Author's note: Not my strongest chapter. But we press onwards.
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"I brought these medical supplies back from home, are you still wounded?"
Kaya sat up a little straighter, a smile turning up the corners of her lips at the reappearance of the human girl Kagome. She passed through the flap to the small hut and came to sit on the ground near Kaya. In her hand she carried a strange metal box with a red cross on one side.
"No, my wounds have all closed. But thank you. I'm sure we'll be needing it in the future." Her clawed fingers touched the surface of the strange box. Curiously, she flipped the lid open to reveal the contents. "These are medicines that you brought back from your home?"
"Yeah, my mom put it together for me." Kagome grinned back at her. "After I told her both you and Inuyasha were hurt, she insisted I bring this back."
"Seems all mothers are skilled in the art of mending." Kaya picked up one item or another from the box and examined it, "Ours taught us herbal remedies for almost any ailment."
Inuyasha's whole body stiffened at the mention of their mother. But Kagome couldn't see it from her angle and so she pressed on, "Oh really? Was she a healer?"
Kaya paused for a moment. "Of a sort," she responded, smile becoming a touch smaller. "But not by trade, no." The human girl closed the lid to the medical box once Kaya had put the items back and slid it to the side. Inuyasha took a place next to Kaede beside the fire. He still looked annoyed—Kaya knew why. But talking of their departed mother didn't bother her nearly as much as it seemed to bother him. Reflexively, her hand raised and smacked the skin of her neck in response to a sharp pain that seemed to have started there.
"Oh yeah, forgot to say, Myoga's back." Inuyasha muttered.
"Myoga?" She repeated, "What are you running from now?"
The tiny demon, stuck to the palm of her hand, took a moment to recover. "Hello, my lady," he said in a voice strained by pain. "What a relief it is to lay eyes on you again. I only wish it were in better circumstances."
Two pairs of yellow eyes met in a knowing look across the fire. "Uh-huh." Kaya spoke, "We know you only show up when something bad is going on."
Myoga jumped to the other side of the fire where he appeared to make himself comfortable. "It pains me that you speak of me this way. After all, I am the guardian of your great father's final resting place. And I have come to inform you that there is someone seeking out his tomb."
"His tomb?" Inuyasha asked, "So of course you ran away and came here."
"Well, more specifically, they appear to be searching for his remains. Unfortunately, no one knows where they are."
What? Kaya just shook her head in confusion. Everything concerning their father seemed to be one big mystery. Their mother had never spoken much of him. In fact, Kaya wasn't sure she had known all that much about him, either. Just enough to get pregnant and have some kids.
"Really? So your father was a powerful ruler? And what about your mother?" Kagome asked. She looked between the two half-demons, but it was Myoga who spoke.
"She was a beauty beyond compare—" But he was interrupted by Inuyasha's foot squishing him into the ground.
"Hey, that wasn't very nice!"
"Just drop it, okay?" He said, crossing over to the exit. "She died a long time ago."
Kaya let out a sigh, pushing a hand through her hair. "You'll have to forgive him. He's still pretty sensitive about the topic. He doesn't even let me speak about our mother without getting all upset."
"I'm sorry," Kagome said. The girl looked upset. Her blue eyes turned to the screen that Inuyasha had just passed through and lingered there for a few moments. "I should go talk to him."
"You don't have to," Kaya offered, gathering herself to stand, "I can go."
Kagome shook her head slightly, "No, it's alright. If I'm the one who upset him, I should do it."
The half-demon shrugged her shoulders a bit, but didn't protest any further. Kagome left the little hut then in search of Inuyasha and Kaya trailed out after her to check on her clothes. She'd dug up her stash of buried items that morning and picked something out to wear. But the stench of fifty years of dirt and decay had seeped into the cloth, which had forced her to wash them as best she could. Sniffing the dried garments now, it had sort of worked. She could finally change out of the clothes Kaede had lent her.
