Black blood sprayed out across the moonlit grass, fuming where it fell. The ghastly screech that had rent the night air still rung in his ears as he dodged the claw that swiped down at him from on high, then pivoted to slash out again. A glinting chain ripped through the dark like liquid silver. Two severed legs spun out from its lash, segmented and still kicking as they spumed with noxious blood. 

Unbalanced, the fiend shrieked again as it started to plummet. Shorn leaves and miasma rained down in a maelstrom. Stout tree branches snapped like twigs. There was a crash like thunder as the demon met the ground on its armored back, screaming in pain and fury. Its spidery bulk thrashed as it strove to right itself amidst the ancient trees of the glade that pinned it.

Dropping down from the safe perch he’d leapt to, he stalked toward his toppled foe. Eight red eyes rolled toward him, searing with malice—too late. The arc of his blade split the demon’s foul face from horned crown to pincered jaws. It spasmed mightily, before its bladed legs drew inward, and it lay there, stiff and still as stone.

Flicking his weapon clean, he put it away and rubbed at his lower back, which was aching like the devil. Every joint along his spine seemed to groan as he stretched himself upright. Shaking his head, he trudged back through the woods, his bad hip now choosing to make its complaints known. 

He sighed, feeling old. Feeling tired.

By a smooth-flowing creek he knelt with a wince. After washing off the grime of the hunt, he drank a few icy, dripping mouthfuls from the cup of his palm. In the stillness thereafter, he squinted down at his own dim reflection, its stark frown lines etched deep by the years. Even when he wasn’t frowning, they still were there, heavy and dark and brooding as his gaze was. His face may be weathered and his hair may be silvered, but his eyes were the same as they’d always been.

More’s the pity, he grimaced to himself.

The more he looked, the more his reflection began to change, reshaping subtly as if the sands of time were blowing backward, restoring the youth that they’d effaced. He saw himself as a young man, his hair dark and his features smooth. The frown was still there, but the lines were gone. Then even the frown went away, as his younger mirror-image grinned and winked.

“…Shippou,” he grumbled, turning around.

Against a broad oak tree, the kitsune leaned, tucking a glimmering spool of spider-silk into his sleeve. A hint of smile curved his vulpine face, as it always did. It gave him a boyish look of mischief, though he was a demon grown. What height the old man had lost over the years, his young friend had more than gained on him. Tall and slender, eerily luminescent in his fur-trimmed and leaf-patterned clothing, with his sheening tail for a sash and his red-gold hair streaming half-bound behind him, at times it was difficult to reconcile this fey illusionist with the bushy-tailed little squirt he once had been.

“You seemed dangerously adrift there, Kohaku,” the kitsune said, his sly smile steepening. “I figured I should reel you back in before you drowned.”

“More special favors,” the old man groused back. “Just like this so-called dangerous job of yours. That spider youkai was child’s play.”

Shippou shrugged. “For you, maybe,” he said, spinning up a ball of blue flame idly in the cup of his claws, “but we both know I’m not one for fighting. You’ve been a big help to me.”

“Say what you will,” Kohaku said gruffly as he eased himself up from the bank, “but just know that I don’t need your charity. Nor do I appreciate it, either.”

With a wry purse of lip, Shippou pushed off from the tree. As he crossed his arms, the blue fox-fire he’d been holding floated up to his shoulder, glowing there like an attendant spirit. Soundlessly, he approached Kohaku. His green almond gaze seemed to side-eye him even as it met him dead-on. Wherever he was truly looking was anyone’s guess.

Arching a brow, he asked, “Must there be some hidden motive in calling on an old friend?”

“You haven’t ‘called on’ me in years.”

Shippou shrugged again, making the flame at his shoulder jump and flicker. “I lose track of time when I’m not around mortals. All of us do.”

“All the more reason to suspect it’s no coincidence you’re here when Kirara is gone. I suppose she put you up to this, didn’t she? Tasked you to check up on me like I’m some dotard in want of watching.”

“For fuck’s sake, Kohaku,” Shippou chuckled, shaking his head, “you’ve turned into such a curmudgeon. All right, I’ll admit she put in a word to me. But only because you worry her, living like a hermit as you do.”

“It’s none of her concern,” Kohaku said sharply, turning away. “It’s not anyone’s. I refuse to be coddled or pitied. Now since we’re finished here,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder, “take me home.”

