InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Fading ❯ Knotted String ( Chapter 10 )

Ten is a special number, don't you think? So I'll start off this little author's note with a big thank you for every review I've gotten. I'm honoured that you'd take the time to tell me what you think of my fic ^_^ To tell you guys the truth, there are a lot of ways I could take this story from here. I'm not quite sure which way I want it to go, so suggestions are welcome!

Chapter Ten: Knotted String

He couldn't believe it. Kagome was back, and lying in his arms as if she hadn't been lost to him only moments before. Inu Yasha allowed himself the luxury of bathing in his relief and joy, not caring that his back was sore from the girl's exuberant greeting or that he was currently lying in the dirt. She's back… Oh Kami, she's back!

Kagome had the decency to look embarrassed, however, when she realized how this little tableau would look to anyone walking by. A girl in strange clothing lying on top of a white-haired man with dog ears in the middle of the street was not exactly a common occurrence, she guessed. Reluctantly, she untangled her limbs from his and, still clutching his hand, she stood up.

"Sorry about that," Kagome mumbled, her cheeks pink as she looked at Inu Yasha's muddy clothes and hair.

"That's… that's okay," he replied, still unsure whether he was dreaming or not. His grip on her hand tightened.

"I see that you're… back to normal... Kagome," Riyo said, calm once again. This answer seemed to incense Inu Yasha immediately.

"See?! You knew what I was talking about all along, miko!" he said loudly, anger apparent in his voice. "It took you long enough to decide to drop your little charade and bring Kagome back!"

The dark miko looked confused. Calmly confused, of course. "But I didn't."

"You know what I think? I think you should… You didn't?" Inu Yasha's shout died down. His brows furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I didn't bring Kagome back," Riyo said, giving the dark-haired girl a quick glance. "Some other kind of magic did."

"I don't believe you," Inu Yasha said stubbornly. "Only a miko like you could do that. Maybe you let out some energy without thinking." He waved his hands like he was casting a spell, letting go of Kagome's fingers in order to do so. "You know, all that uncontrollable dark magic that you were jabbering on about a while ago."

Riyo, however, didn't answer him. Her almost-black eyes were staring in shock at the spot beside him. Inu Yasha followed her gaze, annoyed that she wasn't listening to him. But when he saw what she was looking at, rage pushed out every other emotion inside of him.

Kagome was standing there next to him, a look of surprise and horror on her face as her body quickly became transparent again. It was just like before, except a thousand times quicker.

Inu Yasha, jerking out of his stunned gaze, reached out to her, but she disappeared with a shimmer and a faint cry.

Whirling back to face Riyo he grabbed the front of her clothes, not caring that he ripped the material with his claws. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO KAGOME?"

The normally-serene woman glared at him. "Why must you always blame me when things go wrong? I don't know why she disappeared!"

Inu Yasha snarled as he found that Kagome's scent had vanished as well. It was like she had never even been here. She couldn't have simply faded a second time!

Feeling the demon in him rising, Inu Yasha bared his fangs at Riyo. "It was a trick wasn't it? You made a copy of her or something! An illusion! You fucking bitch, did you think it was FUNNY to do that to me?!"

But there seemed to be something wrong with Riyo. Her gaze was unfocused, her expression slack. "I… I can't remember… Why am I…? Kag... Kago..."

Inu Yasha released her clothes slowly, his golden eyes intent as he tried to figure out what was going on now. It didn't look like she was faking this strange incoherency, but who knew what the wench was capable of? "Don't tell me you don't remember. I know damn well that you know who I am and who Kagome is."

Riyo's body gave a slight jolt and her eyes grew piercing again, but shaded with confusion. "Why am I out here?"

Inu Yasha, frustrated to no end, began to run through his impressive list of curses, making sure not to miss one. By the time he was done swearing, he was out of breath and Riyo was looking seriously pissed off.

"Did that little tantrum have any meaning to it?" she asked icily. "If so, do explain it to me."

