Blood Memory

Inuyasha Fan Fiction

Chapter 12: Dangerous Prey

Enma dug the long, pointed nails of his free hand into the armrest of his throne as he fingered the scar running down the length of his face. Kagura’s careless attack had been unable to kill him—the split halves of his immortal body had joined back together soon after her departure. Yet her magic had ensured that the wound would not heal properly; he could not get rid of the scar, and he continued to be plagued with pain.

“That insolent bitch of a youkai!” he snarled as he slammed his fist down on the armrest. “I should have thrown her in the Eighteenth Level!”

His silent beast-headed guards froze at the very mention of the Eighteenth Level. It was a code name used to refer to the deepest, darkest pit in the underworld. The Eighteenth Level was where the foulest, blackest, and most destructive souls went to be punished for all eternity, to suffer unbearable agony with no chance of relief or escape. It was reserved for unredeemable evil souls, and casting an innocent into that abysmal place was a serious breach of regulations.

To call the penalties meted out in that place severe ridiculously understating things; prisoners there endured various generic tortures—one of the more notorious being having their bodies lowered into boiling oil—along with ordeals reflecting their specific sins. No one cast into the Eighteenth Level would ever return; the nature of the place dictated that none could leave it. It was the perfect prison—isolated, cruel, inescapable. And it never ran out of spare capacity.

“I’ll do it this time,” Enma growled. The look in his eyes was absolutely terrifying. “I’ll catch her, and I’ll throw her in there, for she has committed the grave crime of harming a deity like myself. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

He paused, and glared at his stunned retainers. Then he yelled, “What are you staring at, Gozu and Mezu? Go to the world of the living, you beast-brained fools! Hunt down Kagura of the Seven Winds, and bring me her soul!”

Kagura danced; it was all she had ever been born for, all she had ever wanted to do. High in the sky, her lithe body twirled gracefully between deep grey clouds. She danced, and the world below was ravaged by wind, rain and lightning, for she was Kagura of the Seven Winds, the bringer of storms.

Weak minor youkai, unable to weather the relentless storm that now blasted the area they lived in, took to the air as they sought to escape from the empress of the wind. Her arm limned a beautiful arc through the air, and they were struck by lightning. The wind, the rain, the thunder, the creaking of bending trees, and even the dying cries of those youkai—that was her music. And she danced.

Suddenly, her movements faltered, and then stilled altogether. Something had disrupted the wrathful rhythm of her storm. She spotted the one responsible standing in the middle of the waterlogged field below. As if part of the slanting rain, she descended.

“Who are you to interrupt our dance?” she demanded haughtily. “Leave now, animal youkai, or we shall show you no mercy.”

“Who are you?” Sesshoumaru responded, countering her fiery arrogance with his icy pride. “You do not command me.”

The corner of Kagura’s mouth lifted in a smirk. How she managed to look regal with an impish expression like that was a mystery.

“Oh, we remember you now,” she said condescendingly. “You were the soul bound in chains in Enma’s hand. We liberated you … are you not grateful?”

A sudden surge of powerful youki struck her squarely in the face, and she blinked in surprise. It seemed that her visitor was a taiyoukai as well, and not a very happy one at that.

“I owe you no gratitude,” Sesshoumaru said coldly. “Relinquish your control over that body. It does not belong to you.”

Kagura laughed. “What are you talking about? This is most certainly our body! Who else could it possibly belong to?”

Technically? Him, since it was made from his flesh, blood and bone. Now will you shut up and let me talk for a change? You’re in the way.

Kagura’s eyes widened at the voice that had sprung up inside her head. It was her own voice, yet it spoke in such a loose, unrefined way unbefitting of her noble status! She, who had no memories beyond entering hibernation for the last time, could not even begin to comprehend what was going on.

She was not given time to agonise over the mystery of the disembodied voice—she was distracted by the arrival of more company. Gozu—the one with the bull’s head—and Mezu—the horse-faced one—stepped, bearing their weapons, out of a dark portal not unlike the rift she had created to escape from the nether realm.

