Inuyasha slides a little down the tree bark, looking astonished at the arrow in his chest. Kikyou approaches him from the flaming village, holding her bloodied arm. She looks sad when she gets closer, saying Inuyasha's name. He thinks hers in return, although he looks more dazed and confused than anything. Kikyou holds up the jewel, expression all the more hurt when she staggers a sentence about this little thing being the reason for her betrayal.
Kikyou closes the gap between the two of them, hugging him as best she can, you know with him being pinned to that tree and everything. She says that she's not going to let him die by himself. It's now that he remembers that she died following after him that day.
Elsewhere in the mist, Miroku looks around like Inuyasha before him, wondering where this is and where everyone else got to. There's a marbled background behind him that is less like mist and more like a youkai energy, right before he hears a hiss coming from his right hand. Miroku lifts his hand to examine the cloth and beads covering his palm, and the hiss turns to a faint whooshing sound, a sound he identifies with confusion as the air being drawn into his Kazaana.
Confusion turns to terror when the wind draws in its cloth barrier, becoming stronger.
Still ELSEWHERE, Sango wanders through the mist, wondering where everyone else has gone. It's not long before she steps on the edge of a puddle of blood, in which lies a familiar right hand decorated with a palm-protecting glove and beads. That's right, Sango looks up to the horrifying sight of all her new friends dead and slumped like rag dolls across the ground. As she takes in the tragedy with disbelief and horror, she hears a swish through the air behind her.
Sango falls to her knees beside Miroku's body and twists, likely with screaming pain, toward an approaching Kohaku. As she tries to come to terms that HE'S the one who did this to everyone, Kohaku thanks her. Since she always protected his life, it was easier for him to finish his work for Naraku, which is apparently murdering all of the people around him. Over another shot of the rest of the group lying dead everywhere, Kohaku asks Sango to die soon, very politely. I guess she's STILL his older sister, after all.
Sango's chest and shoulder are slashed, and she falls sideways, tears leaking from her eyes.
Naraku begins to monologue about how weak people's hearts are over the backdrop of the misty woods surrounding him. He lists sadness, fear and delusion as a few of those little darknesses, which even a slight amount of make it possible for the creepers in the forest to touch them. From my experience, creepers tend to be far too EXPLOSIVE to touch anyone.
Naraku goes on to say that each of these weak-ass people will be consumed (or have been already) by the illusions of their own personal darkness, which leads to the consumption of their souls in turn. He looks down at Kikyou, who is yet again having a little snooze, to say that even her beloved Inuyasha is going to be driven to his illusionary death soon.
As per his expectation, however, Naraku has noticed that Kagome is the only person not affected by the spell. She's wandering the woods looking for everyone else just like they were, but she's not plagued by nightmare hallucinations. As she walks the ground looking around her for her missing companions, Kagome walks over some crackling vines. She looks down at them in distrust, mumbling about how unpleasant they feel beneath her feet. Also about how they look like regular vines but it looks like they're moving.
These are the creepers Naraku refers to, when he says that Kagome is being grasped by them, but her lack of dark feelings makes it impossible for them to get at her soul. Are we SURE she lacks dark feelings? I mean, wasn't she just angsting over her jealousy that Inuyasha was thinking about Kikyou earlier? Or does jealousy not count as a dark feeling?
Anyway, Kagome continues to walk, but stops short and hides with her back to a tree, sweating. She's stumbled upon where Naraku is hovering over Kikyou in the tree. Kagome begins to ready her bow, thinking that Naraku hasn't noticed her yet, and prepares to act even though her heart is hammering.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Far more disturbing than I remembered. All those characters I love suffering gruesome, painful deaths is visceral, especially considering how much DETAIL went into each one. Inuyasha was basically occupying a corpse for that first part; he couldn't talk, couldn't move, his eyes were glazed and without life. That little decision made the whole scene so much more horrific, because it encourages the reader to think about what it would be like to have your consciousness trapped in a body that you can't command. It's no wonder Inuyasha gave up on the idea of convincing Kikyou that they were both tricked by Naraku after such a short time. What else was there to do but go quietly into that good night when even his voice wouldn't work. All he can do is listen to the lamentations of a woman he loved, knowing that all he can do now to quell her pain is to die with her. There's no other option, no other choice.
And the bones crunching and splintering in Miroku's arm as his Kazaana starts to pull it in was TERRIFYING to me. To consider how much pain that must induce is a little sickening. Seeing Sango's illusion of everyone lying slaughtered on the ground was just heartbreaking, moving into the uncanny horror territory when Kohaku came along expressing pleasure at being so murderous. All of these scenes hit on just about every level of disturbed I could possibly be. The only way I could have been more disturbed is if we had seen Shippou hallucinate his own death as in relation to his father's. But I think that would have been a bit too much to handle, so I'm glad RT didn't go there. She didn't want to, given how she made a concerted effort not to show too much of Shippou in Sango's dark fantasy.
But while RT didn't WANT to go anywhere terrible with Shippou, she COULD HAVE. With Kagome, she COULDN'T. Where all Kagome's companions have legitimately dark pasts that could not only come back to haunt them, but KILL them, Kagome doesn't have that at all. The worst thing she can muster is the jealousy she feels for Kikyou. It's not enough to create an illusionary death because you'd be hard pressed to figure out a scenario in which jealousy could actually KILL you. So, while it's an unpleasant emotion that sucks, it's not quite as dire as the others.
Then again, maybe the reason Kagome and Shippou were immune to Naraku's spell was because they weren't explicitly targeted by his douchebaggery. All the illusionary deaths he created were, after all, direct results of his own abuses of the characters in them.
OR, RT and by extension Naraku just forgot about Shippou's existence for a while. Occam's Razor and all that.
No comments:
Post a Comment