"Say, girl, how fares the wound from Kikyou's arrow?" Kaede asked when she ducked back into the hut to change, "Has it healed fully, like those from Yura's puppets?"
Kaya had only just removed her top. No, that wound had not healed like the others. In the days that had passed since she and Inuyasha were freed from their slumber, that wound had only closed slightly. And now the edges of it were once again turning the dark color of decay. The bandages helped to hold in the smell somewhat, but a nose as keen as hers could still pick it up. "No," Kaya responded after several seconds' hesitation, "it seems to be getting worse." There was no sense in lying, the old hag would find out eventually no matter what.
"Aye, I thought ye may say that. I can still sense it within ye."
"Sense what?" The girl asked. She pulled the legs of the form-fitting black pants slightly further down her calf before moving to kneel beside the old woman.
Kaede's single eye caught both of hers and Kaya suddenly knew what she was about to say. "My sister Kikyou's malice. It festers within ye even fifty years on. I never knew that she was capable of casting a curse just by feeling."
"I doubt she did, either." Kaya murmured. For whatever reason, Kikyou had chosen to let her live as well that day. But it seemed she managed to doom her anyways. "What are the chances that you can purify it?"
"I will certainly try. But child, my sister's spiritual powers far surpassed my own. The only hope you have may lie in the training of young Kagome."
Kagome. Despite her sometimes immature nature, the girl was unapologetically kind. Knowing that Kaya was relying on her to grow stronger would put undue pressure on a girl who was already a stranger in a strange land. Though she did seem to be taking it all in stride. And even worse, if Inuyasha knew… "Kaede, I prefer that my condition stays between the two of us. If Inuyasha realizes it will only make him more rude to Kagome. And if Kagome doesn't get strong enough before it's too late… I don't want her to know."
The priestess looked at her for a long moment, "I'm afraid I must ask for forgiveness from ye, child. I thought ye were the same as thy brother Inuyasha, but it appears I have misjudged ye. You have a more compassionate heart than one would expect of a demon—half or otherwise. And ye lack the brash exterior of thy brother."
"There's no need for apologies, Kaede. Inuyasha and I are actually very similar. We just hide our pain in different ways." She fiddled with the neckline of her outfit a bit. "Tell it to me straight. How long should I expect to live with this kind of wound?"
"If ye come to me for regular purification and remain otherwise healthy… A year, I wager. Perhaps more. It is hard to predict how a demon body will be affected by such things." Kaede seemed to ponder on it a few moments longer, eye watching the embers in the hearth. "I am sorry, child, truly. Though I am confident Kikyou knew not what she had done to you, perishing from a curse such as this is not a pleasant experience. "
"I suppose I should have been nicer to her." Kaya mused. There was no sense in crying over what had already come to pass.
The hut's thin screen fluttered with a strong wind that seemed to pass quickly. But on that wind came both Inuyasha and Kagome's scent. And… Oh, no.
Sesshomaru.
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"Where is he?"
She'd tore through the forest as fast as she'd possibly could, following the scent of Inuyasha and Kagome on the breeze. But then their scents had vanished and left only Sesshomaru's.
"Ah, finally. I knew you two wretches wouldn't be far from one another. Too bad you didn't arrive sooner." It had been so very long, a hundred years maybe, since she'd laid eyes on her daiyoukai brother. Sesshomaru had remained completely unchanged in all that time. "Though I half-expected you to finally have tired of being caught up in Inuyasha's messes."
"Where is he, Sesshomaru? And where is Kagome? What have you done with them?" Kaya growled. In her haste she'd snatched a scythe from the rice paddies and had managed to turn it into a half-decent weapon.
"So you've come to share a fondness for human pets. How disappointing. Just when I thought you may not be a complete stain upon our father's legacy." Pleasant as ever. He jumped from the shoulder of the towering ogre he'd stood on and slashed at it with his whip on the way down. The creature's body sagged before separating into sections and falling towards the ground. Kaya narrowly avoided getting crushed by one of the pieces.
Now the two of them stood face to face, though Sesshomaru was at least a head taller than she. "Answer my question," the girl demanded.
He smirked—as far as Sesshomaru's muted expressions went, anyways. "Perhaps you are the smarter of the half-demon embarrassments, little sister. Seen, but never seen. Protected, yet never known to its' protector. This is the only clue to the location of our father's tomb. Where is it?"
Kaya scoffed, "You really think that I know something about our father that you don't, Sesshomaru? I couldn't recognize the guy if he was standin' in front of me. If you don't know where the tomb is, I sure as hell don't."
"If Father left no other clues, surely one of the three of us know the Tomb's location. It would be foolish of him not to leave that information in the care of one of his children." His yellow eyes turned to a space of land across a dark lake beside them. "It stands to reason, then, if I do not know and you truly do not know… That Inuyasha knows and is concealing its location."
"If Inuyasha knew anything then I would know it, too."
"Such confidence in him, little sister, even after he caused you to be sealed away for fifty years due to his inability to stay away from mortal women? Perhaps Inuyasha knows of the treasure that lies within our father's tomb and seeks to keep it for himself."
Kaya couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "Inuyasha can't keep a secret from me to save his life."
"We'll see if you're right." Sesshomaru responded. His hands entered his sleeves and he turned boredly towards the lake. Kaya didn't drop her stance. Any moment he would come at her and, honestly, she was no match for Sesshomaru. She and Inuyasha together were no match for Sesshomaru. Especially when the only weapon she had was some farmer's rice cutting scythe. All she could do was try to anticipate his movements, read his face, and…
His bored expression turned into a smirk. "Well, it seems you truly did not know the location of the tomb. Inuyasha has been hiding it all along. I'll reward your honesty by sparing your life… at least until I finish with your wretched brother." In the next moment he was leaping across the lake and into the distance at great speed. Kaya could do nothing but follow.
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Their father. His bones were larger than life. Neither of them had ever so much as seen the man, but still they knew it was him. Borne upon the backs of skeletal birds towards his remains, Kaya couldn't help but think how typical this was. Planned. Orchestrated. Every scrap of information—of proof he had acknowledged them was delivered in some sort of grand gesture. Like they should be grateful.
She had a real bad taste in her mouth when it came to the old man.
She'd been so distracted that she hadn't noticed her damn bird had changed direction. Kagome and her brother had gone one way and she another. No matter how she hit the damn thing it wouldn't change course, and it was too high to jump.
"Take me to where the others are, you stupid bird!"
The wind changed direction, then, and the bird dove. Kaya hung onto the damn thing for dear life so she wouldn't plummet to her death. The next thing she knew the damn thing had flipped over and deposited her so kindly onto the earth below. Body hit dirt and rolled until she managed to stop herself. Fuck. The wound hurt like hell.
Kaya stood, brushing some of the dirt off of herself as she did so. The bird had taken her...behind her father's skeletal remains. She looked up for a moment at the broad back of his armor and felt very, very small once again. A feeling she detested, so she averted her eyes. There was nothing else out there but jagged rocks rising from every angle around her—that damn bird she'd been on must have been broken.
Until she saw it.
Glinting in the odd light of the sun this close to the border of the afterlife, was a small golden pedestal. Extremely small. Perhaps if one were standing in this exact spot at this precise time of day, one would miss it. Ah. So it was but another one of her father's plans then, was it? Kaya hated it already, but nonetheless approached. It was tucked in between the faces of two of the jagged stone pillars that surrounded her father's corpse.
Orchestrated. Planned.
Laid on top of the golden pedestal was a string of pearls—no, beads. So pale pink in color they almost appeared white and a single, small fang. Kaya moved her hand to touch it, but withdrew her fingers before they could touch.
"I don't want to play your game, old man. Whatever you have Inuyasha and Sesshomaru fighting over, I don't want any part of it. You can keep your jewelry."
