《Nine-Tailed Rebirth》
Prologue
Blood poured down the street, soldiers swarming into the now undefended gates, swiftly slaughtering the innocent and helpless like sheep. Heroes step forward, some succeeding in their endeavor, pushing back the incoming bloodthirsty pillagers, while others fall.
Her head shot up, heart beating like a drum within her chest. There were a thousand emotions running through her mind, the taste of her own blood fresh on her tongue.
A headache suddenly struck her, forcing her to the floor as her hands shot towards her head, clutching it tightly as her brain pulsed painfully, again and again. Letting out a whimper, she curled up, trying meaninglessly to reduce the suffering inflicted upon her.
Broken, distorted images flashed before her eyes. She didn''t really understand them, not truly at least, and as the headache became even stronger, she found herself utterly unable to even attempt to decipher the information flowing into her mind.
Finally, as the headache slowly receded, she was finally allowed some quiet within her head. Still, she didn''t move, trying to understand what was happening and why.
Her eyes opened, glossy and shiny with tears. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. Despite the absence of light, she had no problems seeing the slightly wet and mossy walls of what she somehow knew to be a cave.
Shakily, she tried to stand on her feet. Instinctively, she attempted to stand up with two feet, only to fail miserably and fall back with a strange yelp ripping its way out of her jaws.
She twisted around at the last moment, preventing her from slamming the back of her head onto the floor below. Instead, it was the side of her head slamming painfully against it. It was painful, certainly, but it wasn''t as bad as it could have been. Grimacing, she tried to understand what went wrong.
Something unknown to her sparked within her. Automatically, she twisted her head, staring at herself. Confusion bubbled within her at the sight of a body that did not belong to her... And yet, why would it not belong to her? It was her body, was it not?
Questions only lead to other questions, the confusion only leading to more confusion as she took in the sight of the body that laid before her. A snow-white, canine-looking body with a few features that seemed more appropriate for felines, such as the sharp claws and agile look.
Nine long tails flowed naturally behind her, sprouting from her tailbone. Suprisingly, they weighted very little despite the large amount of fluff they carried.
Letting out a long, calming breath, she tried to reel back her erring thoughts. She would try and decipher them later along with her memories, but for now, she wanted, no, needed to move around a bit. She somehow knew it would calm her troubled mind down to do so.
Carefully, she stood up, her legs trembling underneath her, unused to the strain of having to hold up a body, even one as light as hers. Had she just been born? But she knew that her body wasn''t that of a pup. But, how did she know that? What even was a pup?Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Huffing, she shook her head. Questions could come later. Slowly moving a foot forward, she paused for a few seconds, feeling a lingering fear from her previous failure. After another few seconds of working through said fear, she finally put down her paw in front of her.
Seeing that nothing had happened, she repeated the motion with another paw, then another. Finally, a few minutes later, she found herself trotting happily along the cave, the lack of light hardly bothering her, as stated before. Curious, she pushed her head forward, sniffing the very green moss lining the cave walls.
It smelled strongly of earth mana. What was earth mana? She didn''t know, but the term seemed right to her. Somehow, this felt different to how she''d instinctively tried to stand up on two legs before, but she couldn''t put her non-existent finger on it exactly.
After a few hours of trotting around, she finally came upon what she''d been looking for: the exit.
Poking her nose out of the suprisingly small opening that led to the outside world, she felt her heart go cold once she saw what lay beyond the safety of her abode.
The land was practically hell on earth. Rocks fell from the skies every now and then, striking the ground below with a force that put the fear of god into the fox. Lava boiled angrily, replacing most of the ground. There were no trees in sight, no water.
Her breath hitched as she slowly backed away from the small hole that separated her from whatever the hell was out there. After taking a few steps back, she turned tail and ran, only to trip over herself and land in a painful heap on the ground.
She whined pitifully, awkwardly holding her nose with her paws as her tails restlessly moved side to side in agitation. Intellectually, she understood that something had to be special about this place for obvious reasons, but the more instintive part of her was crying out to her to simply run and abandon all reason.
Shaken out of her fear, however, she now resisted that impulse. Gritting her suprisingly sharp teeth, she inched her way back to the window of hell.
