XLI
Daylight Is Darkness Without You
With a mighty heave, Rin unsheathed Tenseiga, staring into the blue glow - but no effort of hers would lift the blade from the ground enough to wield it. Kagome's eyes cleared, focusing on the sword – on the light of hope that had restored Sango to her, the glow that had brought life back to the village.
Slowly, she stood, and walked around Sesshomaru's still body to Rin's side. She reached down, and wrapped her hands around Rin's, grasping the hilt of Tenseiga and lifting it. The flash came immediately afterward, a surge of power so great it knocked Rin back into Kagome, who rocked under the impact but stood firm, staring down at Sesshomaru with a fixed, unchanging gaze.
A strange new vision had been imparted to her by the sword; suddenly, Sesshomaru looked like he was only sleeping. No blood seeped from his cold wounds; the flush of death was brighter in his cheeks than the ivory tones of life had granted. Tenseiga pulsed again in her hand, suddenly hot, and another reeling flash stung her eyes, prickling with new tears.
Fading into existence like dust motes in the moonlight was a quintet of grotesque creatures, crawling across Sesshomaru's still body. Vaguely, she heard Rin's startled gasp – but without thinking, Kagome lashed out with the sword in her hands, so abruptly that the girl was dragged forward with her a full step. She felt Tenseiga's edge bite into the crawling things as though they were something substantial; they dissolved away like mist.
Beneath her gaze, the viscid, clotted mess of Sesshomaru's wounds seemed to turn inward, closing, vanishing and leaving only the brown of old blood on his skin. There was a smoking hiss as the black venom disappeared, fading into foul-smelling, copper-accented smoke.
Kagome watched Sesshomaru's eyes open, watched his strong, pale fingers twitch, flex, and then force his claws into the earth and push on the bloody ground, bringing him upright. Rin flew at him at once and clung to his leg; Tenseiga fell to the ground as the girl tore her hands away from beneath Kagome's numb fingers.
Sesshomaru spoke then, his voice hoarse and quiet.
"Rin. You are...safe?"
"I am safe, Sesshomaru-sama, I am safe – and Sesshomaru-sama is safe too!"
It was only when his eyes turned to Kagome, lamplight gold and bright with life, that she flew at him, believing, and almost knocked him back to the ground. Sesshomaru blinked slowly, feeling agony recede like fire in his veins.
"Sesshomaru – Sesshomaru -"
It took Kagome three tries to say even his name, and then sobs broke her words open. He saw her tears with startled surprise, touched them, tasted them, bitter and salty on his tongue.
"You…are crying for me?"
Kagome drew a ragged breath and felt the words fly hot and heaving out of her control.
"Bastard! Bastard, of course I'm crying for you…"
Anger flared in her and dissolved, returned mixed with the powerful feeling that had risen unchecked to claim her the moment she had watched his eyes close, felt the dark loss of his pulse beneath her palm - the moment she had been reduced to thinking only not again, not again the one I love. What that meant, now that he was alive again, standing in front of her, she could barely begin to contemplate. In this moment, it was anger – because he had dared, even for a moment, to leave her alone.
She gripped his torn and bloodied haori in both fists, and shook him sharply; he swayed, and she pounded at his chest with her fists, hating his pain, hating his visible weakness and how it made her angry at herself – because he had just been dead, he had just been dead -
"Kagome – Kagome, don't cry for me -"
She pummeled him again, saw him wince and cried harder.
"Bastard! You are everything I have left – the only one - you made me love you – how dare you – how dare you – how dare you die!"
The last word was a howl that choked into silence on a sob. Kagome leaned her head forward against Sesshomaru's chest, breathed in his warm and living scent beneath the streaming odor of gore, listened to the strong, vital beating of his heart.
Kagome did not detect it, but Sesshomaru felt his heart skip and shudder in his chest.
"You made me love you."
Of their own volition his arms came up and wrapped around her, crushing her tight against his chest. He bent close to her and murmured against her hair.