Her mother had told her that she'd had no idea that she'd carried twins inside of her belly until the moment Kaya was born. But her father, the Great General of the West, surely could have sensed it. He had named Inuyasha himself. Kaya had been named by her mother. Throughout her life she had wondered if her father would have acknowledged her at all had he survived his final battle. Daughters of noble lords and great generals were often bought and sold as part of peace offerings and treaties between different warring clans, after all. But a half-demon daughter of a daiyoukai such as her father was of little use for such things, not that Kaya would have been at all agreeable anyways.
And now, she was offered a fucking necklace.
He died and abandoned they and their mother to scorn and poverty. He sealed the only means of getting to his tomb in his half-demon son's eye knowing that his full-demon son would come looking. Their mother had died because they hadn't been able to buy real medicine and all he had to offer them now was a battle with Sesshomaru and a fucking necklace? Kaya was seething with anger, ready to boil over at any moment at a man who had been dead for over two hundred years—whom she had never so much as laid eyes on.
Just as she got ready to turn and find where her brothers fought, the necklace called out to her. Waves of demon energy, her father's she presumed, emanated from the string of beads and seemed to speak her name into the air. For a moment, she found herself taken aback.
But then from behind and above came a crash as part of their father's corpse collapsed in on itself. Inuyasha and Sesshomaru. "Fine, I'll take the fucking beads." She muttered, grabbing them from the pedestal and shoving them into a hidden pocket lest Sesshomaru discover their existence and claim they belonged to him.
Time to figure out how to kill Sesshomaru.
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"Where the hell have you been?" Inuyasha yelled as she arrived. The two of them were as ants standing on their father's massive shoulder. In his hand was the skinniest, most unkempt looking weapon she had ever seen.
"Forget it, I'm here now. Is that the sword Sesshomaru was going on about? Maybe you should just let him have it."
Sesshomaru roared in front of them—Kaya hadn't realized that he, too, had a 'true form' as their father did. But she supposed it made sense.
"Here, you try the damn thing. Maybe you can get it to work." Inuyasha handed her the battered weapon. As soon as Kaya's hand gripped it, she could feel that a power greater than her own coursed through it. It wouldn't bend to her will as so many other weapons did. It was a demon's blade, alright, but what could it do in this form?
It was then their older brother attacked, causing the twins to separate and jump away from each other to avoid him. As Kaya was holding the precious sword, she was the target. As she dodged Sesshomaru's claws and fangs, she managed to get a few swipes with the weapon in. It didn't so much as cut his fur.
And then the sword began to pulsate in her hand, just as the necklace had. Waves of demon energy rolled off of it like a heartbeat telling her of the sword's dormant power. But somehow she knew she wasn't the intended recipient. A swipe of Sesshomaru's massive paw came her way and Kaya didn't dare parry it with the flimsy-looking blade so she was forced to dodge yet again. Her feet slid against the smooth surface of their father's pauldron.
"Here, take it back." She muttered when Inuyasha landed beside her. His expression changed as he took the sword from her hand, Kaya could tell he'd figured out exactly what she had minutes before.
"Alright," he said, relaxing into a more confident stance, "Let's see what this hunk of junk can do."
Sesshomaru bounded towards them. Kaya finally took a moment to really assess his true form. A big dog. Nothing like the corpse under their feet. In fact, she was quite sure he was far more deadly in his humanoid form—not to mention more frightening. He wore no armor, had no protection other than his teeth and claw. With enough luck to get close and a blade sharp enough to cleave flesh and bone…
Well, Inuyasha was on it. Even as Kaya had determined that she could probably get one of his eyes with her claws if she were lucky enough, Inuyasha had charged their older brother and started swinging that blade like their lives depended on it. He'd never been much for weapons in the past and it showed a bit in his swordsmanship, but nonetheless the scrawny looking blade transformed into one that was almost bigger than Inuyasha himself. It cleaved Sesshomaru's giant foreleg in half from wrist to shoulder as though the flesh and bone were nothing. The beast roared and lost its balance, falling from the shoulder of the skeleton into the mist below.
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