The scenery was the same. Volcanoes still spewed dark, dangerous smoke into the air along with the occasional flaming rock, magma slowly inching its way down. Meteorites still fell in the distance, and there was still no green to be seen anywhere.
However, thinking further about it, she found it... strange. Why was she not hearing anything?
Something within her told her that there should be some noise. The meteorites couldn''t be silent, the volcanoes and magma too should at least warn her about their existence. Hell, the temperature was nice and cozy in here, nothing like the outside world.
She tried to put her paw out and through the thin space separating hell from hearth, but immediately retracted it, hissing in pain. The temperature outside was simply too great.
It hadn''t hurt her, not really. Still, it was a pretty good indicator that she should decisively not go out.
Still, it was fine. She had other things to do in the meantime, deciphering her various memories being one of them.
Slowly, she inched her way away from the cursed opening, careful not to do anything that might cause whatever it was that made this place habitable for her to collapse.
Then, she ran. This time, she did not trip. She didn''t stop until a few hours later, when she reached a dead end.
The cave was a fairly straight and long tunnel, holding various plants here and there. She had even spotted a few bugs and other small creatures prowling around, but they were few.
The complete lack of sunlight bothered her, as if those things shouldn''t be here without it, and yet, she lacked context and understanding other than a slight unease with it.
Sighing, she chose a spot next to the dead end, one that looked fairly nice to her, and laid down, curling around herself as her head rested on her hips. Closing her eyes, she began to rummage through her memories, faintly happy at not being inconvenienced by the horrible headache from before.
Chapter 1
Her eyes slowly opened, her mind still foggy from the nice and long nap. She yawned, stretching as far as she could, feeling her bones creak pleasurably from the action.
It had been several weeks since she''d come to this place, and it still showed little to no signs of changing. The outside world was still a fiery mess utterly inhospitable to any life. That said, she had learned a few things during her time not spent sleeping.
Firstly, she had no real need for sleep, food, or water. She still wasn''t completely certain as to why, since the memories she''d slowly dissected spoke clearly about all beings needing sustenance to survive.
Secondly, the memories. They were... A mess, to put it lightly. She still wasn''t truly certain of certain bits and pieces, some parts bleeding through without conscious effort, while others had to be opened through time.
It had taken until today for her to finally pierce together a coherent enough string of information to understand who the memories belonged to. A human, female, of her early 30''s.
She had been an average, if not slightly more intelligent woman in a world where the rule of law reigned. Technology had advanced to the point of colonies being built on other planets, and she had been one of the few lucky ones to become a colonist.
Unfortunately, and on this the fox still wasn''t 100% certain, it seemed as though the spaceship the woman had been traveling in had met some kind of accident. The memories were blurry, but from what she could put together, the woman had ended up in some sort of wormhole, and that''s where the memories ended.
There were obviously a lot more parts to it, many of them completely irrelevant, but the fox still liked trying to understand them, both for the valuable information as well as a way to kill time.
There was another set of memories, but these ones... They were different. If the fox had to take an educated guess, she would say they were racial memories of a sort. They spoke of magic, of evolutions far different and quicker than that of the other memories, and of mana.
The two memories clashed on many points, which confused the technically newborn fox. Still, she had the time and enough intelligence to slowly work through all the difficulties that came from trying to integrate three technically different beings into a coherent whole.
Slowly, the fox got up. She glanced around her nest, trying to find a good spot for what was on the menu today: Magic.
The racial memories promised her that all nine-tailed foxes, herself included, had superb magical capabilities. Thus, she was quite curious.
Alright, that was a lie. She was practically dying to test out her magic, but she''d wanted to finish dissecting all her memories before she did, lest that come back to bite her in the ass later on.
Once she was a sufficient distance away from her little nest, her safe haven in an already quite safe haven, she called the memories she needed to the front of her mind.
Her racial memories differed from the other set mainly in that they were not images and emotions, but rather, they were ingrained knowledge, void of any personal feelings beyond ''pay attention to this'' or ''don''t do this''.
