Hoo boy what a chapter that last one was. More Naraku badness, and more Nori falling under his spell in this one. Lots of sin going on this chapter.
Miasma
Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
-Jean Racine
"Are you his brother?"
Birds flitted around outside, singing and playing with each other in the morning warmth. My eyes followed their playful movements as warm lips teased at my shoulder. Blunt nails scratched over my tattooed hip.
"His brother?" he asked in mild disgust, voice thick and deeper than usual with the sleep neither of us had yet managed to fully leave the grasp of.
I turned over in the futon, looking up into Kagewaki - Naraku's - face. There were differences if you really looked. Naraku's cheeks were slightly fuller in a healthier way. His eyes weren't so deepest uder dark bags and hooded with fatigue. His lips weren't dry. He looked like Kagewaki but healthier. The glaring difference was his eyes. Kagiwaki's were a deep, warm brown. Naraku's were red, that I already knew, but seeing them staring down at me from my fiancé's face was a little disconcerting. His eyelids were coloured. A pale blue colour. They weren't covered with a powdery pigment. The colour looked too smooth and consistent. It looked more like blue tattoo ink than makeup.
"If not, then who?" My fingers stroked over his jaw, down the corded muscles of his neck. That was different, too. He had more muscle than Kagewaki, more fat.
His lids slid shut, revealing more of their colour. He basked in the light touches I lavished over his collarbone and chest. "Nothing so innocent as a family relation."
I'd thought as much. If there were family relationships, he would be a Lord himself, not a secretive advisor in a baboon mask. "Are you a fox?" Until that spider demon thing had attacked the castle, I had no opinion on the supernatural. Demons? Foxes, racoons? They couldn't have really existed. Now, though? If the Tsuchigumo existed, then so much other beings.
His eyes flashed open. "Are you trying to insult me, Masanori?"
"I'm trying to understand you."
He let out a breathy chuckle, lips curling into a smirk. "You couldn't understand me in a thousand years, girl."
I agreed in a quiet hum, leaning forward to plant a kiss to his chest. More kisses followed as I slid one leg over his hip and hoisted myself up so I was knelt above him, legs parted around his muscular hips. My lips trailed up his neck again as my hair fell around us. Thinner than Naraku's and about half the length, my hair made a poor mockery of the thick curtain of privacy his hair could provide.
His hands slid over my thighs, up over my back, teasing over a stinging bite he had left on the skin of my upper back. I'd tasted the blood on his lips after he had kissed me, and delivered my own bleeding bite to his chest soon after. His skin - the lucky bastard - was blemish free this morning.
"I am a conglomerate."
My eyes flickered up to him as I continued to pepper kisses over his chest. His eyes were closed again, enjoying the sensation.
"An amalgamation of demons who tore at the body of a man and settled into his soul. I do have fox in me, the ability to shapeshift."
"So I was right," I crowed, hovering above him triumphantly.
His eyes slid open, staring up at me blandly for a moment, then they flashed and before I knew it, I was staring up at him, smirking down at me. "Only in the crudest sense." His nails teased my thigh, fingers wrapped around it, hiking it up. He settled between them, dropping down to his elbow, resting his forearm above my head.
This kiss was hot, and still tasted of the remnants of my blood.
My legs wrapped around him, pulling him closer.
"Miss Masanori."
I froze, head turning to the closed door, mostly obscured by my lovers thick curly hair.
Naraku didn't seem to care that we may have an audience. I bit my lip to silence a moan as he pressed forwards, nails biting into his shoulder punishingly. Bastard. He just smirked down at me.
Whether the servant heard or not, I wouldn't be able to tell you, but she left my mind quickly when Naraku bowed for another kiss.
Kagewaki got his breakfast late that morning.
"He really gave you this?" I demanded, brows furrowed, glaring at my fiancé. "I should hunt him down and beat some sense into him."
The baboon opposite me chuckled. Kagewaki, however, attempted to keep some semblance of professionalism.
"However senseless you think the decision may be, it is still our duty to create a plan against this beast."
Nagasaki Hitomi was a steaming sack of shit, I had decided. It had been a week since the first battle with the Tsuchigumo, and it had come back for us twice more now. Each time I'd followed the General into battle against the damned thing, and each time I'd been left in a state of aching exhaustion afterwards. That demon just wouldn't die.
And now Nagasaki was assigning the extermination of this thing to Kagewaki and the small regiment of men he had?
"Yeah, sure." I could think of a dozen other things I'd rather be doing now, all of them with Nagasaki and none of them ending well for the prick. "All right then. What would you suggest, Naraku?"
He was a demon. He had some expertise on the matter, right?
"Perhaps staging an attack. Going after it with all our might."
"Are you sure that's a good idea? It has literally chewed through our ranks before. Trust me. I think I'm still finding bits of people in my hair." That was a nasty truth about the frontlines. You saw a lot of action, which meant a lot of viscera. It got everywhere. Cleaning up after a fight with that demon was not a pretty thing. I wasn't kidding when I said I'd found bits of people in my hair afterwards. I genuinely had.
Kagewaki hummed, not much affected by my talk of viscera. "How about..."
The three of us argued back and forth for hours, eventually reluctantly settling on Naraku's simple brute force plan. Worst of all, between them, they'd brow-beaten me into not taking up arms for the battle.
I need my advisor alive, Kagewaki had told me.
