InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Prophecy ❯ The Cave ( Chapter 3 )

I'm going to try and make my chapters longer after this. That might mean it'll take longer, but I think it'll be worth the wait.

 

Chapter Three: The Cave

 

The water was actually surprisingly warm, Kagome noticed as she waded in to her waist. Mira was already a ways ahead of her, in up to her neck. She beckoned Kagome closer.

 

“Come on, don't be scared.”

 

“Sorry, I like being able to breathe,” Kagome muttered, as she drifted towards Mira. “Where did InuYasha head off to?”

 

Mira shot her a wily smile. “Under water.”

 

“What? How can he breathe? Is he okay?”

 

Mira laughed. “Come on, Kagome,” and descended under the water, leaving a terrified Kagome in up to her neck. With one large intake of breath, Kagome plunged underwater, eyes opening slowly, and blinking twice when she couldn't feel the water at all.

 

Was she even under water?

 

The air was still around her, and even though when she looked up she could clearly see the top of the water, breath came to her as naturally as it did on land.

 

She took a peek at her surroundings. Rocks and algae littered the floor of the lake, and around her, fish swam in delight. She raised her eyebrows, confused. The fish had no gills!

 

“I know it's peculiar,” Mira was saying, “it takes some getting used to. This water is enchanted. Once you're in, the water adapts to your natural settings, making it possible for you to breathe, see, and talk. Now stop dawdling, the cave is this way.”

 

Kagome followed her to a smooth slab of stone nearly thirty feet high in the water. “What? I didn't know it was this deep!”

 

Mira just grinned. “It's not.”

 

**********************

 

“About fucking time,” InuYasha grumbled when they entered the massive cave. Probably about sixty feet wide, and thirty feet tall, drawings and maps and script scattered the walls, ceiling, and floor. In the center of the room, a star was etched into the ground, with a river of what looked like blood running its outline. Kagome bit her lip.

 

“Is that… blood?”

 

“No fucking shit,” he snapped. “Whenever someone around here dies, their bodies get tossed into the lake. Since this place is enchanted, the bodies end up in here, and their blood is drained and poured into the star thing, which supposedly keeps this place running. I figured you'd remember that, stupid.”

 

Her eyes narrowed. “Stop calling me stupid, InuYasha. I have no idea who you are, or what any of this is, or what I'm supposed to be doing to fulfill this stupid prophecy, okay? So chill out.”

 

“Keh,” he scoffed.

 

Kagome used the silence to explore the cave. There it was, the family tree. It extended down almost the entire length of the wall, but left a little space for something… future generations maybe?

 

There she was. Her mother and father were listed shortly above her, and her grandparents above that. There was more, beside her, but it was grayed and faded. “Why can't I see my future husband or children like you said I could, Miss Sayo?”

 

“Knowing your future could destroy you, especially if something goes wrong. That is why it is invisible to you. Mine is invisible to me, too. Though I couldn't possibly fathom getting married or having children at this age.”

 

Kagome nodded. “Oh.”

 

“Now for the good stuff. See, on the ceiling, all those words?”

 

“Yeah, is that another language?”

 

Mira sighed. “Unfortunately. I have poured through numerous language texts, and searched online for a sample, but there's nothing. It's like it's a made up language.”

 

“So no one can read it, then,” Kagome muttered with a slight frown. “Then what was the point in all this? This doesn't help me at all.”

 

“You and InuYasha could read this, actually. Not yet. But when the reincarnations adapt more thoroughly, you will be able to understand everything in this cave. There are pictures though, pictures that you can understand now. I've tried to understand them to the best of my ability, but perhaps you and InuYasha could do a slight better job. It might trigger something, you never know.”

 

“This one is when Jacques was beheaded,” InuYasha commented as he stared at one of the pictures. It was a picture of a young woman, holding the head of a young man, tears leaking out of her eyes. Blood was on the ground surrounding both of them, and there was a man wielding a scythe above the male. “You'd think they'd use some sort of guillotine for the beheading, but I guess not.”

 

“Perhaps they wanted to make it more torturous?” Kagome suggested. She walked over to him, fingering another drawing, this one of a woman riding a horse, the ground covered in dog heads and horseshoes. “I don't know what this is,” she admitted.

 

“Course you don't,” InuYasha muttered. “Jacques was dead by this time. This is the Massacre of 1845. The Church had been freaking out lately because of some dogs always hanging around His Holy House. Father Raphe had been complaining about their barking whenever Service would start, or whenever he would try to pray. He thought it was just weird until he started hearing horses galloping past too. He was convinced then that it was some sort of evil omen, so he ordered all the dogs and horses within a fifty mile radius to be killed. Anyway, at this time Kyoko and Ash lived in a small town a couple hundred miles away when he heard the news. Father Raphe had been her mentor as a child, so Kyoko was pretty damn concerned. Anyway, she rode several horses down there, leaving Ash behind with a caregiver, and this is the one she had when she entered the city. Father Raphe freaked when he saw the horse, and threw himself off the top of the Church that morning, against Kyoko's will.”

 

“Wow. That's so… sad.'

 

“Eh, that's not all of it. Later that week, at Father Raphe's funeral, Kyoko went down to Jacques' grave. She felt very uneasy approaching it, like she wasn't supposed to be there. Something felt off. She ordered it checked out, and it turned out Jacques' body was missing from his grave, though the ground and casket remained untouched, or so it seemed.”

 

“How do you know all this? I thought there was no record of Kyoko! What happened to Jacques?”

 

Mira cleared her throat. “There is a record, but only if you know where to look. No officials know of her. But there are a couple people.”

“People?”

 

InuYasha scoffed. “Yeah, you know, ordinary citizens? Do you have half a fucking brain?”

 

“Oooh, InuYasha!,” Kagome seethed.

 

“Enough,” came Mira's voice. She was staring at a lone picture, set apart from the rest. It was farther along the trail too, so it was far past anything that they had been talking about before. “This one… It seems like it's in the future. See, back there's a picture of Kyoko breastfeeding, which must be the birth of Ash. Then there's all these other pictures of wars, treaties, deaths, births… and I think we hit the future about here,” she was saying, backtracking across the wall. “See, that looks like your school, Kagome. And there's a girl with a backpack, you, I presume. And here's pictures of your life, your brother's birth, your father's death, the fortunteller… yes, this picture over here is in the future.”

 

Kagome went up to the picture that was farther away. “What is it? It looks like four people, and some kind of animal, battling this creature… half man, half… spider? There's something written in kanji over here, too. Na… Naraku.”

 

InuYasha stood beside her. “Is that us? Who the hell are these people? It's the only picture in the future, too, guess it's important.”

 

Mira sighed. “It looks like the two of you have a difficult battle ahead of you, though it seems as if you will receive aid from others, as denoted in this picture here.”

 

“Battle…?” Kagome squeaked. “Me?”

 

“Yeah, you, who else?” InuYasha added sarcastically. “Whatever, let's get the hell out of this Godforsaken place. It's all messing with my head.”

 

“Good idea,” Mira said as she headed towards the entrance. “We'll head back tomorrow.”

 

Kagome groaned. “Yay.”