A/N: Um… has it really been a whole year since I last updated this thing? ((blinks innocently))

Well, anyway, thanks so much for all the reviews. I realise that the previous chapters could use some fine-tuning, as can some of my characterisation (though I do not understand how I’ve anglicised Kouga in any way) and I will try to get down to some editing as soon as I can get some time. And my whole-hearted thanks to those who nominated/voted for this story in the IYFG last year. It came as a welcome encouragement at a time when I was ready to give up on this story.

Secondly, I would also like to express my overwhelming admiration for Rumiko Takahashi and the storyboard behind “Inu Yasha”. How they manage such a melange of characters and plotlines so beautifully, I simply do not know!

V

Rin could feel it calling to her.

She stumbled through the forest, clutching at the hand of a very talkative Koharu, while the skies began to darken, and a chill breeze made its cutting, icy way through the woods. And through it all, she could hear it: a voice – soft and plaintive at first, but slowly growing in intensity and pain – so much pain – until it seemed the hounds of hell were howling in her head, screaming raw pain and despair, desperately calling for help.

Calling to her.

She tugged on Koharu’s hand, but the young woman didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve now settled in Lord Kuranosuke’s domain, you know,” she was saying. “There’s a rumour going around that a sudden change has come over the lord. That he’s been gathering all his military forces for some grand assault against all demons.” She crinkled her nose. “I can’t say I blame him, don’t you think?”

Rin squeezed the woman’s hand again, gesturing wildly.

Koharu finally stopped. “What is it, Lin?” She looked up at the rapidly darkening skies. “Oh dear, I didn’t think it was going to rain today. We’ll get soaked if we try to go back home.”

“Come,” Rin tried to whisper. “Come, he’s calling to me.”

“But I know of a clearing with a small cave nearby where we can stay through the rain,” Koharu said brightly. “Come on.” She led Rin through the forest, weaving through the trees in a complicated pathway which would’ve had Rin, had she been in a better state of mind, wondering at the young woman’s remarkable knowledge of the whereabouts. When they had finally reached the clearing, it had already begun to drizzle, cold needles of ice sliding down Rin’s increasingly fevered body.

“Don’t worry,” Koharu was saying, “We’re here now, and – oh!” She stopped abruptly, and Rin nearly walked into her. The woman seemed frozen in shock, staring with wide eyes at something in the middle of the clearing. Rin, more wary than curious, followed her gaze. Her eyes widened.

The ground was littered with the bodies of dead demons.

Wolf Demons.

The howling in her head reached a terrible crescendo, and she clutched at Koharu’s hand tighter, as if the warm flesh were her only lifeline in what seemed to be a cold, bloodied, swirling pit of unending terror.

Despite all the horror, however, she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Koharu started laughing.

It wasn’t the light, simpering giggles that Rin was used to hearing from the girl, nor was it like the laughter she had normally heard from humans. It was… was cold, there was no other word for it, sinister, with a certain inflection of pleasant surprise, as if somebody had surprised her with a gift she liked very much. Rin loosened her hold, then let go altogether, stepping back warily. She tripped over a nearby wolf-demon carcass in the process, and the putrid smell emanating from the corpse, already picked upon by vultures and smaller demons, and disintegrating in the light downpour, seemed to be the final seal on her terror, and Rin screamed.

A scream, which tore not out of her throat, but from something right in the middle of the corpses.

Male, agonised, and terrifying, it seemed to break Koharu out of her reverie. She blinked and turned to Rin, and then toward the direction of the source of the scream. “Something’s still alive…?” she whispered, frowning and walking toward the middle of the bloody clearing. Rin’s eyes followed her, wide, terrified.

Before Koharu could get there, however, an arm sprung out of the bloodied battleground, like a drowning creature clutching desperately at a straw, the deceptively human hand tipped with claws that gleamed in the moonlight. The scream resounded again, and despite the absence of some of its original rawness, Rin’s heart still pounded against her ribs.

It now sounded familiar.

Koharu froze once again. “Wha – what?”

The scream continued to echo in Rin’s head, joining the previous howling, transforming itself into words, spoken in gasps and rough whispers. Help me help help please help help PLEASE HELP

Rin frowned, and rose to her feet. The surreal experience of having died and then being brought back to life and good health had left her with maturity much beyond her years and a profound respect for the intricacies of the supernatural, disguised behind her childlike zest and enthusiasm. Even now, in such a terrifying environment, with a companion who was not all what she seemed to be, she trusted that voice, wanted to assuage the pain of its owner. She walked slowly toward the source of the scream, until she was standing right over it.

The leader of the demon wolf tribe, bearer of the two Jewel shards.

