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The Tale of the Demon Lord	By : Arianawray Category: InuYasha > Yaoi - Male/Male > InuYasha/Sessh?maru > InuYasha/Sessh?maru Views: 56279 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha or any of its characters, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 18
- 19
- 20
Author's Note: I know that some readers are demanding lemons, but I'm afraid the internal logic of the story and the requirements of properly developing the relationship between the two main characters mean that there cannot be any lemons for quite a long time to come. If you are in it only for the sex, so to speak, you may want to come back several chapters and a couple of months later, because I'm planning precious little of it in the interim. To those of you who can endure other kinds of drama, sentiment, and various non-sexual plot developments, I would be delighted to have your company along the way. No matter which category you fall into, I am always thankful to those who take the time to read my stories, and for all the reviews you leave. I hope that you find at least some enjoyment in what I have written!
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XIX: First Blood
"Not like that!" Sesshomaru corrected his brother, who had come lunging at him with the wooden practice sword he had selected for him earlier that morning in the training hall beside the barracks. "You're leaving yourself too open to a counterattack!"
"But this…" the prince grunted as he clashed swords with Sesshomaru, "…is the way I've always fought!"
"Always doing something a certain way does not mean there is no better way," Sesshomaru said, easily keeping him at bay with the Tenseiga even as he reached his other arm out and firmly poked Inuyasha in the tummy. "Feel that – I could easily have driven my claws clean through your belly as you came at me."
They were in one of the two training halls used by the soldiers and guards of the castle for their workouts and martial arts sessions. The military and security personnel primarily used the other one, knowing that this hall was occasionally required for Lord Sesshomaru's own use, or for performances and demonstrations to impress or entertain important guests that might be visiting the castle.
The two brothers currently had the place to themselves, with all the doors along both sides of the hall closed, for neither of them particularly wanted an audience.
"I would have survived even if you had," Inuyasha growled, straining to keep a proper distance between them while not allowing the Tenseiga to force his wooden sword downwards.
"Perhaps you would, but purging my poison from your body could never be a pleasant experience," Sesshomaru smiled grimly as he spoke. It was a knowing expression, one that summed up the troubled years of war and decadence, when he had often injected his venom into the flesh of unfortunate enemies and occasionally had the time and space to watch the effects at his leisure.
The smile made Inuyasha's blood rise – how could this insufferably powerful demon brother of his manage to smile as he grappled with an opponent who was almost as strong as himself?
He pressed forward, but Sesshomaru used his momentum against him and threw him off. He flew backwards through the air, but landed lightly on his feet and went charging at the demon lord again.
This time he kept his arms lower than before, protecting his body while making it easier for him to thrust his sword in any direction in response to Sesshomaru's moves. "Okay, I see your point – but when I do this, I'm sacrificing the option of bringing this crashing down on your head… like… this!" he yelled, leaping into the air and swinging his blunt training weapon in the direction of Sesshomaru's silky white crown.
"If your opponent can fly as high or higher than you can jump, what would be the purpose of that?" Sesshomaru countered, dodging the blow, levitating and rising above Inuyasha to deal him a neat tap on his head with the tip of his soft deerskin boot.
Irked by receiving what felt to him like an enormous boot-sole imprint on his hair, Inuyasha swung wildly back and would have smacked Sesshomaru in the hip with the broad side of his sword had the demon lord not thrust his own weapon in the way to block the blow. He then jumped lightly upon the blade of Inuyasha's sword, used it as a step to get one foot onto the half-demon's head again, and jumped away just as the prince stabbed at the air above him.
In half a second, Sesshomaru was close to the ground again, and a graceful, circular, low sweep of his long right leg forced Inuyasha off-balance. As the half-demon righted himself, he found the tip of his brother's training weapon just kissing his throat.
"What did I tell you yesterday?" Sesshomaru asked rhetorically. "An astute enemy can see what you will do to right yourself after he puts you off-balance, and he will be already waiting there, barely having to move as you impale yourself on his blade. Try again!"
Sesshomaru kicked the boy off his feet once more, and this time Inuyasha went against his instincts and found another way to recover his stance, one that Sesshomaru could not predict and take advantage of.
"Better – but keep on the move – because you have now left your side exposed!" Sesshomaru told him, turning his sword and dealing him a thump in the ribs with its hilt.
"Aaargh!" Inuyasha growled in frustration, unused to such sophisticated swordplay, feeling greatly tempted to toss his training weapon into the corner of the hall and lunge at Sesshomaru with his teeth and fangs, as he had so often had to do against all sorts of demon predators when keeping himself alive in the forests and wilds.
