The Demonic Forest
They walked away from the hut that they had stayed in the night before and paused a second to decide which direction they wanted to travel in next. They had come out of a mountain pass, and found no value in retracing their steps. To the left was a river that began in more mountains and snaked along toward the forest straight ahead of them. To the right was field that seemed to stretch, unending, for miles and miles. The forest seemed to be the best bet.
But as they approached the forest, something didn't seem right. InuYasha noticed it didn't smell nor seem like a normal forest. It was quiet. Too quiet.
"Are you sure th-this is the best idea?" Shippo asked. He was obviously terrified of the thought of stepping foot into the forest, judging by the fact that he was trembling in Kagome's arms.
"I get a bad vibe from this place too, but it seems the only other option." Miroku said. "Unless we turn back now, we either go through this forest searching for the jewel shard, or we walk across the empty looking meadow over there. And what do we do if the jewel actually is hidden within this forest or beyond it? We need to search this way anyway." Miroku looked from left to right, trying to judge how big the forest actually was lengthwise.
"He's right. And besides, do you really think I'm gonna run away with my tail between my legs and let some forest beat me??" And with those words, InuYasha marched straight into the forest, leaving the rest to follow cautiously. It was very dark inside the forest. The trees were so thick that not much light was able to shine through. Kirara transformed from the small, lovable cat into the fierce, flame-resistant, flying beast to better aid Sango and the others if needed. Sango looked over at Kirara, wondering if she had actually sensed danger or if she was merely preparing herself for it. She decided she would change into her demon slaying suit as well. She dropped behind the group, hid behind a few trees with the help of Kirara, and changed quickly. When she came out of hiding, she noticed Kagome had not only seen her leave but had also realized what she was doing. She began to walk slower to keep the guys in a distance close enough for Sango and Kirara to catch up. After a few minutes of walking, InuYasha stoped. His ears twitched, and he put his nose in the air. He caught the scent he was looking for. His head turned to the left, and he took a small step toward a tree that was right in front of his face. As soon as his face approached it, the tree moved back a few feet.
"These trees are alive! This place is haunted! We're gonna die!" Shippo screamed. He began to cry as InuYasha jumped back, pulled out his Tetsusaiga, and tried to cut down the tree. It jumped back, and the tree behind InuYasha hit him hard in the back, knocking him flat on the ground. Miroku tried to throw a scroll at the demon trees. It dodged it, and he had to duck as a branch from another tree swiped at him. As soon as he had dodged that branch, he was hit hard in the stomach by the trunk of yet another tree and sent flying into the trees behind him.
"Houshi-sama!" Sango cried, watching Miroku disappear into the dense trees to her right. She didn't have time to keep her eyes on the spot where he had vanished, because the trees were attacking all of them. She looked over and watched the others struggle to fight and dodge trees all at once. This wasn't good. The next thing she knew, Kirara pulled Sango onto her back, grabbed Kagome and threw her into Sango, and flown into the sky. Sango caught Kagome and helped her sit upright on Kirara's back. They looked down just in time to see InuYasha try to jump up into the air with them, but he was grabbed by a tree and pulled back down.
"Kaze no Kizu!!" InuYasha sent his wind scar flying right into the tree that had grabbed him. It blasted apart and splinters of wood showered down on him. He tried once again to jump up to the girls above him, but the trees around the one he had destroyed weren't very happy. They all grabbed him at once and began pulling him in different directions. He could help but let out a scream of pain.
"Hiraikotsu!" Sango threw her boomerang bone weapon at the trees, releasing InuYasha from all but one's grip. It took advantage of being the only one with a grip left on him and pulled him into the depths of the forest, passing him from one tree to another. Each tree grabbed him in a hold that was inescapable, even for the powerful half-demon.
Sango, Kagome, and Shippo all tried to follow in the direction they thought the trees were taking him, but lost sight of him very quickly.
"What do we do now? We've lost both Miroku and InuYasha. Do we just wait here?" Kagome was devastated. She seemed scared, confused. Sango wasn't much better, and Shippo was hysterical, unable to speak.
"I guess we should try to see if theres any caves or areas where the two of them may have been taken. We're in a tough spot, though, cuz we have to decide who to search for: Miroku or InuYasha."
"Why can't we look for both?" Kagome obviously hadn't been paying as much attention to what had happened as Sango had. But Sango didn't seem to find that very important. She was more than willing to explain.
"See how the path is clearly obvious from up here, and it runs almost straight through the forest? Well, Miroku was pulled into one direction, and InuYasha into another. Come to think of it, I'm not sure which way was which up here, I think we may have been turned around . . . "
"So the question now isn't which boy do we look for, it's what direction do we look in, right?" Kagome understood now.
"Yeah. So pick one."
"Me? Why do I have to pick one?" Kagome turned around to look at Sango, smiling.
"Would you rather I picked it?" Sango didn't smile back. She was looking at the forest, not Kagome's face. Kagome realized now wasn't the time to be stupid and joke around. "Kirara, to the right!" As soon as Sango yelled out the order, her cat followed it with a gentle purr of consent.
Kirara glided just out of reach of the trees, but close enough to the forest for them to see inside it slightly. They couldn't see any people, just a few rocks every now and then, and patches of grass surrounded by trees all around.
"This seems hopeless, doesn't it?" Sango was beginning to become depressed.
"No, we'll find them. I'm sure they'll be ok, it just might take awhile." Kagome said in an attempt to comfort her friend, also trying to comfort herself. It did seem awfully helpless with their limited vision.
"What's that?" Shippo, finally able to speak, pointed to a glint of silver that shone between two trees.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say that was a spider's web." Sango looked closer. Kagome was right. It looked exactly like a spider's web.
"I don't like the look of that. If that is a spider's web, its no small, harmless spider." They had been swirling over one side of the forest path, and so far hadn't gotten very far from it. "I also don't like the fact that we were this close to those webs the whole time we were in the forest."
Kagome looked from the path to the spot they were right now. It was pretty close, less than half a mile. "That's true . . . I hope neither Miroku nor InuYasha get to meet whoever owns those webs . . . "
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Miroku was hit hard in the stomach and knocked backwards into the forest behind him. He landed hard on the ground, unable to catch himself after having been taken by surprise. But as soon as he saw the tree branches reaching for him again, he did a back flip, turned on his feet, and ran deeper into the forest. He didn't want to run away from the others, especially as he heard a scream from InuYasha, but the trees blocked his way back to them. The branches hurt when they hit, too, and he knew he wouldn't be able to take getting hit by them for very long. His only option was to run as far and as fast as he could, hoping to reach the end of the forest or a clearing in it before he was completely drained of energy.
After a few minutes of running, the ground beneath him got bumpy. The tree roots were sticking up out of the ground rather than going straight down. He started paying more attention to where he was putting his feet, and felt himself slow down. But he was still running faster than the tree branches could swing at him. While watching the ground, he saw something silver glint at the top of his eye. He looked up just enough to see himself tear through a spider's web. It stuck to his face, making it difficult to see. He continued forward, breaking through a couple more webs, feeling as if he was approaching a greater danger than the one he was running from.
After a few more minutes and three more spider webs, he reached a big clearing in the forest, just what he had hoped for. He ran into the middle of it and pulled the last of the spider webs off of his face and clothes. His staff was hopelessly covered with them, so he threw it down and took advantage of the chance to catch his breath. Once he had recovered enough, he looked around him. He was surrounded by forest on all sides. The leaves and smaller branches of the trees moved as if blown by a light breeze, but no wind was blowing at the moment. Miroku shivered. He wasn't cold, but the trees gave him the creeps. And he was surrounded by them.
Miroku stood up. He had caught his breath, and now needed to figure out what he was going to do. Just as he began an attempt to think up a plan, he heard a crunching noise behind him. Someone or something was coming. He hoped it was InuYasha and the others, but somehow he doubted it was. The footsteps didn't sound human. It looked like he was about to meet the owners of the webs he had passed and destroyed.
