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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
- 40
- 41
- 42
XLI: Parting
"This is an evil day," Kikyo said quietly to Kaede as Kagome and Sango slept close by. "I can feel it."
"Don't speak so ominously," Kaede returned.
"But I sense that it is so. Now that I know the demon that attacked me fifty-one years ago is the same one trying to destroy Inuyasha and Lord Sesshomaru and seize these lands, I know that eliminating those glass shards, and their maker, is a task I was destined to face. We cannot allow someone like Naraku to gain power in these lands."
"No, we cannot. So we will do what we can to be rid of him and those who belong to him – which makes this a good day, does it not?" Kaede commented optimistically.
Kikyo smiled, but in her eyes was the conviction that this was an evil day dawning. "Well, the sun will be rising soon," she said. "I'll go to the shrine first. You watch that shard in the iron box. You can take over my work later in the day."
She left the hut to go about her morning duties, coughing lightly as she went.
~ - ~
Her aura and scent concealed by the nulling stone, Kanna floated towards the village of the tree sacred to the gods.
Naraku had not specifically ordered her to come, but he had handed her the nulling stone and given her no further instructions, only telling her to leave with the stone when the wind rose so that Sesshomaru would sense him.
Free to do as she pleased, Kanna did what came instinctively to her. She turned east towards the village, drawn by the glass splinters from her magic mirror. She could hear the shard they had merged into calling and crying, even when no one else could, sealed as it was by her father's amulet spell and the powerful magic of the great dog demoness of the Far West. She travelled close to the ground, under the cover of the forests, and when she was halfway to the village, Lord Sesshomaru even passed her as he flew out on his dragon to confront her father. But he was far overhead in the sky, and never knew that she was there on the ground, moving in the opposite direction.
In the deep forest, she waited and watched. It would not be easy to enter the village, not with that sturdy barrier put up by such powerful priestesses, and with so many guards around and in the human settlement, watching their surroundings intently. The great tree, too, at the heart of the village, emanated a dangerous energy which she recalled her father making vague, angry references to.
But she did not need to enter, or get past the barrier. She only needed to get a little bit closer.
She bided her time until she saw the prince, Inuyasha, hurry out of the village on a dragon, along with the powerful fire demon on his flying cow.
She waited some more until the guards had reorganised themselves following the prince's departure. She watched their new patterns of patrol and learnt the rhythm of all their steps.
Then she made her move.
Once the guard watching over the section of forest in her direct line of sight passed her, she moved swiftly and noiselessly towards the edge of the barrier.
The aura of the great tree was stronger now. It made her uncomfortable. However, she was determined to retrieve the glass that belonged to her mirror. She floated for cover behind a thickly growing shrub, and stood there unmoving until the guard passed by again in the other direction before raising her mirror and pointing it towards the hut which she sensed was housing the shard.
~ - ~
Kaede stared at the iron box as the object inside it began to rattle aggressively. She tried to reinforce the barrier around the container, but the barrier was intact – it was only that something was agitating the shard. Its master, and the main body of glass from which it had come, must be very close by. Such proximity of what it would naturally seek to return to would be as strong as the force of the barrier.
At once, she woke Kagome and Sango and ordered them back to her nephew's hut. Then she began to move slowly towards the door.
"Kikyo!" she shouted for her sister.
Kikyo and several castle guards appeared in the doorway at almost the same moment that Kaede called, for the older priestess had already been alerted by the angry aura of the sacred tree, and by the agitation she had sensed from the shard inside the hut.
"Get behind me!" she told Kaede and the guards. She drew an arrow, pulled back the string of her bow, and pointed it at the box. No use firing yet, for the power of one of her arrows would succeed only in breaking the dog demoness' barrier before it would home in on the shard.
What was bringing the glass to life when it had been so still before this? Naraku, or one of his people, had to be close by with the intention of getting the shard back, and must have commanded it to fly to them.
"A spider demon must be here, near the village – probably the small female one that Inuyasha told us about," Kikyo whispered to her sister. "It must be using the nulling stone to conceal its presence. Look for it, and get rid of it. Take the king's guards with you."
"Let them deal with it," Kaede answered. "I can't leave you alone with this."
"I can handle it," Kikyo said firmly. "The guards are demons themselves – they won't be able to purify another demon, and if this one does not keep its heart with it, they won't be able to kill it. You have to be with them."
Kaede hesitated.
"Just go," Kikyo ordered. "I can handle this. The sooner the demon leaves or is destroyed, the quieter the shard will grow, so be quick about it."
Kaede obeyed. She hurried as fast as her old legs would carry her to the edge of the village, taking two of the guards with her and leaving one with Kikyo. The unwelcome visitor was emitting no aura that her priestess' powers could sense, but at least the guards who had come with her were alerting those beyond the barrier, and starting to search intensively for a sign of a scentless intruder with no spiritual aura.
How long would it take to comb the entire perimeter of the barrier, searching for someone they could only use their eyes to detect?
~ - ~
Kanna was running out of time. The guards closest to where she was were speaking to one another in urgent tones, and they would soon see her if they kept searching every inch of ground like that.
She intensified the power of her mirror, and was gratified to feel the imprisoned shard respond from where it was.
A little more… just a little more… and there it was, free of its shackles.
~ - ~
The shard burst out of the iron box and struggled to penetrate the Lady Shirakumo's barrier. That barrier was very powerful, but the proximity of its mistress and her mirror exerted a naturally and immensely strong pull, so it fought through, and at last it was out.
Kikyo released her arrow just as the shard emerged from the barrier. Although she was on target, the glass wriggled loose from its cell just as the arrow hit. As the point of the arrow touched the very tip of the shard and started to purify it, something else happened.
At Kanna's command, the tiny shard grew into a towering mirror demon, like the one which had attacked Sesshomaru and fired part of itself into Inuyasha.
Its spurt of growth into something so massive limited the damage done by Kikyo's arrow. Only its right arm was withered and useless. The rest of it was intact. As Kikyo watched, the demon stared down coldly at its wasted arm, from which the purifying power was starting to spread, and severed that arm from its body with a blade it grew from its left hand.
The discarded arm fell to the ground, where it turned to ashes as it was completely purified. Kanna would never get back that part of her mirror, but as the priestess was to learn, the female demon was determined to recover all that she could.
The mirror creature then grew another arm from what remained of its body, and turned towards the priestess as she released another arrow from her bow. Swiftly, its enormous bulk swept the arrow away, taking care to hit it only along its shaft, and not to touch the tip where the spiritual power was concentrated.
But as it attempted to sweep the priestess aside too, thinking that such a fragile old human could surely be broken in two as easily as a stick of wood, it was surprised to find that it could not touch her without being burnt by the same kind of power that had wasted its arm.
It grunted, then stepped towards her again, commanded by its mistress to ignore the superficial burns and get past the dangerous human quickly. As it obeyed, however, and threw Kikyo and the castle guard aside, burning itself badly in the process, it was assailed by a blow of power from the great tree in the village.
Physical assaults meant nothing to it, and it would hardly feel them as its heartless mirror flesh reformed and healed over and over again – but spiritual attacks were different. The demon roared with a pain that was channelled back to Kanna. Outside the village, the small demon girl doubled over from the force of the counter-attack.
But then she straightened her little body through sheer force of will and further intensified the call of her mirror.
Inside the hut, the mirror demon heard the call, stared at the priestess lying on the floor, and saw that she was already struggling to her feet. As it prepared to face her again, the other guards still inside the village, and the demon slayers, surrounded the hut and shouted angrily at the mirror creature.
