Me: What is wrong with me?
Kirino: Another story? Geez, don't you have enough already?
Me: Aparently not... Ehm, I don't own Inazuma Eleven, minna-san. This story was suddenly born during my holliday in Greece (strangely enough, it has nothing to do with the climate, the scenery or practically anything that I saw or did there). It keeps on bugging my mind, so I decided to type it down for you. I hope you like it.
Shindou: By the way, I guess this could be considered friendship RanTaku... remotely.
Me: Yeah, probably. That's how it started, but I don't know if it will actually turn out that way...
"But I don't want to eat the carrots!"
"You have to, they will make you strong and healthy. You are a big boy, right? Big boys always eat their carrots."
"But I don't like them!"
"Do you know many people would like to switch places with you? They would love to eat these carrots."
"Then they can have them. Carrots are yuck!"
"Now listen to me, young man. If you don't eat your carrots like a good boy, Kiriyoshi will come after you."
A tiny gasp was heard before the boy shoveled the carrots in his mouth. The mother allowed herself a small smile when she saw his stuffed cheeks and his fast-moving jaws as he chewed. His fear of the evil sorcerer Kiriyoshi was greater than his dislike of carrots.
In the whole country, there weren't many who had never heard of Kiriyoshi's name. One of the Inazuma Kingdom's most famous legends centered around him and the story was often told by troubadours an storytellers. They told the tale of what happened five, maybe even six centuries ago and each person gave his own twist to the story. The original legend came down to this:
A couple of centuries ago - no one knew exactly how many years passed since Kiriyoshi's time - there was a teenage boy. Despite his young age, the boy was a marvelous healer and he cured many people around him. There wasn't a broken bone he couldn't fix and not a disease he couldn't cure. And when it was impossible to cure someone, even for him, the boy made sure that the poor fellow painlessly left this world for the next.
The name of this marvelous boy was Kiriyoshi.
Kiriyoshi wasn't just any boy, he was a powerful sorcerer. He used his powers to heal the injured and cure the sick and he was loved by everyone around him for the good deeds that he had done. Everyone in the kingdom knew about Kiriyoshi's abilities and praised him for it.
But what no one knew, was that Kiriyoshi had a dark side. Deep in his heart, he was evil. He got bored from helping people day after day, week after week, year after year. To cure his own boredom, Kiriyoshi placed a curse upon the monarch of that time. The king was a good leader who was kind, just and considerate when it came to his subjects. He was a good man and didn't deserve to die the way he did.
It was said that the king grew terribly ill by Kiriyoshi's hand. His skin was as cold as ice, although he kept screaming about his body being on fire. Strange, unexplainable bruises and painful blisters covered his skin and none of the usual herbal creams helped. The king kept yelling about birds that picked out his eyes and demons that wanted to eat his soul, but nobody else saw these creatures.
Of course, the people asked Kiriyoshi to save their beloved king, but the boy refused. After the king died and everyone found out that the mysterious disease had been Kiriyoshi's doing, they were furious. The sorcerer fled before any harm could fall upon him and he hid himself in the Misty Woods, a large forest that laid on the east side of the kingdom and covered about a fifth of the total territory. After that, nobody had seen him ever again.
The stories differed from each other from that point. Some said that Kiriyoshi had grown up and gained more power by the day, determined to make the lives of the kingdom's inhabitants as hellish as possible. Plagues, poor harvests or robberies, all were believed to be Kiriyoshi's doing. The king's successor sent some men into the woods to kill the sorcerer, but all came back with the message that they couldn't find the boy, if they even came back at all. Even today, the Misty Woods were great, dark and nearly impossible to cross without getting lost. And if you got lost, the chances of ever getting out were very slim.
Others said that Kiriyoshi didn't grow old, but had used his powers to keep himself young. That would mean that he was still a teenage boy at the age of fourteen, who was probably waiting for his chance to bestow harm upon others.
Even though everything surrounding Kiriyoshi was legendary, people avoided the Misty Woods like the plague. After all, it wasn't impossible that Kiriyoshi had indeed survived all those years while he hid behind the dark trees. 'Better safe than sorry', was what the people kept in mind whenever someone brought up the matter of Kiriyoshi or the Misty Woods.
Despite the people's fear for the evil sorcerer's power and the dark woods, villages and towns appeared near the trees. Raimon was one of these villages, although 'hamlet' would be a better word for it. After all, Raimon didn't count more than twenty buildings.
It started out with a blacksmith. Since no one dared to travel through the forest, everyone had to go around it and slowly, some settlements arose from the ground. It happened more than once during your travel, that your horse lost one of its horseshoes or that some part of the saddle broke. The two buildings next to the lone road - one being the blacksmith's workshop and the other one his house - were a relief to many travelers. Then came a small inn, followed by a tannery and a few farms. Slowly but surely, the group of settlements expanded until it was big enough to be called a village and gain the name 'Raimon'. As of today, Raimon was still a small hamlet that was only shown on the most detailed maps.
Raimon was the village that laid closest to the much dreaded Misty Woods; the distance between the closest house and the farthest tree was only threehundred metres. Kiriyoshi's legends didn't only serve the purpose of entertainment here. Mothers whispered the name to discipline their children, workers scared each other when they had to walk home from the tavern after a long day of work and teenagers sometimes dared each other to enter the forest as a test of courage.
But whatever people said about Kiriyoshi, the peremptory belief was gone. Even though the mention of Kiriyoshi was often accompanied by a wary glance in the direction of the Misty Woods, the people did not fully believe the legends anymore. Sure, they kept telling them because there might be a grain of truth in them, but the total conviction was gone.
Until that one night, three years ago, when someone saw floating lights appear and disappear in the mist between the trees.
Me: There you have it, the prologue of 'The Sorcerer in the Woods'. I hope you all liked it a little. Would you care to review?