InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Zero ❯ Tasks ( Chapter 7 )

The skies over the ever-moving water was painted in hues of pinks and oranges and fiery reds that belied the layer of violet that darkened above the horizon.  It was a calm, peaceful night as the stars started to emerge, one by one, yet the thoughts swirling around Sesshoumaru’s mind were far from settled.

“I think that the best thing to do would be to question the locals, see if anyone has heard tale of anything strange—anything out of the ordinary that could point to the presence of the Blackened Tears or the creature that wakes at midnight.”

Sesshoumaru stared at him for a long, long moment.  “And you honestly believe that mere humans would be perceptive enough to know?”

Jester chuckled.  “There are humans who are smarter and more cunning than you’d like to give them credit for.”

The look on Sesshoumaru’s face must have stated quite plainly that he didn’t agree with Jester’s assessment.  It had always been his opinion that humans, on a whole, tended to be unwilling or unable to take note of anything that did not directly affect them, one way or another.

The entity sighed.  “All right, then.  I shall venture into the village and ask around if you’d be so kind as to wait for me.  You’d probably just scare the hell out of them, anyway, if you did accompany me.  You really do have a habit of looking like you’re about to light into someone for simply breathing, Sesshoumaru.  Anyway, I’ll be back.  It shouldn’t take long.”

He was still waiting, sitting upon a large rock, gazing out over the lake.

It had taken them two days to reach the area that Jester thought was a good place to start looking.  The large lake was surrounded by marshes—swamps . . .

‘The Sacred Ward . . .’

“I have read your mind, Sesshoumaru, from the moment you entered Yomi.  I have heard your thoughts, your conversations with your youkai-voice, but I can see deeper than that.  I can see your heart—your soul—that even you cannot comprehend, and I tell you this: I require four things, and you will bring them to me.  To acquire them will be more difficult than searching for the Heart of Kiriyama.  However, if you bring me these things, I will return the soul of your wind sorceress—if she has not eaten food of Yomi when you return.  If she is given back to you, then know this: the moment you succumb to the faithless disdain that comes after, I will claim her back again.  After all, to exist here is far better than to spend a lifetime in a world with the one that you cannot forget.”

Scowl deepening as Izanami’s words echoed in his mind, Sesshoumaru ground his jaws together.

‘I would make more progress if I set out to find this alone,’ he mused.

Even so, he made no move to set out alone.  Scowling at the skies, he did not blink.  The sky . . . It was the same, wasn’t it?  That evening, so long ago . . .

“Sesshou!  Sesshou!”

He stopped, turned in time to see Hibana, darting through the tall grass, her delicate laughter, coloring the air as she ran toward him.  For a brief moment, he considered ignoring her.  After all, his cousin was only a child of seven—an oftentimes annoying child—never mind that he was only a couple years older than her . . .

“I found you!” she exclaimed happily as she skidded to a halt before him, her crimson eyes, sparkling in the waning evening sunshine.  “I’ve been looking for you all day!”

“I was off, training with chichiue,” Sesshoumaru replied, indulging a surge of unmistakable pride, his tone indicating that it ought to have been a foregone conclusion.  It was a big deal, though—a huge deal: the first time his father had taken him out to teach him without his mother . . .

She made a face, silvery white hair, blowing in the breeze, even as she impatiently shoved the strands back out of her eyes.  “But you promised you’d go with me, Sesshou,” she complained as her deep pink bottom lip jutted out in a very real show of petulance.  “You promised we could look for the fire flowers together.”

“Chichiue said there is no such thing,” he pointed out.  It was a common enough discussion between the two of them, after all.  No matter how many times he’d told her that the fire flower didn’t really exist, she’d argued that it certainly did . . .

“Papa said that there is!  If you know where to look, anyway,” she challenged.  “He said they only grow in the Valley of Fire between the Gale Mountains and the Blue Depths.”

“And chichiue has traveled all over the Valley of Fire, and he has never seen them—Never.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t know what to look for,” she scoffed, her stubborn streak, rising fast.  “Oji-sama might be strong, but he doesn’t know everything!”

