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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
- 39
- 40
- 41
XL: Making Sacrifices
"Kikyo, you promised me you would look after yourself," Inuyasha chided the coughing priestess, whose delicate frame was rocked by the soreness and irritation in her lungs and throat. "How did you allow yourself to get into this state?"
"She will insist on carrying out all her duties, visits to the sick villagers and devotions at the shrine in all kinds of weather," Kaede grumbled to mask her own fear for Kikyo's well-being. "Everyone from the headman down has advised her to take it easy, but no, she walks out in the rain and wind and goes about her work as if it were sunshine all day long."
"I can't leave you to do all the work by yourself," Kikyo told her sister.
"Well, I soon will be doing all the work by myself if you don't get better! Much use you'll be if you're dead!"
"I can help," Kagome said from the doorway.
"What are you doing out of bed at this hour? Does your father know that you left your hut?" Kaede asked, startled to see her grand-niece in the dead of night. "And Sango with you!"
A girl who looked a year older than Kagome was in the doorway too. Inuyasha remembered someone telling him that she was the daughter of the demon slayer family hired to protect the village.
"Come in, both of you," Kikyo said hoarsely. "Don't stand out there in the night wind."
"Oh, you're one to talk!" Kaede muttered as she wrapped a blanket around her sister's shoulders.
"Sango was spending the night in our hut when we heard you coughing, Grand-aunt Kikyo," Kagome said, inching closer to the warmth of the small fire in the brazier. "It sounded bad. We wanted to make sure you were all right."
"Nothing worse than the few nights past, don't worry," the priestess said.
"But I can help do your work," Kagome said, unrolling a spare sleeping mat and burrowing under a large blanket with Sango. "Then you can rest."
"You will be doing my work when I am gone, anyway," Kikyo said with a smile. "For now, let me do all I can."
"Stubborn as ever," Inuyasha snapped.
"As if you're any different," Kikyo retorted gently.
"We also came because we wanted to ask you if we're in any more danger now than we were earlier in the night," Sango spoke up in a gentle but firm voice.
"Why would you think that?" Inuyasha asked the child.
"There are more guards inside the village barrier now," Sango explained.
"Sango is always the first to notice these things," Kagome said, nodding to confirm what her friend had said. "Among us children, I mean."
"Well, I haven't noticed," Inuyasha muttered, realising he had been so worried about Kikyo that he had not been paying much attention to what was going on around the village.
He got up and strolled out of the hut to where Totosai, his cow and three of the smaller dragons were snoozing under a tree. Inuyasha sat beside his godfather quietly while extending the reach of his senses to determine which demons were within the barrier.
The children were right. Three of the demon guards who had been patrolling the forest beyond the barrier were now within the boundaries of the village. Then he tried to determine who was outside the barrier, although its thickness was muting his senses. That was when he realised that while he could very vaguely and lightly sense seven of the castle guards outside, there was nothing of Sesshomaru's presence. Considering that he was more attuned to his brother's aura than that of others, Sesshomaru ought to have been the first one he picked out.
The demon lord was not in the forest.
"Totosai! Wake up!" Inuyasha said urgently, elbowing his godfather in the ribs.
"Wh- who said I was asleep? Huh?" Totosai mumbled.
"Where's Sesshomaru?"
"How would I know, young one?" the fire demon asked, blinking in the darkness as it dawned on him that he too had no sense of Sesshomaru's presence beyond the barrier.
"That stubborn ass!" Inuyasha exclaimed angrily, jumping to his feet. "He's gone off to face Naraku alone!"
"You, guard!" Totosai called to the demon closest to them. "Three of your colleagues were beyond the barrier earlier this evening, but now they are within. Bring one of them to us."
"Yes, Master Totosai," the guard replied, and hurried to find one of the three who had joined them inside the village only a few hours ago.
He soon returned with one, a fox demon who bowed to Totosai and asked what he could do for him.
"Where is Lord Sesshomaru?" Totosai asked.
"Master Totosai, Lord Sesshomaru did not want us to say anything to you until you specifically asked us. He has left. He did not tell us precisely where he was going, but all of us scented the spider lord, Naraku, at a distance just before Lord Sesshomaru departed. He also sent Isshin back to the castle to inform the Lady Shirakumo that he would be away from both the castle and the village at this time. We believe that Lord Sesshomaru must have gone to confront Naraku. He left about an hour ago."
"Naraku is here in these lands?" Inuyasha asked, with a growing sense of dread for Sesshomaru's safety. "Which direction did his scent come from? Did he come over the waters? Which direction did Sesshomaru fly off in?"
