Kuroihi dared not breathe. 


Of all the people at the base to catch her, it had to be the general’s son. She was not ignorant to Sesshoumaru’s reputation and had seen the marks he often left on his ever-revolving roster of attendants. Only two had managed to last longer than a year in his service; the rest had begged the general to be released or mysteriously vanished. And now that same being, relentlessly cruel and cold as a winter storm, loomed over her. 


His jyaki; it was enormous, and she trembled as it weighed heavily upon her weary frame. 


Her mind raced to find justification for his scrutiny. There was no reason for him to pay her any mind; she’d only been tending to her duties. She’d been seen doing it, though. That was the crux of it: she’d been seen. As she understood him, Sesshoumaru needed little, if any, more reasoning than that.

Kuroihi cursed herself silently.

Fuyutoka would lash her mightily for this on top of whatever the general’s son chose to do to her. She’d been so close to being finished for the evening, and now this. Truly the gods were laughing at her from on high. 


She felt his gaze crawl along her rigid form. Just what he thought, she dared not venture a guess. Whatever he was about, she only prayed it would be quick and that he would get on with it. Unlike him, she did not have the leisure time to satiate his fleeting curiosity. 


He shifted; his tabi-wrapped foot mere inches away, the supports of his geta biting into the loose dirt.  His jyaki was crushing at this distance.

Her lungs burned for air, her head swam, and bright spots flashed across her vision. She was suffocating. As quietly as she could manage, Kuroihi forced herself to draw in just enough air to avoid fainting.


This wasn’t going to end well for her.

Sesshoumaru examined the frozen thing before him.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had seen what it had done with the fire, but he could not find any other indications of power about this creature.

Had it been a fluke; a one-time miracle? Surely something with youki as limited and feeble as this could not possess any true talent of note, and yet Sesshoumaru could not deny that he had not encountered such a skill before. There were demons that wielded fire, this was true and common enough, but the hanyou’s flames had been black and had given off a unique scent. It was molten, similar to magma, with a tinge.  


Why? How? 


His lips parted as he prepared to speak, but a soft sound from inside the castle caught his attention. Someone was coming; Fuyutoka judging from the telltale pattern and weight of footfalls. 


How bothersome, he thought, I will have to manufacture a reason to interrogate this creature in the near future. 


To be seen anywhere near the louse without such a reason would be deplorable enough, and he refused to be caught giving it even a moment’s consideration; at least, not tonight. With little more than a scoff, he left the hanyou with its face in the dirt and made his way through the entrance it had been intent on escaping into before. 


His senses had not failed him. He met Fuyutoka on his way outside. The hawk demon deferred to Sesshoumaru’s passing with a deep bow, his short quill-like hair rustling softly as the young daiyoukai passed. 


A thought struck Sesshoumaru. He paused, turning to address the Overseer. 


“Fuyutoka,” he began, his tone ringing with counterfeit concern. “I do believe your mongrel is off its leash. You should exercise more caution lest it escape and cause harm to my father’s vassals.” 


The hawk’s eyes flitted about as though searching for an explanation for Sesshoumaru’s words. He muttered the appropriate ‘yes, my lord’ as Sesshoumaru departed. It took a moment for Fuyutoka to understand what must have happened to justify such a comment, and Sesshoumaru allowed himself a smile at the sound of the hawk’s quickened stride as he continued outside. 

Kuroihi remained frozen until she saw the last flick of Sesshoumaru’s mokomoko disappear inside. She waited a moment longer to be sure he was truly gone.

Exactly what had just transpired was beyond her, and she was still shaken as she rose hesitantly to her feet to brush the dirt away from her clothes with trembling hands. 


Voices inside; Sesshoumaru’s, she was sure, and…Fuyutoka’s. 


Icy dread filled her belly as her ears perked and caught the sound of the Overseer’s hurried steps. She was halfway to the ground again as he emerged from inside.

His orange eyes flashed with rage at the prostrated hanyou. Kuroihi bit back a yelp when he buried his talon-like fingers in her hair, yanking her up again. She could barely make out his livid sputtering as he dragged her inside and down a darkened hallway where few ever went. 


