InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Half-Breed ❯ Chapter IV ( Chapter 6 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: rockthedragon7 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.27.2005 | Updated On: 03.31.2005 | Pages: 1 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 182 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 02.27.2005 | Updated On: 03.31.2005 | Pages: 1 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 182 | Status: Completed
Half-Breed: Chapter IV
Fog rolled in before dawn, thick and gray, blanketing the forest in a silver mist and letting very little dim light to the woodland floor. My sight ended at an arm’s length away from where I was, yet I did not mind, for I could trust my ears. Crouching next to a freshwater stream, I splashed my face and swallowed down several gulps of the cold water.
A sudden air-piercing scream rose on the breeze, echoing through the stillness of the misty morning, and I perked my ears with uneasiness. Somewhere I could smell demon blood, and not far off. There was the horrified yelling and sounds of fighting away to the north. Over the gentle trickle of the brook, the faint crunching of leaves beneath clumsy feel arose, and they turned my attention to within the bounds of the forest. Searching the leaden gloom of the trees with my keen ears for a moment, I sprang into the air and lightly landed on a branch overshadowing the creek, silently listening to the approaching sounds. I could smell fear, pulsing with every beat of the interloping creature’s racing heart. They were terrified. Beneath me, a boy wearing only a greenish-brown kimono, his black hair tied up into a topknot, stumbled backwards toward the stream, his breath labored with fright. I watched him with curiosity as he spun around, and he tumbled with a splash into the stream. He struggled up, and took a few steps to collapse against a tree trunk for a moment, looking back toward the direction of the shriek, and the sharp smell of his blood reached me. His left arm hung limply at his side, crimson liquid surging from a deep gash near his shoulder. ‘Demon?’ I thought to myself. I observed the boy as he urged himself on until he vanished into the thick, gray haze of the woods, his clumsy footfalls echoing after him.
I raised my head to another exploding screech. For an instant, my curiosity seemed to get the better of me. Anxious to discover the source of the abrupt chaos, I dropped to the ground and headed in the direction from which the commotion came.
Leaping into a tree near the borders of the town, I stared down on the scene unfolding before me. Some huts were smashed, shattered like glass. Terrorized cattle that had escaped from the destroyed form of their corral ran recklessly through the borough, bawling and hollering in fright. Women and children shrieked and ran in frenzied panic, and men shouted with anger and fear. A monstrous snake demon with eyes like fiery red coals, fangs dripping with unseen poison, and a tongue like a pitchfork, thrashed and writhed, screaming like a nightmare. Between its teeth was a caterwauling cow, which it promptly flung at the villagers, who had retrieved spears and arrows from the homes left standing. Wild with anger, the snake reared it head as it let out a shattering wail that sounded as a crazed laugh, causing me to throw my hands to my ears in pain, and the demon thrashed its tail, sending men flying to the dirt where they lay dazed and in agony on the cold ground. Securing a bloodied bull between its fangs, the snake slide by the mass of disoriented villagers, and rushed for the cover of the forest with its meal.
My ears ringing, I fearfully wrapped my arms around the trunk of the tree as the demon hurtled past me, not even pausing to acknowledge my insignificant presence, followed by the figures of a multitude of angry villagers, firing arrows, wielding javelins, and brandishing flames. I watched silently from the treetop as the furious curses of the men faded into the forest, chasing the retreating shape of the snake demon, their torches vanishing into the fog as little orange lights, bobbing in the distance.
I had never truly understood what began the heartless relationship between demons and humans. There was no history of it. Perhaps it had been that old superstition, which claimed that demons could bring disease and famine with them, bend natural forces to their will, devour humans and drag sinners to Hell. Perhaps it had been that these weak and pathetic humans stole their land, polluted their earth, and hunted their quarry. Why do demons and humans hate each other? They just do.