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InuYasha was grabbed and pulled from one tree to another. There was no way to escape the grip of the trees, especially since he was not only unable to tell which direction he would be pulled next, but also because he was never held by one tree for very long. He was being passed from tree to tree, root to branch, branch to root, endlessly. Every time he tried to struggle free or use his claws against whatever was grabbing him, it would pass him to another tree, or flip him upside down. Eventually he gave up, and let the trees take him wherever they were trying to take him.
After what seemed like a lifetime, the one tree threw him onto the ground rather than passing him to another. He stood up, sore from being gripped so hard and passed so many times. He looked around. The tree that had dropped him was no longer moving, and neither were the trees around it. He turned around, and saw that he was in front of a cave. Apparently he was supposed to walk into it, but he decided against that. He instead began to jump up the mountainside, dodging the tree branches that lashed out at him as he jumped. He reached a ledge way out of reach of even the tallest of the trees, and stopped. He turned around and saw the path they had been walking along before they were attacked. He remembered that Kagome and Sango had taken to the air before they could get dragged away by the trees. He scanned the top of the forest for Kirara and didn't see anything other than trees. Then, he suddenly noticed something come flying out from behind a very tall tree. They were quite a distance away, but if he ran along the top of the mountains they would be able to see him. He jumped the remaining distance to the top of the mountain he was standing on, and started jumping from mountaintop to mountaintop, running toward Kirara. As he got closer, he noticed they were slowly moving away from him, away from the mountains as well.
"Hey!! Kagome! Sango! Come back here!" He yelled as loudly as he could, and sure enough, they heard him. Kirara spun around and flew toward InuYasha as fast as she could.
"InuYasha! You're ok!" Kagome jumped onto the mountain, off of Kirara's back as soon as she got the chance. She ran forward and threw her arms around InuYasha. "I was so worried!"
InuYasha, taken by surprise at first by Kagome's affection, looked away, blushing. "Keh! As if I'd let some tree do me in! That was pathetic. Miroku better not have let the trees get him." InuYasha looked around. "Speaking of Miroku, where is he?" But he already knew the answer.
Kagome released her hold on InuYasha, slightly disappointed that he hadn't hugged her back. "We haven't found him yet." She stood on one foot, lifting the other so that only her toes were touching the ground. Her gaze shifted to the forest. Her hand went up to her mouth, covering it as if she didn't want to say what she was about to."But we found some large spider webs when we were searching. We didn't see the actual spiders, meaning they aren't in their webs, and we didn't see Miroku either . . ." He voice trailed off. InuYasha looked from Kagome's face to Sango's face. They both looked desperate and upset by the fact that Miroku was missing. It bothered InuYasha to think of Miroku stuck in a spider's web, too, but not as much as seeing the pained look on even Shippo's face. The worst of it was, he didn't have a clue what to do or how to find him either. They couldn't all fit on Kirara, and there was no way InuYasha nor the others could re-enter the forest without getting attacked by trees. He remembered the cave. It was worth a shot to at least mention it.
"One thing's for sure, we're not going back into that damn forest. When I was carried by the trees I was brought to a cave and dropped. Maybe Miroku also found the cave and entered it. Should we go take a look?"
"I don't know, that doesn't sound like the best option right now . . . " Kagome sounded doubtful. So much for that idea. But what other options were left?
"What do you mean, you don't know? What else can we do?" InuYasha sounded angry, but Kagome knew he was just frustrated.
"I don't know. Maybe we should wait here while Sango and Kirara go back out and search for him more."
"I guess that's the best answer for now, and if I don't find anything, I'll come back and we'll develop a better plan from there." Sango pulled herself onto Kirara's back once more, and looked out toward the forest she was about to search. "Sound ok to you, InuYasha?"
"Feh, do what you want." Obviously it wasn't what he wanted to do, but he sat down on the mountaintop anyway, eyes shut.
Kagome looked at Sango. "Good luck." She sat down next to InuYasha and watched Sango fly away to search for the missing monk.
