Arigato minna-san for all your reviews! ^^ I'm really REALLY happy that you guys actually like this, and want me to continue! *smiles*
I know that many of you were concerned that I was copying the story "Legend of the Labyrinth" (which I have begun to read now, and I heartily agree that it is worthy of defending! ^^), but I have never been a person to take someone else's work and pass it off as my own. If you can't write something that you're proud of on your own, what makes it any less of an effort on the part of the person being copied? *hisses at copycats* Thanks to Chris-san for clearing up the whole issue, and for giving her approval! ^^ Domo arigato gosaimashite! (_ _)*bows*
Anyways, to the story!
Disclaimer: In my dreams…
Labyrinth
~An Inuyasha fanfiction story presented by Jurei~Chapter 2: At the Heart of the Maze
Kagome didn't remember falling asleep. All she was aware of was waking at
the sudden sharp sound that cut through the tomblike silence like a knife.
Footsteps echoing through the wide corridor, reaching her ears with surprising
clarity, though they seemed to become less audible at each passing moment.
She came into complete alertness with a jerk, her eyes searching around her
frantically for the source of the disturbance. Nothing moved in the stillness
all about her, but the sound echoed unmistakably all around her. It was
impossible to tell from which direction it came, as it bounced along the
roughly hewn stone while shooting off in all directions. She drew a frantic
breath into her lungs and winced.
No matter how long she had slept (there was no way of knowing exactly how
long that was, especially when the light never changed and there was no day or
night to speak of), it had evidently not been long enough to allow her body to
heal better than the scabbing on some of the more severe wounds. Her hand
inched timidly down to examine the wound on her stomach, pulling back quickly
when its touch was met by stinging pain. However, it was nowhere near as
intense as it had been before.
This realization was accompanied by the surprise of feeling unfamiliar
material under her fingers, despite the minimal contact that they had
experienced. She examined the wound again, this time making sure to avoid
pressing on it in any way. Yes…there was no doubt that it had been bandaged.
Tentatively, Kagome sat up and gazed with unconcealed shock and surprise at
the cloth that bound her stomach, her palms, and a particularly nasty cut on
her lower thigh, directly above the knee. She had been bandaged, most probably
while dead to the world, but by whom?
Almost more importantly, why?
By now, the sound that had been her alarming wake-up call had all but faded into
the silence that was the norm, even if not what was preferred. With a start,
she also realized what it must have been: the mysterious healer (she assumed
them to be a healer, seeing as the bandaging was done with incredible precision
and expertise) who had attended to her more grievous wounds.
Almost immediately, she was overcome with a great sense of guilt and
remorse. Quite possibly, she had been found by one of the only beings retaining
some humanity within the Labyrinth, and she had no idea which direction they
had gone. She couldn't even thank them—
Suddenly, she caught sight of the rough sacking cloth that contained her
only food and water, lying opened beside her leg. Frantically, she scrambled
onto her knees and gripped the rough material in her hands, tipping its
contents out onto the floor like she had done before. This time, only one
apple, half the crust of bread, and the water flask rolled out.
Kagome gulped down the anger and despair that threatened to choke her. After
what they had done, she supposed it was fair payment. After all, they had most
probably just saved her from bleeding to death. However, her chances for
survival were severely shortened now. She had been spared bleeding, only to
perish by starvation.
A small, bitter smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. She would almost
have rather gone with bleeding to death.
Laboriously, she struggled to her feet before dusting off her ragged dress
skirts. It was a wasted effort, seeing as the threadbare cloth was already
filthy and grimy beyond recognition. If she was to get back to Sango, whoever
the owner of that name was, she supposed there was no use in just sitting
around for the rest of her decreasing life.
She tore two ragged strips from the skirt of her dress, using the frayed
material to bind what remained of her food and water to her back like a
makeshift haversack. Then, she roamed her eyes over both directions that the
corridor offered, trying to decide which to take. Both were identical and
offered no hint as to where they led.
Resignedly, she stuck one of her least injured fingers in her parched mouth,
allowing the little moisture there to coat the appendage before she held it up
vertically. If she could possibly feel the flow of fresh air, it might lead her
in the right direction…
No such luck. The very air of the maze seemed to be ancient and dead as the
prison itself.
Kagome frowned, finally resorting to complete and total luck to solve the
problem. She closed her eyes and span around slowly with one hand outstretched
to keep herself from running into the wall. Finally, being as dizzy as she
dared without making herself physically ill, she stopped and opened her eyes to
stare down the shadowed passageway that lay before her.
Her face hardened into a determined expression.