The head of the family of slayers, Sango's father, burst through the doorway and hurled a great blade at the demon. The blade sliced the demon in two, but because it was a thing with no heart, it could not be harmed that way. Even before its two halves could slide apart, they began to reconnect.
The demon guard with Kikyo scooped her up, raced out of the hut, and left her under the great tree in the care of Kagome and Sango. Kagome's father, Kikyo's nephew, ran to his aunt. Together with his wife, he tried to help her to a hut where her injuries could be tended to.
But Kikyo refused. "No!" she cried, although the pain she felt from her side told her that some of her ribs were broken. "I must get rid of that thing!"
"Aunt Kikyo, please – please don't fight that creature any more – let the slayers deal with it," Kagome's father advised.
"The slayers and the guards can't purify it!" she insisted, struggling to her feet, using her bow for support. "If I can purify it completely, some damage will also be done to the demon which controls it!"
Before she could move towards her hut again, the humble structure of wood was shattered before her eyes, by the mirror demon breaking out of it like a tiger from a small cage. The slayers and guards leaped out of the mess after their quarry.
Sango's uncle, father and mother – a feisty woman whose figure was just beginning to show that she was carrying her second child – hacked and sliced at their massive opponent alongside the castle guards. But like Sesshomaru and Inuyasha before them, they learnt that whatever damage they did was not permanent.
Kikyo attempted to fire an arrow, but the pain from her ribs was too great for her to be sure of shooting accurately. She would risk hitting the slayers and guards instead. Kagome could purify the creature too, but the child was still too small to handle the bow.
"Come on, Kaede!" Kikyo muttered under her breath. If the source of the problem could be dealt with, this demon would disappear. Even the shard inside Inuyasha might be rendered harmless – although that was not certain, as Naraku and not the ghost-like girl child that Inuyasha had told them about was the one in ultimate control.
~ - ~
Kanna could wait no longer. A minute more, and she would be discovered. Issuing a strong command to the mirror demon to come to her immediately, she began to make her way out of her hiding place.
"There you are," came a voice to her left.
The other priestess of this village, a stout old woman, was standing there, arrow pointed in her direction.
Priestesses' arrows were dangerous. They could not be easily absorbed by her magic mirror like so many other things could be, for they had a purifying power which could do her and her weapon great damage.
But this priestess, Kanna could sense, was not nearly as spiritually powerful as the one doing battle with her shard-grown demon inside the village. Perhaps she could risk it…
As Sesshomaru's guards closed in, Kanna pointed her mirror at them and spoke a command that began to incapacitate them by drawing out their spirit energies. The guards stumbled, and Kaede quickly fired her arrow at Kanna.
Kanna risked her mirror by using it to deflect the sacred arrow, which flew aside and lodged harmlessly in a tree. She sprang into the air and soared above the trees, using the leaves and branches to block her from the view of the demons and the human on the ground.
The demon guards also took to the air once they recovered, but by then Kanna had gone a distance and dived back among the leaves and branches. They would have to start their hunt for her all over again.
~ - ~
Kanna had miscalculated. It was true that the stout priestess was not as powerful as the other one, but her powers were still considerable. The mirror was damaged where it had touched the sacred arrow as it deflected it, and the damage was spreading.
It was not beyond repair, however. If the shard still outside the main body of the mirror could return to it more powerful than it had left, it could heal a great deal of the damage, and the mirror could be renewed.
Kanna had originally wanted only to call the shard back to her and command it to get past the priestess in the village, but she now changed the purpose of her mission. If her mirror demon could kill one of the priestesses and absorb her powers, it could increase its strength and repair not only the damage to its arm, but also to the mirror itself. These two priestesses were not easy to kill, though.
Ah… but there was another one. A little one. A small priestess who would be much, much easier to contaminate, kill, then absorb. Very powerful, as Kanna's senses told her, and as her now-clouded mirror showed her. A girl-child whose spiritual powers were great indeed, possibly greater than those of the old one in the village.