Her murderer.

Kouga.

He lay there on the muddied ground, writhing in obvious pain, mingled sweat, blood and rain running down his form in rivulets. Her eyes travelled to his exposed legs, where two peculiarly circular wounds stood out in garish prominence. The edges of the wound were rough and pale with spreading infection, and even as she watched, the demon skin tried to close over the wound, only to peel away once again. Something was stuck in there, something that wasn’t allowing him to heal…

She knelt down, and with one small hand reached out to touch his wounded leg.

What she felt then was not what she expected to feel – there was no blinding white light that enveloped her universe, no instant of wondrous realisation, no cutting pain that numbed her senses. There was just an overwhelming sympathy, the likes of which she had almost never felt before – a thread of silent understanding that connected their souls through the rain, not entirely an alien feeling, but so profound…

“You’ll be okay,” she mouthed. “I’ll be by your side.”

His eyes opened, and a moment later, Koharu screamed.

Even in the soft rain, even in the distorted vision provided by the moonlight gleaming dully through the sheets of water, the sight of so many dead villagers was enough to make Kagome strongly nauseous. She… she was so tired of seeing all this… if only… if only…

Inu Yasha walked past her, brow pulled into a frown, nose twitching. “There’re a few demon bodies here, too,” he said, almost as if he were confused. “That’s kind of weird.”

“Weird?” Kagome’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. “I can’t believe you! You see all this, and all you have to say is ‘weird’?”

Inu Yasha’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa, calm down, woman,” he said. “I only meant that these demons are too strong to have been killed by simple villagers in a battle, without the help of an army of some sort.”

“So you mean to say that…”

“The villagers attacked first,” Sango finished, walking up to them, Miroku close behind her, a visibly disturbed Shippo on his shoulder. “That doesn’t make any sense,” the young demon said. “Why would the villagers suddenly want to fight demons that weren’t even attacking them? I mean, isn’t it usually the other way around?”

“I think that’s exactly why they did it,” Miroku said quietly. “And I cannot honestly say that I blame them for it.”

Sango gave a bittersweet smile. “And perhaps it is something we ought to have done from the beginning.”

Inu Yasha shook his head in disbelief. “You guys are crazy. All you humans are.” He snorted. “I oughta have worked alone from the start.” He fully expected Kagome to hotly remind him of all of the times she and the others had saved him, how she was the one who was able to detect the Jewel shards, in short, display that extraordinarily irritating human sense of supreme self-importance.

What she did say instead, however, floored him like nothing had ever done before in his considerably long life.

“Maybe you’re right.”

He squinted at her through the rain. “What?”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, her voice still calm, but with angry tears gathering in her eyes. “I never ought to have tried to help you in the first place.”

Inu Yasha’s frown deepened for a moment, before his face cleared. “Hey listen, woman,” he said, “If this is some kinda new method, emotional blackmail or whatever, to try and make me do whatever you want me to do, let me tell you this: it ain’t working.”

Kagome opened her mouth to retort, but before she could speak, a colder, deeper male voice cut through. “‘Emotional blackmail,’ you call it?” A small laugh. “How quaint.”

They turned as one to see Sesshoumaru standing behind them, looking strangely angelic in the falling rain, serene face framed by long silver hair that glowed softly. Inu Yasha lifted a corner of his lips in an angry snarl.

“You don’t realise what has happened, do you?” Sesshoumaru continued.

“What I realise,” Inu Yasha growled, hand moving toward the hilt of the Tetsusaiga, “is that you’re being unusually talkative today. Cut the crap if you wanna fight.”

“Oh, I’m not here to fight,” Sesshoumaru said, still unruffled. “Your companions will keep you with enough on your plate, I’m sure.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t you realise, Inu Yasha? Humans and demons cannot co-exist anymore. The time has come to decide who is the master of this world.” A corner of his lips lifted slightly in a shadow of a sneer as he looked to Kagome and the others. “I’m sure your companions have realised this, even if you haven’t.”

“Wha –?” Inu Yasha looked toward his travel companions, then turned to Sesshoumaru again, only to find out that he was already gone. “Feh,” he snorted. “Ran away like usual. Thinks he’s so smart, thinks the rain can hide his scent… feh.” He took a deep breath, and tried to sound nonchalant. “So you guys have any idea ‘bout what he was talking?”

“No,” Kagome said shortly. She turned to Miroku and Sango. “We need to give these villagers a proper burial…”

“Of course,” Sango nodded, and walked towards the scattered corpses, Shippo and Kirara trotting with her. Inu Yasha moved to help, still muttering under his breath about ‘insane humans’ and ‘even more insane demon stepbrothers’. Miroku turned as well, before Kagome clutched at his robe. “I can’t take this anymore,” she whispered. “I wonder if it’s better that I just go home.”

Miroku gently removed her hand from his robe, and held it between his palms. She looked up at him, and he wondered at what a vision she was, how the raindrops gleamed on her silky black hair like small pearls, how her beautiful brown eyes sparkled with unshed tears… did Inu Yasha really deserve her? “You must not lose hope, Kagome,” he said quietly. “If you go, then who will remain by mine and Sango’s side to vanquish the demons?”

“Vanquish the demons,” Kagome repeated, leaning gently into his open arms. He released her hand and gently wrapped his arms around her slender form. “You know,” she whispered. “That keeps sounding better and better to me.” She closed her eyes and smiled into his robes. “Maybe the world would be better off without them.”

“Yes…”

As they tightened their embrace, a chill gust of wind blew past them, through them, enveloping their souls into darkness.

A simple statement, maybe, but it implied a soul-devouring exhaustion that transcended mere physical boundaries; she wasn’t even sure if the word ‘physical’ could be associated with her anymore. A perceptible heaviness in the air seemed to be burdening even her tainted soul with malice the depth of which she hadn’t witnessed in years – she had only read of this kind of power before, nearly a century ago, in a long-forgotten place that had nestled among happier times.

The decimated Mount Hakurei loomed ominously in the distance, and the chill wind, light downpour and roiling skies made the environment even more terrifying. Kikyo stopped walking, her long hair flying in the strong wind, the raindrops barely touching her parchment-white skin. Maybe it istime after all, she thought. Time for the paths of humans and demons to diverge.

Time for the birth of a new world.

What place, she wondered, did her kind have in such a world?

“Just what… just what is this power?”

Kikyo did not need to turn to know that the voice, young as it was cold, curious as it was callous, belonged to Hakudoshi, Naraku’s spawn. Entei snorted jets of fire through its nostrils behind her, even the demon horse struggling in the cold. “It is the power of change,” she said. “The greatest power of them all.”

“Change?” She could almost feel Hakudoshi’s sneer. “Change that not even we can face?”

“It is powerful because it is inevitable,” Kikyo said. “The world is undergoing a transition, and we have no way to stop it. We can only hope that we survive to live in that new world.” She smiled. “I’m sure that concept isn’t alien to you, and your… master.”

“Ah, yes: change and death, the only two constants in this world.” He gave a short laugh. “We… live in an era where there are ways to even cheat death – something I’m sure that isn’t alien to you – and where ultimate spiritualism shares the land with ultimate evil. So you see, the question isn’t whether we can survive change, it is about whether change can survive us.”

Entei then rose into the air above her, its fiery plumes cutting through the darkness. “We will find this power,” Hakudoshi said. “We will find it and we will destroy it, for Naraku can not only transcend death, but change and time itself.”

Kikyo did not reply; the rain continued to pour down, harder than ever.

Entei flew toward the decimated mountain, at the centre of which Kikyo could feel the power start to gather itself. Atop the wasted peak then appeared a remarkable creature, its terrible maw widening in a grotesque facsimile of a grin. The wind velocity increased to reach a crescendo, and Kikyo thought, with something approaching awe, That is it. That is it!

Hakudoshi extended his arm; the skin there rippled, and out of it rose a spear made of sharp demon bone. He held it in his hand like a javelin, and spurred his horse to approach the creature. The great horse shied and snorted in mid-air, hesitant, perhaps even afraid, but with another violent spur from the spear, continued in its path to the creature.

The creature did not move; it merely opened its mouth.

Kikyo’s eyes widened for the first time that day at the miasma emanating from that mouth, the malice, the hate, so tangible that they seemed to be tentacles, wrapping around a surprised Hakudoshi’s form, entrapping the horse and the spear, pulling them in, slowly, inexorably, into that fearsome maw. The barrier that Naraku had taken such pains to construct to protect him and his spawn seemed nothing to the creature, as both a struggling Hakudoshi and Entei were pulled into the creature. A rubbery tongue then extended and swiped at the lipless mouth, before the great yellow eyes turned upon her. She stood unflinching, before the creature finally turned, and faded into the wind.

An agent of change, she thought, a messenger of death, informing us of our choice. For no more can humans and demons occupy the same land: they must fight for survival until only one race is left remaining. She turned, and raised her eyes to the swarm of saimyoshou hovering above her. The insects buzzed indecisively, before turning and flying away. Kikyo smiled, a smile of melancholy resignation. Fight, Naraku. Fight while you can.

She continued to walk down her own endless road.