The villagers were insistent on fighting. Even as he defended himself, Miroku was keenly aware that these were not monsters or youkai, but ordinary men who had been somehow bewitched. He was less certain that his companion would take such things into consideration.

"Inuyasha," he cautioned, "try not to hurt them."

"You think I don't know that?" the hanyou snapped. A quick glance revealed that he was, at least, using his fists instead of his claws or the Tessaiga. Those men would have some very painful bruises if they ever got free of the spell, but they would be alive to feel the pain.

Inuyasha might have sheathed his claws, so to speak, but his impatience was still honed to a keen point. "But the gentle approach is getting us nowhere," he added. "There's too damn many of them."

"Just go ahead and kill them all." Kagura suddenly revealed herself in the midst of the mob, the calm at the center of the storm. "If you don't, they'll just keep getting back up." Her voice was almost unbearably smug. "Though I suppose if you were going to do that, you'd have done it from the start, wouldn't you?"

"You're the one controlling the villagers!" Inuyasha shouted back.

"Wrong," she sneered. "My corpse dance can only control the dead. It's useless against the living."

Miroku's insides went cold. If Kagura wasn't the culprit, did that mean there another youkai somewhere in the village? There had to be. And he'd left Koharu back there…

There was no going back now, not with Kagura here. He would have to count on Sango to keep Koharu and Kagome safe.

"By now, your friend Kagome has probably had her soul sucked out of her body," Kagura went on. Was she telling the truth, or was it just a ploy to shatter Inuyasha's concentration? Her face was impassive, giving nothing away. "If you want to save her, you'll have to go through me… so draw your sword, Inuyasha!"

Inuyasha, usually so eager to rush into battle, did not immediately draw his sword. Something about this situation was giving him second thoughts.

"Miroku, go check on Kagome and the others," the hanyou ordered.

"But Inuyasha—"

"Ain't it obvious? I'm gonna wipe the floor with this bitch!" He finally drew the Tessaiga, giving Kagura exactly what she wanted, and raced toward her. With a decisive wave of her fan, she set blades of wind to flowing, heading inexorably toward Inuyasha. The Tessaiga deflected them easily. "Go, damn it!"

Since Inuyasha appeared to have things under control here, at least for the moment, Miroku did as he was ordered. If the girls were safe, it would set his mind at ease. And if they weren't… maybe there was a chance he could help.

"It won't matter," he heard Kagura say as he departed. "By now Kagome will be nothing but an empty shell."

Miroku couldn't help but wonder what he would find back at the headman's home. What sort of youkai could draw the very soul from a person's body? He pushed himself, running as fast as he could, knowing it might already be too late.

Kirara, wreathed in flames, stood in the doorway to the headman's house. There was no sign of any of the girls outside.

"Kagome-sama!" he called. Kirara moved aside to let him through. In the darkness of the house, he thought he caught a glimpse of a young girl, unearthly white all over, disappearing into the shadows. But she was gone as soon as he saw her, and might not have been there at all… And he had greater concerns than strange children.

Sango lay unmoving on the floor, her hiraikotsu beside her. Kagome was still conscious, but barely able to move. "Kagome! What happened here?"

But Kagome lacked the strength to answer him. She crumpled the rest of the way to the floor as he watched, barely managing to keep a grip on her bow.

"Koharu!" he realized with a start. "Where is Koharu?"

At the sound of her name the girl emerged from the shadows. In one hand she carried a kitchen knife. "Miroku-sama."

"Careful," Shippou warned. "Koharu is being controlled, too!"

Tears welled in Koharu's eyes, slid down her cheeks. "I did something terrible to Miroku-sama's friends," she went on. "I have no excuse, and… can no longer allow myself to live."

She brought the blade toward her own neck, as if to slit her throat, and slashed toward Miroku when he tried to stop her. The blade barely missed his arm, and the string of prayer beads that kept the kazaana contained.

He didn't have time to think about how close he had just come to disaster. He needed to disarm and disable Koharu before she could hurt him, or herself. With one wild punch he managed to knock the knife from her hand; he followed that up by stepping closer to punch her in the gut hard enough to disable her, for now anyway. He caught her as she collapsed, murmuring an apology for the pain she would no doubt feel later. Assuming, of course, that they were able to break whatever spell was controlling her.

"Her soul has probably been taken by the mirror," Shippou said morosely. "Just like Kagome's…"

"Mirror?"

"There was a youkai that looked like a little girl. She had a mirror that she used to try and pull Kagome's soul out of her body!"

