From Half a Century Ago (2)
1001 Words
Outside the actual settlement, the warriors came face-to-face with a hundred or so of the beasts with the mysterious auras. They all snarled before they roared with the most primal of desires: To kill.
“FOR OUR TRIBE! FOR OUR FUTURE!”
The bravest of the warriors, Gistatarind and Ustajikawalka, initiated their battle cries. The others followed suit, with their own ferocious cries, as they all begin to charge towards the group of a hundred or so of these beasts, their axes ready to meet the soon-to-be carcasses.
In just a matter of minutes, the war cries and roars turned into wails of pain – and soon enough – death.
Some warriors could not keep up with the beasts' otherworldly powers, and thus they succumbed to their wounds.
From approximately a hundred warriors that led the charge, only fifty remained standing by the time the battle turned into one of attrition in just thirty minutes.
By that time, the warriors could feel early signs of their stamina depleting. But their morale stood as strong as ever.
An hour then elapsed. Twenty-five warriors were left.
Signs of wearing out began to manifest more on the warriors' side; and on the beasts' side, seventy-five or so of them still stood, ready to pounce on their next victims.
That was the point where Gistatarind and Ustajikawalka recalled why they had to participate in this battle they were involved in – the elder's daughter, Nimasalkina.
She was unquestionably the most beautiful maiden in the tribe.
Her crystalline blue eyes, her long straight hair that shined underneath the moonlight, her dainty figure and personality – these caught the attention of the tribe's unmarried men.
But no one wanted her more than the two.
And that awakened something inside their own minds.
Right from when Nimasalkina was at an age where she could be eligible for marriage, many men wanted to tie the knot with her.
But Gistatarind and Ustajikawalka were the ones more passionate – or maybe more obsessed – with her.
They were so obsessed with her to the point where the two would sometimes one-up each other for a shot at her beguiling glance.
The two were, indeed, bitter rivals for her hand.
And combined with their basal desires of killing and conquest, the thing called “lust for power” awakened inside their minds.
The number of warriors dwindled by the minute – until Gistatarind and Ustajikawalka were the only ones left to slay the beasts, which at the time, only twenty were left.
With their awakening, their strengths reached their peak.
And from out of nowhere, they were both decked in mysterious pieces of armor, little by little.
With their newly-acquired armored forms, they were able to ultimately kill off the rampaging beasts with little to no difficulty.
The Kipalwi should have breathed collective sighs of relief.
But the two's lust for battle has never been satiated.
“You think you will marry her? Not a chance!”
“I deserve to be her husband, not you!”
From slaying beasts laced with malicious auras to slaying each other.
The sparks that came from the clashing of their axes flew everywhere, as the two warriors continued their ferocity even in other places within the Kipalwi settlement.
Gistatarind and Ustajikawalka, despite dueling for a few more hours, never seemed to run out of energy once they have gained their mysteriously-acquired armored forms.
The surviving tribesmen, and even the elder and his daughter, could sense the battle that should've ended hours ago.
And they were indeed worried.
They pleaded the two to stop the battle, but those pleas fell on deaf ears.
Day and night, they continued on fighting each other, and the rest of the tribe could do nothing but witness the continuing enmity between the two.
And as the duel continued for a few more days, the “orb”, the tribe's most prized possession, began emanating the same malicious bluish aura. That greatly concerned the elder, as he could feel... destruction knocking at the tribe's doorstep.
Eventually, one week has passed; and the duelists threw everything they got.
Collateral damage was racking up; as houses were inadvertently destroyed by the duelists' incessant fighting, and innocent tribesmen were unfortunately caught in the crossfire and ended up as casualties.
In desperation, the elder and his daughter decided to isolate themselves, guarding the “orb” that was the remains of the tribe's creator deity.
The “orb” began manifesting more of its malevolent aura...
...as the two dueling warriors began to show signs of wearing out.
Still, their ferocity never ran out.
They ignored the pleas to stop their incessant fighting,
They still focused on the two prized possessions.
They knowingly destroyed their friendships, all in the name of achieving their common lofty ambitions.
And as they are surrounded by death and destruction they themselves have inflicted...
...they decided to give one last shot at the bride's hand; and sooner or later, the “orb”.
With their axes that glowed with a bluish aura – the same mysterious, malevolent one that affected the beasts...
...they exchanged their own surefire blows...
...creating a massive explosion of the bluish aura that consumed everything within its radius.
No one was spared.
Not Gistatarind, not Ustajikawalka, not Tanusbulawat, not Nimasalkina, not the rest of the Kipalwi.
Everything about the tribe itself...
...its history, its people, its culture...
...turned into nothing but dust, a huge crater...
...and the orb itself in the crater's very center.
The orb shed a silent light in this shattered landscape...
...as everything about the Kipalwi but its name would never be recorded in the history books for a long, long time.
The orb would sit in the crater undisturbed in the years to come, until an explorer chanced upon it sometime in the nineties.
The explorer then sold the orb to an antique collector, who would later auction it off to a collector of rare crystals.
As others vied for the ownership of the orb, the collector was later robbed of it; and since then, the possession of the orb changed hands several times over the years due to varying circumstances...
…until antique collectors moved on to other things, and the competition for the orb died down.
In the present day...
...one certain individual took possession of it...
...and quickly learned of its powers.
The lives of two vastly different individuals , bound by an odd friendship, will change forever.
- Writer
