The Welder of BlackFire:

Thorn's Past Life-A Mysterious Ally

Chapter Seventeen: The Black Blaze and Thorn's Good-Bye

"Do you feel that too, Inuyasha?" Miroku asked, watching as the hanyou paused in mid-step.

"Yeah. Thorn's calling to us," he answered, looking up.

"What's wrong with you two?" Kegome asked, wheeling her bike to a stop next to them.

"Can't you feel it Kegome?" Shippo asked from the bike's seat. The girl paused a moment before answering.

"Yeah! Yeah, I can," she said, turning to the kitsune.

"We should go," Sango said.

"What? After the way we got beaten last time, you want to answer her call?" Shippo squeeked.

"Yes, I agree. What do you think Inuyasha?" Miroku asked. The inu glanced toward Kegome, who nodded.

"Fine, let's go!" he said, bolting into the trees.

Just like last time, only this time she's calling for us to come. Even the sun is setting, just as it was before. Hopefully this time I won't be defeated and I'll get the shards. Inuyasha thought to himself as he paced along, his feet covering the ground swiftly. But we're nowhere near her denning site, and why would she be summoning us if she has her cub so close? We'll just have to go and find out. I wonder how she's emitting the signal like that? He gritted his teeth and looked behind him, watching as his companions ran to keep up with him. He waited for them right before a thick wall of trees. She's right behind these trees. I can feel it. Her voice in my mind is getting stronger.

"Inuyasha, do you have to run so fast?" Kegome panted, coming to a stop behind him. "Why did you stop?"

"She's right here, can't you feel the Jewel shards?" he growled.

"Oh, yeah, but I didn't think she was so close. The feeling of the shards is almost hidden."

"Feh."

"So are we going in?" Sango asked, readying her weapon on her back.

"I don't think she wants to fight, Sango," Miroku said.

"Yes well, I don't want to take any chances. A mother with a child is no one to mess with," she stated, but relaxed somewhat. She acquired a glance from nearly everyone in the group. "What? That's what everyone says!" she said.

Are you coming? whispered a voice in the air. Thorn's voice. They all turned toward the wall of trees.

"I hate it when she does that!" growled Inuyasha as he sulkily lead them past the thick curtain of trees, but his guard was high as he took in their surroundings, contemplating battle strategies. Just in case.

Thorn sat peacefully on the other side of the sparsely treed groove. Her eyes were closed, and her hands placed gracefully on her lap. Her hair shimmered with a golden glow in a ray of the retreating sun's light, still long and luxurious, two strands falling over her closed eyes.

"Glad you could make it. The others will be here momentarily," Thorn said, lifting her chin and opening her emerald eyes to look at them. Before they could say a word, she continued on. "Sango. Hello. We have yet to be properly introduced. You may call me Thorn."

"Are you saying that is not your real name?" the demon exterminator quipped. The woman smiled.

"That doesn't matter anymore. Everything will be explained soon enough, when the other guests arrive. But before that, I wanted to show you I was not truly as you saw me, as the devilish wench."

"Yeah right," murmured Inuyasha, but Thorn picked up the sound. She glared at him, but only sternly, not with any cruelty.

"I have something that will prove useful in the future," the woman continued, reaching behind her. Sango braced herself, but what Thorn pulled out behind her she did not use against her. She revealed the sword that had, not a few weeks ago, been snapped in two with her powerful, canine jaws. "This is yours, I have fully reinforced the point where I fused the two halves back together with unbreakable dragon scales that have been hardened into metal. It will not snap as long as your spirit believes it wont. And your spirit is strong. It wont give up, so neither will the blade," she explained, offering the sword to the now-seated woman.

"Umm, thank you, ah, Thorn," Sango said, taking the newly-mended sword and sheathing it. Thorn sighed, looking around as the group sat around her in their respective places.

"So what's the meaning of all this?" Inuyasha said with a snort, dropping to the ground with a thud, his arms crossed, as if he was bored.

"You'll find out in a few minutes. Do you not feel the others coming?" she asked. Inuyasha opened his eyes, clearly no longer bored. He looked at her a moment, and then looked up into the tapestry that swam across the evening sky, listening, smelling. It took him a couple seconds before he realized what she was talking about. His eyes grew wide and he growled and cursed under his breath.

"Why'd he have to come?" Inuyasha huffed.

"Well I would think that you would understand," she said bitingly, but her tone was playful.

"Feh."

