InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Bound to Tomorrow ❯ The Messengers ( Chapter 8 )

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Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday the nice reviews were a great present

A huge thank you goes out to Raian who helped me clear some of the clutter out of my brain by listening to my ideas and even inspired a few new ideas, too.

Historical background: This chapter is still in 1569.

Ritual Notes: The wetting of the lips is a ritual performed on the dead immediately following death. I'm not sure if this ritual is performed by a priest or not. I would have had Miroku do it but I can't remember if monks are allowed to touch dead bodies like that. It might be considered impure. Not sure though, if anyone knows, please message me!

Author's Note/Question: I'm not a big fan of writing Sesshoumaru stuff. I'm a little… er… ghetto… high society-types like Sesshoumaru are hard things to write. However, I think it'd be silly leaving Rin and Sesshoumaru's escapades out of the story. Everyone would want to know what's going on with them while Inu Yasha and the gang are out and about. So, if anyone is interested in writing an off-shoot about Rin and Sesshoumaru's time together during this fiction then shoot me a message/e-mail… otherwise I'll put off writing their part of the story forever, no joke. I can give any interested party more details once I know who might be willing to contribute.

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Inu Yasha should have known things would go to hell when two bloodied humans stumbled in to town a week after his brother had run off with his Rin. Several villagers tended the outer rice fields had discovered them. Three of them carried one of the men between them, apparently so critically injured that he could not walk. From a distance Inu Yasha could not visually make out how terrible his injuries were but the scent of his blood was so strong there was little question he was mortally wounded. One other villager followed up behind the small group. The man had fared somewhat better than the first in a sense that he could actually walk with the help of the villager's shoulder as a brace. The hanyou could not scent out the other man's injuries because the smell of blood from the first was so overly abundant.

The dog demon's ears twitched at the sound of Kagome and Kaede's rapidly approaching footsteps. The two made a beeline for the one so clearly worse off than the other. Inu Yasha approached cautiously behind them, the smell of fresh human blood made his demonic blood sing while his humanity cringed in empathy.

His wife had carried with her a bag of medicines and bandages. One of the village children who had been helping his father tend the fields had been sent out ahead to alert the two miko. However, the way her eyebrows arched and her eyes widened told her husband she had not brought nearly enough bandages. Inu Yasha closed the remaining distance between the gathering crowds.

He leaned in just enough to whisper to his wife. “Bind him just enough to make him comfortable but save your bandages for the other. He's not going to make it.”

Kagome wanted to argue but one look at the damage—most of it to the man's lower torso—told her that he was exactly right. It looked as though the man had been slashed across the abdomen some time ago and had somehow managed to bind his innards enough to keep them from spilling out. How the man had been able to walk was a mystery to her as the pain must have been excruciating. Regardless, his body never would have recovered from such a wound, something of great importance must have forced him to come so far in such pain rather than die in relative comfort.

Inu Yasha pushed closer to the man and called out, “What happened to you? Who attacked you? Where are you from?”

The man was somewhat delirious and shivering from a chill that only came from blood loss but somehow he managed to gurgle out the name of a village Kaede quickly identified as small farming town a few day's walk to the west of Edo. Kagome grasped his hand gently and repeated Inu Yasha's questions.

He smiled blearily up at her and relaxed at the sound of her voice. “Mina, you got here safely? That is good to know… Stay in Edo… don't go back… don't go back…home… the demons are…”

For a second his eyes regained their focus and locked on the hanyou hovering behind what he believed to be his beloved Mina. The man's eyes grew wide and his voice died on his lips. At such close proximity it was impossible, even with all the blood, to miss the scent of fear that suddenly permeated the air around the dying man. Suddenly, he began to scream, pointing at the half demon even as he struggled to get away. He shrieked that the demons had come for his Mina and that she should run. His irrationally-fueled movements further aggravated his terrible condition while the villagers tried desperately to keep him still. Then, just as suddenly, his eyes rolled up into his head and he went limp. Shock had set in. Moments later Inu Yasha murmured that the man was dead.

