Disclaimer: If I owned Inuyasha, I wouldn't bother writing this for you! BWAHAHAHA! Count your lucky stars, I guess. I'm sad. u.u
~*~
PROLOGUE
Obieru stepped forth from the shadows. The man in the baboon pelt--Naraku--turned, half-surprised at the demon's early arrival. Obieru suppressed a snort. A demon should know that one should expect anything, especially where Shikon shards were concerned.
"Ah, so you are here," Naraku said smoothly. "What are your powers? Are they capable of crushing that hanyou, Inuyasha? Are they capable of crushing his human companions?"
Obieru sighed. Nobody gave a nightmare any respect. Nightmares were things to be feared. Nightmares were fears. Nightmares were solid, supreme. Nightmares were unconquerable. People feared nightmares because of this. People feared what they could not control.
"Yes, my lord. My powers are things that nobody can overcome easily, if at all. If I should fail at destroying the mind of this hanyou, he will be weak enough for anyone to finish him easily."
Naraku glanced at him. "If your powers are so mighty, test them on my servant." From behind him came a woman with red eyes and an open fan. She looked at Naraku distrustfully, setting her gaze upon Obieru.
The demon spent a few seconds looking at her, then almost carelessly tossed a ball of black light at her.
The woman reflexively caught it. Then her eyes widened as the black light crept under her skin, rushing toward her face to pool behind her eyes, making her see what Obieru wished her to see.
The demon himself was looking through a small mirror emitting the same black light. Pictures flashed upon its surface. He nodded slowly as he saw the image of a pool of golden light in Naraku's hand, molding to become a heart. Kagura's heart. The image Naraku squeezed, and Kagura fell to her knees in agony.
Through the mirror he saw a fang, wielded by the hanyou Naraku wished to kill so very badly. The hanyou swung it down, through the air, and he saw the image Kagura's fan break under the pressure. The image Kagura's control over the winds snapped, and her wind blades turned from their course toward Inuyasha to embed themselves in her own body. The real Kagura flinched as each image blade struck her image self, her hands coming up to try to stop the nonexistent blood flow.
Her struggle was useless. All she saw and felt was only in her mind.
"Stop," Naraku ordered slowly. He was pleased at this display of power, Obieru could tell, but didn't wish for his servant to die in the recesses of her own mind.
It wasn't even a quarter of his real power. Kagura's mind was especially vulnerable to an attack such as this. She was living most of her fears in the waking world already. But Obieru could take those and multiply them a hundredfold to bring her to her knees. If it was her fear, he could have her image self die. And since her image self was her reflected soul, she would die as well.
That would not work on her, however, as dying was one thing she did not fear. Quite the opposite, actually. She wished for it daily. So in a case such as hers, where the soul did not fear death, he would merely trap the soul in their other fears and kill their body with one stroke.
Nightmare demons were aptly named.
Naraku looked up from his crumpled 'servant'--though from Obieru's sifting through Kagura's thoughts, he knew she was something much different--to give the nightmare demon a thoughtful look.
"This is only a fraction of your power, yes?"
Obieru nodded. "Kagura was especially susceptible to her fears."
Naraku looked away. "I'm sure that Inuyasha will be as well, though I'm sure he will be harder to penetrate. He has evaded many of my mind traps because of his thoughts about a certain human girl."
Obieru smirked. "In my case, I'm sure that will be a weakness. If this girl brings him out of one nightmare, it will only lead to one about her being killed."
Naraku looked thoughtful. "That is good to know. Just to make sure you do not fail, I give you this." He held out one hand, offering a shard of the Shikon Jewel.
Obieru took it from the hanyou's fingers, examining the dark, tainted aura it gave off. He could tell that it could boost his strength greatly. It could also do something that would make his nightmares that much more deadly.
Of course, he would choose the second option. Instead of imbedding the tiny shard into his forehead as he could have done, he chose to lay it in a small crack in the surface of his mirror.
Naraku looked on, and Obieru could nearly feel the waves of confusion rolling off him.
"You wish to see why I chose to put the shard in my mirror?" Obieru asked, smiling. "I will show you."
With one smooth motion he sent a cloud of the black youki rolling toward the hanyou. To the nightmare demon's surprise, from under the baboon pelt, several root-like tentacles appeared. Quickly looking into the mirror, he saw only the image of a puppet with a dark hair strung around it. Kugutsu.
Snorting, Obieru twitched his fingers to send the youki cloud under the "skin" of the kugutsu and crawling towards the wooden puppet buried inside. The dark cloud condensed to merge with the puppet, breaking it. But not before he sent some of that youki through to the master puppet.
He could see through the mirror the master puppet, with a dark haired young man sitting near it. His youki exploded from the master puppet when it cracked. The man's head snapped up at the loud noise, right as the cloud enveloped his body.
Just as it had with Kagura, the youki sunk under Naraku's skin to pool behind the hanyou's eyes. Obieru searched the man's thoughts, finding many crevices of fear for his nightmares to sink into.
The mirror flipped from the image of Naraku himself to images of Naraku's fears. Namely, one Onigumo.
Obieru watched as the image Naraku put a hand to the spider mark on his back, the burn swelling larger and larger to encompass him. The demons were expelled from the ex-hanyou's body, all that once held them together now being the force that drove them out. Obieru watched in satisfaction as Naraku's face twisted from shock to horror to pure delicious fear, as Onigumo resurfaced entirely. No longer was Naraku a hanyou. He was human. He was Onigumo.
Once the nightmare was completed, Obieru had the mirror show him the real Naraku. But he could see no difference between reality and the image. Naraku's nightmare had been real. The Shikon shard had given Obieru the power to make real a person's greatest fear.
Nightmares truly were fearsome.
And now the fear was real.
~*~
Onigumo opened his eyes to the sight of a demon. This demon was awfully familiar. Black eyes, black hair, black robes, one hand holding a mirror, the other hovering near the hilt of a katana at his side. The demon emitted a steady, slow stream of dark youki similar to the glow of a tainted Shikon shard.
He knew this demon. Obieru.
Obieru looked up from the mirror he held to meet the eyes of the frightened human before him. Onigumo was weak from his ordeal, helpless against a full demon with boosted powers. He was not worth an effort.
The nightmare demon turned to see the demons that had been a part of what was once Naraku. They gathered in a corner of the room, near the shoji, trying to regain their strength.
Obieru smiled, drawing his katana to point at them. His dark youki crept along the blade, mist-like, to form a cloud around the cowering demons, squeezing tighter and tighter to form Naraku anew. Their powers were squeezed from their bodies to form a pool of liquid miasma.
The essence of Naraku.
From what he had seen in his mirror, Onigumo's worst nightmare was to become trapped in Naraku once more. Ironic, that what both Naraku and Onigumo wanted was to be separate beings, yet neither had the power.
Obieru crushed and squeezed the essence tighter together, forming solid spikes of the miasma. Then, picking up the poisonous objects, turned to Onigumo.
~*~
Kagura staggered into the courtyard of Naraku's castle, calling out her hated master's name. She had awoken a few minutes earlier, finding both the kugutsu and Obieru gone, and had returned to try to find more information. Unfortunately, she couldn't see her master's outline behind the shoji screens. Wondering where he could be, she slid one back to reveal the interior of the castle.
The wind demon bit back a gasp at what she found. A human--Onigumo, most likely--lay pinned to the floor with spikes formed of solid miasma, like a beetle to a card. He breathed raggedly, still alive, but she knew that the poison was seeping into his bloodstream.
This was what that nightmare demon had done to her master. Obieru had separated Naraku's demon and human essences, then solidified the former to let them dissolve back together in the most painful way possible. Naraku was alive, to be sure, but probably wishing he was dead.
Most definitely wishing he was dead.
And had she known what mercy was, she would have given it to him.
~*~
It's kind of dark, I guess, but that's what angst is for! *cackle* Just wait until we get to the plot--- You'll shake in the face of my imagination! BWAHAHA! Anyway, We'll get things rolling down that rocky, angst-filled path soon enough. Just you wait...