The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods: Volume 2 (eBook)

Yanagi (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-1306-4 (ISBN)

Infos

After a surprisingly long journey, Misha arrives in the Kingdom of Redford. Her identity as one of the People of the Forest grants her an exceptionally warm welcome, though her first taste of high society ends up being a bit bewildering for her. However, it's not long before she's back in her element. After a few days of living in Redford Castle, she encounters the king's younger sister, a frail and sickly girl just about Misha's age. Driven by her insatiable curiosity, she can't help but investigate what is causing the princess's illness, even when it leads her to butt heads with Redford's nobility.

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Prologue

The Kingdom of Redford was one of the largest and oldest nations on the continent of Carmine. Since it was on the southern end of the continent, its climate was fairly mild, the temperature remaining fairly stable across the year. Underground springs in the center of the kingdom fed a large lake that, coupled with large stretches of flat ground, made Redford well suited to agriculture and dairy farming. The kingdom produced such an overabundance of food that they often lent a helping hand to their neighbors. On top of that, good government over the past generations had led to the Redford royal family being famously adored.

As a result, the last few hundred years had been a time of unmitigated prosperity, cementing Redford as a powerful nation. The current king, Ryan Lou Redford, had taken the throne six years prior. He’d displayed remarkable charisma as he took over leadership of the country despite the chaos at the time, and he’d quickly made a name for himself as a wise king.

Born as fourth prince to a concubine of the previous king, he had grown up with the bare minimum of education in statecraft, his distance from the throne leaving him saddled with little in the way of expectations. As such, he had lived a relatively unfettered life. Fully intending to support his older brother’s claim to the throne, he’d spent most of his time traveling around allied nations under the pretense of studying abroad. As for how he’d ended up becoming king, it could only be said that coincidence had conspired in his favor.

Ryan’s father had never been great at building new things, but he was renowned as a king capable of protecting what already existed. Peaceful times were prosperous times. Instead of carrying himself with a striking charisma, he’d had a gentle, graceful aura about him. That personality should have attracted the best people, leading to a peaceful and effective government.

That was what was supposed to have happened.

Shortly after Ryan left to study abroad in the kingdom of Jaunbrillant, a mysterious illness swept through the capital of Redford.

At first, it had seemed to be nothing more than a mild virus, but as time progressed, it developed brutal symptoms: fever, vomiting, and violent coughing fits. In the end, victims lapsed into comas, their bodies covered in strange bruises resembling worms crawling across their skin. It came to be called the “Red Eye plague” from the color of the victims’ eyes upon their deaths.

More than half of people who contracted the disease died from it, and it spread indiscriminately, found just as readily in the slums as in the mansions of the rich and powerful. Most terrifying of all was that even the women of the inner palace succumbed to the disease despite rarely leaving the wing of the palace set aside for them. Strangely, there were no instances of the disease reported outside the capital.

The king immediately locked down the city. He couldn’t allow the disease to spread throughout the entire kingdom. With no clues as to the source of the disease, the only hope of containing it was to quarantine the people who carried it.

However, that also meant locking the royalty and nobility in the capital. Even if they understood this lockdown was meant for everyone’s safety, people acted irrationally when their own lives were at stake. In order to suppress those high-running emotions, the king and his close associates decided to remain in the capital themselves. Most of the remaining objections were quashed once the king allowed the children of those who were asymptomatic to evacuate.

However, the third prince decided to remain in the city. “There’s the crown prince, the second prince, and even a fourth prince off studying in foreign lands. Three heirs is more than enough, so it should be fine for me to work on the ground,” the third prince declared, heedless of his own life. He always joked about being too dumb for his position and that he’d leave the hard thinking to his much smarter brothers. Ever since he was young, he had spent most of his time training with the knights of the kingdom, and that didn’t change when those knights were sent across the disease-ridden capital.

The king, his queen, and his concubines elected to remain in the capital, hoping to offer solidarity with those suffering within the city. That act bolstered the resolve of the remaining nobility. Rather than panicking and fleeing, they followed the king’s orders. Even those permitted to evacuate respected the period of quarantine demanded of them to keep any infected from leaving the area.

