Foxfire || A Nine-tailed Fox Fantasy

🎐[4] Run away

You decide to sprint.

You don't hesitate for a second longer and sprint in the opposite direction.

There's no way that you're following a talking vixen right into your doom. Your sneakers tear through the cover of fallen leaves, dirty snow and undergrowth smothering the forest floor.

The vixen thankfully doesn't follow you as you flee. Your hands push past the low-lying branches, twigs of bushes and vines out of your path. The moon provides ample light for you to see and dodge the moss-encrusted trunks of the wild oaks and maples. These peculiar trees clearly tower over their urban counterparts, scaling heights that you would have commonly associated with red woods. The smell of rot, dung and decay lays hidden under the sweet and fishy perfume of the forest. Bright red mushrooms form fairy rings over rotten logs in clearings, and the teal fireflies dance over them like will-o'-the-wisps.

Your ears register the turbulent gurgle of a nearby brook and halt your progress. You dig about a little and discover a clearing leading to the brook, surrounded by young maples with tips reaching upto your hip. The water gushing across the smooth grey pebbles is clear as new glass from a distance, encouraging you to quench your throat with it. The wildlife is sparse in here, with barely an owl hooting as compared to the liveliness your initial location had offered.

Your gameplan is to follow the brook to the river or lake into which it drains. Rivers are certain to have some sort of civilization on their banks, and it's a fact that has been proven to be true by history. Where there's a river, there's a city, you think while spitballing new proverbs on the go. You bend over and scoop up some water in your palms. As you bring it up to your face, you catch a flash of your reflection.

It's not horrible; it's just not you anymore.

Your face is covered with an iron mask shaped in the fierce likeliness of a cougar. You run your fingers run across the smooth, unrusted black steel, prick your fingers on the sharp canines bared in a snarl near your mouth and feel the edges of the mask that have grown into your skin. The slits serving as the mask's eyes serve as yours too. You can clearly see the maroon skin folds that had once cushioned your eyes in your eye-sockets through them. You don't feel afraid for some reason. You just welcome the change. This is you now.

You can still feel the pressure on the burning skin underneath the mask when you pat your face. A deep male voice awakens in your head, making you gasp and crash into a baby maple. Its stem snaps off and hangs limp. You watch the sap trickle down the green stem, and catch it turning red as soon as it hits the ground. Just as you manage to pull yourself up on your legs, a figure rises out of the brook.

It is a Verdish youth dressed in voluminous black furs, holding back a pair of mountain lions chained to the thick belt on his hip. A black rag covers his eyes, and two streaks of blood race down his cheeks parallel to each other. The streaks connect his eyes to his jaw, and they seem to be dripping fresh blood onto his chest. The air holds a deep scent, a mixture of deer musk, cinders and death, that clings adamantly onto the inner surface of your nose and mouth. The mountain lions shaking the chains holding them back are half golden fire bursting from the brook's splashes and half smoke. The youth lowers his head to look down at you, and the moon seems to be held prisoner behind the spikes of his iron crown.

Warrior, he asks in a hoarse whisper, would you like to avenge yourself?

You see, before Shikagami City became a mostly Junhic settlement, it was an abandoned stretch of forest land dedicated to a Verdish god of Law, Justice and War. Even after the whole deforestation and urbanization had occurred, the Verdes and the Junhics were careful to leave the holiest of groves alone and untouched. Even today, humans are not allowed to enter the forest for no reason whatsoever. 

Unfortunately for you, your corpse was dumped in the groves by the shady park authorities trying to cover up your death. Death by falling tree branches could adversely affect their income and reputation, so they called in some of their Underground well-wishers and did the deed.

Fortunately for you, the war god doesn't like his grove being turned into a free-for-all public cemetery. Resurrection is a risky business, and your body is lucky to have been fresh enough to not have suffered much damage. Your face however is an entirely different story, thanks to your eyes being taken as the payment for your resurrection. The god isn't picky on his demands, he just wishes to taste some blood again in this suddenly very peaceful world in the form of revenge murder.

As eager as you are to embark on a journey as an undead knight of a Verdish war god, I'm sorry to say that you're in the wrong book. Perhaps sometime in the future, if the author has not yet lost all hope in humanity, you can expect a sequel where you can pursue vengeance. But as of now, you've hit one of the twenty endings. If it's any solace, this one is not the worst ending you could've stumbled upon.

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｡:ﾟ.*･Ending 1 / 20｡:ﾟ.*･

Ghoul of a war god.

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Would you like to try again?

Turn to chapter 2.

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