InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Zero ❯ The Search ( Chapter 3 )

“They say that a fog lies heavily upon the mountain—a fog created by the jyaki of all the youkai who die.  It migrates there and settles.  It’s as close to Yomi on earth as you will ever find.  Ill will and rage reside there, lingering in the visceral form of the fog.  You must travel through that, immersing yourself in the thick of it, to find the Heart of Kiriyama.  They say that the heart lives, deep in a cave on the eastern side of Kiriyama . . . None who have gone there in search of it have ever made it back alive.  You will go mad or die—that is what they say.”

Stepping out of the forest, Sesshoumaru stopped, lifted his gaze to stare at the visage of Kiriyama.  The mountain, located in the eastern lands, was picturesque, almost beautiful, standing in silent majesty, surrounded by wispy cloud formations—the fog?  Yet, even from where he stood, well away from the base of the mountain, he could feel the malignance that lived there.  Why Izanami would want something born of such an immoral place was vexing, at best . . .

The thing was, Sesshoumaru might well have heard of the Heart of Kiriyama before, but he didn’t actually know what it was.  To his knowledge, no one did, which would make searching for it exponentially more troublesome.  Funny how it never occurred to him to decline the task . . .

It didn’t matter, though, did it?  It wasn’t like he was given a choice.  Either he retrieved the Heart of Kiriyama or he failed; there was no middle ground.

There were also no villages, no local dwellings, where he could gather information, either.  It was a testament as to just how much this area was feared that no one would dare try to live here.  It was also not surprising.  Given that humans as a whole seemed to be a lot more on the superstitious side than youkai tended to be, the mist that gathered here was more than enough impetus to turn them away.

Creatures of nature steered clear of Kiriyama, that was no secret.  Sesshoumaru himself had only seen the mountain once before, and he had been farther away from it then than he was now.  When InuYasha was small, the fool had blundered near it.  Too young, perhaps, to feel and to take heed of the warning to his senses, that foreboding undertone that grew increasingly stronger, the nearer one got to the edifice, or maybe, in his haste to escape the oni that had been chasing him at the time, he had ignored it, believing that he would rather chance the proximity of the mountain than to try to find a better place to hide . . .

At that time, Sesshoumaru had killed the oni.  It wasn’t that difficult to do.  The hardest part, really, was hiding himself from his half-brother’s notice.  Far too perceptive, InuYasha had always been . . .

“Are you so pitiful that you would chase after a worthless half-breed?”

The oni stopped, grunted, sniffed heavily as he turned his lumbering body around, his beady little eyes, seeking out the owner of that voice, but relying far more heavily upon his sense of smell.  The area—a very small clearing—wasn’t the best place to fight the creature, but Sesshoumaru had been tracking it for the last few hours as he chased after InuYasha.  The pup at least had the sense to run away.  Unfortunately, what the oni lacked in intelligence, he more than made up for in his annoying tunnel-vision whenever faced with something perceived to be a light snack . . .

Sesshoumaru’s lip curled in absolute disdain.  Stone oni were far too stupid—barely cognizant, really—and this one was no exception to the rule.  The creature was nearly thirty feet tall and formed of stone.  There were only two areas where any kind of attack could damage him, and both of those places were on his head.  The sizzle and snap of the harsh green energy whip cracked through the air, connecting with the oni’s right eye.  The infernal beast howled in enraged pain as blackened blood, as thick as tar, slowly oozed out of the ruined socket.

The oni lunged blindly at Sesshoumaru.  He was faster, hopping onto the creature’s arm then pushing off again.  Reaching back, he straightened his fingers, forming a blade of sorts, that he jammed straight into the oni’s already injured eye, unleashing a flood of noxious poison from his claws.

The shriek echoed in the forest, bent the trees, shook the very ground as Sesshoumaru sprang away from him, lit on the dirt floor.  Pausing just long enough to watch as the beast exploded in a rain of that same sludgy blood, Sesshoumaru uttered a terse grunt and strode back into the forest in the opposite direction from where he’d watched InuYasha run away . . .

