Chapter One
Prologue
The Earth was still young in his years when he experienced the first fight between his two closest confidants, Sun and Moon. The nature of their fight has fled from legend, but what has always remained was the punishment Earth gave the two in order to reprimand the pair for their selfish conflict. From the two rigid mountain ranges at each of his poles, Earth carved two celestial beasts of his own spine; twin dragons. To the Sun, he gave the Dragon of Temperament, and to the Moon, he gave the Dragon of Timidity. His essence, given to both of his creations, formed an eternal bond between each solar body upon receiving the gift - now, though they would forever be pitted against each other it would not be in opposition; it would be a battle of harmony, a dance of equilibrium, an eternal push and pull.
The exertion required of Earth to bind his companions soon put him in a great slumber, and the beasts he birthed seemed to disappear once more. Legend tells not where the dragons went, nor when the Earth will return, and time has yet to make the tale sharper on each retellers' tongues. What legend has failed to remember, however, was that when the first twins were born to a mortal woman and a demon man, each babe had curious eyes - one, like liquid suns, and one, like liquid moons.
Twin spheres of molten ruby, faceted in an obscured face framed by cascading ringlets of earthy brown hair, raised in unison to stare ahead, their fierce gaze seemingly boring a hole straight through the mountains that obscured the sun's rising from where the figure stood. The horizon was still muted, drowsy with the after effects of the night's drunken kiss. The only sign that the sun was approaching at all was in the rosying of the swollen clouds perched loftily above the crests of the jutting mountainsides.
There would be rain today, but before it arrived, there would be dawn.
As the sky's blush continued to deepen, the figure finally rose from where she had been kneeling. Her arms were soiled with crimson rivulets of already drying blood, the thick liquid seeping into the hems of her sleeves and staining what was once white red. In her palms rested a knife, where drops of her sacrifice still lingered before occasionally falling through the air and into the deep bowl waiting at her knees. The bowl was made of solid gold, with carvings etched into the outside portraying her ancient Patron, the Dragon of Temperament. She couldn't fight the smirk that rose to toy with her lips as she gazed upon the source of her power, stared into the lifeless eyes that she knew had become hers.
Her chuckle burst from her mouth just as the elemental sphere of fire breached the barrier blocking all of its righteous glory from her sight, plunging the fields between them in a swath of light and heating the dewy air. She allowed her eyes to close languidly, to feel the warmth of the dawn against her lids as her voice climbed out of her throat in a ritual chant.
For half a day she stood, arms raised to embrace the day, letting the sound of her spell carry into the forest below. She could feel her veins begin to boil; could feel the pressure building behind her eyes. And when she could hold it no longer, when the sun fell to that sacred place exactly above her, she threw her head back with a gasp and opened her eyes to stare at the presence before her.
But it was not the sun she saw.
Seemingly in the sun's face itself was the corporeal image of a proud, powerful daiyoukai, facing something that she couldn't quite see. For a moment she was lost in absorbing the sight, allowing her eyes to roam over the lethal claws on his hands and the trailing fur that was tossed over his right shoulder. Her eyes shifted and she admired the gently swaying strands of silvery-white hair, the roguish stripes on his cheeks, the circulating pools of gold in his eyes . . . but she had to bite back a snarl at the symbol on his forehead.
A crescent moon.
Now firmly reminded of her goal, the woman with the eyes of the Dragon of Temperament drew in a triumphant breath before she set to finishing the last of her chant, with the subject of her spell locked firmly within her gaze. But just as she was to bite off the last word, a flurry of checkered motion pulled her distracted gaze from her target to the puny, minuscule figure of the human that had launched itself against the daiyokai's arm. In a surge of alarm and fury, she forced her mouth to move before the very last syllable could fall off her lips.
She was not fast enough, and for a torturous moment she was haunted by the dying note that reverberated around her. Rage soon began to swell underneath her skin as she watched the pathetic mortal clasp her hands at the orange and white fabric over her heart, silently screaming as she collapsed unconscious by her lord's feet. Then the image in the sun faded, and the figure was forced to tear her ruby red eyes away from the sun's sweltering glare as her body succumbed to exhaustion and connected with the soil, her head connecting with the lip of her golden bowl on the way down.
Her temple smarting with pain and her arms quivering from holding themselves aloft for so long, it was all she could do to try and fight the passionate temper brewing within her. She had failed in her curse. She, a woman born with the legendary eyes of a Twin Dragon, had failed.
Utterly, irrevocably, inconceivably.
If she had not felt so devastatingly drained, she would have summoned her power tenfold and burned the entire forest that had so mockingly watched her on this day. She would have melted the mountain that had made the sun rise just a second too late. She would make the lakes for miles dry up, would watch with morbid satisfaction as the fatty fish would fall into the blistering crater of her wrath and would grin as they gasped foolishly for air.
She would have her revenge, on the son of her betrayer, or she would have the Earth in his place - consequences be damned.
But as she felt the sun's heat began to simmer down, and as she felt the exhaustion setting in, she noticed that a curious thing was happening to her wrath. It was transforming, and the more she thought about her failure, the less angry she grew.
Yes, she had missed her mark, and Toga's son had yet to taste the helplessness only she could instill in him. But at the same time, she had succeeded in doing exactly that. Her crimson eyes had been trained on the dog demon for many centuries now, as she bided her time to collect the power she would need to cast this curse. Through those centuries she had seen him grow to command the West; had seen him acquire supreme power through battle and a mastery of his presence that gave away nothing and left all who met him with the distinct taste of fear on their tongues. It had only been a recent development, but she had watched with astonishment as the demon thought to detest humans actually let one into his company. She had grown since then, was perhaps several years older, but she had spent those years by her lord's side.
Although her eyes had not witnessed the moments after the curse had attached to the Lord of the West's ward, she knew without a doubt that he had caught her unconscious form before it hit the ground. She knew, as one who once permitted another being close to her, that perhaps even the emotionless prodigal son would feel something once he realized that his precious pet would not cure from this sickness.
Her rage was gone now, replaced entirely by triumph and pride. He would feel helpless, watching the only human he seemed to tolerate suffer until her end from something not even he could fight. What a sweet, sweet thing revenge was. As her body continued to fight against the onslaught of exhaustion, her mind roamed over the possibilities that now spanned before her. There was no one with her sort of power that could ever hope to revoke the curse, and when that blasted daiyoukai realized it he would naively find the one who cast the curse to begin with. He would appear before her and demand her to heal his precious ward. She would make him kneel before her, make him beg, and then she would watch his fury rise as she told him why she was the wrong person to beg to.
Then, she would kill him. Perhaps. There were fates worse than death; even for someone like him.
But even as she pondered over her undeniable victory, a frown set in as she felt there was something she had forgotten to address. Sure; it would take her many suns to regain her power; but then again, it would take many suns for anyone - even one of his caliber - to find her. She dismissed the thought, and as soon as she did she realized what her source of wariness was.
There was someone with her level of power in the world, someone who was capable of all that she was.
Someone, with the eyes of the other Twin Dragon.
A snarl escaped her lips as she inwardly cursed herself for not thinking of this sooner. As her lids grew thick with weariness and her consciousness began to drift away, she promised herself two things: that when she woke, she would find the one with the eyes to rival her own, and that she would prevent that rival from deterring the revenge she had yearned for.
And fast.
Sesshomaru stood, facing the direction that would lead him further from the shiro he had claimed after his father's death. He had been travelling swiftly for the past few weeks, his feet hardly dusting the forest floor as he glided over it. The request to leave his lands had come from Rin; Kimi, Lady of the West, had been throwing suitors towards her for weeks now in the hope that Sesshomaru would concede to her belief that as the ward of my beloved son, the Lord of the West, it's only natural that she would be provided with the finest selection of suitors; I understand that she has just reached human maturity, no? His mother was a fool to think he'd simply condone a courtship if she pressured his ward enough.
Disgusted by the idea of someone taking her away from Sesshomaru's side, Rin had protested, and he had allowed her to coax him into a temporary escape with those large, pleading eyes of hers.
And that is how he came to be surveying the unruly territory of the Northern lands, far from the almost oppressive aura of his birthplace. Behind him, trekking back from the stream, Sesshomaru could hear the padding of Jaken's footsteps and the sloshing of water in the containers he had just filled. Sesshomaru could hear each irritated squawk as his retainer stumbled over unruly pebbles and unearthed roots. Beyond him, to the proud demon's other side, came the slightly more pleasant sounds of Rin's gentle humming as she meandered around their temporary campsite.
"Rin can get tea started, when Jaken brings back the water," the human called out pleasantly. As the currents on the wind shifted, Sesshomaru inhaled slightly to take in her scent: lively oranges and a more subtle note of cinnamon. He noticed that she had paused in her movements to watch him for any sort of reaction, and he allowed his eyes to glide over to where she stood.
She had grown, since he had first swung Tenseiga over her lifeless form. In truth, it had happened so fast he had at first marveled at how rapidly a human could develop. It hadn't been more than eight years since Rin had begged him to take her from Edo, of that he was sure, and yet time had changed her heavily. And yet, as he glanced into her expectant eyes, he supposed not much had changed at all.
