“Kumo no Su”
The circular blade that made up the head of his staff passed easily through the youkai’s body. Miroku had slain countless youkai stronger than this one by himself, and now he had five allies to watch his back, although the little kitsune did not count for much yet; he was just a child, and even though his particular powers had been an asset in numerous situations, he was more a liability than a help in out-and-out combat. Shippou’s power just had not begun to develop yet.
Kirara flashed across his vision, plowing full-force into the youkai right behind the one he had just killed, her snarl deep enough that he could feel it in his bones even over the sound of the battle going on around them. Purple blood stained her teeth, yet none of hers was evident on her fur, testifying to he great experience.
A beam of light shot into another youkai, and it simply exploded, a victim of Kagome’s mystic arrows; she was most mysterious, and he often found himself wondering just what the nature and extent of her talents were. Her power, on the other hand, was unquestionable. The idea of not having her around made him shudder.
A string of swearing mixed with boasts brought his attention to the most obnoxious member of their little group; Inuyasha must be having a good time if he was shooting his mouth off like that. Miroku grinned in spite of himself. Obnoxious he might be, but he had to admit that nothing was ever boring when Inuyasha was around.
Then a breathless but triumphant “Ha!” came from behind him, and he turned to see Sango skidding from absorbing the force of the Hiraikotsu as it returned from its foray into various youkai bodies, which fell with loud splatters to the ground. Her face was flushed with exertion and excitement, and her eyes glowed with the thrill of battle; over the time they had all spent traveling and fighting together, he had come to the decision that she liked fighting just as much as Inuyasha.
A final swipe of Tetsusaiga dropped the last youkai, who had decided enough was enough and was trying to escape. The sword reverted back to its original chipped and battered form, completely bereft of blood and gore; Miroku sardonically wished he could pull the same trick with his staff, which he was currently wiping clean. The hanyou slid the sword back into its scabbard, then gave the surrounding area an appraising look.
This particular crop field was completely ruined.
“Nothing like a nice fight to start the day off right,” Inuyasha said. Kagome rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
“Yes, but I don’t think the people who own this field are going to be very happy with the results of said fight,” Miroku said, inspecting his staff. Good enough. “It is my advice that we leave before they decide to do to us what we did to these youkai.”
Inuyasha sneered, probably at the threat of being chopped up by mere humans, but did not argue the point, and began to walk off towards the woods that made up three sides of the field. Miroku waited for a moment, glancing at Shippou, Kirara, and especially the two women. Over time they had developed a kind of unspoken system, where if anyone was hurt after a battle they were to speak up immediately; since no one said anything, the monk assumed there were no problems. He himself was fine. In fact, he was better than fine.
Life really is good, he thought, walking along beneath the trees, the lacquered shaft of his weapon sitting easily on his shoulder. It was a few hours shy of noon, and the warm sunlight filtering through the leaves was at pleasurable odds with the cool of the night that still clung to the forest floor. He could hear a stream somewhere off to their left; birds were singing and squirrels argued back and forth. There was none of that pollution stuff that Kagome said had taken over the air in her time. But most of all, he was with people he cared about, and who cared about him. Sure, they were an odd group, taken from every walk of life and even different species—and there were definite character flaws to at least one member of the party—but he knew that they would give their lives for him, just as he would for them. They had already given him their comradery, and their friendship; before this he had never had someone he could really call a friend, and it was beautiful days like this when he felt it most acutely. He could almost see the good humor rising off his comrades, and knew that it was simply because they were all together.
They stopped only to hand out some of the futuristic food that Kagome always carried nowadays. You did not even have to cook most of it! You could just pop it in your mouth and chew, or at most add hot water and wait a moment for it to soften up. Miroku resolved to see this wonderful world someday, pollution or no. They ate while they walked, because Kagome had to go back tonight for another of her tests and they were still quite a distance from the village.
“Houshi-sama, would you like to finish this?” Sango asked, holding her half-empty cup of ramen out to him. For some reason, even after—what, two, three years?—she still insisted on referring to him by his title the majority of the time. He had told her several times that he would rather her call him by his name, and she had improved, but she still fell back on it often.
“I would be delighted,” he said, taking the proffered cup from her hand. He smiled to himself as he saw Inuyasha turn to say he wanted it, only to be forestalled by Kagome smoothly sticking her chocolate bar into his mouth. The hanyou was surprised and reflexively bit down, then decided that candy tasted better and tried to take another bite. Kagome jerked it away.
“This is mine!” she said. “I only gave you a bite, not the whole thing!”
“That’s not fair, to give me just a taste and nothing else!”
“Just a taste? I had only taken two bites of it, and now all I’ve got left is what’s actually in my hand! I suppose I should thank you for not biting off my fingers, but you’re not getting any more of my candy.”
“You don’t need it anyway! You’re going to get fat if you keep eating like that.”
“You eat worse than I ever could—!”
Miroku tuned them out, knowing they would eventually reach a mutually dissatisfying decision, then promptly forget the whole thing. Instead he focused on being next to Sango. She had changed out of her taijya uniform soon after they had entered the forest, walking deep into the bushes and leaving Kagome to keep suspicious watch over the boys—well, mostly him. He just couldn’t help himself. He had seen his father flirt with every beautiful girl that came along, and he seemed satisfied with the results. So when Miroku first felt the stirrings of puberty in his lower belly, he decided that what had worked for his father—who was several years in the grave at this point—might work just as well for him.
Most of the time it hadn’t, and nowadays earned him whack with the Hiraikotsu and whatever Kagome happened to have in her hand at the time. So he had pretty much left his lecherous ways behind him—although every so often his hand felt the need to stay in practice, with his head paying the bill. Old habits were hard to break, especially if you still half-believed the old habits still worked regardless of what your head told you. All the difference between knowing and believing.
But more and more he was coming to appreciate Sango being here. Not only because she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but also because of her—her prowess in battle; the way her laugh made him feel any troubles he had were nothing; the way her rare cheerful moods turned her into a little girl again, scampering about at play without a care in the world. It was her that blunted his deep habit, exorcising it slowly but surely over the past few years.
He felt her eyes on him, and he quickly turned his head so that he could cough into his shoulder, catching the barest glance at her face. Yep, she was looking alright, and trying to look like she was not. Also over time, he had become aware of her doing that, and could only hope that it meant what he hoped it meant. He was attracted to her in a way that had been absent with any other girl; he was actually quite fond of her—although “fond” felt a little weak to him—and in his deepest dreams, on the very edge of consciousness where intuition met logic, he also felt that there was some connection that only the two of them shared. He was aware of it only on the most primitive levels of his mind, but he still felt it. He did not know if it was real or only a desire for it to be so on his part, but there was no proof either way, so he decided to believe the former. He did not know what it meant—or perhaps he did not want to know—but it made him feel something that he had never felt before. He felt special.
“Miroku?”
Her voice snapped him out of his reverie—and his thoughts were fading now, becoming indistinct, clouds burned away by the sunbeams of everyday life. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I wanted to know what you were thinking about. You had a look in your eyes I’ve never seen before.”
He smiled while trying to collect his scattered thoughts. “I was just thinking about how beautiful you are.”
She looked at him suspiciously, although a flush began to grown on her cheeks, then seemed to decide that he was being serious and looked at the ground. “Um, thank you.”
Sango, for her part, was still a little nonplussed. She knew she had caught him off guard. He complimented her several times every day—at least he was not like Inuyasha in that regard—but these compliments were always tinged with his mocking good humor, so that she could not tell if he really meant them or was just bantering with her, like he did with every pretty girl he came across; it was as if he simply said them out of habit. But this time it seemed he was outside his normally reserved self. He held people at arm’s length, using his cheerful disposition and that beautiful laugh to artfully dodge any questions or issues he did not want to discuss. Where Inuyasha was a rock, stubbornly resisting all effort to open him up, Miroku was water, letting you easily pass through and moving around any probe without letting you glean anything of value for your effort. Anything he did not want brought up slid by him, leaving you slack-jawed and wondering just how he had gotten by your most cunning word-trap.