"Damn it all to hell, I have HAD IT with you! One minute you know me and the next you're acting like I'm a stranger who took you out of your home by force!" Inu Yasha yelled. "I'm leaving!"

Riyo merely gave him another cold stare before turning and walking back towards her house.

She acts like a bloody queen! Inu Yasha thought. Heartless bitch!

It was then that he realized his and Riyo's argument had attracted a crowd of villagers. Many were gripping farming tools and some even had weapons out. Every single one of them was glaring at him in a mixture of fear and hatred.

"What are you all looking at?" he shouted, beyond caring about what their reactions would be. "I'm not some animal in a menagerie!"

"Half-breeds are not welcome here," one of the men said, repeating Riyo's earlier statement. "Get out!" The others raised their makeshift weapons threateningly.

Inu Yasha showed his fangs in a cocky grin, allowing his claws to extend to their full length. A good battle might fill up the empty spot in him that Kagome had left behind.

But before either he or the villagers could attack, Inu Yasha was thrown off balance by a sudden tug. It almost felt like when Kagome sat him, but not as forceful. I swear, if this is Riyo's doing I'm gonna- Another tug cut off his words.

Something strange was happening.

A villager suddenly collapsed, his skin turning a sickly colour. As he lay on the ground, his flesh disintegrated until all that was left were bones that could belong to a year-old corpse. Another villager fell the ground, with the same results.

This can't be Riyo - she wouldn't do this to her village. So what the hell is happening? As Inu Yasha watched in shock, men and women died within seconds while others simply took on a sickly cast, as if they had been ill for weeks.

Feeling something akin to revulsion, the half demon backed away. Bloodshed suddenly didn't seem so appetizing.

Once he reached the entrance to the village, Inu Yasha turned and began to lope back to Miroku and the others, his mind crammed with thoughts and questions as night fell around him.

The sound of something crunching underfoot made him pause. Glancing down, Inu Yasha saw that it was ashes - old ashes by the looks of things. A house must have burned down here.

The charred dirt under the ashes was, oddly enough, arranged in rows like a garden. Inu Yasha bent down and picked up a blackened plant that had escaped the worst of the fire. It looked like some sort of herb.

Wait a minute… The hanyou stood up and looked around harder, taking in everything at once. Realization hit him. That was where the house was, and here was the herb garden… but we saved Jinenji, didn't we? Memories flashed in front of Inu Yasha's eyes.

He saw angry villagers, certain that Jinenji had been eating people from their village, come to the huge hanyou's house, bent on killing him and his human mother. And there was Kagome, yelling at them to leave Jinenji alone. The roof… it had caught on fire as Jinenji's mother came out of the house. And then the demon came, with Inu Yasha close behind it. Jinenji had killed the demon in the end.

Inu Yasha blinked as one final scene played out in his mind's eye. Him and Kagome, waving as they walked away from Jinenji and his mother in their herb garden. The villagers talked and laughed with those they had once despised as they all picked the plants to be used in medicine. A touching scene, and one that had given Inu Yasha a spark of hope that maybe one day he too could be accepted as a hanyou.

But these ashes... Inu Yasha let the charred herb fall back to the ground, shifting from foot to foot uneasily. First the villagers dying within seconds for no apparent reason, and now this.

Maybe the villagers burned the house sometime after we left, Inu Yasha reasoned. But the edgy feeling didn't leave him.

He had just started out for Miroku and the others again when that strange tug yanked at him. Trying to stay upright, Inu Yasha planted his feet firmly apart, cursing under his breath. What was going on now?

The orange-red glow of fire and the sickening image of people rotting to corpses in seconds flashed in front of his eyes. Could they have something to do with Kagome's disappearance and this pulling that was now affecting him?

"Damn it, Kagome," Inu Yasha muttered, his voice thick with the agony of loss as he tried to ignore the tugs and continue on. "Why did you have to go?"

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Miroku sat by the fire, lost in his thoughts as he gazed into the flames. Nearby, Sango lay with her head pillowed on her boomerang and Shippou curled next to a tiny Kirara in her arms. The monk's eyes softened as thoughts of Sango crossed his mind, then hardened in self-disgust. She thinks you're a pervert, remember? And you've never given her any reason to think otherwise…

The sound of soft footsteps brought Miroku out of his bitter reverie with a start. He jumped to his feet, gripping his staff tightly as he searched the surrounding darkness for signs of the intruder.

The monk took an unconscious step back as a pair of bodiless amber eyes appeared at the edge of the firelight.

"Inu Yasha," Miroku said reprovingly. "You nearly gave me a heart attack. Couldn't you have at least announced yourself?"

"Feh," the hanyou grunted, taking a seat on the opposite side of the fire. Miroku sat down again, laying his staff across his knees and staring intently at his friend.

"You didn't convince Riyo?" he asked softly.

"Don't talk to me about that bitch," Inu Yasha growled, hands curling into fists. "Even if she had agreed to come I wouldn't have let her!"

"What happened?" Going by Inu Yasha's tone, nothing good, Miroku thought.

"She played a trick on me." The venom in the half demon's voice startled Miroku. What had that woman done?

"A trick?" the monk prodded.

"Yeah." Inu Yasha lowered his gaze to the fire. Miroku found himself becoming almost mesmerized by the way the light was captured in the golden orbs and released again in a fierce amber glow. Shaking himself out of his trance, the monk waited for Inu Yasha to finish.

"She… she made a copy - an illusion, I guess I should say - of Kagome." Then why did she smell and feel so real? The hanyou pushed that question away - the thought of having lost Kagome a second time was too painful. "I thought it was Kagome, and… well, I fell for the trick. As soon as I let go of the illusion's hand it disappeared."

"That's awful," Miroku said, giving Inu Yasha a sympathetic look. "What happened after that?"

Inu Yasha actually blushed a little, cheeks turning slightly pink. "I kinda lost my temper then. I grabbed Riyo and yelled at her, but she just walked away. But it was strange - before and after the illusion she said she didn't know who I was, or who Kagome was. It was like she had lost her memory of everything linked to Kagome."

"That is strange…" Miroku thumbed one gold earring absently. "I think that more than just Kagome herself was lost when she faded. Kagome was very… very important. She… Kago…" The monk shook his head, frowning. What was wrong with him?

"Kagome. Yes, Kagome." There, that was better. For a second, his thoughts had slipped away from him, memories of Kagome growing dim and unreachable. But now he could clearly remember a pretty, hazel-eyed face with hair fluttering around it like ravens' wings.

Inu Yasha stared at Miroku, nonplussed. What was wrong with the hentai? He was starting to act like Riyo had been… "Yes, she was important. That reminds me, more odd things happened as I was walking back here." The hanyou quickly described the villager corpses and Jinenji's burned house, adding a little about the weird tug he kept feeling at the end of his explanation.

"This whole experience just keeps getting more complicated. It's like untying a piece of knotted string - every time you undo one knot another is waiting," Miroku said, unknowingly repeating one of Kagome's earlier thoughts.

Inu Yasha nodded. Knotted string sounded about right. But what happened when undoing a knot simply made the rest become more tangled?

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The small flame of the plain wax candle sputtered and died, leaving Riyo with only the light from the moon shining in one window. She didn't mind, though - darkness suited her mood tonight.

Riyo sighed, the sound coming out as a hiss from between fanged teeth. Tonight happened to be the night she turned full demon. Well, at least as demon as she could get with human blood still in her veins. They were an annoyance, these nights - they came and went with no particular pattern or set date.

Lowering herself to the floor with the grace of a coiling serpent, the dark miko casually surveyed the damage around her. Chairs and tables gouged and splintered into pieces, expensive vases shattered, curtains and paper screens torn and thrown around the room - the result of the first few hours of her transformation.

When she felt her blood begin to change from mostly human to mostly demon, Riyo had quickly locked herself in her house, barring all windows and doors. The transformation was not painful, but for a while after her body changed to that of a dragon youkai in human form, she was wild, uncontrollable. Unable to get at other living creatures, she would destroy everything around her. Luckily, the beautiful woman had remembered to set wards around her home - they would keep her in and keep others out.

Now, waiting for the sun to come up, Riyo was left to her thoughts. Mostly, they were of that loud-mouthed hanyou she had met today. What had he been talking about, saying that we had already met? And who is this Kagome he kept going on about? A fuzzy outline of a girl's face rose in her mind and quickly sunk back into blackness.

However, as if this vague memory had been a trigger, Riyo felt her body stiffen. Already? she thought. My last foretelling was only weeks ago! A tingling swept through her limbs, filling the dark miko with the sweet sensation of incredible power and knowledge. Her eyesight was quickly disappearing, pupils dilating until they completely blotted out the emerald of her irises. Here it comes…

Darkness. It filled her vision, consumed her, until she was no more than a part of that black nothingness. Then, off in the distance, a spotlight appeared, moving closer until it reached her feet. There it stopped, leaving Riyo to the shadows. The dark miko waited, knowing the foretelling would play itself out when it was ready.

But when it started, it wasn't the usual brief flash of people and places. Instead, a piece of red string appeared, moving endlessly in one direction. It had neither beginning nor end that Riyo could see.

The dark miko would have sucked in her breath sharply if she could. As it was, she had no body here and could only stare. That thread represented the annoying hanyou from earlier today! How she knew this, Riyo couldn't say, but her visions and the impressions she received from them never lied. But why would she have a foretelling about that particular half demon?

Suddenly, the red string was joined by a piece of dove gray string with a strand of purplish pink running through it. For a while they simply moved beside each other, no closer than they had been at first. But then they slowly began to come together, winding a little closer each second. Finally, they met and curled around each other, clearly still two threads but as close as they ever would be. An impression of… not love, but companionship emanated from the twined threads.

Looking at the gray string, Riyo received her second impression, as she liked to call the feelings and knowledge she got from her visions. The dove gray thread was a woman, a miko like her, though one pure of soul, that had black hair and dark brown eyes filled with such sorrow and hate that Riyo wanted to cry. Her emotions were always stronger when she had a foretelling.

But what was this? Another impression from the gray string? No, it was one from the purple-pink strand running through it. In her mind she could see a small sphere, its smooth exterior the same colour as the thread that represented it. The Shikon no Tama?!

All of a sudden another string appeared, shaking Riyo out of her surprise. This one was made of millions of different colours and practically oozed malice and evil. An image of a man with long dark hair merged with that of a white baboon in her mind. What is a monkey doing in the vision?

The multi-coloured thread moved closer to the joined red and gray threads, red suddenly becoming its most prominent colour. Without warning, it sliced through the gray one and vanished.

The gray thread, now frayed and shredded, slithered back to its red companion. To Riyo's acute senses, the woman that the gray thread represented was only full of hate and betrayal now - all companionship had disappeared. With its remaining pieces, the gray thread sheared through the red's center and fell limply into oblivion. The crimson string simply stayed in position, no longer moving and full of holes and frayed ends.

I… I don't understand, Riyo thought. The impressions she was receiving made sense, but they told a story that was almost impossible to follow. Her thoughts were interrupted, however, by the appearance of yet another thread.

This one was a pure, glowing green - the kind of green that made you think of spring. A laughing face filled Riyo's mind, with hazel eyes framed in long lashes and dark hair bouncing around the young woman's head. And there was that pinkish purple thread running through the green that represented this cheerful girl. How did it get there? Riyo was completely confused, but her foretelling didn't give her a rest.