“So this man's village was under attack by a demon…?” Kaede wondered aloud.

She had no time to think further upon it because the second injured man had finally managed to make his way to the two priestesses. The villager who had assisted him thus far gently set the man down on a bench so that the women could attend to him. As soon as they did the villager, a man named Hayato, made a bee-line for the hanyou who hovered near by the dead body of the first man.

As quietly as he could Hayato whispered, “This other guy's been saying that his village was attacked by those feral demons. He's scared…keeps babbling that there're demons around every corner… his mind doesn't seem quite right…”

Inu Yasha quickly interpreted the message, “He's spooked? Right, I'll hang back behind that house over there. I'm not straying any farther away than that.” He warned and shrugged a shoulder in the direction of a small hut a few hundred yards away.

The villager nodded and released a relieved sigh. He had been concerned that the other man might hurt himself if he was scared by the sight of a demon. Judging from the screams of the first dead man and the rants from the second one it was a wise move not to chance a secondary confrontation.

Hayato watched the half demon disappear behind one of the huts and then hurried his way back over to Kagome and Kaede. Kagome had just finished carefully stitching up the wound on the man's side. Kaede was almost finished with another gash on his left shoulder. The two agreed that the most worrying injury, the one to his side, was deep but had somehow managed to evade vital organs as far as they could tell. They would have to wait to see if he would live or if infection would seize him.

Kagome knelt down in front of the shivering man and gently took his hand as she had the first, “Would you us what your name is?”

Hayato had brought the man some water on the way back and handed it to him. He had already ordered his wife to prepare a meal as well. The injured man took the earthenware mug in both shaky hands and raised it to his parched lips. He took several long gulps and winced each time when his stomach muscles near the wound contracted.

After a long time he was finally sated and spoke, “My family name is Saburo. Saburo Ken.”

“Thou art safe now master Saburo, we have a great many warriors here.” Kaede began politely, not quite sure what social status he hailed from, “Would ye tell us where ye are from and what happened? Our warriors may be willing to assist.”

He glanced around for a few minutes before he spotted the dead man several feet away. Some of the women tended to him and when he saw one of them moisten his lips with water he knew his traveling companion was dead. They would not have performed the Buddhist ritual otherwise. He heaved a shaky sigh and stared down at his nearly empty mug. He decided then that his companion's story should come first.

“His name… That man's name over there… It's Shin. I-I don't know his family name.” He swallowed hard before he continued, “He told me his village was under attack. I met him on the way here. My village is to the northwest… I knew he wasn't going to make it but he said that there were warriors in Edo who could save everyone.”

“His village was under attack? The village ye hail from; is it also under attack?” Kaede queried.

Ken nodded to his mug, unable to meet the elderly woman's gaze. “I should have stayed with my family. I should have defended them. But the elder told me to send for help—kind of like Shin. His patrol leader sent him for help…” He suddenly locked eyes with Kaede. “I should have stayed. I could have helped. It all happened so fast. There were youkai everywhere. They came through the forest like a tidal wave and tore apart any man on sight…but—the women, oh gods, the women!”

Kagome squeezed his hand to bring him back into focus, “What about the women, what happened to the women?” She urged.

“They took them… women, some girls, but mostly women. Those that escaped are hiding in the shrine—but they're trapped. We thought we could wait them out but they stayed. It's like they're waiting for us to come out. After a few days the food in the shrine started running low and the elder sent out men—most of them just boys—out into the village. He sent them out to distract them while a few of us ran for help. There were three of us… the demons got Shou and Ryuu… but I kept running. I got hit. I kept running anyway.”

“Ye were bleeding, why did the demons stop pursuing thou?” Kaede wondered aloud. Once the scent of blood was in the air demons were nigh-unstoppable. They should not have let him get away or if they did they ought to have stalked him down before the day was done. It made little sense.

