The village, which had been so peaceful earlier, was in flames. Men on horseback rampaged amid the destruction, glorying in the bodies of the villagers they had slain, but they had not yet begun looting. As he approached with Inuyasha, Miroku couldn't help but think what a tragic, pointless waste this all was. All this destruction, all the loss of life… once he and Inuyasha put a stop to the bandits, it would all be for nothing.
It was hard to tell what was going on, with the smoke and the fire and the horses, but one thing was certain: none of it was good. And the further they ventured into the village, the worse it got.
With a sudden shout, Inuyasha drew the Tessaiga and rushed toward a group of the bandits.
As he followed, Miroku could see why. These men had worked together to herd the village women into a corner where they were now trapped. Whatever the bandits' intentions, it was obvious that those women were in serious danger.
Miroku kept close behind Inuyasha as he cleared a path with the Tessaiga. Trying to protect the women was all to the good—if they could get them safely out of the village, at least those lives might be spared even if the men were already dead—but something else nagged at Miroku. There was a darkness here beyond that of the smoke, an unpleasant, prickly aura.
"Inuyasha, these bandits," he began.
"Yeah, I can smell it. One of 'em's a youkai," Inuyasha confirmed.
It explained a lot, but Miroku had to wonder: how had they missed this? They had come this way not all that long ago and he had sensed no sign of this.
From among the bandits, one man rode forward, chuckling darkly as he came. Like the others, he was dressed in armor. Unlike the others, he carried a gigantic and bloody axe. Bits of hair and gore still clung to it as he slung it up to rest on his shoulder. The evil aura Miroku had sensed was definitely emanating from this man. "Hey brat," he said, "nice sword you've got there."
Inuyasha, of course, was not impressed by the implied threat. "So you're the youkai, then. And you brought all these measly mortals along to help you do your dirty work."
This made some of the bandits nervous; uncertainty was written plainly on their faces, and they looked to one another in confusion. They had not known their boss was a monster. Interesting.
If the youkai was bothered by the revelation of his true identity, he did not show it. Instead, he insisted again, "Give me that sword."
"You want it, you'll have to take it from me."
"Don't get careless," Miroku cautioned. This youkai seemed awfully confident. Yes, most of them were overconfident, especially if they knew Inuyasha was only a half-youkai. But something about this one made Miroku want to be extra cautious. There was something avaricious in its face…
Unfortunately, Inuyasha was past the point of caution. "Bah, you think I'd actually lose to this guy?"
"If you do not give me that sword, I will have no choice but to take it by force," the youkai added.
Fully goaded now, Inuyasha raised the Tessaiga and rushed toward the youkai man. "Oh yeah?" he demanded. "I'll show these men what you really are, youkai!"
This was a terrible idea, but Miroku knew there was no point in intervening just yet. Inuyasha probably was not ready to fully master the reforged Tessaiga, but he was obviously eager for a chance to try. Perhaps he was right, and he would be able to make short work of this bandit leader and all would soon be well. Yet Miroku couldn't shake the doubt—or the sense of foreboding—that had crept into his mind.
He wanted to have faith in his friend. And yet…
As Inuyasha brought the Tessaiga around to tangle with the youkai's axe, Miroku kept an eye on the other bandits, ready to intervene should they think to overwhelm Inuyasha with sheer numbers. With the old Tessaiga, he would not have worried. But with the new one still unproven, he thought it best to be cautious.
At first it seemed that he might be overcautious. The blades clashed again and again, so rapidly that the action was difficult to follow in spite of the weapons' great size. Inuyasha had no trouble keeping up with the youkai bandit's attacks even though the youkai was fighting from horseback.
And when Inuyasha used the Tessaiga to force the youkai bandit back, his horse reeling so he was forced to dismount, and sliced through his enormous axe, it seemed to Miroku that he must have been wrong. Inuyasha must be much closer to mastering the heavier Tessaiga than he had initially thought.
But the youkai bandit was undeterred. "That sword cuts quite well," he observed.
He paused only for a moment—what was he thinking?—and then darted back and seized one of the women. Before Miroku had a chance to react, the youkai had thrown her directly into Inuyasha's path.
Horrified, Miroku prayed that she would not be slain by the attack. Inuyasha was able to turn aside, and somehow managed to avoid slicing the woman into pieces, but this left an opening for the youkai bandit. He saw his chance and took it, following in the woman's wake to vomit some sort of nasty goop right into the hanyou's face.
Inuyasha reeled back, grimacing, as the bandit laughed. "How do you like my poison dust?" the creature asked.
Seeing his own chance while the two fighters clashed, Miroku ducked in and hauled the woman to relative safety, out of the immediate reach of either of the blades. She did not appear to be seriously injured, just stunned by what had happened to her, but that would soon have changed if he left her where she was.
"Houshi-sama," she murmured weakly, "can you help us?"
"I'll do what I can," he promised her, though he could see no way to help that would not result in his own demise.
It was quickly becoming apparent that the enormous axe was not this youkai's only weapon—and that, with his current level of skill, Inuyasha was not going to be able to defeat him with the Tessaiga. Weighed down by the youkai's poison, he was visibly struggling.
