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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
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XLII: Waiting Impatiently
Kikyo's funeral pyre lit up the sky that night. Her family, the villagers who had always honoured her for her goodness and her powers, the visiting demons, and Inuyasha paid their last respects to her, standing or kneeling around the pyre until the fire had died.
Kaede gathered her ashes into an urn, and buried it beside the shrine in the morning.
She felt the loss of her elder sister profoundly, but everything that needed to be said between them had long been said, and Kikyo had lived a full life. The younger of the two priestesses was determined to look ahead and continue her good work.
Inuyasha was the person Kikyo had most often felt concern for, because someone who belonged to neither of his two worlds would always have a harder life than a person who had a place in one. But now that he seemed to be making his way in both demon and human societies, with a good future ahead of him, Kaede told herself that she would be damned if she would let that go to waste by leaving alone the threat of the shard inside him.
So when she had completed the rites and finished her prayers the day after Kikyo's funeral, she took Kagome by the hand and strode up to Inuyasha, who was still moping in the tree.
"Come down, Inuyasha," she called up to the red-clad figure with a firmness in her voice that he recognised as a warning that he would not be left alone until she was satisfied. "Let's get that accursed shard out of you."
"How?" he snapped. "Naraku's made it worse. Whatever the great tree was waiting for, it's probably not good enough to work against the shard by now, under these circumstances."
"Don't be so sure. We won't know till we try again."
She stood there stubbornly until he jumped lightly to the ground.
"Look at the state of you," she grumbled, peering into his weary eyes, golden irises dulled by fatigue and grief. "My sister would not want to see you like this."
Turning to the tree, she pressed her palms to its massive trunk, motioning to Inuyasha and Kagome to do the same. Inuyasha scowled at what he thought of as her unfounded optimism, but the aura of the tree comforted him, and he did as he was told.
"Tell me if you hear anything, child," Kaede said to Kagome, whose eyes were closed, concentrating on the messages from the tree.
After a while, Kagome said: "I hear… I think it's time… I think the other tree…"
"The other tree has come," boomed a low, firm voice from the ground beneath their feet, making Kaede and Kagome jump backwards in fright.
Inuyasha gasped: "You?"
"Is that any way to greet your godfather?" Bokusen'o rumbled. A thick root emerged from the soil, and a smaller version of the tree demon's face appeared at its base, close to the soil, while its tip waved in the air.
"Wh- what on earth are you doing out here?" Inuyasha demanded in amazement. "Or should I say, one of your roots…?"
"The moment I learnt that you had been wounded by the glass shard, I began to extend and send one of my roots deep under the earth in the direction of this village," Bokusen'o explained. "I knew that powers such as those I sensed from the leaf of this tree which you once gave me were the kind that could purify such shards, unlike demon powers. But I did not want to raise hopes unnecessarily, so I decided to find out for myself without telling you anything."
"Is that why you've been looking so tired of late?" Inuyasha asked, relieved to learn that there was a reason for his tree-demon godfather's fatigue. He did not want to lose another loved one.
"Yes. It is hard work sending a root through so many miles of earth at my age. I have been communicating through the soil with this holy tree for several days now. We have both learnt that while its powers, combined with priestess powers, can purify the shard for a time, only I can physically remove it from you without doing you too much damage. So you see, we had to wait for each other – I could not have removed the shard from you without my demon aura provoking it to flare, while the holy tree could only purify it but not remove it. We had to be in the same place with you, at the same time, so that its spiritual energy could blend with and hide my demon energy. I believe that Naraku does not know that tree demons exist, so his shard is less likely to react strongly to me, especially if my aura is disguised by that of a sacred tree."
"Well, if we'd only known that earlier, I could have just uprooted you and flown you over by dragon!" Inuyasha exclaimed.
"But we didn't know," Bokusen'o said sensibly. "Besides, it would not have worked that way, because I needed time to sound out this tree, to carefully twine this root of mine around its roots, and for our powers to gradually merge. That is not the sort of thing that can be done in a day or two."
"So let's get started already!" Inuyasha said impatiently. "I've got to get this thing out of me so that I can go get Sesshomaru! Naraku has him, and he's badly hurt."
"I have learnt that fact from the tree, which communicated to me what it sensed from your thoughts," Bokusen'o said soberly. "There is a new problem, however."
"Now what?" Inuyasha asked worriedly.
"Naraku has reinforced the positioning of the shard in you in such a way that I am now unable to remove it from you without causing you to lose a lot of blood – and that was what brought you so close to death only a few days ago. It would be an enormous risk to put you through that all over again."
