The Three Impossible Tasks
In a land were impossible is the only word people find truth in, a boy seeks to break the odds. Three tasks, that's all it will take to fulfill his heart's desires. That is until he realizes that he isn't just fighting for himself anymore… KagInu
Author's Note: As always, italics are usually people's thoughts.
Introduction: Tenjin Tyouritsu
Once upon a time, in a deep valley too far away to even imagine, there sat the foundations of a kingdom. It was a glorious realm, one filled with magic and adventure, hope and love. It was a place where dreams sprang to life, where miracles ran rapidly along the countryside, where, if one set his or her mind to it, anything could be accomplished. Impossible was only a word muttered on one's dying breath as they glanced back at their life and couldn't believe all of the wondrous things that he or she had experienced. This land of perfection was known as Tenjin Ryouritsu.
Now you must be thinking that this is a dumb kingdom, one that can only exist in some dreamer's mind. True utopias only exist in fairy tales and little children's overactive imaginations, none of these things could be real. Trust me, I know the feeling. I too have felt the hopelessness that life weighs down on the shoulders of the human species. It seems that every day we are reminded of life's flaws, the flukes that curse our very beings. We seem to wake up in the morning just to fulfill a destiny that leads us to one destination: an average life topped with an untimely death. Such a happy thought.
Humor me for a moment and let's just say that such a place did exist, that there was a location where dreams could come to life. Believe for a instant in a land where the streets were lined with gold, where the poor went to bed cozy and stuffed, and where you could follow your heart because "impossible" wasn't an option. Wouldn't you have wanted to go there? Of course! But, then you realized that you couldn't. You weren't allowed to just up and leave the responsibilities of your life. You couldn't have left your family and friends. To top it all off, starting a new life didn't sound all too inviting when you already worked all of your years to establish a place for yourself in this world of ours. Life sucks and then you die, this just helped to prove that.
Now you know how the occupants of the other villages felt. How was it possible that just beyond the mountains in the horizon existed a place where the impossible was, well, possible? How could a land of opportunities be so close, yet so far away? Alas, the homeland of their fancy was just a mere walk away, but they were never able to reach it. It is one thing to wish for a country of perfection and know that you will never glance upon such a place because it is too far off, if in fact it even exists. It is a whole other playing field when you live right next to the place of your fantasies and you know that you'll never even go there for a visit.
The members of the other empires surrounding the vast kingdom, which was hidden in an envelope of mountains, were always envious of the villagers of Tenjin. They were forced to spend their whole lives living in the shadow of their desires. Those poor people had to undergo ever minute, every agonizing millisecond of their days on this planet just close enough to reach for their dreams, but just far away so that they adequately could never grasp them. Envy turned into jealousy which later twisted into hatred. Hundreds of years of being inferior to a kingdom of dreams, a place where it seemed that no one had to even make an attempt before they were able to find happiness, built up anger and bitterness between the surrounding kingdoms. Life seemed to come easy to the people of Tenjin, or so the surrounding realms supposed.
Overtime, resentment towards the Tenjinians boiled the blood of the self-proclaimed inferior kingdoms. Jealousy consumed them to the point where anything about the Tenjinians would be considered unacceptable and mocked despite how unimportant their actions might have been. It was safe to presume that being a Tenjinian was not considered a term of endearment by any means. In fact, it was the equivalent of calling someone a workless fool who couldn't lift a finger to complete any task even if they wanted to. Well, that was the child appropriate version of the word's meaning. To the bordering villagers, it just appeared that the people from the land tucked away in the mountains had the whole world wrapped around their pampered fingers. Why should they themselves have to work for every descent thing they craved for while their neighbors didn't have to life to lift a finger?! To put it rather bluntly, they were enraged.
One would have had to find it amusing as to how multiple civilizations made such an assumption about a society that they didn't even know about. Especially considering that as soon as their resentment began escalating, contacts with Tenjin began to break. Alas, everyone knows what happens when you assume…
As the years creep by, the indignant empires grew weary of even the thought of a utopia flourishing right beside them. Soon it was being said that the kingdom of Tenjin was a fraud, a wives tale created to ease the minds of little children so that they'd believe in a better tomorrow. As it's been said, impossible is the only thing possible in the world we survive in. A perfect empire in a sea of imperfection; the likelihood was too miniscule to even waste brain cells pondering over. Tenjin, or any place like it for that matter, couldn't exist outside the minds of those with overactive imaginations. End of discussion.
But… Could it have been real? Ah, now that was the question. Everyone knew that the only beings who were supposedly worth flawlessness were the gods. After all, they needed a realm that mimicked their own superiority, anything short of perfection just wouldn't have been appropriate for such high beings. This was where the rumors began. It was said that Tenjin was a kingdom of the gods, that the people all under the ruling of King Onigumo were all servants of the power hungry kami.
The stories from that point went haywire. There were those who still believed that King Onigumo was just a regular human who was simply a lucky man during his reign. And, it was through his good fortune that Tenjin became a prosperous country. Then there are those who whispered the tale of the great king being a god who frowned upon the other empires' defiance of his people and ultimately himself. This in turned caused him to become an evil spirit, one bent on seeking revenge for those who sought to corrupt his peaceful kingdom… even if the price for revenge was becoming corrupt himself. Furthermore, there were those beings who still couldn't comprehend that such a place could have existed; that a wives tale spread too far and it was all an explosion of a fairy tale land. Only a handful sought to discover the truth of the empire instead of just relying on assumptions and generalizations. Yet those who dared to try often failed, miserably.
Around the same time of the godly accusations, there was a war between the kingdoms near the circle of mountains. Everyone and anyone who yearned for information were killed off, or at the very least went incognito. Not much was known from that war, probably resulting from the tiny amount of people who actually survived the bloodshed. The few who were spared found even whispering of the event to be taboo. Every now and then a wind would blow by and murmur distant memories about a time when the gods rebelled, but that's only folklore, and people don't believe in folktales anymore.
The only thing that was for certain was that all contact with Tenjin dissolved away, as though the kingdom never even existed. It wasn't until sometime during the start of the next century that a new county appeared. It was known as Tenjin Ryouritsu, but it was mostly referred to as Tenjin. Was this the kingdom of the unachievable that was rumored to exist? Could the empire that seemed to have been lost for generations have magically reappeared?
Alas, though the new empire held the same name and location of the supposed wonderland, this kingdom was different. Instead of the famous King Onigumo, a queen by the title Higurashi held the throne. Moreover, the streets were certainly not lined with gold, the poor went to bed cold and famished, and "impossible" was a part of everyone's daily vocabulary. This could not possibly have been the legendary Tenjin Ryouritsu; it was unfeasible that this could have been the same place.
So, for those of you who said that such a utopia could not have existed, well, you were right. The kingdom of Tenjin, the land where men and gods lived together, turned out to be nonexistent, a fairy tale. With few who were alive during the time of its supposed supremacy, none dared utter a word as to what happened before or during the bloody war. Only bits and pieces of stories were able to be passed down generation to generation, yet their content seemed too ridiculous. The Tenjin before the war, the place of miracles and happiness, turned into nothing more than a story to brighten the spirits of villagers during times of warfare and depression.
This is where our story begins, many generations after the new Tenjin Ryouritsu first came about, centuries after a utopia of the possible appeared to just have vanished. This is the story of friendship developing into something more, making your dreams come to life, and why "impossible" isn't just a mere word, it's…dare I say it?... an impossibility.