"Don't cry – don't cry, Kagome. I am alive; I will...be more careful, next time, but please...no more tears. I...don't know what to do with them."
She giggled faintly, almost hysterically, and then closed her eyes and clutched at him as if she would never let him go.
Unnoticed, unseen, beyond even Sesshomaru's senses, a dark flood of shadows streamed out of the woods and across the bloody battlefield to the north. They picked up speed as they traveled, and as they moved further and further from the carnage, their shape became more defined, more definite.
More Dragon.
More deadly.
Mere minutes later, in a fold of rough and hilly tundra at the foot of the northern mountains, in the fortress that was home to the Lords of the North, shadows flickered and dimmed, bloody on the walls. In their movements, which mimicked no firelight, no dancing lamp, Kasuka watched a story play out in shades of darkness and ruby - the attack that Tatsuya had made, and his ultimate failure.
Her lips pouted momentarily in a frown, and then she let out a shriek of rage, gnashed her teeth and snarled.
The crimson shadows fled her anger, and left her alone in a dark room.
"Even with the aid of my ancestors, the aid of all that is shadow-shaped – even with my own help to breach the barrier, to let him past the power..."
Her eyes snapped and flickered, dark and sharp and mad.
"Tatsuya – you fool! You had the girl in your hands...you should have killed her when you had the chance! At least then he would be wounded, broken – at least then he would have paid a partial price!"
Wind whipped up around her, and Kasuka leapt up in a scream of power and out the wide, open window of her bedchamber. Something like a hysterical tantrum overcame her, and she worked sorcery on the wind, scales grinding and leaping out of a smaller form to bite at the ice-frosted air with growls and screams. In the shape of the Dragon inside her, the Dragon she had never given over to Kinawai's Tiger-nature, she roared and wove back and forth among the high currents of the air.
Above the clouds, flaky purple lightning burst in response to the speed and trauma of her presence. The sky continued to rage as she landed, far away now from the fortress, her home - sap-sticky branches of fragrant evergreen trees were parted, swept down, and broken by her flurry of motion.
A roar in all the loudest tones of Dragon rage clawed its way out of Kasuka's throat, and then the wind was the wind of power and change, and it swept back over her and left her trembling on her knees, blood seeping from her clenched fists.
"Dead, he was dead, it was over! Damn that sword! Damn that sword, and damn his miko mate!"
In her frustration, Kasuka reached into her sleeve and pulled out the mirror she had taken from beneath the mountains. For a moment, it reflected a black night alight with stars; then, as she touched it lightly with her fingers, the surface rippled and changed, began to swell and grow.
An amorphous figure of blood and power took birth from the running glass, shifted and groaned in mid-air, then settled into the shape of her Dragon kin. Tall and pale and expressionless, the one she had summoned fixed Kasuka with glacier-blue eyes. Words came - not from his throat, but she felt them like piercing, icy daggers in her brain.
"You call, Mistress?"
She focused her power, her thoughts, and spoke her commands in an ordered tone that belied the shifting fury of her emotions.
"Yes. We have...work to do.
The Inu thinks he is safe, he thinks he can thwart me? He will steal my home, my birthright, the power my ancestors sealed with anguish?
No.
"Go South; and seek out Tatsuya, the Lord of the Silent House."
"That one is no more."
"Yes...I know this. But the Inu will change that soon enough. He needs information. When that happens – you must be there to teach him a lesson. You must follow our servant; you must ensure he says only things that do not endanger our plans.
"We will breach all the Inu's defenses, plant seeds of fear in that cold heart. When he was alone, he was all but invulnerable."
She smiled slowly.
"Now that he is not – well. Tatsuya may have failed, but he has shown me that the Inu is no longer perfectly protected; that he will act, not for his honor alone, but for those he has chosen...well, well, perhaps Tatsuya was not so useless after all."
Her eyes glittered suddenly, a red so dark it was almost black.
