Chapter 1
I walk along the village road with my friends. Agartha is close behind, stalking slowly. Player walks right next to me. His gray hair is pulled back so he has room for his digital eye mask. It can do many things, such as scanning and shooting lasers. He always acts as my bodyguard, probably because I’m a princess. Nora is also right next to me. Her green-black hair is untidy as usual. Everyone in the village was staring at us, but mostly me. They have disturbed looks on their faces. I don’t understand why they are looking at me like that. Is something wrong with me? I can hear them murmuring to one another.
“What is a Fox Yokai doing here?”
“Why are those people with her?”
“Ugh! A Fox Yokai!”
I flatten my ears and lower my head. I start walking faster. Nora has a worried look on her face.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. Suddenly, a man steps out of the crowd with a spear and swings it at me. A zap of purple lighting hits the man, Agartha’s Ruin Magic. Agartha runs up to me. She has an angered look on her face.
“Are you hurt?”
I shake my head. I was fine.
“What is wrong with these people? Jeez, don’t they know they’re attacking a goddess-princess?” said Player. Many gasps arose from the people at the phrase “goddess-princess.” The man who attacked me lies on the floor, still shocked from the impact. Little sparks of lightning fly off of him.
I lean down to him and growl in his face. “Don’t you dare attack me again,” I hiss quietly. Agartha turns to her dragon form, a large grey dragon with purple designs and ruin marks. Her luminescent purple eyes are thin slits. She cranes her neck down to the man and roars in his face. Her roar thundered throughout the village. He screams loudly and stammers to his feet. He runs away quickly, flailing his arms wildly in the air. Agartha then turns to the crowd of people and growls. Lightning sparks fly from her mouth. I glare at the villagers.
“Get out of here, you stupid Fox!” scream the people.
“Or we’ll throw you in the dungeons like the rest of the Fox Yokais!” others scream.
I flatten my ears, growling, and run out of the village. My friends chase me. Why do they hate foxes so much? Did they really imprison other foxes? I keep running. I need to check the other villages. Agartha, still in her dragon form, runs after me. She jumps in front of me.
“Where are you going?!” she roars.
“To see the other villages!”
“We can’t go there! THEY'RE GOING TO KILL YOU!” Agartha growls. I ignore her and morph into my fox form, a white fox. I start running swiftly towards the next village. My paws glide over the sharp blades of grass. The grass is a lush green and patches of flowers dot the valley. I reach the village. Agartha is flying in the air, hovering above the village. I creep into the village, hiding in the shadows. I see a Fox Yokai. A few people are throwing rocks at him. He growls and hisses at them, swiping back at them. Other people watch and laugh. Some people insult him. A soldier runs out of a run-down building with a net and tosses it onto the Yokai. The Fox Yokai thrashes in the net as the soldier closes it and drags the net to a door in the ground. He opens the door and hauls the net with the Fox Yokai down a spiraling set of stone stairs.
I follow behind the soldier, keeping quiet. I see the soldier open the net and toss the Yokai into a cell. The soldier locks the cell as the Yokai claws at the bars. I look down the tunnel. I see many more cells. Many of them hold Fox Yokais in them. Some cells contain multiple Yokai, some that are in their fox forms. The bars are too close together for a Yokai in their fox form to squeeze through. None of them are dead, meaning they must have been recently imprisoned, but they all look starved. I walk up to the prisoner that was just thrown into the cell. He is a young man. He has sharp brown eyes and brown hair. His tail is fluffed and his ears are pulled back. His eyes are wide from terror. He turns to me. I turn to my normal form.
“It’s okay. I’ll get you all out of here,” I reassure him. He leans closer and his nose twitches.
“Thank you, Princess,” he says. He figured out my heritage by my fragrance, a strong natural fragrance of nature, usually flowers. Only royals have these fragrances. I smile. I have limited energy, so I can’t free everyone at once, but I try my best to free as many as I can, keeping in mind I can’t control my powers properly. I first free the man I just met. Then I free at least ten others. They all escape through the back door of the dungeon. Suddenly, I hear the bang of a door. I see two soldiers entering the dungeon. They see me. I freeze in place. My tail curls around my leg and I growl softly. They both attack me. I blast one of them with light magic. The laser beam of light illuminates the dungeon. The soldier flies into the door he entered through. I knocked him out and used some energy with that attack. The other soldier knocks me down. I yowl from the impact with the cold hard floor. The soldier pins me down. This man is heavy, the weight of his armor adds to him. He looks me in the eyes. He takes his spear and attempts to hit me. I manage to wiggle out of his grasp and roll to the side as he slams the blade of his spear into the ground. I morph into my fox form again and jump onto his back. I bite his neck and he produces a bloodcurdling scream. He grabs me and tosses me. I land on my feet. He clenches his neck and grunts. I turn to the back door to see it is being held open by another Fox Yokai. The Yokai beckons to me and I scamper out the door. I run further and further away from the village. I see Agartha flying after me. She lands and turns back to her human form. She picks me up and shakes me.
“What… WERE YOU THINKING?!” she howls.
“You did save some of them, but you could have gotten seriously hurt! Did you forget that you can’t control your powers?! What would have happened if your attack wasn’t strong enough?!” she chastises me. I turn back to my normal form and start sobbing. I can’t believe this is happening. They’re imprisoning my people and starving them. If this keeps happening, this can cause a mass genocide of my species.
“I need to help them,” I sob. Agartha hugs me.
“It’s going to be ok. We can save them together,”
Nora and Player run out of the village towards us.
“We should warn my Kingdom. I’ll have to go back there and see my parents. What will they think after I ran away for all these years?” I say.
“It will be fine. I’m sure they still love you,” Nora reassures me. We later decide that I will head to the forest on my own, and my friends will go check out the other villages and try to free some Fox Yokais the next morning.
I walk up to the edge of the forest and take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. I walk in and inhale the scents of the forest and the trees. The smell of the forest reminds me of home in the Kingdom. The different varieties of trees loom over me. Various plants grow everywhere. After walking for a while, I don’t know where I am. Am I lost? I see a patch of flowers and sit down in it. My ears droop. I hear a noise and turn around, but nothing is there.
“I wish Avi were here. He could help me navigate the forest,” I say to myself. I think back to the young elf, Avi, who helped me run away from the forest when I was seven.