He stared at the elderly miko, “I-I don't know. They should have come for me, shouldn't they? I remember their howls. It seemed like they were breathing down my neck. I don't know… I ran for so long until I realized they weren't howling anymore.” He paused to catch his breath before he continued, “I found Shin in bad shape on the way there. I helped patch him up a little. He told me about Edo. He told me the same thing was happening in his village. Please, you've got to go there! There are people waiting for help!”

Eventually he related what little he knew of Shin's story. The man had been part of a group of hunters hired to protect his village from the random feral youkai attacks. Shin had lived among them for several years, eventually marrying a local woman named Mina. One day they had returned from a patrol only to find their town devastated and demons grabbing up any women they could find. His leader quickly mounted an attack while half of the hunting party rounded up the villagers and led them to the safety of the local shrine.

The hunting party was able to thin the ranks of the attacking youkai considerably but not without heavy casualties. Eventually it became clear to Shin's leader that they needed to send for help. They led one last offensive which allowed a few men to escape into the woods. All were hunted down; including Shin, but at the last minute when he was wounded his leader had appeared out of nowhere and with his last breath had fought the demons off long enough for Shin to get away. The man was desperate and he quickly explained to them how to get to his village. He emphasized over and over again that there was little time.

By the time Ken had finished speaking Miroku and Sango had been summoned and were quickly filled in on anything they had missed. Ken had no further information to give and was taken away to Kaede's hut to recuperate. Once the messenger was gone Inu Yasha returned to the group. His sharp hearing had picked up everything. He could already hear Kagome formulating a strategy with Sango and Miroku.

“…I don't think we have many options here.” She worried.

“It seems apparent that we will have to split up.” The monk replied.

“I don't like the sound of that” Sango grumbled.

“Neither do I but what choice do we have? Inu Yasha, what do you think?” The young miko turned to her approaching husband.

“Feh, I agree with Sango on one thing. I don't like how it sounds, but I don't see how else we'll get to the villages in time.”

“Shrines don't stock much food.” Miroku added, “If we don't split up and clear these places out those villagers are likely to starve.”

Everyone became quiet for a moment. Lost in thought until Kaede appeared again this time though, a familiar face accompanied her.

“Kohaku!” Sango cried as she ran to embrace her younger brother. “What are you doing here?”

Kohaku had grown quite a bit over the years since last they had seen him. He was a tall, slender man barely pushing his twenties. He had not grown quite as tall as Miroku but was certainly a few inches taller than his sister. His boyish features had been replaced by more angular traits that mirrored his late father. Kohaku wore a newer, larger version of his hunters' armor in the same colors he had worn previously. However, some things did not change; Sango's brother still sported the exact same hair style he had once worn as a boy, even the length of his hair remained exactly the same as it had then.

The young man gave his sister a gentle hug. “I… sensed something wrong in the forest… so I came here because I figured you might know.”

Kohaku had inherited a special ability when Kikyo had passed away. He could detect strong changes in the energy surrounding natural areas. He could sense an approaching earthquake a day before it happened or locate the starting point of a forest fire days after it happened. He could even sense impending lightning storms. The man had never been quite sure if the ability was an after effect of the shard implanted in his neck or from the small part of Kikyo that had saved his life when it was removed. Whatever had caused the gift had made his ability somewhat broad. He knew if something dangerous was coming but could not identify specifically what the approaching danger was. All Kohaku could do was follow the impression the sense left in his mind to the source and try to determine the reason when he arrived.

He gave a polite nod to Miroku before he turned to Kagome, his face serious. “Lady Kaede has brought me up to speed on the situation. I would like to go with you to one of the villages.”

Sango opened her mouth to speak but Kaede intercepted her, “Ye shall accompany Miroku to one of the villages. Inu Yasha and Kagome should always be together so they shall go to the other village.”