As she reviewed the information trickling down to her, she began to do what was practically mandatory for any sort of magic: Mana control.
The mana in the Haven, as she called it, wasn''t much, but it was still there, and definitely enough for the fox''s purposes. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
She could somehow feel her body drawing in mana every moment, slowly taking it in and using it to strengthen herself. It was a painfully slow process, one that would take ages to show any real effect, but she wasn''t inspecting the phenomenon for its effects, no.
She wanted inspiration, and she quickly found it. Her body drew in mana, converted it into her mana, and then used it. If she wanted any results, she would have to do the same.
However, she had a problem. She could sense mana once it was within her body, but outside of it... Thankfully, the racial memories came to the rescue.
A training method, one that her racial memories insisted was the one and true method for seeing, controlling and absorbing mana. Three birds with one stone, if you would.
The fox had her doubts about the authenticity of the ''one and only'' claim, but she didn''t really have anyone to argue with about this, nor any real desire to do so.
She hummed slightly, closing her eyes to concentrate before carefully following the steps laid out by her memories.
First, she laid down onto the floor, feeling only a smidge of regret at not just having remained back at her comfortable bed of moss before curling up into a ball not too dissimilar from that of her sleeping positions.
Still, there were key differences. Her muscles had to be pulled just the right amount to be uncomfortable, her snout had to poke her hip in just the right way that her throat and skin felt stretched, etc.
Finally, she tried to meditate. She had to ''open her soul to the world'', as her memories put it. She didn''t really have much of a clue as to what exactly she was supposed to be doing, so she tried to wing it.
Needless to say, it didn''t go very well.
For the following hours, not that the fox had much of a way to tell the time in this place nor any real reason to, she remained in that same exact position, only getting more and more uncomfortable.
Finally, with an annoyed huff, she forced herself back to her feet, frustrated at the lack of any result whatsoever. Were her memories lying to her? They shouldn''t, right?
As she mulled over those questions, she retraced her steps back to her nest, huddling her body within the comfortable moss. Rubbing the soft plants with her equally soft fur was a shamefully pleasurable act, but considering she had no one else to be ashamed for, she cared little.
Sighing contently after a good session that would have seemed almost sexual to any onlookers, the snow-colored fox decided to be stubborn, her regained vigor only bolstering said stubbornness.
So, she tried again, forcing herself into the uncomfortable position from before. She knew and was thankful that it was only necessary for ''seeing'' mana for the first, and maybe second, times. Still, that didn''t make it any less annoying.
Unfortunately, when she yet again failed to produce results hours later, she was left feeling downtrodden yet again, perhaps even more so than her first failure.
Grumpily, she decided that since she really wasn''t in any mood to sleep, she might as well take a walk. Granted, she''d already seen most of what the Haven had to offer, but she had very few other choices.
Getting up from her sprawled position, she forced herself to walk. By now, with several weeks of experience in this body under her proverbial belt, she had very little trouble walking or running, although anything more complicated would likely require more time to gain the necessary finesse to accomplish.
Shaking her head at the unnecessary thoughts, she focused back on the small signs of life spread around the Haven.
Small insects scurried about, eating moss and other insects alike to sustain themselves. A few went as far as to only prey on other insects, but they were the minority, as the amount of insect life was still very small and unable to sustain a sizable hunter population.
Not that the fox could tell much of this. Despite all her memories, she was still very much young. Influenced by another life, yes, but she still lacked true understanding. That would need time.
At one point, curious as to see just why the bugs ate each other, she bit down on a small, butterfly-like bug buzzing around her. She rolled it around in her mouth, crushing it between two teeth before swallowing.
It tasted fine. Nothing really special about it, really. She might as well have eaten air with how bland it tasted.
She was slightly stunned though. In her ''human'' memories, she knew that everything had a taste, be it good or not, organic or inorganic. However, she really couldn''t feel anything.
She pondered over the issue for a bit before reaching a tentative conclusion. Maybe she simply had no taste buds, or maybe they just worked differently?
She didn''t know, and it bothered her quite a bit.
Sighing, she made her way back to her nest, deciding that a nap sounded great as of right there and then. She would continue trying later.