~ - ~
The mirror demon suddenly swept the slayers and guards aside and turned right around from the direction it had been heading in before. It had been trying to leave the village, but now, it was charging towards Kikyo.
Once again, getting closer to the great tree hurt the approaching demon. It held back, in obvious discomfort. Still, the absence of a heart in its body meant that however great the pain, it would tolerate it, as long as its mistress could stand it. It lurched forward.
Kikyo stood up straight in front of her nephew, his wife, Kagome and Sango, under the great tree. She fitted an arrow to her bow and drew it, ignoring the pain in her side. Now that the slayers and guards were not between her and the mirror demon, she could chance it.
She fired, but the demon deflected the arrow again, ignoring the burn where the arrowhead seared its glassy flesh. Before she could draw another arrow from her quiver, the demon swept towards her and knocked her aside – then stretched out a large open hand in Kagome's direction.
Kagome screamed and dived away as the huge glassy hand pounded into the ground where she had been standing a second ago. Her father clung to the demon's fist, but was only thrown painfully aside as the creature went for Kagome again.
Sango threw a dagger at the mirror demon, grabbed her friend's arm, and fled through the village with the demon in pursuit.
The huts and scattering villagers got in the way, and Kikyo could not let loose another arrow.
"Look out!" she screamed at the children as the mirror demon tried to cut them off from the left.
Sango's father sprang onto his fire-cat mount and sped after the mirror demon. He swooped in front of it, leaned down and scooped up both girls in his arms, then circled in a wide arc back towards the great tree, which the mirror demon seemed to be trying to avoid. On the fire cat now, Sango scrambled behind her father, faced backwards and threw several poisoned darts at the demon. They hissed and burned, but hardly slowed it down.
"Give me some darts that haven't been coated in poison!" Kagome said to the two slayers.
Sango's father whipped three out from his belt and handed them carefully to the child. Kagome grasped them, imbued them with her priestess' powers, and crawled round Sango's father to the rump of the fire cat.
She hurled the darts at the demon, and this time it roared and its glassy flesh registered severe burns.
Out in the forest, Kanna gasped in pain, and her mirror smoked. Kill that child now! she commanded the demon.
Extending its mighty arm, the mirror demon knocked the fire cat out of the air, sending her riders flying against the base of the great tree.
Sango's father cushioned the fall for the children, but that was all he had time for as the demon closed in on Kagome.
With a cry of fury, Kikyo launched herself at the mirror demon, one arrow grasped in her right hand, and took the brunt of its fist driving in hard for the child. She cried out in pain, but did not hesitate to stab the demon's arm with her arrow, sending the head deep into its strange flesh.
The mirror demon shrieked and flew away into the forest, crashing painfully through the thick barrier the priestesses had erected around the village.
~ - ~
The instant Kikyo sent her arrow deep into the mirror demon, Kanna stiffened and toppled from the high branch she had chosen to hide on, like a stunned bird dropping out of a tree.
Sesshomaru's guards saw the white figure plummeting earthwards, and raced to the spot with Kaede panting and puffing in their wake.
"Don't be fooled by her appearance, Lady Priestess," the highest-ranking soldier among them told Kaede. "She may look like a child, but she is a mature demon."
"I know that," Kaede said grimly, drawing her bow.
But in the next second, the mirror demon barrelled through the barrier, and the forest filled with the scent and demon aura unique to Naraku's family. The mirror being sprang between its mistress and her enemies, and shielded her from them.
Some of the guards here had been among those who had battled the other mirror demon in the castle, and knew what they were up against. Despite the injuries that this one seemed to have sustained from the sacred arrows and darts, it was still huge and powerful.
Bracing themselves for more punishment, the guards darted and flew in at Kanna, but her bodyguard battered them and stood its ground, even as it raised one large foot and aimed it at the priestess Kaede.
"Stop that!" an angry voice called from above them as blades of wind drove the mirror demon back from Kaede. "Kanna, stop!"