Leaving the injured woman aside for now, Miroku joined the fray just in time. He brought his staff around, fending off yet another blast of poison, as Inuyasha lost his grip on the Tessaiga.
The sword fell to the ground, but there was no time to retrieve it: the goop wasn't just poisonous, it was sticky, forming long strands that Miroku realized were silk. His first panicked thought was of a spider—Naraku!—but then all his attention was consumed by necessity. He had to protect himself and Inuyasha from that poisonous silk, so he summoned a spiritual barrier.
It worked, sort of. Except for the places where the poison had already touched them, they were safe. Unfortunately, maintaining the barrier in the face of all that malice left Miroku with no opportunity to fight his way out of the rapidly growing mass of silk that surrounded them. Inuyasha had fought hard despite the poison, but it was catching up with him now in a big way. He sagged against Miroku, barely conscious as the two of them were increasingly cocooned in the poison silk.
It occurred to him that it might have been a mistake not to bring Sango and Kagome with them. The girls might have turned the tide, with Sango and Kirara to help with crowd control and Kagome's arrows to harry the bandit leader. Instead, in trying to keep their friends safe from the bandits, he and Inuyasha had gotten themselves into a dangerous situation they might not be able to escape.
With no way to call for help, and no guarantee that Sango and Kagome alone would be able to help anyway, Miroku sought for a way out. They weren't dead yet; they couldn't give up.
Perhaps a few minutes' respite had allowed Inuyasha a chance to recover. If he could bring his claws to bear, he might be able to at least break them out of the silken trap. And if they could manage that, then sutra scrolls might be able to make a difference… but Miroku knew he needed to focus on one step at a time—and on maintaining the barrier that was keeping them alive.
"Can you move yet?" he asked.
"Bah, of course I can!" Inuyasha replied. "I'll tear this damn cocoon apart!" But all his brash confidence was betrayed when he actually tried to move. Even the slightest movement left him reeling, flinching away from the poisonous silk in a rictus of agony.
His ears twitched angrily as if he were listening to something outside; Miroku could hear the murmur of voices, but everything was muffled by the thick layers of silk. He couldn't make out the words being said.
The Tessaiga, he realized. The youkai had wanted it. Inuyasha would be furious if his enemy tried to steal his sword.
Worse, Inuyasha was obviously struggling and probably injured, and he had been separated from his sword. The sword that sealed his demon blood. The two of them were doing okay so far, but it was taking a great deal of effort on Miroku's part—effort he was not sure he could maintain for long. The poisonous silk ate at his spiritual barrier like acid, forcing him to constantly pour more effort into maintaining it.
If the barrier failed, they would be in even greater danger. Worse, further injury might spur Inuyasha to undergo another transformation to full demon. He could not let that happen, yet he also knew he couldn't keep the barrier up forever.
As his mind raced, he felt the barrier weaken slightly, the poison encroaching even closer.
Damn! Merely trying to think of a way out was causing his defense to fail even faster. If he didn't think of something soon, it wouldn't matter anyway.
He was dimly aware that Inuyasha was conversing with the youkai bandit and hopefully needling him. If they could get him angry enough to attack, he might break open the cocoon to get at them…
But Miroku realized that Inuyasha was sagging even more heavily against him, despite his bold words. The hanyou was growing weaker by the moment—and was that the smell of blood in the air?
He couldn't risk a look, but had to assume Inuyasha was injured and that the injury was not healing with its customary speed. The poison must have affected his healing ability.
With another mental curse—he'd been counting on that healing ability to get them out of this—he redoubled his efforts to maintain the barrier. His best hope right now seemed to be trying to maintain the barrier long enough for Inuyasha to fight off the poison and figure out an escape… however painfully unlikely that seemed.
The bandit leader's voice, raised in anger, penetrated through the silk cocoon and Miroku's intense concentration: "Hey brat, what's the deal? Why did the sword reject me?"
That put some of the spirit back in Inuyasha. He chuckled and shouted back, "Tessaiga chooses its master, and there's no way it would choose a lowlife like you!"
The leader muttered something else about a human bandit being able to touch the sword, before realizing the full implications of what Inuyasha had said. In attempting to taunt the bandits' youkai leader, Inuyasha had inadvertently revealed his status as a hanyou. "Wait, that means you're only half-youkai, doesn't it? Those with human blood can touch the sword." There was a pause, and then, "Did you really think to beat me, the great Gatenmaru, as a mere half youkai?"
Inuyasha growled, but made no further attempt to break free of the cocoon. As soon as he made even the slightest move, he flinched, coughing. Dim as it was inside the cocoon, it was obvious that he had just coughed up blood. Not only were his wounds not healing, they were getting worse: he was choking on his own blood.
Until now, Miroku had been able to remain mostly calm and detached from the danger at hand. Now, however, he had to fight much harder against a rising tide of panic. If he didn't find a way out of this soon, the poison would eat through his barrier and there wouldn't be enough of him or Inuyasha left to care about finding a way out.
Damn!