~~~wow. ff.net's code has really been sucking out recently. How totally
lame. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to get some decent code-monkeys
to volunteer to fix this crap. I mean really, updating everything just once
a day? Still with the site overloads, and nonexistent chapters, and major
review lossage. Wtf? In other news, I apologize for my utter pantlessness
in spelling Naraku in the last chapters (it's fixed now). I have no idea
what that was all about, although I suspect it has something to do with
writing at 2 am while plagued by bizarre delusions involving midget mice
gnawing on my poor poor brainmeats. ~~~
Of blood and clay, chapter 3:
Kikyo rested on one comfortable limb of a broad-branched tree. She was exhausted. This close to Naraku's evil miasma, there were few enough living souls, let alone those of the recently deceased, for her to feed from. Of course, attempting to blast a hole through Kagura hadn't really helped her energy supply any, either. Kikyo sighed mentally as she leaned back against the rough bole of the tree. The encounter hadn't gone as well as she could have hoped. An enchanted arrow like the one she'd fired should have shredded the wind demon to bits, not merely made her angry. However, it was intriguing that one such as Kagura, spawned as she was from Naraku himself, should have demonstrated such a resistance to an arrow coated not only with soil from Onigumo's cave, but with her own strong magics as well. Perhaps there was more to the demon than it appeared? Maybe she was more than an extension of Naraku's will? Kikyo wondered, for the first time, if maybe it would be possible to slay Naraku without first eliminating his numerous offspring? This would bear more thought. Kikyo let her head slump down in exhaustion, as she awaited the return of her soul- stealers.
An observer on the ground below would not have noticed the undead priestess lurking overhead, for she made no sound at all as she rested, and her stillness was absolute. Inside the lump of clay that passed for her brain however, her thoughts could not remain still for long, no matter how she tried. If Kikyo had still possessed lungs with which to sigh, she would have. Daily, she regretted her continued existence on this earth. She was a priestess, it was her sacred calling to eliminate beings such as that which she'd become. She lived off of innocent souls, denying them the peace they so rightly deserved, just as she was denied her own rest. Oh, it was her own fault, she knew that too. . .
Her own fault that she'd been weak, impure. . tempted and led astray by that half-feral half-demon, Inuyasha . A priestess didn't love -- wasn't allowed to have such simple human emotions. . . And now she knew why. Love cracked your armor; love clouded your vision; love. . . love led you to your death.
Had she not been obsessed with the cursed hanyou, she'd have seen the look in Onigumo's eye, and she'd have set better wards and defenses against demons in that cave of his. Or better yet, she could have let him die. She'd known the herbs for that, as well she she'd known the herbs for healing. It could have been him that found his way to hell instead of herself. Such an act might have contradicted all her oaths to help people, but wouldn't it have bee for the best, if after all, Naraku had never been spawned?
It was too late now, though. She was dead, returned to walk this lonely earth, with a hatred burning within; the betrayal with which she'd gone to her grave. Luckily, hatred didn't cloud the vision in the same way that love did. Kikyo hated Inuyasha now. Hated him with the same intensity she'd once loved him. And what was hatred anyway, but the flip side of love? Equal and opposite-- such extremes could only explode on contact. Yet, in her, they'd fused into a cold lump of stone around a heart of molten fire. Hatred and love could wait, contained, the one within the other, until she'd done her Duty, repaired her mistake, and rid the land of Naraku.
Duty always came first. These days, she didn't have much else, not even her self respect. For, what self-respecting miko would let themselves be brought back from the dead, sustained on a fraction of stolen soul from a living being and by the desecration of hundreds more souls of the deceased? No, anyone who respected their title would have let death reclaim them at the first opportunity, rather than cling to this shallow simulacrum of life any longer.
Her body; clay and bone -- no organs, no lungs, no need to eat, sleep, breathe. No sense of taste, nor any smell. She could feel, after a fashion, and see, and hear, even speak, despite the lack of a larynx, or lungs. She supposed she should be grateful for that, at least. But she missed the scent of the dawn, the taste of food. Sometimes, she wondered if the souls she absorbed had a taste. . . They had, each of them, a peculiar spiritual feel, as if she could read a sense of their lives as their energies merged with and became her own. But that wasn't the same thing as having savor and spice, now was it?
And speaking of food. . . Kikyo looked up as she sensed the return of her soul stealers. Finally, it was time to feed. She stretched up one languid hand to receive the first of the proffered souls as her familiars swirled around her. Soon, it would be time to investigate the outskirts of Naraku's miasmic boundary, to see what new tricks the clever hanyou had come up with. . . and more importantly, to reflect on how she might defeat them.
-------
Naraku paced the corridors of his fortress restlessly. Kagura was late again. She was supposed to have returned from her patrol hours ago! But no, that little wench had to go disobeying his orders once again. You'd almost think she hadn't learned anything from their last little session. Stupid bitch. But she was his firstborn. So he was allowed to have made a few mistakes here and there in her birthing. No one was perfect, not even himself. Though, he did like to think he came close. . .
Narku chuckled softly. Maybe he put up with her antics because he liked to see her impotent fury as she submitted to his will. Or maybe he just liked the way she screamed-- or rather, he frowned, the way she used to scream before she'd realized how much it angered him when she kept her silence. He'd always love the inhuman sounds that he'd once been able to tear from her throat. The delicious sound of an animal in agony. He'd always wondered if he could make Kikyo scream like that?
No, no, that wasn't right, Naraku cursed himself silently; it was that damned Onigumo who wondered that. Honestly, you'd think that humans thought of nothing else but sex and pain. He had better things to do; like find out where that Kagura had got herself off to. He didn't have time for one of their sessions today. Kanna had scried for him this morning, and had managed to locate one of the few remaining shards not already in his possession (or that of Inuyasha's pathetic group), and he needed Kagura to go out and fetch it before they did. Not that it would be hard, the shard seemed to be moving around near the edge of his own domain. . . All Kagura had to do was go and get it from whatever sad excuse for a demon or human had found it. But that required her presence here first. . .
And where the bloody fuck was she???
Naraku felt his already short temper about to explode. His patience wasn't limitless. His foolish offspring had best be reminded of the consequences of angering him again so soon. . .
It was this frame of mind that Kanna found him in, as the short girl stalked down the hallway towards her creator and master.
"Ah. . . Kanna." Naraku crooned. One of his favorite children. Never disobedient, never impertinent. The perfect slave. Boring as all hell, not much of a conversationalist, and not built for carnal pleasures like Kagura. But still, much more useful in her own way. "What have you got for me, my dear?"
Kanna mutely turned her mirror so he could see the scene therein. A dark forest, a giant feather lodged in a tree limb high above the ground, and in the foreground, the unmistakable figure of Kagura limply dangling from a tree, her shoulder impaled by one jagged branch, with spreading bloodstains adorning her shredded kimono.
"Fuck. She's not dead is she?"
Kanna shook her head slowly.
Naraku scowled, furious with himself for the slip. Of course she wasn't dead. She'd never die until he let her. (Which, given his current mood, might be very soon now.) "You know where she is?"
Kanna nodded.
"Good. Leave her. You're going after the shard instead."
What was the world coming to when he couldn't even trust his own offspring to do a simple border patrol without ending up half-dead in a tree? Kagura would pay for her carelessness with the pain she felt when she eventually awakened to find that her shoulder had healed with a tree stuck in it- a branch that would have to be bloodily, and messily, torn out before she could move again . Maybe it was time to get rid of her after all? . . .
To be continued
Of blood and clay, chapter 3:
Kikyo rested on one comfortable limb of a broad-branched tree. She was exhausted. This close to Naraku's evil miasma, there were few enough living souls, let alone those of the recently deceased, for her to feed from. Of course, attempting to blast a hole through Kagura hadn't really helped her energy supply any, either. Kikyo sighed mentally as she leaned back against the rough bole of the tree. The encounter hadn't gone as well as she could have hoped. An enchanted arrow like the one she'd fired should have shredded the wind demon to bits, not merely made her angry. However, it was intriguing that one such as Kagura, spawned as she was from Naraku himself, should have demonstrated such a resistance to an arrow coated not only with soil from Onigumo's cave, but with her own strong magics as well. Perhaps there was more to the demon than it appeared? Maybe she was more than an extension of Naraku's will? Kikyo wondered, for the first time, if maybe it would be possible to slay Naraku without first eliminating his numerous offspring? This would bear more thought. Kikyo let her head slump down in exhaustion, as she awaited the return of her soul- stealers.
An observer on the ground below would not have noticed the undead priestess lurking overhead, for she made no sound at all as she rested, and her stillness was absolute. Inside the lump of clay that passed for her brain however, her thoughts could not remain still for long, no matter how she tried. If Kikyo had still possessed lungs with which to sigh, she would have. Daily, she regretted her continued existence on this earth. She was a priestess, it was her sacred calling to eliminate beings such as that which she'd become. She lived off of innocent souls, denying them the peace they so rightly deserved, just as she was denied her own rest. Oh, it was her own fault, she knew that too. . .
Her own fault that she'd been weak, impure. . tempted and led astray by that half-feral half-demon, Inuyasha . A priestess didn't love -- wasn't allowed to have such simple human emotions. . . And now she knew why. Love cracked your armor; love clouded your vision; love. . . love led you to your death.
Had she not been obsessed with the cursed hanyou, she'd have seen the look in Onigumo's eye, and she'd have set better wards and defenses against demons in that cave of his. Or better yet, she could have let him die. She'd known the herbs for that, as well she she'd known the herbs for healing. It could have been him that found his way to hell instead of herself. Such an act might have contradicted all her oaths to help people, but wouldn't it have bee for the best, if after all, Naraku had never been spawned?
It was too late now, though. She was dead, returned to walk this lonely earth, with a hatred burning within; the betrayal with which she'd gone to her grave. Luckily, hatred didn't cloud the vision in the same way that love did. Kikyo hated Inuyasha now. Hated him with the same intensity she'd once loved him. And what was hatred anyway, but the flip side of love? Equal and opposite-- such extremes could only explode on contact. Yet, in her, they'd fused into a cold lump of stone around a heart of molten fire. Hatred and love could wait, contained, the one within the other, until she'd done her Duty, repaired her mistake, and rid the land of Naraku.
Duty always came first. These days, she didn't have much else, not even her self respect. For, what self-respecting miko would let themselves be brought back from the dead, sustained on a fraction of stolen soul from a living being and by the desecration of hundreds more souls of the deceased? No, anyone who respected their title would have let death reclaim them at the first opportunity, rather than cling to this shallow simulacrum of life any longer.
Her body; clay and bone -- no organs, no lungs, no need to eat, sleep, breathe. No sense of taste, nor any smell. She could feel, after a fashion, and see, and hear, even speak, despite the lack of a larynx, or lungs. She supposed she should be grateful for that, at least. But she missed the scent of the dawn, the taste of food. Sometimes, she wondered if the souls she absorbed had a taste. . . They had, each of them, a peculiar spiritual feel, as if she could read a sense of their lives as their energies merged with and became her own. But that wasn't the same thing as having savor and spice, now was it?
And speaking of food. . . Kikyo looked up as she sensed the return of her soul stealers. Finally, it was time to feed. She stretched up one languid hand to receive the first of the proffered souls as her familiars swirled around her. Soon, it would be time to investigate the outskirts of Naraku's miasmic boundary, to see what new tricks the clever hanyou had come up with. . . and more importantly, to reflect on how she might defeat them.
-------
Naraku paced the corridors of his fortress restlessly. Kagura was late again. She was supposed to have returned from her patrol hours ago! But no, that little wench had to go disobeying his orders once again. You'd almost think she hadn't learned anything from their last little session. Stupid bitch. But she was his firstborn. So he was allowed to have made a few mistakes here and there in her birthing. No one was perfect, not even himself. Though, he did like to think he came close. . .
Narku chuckled softly. Maybe he put up with her antics because he liked to see her impotent fury as she submitted to his will. Or maybe he just liked the way she screamed-- or rather, he frowned, the way she used to scream before she'd realized how much it angered him when she kept her silence. He'd always love the inhuman sounds that he'd once been able to tear from her throat. The delicious sound of an animal in agony. He'd always wondered if he could make Kikyo scream like that?
No, no, that wasn't right, Naraku cursed himself silently; it was that damned Onigumo who wondered that. Honestly, you'd think that humans thought of nothing else but sex and pain. He had better things to do; like find out where that Kagura had got herself off to. He didn't have time for one of their sessions today. Kanna had scried for him this morning, and had managed to locate one of the few remaining shards not already in his possession (or that of Inuyasha's pathetic group), and he needed Kagura to go out and fetch it before they did. Not that it would be hard, the shard seemed to be moving around near the edge of his own domain. . . All Kagura had to do was go and get it from whatever sad excuse for a demon or human had found it. But that required her presence here first. . .
And where the bloody fuck was she???
Naraku felt his already short temper about to explode. His patience wasn't limitless. His foolish offspring had best be reminded of the consequences of angering him again so soon. . .
It was this frame of mind that Kanna found him in, as the short girl stalked down the hallway towards her creator and master.
"Ah. . . Kanna." Naraku crooned. One of his favorite children. Never disobedient, never impertinent. The perfect slave. Boring as all hell, not much of a conversationalist, and not built for carnal pleasures like Kagura. But still, much more useful in her own way. "What have you got for me, my dear?"
Kanna mutely turned her mirror so he could see the scene therein. A dark forest, a giant feather lodged in a tree limb high above the ground, and in the foreground, the unmistakable figure of Kagura limply dangling from a tree, her shoulder impaled by one jagged branch, with spreading bloodstains adorning her shredded kimono.
"Fuck. She's not dead is she?"
Kanna shook her head slowly.
Naraku scowled, furious with himself for the slip. Of course she wasn't dead. She'd never die until he let her. (Which, given his current mood, might be very soon now.) "You know where she is?"
Kanna nodded.
"Good. Leave her. You're going after the shard instead."
What was the world coming to when he couldn't even trust his own offspring to do a simple border patrol without ending up half-dead in a tree? Kagura would pay for her carelessness with the pain she felt when she eventually awakened to find that her shoulder had healed with a tree stuck in it- a branch that would have to be bloodily, and messily, torn out before she could move again . Maybe it was time to get rid of her after all? . . .
To be continued