The day drew to a close as they neared the village. They were approaching from the forest wherein Inuyasha had been sealed, so they reached the well while the village was still a few miles distant. The sun was painting mighty hues of orange, red, and purple across the sky in a breathtaking display, and the air was becoming cooler, a herald of the coming night. Shippou was yawning tiredly, having just been rousted out of the front basket of Kagome’s two-wheeled carriage that she rode on.
“I promise I’ll be back in three days,” Kagome was saying.
“Two days,” Inuyasha replied shortly.
“I can’t. I have two very important tests to take before I can come back, and one of them is in three days. I have to stay and study for it.” They haggled back and forth and eventually came to the agreement that as soon as school was over on the third day Kagome would immediately come back.
“Make sure you’re not late, wench!” Inuyasha said as Kagome prepared to drop over the side.
“Inuyasha, that necklace works perfectly well, you know,” Kagome said offhandedly.
The hanyou grabbed the beads and held them against his chest. “You wouldn’t!” he said, knowing perfectly well she would. Kagome just gave him a meaningful look and jumped off the side. Inuyasha glared after her sullenly, no doubt stewing about being at the beck and call of a “pathetic human.” Then he sniffed. “She’s gone,” he muttered, and Miroku heard the sadness in his voice. Did he have any idea how transparent he was, how openly he wore his feelings for the girl? The monk thought not.
“Well, another day behind us,” Sango said, stretching. Miroku appreciatively watched the bodice of her kimono from the corner of his eyes, and felt a slow smoldering take root in his chest. Oh Amida, but she was beautiful! He was startled as the kitsune hopped onto his shoulder and settled in for the last of the trip to the village. Miroku smiled and affectionately rubbed the little youkai’s head, bringing a “hmm” of contentment.
This exchange was not lost on Sango, and as the group started back—Miroku humming quietly, Shippou already sleeping, and Inuyasha still muttering—she smiled at the houshi’s back. Kirara, who was riding on her shoulder, mewed her curiosity, and the taijiya ran her fingernails through the soft fur. “A lech he might be,” she whispered to her longtime companion, “but he’s still a good man.” Kirara nipped her finger.
They sat silent through the meal, eaten in Kaede-bachan’s hut. Inuyasha’s glower was not conductive to conversation, and Miroku could almost feel waves of irritation rising off him. The hanyou had been getting worse as time went on; now he was impossible to live with when Kagome was not around. Hopefully this would be one of the times he ran off to await her return by himself instead of hanging around making everyone else miserable. One could only hope.
Miroku’s hope was borne out when Inuyasha stood and swept through the door without a word to anyone. Everyone stopped eating, and Miroku wondered exactly where he went for these little excursions. Then he shrugged to himself and went back to his meal; it did not pay to pry into a hanyou’s secrets, especially when said hanyou was lovesick and without the object of his affection.
Speaking of affection... Miroku gave his head a shake. Why could he not keep his thoughts on a single track? It was highly annoying to continually think of the girl across the fire. So much to do! They were getting close to finally finding Naraku, and Miroku knew it would take all his cunning and skill to come out of that fight alive.
Actually, it was not at all annoying. It was very pleasant.
No, because distraction lead to death in this line of work. Kohaku was still in the wily bastard’s clutches as well, and they needed to figure out how to extract him without getting him killed. Then there was the whole Kikyo-Inuyasha-Kagome thing, and Miroku shuddered at the thought of trying to untangle that mess.
But she was beautiful, and graceful too.
Enough! This was a deadly serious campaign they had embarked on, and the last thing they needed was two convoluted love affairs going on. One—and that one involving a dead woman pitted against her reincarnation, no less—was more than enough. Besides, what kind of life could he offer her? Running around being splattered with youkai guts every day was not very romantic, and there was that my-Kazaana-is-getting-bigger-and-I-don’t-have-much-time-left-on-the-earth aspect to consider. Problems and more problems. Miroku absently wondered if he had been born under a bad star, then sighed.
“Houshi-sama? Are you feeling well?”
