By Scribe of Figaro
SANGO'S SORROW: PART IV
"The last that ever she saw him
Carried away by a moonlight shadow
He passed on worried and warning
Carried away by a moonlight shadow."
-Missing Heart, "Moonlight Shadow (New Vocal Version)"
I'll tell him tomorrow. The sun will be up soon, and I'll tell him then.
Sango sighed, realizing with a start she had been staring at Miroku for the better part of her watch.
"Taiji-ya no baka," she muttered. "I'm barely paying attention at all. No wonder he and Inuyasha post watch most of the time."
She yawned. Hers was the last watch – she had relieved Miroku only an hour before, and her best guess was that the first light of dawn was not more than a few minutes away, despite the fact that her watch should have started at least three hours before first light.
Houshi-sama was supposed to wake me two hours earlier. Does he think I don't realize he's been letting me sleep so late?
A cold breeze ran through her hair, a teasing wind that scattered her bangs across her forehead and childishly swung her high ponytail. It was an unnatural wind, followed by a deep sense of apprehension. Her senses immediately alerted, she slowly reached for the hilt of her short sword.
Icy, invisible fingers clawed at her, cutting through the leather and youkai-hide of her taiji-ya uniform, cutting through her skin, and suddenly she felt something deep inside her, violating her, controlling her, making her body its own.
The sensation itself was enough for her to freeze completely in a mixture of fear and revulsion. Every muscle in her body tensed. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach became intense. The embarrassment and disgust she felt when Miroku's hands were upon her could did not compare to this, could never compare to this. Her very spirit was being raped, her body seized by some sinister ghost, and so quickly did the fear run like icy fingers up and down her body
What's happening to me?
She couldn't speak, couldn't call for help. The hand that was reaching for her wakizashi froze in midair. She could sense it now, a consciousness inside her, a voice in her mind that was quickly seizing control of her mental faculties.
So this is how Kohaku feels . . .
Her mind become foggy as the second voice became stronger, and its memories began to flood into her.
I want the inu-hanyou. But he is too powerful for me. If I took him now, he would call out to the houshi and I would be exorcised. But the taiji-ya is physically strong and mentally weak, and the neko-youkai would not hurt her. So I will take her quickly, kill the houshi, the neko-youkai, the kitsune, and the miko. The inu-hanyou will avenge the miko without thought, and with him alone it will take very little time to take over his body. Then I will own him, a creature a thousand times stronger than that worthless tora-youkai. I will be invincible then.
To thank the inu-hanyou, I think my first act will be to destroy that village he hates with a single swing of that beautiful sword.
It's a ghost, thought Sango. It's the ghost that controlled the tora youkai, the presence that Houshi-sama felt after the youkai was destroyed.
Sango did not believe she could feel more appalled, more angry than she already did; nevertheless she reached a new level of disgust and hatred when the thing addressed her.
Hai. I've become quite good at controlling youkai and humans, but as you can see it takes time for me to kill the mind of the thing I inhabit. I'd appreciate you being silent while I – I should say 'we' – kill your companions.
Sango steeled herself, found the inner strength necessary to speak to this creature that was invading her, and spoke to it in her mind.
Get out.
The creature seemed to laugh.
I am Asesu, the thief of lives, the puppet-master of both humans and youkai. Your body is merely the last of tens of thousands I have taken and destroyed for my own purposes. You will not resist me.
You are weak, she countered. You steal the strength of others. You are nothing.
Sleep now, Sango. Give yourself to me. It will hurt so much if you keep resisting.
You are nothing! Sango shouted. Worthless, useless parasite!
Against her will, Sango's arm drew the wakizashi, holding it horizontally before her, as if prepared to impale herself upon it.
I don't have time for your banter, taiji-ya. But I have plenty of time to cut you up, if only for my own amusement. Your pain doesn't bother me. Would you like to be silent, or should I simply skin you until you pass out from the pain? Either way I'll control you fully.
K'so . . .
What will it be, Sango?
I need to stall. I need to delay him. If I can wake the others . . . Ah!
With a flick of the wrist, Sango's sword struck her left forearm. Her gauntlet saved her from losing her arm, but the wakizashi cut partly through the material, drawing blood.
I'm in your mind, teme. You can't hide your thoughts from me.