Sesshoumaru frowned.  He hadn’t thought of that day in a very long time, if he had ever really thought about it, at all.  In fact, he preferred, not to think about those times.  After all, no good could come of it, and now . . .

Narrowing his gaze as a wind kicked up, carrying with it the scent of grasses and dirt and other earthy things, Sesshoumaru strode forward, heading straight for the base of the mountain.

He could feel eyes upon him as he stepped into the forest once more, only this forest wasn’t clean and peaceful, as the one he’d just passed through had been.  No, there was an underlying sense of foreboding about this wood, as though the very trees were attempting to lean in, to listen—to wait . . .

And with every step closer to the mountain, the heavier the sense of trepidation grew.  He did not fear what lived there—if one could call it that—but he could feel the gravity of the mingled jyaki, so thick, so strong, that even he could feel the toxicity in the air.  In spots here and there, it was gathering, thick, like a shroud upon the ground.  The evil desires, the deceitful and malignant leftovers of the youkai who would seek their own personal gains . . . These were the things that lingered, long after their souls were dispatched . . .

‘And if you fall, will yours join these?’

‘I, Sesshoumaru . . .?  That is not possible.’

‘Do you honestly think that?  Are you so arrogant that you can truly think that you, alone, are above this?  Do you think that your will—your desire—to surpass your father, to exist as the strongest amongst the youkai, is all that different from the dank and abhorrent mist?’

Arrogant?  Perhaps. Even so, his desires might well be the same, but his reasons . . . Those were vastly different . . .

It was not as simplistic as that.  Power . . . to be strong . . . It would mean that he would be free—free to make his own rules, to set his own path, one that disallowed anyone else from touching him.  Power . . . He did not desire it in order to subjugate others, nor did he seek to use it to protect anyone else, either.  That was a fool’s quest, and he’d already seen the spoils that would come of such a base and elementary compulsion.  Hadn’t the great and powerful Inu no Taisho already proven that beyond any shadow of a doubt?  The strongest, the most feared . . . And he was dead now—all to protect that miserable human life—and InuYasha.  He . . . He was a fool . . .

No, the power Sesshoumaru sought was simply a means to allow him the ultimate kind of existence, one where he relied upon no one, needed no one, and nothing—nothing—could be more important than that . . .

‘Except there’s more to it than that, and you know it.  Whether you wish to admit it or not, you know why you feel the way you do.  You know how easy it is, to fall into the hands of the enemy, to be truly unable to save yourself, and that . . . That’s what you fear most, isn’t it?’

‘Enough.  That has nothing at all to do with this.’

‘But it does, you realize.  It doesn’t help to tell yourself that you were young then, that you did what you had to do to survive until your father came to save you.  Somewhere in your soul, you still blame yourself—blame yourself for being young, for being weak, and that’s why you vowed that you could never, ever allow yourself to be weak again, isn’t it?  And . . . And you blame him, as well.  You blame him for allowing you to fall into that bastard’s hands, in the first place . . .’

Brushing aside that thought was simple enough.  He’d become quite adept at doing so in the years that had passed.  True enough, back then, he was little more than a pup himself, and those days—those miserable and terrifying days—had etched themselves into his mind so dark, so deep . . . True enough, he’d sworn that he wouldn’t allow anything like it to ever, ever happen to him again . . .

Power.  Yes, a desire to obtain power . . . That power would save him, not condemn him.  Ending up like these innumerable and pathetic youkai?

“That will never happen.”

Without a second thought, she had stepped into the path of the lightning-fast runners. Five had impaled her at once, as Sesshoumaru whipped around, just in time to see those vines, slamming straight through the wind-youkai’s body, lifting her into the air, her head falling back as the softest gasp slipped past her lips.  He unleashed an enraged howl as he shredded the vines as though they were made of little more than paper in his haste to get to her.  As he reached her, as she closed her eyes, an oddly misplaced yet peaceful kind of smile, quirking the corners of her lips, and he had heard her one word: "Sesshoumaru . . ."