No. I’m sick of Inuyasha and Kagome playing their little come-hither-go-away game, I’m furious beyond belief at Naraku for everything he’s done to me and mine, I’m terrified that I’ll be sucked into my own fucking palm in my sleep, and all I can think about is how beautiful you are. “I’m fine, Sango-kun. Just a little tired.” Tired of my life seeming like some horrible inescapable maze; I feel like a fly caught in a spider’s web, and the more I struggle the more tangled I become. Why the hell did I become a man of the cloth, of all things? I could have been a bandit, or a basket weaver. “I think I’ll go for a walk before I go to bed.”
The night air was fragrant with the scent of morning dew not yet formed, and the coolness cut through his cluttered thoughts, helping him to center himself once again. He was being thrown off kilter more and more often, and it was always Sango who did it. Even those youkai who disguised themselves as beautiful women—and come to think of it, there had been a disturbing number of those in his travels; or was it just him?—did not shake him as much as she. Another sigh escaped his lips.
Sango sat where she was for a long time, staring into the fire, trying to sort out the tumult of her thoughts.
It was Kaede—who, after all, had much more experience with life and love—who broached the subject for her. “Miroku seems to have less bumps on his head of late. Has he been behaving himself more?”
Sango looked down in an effort to hide her blush, but she could still feel the old woman’s eyes on her. “I guess so,” she said, striving to seem unconcerned but sounding strained instead, even to her own ears.
“That’s good. Once that particular demon has its claws out of him, he will have to beat the other women off. He’s handsome, brave, loyal. Quite a catch. But what do I know?” she asked, rising and moving towards the back room where she slept. “I’m just an old woman who’s past her time. It’s always easier to see someone else’s problems and solutions, but my eyesight is going fast, as we all know.” Kaede could still hit a moving target at a hundred yards, indicating both excellent eyesight and extraordinary skill. This monologue was a not-so-subtle declaration that Kaede both saw her troubles and thought the solution should be obvious. “Good night, dear.”
“Sleep well, Kaede-bachan.” The squat old woman disappeared behind the blind that separated the rooms, and Sango hung her head between her knees.
While Shippou’s nose was not as good as Inuyasha’s, it was still nothing to sneer at. So when he brought news that several youkai had been near the river, no one doubted him. Kaede grabbed her bow and led them to the riverbank, very lively for one of her age. She should have been stiffened up by now, going to bed early and walking little. But she was moving as sprightly as a woman half her age, easily staying with them and even humming to herself. No wonder she still had good eyesight.
Miroku could see very faint tracks pressed into the softer soil of the riverbank: splayed feet that almost looked like a bird’s track, except it did not have a back toe. The thing was that it looked there was more than just several; there were hundreds of tracks all over the place, leading up into the grass line, where they promptly disappeared.
“I remember this smell. It’s kumogashira.”
“Those spider youkai you fought way back when you first met Inuyasha?” Sango asked.
Shippou nodded, and she looked expectantly at Miroku, who shrugged. “It was before I joined. Apparently the night they all fought was the time they found out about Inuyasha’s human form.”
Shippou nodded again. “But what do they want? They can’t be after revenge, not after this long.”
“They’re probably just passing through and decided to kill the village on the way,” Kaede said nonchalantly. “Kumogashira settle into an area and make a colony for twenty to thirty years before migrating to another place and doing it again. These are probably migrating; the tracks we see here are the scouts. They came, got a look at the village, and went back to report. I believe we can expect an attack sometime in the next two days.”
“You’re awfully calm about it,” Miroku said, cocking an eyebrow.
The old miko shrugged. “Kumogashira, although crafty, are weak. The village shouldn’t have too much trouble defending itself, especially with you two here.”
Miroku opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. She was probably right. Except...he had a bad feeling about this. It was small, almost unnoticeable, but he had learned in his journeys that that voice was the most important of all if you had any intention of staying alive. Perhaps he should take another walk tonight...
Sango was half asleep, drifting through the gray areas of her mind. Her thoughts ran on as they wished, touching on meaningless subjects or simple nonsense, like what fish would look like with teeth, before flitting like a hummingbird to another equally inane topic. Thus she heard when Miroku got up from his place across the fire pit, and her consciousness rose a little towards wakefulness, focusing on the quite rustling sounds. In the dying embers he was cast in red and black, and Sango absently thought that anyone could look like a youkai in such contrast. She closed her eyes on the image; he was probably just going out to pass water.
