"Inuyasha, sheathe your sword! You mustn't fight!" Miroku shouted, hoping in vain that Inuyasha would listen for once.
It was no good.
"No way!" the hanyou shouted back. "If I don't fight back, I'll be killed!"
The enormous youkai, glutted on the bodies of the other youkai it had killed and absorbed, had not bothered to strike at Inuyasha as he descended into the pit. It did not strike at him now, but merely waited. No doubt it had every faith in the strength of its power. It could not possibly know about the Tessaiga, but Miroku himself was dubious about Inuyasha's ability (or lack thereof) to utilize its full potential.
"Listen to me, Inuyasha! All the other youkai that were here have been defeated and absorbed into the one you now face," Miroku called in explanation. The youkai began to chuckle, a deep unsettling rumble Miroku could feel as much as hear.
"You, too, will die and be absorbed," the youkai told Inuyasha. "And I will become even stronger."
Inuyasha brought the Tessaiga to bear between them. "Yeah. Right."
"It's like the spell to make kodoku!" Miroku explained desperately. Hoping to make the hanyou understand just how dire the situation had become, he continued, "All sorts of deadly creatures are put into a jar together: poisonous insects, lizards, snakes, and the like. And once the spell is activated they are made to fight and kill each other, each one absorbing more of the deadly evil. The last one that remains is the kodoku."
He had not been entirely sure that this was kodoku, or something very like it, until just now. He had never seen such things himself, only heard the stories of these evil creatures and the nefarious purposes to which they were usually put to use. But now that he had spoken the words aloud, he was certain. This entire cavern had been made to serve as a gigantic kodoku-jar.
"This place exists to produce a kodoku! Even if you win, the spell will merge the loser's body with yours, Inuyasha. If you fight, it won't matter who wins — you'll be fused into one no matter what!"
That got his attention, at least. The other youkai continued its low, rumbling laughter unabated. From its point of view, Miroku supposed, the situation must be looking pretty good. No matter what happened next, it would win and Inuyasha would lose.
"What do you want me to do, monk?" Inuyasha demanded, barely managing to avoid the monstrous fist that pounded down where he had been standing. Bloody liquid sloshed and splashed around him. "It's not like this guy's just going to let me walk away. I'll have to kill him." He ran, circling partway around his enormous enemy before attempting a slash with the Tessaiga.
The youkai merely continued to laugh, letting the sword bounce harmlessly off the horns of its lower head.
They needed to find a way out, some way to loosen the spell's hold on this place, or break it altogether. Something, before it was too late to get Inuyasha out in one piece.
Belatedly, Miroku realized that there was another light approaching from the tunnel behind him. He could only hope it wasn't Kagome and Sango looking for them.
It wasn't, he realized immediately. It was Kikyou. They hadn't seen the revived priestess since before they met Sango, and yet she had somehow found her way here to join them. But—something was wrong. Why was she emitting that eerie, bluish glow?
"Inuyasha," she breathed.
Of course, the hanyou heard that where he had completely ignored all of Miroku's shouting. He turned in alarm, just in time to see Kikyou topple from the precipice as her hoarded human souls began to abandon her all at once. Globs of glowing blue fire pulled free of her inhuman body one by one, revealing their true nature before the kodoku spell drew them inexorably toward the youkai far below. Each soul was absorbed as it reached the youkai, no doubt adding to its power.
Miroku reached for her and missed, too sluggish from the evil effects of this place to be much use just now.
That was all it took for Inuyasha to abandon the fight. He threw himself away from his youkai opponent, rushing to catch Kikyou before she could hit the floor. Unlike Miroku, his youkai blood apparently protected him from the ill effects of such concentrated evil. He nearly made it in time, but was tossed aside by a well-timed blow from his forgotten opponent. Kikyou landed hard on a ledge just above the swirling offal and did not move, while Inuyasha slammed into the stone wall.
Even as he rebounded, Inuyasha only had eyes for the fallen priestess. "Kikyou!"
There was powerful fury in his face as he put himself and his sword between the youkai and Kikyou. Miroku didn't have much energy left, but knew he had to keep trying to get Inuyasha out of this trap. He summoned what reserves of strength remained to him, and was cut off as he was about to speak.
"Miroku-sama!"
His fears were confirmed a moment later as Kagome came running down the tunnel to join him, followed swiftly by Kirara. "Kagome-sama," he greeted uncertainly. "You seem to be holding up well."