"I'll survive. Get on with it, please!" Inuyasha begged.
"Another difficulty is that you have lost your powerful priestess friend, who was protected by the sacred tree for so many years. Although her death may have sped things along in a way, because I sense that a benevolent spirit has helped me to finally get my powers in step with the sacred tree's, we could have done with her physical presence too. I do not know if the other priestess and the little one are up to the task."
"I can try," Kagome said boldly, stepping out from behind Kaede. Her eyes were still puffy from having cried so hard over Kikyo, but she was determined not to let her grand-aunt down. "I may be small and untrained, but just because I'm small doesn't mean I'm useless, Mr Tree. Grand-aunt Kikyo always said I had more natural power than she did at my age. Grand-aunt Kaede can guide me. She's pretty strong herself, and is very experienced and very careful."
Smiling as he heard the child call his godfather "Mr Tree", Inuyasha said to her: "You have a brave heart, and a kind nature. I believe your powers can help the trees. My tree-demon godfather, Bokusen'o, knows what he is doing, and he will direct us all."
"I will," Bokusen'o assured. "Give me a while more, however – I requested the lady's presence, and she is almost here."
"You asked Lady Shirakumo…?" Inuyasha murmured, as he grew aware of her approach.
Within minutes, the lady in question descended from the sky in the shape of an enormous white dog, Natsumi clinging to her back. As she touched the earth, she transformed into her two-legged shape, looking so splendid in her magnificent robes that all the villagers clustered round them to stare at the demoness who looked so much like the king who ruled their lands.
"My lady? And Natsumi?" Inuyasha gasped. "Lady Shirakumo, if you're here, who the hell is looking after the castle and the kingdom?"
"Oh please," she sniffed dismissively. "Ministers Atsushi and Ryota make very good stewards. They can run things quite as well as Sesshomaru can, except that they are too humble to put themselves forward. And they are trustworthy, so I have no fear of returning to find my son's throne usurped by those old dogs. Perhaps I should say 'your throne' now, as I hear that my careless son has foolishly allowed himself to be seized by Naraku."
"And I will get him back AS SOON as everyone around here who knows how gets this BLASTED shard out of me!" Inuyasha yelled furiously, startling the villagers and making Bokusen'o and Lady Shirakumo laugh.
"Patience, young one," the lady said sweetly. "I had a conversation with Bokusen'o in the forest patch this morning, and flew here as soon as I understood what was happening. How silly of you to wish to proceed without me. Would it not make sense to have a powerful healer and practitioner of magic close at hand, so that she can close the wounds and silence the shard once it is outside your body? Your attendant insisted on accompanying me. I agreed because I found her such a sensible and devoted helper while you were recovering from your wounds. Totosai, be an old darling and move all those curious humans away. You and Kagura had better keep them amused in another part of this… quaint… little village, so they won't distract us all. Guards, block off everyone else's access to this area apart from the priestesses, and ourselves."
Once they were left in relative privacy, Inuyasha prepared himself. He removed his upper robes and stood bare-bodied before the great tree. Natsumi waited quietly, standing to one side until the time came for her to tend to the wounds that Bokusen'o would have to open up in order to get the shard out.
"Sit down with your back to the great tree," Bokusen'o instructed.
Inuyasha sat cross-legged on the ground, facing outwards.
"My lady, would you please cleanse the tip of this root with your powers so that no elements of soil or dirt on it will infect the prince?" the tree demon asked. He narrowed the very tip of his root to a needle-fine point, and Sesshomaru's mother used her magic to cleanse it of every speck of physical grime, so that it would be perfectly clean and safe for Inuyasha.
"Priestesses, please take your places, one on either side of Inuyasha, and hold his arms to help keep him still, while directing your powers of purification towards the shard, without purifying his demonic nature along with it. Child, do you know how to do that?"
"Yes I do," Kagome answered Bokusen'o. "I've learnt that much from my grand-aunts."
"Good. Now I must work with this sacred tree, and time things perfectly, so that the very moment that the shard is paralysed by the power of the tree and the priestesses, I can push my root into you, with my aura shielded by the tree's, and draw out the shard," Bokusen'o said. "Only a careful tree root, which can grow into the finest of spaces yet break the strongest stone, can do this without injuring you more than necessary. It is even more dangerous than it would have been before, as the shard is now stuck to your heart and one lung, and sits very close to your spine – but as I said, only a tree root can do it, and only a demon tree root can do it quickly enough."
