Seducing Maihime proved even simpler than Ren had thought. The prospect of a forbidden romance was enough alone, perhaps, for an idle, feather-brained princess to throw herself at him with abandon.

Buried to the hilt in her sweet virgin cunt, Ren realized that there wasn’t much difference between her and the soft young whores he’d purchased for himself over the years. For Maihime, the price of entry was not gold, but merely a reprieve from the tedium of noble life. A fancy of distraction, though she would never admit it.

Ren found himself despising her for the luxury of her caprices. At least whores were honest in their aims to lighten his purse.

And apart from the papery bit of flesh he’d torn his cock through, she hadn’t felt much different to him, either.

“Oh, Rennosuke-dono,” she’d sighed to him, clinging, after he was well and finished with her. “If only I could convince my lord father to let us be wed.”

“Worry not, my dear,” Ren said with a sharp curve of lip, as he pried himself free of her hold. “Even were he to reconsider, I wouldn’t have you now. Who wants such an easy woman to wife? Not to be cruel, but you’re rather a bore. I like a girl with a bit more spirit—not one who lays there gasping like a dying fish.”

Maihime gaped. The sight was so comical to Ren that he nearly laughed aloud, but settled for smirking at her instead.

“Y-you,” she spluttered, flushing scarlet in outrage as she started upright, clasping a robe to her naked breast. “You’re a scoundrel! I’ll tell Chichi-ue you forced me.”

Ren couldn’t help but chuckle at this. “Go tell him then, little fish, and see where it lands you. What honorable man would want you after such a scandal as that? Deflowered by a knave, for shame,” he said, giving his head a theatrical shake. Maihime scowled helplessly at him. “No, run quietly along into the marriage already arranged for you, and if by some stroke of luck I’ve put a bastard in your belly, your lord husband will be none the wiser to it.”

Maihime trembled so violently Ren almost pitied her.

Almost.

“Wait,” he called after her, as she began to turn away. “Maihime, wait.” With wide gleaming eyes, the princess glanced back. “My name is Ren, by the way. Just Ren—that is all.”

With an affronted sob, Maihime spun on her heel and fled from his sight.

…

Over the months that followed, Ren took pleasure in stealing away both men and materials from his liege lord. Cleverly, discreetly, he amassed a wealth of resources, a loyal following, and more importantly than that, he began to make Torimasu suffer.

Other lords laughed at him when his troops broke ranks and fled. When masked ‘bandits’ made off with his arms and riches. Poor Maihime never even saw her wedding day; sadly, she was found cold and disgraced in the same familiar wood where she had always walked without a care. The raiding parties of Torimasu’s rivals were naturally blamed, but with what forces could his commanders hope to overtake them, when so many foot soldiers had defected as of late?

At his wit’s end, Lord Nidama relied increasingly upon his most trusted vassals, of which Ren was ironically the foremost. Pouring poison in his ear, he stoked Torimasu’s paranoia. What samurai escaped his ensuing persecutions became as meek as sheep to the slaughter.

No longer caring much for anything save Torimasu’s total destruction at his hand, when the flood came roaring down the valley toward them, Ren welcomed it with a laugh so riotous and loud, his lord looked to him at last with the first hint of true suspicion.

It was a second more, before Torimasu himself saw the danger. Another second still, before the raging waters were thundering down upon them, throwing them from their horses in a mighty frothing slam.

“Rennosuke!” the daimyo yelled brokenly as they surfaced, holding fast to Ren’s gauntleted arm.

Chuckling still, Ren cleared his shaggy bangs from his eyes and grinned back. The dark water rushed them along like hell’s own river, and but for his deft maneuvering, they’d have been smashed against trees and debris three times over. Always an adept swimmer, even amongst the other islanders, from the wide glaring whites of Torimasu’s eyes, Ren perceived at once with diabolic glee that on his own the old warlord would float about as well as a rock.

“Who is ‘Rennosuke’?” Ren shouted back with a sneer, as he wrenched loose the straps of his armor. “Some fool you mistook me to be? I am the knife in your ribs, the dog you kicked until it bit you back. I took your gold and munitions, turned your men into outlaws and spoiled your only daughter. I took all that I could take from you, and this flood will take the rest: Nidama Torimasu, you and your legacy shall be erased from this world!”

“You bastard,” Torimasu seethed, his face turning white in mingled fury and terror. “You mad dog!”

Loosened, the armor gave beneath Torimasu’s clinging weight. In desperation, the warlord clawed for Ren’s flesh instead, but he swerved away, nimble as a shark, to watch his old master smash against the side of a crate, then tumble downwards, to sink beneath the black churning tide…

…

As the waters surged ever higher, Ren swam like a demon. Confronted with the prospect of his own death, he felt alive again—like himself again.

He wanted to live, he realized with a rush of pure zeal. To live on his own terms, and for his own sake.