"Make sure...he is of use to me one last time."
"As you will it, Mistress..."
There was a screech that held something of death within itself; a foul stench rushed in on another flux of terrible wind; the shadow rose, and changed, and took on the form of the Beast within.
A vaguely insubstantial Dragon shot off into the southwest.
Kasuka stood alone for a while, biting her lip, thinking back with more calm now on the scene she had witnessed through her mirror after she had left Tatsuya behind:
Sesshomaru's power, sweeping aside Dragons as if they were nothing. Tatsuya, bested in battle, but holding onto victory with the treachery she had prepared for him – an old poison, thick as tar, black as hell – deadly, deadly to any not party to its secret, to any not gifted with the antidote before hand.
She had made that poison with her own blood.
All my effort, wasted! Twice, that sword has bested my intentions; it saved the hanyou and his mother – and now that the hanyou has been dealt with, it saves the elder brother!
There was Kagome to think about, too. So far, she had seen a gentleness in Sesshomaru's new mate that had made her think the other female would be pliant, soft, non-threatening. The truth was...rather different.
She is as deadly as her dog. More deadly. That power...that was youki like nothing I have ever experienced. Something of the Dragon remains in her, though she is Inu. Combined with miko magic...she is a formidable foe.
As I am.
Still, she knows nothing of me...nor does Sesshomaru. Even if he suspects, he cannot know that I was the one who attacked him...and he does not know the truth of my nature, the secret I have kept hidden for a thousand years and more.
It was why she had chosen the son of Ryuukotsusei for this work; the one who, more than any other of her servants and allies, had a reason to attack the Inu.
His failure could not be traced back to her...
There was nothing...
Nothing...
Good.
Sesshomaru was quick to begin gathering up everything of importance so they could vacate the battlefield. The first thing to come to hand, once Kagome was able to let go of him, was Tenseiga; he stared at the sword, dull and silent now, and contemplated the power to which he now owed his own life.
It was a demon weapon, full of powerful youki – some his father's and some other. It had never, since the day it had come to him, ever worked in another hand but his. Even his mother could not make Tenseiga work its magic – and he had let her try, once, when one of her favored females had been killed.
He had thought for some time - though he had not tested his theory - that Tetsusaiga would transform for Kagome now; Tetsusaiga, which had long ago recognized her as one of those it had been made to protect. But this...he had never expected this. Even if Kagome – as his mate, as a miko – had something special about her, something that would allow her to access the hidden power...what of Rin? What was it that had let a little human girl reach past the borders of death and tug at his soul?
It was a reversal of a vanished moment; he would remember forever the tear streaked eyes, mismatched with her childish face, inhuman but not youkai, looking down at him with eager joy as he breathed.
Merely...breathed.
It was a moment as poignant as Kagome's confession of love.
Is it because Rin, too, has died? Is it more of that strangeness which let her wander at the borders of the world under the Ink? Or...is it something else?
He felt clearly within himself the place where soul and body came together, felt as if it were happening again the raw, stretched sting of returning to his recently vacated flesh.
How did it happen? What is it that let them use Tenseiga, when no hands but mine and my father's have ever been able to call that power forth?
Just as the thought passed through Sesshomaru's mind, there was a crash and grunting in the undergrowth. Scenes of new carnage evoked themselves in his head, and he stood on guard, pushing Kagome slightly behind him - and then stared, nonplussed, as a grumbling, familiar sword smith shoved his way through the foliage.
"What a mess! What happened - what am I doing here? These aren't Inu parts... You stupid cow, this must be entirely the wrong direction...oh! Is that a Dragon eye? Hmm..."
Apparently unconcerned with – or unaware of – the small group of battle weary companions watching him, Totosai dismounted from Momo and hobbled over to peer at what was, indeed, a lone Dragon eye, clouded with death at the edge of the greater part of the destruction.
"Oh, and in such good shape, too...my, what a lucky find!"