"Understood," Inuyasha said, holding himself perfectly still, bracing himself for the pain that he knew would come. But he also knew that this would be a good pain, inflicted on him by his godfather, and for a good purpose. He could stand it as long as he knew it would work.
Bokusen'o focused for a few minutes to get himself in tune with the progression of the sacred tree's release of power. When the moment was right, he moved the tip of his root to within an inch of Inuyasha's back, to one side of his spine. With demon-swiftness that enabled it to penetrate Inuyasha's flesh and muscle while keeping the pain to a minimum, the fine root-tip pierced the prince's back like a long needle.
Inuyasha grunted, but it was bearable.
"Now this will hurt more, but you must put up with it," Bokusen'o warned.
Deep inside Inuyasha, the root-tip which had entered him as rigid as a needle of steel now softened and became pliable enough to gently probe the confined, delicate space around the shard. The probing itself did not hurt, as Bokusen'o took care not to touch Inuyasha's organs or bones, but it began to grow uncomfortable as the root-tip twined carefully around and around the spherical piece of glass, and started to tease it from the prince's heart and left lung.
The entry point on Inuyasha's back began to bleed as Bokusen'o patiently moved his root about in an attempt to unstick the shard without tearing open Inuyasha's heart and lung. More soreness and bleeding were provoked within the cavity of his chest as the movements of the root-tip disturbed muscle and the outer walls of the half-demon's heart. As the sacred tree and the priestesses began to feel the shard attempting to waken itself against the stupor that their purification had put it into, they redoubled their efforts to keep the glass quiet.
"Forgive me for the pain and blood, young one," the tree demon said.
"It's okay," Inuyasha said, gritting his teeth. "I'm fine."
"Almost…" Bokusen'o said softly.
Something made two tiny squelching sounds inside Inuyasha as the glass was carefully peeled loose from his heart, then his lung, taking thin layers of the organs' outer walls with it, then moved with infinite care around the column of the spine.
"The purification can contain it only for a few seconds more, Ancient Speaking Tree," Kaede warned. "Please hurry."
"Almost there," Bokusen'o murmured, negotiating the manoeuvring of the shard around the half-demon's spine before quickly tugging it out of his body, just as it sharpened and grew. The sharp points cut Inuyasha's flesh and made him bleed alarmingly, but the damage was relatively superficial, and he was otherwise unharmed. His heart and lung were intact, and his spine was untouched.
"Quickly, my lady!" Bokusen'o said as the shard struggled in the grip of his root and threatened to either grow into a full-sized demon, or fire itself into another body.
Lady Shirakumo seized the shard and cast a powerful barrier around it. As it began to dart angrily back and forth within the barrier, wearing it down and trying to break through, she took Naraku's gold amulet and spent many minutes casting a spell over the shard. While she worked on the piece of glass, Natsumi pressed clean cloths firmly to the wound in the flesh of Inuyasha's back to staunch the bleeding.
At last, Lady Shirakumo put the paralysed shard down on the ground before Kaede and Kagome and said to them: "Priestesses, it is time to destroy this forever."
Kaede and Kagome did not need telling twice. They uttered their holy chants and purified the shard, then Kagome drove the tip of a sacred arrow into the glass, making it disintegrate into nothing.
"Now it is time to help your wounds to heal, young one," the lady informed Inuyasha.
"It's fine – they'll close up in no time," Inuyasha said, getting to his feet and looking only too ready to jump onto a dragon and beat the life out of Naraku. "Thank you, Godfather Bokusen'o. Thank you, Kaede and Kagome. Thank you, my lady. I am grateful for everything that all of you have done for me. I must leave now."
"Not so fast," Bokusen'o boomed. "The spider lord has taken one of my godsons. I will not have another lost to him through haste. Let the lady heal you, or I shall wrap my root around your ankle and hold you to the ground until you are ready to face the enemy."
"Listen to your tree godfather," Kaede advised him. "Let us use my nephew's hut – he and his wife are praying at the shrine today, so the place will be quiet for the next few hours."
~ - ~
"It is done," Lady Shirakumo announced when she had stopped the internal and external bleeding, checked that the wounds affected only his flesh and muscle and not his bones, and that the tears on the outer surfaces of his heart and lung were superficial. She applied a touch of magic to speed up the healing.
"Normally, speeding up healing through magic of this kind can leave scars and tighten flesh. But the tears on your heart and lung are very tiny, and this should leave no permanent negative effects."
"So can I go?" Inuyasha asked, pulling his inner shirt and fire-rat jacket back on with Natsumi's help.