“To what do we owe the honour of a visit from such ugly creatures as yourselves?” Kagura of the Seven Winds asked in a voice dripping with sarcasm. Her right eyebrow was raised as far as it would go.

“Kagura of the Seven Winds, we are charged with conducting your soul back into the nether realm to serve your penance for harming the Lord Enma,” Mezu announced stiffly, as if reading off a script.

Kagura smirked again as the storm clouds that had begun to disperse gathered anew. “We are afraid we could not understand you; that sounded like nothing more than a neigh. Nonetheless, we extend our gracious hospitality to all guests, even dumb beasts. Now … we shall dance for you!”

With that final sentence, uttered like a spell, Kagura moved to begin a new dance. She was, however, once again interrupted by yet more new arrivals.

“Damn it, dog youkai, what’d you take off so fast for? It wasn’t easy tracking your bloody scent all the way here!”

A copper-skinned youkai with long black hair, dressed most indecently in a scanty outfit of fur and armour, dashed into view with an adolescent boy in tow. The boy carried a small girl dressed all in white on his back, and a scythe-like weapon in his hands.

The newcomers stopped right in front of her, forming a sort of barrier between her and the guards of the underworld. She studied them with a bemused eye.

“What have we here? An obscenely dressed barbarian, a human youth, and a … we do not know what you are, little one. All of you, on top of the one we rescued from Enma’s clutches. Are you all here to offer yourselves as our servants? We have no need for such burdensome, restrictive things.”

Without warning, Kouga whipped around and backhanded her across the face. She was taken so much by surprise that she neither blocked nor dodged the full-forced blow.

“If this is some sort of joke, it isn’t funny,” he said in a low, tense voice. His eyes were bright blue, but at that moment they seemed so dark.

Kagura was too stunned to even strike him down in anger. In her outdated memory, no one had ever dared to hit her like this. Her enemies had attacked her in attempts to kill her, but no one had ever struck her the way the wolf youkai had done, as if to chastise her.

At this moment, Mezu spoke up again, lest he and his bovine companion became forgotten, “Remove yourselves from our path. We are not authorised to harm innocent living creatures.”

“I promised you, didn’t I?” Kouga continued in the same uptight, quiet voice as he turned to face the beast-headed guards. “I said I’d always protect you.”

“There is no need for you to turn this place into a storm-ravaged wasteland,” Kanna told Kagura. “These three will resolve the battle for you.”

Kagura had tears in her eyes, but she could not fathom why. Nonetheless, she laughed derisively at Kanna’s remark and said, “But you don’t understand, all of you. We are Kagura of the Seven Winds, and we need no protection from the likes of you. We fear no enemy, for we live only to dance.”

She assumed the starting pose for her battle dance. The air around her spun fiercely, hurling Kouga, Kohaku and Kanna away. Even Sesshoumaru was forced to retreat a considerable distance away.

“We have kept you waiting, have we not, ugly ones?” she said snidely. “Now we will show you our dance.”

Enma’s guards charged at her with inhuman speed, raising their bladed spears. Unperturbed by their surprising agility, she merely changed her pose in a single fluid motion. Insanely fast winds formed a moving barrier between her body and their weapons, and their spears bounced right off the wall of air.

Smiling prettily all the while, Kagura began a complex series of motions. Her dance had begun proper.

Her leg kicked, perfectly angled, up into the air; the wind gathered under Gozu and Mezu, then erupted upwards like a geyser, tossing them into the air. Her arm swept smoothly across the front of her body; the wind sharpened itself into millions of lethal blades and assaulted them. To their merit, they managed to parry most of the wind blades and avoid serious injury even in their disoriented state.

The deadly dance continued. The stunning repertoire of wind-based attacks Kagura unleashed upon her would-be captors made Kazagumo’s powers look like cheap tricks. Even Gozu and Mezu, who were minor deities themselves, could do little more than defend themselves against such an onslaught. They were the hunters, but she was extremely formidable prey.

Kazagumo had been the king of wind youkai, greater than any of his own kind. Kagura of the Seven Winds was not his kind; she was in a different league altogether. She was a goddess among youkai, and at the moment it seemed that her powers more than rivalled that of true gods.