They walked away from the hut that they had stayed in the night before and paused a second to decide which direction they wanted to travel in next. They had come out of a mountain pass, and found no value in retracing their steps. To the left was a river that began in more mountains and snaked along toward the forest straight ahead of them. To the right was field that seemed to stretch, unending, for miles and miles. The forest seemed to be the best bet.
But as they approached the forest, something didn't seem right. InuYasha noticed it didn't smell nor seem like a normal forest. It was quiet. Too quiet.
"Are you sure th-this is the best idea?" Shippo asked. He was obviously terrified of the thought of stepping foot into the forest, judging by the fact that he was trembling in Kagome's arms.
"I get a bad vibe from this place too, but it seems the only other option." Miroku said. "Unless we turn back now, we either go through this forest searching for the jewel shard, or we walk across the empty looking meadow over there. And what do we do if the jewel actually is hidden within this forest or beyond it? We need to search this way anyway." Miroku looked from left to right, trying to judge how big the forest actually was lengthwise.
"He's right. And besides, do you really think I'm gonna run away with my tail between my legs and let some forest beat me??" And with those words, InuYasha marched straight into the forest, leaving the rest to follow cautiously. It was very dark inside the forest. The trees were so thick that not much light was able to shine through. Kirara transformed from the small, lovable cat into the fierce, flame-resistant, flying beast to better aid Sango and the others if needed. Sango looked over at Kirara, wondering if she had actually sensed danger or if she was merely preparing herself for it. She decided she would change into her demon slaying suit as well. She dropped behind the group, hid behind a few trees with the help of Kirara, and changed quickly. When she came out of hiding, she noticed Kagome had not only seen her leave but had also realized what she was doing. She began to walk slower to keep the guys in a distance close enough for Sango and Kirara to catch up. After a few minutes of walking, InuYasha stoped. His ears twitched, and he put his nose in the air. He caught the scent he was looking for. His head turned to the left, and he took a small step toward a tree that was right in front of his face. As soon as his face approached it, the tree moved back a few feet.
"These trees are alive! This place is haunted! We're gonna die!" Shippo screamed. He began to cry as InuYasha jumped back, pulled out his Tetsusaiga, and tried to cut down the tree. It jumped back, and the tree behind InuYasha hit him hard in the back, knocking him flat on the ground. Miroku tried to throw a scroll at the demon trees. It dodged it, and he had to duck as a branch from another tree swiped at him. As soon as he had dodged that branch, he was hit hard in the stomach by the trunk of yet another tree and sent flying into the trees behind him.
"Houshi-sama!" Sango cried, watching Miroku disappear into the dense trees to her right. She didn't have time to keep her eyes on the spot where he had vanished, because the trees were attacking all of them. She looked over and watched the others struggle to fight and dodge trees all at once. This wasn't good. The next thing she knew, Kirara pulled Sango onto her back, grabbed Kagome and threw her into Sango, and flown into the sky. Sango caught Kagome and helped her sit upright on Kirara's back. They looked down just in time to see InuYasha try to jump up into the air with them, but he was grabbed by a tree and pulled back down.
"Kaze no Kizu!!" InuYasha sent his wind scar flying right into the tree that had grabbed him. It blasted apart and splinters of wood showered down on him. He tried once again to jump up to the girls above him, but the trees around the one he had destroyed weren't very happy. They all grabbed him at once and began pulling him in different directions. He could help but let out a scream of pain.
"Hiraikotsu!" Sango threw her boomerang bone weapon at the trees, releasing InuYasha from all but one's grip. It took advantage of being the only one with a grip left on him and pulled him into the depths of the forest, passing him from one tree to another. Each tree grabbed him in a hold that was inescapable, even for the powerful half-demon.
Sango, Kagome, and Shippo all tried to follow in the direction they thought the trees were taking him, but lost sight of him very quickly.
"What do we do now? We've lost both Miroku and InuYasha. Do we just wait here?" Kagome was devastated. She seemed scared, confused. Sango wasn't much better, and Shippo was hysterical, unable to speak.