He gave her a toss as he released her to sink to her knees once more, voice low and sharp to berate her. Kuroihi kept her head down, ears flat in the expected display of shame, but she was still too rattled from her encounter with Sesshoumaru for Fuyutoka’s scorn to reach her. 


His train of scolding paused when he realized it wasn’t having its usual effect on her. His hand flashed out, claws biting into her tender ear as he twisted it between his fingers, and Kuroihi swallowed down another cry of pain. He certainly had her attention now. 


“Don’t ignore me, you worm,” he hissed, “If you can’t handle a close encounter with your betters, then maybe you shouldn’t let yourself be seen.” He twisted harder, and Kuroihi resisted the urge to bare her fangs. “This never happens again; do you understand?” 


“Yes, honorable Overseer,” she managed through gritted teeth. 


Fuyutoka ‘humph’ed as he shoved her to the floor. She kept her face pressed against the polished wood until he disappeared.

Alone, she finally allowed herself a soft whine of pain as she stroked her bruised ear. 

Kuroihi wanted this night to be over, but there were chores to be done before she could sequester away. She did her best to focus as she worked, trying to push the memory of her encounter with the general’s son from her mind. But it clung as stubbornly as the frozen honey of his eyes. Her hackles rose in a flash of fearful paranoia at every sound or flit of shadow she didn’t immediately recognize. She still felt the weight of his gaze upon her, felt the ghost of his suffocating jyaki pressing in. 


Sesshoumaru was around every corner, she could swear; haunting her steps, waiting to pounce. The tangy hint of his venomous scent was everywhere, and it made the human part of her hysterical. 


She was thoroughly flustered by the time she was able to flee to the tenuous safety of her quarters. It was little more than a closet in one of the old storage rooms where barely anyone went anymore, but it was a space of her own away from the others and she was thankful for it. The alternative was to bed in the common room with the rest of the female staff. They heckled her enough throughout the day, who knew what they would do to her behind closed doors? 

  
Kuroihi finally began to calm as she settled onto her makeshift futon, pressing into the darkness of her small space. The room beyond was bathed in the moonlight spilling through the window on the far wall, and it illuminated the wood frame of the closet’s paper door. Any movement in the room would cast a shadow against those paper squares; she would see them long before they saw her. 


As she waited for sleep to take her, Kuroihi allowed her thoughts to wander.

More so now than ever before, her mind turned to escaping this place. She suspected Sesshoumaru’s attention would be lethal. She had absolutely no intention of dying here where she was treated, at best, as an annoying footnote.  She wanted more for her life than gruel to eat and ruined textiles to sleep on. She wanted the freedom to choose her own path, pursue her own interests, to exist beyond what fate had forced upon her at birth.


A life beyond these walls… How she longed for it. 


Escape would not be simple, she knew, for one could not easily slip the notice of Fuyutoka or the noses of the pure-blooded demons that comprised the staff. The way she managed to sneak in and out of the castle on her days of rest was miraculous enough. When she was noticed to be missing outside that allotted timeframe, she had no doubt that she would be hunted on principle. And, over and above the usual attentiveness of the guards, there was Sesshoumaru’s recent knowledge of her very existence to consider. She knew she had not a chance in hell if he was the one to give chase.

She prayed with all her heart that Sesshoumaru would simply forget about her. How captivating could a mere hanyou truly be to the likes of him anyway? It wasn’t as though he had seen-

Her thoughts screeched to a halt, panic creeping painfully into her chest.

Had he seen it; her black fire? She considered the timing of his arrival, recalled how she hadn’t sensed him at all until after her work was finished. It was completely possible he had been watched from afar. No, she was certain of it. He had seen, and now he knew.

And she was fucked.

Sesshoumaru woke early the following morning. 


His dreams had been filled with battlefield victories and they left him in an affable mood. It was not uncommon for him to rise before most of the other denizens of the castle-base, thus he was unsurprised to find his attendant Kazawa kneeling outside his quarters. 


