Birth of a Valkyrie by Maya
Prologue: Death is Kinda Shitty
Hello! friends and welcome to a story that I have decided to write. Before we continue, I do not claim any of the character associated with Inuyasha. This is all for fun, I gain nothing from posting this and all characters and belong to their respective parties. This is my first story, please be kind. I would love critiques and review, they are much appreciated.
Kagome could feel her breath coming more slowly now. Her wounds were bleeding rapidly staining the ground beneath her. She could feel the world changing, collapsing on her. It was different, she expected to see what her life could have been, all her wants and needs flashing before her eyes. She expected a sense of peace. No, that wasn’t quite truthful, she’d never expected death. Maybe a wound that would change her appearance, a gnarly scar that she would come to see as character growth. All she had now was anger. This wasn’t fair, this wasn’t how she was supposed to end. She was the Shikon Miko for fuck’s sake! The moment she starts to believe in all the destiny crap and this happens! It wasn’t her fault she was from 500 years in the future and didn’t know about any of the shit in this era. She’d spent the past four years making up for being born the reincarnation of some random priestess who decided to be cremated with a cursed jewel.
Kagome’s anger fed into her limbs, reviving the briefest notions of sensation, if only momentarily. She could feel her shaky fist gripping at the blood soaked grass next to her. The grass caressed her hand, almost apologizing for not crushing and crumbling beneath her meager force. It would be over soon, her breaths came even more slowly now. They wouldn’t find her in time, all that would be left was the corpse of an angry teenager who never got to grow into herself. They would find a child who never quite got the chance to be comfortable in her own body, a babe who’d become a mother herself at the tender age of 14. It would be pitiful and sad and pathetic.
Kagome knew she was crying even though she could no longer feel her tears. Her frustration spilled from her eyes in tears and fell from her lips in broken, bloody prayers. “No. I don’t wanna go,” she pleaded with God, gods, spirits, who or whatever put their ear to the lips of the dying girl. “I have a mission. I have things to do. I need to at least say goodbye to Shippo.”
Suddenly the world lost it color, all things gray except the sky, still an inky black. smoke seemed to appear around Kagome, small gangly imps rose from the fog surrounding her body. Ah, the soul snatchers. She truly was dying, they were here to take her soul to the underworld. She’d only seen them once before when Sesshoumaru revived the small child who traveled with the western lord. She was so sunny, and happy even though she followed such a cold hearted being. Kagome was pulled from her final musing as a snatch climbed on her chest. It moved methodically as though it had done this, millions of times, which it probably had. It took a small hook from its belt and swung down on Kagome’s chest.
A painful pulse radiated through kagome’s being. She could see the other imps lining up on either side of her body filling out similar hook-like tools. In unison, they struck at different parts of her body. Waves of pain bounced around her soul as they began pulling and wiggling their tools. Kagome whimpered, it hurt awfully. She should, at least, have the gift of dying without all of this struggle. This was unbelievable, the phrase you die as you have lived popped into Kagome’s head. Had she struggled in life? The constant battles, the trekking across Japan, the lack of general bathing! Indeed, she had struggled, but she’d also lived vibrantly, taking every piece of happiness she could find in this brutal and unforgiving world.
Images of Shippo cuddling into her arms struck a chord in the dying priestess. Her poor kit, she couldn’t leave him without parents again. It had taken him so long to trust that every time she went down the well she would return. Kagome closed her eyes embittered by the idea that she was leaving Shippo alone. It hurt more than the soul snatchers currently hacking away at what she could only assume was her soul. Kagome bit her tongue, the pain of the hooks faded quickly, she could feel herself becoming weightless.
The boundaries of her corpse began to fade away, toes, fingers, blood, the grass, all distant memories. Her whimpers long ago stopped played in her ears, a final reminder of life. Like death, it was soft and fragile, so wholly different from the life she lived. As the last of her soul drew away from her body and even the sound of her own dying whimpers faded into nothingness Kagome let out a death rattle, an agonizing shriek, a final marker on this plane. Her last hope was that someone heard, that someone knew she hadn’t gone quietly.