• PROLOGUE: OF MYTH AND LEGEND

    Satora: a well-known name from where I was born and raised. Personally, I never believed in any of the old tales that my town passed on from the generations. I had faith in only the “real” things in life. Satora was a myth, or so I thought.

    Satora was well known only as the goddess of the forest that surrounded the village where my town now resides. She guarded it and everything within and betwixt since the “First Battle” of legends. That time period was only defined as a portion of Hell on Earth in the olden days. However, since it was so long ago, all of those stories were just that and never passed as true, save for in the eyes of the youth and elderly.
    The goddess, commonly described as either a beautiful maiden or a fearsome wolf, kept children from wandering off at dusk and the local lore alive. Despite this, after the children became adolescents and no longer cared for bed-time stories, the tales were forgotten by all but the youngest and the oldest of the town, since no one else bothered to listen. Only portions of the stories survived the aging of the village.

    As the myth goes, a young girl of about twenty was to be sacrificed to a demon by the name of Kake whom took the form of a white panther with eyes darker than a starless night. He resided within the surrounding mountains and always demanded sacrifices of sorts, mainly the beautiful young maidens of the village. The women of the village feared for their lives and the lives of their children, but they continued to submit to the evil entity’s whims.
    However, that all began to change when an old storyteller told of an ancient prophecy. The villagers found out that the goddess Satora lived on the borders of the mountains and forests, so they planned to send a young girl out as a sacrifice to the goddess in return for her help. Gaining the hope they so desperately needed, the inhabitants gathered together to select a child whom was pure and clean. From there, the girl was sent, prepared for her death at the goddess’s claws.
    When the girl finally arrived at the border between mountain and forest, she was told to have seen a tall, black-marbled statue of a wolf. Upon stepping forwards to place down pure white lilies, the girl tripped, and her wrist was cut open by an outreaching stone paw, leaving her blood to splatter the figure as she bent down in pain to cry. As she did so, however, the legend tells that Satora’s statue seemed to light up like a sun from within and shone directly out of the eyes. At the brightness, the girl stood up and shielded her eyes with the hand that wasn’t bloody, and supposedly, the statue cracked from the middle and fell to the ground. Removing her hands from her face, the girl noticed a young woman standing atop the broken statue that was more beautiful than any she had ever seen in her previous days, and with tears in her eyes, the girl raised her hands to protect herself whilst the woman stepped down and towards her.
    “Please don’t hurt me,” the girl whimpered, but only got a gentle smile in return as the lean woman took the young girl’s injured hand and touched the wound on the wrist. The girl stared on in amazement as the wound glowed and astonishingly closed.
    “Do not fear me, young one, for I am not here to harm you,” the nude woman said in a calm and almost motherly voice before releasing the healed wrist and looking over the girl with eyes of the purest white. The girl found the eyes, which were lacking pupils, extremely frightening, especially the eerie glow that they were emitting, but that did not compare to what she saw upon the woman’s head. A pair of pointed, blue-black wolf ears rested above shimmering black hair. The darker-skinned woman was even more the strange after the girl found that, just at the end of the spine and barely below the lengths of hair, wavered a long, furry tail the same colors of her unusual ears.
    “.. W-What a-are you?” the little girl stuttered with a shiver, backing up on her hands and knees from the female. Despite the woman’s sheer beauty that would send many a man to follow her to no end and cause women to fall over in jealousy, the girl still couldn’t manage to get around the odd appearance of the tail and ears from that of a wolf.
    “I am Satora, goddess and protector of these forests and mountains. Why, mortal, have you awoken me from my long slumber?” was her response to the stammering girl’s fearful question. She stood up straight at this point and stared, pupil less, towards the village where she guessed the young one had wandered so far from.
    The girl hesitated for a long time, still awe-struck at the heavenly presence of the supposed goddess. Finally, after many moments in silence, she replied with worry in her voice, “All… all is not peaceful..” Her tone was whispered, though it really made no difference to Satora, as she could hear quite well with her specialized ears.
    “I see… well, I will have to get more information than that,” Satora said gently, her words sending warmth through the trembling girl’s body as her forehead was touched by the goddess’s index and middle fingers. The girl’s every muscle relaxed and she went limp for an instant as Satora made sure she didn’t fall over by placing her other hand around her waist. It only took a minute or two before the girl was conscious again, but she woke up at the edge of the statue with little remembrance of what just happened.
    Meanwhile, Satora pondered over what she would need to do next since she gained the information she needed from the girl and needed to solve the current issue. With a flick of her tail, the odd-looking, yet gorgeous, goddess was transformed with a flash of light into a giant wolf at a size of nearly four heads taller than she had previously been.
    After that, it is said that the girl ran back to her village, and by that time, there was no further sign of Satora, and there never again was after then. The myth led on to tell of Satora’s victory in the “First Battle” those countless years ago. Details became lost in time; but the conclusion to the story was that the demon was banished and Satora became the most-praised and revered in all of the land as well as that the young women returned to their village, scared but unharmed.


    Many years passed from that event, falling into centuries, until the time was set for a new disaster…




    End Prologue
    Story/Characters/Etc © Paige D. Red/Kouga_wolf_Kiba