Sesshoumaru alighted at last on the cliffs of a blackened, desolate canyon, his trailing band of humans and demons following suit.

Long ago, this place had been the site of a ferocious battle between daiyoukai, and decades later, the land had yet to recover. Once a lush valley, the earth where he stood was hard and lifeless, the ground gouged open by the dark, demonic fire that had ripped through the land, splitting it like mud in the sun.

Black dust shimmered in the air as Sesshoumaru walked along, heat rising even now through the soles of his boots. Perhaps like his father, he, too, would meet his end in this accursed place–though the thought did not trouble him as it once would have.

He had only one concern, now.

“Sesshoumaru-sama,” the monk spoke dourly from behind him, “I sense a malevolent presence approaching.”

“A-aye, milord,” Jakken echoed nervously.

Sesshoumaru sensed it as well, his eyes narrowing as they lifted to the sky. He had not expected Naraku to expose the path to his stronghold so blatantly, but as the air darkened and parted above them, he could see it—the peaked roofs of a towering, ghostly castle lurking in the distant gloom.

“Guard yourselves,” the daiyoukai warned as purple vapor began to spill through the gap, obscuring all. “This demon’s miasma is more potent than Naraku’s.”

As the noxious mist thickened, Sesshoumaru’s hand went to Tessaiga. If Naraku was fool enough to provide him with an opening to Kagome, then he would take it—Magatsuhi be damned. Rising swiftly, he called his power around him in a flickering blaze, preparing to charge the gate and its keeper head-on.

Masked and defended, his followers ascended with him. The portal remained open before them still, only a short span of poisonous air separating them from it—until a sudden slew of barbed tentacles drove them back, Sesshoumaru most viciously of all.

One hooked point cleaved deeply through the muscle of his right arm, a jet of blood streaming from him as he crashed to the gorge below. Dangling in his weakened hold, Tessaiga reverted, Sesshoumaru healing himself in a burst of youki as his gaze returned upward—to the portal now closing swiftly above him. Gritting his fangs in desperation, he lunged toward it again, bands of demonic flesh constricting around him in midair and slamming him back down to the blasted earth once more.

In vain, he glared toward the sealing sky, where his recovered allies hovered still, looking between Sesshoumaru and the shrinking portal in indecision. With a furious snarl, he decided for them.

“Go!” Sesshoumaru shouted savagely as he strained at the venomous bonds that ensnared him, watching their jolted forms vanish through the gateway an instant before it closed.

I am the one this foul demon seeks, the daiyoukai knew, bitterness smothering him more oppressively than the miasma that surrounded him.

Breathing heavily through it all, he lowered his baleful stare, his assailant materializing at last through the haze. Red eyes gleamed at him like chips of burning coal, beset in a pale, marked face not unlike his own. Blue lips lifted toward him in a jeering smile.

“Sesshoumaru-sama,” Magatsuhi greeted in dark amusement, the swirling breeze shadowing his eldritch features with ash.

At the daiyoukai’s low growl, the demon of Shikon no Tama smiled even broader, a wreath of scythe-like appendages sprouting from his back. 

“You,” he said lowly, “are mine.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi