InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Shards of Destiny ❯ Chapter Ten ( Chapter 11 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, etc., of Inuyasha or Yu Yu Hakusho. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and not for profit.

SHARDS OF DESTINY

Summary: Naraku has crossed over to the modern era, and our heroes must band together to try and stop him. But what troubles arise as old relationships are torn apart by new, and the dark spider sits spinning new webs of deceit?

A/N: Surprising how quickly the time flies! Hope this was worth the wait. =)

Chapter Ten

“Kagome!” Inuyasha yelled, trying to shield her from the miasma boiling up all around them. “Don’t breathe it in!”

“I know!” she protested, muffled behind the sleeve she raised to cover her mouth. Backing away, Kagome blindly groped for her bow and arrows. A purifying arrow might clear enough space to give them a little breathing room.

Until the flashlights winked out, leaving them in fetid darkness.

Unable to call out, lest she breathe the poisonous stuff in, Kagome turned this way and that, seeking a way free from the evil vapor that now surrounded her on all sides. Shippou, cheeks puffed, desperately clung to her shoulder. He tugged urgently on her sleeve, almost exposing her bra strap.

Could he see in the darkness? Kitsune vision was keener than a human’s. Kagome turned her head, and Shippou nodded, his rusty hair brushing her cheek. Going right, she blindly felt her way forward. Something slithered past her ankle, tripping her up. She fell with a swallowed cry, both knees burning against the sharp gravel of the cave floor. Drat this stupid skirt!

She tried to stand, her lungs burning, but the heavy book bag and Shippou didn’t help. She dropped her bow to use both hands, and something rolled under her left palm. Her soul throbbed upon contact, and Kagome froze.

But that only happened when she sensed…

Desperately groping around in the dirt and gravel, Kagome cupped the small, round ball in her hands. She sank back on her heels in shock even as the unbroken Jewel of Four Souls started glowing.


“What the hell is that?” Yusuke stared at the bright pink light suddenly gleaming out of the darkness. The distraction nearly cost him, for yet another tentacle whipped out of the dark, trying to wrap around his arm. Jumping back, Yusuke struck out, energy flaring around his fist. The tentacle split upon contact, waving wildly as the separated pieces flopped on the ground like dead fish.

“Yech! Gods, that’s gross! Everything’s gross since we came down here, Urameshi!” Kuwabara declared as his sparking energy sword severed another tentacle.

“How many of these things does that thing have?” Yusuke demanded, punching through another one. The damn tentacles had followed the miasma, both attacking at once. They just kept coming and coming, no end in sight. And nothing at the end of them but an empty black hole that seemed to swallow everything inside it.

A faint cry to their right---

“Botan!” Kuwabara cried, distracted, and howled angrily when a tentacle grabbed his leg. Now furious, he cut a swath around them. “Yusuke, she needs our help!”

“Damn it, Kuwabara!” Yusuke shouted, distracted by six of the creepy things coming at once. “Wait for me!”

But the beefy redhead was gone, swallowed by a writhing, squirming mass that continually attacked the ex-detective, roils of thick miasma obscuring everything else.

Fed up, Yusuke pumped his arm, shouting, “Shot Gun!”

The blast cleared the immediate area, leaving bare rock after the blue-white brilliance faded.

“Kuwabara!” he shouted, staring wildly around him.

No one answered, except a sinister slither against stone…


“Ew! Something just tried to grab me!” Botan cried, flying her oar some feet above the poisonous vapors that seethed across the cave floor.

“Wasn’t me, I promise!” Miroku said, riding behind her. The ferry-girl summoned an orb of light, all she could do right now with her spirit energy so drained. Miroku, riding pillion, used his staff to point, the rings jangling at the movement.

“Look!”

“What is that? An octopus?” Botan stared at the horrifying image---a mass of dark things writhing around a deeper black maw. Even the ghostly light of her floating orb couldn’t penetrate the utter blackness of its center. There was a curious twisting of wrongness to it that slithered over her spiritual awareness.

“Fly us higher!” Miroku said, his voice a desperate gasp in her ear. “We cannot allow that thing to swallow us into itself!”
“What is it?” Botan demanded, even as she urged her oar up, away from the waving shadow-tentacles that, much like their fleshy counterparts, reached for them. “I know it, I know I know it!”


Damn that Naraku, Sango thought even as she fumbled for her mask. Holding it to her face with one hand, she glared at the deadly miasma rolling towards them. Naraku couldn’t even give her one damn moment to grieve. The evil vapor now surrounded them, cutting them off from the others. The short demon, unaffected by the poisonous cloud that was deadly to most humans, ignored it to stare at something beyond it.

“The miasma is just a cover,” he spat, drawing his sword and vanishing.

What did he mean, just a cover? A cover for what? Tying her mask with a jerk, Sango unsheathed her sword. Her Hiraikotsu lay somewhere beyond the roiling smoke, out of reach. She refused to leave Kohaku’s side. If she hadn’t before, then he might still be alive…


Kirara hissed as the tentacles hurtled out of the dark, trying to wrap around her body and drag her off. Spitting in anger, she leapt for the sky, fire trailing from her four paws. She barely avoided the dark blur that landed right in the middle of the thickest mass of writhing malice. The fire demon laid about him with his sword, clearing the area as the neko desperately searched for Sango and Kohaku.

There! Spying the pair through the clouded darkness, Kirara gave a glad cry---only to be cut off as a thick tentacle slapped her out of the sky. Spinning end over end, the nekomata quickly righted herself. Snarling, she attacked the thick tentacle with tooth and claw, slashing through the tough outer layer until the squishy, foul-tasting innards spilled forth.

The tentacle flinched away, but another took its place. And yet another, thinner this time, trying to twist around her back leg even as she grappled with the first in her front claws. One tried to wind around her midsection, and the nekomata howled in fury.

Fury that was unmatched, as the death of the poor boy still rent her heart. And now those same tentacles were keeping her from the girl’s side, from giving what little comfort she could to those who had so long been in her charge.

Roaring furiously, Kirara twisted around on herself, running faster and faster in a tightening circle until the streaking flames of her passage became a ball of blazing vengeance. A blaze that sparked from one tentacle to the next even as they tried to escape. The fire rose with the neko’s roar of angry triumph, until the tentacles scorched into ash all around her.

The fire of her anger abruptly died. Kirara stood, panting and slightly dizzy, inside a barren space, devoid of tentacles or others, including Sango or Kohaku. Blinking in bewilderment, the exhausted neko shrank substantially in size. She tried to take a step forward, managed two before finally collapsing.

The silence was deafening, even as the darkness reached for her with shadowy fingers.


He knew that cold blackness. He had faced it, and taken it into himself until he became one with it. Red eyes narrowing, Hiei disdainfully swept his sword across the endless tentacles that sought to drag him under.

Weak physical manifestations of a much larger menace. He stared into the twisting center of that utter darkness that was the absence of anything that had ever known the light.

And laughed, his scorn a challenge as he raised his bandaged right arm.


Cold. She had never known such cold. Sango shivered, the pommel of her sword digging into her palms. She clasped it with both hands, feet braced on either side of Kohaku. She wouldn’t let them have him.

Over my dead body, she vowed, and glared at the waving tentacles that strangely kept their distance, as if mocking her by forming an interlocking barrier that kept anyone from reaching them.

Perhaps that was their intent…



Botan convulsively shuddered at the unholy despair and wretchedness spilling from that horrible black maw with a hideously foul wind. The stench of a thousand untold horrors rose with an undying scream that resonated across her very soul.

“What in all the nine hells---”

The curse was faint, as if further away then just ten feet below them. Botan’s first thought was “Yusuke!” but at her second, she froze in realization.

“Miroku! That pit---it’s the opening to the Ninth Hell!”

“The Ninth---” Miroku paled, his eyes dark holes in his face. “You mean…”

“The Abyss,” Botan whispered in dawning terror. Her sweaty palms clutched desperately at her oar. “We have to get everyone out of here! We need to leave---this instant! No one can survive the Abyss, not even gods or demons!”


“You’re not Botan!” Kuwabara declared just as Inuyasha yelled, “You’re not Kagome!”

