InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Zero ❯ The Blackened Tears ( Chapter 10 )

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

“They said that the Night Reaper is a fiend that spirited away Aoizoku, who is the real source of the Blackened Tears.  We’ve got to find and defeat the Night Reaper in order to find Aoizoku.”

Sesshoumaru considered that as he and Jester traveled through the sparse forest on the way back to the marsh with the solitary dead tree.  “Did they say what kind of youkai this Night Reaper is?”

Jester sighed, shook his head.  “No, they didn’t know,” he replied.  “I doubt he’ll be too hard to find, though.”

The continued on in silence for a while.  At least the people that Jester had talked to seemed to know a little more about the mysterious Night Reaper.  It seemed that they were afraid of it, too, refusing to leave their dwellings after dark for fear that they would be ensnared in the creature’s spell.

It was nearing midnight.

There was a strange sort of calm that seemed to settle over the marsh, but it was an unsettling kind of calm, as though everything that should have been there had been forced into silence.  Glancing at Jester, he frowned.  The entity was moving slower, almost cautiously.  He felt it too, didn’t he . . .?

“So,” Jester said, breaking the silence at last, “Kanta said that you revived his father with Tenseiga . . .”

“What of it?”

Giving a little shrug, Jester kept walking.  “It just doesn’t strike me as something you’d choose to do out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I harbor no such feelings as those,” Sesshoumaru replied.  “Tenseiga willed it to be so.  That is all.”

Jester frowned.  “Tell me something?”

Sesshoumaru shot him a sidelong glance but didn’t speak.

“Why do I feel as though you view such things as weakness?”

“Such things?”

“Yes, compassion, for starters.  Is it so wrong to feel badly for someone else?  Kanta’s a child, and a child should not be left to fend for himself, now should he?”

“It is the way of the world,” Sesshoumaru replied.  “Didn’t Izanami say it herself?  Some are meant to die.”

Jester slowly shook his head.  “Is that . . .?  Is that truly what you believe?”

“I have neither the time nor the patience to venture around, helping others out of the goodness of my heart.  I am not so naïve as to believe that it would make a difference—and strength is not achieved through the coddling of others,” Sesshoumaru maintained.

“Then tell me why you would retrieve Kagura’s soul.”

Stopping abruptly, the dog-youkai narrowed his sidelong gaze on Jester.  “She died only because she tried to protect me when I did not need her to do so,” he said.  “That is reason enough.  I will not be beholden to her; not even in death.”

“And the child, Rin?  Why do you care for her?  She holds little value for you.  I would, in fact, argue that she is more of a liability than a resource, so why?”

“Tenseiga chose to revive her when she was cut down by wolf-youkai,” Sesshoumaru said.  “She chose to follow me.”

Jester didn’t accept that reason.  Sesshoumaru could feel it, surging in the air around him.  “So, she, too, was resurrected by Tenseiga . . . But tell me, Sesshoumaru, why would you allow it?  A human child who is so weak, whose very existence is so transient—That is what you believe, isn’t it?”

Sesshoumaru didn’t answer that.  There was no point, was there?

‘And you retreat into silence again because you do not like the questions—or perhaps it is the answers that you despise . . .’

Ignoring his youkai-voice’s statement, he kept moving, focusing instead on the task at hand as he pushed back the impatience that never seemed far away these days.

Now, he needed to concentrate, to devote everything within him to finding the Sacred Ward, and with those items, he’d fix what had gone so very, very wrong . . .

‘Kagura . . .’

“You’re angry with me.”

Casting the entity a sidelong glance, Sesshoumaru said nothing for a moment.  Explaining his feelings just wasn’t something he had ever been interested in doing, after all.  Even so . . . “There’s nothing to say, Jester,” he replied instead.  “Rin follows me by choice.  I never forced her.”

“I’m not saying it is bad, you know,” Jester went on in an almost placating kind of way.  “It simply seems like an odd choice; that’s all.”

