Twice Lost, Once Found
An Inu-yasha fanfic
A story of a special someone who did not exist in their lives long enough to mention.
Chapter Three: Spirit of a Priestess
The demonic aura being emitted from the shrine was immense. With little to no word to the old man and his family, the team all headed straight for Champion's Shrine.
"Why the heck are you guys coming?" Inu-yasha shouted at the four humans following him. "I can beat this stupid demon on my own!"
Miroku put on a determined face. "I cannot let my opportunity to see a woman of such beauty to slip away."
Sango whacked Miroku thoroughly over the head and Kagome sighed. "I think what Miroku means is that we all want to help."
Kagome was smiling, but her heart was sorrowful. I wonder if this priestess knew what she was getting into when she sealed that demon away. Her soul's been held captive for almost 60 years. That's longer that Inu-yasha was sealed.
Kagome was starring at Inu-yasha's back, but Inu-yasha was too distracted in his own thoughts to notice. He hadn't been able to look at her yet. I want to save her, Kagome thought. I bet that's what Inu-yasha's thinking too.
He was indeed thinking the same thing. Kagome knew him well.
"Do you feel that?"
"Feel what, Miroku?"
"That aura."
"We've been choking on that aura this whole time!"
"Not the demonic one. There's a new one now."
The all kept walking, but they all glanced around. Kagome was the second to catch it. "I can feel it. It's... calming."
"I can feel it too. We're close."
"Is it the spiritual aura of the priestess?"
"It has to be!"
Miroku smiled, his eyes relaxed. "It's one of the greatest energies I've ever encountered. I've never felt anything so soothing."
"Me neither." Sango agreed.
"Ooo!" Shippo cooed. "It's making me feel all fuzzy."
Sango looked down at Kilala purring and chirping happily. "I guess this priestess spiritual aura even calms demons. She must've been very powerful."
The shrine was in sight now at the end of the overgrown path. It was a simple shrine and surprisingly sturdy. Nothing had fallen over or collapsed, but the paint was fading and vines and other plants had climbed up its walls and beams. There was almost nothing in front of the door.
As they walked closer to it, the powerful demonic aura that had disturbed them so much as they came was now mixed with an incredibly soothing spiritual aura. The two did not cancel each other, but lingered in the air side by side.
They gathered at the bottom of the steps. The door ahead of them was large and heavy and ornately designed. The doorway was the clearest part of the whole outside of the shrine.
"You all ready?" Inu-yasha grumbled, having accepted a long time ago that the others were going to follow his every step.
"Right behind ya." Kagome smiled, adjusting her bow on her shoulder. She had thought ahead this time.
Inu-yasha took the first few steps right up to the door and he froze, completely rigid, almost frightened.
"What is it, Inu-yasha?" Kagome asked, walking up behind him.
"It's- It's Kikyo."
"What?" They all said in unison. "That's impossible!"
"I can smell her- No. No, wait. It's not her."
"What do you mean 'it's not her'?"
"It's-" Inu-yasha was still shocked and at a loss for words. "It's like when I met you, Kagome. You smelled so much like her."
Inu-yasha's eyes bore into the chipping paint on the door. "But I don't smell any graveyard soil."
Shippo was looking at the door incredibly frightened. "You don't think someone cloned her again, do you?"
"No, that's silly," Kagome soothed, still confused herself.
None of them had much time to think before Inu-yasha, over come with curiosity, busted the duel doors open.
There were no windows in the shrine of any kind and very little light broke through the canopy outside so very little light was coming in through the doorway, but the shrine was filled with its own blinding light.
Their eyes adjusted slowly to this bright new light, but they all seemed to see it at once. The source of the light was an intricate, circular design on the floor that glowed brilliantly. It was what was in the middle of that circle that really caught their eye, though.