He looked around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary beyond the unconscious members of the village headman's family. The girl he had seen earlier must have been the youkai, but there was no sign of her now. "Is it still nearby?"

"I don't know! It disappeared just before you showed up!" So far Shippou had done a very good job being brave, but his distress was beginning to show.

"We'll have to take our chances, then," Miroku decided. "Kirara, can you help me with these three?"

She obligingly let him drape Koharu across her haunches. He was almost afraid to check on Sango. She was so motionless that at first he wasn't even sure she was still breathing. To his relief, she was still alive.

"She was hit with the hiraikotsu," Shippou explained. "It bounced right off the mirror and hit her…"

That mirror was beginning to sound extremely dangerous. As he hefted Sango to join Koharu on Kirara's back—he had no way to secure them and would just have to hope they wouldn't fall off—he kept an eye out for any sign of a little girl with a mirror. There was none so far, but without any way to detect the youkai he was unwilling to leave Sango and Koharu behind to have their souls stolen. Kagome he carried on his own back. She was very weak, but at least still awake.

"Come on, Shippou, let's go find Inuyasha," he said. With Shippou bounding along beside him, and hopefully keeping an eye on Sango and Koharu to make sure they didn't fall, he headed out of the headman's house and straight for where he had left Inuyasha. With luck, the hanyou would still be in one piece.

"I have a feeling that youkai with the mirror is working for Naraku," Shippou said.

"Indeed." It seemed altogether too convenient for this youkai to appear just when it would most benefit Naraku. It couldn't be a coincidence.

There still remained one question, however: why had Inuyasha not smelled the youkai? Indeed, Miroku had not sensed anything amiss himself. None of them had.

If Naraku had control over a youkai that could wreak this kind of havoc without being detected… the implications were even more dire than the current situation.

Even worse, they had no idea where it might be now and no way to discover its whereabouts.

Inuyasha, at least, was right where Miroku had left him. If he hadn't made any progress in his battle with Kagura, at least he hadn't been seriously injured, either. And he was now preparing to use the wind scar attack, it seemed. If Kagura realized the danger she was in, she did not appear the least bit concerned.

Behind Kagura, the figure of a young child could be seen. Could it be…?

"Inuyasha, don't!" Shippou screamed, his voice raw with terror.

It was too late; Inuyasha used the wind scar attack. Before it could strike, the little girl stepped around Kagura. She carried an ornate hand mirror, and held it up now. It seemed an impossibly small and unlikely shield, but according to Shippou this mirror had turned aside an attack from the hiraikotsu so that it struck Sango instead of its target. Could it do the same with the Tessaiga's attack?

Unwilling to take any unnecessary risks, Miroku threw himself and Kagome down behind a small rise in the ground. The meager protection at least deflected the worst of the wind scar attack harmlessly away from them. Inuyasha was not so lucky. Struck head-on by his own attack, the hanyou went down in a bloody mess.

"Inuyasha's attack was turned back…"

"I told you," Shippou said. "She got Sango, too!"

A new figure emerged out of the dust cloud raised by the wind scar attack, a figure that was all too familiar. "Hmm, Inuyasha dropped dead?" Naraku asked, taking his place between Kagura and the child with the mirror.

Something in Miroku snapped. Rage consumed him.

Without any real awareness of how he got there, he ran forward so that all his friends were safely behind him, reaching for the prayer beads that sealed away the kazaana as he went. This had to be the real Naraku. This had to be his chance.

Naraku chuckled. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, monk. Unless of course you want to suck up the souls of Kagome and all the villagers, which are trapped in Kanna's mirror."

Cursing as he fought to swallow his worst impulses, Miroku wrapped the beads around his wrist once more. As much as he wanted revenge on Naraku and freedom from his curse, his life just wasn't worth the deaths of Kagome and all the villagers.

"It's just you now, monk," Naraku went on. He still sounded more amused than anything, which only served to make Miroku's blood boil. "The others are dead or will be soon. What will you do without your kazaana?"

He had no idea what to do. Without using the kazaana, he was no match for Naraku or the others.

"What are those two, Naraku?" he asked. "Your underlings?"

Naraku laughed again. "What good will it do you to know, monk? You'll soon be joining your friends in death."

"Answer me," he pressed, hoping that his enemy didn't realize he was stalling for time as much as demanding answers. There had to be some way out of this that didn't end with him and all of his companions dead. He wouldn't accept defeat. "Does the girl called Kanna, like you and Kagura, bear a spider-shaped scar on her back?"

