InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Welcome To The Machine ❯ The Ingress ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Ejecta2248586 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Supernatural / Occult / Mystery | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 05.18.2004 | Pages: 1 | Words: 1.5K | Visits: 269 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Suspense / Supernatural / Occult / Mystery | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 05.18.2004 | Pages: 1 | Words: 1.5K | Visits: 269 | Status: Completed
Welcome to The Machine
Chapter I: The Ingress
I wonder, if, after I am gone, the universe will remember me. In the wake of what I am forced to do, I suppose my name and identity will be lost forever to posterity. I will slip through Time's gnarled, ageworn fingers like a grain of sand, washed away as the tides of time ebb from the shore. But this is how it must be. I am to work in ambiguity, none will know my name, none will see my face, none will hear my voice. But I am all around them, I surround them like the air they breathe; they are inside of me, part of me. But they will not know my name. To know one's name is to control them, so an old maxim says. They will not control me, they will not know me, my name shall never be spoken from their lips, their eyes shan't behold my visage, their ears hear only the breeze as I speak to them in riddles. No, they will not know my name, I say. For my name is a thing that is not a thing, a word that is not a word. It is a reality, a state of existence, and one that so many are part of and so few ever experience. Are you a part of me?
* * *
Grass crunched beneath her feet, nipping between her toes as the ragged band walked through a green field, mottled with the yellow and blue of wildflowers. Inuyasha, broodingly silent and noncommital, walked beside her, immersed in his thoughts. Miroku and Sango hung back a little, hand in hand, wordless in their contained, joyful reverie at the approaching marriage, but respectful of Inuyasha's emotional dilemma. Shippo rode atop Kirara's back, drifting in and out of sleep, soothed by the lolling of the animal's gentle gait.
So, Kagome was finally going home, never to return. Of course, she promised to come see them, visit on occasion, perhaps even stay overnight a few times, but everyone knew that, though they didn't doubt her sincerity, these were just wistful musings. Kagome, their Kagome, Inuyasha's Kagome, would leave them forever, becoming nothing but a deliciously depressing memory of a time long ago. Kagome knew this was hard for them, particularly for Inuyasha, but they could not imagine how she was feeling.
After recovering the jewel, she simply handed it to Inuyasha, never even discussed her staying. He knew that it was impossible to stay, impossible to go with her, but knowing something is not possible only makes it hurt more. She knew this as well, realizing that talking about such a thing would also only make the pain more unbearable, and so decided to let silence hold a general reign over the group.
Up ahead, mixing and melting with the marshmallow clouds above them, fluffy, gray plumes of smoke twirled and writhed upward into azure, dissolving into another cumulus bundle of cotton. The village was up ahead, she thought sadly. Those few, precious, meaningless moments in between events in our lives make them all the more worth living. The same could be said in said circumstance. Simply walking beside him, in glorious, albeit somewhat gloomy, quietude was something Kagome had always treasured, even more so now than ever before. In an hour, perhaps two, they would be at a village, hoping to contact some anonymous witch or soothsayer and convince her to, out of kindness, heal the mass of scar tissue on the back of her neck, meandering from the base of her skull down to the small of her back. All of this seemed only a pointless distraction. Kagome cared little now about the scar, and even less about this witch.
A rebellious sigh sieved through her pink-gray lips, being audible only to a certain nearby youkai. He glanced sidelong at her, then glared distantly at the green earth. He could tell that she was feeling sad. What she did not understand was, while she would go home and have family and friends to comfort her and see her through the pain, he had no one. Sango and the monk would be married off soon, leaving only Shippou, as Kirara would stay with her master. The little kitsune might hang around for a while, but eventually he would leave for some reason. Sooner or later, Inuyasha would be alone again. He could shrug it off and put up a external guise of apathy, but, inside, he would be just as alone as ever. He might as well be dead.
By now, they had reached the fringes of the town and skirted around to where the main road went out, off, away into the distant, dim mountains. The simple, hardworking plebeians of this town seemed like ancient, moving statues, weathered by Time and the long, biting winds of life. They walked unhurriedly throught the dusty street, pushing their hay-carts or carrying their dry goods on their backs, like Sisyphus, always pushing, never seeming to move anywhere, trapped in a moment that never appeared to end. Quietly, Inuyasha asked a withered old gentleman about the witch. Without saying a word, the man pointed a gnarled, bony hand toward a rocky scar on the outskirts of the other side of the small village. A nod was the only sign that Inuyasha understood. The man went back to fruitlessly pushing his metaphorical boulder up that steep incline as the six strangers walked on.