"Your Highness, Lord Naraku's scent and waves of his aura were coming from the south. He must have come in across the southern border, using the nulling stone that we were all briefed about after one of its shards was used by the assassin in the castle. Lord Sesshomaru flew south on his dragon."
"If he was using the stone to enter our kingdom, how could his aura flare?" Inuyasha asked. "The stone would have suppressed it."
"He must have given the stone to an aide, or one of his children, and ordered them to leave," Totosai murmured.
"But why would he do that after succeeding in slipping in undetected?" Inuyasha asked, frantic at the idea of Sesshomaru going to face the tricky spider demon who wanted him dead.
"Obviously, he wanted to get Sesshomaru away from you, believing that you would either be too incapacitated to travel, or that Sesshomaru would not permit you to face any more danger," Totosai said.
"But he will put himself in danger?" Inuyasha howled with frustration. "I don't give a shit that he's stronger than Naraku – the bloody spider has a million tricks up his tentacles, and he has this card to play!"
Inuyasha jabbed at his chest, where the glass shard was buried.
"He can't do this alone – I'm going after him!" the prince declared, shedding his outer robe and outer trouser layer hastily and pulling on his fire rat robe, which he had stored in one of the dragons' saddlebags.
"That will put both of you in danger," Totosai said calmly. "Who will run the kingdom then? You are his heir."
"I don't give a rat's ass who his heir is. His mother can do the job. I'm going to get him back."
"If no one can stop him from leaving, then please go with him, Master Totosai," Kikyo's soft voice came from behind them.
Inuyasha turned to see her, with Kaede, Kagome and Sango, standing a little way off, holding a small lantern for light. They had heard his exchange with Totosai and the guard, and come out of the hut to see what the matter was.
"Kikyo, I don't want to leave you at this time…" Inuyasha began.
"I know. Would it be of any use for me to advise you strongly to wait until the shard can be removed from you before you go?"
"There's no time for that. If all goes well, I either won't need the shard removed, or I'll be able to come back here and get it out of me at our leisure. If all goes wrong, then there's nothing more to discuss."
"I understand," Kikyo told him, resigned in the face of his determination and obstinacy. "Your brother and king needs you. We will defend the village, as we always have. Your guards will be here too, I believe?"
"Yes," Inuyasha declared. He turned to give orders to the highest-ranking guard: "All of you are to remain here and protect the village. Naraku is in these lands. If his aura is detectable now, it means that he has handed the nulling stone to someone else, possibly one of his children. That person, or those persons, will now be undetectable to you except by sight and feel – watch out for them."
"Yes, Your Highness."
With that, Inuyasha raced into the forest to get one of the faster dragons to ride, while Totosai mounted his flying cow and soared into the air. Yuno saw him coming and knew that he had learnt of Sesshomaru's departure. Quickly and without a word, the dog-demon messenger handed the prince the reins of the swiftest dragon with them. Inuyasha nodded his thanks, sprang onto the beast, and flew off after Totosai.
"There's no way even this dragon will be faster than Sesshomaru's two-headed beast!" Inuyasha yelled across to his godfather.
"No – Sesshomaru's dragon is the fastest of the lot," Totosai confirmed. "And my cow Momo is already falling behind – you go as fast as you can, I will follow."
"All right!"
Inuyasha urged his mount on, and they flew on through the dark clouds of night.
~ - ~
"Naraku!" Sesshomaru roared, leaping off his dragon and descending on the dark form of the spider lord who had trespassed on his lands.
Naraku jumped lightly away and soared to safer ground, out of the immediate reach of the dog demon lord.
"Sesshomaru, how good of you to come at my invitation," Naraku smiled. "And it was an invitation, was it not, allowing you to sense and scent me at just the right time? Do you like the place I have chosen to wait for you to come to me?"
Sesshomaru knew this barren land. He had visited it many years ago, alone, to mourn and rage, for this was where his father had died protecting his human mate and the newborn Inuyasha. But this was not the time to care about where they were.
"I will destroy you for everything you have done to me – all your past offences, your repeated incursions into my territory, and most of all, for the harm you have done my brother!" Sesshomaru growled, turning his eyes from the few remnants and marks that showed where a human mansion had once stood, the place in which Inuyasha's mother had been housed and sheltered after her demon mate took her away from the castle. Humans had from the time of the great battle regarded the area as cursed and haunted by demon ghouls, and had never rebuilt homes or settlements here.