Naraku wasn't laughing now. "So you figured it out… Kagura and Kanna are indeed youkai born from my body. The wind and the void."

"The void… so that's why. With no scent, no aura, nothing… of course we didn't sense her until she was already among us and the damage was already done." The mirror had captured Kagome's soul, and the souls of all the villagers, if Naraku could be believed. If he could retrieve the mirror somehow, or release the souls trapped within, there would be no reason not to use the kazaana. But how could he get the mirror without being killed?

"Kagura, take Inuyasha's head," Naraku instructed. He was apparently finished with Miroku for now, and considered him to be no threat.

"Trophy hunting?" Kagura asked, fanning herself in an off-hand way as if she were only idly curious. And perhaps she was.

"Yes. When I show Inuyasha's head to Kikyou, I wonder what she will think."

Kikyou! Was Kikyou somehow tangled up in all of this?

A deep growl from behind warned him even before Shippou cried out that Inuyasha was alive. It wasn't much, but he clung to that bit of hope. If Inuyasha wasn't dead, they might all make it through this. Somehow.

The villagers, who until now had waited at a safe distance, now approached again. Their mindless shuffling was unnerving.

"These are your opponents, monk," Naraku told him. "Fight as long and hard as you want."

This was it: he was going to get away. He was so close, and Miroku was going to lose him again.

Rage, however impotent, consumed him so completely that he only realized Kagura was attempting to take Inuyasha's head when the attack was deflected at the last moment. Kagome was not only back on her feet, she'd made it to where Inuyasha still lay on the ground. And she'd managed to fire an arrow exactly when they needed it most.

Spurred onward by Kagome's determination, Miroku pushed back against the villagers, fending them off with his staff and attempting to keep them away from Kagome as much as carve a path toward Naraku. Kagome had almost obliterated Naraku once before with just a single arrow. If he could keep the possessed villagers away from her, she might be able to do it again.

"Didn't you get that girl's soul?" he heard Kagura ask. "Then why is she still moving?"

Though he was still busy fighting off the villagers, Miroku couldn't help but be pleased. Perhaps he and Shippou had showed up just in time to keep Kanna from fully absorbing Kagome's soul. Or perhaps there was some other explanation. Either way, Miroku was glad not to be the only one left in the fight.

"You still have the strength to draw that bow? Remarkable," Naraku said.

Miroku couldn't risk looking away from the villagers, now that he was surrounded by them, but he hoped that meant Kagome had taken aim at Naraku once more. Do it, Kagome, he thought. Get him!

But she didn't shoot. Instead, she demanded, "Where did you get a Shikon fragment like that?"

"That's right. You can see it, can't you?" Naraku asked.

What are you waiting for? Miroku thought, desperate as he avoided the slash of multiple knives wielded with uncanny precision by the villagers. Kill him!

"You want to know who gave me this Shikon shard?" Naraku went on. "Soon it will be complete. Who can say what she was thinking when, with her own hand, Kikyou gave me this piece of the jewel?" He laughed then, an evil sound. "So if you want to hate someone, Inuyasha, hate Kikyou," he suggested. "It's only because she gave me the jewel that I was able to defeat you like this."

Kagome lost her temper at this. "You creep!" she shouted.

"Go ahead and shoot." Even without looking, Miroku could hear the cruel smile in his voice.

The mirror. Of course he wanted Kagome to shoot. Kanna's mirror would simply reflect the attack right back at her…

"Or don't bother," Naraku went on. "Since it's just to protect that idiot, Inuyasha…"

"Shut up!"

Miroku wished he could see what was going on, but if he diverted too much attention one of the villagers might get past his defenses. He trusted Kagome to make the right choice, and he trusted her power to defeat Naraku and his minions, even if he couldn't see exactly what she was doing.

"Kanna, are you doing that?" Naraku asked.

"The mirror won't respond to my commands. Unless I expel the souls, it will break," said a quiet voice that must have belonged to the girl, Kanna.

She must have released the souls then, because balls of light streaked from behind Miroku to land within each of the villagers, who suddenly ceased their onslaught.

"Miroku, use the kazaana!" Kagome screamed. "The souls are free!"

He didn't hesitate, didn't ask questions. He just whirled, whipping the prayer beads away to free the kazaana. At last, his enemy within range, his battle might be over…

But it was too late: Kagura had swept them away before he had any chance of pulling Naraku into the void.

That they had all survived a battle that could so easily have turned deadly was small consolation. He'd been so close…