I dropped from the tree, carefully looking over my shoulder at the disappearing villagers… and found my feet jerked out from under me, something constricting around me, squeezing my arms and legs helplessly to my body. I was in an instant panic, struggling and thrashing about only to find myself tangled up in weaves of thin, strong cord. I was trapped, like an animal. Golden eyes wild with terror, I forced myself to stop fighting, discovering that it only succeeded in wrapping the tough fibers around my wrists and ankles, binding me all the tighter. My heart pounding madly in my chest, my breathing coming in gasps, I glanced around me. A net, a mesh of twine entangled about me, holding me high from the ground, dangling from a tree branch. Something inside of me cursed me for my lack of observation. Looked over my shoulder for a second, got caught in a defensive netting that humans placed on the outskirts of their villages to prevent small trickster demons such as kitsune and tanuki from bothering them. It wasn’t until I heard footsteps nearing that I realized that there was a string of bells lashed to the net. Just my luck.
Townsmen materialized from the trees below me, glaring up, bows and arrows in hand. They looked at me. I stared back. One made a disgusted face and a sound in his throat like he could smell rotting meat. Slinging the bow over one shoulder, replacing the arrow in its quiver, he drew a knife, and with a quick swipe, the net was falling and I plummeted to the ground, striking it with a hard, painful thud. I lay there, groaning at the dull throbbing spreading from my head and limbs, wishing that I could budge, even if it was just a flicker of one ear. I noticed that another man had taken hold of the netting, grumbling a dozen curses under his breath, including something like, “Damned dirty beast…” He gave the mesh a wrench, enough so my head would slam awkwardly into the dirt, against a conveniently protruding tree root. He turned to follow the others, dragging me along the ground, purposefully making certain that my skull came into contact with every log, rock, root, and rut that he could find along the path.
The townsmen came to a stop, and I realized I was in the village, head pounding, hammering like a rock inside my skull, a multitude of blue and purple bruises blotching my skin. There was the sound of a heavy piece of wood being shifted and moved, and the sudden dank and rotting smell of soggy leaves wafted toward my nose. I gave a whimper, and my breath left me in a hurry when I received a violent blow to the ribs in return. “Shut up, you wretch!” a man growled. My lungs insisted that I cough, and felt something solid, probably a stone, furiously strike the back of my head. Pain exploded through my skull, colourful stars bursting behind my eyes, hurling me into the shadowy space of unconsciousness. “He said stay quiet!” came another voice from somewhere distant, slowly echoing and fading away as the gloom consumed me.
When I came to, my mind was still hazy, my sight was blurry, my memories vague. My head was throbbing, and I folded my ears back to muffle the thunderous sound of my heartbeat, the hurricane of my breath. Slowly, I opened my eyes, looking around me in a daze. My brain didn’t register half the things I saw. For the most part, there was darkness, a few slivers of light falling on my face, that clammy scent of dirt and foliage, the cold hard ground against my back. Hissing sounds following the bits of light down to me, low and even, like wind passing in and out of a window that was opened only a crack. The whispering grew into curious-sounding, guttural noises, which I decided were spoken words, but muddled as my head still was from the aftereffects of the blackout, I couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
“…the half-breed…” Half-breed? That was me. I was what they were calling ‘half-breed’. That wasn’t my name though. What was my name? Something to do with my father… Right, it began with ‘inu’. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a voice, like a ray of sunshine on a summer breeze, calling… Inuyasha. That was my name.
“…that witch that gave herself to Inu no Taishou…” Inu no Taishou, Sugimi… he was my father. Well, obviously the witch that they spoke of was… my mother? No, you have no mother, something inside me hissed, but I bluntly told it to shut up. I could hear the voice again, that beautiful voice, and there were star-studded eyes behind it. I had a mother. But she… wasn’t with me… somehow.
“…should have been killed at birth…” That struck a bit of a cord. I was a half-breed, born from a human and a demon, the pariah of society, the recluse of life, always a part of humans and demons, but never of them. So many people have said that I should have been killed at birth. My father had died rejecting the idea. My mother had died protecting me from it. That was why she wasn’t with me. That was why I was alone, in this dark and dank place.
“Let him stay down there, I say. What do you think the beast was doing at the edge of the forest, waiting for most of the men to run off after that snake?”
