PURE FLOWER
Chapter 18
The Dead and the Living
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"...Sakuyabi no Mikoto, the last priestess of the Wing Clan..." Sesshoumaru whispered as his golden eyes narrowed at the screaming spirit hovering above Rin's lookalike. Dark miasma circulated around the vengeful spirit as it continued to scream.
A long time ago, Sesshoumaru had unwillingly made to listen to Kannabi as she briefed him through the history and lineage of the Wing Clan. She had told him how she became the first priestess for her clan and that she had chosen her great-granddaughter Sakuyabi to inherit her position as the priestess. Before the war, Sesshoumaru and his father had always visited Kannabi at her shrine, and Sesshoumaru remembered seeing Sakuyabi once during one of their visits.
Damn you...demon...
Sesshoumaru watched as the spirit who had stopped screaming, turned to look at him with her dark hollow eyes with blood trailing down her cheeks. Unlike the young priestess he met before the war, the spirit of the same priestess now was tainted with hatred and curse.
I curse thee...I curse thee...
When Tenseiga pulsed in his hand again, Sesshoumaru glanced down at his sword with a frown on his face. When the vengeful spirit screamed again and lunged towards him, Sesshoumaru looked up and by using Tenseiga, he made a vertical slash on the spirit, splitting it in half. The spirit let out a high pitch shriek before it dissolved into a mass of dark miasma.
"It ran away..." Sesshoumaru murmured and sheathed his Tenseiga. When the dark miasma that had spread across the whole dungeon finally cleared, Sesshoumaru glared down at the Rin's lookalike on the dungeon ground. Reaching out a claw hand, Sesshoumaru wrapped his fingers around the lookalike's slender throat and lifted her above the ground. He caught a strong scent of decayed flesh and tightened his grip on the lookalike.
"Who are you?" he asked coldly.
Instead of looking at the demon lord before her, Rin stared at the night sky above where the miasma had disappeared to. When her mother died, Rin knew her mother had placed a curse on her, but she did not realize until now that the curse was her own mother's hatred and tainted soul. When the Western Lord stabbed her with the sword infused with power Rin was familiar with, most of her power was drained out along with the curse.
"Where did you get the sword from, demon lord?" Rin asked, ignoring the tightened grip on her throat or the claws that had pierced in to her flesh. Since the body was not hers, she felt no pain nor did she care if the demon lord destroyed the body. However, the sword caught her interest. It was a sword infused with the power of the Wing Clan's priestess. She wondered how a demon lord came to have such weapon, or to know her mother's true name.
"If you want the truth then unhand me, demon lord." Rin said and narrowed her amber eyes into the pair of icy golden eyes of the demon lord. "My mother has taken my power. I no longer can harm anyone." Rin said again with half truth.
Sesshoumaru glared at the lookalike. He wanted to tear the lookalike limps by limps for killing his daughters, but he also wanted answers from her regarding his Rin. Reluctantly, Sesshoumaru loosened his grip and watched impassively as the lookalike fell down on the ground with her pale hands now caressing the welts on her neck. When the lookalike stood up, Sesshoumaru turned slightly to look at another lookalike chained on the wall. The other lookalike was not his Rin.
"...the young woman you seek is dead. The body you are looking now is only a vessel, for her soul is no longer here." Rin stated calmly and laid a hand across on her breast, above the place where a heart should be beating. She saw an expression similar to anguish flashed through the golden orbs briefly before it was gone in a flash. "This body I now occupied did belong to the young woman, but it will not last long now."
"It is decaying." Sesshoumaru said with a glare. His fists clenched so tightly his claws bit into his palms, when he heard the lookalike mentioned his mate was dead. The smiling face of his Rin flashed before his eyes and he gritted his teeth in anger. "Who is she?"
Rin stared at the demon lord before her with a blank face. Rin did not believe the demon lord cared about a mere human, but the one before her reek of anger and anguish. When Rin took over the current body, she had also taken over the memories it stored within it. She did saw how caring, bordering to loving, the demon lord was towards the young woman. Well, it was not like she had anything to do now until her mother's cursed soul appear again.
"She was only an innocent woman I happened to revive from a certain death. Then I merged half of my soul into hers so she could be me. However, she was in the end, a human." Rin explained and then turned to look at her own body chained on the cell. "Before her soul vanished completely, I trapped her in my body, until it was no longer there."