"Hn."
The small, trademark response had only just been given when Rin's face burst into an expression of bliss, and soon she was eagerly arranging supplies next to the remnants of last night's campfire. "Rin thinks she will make a light tea, today," she informed him decisively, even as his eyes returned to roam the mountains that sprawled out beyond his feet. "And after tea, we can all continue our adventure!" Though her voice had ended in a rather pleased tone, he could feel the shift in her thoughts when she spoke again. "Where is Sesshomaru-sama taking us?"
"This Sesshomaru wishes to hunt in the North."
"Oh," Rin replied, before falling silent. After a moment, the sounds of her returning to the task of preparing tea reached his ears once more, though minutely slower this time.
Sesshomaru allowed himself an internal smirk before he amended, "This Sesshomaru wishes to hunt for a new servant, one that can attend to his ward's constant need for new kimonos."
Her reaction was instantaneous; first, the startled clatter of a cup being dropped in surprise. Then, the sound of rustling fabric as she abruptly turned to face him, and he could picture the exact expression she had on her face: wide, innocent eyes mixing both elation and shock, coupled with her mouth agape in awe. The squeal came a rather delayed moment later, and then she was bounding towards him and reaching to wrap his arm around hers in her less invasive form of a hug.
No sooner had she reached him, though, was she clutching at her heart through the fabric of her kimono and screaming, her voice clawing out of her throat in such an unnatural way that shivers ran down the length of his spine. Dimly, he could hear Jaken's squawk of alarm, but all else was lost to him as he focused his attention to catching the now unconscious woman before she connected with the ground.
He studied her form in his arms carefully, his senses fully alert to both her condition and the area around him. Her scent reached his nose, but it lacked its usual vigor and seemed to have reversed itself; powerful cinnamon now smothering those few traces of orange. Her forehead was slick with sweat and her skin disturbingly pale, and he could hear the erratic pulse of her heart and each uneven, sudden hitch of her breath as her lungs strained to return to normal. Biting back a snarl, Sesshomaru lifted his head and focused on his sight and hearing, turning in a slow circle to confirm exactly what he already knew: that asides from Jaken, there was no one else. He could not understand what had come over Rin - perhaps one of those sudden weaknesses humans were prone to - and so, all other demands forgotten, Sesshomaru let out a low growl to Jaken and set to forming his cloud beneath his feet. His retainer reached his side a fraction after that, took one look at the situation, and abandoned the heavy containers of water in favor of speed to reach his master's side before he took to the air; Sesshomaru had no intent of waiting to leave any longer, and Jaken knew it.
Without even glancing at the neglected campsite, Sesshomaru propelled himself into the air wordlessly and flew, as swift and hurried as the wind, to his shiro, where the best healers in his lands were.
He allowed no other thought to control him, as he carried his ever-faithful ward home, other than the desire to reach his healers in time. So all consuming was this singular thought, that he did not notice the marks beginning to form on Rin's forehead.
The sun had set hours ago; night had long since fallen and the moon was already set in descending from the heavens when her meditation finally ended. It had been two days since she had felt a disturbance in the air during the sun's peak; two days since she had felt some unknown knot of trepidation worming its way into her stomach. And so, she had fasted the rest of the day and made the journey through the night to arrive at a seemingly normal cliff face. She had taken her seat facing the smooth rock wall before her and meditated for all of the following day; and when the first rays of moonlight struck the glassy surface the mirage was lowered to reveal a cave, wherein a shallow pool of water lay. The only testament to the pool's significance was the carving of a dragon at its bottom, and that the water itself wasn't fresh - it was saltwater, in a place many miles from the sea.
She spent the night in the pool, her eyes open and waiting for the first light of dawn to arrive. At exactly noon, two exact days after she had felt the initial disturbance, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to go into a deeper meditation, one fueled by her power.
And so it came to be that over twelve hours later, her mind returned to her body once more. Her eyes felt slightly weary, which she had expected would happen after using their power continuously for half a day, but the results of her meditation were not. She mulled them over to herself as she rose from the pool and walked towards the entrance of the cavern.
She was no fool; it had undoubtedly been the bearer of the other Dragon's eyes that had caused this. Why, she was uncertain. She knew that whatever ritual that had been performed to harness the birthright had been successful, but without knowing its purpose she could not ascertain as to whether or not it had been performed on a person, on an object, or on something else entirely. She paused at the cave's mouth to rest a hand for support on the cave's wall, allowing the brief respite. Her body was certainly taxed; she had forgone food and drink for several days, had soaked for hours in frigid water, and had used the Twin Dragon of Timidity's eyes for an extended period of time as well. However, she could not allow herself to rest yet: not before she reapplied the mirage to the face of the cliff for protection.
She tried to think of what kind of person - or who, really - was currently possessing the eyes opposite of her own as she positioned herself in a similar manner to the one she had assumed to break the mirage. She had heard no mention of one like her for centuries, which she knew was not uncommon. Even as many as thousands of years could pass after her death before the next with her Dragon's eyes was born.
Regardless, she determined as she gently folded her hands into her lap, when she was done here and rested she would find her match, wherever in the world that person was, and she would ensure those eyes could be trusted in the current vessel. The knot in the pit of her stomach seemed to ease with her resolution, and she closed her eyes in satisfaction to start the reinstatement of the mirage once more.
No sooner had she begun, though, did she notice that she was not alone.
Carefully, she pulled herself out of her meditation and alerted her senses one by one, letting her body and aura remain the same to hide that anything had changed. Her first sense to return was touch; and she felt nothing new. Next was sight; her eyes remained closed, and the only sensation she felt was the tiny retreating trace of soothing power as she stopped reforming the mirage. After her sight came taste, and with it the own sensation of her parched tongue resting in her mouth. She determined that after she dealt with her current situation, she would find a stream to drink from, then return to fix the mirage, and finally rest.
Her sense of smell soon followed taste, and its presence quickly refocused her thoughts from how desperately she craved water. The problem was not that she smelled something alarming; it was that she smelled nothing. There was only her, the breeze that carried the tang of saltwater in the pool to her nose, and the earthy smells of the forest.
It was only when her hearing returned did she know that it had returned too late.
The resolute, final, whoosh of several - many - bodies breezing towards her could have been the last sound she heard, if she had been a mortal woman like the villagers she often met. Instead, she focused on the moment that she knew would soon arrive, that moment when they'd be too close to stop and too far to reach her, and started to channel her power once more.
But that moment didn't come, because just before it did, the ground beneath her caved and she was sucked into the earth itself, just up to her neck, before the ground shifted again to trap her. The surprise at not sensing the elemental demon far beneath her was the pivotal moment in her defeat, and the attackers who weren't actually there to murder her as she had presumed all placed their index fingers in a halo of contact around her skull, and she could see more than feel the face of the one who had imbibed these assassins with power enough to touch her skin - the face of the woman embodying the Twin Dragon of Temperament.
She had eyes like molten rubies, like twisting eddies of liquid lava. Long, dark brown lashes curled away from her irises and towards her delicate brows, which were twisted in some expression of superior amusement. Her startlingly red lips were torn somewhere between a smirk and a smug tilt of satisfaction. The waves of earthy brown hair slipping down from her head bobbed in time with the slight shake of her head; the gesture of disapproval almost appearing motherly in the magnitude of how personal it felt.
Such a shame, she could feel those eyes saying, that my equal was this weak.
Then the image vanished.
She could feel the elemental demon beneath her slip away, the mercenaries too, but they had done what they needed.
She found herself to be rather calm about her situation. Yes, she had been easily apprehended, but only because she was in a very weak state at the moment. Additionally, she knew immediately once she had seen in her mind the other woman that whatever her purpose for establishing a link with the one with eyes opposite of the sun, she hadn't used a great deal of power in doing so. Nothing, she was certain, she wouldn't be able to take care of within a few days.
Of course, this had all been before she had attempted to open her eyes.
She knew they were open by the feeling of her eyelids parting, but the darkness of their closing followed, and that was when a tiny sliver of alarm snaked its way through her spine. Of course, it didn't last long - someone who was as rational as she didn't dare do such a thing as consider her emotions before she considered the extent of her situation.
First, she was lucky that she was intimately familiar with the area, and would have no trouble navigating her way around once she was free of the earth she had been imprisoned by up to the neck. She decided to leave pondering why her assailants were able to so quickly locate her after the ritual two days ago aside for later. Second, she figured she ought to properly assess the extent of how screwed she might be. Simultaneously sending practiced pulses of power through her body into the ground and through her mind into her skull led her to two distinct conclusions: one, that the earth was not something she could free herself from with mere strength alone in the seated position she was in, and two, that her twin in power had left some sort of seal over her eyes.
She relaxed slightly as she drew her conclusion. There wasn't anything wrong with her eyes or the power instilled in her; both were there, just repressed with a seal. She wouldn't be able to understand to what extent until she recovered her powers fully, and she wouldn't be able to break free from her earthly prison without the help of her power either. So logically, she needed but to wait for her strength to return, and then she would proceed with escaping, undoing the seal, and finding a decent meal.
She let her sightless eyes close once more, and before the moon could shift much more she had succumbed to sleep.