“Looking to satisfy that demon bloodlust. He could probably smell the blood of the wounded.”
“He was after something, whether it was blood or the food in our kitchens. There’s demon in his veins. He can’t be trusted.”
“Let him rot in that cellar without food or water. No one is to remove the seal until we can smell his carcass.”
A shot of horror bolted through me like lightning, and I was on my feet in an instant, scrambling wildly up the steep wooden steps to the door. “Let me out! Let me out, please!” I cried, pounding against the heavy slab with my fists, carving hollows into with my claws. “Please, don’t leave me in here! Please! Let me out!” I screamed at that entrance for hours, tears rolling down my face, my efforts to break the seal slowly dying away. I sat at the top of the staircase, my head buried in my arms, spending the next long hours crying until my sleeves were damp to the elbow, and the light no longer filtered through the cracks.
I stared up at the door, my keen eyes sifting through the details of the grain, through the riddle of claw marks scarring the wood, and I wondered to myself, did my sobs haunt the villagers as they walked by, ignoring the sealed door, or when they slept, pretending that they could not hear? Had pity even crossed their minds? I slipped down the flight of stairs, and felt the cool ground beneath my toes. The cellar was large, empty pots and an old burnt out lantern lined up upon wooden shelves which were mounted onto stone walls. Just a great square hole in the ground. No windows, dirt floor, one way in and one way out… with a sacred sutra upon it.
Suddenly, my knees felt very weak. I collapsed to the ground. I wasn’t going to get out…
How long was I trapped in that hovel? I can’t recall. During the day I sat at the top of the staircase, staring up at the door, silently listening to the people as they bustled about. When night fell, I huddled in a corner, wallowing in the feelings of sickness that had crept into my stomach, the sensations of helplessness, the parchedness of my mouth. I bit my arms, drank my blood until my forearms were raw with wounds that would no longer heal. Three days passed. My demon blood was failing me. When the fourth day came, I couldn’t find the strength to lift myself from the corner. I lay very still, head against the cool ground, watching the door. Just watching, and listening to the frail wheezing of my own breath, the weak and hasty beating of my own heart. I remember wanting to go home.
Converting /tmp/phpSZnJkl to /dev/stdout
Fog rolled in before dawn, thick and gray, blanketing the forest in a silver mist and letting very little dim light to the woodland floor. My sight ended at an arm’s length away from where I was, yet I did not mind, for I could trust my ears. Crouching next to a freshwater stream, I splashed my face and swallowed down several gulps of the cold water.
A sudden air-piercing scream rose on the breeze, echoing through the stillness of the misty morning, and I perked my ears with uneasiness. Somewhere I could smell demon blood, and not far off. There was the horrified yelling and sounds of fighting away to the north. Over the gentle trickle of the brook, the faint crunching of leaves beneath clumsy feel arose, and they turned my attention to within the bounds of the forest. Searching the leaden gloom of the trees with my keen ears for a moment, I sprang into the air and lightly landed on a branch overshadowing the creek, silently listening to the approaching sounds. I could smell fear, pulsing with every beat of the interloping creature’s racing heart. They were terrified. Beneath me, a boy wearing only a greenish-brown kimono, his black hair tied up into a topknot, stumbled backwards toward the stream, his breath labored with fright. I watched him with curiosity as he spun around, and he tumbled with a splash into the stream. He struggled up, and took a few steps to collapse against a tree trunk for a moment, looking back toward the direction of the shriek, and the sharp smell of his blood reached me. His left arm hung limply at his side, crimson liquid surging from a deep gash near his shoulder. ‘Demon?’ I thought to myself. I observed the boy as he urged himself on until he vanished into the thick, gray haze of the woods, his clumsy footfalls echoing after him.
I raised my head to another exploding screech. For an instant, my curiosity seemed to get the better of me. Anxious to discover the source of the abrupt chaos, I dropped to the ground and headed in the direction from which the commotion came.