It was time to start Running.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The passages seemed to pass before her in a blur: dark openings in the
otherwise solid wall completely undistinguishable from each other. The flaming
torches flickered as the still air moved for what seemed to be the first time
in centuries, casting the shadowed cracks and crevices into deeper darkness.
Kagome clutched a hand to her chest, her breath laboured.
She walked, tight pain shooting through her calves with each stride. Her calve
muscles ached painfully, as did her feet. Already she could feel blisters
forming under the worn leather straps of her sandals, chafing the skin at each
step.
And the walls continued on, stretching into the darkness unendingly. For all
that her surroundings changed, she could have been walking in circles. Around
and around, never getting anywhere, to die eventually, alone in the dark…
She shook her head. She wouldn't think like that. It would mean her captor
had won…
Naraku…the very thought made her grit her teeth subconsciously, her
face displaying an expression of disgust. The name of the man responsible for
her imprisonment...and the one who held Sango's fate,
if the guards were to be believed. The very thought of him was enough to make
her sick. Cruel monster that he was…he deserved to be thrown into his own game
and made to die slowly…
She would escape this place, if only to see his destruction.
Being so deeply embedded in her thoughts, it took a while for the
dark-haired girl to realize that the walls on either side of the passage she
followed were beginning to hum and buzz with a strange power. Faintly, a
strange purple-violet glow emanated from the stones, becoming stronger with
each passing moment. The rough-hewn rock beneath her feet started to shake, the
strength of the vibrations increasing with the volume of the humming corridor.
The walls were beginning to move.
Kagome froze as the waves of power coming off the walls passed through her,
their magnitude making it difficult for her to breathe. Underfoot it was like
the earth itself was coming alive; heaving, moving, and shifting like a beast
straining against iron chains. The quaking jarred through her being, rattling
her joints and causing her teeth to knock together painfully. The magic was
heavy and oppressive now, weighing down on her limbs like a lead blanket. It
was all she could do to keep from sinking to her knees under the pressure.
Suddenly, a thought cut through her mind like a thunderbolt, almost as if
someone had shouted directly into her ear.
Run.
Kagome wasted no time in complying, forcing her leaden limbs to obey her
commands. With almost excruciating slowness, her body began to move, walking
first, then trotting, and finally breaking into an all out run. Behind her, the
floor stones themselves began to lift and arrange, each stone fitting itself
into an empty space left by the others, the whole resembling what looked to be
a low wall.
However, the wall was growing with each passing moment, and the stones
weren't only rising up from the stretch that she left behind. The newly made
Runner ducked as a particularly low-flying stone whizzed overhead, missing her
by inches. Her eyes widened in horror as the stones making up the passage below
her feet began to shift as well, leaving her to see the deep trenches they left
in their absence. She stopped herself short, skirting one such hole with as
much speed as she could afford without pitching forward head-first into another
trench to her left.
Worst of all was the sudden roar that seemed to drown out that of the
re-arranging floor, and which caused Kagome to look back quickly before turning
her head forwards sharply and attempting to increase her speed. From far above
on either side the already existing walls were beginning to cave into the passage,
some of the blocks fitting themselves into the empty trenches while others
seemed to be creating a new wall of their own. And they were gaining on her
faster than she had expected…
She put her foot forward, only to find air below it. A strangled cry escaped
her lips as she fell, ending with a sharp jolt as she managed to grip onto the
edge and halt her descent into the blackness of the pit. Her legs swung out,
pulling one of her hands free, but she managed to hold on and bring her body
back to rest against the side. It was rough beneath her touch and irritated the
almost forgotten stomach wound, but Kagome didn't even notice. There was no
time to waste, and she wasn't going to let herself die before at least making a
decent effort to escape and stick Naraku's head on a
pike.
Desperately, she dragged her legs up, trying to grip the wall with her
leather sandals and climb out. The task was made all the more difficult by the
constant tremors that constantly threatened to shake her weakening grip loose, but
she continued with an almost frenzied energy driving her every movement. Above
her, the walls were already beginning to cave, stone after stone fitting into
each empty trench. All too soon, the shadow of an incoming boulder was over
her, speaking quite clearly of what fate awaited her; if she didn't hurry, she
was going to be crushed!
A sharp pain stabbing through her wrist caused Kagome to look up sharply,
her teeth gritted in discomfort. Jaws were clamped around the bony appendage,
their large white owner tugging on it with a surprising amount of force. She
flinched as the creature jerked her wrist sharply once again, before she
realized its intent and began to scramble at the walls of the pit with renewed
desperation.
