1 Prologue: Part 1-4
#The World of the Story
A very strange tale of magic and mystery is about to unfold before you.
A blatantly rugged mountain range, Ekwensu Ogologos, stands at the center of it all, like a megalithic sentinel keeping a careful watch over the realms of the seen and the unseen.
The virgin crowns battle each other through the cirrus clouds toward the heavens.
How far into the sky they go is unknown to this day.
Those fiercely inaccessible and dominant peaks inspire abyssal awe and pernicious curiosity among those who long for them so intently. But a constantly raging weather inhibits their prying eyes and ridicules their foolish courage.
The rumored snow beasts and so-veiled-in-obscurity snow eagles find their sanctum among the mountain peaks of Ekwensu Ogologos. However, no soul ever dared venturing to validate those rumors.
Who can tell?
At the foot of the mountain range is a very deep, dark jungle called Akunomori. Probably, this is the first reason why the mountain ranges are still untainted.
The forest is like a continent. A brave explorer can experience the beauties of all the seasons if they dare to defy the wild forest and traverse through it. Somewhere it rains, and at the same time, somewhere it is winter or summer. Not just that! It is the home of deadly beasts, reptiles, and creatures of the unseen realm. If these creatures do not scare you, then perhaps quicksand, sinkholes, and deadly poisonous carnivorous plants would! This jungle is not for humans to venture into.
A beautiful river flows through the jungle, the Sunsunhan. She springs from one of the highest peaks of the Ogologos and rolls down like the beautiful long hairs of Rapunzel, as if waiting for her prince to climb up the mountain to meet her at the tower of the witch!
As Sunsunhan flows down, piercing through the thick of Akunomori, she bathes and nurtures the lives of beasts and plants alike. Countless strands of Sunsunhan cut through the forest lands to make Akunomori even darker, denser, and more dangerous than ever. You could call Sunsunhan a mother figure to Akunomori.
The jungle and the mountain ranges lie across such a wide land area that they cover significant parts of three different countries: the Kingdom of Nordurljos From the East to the North spreading to the West, the Kingdom of Omortolok from the East to the South, and the Kingdom of Arkistan from the South to the West. This is the world where our story is set to unfold.
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"Monsters are not born, but made."
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Part-1
#The City of Ayodale
Ayodale City. A beautiful, vibrant, and thriving city. A few hours of journey away from Akunomori's border. The city was the capital of the Nordurljos Kingdom. It was full of tall and glittering buildings.
During the day, they stood tall, reflected the sun, and gave you the illusion of a shining city of gold—El Dorado. This was a city where magic and technology flourished under the reign of the scholar King El Bakko. Lights from building signboards, colorful street lamps, floating balloons, and the Ayodale Tower kept the city brighter even in the evening.
However, just like any city, it had a darkness that hid right under its brightness. Sorcery, magic, and curses were practiced in secrecy. However, one day, the things that lurked behind shadows and beyond the eyes of normal people crawled out and announced their presence to the whole human realm.
Calamities befall the unsuspecting people of civilization, like the people of 'Aad or Thamud! The people of Ayodale were not expecting anything, but this was right at the moment when 'it' happened!
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#Just a Regular Day at Ayodale
It felt like a regular and normal evening. People were going through their normal day.
Just like the couple sitting outside a café at a table waiting for their coffee and snacks. They were holding hands. Enjoying the lovely moments of the evening. The man was thinking of proposing to the lady sitting on the other side of the table, talking about going stargazing at the Ayodale Tower.
Or an ambulance going past them, sounding its siren.
Or, perhaps, a group of schoolgoers moving toward a concert venue wearing logos of their favorite bands or artists.
The normal Ayodale day can be seen as an old lady walking into a store in a residential area and the young girl at the counter coming forward to help her out!
Or a business tycoon having a closed-door meeting with the mayor of the city; or it could be seen in a group of friends coming out of a movie theater.
There were other parts of the city where bullies were exacting bloody revenge on a normal schoolboy not caring for a human life or a drunk husband beating his wife for money for gambling.
Or perhaps a normal Ayodale day was seen in the young boys helping an old man carry his cardboard boxes.
Today was just like any other mundane day in the lives of the people of Ayodale City, and no one had any idea the event that was about to take place would shake their lives.
*****
Part-2
#A Recipe for Disaster
The sun was kissing the western horizon goodbye. The soft crimson light of a dying afternoon would usually inspire melancholic romance or nostalgia. Think about sitting on a rooftop or a terrace, if you have one, or somewhere high up there to watch the sun bid farewell to the world for the day. With a mild late spring breeze that caresses your hair and touches your lips and cheeks with adoration, what do you think goes through your mind?
However, for a group of university freshmen, it was nowhere near that kind of emotion. All they were having in their minds was regret for not listening to their group leader, Adam, a trainee ranger from the same department they were from. They were still cursing him for his poor background.
Maurice, one of the wealthiest kids in the group, said in a wavering voice, "That idiot! It's his fault that we are stranded. If he were from a wealthy household, I would have listened to him."