“Her family was killed by human bandits,” Sesshoumaru heard himself saying.  “She was mute after that and lived on in the village, however . . . She came to me when I was . . . resting in the forest nearby.  She offered me food and water, and those humans in her village beat her for stealing fish.  Then, the wolves came, and they cut her down.  I smelled her blood, and Tenseiga chose to save her.  That is all there is.”

Jester considered what he’d been told for a long moment, and not for the first time, Sesshoumaru wished that he could properly see the entity’s face beneath the half-mask.  Being unable to read someone’s expression bothered him far more than he was wont to admit.  “I think that I would feel the same way,” he admitted finally.  “It sounds to me as though the child has seen more than enough in her short life.”

Sesshoumaru frowned.  Had he not thought the same thing himself?  And, yes, it was part of the reason that he told himself that he allowed her to remain.  As much ugliness as she’d already experienced, and yet, she still smiled.  It wasn’t something he understood; not really.  For that matter, he didn’t suppose that Rin understood it, either . . .

Stopping abruptly when Jester grabbed his shoulder, Sesshoumaru shot him a withering glance, only to frown as he shifted his gaze, following the direction of the entity’s stare.

At first, he sensed nothing at all.  Slowly, however, from the opposite direction, he saw it—felt it.  The youkai—he still couldn’t discern exactly what kind—seemed to be lurching forward, dragging something behind him: a small human child?

Strangely hunched over, bulbous growths that distended the creature’s sallow green-skinned back; glowing yellow eyes, unnaturally bright . . . He almost seemed like an oni, but he wasn’t large enough . . .

“An imp . . .?”

Nodding slowly in agreement with Jester’s whispered words, Sesshoumaru’s frown darkened.  Even so, an imp?  However, unlike Jaken, this one was huge in comparison.  Imps weren’t strong, as a whole, tended to rely upon each other for strength.  ‘The power of the Blackened Tears . . .’ he thought.

The imp—the Night Reaper—dragged the unconscious child toward the dead tree.

“Put the human down,” Jester said, his voice, echoing in the stillness.

The Night Reaper stopped for a moment, looked around slowly, though Sesshoumaru could tell, even from the distance that separated them, that the imp was having distinct trouble seeing.  “Who’s there?” he demanded, his voice, an ominous rumble of something dark and rusty from misuse as he slowly turned his head from side to side.

“We seek Aoizoku,” Sesshoumaru replied, cracking his claws as he narrowed his eyes upon the pitiful imp.  “Get out of the way or die.”

The overgrown monstrosity wheezed out a strange little laugh, but he did let go of the human as he turned to face the sound of Sesshoumaru’s voice.  “Aoizoku?  She belongs to me!”

Without warning, the imp dashed at him, moving faster than he should have been able to, and what he lacked in the ability to see he very clearly made up for in his hearing and perhaps his sense of smell.  Swinging a heavy and cumbersome wooden club at him, he uttered a terse grunt as the blunt end hit the ground hard, sending up a spray of water with a sickening squelch, Sesshoumaru hopped back to avoid the attack, drawing Tokijin and blasting off a ball of green energy in one fluid motion.

The Night Reaper sprang out of the way as the blast hit the ground behind him, illuminating the night in a flash of brilliant light that shook the earth, outlining the imp in the flashes.  He leapt forward, swinging that club once more, and once more, Sesshoumaru evaded it entirely, but had to leap again when the imp managed to barrel after him.  The club of his was moving with so much force behind it that the wind it created ruffled Sesshoumaru’s hair.  Grumbling, growling, burbling out a string of inconsequential noises, he spun to the side, kept Sesshoumaru moving to avoid that club.

Sesshoumaru’s irritation was fast spiraling higher and higher.  An imp shouldn’t have had the ability to move the way this one did, shouldn’t have had the power to swing that club with the force that he put behind it.  It was on par with the strength that petty youkai got when in possession of a single shard of the Shikon no Tama before it was purified—maybe even more.  ‘The Blackened Tears . . . They hold so much power . . .?’

“You can’t take her!  She’s mine!” the Night Reaper bellowed as he charged at Sesshoumaru again.  Cleaving an arc through the air with the unwieldy weapon, he grunted, snarled, focusing his youki into it as it erupted in a hazy red glow.  Sesshoumaru met it with Tokijin and all the hate and malice that was housed in the wicked blade.  It split the club in the Reaper’s hands straight down the center, and that ought to have been enough.  It wasn’t.  The Night Reaper howled in abject frustration, his fist, snapping out straight, catching Sesshoumaru in the center of his jaw, sending the dog-youkai, sliding back as he jammed the point of Tokijin, deep into the soft earth, boots squelching against the sodden ground before he managed to stop himself, to draw himself up to his full height, even as the wind rose around him, as his youki flashed in the darkened night.

He could feel the electricity in the air, billowing through his hair, his clothes.  His vision remained clear, though.  Reverting to his visceral form?  ‘I think not.’

Tossing his head back, unleashing a high-pitched shriek that rattled straight through Sesshoumaru’s body, the Night Reaper shot forward once more, bearing unnaturally long fangs that glinted in the shivering light, eyes still dull and blank, and yet, they glowed, too.

Sesshoumaru yanked Tokijin free and slashed hard, shooting off a streak of blue light, the crackle of lighting that ripped through the night.  Standing still, staring without blinking, Sesshoumaru watched as the Souryuha engulfed the imp’s body, as his shrieks of pain echoed in the air, even after his body exploded in a gust of light and dust and wind.

“That . . . seemed rather anticlimactic,” Jester remarked as Sesshoumaru dropped Tokijin through the sash around his waist.  The entity frowned as he watched Sesshoumaru for a moment before stepping over to check upon the unconscious child.  “That sword has an evil aura,” he remarked at length, hunkering down to check the child over for injuries.

“It serves my purposes,” Sesshoumaru responded.  That said, he turned on his heel and headed toward the dead tree.  “My youki is much stronger than that of Tokijin.”

There was nothing at all remarkable about the tree, yet that was where the imp was taking the child.  Slowly stepping around it, he frowned, narrowing his gaze as he methodically examined it.

“They say that defeating the Night Reaper would open the path to Aoizoku,” Jester said, placing his hands against the gnarled bark, tilting his head back as he peered up at it, investigating it in much the same way as Sesshoumaru already was.  “Given that the imp wasn’t all that smart, I highly doubt that any kind of concealment used on this would be that tough to figure out.”

“Wh-Who’s there . . .?”

Stepping back at the sound of the voice that didn’t actually seem to be attached to a body, Sesshoumaru frowned at the tree.  It had spoken, hadn’t it?  An almost lyrical, most certainly female, voice . . . Not unlike old Bokusenou, and yet . . . “Are you Aoizoku?” he asked.

There wasn’t a response for several moments.  Finally, however, the voice—the tree—spoke again.  “I . . . I am,” she admitted quietly, almost cautiously.  “Who are you?”


There was nothing more than unending darkness, nothing but void and emptiness.

The flicker of images that were more emotion than actual thought both comforted and tormented her by turns.  A flash of amber—brilliant, glowing—and yet, the color held no form, and something about it . . .

‘It . . . hurts . . .’

But, why . . .?

The memory of the scent of the forest and the trees, the earth and the sea, carried on the wind, but it was fading.  That scent—the combination—it . . . It meant something to her, and yet . . .

And she knew that it was precious, but she couldn’t remember why.

The flash of silvery-white, almost like strands of . . . of hair . . .

Why was she remembering these things, and why couldn’t she remember more . . .?

A garden of wisteria, the calming trickle of water as it ebbed and flowed in a small and crystalline stream . . . an incredible peace that had felt like . . . like coming home . . .

What was it?  What did it mean . . . to her . . .?

The unsteady and labored throb of her heart, growing weaker and fainter by the second, and . . .

And such a sadness, captured in the depths of the amber lights . . .

Something about that . . . She wanted to hang onto it, didn’t she?  Wanted to cling to it . . .

The one word that she knew, even if she had no idea, just what it meant . . .

‘Sess . . . Sesshoumaru . . .’


“You . . . You defeated Toshiaki . . .?  And he’s gone . . .?”