Despite being able to use only one hand this time, the creature's efforts
definitely made up for whatever use her other hand could have offered her, and
she was clearing the edge of the trench and scrambling away on all fours sooner
than she would have believed possible. Behind her, the boulder thudded home
with a sickening thud and grating noise that seemed to her ears louder than all
the other noises in the corridor. She struggled to her feet and forced her
exhausted legs to resume their running, feeling almost sick with both relief and
shock. One moment later and…she clamped a hand to her mouth, forcing herself to
keep from retching.
Up ahead, she could make out a thinning in the stones that filled the air,
and she almost cried with relief. Beside her, the creature loped along at an easy
pace that she would have envied had not the danger still been present. It
seemed to effortlessly keep pace with her, almost as if it was merely humouring her by running at the fastest speed she could
achieve. Already she could feel a small spark of annoyance ignite within her,
though she squelched it immediately. Why feel something so ridiculous when the
poor beast had no doubt risked its own life to save her? There were definitely
better things to devote her attention to at the moment.
'…Though it definitely doesn't make it easy to remember that,' Kagome
thought sourly as it dodged a flying boulder with practiced ease, while she was
forced to scramble aside ungracefully and almost lose her footing. The
white-furred creature then turned its head to look at her with what she could
almost have thought to be a patronizing smirk on a human. Why, it was like the
beast was taunting her!
All these thoughts were cut short abruptly, however, when the ground
directly in front of the two surged up suddenly and without warning. Kagome
screamed, throwing out her hands to shield herself from the impact that seemed
to be inevitable. The creature's reaction was immediate; it skidded to a halt,
gripping the skirt of her dress in its jaws tightly before springing from its
hind legs and pulling the girl away in a parallel direction to the wall. Kagome
overbalanced, and the two went careening into the newly formed side passage,
rolling over and over in a mass of fur, hair, arms, and legs as the corridor
inclined steeply downwards before flattened out once again. Their advance
seemed to continue for an age before the tangled ball finally came to a stop
through the not-so-forgiving aid of another wall as it blocked further
progress.
Kagome groaned, waiting a full minute before attempting to unravel herself
from the beast, who seemed to have been stunned by the impact. She sat up,
rubbing her head tenderly before checking herself for more serious injury.
Other than the place on her wrist where the creature had gripped her with its
jaws, she seemed to be generally no more injured than before, for which she was
grateful. No matter how helpful the beast had been, she doubted very much that
it could tie bandages.
She was suddenly alerted to the movements of the creature as it began to
stir, bringing itself shakily to its legs before tossing its head back and
forth sharply as if to clear it. Now that she could see it more clearly, she
realized that it was a large white dog, an indefinite breed by the look of it,
with triangular ears, a long brush of a tail, and a shaggy mid-length coat. She
grinned sheepishly-almost condescendingly-at herself. This was the type
of creature that lived in the labyrinth? She had expected something altogether
more terrifying, like a Red Dragon, a Skerrigor; or
maybe even a Pantkhaera; creatures of which she had
heard stories in her early childhood.
"Konnichiwa, Inu-san," she said
smilingly, feeling slightly foolish all the while for talking to a dog who, she
assumed, couldn't understand a word of what she was saying.
The dog fixed her with a half-interested eye, as if sizing her up. It then
came closer and sniffed her carefully before nosing her hand, almost as if it
was replying to her greeting.
"Are you male?" she asked tactfully, though hardly expecting a
reply.
The dog nodded once, sitting himself down directly in front of the
astonished girl. Almost immediately, she edged forward, fixing him with curious
eyes. "You can understand me?" she asked, her voice clearly
portraying the disbelief she felt.
Again, the dog nodded.
Kagome grinned, lifting a hand to scratch the dog's ears. He jerked away,
body stiffening in reflex as he eyed her hand suspiciously.
"Alright…" she said kindly, pulling her hand back though it still
remained in the air, "If you do not want me to touch your ears, that is up
to you."
The dog sniffed at her warily, his eyes still fixed on her hand. Unusual
eyes, she noted; unlike most other dog's eyes she had seen, this creature's
were a deep violet colour. Furthermore, they held a
strange intelligence that suggested something more than an animalistic mind...a
fact she already suspected. After all, how many dogs had she known that could
understand her, nevertheless answer back in legible ways? The girl found
herself drawn into the deep, mysterious orbs, staring openly before she
remembered exactly what she was doing, and noticed the dog giving her a bemused
look.
She blushed lightly before catching herself. He was just a dog, after
all…why did she feel embarrassed? It wasn't as if he was judging her… 'Ah, but
that is exactly what he seems
to be doing…' she amended, meeting the dog's stare once again.