“Tea,” he commanded from his futon just loud enough to be heard.

Kazawa rose wordlessly to comply with his master’s desire. 


While he waited for his servant’s return, Sesshoumaru stretched languidly and shrugged into a simple yukata. By the time Kazawa arrived with a tray of tea and Aoki in tow, Sesshoumaru had settled on his zabuton. Before him, the male Kazawa served his tea and delivered the news of the morning; behind him, the female Aoki drew a comb carefully through his silvery locks. All was as it should be for the moment. 


Sesshoumaru was not attached to the pair, but there was something to be said for the fact that they were the only two in his montage of servants to not succumb to their own weaknesses and flee from him. Kazawa and Aoki understood their places and willingly submitted to them. They did not argue or fuss, did not complain or dally or contrive excuses. Sesshoumaru found them as agreeable as one could find their underlings. 


He sipped his tea as Kazawa finished reporting on the prospective weather for the day-overcast and chilled from the approaching rain- and found nothing of any particular importance he need tend to. He was pleased by this, for his mind was already wandering back to his encounter the night before with the half-demon creature. 


Any minor power a hanyou possesses can be traced back to its youkai parent; he thought. Surely this one is recorded somewhere in father’s collection of notable family lines. 


It did not take long for Kazawa to acquire permission from the general on Sesshoumaru’s behalf to examine those scrolls. The young daiyoukai spent the better part of the day sifting through them. He’d read over them before as a matter of practical interest but found himself frustrated this time. He discovered nothing about the black fire he’d seen the half-breed produce. There were several families that had fire-dependent abilities, the usual records of Kitsune and their fox magics, even a few dragon lines, but none of their flames were noted to be black. 


He moved on to the scrolls the general had brought home from one of his trips to the continent across the ocean, but was similarly frustrated. The characters he found were familiar to him since his native language used them as well, but their arrangements were foreign, their meanings were, therefore, unintelligible. Even when he managed to find those reading something akin to ‘black fire’, he could make out nothing else. 


Sesshoumaru knew his father could read these, but asking him to translate them without significant cause would raise suspicion. He was not willing to confess, even to himself, his unseemly curiosity for the half-demon creature. 


He would have to approach this from a different angle. With a plan in mind, he sought out the Inu no Taishou personally.


He explored the usual areas his father could be found this time of day, but to no avail. He stepped onto one of the decks stretching out from the third floor of the central castle tower but did not find his father anywhere in sight within the grounds. He would simply have to wait for the general’s return. As he stepped back inside the castle, he dissected the myriad of scents that surrounded him in his usual habit and discovered something curious. 


Intertwined with it all-silk, bamboo, lacquer, youki-was something molten, something rich; something…hanyou.

He blinked as he realized it was a scent that had existed in this place for quite some time and that he had simply been overlooking. Strange, for he was usually quite perceptive about these things. He forced himself to turn his focus to other, more constructive endeavors before his thoughts ran away with him. It was only a half-breed, after all, and it wasn’t as though the thing would be leaving anytime soon. He could parse the scent further another time.


As he went about the rest of his waning afternoon, however, he found his thoughts returning to the creature.

Hints of that molten scent cropped up everywhere, passing almost as soon as his nose detected them and leaving no hint as to where they had come from. It was all around him, and yet nowhere at all, and it was becoming irksome. Every instance brought to mind the scene from the previous night, and by the time he had settled into a game of shougi with the Warmaster around sunset, he was thoroughly distracted.

Finally, he stopped trying to fight his insistent curiosity. Surely, his father’s companion knew something of use in respect to the half-demon. He would do just as well as the general himself.


“Rekkonji,” Sesshoumaru said, addressing the elder demon seated across from him. 


The jackal halted his consideration of the board and gave the young daiyoukai his attention. “Lord Sesshoumaru?” 


“Where is my honored father?” 


Rekkonji snorted a laugh and muttered for a moment before answering. “Brutish, as always… The Inu no Taishou has taken the day to secure the lands surrounding the base. He will return after the moon has risen for the evening.” 