***
There is a place, outside of this village. A beautiful landscape of verdant fields and evanescent mountains was marred only by a coal-black stretch of land, about a half-mile long, that the villagers called The Scar. Strewn with jagged, achromatic rocks and simmering, seething volcanic vents that pervaded the air with the thick odor of sulphur, The Scar had been always the meeting place for an esoteric circle of Truthsayers and anile old witches with intense emnity toward mankind. Some said that some had been murdered for revealing certain secrets that were not meant to leave The Circle. Among this group of mystic was a feeble beldame, Emi, who had been cursed with the bitter irony of her name. A mane of colorless hair fell in a drizzled mass in front of vacant, black eyes. Her eybrows were thick and white and had almost joined in the middle, while her nose seemed bent slightly to the left, with a small dent in the side. Her toothless mouth caved inward, covered only by thin, grey lips. Emi hated her mother deeply for giving her life, and giving such a mockingly sweet name to such an ugly, deformed little baby girl. Yes, behind those dead eyes lied a bitter and hateful soul. Never had those lips felt a loving kiss from any but her mother, and never had her wrinkled skin felt the gentle caress of a man.
On this particular night, a moonless night dotted with fulgent white spheres in the heavens above, The Circle members gathered in a semicircle around the watchfire, staring through the dancing flames to the cloaked figure who gazed back at them from behind a hood. The occasion flicker of light danced across an inkvine scar across her cheek, reflecting darkly in those cold, black eyes. She held out a hand to silence them, and prepared to speak. Only the crackling and popping of the furnace before her disrupted the holy calm that held the night in tension. Her voice echoed eerily throughout the great cathedral of granite around them.
"Comrades!" She cried out, in a shrill, squeaking voice. "I have meditated on...the matter at hand. The gods have decided, and have shown me their decision!"
"And?" One ventured to ask.
"I have seen death, fire, and pain..." She pointed into the darkness. "...at the hands of One Who Is Yet To Come. He wears a mane of white and strikes with flaming claws, spews flames from his mouth, tears flesh with his fangs. His is a monster, a demon who comes to destroy us all. But he will not succed!"
Her dry, old hand passed in a slow circle through the flames, the flames nipping at her fingertips.
"The rosewater has shown me a catalyst, one who will change his evil into calm. She is called Hotaru, the firefly, the God-light, who will lure him to us, only to watch in horror as we squeeze his troubled little soul into submission." She slowly clenched her long-nailed fingers into a tight fist amidst the flames, then opened them, revealing a small bronze ring, with a tiny crystal imbedded in the center.
"...And then, my comrades, he will be ours."
Chapter I: The Ingress
I wonder, if, after I am gone, the universe will remember me. In the wake of what I am forced to do, I suppose my name and identity will be lost forever to posterity. I will slip through Time's gnarled, ageworn fingers like a grain of sand, washed away as the tides of time ebb from the shore. But this is how it must be. I am to work in ambiguity, none will know my name, none will see my face, none will hear my voice. But I am all around them, I surround them like the air they breathe; they are inside of me, part of me. But they will not know my name. To know one's name is to control them, so an old maxim says. They will not control me, they will not know me, my name shall never be spoken from their lips, their eyes shan't behold my visage, their ears hear only the breeze as I speak to them in riddles. No, they will not know my name, I say. For my name is a thing that is not a thing, a word that is not a word. It is a reality, a state of existence, and one that so many are part of and so few ever experience. Are you a part of me?
* * *
Grass crunched beneath her feet, nipping between her toes as the ragged band walked through a green field, mottled with the yellow and blue of wildflowers. Inuyasha, broodingly silent and noncommital, walked beside her, immersed in his thoughts. Miroku and Sango hung back a little, hand in hand, wordless in their contained, joyful reverie at the approaching marriage, but respectful of Inuyasha's emotional dilemma. Shippo rode atop Kirara's back, drifting in and out of sleep, soothed by the lolling of the animal's gentle gait.
So, Kagome was finally going home, never to return. Of course, she promised to come see them, visit on occasion, perhaps even stay overnight a few times, but everyone knew that, though they didn't doubt her sincerity, these were just wistful musings. Kagome, their Kagome, Inuyasha's Kagome, would leave them forever, becoming nothing but a deliciously depressing memory of a time long ago. Kagome knew this was hard for them, particularly for Inuyasha, but they could not imagine how she was feeling.
After recovering the jewel, she simply handed it to Inuyasha, never even discussed her staying. He knew that it was impossible to stay, impossible to go with her, but knowing something is not possible only makes it hurt more. She knew this as well, realizing that talking about such a thing would also only make the pain more unbearable, and so decided to let silence hold a general reign over the group.