“Chichiue would know if he’d ever seen a fire flower before,” Sesshoumaru retorted coldly.  He couldn’t help the surge of irritation that anyone, even Hibana, would dare to say something against his father, never mind that the two had been friends as well as cousins their entire lives.

Hibana wrinkled her nose, crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly.  “You still promised, and if you break your promise, it’s the same as lying—papa says so.”

Wrinkling his nose since he had been told the same thing by his own father before, Sesshoumaru shook his head.  “I have more important things to do than to run off with you, looking for a flower that doesn’t exist,” he shot back.  “You’d better go home before oba-san gets mad and blames me because you had to sneak out after dark.”

Hibana’s chin dropped, her shoulders slumping under the short, pink kimono she favored in the summertime.  “It’s not dark yet,” she muttered, slowly shaking her head.  “And . . . you promised, Sesshou . . .”

He’d said nothing as she’d turned and walked away, the air of defeat, so thick around her, woven into the very strands of her youki, and he’d sighed.  There were a million reasons why he ought to just walk away, not the least of which was the anger he’d have to face from his own parents, once they returned from the Valley of Fire.  Even so, Hibana was right.  He really had promised her . . .

But it was normal, wasn’t it?  He was nearly ten years old—no longer a child, left to play all day with a little girl.  He was old enough to start training to be a great inu-youkai, like his father, who ruled over the Western Lands.  There was no one who could come close to his power, his might, and Sesshoumaru, in time, would be just like him, too.  If he truly wanted to do that, though, then he couldn’t waste his time, chasing after fire flowers in the Valley of Fire, either . . .

“Sesshoumaru, if you want to be a truly honorable youkai, then you must remember that, with power comes responsibility and wisdom, and it will fall upon you to make the right choices.  Always remember not to give your word lightly, and when you do, never, ever go back on it.  Do you understand?”

Staring solemnly up at his father, Sesshoumaru had slowly nodded . . .

And he’d sighed.  Maybe he shouldn’t have made that promise to her, but he had, and since he had . . . “Hibana,” he called after her, quickly, before he changed his mind.  “Come on.”

She peered over her shoulder at him for a long moment.  Then she’d broke into the brightest smile as she ran back to his side . . .

“Well, I found out a few things.”

Blinking as the memory faded, Sesshoumaru slowly shifted his gaze to the side to meet Jester’s.  He didn’t seem to notice Sesshoumaru’s preoccupation, however.  “Oh?”

The entity nodded, biting into—something—and taking his time, chewing it before he answered.  “They indicated that no one ever ventures outside of the village after darkness falls, especially in the direction of the marshes.  One of them mentioned lights that lead people astray . . . He said that a couple years ago, a child had sneaked out of the village after sundown, but was captured in the thrall of the lights, and that he’d been found a few days later in the marshes, his face, frozen in a grimace of sheer terror.”

“And you believe—What are you eating?”

Jester blinked, as though he wasn’t sure what Sesshoumaru was talking about, only to glance down and stare, rather blankly, at the thing in his hand.  “Oh, it’s a dried persimmon,” he explained.  “Do you want a bite?”

Sesshoumaru wrinkled his nose.  “I don’t eat,” he said.

Jester chuckled.  “Are you sure?  That’s a shame.  This is really good.”

Sesshoumaru didn’t respond to that, but he did stand up, his gaze sweeping over the lake and the marshes beyond.  He started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Jester called after him, hurrying to catch up with him once more.

“I’m going to find those lights,” Sesshoumaru replied.

“Oh,” Jester drawled.  “All right.  Let’s see what the truth is in the rumors, shall we?”

Narrowing his gaze as he scowled at the one who was supposed to be his guide but was failing miserably in his estimation, Sesshoumaru stood back, remaining silent, even though he thought that the entire situation was sorely beneath him.

