I had mentioned before in my Koga fic In The Jaws Of The Wolf that I had an idea for a Naraku story that was flitting around. I've had some interest in that fic, so here it is!

I'm excited for this one. For such a big InuYasha character, he hardly has any OC fics centred around him. It's kind of sad. I love Naraku as a character (and not just for his luscious hair) so after despairing a little over his lack of fics, I've chosen to write my own.

This one will be based on the anime rather than the manga, as Kagewaki's plotline will be quite important in the first part of this fic, and the anime plot for Kagewaki just works better for what I have planned. This chapter takes place during episode twelve of the anime, which explains why there's nobody at the shrine. Grampa and mama Higurashi are at the hospital, and Sota, Kagome and InuYasha are in the building site, fighting off the Noh mask. I think it's the only time I could ever have nobody at the shrine and have that make sense.

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
-Jean Racine

"Hey, Nori?"

I tore my eyes from one of mom's magazines. "What is it Ayumi?" My youngest sister was stood in the doorway of the livingroom, shifting awkwardly as she built herself up to make her request. That was a sign that she wanted to ask something big of me. Ayumi didn't often ask for things. Being the youngest of the four of us, she had ended up being doted on and spoiled by the rest of us. As such, she didn't often like asking for anything more of any of us.

"Well..." She curled her fingers hesitantly in her wavy hair.

I set the magazine down gave her my full attention. Now I was really curious. Ayumi was usually a pretty confident girl, even when doing things she wasn't comfortable with. This clearly wasn't just a big ask. It was a big ask. I was more curious than reluctant. Ayumi wasn't an inconsiderate girl. She'd never asked me to do something that I had seriously disliked doing. Well, once she had asked me to look after her when she and Botan were sick with the flu while our parents were attending a friends funeral down in Osaka. I hadn't much enjoyed that, but I'd stayed by their beds dutifully, wiping away sick and checking temperatures until they'd recovered. This was obviously going to be different than that.

"My friend, Kagome, she'd been off school a lot and she's really sick, and well, I was wondering if you'd mind going over to see her and make sure she's okay. You're a really good doctor and I really want to make sure she's okay."

"Ayumi..." I took a moment to process what she'd said, chewing on my inner lip. "If she's as sick as you think she is, Ayumi, then she'll have her own doctors looking after her."

I didn't want to step on any other doctors toes, and, despite Ayumi's unflinching belief in my ability, I had only been a qualified doctor for four years now. I was top in my class in Todai, but book smarts didn't equate to experience. I'd had that one drilled into me when I started kenjutsu as a cocky kid that thought she knew everything about it because she had read a book about it. How wrong I had been there. I didn't have as much experience as I could have as a doctor, though. It was likely her friend Kagome was being cared for by better doctors, at any rate Maybe even professionals in whatever Kagome was suffering from. I didn't think an ER surgeon like myself could help if Kagome had some sort of chronic illness.

My sister's eyes were wide, and help me, glossy with emotional tears. "Nori, please. I'm worried for her."

Seeing Ayumi so distressed hurt me on a level only a much older sister could understand. There was almost fifteen years between Ayumi and I. As a teenager I had cared for Ayumi more than my mom. I was the ideal babysitter, as the oldest child. So I'd had a big part in raising Ayumi, helping her through every scraped knee and friend drama at school.

"Okay," I relented quickly. I didn't want her to cry over it. "I'll go and check on her before I go home."

I lived in my own apartment close to the hospital I worked at. I'd been graced with a few days off, and mom had insisted I come home and stay here for those few days. "You work so hard, so you need to spend as much time around family as you can," she had insisted over the phone. When your mother makes a demand like that, you listen. So far it had been a nice break, and seeing two of my three siblings was nice. Tomo, my twin brother, younger by an hour, thank you, had his own life up in Sapporo with his wife and beautiful little daughter, and hadn't been able to join us for the small family reunion.

"Thank you Nori!"

"Masanori, Botan, Ayumi! Dinner's ready," mom called from the kitchen.

As promised, the evening before I was to return to my little apartment in Shinjuku, I headed to Kagome's home. Having been given the address and told that she lived on the grounds of a shrine, it still surprised me when I walked up the steps to said shrine and saw the beauty of the little place. As much as I loved our country's history, I didn't have nearly as much time as I would like to visit shrines like this. Between work, kenjutsu and koto practise, I rarely had the time to blink, so coming to shrines like this was a bit of a pipe dream.

Still, while I was here, I could admire the beauty of it.

Well, after I did what I came here to do, at least.

I knocked on the front door of the main house and waited.

After a couple of minutes of no answer, I hummed in confusion. If Kagome was home sick, I had expected her to be home. "Maybe she's in the hospital?" I asked aloud. I'd taken to speaking aloud a lot during university. Speaking out loud helped me a lot with learning what I had to, and since then it had just become a habit.

If her condition had escalated, going to the hospital was the right call. She'd be taken care of there.

I guess there was little I could do if that was the case.

Deciding to leave a note, I scrambled through my bag to find my notebook.