She remembered the feel of his arm around her, holding her close as he carried her away.  She recalled the haste in his steps, then the smell of the wisteria, the wavering light of the full moon, though it might have been the tears that had filled her eyes.

She remembered, trying so hard to hang on, could feel her body as it worked to repair itself, but the heart that had been returned to her upon Naraku’s death . . . It had pumped the blood out of her faster than her body could compensate . . .

She’d thought that those minutes had been enough—minutes and memories that would last her forever.

Here, alone in this blackness, this void . . . Time meant nothing here.  There was no way to mark the passage of days or weeks, months or years.  Even minutes or seconds meant nothing at all, and she really had no way of knowing just how long she’d been here . . . There was no sky to mark the time, no sun, no moon—just an overwhelming sense of nothing at all, and, little by little, she had to struggle harder and harder to remember those basic things: the feel of the wind on her skin, the warmth of the sunshine upon her . . . the cool tickle of water on her feet, the scent of Sesshoumaru’s very being, the sound of his voice . . . Those things were fading from her, even though she tried so hard to hold tight to them . . .

She had no voice, and, without a body, she had no smell or touch or taste or hearing, and, try as she might to hold fast to those memories, it was growing more difficult to hang onto anything but fleeting images—and those regrets of a life lost, half-lived . . .

If she’d realized back then, would she have done things differently?  What could she have done, really?  Bound to an entity that saw no value in the incarnations he created, just what might have been?  The only thing—the one thing—that had made her existence of value . . .

‘Sesshoumaru . . .’

She couldn’t speak his name, couldn’t hear it as it tumbled from her lips, couldn’t comfort herself, simply from hearing the sound of it.  But she’d protected him, hadn’t she?  Protected him from Naraku’s runners, and, despite the darkness, the nothingness, she . . . she couldn’t rightfully say that she regretted what she’d done, even when she had been banished here.

His existence . . . It was worth more than hers, wasn’t it?  He, unlike her, had those who depended upon him, who counted his life as necessary.  She’d never had that.  She, after all, was never more than a pawn, playing someone else’s game, and . . .

‘I . . . I just wanted to see him, one last time . . .’

How much longer would she remember him before he just became an image in her mind—someone that she used to know, but she couldn’t recall his name, his scent, his voice?  Did she know him at all or was he simply a phantasm of the darkness—an embodiment of light in a world without any? A figment of her imagination, as bright as the memory of the sunlight that was slowly, dreadfully, starting to fade . . .?

In fact, the only thing she could feel at all was a strange sort of emptiness, an ache that she didn’t quite understand.  If she were alive, she might have thought it was hunger, but . . .

But she could ignore that for now.  She’d rather focus her concentration on the inu-youkai with the amber eyes and the silken strands of silvery-white hair . . .

The mist was wearing on him.

As loathe as he was to admit as much, that was the truth of it.  The stagnant air seemed to be devoid of oxygen that had very little to do with the altitude, even as he climbed the steep grade.  The fog seemed to press in on him from all sides, and it felt clingy, almost searching, as though the jyaki were seeking to find a way into his body.

For three days, he’d been searching the mountainside for a cave.  It was really all he had to go on: Bokusenou’s words . . .

“They say that a fog lies heavily upon the mountain—a fog created by the jyaki of all the youkai who die.  It migrates there and settles.  It’s as close to Yomi on earth as you will ever find.  Ill will and rage reside there, lingering in the visceral form of the fog.  You must travel through that, immersing yourself in the thick of it, to find the Heart of Kiriyama.  They say that the heart lives, deep in a cave on the eastern side of Kiriyama . . . None who have gone there in search of it have ever made it back alive.  You will go mad or die—that is what they say.”

If he knew what he was looking for, maybe . . .

Impatience wore at him, fast on the heels of rising indignance.  He felt like an idiot, didn’t he?  Seeking what could not be found with only a vague idea to go on . . . It was a fool’s venture, and he . . .

The Heart of Kiriyama.

It was infuriating.