Kagura floated to the forest floor on her feather, jumped off it and tucked it into her hair.
"Kanna, you have gone far enough – stop this at once!" she ordered, standing between her sister and the others. "I love you best of all our family, but if you don't stop, I won't hold back!"
"Lady Kagura," the guards acknowledged her, recognising her as Lord Sesshomaru's friend, who had helped to save the prince's life.
"Please," Kagura said urgently, seeing the cold look in her sister's dark eyes, and the way her hands clutched her mirror determinedly. "Please don't do this – I know you have your heart with you, so you can be destroyed. Please don't make me destroy you!"
"I can't stop this," Kanna replied in her whisper of a voice.
"You can. I did."
"I was never like you," the girl whispered.
"Kanna, I'm begging you!" Kagura cried.
"I've missed you, Kagura," the girl said, as she raised her mirror to trap her elder sister's soul.
Kagura unfurled her fan and raised a sharp wind that drove back the magic mirror's stealing powers. The huge mirror demon aimed a blow at her, but in another smooth move, she released a burst of jagged-edged wind blades which ripped through the demon's body and briefly held it back.
"This is your last warning!" Kagura hissed.
"I'm sorry, Sister," the girl whispered, and aimed her mirror again.
Kagura's next volley of wind blades was fired at Kanna, who gasped as the blades tore through her. Her little body cracked and crumbled like broken glass at the same time as her mirror shattered, and the mirror demon turned to dust.
"Kanna…" Kagura whispered, gutted by both sadness and anger as the sibling she was closest to died.
She reached out a hand to touch the glassy dust, but all the shards of the mirror were melting away into nothing, and the mirror demon was no more.
Along with them, Kanna's remains evaporated into the forest air, turning back into the nothingness she had been made from.
~ - ~
"I hurried here as soon as Lord Sesshomaru's attendant returned to the castle and gave his message to Lady Shirakumo that her son would be delayed. I knew at once that he had decided to confront my father, and that there would be trouble!" Kagura said bitterly as she hurried towards the village with Kaede and the guards.
The barrier had been momentarily torn by the mirror demon breaking through, but it had reformed.
"I will let down the barrier so that you can pass," Kaede said.
Once she did that, they all smelt the scent of terror, anger and death in the village.
"Oh no…" Kaede gasped, running past the many huts and down the winding village lanes towards the great tree under which her sister lay.
Kagura held back as she drew close to the heart of the village. She sensed the power of the great tree testing her, feeling her Naraku-like aura, and scanning her soul. She held out on her open palm the nulling stone she had taken from her sister's body, as if to convey to the tree the message that all she had with her was open to view, and it was not her intention to hide anything. The blue stone was whole now, for Kagura had pressed the shard used by the first mirror demon back into the rest of the orb, which took it back and made itself smooth and round again. She told the tree in whatever way she knew how that she meant no harm, and gradually felt the intimidating spiritual threat recede.
She then hurried forward and saw an old priestess, so delicate of form that she seemed quite unearthly, bloodied and battered under the tree. A child was kneeling beside her, hugging her and crying bitterly over and over: "Grand-aunt Kikyo! No!"
The priestess was hardly breathing.
"Please let me see if I can help," Kagura said gently, motioning the humans back.
She stirred up a gentle but concentrated breeze, which carefully lifted the priestess Kikyo off the ground without further disarranging any of her broken bones, and moved her slowly to a nearby hut, in which the villagers quickly set out a sleeping mat for her to lie on.
"I am no healer, but I know the patterns of the wounds inflicted by Kanna's attacks," Kagura told Kaede. "Her mirror creatures can inflict narrow but deep wounds with every blow. These injuries on her body will have shattered her ribs and tunnelled far into her lungs."
"I will try to stop the bleeding," Kaede said grimly. "Kagome, help me."
They worked to keep Kikyo alive. But that was all they could do, and as the hours passed, they knew that they were losing her.
