InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bloodlust: Purity ❯ Forward Momentum ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6

Forward Momentum

 

Kagome sat and stared at the play of light on the backs of her hands for long minutes, dazed by her sudden awakening, troubled by the thoughts that came with it. The light was pretty, shifting with the ripples of water through that damning pool, daring her, as always, to come again and seek for deeper secrets.

How could it be that the future held the cause of this creeping danger? Eldest would not explain the power of the well to her; Kaede did not know its secret. If Kikyo had known, she surely would never have told her. Still - the future did not influence the past.

Only she did that.

“Kagome?”

From the doorway, Eldest's voice sounded as though it were coming from a great distance, barely piercing the fog of vision and time that separated Kagome from herself. She had forgotten what her brother looked like - and how many stairs were there from the door-platform down to the well?

“Kagome.”

She shook her head and looked up slowly, but her face did not show the rumble of thoughts that were sliding through the hands of her memory.

“You must come with me, Kagome. Your son is…drowning.”

“Drowning? We are in a wood, Eldest.”

“Yes, in a wood - the wood of Dreams. And is that not the thing most dangerous to him, more dangerous than fire, or sword, or death?”

Kagome's eyes flared as her head shot up to meet the cool, caring face that dared that word.

Dreams more dangerous than death?

The name of the Dreaming Woods came from the power of the trees, some soporific energy that catapulted all but the most powerful of souls into dreams of power. The deeper glades had been explored by no one but Eldest in her own living memory, too sure of her own power to suffer the unconscious burn of old indulgence. Though legend spoke now of how that power was Eldest's, a protection for her chosen home, the only legend she knew gave the Dreaming Wood a much more mystical origin. Many stories had been lost to the rolling of time's long press.

Thinking these thoughts, Eldest led Kagome back through the trees, down to where Kouga lay in a dreamless sleep. As they approached, Kagome opened her senses until she felt wide, her awareness ajar. She watched him for subtle signs, seeking the reason for a magic presence which she sensed so strongly that it sent tendrils of creeping power down her throat, strangling.

A whisked frailty of fear tumbled in the air, even as Kouga slept and did not dream. Eldest twisted her fingertips near his temples, dispelling her previous magic, and another power was immediately more noticeable, locking into him like a bird of prey and tightening the lines across his forehead. In sleeping slow-motion Kagome watched him snarl, his claws reaching up for a memory's flesh, and then he turned into a quieter slumber.

Eldest used that same twisting motion of her fingers, as though she gripped an immovable bar that tuned her thoughts to the frequency of Kouga's dreams. Her eyes locked Kagome into the spell, holding her still and sweeping her in.

Almost instantly, they were drawn through a wave, a tsunami-wall of images. Looking down, Kagome saw that she had no form, only sight. In the dreams of her son she was a silent observer who was not noticed and who could not interact with what she saw. With only a listening expression, Eldest watched the dreams of one life and the memories of another play past her glinting eyes, but Kagome felt plunged into one of her own nightmares.

She was not prepared for the violence that greeted her. The screams and cries of selfish battle were not a new music to her; her eyes sprawled out over the scene, catching every dismayed thrust of steel and sharpness. The eloquence of warfare spoke in flashes of light and the adrenaline edged gleam of blood slicked blades. There was more than a battle in front of her - the one who led the fighting wolves had magic touched eyes, and around him a wave of powerful sound roared and ripped through the air.

With a rush like the sea, the ground rose up in a fury against the ones he designated enemies. Eldest knew that he was Kouga, full of pride and passion - had he been born in time with her, his soul would have fitted well the raw fury of those old days. Kagome saw a battle she did not know, but a smile and a laughing whirl of swords that she did.

The noise swelled and grew, finally falling flat with the leading edge of dirt, and Kouga pulled his swords free from the neck and belly of his last kill. Eldest did not have time to see who he had been fighting before the images shifted. Kagome did not even look.

There was no battle this time - they were in a different clearing, where water flowed in two patient rivers and the trees were old, old, old. It was night instead of day, the stars visible among brotherly clouds who in their turn passed before the face of the moon and bowed. The Wolf was kneeling on the ground, and Kagome knew he was weeping.

The time of silence around him was charged with electric grief, a marimba pointed cache of sadness leaking away into the night. Though she knew that the youkai in front of her had long since surrendered his flesh to the touch of the earth that gave him power, still there was a part of her that was embarrassed to witness this private outpouring. Quiet, still, she steeled herself to remain.

“Kagome…my Kagome…why?”