She gritted her teeth. Or tried. She wasn't certain of her movements, could only lightly feel her arms and legs. Her vision too was dulled, and she could see only where the ghost pointed her own eyes.
She had her hearing, though. There was a rustle of clothing behind her.
"Sango?"
Houshi-sama!
Houshi-sama.
She tried to speak, but still had no control. She felt herself being pulled deeper into her own mind, far from the controls of her own body.
Miroku kneeled beside her.
"Sango! Your arm!"
"Something startled me," she said. "My hand slipped."
Not my voice not my voice that's not me! Houshi-sama, please, use your o-fuda!
Miroku took a white cloth from a pocket of his robe and wrapped it around her arm.
"You're tired," he said. "Get some sleep. I'll finish the watch. The sun will be up soon, anyway."
Miroku finished the knot on the makeshift bandage and put a hand casually on her shoulder.
"Go now."
Suddenly his hand gripped her tight. His eyes widened. Clearly, there was something in her face, something he could only see when she turned slightly to the hand on her shoulder and the left side of her face caught the last traces of the campfire. Sango thought of the soulless eyes of her brother Kohaku.
He knows.
He knows.
The blade of her wakizashi flashed bright in the starlight. The grip on her shoulder weakened. Blood dripped on Sango's thigh.
"How stupid . . . of me," Miroku muttered. His free hand reached into his robe, in the secret fold only inches above the widening dark spot on his chest. An o-fuda was held in shaking fingers.
"Houriki!" he shouted, a tight burst of breath from his pierced chest, as he pressed the paper to her forehead with his thumb.
She had seen the crackle of energy emanate from his scrolls before, seen the writhing agony of their targets, but experiencing it firsthand was indescribable. A shocking, burning, stinging sensation drilled through her temples, down her body, across her chest, and even made its way to fingers and toes in short, repetitive lancelets of suffering.
However, Miroku's spells were made to focus only on evil spirits, and Sango knew the injury dealt to her was only a fraction of what Asesu felt. The agonized and desperate screams of that spirit echoing through her mind brought to her a satisfaction that made her own ordeal quite bearable.
She felt a terrible rushing sensation, as if all the breath in her body was being stolen out, and suddenly she felt herself in control – tired, weakened, dizzy, but in a body that was hers alone.
Miroku fell forward on the grass, bracing himself with one hand, staining the ground with a steady dripping of bright red blood.
"Houshi-sama," she whispered. His o-fuda fluttered to her lap, its power spent and its sacred inscriptions faded away.
"Houshi-sama!"
The others were awakened now. She could hear them move, shouting her name as she dropped her short sword and fell to her knees beside the houshi.
She pressed her hands to the wound, but he pushed her away, violently, with his right hand. She fell backwards in a gasp of both surprise and hurt.
He hates me. Kami-sama, I tried to kill him and he will never forgive me.
That line of thought was immediately broken as she saw the shape before her. She had thought Miroku was staring forward blankly, but his eyes were focused on the same thing she could now see, lying on her back beside him.
It was Asesu, in what was not quite corporeal form. The creature should have been invisible, but it instead hovered above them in a black cloud about the size of an ox, though of no shape she could possibly discern or describe. Tendrils of its edges moved this way and that, here and there faces with hollow eyes and hollow mouths pushed their way out of the bulk of the black mass for an instant, then pulled back as the surrounding tumorous non-flesh enveloped it.
Miroku's spell had exorcised it, stunned it, and made it visible.
Behind her she heard the familiar sound of Inuyasha unsheathing and transforming Tetsusaiga, and as she dug her fingers into the dirt to pull herself away from the beast that hovered above her, Inuyasha leaped above her and sliced it cleanly through.
Inuyasha landed not far from them, striking the ground with one knee, and Sango could tell by the way the sword struck dirt that Inuyasha felt no resistance in his swing.
Sango wasted no time getting to her feet, wrapping her arms below Miroku's arms, knocking him off his feet, and dragging him along the grass, pulling far away from the form that loomed above.
Asesu swirled and recombined itself to its former shape. The faces seemed to stretch out farther, faster, and she could tell that this creature was dying – it could not live long outside a host, and the breath it took from her was rapidly growing stale in its smoke-like body.
The faces began to turn to her, their hollow eyes pleading, their mouths twisted in hunger. It advanced, closing the distance quickly.
She stood before Miroku, fully prepared to take the creature inside her again.