The green string moved with surprising speed over to the damaged red one and smoothly joined with it, filling every hole and tying off every frayed end. The red and green threads were now one in a way that the gray and red could never have been. Love - small at first but growing ever larger - came off of the two in waves.

Unexpectedly and suddenly, the purple-pink strand exploded, sending tattered bits of string in every direction. Seemingly undisturbed by this, the green-and-red string continued on.

This was, by far, the longest foretelling Riyo had ever had. As she watched, unable to look away, the green-and-red thread was joined by an orange string that carried with it the impression of green eyes in a child's face surrounded by auburn hair. Oddly enough, this string made her think of fox cubs frolicking near their den.

After the orange string came a dark purple thread that gave off great knowledge and solemnity buried deep within amethyst eyes in a handsome, dark-haired man's face. With this image came that of a dark hole, sucking in everything in its path.

Soon after, a pink thread combined with a beige string joined the ever-growing weave of various strings. The pink thread showed a pretty woman with dark hair and dark eyes followed by the image of a giant boomerang. The beige thread simply gave the impression of fire and flying and the quiet, deadly grace of a feline.

Now the green-and-red string had grown to be the twined strands of the inu hanyou, the cheerful girl, the young fox-boy, the wise monk, the boomerang woman, and the fire cat. Mixed in with all these colours were tiny fragments of the purple-pink string that had exploded. The multi-coloured thread from before returned occasionally, seeking to destroy the tightly wound companions with offshoots of itself. Impossibly, the gray thread also appeared, though this time it gave off the feeling of a grave.

By now, Riyo's head was spinning with the effort of absorbing all of her vision. When the spotlight went black and the strings disappeared, she thought it was over and mentally sighed in relief. However, there was one more surprise in store for her that night…

Bright light shone in her eyes - the spotlight was now on her. Riyo felt herself change, her non-existent body stretch into a string like those she had been watching. She suddenly became detached from this new form, her consciousness set to one side in order to watch.

A black thread was now the only string in her vision. As she looked on, it was joined - much like the green and red threads from before - by an earth-brown string. The black thread - Me, Riyo reminded herself - quickly twined with the brown string that carried with it the impression of a face with twinkling eyes and a mouth always ready to grin. The black-and-brown strands gave off great love, but also great sorrow.

This is the present, Riyo realized. The vision before was of the past, and now this one is the present, a representation of Taro and I. But my foretelling always shows me the future!

As if on cue, she felt a change in her vision. Not a physical change, but Riyo was now certain that she would see glimpses of what might be. There was the black-and-brown string, still moving together seamlessly, and there the many-coloured string of companions had just appeared. Now, the spotlight split into two, as did the images of the string.

In one spotlight, the two thick strands combined to create one huge cord, rushing on towards a bright light that shone with hope and determination. In the other, the two strings stayed separate and things began to fall apart. Literally. The green thread disappeared slowly, fading out of existence completely. Without the green string, the weave of the others collapsed and each was left to struggle on their own. As for the black-and-brown strands, they simply drifted apart, floating alongside the other separated strings as they sped towards a bleak gray light of despair.

And then Riyo was back in her own body, waking from her trance with a jolt. Standing up slowly, the dark miko realized that the sun had risen and she was human again.

"Kami…" she breathed. "That was the most complicated vision I've ever had!"

She sank down into a ruined chair wearily, feeling shaky from her foretelling. Now she knew what was going on and what she had to do. But who was that hanyou and his companions? Massaging her temples, Riyo closed her eyes.

Oh Kami, why me?

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Wahoo!!! Finally! A long chapter! lol, and I wrote it just for you guys, so be thankful! Well, it looks like Inu Yasha and the gang are back to square one and Riyo's got one hell of a migraine coming on. You didn't think I could just end it like that, did you? ^_^ No, I'll be around for a while longer to bug you. I hope you enjoyed this chappy. Maybe I'll keep up this habit of updating fast… then again maybe not - this one dried up my well of inspiration ^_^;; Until next time, R&R!

~SilverMyste~