~ - ~
Inuyasha could think of nothing else after seeing Sesshomaru seized, wounded and abducted by Naraku than to hasten back to the village, get the disgusting shard out of his body by any means necessary, then go after Naraku and save his brother. He could not find Sesshomaru's severed arm – it seemed to have been taken away in the whirlwind into which he and Naraku had disappeared – but he snatched up the Tenseiga and armoury sword, mounted Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon, and flew north-east at top speed. Totosai followed on the other dragon, while his cow tailed them at her more sedate pace.
But as they approached the village, Inuyasha's nose told him at once that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong in his absence.
His worst fears were confirmed when he rushed into the heart of the village to find Kikyo's hut destroyed and all the villagers clustered around another hut, in which the priestess lay dying.
"Kikyo!" Inuyasha cried, pushing past the villagers and throwing himself to the ground beside her. "Kikyo… no…"
"I'm sorry, Your Highness," Kagura apologised. "I got here too late to stop Kanna."
"Forgive us, Your Highness," the captain of the guards also said, kneeling before him and pressing his forehead to the floor. "We failed to prevent this."
"Grand-aunt Kikyo got hurt saving me!" Kagome wailed, raising a face soaked with tears for only a second before she bowed her forehead to Kikyo's arm again.
"You're worth it," Kikyo whispered breathlessly to the child. "Don't cry… be a good priestess."
"No, it wasn't anyone else's fault," Inuyasha murmured numbly. "It was my fault. I should never have brought myself or that glass shard here..."
"It was my decision to face this threat," Kikyo breathed as fiercely as her wounded lungs would let her. "I would never allow the abomination that tried to violate me fifty-one years ago to take control of this kingdom. Never. Your brother has his faults, but he has been a good ruler."
Kagura and Totosai ushered the villagers away from the hut, posted the guards outside it, and stood at a respectful distance to give Kaede, Kagome, the child's parents, and Inuyasha some privacy during Kikyo's last moments.
"Kikyo, I shouldn't have left the village at this time," Inuyasha cried, the tears filling his golden eyes.
"It was meant to be," Kikyo whispered, slipping her hand into Inuyasha's. "Your brother…"
"Naraku's got him, but I will get him back. Don't think about that now. You have to heal."
"I won't be healing from this one, Inuyasha," she said sadly.
Kaede sobbed and Kagome buried her face in her mother's lap.
"The shard inside you hasn't dissolved despite the demon girl's destruction," Kikyo murmured. "It should have. Can't I let you out of my sight for even a few hours?"
She smiled in an effort at humour.
"Naraku reinforced its strength," Inuyasha muttered. "He still has ultimate control over it, even if his younger daughter and her mirror are gone. But stop worrying about everyone else besides yourself. You're strong, Kikyo – you can get through this – you have to get through this!"
Totosai's demon hearing picked up the words spoken in the hut, and he stepped back indoors to say quietly: "Tenseiga may be able to revive the priestess. I never told Sesshomaru, but his sword is meant to sever spirit and not flesh – at times, it has the ability and the willingness to destroy the spirits who come to take a soul to the other world, and in doing so, it may revive the person the soul belongs to. Although it is intended to be wielded for such purposes only by Sesshomaru…"
Inuyasha's eyes brightened, and he glanced eagerly at the Tenseiga which was now in his sheath beside its brother-sword. But Kikyo's fingers tightened around his hand, and she said: "No, Inuyasha. My time has come. I sense that it is so. Even if you have a magical sword that can revive me, don't do it. Let me go. Let me rest. I've lived long enough for a human…"
"Kikyo, please!" Inuyasha begged.
"I want peace," Kikyo stated.
Those words had many layers of meanings, and her family and friends around her understood that she meant to pass away gently, so that her spirit might remain a peaceful one, and she also wished to have quiet around her as she departed this world.