He lifted the eye triumphantly, but his moment was short-lived. A voice that he had never been fond of hearing spoke up from behind him.
"Totosai. What are you doing in this place? Why have you come here?"
Totosai turned slowly to face Sesshomaru, chuckling halfheartedly under his breath.
"Ehe..hehe...well, now...fancy meeting you here...of course it explains the nasty mess..."
There was a light in his eyes that made Sesshomaru suspicious; this moment was far too strange, this meeting far too convenient to be mere chance. He chose dry sarcasm as the most appropriate response; he was too exhausted, too keyed up on caution for anything else.
"Indeed. An interesting chance, old one."
Totosai bristled at that.
"Old one? No respect, that's your problem – no respect for your elders and betters -"
Sesshomaru growled quietly at that, and Totosai desisted, sensing that anything else would be...bad for his health.
Without further prelude, Sesshomaru picked up Tenseiga and held it out in the old smith's direction. There was no other reason for his presence, no other conclusion to be made – and Sesshomaru would have answers.
"It is long past time for you to explain this blade to me, Totosai. Something is...wrong with it."
Squinting, rubbing his chin with his hand, Totosai peered up at Sesshomaru and inched slightly closer. With a sudden, snatching movement, he grabbed Tenseiga and brought the blade close to his eyes, crooned at it softly while he peered at the metal.
"Well, well, my beauty, been doing something naughty, have you..."
The tone of his voice and the limber stroking of his wrinkled fingers on the smooth length of Tenseiga's blade made Sesshomaru shudder.
He was suddenly certain that he would never be able to leave any weapon of his with Totosai unattended ever again.
"Speak, now! I have no time for foolishness, Totosai!"
Scowling, Totosai squelched another step closer to Sesshomaru and peered up at him, poked him – and then poked him again, more roughly, with his hammer.
"You're really alive – huh, more's the pity...so who's the lucky lady, then?"
Sesshomaru's eyes narrowed sharply, and he reached out and snatched Tenseiga back from the old smith. The blaze of an impending eruption of violence shone scarlet in his eyes
"You intended to come here, didn't you? And you thought to find me dead. What -"
"Simmer down, simmer down! I felt the power of that sword from miles away! The little beauty has been active the last few days, and that was strange enough – but not more than an hour ago there was silence, so I came hurrying along."
Sesshomaru's voice came out as a poorly restrained growl.
"You can sense Tenseiga's power? You were coming to it?"
Totosai backed away a single step, a sheepish expression on his face.
"Actually I was coming because you were dead. Didn't expect anyone else would actually be able to use the sword on you, you see...and your father left strict instructions I wasn't to leave it laying about if you died without an heir - too good to be true, I knew it –
Sesshomaru snapped at that.
"My heirs and the artifacts of my ancestry are my business, not yours and not my father's – he is dead."
Far too calmly, Totosai crossed his arms.
"And so were you. Weapons of such power, abilities that drive back the veil between the worlds...dangerous in the wrong hands, very dangerous – not that yours are right."
He cleared his throat then and continued.
"Now, do you plan to answer my question? Who is your mate – or at least, the one who loves you? Such a female...I'd like to meet the one capable of that!"
Sesshomaru scowled at the implied – was it an insult? Once he would not have thought so – but he beckoned Kagome forward all the same. Her smile was thin and tired, but real; she had always found the old sword-smith amusing.
"Hello, Totosai. You might not remember me, but I was a companion of Inuyasha's; I've met you before. I'm Kagome -"
Totosai's eyes bulged oddly in her direction.
"You? You! Well, well...isn't that interesting, now? But I thought you were a human, missy!"
Kagome shrugged and her smile gained a little more life.
"So did I. Please, Totosai, can you tell me – us – what it is that made Tenseiga work? If it hadn't been for Rin, we would've lost him..."
Her eyes drifted back to Sesshomaru's face, as if to reassure herself - yes, he is still breathing.