It made sense, but I wasn't happy about it. I hated sending people into a battle I wasn't willing to fight in myself. Where was the sense in that? This was exactly what I didn't want. I didn't want to send men to fight in my name while I sat back safe. There was no honour in that.
"Now that we've decided, I think I'd like to retire for the evening." Kagewaki shifted in his seated position, grimacing.
He really was regressing. I'd noticed it over the past week. He was wincing more, losing his appetite again. This morning he had refused a walk. The stress was causing a relapse. That was exactly what I didn't want to happen to him. I could just imagine how frustrated Nagasaki would be with the relapse. Could he threaten to kill his daughter in law, though? Who knew?
"Let me get you some tea." I busied myself with pouring it for him. "I'll see if I can source something a little better than the tea while you're relapsing. You'll be feeling better again in no time."
Already I was trying to come up with some herbal concoction I could create that would help. Eucalyptus? No, it wouldn't be grown in Japan for another three hundred years. Damn.
Ginger? Could work. It relied on getting his appetite back up more than anything, though.
Thunder god vine, maybe. Though that was risky. That could hinder him more than help if I wasn't careful.
"Thank you, Nori. Naraku, please walk her back to her chamber."
That had become a pretty regular request when we had these meetings now. Every time there was an obedient 'yes, my Lord' and the two of us were dismissed. This time I didn't leave immediately. "Don't... Don't worry so much that you're hurting again, Kagewaki. Relapses happen. We roll with the punches. When this Tsuchigumo is out of the way, you won't be as stressed. It'll get better again. Okay?"
He patted my cheek gently and leaned down for a kiss. "You need not worry, Nori."
Yeah, so not the case, Kagewaki.
Naraku and I fell into step together in the hallways when Kagewaki finally managed to shoo me away.
"You care for him. How sweet," the demon mocked.
"Fuck off, Naraku." There was no bite in my words. We both knew I was fighting him for propriety's sake at this point. My like of Kagewaki was no secret. The fucked up situation I was in was no secret between Naraku and I, either. He was loving it.
Stupid stupid girl, I was too.
"Will it last, I wonder? The love between you. How long can you play this game before you're burned?"
I opened my door and stepped inside, reaching up to let loose my hair from its bun.
The door slid closed behind me. Naraku's mask hit the floor. His lips found my neck. "The fire's already eating me alive, Naraku." My kimono slid from my shoulders, the heavy silks pooling at my feet. "I might as well dance in the flames before they consume me entirely."
He chuckled, dragging me back against him.
Then we danced.
Our dance continued on. Most nights, if Naraku didn't escort me to my rooms, he was waiting for me in them.
Some nights our dance was gentle. We explored with gentle touches and fluttering sighs.
Some nights we came together like demons, biting and scratching and hissing dark things in each others ears.
It was crude and violent, gentle and sweet, love and hate and everything it shouldn't be.
I couldn't get enough.
Pub Quiz Corner
Tsuchigumo - A Tsuchigumo is a type of Japanese spider demon. If you look up images of it, some of them look so similar to the spider demon from Sango's introduction that it's pretty crazy. I think if I were to pick any irezumi style tattoo, that wasn't a Tanuki (I'm obsessed with them), then it would likely be a Tsuchigumo.
Eucalyptus - Eucalyptus oil can be used as a homeopathic remedy for pain. The trees were introduced into Japan in the 1800's, so no eucalyptus for Kagewaki.
Review corner!
darkvibeslover - It was a really fun chapter. I feel like I'm saying that about every chapter at the moment, but there's just something I love about just about every chapter I write. I'll be sad when Kagewaki dies, too. He's a little bland and sweet for my liking (I'm also a rough lover kind of girl) but I'm developing a soft spot for him while writing this. Kagewaki and Nori's relationship developed way past what I thought it would. Nori was never supposed to develop real feelings for Kagewaki in return, but the story evolved, and I'm kinda happy it did. It'll make losing him far more emotional. I'll rip everyones hearts out and then have Naraku take over!
Guest - I'm glad you're loving it! So am I. It's definitely not turning out how I originally imagined it to go, but I'm glad for that. It's taken on a beautiful life of its own. Oh yeah, Kikyo and Naraku's deal is going to be so much fun to play with. I can't wait to get my grubby little fingers on that plotline. It's going to be fun and messy and likely very emotional. There's plenty more coming, I promise. I'm currently writing chapter fourteen, so we have a good week of consistent posting ahead.
One thing I like about Naraku is that he's actually a pretty chatty person. He tells other characters in the series a lot of info. He's not a quiet and brooding antagonist. He's talkative, but its usually never a good thing when he is talkative. I hope I managed to portray that pretty well here.
One thing I really want to put out here is this: Nori is not a good person. She has a code she lives by and thinks that makes her good, but she is deeply flawed and selfish. This woman is definitely not a good person, and you get to see more of that going on. She'll start to get twisted up in Naraku and his evil pretty soon, and you'll probably see it a little more. I'm not writing a sparkle-sparkle good triumphs over all anime story here with Nori. Not even close.
But boy is it fun to write a bad guy every once in a while. I think, while I err on the side of flawed realism, I do tend to write more good-aligned characters. I enjoy it, but sometimes you just want to write villains. Nori definitely started as good-aligned, but she's slipping. Or, rather, jumping. I don't think the poor girl really know how deep she's going to go with all of this. She has no idea what's happening.
And you all get to see her struggle on with the ride. Aren't you lucky?