Invictus by mandy

I Thank whatever God May Be For My Unconquerable Soul

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. I don't own the poem that has inspired this fanfiction. 

Authors note: This shouldn't be a long fiction. Im looking at this being a max of like... 10 chapters, but Ill keep everyne updated. Im excited about it. 

Invictus

By: William Ernest Henley

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul."

Chapter one:

I suffer the dark, the dampness of my living quarters, the chill that creeps like time, killing me slowly.

Time.

My eyes shift towards the southern wall of my stone pen and find nothing, still. I forget sometimes that this isn’t my home in the village. I don’t have a window here. The sun doesn’t shine were I am.

 I look forward once more, to the door, the only place with a crack that allows an outside view of my cage. Its solid stone, spelled to repel me, but my captor has become lax in his up keep of his prison because there is a small crack. Just tiny enough that I can see the torch outside my cell, the thick stone that lines the corridor leading to my cage, and the blood stained floor. 

Maybe he hasn’t been lax and this is a form of mental torture.

See the stains, the only remains of the person who placed them there.

 See how deep red they are, like crimson dye.

See the break in the stone where something connected, a weapon that thrills in taking.

-You’re next.

Can you hear the screams that still echo?

-You’re next.

A phantom in such agony, they never left.

 -You’re next.

I’ve already wasted too many breaths thinking on how that blood got there, my imagination is much more an enemy than an ally in moments like this. But even with my grand imagination, it isn’t hard to conceive the agony whoever stained the floor has gone through.  Suffering echoes here.

I hear them crying, sobbing openly in despair. They are broken.

I hear them screaming in fury. I hear them spitting blood and screeching till they have no voice left. And sometime I feel the ache of desolation building behind my eyes, because I know no one is coming. A fire so hot, that my throat is scorched and left dry enough that I can’t breathe. My mouth gapes in an effort to draw air, but nothing comes. I ache to scream, but won’t give him that pleasure. So even though I want to release it, I swallow it down and shake with its intensity. Because I am alone; and I am strong.  

Sometime I think I can hear his voice, my captor.

Sometimes I dream of his face, first meeting and last, and I wake up shuddering.  

Sometimes I am desperate and I reach out with tendrils of my power. Stroking the door like a lost lover, coxing it open, only to watch it grab my power and slam it back at me, tumbling me across the wet floor. And then I am angry.

He was smart to think of that or else I would have been out of here as fast as he had walked away.

I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could over throw my captor. But I wasn’t the same helpless little girl either. I was a fighter with scars to proof it. My hand reaches up to my chest, rubbing the puckered scar; just barely visible through my ripped top.

My eyes catch the glint of a light flickering weakly through the crack.

Movement?

I am too eager. I have to contain myself, hide my emotions. I already know this. But my heart still races.

Change is better than stagnation, and I feel like I have been stagnant too long, a prisoner to my mind.

My ears are sharper than my eyes. They hear the echo of heavy armed feet stomping down the corridor to my cage, the splat of water in my prison cell’s left corner, the steady thump of my heart, the constant rush of blood, the screams, but something else, something new.  

I turn myself so my right ear is more directly focused on the door and catch it.  A slight ‘shhhhh’ing is heard.

Shoes? Clothing? A weapon?

My throat clenches in terror of the unknown, but I remain physically unaffected.

I don’t know.

The noise continues for a small minute and then vanishes.

 I know he’s trying to intimidate me but I have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to justify. He has no reason to hold me. And yet he does.

My mind turns inward, mediations.

I was trained for my position. Or I should say I have been trained now. When I first arrive this wasn’t the case. But now, now I am the village miko for Edo. Kaede and Miroku took over my training. Honing me like a weapon. And I have learned that I am powerful. I am connected to the earth in ways most will never be. I am a child of nature.

It heeds my call.

I am all. I am mother.

And I focus by counting, dropping deeper into my zen with numbers.

565.

The number of breaths I’ve taken since waking up.  

The cell fades.

22 years of living.

My environment warms and grows.

One lover.                         

Mental barriers break and impossible becomes possible.

Million of children.

My powers thrum through me, easing the ache, rejuvenating.

450 stone bricks.

The stones lap at me like tiny tongues, they are not dead and they understand I am more. They want to do my bidding.

One spell that repels.

I tell them to fall. I watch them in my mind wiggle, and then I am snatched.

My eyes fly open, my heart races, my mind is fuzzy.

It isn’t healthy to go as deep as I did, and it’s less healthy to be pulled from it.

I am weak, shaken, and unable to stand; but forced to.

I have no sense of time. I can’t remember the place. I only remember stones, a spell, and a door.

My arms quake, my teeth chatter, my eyes are rolling, and the colors are melding. My world is melting.

So cold, I feel the cold now, the wetness of my cloths, the dampness of my skin, hair, and body. I am flooded with ice. I can feel it crawling like needles through my veins. So cold!

Something is holding me up. My eyes look to the floor and notice my toes just barely holding the ground in place. I hold the ground down. And again the world rolls.

Feet.

My feet are dangling now, unnaturally shaking, and my hands are grabbing something.

I feel a nagging in my mind, like a nat, a buzzing that won’t quit.

Quit.

Quit

Quiet.

I am too far.

And then, I’m not.

My world comes into focus and I am gasping. Air won’t come. The room is suffocating me!

Not the room. My hands claw around something warm and I force my eyes up from the floor. Up a pair of pristine pants, a beautifully sheathed sword, up a male torso, and into a pair of moonlight eyes flickering with rage.

“Se-ssho-maru.”

“Miko.”

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chapter two to come...