Leaping into a tree near the borders of the town, I stared down on the scene unfolding before me. Some huts were smashed, shattered like glass. Terrorized cattle that had escaped from the destroyed form of their corral ran recklessly through the borough, bawling and hollering in fright. Women and children shrieked and ran in frenzied panic, and men shouted with anger and fear. A monstrous snake demon with eyes like fiery red coals, fangs dripping with unseen poison, and a tongue like a pitchfork, thrashed and writhed, screaming like a nightmare. Between its teeth was a caterwauling cow, which it promptly flung at the villagers, who had retrieved spears and arrows from the homes left standing. Wild with anger, the snake reared it head as it let out a shattering wail that sounded as a crazed laugh, causing me to throw my hands to my ears in pain, and the demon thrashed its tail, sending men flying to the dirt where they lay dazed and in agony on the cold ground. Securing a bloodied bull between its fangs, the snake slide by the mass of disoriented villagers, and rushed for the cover of the forest with its meal.
My ears ringing, I fearfully wrapped my arms around the trunk of the tree as the demon hurtled past me, not even pausing to acknowledge my insignificant presence, followed by the figures of a multitude of angry villagers, firing arrows, wielding javelins, and brandishing flames. I watched silently from the treetop as the furious curses of the men faded into the forest, chasing the retreating shape of the snake demon, their torches vanishing into the fog as little orange lights, bobbing in the distance.
I had never truly understood what began the heartless relationship between demons and humans. There was no history of it. Perhaps it had been that old superstition, which claimed that demons could bring disease and famine with them, bend natural forces to their will, devour humans and drag sinners to Hell. Perhaps it had been that these weak and pathetic humans stole their land, polluted their earth, and hunted their quarry. Why do demons and humans hate each other? They just do.
I dropped from the tree, carefully looking over my shoulder at the disappearing villagers… and found my feet jerked out from under me, something constricting around me, squeezing my arms and legs helplessly to my body. I was in an instant panic, struggling and thrashing about only to find myself tangled up in weaves of thin, strong cord. I was trapped, like an animal. Golden eyes wild with terror, I forced myself to stop fighting, discovering that it only succeeded in wrapping the tough fibers around my wrists and ankles, binding me all the tighter. My heart pounding madly in my chest, my breathing coming in gasps, I glanced around me. A net, a mesh of twine entangled about me, holding me high from the ground, dangling from a tree branch. Something inside of me cursed me for my lack of observation. Looked over my shoulder for a second, got caught in a defensive netting that humans placed on the outskirts of their villages to prevent small trickster demons such as kitsune and tanuki from bothering them. It wasn’t until I heard footsteps nearing that I realized that there was a string of bells lashed to the net. Just my luck.
Townsmen materialized from the trees below me, glaring up, bows and arrows in hand. They looked at me. I stared back. One made a disgusted face and a sound in his throat like he could smell rotting meat. Slinging the bow over one shoulder, replacing the arrow in its quiver, he drew a knife, and with a quick swipe, the net was falling and I plummeted to the ground, striking it with a hard, painful thud. I lay there, groaning at the dull throbbing spreading from my head and limbs, wishing that I could budge, even if it was just a flicker of one ear. I noticed that another man had taken hold of the netting, grumbling a dozen curses under his breath, including something like, “Damned dirty beast…” He gave the mesh a wrench, enough so my head would slam awkwardly into the dirt, against a conveniently protruding tree root. He turned to follow the others, dragging me along the ground, purposefully making certain that my skull came into contact with every log, rock, root, and rut that he could find along the path.
The townsmen came to a stop, and I realized I was in the village, head pounding, hammering like a rock inside my skull, a multitude of blue and purple bruises blotching my skin. There was the sound of a heavy piece of wood being shifted and moved, and the sudden dank and rotting smell of soggy leaves wafted toward my nose. I gave a whimper, and my breath left me in a hurry when I received a violent blow to the ribs in return. “Shut up, you wretch!” a man growled. My lungs insisted that I cough, and felt something solid, probably a stone, furiously strike the back of my head. Pain exploded through my skull, colourful stars bursting behind my eyes, hurling me into the shadowy space of unconsciousness. “He said stay quiet!” came another voice from somewhere distant, slowly echoing and fading away as the gloom consumed me.