Slowly regarding the dead tree, Sesshoumaru nodded.  “Was that the Night Reaper’s true name?”

“Y-Yes . . .”

“He is dead.”

“Then . . . Then I’m free . . .”

Jester shrugged.  “Well, as free as a tree ever can be . . .”

Blinking as the flash of white light erupted before them, Sesshoumaru wasn’t entirely surprised to see the tree had disappeared, and where it had stood . . .

She was pale, almost glowing, from the top of her bluish-white head to the soles of her tiny and bare feet.  Her skin seemed to absorb all the stingy, thready moonlight as she peered up at him through the thick fringe of her eyelashes.  “I am Aoizoku,” she said, offering him a low bow.  “Thank you for freeing me from Toshiaki.”

He brushed aside her thanks, as though it were of very little consequence, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Jester was faster.  “You’re a light-youkai,” he blurted, shaking his head in obvious disbelief.  It wasn’t surprising.  Light-youkai were few and far between . . . In truth, it was the first time Sesshoumaru himself had ever seen one, though he had, of course, heard rumors.  Jester went on, “Why were you a tree?  Did the Night Reaper bewitch you?”

She shook her head quickly.  “He didn’t have the ability to do that,” she replied, wrinkling her nose, as though it should have been a foregone conclusion.  “I did it.  He . . . He threatened to force me to be his mate, and I . . . Well, he couldn’t do that if I became a tree . . .”

Jester nodded sagely.  “And how long have you been his prisoner?”

She sighed.  “I don’t know,” she admitted softly.  “I know it’s been a very long time, but counting days is hard to do in that form . . .”

“I am searching for the Blackened Tears,” Sesshoumaru cut in.  “I was told that you have them.”

She didn’t look particularly surprised.  In fact, she took an involuntary step back, as though to put some distance between them.  “Will you capture me, too, if I give them to you?”

“I have no interest in doing so,” Sesshoumaru replied.  “I merely want the tears.”
Biting her lip, she considered his words, tried to decide whether or not she ought to trust him.  “And then, you’ll just leave me?”

“I have no desire to imprison you, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied.  “Tell me, though.  Can any light-youkai produce the Blackened Tears?”

Taking her time as she slowly stretched, she sighed.  “They cannot,” she finally said.  “I . . . I am the oldest of my kind.  That is why . . .”

Sesshoumaru considered that for a long moment.  Then he nodded once.  It made sense, after all.  Youkai, for the most part, tended to keep evolving, even as they aged, and with those evolutions came greater power, too.  What she claimed made sense.  “And the rest of your kind?”

She frowned, and suddenly, she seemed sad.  “I don’t know where they are,” she admitted.  “Some youkai have heard the lore, and every day, I can feel the voices of the others as they fall silent.  The ones that remain are scattering—trying to hide what they are, simply to survive.”

“As you’ve done,” Jester remarked quietly.  “Where will you go, Aoizoku-san?”

Shaking her head, she seemed to draw back into herself—almost a seemingly reflexive kind of stance.  “I wonder if anywhere is safe any longer,” she mused.  Then, she gave herself a little shake, her gaze clearing as she lifted it to meet Sesshoumaru’s.  “As for the tears . . . I can only produce them on the night of the new moon, but if I give them to you, can I . . .?  Can I come with you?  Can you help me to find somewhere safe?”

“Somewhere safe?”

She nodded slowly.  “It may take me some time to regain my bearings,” she admitted.  “To think about where I should go from here . . .”

Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes.  He wasn’t really on a mission to search and rescue anyone, however, a youkai like her, falling into the wrong hands?  That could be potentially disastrous, not to mention that the lore of which she spoke . . .

“Until you find a more suitable place,” he allowed.

“But first, we need to find out where this child belongs,” Jester added, striding over, lifting the child gently.  He gave him a little shake, attempting to rouse him.  It didn’t work.

It was on the tip of his tongue to demand that Jester leave the pup.  In the end, though, he stifled a disgusted sigh and strode away in the direction where the Night Reaper had first appeared.