Totosai stared at Kagome for a long moment, a shifting in his face the only clue that he was thinking, contemplating – making decisions.
He had been waiting a long time for something like this to happen; for the icy wall Sesshomaru lived behind to crack. The dim hope that he had nurtured through the centuries, more the Inu no Taisho's than his, had come to unexpected fruition. He had not expected this woman – this female – to be the one responsible – out of anyone in the world, he had not expected her. But perhaps...there was no one better.
Totosai had witnessed the strength and power of her feelings himself; he had seen heart in her even when there was nothing else to witness – not strength beyond measure, not power beyond limit...as he sensed she might possess now.
Peering about, as if to hide this secret from the watching world, Totosai crooked a finger, beckoning Kagome closer.
"Tenseiga is a picky weapon, little girl, a picky weapon indeed. It is not like its brother; it is not meant to protect. It is meant to undo the darkness when all protection has failed...and it will awaken itself in the hands of any who feel a true bond of love. Do you understand? It is love, the beating heart that is more than life, which can awaken the beating heart of this sword...that power which is more than death."
Kagome flushed brilliantly, pressed her hands against her cheeks. Certainly there was no point in uttering any denial; she had spoken the words aloud in a moment of pain and weakness but that had also been a moment of truth.
"I...I see."
Sesshomaru scowled.
"This does not make sense. Once, I used Tenseiga to resurrect Jaken. Once, I used Tenseiga to resurrect a human girl I had exchanged less than ten words with. Last night, I used Tenseiga to resurrect three humans I did not know, and one who is the hearth-sister of my mate. I did not love those humans; I did not care if they lived or died."
The sword smith tapped the head of his hammer against the ground impatiently.
"If you did not care, why did you do it?"
Sesshomaru's scowl grew into a snarl and then faded.
"For Kagome. Because she has chosen them to protect; because they belong to her, and she to me. Because I would not have them harm her, even by their own deaths."
Totosai grinned, a disturbing sight. His eyes gleamed the gleam of a trap as it closes.
"The sword is motivated by only one power, Sesshomaru. You must love someone, or it wouldn't work. Love is not only romantic, you know...oh, no it is not...but I will admit that such a kind of love is deeper and more binding than many others."
Between them, silent, Kagome flushed a brilliant, glowing red. Joy lifted from her skin in tangible waves – and because of that, and because it was true, Sesshomaru did not deny it.
"Hn."
Totosai was quick to make his exit, once it became clear that Sesshomaru's patience had frayed and the questions that he had come to ask and answer were done with. Rin and Shippou watched Momo lift up and fly off into the sky with open mouths – and then Rin turned to Shippou and began to immediately question him about all the times he had previously encountered the smith.
There had not been many, but Shippou was happy to oblige – anything to distract him from the agony and the terror that had just passed.
Sesshomaru's first action, as if to deny everything that Totosai had told him, was to draw Tenseiga over the body of his fallen foe. He stood and stared down at Tatsuya for a long moment with the blade drawn in his hands, filled with variations and inflections and fluencies of rage.
He thought of the long feud between the Silent House and his own House of Blades – of the vengeful battle between Ryuukotsusei, Tatsuya's sire, and his own father. He thought of years and decades and centuries of hatred congealed into this battle, this attempt to steal from him all that he had newly gained...by the theft of his life.
You would have succeeded in your treachery, if not for Kagome...that is what the old one was telling me. I would have lost everything, if not for her – if not for Rin -
He thought of the blazing fury that had possessed him, the moment Shippou's panting voice had spilled out the bare skeleton of the story.
He thought of Kagome standing beside him in battle, and wished that he had been alive to see her fight, to see again the enchantment of her beauty when she killed...without guilt, this time. He looked over his shoulder and saw her smiling, looking down at her friend – saw her face twitch and her nose wrinkle as she made a moue of distaste, looking at her bloodstained dress and hair.