“I see. Then you will answer my questions in his stead,” Sesshoumaru declared authoritatively. 


Rekkonji’s brow twitched perceptively with irritation at being spoken to in such a manner by this pup, but he straightened his already rigid posture and gave the overly-entitled prince the expected respectful nod. “It is an honor to be of service to my lord’s heir.” 


Simpering bastard, Sesshoumaru thought. “Tell me what you know concerning demons that control fire.” 


“Does your honorable self mean to inquire about fire sprites or beings more similar to the Kitsune?” 


Sesshoumaru considered for a moment. “Similar to that Panther wench I found on the battlefield; Karan.” 


Rekkonji similarly took a moment to consider and nodded approvingly. “Generally, such abilities run in a demon’s family. Where Karan specifically is concerned, it is not uncommon to see lines of greater demons such as hers with no specializations spawn elemental foci. If you recall, her sisters controlled ice and flowers, and their brother channeled the power of lightning.” 


“Indeed, I do,” Sesshoumaru said dismissively, refusing to let the Warmaster derail the conversation. “The wench’s fire held no unique traits and was a natural hue; quite unlike the fire of foxes, which is teal and capable of multiple feats. Do other such variations exist?” 


“The world is filled with an incomprehensible array of creatures and abilities; it is quite possible, your lordship.” 


“I have previously encountered a flame-like skill that froze its victims instead of burning them. This one was blue in color. It would seem the hue of a flame is an indication of its traits.” 


Rekkonji’s disinterested nod only encouraged Sesshoumaru to continue musing aloud. He did not need the Warmaster to participate in the conversation directly; his body language would be enough. Sesshoumaru plucked up one of the small wood tiles he had captured from the jackal, stroking the stark black character on its face that read ‘knight’ with a clawed thumb.


“If such is the case, would it not be interesting to encounter a being that wielded, perhaps, flames of a more unnatural hue. Green, or purple, or black? What fantastic abilities might those have?”

Rekkonji’s shoulders tightened involuntarily. His dark eyes, touched with red, narrowed slightly at the aloof young male that reached forward gracefully with two poised fingers to slide a tile across the board. 


“Black, your highness?” 

“Yes,” Sesshoumaru continued airily. “What sort of creature would it be, to possess such a unique power, do you think?” 


Rekkonji’s eyes narrowed as he stared the young daiyoukai down. “If your lordship will allow me, I would suggest that perhaps the desire to encounter and defeat both powerful and interesting opponents has driven your imagination away far from the strictures of reality.” 


It was Sesshoumaru’s turn to fix the jackal with a darkened gaze. His tone remained disturbingly even. “Would you now… Are you not the one who speaks on considering all possibilities in life, as to be better prepared for any challenge that may arise?”


“When there is evidence for such a possibility, yes. Respectfully, my advice is not to be taken as an excuse to be nonsensical.” Rekkonji’s gaze did not shift as he slid one of the wood tiles across the board. “You are in check, my prince.” 


The two males held each other’s gaze for a tense moment before simultaneously glancing down at the board. Sesshoumaru had no interest in this silly game now, and he flipped his king piece over in defeat before rising to depart without excusing himself. He did not see the way Rekkonji narrowed his deep ruby eyes suspiciously at his back as he turned a tile over and over through his fingers.

He knows something. Sesshoumaru thought as he passed through the halls. That bastard knows something and is refusing to tell this Sesshoumaru.

There was little else he despised more in this life than being refused.

The jackal’s responses had only served to increase the young demon’s curiosity about the black fire he’d seen the hanyou make. When the general returned that evening, his reaction to the Warmaster’s news of Sesshoumaru’s query was similar to Rekkonji’s; and Sesshoumaru silently cursed. Even his own father was keeping from him. Did they think him too young? Too naïve? Was the truth of that fire truly so momentous? He decided then and there that he would discover it for himself, and he knew exactly the manner he would go about it.

His father and the Warmaster never need know.