Unbeknownst to the taijya, he did go out to pass water, in a sense, and grumbled as he waded through the shallow brook that separated the village and the kumogashira menace. This was what Kagome called a “recon mission,” going to get information on the enemy. Mainly what he was interested in was what kind of numbers they were up against; even the weakest enemy could win if they had enough troops.
Miroku walked along, not creeping but walking as silent as he dared while still making good time. He wanted some sleep too, after all. He was familiar with the lay of the land, having traversed its face hundreds of times, and he left his body to its own devices while trying to formulate different plans of attack and defense. But his thoughts invariably turned to the young woman who slept across from him.
Her spot was perfect—well, actually perfect would be right next to him, but still, it was damn good—so that she was the last thing he saw when he drifted off and the first he saw when he woke. It would be very nice to have her here beside me now, he thought absently. But she needs her sleep. Besides, if I tell them what I find out here, I might surprise her enough to have her turn that small, shy smile on me. He felt chills run up his spine at the thought.
If he had perhaps been paying attention, he might have seen the thick rope of web that hung across the two trees, even though it was cunningly hidden. But Sango was a powerful subject, and one he had no desire to leave even if he could. So he was very surprised when something wet and sticky latched onto his head and stopped it, leaving his feet to walk out from under him. Now he was hanging from his head, and he had the idea that he looked really, really stupid right now. But he was enough of a veteran to not cry out: there was no one out here to help him, and a call might bring his enemies right to him. Right now he was simply caught, not captured, and he intended to keep it that way.
A blow to the back of the head corrected his way of thinking, and he saw stars in spite of the sticky stuff that covered his eyes. His staff was pulled from his hands, and another blow convinced him to stop flailing in hopes of getting a lucky hit in. He had an idea that he had found the kumogashira.
The youkai conversed back and forth in a language made up of hisses, clicks, and whistles; it sounded disgusting, and the spiders themselves stank so badly that Miroku was on the verge of vomiting. Suddenly more of the sticky stuff—which he assumed was web by now—secured his arms to his sides. He was swathed from neck to feet with it, and a glob was placed over his mouth. The stink was so foul he had to use all his training to keep from vomiting and drowning himself. His breathing slowed as he sank into his mind, removing it slightly from his body until he was little more than an objective observer. He felt them dragging him for several minutes, and then the strange acoustics said that they had gone into a cave. The smell in here was nigh on overwhelming.
The web was removed from his eyes and mouth, and he spat profusely, trying to clear his lips of the awful taste. A hideous face lowered itself over his, and the kumogashira said in a barely intelligible voice, “You will remain silent, or you will die slowly and painfully with our venom melting your guts. We want your information, village-man, and will kill you painlessly if you oblige us. Merciful, neh?”
“I have a better idea,” the monk said quietly. The kumogashira lowered its head, trying to catch the words, and Miroku took a deep breath of the stench and forced himself to think of maggots, of the pale shades of death. His stomach twisted, expelling its contents in a torrent all over the youkai’s head. “There’s some venom for you, bastard!” Miroku said, coughing to clear his airways of the bitter fluid.
The kumogashira shrieked in outrage and drew it’s leg back, delivering the most powerful blow yet to the monk’s head, and Miroku reeled, fighting to remain conscious. He lost.
Sango sat up, tugging her yukata back into a modest position. He had been gone probably ten minutes; far too long a time. A sudden weight of certainty appeared in her stomach. He wouldn’t... Except he would. Going off to check out—perhaps even fight—the kumogashira was exactly the kind of thing the monk would do. But just to make sure...
A search of the village confirmed her suspicions, and she strode angrily back to the hut cursing him for several kinds of fool. Kirara was sitting on her mat, waiting for her with those large beautiful eyes that had seen so much. Without a word Sango grabbed Hiraikotsu and strapped it to her back, tucking her wakizashi into her obi—there was no time to change into her taijya uniform or even to pull her hair back. Kaede-bachan was sleeping peacefully, and Shippou was emitting a high-pitched whistling sound; when he grew up, he would snore something awful. Kirara walked through the door-flap at her side without a sound.