"Thorn. What's going on?" Sesshoumaru asked, slipping from the shadows. A gasp escaped nearly everyone in the clearing but for Inuyasha, who growled fiercely, and Thorn, who smiled sweetly.

"Mistress! What's going on?" Jaken asked in his usual squawk.

"Its time you knew about everything. Please, Sesshoumaru, Jaken, sit. And try not to kill one another you two," Thorn said, referring to the growling inu-youkai's. "While I explain."

"Explain what? I know everything I need to know," Sesshoumaru said, reluctant to sit across from Inuyasha.

"That is not true, my dear. Please, have a seat. You all deserve to know the truth," the black-dressed woman said with a sigh. The Inu-youkai lord sat down gracefully, his body close to her side, with Jaken hesitating before sitting next to his master.

"What truth? You mean everything you told us were lies?" Inuyasha growled, tearing his angry eyes from his brother to his brother's mate.

"Not entirely, but I will admit that I haven't been entirely honest with you."

"Of course," Inuyasha spat, receiving a dagger-like glare from his brother at his lack of respect in his tone.

"Will you let me begin?" Thorn asked, glaring at both brothers.

"Yes, go ahead," Sesshoumaru said, turning to face her.

Thorn sighed and took a deep breath, and her body began to glow a bright azure. Inuyasha and his group was taken back, but Sesshoumaru and Jaken were unfazed by her concealing spell.

"Its easier to speak through the mind in my present state, and so that is how this tale will be spun," Thorn said, as she closed her eyes and bid the others to do the same.

"Now, Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru, dear," she growled softly, pressing buttons in their mind to force their eyes shut. They closed their eyes reluctantly, but did so still the same. "First, I must tell BlackFire's story, if you're to understand what I need to tell you."

She began her tale, her voice fluid and clear in everyone's mind.

*

BlackFire, who's name you might find familiar if I told you his real name was Blazin' Black Fire, The Black Blaze. Yes, I know, everyone thought he had been killed long ago, but he's alive and well right beside you. Clearly, his reputation for being heartless and a killing-machine proceeds him even hundreds of years after his imprisonment. Anyway, when he was still young, only a couple of hundreds of years old, he learned that he had naturally evolved into having a second stomach. A stomach that demanded a feeding of souls every hundred years. The stomach digested the souls, and gained their strongest and most useful powers. The more powerful the soul that was consumed, the more powerful he became after the ten-year digestion period. He would gain their power after those ten years, and soon, his soul became addicted to the power and greed overtook it. He began to consume more souls every hundred years to keep its hunger at bay. But the more he killed, the more addicted he himself became to the scent and taste of blood. Finally, after thousands of years of watching BlackFire consume so many, a large band of priests and priestess, hundreds if not nearly thousands, grouped together to put an end to his destruction before he killed off the races that inhabited the world. They plotted for years, binding their time until they could corner him. Finally, they did corner him, and began the battle. They attacked him in waves, so that after killing one wave of weak priests and priestess, he was faced with another, more powerful wave of them. Eventually, they wore him down. There were too many souls and too much rotting flesh about him, and both of his stomachs screamed for more, although they were ready to burst in their fullness. And still, they kept coming, forcing him to kill them until the ground was so littered with the carcasses and his body craved for more that he was forced, for the first time in his life, to retreat to higher ground. Finally, though, the waves became less and less, although their strength became even greater. At last, when he had advanced to a high shelf on a high mountain, he saw the power and strength that drove the holy people to their deaths. It was a young man, with a strong, powerful aura. He was the last, and he stepped forward to finally dispose of the mighty dragon. He said that he would not kill BlackFire, but nor would he let him go unpunished. But by then, the Black Blaze was too weak and exhausted of his powers to seemingly give him much of a fight. But he did. He fought until his stomachs revolted from not consuming the flesh at his claws or the souls that hung at his jaws, and then he could do nothing but stare down the man. His breath was heavy with smoke, a sign that the dragon was spent, as he panted, anger raging in his blue eyes that hinted enraged gold as he hissed curses under his breath.

"You will forever suffer for what you have done!" the young man had said in a strong voice, raising his sword into the air. BlackFire paused as he saw the sword. It was capped with the energy of the man, and he knew that in his weakened condition he could not even harden his armor to ward its power off. He waited for the blow, and received it, but it was only on his forehead, where he now welds a scar, as do I. But the man did not kill him, instead the man began to chant, slowly, then with more vigor and heart. His sword began to quiver and shake, as well as glow with even more awesome powers than before.