There was the depth of the pain; there was the definition of agony. He had really loved her, and his soul had been torn by the impossible. A howling met the sky from his black eyes, straining, and the Wolf shape that had fallen to Riordn's blade once in a dreamless past padded the solemn ground in a circle of pain.

Eldest's mother soul longed to offer some comfort, but it would be false and useless. These were dreams of the dead, despite their effect on the living, and she could work no comfort for a departed soul.

The Wolf she watched pawed in great circles, working the soil into froth and frenzy, howling a moon-throated roar into the night sky. Hunted creatures safe in hidden burrows felt a sharpened sting of fear, and huddled closer together against the terror of that gnawing, crawling cry. Beneath leather-padded paws, the ground shivered and trembled. Grief-yellowed sparks bit at the earth with thunder tipped tongues, and their lashing cracked the earth at Kouga's feet and spilled deadened greenery over the edge of a natal cliff.

The quaking ground seemed to fill his need, and it faded into the shaking of Kouga, Wolf, and Kouga, youkai…mostly human. Then the landscape fell away into uncharted blankness, dropping the walls of the world around them.

There was no reality and never had been. This was a dream, but Eldest could not control the fragments that spun around her now, different memories hammering for their place, old voices repeating themselves in an endless fog of words. A deserts' dryness came into her mouth, and she wrenched herself and Kagome free of the dream - and Kouga into wakefulness - with one shudder of power.

He sat up faster than either of them was able to move, and caught his mother's arm in tight, nerveless fingers. The muscles in his jaw spasmed; the twitch passed up the line of his cheek, and ended in a tic at the corner of his left eye. Floating in her own flesh, waiting to be enfolded, Kagome had only enough unity with her body for her gaze to flicker up and meet his eyes. The line of muddy color that divided them was gone. The gold had faded, dulled to a smooth and creamy brown, but the silver remained only as flecks of brightness.

Kouga stood, pulling her with him, and she dangled off his arm, stuck in the returning sensation of skin around her thoughts. Her muscles shivered, but her joints were locked, and the white slice of teeth that glinted at her in the darkness was curved at a teasing angle she knew all too well.

“Kagome.”

Her lips parted, quivering, hearing her name when it should not come from his mouth.

“Kagome…”

His breath was hot and moist, close to her skin, and she closed her eyes, fighting off the shiver of revulsion that sought to pass through her at the heavy sound of need in his voice. That voice did not belong to her son.

“Kouga…”

Whatever remnant there was of her son rose up behind the struggle of color in his eyes and swelled, hearing loss in her voice and nothing found. When he blinked, and let go of her with a startled breath, she sighed, finding someone she knew as the metal challenge in his eyes growled, and backed away.

“Mother? What -“

It was Eldest who rescued him, when Kagome could not speak; Eldest who took him firmly by the arm, and led him up the hill into the trees. The woods closed around them, and cleansed Kouga of his need to question. When Eldest let go of him, he stumbled, and the air seemed suddenly to press on him with the warm weight of a blanket, or a late summer evening.

He had felt something, someone; like a wave inside his brain it had consumed his thoughts, his essence, until he was both drowned and transfigured - he could not remember the details of his present life, but he remembered the vision that had come over him, the memories so precise and damning. Now that more and more of this other life came to him, his heart was confused. How had his father - the father who trained him, and could make his mother laugh; how could he be the same person as this darkly frozen demon of his dreams?

And Inuyasha. He remembered that name now, and had more detail for the person behind it. With his own emotions behind them, the memory of Inuyasha was confusing. His mother had loved him; everyone said this, secretly, while his father's eyebrows contracted at the whisper of his brother's name. They had fought each other, though they were blood brothers, and for nothing more than the sword he himself now carried.

He stopped in his tracks, and tightened his hand on the tetsusaiga's hilt. The sword shimmered, as though it felt his tension, and his mother's eyes flickered toward him. The aura of that sword was too familiar to evade her detection.

“Kouga? There is nothing near us to be worried about. I would know.”

He smiled, and relaxed his grip, forcing calmness on himself, but his thoughts were becoming more divided with every step he took. A black flame was creeping through him again, pushing at the edge of will that restrained the tide of memory, and pushing back made his temples throb.

They were moving through more widely separated trees now, and he could see the sloping roof of a long, low house over the edge of a shallow ridge winding through the wood. A tighter, more focused thrust of vision forced itself into his consciousness, prickling his eyes with heat.

