"LIKE I CARE? OR KNOW? SESSHOMARU, ARE YOU -"

"Then your mother will suffer."

"I'M NOT STUPID, SESSHOMARU! She's been dead for sixty years! You can't fool me -"

"Playing the fool, Inuyasha? Or is that simply all that you are? I am Sesshomaru. Death is beneath me, and the binding of a soul a simple task."

"Inuyasha..."

Her voice is faint.

"Don't do it - I've died once already -"

The ogre tightens its grip - 

And loses the relevant arm.

Inuyasha's really very fast when he wants to be, and in the moments between the grip tightening and her bones starting to creak, he's just not there any more, and neither is the ogre's arm. Various small pieces of it are, though!

"Kagome, get my mother out of here!"

"Right!"

She's already standing, having decided about a second ago that the ogre is actually big enough that she could, plausibly, hit it with an arrow. Now she throws her momentum towards Inuyasha's mother, all thoughts about how insane this is taking a back seat to figuring out how to help the poor woman to her feet and half-drag her in the direction of their sad little camp.

"No," says Sesshomaru, who is at least as fast as Inuyasha and is headed straight for him - or possibly her, she's not sure -

And - Kagome is running to support ?Inuyasha's mother? and Inuyasha is falling to turn to protect her and Sesshomaru is chasing after them - 

And then ?Inuyasha's mother? does - something magical - 

And then she and Inuyasha and Kagome are all Elsewhere.

(Specifically, they are in a nice if slightly otherworldly garden by a riverbank; there's the faint outline of trees off in the distance, and a pagoda. Kagome is some way off from Inuyasha and his mother.

She's also feeling astonishingly tired, though maybe not, considering how soft the grass under her is, and how late it already was...)

Being a fantasy protagonist freaking sucks. She's not even surprised that she feels exhausted. Of course she would be exhausted after all of this.

Still, as peaceful as it feels here, she was in a life-threatening situation about five seconds ago, and doesn't know where Sesshomaru is; this is not a good time to collapse. She tries very hard to sit up, to get a sense of her surroundings, and - can't.

It's like a night terror, if she's had one of those. She can attempt to issue orders to her body, but somewhere between her firmly intending to take an action and her body actually moving, nothing actually... happens.

Kagome has had those kind of a lot! They're not supposed to happen in real life! What gives!

She tries calling out, but that doesn't work, either. About the only thing she can move is her eyes, so about the only thing she can do is pick something to watch.

She turns her attention to Inuyasha and his mom, trying to figure out what's going on with them.

They're quietly talking, by the streambed. Inuyasha looks exhausted, too, and also - at peace? Whatever it is is really unfamiliar.

"... Where are we?"

"At the crossroads between this world and the next. I will need to return, soon enough."

She will give a weary but fond smile. "Inuyasha. I am so pleased to see you again. You've grown so splendidly..."

"It's been... a long time since you died..."

"I'm so sorry for leaving you."

"It wasn't your fault." He looks so tired.

... And he doesn't seem to have noticed that, reflected in the stream, his mother has no face.

Okay, that seems like a bad sign. A tell, the sort of thing you get when the person in front of you is actually a monster with glamour, and not your dead mother, which really should have been obvious from the fact that mothers don't come back to life and Inuyasha knows that. 

(It is, admittedly, pretty hard to figure out which things to just go with, here. But this - paralysis and a dead mother with an illusory form brought back by a hostile force - this is not something to just go with.)

If it's a glamour, then Kagome should be able to see through it. Seeing things is her entire power set, other than the occasional magic arrow. She has no idea how to actually activate it, but she's going to concentrate as hard as she can on seeing what's really there. Maybe it'll be easier if she's looking for it.

It's a strain the first moment, and then - focusing on the thing that doesn't fit - it all shatters. She's actually trapped in some kind of magical horrorscape; the grass is empty reeds on marshy ground, the trees old and dying, the water a drowned swamp full of corpses instead of a pure and clear stream, the air stagnant, lit only by marsh-lights instead of the clear son. She's been completely wrapped in magical chains by those ethereal gobliny thingies that were escorting the Thing That Is Not Inuyasha's Mother, who is embracing him in by the swamp's edge. He's half-asleep, and her hands are digging in to his back; whatever curse she's wielding has successfully seized him.

(Inuyasha's reflection, in the water, is as a small child, asleep in his mother's arms.)

Okay. This is bad. Everything here is illusionary, Inuyasha's mother is - probably working for Sesshomaru, which means Sesshomaru must still be around, Inuyasha has been caught and may be hurt, and she still can't move.

Luckily, she has a hitchhiker!

"Oh, Kagome! Who would have thought that the person seeking the grave would be Sesshomaru, Master Inuyasha's older brother? He may well be too formidable a foe..."