“What about me?” The huntress clutched the edge of Kohaku's armor as if she might be torn from it.

“Ye shall stay here. We need a strong warrior to protect the village. Ye have children to care for as well, have ye forgotten?” Kaede gently chided.

For a moment Miroku could see the inner battle forged in his wife's eyes until clarity took over. Her gaze shifted down to the ground; her fingers released her brother's armor and she quietly took a step away from him. She took a second to compose herself and then returned to her husband's side. She gave his hand a small squeeze and smiled up at him. He returned her smile. The young priestess could barely fathom how they could repress the urge to grab one another in a tight embrace. She would have thrown proper public etiquette to the wind about then were she in the same situation. However, it was how they were raised and she knew it but it never changed how much it pulled on her heart to see such restraint.

“Be careful.” The huntress whispered.

The priest put on his boldest smile, “Of course.”

“Let's get going. Miroku, Kohaku, head for the village to the west.” Inu Yasha's strong voice broke in. He could smell Kirara nearby. That meant it was time to go.

Kagome wondered briefly why he had chosen the town; normally it did not matter to him where they gang went; he simply went where he was told. Then it hit her. The western village was closer to Edo; should anything go wrong Miroku and Kohaku would be the first to return home. Not only that, but the hanyou could rely on his own super-human speed to get them home in a hurry. It was only sensible that they venture further out. Once again, she was impressed by how much her husband knew and how little he let on that he knew it.

Inu Yasha squatted to allow Kagome onto his back while Kirara transformed and Kohaku and Miroku clambered onto her back. They all waved at the two remaining women before taking off in their respective directions towards the beleaguered villages.

As Kaede and Sango prepared to leave Shippo trudged up to them, yawning, “Where is everyone?”

The women looked at each other and shook their heads.

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It had taken Ken two days to walk to Edo. For Kagome and her hanyou companion it took half that time. In the wee hours of the morning Kagome was roused from her sleep where she had been snuggled up against her husband's back when he abruptly stopped moving.

“You awake?” Inu Yasha asked and when she said yes he allowed her down to the ground.

They were on the outskirts of Ken's village. The hanyou coughed, made a face, and then spit into the ground. The town reeked of decaying flesh. From a distance he could make out the forms of bloated corpses. As they cautiously approached it became apparent that they had not been moved. To the demon it was a bad sign.

“This isn't good, Kagome…” He grumbled, as he raised the sleeve of his haori to his sensitive nose to cover it.

“It's so quiet here… have the demons gone?” Kagome asked, wondering if he might know.

“I don't know.” He admitted, “By the looks of things these bodies haven't been moved. It could mean that the villagers are still in hiding or…” He hated to say it, but his wife needed to be prepared for the worst “…there's no one left to bury their dead.”

His wife didn't respond. Kagome's less sensitive human nose finally began to pick up the scent of death. She quickly produced a cloth from one of her sleeves and tied it around her nose and mouth to lessen the smell. Once she did she offered another one to her husband, who gratefully accepted though he had been suffering for some time already.

Inu Yasha kept one hand on his sword hit as he approached and examined the closest body. The body was that of a middle-aged man who was barely recognizable from both the physical decay and the deep lacerations covering him. It was clear that a demon had torn him up.

“Why the hell is he still here?” He mumbled to himself.

“Who's here?” His wife replied. She stared at the remains for a few moments before she chanted a quick prayer for the deceased.

“No, I mean, this guy's been shredded by a demon… but not eaten. This guy shouldn't even be here. None of these bodies should be here.”

Kagome followed the direction of his eyes and she spotted a dozen more bodies along the main road through the town. They had been left similarly abandoned which was odd. A demon should have run off with the dead to gobble them up in the privacy of their den. To leave such a, for lack of a better word: feast, was unthinkable.

“I don't even see carrion birds.” She said and wondered why that bothered her just as much as the carnage?

