InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Double Vision ❯ Chapter 35 ( Chapter 34 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Sesshomaru looked down at his brother, working on regaining his usual remote façade. What a mess, in more ways than one. He had toyed with Inuyasha for years, inflicting injury, but never maiming him beyond his capacity to heal. Lately he had begun to regret not having killed him outright. Then he wouldn’t be in this quandary. Rin had selected Inuyasha to father her pup. He had always let Rin choose her own path, up until the time he was forced to leave her in Edo. If he continued to let her determine her own destiny, she would surely want to stay with this useless mongrel. Resigning himself, he admitted that there were no good options. He might as well drag his brother back to Rin and try to intimidate the hell out of both of them, in hopes of getting them to grow up enough to serve as adequate parents to the new pup.

He was still lost in thought, staring blankly at the bloody heap on the floor when Jakotsu launched himself across the room, throwing himself to his knees and wrapping his arms around the demon lord’s legs, crying hysterically. Sesshomaru, distracted with his depressing train of thought, had to stop himself from placing a comforting hand upon hysterical young man’s head. His stance was so reminiscent of the way Rin used to attach himself to his person. Disgusting. But opportunity never knocks twice, and there was no way the demon lord was going to carry his brother out of there himself.

Sesshomaru left the inn and strode majestically down the main road, heading westward out of town. His white silks bore no stains from the fight, for they were bespelled. He appeared pristine and dignified as befitted a great lord. Behind him trailed a beautiful youth with streaks of tears and makeup running down his face, carrying Inuyasha’s bloody and battered body in his arms.

The demon lord made his way out of town. The place made him very uneasy. His most immediate concern was that there was something about the town that prevented his powers from working. When he had passed through roughly a hundred years ago, his powers had not been affected. He remembered it as a hamlet called Fudo. Situated at the base of the eastern mountains, it had been the home of a small group of humans who supported themselves by mining and smelting iron ore. Since the last time he had been there it had grown by leaps and bounds. In his recent foray into Fudo, he had observed many signs of heavy industry. The air was redolent with coal smoke, and there was an incessant clanging and banging, as from a huge foundry. The infrastructure of the town was obviously in the process of incredibly quick growth, with human and demon workers hurrying to and fro and carts full of stone and wood being pulled down the streets by large, low-level demons in harnesses. He had heard of attempts to use such demons as draft beasts before, but such endeavors invariably failed. Could the same phenomenon that had stolen his demonic powers be taming the normally intractable oni?

He was troubled by this industrial build-up and the extremely overbuilt roads he had observed. While good roads benefited commerce, it was his experience that the only reason such heavy roads were constructed was to accommodate massive weapons and large armies. It was not just the east-west road through Fudo that was built to military specifications, but the north-south one as well. He turned to look back at the town, gesturing to Jakotsu to keep walking. As he had when he first came upon the road, he dug his heel into the roadbed. This time, he paid close attention to the methods and materials that had been used in its construction. As he had first thought, it was a typical Roman-style metalled road. The road itself was considerably wider than Sesshomaru was tall, and banked so the center was higher than the sides. Curbstones bordered the edges of the road. Within the roadbed, there was a bottom foundation of stones the size of a human skull, topped by fist-sized stones, then a well-packed layer of what he had originally thought to be red clay and gravel. The roads in the populous part of Fudo had been paved with flat stone joined with the same substance, but once the road left the borders of the town, the surface, which he had earlier assumed to be clay, was clearly slag left over from the manufacturing of iron. Though the term “road metal” referred to the common, non-metallic, crushed stone commonly used for paving, he had seen slag used as metalling in regions where iron was being worked before. It made an extremely durable, solid road surface.

He was not the tactician his father had been, but he was the Lord of the Western Lands nonetheless, and such military preparations did not bode well. He caught up with Jakotsu easily. Once he had returned his brother to Rin’s side, he would deal with Fudo.

As evening fell, Sesshomaru stopped near a stream to give his brother a chance to recover from his beating, and for Jakotsu to rest. Jakotsu went to the stream, and filled his hands with ice-cold water, which he dashed in Inuyasha’s face, bringing forth a blistering string of curses. It would take a good day’s travel on foot to come to the place Sesshomaru had left Rin. Jakotsu told them that he did not need to eat in his current state, but he did need to rest occasionally, so they all settled down for the night to get what sleep they could.