InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Hymn for the Missing ❯ Hymn 6 ( Chapter 6 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Hymn 6

~oOo~

Lashes fluttering weakly, Kagome groaned softly as she regained consciousness.  It took a few moments, but she managed to pry her oddly reluctant eyes open...

And blinked, wondering if she'd been blinded, as the darkness that lay behind her lids was echoed when they were opened.

Frightened, heart speeding up as she gasped, she blinked again, turning her head as she took in the fact that she wasn't laying on anything – or at least, nothing she could feel.  It almost felt like she was... floating.

Closing her eyes again, she ground them shut tightly, then opened them again, trying to maneuver herself around to see if she could see anything at all.  After a moment, she realized that she wasn't blind after all – she was just in the dark, because there was a very faint glow coming from what seemed to be a long way away.

Where the heck am I?  she wondered as she stared at the distant glow.  I was... I was sleeping.  With Shippo and the others.  Inuyasha...

Oh.  That's right.  Inuyasha left... and then Byakuya came.  But where did he put me?  

“What kind of illusion is this?”  she wondered aloud.  

“This is no illusion, fallen priestess,”  came a great voice echoing in the darkness, and Kagome twisted around in a panic trying to see who was speaking in such a malice-laden voice.

“Who are you?”  she cried out desperately when she couldn't find anyone.  “Where am I?”

“Welcome to the dark world inside the Shikon no Tama, Kagome,”  that insidious voice chimed in once more.  “Just like Midoriko is trapped within, so you are also.  
And I,”  a sickening chuckle came, and then a swirl of light formed right before her, becoming a male youkai with more hatred in his eyes than even Naraku had,  “am Magatsuhi.”

Eyes widening, Kagome remembered something Kaede had said once about Naohi, the spirit of good in the jewel... and Magatsuhi, the spirit of evil.   “Why am I here?”  she asked, voice almost a whisper in her choked throat.  “What good is my being brought to this place going to do you?”

“Haven't you figured it out?  You fear the darkness.  Naraku wants to taint the jewel fully.  And while you foiled his plan to take your shard by hiding it from him, still, with your soul darkening within the mostly blackened Shikon no Tama-”  he grinned evilly,  “-the tiny pinpoint of light still within it will finally be wiped away like it never existed.”

“I'll fight you,”  she warned, finding courage for a moment from somewhere deep inside.

“So you shall,”  he said, an odd relishing sound in his wicked tones that made her shiver.  “But how long do you think you, a mere child, can fight me?  Midoriko has fought for five hundred years.  But she is an adult, and a fully trained warrior miko.  What are you?  A frightened child with power that you use in an almost accidental fashion.  What do you think you can do?”  he asked spitefully.

Every word he spoke hit her like poisoned arrows, reaching deep and wounding her in places that were already damaged at best.  He was right – she was a child, playing at being a miko.  Who did she think she was getting involved in fights between the very tenets of good and evil?

Hadn't Inuyasha asked practically the same things back in the beginning?

With an insane sounding laugh, the youkai before her faded away, and she stiffened in shock as it seemed she was also fading... dissipating into the darkness around her – becoming one with it.

She could still feel herself – her sense of who she was was intact, but she didn't seem to be corporeal any longer, and despairingly, she let her mind reach out into the ether she seemed to be a part of now.

Inuyasha, her mind cried, and the void echoed his name emptily around her.


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