"That was your fault, Sesshomaru," Naraku spat bitterly, his face turning dark in an instant. "If you had given the prince to me, no harm would have come to him. I would have taken very good care of him."
"He does not need what would pass for 'care' from you," Sesshomaru snarled.
"I took every reasonable precaution to safeguard his well-being," Naraku said. "Did you?"
With a roar of anger, Sesshomaru flew at Naraku. He had Tenseiga and another sword taken from the armoury, but unknown to his friends, he also had Tokijin with him. He had concealed the aura of Kaijinbo's sword under a barrier so that Totosai would not know it was in his dragon's saddlebag. He knew it was a weakness to resort to Tokijin after promising Totosai that he would put it away, but no sword he had wielded against the mirror demon had stood up to the test, and Tenseiga was too dull a blade to cut flesh and bone. So he had given in to his desire for revenge and secretly retrieved Tokijin from the armoury just before leaving for the village.
He drew Tokijin now and slashed fiercely at Naraku, who extended his numerous tentacles and allowed him to cut away. Every wound released bursts of toxic demon poison. With his other hand, Sesshomaru unleashed his own brand of poison in the form of a long, lashing whip. It cut Naraku repeatedly and burned his skin. But the spider lord had so many demons, spirits and bodies absorbed into his compound being that he easily regenerated any injured part of himself.
He was no warrior like Sesshomaru was – no one could remember ever seeing Naraku lift a sword, spear, staff or bow in his pale hand – but he was a crafty thing, and this was his way of doing battle. He would let his opponents hack at every expendable part of his renewable body until they were either overcome by the toxic fumes spewing from his wounds, or until they tired enough to let him fire yet more tentacles from his body and wrap them inside those appendages so he could assimilate them into his being, make their power his power, and their memories his own.
"I see that I have indeed chosen the right place to face you," Naraku sneered. "You will be no more successful here than your mighty father was in preserving his own life."
"My father succeeded in what he set out to do – to save the lives of the ones he loved – and I shall do no less than him!" Sesshomaru declared, launching another attack on the spider lord.
Naraku was crafty, but Sesshomaru knew better than most how to deal with him. They had clashed before, and Sesshomaru had learnt important lessons from those encounters. The first was to avoid transforming into his full-dog form – enormous as that dog shape was, Naraku had no difficulty twining those slimy, muscled limbs around and around him and holding him in place long enough for Sesshomaru to run the risk that he might be absorbed.
The second was to avoid hacking away pointlessly until he was distracted and blinded by clouds of purple poison fumes, as well as disorientated after flailing at flying tentacles from every direction.
The trick was to accept a few hits while lunging directly at Naraku's primary body. Even that was an easier tactic to talk about than to carry out, for the hits were vicious, and the thick tentacles were no mean obstacle. But Sesshomaru went for it. He ceased fighting with the tips of the tentacles presented to him, soared into the air, and lashed out with his sword, claws and whip. Tentacles battered him and injected their poison into him, but he shot like an arrow towards Naraku's main body, and thrust Tokijin deep into his chest. With the other non-demon sword he had taken from the armoury, he impaled Naraku against a dead tree trunk, pushing the blade right through the point on the spider lord's back from which the tentacles sprang, thus temporarily paralysing the eruption of new appendages.
Tokijin's tip thrust repeatedly into Naraku's body, searching, searching… his heart had to be here somewhere.
"What makes you think I've got my heart with me, Sesshomaru?" Naraku laughed, ignoring the pain of the blade prying his ribs apart.
"I think you've got your heart with you," Sesshomaru grunted. "Because you no longer trust anyone else with it."
Tokijin sliced through more bone and unnatural flesh as it sought Naraku's heart. Sesshomaru's whip slashed Naraku's hands off and fused into a stiff mass of green dog-demon poison the tips of those tentacles which had already been outside Naraku's body before their source was pinned to the tree. Those free tentacles now flew in at him, only to tangle one another up as they melted slowly from the poison. Ironically, they thus formed a bizarre shield for Sesshomaru against other appendages seeking to worm in towards him. The dead tree creaked as Naraku strained to unpin himself from it. The time it would take the spider demon's hands to regrow and for the tentacles to disentangle themselves would be all the time he had to locate Naraku's heart.
"You may have hidden it in different places in the past, and shaped it into different forms," Sesshomaru growled, driving Tokijin downwards. "But I know that ever since your infant, Hakudoshi's twin, turned against you while harbouring your heart, you have kept that vital organ within yourself."
