Inuyasha: Girl Lost In Time

Chapter 9: The Sword

Chapter 9: The Sword

It's so cold... Am I frozen?

I can't see anything, but I know my eyes are open. Only darkness fills every crack. I am not sitting or standing... or laying; it feels like... I am floating. So cold...

"Wake up." Soft words echo through the chill and shadows, it's a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, so familiar.

How'd I get here? Where am I? All I remember was bickering with Inuyasha's brother and a large demon. Maybe there was a light...

"Wake up," She repeats. Her voice is almost too soothing; it makes me want to stay in this darkness regardless of how cold I feel. Where have I heard her voice before?

Beyond the darkness, there is the faintest sound of battle, metal on flesh. The smell of decay fills my nostrils and it burns. My body tries to recoil from the scent and sound, but it is unmoving. I am a statue, frozen in a dark abyss. Those sounds are familiar as well.

An image of a pair of brown eyes staring at me through the darkness, then red lips below them. She smiles, her eyes are warm like pools of chocolate. I know those eyes; I've seen them fiercely fight off hordes of demons every night in my dreams.

"Who are you...?" I hear myself ask but the words, I know they didn't leave my lips yet they echo in the darkness.

"Wake up. Inuyasha needs you," she replies. "Wake up."

Inuyasha...

That light... I remember it now. The demon was coming towards me so quickly, and then a flash of red. Inuyasha! It was Inuyasha, who jumped in front of that woman and I. And then she let out a bright light...

Where is Inuyasha? I need to wake up.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

A vacuuming sound fills the darkness, it's loud and overwhelming. I want to cover my ears, but I still can't move. Deep within the darkness, there is a sparkle, like glitter. It gets bigger and whiter—faster towards me until finally it blinds me. The whiteness covers me in a heat wave and washes my entire being and then-

Nothing.

I open my eyes expecting to be burned by some omniscient light but I'm staring at clumps on clumps of brown, decaying grass at my side. Beyond the grass, between openings, I see a dark murky pond with ominous fog rolling over it.

Rolling my head straight, I notice the sky above is an odd mix of grey and black but yet no stars, no moon, no nothing to signify it is a sky at all. It is eerie and moving without clouds. Narrowing my eyes suspiciously, I move my arms to push myself up.

That's when I see them.

Ugly little things. imp demons—I know them from all the signs that litter the rivers and streams back in the present, a bogeyman kind of creature for kids that adults used to keep them from getting close to water. And yet here they are, much like the demon I saw next to Sesshomaru. These are different. They have a grey tone to their nasty green skin and look slimy. They have webbed hands and feet that are bare of any clothes; their eyes are wide without lids and large like aliens, yellow to the very center where cat-like slits stare at me. Their weird pointed mouths gape open at me as if something shocks them.

I glare at them, angry that they are in my presence, and then I spot their tiny hands reaching for rusty chains that lie next to their feet.