Larry and Paul were the most silent of the group. However, Paul opened his mouth for the first time and asked, "What are you even saying, Maurice? Why would we bring poverty into the jungle when we needed Adam's experience? You pushed him way too much! Anyone would have gotten angry with you. Do you even know what you are doing now? Where exactly are we?" He looked around. Everything looked the same. "Shit! You bastard! We should have backtracked our steps and not gone farther inside this god-forsaken jungle. Damnit!"
Maurice looked at his GPS tracker, one of the most advanced ones preloaded with maps of the world and connected to the GPS satellite in real-time. "I am sure it is this way!"
The cheeky bastard, Zack, was now quaking in his boots. "Bro, let's just go back, yeah? Your GPS can take us back, right?"
"Fuck you, man! If you hadn't been so enthusiastic about using your night vision gear in the jungle and doing night photography, we wouldn't have come today. Bastard! You began all of it with Adam. Have you forgotten?"
None of them actually forgot.
It was their semester finals. Before the next one began, they had a lot of time to kill. It wasn't that they were the sharpest students in the class. They were pampered princes of wealthy families. The four—Larry, Paul, Zack, and Maurice—had been together since their childhood.
The four got to know Adam during the orientation. He was super down to earth. They immediately knew this guy could be their next usable item. He came from a needy family. He was also a scholarship student at the university.
Pretty soon, they roped Adam into their circle because of his extracurricular experiences. He was an amateur ranger at the National Forest Rangers' Association. He already had hundreds of hours of assisted tours as a trainee. He was excellent at his job and got a few medals as recognition of his talent.
Right before the semester finals, Larry and Paul got a rare book from some thrift shop. It chronicled the lives of some mysterious people around the world. However, in one chapter, they learned about the mystical people of a village called Darussufi. The village was outside the national border and very deep inside the jungle. It was not a tourist attraction. Unless you were a serious explorer commissioned by the kingdom, you would not dream of going there.
However, the book vaguely marked the location where the village could be. It was not certain and, of course, was unverified. The village did not show up on any of the modern maps. The map in the book was hand-drawn and only marked the point of entry and a rough distance and direction from the point of entry.
They planned out the whole thing just in the afternoon and then Maurice called Adam.
"Buddy! Are you free for a tour inside the Akunomori?" Maurice asked him, "You will be handsomely paid! We need a guide for our adventure." He winked at the other three. Actually, they intended to use him as the guide and the load bearer. Adam was quite burly.
To their surprise, Adam declined the offer straight away: "Sorry, friends! That, I cannot do. I am just a trainee and an amateur ranger. If you want to go into the jungle, you will need a fully certified ranger as your guide. Besides, I don't want to go into that fearsome jungle."
However, after a few minutes, Adam had to give in to their request reluctantly. "Okay! But, Maurice, if I say something in the jungle, you guys must follow my orders. I won't take responsibility otherwise."
"Okay, okay, bro! Chill out! Cool!"
It was decided that the group would leave right after dawn. Adam told them to pack everything up and double or triple check their gear before they left their dorm. But the four paid no heed and intentionally partied hard at night with some girls from their department.
Adam kept calling since the sunrise but Larry first responded when it was half way through the daylight.
"Hey! I told you we needed to start immediately after or before the sunrise! We need to use the most of the daylight and find a good place to camp inside the jungle! Why are you so late? What have you guys been doing?"
"Chill out, man! We are coming! We have a car, remember? We are not like you, bro! We have a car! We can manage in time. Just wait at your home; we will pick you up." Larry dropped the call and it took them another hour or so to pick Adam up.
When they reached the entry point, it was two in the afternoon.
"What can we even do with only a few hours of sunlight? Guys, let's just stay at a nearby motel and be there tomorrow! I am telling you from my exp..." Maurice cut him off even before he could finish his sentence.
Adam made it clear they should listen when he gave advice as the team guide. However, all of them kept making jokes about how strict he was and there was no need for him to be such a stickler for rules.
They were telling each other how they had the latest and most expensive GPS devices, night vision goggles, and hi-tech cameras to do photography. They wanted to put them to the test as soon as possible. So, a mere Adam could not dare stop them in their tracks. After all, "We are paying you, man! Just follow us!" is what they said to Adam.
In the end, Adam got angry and stopped talking to them. Now he was at the back of the group, silently following Maurice and his enthusiastic followers.
Adam was sure; at this point, they were pretty lost in the jungle. They kept venturing deep into the jungle. Although Maurice said his GPS was working just fine, Adam was sure he did not have enough experience to follow the GPS device.
They had lost the trail they were supposed to take to find the village. And now they were blindly walking forward, not knowing what lay ahead.
The sun was about to set. The darkness inside the jungle was compelling. Although Adam was sure that outside the jungle there was still the last bit of sunlight visible, in here it was pitch black darkness.
It was not Adam's first time in the jungle after darkness had hit; it's just that something did not sit right with him. He carefully tried to listen.
Suddenly, it hit him. The jungle was not supposed to be this silent! It was like the calm before the storm.
*****
Part -3
#Heaven Piercing Wail
Adam noticed the unusual silence and got stirred up.
"Guys! I think we should head back! It's dark and it's dangerous. Something is about to go down!" Adam spoke aloud to break his long silence.
