Human bodies, perhaps of all the humans that had been working at the festival, were strewn everywhere; slashed and mutilated. The ground was covered with a thick coat of shiny blood, and I watched as more and more of the liquid splashed over the grass at each of the human's pathetic movements to keep alive. Most were dead, but those that weren't lay with wide, horror-filled eyes. At the sight of me, many of them began to wail loud, and some even spat up blood from deep gnashes to their stomachs.
It stuck me as ominous that there were no demons around. It was mostly quiet, except for the occasional human scream from far off. It was a massacre. As I half walked, half ran through the grounds, I saw worse and worse horrors. Men and women slashed and left to die. A group of men with their arms and legs torn off and strewn about them; still alive but screaming blood. Many people had slit throats. Some people had large bites taken out of them. But most, now, were still alive and dying slowly. As I passed, they all wailed at me. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the demon's doing. I needed to find my mother.
The more humans that I passed, the more I began to fret for my mother. My father and I had stupidly left her alone with all of these demons! How could we? I began to feel lightheaded. What if she was dead? No! I couldn't think of something so horrible! But what if she was? What would I do? No! Stop thinking of it! "Mother! Mother!" I ran wildly. I needed to be by her side. I needed to see she was all right! That's it. Father must have smelled the blood and come to protect her! Why did I get the feeling I was wrong, though?
And then I saw. Up ahead, father, in his dog demon form, was standing his ground over what looked like a heap of bloody cloth. Lesser demons were trying to stab spears at it, but he angrily snapped at all of them to get away. He wouldn't budge an inch. I stopped at the edge of the ring of demons and tried me best to look. What was going on!? And then, someone suddenly grabbed me and lifted me, tucking my face into her shoulder, "Don't look. Don't try and see." I recognized that voice; Suya, one of mother's handmaidens.
But I had to know. "Please! Suya! What's going on!?" Her face was tearful as she quietly carried me away from the raucous. She did her best the keep my head from turning, "We must flee, Inu-chan. His lordship ordered it." "But what about mother?" A silence passed between us, then she hugged me, obviously trying to mimic a mother's embrace but doing a poor job, "Sh-she's dead."
And that was the end.
Suya and I hid in the forest with some of mother's other handmaidens for two whole days until everything had died down. And then, we had emerged and entered the castle grounds once more, fearful of our lives. Suya and the other handmaidens were all human, and the absence of human scent from the mass homicide at my home was alarming.
Still in denial over my mother being dead, I had quickly rushed to my father's apartment to find out the truth. As I entered, I stopped short and let out an involuntary squeak. My father, still bloody from the battle, knelt numbly over my mother's lifeless body. She was beginning to gray and her skin was beginning to shrink. Father told me that he had not placed mother on her funeral pyre as of yet because he was waiting for me.
The next day, dressed in a pure white kimono, mother's body was burned. I watched as her beautiful black hair sizzled and smoked from the licking of the flames, and she was slowly consumed due to her damp, decomposing corpse.
Father told me some facts of what happened.
He had gotten to the fairgrounds, and humans were being killed left and right. Immediately, he had run to his mistress, my mother, and found her in danger.
Apparently, and I never looked at her the same way again after I heard this, Kirinu, Sesshomoaru's mother, had actually been protecting my mother when he had arrived. Sesshomoaru had been mortified by this.
Father had jumped over mother's slashed body to defend her, getting very hurt himself. He had told Suya to take me away.
According to father, mother's last words were, "I die but I triumph. Inuyasha… lives.
"Oh… gods…" Kagome sniffed and rubbed her eye with the back of her hand. Sango coughed from all the crying she had begun to do, and Miroku sat in silence. Shippou whimpered loudly and Kilala showed visible tears. Inuyasha, silhouetted by the moonlight, shed a single drop.