Sesshomaru read his mind, it seemed, for the demon lord commanded him: "Keep hold of your weapon. If you are ever disarmed, you already know how to fight with claws and fangs – but until then, learn to use a sword with skill – we may be animal-demons, but we are not mere beasts, so do not resort unnecessarily to behaving like one."
"Sometimes it's just a whole lot more fun with claws!" Inuyasha shouted, ignoring the instructions and smacking the Tenseiga aside to sink ten sharp points into Sesshomaru's shoulders. He did not dig his claws in as he did not genuinely wish to hurt his brother, but the tips did go in just far enough to draw pinpoints of blood.
"Undoubtedly," Sesshomaru's voice rumbled in Inuyasha's face as he enjoyed his temporary physical proximity to the boy while knowing that he should not permit it in combat. "But it's really not – very – civilised –" With that, he knocked Inuyasha's sword out of his hand, sprang into the air, closed his right fist around the entire thickness of his brother's hair and tugged his head back and up, leaving the lad dangling by his long tresses a few feet off the ground, swinging his arms and kicking his legs at the demon lord in frustration.
Sesshomaru swung him away, dropped him, and motioned to him to unsheathe his Tetsusaiga. "Outside, now – let's not have you tearing this shed down with a misplaced blow!"
The demon lord burst through the central door on the east wall of the training hall, with the half-demon bounding after him, Tetsusaiga flaring boldly in the morning sunshine.
The soldiers and guards who had been shut out of the hall now raced after them to watch, excited by what they were seeing, as the brothers took to the nearest open field, blade clashing wildly against blade, and the half-demon prince's missiles of his own blood smashing into the demon lord's poison whip.
"Unless you are truly in dire straits, do not use your blades of blood!" Sesshomaru shouted across to Inuyasha as he saw his brother dipping his claws into his own chest once more to draw out drops of blood which his half-demon powers allowed him to turn into sharp, liquid weapons. "Why deplete an important resource within your own body that gives you strength?"
"Fine!" Inuyasha snarled back, ceasing his use of that alternative and focusing on wielding Tetsusaiga, employing his own swiftness of movement to tackle Sesshomaru.
All the spectators assumed that their king would easily get the better of his impulsive, untrained younger brother, but as the two swords clashed and sang, the members of the castle community saw with their own eyes that Inuyasha was incredibly strong for a half-demon of his age, with an untamed boldness and a delightfully unconventional fighting style. Sesshomaru had many powerful demons in his army and among his security personnel, but every one of them had to admit that they would be hard-put to defend their limbs and lives should they ever be engaged in a real battle with either of the royal brothers. The siblings had, after all, inherited their mighty father's strength – although neither had developed it to the fullest yet – and no single demon who walked the earth or flew above it had ever been a match for the late demon lord's sheer power.
The duel the pair engaged in, as much in the air as on the ground, was compelling to watch for its ferocity and speed, Sesshomaru's unflappable elegance a neat foil to Inuyasha's dramatic swipes, leaps and gymnastics.
Sparks flew as the blades scraped their edges and planes against each other with every strike, each portion of their father's enormous fang blazing against the other, finding its other half from which it had been made separate long ago, as if seeking to merge into one again. Most of the spectators had once thought that the best metal made the strongest blades, but it became plain to the awe-struck audience that nothing they knew was quite as hard or resilient as the dental structures of the late demon lord when he had been in his gigantic full-dog shape.
While Sesshomaru had the superior strength and skill, Inuyasha was feisty and dogged, and his determination against his opponent even in a mock-fight soon saw him getting the point and edge of his blade close enough to his brother such that if it had been a real duel, Sesshomaru's skin would surely have been nicked.
Sesshomaru saw Inuyasha pull back and hold back when he realised how close he had come to grazing him. The demon lord wanted Inuyasha to push them both to their limits, so he fired a volley of provocative words at the lad: "Holding back, Inuyasha? Too fearful to engage me to the fullest? Are you afraid that your half-demon nature will show itself to be far too fragile against my powers?"
Spurred by those words, Inuyasha growled and unleashed his speed and strength, and came close once again to touching Sesshomaru with the point of his sword.
Surprised now by Inuyasha's superbly bold moves, Sesshomaru pushed him even harder, and then drove him back till he was on the defensive. At this point the half-demon only grew more challenging to keep at bay, for he battled ferociously and in unpredictable ways to restore the balance, until in a sudden and unexpected lunge, he pushed the Tetsusaiga up and out – and sent the blade deep into Sesshomaru's left arm.
Flesh and muscle split and parted beneath the blade's edge till the great fang scraped against bone, and blood gushed out of the wound, filling the air with its distinctive scent and soaking into Sesshomaru's white robe, turning it an ugly shade of red.
