Inu 1/2

Book 2

Chapter 3

The price of arroggance. A battle of two demons. Sesshomaru, what were you thinking?!?

The flesh hurt. Stripped of one hind leg and almost stripped of its other, the boar was running itself ragged trying to flee. Half absorbed, he'd been when he'd ripped himself out of the demonic mass. Now pain flitted through his mind. He sensed others; other demons; other shikon shards. A death by their hand would be far less painful than the death the other demon had planned for him. Running. That was all he was capable of. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the other demon. The acidic poison in him burned like fire the more he pumped his legs, but he did not care. It only fueled his determination, his want for sweet death and release. He knew the thing persued him, drawn by his spilt blood and the lure of the shikon shard on his brow. It was slow in its coming, taking its time, sure of its usurping him. He ran blindly, the stump of his right hind leg churning a phantom leg. He could feel where the leg used to be, working and pumping. His body still sent blood there. He would pass out from blood loss but the shikon shard kept him moving, seering his forehead with a heat as it urged him onward.

He burst through a clearing and saw there a white haired demon. One strong enough to slay him. He steered toward it, barrelling onward, but the demon simply feinted to the right, allowing him to pass. Two months prior he would not have, but he knew the blind terror of a demon in flight. The boar demon cursed his luck. The demon had let him live and was now in the path of the other. He gnashed his teeth as he rode onward, feelling the pull of those others that might help him, might rid him of his pain.

Daylight dwindled into nighttime and still the boar road onward, blinded by pain, maddness overtaking him. He could not remember why he ran. He simply felt the pull and ran toward it. The forrest grew silent all around him, the animals cowering at the presense of the mad demon as it tore its way through the forrest. Then finally, finally, he sensed them. The creatures there maddened him. He had forgotten his mission was to die and he lashed out of the trees.

When the release came to him he was insensible of it, his frothing mouth spewed spittle and foam across the forrest floor. As he lay dieing the shikon shard was plucked from his brow and his soul sighed in release. How sweet, death... His body no longer felt the pain and he moved on thanking his rescuers.

-------

The boar appeared suddenly, bearing down on him.

He was startled. Two months ago, he would have simply slain it out of habit. Now he was out of practice, actions so natural to him before were now difficult to perform. He stepped aside quickly, allowing the boar passage and glancing after it with a well-checked curiosity.
Sesshomaru looked at the blood trail the boar had left and smelt the acrid smell of poison as it ate the blood away. There was much of it in the boar's blood stream, he wagered. Enough to give the boar demon that crazed and mindless look. Enough to cause him to run blind into the forrest seeking death in whatever form it might find. He realized now that the boar had wanted him to kill it. Ah well. It was no concern of his. Funny that during the past few months his skills had been so undermined that he would allow the boar to pass on unscathed; that he would allow such a mercy, when in fact the boar had wanted the opposite. The irony was not lost on him.

He had been in the forrest for several days now. He was loathe to return to his castle. The mercy he had learned from Kagome would show itself as a weakness to those demons nearest his realm and, so out of practice was he, that he wondered if he could even survive facing them. No, he would not return yet. Not until he had honed his skills once again, driven away the edge of weakness and kindness that Kagome had given rise to. He came to the forrest to fight demons, to train, but for some reason the demons were few and far between. It could be his fault. The presense of a demon such as himself could be reason enough for the other demons of the forrest to hide. It was his assumption until he saw the boar demon. Whatever did this to the boar was the demon at fault. Of that he was sure.

He stood there eyeing the trail the boar demon had left.

It nagged him, the thought formulating in his brain. He could find this demon and fight it. It could not be that it was more powerful than he, Sesshomaru. True, he had two months of lounging and growing fat to work off, but he knew once he got into a fight that everything would fall back into place the way it had before. He was arrogant and confident enough still to believe this and with a nod to himself as he made his decision he started to follow the trail of the boar.

