He laughed in the dark.
Around him, the darkness laughed.
He was alone, surrounded by the dark. It never let him be. Sometimes it talked to him, and sometimes he talked to it. Sometimes he thought he was the darkness. Until he remembered.
The Darkness laughed. It gibbered. It howled. He howled. He giggled. He cursed.
Around him, it breathed. The dark. Warm exhalations like steam into a winter's night. Dank and musty. A smell of mud and clay and mold. The smell of decay. A damp smell. He knew that smell. It had been with him forever. It was cold in the dark, a damp cold, it seeped into every fibre of his being, until he could not get warm again. Even his bones felt sodden and chilled. Did he even have bones anymore? Cold everywhere. So cold, except where it burned. He remembered burning. Those parts felt hot, an eternal fiery agony that never ended. Yet he was never warm.
Here in the darkness within, Onigumo felt cold. And he remembered. He remembered the months in the cave, alone, in the cold, the dankness seeping under his charred skin, until all he could feel was the pain and the ice. She should have let him die. Kikyo. Instead, she'd tended him, the one soul who'd shown him kindness. Hah, that sort of chill kindness was torture too. She'd tortured him. Her unyielding ice brought no warmth to his chilled flesh, only burnt his heart, and left him lonely, alone, in the dark.
And then they'd come. They'd whispered lies in his ears. Told him he'd never be alone, that he'd be all-powerful, and great. That revenge could be his. And then he'd have her. Kikyo. Right where he wanted her. Power and Hate and Lust and Revenge. And it had felt warm. Not hope, for there is no hope in hate, but elation. The desperate spasm of a dying heart.
But it had been lies. All of it. He'd succumbed. He'd let them in. The ravening hordes. He thought the monsters in his soul would be a match for the monsters without. But he was wrong. Oh so very wrong. They'd entered him, and they'd torn him apart. Invaded his body, invaded his mind, sent him screaming for the light. His body torn to shreds, subsumed into the greater all, his mind fractured and reeling. Who was he?
They called himself Naraku, the greatest Hanyou of all time. Greatest, but still a Hanyou at that. No matter how much he spawned, and reformed himself, no matter how many youkai he absorbed, he was still a partblood. Because he had a human heart. Without the heart, Naraku would die. The rest of Onigumo had no value. But try as he could, Naraku could not eliminate that wailing voice within.
Onigumo, long since driven to insanity, the fractured remnants of self locked in the deepest, darkest corners of that which Naraku called a mind. He existed solely out of spite. To spite Naraku, to Spite Kikyo. He liked to think that Kagura had inherited some large part of himself, that her obstinacy was some form of payback for the lie that Onigumo had become.
And Kikyo. Onigumo reveled in enforcing Naraku's weakness. If he could not have her, then Naraku would not kill her.
His one goal. That they all might perish. Once he had longed for money. Fire had destroyed that. Once he had longed for love. Kikyo had denied him. Once he had longed to live again. Naraku had changed all that. Now he only longed for death. Death would free him from the dark, the cold. Death would free him from the laughter. Even hell would be better than living as a fragment. Death would be preferable to this insanity.
Locked in the dark, Onigumo listened to Naraku giggling to himself, the conversations of a hundred fragmented youkai. The gibbering, teeming madness of a soul too full. Locked in the dark, Onigumo waited for his chance. Locked in the dark, Onigumo watched. Locked in the dark, Onigumo laughed.
His time would come.
----
Released from the dungeon at last, Kagura rested, healing her wounds and sleeping in a pile of feathers. In the back of her mind, she could hear the echoes of Kikyo's soul muttering to herself. Plotting. Planning. Let her plan, let her scheme away. Kagura was a creature of action. If Kikyo was willing and able to do the thinking, Kagura would wait and heal and grow strong until called upon to do her part. Revenge would be theirs. Revenge, and . . maybe even. . . freedom.
---
Kikyo reclined against an ancient oak tree, feeding on the souls of those less fortunate than she. She'd had to retreat for the time being, at least physically, that her soul-stealers might find and deliver her food without Naraku's detection. But mentally, she remained tied into Kagura's senses and her soul. Reveling in the sensation, the emotion, the hungers that washed through the demon. They were entrancing, addicting, after so long without, and Kikyo found herself distracted from her task. How to slay Naraku? That was the question that weighted heavily on her, yet that she could not give the full span of her attention to, not with these feelings and desires and sensations coursing vicariously through her soul.
Kikyo shut her eyes, as if to block Kagura out. But the link came from within, and this was no help. She could cut off the flow of her soul to Kagura, as Kagura had done to her when tortured by Naraku, but not vice versa. And now Kagura was too far gone in sleep to shield herself. Kikyo could taste her dreams.
Kagura dreamed of flying, of cool breezes and sunny skies. She dreamed of blood and pain and chains. Of corpses and battles. Of a brutally beating heart.
And these images were no help. Kikyo allowed herself a frown. She already knew what they were and what they desired. They were trapped, they were slaves to their fate, and they desired revenge and freedom and death. The question though, was How? How could they achieve this?
Kikyo had originally taken Kagura's soul with the intent to somehow purify Naraku through his link with that soul. Instead, she'd ended up linked to Kagura, a creature with two minds, two bodies, but one will. Like a hanyou, but not. Like Naraku and his spawn, but not. How could such a thing be? She was an undead priestess, not even alive, not even possessing an entire soul to call her own, yet still possessed of holy energy, however tainted as it might be by her unclean pseudoflesh. If they were linked, could they merge more fully? Would the holy energy remain hers to wield or would it dissipate in the surge of Youki? Would it destroy them both?
What if Naraku were to resorb Kagura into his being? Would her memories become his—would her soul become his? Kikyo felt a surge of horror—would She, herself become a part of him? And what of her holy energy then?
And yet, despite the horror, Kikyo found her self returning to this idea time and again. Merger, the three of them, Simultaneously. An orgy of self destruction. Her cold clay heart shivered at the thought; the erosive force of miasma tainting her core, the holy fire coursing through his – through their body. Alone, Kagura could not wield the fire, merged, the two could not hoodwink their way through Naraku's defenses.
But what if Kagura were to provoke her sire into a fit of pique so great that he performed the ultimate retribution. Not death, Not torture, but to be rendered once more into the seething madness from whence she'd sprung. And what if, at that very moment when Kagura's body and spirit stood on the verge of being rent asunder, she called Kikyo into her. Then, in that moment, they could burn as one, the demon lending strength to her coruscations of holy energy.
It was risky. There could be no partial victory. Only absolute destruction or total defeat. Nothing else would do.
Could she risk it? Could Kagura?
How could they not?
In that moment, the two women thought as one. No words, no images, no thoughts needed to be shared. Their united subconscious flared in a silent warcry. Two huntresses lying in wait.
Their time would come.
TBC