When I came to, my mind was still hazy, my sight was blurry, my memories vague. My head was throbbing, and I folded my ears back to muffle the thunderous sound of my heartbeat, the hurricane of my breath. Slowly, I opened my eyes, looking around me in a daze. My brain didn’t register half the things I saw. For the most part, there was darkness, a few slivers of light falling on my face, that clammy scent of dirt and foliage, the cold hard ground against my back. Hissing sounds following the bits of light down to me, low and even, like wind passing in and out of a window that was opened only a crack. The whispering grew into curious-sounding, guttural noises, which I decided were spoken words, but muddled as my head still was from the aftereffects of the blackout, I couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
“…the half-breed…” Half-breed? That was me. I was what they were calling ‘half-breed’. That wasn’t my name though. What was my name? Something to do with my father… Right, it began with ‘inu’. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a voice, like a ray of sunshine on a summer breeze, calling… Inuyasha. That was my name.
“…that witch that gave herself to Inu no Taishou…” Inu no Taishou, Sugimi… he was my father. Well, obviously the witch that they spoke of was… my mother? No, you have no mother, something inside me hissed, but I bluntly told it to shut up. I could hear the voice again, that beautiful voice, and there were star-studded eyes behind it. I had a mother. But she… wasn’t with me… somehow.
“…should have been killed at birth…” That struck a bit of a cord. I was a half-breed, born from a human and a demon, the pariah of society, the recluse of life, always a part of humans and demons, but never of them. So many people have said that I should have been killed at birth. My father had died rejecting the idea. My mother had died protecting me from it. That was why she wasn’t with me. That was why I was alone, in this dark and dank place.
“Let him stay down there, I say. What do you think the beast was doing at the edge of the forest, waiting for most of the men to run off after that snake?”
“Looking to satisfy that demon bloodlust. He could probably smell the blood of the wounded.”
“He was after something, whether it was blood or the food in our kitchens. There’s demon in his veins. He can’t be trusted.”
“Let him rot in that cellar without food or water. No one is to remove the seal until we can smell his carcass.”
A shot of horror bolted through me like lightning, and I was on my feet in an instant, scrambling wildly up the steep wooden steps to the door. “Let me out! Let me out, please!” I cried, pounding against the heavy slab with my fists, carving hollows into with my claws. “Please, don’t leave me in here! Please! Let me out!” I screamed at that entrance for hours, tears rolling down my face, my efforts to break the seal slowly dying away. I sat at the top of the staircase, my head buried in my arms, spending the next long hours crying until my sleeves were damp to the elbow, and the light no longer filtered through the cracks.
I stared up at the door, my keen eyes sifting through the details of the grain, through the riddle of claw marks scarring the wood, and I wondered to myself, did my sobs haunt the villagers as they walked by, ignoring the sealed door, or when they slept, pretending that they could not hear? Had pity even crossed their minds? I slipped down the flight of stairs, and felt the cool ground beneath my toes. The cellar was large, empty pots and an old burnt out lantern lined up upon wooden shelves which were mounted onto stone walls. Just a great square hole in the ground. No windows, dirt floor, one way in and one way out… with a sacred sutra upon it.
Suddenly, my knees felt very weak. I collapsed to the ground. I wasn’t going to get out…
How long was I trapped in that hovel? I can’t recall. During the day I sat at the top of the staircase, staring up at the door, silently listening to the people as they bustled about. When night fell, I huddled in a corner, wallowing in the feelings of sickness that had crept into my stomach, the sensations of helplessness, the parchedness of my mouth. I bit my arms, drank my blood until my forearms were raw with wounds that would no longer heal. Three days passed. My demon blood was failing me. When the fourth day came, I couldn’t find the strength to lift myself from the corner. I lay very still, head against the cool ground, watching the door. Just watching, and listening to the frail wheezing of my own breath, the weak and hasty beating of my own heart. I remember wanting to go home.
Converting /tmp/phpSZnJkl to /dev/stdout