Naraku's eyes widened and glowed with pain as Sesshomaru drove his blade into a new spot. But he smiled at the same time, and bit out these words: "Oh, Sesshomaru… you know, sometimes, having a heart can mean the chance at life as well as it can mean the risk of death. You will remember that I returned Kagura's heart to her moments before I drove my tentacles and my poison through her – I thought it would kill her for good. But as I have recently learnt, she survived, and because she had her heart, she was free of me forever. A double-edged sword, having a heart…"
"Shut up and die," Sesshomaru snarled, carving up new flesh with the steel of his blade.
"Not so fast – having my heart back does mean that there is a chance of your killing me here and now. But it also means that I would go much, much further to keep myself alive now than I used to before, when my body had no heart in it, and I knew that however much you cut me up, whether you hewed my head from my shoulders or tore me to shreds, I would be able to slip away, return to the place where I had stored my heart, and make myself whole again."
"Be silent!" Sesshomaru commanded, clawing Naraku's head open with his talons and tearing his face off his false bones. The lump of flesh with his features on it flew to the ground and lay amidst the other pieces of flesh scattered in a wide radius around them, all writhing and struggling to reform into a proper body.
More toxic fumes. It was getting harder for Sesshomaru to focus on what he was doing. And slashing his head into three parts still did not shut Naraku up, for his face in the dirt began to join up along its torn seams, and the mouth continued to form words: "You were right in a way – I do have my heart with me. But it seems you've miscalculated, my dear Sesshomaru. I took the liberty of concealing my heart in the ground of this barren land. You can't have noticed its scent and aura as you were so focused on attacking me, and from the very first strike, you reduced your chances of ever locating it, for even your powerful nose cannot now pick it out from amongst all the other pieces of my flesh throbbing and pulsing on the ground."
Sesshomaru gave Tokijin another desperate thrust, but there was no heart to be found within. He had been deceived by Naraku's tactics, and had failed again. Tokijin creaked at the resistance from Naraku's ribs, and suddenly broke in half. It was the third sword in seven days that had broken in Sesshomaru's hand – even so powerful a sword as Tokijin…
He quickly burst through the tangled mass of tentacles and escaped Naraku's clutches just as the spider demon regrew his hands and tore free of the dead tree. The armoury sword that had pinned him there fired free of his body and the tree, and Sesshomaru caught it by its hilt as it flew through the air.
"Sesshomaru, oh Sesshomaru," Naraku purred as his face drifted back up to join again with his head, and his injuries closed up. "None of this ever needed to happen. If you had only given Inuyasha to me, you would be spared all this trouble. Inuyasha would be safe, and you would have your old life back."
"Liar," the demon lord stated calmly. "Inuyasha would be at your mercy, and I would be dead. You only want him to get to my throne."
"I exercised that plan only after you rejected me, and humiliated me," Naraku scowled. "I would have been content with the boy. I would have had him bear my children, and let them contest your children for the throne – or better, woo your children, and mate with them. My descendants ruling your lands would have been good enough for me, until I discovered in the course of my visit that you took my daughter, took my slave, and seduced your brother while I was under your roof courting him! That was when you had to die."
"Unfortunately you wounded Inuyasha instead."
"I did not want to do that, but as I have, it is just as well. His life is in my hands. Now I only need you out of the way. It has been amusing playing these games with you, but it is time to end the fun. As you cannot find my heart, all I have to do now is order you to stand back and give Inuyasha to me, or else I shall command the shard inside him to sharpen and grow."
"You are the fool who has miscalculated here," Sesshomaru growled, levelling the point of the armoury sword at Naraku. "If you kill Inuyasha, nothing will stop me from killing you, even if I have to dig up every piece of earth on this land to find your heart. I do not believe that you will kill him."
Sesshomaru took a step towards Naraku, but the spider lord spoke: "Who said anything about killing him?"
Sesshomaru stopped.
"You are quite right to say that I won't kill the boy," Naraku continued. "What good would that do me? Oh dear, no. I'm near enough to him now to control that shard with great precision. So I'll make the shard grow into his spine and sever it, and he will never again be able to stand up on his own two feet, never move without help, never feed himself or wash himself. But he will live. And that is all I need once I get my hands on him – a still, compliant body in which to work my magic and plant my seed. He will have my children, and I will plot against you repeatedly until you are dead, and then my children will sit on your throne. And when they are in power, I will have no further need of the prince – if he ever displeases me, he can lie there still and unmoving and starve slowly to death. How long does it take a strong, paralysed half-demon to starve to death, Sesshomaru?"