There was nothing on the mountain in the way of living creatures.  Even the foliage was sparse, aside from the trees that all seemed to be growing at odd angles and strange twists, and the winds that blew through here carried a low and sweeping kind of melancholy.  He was not a superstitious being, but even he could feel it . . .

‘How will you know when you find it?  If you find it?’

That was a question that he didn’t have an answer to, either.  Easy to think that, perhaps he’d just know, but would he?

He ground his teeth together as another wave of sheer frustration rolled over him.  For once, he could understand why InuYasha would fly into impetuous rage.  He hadn’t really comprehended that before . . .

“You . . . You are Sesshoumaru-sama of the Western Lands, are you not?”

Flicking his gaze around as he stopped abruptly, he watched as a face slowly emerged from the trunk of an aged sugi pine tree.  It was bent, wizened, yet hulking and regal in a tragic kind of way, but whether the deformities were the result of age or exposure to the putrid mist, Sesshoumaru didn’t know.  “I am,” he replied, but offered no more.

“So, I finally get to meet the great Inu no Taisho’s heir . . . I am Hotaka, and it has been my charge to guard this land for the last thousand years—maybe longer.  I’ve lost track of time, young one. Bear me no ill will.  Bokusenou told me that you were coming.  Tell me, son of the Inu no Taisho, what is it you seek here?”

“I am Sesshoumaru,” he repeated, narrowing his eyes in what should have been warning.  He’d outgrown that kind of address long, long ago—the need to walk within his father’s long shadow.  “I seek the Heart of Kiriyama.”

“The heart?” Hotaka echoed, sounding more surprised than perhaps he ought to have.  Why else would someone venture into this place that even the kami had forgotten, after all . . .? “If that’s the case, then best you turn around—go back the way you came.  There is nothing for you here.  Not even your father was able to find that, and he tried.”

“Chichiue tried to find it?  Why?”

The tree chuckled.  “Surely you have heard the ancient tale.  They say that if you have the Heart of Kiriyama in your possession when your soul is taken to Yomi that you may be able to barter with Izanami’s personal guard.  Cheat death, as it were . . . The Inu no Taisho, however . . . He was not doing well when he ventured here.”

“Do you know what it is that I am looking for?  The heart?”

The branches of the tree creaked and groaned as they bent and swayed in the falling dusk.  “I cannot tell you that, son of the Inu no Taisho.”

“Do you plead ignorance or is it that you simply refuse to tell me?”

“I may not tell you,” he corrected, and, for his part, he did sound remorseful—not that Sesshoumaru cared as he tamped down the rise of fresh and entirely unwelcome frustration.  “It is not allowed.”

“By whose decree?”

“Izanami no Mikoto.  We may not interfere.  It is her law.”

“So, you obey the law of the dead when you dwell in the world of the living?” Sesshoumaru challenged.

“She protects us from the mist, from the fog—allows our roots to dig deep, allows us to remain when all others have gone.  In return, we abide by her wishes . . .”

“Then you are of no use to me,” Sesshoumaru decided, turning on his heel, ready to go, to resume his search.

“There is one who knows—just one,” Hotaka called out behind him.

Sesshoumaru stopped, but he did not turn to face Hotaka again.  “Who?”

The tree rumbled once more, almost as though it were trying to lean in.  The creak and the groan of the ancient wood, the slight shifting of the tangled and gnarled roots . . . “I know not his name, but he was with the Inu no Taisho all those years ago.  That is all I know.”

“Describe him,” Sesshoumaru demanded, his patience wearing thinner by the second.

This time, Hotaka sighed—a great, rumbling sigh that even seemed to shake the ground below him.  “I never saw him.”

“If you didn’t see him, how, then, did you know that he was with chichiue?”

“I heard the Inu no Taisho speak to him—and I heard him reply.”

“But you never saw him.  Did any of your kin see him?”

“No, they did not, but the way in which he spoke . . . I believe he was one of the Inu no Taisho’s vassals.”

‘One of chichiue’s vassals . . .’

Those words.  Those words had plagued him for the last couple days, ever since Hotaka had uttered them.