The air was cool on her face, hot from the rapid beating of her heart. In a month of two they would be able to see their breath. She strode towards the river and the far bank where they had seen the tracks. The water was chilly, but she hardly noticed it.
That stupid man! He’s always in some sort of trouble or another, and what’s more, he’s always the one that’s gets into it. It never has to find him, because he always finds it! She was not fooling herself, though. Her weak anger could not cover her worry, and she gave up trying after a moment. “Kirara, can you find his scent?”
A small mewl answered her, and the two-tailed feline abruptly burst into flame. The fire whooshed out after a few seconds, and Kirara, now the size of a young horse and sporting wicked fangs, lowered her head to the ground. She sniffed around for what seemed like forever, but could only have been a half-minute. Her sense of smell was not up to par with Inuyasha’s either, but it was more than adequate to find a trail only a half-hour old, and she started off confidently, the taijya walking abreast.
They traveled for maybe three miles, until they came to a stand of maples. Kirara stopped and crouched down slightly, a growl so low Sango could only feel it rumbling from her.
“Are they in there?” Kagome had told them of a horse that had been able to do simple addition problems, reading the equation and then tapping out the answer with its hoof. Sango had never seen Kirara do anything like that, or really answer at all, but she seemed to understand human speech perfectly; and somehow she did answer, with looks or the way she positioned her body. It was nothing ordinary animals did not do, but Kirara’s seemed to carry wait, and she always did manage to get her point across. For instance, a slight lessening of her crouch told Sango that there were no more kumogashira in the copse. “OK, let’s go.”
They continued on, stalking through the short grass made luminescent by the moonlight, and into the shadows of bough and branch. Kirara, knowing in her peculiarly human way of understanding that they needed stealth, fell silent. They both froze once within the confines of the trees, senses questing for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing came to them.
“Let’s keep going,” Sango whispered, and the firecat began tracking again. The trail led out of the trees, up towards some rocky hills a little distance off. The ground began to lose grass to dirt almost immediately, and after a half-mile the only plants were low scrub bushes. The moon was only a quarter-full tonight, giving just enough light to let them slowly make their was around crevices and holes, working towards the top in a zigzag pattern. Sango began to detect a faint reek, and one look at Kirara’s wrinkled nose told her that her companion had smelled it for a while.
An oval blackness appeared above them, and Sango crouched down behind a bush, Kirara trying to do the same as best she could with her massive body and bright fur. Sango could hear faint clicks and whistles coming from the direction of the cave. She sat for several minutes, perhaps even a half hour, feeling out the rhythms of the environment: the songs of nightbirds, the chirp of insects. The way the wind blew and the small animals that scrabbled along the ground. The kumogashira. All of it slowly fell into place, and with the patterns mapped out in her mind, Sango crept forward, so low that her knees were level with her breasts, feeling for any disruption in the aural pattern. It took several minutes to make it to the cave entrance, but Sango had done this for many years, and knew one of the worst things you could do was make noise while stalking; then you were ambushed by those you were trying to ambush.
The cave floor dropped steeply just inside the opening, and the air steadily became fouler; Sango did not envy Kirara her nose. But the firecat trod steadfastly beside her, giving no indication of any intent except to rip youkai apart. They glided down into the bowels of the hills, two shadows among other shadows.
The clicking and whistling sounds grew louder the further then went in, but the strange acoustics of the tunnels made pinpointing direction all but impossible. “Where, Kirara?” she hissed, placing her hand on her friends shoulder to be guided; she could no longer see anything. Kirara went slowly, wary for anything out of the ordinary. In this manner they came around a corner to a circle traced in bluish-white light; the din suddenly jumped in volume, and Sango realized that the circle was an opening to a cavern. She knelt against the wall, peering in.
The cavern itself was about four hundred feet in diameter. What roof the cavern did have was thirty feet above the packed dirt of the floor, and would have supported the floor of the house that were under—as it was, only half of the roof was there; the far half of the chamber reached upwards into the remains of a ramshackled house. The floor below her sloped gently up until it met with the far wall of the structure, where it met a little lip of remaining floor. There was one other entrance, off to the left maybe fifty feet. It appeared that the entire kumogashira colony was gathered here. A single window—crossbars still oddly intact—was set into the wall that was facing her, and after her time in the dark, Sango could see perfectly fine. There were at least sixty monsters below her, all gathered around something on the far wall, below and to the left of the window; a white cross?