The lights that the villagers had spoken of had turned out to be nothing more than fireflies.  They’d spent the entire night, searching the marshes, trying to locate anything that might be a sign of something unnatural.  In the end, they’d come up with nothing, so Jester, in one of his more inspired moments, had talked Sesshoumaru into venturing into the next village they found, where it became immediately apparent that the village itself was being plagued by a particularly troublesome leech-youkai.

Sesshoumaru hadn’t cared about that, one way or another, but Jester, for some reason, did, and now, he was busy, trying to flush the creature out of hiding using weird talismans—almost like ofuda—that he slapped onto the closed doors of the headman’s hut.  Those things would draw the creature out, certainly, however . . .

A minute later, a strange howling grew louder and louder as the doors of the building shook and groaned.  The youkai wanted out, didn’t he?  Even so, Sesshoumaru didn’t move, had no interest at all in helping to intercept the leech.  It burst through the doors, straight at Jester, who caught him easily in a swirling orb of blackened mist.  It held the leech securely as the entity shot Sesshoumaru a look.  “A little help, if you would,” he remarked dryly, holding out his hands, obviously controlling the sphere of smoke.

“You flushed it out but have no intention of killing it?” Sesshoumaru asked.

Jester shrugged.  “Strictly speaking, I’m not allowed to kill.”

“. . . What?”

He grimaced, pushing his hands together slightly, but it took some effort, judging from the tightness in his jaw, the slight shaking in his stretched-out hands  “I’m a guide, not your personal protector,” he gritted out.  “Besides that, does it look like I have any weapons on me?”

His flip response only served to earn him a rather narrow-eyed glance from Sesshoumaru, who still made no move to assist.  “You shouldn’t have volunteered to rid the place of that youkai if you had no intention of doing it yourself,” he pointed out instead.

“It is a well-known fact that leech-youkai infest villages for the sole purpose of infecting every person alive with their larvae,” he growled from between clenched teeth.  “If we did nothing, then this whole region would be overrun with their spawn, and if those were left unchecked, then they’d eventually spread all over—even to the Western Lands—and then, you’d have a scourge to deal with, not just one paltry leech.”

Sesshoumaru said nothing, even refusing to acknowledge the truth in Jester’s claims.  It was a little more sinister than that, as well.  Jester had over-simplified things.  Those larvae would attach to human hosts, but by the time they were finished, the humans nearly always died since they were used as nutritional hosts for the parasites, but the real trouble was that the leech-youkai were barely sentient.  They lived instinctually, which meant that, if left unchecked, they would raze the area entirely since they fed off life-force, and not just humans—animals, plants, even youkai if they could find any that were weaker than they were—anything that grew . . . It would leave the entire area, completely dead in every sense of the word . . .

Despite that, it still annoyed Sesshoumaru that Jester hadn’t been a little more forthcoming with a significant detail like his inability to kill.  Defensive control seemed good enough, but . . .

Too bad he was also right, Sesshoumaru thought with an inward snort of pure derision.  With a flick of the bright green energy whip, he struck the leech-youkai, even through the smoke sphere.  The creature shrieked—it was dulled by the orb—its body, shattering into little more than a cloud of dust that disappeared, along with the orb of murky mist.

He didn’t bother to wait on Jester, either, as he turned on his heel and walked away.

“All right; all right.  I should have told you that.  I confess, I forgot.  I . . . Well, I rather lost myself when we left Yomi, and you can’t really blame me for that.  It’s been a long time since I was on this side of the gates, and . . . and . . . just everything . . .”

Casting Jester a sidelong glance, Sesshoumaru slowly shook his head as he faced forward once more to resume his path.  He was eating—this time, a dried eel, it looked like.

And yet, he supposed that he could understand Jester’s almost unnatural preoccupation with everything.  The limited time that he’d spent in Yomi had been just a taste of what Jester had known for such a long time.

“Do you mean to tell me that you agreed to help those villagers all for a dried eel?” Sesshoumaru asked rather blandly.

“No,” Jester replied, stuffing the rest of the eel into his mouth.  “They gave me some dried fish and two pears, too.”

Sesshoumaru didn’t respond to that.  In truth, he figured that there wasn’t much to say.  After all, it wouldn’t change anything now, and as long as Jester didn’t make a habit out of volunteering Sesshoumaru’s services . . .

Jester sighed, his gaze, shifting over the area.  “We don’t have much to go on,” he murmured.  “Even so, I . . . I feel like we’re heading in the right direction, but whether that’s my own wishful thinking or not, I can’t really say.”

‘Of course, it’s difficult.  If it weren’t, then the Sacred Ward would have been gathered for Izanami no Mikoto long ago, don’t you think?’

He knew that, too.  It didn’t matter.  He didn’t care how difficult it would be.  He’d vowed that he’d find these things, this Sacred Ward, and he would.  If it meant that he’d be able to retrieve Kagura’s soul, then he’d find them all.

Failure wasn’t an option.  ‘This Sesshoumaru . . . This Sesshoumaru will not fail her again . . .’

They stood at the top of a tall cliff that overlooked the lowerlands that eventually ran to the sea somewhere in the vast distance, well over the horizon.  As the oranges and golds of evening fell, lingering in the patches of fog, Sesshoumaru frowned.

It looked so peaceful.

From where he stood, he could make out the vague rising of smoke from a small and ramshackle dwelling down below.  In the distance, the sound of a wolf, howling, broke the companionable silence, and Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes as he scanned the area for anything that looked even slightly out of place.  There was nothing.

“So,” Jester drawled, plopping down on the ground, dangling his feet over the edge of the cliff, “those humans that you left your human with . . . Those are your brother’s friends?”

“Half-brother,” Sesshoumaru corrected automatically.  “They were, yes.”

“Were?”

Closing his eyes for only a moment as the rise of a gentle wind hit him, full in the face, Sesshoumaru sighed inwardly.  “It is not my story to tell,” Sesshoumaru said.

“Why wasn’t he there?  With his friends?” Jester pressed.

“He . . .” Trailing off, his amber gaze darkening considerably, Sesshoumaru carefully measured his words.  “It is none of my concern.”

Jester stared at him.  Sesshoumaru didn’t need to look to verify it.  He could feel the probing gaze, and it felt curious, maybe even a little surprised.  “You sound . . . angry about this,” he finally mused.

“Angry?  No.  It has nothing at all to do with me.”

Jester slowly shook his head, but his gaze moved on, off over the horizon once more.  “And now, you sound even angrier.”

Sesshoumaru didn’t answer that.  It was absurd, anyway.  Angry?  Of course not.  Why should he be?

‘Why, indeed . . .’

He ignored that, too.

Jester, however, didn’t seem to notice Sesshoumaru’s mood—that, or he simply didn’t care, and he dug a pear out of the folds of his robe and bit into it with a low moan.  “We’ve got time before midnight,” he ventured when Sesshoumaru remained silent.  “Do you want the other pear?”

“I told you, I don’t eat that,” Sesshoumaru murmured.  “Tell me what you know about the other wards.”

“The other wards,” Jester repeated, taking his time as he chewed the fruit and took another bite.  “The eastern one—the Fire of Wrath—is said to be the Sacred Fire—the fire that never extinguishes, and if I recall rightly, we’ll have to travel the Road of Hell to get to it.  That’s the challenge.  The Balm of Peace to the west may not be that difficult—well, if you compare it to the other things, although they say the guardian is particularly troublesome.  The one we’ll have the most trouble obtaining, I think, is the Essence of Joy to the north.  That is said to lie within the Sacred Mountains, protected by barriers maintained by the ancient order of monks that dwell in those mountains.  It’s going to be a lot more difficult to breech those barriers without some kind of spiritual power, and we . . . Well, I highly doubt you have any of that.”

Sesshoumaru frowned as the other part of the challenge came to mind: that Kagura must not eat the food of Yomi.  “There is no time to lose,” he growled, feeling the edges of impatience, licking at him.

Jester nodded slowly.  “You’re afraid she might well eat the food,” he concluded.  Then, he sighed.  “There’s more to it, you know.”

“What’s that?”