At first it looked like nothing more that a heap of red and white clothe, then they noticed long, night black hair strewn across the floor. It was a girl all curled up in a ball. Her hair wove in and out of the writing inside the circle. She had no bow or arrow as Kikyo would have had, but she did have something resembling a walking stick next to her.
"Is that her?" Shippo asked. His loud, childish tone seemed to break the spell. The heap on the floor began to stir. Inu-yasha was useless in his shock. The others were all quite frozen too, no one willing to move, except Kagome. When the heap on the ground began to pull itself up, its hair sweeping off the floor and beginning to part. Kagome kneeled down to the girl, a little worried. "Are you alright?"
The girl's head tilts and her hair parted to reveal her face. She had an inhuman glow and her deep brown eyes shined. She must've been about eighteen. There was too much hair still in her face to really see it. The woman, barely being able to lift herself up, had a groggy look to her. She was smiling pleasantly, but her eyes were still partially closed. She looked as if she thought she was still asleep. "Why, Kikyo. Here I was thinking I was asleep for decades and here you stand before me seeming to have barely aged one." The woman began to fix her stance, shifting her weight, preparing to stand. She was moving heavily, sleepily, but gracefully inside her circle that seemed to be made of light. "Now this truly is a mystery."
Kagome managed to get herself to stand. No one else had moved yet. They had less a reason to move now than they did when they first entered.
The woman was on her feet now, her torso hanging over as she began to dust herself off. A hand that seemed made of light swept the ground to pick up the thing that had seemed like a walking stick and she finally began to straighten. All of her seemed to be made of light.
As her spine began to set and her hair began to fall out of her face, her grogginess and dream state started faded way into something of a more serious, almost sincere glance. "Unless, of course, you're not Kikyo."
Now they were all frozen. This woman looked almost exactly like Kikyo. Her eyes were the same deep brown, shaped with a sincere smile. Her hair was the same raven black, long, silken, and perfectly straight. They stood the same, their voices were practically the same, and what's more, this woman knew Kikyo.
Miroku was charmed into speaking first. "Are you the priestess of Champion's Shrine?"
"Is that what they call it now?" She acted very casually and amiably, with a practiced calm as if she still thought she was dreaming. "One would think I'd have been here for centuries with all the names it's had."
The woman smiled a bit, her mood remaining the same, all very sweet, making her seem less and less like Kikyo since the Kikyo they all knew was very serious all of the time. She began to sooth the others out of their frozen state. "Have you come here to challenge the demon?"
Inu-yasha was finally beginning to loosen up, as was Kagome, but it was Miroku, again, that spoke. "We've come to free your soul from this fate."
Still very casual, the girl smiled and tilted her head slight like it was a wonderful dream while it lasted, "wouldn't that be nice." Her voice had the tiniest bit of laugh and the tiniest hint of a tear, but nothing more. There was a strange pause where the simple little phrase began to sink into everyone's hearts. They couldn't help but feel pity. She must've heard it so many times. Many warriors must've pledged themselves to her beauty and not come out alive. "But is it worth it?" she asked.
"We also fight," Inu-yasha started, fighting his own emotions and once again sounding like his own angry and stubborn self by the time he finished the sentence, "for the memory of Kikyo."
This touched the girl. She had never heard that one before. They could not tell what in her face changed, but her smile seemed painful. She turned her head and looked away with a smirk. "Now that is a truly noble cause."
She lifted her head, and her staff and a single tear floated through the air and struck her circle of light, causing it to glow brighter and force everyone to take a step back. The woman's body glowed and her hair lifted off her back. "I warn you now that the demon you face is not the original. Both man and demon have come to this shrine to fight. The greater evil does not leave this shrine." There was a pause. "Good-luck."
The woman sidestepped and instantly vanished. The light of the circle vanished as well. The doors they had walked through closed behind them and they were cast into darkness. The only light now was the red glow of the seals on a second set of doors that they had not seen before for they were behind the spirit of the priestess. They were immense; greater than the doors they had walked through, but these doors were not faded in the least bit.