With realization that struck her like a falling tree, she realized the white thing was Miroku, robes torn from his body, arms splayed out at his sides and secured to the ancient wood. She suddenly heard his voice, tiny with distance and hoarse with anger and pain. But she did not detect any fright, and her heart skipped a beat; even in such a situation he had not given up! Then anger flared bright behind her eyes. These filthy youkai had come to slaughter the village, and were now torturing him? She leaned her head close to Kirara’s ears, feeling the firecat’s powerful muscles trembling with anticipation, and whispered her instructions.
Miroku felt his mind breaking down, an accumulation of exhaustion, pain, and raging emotions. See? He would never be in this conundrum if he had been a stupid basket weaver. But only hindsight is crystal clear, and damned if he would give these nasty things what they wanted. If he had to, he was prepared to bite off his tongue and drown on his own blood; anything to keep them from information, because if this many youkai stormed the village at once, it would fall, no matter how experienced the villagers, especially if they had the element of surprise. His staff was planted in the ground not five feet from his bound hand, but it might as well have been in the village for all the good it would do him now. The monsters had managed to shred the majority of his robes, but by lucky accident had left the cloth brace and rosary that bound the Kazaana unmolested. Then the same kumogashira that had been interrogating him all along leaned close again, voice barely understandable.
“Tell us, human, and your suffering will stop. We—”
“What suffering?” Miroku asked in his best I’m-just-sitting-here-slightly-bored voice. “I love hanging on walls. Do it all the time. It’s relaxing.”
“Sooner or later you will break, and when you do you will tell us everything we want to know. Then you will die!”
“Not much incentive for me to tell you then, is it?”
The spider-demon shrieked as it hit him again, flinging droplets of blood from his crushed lips. He saw the leg drawing back for another blow, and closed his eyes. There was a whoosh, and Miroku tried to prepare himself for the impact. The whooshing turned into screams of pain and surprise, and Miroku’s eyes popped open to see something white slicing through the air off to his right, heading on a vaguely circular path for the opening directly across from him back down in the underground chamber. It had scarcely passed from sight when it blasted out of the shadows again with renewed vigor. The Hiraikotsu smashed through the throng of kumogashira, now boiling in a panic, climbing all over each other and their slain brethren in an attempt to escape the doom that flew around the room like an avenging kami. The massive boomerang fled into the shadows once again, and several of the youkai, marking its point of origin, swarmed towards the dark opening.
If the youkai were surprised at the first attack, they were astounded as a fury of flame and white fur tore into the mass from the other opening. They fled from it, but it came after, shredding them from behind, a rumbling roar echoing from powerful throat muscles. Miroku felt it shaking his bones; his heart was stuttering, but not from the sound.
She came...? was the only thought that danced in his head. To actually be rescued against all expectation, and by the very woman he had never expected to see again... The monk’s mind was a swirl of gray, those two words the only coherent thing he could muster; he was numb with shock and joy.
And when she leapt out of the shadows, swinging the Hiraikotsu and bashing the shrieking youkai to pieces, he thought he would die. Her face, beautiful and terrible in its wrath, burned itself into his vision, taking way what little breath he had. She fought her way towards him, Hiraikotsu a shimmering blur around her, as if it absorbed the moonlight before sending it back.
Then a few kumogashira turned and came at him, determined to at least take him with them. Helpless despair washed through him. Then Sango threw, and the youkai-based weapon slashed through the aggressors, relieving the threat. But it scraped against the wall on the backtrail, throwing it off just enough that Sango missed it. It circled around once again, heading straight at him. Well, damn. Wouldn’t that just be his luck, to be saved from certain doom by the woman he worshiped only to be killed accidentally by her own weapon. But the altitude was lowering, and it smashed into the ground before it reached him; it cartwheeled, bashing two more kumogashira, then finally deposited itself in the wall off to his left, raining wood chunks and small burrowing bugs from its impact point.
Sango had cut a straight path to him, and Kirara had finished any stragglers that had escaped her fierce attack; the only few left were the ones around him, and Sango rushed at them, drawing her wakizashi as she came and using the drawing motion to lop the head off the nearest spider.
The one that had interrogated him turned without warning and sank his fangs into Miroku’s exposed chest, pumping death into him. Miroku arched backwards, exquisite pain flaring through his chest and side.
The kumogashira flew into two pieces, Sango’s blade traced in light as it passed through the disgusting body. “Mine!” she snarled at the corpse, and spun to cut another that was trying to attack her unprotected back. The final youkai turned to run off—a startling reflection of the fight the other day—and Sango’s wakizashi stabbed down, pinning it to the bloody ground as it kicked its death-throes, and Miroku felt a surge of relief through the pain; at least the village would be safe. Pity he would not be there to see it.
Sango turned to face him, yukata pulled open to nearly to her navel, revealing her shoulders and the wrap she used to bind her breasts. She dipped a hand into a small pouch tucked into her obi and pulled out a small handful of yellow powder. This was the powerful antidote to the poison the taijya carried, and she prayed fervently as she worked it into the bite, long delicate fingers expertly massaging the area around the wound to promote blood flow and spread the antidote. If it even worked, that was.
Miroku’s body was on fire, and he did not understand how he could feel it; he was not connected to his body anymore, was he? It did not feel like it. His mind was eroding, just washing away like sand under your feet when the tide washed back out. This sure was not what he had thought death would feel like. A sick pulse beat in his head, and everything had a dingy yellow sheen. Dying is stupid, he thought irritably. I don’t like dying. Too late now, but I don’t think I’ll do it next time. But it really was taking an awful long time...
Slowly, ever so slowly, the yellow began to fade, moving along the spectrum into white. Finally. Everyone said there was a bright white light at the end of the tunnel, but his light was faint and dull, barely there. Had his lecherous ways finally caught up with him, denying his soul reincarnation? Yes, dying really was stupid. And it hurt. Pain radiated from his chest and side, right below his armpit. Couldn’t a guy get a break? A long time dying, and pain, and...warmth?
It took an inordinate amount of effort, but he lifted his head from its position of staring at the oddly textured ceiling and moved his gaze to his stomach, where the warm sensation was centered. On the way he caught sight of Kirara, transformed back into her tiny body, staring at him with her huge, unblinking eyes. She mewled, standing and scampering towards him. His gaze continued downwards. He saw Sango lift her head off his chest, catching his eyes with the hope and fear written in hers. He absently wondered when she had cut him down from the wall.
He tried to make a witty comment, but barely managed to move his jaw, much less make an actual sound.
“Are you OK?” Sango asked, voice no more than a whispered breath, disbelief warring with hope. Kirara had reached them and was nuzzling his limp arm, the only part of him she could reach in his sitting position.
“Yes.” His voice was no more than a rasp, the word barely discernable. Tears formed at the outside corners of her eyes and her lower lip trembled. I am now.
She threw her arms around his neck. He thought the press of her against him would sent pain shooting through him, but oddly enough, it seemed the contact actually drew the fire from his chest; the pain lessened until it was no more than a dull ache. She crushed her mouth against his—and swollen, bloody lips or no, he felt exhilaration he thought impossible race through him, becoming aware of this angel with stunning clarity, The sensation serving to truly anchor his mind back in his body. Her tongue met his, giving him the moisture he so desperately lacked. She had healed his body, and now as her mouth moved with his—and it felt so right!—she healed a schism in his heart he had not even known was there, melting the walls of apathy he had built within himself, until his guts felt liquid and heavy, like molten lead. She had freed him from the webs that bound him to the wall, and now she burned away the webs that held his soul in their inescapable clutches. Yet he had escaped; she had freed him.
Dawn announced itself in the sky above, leaking hues of lavender and azure into the ruined house. Still they knelt in the bloodstained soil and rotten wood flooring, truly meeting each other for the first time, expressing the inexpressible: mind to mind, heart to heart...soul to soul. They both felt for the first time in their lives that everything would turn out alright, because they now were both forever, finally complete.
F i n i s
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