For one moment – just one fraction of a second while the blade was still cutting through Sesshomaru's arm – Inuyasha felt a burst of triumph swell in his chest as he scented the blood and knew that he had got the better of his stronger, more powerful brother for once, and dealt him a fair blow that in some primal way was payback for the wrongs he had done him and his mother.
But in the next fraction of that same second, the half-demon felt nothing but horror as the same knowledge hit his heart and mind from a completely different angle: Oh no, what have I done?
At that point where he could have chosen to push on and sever the demon lord's arm, he chose instead to pull back and pull away, sparing his brother's limb further damage. The exchange ended as both combatants landed lightly on their feet on the grass, at a distance from each other.
"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled in alarm once his feet were back on solid ground. He dropped his sword and rushed to the demon lord's side.
"Good move," Sesshomaru said calmly, sheathing the Tenseiga quickly before clutching at the wound with his right hand.
"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" Inuyasha gasped. "I didn't mean to do that!"
"You did well," Sesshomaru replied evenly, his voice not betraying any of the pain he felt.
"Oh gods," Inuyasha cried, looking at all the blood and seeing the gaping wound beneath his brother's slashed robe and the tight grip of his fingers.
The prince tore off his own sash and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow of blood, as some of the officers who had been watching the duel gave swift orders to their soldiers to fetch clean water and bandages.
"I'm so sorry," Inuyasha said again, tears springing into his eyes, as he saw that if he had struck any harder, Sesshomaru's left arm could well have come clean off.
"Silly boy – these things happen in training."
"I should have been using the wooden sword…"
"It was I who suggested that you use the Tetsusaiga."
Soldiers bearing basins of water, clean cloths and bandages were now by their side, and someone had called for Sesshomaru's personal healer, an old dog demon who now rushed over to them from the castle building, and whose face Inuyasha remembered from his childhood.
The old healer begged Sesshomaru to sit down on the grass. He knelt beside him and glared at Inuyasha as he almost slapped the half-demon's hands away from Sesshomaru's arm. The demon lord stopped him with his right hand.
"Yoshi, this was purely a training accident," Sesshomaru growled. "My brother is not to blame. Although I deeply respect your skills and your loyalty to me, I shall not look kindly upon any behaviour or expressions that indicate contempt for your prince."
"Yes, my lord," the chastened Yoshi replied, bowing low to both the brothers before carefully lifting the sash a little to see how bad the injury was.
"But it is my fault," Inuyasha insisted angrily.
"You did not intend to injure me, so I do not hold it against you," Sesshomaru told him. "Indeed, were we engaged in a real fight, and you meant to wound me deeply and succeeded, I would still not hold it against you, for that is the reality of combat."
Yoshi pressed down on the wound for several minutes, assisting Sesshomaru's powerful demon spirit-energy in stopping the flow of blood and preventing the muscles from tearing any further. The healer then sought and obtained permission to cut Sesshomaru's sleeve open for better access to his upper arm. He rent the fabric from where it was already slashed, wet a piece of cloth and wiped carefully around the site of the injury to remove all the blood obscuring it, took a closer look at the extent of the gash, and murmured to himself as he went swiftly through the selection of bandages and ointments in his carrying case to find a suitable length of fabric and blend of medication that would hold everything in place until the demon lord could return to his room for further treatment.
In a very short time, he had bound Sesshomaru's arm firmly in layers of bandaging, and slung another strip of fabric from the arm to the shoulder to prevent him from moving his limb too much. Then Sesshomaru got up and directed his steps towards the castle. He walked steadily, requiring no support from Yoshi or Inuyasha, who hovered uncertainly near him before dashing back to where he had dropped the Tetsusaiga on the grass. He quickly wiped the blade clean of Sesshomaru's blood, sheathed it, and caught up with his brother and the healer.
Back in the demon lord's bedroom, attendants moved about quickly but quietly, fetching whatever Sesshomaru and the healer needed. Inuyasha stood miserably by the bed until Sesshomaru said to him: "Go back to your room or go for a walk in the gardens. Stop worrying. I will be perfectly fine."
The boy hesitated.
"Go on," Sesshomaru told him. "I will see you later."
Inuyasha went to his room, upset by how he had so lacked control of his sword that he had inflicted such serious injury on Sesshomaru. It further upset him when one half of his mind questioned the other as to whether the blow had truly been unintentional: had he suppressed so much anger and resentment for his brother that he might in fact have wanted to hurt him badly – or even kill him?
His heart said no, stressing repeatedly that he would never deliberately injure someone to such an extent in mock-combat. His head toyed with his heart, questioning him again about whether his motives might be concealed even from himself.
Agitated, Inuyasha left his room and walked out to the patch of forest, where he stood before Bokusen'o and hung his head.
"What is the matter, Inuyasha?" the tree demon asked, showing his face.