"Inuyasha!" she shouted. "If I act strangely, attack me at once!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" he shouted back, holding Tetsusaiga in a battle posture.
"Do it!"
He stared, mouth agape, and grunted affirmation. He clearly didn't understand just what she was going to do, but she would have to trust him to do the right thing if the ghost before them made her hurt her friends again.
Asesu approached. Sango stood her ground, her hands balled in fists at her waist, her jaw set, her eyes staring down the enemy that approached her. She believed it was weak enough that she might be able to resist it this time, but that was hard to tell. Whatever the case, she knew Miroku would stand no chance against it, unconscious and injured behind her, and the only chance she had to save him would be to take in Asesu, fight it in her own mind, and hope that Inuyasha would stop her from hurting Miroku further.
She did not expect to feel Miroku fall heavily against her back, to feel his arms wrap around her own and pin them to her sides, to feel his hands linked together just below her breasts, to feel his breath heavy and desperate in her ear and his blood warm against her back, or to have him turn her around violently such that Asesu struck him instead of her.
He's lucky I'm still so weak, or I would have snapped Houshi-sama's arms for sneaking up on me like that, Sango thought, but then realization of just what Miroku planned dawned on her and her eyes widened in terror. This terror coupled with the sudden fear of falling as the heel of one boot caught on the shin guard of another, and suddenly she found herself splayed on the ground, missing a rock by mere centimeters that would surely have put out some teeth. Miroku lay above her, heavy and unmoving.
Sango gasped out a breath, her head a pounding mess, a bruise flowering on the right side of her forehead, Miroku's grip on her slackening. She pulled her left hand free, violently pushed the houshi off her back, and kneeled above him.
It was hard to decide what angered her more: that Miroku would tackle her like that, or that he would completely ignore her battle plan.
"What the hell are you doing?" she shouted.
He was grimacing , lying on his back, his hands clasped in what may have been prayer and his wound ignored. But he seemed to smile, a little, in the corners of his mouth. His eyes were dulled – not the blank stare of Kohaku, nor the piercing, dark blue gaze that she was so accustomed to receiving from him. They were the blue-grey of the sky just before a winter storm.
"You would have stood no chance, Sango. He is . . . very strong."
She reached forward, clasping her hands over his wound, blood seeping between her fingers. She shook her head.
"I could've tried! Why would you do such a stupid thing?"
She made the mistake of looking into his eyes, faded as the youkai inside him fought for control, but still his eyes, and his mind behind them, and she understood the sadness within them, the desperation, the words not spoken between them – "Because I care for you, Sango" – and her eyes stung with the threat of tears.
"Houshi-sama . . ."
Already, Kagome, Inuyasha, and Shippou came to investigate, encircling Miroku with worried expressions. Kirara approached and nuzzled her mistress's leg.
"There's not much time," Miroku said. "I can hold this creature captive in my body, and I can fight it. I think I may be able to defeat it. You must be on your guard if I fail." His eyes shut tightly in another fit of pain.
"On our guard?" Sango asked. "What do you mean? What are we going to do if you fail, and Asesu tries to hurt us?" Thoughts of a maddened Miroku attacking her, swinging his shakujou with ruthless efficiency, coursed through her mind. Sure, she could strike him when he misbehaved, but what would she choose if forced to decide between killing him and being killed by him? Could she strike him down and be able to live with herself?
Miroku said nothing – already he was unconscious. Kagome leaned down and put two fingers on his neck and a hand before his mouth.
"He's breathing," she said, "and his heart is still beating. We should find some better shelter. A cave or something."
"Kirara and I can go look," said Shippou. "Alright, Sango?"
She nodded. "Alright, Shippou."
Kagome turned to get her medical supplies. Inuyasha sheathed his sword and began to pack up the camp.
Sango looked behind her, to make sure their backs were turned to her, and leaned down to whisper in Miroku's ear:
"Fight hard, Houshi-sama."
Author's note:
The song in the epigraph of this chapter is perhaps one of my favorites. The lyrics are originally by Mike Oldfield.
I'm going out on a limb on this story – I have a lot of scenes written about events much later in the story but the immediate events after this are still undetermined. Sometimes writing oneself into a corner leads to great creative discovery, and sometimes it leads to painfully strained plot twists. I'll let my readers judge the results for themselves when I update again.
-Scribe
Chapter posted June 13, 2003