In the burst of flame as each seal vanished was incinerated, the dark silhouette of the girl that had once been made of light could be seen, the flame reflecting off her eyes, fog beginning to seem out from behind her from the door she stood before. She vanished in the mist and soon the shrine was filled with it; a fog so thick that when Inu-yasha pulled out his Tetsusaiga, he could barely see it. He couldn't see Kagome or the others either. "Kagome! Kagome, where are you?"
He grew more and more tense. "There's an extremely powerful demon here."
Everyone was separated from the other. Miroku backed up and found a wall. "That priestess must've been extremely power for her spirit to seal away such an aura."
There was an evil cackle, one they could all here. It was a thick, boisterous, and masculine voice. The demon laughed. "Ahaha! I've been released! Once again I can feed on the living!"
Inu-yasha threw his head. "Feh! Not while I'm here!"
The demons voice came again, but from a totally different direction. "Hmm, I can smell them."
Inu-yasha was turning around, trying to find the demon. "Damn! This fog is messing up the scents."
Another laugh came, but from yet another direction. "What's this? Mortals? Where is the one that sealed me?"
This sent Inu-yasha into a panic. If the demon confused Kagome for the priestess, the demon would find Kagome before he did.
Kagome was shouting for Inu-yasha. Everyone was shouting for everyone else and they hear everyone else's voices from strange directions. When they looked about them everyone kept thinking they saw someone for a brief instant in the fog, but there was nothing. "We have to get rid of this fog."
"Damn." Inu-yasha scowled to himself. "I don't know where anyone is. I can't blow away the fog with my wind scar 'cause someone might be in the way."
"Sango!" Miroku shouted, feeling along the wall. "Blast. This fog distorts sight and sound." He was about to attempt to think of something clever when the prayer beads on his wrists struck a corner. He lifted his hand to his face so he could see it and starred at it for a moment, pondering the pros and cons. The fog isn't poisonous and there's not Samyosho here. Miroku almost smiled. This thing finally came in handy again! Miroku pointed his hand to the ceiling and whipped the beads off it. "Wind Tunnel!"
The fog began to vanish at an alarming pace. The rafters began to shake and ancient dust flew up from the floor, but the shrine stood strong as the fog began to vanish and heads began to appear above the fog.
The demon was human in appearance and armored. His armor and skin were gray and shiny and he had a dangerous amount of hair in his face. The demon hissed angrily, his pupils purely white and angry. "Disgusting human! No demon or mortal can best the great-"
Sango cut off the demon by whipping her boomerang at him, forcing him to hop, nimbly to the side to dodge it. There was sacred arrow to meet him, of course. While half his torso got blown away and the demon was glaring at Kagome with a burning hatred, Inu-yasha lifted the Tetsusaiga above his head. "Oh, yeah? Well how about a half demon? WIND SCAR!"
With a mighty swing, the attacked incinerated the demon before it even had a chance to introduce itself and it left that world filled with anger, as it should have.
The priestess of the shrine waved her staff over the spot where the demon had fallen, striking the ground once, then she moved to the front door which was once again open. Her smile lit up the morning. "Well, that's done. Shall we return home?" Without waiting for a response, the woman turned on her heel and strolled out the door.
-------------------------------------------------------
Did you see that coming? I tried real hard to you wouldn't but I don't think I tried hard enough. You didn't saw all of it, right? By the way, I didn't feel like looking up cool names, which is why the demon got whacked before he could say his name. It'd be something with '-maru' and you know it.
-------------------------------------------------------
I do not own Inu-yasha, but if I did I'd make sure they finished the anime series!
------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your generous offer of assistance, Damki. I did activate the anonymous thing so if I get more reviews now I owe you a cookie. I love reviews.
I'll give a cyber pat on the back and credibility to whoever can think of a cooler summary. You get my whole story to think of one since this will be here forever!
-------------
THANK YOU! COME AGAIN!