Her eyes shifted just the slightest bit and met his gaze; she smiled, flushing faintly, and he heard her words, bright and clear in his thoughts, far clearer than she had actually spoken them.
You made me love you.
Warmth, burning, blinding, enormous, rose suffocating in his chest – and then in his hand there was a matching warmth, a bright blue light.
Tenseiga?
And then his stare hardened; his eyes narrowed to golden slits.
So the smith did not lie – but neither did he tell the truth. Love, indeed...
"Houshi Miroku."
His sudden address startled Miroku into turning so swiftly he overbalanced and nearly fell flat on his back. For a moment he teetered wildly, and then spun back in the other direction and looked across at Sesshomaru with a sheepish expression.
"Ah...haha...yes, Sesshomaru-sama?"
Sesshomaru stared for a moment, as if rethinking his request, and then turned back to Tatsuya's body and leveled three quick slashes of Tenseiga's blade at the creatures only he could see. There was a moment of silence, and then a long, drawn-out hiss of breath from his revived foe.
"Houshi Miroku, you have the ability to create a seal of holy powers; do so. Bind him."
Sesshomaru stared down into his enemy's eyes, saw fear and rage layered there with hatred and disgust. Miroku was quick and did not hesitate, but flung ofuda one after another, binding Tatsuya in a cocoon of power that manifested as glittering chains. Tatsuya struggled as soon as real consciousness had returned to him, thrashed and snarled in his bonds, but Miroku's seals had held Inuyasha – Inuyasha, who had defeated Ryuukotsusei. Tatsuya was strong, but he was not his father – or he would not have needed treachery to gain his victory.
Harshly, Sesshomaru grabbed the crackling chains in one hand, and turned toward his fortress dragging Tatsuya behind him.
For a moment there were shouts and hisses and screams of rage – and then Miroku activated one more well placed sutra, and Tatsuya was forcefully silenced.
A shadow followed behind Sesshomaru and his family as they returned to the fortress. It was a filament of Kasuka's will, a fracture of power; it was a soul recaptured from beyond the edge of death, an ancestral spirit snatched bodily from the void. It was set to do her bidding; its will was the will of power and the will of pain.
Time had passed slowly, all its moments torture for a being immortal in death as it had been in life. Time had passed, and much had been forgotten, but things lost to memory cease to matter...
And vengeance walked free.
The shadow bypassed the screaming protection that still roiled uncertain about the gate of Sesshomaru's fortress; it was not a living presence, not a living being; it intended harm only indirectly, and a more vital, more certain enemy was being dragged through that Power before it.
Still, despite this initial ease of entry a thing that Kasuka had not expected conspired against her commands, turning events in a direction that she could never have foreseen.
Miroku's presence was that thing. His power was a different sort than that a miko wielded, bound more firmly to this world. Without the aid of his ofuda and staff, the energies he manipulated and bent to his control would not work for him; there was no youkai equivalent to such a mastery, such an art of power and intent. Miroku had been a prodigy all his life, a wielder of mighty energies in all the forms that he could learn – but it was in the banishing and capture of youkai and evil forces that he had the most skill.
It was the way he had made his living, for though occasionally he was less than honest about the existence of an ominous cloud, he had never once stepped back from a place where an infestation of evil was genuine.
The chain with which he had bound Tatsuya was a manifestation of all his strengths in exorcism and containment, a power he had only rarely used to its fullest. He did not often face foes strong enough to require it. He had no doubt, even in the moment he had let the first ofuda fly, that Kagome could easily destroy this beast again...but he knew equally that Sesshomaru wanted something from Tatsuya, and that only he could make that possible.
A miko's power was purification – destruction or healing; Miroku's power was the power to shape and control. The chain bound Tatsuya to Miroku's will, each character a specific seal. For his legs, stillness; for his arms and hands, lethargy and numbness. To his torso, binding, binding repeated over and over; for his tongue, silence, the complete absence of noise.