He'd been surprised, when he'd come back, at how much he'd changed. It didn't occur to him to take flight now, or to kill things on sight, or even to speak. He had been silent for so long that words seemed a little... superfluous to him. Not that there was anyone to speak to out here anyway. Jaken, his retainer, had fled before his fateful fight with Inu-Yasha. He wondered silently where the little demon was. The demons in the area had mostly fled. Sesshomaru was never much of a talker anyway. As for flying, he didn't miss it so much. He was sure he could still do it and had tried it frequently to make sure, but he found, oddly, that being a puppy for so long had actually made him notice his sensitivity to the vibrations in the ground. Many things could be sensed that way before they could be seen or heard or even smelled. Walking was not such a chore when it gave him an advantage like that. It was the same in his demon form if not more pronounced. As for not killing things on sight... He blaimed the whole of that on his stint as a puppy as well. And Buyo. That damned cat. He had endured innumerable indignities at the paws of that blasted feline and in the end had come to know the patience to ignore his annoyances. His first instinct was no longer to fight-- it was to endure (as in the case of Buyo and occassionally Sota) or to avoid (as in the case of cars, bicycles, etc, and also, when applicable, Buyo and also occassionaly Sota), but not to fight. It would not do for a Demon Lord to have such sentiments. That was why he was in the woods, seeking out opponents that were seemingly nonexistent.

Picking his way through the forrest, Sesshomaru came upon the demon before nightfall. It was a mass of flesh with strange, long arms that grew as if they were spewed forth involuntarily. He saw the remnants of other demons hulking benieth the skin. Most were placid, small creatures resigning themselves to their fate. Others were large and had strong wills. These were the horrifying ones-- the ones that lay in pieces inside the demon and yet they still tried to pull themselves out. Sesshomaru saw the leg of a boar floating in the flesh, being dissolved. It was nearly transparent.

"Abomination..." he muttered, his eyes narrowing. One of the massive clawed hands swept out at him slashing at the air as Sesshomaru leapt above it.

They fought the rest of that night, Sesshomaru unsure of his victory, yet unwilling to admit he had been foolish in seeking out the strange demon. For every blow the creature exacted on Sesshomaru, the demon lord retaliated with four. Every inch the flesh demon gave, the demon lord took twice that. They moved akwardly throughout the next day, the demon thing slowly retreating. Sesshomaru had hurt it and it was not used to things hurting it. It knew to bide its time. It knew that the demon it fought was coursing with its poison by now. It knew that it could track Sesshomaru down at a later date and finish him. And so the thing retreated slowly, as if Sesshomaru were merely an annoyance to it.

The demon lord himself was not fairing well and the thing's retreat was slow and it still fought him. The fight should have been over in hours but here they were... a day later... and both of them still lived. The day wore on, turning to night. The monster's slow retreat slowed even more as its wounds began to heal while Sesshomaru's wounds were kept open by the thing's stronger poison.

And Sesshomaru grew weary.

The second day of the fight approached, Sesshomaru's strength beginning to flag under the constant onslaught of claws and poison and disgusting sensations as it tried to pull at him and draw him closer. Caught once too many times in surprise he was slammed against a tree and he felt the sickening feeling of the flesh sticking to his exposed skin, drawing especially at the places that its poison had touched. The bones of his left arm ground as he strained against the creature and he yelped involuntarily, realizing that the arm, only just healed, was once again broken. Anger flared in him and he fought back again, fierce enough to make the thing begin retreating again. He shuddered on his feet and knew that he had to keep fighting it or it would heal its wounds and come at him again. He couldn't take it again. He knew that much. He was not stupid.

Desperation overcame him as the day turned grey and spiralled toward night yet again, their second day of fighting drawing to a close. He was weary beyond anything he had imagined possible, shaking with exhaustion, his eyes half useless from sleep deprevation and bloodloss. Yet he fought, driving the creature back with a tenacity that made it think that perhaps this certain demon was best absorbed dead and showing a burst of speed it had saved, it struck him a clawed blow to the abdomen before it retreated, running for good. It would find his trail again in a few days when it was fresh and healthy again.