Shippou sighed. Plucking an emerald leaf from the pattern emblazoned across his chest, he flicked it down to the ground where it hovered, growing at once into the size of a sled. Lightly, he climbed onto it and sat down cross-legged. With a look of chagrin, he gestured for Kohaku to do the same.

Together they sailed through the lightening skies. By the time the mountain range came into sight, Kohaku’s dour mood had lifted. As much as it ever did, anyway.

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

Shippou’s mirrored gaze slid back to him. “She didn’t.” After a beat he asked, “Why?”

“She’s left before, but never so long as this.” Dryly, Kohaku said, “Maybe she’s just lost track.”

Shippou laughed, turning back. “I doubt it. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said with a wave. “Kirara’s not the type to land herself in too much hot water.”

Behind the fox demon’s shoulder Kohaku frowned.

As they touched down on the rocky mountain slope, the leaf beneath them shrank back to size. It affixed itself seamlessly to Shipou’s haori as he stood, peering at Kohaku as he pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. 

“Sure you don’t want me to stay for a while?” the kitsune asked. “There’s no catch in the offer, I promise.”

“A trickster’s word is as good as smoke.” As Shippou’s smile twitched, Kohaku clapped a hand to his slim shoulder and said, “I’m fine, Shippou, truly. Go on now. Leave an old man to his rest.”

Shippou’s mouth quirked, twisting. “I’d rather not.”

“His solitude then.”

The kitsune bowed his auburn head. “Very well then, old man. I’ll leave you be—for now, anyway.”

Not quite trusting him, Kohaku watched as his whole form flickered, blue-edged like the flame he held to his chest. In a wisp of smoke, he vanished. His parting joke wasn’t lost on Kohaku, who shook his head as Shippou’s ghostly chuckle echoed along the mountainside. Picking up a stout stick, Kohaku turned for home, his breath steaming out before him in the chill.

It wasn’t much of a trail that wove up through the scraggle of bent and twisted pines. Like penitents in eternal prostration, they bowed above the hard, frigid land, which did not seem to care that it was spring, brittle and snow-crusted as it ever was. To keep his balance on this steep, treacherous terrain, Kohaku bent almost double with the trees. 

He was panting by the time the alpine forest began to level out, and the grey-timbered hut came into sight at last. Chinked with frozen clay and rimed all about with gritty frost, this mean little hovel suited him well enough in his self-imposed exile. After digging out the door, he leaned heavily against its outer frame.

His heart pounded wildly in his ears as a sudden spell of dizziness overcame him. The stick clattered from his bloodless hand. Gritting his teeth against the pain that radiated down his left arm, he clenched and unclenched his fist until it dulled, and he was able to compose himself once more.

He spent the better part of the day collecting firewood. The rest he spent excavating meat from the stores he kept buried away from the house, in a cage of wood and stone. While the meat thawed, he built and tended to the fire. The little hut grew so warm he shucked off his fur overcoat. Sitting there in his faded haori, he watched the flames as they sparked and leapt, sizzling the boiling sap.

Nursing his guilts and regrets until they consumed him.

It was a hellfire he welcomed with open arms, wishing it would scorch him away, burn him to ash. How he could still be alive when he’d killed nearly everyone who’d ever loved him was proof that he was a scourge upon the very earth that had born him, outcast by the gods as a wretch too loathsome even to crush beneath the heel for the stain he’d leave upon it.

Closing his eyes, he still saw the flames. They reared before him in his mind, as they’d reared above the smoldering ruin of Edo castle, some fifteen years ago. This living pyre that had swallowed up his remaining children and burned them to a cinder. All trace of his name come to nothing, ashes in the wind.

The final insult to the wife he’d killed with his own accursed embrace. 

His grief had been raw and terrible enough when he’d reached his eldest son’s encampment to find that he’d been dead for days. Clutching his heir’s cold corpse to him, he’d realized then the trap that had been laid for him. With Kirara, he’d raced back to Edo castle—too late, far too late.

He’d sent Kirara into the conflagration to look for his children. But it was he who’d found them, staked naked in a yard just inside the rear palace gates—Reiko and her three children, his second son, and his youngest, his face bashed-in so brutally it was unrecognizable, even to him. He’d fallen weeping to his knees as he’d crawled toward them, clasping at their cold bloody feet. 