“I don't like this. Let's hurry and get to the shrine.” Inu Yasha suppressed a shudder and led his wife in the direction Ken had described.

They quickly found the shrine…or what was left of it. Kagome could hear the hanyou curse under his breath as they surveyed the remains of the ruined building. It was in pieces, the heavy timber lay scattered about as if it had been shaken to bits in a child's hand like a fragile toy. Inu Yasha was not sure if he should be relieved that he could not scent any blood or decomposition inside the building… or if he should be concerned. If there had been people inside the shrine then they had left, killed, or taken before it was destroyed. Kagome had begun to poke through the rubble when the half demon shook his head.

“Nobody's in there. No blood, no nothing.”

“Gods, did someone take them?” She placed her hand over her heart as if it would help ease the twisting pain within it.

“Some demons are picky… they prefer to eat a certain gender or age… but those kind are few. They shouldn't be operating in two places at once… but some of these marks on the other bodies. It looks like more than one youkai attacked here. The youkai only swarmed like that around…” He felt the name catch in his throat.

Kagome finished his sentence, “…Naraku.” The possibility of Naraku still in existence somewhere made her skin crawl. “But that can't be right. When swarms attacked like that they didn't take any hostages. They just demolished everything in sight.”

Inu Yasha had to agree with her. “You're right. Something else was going on here…”

His wife sighed and shook her head as she began to roll up her sleeves. “Well, whatever happened here there's no way to tell now. I need to purify these bodies and ready them for cremation. We can't just leave them out here like this.”

For the next several hours the hanyou and the miko went through the grueling process of cleaning up the dead. By late afternoon they were able to begin cremating the bodies. It took them until nightfall to pick through the bones and place them into various containers they took from the empty village huts. Kagome insisted, since they did not know the names of any of the deceased, that they write a loose description of each person and where they had found them on the urns. The hanyou had tried to convince her of the futility of such things but his wife was adamant that they do so, just in case the women somehow managed to return or some other family traveled to the village. He complained in a gentler tone that she was too kind, even to the dead.

It was nightfall by the time everything had been completed. They left the urns in the town's cemetery. Neither felt like sleeping in the empty village so Inu Yasha sniffed out a safe camp site near a hot spring. Even though he was exhausted, the hanyou watched over his wife in a nearby tree while she bathed first. Eventually, she invited him to join. At first he objected… until she warned him that she would sit him and would not sleep with him smelling as he did. No further arguments had to be made.

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The next morning went by slowly for the couple. No amount of distance seemed to entirely eliminate the memory of the terrible odor of rotting corpses, burning pyres, or the vision of the dead villagers. Just before the sun reached its apex signaling the afternoon hours Inu Yasha slowed his lope through the forest. He stood still to sniff the air while he continued to ignore his wife's questions. Then his eyes narrowed and he suddenly burst into a sprint while the surprised miko clung to his back.

“Inu Yasha, what on earth is going on?” She hollered as the rushing wind seemed to rip the words right out of her mouth.

The dog demon heard her regardless, “Its Shippo's scent… what the hell is he doing out here?”

The uneasy feeling that had bubbled in her stomach since the two injured villagers arrived in Edo seemed to flip-flop at the mention of the kitsune. Shippo would never venture too far away from the village whenever Inu Yasha, Kagome, and Miroku happened to be out. It had been quietly assumed that both he and Sango kept watch over their home whenever they were away. For the boy to be out so far could not be good.

Inu Yasha entered a small clearing and stopped again. Seconds later the ginger-haired boy came tearing into the clearing. At the moment he would have smashed headlong into them the hanyou's claws shot out and expertly caught his shoulders. Shippo jerked to a stop and stared up into the half demon's golden eyes. He panted heavily from the exertion of having run for miles without a break.

Before the half demon could even ask Shippo began chattering between choked breaths, “Inu…Yasha… Edo… attacked. Got to… M-Miroku…S-s…”

The boy collapsed to the ground unconscious.