At first Sesshomaru did not believe that the creature had gone. He stood shaking in the woods, his breath ragged, his arm useless, his eyes nigh blind and his abdomen seeping fresh blood. After no blows came for him for a few mintues he realized that it had truly left and he shut his eyes.

He had only a moment of peace before the pain from the poison and his wounds sang through his body and he sagged against the trees leaning into them to bear some of his weight. It didn't matter. His muscles still jumped and convulsed under his skin, the poison almost seizing them up. He realized that if he didn't keep moving the poison might succeed in fixing him there and, though his muscles protested sending firey jolts of pain through his body, he forced himself to move. He stumbled through the forrest, his right hand guiding him against the rough bark of the trees as his eyes became more blurred, his vision moving in and out... slipping away from him. He stumbled forward, groping for trees and falling instead against the ground, a field of tall grass surrounding him.

He lay there for a minute before he tried to move and then the pain came to him worse than ever. He drug himself to his feet and willed his limbs to move again, refusing to accept defeat.

He worked to move, akwardly staggering into the field, getting glimpses of it every time his heartbeat forced enough blood into his head and his eyes worked for an odd second or two before they faded to black yet again. He would pass out soon. He had to be somewhere safe when it happened. Otherwise he would wake up to find something munching on his intestines. Or worse still, not wake up at all.

Half an hour he walked across that tiny field though to him it felt like days. Through his pain he caught a scent. It was strong and close. He felt foolish for not noticing it before.

Humans.

He had exited the forrest near a village. He cursed silently to himself. If the humans saw him they would probably kill him. He turned to flee, urgency making his limbs listen to him even through the pain, but the poison was still strong in him and it clenched his leg in a spasm. It was distraction enough that he stumbled, his head falling hard against a rough hewn board. He felt his legs scraping painfully against another board as he was drug down by gravity and then he was falling, his consciousness swimming in and out. He hit the hard packed earth with a cry of pain.

He lay there, breathing, trying hard not to pass out. He heard movement, like the swift movement of cloth. Was someone coming? The idea frightened him but it also sparked hope in him. Then he realized it was his clothing. He couldn't feel himself shaking over the pain of everything else, but he heard it.

"Ahh... the boar had the right idea..." he thought to himself as his eyes began to close. "A swift death would be preferred to this. Had I the energy I might kill myself... What is that noise?...." he muttered inwardly. After a minute he realized he was whining. He had been completely insensible of it. He imagined he smirked, felt his muscles pulling at his mouth the way they ought to. He did not, in reality. His musles were siezed by then. His eyelids, they still moved and when the world came into view breifly he could see that they were half-closed. He spasmed, felt something hot come onto his lips. "Is that blood?... It is... Have I shit myself as well, I wonder?..." The world swam away again. His broken arm lay crushed benieth him. He'd landed on it in the fall.

"So this is how I die... Blind and alone... at the bottom of a ditch. Heh." He felt things slowing, felt his shuddering become more prominent than the pain and slowly he became glad for his loss of blood. It would help him pass out. He felt his thoughts becoming disjointed, fuzzy; slow. He opened his eyes feeling the lashes sweep upward just a little. Sight came back momentarily as he focussed through the net of eyelashes over his already clouded vision.

He was too groggy to be startled so he simply let unconsciousness overtake him as he stared up at Kagome's surprised and terrified face peering over the edge of the well.

Next time: Sesshomaru's in a familiar situation though this time Kagome's not the doting nursemaid she was in the past.

And the "Letter from the Author":

It very cold here in my house, but my hands feel it most. I find catterpillar on floor... Why? Why? It still live. Me think it come from vent. Me no like that idea. Why there catterpillar in vent? You tell Amber, yes? My hands are frikkin freazing. No more typing until summer. Ha ha. No I jest.

So anyway, this chapter was going to be less fighting and less stuck in the well and more of the next chapter, but... this is a good place to end it I think. The next chapter is the one I've been looking forward to so here's hoping I don't screw it up.