"I guess we should try to see if theres any caves or areas where the two of them may have been taken. We're in a tough spot, though, cuz we have to decide who to search for: Miroku or InuYasha."
"Why can't we look for both?" Kagome obviously hadn't been paying as much attention to what had happened as Sango had. But Sango didn't seem to find that very important. She was more than willing to explain.
"See how the path is clearly obvious from up here, and it runs almost straight through the forest? Well, Miroku was pulled into one direction, and InuYasha into another. Come to think of it, I'm not sure which way was which up here, I think we may have been turned around . . . "
"So the question now isn't which boy do we look for, it's what direction do we look in, right?" Kagome understood now.
"Yeah. So pick one."
"Me? Why do I have to pick one?" Kagome turned around to look at Sango, smiling.
"Would you rather I picked it?" Sango didn't smile back. She was looking at the forest, not Kagome's face. Kagome realized now wasn't the time to be stupid and joke around. "Kirara, to the right!" As soon as Sango yelled out the order, her cat followed it with a gentle purr of consent.
Kirara glided just out of reach of the trees, but close enough to the forest for them to see inside it slightly. They couldn't see any people, just a few rocks every now and then, and patches of grass surrounded by trees all around.
"This seems hopeless, doesn't it?" Sango was beginning to become depressed.
"No, we'll find them. I'm sure they'll be ok, it just might take awhile." Kagome said in an attempt to comfort her friend, also trying to comfort herself. It did seem awfully helpless with their limited vision.
"What's that?" Shippo, finally able to speak, pointed to a glint of silver that shone between two trees.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say that was a spider's web." Sango looked closer. Kagome was right. It looked exactly like a spider's web.
"I don't like the look of that. If that is a spider's web, its no small, harmless spider." They had been swirling over one side of the forest path, and so far hadn't gotten very far from it. "I also don't like the fact that we were this close to those webs the whole time we were in the forest."
Kagome looked from the path to the spot they were right now. It was pretty close, less than half a mile. "That's true . . . I hope neither Miroku nor InuYasha get to meet whoever owns those webs . . . "
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Miroku was hit hard in the stomach and knocked backwards into the forest behind him. He landed hard on the ground, unable to catch himself after having been taken by surprise. But as soon as he saw the tree branches reaching for him again, he did a back flip, turned on his feet, and ran deeper into the forest. He didn't want to run away from the others, especially as he heard a scream from InuYasha, but the trees blocked his way back to them. The branches hurt when they hit, too, and he knew he wouldn't be able to take getting hit by them for very long. His only option was to run as far and as fast as he could, hoping to reach the end of the forest or a clearing in it before he was completely drained of energy.
After a few minutes of running, the ground beneath him got bumpy. The tree roots were sticking up out of the ground rather than going straight down. He started paying more attention to where he was putting his feet, and felt himself slow down. But he was still running faster than the tree branches could swing at him. While watching the ground, he saw something silver glint at the top of his eye. He looked up just enough to see himself tear through a spider's web. It stuck to his face, making it difficult to see. He continued forward, breaking through a couple more webs, feeling as if he was approaching a greater danger than the one he was running from.
After a few more minutes and three more spider webs, he reached a big clearing in the forest, just what he had hoped for. He ran into the middle of it and pulled the last of the spider webs off of his face and clothes. His staff was hopelessly covered with them, so he threw it down and took advantage of the chance to catch his breath. Once he had recovered enough, he looked around him. He was surrounded by forest on all sides. The leaves and smaller branches of the trees moved as if blown by a light breeze, but no wind was blowing at the moment. Miroku shivered. He wasn't cold, but the trees gave him the creeps. And he was surrounded by them.
Miroku stood up. He had caught his breath, and now needed to figure out what he was going to do. Just as he began an attempt to think up a plan, he heard a crunching noise behind him. Someone or something was coming. He hoped it was InuYasha and the others, but somehow he doubted it was. The footsteps didn't sound human. It looked like he was about to meet the owners of the webs he had passed and destroyed.