"Not yet. The hole on your back may be a small wound, but it is of course deep, and you must give it another hour to close up completely. Remember that the outer wall of your heart is slightly torn; give the magic time to help it heal properly. Now lie down on your front so that you won't disturb the wound on your back further."
Inuyasha sighed. He ached for Sesshomaru, but he knew that the lady and Bokusen'o were wise in asking him to be patient. After all, it was Sesshomaru's impatience which had done him in this time.
So he waited, lying face-down, while the lady sat cross-legged on a mat beside him.
"Even if you don't get my son back, the kingdom will not be directionless," Lady Shirakumo said to him quietly, when she had dismissed Natsumi. Kaede too had left, and they were alone in the hut. "You will rule wisely, I know, and the ministers and I will be your advisors."
"I will get him back. Don't think I won't," Inuyasha growled, resting his chin on his forearms.
"Anything can happen," she said philosophically. "When your father was in trouble, I offered my help, but he declined. I thoughtlessly left it at that, thinking him more than strong enough to deal with anything. I expected to hear from him soon, a cheerful letter to say that he was healing from the battle and that his human lady and their child were well. But I never heard from him again."
"Well, it will be different with me and Sesshomaru. I'll get him back, and he'll rule. I have no interest in ruling anything other than myself, anyway."
"You should be interested. You have the right to rule not only your brother's lands in his absence, but perhaps even mine," Lady Shirakumo remarked.
"Huh? What do you mean?" he asked, turning his head to look up at her. "I'm not your descendant."
"No, but your bloodline outranks mine, did you know that?" she smiled. "Didn't you ever wonder why your brother is considered a higher-ranking king than so many of the other monarchs on this continent and even its neighbouring continents, despite the fact that your kingdom is such a young one?"
"I can't say that it ever occurred to me to think about that sort of stuff," Inuyasha murmured. "Too busy surviving, you know."
"Well, it's time you thought about it. Millennia ago, your great-grandfather was the only child born to the lord of the dog demon kingdom I now rule over. He came from an ancient and noble line, superior to that of many other monarchs. His father, who was brother to my great-great-grandfather, died while he was still quite young, and he succeeded him. However, he quickly grew dissatisfied with the small territory he ruled – not on his own behalf, but for his descendants, whom he believed would have strength and greatness enough to rule empires. So he gave the crown and the throne to his first cousin, my great-grandfather, and set off with his mate and many dog demons loyal to him for these vast, lawless lands east of where our tribe originated. He claimed the piece of land on which Sesshomaru's castle now stands, and defended it fiercely until no bandits, warlords or petty rulers of princedoms dared touch him or his. His son, your grandfather, was born in these lands. Under his direction, the territory ruled by the dog demons expanded, and they built almost the entire castle you see today. Then your father, with an ambition that far exceeded the dreams of his grandfather, conquered the lawless territories one after another and seized them all for himself, expanding his kingdom to the west so that its borders almost touched those of his ancestral homeland, to the east until he reached the sea, to the north up to the wintry mountains where the bears dwell, and to the south until he was at the border of the territories controlled by the spider and demon-bird tribes. Then he stopped."
"And then he courted you?" Inuyasha asked, intrigued by this new angle of his family's history which Sesshomaru had touched on before.
"Yes. He decided that it would be good to reinforce his bonds with the original kingdom, and I caught his eye as the only heir to my father's throne."
"I'm sure you caught his eye for more reasons than that!" Inuyasha grinned.
"Oh, a compliment from you!" Lady Shirakumo exclaimed, with mock surprise and genuine delight. "What a charmer you are! Do you know, if you don't get Sesshomaru back, I'll take you as my mate and give you children!"
Inuyasha yelped as her fingers pinched his bottom, which she must have found ever so temptingly presented as he was lying on his belly. "Hey! Watch it!" he snapped. "And stop talking about 'if I don't get Sesshomaru back'. I told you I will!"
"Of course you will."
"So… as you were saying, my old man courted you. What made you accept him?"
"I agreed to be his mate because he was strong and handsome, and a good king. In our family, we refer to him as my cousin, but he should really be my uncle, as he belongs to the generation before mine. We didn't get along despite our initial attraction to each other, but at least some good came of it – Sesshomaru was born. And some good came of our severing our mating bond as well, as it meant he was then free to take your mother as his next first mate, and to have you as his second son. So you hail from a proud and noble line, and your father's direct ancestors had a greater right to the throne of my kingdom than mine did. That is why I say that you may even have a claim to my throne – although I should warn you that I won't give it up without a fight."