He’d heard the dark laughter, felt himself being lashed to the poles along with them, but he’d had no will to fight, no will to live. He’d let them bind him almost gladly. He’d heard the roar of the flames as they’d set fire to the yard, felt the pitch they’d slung over him as though the encroaching inferno were not enough to incinerate him. He’d yearned for the fires of death, but in the end they hadn’t touched him. Kirara had returned, torn him loose from his bindings and ferried him through the flames. The only fighting he’d done that day had been with her, that she hadn’t left him there to die as he should.

He’d been cruel to her for a long time after. He’d cursed at her, hit her and kicked her. Tried everything he could think of to drive her away. But she’d refused to leave him, and so he’d been forced at last to give up.

It was then that he’d recalled the faces of his enemies, swimming back to him through the fiery haze. Rivals and false allies, even traitors amongst his own. The lot of them, those slinking cowards, how they’d teamed up like a pack of mangy dogs to jump him unawares. His white-hot rage had been a balm to him after his festering grief.

Over the course of a year, he’d taken his vengeance. One by one, he’d hunted them down, biding his time so that the next cretin would tremble with fear at every shifting shadow, never knowing which one contained the living specter of him. He’d cut them down like dogs, with cold and ruthless disdain. But not their wives, not their children. He’d told himself that because of this he was better than they.

But he was no better. He was worse, if anything. Before, he could blame it on Naraku’s scheming. But this infernal design had been his own.

As if it were some hellish destiny he could not escape, he’d become once again a slayer of men.

Opening his eyes, he saw that the hearth fire had burned down to embers. The hut was dark and cold. His breath misted before him, white and trembling as his spirit must be, raring to burst free from this forsaken flesh. 

More than once he’d thought to take his own life. But since that would have been a mercy to him, he’d decided against it. Better for him to suffer on until the bitter end. In that way, perhaps his pain could be something of an atonement to those he’d wronged in this life.

“Better than burning incense for them,” he muttered to no one, since Kirara wasn’t there. “And anyway, what good would my prayers be?”

Picking himself up from the cold plank floor, he rekindled the fire and set the tough meat to roast in skewers over it. The savory scents lifted his mood somewhat. In his better moments he thought of Shurei and her children, his only living kin. Still alive and well only because she’d had the good sense to get away from him. He did not speak of her, not even to Kirara, not even now to the empty air, as if merely by mentioning her aloud he’d set some fell omen upon her.

But to think of her felt safe enough. And so he thought of her, and of her mother, until his chest grew tight and his jaw clenched with all the suppressed want for what could never be. He would not go to them. He could not. He would not inflict himself and his curses upon them. This he’d vowed, and he vowed it again to himself as the meat began to char.

With his sad dinner done, he lay down on his mat of reeds and dragged a musty fur blanket over him. He frowned up at the dark smoky ceiling. Hours passed, but he could not sleep. He seldom did. 

In the sleepless dead of night was when he thought of her.

“Kagome,” he spoke aloud to the darkness looming above him, for he had no fear of bringing any curses down upon her which were worse than the ones she already bore.

Neither had she ever loved him, which made her doubly safeguarded in his mind.

He’d spent a good deal of his life furiously resenting her for it. But he didn’t feel resentful toward her anymore. Strangely enough, he remembered her now only fondly, as if she were a loved one lost to him. He doubted she was any more dead than he was, yet since she was as gone to him as if she were dead, he felt at liberty to remember her however he liked.

He liked to think of her as she’d been before her tragedies had warped her, as the kind, bright, spirited girl he’d loved as a boy. That had been a pure love, in the beginning. The purest sort of romantic love one could feel. His lust for her had muddied the waters of that love. Now that he was an old man and such fires had tamped down in him, he felt that he could see this clearly.

He grieved for her in his heart, more so than he grieved even for his dead parents and his dead clan, his dead sister, his dead wife and all his dead children. He felt guilty for it, selfish for it. Indeed to grieve for her was to grieve for himself, and he knew it. But his sense of self was so tied up with her there was no extricating the two.

Kohaku sighed heavily, recalling the last time he’d seen her, the one night they’d spent together. “I’m an old fool,” he confessed to her, as if she were lying there beside him still. “When I was younger, I was a young fool. Both then and now,” he whispered, “I’d do better by you, if I could. I hope you know that.”

Kagome didn’t answer, not that he expected her to. He wasn’t quite so addled in the head as to hear her replies.