As she assailed the guards of the underworld with weapons made of thin air, the massive storm that had broken out in response to her dance continued to wreak havoc upon the surrounding landscape. While it was an unavoidable side-effect of using her powers, it proved quite useful in keeping the others out of her way. Kouga, Kohaku and Kanna were barely able to move against the lashing wind and rain, and even Sesshoumaru could not get anywhere near—the closer to Kagura, the fiercer the storm.

Kagura stopped dancing. Gozu and Mezu were both down on one knee, panting heavily and covered in numerous injuries. Their spears were broken, and by Kagura’s estimation they should be too winded and badly hurt to fight.

“Return to your master, and tell him that if he wants to watch us dance, he shall have to come to us. We have no inclination to travel to his realm to perform our dance.”

The triumphant look on her face was quickly replaced by confusion when Gozu let out a series of deep, throaty guffaws. When his mirth subsided, he said, “You are mistaken, Kagura of the Seven Winds, if you think us defeated. We are the guards of the nether world—we are deities specialising in battle. You were able to momentarily overcome Enma-sama, but only by taking him by surprise, and while his immense power was being drained to maintain order in the underworld. We are far stronger than what you have allowed yourself to believe.”

Alarmed, Kagura immediately started another dance. Or at least, she tried to. But she found, much to her shock and horror, that not a muscle in her body was able to move. Her powers were being negated—the storm had subsided, and the sky was clear.

“What’s wrong, Kagura of the Seven Winds? Are you not going to dance for us again?” Mezu taunted her. “Do you know why you can’t move? That is our power. We are more than mere guards; we are also gatekeepers. It is our job to bring death to those whose time is up and allow our minions to cart their souls off to the underworld. That paralysis that afflicts you … it is the grip of death.”

Kagura’s head swam, and a thick fog began to settle over her mind. The ‘grip of death’ that Gozu and Mezu had inflicted upon her was robbing her of her consciousness. Had she truly overestimated herself by so much? She understood that she was beaten, even as her ego fought like an animal to reject that fact. Perhaps she would pass out before she could watch herself die. Then again, what was the difference? She would awaken then as a soul in their custody.

Gozu picked up the severed head of his spear as the wounds on his body, as well as Mezu’s, closed up, leaving only thin scars. “This is the end, Kagura of the Seven Winds,” he said in a stern, grave voice as he hurled the razor-sharp spearhead straight at Kagura’s chest.

Several things happened then. Kohaku’s scythe, controlled by him through the long chain attached to it, flew in from the side and knocked the deadly projectile off course. Kouga caught the collapsing Kagura, who was already unconscious. And Gozu let out a bellow of pain.

Behind him stood Sesshoumaru, and from the middle of his chest sprouted the tip of Tenseiga’s blade. It looked to be a blunt, useless blade, but it was able to cut creatures of the underworld. Deity or not, Gozu was still part of the underworld.

With a battle cry that sounded a little like an agitated whinny, Mezu charged at Sesshoumaru from behind, casting the spell known as ‘the grip of death’ as he did so. However, Sesshoumaru turned around, completely unaffected, and slashed with Tenseiga.

Mezu managed to dodge the blow and save his neck, thanks to his superior reflexes. For Gozu, however, it was too late. The bull-headed deity crumpled into a heap on the ground before dissolving into black smoke.

Sesshoumaru had slain a deity with a single blow. He was a taiyoukai, nothing more—both Kagura of the Seven Winds and Enma’s guards were far stronger than he was. The difference was that he held Tenseiga, the weapon that afforded him supremacy over those of the underworld. As long as he still lived to wield it, at least.

“Cruel fate allowed you to escape from Enma-sama’s clutches, wielder of that accursed sword,” Mezu said bitterly. “And now my brother is dead. I have no choice but to retreat, but mark my words, Enma-sama will make all of you pay for your insolence.”

Before Sesshoumaru could attack him again, he opened a portal to the nether realm and vanished through it.