"Rin knew about your plan?" Sesshoumaru asked. Could Rin be deceiving him from the beginning? Sesshoumaru recalled how innocently and happily Rin had followed him from the Southern stronghold to his own. She had told him how excited she was to visit a human village, and how happy she was to carry his pups. Was it all an act?
"When I revived her, I planted fake memories into her soul. She was not supposed to remember anything but she did...when she was about to give birth." Rin explained and recalled vividly how the young woman begged her to spare her children and the demon lord. The spell she cast was perfect. The young woman was not supposed to regain her memories as a human. Rin wondered what went wrong. "And she was supposed to disappear completely upon giving birth but she didn't. So unfortunately, I had to eradicate her soul."
Sesshoumaru, who had listened enough, felt his energy sizzled in anger. How dare a mere wench toy with the emotion and memories of his mate! In a flash, Sesshoumaru had the lookalike pinned against the wall in a death grip on her slender throat. He wanted the lookalike to die a slow painful death. However even though Sesshoumaru had almost snapped the lookalike's throat, there was no emotion of pain shown on her face. Thus he doubted she would feel pain at her since it was an occupied vessel only.
"...If Rin dies, will Lord Sesshoumaru remembers Rin forever?"
Sesshoumaru gritted his teeth in anger as he remembered what his Rin had asked him before. If what the lookalike told him was truth, then since when his Rin started to remember her own past? Then if his Rin knew she was going to die, why didn't she tell him anything? Didn't she trust him? Did she though he would abandon her if he knew she was a human?
Sesshoumaru's golden eyes narrowed as he stared at the face of his Rin. In truth, he did not know how he would react once he knew his Rin was only a human. He despised human. They were greedy, foolish, and selfish. In fact, a human woman had became his father's weakness and caused his death, indirectly.
"...If Rin dies, will Lord Sesshoumaru remembers Rin forever?"
Memories of his Rin playing with the demon and human children flashed across his mind. His Rin had smiled at the children as if they were her own. His Rin had not cared if the children dirtied her beautiful kimono. His Rin cared and comforted his sons when they were injured from training. His Rin's amber eyes sparkled with happiness and always smiled at him whenever she saw him. His Rin...his beautiful, kind, caring Rin...
Calming his anger, Sesshoumaru leaned closer to the lookalike and stared into the hollow of her amber eyes. Unlike his Rin whose eyes always filled with emotion, the lookalike before him had empty, emotionless eyes.
"Bring her back." Sesshoumaru demanded.
"It is not possible." Rin stated with half-truth. It was possible for her to revive the young woman again with her spell, provided she had a vessel, but she saw no merit in doing such favour for the demon lord.
"This Sesshoumaru will allow you to continue with the curse, if you bring her back." Sesshoumaru said. He watched impassively as the lookalike looked up at him with surprise before a smirk appeared on her face.
"What makes you think I require your approval to continue with the curse?" Rin asked with a smile that did not reach her eyes. Indeed, even with her spiritual power gone, the curse she placed had not been stopped. It seemed the demon lord before her knew more about her clan than what she gave him credit for. With his knowledge and the sword bestowed with the spiritual power of the Wing Clan priestess, apparently the demon lord before her had a close connection with them prior to the war.
"Because this Sesshoumaru knows Tenseiga will kill you and Sakuyabi, priestess." Sesshoumaru spat and loosened his grip around the lookalike's neck once more. He knew he hit the truth when the lookalike glared up at him. Tenseiga was a sword that could not kill. Specifically, it was a sword that could not kill living beings resided in the living realm. In contra, it was a sword that could kill beings that did not belong to the living realm.
"You talk as if you are still living, when in truth, you died on the same day you switch with my mate." Sesshoumaru said and turned slightly to stare at the empty body chained on the cell; a body that had no sign of life. "You are only a spirit residing in a human vessel."
"What is your plan, demon lord?" Rin asked warily.
Sesshoumaru simply gave an icy smile.
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A/N: Hi folks, I'm back after more than ten years!! I sincerely apologize for taking such long time to write the chapters. For the past few years I lost interest in writing stories and for a few years I did not touch fanfiction at all, until recently. The sparks are back so I'm back to writing whenever I can.
I did promise to complete my stories, so I will. There are only two or three more chapters to go for this story before it completes. Then I will proceed to upload my other in-progress stories.
Also, I apologize for the grammar mistakes and crappy sentences since it has been a long time since my last writing.
I have some difficulty uploading using mobile...