He saw clearly at last his own destiny before him, if only he could survive to make it so. He saw a vision of himself, of his dynasty. He saw too, glowing before him, the face of the woman he would marry. His mother, but perfected—not a noblewoman, but a noble woman, in truth.

A woman who would reproach him, even as she suffered him to have her. A woman who would see him for what he was, and choose him anyway.

A woman who would pray for him, in earnest.

Who would call him ‘Mizuno Rennosuke’ once again, when he had proven himself worthy of the name.

The flash of her eyes was the last light he saw, as his strength gave way, and the water’s surface closed over his head.

…

When he awoke on the corpse-strewn mud, Ren assumed he was in hell.

His lungs burned like fire, every muscle in him also. He had never felt so weak before. Even as his strength began to return to him, he struggled to his feet with painful slowness.

Somehow, his sword Houchou was still at his side. Drawing the dark heavy blade from its sheath, he proceeded warily through the muck and wreckage that surrounded him. Swollen by the deluge of that calamitous flood, the river bank now extended for miles around, a vast swathe of puffy, oozing earth—though the river itself had calmed and subsided.

Strangely enough, after all he’d endured, Ren’s throat was raw and aching with thirst. The glint of clear water in the distance drew him like a lure.

Nearer to it, an eerie pale glow made him pause. Padding forward, he beheld through the broken trees the slender radiant form of what appeared to him at first to be a woman. Silk-clad and silver-haired, the figure glided along the river as though strolling down a road. Approaching the treeline with sword in hand, Ren felt his hackles rise, something in his dirty blood warning him not to tread too close to the water’s edge.

The creature stilled—clearly it had sensed him, too.

“So,” it spoke, in a voice so silky and cool it seemed to flow over Ren like a wave, “something yet stirs here, after all.” The slit-pupiled eyes that glanced back at him were a sparkling, ocean-blue. “I am impressed.”

“The flood,” Ren rasped out, emerging from the trees with his katana set before him. “It was your doing, wasn’t it?”

The creature smiled slightly, turning to face him in full. It eyed him like a woman, though most certainly it was a man—or male at least. Ren’s brow furrowed, as he recalled the tales he had heard, of creatures such as this.

Daiyoukai, he recollected, though until now all the demons Ren had encountered were ugly, stupid, brutish things. Ren detested them, as he detested all things unnatural. But it was a special brand of antipathy he harbored for this one, this author of the flood, for he was not ugly or stupid, but handsome and keen-eyed. Regal, though Ren loathed to admit it. He felt for this demon the same festering resentment he felt for all those who looked and carried themselves as superior to him.

“You have sharp eyes, for a mortal,” the demon replied. Graciously, it gestured toward the river between them. “Have a drink, if you are thirsty. I’ll harm you not.”

Setting his jaw, Ren stayed where he was. The demon’s smile steepened.

“Why did you do it?” Ren demanded. “Why did you send this flood down upon us?”

“I was in a temper,” the creature airily replied, inspecting the points of his fine, pearly nails.

At this, Ren gave a short barking laugh, and the demon’s eyes cut to him, sparkling like jewels.

“It seems there is no ill will between us. I am glad.”

Ren shook his head. “I had nothing left to lose, save my life. Yet here I stand.”

“Indeed you do.” Silver hair spilled over the demon’s shoulder, as he titled his head to one side. “You seem to me a singular man. A ‘samurai,’ no? Then perhaps I may give you a word of advice, seeing as how I’ve put you through so much grief.”

“…Perhaps,” Ren muttered, tightening his grip on his sword.

The demon’s eyes glittered. “Go East,” he said, “and seek a new master there.”

Ren glowered. “I’ll serve no lord again as long as I live.”

“No lord,” the demon said smoothly, “but a lady? It is a priestess who rules the Eastern Lands: her name is Higurashi Kagome, and you may find serving her to your advantage.”

Ren’s eyes narrowed, though his pulse ran hot. “This priestess…she is your enemy, I take it?”

“She is a troublesome woman, to be certain.” The demon’s look was furtive, obscure. “Yet my lord is partial to her.”

“Your lord—and who is he?”

“If you meet him, you shall know.”

Despite this cryptic answer, Ren flashed him a sharp-toothed grin. “Tell me something, demon—can you control the sea as you can the river?”

The creature stared at him, unspeaking.

“There is an island,” Ren continued, “a dismal, rocky place. A clan named Mizuno rules it, but their house is on its last legs. I fear one good surge would do it in altogether.”

“Such a tragedy,” the demon said, slow and deliberate, “seems inevitable to befall it.”

“So I thought,” Ren said, smiling darkly in reply. Kneeling down on the shore, he took a long draught of the water running clear and swift between them. “Then perhaps,” he said as he stood with the setting sun at his back, “I will go east after all.”

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Series Navigation

<< Control Side-Stories: The Man from Nowhere, Part 2 (Explicit)