‘One of chichiue’s vassals . . .?  That . . . That avails me nothing at all.  Chichiue had many vassals . . .’

‘As true as that may be, how many of them would fit the rest of it?’

‘The rest of it . . . That Hotaka did not see the vassal?’

‘Yes, that’s right.  Yet he said that he also heard him speak.’

Frowning at the irritating patience in his youkai-voice’s words, Sesshoumaru idly flicked the feather against his lips.  He’d taken a break since the darkness of night had fallen an hour ago—an annoyance that he simply couldn’t stand, really.  He’d considered, trying to sleep, but discarded that idea, as well.  In this place of stagnant mist, of invasive fog, the very idea of sleeping held absolutely no appeal.

If he gave in, if he slept, that mist . . . It would try to steal away his dreams.  It was more of an intuitive realization than an absolute thought, and, though he couldn’t remember his dreams, he knew that within them, he saw Kagura . . .

‘I wonder, though . . . Just when did your father come here, seeking the Heart of Kiriyama?’

Sesshoumaru didn’t know the answer to that, either.  In truth, it was the first he’d heard about his father searching for the elusive thing.

It was even more vexing, really.  Given that his father had searched for it, too, how was it that he wasn’t able to find it?  His father, the tai-youkai, the Inu no Taisho . . . and if his father had not been able to locate it, then how would Sesshoumaru fare any better?

‘It does not matter.  I will find it.’

‘All of this, just to save a woman who you barely acknowledged in life . . . Why?’

His jaw tightened, his fingers, gripping the feather a little harder than he meant to.  Certainly, this question had come up a number of times since he’d walked through the gates and into Yomi.  Always, it was the same answer.  Unable to reconcile the very idea that his own sword would ignore his bidding . . .

It was a convenient answer, and he knew it.  He simply didn’t know otherwise.

Those feelings that he’d had still plagued him.  They still lingered there, just below the surface.  But he didn’t understand them.  Such a strange sort of melancholy that he simply could not abide whenever he remembered the expression on her face as she lay, dying . . . Anger, rage . . . Those things he understood, could reckon.  But the subtle warmth that he’d felt whenever he’d allowed himself to think about her—a warmth that had steadily grown stronger and more difficult to ignore as time passed, as their chance meetings had etched themselves in his mind—had twisted, changed into such emotion that he could not define . . .

He’d never felt anything like it before, and he didn’t like it.  Something about those feelings made him feel vulnerable, almost naked, in a manner of speaking, and that kind of thing wasn’t something he could accept easily.  In truth, if he could have just continued on about his life in the same way that he had already done, it would have been far more to his liking.

Unlike InuYasha, he wasn’t given to impetuous or nonchalant actions.  He prided himself on his ability to stand apart from it.  Considered cold, calculated, it was entirely unlike him to be doing what he was doing, and the sense that he couldn’t quite help himself just made it all a little worse, too . . . Even so . . .

Five days, he’d been searching, and, while he’d found caves aplenty, he had still yet to find anything that might be considered the Heart of Kiriyama.  He’d know when he found it.  That was the sense he got.  Still, the vagueness of his quest was annoying, the sense that he was playing a fool’s game, unacceptable.

‘And don’t forget what Jester said: if Kagura eats the food of the dead . . .’

Yes, he supposed, there was that, too.  He had no way of knowing, just how long she could or would hold out.  If he found the Heart of Kiriyama, but she ate the food in the meantime . . .

It would be better to deal with one thing at a time.  But . . .

The air was cold this far up the mountain, and the night air was colder still.  If he had to search for another few days, he’d doubtless reach the peak.  The east side of the mountain—that’s what Bokusenou had told him.

Pushing himself to his feet, he tucked the feather away in his armor once more.  Night on this mountain was fairly brutal, and despite the myriad of stars that dotted the night skies, it seemed that light did not touch down, either.  He’d never seen darkness so vast, so deep, as he had here upon earth.  Only the darkness in Yomi was thicker, more profound, more insurmountable . . .

‘It matters not.  This Sesshoumaru will find what it is that I seek.  There is no other choice.’