Chapter Text
Humans adored legends.
Myths, fables and folklore. No matter what one called it, the tales told over hot meals on cold nights were precious to humankind.
They spoke of the past, of times gone by, of places unvisited.
No greater tales existed in Naha than those of the fairy forest.
A forest, once owned by the fae, had been in the hands of the Naha royalty for over a century. The elves had deigned it too close to human lands for magic to flourish. What had been discarded by the elves had been eagerly taken by humans.
But rumours pervaded. Whisperings that, in the forest, something the elves had searched for decades to find remained hidden. Decades were not a long time for elves, but long enough for humans that it had become something like a legend. When elves were so often spoken of and so seldom seen- almost a myth by themselves- the knowledge that they, the creatures who could command magic at their fingertips, could not acquire what they truly wished for was a source of endless curiosity.
With magic, elves could get anything they wanted, but this- the jewel of the enchanted Fae Forest.
But what was that jewel?
No human knew, and elves were so rare that it wasn’t as if one could simply ask.
Whatever it was, it was the stuff of bardic song, of epic poems, of human curiosity.
Something beyond the elves' powerful abilities to control. Something they would do anything to have in their hands once more. And, if rumour was to believe- and it had no reason not to be- something that the Queen of the Elves, Carla, would grant any wish to the brave person who could bring the jewel back to the elven palace once more.
Kojiro Nanjo was tired of the constant warring of kingdoms. He was a man who had not had the luxury to take such rumours lightly. He could not dismiss them as meaningless yarns, or tales to pass hours. Astute, and a man of many rumours himself, Kojiro knew how quickly a myth could sprout from just a seed of the truth.
There were a hundred different tales on the Fae Forest and the jewel that lurked there. Some said that it lay beneath the surface of a lake that shone like amber. Others claimed that was deep in a cave, that could only be accessed by those pure of heart. Many believed that it was worn on a chain, like a necklace by a forest dryad. And yet one fact remained consistent.
There was a jewel in the forest.
And if Queen Carla would reward whoever found it and returned it handsomely, Kojiro Nanjo would be that man.
Forming a favourable alliance with the elven people would be the action needed to instil peace in the land. No one dared to fight with the elves, who were powerful, magical and ageless, but remained wholly neutral in what they viewed to be the petty squabbling of mortal men. It stood to reason that none would dare to interfere with the allies of said creatures.
Not that there was a precedent for such an alliance.
Yet Kojiro was not the type to let such a thing still him. Determined to a fault, he was both famous and infamous among the knightly ranks for his dedication that bordered close to bull-headedness. He had announced to the ranks that he was entering the forest on a single minded mission, and left that very day. He was determined to find the jewel of the enchanted forest or die trying.
Yet he had not been the first to partake in what many considered a fool’s errand, entering the forest, hoping to find the jewel. Though Kojiro might have considered his motives a little more selfless than others, people took pilgrimage to the Fae Forest all the time. Herbalists, healers, potion makers they all had legitimate reasons to be there. The Fae Forest was rich in rare herbs, and healing plants. But they were familiar with the forest and sensible of its ways. Those who sought herbs and forgeable vegetables did not venture far in the forest.
Unlike Kojiro who would enter the heart of the forest if he must.
No matter the dangers the forest held.
Rumours of the jewel were not the only tales which pervaded tavern yarns. The bards delighted in the macabre, and their attention lay much heavier on the stories of what happened in the forest at night.
At night, the forest was haunted by the spirits of those greedy enough to try to search for the jewel, those who had not lived to tell the tale. But Kojiro was not swayed by the bards and their songs of warning. He remained willing to take the risk.
So what if it was dangerous in the forest? It was plenty dangerous on the battlefields he had come to consider his home. And if it was monsters he was to be afraid of, then he had encountered plenty of humans who’d fit the archetype over the years.
Instead of the dangers untold that lay before him, Kojiro opted to be excited about something he knew he would find in the forest.
Magic.
Naha, despite being one of the human kingdoms closest to the Fae world, had a very low amount of magic in their bodies. Not many humans did, though it would be dismissive to presume that none had aptitude. Humans, despite their dulled sense of magic were often about to harness a little magic nevertheless. Perhaps they could never be spellcasters, but humans were good healers, herbalists and potion makers. In tune with nature, if not in tune with magic, some humans preferred utilise the magic that the earth provided in the only way they could.
Humans could use magical plants as well as elves could, perhaps better, as it was a necessity, the only magical skill they could harness. But it was a commoners skill, left to those not wealthy enough to afford doctors or medical practitioners who had access to medicine and no need for magic. Kojiro had learned about healing herbs from his mother. He’d learned everything from her, from cooking to dancing, from fashion to swordsmanship.
Perhaps her teaching was the reason excitement overrode apprehension as he entered the forest.
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Kojiro’s story in the forest started, as it so often had, with a sword in his hand. He had not journeyed in there long, but already he knew that fighting was a necessity to survive the cruel forest. He had access to magical weapons thanks to his high ranking within the knightly ranks, rare gifts that were traded so carefully in an agreement with the fae, but he had not taken them with him.
He could not take them in good conscience, knowing that one more weapon in his hand was one less weapon the military had to protect the lines. For the longest time, travelling with a veritable armoury had seemed the only conceivable way Kojiro would have been allowed to go to the forest without a dozen warriors by his side.
His time before leaving the battlefield had been limited but his resolve was firm.
He would go.
And he would go alone.
His sword impaled the snake easily. A metal blade could kill just as well as a magical one.
Perhaps it wasted use of such a weapon, a great sword blessed for battle, but the snake’s venom was paralysing, and Kojiro could not risk such an injury debilitating him for any amount of time. He’d been a fool when he first encountered a similar snake. It had latched onto his boot, its fangs only just scratching through the topmost layer of skin but it had taken two days for him to regain feeling in his fingertips and toes and he refused to let such a thing happen again.
How many days had he been in here?
Goddess, it feels like forever.
It had been long enough that he could climb the tallest tree and still see no sign of the small town he had entered the forest from. Though that did not mean much. In a place as touched by magic as this his compass had become unusable the moment he had entered. Even time did not seem to pass as it should.
Then how about he considered it a different way?
Long enough that he had consumed the rations he had brought along with him. The oiled leather pouch that once held bread, seasoned preserved meat, wine and even dried fruit had been empty longer than it had been full. He’d been hunting daily for his meals now. Taking only the bare minimum from the forest, careful to make sure to only take what he needed, nothing more. He longed to feed himself until he was full, feast like he did when the army returned home from their arduous days marching, fighting, protecting and entering the king’s castle for a well-deserved reward.
He had to remind himself, though, that this was not the land he had traversed all his life.
Nothing was the expected, the ordinary.
He’d seen much already in this forest, creatures of which he’d never seen the likes of before. Animals he initially thought were deer, he was startled to find, had two sets of eyes, wide and pretty in their heads. Rabbits who sported horns like cattle. Birds whose sweet songs were mellifluous and baritone, and not the soprano tweeting which he was accustomed to.
Yes this was the kingdom of humans, but there, well there the common ground ended. The humans owned this piece of land, this forest; they kept it sacred and magical by entering as little as possible. Herbalists, potion makers, apothecists were the only mortals who were legally allowed to step foot here.
No matter what the king may like to claim, this was still the land of the fae.
The day’s travels were long; time didn’t seem to exist in the forest as it did outside of it. Sometimes it felt like the days extended twice, thrice longer than it should have. He’d walk until he could walk no more, and wonder how it could be that the sun had yet to complete its arc in the sky. He’d sleep a little, never deeply, for when night came, and it always did, it was the most dangerous time at all.
The creatures he met in the day, pretty, ethereal things were small, and gentle. They were much more scared of Kojiro than he was of them- with the exception of the blasted snakes- each likely found the other’s appearance unusual. It wasn’t as if a human was a common sight around these parts.
Kojiro shivered.
Tonight is a cold one.
No matter the heat of the day, and no matter how long it lasted, nights in the forest were always freezing. He worried that the metal of his armour would only make the cold worse, and he kept his gloves on, his scarf tight so that none of the metal touched his skin and stuck together. He did not wish to add ice burns into the mix. Granted, his own body temperature was so low he wondered if there was even a chance of that happening.
If my father could see me now.
There was mocking there, muddled with a healthy scoop of self-depreciation. His father never looked at him when he was at home, why should he have cared when his precious oldest child left on what many regarded as a suicide mission?
Kojiro scoffed.
Plenty would have thought him dead already, a mad man, a fool. Perhaps he was. It was hard to feel like the living when the forest was chilled like the underworld. But he fought on, because no matter how frigid the night, the sun was destined to rise again.
A gloved hand gripped the hilt of a well-tended sword. It was old but cared for. It wasn’t a magical item he had on his person, but there was a simple kind of magic in the relationship between a knight and his sword. It had been by his side since he was a child. It had been his destiny to wield it, and, just as it had been his mother’s, his grandfather’s, and countless generations past. He respected and put his faith in the blade.
The leather of the hilt had been replaced recently. It was the only modification Kojiro would allow the smithy to make. Only he and he alone would tend to the blade.
Sol.
The one constant by his side.
It provided him comfort in lieu of the warm, crackling fire he truly desired. He had learned quickly to not be so foolish at night.
Kojiro tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.
His hair was getting long.
His father would hate that.
His mother would have loved it.
He’d let it grow.
He stood stock still in the middle of the thicket of trees, his hand unmoving on Sol. He knew his ears did not betray him, the gentle sounds of rustling in the distance. He slowed his breathing, broad chest taking slow, calculated breaths in total silence.
A rustle.
His green eyes darted, focused in an instant to the target of his attention.
Fifty, maybe sixty feet away.
Too big to be a bird.
Too heavy for a deer.
Too small to be the mystic moose like creature he had happened upon only once.
What he would have given for it to be that creature again. It had snorted and hooved the ground, but had eyed him with an intelligence that made him think it was much smarter than its animal appearance would suggest. Kojiro had fed it some sweet blossoms he had found whilst foraging, and it had bowed long and low before continuing its plodding journey into the unknown.
He doubted whatever creature he’d encounter this night would be so regal. Nothing he had encountered at night in the forest had been kindly, nor even neutral. The night might have been icy cold, but the creatures that awoke then craved violence, and blood.
It was just another challenge for Kojiro. Another dent in his bracers, another claw mark on his breastplate, another scratch on his blade. The muscles he had grown had not been for show. He was the most powerful knight in the king’s army.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been so exhilarated for battle, Kojiro mused. His thoughts were wandering, making light of the danger he faced, but his body was tense, his senses focused intently on tracking the movement of the creature. He would not approach it, nor would he attack first. Any creature would smell the blood on him. Though he washed it off every morning with the sun rose again, it lingered, a warning. Any creature who did not heed that warning would face a similar fate.
The rustling grew more and more distant as the seconds passed, and only once a full minute of complete silence passed did Kojiro dare to relax his shoulders and to breathe freely once more.
Despite the intense danger he faced every night in the forest, why didn’t he hate it?
Perhaps it was the fight for survival and nothing more that Kojiro found appealing. Those creatures that fought him, fought for reasons other than hatred. They attacked to defend their territory, to secure their next meal, to show their power.
Were mortals not simply the same?
No, for hatred coloured their every action. They fought among themselves choosing reasons why they should hate others, religion, race, it only provided the next reason for war.
It was hard for Kojiro to keep his thoughts light amid the darkness, and goddess help him; he succumbed to the dark more than he liked to admit, but tonight he pushed such things aside. He was growing accustomed to the cold, to the life outdoors, to the isolation and the newness of his surroundings.
The very land seemed to try to push him out, but determination was vim and vigour in his belly. He wouldn’t give up on a quest of this importance so easily.
He stepped on, in no mood to risk sleeping at night, he’d push through, travelling slower than he might like, and rest at sunrise.
As he stepped, waded at parts through the thickets that grew, the ground crunched below him, it wasn’t ice, just the cold seemingly cooling everything to an almost freezing point. Just another thing Kojiro had grown accustomed to. In the barracks, he had quite the reputation as a show off; never shy of training without a shirt, plenty of chances for the sun to caress his skin, and to show off his tattoo, the mark of his mother’s family, patrons of the sun.
Here, in the icy dead of night, he was a world away from his usual life.
Some might have struggled to adapt, it certainly wasn’t for the faint of heart- but faint of heart had never been something Kojiro had been called.
He embraced the crunching of the earth. It made his position easier to locate, but that meant the same for the creatures that lurked all around him.
The crisp sound of paws on frozen earth alerted him to another presence, but he kept his pace steady and unhurried, as if he hadn’t noticed.
Korjiro was ready when the creature leapt towards him, so high it momentarily covered the moon, a total eclipse. It slammed against him, knocking him to the ground, but he had expected that, and rolled the moment his back impacted the earth so that he could stand up again with the assistance of a nearby tree.
What kind of creature was this?
Kojiro tried very hard to accept the different creatures he encountered in the forest, but there was a part of him who could only call such a thing a monster. Magic did not make a monster, for Kojiro knew plenty of non-magical people who were as monstrous as they came, but was there another descriptor for the sight before him?
A head taller than Kojiro with fur as black as the sky and eyes that glinted red against the moonlight, there was something inherently wrong about this creature. It looked like a wolf forced to walk as a man might, on its powerful and too long hind legs, its front paws, for surely they could not be hands, had claws far larger than they aught. Massive, and deadly, they were as thick as blades.
Were-creatures.
Kojiro swallowed and willed his heart rate to calm, panicking would not help anything but he knew all about the infectious disease that afflicted all those injured by were-beasts. How couldn’t an icy vein of terror shudder through him?
The beast was quick, and fought like it knew it would win. Kojiro was fast too, but certainly not fast enough to match such a creature. He could only thank his lucky stars that he had chosen not to strip from his freezing armour. He felt the sensation of metal collapsing against his chest, a colossal dent. He shuddered to think what it’d do with his body.
Pulling his blade free from its sheath took precious few seconds, but he won them back by darting around a tree, rolling back behind a bush. It was clumsy, graceless, but bought him the time he needed. The were-beast fought like it wished to draw things out, extend the fun for as long as possible.
Kojiro tried not to notice the tatters of clothing that remained on the beast, the sword belt on his waist.
The spirits of those who had traversed the forest before him in search of the jewel. They had not lived to tell the tale, but their mutated remains were revived and warped by the magic into the beasts before him.
One scratch and Kojrio would end up the same.
Blade drawn, clenched in a massive fist, he kept the sword down, his centre of gravity just as low and solid. Deep like an unexplored ocean there was no alerting the creature of his thoughts under his impassive expression.
Like lightning, a move that should have been impossible in such heavy armour, Kojiro lashed out, striking one quick but glancing blow to the creature’s side. The pain ripped through the beast’s body in a physical way and an agonised and infuriated howl was a terror to hear.
It had only been a surface injury, not enough to fatally wound it. Kojiro knew it would have little effect, but he still couldn’t help himself. Every monster he encountered he gave it the opportunity to realise the danger it was in and run.
But the creatures that dwelled in the moonlight had no need for reason or sanity. When given the chance to fight or flee, it was like a choice had never existed at all.
It had likely been a warrior like him once, and as in life, its existence was to fight only.
Its claws lashed out, throwing Kojiro like he was nothing more than a ragdoll, crashing him against a tree. It had been a painful thrusting back into the moment. Clarity and presence was agonising. He wheezed, winded, but pleased he had remained standing, his blade in his hand.
The monster intended to rush him, crowd him against the tree and kill its captive prey. Not a chance. He didn’t have the size or strength advantage, but he had presence of mind, and a quick wit. He did not react solely on reflex. Kojiro let the beast run to him, jerking to the side at the last moment, reversing the position by pushing the beast to the tree, running his blade through its shoulder and embedding it into the tree.
He’d used his shoulder to slam the beast, and it ached from the force he’d sued.
The monster threw itself back, uncaring how it exacerbated the injury from its thrashing, wishing nothing more than to free itself. Kojiro could see how it no longer used its right arm. The battle was far from done, but he had at least exploited a significant weak spot.
With no blade, Kojiro lifted his scabbard and used it like a club to slam the unprotected back of the beast’s neck. It staggered, dizzied, but remained upright, still fighting to free itself. A second blow, a third, a forth before Kojiro cast the scabbard aside, reaching for his smaller blades, just in time for the beast to finally pull the blade from the tree.
It pulled the sword from its shoulder, and for just a moment, it held the blade in its hand like it was an old friend, like he knew how to use it. Kojiro steadied his stance, unsure if he should expect to parry a swing or not, but the beast dropped it, and rushed with its claws glinting in the moon.
His blades were smaller than his sword, daggers he kept on him at all times but preferred not to use if not necessary. His sword was always what he reached for first, but he was proficient in them, and his movements were quick and accurate. One blade in each hand, he hunched low, and launched himself right back at the creature storming towards him. One blade sliced the belly, the other the throat. It was dead the moment it hit the ground.
Kojiro had aided its fall, landing on it heavily having essentially tackled it to the frozen earth. He rolled off the now dead creature with a groan, embedding a blade in its throat before taking a second to catch his breath. Having landed on the beast, and being covered in a healthy dose of its blackened blood he should have been heated by the heated, at least a little from the contact. But the beast was already as cold as the dead. It likely had been from the first death it had experienced.
He looked at it more carefully now. Wolfish, as he expected. Not the first were-beast he had encountered. They weren’t as terrifying now, just … sad.
He hoped that this death, the one he provided, was the final one. This forest was no place to consider an afterlife.
Aching, stiff and exhausted, Kojiro crawled to a standing position, picking up his scabbard, his sword, his blades.
He wished he could bury the beast, but he knew that nature would appreciate its presence a lot more. The scavengers would be there soon for their evening feast. As long as it wasn’t Kojiro, the knight would allow them to have their fill.
If anything, he almost wished he could partake in it. Hunting meat for sustenance was no mean feat in the greedy forest.
Would there be a feast in his honour if he found what he was searching for? He hoped so. Kojiro had always taken great pleasure in coordinating feasts, the laughter, the merriment, the celebration, the reprieve, the music, the dancing, the food.
Oh by the goddess, the food.
His mouth was salivating at the thought. Not a dried ration in sight. Tables would be heaving with pastries, with hearty meats, with a bounty of vegetables and puddings.
Yes, this must happen.
His kingdom had been barely holding on for decades. The feasts he imagined were only so vibrant in his mind due to the tales of the knights who had trained him from childhood. A banquet hall was just another of the dozens of closed and unused rooms in the castle he strolled by often.
When he returned, that would change.
Kojiro did not spend long in the area when the fight was done. He followed the trickling sound of water, eager to find a place to bathe. Or another route to follow. He knew that there was plenty of babbling brooks and sparkling streams he could clean his armour and his bloodied body. He needed to find one soon too, as he had to thoroughly inspect his body and ensure that he had not received injury from the beast’s claws.
He was lucky to have escaped as lightly injured as he was, and in the magic of the forest there was no telling just how long this long accursed night would last.