Warning: gory, seriously disgusting chapter. I'm going to have nightmares for weeks about this chapter, and I'm the one who wrote it! Not for the weak of stomach. Ew, yuck, and gross.

Chapter 10: Demon of Chaos

Kira rationalized that she was buying time for the villagers to escape. In truth, the hatred she felt toward Naraku overshadowed all other considerations. Her next attack was barely controlled; it charred the grass and might have started a forest fire if Naraku hadn't smothered the flame with his miasma.

Kagura returned the attack, sending windshards and lethal dust devils in turn. Unable to block with only fire, Kira found herself dodging, diving and rolling out of the way of the knife-like winds, until she didn't quite dodge one of the windshards. It opened up a gaping wound from one side to the other across her abdomen. She staggered into the path of two other shards; one sliced her hamstring at the back of the left thigh, the other cut deep into her right shoulder.

For a long moment, Kira couldn't feel any of her wounds. She watched hot, sticky blood seep between her fingers. "I'm losing too much blood," she thought clearly, "I'm going to die." She collapsed to the ground as the suppressed pain surged to the front of her consciousness.

Then, she was safe. He was there, holding her up on her feet, speaking to her, healing and protecting her. She managed to whisper, "Thank the gods you're here, Takayuki-sama."

She was floating away when she heard someone calling her name, over and over again. "Kira-joshi. Kira! Kira-joshi, wake up."

When she opened her eyes, Kira saw square, honest features in a sunburned face. His eyes were deep brown, not the color of the ocean. She muttered, "Of course. He's dead. I killed Takayuki-sama . . ."

The man shook her frantically. "Kira-joshi, it's me: Itsuko. Wake up, please!"

With a monumental effort, Kira gathered her scattered mind, stood on her own feet and pushed him away. "Run, Itsuko-san."

"I won't . . ."

"You will if you don't want to be burned alive! GO!" He paused, but then started running for the forest and the village beyond. Naraku, who had been watching the drama unfold with great amusement, leaped forward to stop him, and was engulfed in an inferno.

Kira forced out her power with no spell or direction. She was surrounded by a growing hurricane of flames that incinerated everything it touched. It blazed through the outer layer of Naraku's shielding miasma, setting fire to the baboon pelt. Naraku tore off the cloak. The inferno pressed closer all around him and his incarnations. Just when they felt the heat beginning to burn their hair and skin, it died away.

Kira lay on a single patch of unburned grass: the eye of the fiery hurricane. She was completely exhausted, without enough power to light a candle or strength to turn her head. Her breathing was weak. Already, the ground was black with her blood.

Gentle fingers turned her head until she was staring into the most beautiful face she had ever seen. The harsh moonlight made his pale skin luminous and the shadow under his delicate jaw line absolute. His nose and lips were thin. His brow cast his eye sockets in deep shadow, but moonlight reflected off his eyes like stars shining in his eyes. Light shimmered in the glossy long hair tucked back in a high ponytail.

He leaned forward as if tenderly embracing her, and Kira felt excruciating pain explode in her abdomen as the beautiful man forced his fingers into the half-clotted wound. Mercifully, Kira fainted. The manicured fingernails of his right hand pressed into and tore apart muscle and organ tissue all the way through her body to her spine. With his other hand, he reached into a pouch to retrieve a single jewel shard, which darkened to a blood red at his touch. Using his hands as a wedge to force the wound still wider, the beautiful man shoved the tainted Shikon shard between the vertebrae of her lower back and into the spinal cord itself.

Kira awoke with a roar. Her wounds closed within seconds, and a sudden rush of power exploded out of her body like a fireball. The beautiful man was laughing Naraku's laugh. He grabbed her chin with his bloody fingers and said, "You have entertained me, so you will live a bit longer. Eventually, of course, I will take the shard back . . . but until then, I will be your master. Understand?" Kira was still. "Answer me!" demanded Naraku. He snapped his fingers, and the fire demon was instantly in such excruciating pain that she couldn't even scream. "Now," he continued calmly, "what do you say?"

Kira's lips moved, but no sound emerged. She wet her lips nervously with her tongue and whispered something. Naraku bent closer and caught the words "I'll see you in hell."

Amplified by the power of the jewel shard, the flames were hot enough to melt steel. The attack would have crippled or killed him had Naraku not leapt back and inflicted the pain again, which stopped the attack dead. Kira stiffened, arching her back until only her head, heels, and the backs of her hands touched the ground. A muscle quivered on her clenched jaw and her cords stood out on her neck. Naraku walked deliberately over her body and entered the monk's wrecked home. Kira's arm and leg bones were near breaking when Naraku released her from the pain. Exhausted and terrified, she could only turn her head to watch.

Naraku shifted aside the debris with his slender hands. Beneath the pieces of a destroyed Buddha statue, he found the three Shikon shards. Naraku's cry of pain and anger at discovering the protective shield brought a trace of a smile to Kira's lips. Naraku struggled to overcome the shield using his own shield, his miasma, his own shards-- nothing worked. He summoned his daughters, who had no better luck breaking the barrier. Kira giggled hysterically, getting louder and louder. Naraku snapped his fingers, but the fire demon somehow continued to laugh through the pain, rolling back and forth.

Furious, Naraku grabbed her by the hair and bent her head back so she would look at him. With a savage motion, he tore out her left eye with his dull fingernails and ate the eyeball. Viscous fluid and blood dripped down his chin. Kira didn't cry out in pain or stop the manic laughter. She had gone beyond pain and was rapidly losing her grip on sanity. For her entire life, she had carefully controlled the blaze of power that burned at the core of her being. Now the Shikon shard was feeding the fire until it became a bonfire that threatened to consume her mind. The blood she had spilled on the ground smoked and ignited.

Naraku recognized the signs of meltdown and used his miasma to transport himself and his incarnations far away. Several seconds later, the clearing was lit by a globe of light as blinding as the sun. It expanded faster than the eye could follow until it filled the clearing and beyond. The light retracted as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind an ashy landscape as desolate as the moon; of the four rows of trees that had been enveloped there was no trace. At the core of the destruction lay Kira's naked body, which was half-buried in the ash and curled into the fetal position. The only evidence of injury was the pair of scars: one stretched across her abdomen, and the other marked the empty socket of her left eye. If you had the spiritual gift, you could also have seen the glow of a Shikon shard between two vertebrae in her lower back. In the shocked silence of a forest that seemed to be holding its breath, one could almost hear the echoes of her insane laughter.