And so, despite being unable to find a cure for the disease, as winter set in, the disease mysteriously vanished...though not before taking the wise and gentle king with it, alongside many of his subjects. Over half of the royals had lost their lives at that point. While the kingdom was deep in mourning, the crown prince ascended the throne, preparing for a dark and lonely winter.

As citizens held out hope for a gentler spring, news of an uprising at the edge of the kingdom poured in. In such a distant city, the people struggled to find accurate information on the crown’s handling of the disease. One person with ambitions for power began spreading rumors that the king had been a fool and had wanted to bring down as many of his own with him as possible when he’d grown ill. Such gossip incited people against the royalty.

Despite the plague having decimated their army, the second prince led the majority of Redford’s surviving knights to quell the rebellion. They made every effort to minimize the casualties on both sides, but splitting the kingdom’s army between quelling the rebellion and protecting the capital had been the rebels’ goal from the beginning. With the capital’s defenses stretched thin, a neighboring nation launched an attack on Redford. It had all been carefully calculated.

Upon discovering the deception, the second prince immediately led his army back toward the capital, but the lord of the rebelling city marched out to attack them from behind. This ended in their killing of the second prince, who died in despair from this betrayal.

When news of the invasion reached Ryan, he immediately gathered a force from among the troops of Jaunbrillant and returned home.

Ultimately, he was too late. By the time he reached the capital, the damage had already been done; the city had been devastated, and the newly crowned king was dead. The sudden invasion had besieged the king and his people in the capital, where they soon learned their walls were not as sturdy as they had hoped.

On the third night of the siege, someone opened the gates to the city from the inside, and the food being supplied to the defending soldiers was drugged. Even if the sabotage couldn’t reach the king or those close to him, with more than half of their military outside the city and more than half of those remaining brought down by the drugged food, Redford had no chance against the invaders. Enemy soldiers overran the capital in no time.

In order to create a window for women and children to escape, having already been evacuated to the castle for their protection, the king marched out himself. When Ryan finally reached the castle, he was greeted by the sight of his now headless brother.

Embracing his dead brother’s body, he roared, “Is this what you people do?! Crush everything underfoot in the name of greed?! You think I will let that pass?!”

Together with the forces of their allies, Ryan gathered his kingdom’s remaining soldiers and returned to the battlefield. Unlike his gentle father and older brother, Ryan very much had a talent for warcraft, driving back the enemy army with every tactic imaginable. Above all, the king’s willingness to sacrifice himself to protect his people had united the hearts of the common citizens. Anyone who could hold a weapon, from the elderly to the young, gathered for battle. Even an untrained militia could accomplish something with sheer numbers, especially with the individual determination each soldier brought to the battle.

In short order, Ryan found himself victorious. He returned home to take the throne. Having lost his father and brothers, even as the nobles bowed to him, he found the idea of taking the throne too much to handle. However, he’d survived; thus, he had a responsibility to protect the people of Redford. Thinking of his citizens’ well-being, he suppressed his storm of emotions and accepted the weight of the crown two years after the first outbreak of the Red Eye plague.

Ryan was nineteen years old at the time of his coronation. Redford faced many hardships from that time on, but with the remaining authority of his father, he and his young advisers quickly grew into their roles and forged a new future for their kingdom. He delivered vicious reprisal with a smile to those who underestimated him for his youth. Those who tried to suck up to him were accepted happily on the surface, but behind every smile the king weighed each of them coldly and analytically.

When Ryan muttered that all the politicking was corrupting him, the old prime minister replied with a smile, “Yet your determination has led others to revere you as a wise king.”

“But my father was known for his kindness,” Ryan had said, and his ministers could only share sympathetic expressions, no answer for him. It was only his newest advisers that could provide consolation.

“Your brother was said to be just like your father, but he...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.9.2025
• Reihe/Serie: The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods
• Illustrationen: Yoh Hihara
• Übersetzer: Nathan Macklem
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: apothecary • Coming of Age • female protagonist • Forest • journey • Medieval • Naturalist
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-1306-3 / 1718313063
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-1306-4 / 9781718313064