"With this sword you will pay the debt you owe!"

I will explain in similar terms as to what the rules were to BlackFire's imprisonment that the man explained. When he became a sword, the rules would be simple. He was to find a human willing to harness his heart. They would have to be pure of heart, and preferably a child, but without a heart that was true to their emotions, he would not be able to fuse with them and thus would remain held stead-fast by the sacred tree his blade was thrust into. If he was to find a willing human, and I will explain why I say human in a moment, to weld him as a sword and harness his energy into pureness, then his body would be freed from the sword-state and he could roam again. Now, the priest had said a human, and had done this because the mind and soul of a demon is much more easily converted from light to dark by BlackFire's black energy, while a human is stubborn, and thus is harder to convert if it came to such measures. The idea of this was to teach him what it was like to not be a killer, to be innocent and pure. As his soul became purer with the human's positive energy, he would come to have more freedom from his prison, but would never be completely free until there was not a trace of darkness in his mind or soul.

As he told him all of this, BlackFire slowly began to change his shape, but he was too drained to be tapping into his shape-shifting powers. It was the man who was changing him, twisting his large bulk into a broad-sword. He resisted, but the man's power was too great and he was too drained.

Now, after telling the Black Blaze of his mission to become pure and caring, he said one last thing, the words that forever have stayed fresh in BlackFire's mind as if they were carved into the rock of his memory.

"Now, in sacrifice for the people of our world, I shall take my own life, and be sure to add my soul into you own, just as you have with all the others you have consumed." And so he emptied BlackFire's second stomach of the souls he had already consumed, and so when the priest's soul was added, more of it was absorbed than if it was digested with many other souls.

When BlackFire eats a soul, as you know, he gains their power, so when he was forced to eat the priest's soul, which was pure and caring, after the ten years, the pureness was absorbed, forever part of his being. It was the first step towards his rebirth. But I am getting far ahead of myself.

By the time his second stomach was emptied, BlackFire was already nearly in full sword shape, and so could not consume more souls to dilute it. But also, the man had placed a powerful spell on Blazin' BlackFire, so that until his soul was totally flowing within the dragon, he would be deaf and blind to everything around him, living in a void until the time passed.

When the time did pass, the spell was broken and he was eligible to search for his new welder. But every time a demon was foolish enough to come and try to take him from his resting spot, instead of letting them go without harm, he had also been granted the freedom to kill them, because although he was imprisoned, his second stomach still demanded the souls, even if his first stomach did not need to consume flesh in order for him to survive. When he took the souls he was not granted their powers, but was able to use them to free his own soul from the sword and search for his new owner thanks to the shard of the Shikon no Tama that had become imbedded in his hilt. Now, you know what happened from there, his finding me in the future and using what power and freedom he had gained from the jewel shard, or had all along, opened a portal into the future and bring me to this time.

Now there is something that I have yet to tell you about his whole sword-bound spell. If BlackFire's heart were to become poisoned once again by the greed of his mind, soul, and stomach, and he were to betray the one who trusted him in their welding and kill them, then his soul would forever be fused with their soul in reincarnation for all of eternity. This is why I have brought you here today. Now I will release you from this trance and answer the questions I hear burning in your minds. Thorn released them with a sigh.

"What does this soul-binding have to do with you?" Sesshoumaru asked, who was the first to recover and was more worried about his mate then the sword.

"It has a lot to do with me. I am his welder, and so these rules apply to me. After I left a few days ago, I thought long and hard about our pasts, about how both our lives have been changed by Fate and her plans," Thorn said, her eyes not opening. BlackFire hummed softly on her back, but only the glow was visible to the group in the darkness. "When I left I learned in more detail of what I just told you. Fate had told me, Sesshoumaru, with the death of the pup," This brought startled expressions from most of the group. "That I was living a lie that I had told myself, and BlackFire himself had told himself a lie when he thought he could obtain the jewel shards to rid himself of his prison, and knows that he does not want to become pure in soul."

"So what does that have to do with us? It seems to me that this is between you and that sword," Inuyasha said, crossing his arms with a snort.

"Inuyasha! Have a little respect," Kegome said.

"Well it doesn't," the hanyou grumbled.

"It does, Inuyasha," Thorn said with a smile. "If you want the jewel shards that I have, and I have many of them." This caught Inuyasha's attention and he sat quietly for once, waiting.

"What's going on? I don't understand what you're trying to say," Sesshoumaru asked.

