InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Dark Past of a Demon Warrior ❯ Introduction ( Prologue )

Standing and staring out over the night-darkened lands, a shadow watched closely over the lands that some might call his home. The ravaging and destruction of the village at the bottom of the hill, smoking with the last embers of life-consuming fire, bring smoke up even as far as the knoll on which the man stands, burning his sensitive nose to the point of choking and gagging. The noxious fumes of burning flesh, humans and even half-demons, like himself, staunched all of his other senses, making him incapable of anything but hate and fury.

 

Despite his earlier feelings of not wanting to return, he made his way down the hill toward his old home where he was raised… where all of his experiences began. The pain of the loss far overpowered any other feeling he could have had to keep him from returning, and if there were any survivors, they would need his help. He had knowledge of healing herbs and such from the time he spent in his later youth at the nearby monastery, so he would be as helpful as any other passerby to any wounded villagers.

 

As he walked, he smelled as keenly as he could through the smoke for anything that didn't fit, other than the burning itself. He knew there would have to be some clue somewhere of who or what caused the fire and what slaughtered the few that made it to the other side of the hill, where he had first discovered the village's plight. His eyes burned with fury and pain as he stepped across the charred remains of the gate and made his way through the ashes and remaining framework.

 

“You'd never guess it was snowing yesterday…” He began talking to himself out of habit. “First snow the village had seen for forty years, here only to prophesize its death in flames.” He shook his head and started looking about for any signs of survivors or escape paths the villagers might have taken, loosening the vest about his chest as he moved toward the nearest ashes of a home.

 

For the first time, his visage became visible to the woman watching him - a tall, lean, young-looking man with shoulder-length silver hair and brown eyes, wearing wide black pants and a thin, unlatched black vest that did not succeed in covering his stomach or most of his chest. He wore a belt with numerous vials and bottles on it, as well as an enormous iron sword, nearly nine feet long and a foot and a half wide, that he called his Zan-batou. She came out of her hiding place behind one of the few beams still standing. “Kumouri? You've come back?”

 

“M-mother… My worst fears are calmed.” Kumouri smiled awkwardly as the woman came to him and embraced him as a mother does.

 

“I knew either you or your father…” She stopped, from either grief or shame.

 

“He's dead. He's not coming back for us.” Kumouri's smile faded completely, and he released his embrace to start checking his mother's wounds and burns.

 

They stood in silence as he treated her gashes with numerous herbs and the like, wrapped the more serious damages, and applied a self-made ointment to all her burns. When he stood back up to face her, she smiled at him still. “He did come back. He's standing in front of me. That same sense of mission and pride… you really are a lot like him.

 

Kumouri gaped. She finally recognized him as an adult, as an equal to her husband. She finally realized that he had gone through his trials for his own strength, not just to prove that he could be like his father… but he couldn't be like his father. His father, a full-blood dog demon, a Yasha Keitounite shogun, was more powerful than he had ever hoped to be… Yet he had his father's gauntlet that controlled the winds.

 

This thought and memory compelled him to look down at his left arm at the gauntlet, made of solid black steel with a gleaming emerald-like stone in the center of the palm, as it extended to the bottoms of his fingers. His mother noticed it for the first time. “So… does that mean.. he really is dead?”

 

Kumouri nodded. “As far as everyone knows, he's been dead for six years, since I first set out looking for him.”

 

His mother sighed and leaned forward into his shoulder to cry, but she kept talking through her sobs. “There are no other survivors in the village… but some.. fled into the woods to the west. I'll go with you and help you look.”

 

Kumouri nodded and looked out west. “Climb onto my back. We need to get moving, so I can find the ones that did this.”

 

She nodded and obeyed, and Kumouri quickly leaped out over the embers into the remnants of snow hanging on the village's edge. He dashed off into the woods, following his mother's direction.

 

He had one thought on his mind - “The same bastard that killed pops, no doubt. I'll have to take care of him myself.” He went on mechanically, acting on impulse, so that he could focus his thoughts on smelling for the culprit…

 

Yet he couldn't help, looking back on the burned village, remembering leaving in the first place. He was flooded with, rather than thoughts of revenge, memories of the village, and of his travels. He sighed as he treated the other survivors, of whom there were about ten, and he quickly left after finishing. He left them all with thankful faces, and debt was something he could absolutely not stand, whether he owed it or it was owed to him.

 

He had come across a smell at the edge of the woods that he decided to follow because he didn't recognize. It seemed likely that it was the culprit… an angry demon with a fire breath. Probably just another one of those “angry at the whole world” types… Kumouri reminisced as he followed the scent…