She ignored that observation in favor of peering into the pit. "What's going on?" She gasped. "Kikyou! She fell? And now Inuyasha's going to fight to protect her…"
The large youkai below them had not yet noticed this newest arrival. To Inuyasha it said, mocking, "This woman isn't human. I'm going to absorb her into my body, too."
Inuyasha flew into action as the youkai reached for Kikyou. "Don't you lay a hand on her!" he shouted, and sliced the youkai's arm off at the shoulder with a single strike. He must have thought this would be a sufficient deterrent, because he turned his back on the youkai to assist Kikyou—and learned the error of his ways a moment later.
The youkai was not at all disabled by the loss of its arm. In fact, it took only seconds for it to form a new arm. An arm like the body of a centipede, long and many-legged and whiplike. Miroku and Kagome could only watch in horror as the youkai struck out with this arm, once again preventing Inuyasha from reaching Kikyou.
"Inuyasha, stop and think!" Miroku shouted, seeing one last opportunity. "Don't forget the kodoku!"
"Shut up!" Inuyasha snarled. "I'm trying to… Kagome." He had apparently only just now noticed her. "Damn it."
He turned once more to the fight, as if he were even more determined to be foolish now.
Exasperated, Miroku called, "Inuyasha!"
"Miroku, what's kodoku?" Kagome asked quietly.
"If the fight continues, regardless of whether he wins or loses, Inuyasha's body will be fused with that of the youkai because of the kodoku spell," he explained. To his horror, before he had even finished with this brief explanation, Kagome had lowered herself carefully over the edge and begun to slide toward the ledge where Kikyou lay immobile. "Wait! What are you doing? You can't get involved in this, Kagome!"
"We have to get Kikyou out of here!" Kagome insisted. "I'll pull her body up. Please help, Miroku!"
It made perfect sense. If they got Kikyou out of danger, Inuyasha would have no reason to stick around so stubbornly. And since Kagome seemed unaffected by the evil miasma of this place… this might be their only real chance.
While Inuyasha traded blows with the youkai, Kagome reached the ledge where Kikyou lay and gently helped her to stand. It seemed that the priestess was not as fully incapacitated as she had at first appeared. For a tense moment it seemed that they might actually make it, but Kagome was forced to dive out of the way of a stray blow from the youkai's centipede arm, dragging Kikyou deeper into the pit with her.
As the girls spoke in low tones, the looks on their faces all the confirmation he needed that this was not a pleasant conversation, and Inuyasha slashed again and again at the youkai in a desperate attempt to defeat it and keep the girls safe, Miroku had never felt quite so helpless. If he tried to help, he knew he would just become another target, another weakness in Inuyasha's defenses. And with his friends between him and the monster, the kazaana was absolutely off-limits. The best option for everyone was to stay where he was, but the thought of not helping was unacceptable. Perhaps he could convince Kirara to go help Kagome and Kikyou, but that would mean sending her into the kodoku jar too, and he couldn't justify that.
Down in the pit, Inuyasha was winning the fight. The Tessaiga was doing its work beautifully, but sealing its wielder's fate. He's going to kill it, Miroku realized in horror.
Before Inuyasha could land the decisive strike, a glowing arrow shot out of the darkness and caromed off the blade to soar up and out of the cavern. Standing only with Kagome's support, Kikyou held the bow that had fired that desperate shot. The Tessaiga, purified, reverted instantly to its ordinary, rusted form. And the spell that had sealed the cavern, penetrated and destroyed by the purifying arrow, suddenly released. Miroku sensed it instantly: the concentration of evil began to dissipate, leaking steadily out the hole in the ceiling.
"The seal is broken," the monstrous youkai observed, before the growing onrush of force tore it to pieces. The rush of wind grew more and more powerful, until it began to suck the contents of the pit right out of the mountain. Miroku pressed himself against the rocks that formed the tunnel wall in an effort not to be pulled into the sudden storm, and watched helplessly as his friends were thrown from the cavern along with a sea of blood and youkai parts.
It went on and on until there wasn't a drop of blood left in the pit and all the youkai parts had been expelled. Happy just to be alive after all that, Miroku wasn't sure he wanted to know what had pulled the whole mess so swiftly out of the mountain. It was unlikely, he thought, to simply be the release of pent-up miasma. Something else must be at play, but what?
Kirara gave a little chirp, as if to say, what now?
It was a good question. With Kirara's help, he could follow after Inuyasha and Kagome right away, and hope to help them if the opportunity presented itself. But that would mean leaving Sango and Shippou behind, and something about that didn't feel right. It wouldn't take too much longer to go back for them.
"Come on, Kirara," he decided. "Let's go get the others."