Eventually, his weariness overcame him. When his eyes opened again it was to the sight of wan sunlight seeping in through the cracks in the shutters and chinking. Stiff and sore all over as he always was when he woke, Kohaku cursed as he eased himself up creaking out of his scanty bed. 

With his blood warmed up, he went out hunting. He felled a demon hawk, picked off a few mountain hares. With all his kills either tied to his waist or lashed behind him, he spent the rest of the morning cleaning his prizes, extracting what could be used of the blood, bones, feathers and offal. He’d planned to spend the afternoon as he usually did tooling about in his workshop, but the sight of a familiar figure soaring toward him through the cloud-scudded skies arrested him.

He loped into the snowy clearing as fast as his cold-stiffened joints would allow. By then Kirara had alighted among the drifts—

But she was not alone.

Kohaku froze, his heart slamming into his throat. All the breath went out of him at the sight of the slight figure standing beside her in the snow. A young woman, strangely clothed in a red and white tunic that fastened high at a slant to its silken collar, with pale trousers that ended in boots curling slightly at the toe. Her raven hair was drawn up in buns at either side of her head, with a few waving locks trailing down to brush at her shoulders. There was a bow and quiver at her back, and sheathed at her hip was a straight, spade-hilted sword.

She turned toward him, and when he saw her face he knew it well. So very well.

It was the face most beloved to him in all the world.

But in that same glance he saw something else that made his blood run cold. Even from this distance he could see that her eyes were wrong.

He grit his teeth, balled his fist as it began to shake. His blood that had gone so chill now seared through his veins. Though he couldn’t sense any youki emanating from her, he couldn’t explain it otherwise except that this was some sort of cruel jape.

“Damn you, Shippou!” he yelled, whipping out several kunai and hurling them toward the illusory girl. “You’ve gone too far this time!”

The illusion started, her eyes going wide. Swerving before her, Kirara swiped out to deflect the kunai, glaring fiercely toward him as if he’d gone mad. Kohaku glared back at her just as fiercely.

“Don’t defend him!” he seethed as he dashed aside and threw a hail of senbon needles, some in feint and some aimed true to pierce through the illusion. “He deserves to bleed for this.”

Kirara fell for the feint. But to Kohaku’s surprise the illusory girl dodged the true strikes in a series of nimble flips. Springing up backward from her hand, she crouched low and panting in the field of snow, her gaze darting around in a panic for cover. But Kohaku was already upon her as he broke out from the trees with a dark-webbed net flying before him.

She let out a cry when it fell over her from behind, its uncanny weight sending her crumpling to the ground. Kirara flew to her with a growl and started ripping at the netting, but Kohaku knocked her aside with the butt of his kusarigama. His precise blow to her unguarded brow-mark dispelled her transformation. Tumbling back in kitten form, she mewled and tossed her head. By now the girl had drawn her double-edged sword to cut herself free, but Kohaku kicked it from her hand.

Grabbing the edge of the net, he yanked it up along with her and shoved his blade to her flinching throat. “How dare you,” he snarled, shaking her by the collar. “Enough of this guise! Drop it at once, or I really will make you bleed…”

The girl’s throat worked furiously, fluttering just beneath the sickle’s sharp edge. “W-what guise?”

He stared down at her, frowning. At the raw desperation in her voice a trickle of doubt crept in. His eyes raked over her pale face, seized upon her own searching stare. The fear and confusion in her expression seemed genuine enough. If this were Shippou, Kohaku knew, even he would have given up the ruse before it came to this. 

His eyes slid to Kirara, who sat on her haunches in the snow just beside him, staring up at him in bristling reproach. He glanced to the girl again, into those eyes that were as dark as slate. 

As dark as his.

Releasing her roughly, he staggered back from her a step. “You,” he bit out, “just who the hell are you?”

The young woman picked herself up, dusting snow from her long sleeves. Glancing to him, she quickly lowered her eyes again. A flush spread high across her fair cheeks.

“My name is Higurashi Mayuri,” she said quietly, almost sheepishly, as she hazarded him another glance. “I’m your daughter.” 

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

This concludes the first arc of the Rebel Anthology 🙂 Hope you guys have enjoyed the series so far! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ll be putting this fic on a bit of a pause while I work on finishing up The Pact. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any updates in the interim, but there won’t be regular updates for this story like there have been over the past few months.

Have a great weekend, y’all <3

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