He stared back, seemingly searching her eyes for something. Then, abruptly,
he stood up once again and tossed his head at her twice, clearly portraying the
message: Come on, let's get going.
Kagome scrambled to her feet and dusted off her skirt before following the
dog as he began to trot off. In here, one way was as good as another, she
supposed, and the dog definitely seemed to know where he was going. 'More than
me, in any case,' she thought to herself dryly, before picking up her pace and
falling into step with the animal.
After merely ten minutes of walking, the passage broke into a wider area
that could almost have been a wide plain in the outside world…a world that
seemed a far-off memory to the girl. She sighed wistfully…would she really ever
get out of this hostile and unforgiving place?
Her companion stopped, staring at her quizzically. She smiled in reply,
waving away his unspoken question. "I am fine," she amended,
"just…I suppose…a little‑"
A sudden mental image shocked her into silence once again: a younger boy
with hair as dark as her own and a carefree smile. Who could it be…and suddenly,
the name came to her as easily as water flowing through loose fingers. Souta…
Tears, unbidden, came to her eyes, and Kagome was suddenly seized by the
strongest urge to cry. How could she have forgotten her little brother…the one
who relied on her to take care of him, feed him, and protect him? And here she
was, in no position to do anything that could aid him in the slightest…would he
be able to survive without her…?
She gasped, hiccupping in the effort to stifle the droplets that looked to
crawl down her cheeks. It was to no avail. Before she knew it, Kagome was
sinking to the ground and burying her face in her knees, the sobs wracking her
wasted figure violently as tears spilled openly from her smoky-gray eyes. Who
was she fooling? She had barely made it out alive from the first trial that the
labyrinth had presented…how was she supposed to find her way out and make it
back to the sunlit world in any condition to protect her brother and get to
Sango? It was improbable at the least. She was going to die, alone, in the
dark, far from anything that had ever mattered to her‑
A gentle lick on her cheek startled the girl into awareness of her
surroundings once again. The dog stood close to her now, licking away at the
tearstains that traced clean paths through the dirt that marred her once
beautiful skin. She gave a small gasp of surprise, slightly shocked by the
creature's sudden display of concern.
He pulled back his head, giving her a look that crossed between guilt and
shame, as if he was the one responsible for making her cry. She smiled, despite
the tears that still crawled slowly across her features. "No…it is not
your fault…please do not feel
guilty," she implored, seeing the dog bow his white-furred head in what
appeared to be sorrow, "I am the one at fault…for feeling sorry for
myself. I must stop thinking about the impossibilities I face, and about being
alone…"
She stood up, wiping the last of her tears away fiercely with a firm hand.
The dog once again resumed his detached distance, but not before nudging her
gently with his wet nose and giving her a look that communicated one idea as
clearly as if spoken, and with more conviction than words could ever express.
You are no longer alone.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Well, that's it for chapter 2! ^^…Man, that ending sucked! .* The
dog does serve some major importance in this story, but I can't say anything
right now! And don't worry, it isn't anything like the "Beauty and the
Beast" syndrome, where the uncaring man gets turned into a creature until
someone can learn to love him, yadda yadda yadda…this twist is
inspired from my main source: the "Death Gate Cycle" novels by
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In fact, that is the main inspiration for this
story, though it is mixed with the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur in
some aspects.
I know it took me a while to update, but I ended up revising most of the
chapter and scrapping about half of it before I could get to a point where I
was comfortable to start writing from. I also have a habit of writing to
certain kinds of music in order to achieve a consistent mood in consecutive
chapters, but my "S&M" CD was shanghaied halfway though the
chapter! *cries* I had to rely on substitutes to finish the thing, mostly Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" and "…And
Justice For All" albums, and Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the
Moon", so I'm not sure if there's any kind of mood flow between the two
chapters. Gomen ne! *bows* (_ _)
If you actually care (which I highly doubt, but what the heck), this chapter
was mostly written to the songs "To Live is to Die" (my newest favourite song), "Fade to Black",
"One", and "The Call of the Ktulu"
by Metallica; and "Brain Damage",
Eclipse", and "Breath in the Air" by Pink Floyd.
Well, that's all for now! ONEGAI REVIEW! It really REALLY
makes my day, and lets me know what I'm completely screwing up on! -_-;;;;;
Plus, it only takes a few minutes, and makes you a responsible reader! *smiles*
Wai!^^
Next chapter is: "Chapter 3: The First Gate"
Ja ne till then!
~Jurei-chan^6