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InuYasha was grabbed and pulled from one tree to another. There was no way to escape the grip of the trees, especially since he was not only unable to tell which direction he would be pulled next, but also because he was never held by one tree for very long. He was being passed from tree to tree, root to branch, branch to root, endlessly. Every time he tried to struggle free or use his claws against whatever was grabbing him, it would pass him to another tree, or flip him upside down. Eventually he gave up, and let the trees take him wherever they were trying to take him.
After what seemed like a lifetime, the one tree threw him onto the ground rather than passing him to another. He stood up, sore from being gripped so hard and passed so many times. He looked around. The tree that had dropped him was no longer moving, and neither were the trees around it. He turned around, and saw that he was in front of a cave. Apparently he was supposed to walk into it, but he decided against that. He instead began to jump up the mountainside, dodging the tree branches that lashed out at him as he jumped. He reached a ledge way out of reach of even the tallest of the trees, and stopped. He turned around and saw the path they had been walking along before they were attacked. He remembered that Kagome and Sango had taken to the air before they could get dragged away by the trees. He scanned the top of the forest for Kirara and didn't see anything other than trees. Then, he suddenly noticed something come flying out from behind a very tall tree. They were quite a distance away, but if he ran along the top of the mountains they would be able to see him. He jumped the remaining distance to the top of the mountain he was standing on, and started jumping from mountaintop to mountaintop, running toward Kirara. As he got closer, he noticed they were slowly moving away from him, away from the mountains as well.
"Hey!! Kagome! Sango! Come back here!" He yelled as loudly as he could, and sure enough, they heard him. Kirara spun around and flew toward InuYasha as fast as she could.
"InuYasha! You're ok!" Kagome jumped onto the mountain, off of Kirara's back as soon as she got the chance. She ran forward and threw her arms around InuYasha. "I was so worried!"
InuYasha, taken by surprise at first by Kagome's affection, looked away, blushing. "Keh! As if I'd let some tree do me in! That was pathetic. Miroku better not have let the trees get him." InuYasha looked around. "Speaking of Miroku, where is he?" But he already knew the answer.
Kagome released her hold on InuYasha, slightly disappointed that he hadn't hugged her back. "We haven't found him yet." She stood on one foot, lifting the other so that only her toes were touching the ground. Her gaze shifted to the forest. Her hand went up to her mouth, covering it as if she didn't want to say what she was about to."But we found some large spider webs when we were searching. We didn't see the actual spiders, meaning they aren't in their webs, and we didn't see Miroku either . . ." He voice trailed off. InuYasha looked from Kagome's face to Sango's face. They both looked desperate and upset by the fact that Miroku was missing. It bothered InuYasha to think of Miroku stuck in a spider's web, too, but not as much as seeing the pained look on even Shippo's face. The worst of it was, he didn't have a clue what to do or how to find him either. They couldn't all fit on Kirara, and there was no way InuYasha nor the others could re-enter the forest without getting attacked by trees. He remembered the cave. It was worth a shot to at least mention it.
"One thing's for sure, we're not going back into that damn forest. When I was carried by the trees I was brought to a cave and dropped. Maybe Miroku also found the cave and entered it. Should we go take a look?"
"I don't know, that doesn't sound like the best option right now . . . " Kagome sounded doubtful. So much for that idea. But what other options were left?
"What do you mean, you don't know? What else can we do?" InuYasha sounded angry, but Kagome knew he was just frustrated.
"I don't know. Maybe we should wait here while Sango and Kirara go back out and search for him more."
"I guess that's the best answer for now, and if I don't find anything, I'll come back and we'll develop a better plan from there." Sango pulled herself onto Kirara's back once more, and looked out toward the forest she was about to search. "Sound ok to you, InuYasha?"
"Feh, do what you want." Obviously it wasn't what he wanted to do, but he sat down on the mountaintop anyway, eyes shut.
Kagome looked at Sango. "Good luck." She sat down next to InuYasha and watched Sango fly away to search for the missing monk.