Kasuka had sent her dark emissary expecting Tatsuya to waken into life free, a motile force who would spew vitriol and plant seeds of suspicion and false intent that she could water later at her leisure. She had expected him to be open to the possession of her shadow-forces, an easy, discarded resource to be exploited one final time.
What Miroku had created was a situation as far from that expectation as could be. If she had known what would be waiting, she would never have overplayed her hand so openly, so visibly – but the decision was irretrievable, irrevocable.
In one moment, there was a quiet group in a quiet room, deep in the fortress cellars – Sango and Kagome quiet, tending to Rin and Shippou; Miroku quiet, maintaining his concentration and his power; Sesshomaru quiet, contemplating his foe -
Tatsuya quiet, forcefully so.
In the next moment, there was a streaming shadow, a flash of light, a terrible, unearthly scream. Where he sat on the floor, Miroku rocked as if under the impact of a physical blow. Sweat streamed from his temples; he let out a gasp of pain, but almost immediately began muttering under his breath, stringing syllables together out of instinct – an incantation against otherworldly assault, the protective spells of seven sutras, a strengthening of the binding that he had wrought against Tatsuya.
Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet. He could feel a foreign will working against his power, ripping at it from outside -
A slow flow of blood trickled from Miroku's left nostril. He staggered; this outsider was strong, stronger than any force he had ever encountered. With a shout, he intensified the boundary of his power; the chains crackled to life, blinding white and brilliant. Beneath them Tatsuya heaved and struggled, twisting despite the ofuda meant to hold him still.
Gradually, Miroku's struggle with an unseen force became a struggle with a visible force, as the dark shadow that had attempted to possess Tatsuya drew itself up into a hovering shape – serpentine, struggling, seeking.
Sesshomaru's voice rang out in warning, sharply.
"Houshi! Beware that shadow -"
Miroku let out a shout of effort. With a swift, long practiced motion his fingers sorted through the ofuda in his sleeve and selected the appropriate one.
Banishment.
Return to darkness.
There was a second, bluer flash of brightness; there was the sound of a thunderclap, and a screech of agony and absolute rage that echoed in two-tone harmony.
The smell of ozone lingered with a foul stench in a room gone suddenly quiet again; Miroku swayed for a moment, and then lowered himself to the floor and resumed his meditative posture, not giving an inch.
Kagome's worried expression vanished, and was replaced by a smile; Sango knelt beside her man and wiped blood from his face with the corner of her sleeve. She had seen him perform difficult exorcisms before, but nothing of this magnitude. She had worried for him, and seeing the strain on his face she worried for him still – but she was also proud, fiercely so.
Sesshomaru stared, and then nodded once.
"Impressive."
On the floor, eyes wide, still now beneath a drifting of ash and dust that was all that remained of the conflict of powers, Tatsuya felt a trembling begin in his soul. He had chosen glory and the memory of lost honors over his own life and the lives of his kin; that seemed clear to him now. He had seen one act of power, one perfect evil permanence calling others into being; Kasuka's will and rightness had seemed unbreakable as he stood before her, watching her summon their ancestors from air and darkness.
In the moment of Miroku's victory, the moment of that terrible scream, Tatsuya knew that he had set himself in allegiance to the wrong side; that Kasuka and those she had called were vulnerable, after all.
I am going to die.
The thought came to him clearly.
He caught the edge of Sesshomaru's glance at him, saw wrath channeled into conduits of patience and pain. He remembered all the horror that had been his first death, the cell-splintering agony that had ruptured his bond with the living world.
He knew that whatever was coming for him, it would be worse.
Hatred boiled in his belly, and he did not know who it was for – if it was for Kasuka, or Sesshomaru, or himself.
A/N: Phew! So many sticking points in this chapter, and delicate truths to be handled only one way in case of future disaster...but...I think I got them all. And so...we say onward once more, to a chapter that will hopefully not take me a month to work through! Thanks go to all my whipcrackers, who reminded me that I was slacking again :P
Please Review!