The demon lord's rage rose, but it was a rage fuelled by the growing awareness of defeat. "For your despicable sins, Naraku, you will die a terrible death one day," he said quietly, gradually coming to a realisation of what he had to do.
"So give me the boy, and I will keep him unharmed and alive, and allow you to live for another few centuries – even another thousand years. What do a thousand years matter to me when you will obediently name the firstborn child that Inuyasha gives me as your heir? I am a chaotic amalgamation of souls, and half the time I barely know what I am. But the children I will have with your brother will focus my countless natures into their beautiful little selves, and through them, I shall perhaps at last find peace."
Sesshomaru remained silent.
"You have few options, Sesshomaru," Naraku said. "I'm doing you a favour, after all. I am relieving you of the burden of being mated to your demanding little brother who has stolen all your heart and will never be happy with your promiscuous ways. Without him, you can continue to rule your kingdom, and sleep with my disowned daughter and your other whores, and know that when you are dead, the seed of your father will still rule your lands, but through Inuyasha and not through you. Come now, you know you could never remain faithful to just one mate. By this, I am offering you a thousand years of freedom."
A cold, calculative part of Sesshomaru's mind told him with crystal clarity that Naraku's proposal made sense. He would be free of the burden of being bound to one high-born mate, free to rule his kingdom and take a female mate who would bear him children who could grow up to challenge Naraku. That calculative part of his mind even reasoned that he would be doing Inuyasha a favour – once Naraku had him, he would have no reason to hurt him further. It would be saving Inuyasha's life and health. No one knew what the future would bring, so perhaps Inuyasha might even die of natural causes before Naraku could implement the second half of his plans for power. And Sesshomaru would certainly not yield the throne to anyone other than his own offspring then…
Yes, it all made sense. Except for one obstacle – an insurmountable obstacle presented not by the cold and calculative part of his mind, but by his heart, which was greater and stronger than everything he had ever been.
The impediment was that the very idea of Inuyasha in Naraku's embrace, at Naraku's mercy, as Naraku's mate, made Sesshomaru want to roar at the heavens and thunder at the gods until they tumbled from their dispassionate perches in the sky. He could not, would not, would never do that to Inuyasha. He would never sacrifice him, not even for the pathetic excuse of saving his life.
He would not allow the priestess' act of severing the enchanted necklace, and her statement that no one could have power over Inuyasha now, to mean nothing. The woman was right: no one could, or should, have power over Inuyasha.
Sesshomaru sensed that at that very moment, the boy was drawing near. The disobedient brat. He knew his lord and brother had given him an order to stay and wait for the great tree sacred to the unfeeling gods to help him, but here he was, rushing after him. An impossible handful, a rebellious child, a mate who would probably be nine-tenths trouble in the future.
Nothing worth keeping, surely?
Except that he loved him as he had never loved anyone in his life.
As Inuyasha came closer and closer to the barren land where he and Naraku stood, Sesshomaru knew that he had to act, and act fast. It was the only way to save the boy.
"Naraku," Sesshomaru said coldly, sheathing his sword and standing before him unarmed. "I have a counter-proposal for you."
"Oh?" the spider lord asked, his garnet eyes flashing with curiosity and greed. "What might that be?"
"Myself."
"What?" Naraku asked suspiciously.
"Take me." It was the bargain he had tried to make with the gods, and they had not listened. So he would now make the same bargain with the being before him who seemed to hold half the devils of the netherworld within him.
"You?" Naraku questioned, sharply.
"Yes. Forget Inuyasha. I offer myself to you. Do with me what you please. You can have the throne through me, through any children you compel me to bear you with magic. They can easily supplant Inuyasha's claim to the throne. The claim of my bloodline will be stronger than the claim of my father's bloodline through a younger brother."
Naraku's grasping mind speedily calculated the rewards and drawbacks of this new proposal, and liked what it saw. A long tentacle snaked cautiously towards Sesshomaru, brushed his waist and hips, and caressed his face. When the demon lord did not react, Naraku grew bolder, and pressed his tentacle closer all around him.
"Sesshomaru," Naraku murmured, drawing the dog demon to him. "If you had been agreeable to this from the start, everything would have been so easy."
Inuyasha was in sight now, tearing towards them on his dragon. The demon lord's two-headed beast let out a great cry as he hovered high in the air, spurring his stable-mate on towards their master.
"My only condition is that you leave Inuyasha alone and unharmed," Sesshomaru said.