Everyone looked back. Maurice chuckled. "This guy! Why? Are you jealous that I'm the group leader now?"
"No! That's not it! It's really dangerous! Don't you notice the silence in the air?"
Paul and Larry looked at each other. Zack laughed and made a funny face. "Ooo! Scared of the silence!" Not knowing the significance of a sudden silence in the jungle.
"We don't hear any birds or animals. Does it look normal to you? They were pretty vocal even a few moments ago." Adam argued fiercely. He did not want to die because of these useless punks.
"Yes, Sir Adam has a gut, so it feels for him." Maurice bantered. Clearly, he was not paying due attention to him. However, the funny expressions on their faces changed a few moments later.
At first, they noticed large flocks of birds flying away from a certain area in Akunomori. The sound of a great dispersion inside the jungle meant that the creatures inside were running away from something, scared. They were moving away from something, as if suddenly they felt a monster waking up from its slumber!
The time was right after the sunset. The fine yellowish-red line was still illuminating the sky while the evening slowly crawled toward the horizon to blanket it in complete darkness.
They felt an abnormality in the atmosphere. Black clouds were gathering over that very spot from where the birds fled.
They quickly moved toward a nearby open space inside the jungle. What they saw, they could not believe. They thought they were hallucinating.
A ball of wind appeared on the horizon. It started collecting dust and dirt and started growing bigger by sucking the air from the atmosphere. The ball wanted to explode while some invisible force was squeezing it inward.
It was imploding and exploding at the same time. As if an invisible chef were kneading the dough of air. The terrifying display paralyzed the witnesses.
Suddenly, it halted its movement for a few seconds, as if it were the calm before the storm. Then, with a netherworldly wail that pierced everyone's ear, that dough of energy exploded with towering flames of black fire. They rushed toward the sky like snakes unleased from hell.
As the five explorers watched with awe, the indescribable scene got burned on their retinas, and the last thing they felt was a tremendous shockwave from the heaven-piercing wail that blew them away, vaporizing their very existence, as if an atomic bomb had exploded.
*****
Part—4
#The Aftermath
The shock wave from the explosion tore through the city like the fallout of an atomic bomb blast. The houses and establishments closer to the jungle felt the impact the most.
Houses with wooden floors, roofs, or walls were mowed down. In some cases, the roofs were blown far away.
Reports of severe injuries and casualties came flooding in, mostly from the areas near Akunomori.
A blackout occurred city-wide. Although it lasted only a minute or so, people froze in their places—everyone. Their hearts stopped beating for a few seconds. Weak people wet themselves! But surprisingly, pregnant mothers who were due at that moment delivered their babies with a never-been-seen-before ease!
Confused and terrified people were trying to prevent the sound by covering their ears but it pierced through. They were all witnessing the incident as it unfolded.
It took quite some time for the people of Ayodale City to come to their senses. Immediately, various government agencies, like the military, police, and fire departments, went on high alert.
A new kind of weapon of mass destruction that they didn't know about? Who was testing it? Spies from neighboring nations started moving in secrecy to find out the cause.
A never-before-seen weapon that could create such devastation would easily break the balance of power between the nations.
The news agencies notified their reporters to hustle to break the first news the next morning. However, government forces stopped their efforts, saying it was a matter of national security.
On the other hand, conspiracy theorists were also raising a storm online. Some said it was a secret weapon tested by the government, while others pointed to the black fire, saying no fire burned like that in reality, so it could be an unknown mythological or supernatural event caused by a supernatural being.
Time stopped for the people of Ayodale City. The night felt suffocatingly hot and long. They could not get even a wink of sleep the entire night. Perhaps this was the first time in their lives that they waited so eagerly for the break of dawn.
At first, choppers were sent to investigate the site. But they could not land. Although the members were thinking about rappelling down from the air, due to unknown security risks, that decision was canceled, and the choppers were called back to the base right outside the jungle.
There was no asphalt road to Darussufi, a remote village in Akunomori where the incident took place, from Ayodale. You could access the village through a trail made from animal and human movement. Not suitable for everyone's access. The road was very dangerous. It was only wide enough for all-terrain vehicles.
The fire department, the police, and the armed forces formed a task force to investigate the site where the village was located. It took more than a week for the team to reach Darussufi. They examined, cordoned off the site, and searched for survivors. Not a soul was found within the village. The people there vanished into thin air!
However, they found a little girl, unconscious, a few hundred meters away from the site of the fire. It seemed that she was hiding or running away into the forest. Although trees were burned to some extent around her, she was mysteriously unscathed.
The rescuers were happy to find someone alive, but this also fanned the flames of conspiracy and suspicion after some time. When nobody found any visible cause of the fire, all eyes were on the sole survivor—the little girl.
The little girl was sent to a nearby hospital but later transferred to Ayodale City Hospital in the secrecy of the night for her safety. The authorities did not want to expose her information to the public until a thorough investigation was performed. Besides, she could be a great threat to national security.
Without anyone noticing, mysterious people started moving in the shadows. They all wanted to get into the head of the little girl.
"Only she knows about that intriguing fire—the weapon." Everyone was thinking the same.