Kagome stopped crying and held her sobs in as she sat up and gazed quietly at her grand-aunt. Kaede wiped her tears away and held her sister's other hand, the one not held by Inuyasha.
"Look after yourself, Sister, and protect this village as we always have."
"You know I will," Kaede assured her.
"Kagome, grow strong and brave, and never, never lose the kindness of your heart."
"Yes, Grand-aunt Kikyo," Kagome answered in a voice that was shaky from crying, but softly determined.
"My nephew, care for your wife and our family. Your aunts have no descendants, but you do, and perhaps by the time Kagome grows to be a woman, priestesses will be powerful enough to marry and still not lose their powers."
"Yes, Aunt. We will do all we can," Kagome's father replied, bowing to the dying woman.
"Inuyasha…" Kikyo whispered. "Perhaps in another life, when you are old and I am young, we might be more to each other. But for this life, I am deeply honoured to have had you as my dearest friend."
"Kikyo, please don't die!" Inuyasha wept.
But Kaede said softly to him: "Don't weep so, Inuyasha. If you cry so hard, her soul will not be at peace, for it will be bound to this world out of concern for you."
Inuyasha remembered one of his human aunts saying much the same thing to him – except in a much harsher and far more spiteful tone – when his mother had lain dying of old age. He had held in his tears the best he could then, although it was very hard, for he was a small child losing the only person in all the world who loved him.
He tried now to dry his tears and give Kikyo the peace she wanted.
"You will live a long and happy life, my dearest friend," the priestess said with a gentle smile. "My soul will be at rest, but my spirit and all my love will always be with you, like your mother's spirit and her love. Always."
You will live a long and happy life. That was just like what Sesshomaru had said to him the day they had returned from the town. Sesshomaru… Inuyasha felt the pain in his heart as he thought of Sesshomaru, bleeding and torn, in Naraku's hands. All for the sake of saving him.
"I'll do what I can to live as long as I can. And I will defend these lands and the people, and I'll make this village even stronger, so don't you worry," he said firmly, clinging to her hand.
"I know you will," she said, her breathing becoming more laboured as her lungs fought uselessly against their wounds. "Remember me."
"Always," he whispered, his tears starting again as she closed her eyes for the last time and her fingers went limp in his grasp.
She was slipping into unconsciousness now. She breathed on for quite some time, but so lightly that only Inuyasha could hear the slow, shallow inhalations. At last, even the very shallowest breaths ceased. Although Inuyasha tried to remain still and let her go quietly, he could not stand doing nothing. He jumped to his feet, unsheathed the Tenseiga, and held it out in front of him, not knowing how it was supposed to sever the spirits of the netherworld which came to take human souls away.
"I don't see anything!" he said frantically, casting a glance over his shoulder at Totosai. "How does this work?"
"Young one, put that away," Totosai sighed. "If you see nothing, then it is not meant to work, or perhaps you are not meant to wield it."
"Let my sister go, Inuyasha," Kaede advised gently. "She let you go; you must do the same for her."
Kaede spoke cryptically of the enchanted beads that Inuyasha never knew existed, but she did not fear being questioned by him about what she meant, for the truth was that Kikyo had let Inuyasha go in so many ways – she had not clung to him in her youth, knowing that her ageing would far outstrip his maturing; she had let him be his own person, never seeking to confine him to her idea of what a half-demon ought to be; and she had let him go again when Sesshomaru proved that he had changed and that he loved his brother.
Inuyasha felt as if his entire world had fallen apart. Sesshomaru gone, and Kikyo dead... what did he have left?
Defeated by Tenseiga's lack of cooperation and his inability to see the spirits of the netherworld, Inuyasha sheathed the sword and dropped to his knees beside Kikyo's body. He bowed deeply to her, who had been his benefactor, champion and protector for so long, then he left the hut to grieve in private in the high branches of the great tree.
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The Tale of the Demon Lord