Up ahead, mixing and melting with the marshmallow clouds above them, fluffy, gray plumes of smoke twirled and writhed upward into azure, dissolving into another cumulus bundle of cotton. The village was up ahead, she thought sadly. Those few, precious, meaningless moments in between events in our lives make them all the more worth living. The same could be said in said circumstance. Simply walking beside him, in glorious, albeit somewhat gloomy, quietude was something Kagome had always treasured, even more so now than ever before. In an hour, perhaps two, they would be at a village, hoping to contact some anonymous witch or soothsayer and convince her to, out of kindness, heal the mass of scar tissue on the back of her neck, meandering from the base of her skull down to the small of her back. All of this seemed only a pointless distraction. Kagome cared little now about the scar, and even less about this witch.
A rebellious sigh sieved through her pink-gray lips, being audible only to a certain nearby youkai. He glanced sidelong at her, then glared distantly at the green earth. He could tell that she was feeling sad. What she did not understand was, while she would go home and have family and friends to comfort her and see her through the pain, he had no one. Sango and the monk would be married off soon, leaving only Shippou, as Kirara would stay with her master. The little kitsune might hang around for a while, but eventually he would leave for some reason. Sooner or later, Inuyasha would be alone again. He could shrug it off and put up a external guise of apathy, but, inside, he would be just as alone as ever. He might as well be dead.
By now, they had reached the fringes of the town and skirted around to where the main road went out, off, away into the distant, dim mountains. The simple, hardworking plebeians of this town seemed like ancient, moving statues, weathered by Time and the long, biting winds of life. They walked unhurriedly throught the dusty street, pushing their hay-carts or carrying their dry goods on their backs, like Sisyphus, always pushing, never seeming to move anywhere, trapped in a moment that never appeared to end. Quietly, Inuyasha asked a withered old gentleman about the witch. Without saying a word, the man pointed a gnarled, bony hand toward a rocky scar on the outskirts of the other side of the small village. A nod was the only sign that Inuyasha understood. The man went back to fruitlessly pushing his metaphorical boulder up that steep incline as the six strangers walked on.
***
There is a place, outside of this village. A beautiful landscape of verdant fields and evanescent mountains was marred only by a coal-black stretch of land, about a half-mile long, that the villagers called The Scar. Strewn with jagged, achromatic rocks and simmering, seething volcanic vents that pervaded the air with the thick odor of sulphur, The Scar had been always the meeting place for an esoteric circle of Truthsayers and anile old witches with intense emnity toward mankind. Some said that some had been murdered for revealing certain secrets that were not meant to leave The Circle. Among this group of mystic was a feeble beldame, Emi, who had been cursed with the bitter irony of her name. A mane of colorless hair fell in a drizzled mass in front of vacant, black eyes. Her eybrows were thick and white and had almost joined in the middle, while her nose seemed bent slightly to the left, with a small dent in the side. Her toothless mouth caved inward, covered only by thin, grey lips. Emi hated her mother deeply for giving her life, and giving such a mockingly sweet name to such an ugly, deformed little baby girl. Yes, behind those dead eyes lied a bitter and hateful soul. Never had those lips felt a loving kiss from any but her mother, and never had her wrinkled skin felt the gentle caress of a man.
On this particular night, a moonless night dotted with fulgent white spheres in the heavens above, The Circle members gathered in a semicircle around the watchfire, staring through the dancing flames to the cloaked figure who gazed back at them from behind a hood. The occasion flicker of light danced across an inkvine scar across her cheek, reflecting darkly in those cold, black eyes. She held out a hand to silence them, and prepared to speak. Only the crackling and popping of the furnace before her disrupted the holy calm that held the night in tension. Her voice echoed eerily throughout the great cathedral of granite around them.
"Comrades!" She cried out, in a shrill, squeaking voice. "I have meditated on...the matter at hand. The gods have decided, and have shown me their decision!"
"And?" One ventured to ask.
"I have seen death, fire, and pain..." She pointed into the darkness. "...at the hands of One Who Is Yet To Come. He wears a mane of white and strikes with flaming claws, spews flames from his mouth, tears flesh with his fangs. His is a monster, a demon who comes to destroy us all. But he will not succed!"
Her dry, old hand passed in a slow circle through the flames, the flames nipping at her fingertips.
"The rosewater has shown me a catalyst, one who will change his evil into calm. She is called Hotaru, the firefly, the God-light, who will lure him to us, only to watch in horror as we squeeze his troubled little soul into submission." She slowly clenched her long-nailed fingers into a tight fist amidst the flames, then opened them, revealing a small bronze ring, with a tiny crystal imbedded in the center.
"...And then, my comrades, he will be ours."