"Well, I don't want it. I'm not interested in being king of this or that – I'll leave that to Sesshomaru," he declared. "Do you know, though, if my mother's family had their lands seized by my father too, while he was expanding his kingdom? She never spoke of it."
"I do not know much about your mother. But your father wrote to me occasionally, and once, he mentioned that your mother's ancestors ruled human kingdoms when they lived across the sea, near the dragons' territories. I believe it was an internal war that ousted your mother's direct ancestors from their home. They retained some of their titles and some influence with their noble relations on this continent, but their power was gone by the time your father embarked on enlarging his territory. I am not certain how he first met your mother, but one of his letters alluded to a battle – perhaps some other demon had seized her for food, and your father decided to save her. I don't know."
"Speaking of getting eaten…" Inuyasha began cautiously, remembering what Sesshomaru had said about his mother consuming humans in her dog form. "I want a promise from you that you will never, ever eat me, no matter what."
Lady Shirakumo's pretty golden eyes widened. "Eat you? Of course I would never eat you, precious little one. Unless you mean 'eat' to stand for some other activities, of course…"
"Eat simply means eat!" Inuyasha quickly and firmly stated. "It doesn't mean anything else!"
"Pity. Very well, I promise that I shall never eat you, as long as 'eat' really means just what it means."
"Even if you think it means something else too, you'd better promise never to do it," he warned.
"Now that, I can't promise," she replied, making him howl again as her fingers once more made their way over to his bottom.
"Hey!" he protested. "What's wrong with you? Aren't you worried about Sesshomaru at all?"
"There is nothing wrong with me," the lady sniffed haughtily. "I am concerned about my son, but until we get him back, nothing is achieved by worrying about him. What happens happens. It is the way I have always looked at the world."
"No wonder Sesshomaru grew up so resentful," Inuyasha muttered.
"And strong," Lady Shirakumo countered. "He had to survive in a world harsher than the one we know today. I gave him everything he needed to not only make it through alive, but to thrive."
"Well, he's not doing so well now, and it's all my fault," he answered unhappily.
"He will do as well as he must, without sacrificing the one he loves. It is not your fault. It was his choice. He will do what he must do, and you will do what you must do. It only remains to be seen if you will both survive this latest development."
We will," Inuyasha said. "We have to."
~ - ~
An hour later, Inuyasha was ready to go. He imagined himself charging off alone to rescue his brother, but his friends were not about to let him go on his own, as he quickly learnt when he went out to the great tree and prepared to mount Sesshomaru's two-headed dragon.
Kagura was the first to step forward. "I will go with you," she said firmly. "I know the way better than anyone else here, and I am familiar with the layout, defences and labyrinths of the castle too, provided little has changed since I left."
"I shall go with you also, Your Highness," Natsumi said, much more softly but just as firmly. "I know the inside of the castle very well – you may need the help of more than one demon to locate Lord Sesshomaru in that maze."
"Natsumi," Inuyasha said. "I'm not letting you go back to that hell-hole."
"Even if I have to cling to the tail of your dragon as it flies off, I will go," the racoon demon said determinedly. "Minister Atsushi is not the only one I owe my life to. I also owe my survival to the Lady Kagura, and I would not be where I am today without Lord Sesshomaru. So I will not sit by quietly while he is in danger, when this is one situation I know I can help you in."
"I, of course, am going," Lady Shirakumo stated in a manner which brooked no refusal. "It is my son who is in the spider lord's hands."
"All right, all right," Inuyasha said, putting his hands up before Totosai and the guards too could chime in. "We have destroyed the glass shard, and Kanna is also gone. So the threat of more attacks by mirror demons is over. However, I need all the guards to stay here and protect the village in case of any other attacks we weren't expecting. We can't all fly off to Naraku's castle and leave this place undefended while things remain so uncertain. We've already lost Kikyo – I don't want to lose anyone else here to another surprise attack by another one of Naraku's people. Yuno is to go back to the castle to tell Ministers Atsushi and Ryota what is happening. All the other castle guards will remain here to keep the village safe alongside the demon slayers. Lady Shirakumo, Totosai, Kagura and Natsumi will accompany me."
The guards bowed and promised to defend the villagers with their lives.
"Godfather Bokusen'o," Inuyasha addressed the face on the root of his tree-demon guardian. "Thank you for all you have done, and all the effort you have expended to save me. I hope you will rest and recover now."
"I will," Bokusen'o assured him. "Go and find Sesshomaru."
Then the villagers, with Kaede and Kagome at their head, bade Inuyasha and his demon companions goodbye, blessing their journey and mission with good wishes, as they soared skywards.
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The Tale of the Demon Lord