Thorn's eyes bolted open, and she sat up straighter, her teeth grinding. They all stared at her, confused. After a moment, she relaxed and sighed, again closing her eyes as she took a shaky breath.

"What was that all about?" Miroku asked. Thorn smiled sadly.

"I will explain why I have called you all here. Both BlackFire and I have agreed that we would be better off emotionally, and better for the future, if we were reincarnated together. BlackFire is willing to sacrifice his soul so that we are forever joined. We will forever be as one," the sword-welding woman explained. Realization hit Sesshoumaru first, making him take a quick breath and opening his eyes wide.

"No! He put you up to this didn't he? Well I wont have it! I'll bring you back with the Tensaiga," Sesshoumaru growled, glaring at the obscured sword on her back.

"No, you wont," Thorn said firmly. "After I die, which will happen soon, I will erase you're memories with the last of my power, the power that was gained from the priest that confined BlackFire. You will live your lives as if I never appeared, you will all forget."

"I don't want to forget," Sesshoumaru said.

"I wont erase it completely. It will be determined by your will to remember. If you want to remember that much, then when, or if, you see my reincarnation, your memory should be sparked. You wont remember everything, depending on how much you want to remember, but its the best I can do without altering the future." Thorn sighed, and opened her green eyes with a sad smile. "But I have a favor to ask of Kegome first." She pulled out a folded envelope. "Kegome, I need you to send this to America for me, so that my mother knows I will not be coming home. You don't have to, but I ask that you call her at the number on the other note, or send her a letter and tell her that I was killed in a fire, and so there was nothing worth bringing back to her. She shouldn't insist upon any evidence. This letter tells her that I had a great time and everything else she wants to hear, nothing special. Thank you Kegome. If I am reincarnated, because I died in this time, I will come back to our time, if so I'll try to come see you," Thorn said with a smile as the girl took the letter from her.

"This is not the way out, Thorn," Kegome whispered.

"Yes it is. When you leave here you will not remember, but when you go back to our time, then you will remember, but once the letter leaves your possession, your memory will be erased." Thorn turned to Inuyasha. "Although you probably wont remember what I say, I will tell you this, Inuyasha," The hanyou turned toward her, pretending he wasn't interested. "How many demons do you think you will have to slay to get all of the jewel? Besides Naraku?"

"I thought you said you were going to tell me something, not ask questions," he huffed.

"How many?" she persisted.

"Well, about ten or fifteen more I'd say, it depends on how many slaves Naraku hires to try kill me with them," he replied, looking up toward the dark sky, thinking hard.

"Well, once you get the jewel, you will of have defeated all those demons, right?" she asked. Inuyasha grew suspicious.

"Yeah. What are you driving at, Thorn?" he asked, glaring at her.

"Well, does that not make you stronger than a demon? To defeat them like that, especially since they will have the shards that enhance their strength? Inuyasha, don't get that look on your face, you look like a pouting child. Just think a moment, I know that if I say this, you'll remember. Your human blood is not a curse, no matter how much you see it as such. More that likely, it was your human blood that won the victory. If you defeated so many demons, without being a full one yourself, does that not prove that you are stronger than them? Let me finish before you start arguing. Just think, when you get all of the shards and finally have the Shikon no Tama as a whole, will you really need it? You will of have already proven that you are stronger than those demons, even with their added strength. You should be happy with what you are. I wasn't, and look how I ended up. I just had to tell you, so that I knew that you had been told." Thorn ended her speech with another sigh, and turned to her mate. "And I have something to give you Sesshoumaru. It isn't knowledge, or a last request, its an offering. A remembrance if you will, even if you don't remember." She pulled from her leather garment a small, multi-colored gem. "I have cried only two of these. You can guess that the other is with the pup. I want you to have it," she said, putting her hand in his and dropping the pebble-like stone into his hand. She removed her hand, and he looked at the gem as the colors swirled around in its depths, reminding him of the night her eyes had glowed silver and green, a whirlpool of color and emotions swimming for dominance over one another.

The dying woman sighed and closed her eyes. "I'm ready BlackFire, let's go. And now I leave you. The Shikon shards will be scattered once again, to build your strength, Inuyasha. You all will walk away in a sleep, but I assure that nothing will harm you, and when you all wake, my memory will be gone from your mind. I hope to see you all in our reincarnation." And with those final words BlackFire burst into a bright golden light, and then all was dark.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

AN: WOO! Done! Well, I'm posting the epilogue too, so don't fret! ^_^

DISCLAIMER: said and done dammit!