Kagome and Eldest walked in front of him, talking in low tones; even if they had been shouting, he doubted he could hear. A low hum of remembered voices stung his ears, obscuring the sounds of the waking world. Watching them, walking like an automaton, his eyes blurred, or something passed over him. Kagome lost her silver tones, darkening until her hair was black and thick and the glitter of her eyes was pure and melted brown. Suddenly he realized that if he could see her eyes, she must be looking at him. A low and agonized moan leaked out of his mouth, and without a word he turned and ran into the press of trees.

Kagome moved as if to follow him, but Eldest stopped her with a hand on her arm and a shake of her head.

“He is being taken, now. You could not reach him. When he is pulled under again, he will come for you, and you must try to draw out your son. You did it once, just now, with only his name. You can do it again.”

Kagome shuddered, and peered out into the forest after her son. Her arms swarmed up around herself, squeezing her worry back into her body. There was nothing for her to see, and she sighed, and turned back to Eldest.

“How do I save him? What have I done to my son?”

The Dragon-miko's eyes were suddenly sharp on her, probing.

“You think this is your doing, sister-daughter? How is it that you think you could have brought this twinning of soul on your son?”

Kagome shook her head, filled with a strange urge to laugh at the sheer absurdity of her life.

“I did not go back. I was not meant to be here, was I? I was born into a different time, a different world, and yet I stayed here despite it. I am changing things; I know this. The legend of shikon no tama that I was taught ended with Kikyou, the shrine maiden who burned the jewel into the afterlife with her - though before the well, she did not have a name to me.”

Eldest turned and continued through the trees towards her house, still speaking, so that Kagome was forced to follow her.

“There are higher authorities, and greater powers than you or I, Kagome. I am counted wise, and ancient among our kind, but I do not have all answers - nor can I always interpret those I am given. Perhaps - perhaps my most recent answers you will have an easier time understanding.”

A haunted look had crept into the edges of Eldest's ice-fingered eyes, and Kagome felt a shudder of some ancient sadness tug at her, and withdraw.

 

Shippou wandered aimlessly in the depths of the castle, bored and without a companion. His father was nowhere to be found, and Rin was occupied with overseeing his mother's usual responsibilities and watching Kystra.

Only a few doors led anywhere this far down - the bathing springs steamed at the end of one corridor, and a long passageway led to the darting energy of the binding door that held their protection in check. Therefore, it was with a good deal of surprise that he found Kinawai, bright-eyed and pacing in a dark, dead-end passage.

“Shippou!”

There was something guilty in Kinawai's expression, or his tone. Not quite definable, it tickled Shippou's devious senses, and prodded him into questions that he might not normally have asked.

“Why are you hiding down here, Kinawai?”

The tiger lord answered him stiffly, not meeting his eyes. The impression of guilty thoughts wriggled deeper into Shippou's thoughts.

“I am not hiding. I came down here to be alone; I did not think anyone but Sesshomaru frequented this part of the castle, and he is not here.”

“True enough. I was bored; Rin is no fun when she's playing Lady, and Soki is too young - Akira has taken her to choose a horse.”

Amusement printed itself on Kinawai's face.

“A horse? Surely your father can provide her with better than a simple horse.”

Shippou shrugged.

“It is what she wants; she is always drawing horses, anyways - she's becoming quite good. Rin is jealous - she always wanted to be an artist, but a brush in her hands is mostly useless. I don't know why it mattered to her so much; she sings like a tennyo, and fights like youkai.”

He laughed, and Kinawai smiled, but a certain impatience was evident at the corner of his mouth.

“You say she sings? I did not know that.”

Shippou smiled with a smug satisfaction that passed Kinawai completely by.

“Oh yes she sings - how could you not know? You are here so often, I'm surprised you haven't heard her. One of these days, you ought to sneak down and listen when she goes for her bathe.”

His eyes darted up to meet Kinawai's with a devious cunning in them that only a kitsune could properly express.

“But no peeking, Kinawai.”

He sauntered casually down the hallway, snickering silently to himself. He would treasure the shocked and tongue-tied expression that had covered Kinawai's face for a long, long time. The tiger Taiyoukai was not following him, and he went up the stairs to the main floor of the castle slowly. At their top, he met his sister carrying towel and comb, and had to lean against the wall and breath deeply.

She smiled at him, the rest of her face puzzled by his sudden halt, and continued down the stairs. Shippou slid down the wall, holding his side, afraid he would explode. When she was out of sight, the laughter burst out of him, and he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

He really, really hoped Kinawai didn't peek. Rin was scary when she was angry.