InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Lost Souls Found ❯ Poor Boy ( Prologue )

 

Author's Note: This story is on hiatus until further notice. I first published this in Spring of '06. By the time I got to chapter 5, it had ballooned into about three stories all vying for space in this one. I need to work out some themes in my other fics and then hopefully will return to this one. I'm leaving it up because some people have liked it - and Chapter 5 is a pretty nice lemon if I do say so myself. Thanks to all the reviewers who've encouraged me to continue. I hope to do so.

 

Some Japanese translations:

Oni = a vengeful spirit, an ogre, a demon

Youkai = a magical, spiritual creature

Hanyou = half youkai, half human creature

 

Lost Souls Found

Prologue: Poor Boy

 

 

Deep within the crystal prison, battle raged.

 

Midoriko - or what was left of the ancient Miko's warrior spirit -- and her Monster fought on, day and night, now and forever, because they had long ago forgotten how to do anything else. Despite their efforts to vanquish each other, they were now fused to one another in time, and outside of it. Forever bonded, they had become the very Spirit of the most eternal of struggles.

 

Only one purpose drove them, drove them so urgently that they remained blind to the eventuality that when one of them finally won, they both lost everything.

 

As they had always done, they reached into the world outside to gather and manipulate its great energy to defeat their sworn enemy, each other, themselves.

 

This battle, begun like so many before it, had taken a newly fatal turn. It was the arrival of the elder Miko that turned the tide, accompanied by her young sacrifice, but things did not go as she or her guide inside the jewel had plotted. The men outside had worn each other down, and Midoriko has been successful in drawing the Wolf close enough to immobilize him at last and trick the corporeal monster into seizing the shards in his legs. The jewel was almost complete, its power ready.

 

Using the spirit of the young Miko, Midoriko called the purification arrow to her and managed to spare the Wolf's life. He rewarded her richly by wielding the power of his ancestors to lay open a great wound on the monster's neck.

 

Perhaps to distract his enemies, the monster released the scores of oni souls that lay trapped in its body, erupting from the gash left behind by the Wolf.

 

Midoriko feinted back to let the monster grab for the last remaining shard in the sacrificial boy. That is when things unplanned began to unfold. The elder Inuyoukai unleashed a sword of the otherworld with such compassion that it reverberated into the very walls enclosing her.. Awakened, the lost souls of the monster's amalgam turned upon one another and fought to be free of their tortured, fleshy prison. In the power of their eruption, they knocked the elder Miko and boy aside, and Midoriko's plan began to falter. Unprepared for the onslaught of monstrous souls, she could not withstand the swarm of hate assaulting her defensive stance and momentarily she perished.

 

Unable to leave her prison, unable to dissipate, and mercilessly resurrected by her Monster, her partner in war, Midoriko winked back into time. Desperately she cast about for protection until she could reform a plan. Near her, placing himself between the battle and the two Miko, was the young Hanyou, the need to protect boiling in his soul. Midoriko needed that protection and she reached desperately to draw him to her, the only weapon within her reach. He gave his gentle soul to her, allowing her to grasp what lay within him and twist it, planting the seed that brought out the wild oni hiding within. With this new strength, she was able to direct his great power into the Monster's war upon itself, driving them all down into final darkness.

 

The jewel, its battle and its flux, returned to the earth from which it would soon rise again in the hearts and souls of the creatures who dwelt there.

 

The ancient Miko's last wisp of thought was, “what have I done to that poor boy?”