They matched glares, jaws thrust out. Then both whirled to stand back to back as the mass of tentacles encircled them.

“Ha! I got a bigger sword than you!” Inuyasha swung his giant fang.

“Just you watch!” Kuwabara sputtered angrily. Standing defiantly, he shouted, “Sword---get long!”

“That’s the stupidest---” Inuyasha gaped as the spirit blade became a spirit pole, which Kuwabara sent in a wide sweep, clearing the tentacles from his half of their tight circle.

“That ain’t nuthin’,” the hanyou muttered. Raising his Tetsusaiga over his head, he shouted, “Wind Scar!”

Ghostly winds funneled from the giant fang, hurling fury against the writhing tentacles, which burned to ash in the wake of the powerful blast.

“How’s that?” Inuyasha demanded, posing with the giant sword against his shoulder.

“Hey! Where’d everybody go?” Kuwabara stared around the bare cave, the silence deepening as Inuyasha did a double-take.

“What the…”


The thorn whip spun around him, cutting a swath through the tentacles. Aiming precisely, Kurama easily dodged the various tendrils, cutting only those that came too close. He directed his way to that uncanny pink light, a tiny beacon in the fetid dark. The power pulsed, calling him, but that wasn’t the only reason he steered his path that way.

It was the distinct aura of purity that surrounded it, the aura that spoke to him on a deeper level then he cared to admit. But he knew where that aura was, so was Kagome.

The tentacles gave way in that direction, as if herding him along. A troubling thought, but one he could not entirely dismiss. But as it aligned with his own desires, Kurama dismissed it as irrelevant. At least, for now.

His thorn whip, no longer needed, he curled upon reaching the miko’s side. She looked up at him, her beautiful face bathed in the pink purity of the small bauble cupped in her palms.

“Kurama?” she asked, eyes wide. The tiny kitsune on her shoulder cried out in joy.

“Kurama! You found us!”

“Of course.” He glanced at the seeming retreat of the tentacles into the darkness that drew in everything else. There was a troubling wrongness to that black pool, as if it sucked everything inside it, never to emerge. Strange shadows now crept across the cave. He didn’t like the feel of those long fingers of darkness, reaching across the walls as if they were tentacles of their own. “We shouldn’t remain here. It isn’t safe.”

“No,” Kagome agreed, cupping the bauble to her chest with one hand and giving him the other so he could help her to her feet. Half-risen, she suddenly froze, her eyes going wide in shock.

“Kagome!” Frightened, Shippou’s tiny claws dug into her shoulder. “The Jewel! It’s sinking inside your body!”

The miko abruptly threw her head back even as Kurama grabbed her upper arms in his hands. Kagome’s eyes were terrified pools as her mouth fell open in a silent cry. Her small body quivered, growing taut as her back arched, mimicking the curve of her bow as she stood on her tip toes. Her hand, melded to her chest, glowed so bright one could see the fine bones through her skin even as that pink light shimmered into a tight ball that slowly burned beneath her skin.

“Kagome!” Kurama said desperately, but she was beyond hearing. Eyes vacant, mouth agape, the girl suddenly seemed to burn with a furious fuchsia light as the Jewel sunk inside her body, a darker fuchsia color coming through the shining pink purity of her spiritual energy.

“Naraku…” Kagome gasped, eyes suddenly showing awareness as her hand fell away, the fuchsia-pink energy now pulsing in time with her heartbeat. “He’s done something…to the Jewel. It’s---”

The world imploded.


A wave of pure energy, pink and purple and fuchsia mixed, flared up from the center of the cavern. Mirrored in Botan’s wide pink eyes, her cry was lost as they were flung out of the air by the force of that blast. The ferry-girl desperately tried to hang on to her oar, grabbing Miroku’s wrist as he slipped off. They over-balanced and she could feel herself being flung towards that awful black maw, which expanded and opened even as the flaring fuschia energy touched it.

Her scream was lost as the blackness of the Abyss sucked them under.


He was the only one who might save them, in that single instant just before the blackness took them all on a one-way trip to Hell.

Tearing the bandages from his right arm, Hiei snarled, “Dragon of the Darkness Flame!”

And fell unconscious as the deafening roar split the cavern.