It only took a couple of minutes to scribble a note telling them who I was, why I was there and penning in my phone number if they ever wanted to reach me. I posted it through the door then packed my notebook away.

"Might as well look around while I'm here."

I'd set aside this time to do a checkup. I didn't have anywhere else to be, so why not look around the shrine? I was sure it wouldn't be much of an issue.

It only took a little looking around to find a half burnt-down shed. What happened there? Curious, I stepped into the shed, careful to keep out of the way of anything that looked charred. It was full of relics of the past. I could spend hours looking at all of this.

A mummified demon hand.

An old wrapped sword. "So'unga," I read aloud from the seal. Interesting name for a sword.

Ancient prayer beads.

A mask.

"Oh, what's that?" I reached for an old jug sealed with paper tags that was glowing a strange pinky-purple colour. I peeled back a tag and uncorked the jug, and coughed when dust billowed out of it, but was immediately drawn back to that glowing. Whatever was glowing inside of it was incredibly bright. I upended the jug, pouring dust and the glowing thing into my palm.

It looked like a long, skinny shard of glass, just as pink as the glow it was giving off. I'd never seen something normal glow like that.

There was something about it that drew me to it. Like a strange heat it gave off.

I curled my fingers around it and turned to leave the shed.

I nosed about the rest of the shrine, stopping at another small shed. Sliding open the door, I peered inside. Down a set of stairs was a wooden well. "Huh." Some exploration told me that it was a dry well and there was nothing particularly exciting about it. There were no carvings, no inscriptions, nothing else in the well-house that caught my eye.

"Well, you're kind of boring," I told it, coming to stand in front of it again.

Still, I didn't want to just leave.

It was so dull, but there was something about it.

What was it?

Leaning over, I tried to see the bottom of it, to see if there was anything down in the bottom of it that would be interesting. I thought I caught a glimpse of something pale in the darkness, but I couldn't be sure. Only one way to find out whether there was something interesting down there or not.

I hoisted myself over the edge.

Instead of dropping down to the bottom of the well like I should have done, the world lit up around me in pink and blue lights. What the hell? Was this an aura migraine? I'd had migraines before, but I hadn't had an aura migraine since med school.

Blinking hard, I opened my eyes again to the dark inside of the well.

"What the fuck was that?"

Freaked out, I began to climb the side of the well, grabbing onto the uneven stones, then the old wood, and hoisting myself back out.

"I'm fucking hallucinating." Whatever that was in the well, coupled with the forest I was currently seeing around me wasn't a simple aura migraine.

Okay, what had happened in the past couple hours that could have caused hallucinations? I hadn't eaten or drank anything out of the ordinary, so consuming a hallucinogen was out. What other exposure could I have had?

The dust.

I didn't know what was in that jug. There could have been something in that dust that could have caused the hallucinations. But that fast-acting, and this complete? I wasn't seeing something in the current environment. I was seeing a totally new environment.

Okay, what did I need to do?

Call someone. If I was having a complex hallucination, I needed to: one, not be alone and probably two, be around another doctor.

That plan was immediately scuppered when both my mobile phone and pager were showing that I was out of range. How could I possibly be out of range? I was in Tokyo!

Okay, so what else could I do?

Try and clear my chest. If I could get rid of some of the dust in my lungs, I'd be better.

Grimacing, I began a round of autogenic drainage. I only managed to clear a little dusty spit, but a little was better than none.

Still, the hallucination just wasn't going away.

I had to have sat for hours at the base of the well with no change in the hallucination before I started considering that maybe it wasn't a hallucination. It was just too perfect an image, totally unwavering for hours. I'd never known a hallucination like it.

But then that begs the question: what is going on?

If it wasn't a hallucination, then what was it?

What had happened? I'd just appeared in another place, completely different besides the well that I had climbed out of. Though, on inspection, the well was different. It was overrun with ivy, and the bottom was scattered with bones. It didn't have as many marks or scars in the wood as the one in the shrine.

Was it a totally different well?

Was this a totally different place?

I wouldn't find out by just sitting here.

I could sit and ponder all night, but the best way to find answers was to explore and find someone who could help me.

With that in mind, I drew myself to my feet, straightened my jacket and set off straight ahead.

Information Corner!

Aura migraine - aura migraines are when you see flashing colours and lights just before or while you're having a migraine.

Autogenic drainage - AD is a breathing technique that loosens secretions in the lungs so you can clear them. I have to do this daily for my condition, and I can tell you it is not pleasant. But it shifts mucous really well so it's definitely handy.

Thank you for reading the first chapter of Miasma! It's a slow start, and not a lot happens, but we'll get there. The next chapter will have a lot more going on in it, I promise.

Also, I want to point out that while I have a higher medical knowledge than most people, having been in and out of hospitals all my life for severe health conditions, I am not a doctor. Some of the medical stuff I'll be writing about will be stuff I know about, but some will come from the internet, so there's no way for me to be totally sure that I'm accurate with the information I'm giving. I'm doing as much research as I can so I don't sound like a total pillock with what I'm writing, but there's always that margin for error there.

I hope to see you next time!