"I hurt Sesshomaru," he confessed. "We were training with our swords, and I wounded him really badly. He could have lost his arm."
"Perhaps he should have," came a strange voice from high above him, which was not Bokusen'o's.
Inuyasha's head snapped up to see a doddery old figure, shabbily dressed and carrying strange tools, mounted on a bug-eyed cow and hovering in the sky above the tree demon. The guards on duty at the perimeter wall were already running towards the spot, eyes focused skyward, as they rushed to deal with the intruder. Two soldiers mounted on fire cats were also flying at top speed towards the strange demon.
"Who the hell are you?" Inuyasha asked angrily, his hand going to the hilt of the Tetsusaiga.
"Let's have a look at that sword of yours," the stranger said coolly in a gravelly voice, completely ignoring the soldiers converging on him.
"Are you crazy? You're not touching my sword!" Inuyasha exclaimed.
Just as the guards and soldiers seemed on the point of pouncing on the uninvited visitor, the latter spat out a powerful stream of fire from his mouth, ringing it about him and blocking off those who had come to intercept him.
"Hey! What's with you?" Inuyasha demanded, unsheathing the Tetsusaiga and springing into the air, where he would have charged through the wall of fire – quite forgetting that he wasn't wearing his protective fire rat robe – had Bokusen'o not reached out one long and surprisingly pliable branch, curled it about his left ankle, and yanked him back down.
"Bokusen'o!" the prince protested, fighting to free his leg.
"Calm down, Inuyasha," the tree demon said in his low and steady voice. "All of you, calm down."
The guards and soldiers looked surprised to be spoken to by the tree – Inuyasha guessed that they had probably always known of this ancient plant demon who dwelt on the castle grounds, but had never had the privilege of hearing him speak.
"Totosai, you careless old codger," Bokusen'o boomed at the visitor still in the air above him. "Have you no sense? You could have set all my leaves afire."
The ring of flames dispersed, and the visitor and his flying mount slowly descended to the ground. "Of course I wouldn't have set all your leaves on fire, you old stick of wood," the swordsmith protested. "I think I can aim better than that – besides, you've been singed by my flames a good many times, and you've never caught fire."
"You're Totosai?" Inuyasha asked in disbelief, staring at the shabbily dressed figure before him who looked so decrepit that had he not just seen the blast of firepower from him, he would have thought him a mere old man who could be blown over by a gust of wind.
"I believe that is my name – at least it was the last time I checked, you silly young prince," the swordsmith replied. "Now let's look at that sword I made."
The guards hung back, the older ones among them lowering their weapons as they realised that this fire demon was one of Lord Sesshomaru's godfathers.
Cautiously, Inuyasha handed his blade over to the old fellow, who took it from him, peered at it in a short-sighted manner, murmured to himself, then took out a strip of leather and began polishing the blade while muttering: "How did it get so rusty? I suppose the spiteful young fool must have stuck it up on the wall for the last two hundred years…"
"It's a fang," the half-demon growled impatiently. "Teeth don't get rusty."
"Well, as rusty as a tooth can get, this one's rusty," Totosai grumbled, polishing away at the blade.
It occurred to Inuyasha that the spell his father had placed on the Tetsusaiga to keep all demon hands other than his own off the sword must not apply to Totosai, who was after all the blade's maker and legitimate steward.
"I do indeed smell my idiot godson's blood all over the blade," Totosai murmured. "But I also hear the sword telling me that there was no malice in the blow which delivered that injury. You held back, young prince."
"I was just going over it in my head, asking myself if I couldn't have held back more – after all, it was only a training fight," Inuyasha mumbled. "I needn't have gone in that hard in the first place."
"You did right," Totosai told him, returning the Tetsusaiga to him after a final buffing stroke of the leather strip. "The sword knows that when you had a choice between pressing on and pulling back, you pulled back, and it knows that possibly better than you yourself do. I am returning the Tetsusaiga to you now only because of that goodness in your heart that stayed your hand despite all the wrongs you suffered thanks to him."
"I don't know that there is any goodness in my heart," Inuyasha said in a subdued voice, staring at the sword and noticing for the first time how well-worn the fabric and leather were which wrapped the hilt. He realised in an instant how well-used it was, and how many living things his father must have slain with this very weapon he had in his hands – it was a deadly thing, and he had wounded Sesshomaru with it.
"Your sword tells me of that compassion within you, and the Tenseiga sang to me of its pleasure at matching blades with your weapon," Totosai stated. "If you had proven cruel and vicious, if you had tried to kill your brother, then I would have snapped your blade in two and never repaired it. Now, where's that fool of a demon lord? It's about time he and I had a talk."
- 18
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The Tale of the Demon Lord