Sesshoumaru growled again, his vision going red as he summoned his power to him in waves of blinding light. Magatsuhi’s head tilted faintly in question a moment before the bonds of demonic flesh around Sesshoumaru exploded, the daiyoukai charging through the youki storm in his true and terrible form. Liquid poison seared from his gnashing jaws, his claws rending the broken earth anew as he lunged at Magatsuhi and tore his head from his shoulders in a single, savage bite.

From the neck down, Sesshoumaru’s opponent disintegrated, yet from within the daiyoukai’s own cavernous mouth, there was the echo of mocking laughter.

Snarling in disgust, the daiyoukai spat out Magatsuhi’s severed head, vile blue lips leering up at him still. The canyon rumbled with Sesshoumaru’s low roar as his enemy’s body regenerated before his slitted eyes.

“If that was your best effort,” the demon sneered, his arm splitting into three barbed tendrils, “then this fight will be brief.”

Sesshoumaru leapt aside as Magatsuhi’s hooked appendages shot toward him. Reverting to his humaniod form in midair, he unsheathed Tessaiga in an arc of radiant gold and severed all three attacking limbs at once. Yet, just as before, Magatsuhi’s tentacled arm regrew in a matter of moments and lanced toward him again, sparking as its blades crashed against Tessaiga’s brilliant edge.

“Perhaps you should stick to battling young women,” Magatsuhi remarked snidely, deflecting Sesshoumaru’s slash with an easy swipe. “At least against them, you prove yourself an equal match.”

Fangs bared, Sesshoumaru knocked his enemy back with a vicious blow, his follow-up strike cleaving Magatsuhi from hip to shoulder.

“Did I hit a nerve?” the demon chuckled, rejoining his sundered flesh. “You carved up that priestess of yours so nicely, indeed…Sealing her power away within me was a simple task, after that.”

At this declaration, Sesshoumaru faltered, scarcely avoiding the jet of razored tentacles that streaked toward him.

“Oh, you did not realize, it seems.” Magatsuhi’s dark smile widened. “By the time I delivered her to Naraku, your prize miko was as harmless as a dove—just waiting to be plucked.”

Outwardly, Sesshoumaru seethed—yet inwardly, he despaired. Without her power, Kagome truly was defenseless…

“She is quite beautiful, your human—I can see why you are so rabid for her,” the demon continued in false sympathy, blasting Sesshoumaru back in a shockwave of miasma. “I, too, once desired a priestess.”

As Sesshoumaru recovered with a grimace, Magatsuhi advanced, seizing the daiyoukai around the neck. Jeering red eyes bore into his own.

“Mortal girls have a certain appeal, do they not? So soft, so sweet.” Magatsuhi’s grip tightened, venom sizzling through Sesshoumaru’s skin. “I wonder if Naraku has tasted her yet, your tender, little peach.”

Cold rage thundered through Sesshoumaru, his own poisonous claws shearing through Magatsuhi’s stranglehold like straw. Thinly, the daiyoukai smiled, his enemy’s expression darkening as he whipped Tessaiga around in a sweeping upward blaze, its flaring kenatsu ripping the demon of the Shikon no Tama asunder.

“If he has,” the daiyoukai said coolly to Magatsuhi’s shredded remains as they fell, “then for him your fate will be a distant dream.”

Sheathing Tessaiga with a click, he turned away, his eyes lifting toward the spot in the sky where the portal had appeared. Even now, Jakken and the others must be fighting Naraku still.

He had to find a way to reach them. A way to reach her.

Kagome…

Still gazing upward, he stepped forward—as the center of his back ignited in pain.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi