Okami Kari
Riki was found sitting naked on a riverbank when she was 7 years old. She was raised in a village where the males were all trained to fight and the women were raised to be homemakers. Her adoptive father, wanting a son, but only granted this daughter, decided to raise her as his son and train her accordingly. The village was constantly being terrorized by wolves, and people's livestock were being eaten, but the villagers weren't completely defenseless and trained from birth to deal with such conditions. They were killing wolves left and right, like pests, and life went on.
But there was one legendary white wolf, that the elders would whisper about. They said it was actually a demon that could shape-shift and take human form.
It once took the form of one unfortunate little one's beloved, and widely revered grandmother, decades before, to get revenge on the village people for murdering so many of its pack. The lovely flower of a girl named Yuki went to visit her grandmother with a basket of bread and when, prompted to come closer by the convincing excuses of the imposter was brutally mauled.
The girl lived. Her perfect form, maimed beyond recognition. She was blinded, her arms and legs severed and what once was a beautiful face was little more than shredded flesh. She made as full a recovery as anyone could under such conditions. After a year, it was simply said that she died of a broken heart "via opium overdose"
Reality slowly faded into memory, memory faded into legend and it became a story. Until. That long-shrill-otherwordly howl pierced through the forest as no one expected and everyone, even the naysayers, knew. The wolf demon had returned. At first the men were enthusiastic and eager to actively hunt the monster. The first hunt, 15 men marched bravely into the birch forest in the dead of winter. None returned. The demon began taking people in the late hours right before dawn. Shrieks and cries of terror echoed throughout the night for days before a second hunting party was scraped together to pursue the beast, yet again.
Riki, petite of frame, but stealthy and quick-footed, attempted to join the hunting party but was ridiculed and ultimately dismissed for being female. 30 men went. None returned, and the midnight attacks resumed. The village numbers started to dwindle after 2 weeks when Riki decided to take matters into her own hands.
She donned a white kitsune mask and long red shawl to taunt her prey out of hiding and stole her father's halberd in the dead of night before fleeing silently to the woods under the waning indigo light of dusk. She waited 4 hours, then waited some more. Hidden from sight behind a fallen tree with her weapon at the ready, her extremities were all but frozen. Her own breath behind the mask was the only thing keeping her face warm but also keeping the heat of it from being seen. The snapping of a nearby twig alerted her senses at last and Riki surreptitiously slithered closer to the source. It was the demon- A white wolf standing at 9 feet tall on 2 legs like a human! Riki moved silently to her mark, while the monster snarled, tasting something different in the air. Her movement caught its attention.
It saw her. She saw it.
She immediately turned and began running, The wolf emitted it's tyrannical, ear-splitting howl for bloodlust before running full speed after the tiny girl. It was no competition, withing 3 paces, the girl's head start meant nothing and the wolf was all but on top of her, snapping its monstrous mouth shut on her crimson shawl. Riki flawlessly spun out of the garment as the wolf swiped its 4 inch claws across her left arm in an attempt to grab her. She side-flipped in an evasive maneuver with the other end of the scarf in hand and as soon as the demon's blood-tipped claws were assaulting her, looped her shawl around his other wrist. The wolf continued to lash out viciously, claws, and teeth gnashing at the girl, but only ever striking air until she finally tugged her entire body weight on the shawl, closing the loops around the wrists and ankles of the beast. A enraged roar reverberated throughout the forest, disturbing a nearby flock of crows before the wolf went about shredding the shawl to pieces in an attempt to free itself, but not before Riki's axe fell on it's wrists, cutting off both hands.
The beast howled in fury and pain, it's eyes fixed in a deadly glare on its masked captor.
"Please... please don't kill me."
Riki had blinked and now before her, a tiny innocent boy, no older than the age of 8, lie before her. His hair was white as the snow, and his eyes were grey as the overcast winter sky. his blood was staining the pure snow, and his body paled more by the second.
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone!"
Riki, raised her halberd shaking away any thoughts of compassion for the monster.
"I swear I didn't! Please don't hurt me!"
"DEMON! I KNOW YOU STEAL THE SOULS OF THOSE YOU SLAY AND USE THEIR FORMS AS DISGUISES. FOR WE HAVE MET BEFORE!"
The demon's innocent face faltered as Riki's mask was lifted, her eyes blazing white hot and revealing the familiar face of a girl that the wolf remembered from another lifetime. Yuki. .
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
"I SACRIFICED MY LIFE TO PROTECT THIS VILLAGE FROM YOUR BLOODLUST. NOW IT'S TIME TO PAY FOR YOUR SINS!"
Riki brought her axe down on the demon's tail, severing it so violently that it flew several feet across the snow, spraying blood in its wake. He howled again, this time more painfully and pitifully.
"I MADE YOU! YOU ARE JUST LIKE ME, GIRL!" The demon laughed ominously. "YOU WERE REBORN OF MY BLOOD AFTER YOUR SOUL WAS FREED AND YOU WILL KILL AS I HAVE!"
"THE BLOODLUST WON'T TAKE OVER ME AS IT DID YOU, DEMON! I HAVE SOMEONE TO PROTECT!" Riki said, driving her halberd down through his ankles.
One last, defeated and painful howl pierced the winter air as the wolf's child form, began to wane. Fur began covering the tiny body as it grew back to the full monstrous size of that of a demon and as the light began to leave his eyes. the wolf scoffed once more at the irony of his plight, before Riki's axe cleaved the smug monster's head from its shoulders. The wolf's body immediately began bubbling up and sizzling into a puddle\of tar-like smoke, wasting away into the icy winds that followed, but the head remained and Riki took it back as her trophy.
The village people were so overjoyed at the morbid sight the monster's colossal, bloodied head, they all crowded around it to investigate as soon as Riki dropped it. No one seemed to notice the otherworldly transformation that began to take place immediately after she'd let go of it. Her hands and feet narrowed into white paws, fur covered her body and she shrank out of her own clothes.
When the townspeople finally looked in her direction, a small, white, fox, with red markings and 4 tails stood before them. A sense of reverence overcame them all and they bowed to the spirit, finally understanding Riki's purpose and thanking her in kind, for her selfless actions. Riki smiled inwardly before turning to the trees. With one look back and a nod, she acknowledged the man who raised her and disappeared into the birch forest where the adventure would fade into memory, legend and ultimately become a bedtime story.
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