"With you in my power, I can agree to a small matter like that," Naraku leered.
"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha yelled as he saw him seized by Naraku's tentacle. "Sesshomaru, no!"
Pressing his dragon on faster as Naraku drew Sesshomaru even closer to him, and seeing his brother unresisting, Inuyasha panicked.
He saw another tentacle of Naraku's snake around the scabbards of the two swords secured to Sesshomaru's sash, pull them free and fling them aside to disarm the demon lord.
"Remember – one false move from you, and pretty little Inuyasha spends the rest of his life as useless as a rag," Naraku warned.
A storm of dust blew into the air as the dragon swooped low over the earth, and Inuyasha jumped to the ground, unsheathing his Tetsusaiga.
"Sesshomaru!" he called again, racing towards his brother and Naraku.
But Naraku held Sesshomaru before him as a shield, and said to Inuyasha: "You're a tempting morsel, little prince, and I still believe that you are destined to be mine one day. But for now, I've been given a better offer."
"What?" Inuyasha shouted, confused. "What's going on?"
"Go home, Inuyasha," Sesshomaru said quietly. "Look after these lands and your people."
"I don't understand!" Inuyasha yelled.
"Your brother is mine," Naraku declared. "Himself in exchange for you. How very much he loves you… but he won't be yours now."
"No, Sesshomaru – please, no," Inuyasha blurted out in fear and anger. "Not you…"
"Yes, him, my prince," Naraku smiled. "And to make certain that neither of you renege on this bargain, I am strengthening the placement of that shard inside you – if you were planning to have it purified by your priestess friends, or to get rid of it by killing my younger daughter, well, let's just say that won't work so well now."
Sesshomaru snarled, but Naraku waved a hand in Inuyasha's direction, and the half-demon prince felt the shard lodge even more securely inside him, if that were possible. It remained rounded and painless, but he felt as if it was now sticking to the flesh of his heart and lungs, and pressing against the bones of his spine, and it began to reek much more strongly of Naraku.
"Inuyasha…" Sesshomaru called, afraid for his brother.
"I'm fine, Sesshomaru. I don't care about me – don't do this – don't let him do this! I'll kill him now!"
The prince charged at Naraku, Tetsusaiga raised. But to his horror, instead of trying to ward him off, Naraku punched a tentacle clean through Sesshomaru's body.
"Sesshomaru! No!" Inuyasha screamed, as Sesshomaru stiffened in shock and surprise and gasped out a mouthful of blood as the toxic appendage impaling him lifted him off the ground, while another limb pinned his arms to his sides. His eyes were open, but his head fell forward, his beautiful silver hair tumbling loose over his shoulders.
"Don't worry, he isn't dead," Naraku laughed. "I wouldn't kill my prize catch. I'm just sending you a clear message that every attempt you make to kill me will only cause your brother further harm. Besides, I need to be sure that he won't try anything funny on the way back to my castle."
"Sesshomaru!" Inuyasha cried helplessly, as Totosai came into view on his cow. Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon sped towards the fire demon, took him and his cow onto its back, and sped them towards Naraku and the dog demons.
Their fire demon godfather sprang off his double-mount, saw what was happening, and directed a thin blast of fire at Naraku's head, careful to avoid Sesshomaru. The spider lord's flesh and hair burned, but he continued to laugh.
"It's useless when I have no heart, old demon," he cackled through the flames, and then, before their horrified eyes, one of his tentacles picked up the armoury sword he had flung to the ground, unsheathed it, and sliced off Sesshomaru's left arm in one clean cut.
The demon lord's eyes widened, and his lips parted, but the pain was so great that no words or cries issued from his mouth.
Totosai, enraged, took aim with his swordsmith's mallet, but Inuyasha saw another tentacle poised to pierce Sesshomaru again, and stopped his godfather. No more pain – he could not stand it if Sesshomaru was hurt again.
"You learn reasonably fast," Naraku smiled from a terrifying face burnt red and black.
"Inu… yasha…" Sesshomaru whispered, finding his voice at last. "Go!"
Naraku rose into the air then, and faster than the two on the ground could do anything about, all the pieces of his hacked-off flesh lying in the dirt also soared into the sky, whirling around him and Sesshomaru. Among them was his heart, which had been buried under the soil. But by the time Totosai and Inuyasha realised how he had hidden it amongst the other pieces of his false body, it was too late.
Naraku was gone, and Sesshomaru with him.
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The Tale of the Demon Lord