Jester gave a little shrug.  It almost seemed apologetic, though Sesshoumaru wasn’t sure why he’d thought that.  It took him a minute to speak, as though he were trying to decide, just what to say, or maybe, how to say whatever was on his mind.  “If she gives in—if she eats the food of Yomi . . . Well, you know, don’t you?  If she does, then her soul will also never be reincarnated, either.  She really will be condemned to remain in Yomi forever.”


-==========-


“If she gives in—if she eats the food of Yomi . . . Well, you know, don’t you?  If she does, then her soul will also never be reincarnated, either.  She really will be condemned to remain in Yomi forever.”

Gazing out over the valley, bathed in the light of the full moon so high above, Sesshoumaru watched for anything strange, even though it still wasn’t really close to midnight, even as Jester’s words replayed in his head, over and over again.

Suddenly, the idea of collecting the Sacred Ward had grown infinitely more ominous in his mind, and the sense of urgency that was already there had only swelled into something far, far larger, far more urgent.

“Sesshoumaru-sama . . . I’m not lonely anymore . . . but maybe Kagura is . . .”

Gritting his teeth as the soft chime of Rin’s words echoed within the confines of his mind, he couldn’t abide the strange and unwelcome ache that shot through him.  It made no sense, and yet . . . Just why would that memory make him feel so . . .?

‘You really don’t know, Sesshoumaru?  Or is it that you simply don’t want to know?  Because you shut that part of you away so long ago on that night . . .’

‘I, Sesshoumaru . . .?  It’s got nothing to do with this.’

‘Doesn’t it?’ his youkai-voice challenged.  ‘That was the beginning.  That was when you decided that you wouldn’t allow anything like that to ever affect you again . . . and then . . .’

‘Let it go.  It wasn’t the beginning of anything—nor was it the end.  It was—’

‘It was both, and that’s why—’

‘That’s why you’ll drop it,’ Sesshoumaru growled.  ‘It matters not—not to me.’

Ignoring the voice’s heavy sigh, Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes, caught sight of Jester, far below, moving through the marshy land.  He’d thought that perhaps he’d be able to find something while Sesshoumaru watched from the cliff, and that was just as well.  The entity had proven to be a lot more verbose than Sesshoumaru was accustomed to.

Besides . . .

“If she gives in—if she eats the food of Yomi . . . Well, you know, don’t you?  If she does, then her soul will also never be reincarnated, either.  She really will be condemned to remain in Yomi forever.”

A flash of irritation surged through him, and he uttered a quiet, even terse, grunt.  “The hell she will,” he muttered to himself.  ‘She doesn’t belong there.  I will not allow it.’

“Sesshoumaru . . . Naraku cannot possibly be killed except by someone of your caliber.  No one else surpasses you in terms of your skill and youkai power.”

And yet, he’d ignored those stirrings deep within himself, hadn’t he?  That fateful day, when she’d dropped out of the sky . . . He’d told himself that it was little more than a shameless ploy on her part—an attempt to get him to kill Naraku, solely to set her free.  Somehow, it had been easier to believe that than it was to stop, to think about the motivation behind her superfluous flattery.

‘Because you never, ever take anything anyone says to you at face-value.  That’s why . . .’

Even so, the look on her face had stayed with him.  As she’d stood to leave, as she’d turned away . . . Perhaps he wasn’t meant to see it: the sadness that settled in the depths of her eyes.  She was suffering then, but was too proud to say, settling instead for allusions and bravado.  But if she had given that vulnerability voice, would he have listened?

Grinding his teeth together so tightly that his jaws ached under the strain, he knew the truth.  No, he really wouldn’t have listened to her—and might even have interpreted it all as another form of manipulation . . .

Was he really as jaded as that?

Maybe . . . Maybe he was . . . and maybe . . . Maybe he shouldn’t have been.  Fixing it now—a little too late, fighting against time itself . . . If it could be done . . .

“I’ll bring you back, Kagura,” he vowed as the wind caressed his skin, tossed his hair upon its capricious and invisible fingers.  “This, I promise you . . .”

And the wind laughed softly, and the laughter sounded like hers.