The Tale of 2 Brothers: Chapter 1
The Boy born without time
The air at the night time was silent, it was as if the village of Goldrith was awaiting something to happen. Still were the leaves on the trees, and quiet was the small village pub, no sound could be heard and an awry observer would have simply passed by the town, had it not been the houses and other constructions to remind the traveller of human presence.
However, the village was not asleep. It was awake, and it was waiting…With bated breath, they kept watch over the boundaries of their little domain, seeking to protect it from those who they knew were definitely to come. The village was armed, it was prepared. Hiding behind shrubs & bushes, dug beneath the land, sharp points carved into the soils, and fire liquid thrown at places of approach, the village waited. With each breath, they knew the danger was approaching, and their resolve and their fear grew stronger. Strict instructions had been passed by the village elders; sound was the greatest enemy, and not a whisper would be tolerated. The prize on victory was tremendous, and the price for the same was terrible…each warrior had dug into his tongue a poisoned sliver to keep it away from his mouth, thus ensuring he would die before he spoke, and if the deities demanded it…a swift death by his own tongue…Each warrior was dressed in black, completely blended with the night, their robes made of liquid cloth, no thicker than a sheet, but sleek & impenetrable. With their painted black faces and even the eyeballs were blackened with spray soot, even darkness would not separate them from its womb. The only marks to distinguish these terrifying soldiers was a straight white line passing like a V over the eyebrows and bent downwards towards the nose. In the darkness, even the mark could be barely seen, but with any contact with water or sweat or blood, it would phosphorescence and create a dazzling light strong enough to stun the enemy. It was an old tradition, this mark, and long forgotten in legend was these were descendants of a Hawk King, a man who could fly. Scarcely any believed that story, and thus story became legend, legend had turned into myth until this time when the mark just remained the mark of these soldiers of terror, the ‘Volt’.
But today the Volts had no time for pride, it was a time for valour, and a time of retribution. They knew who were hunting them, and what they yearned for…
It was in this desolate silence that suddenly a wail rang out. It was the voice of a lady, and it was clear that she was in terrible distress. The leader of volts heard the clear pitched wail, resounding in the silence of the village and crashing into the trees beyond. Involuntarily he shuddered, fearing not for his life, but for failure. The task which was assigned to him was of the utmost importance, and the consequences of failure so devastating that his calm failed him for a moment… And he remembered..
At least for the last 300 years, since before the time of his great-grandfather, his family had been in the volts – an army created with a single purpose, to find and protect the child born without time. The infant who would come into this world at a time when the day was not yet over and the next not yet begun. At that exact moment, the child must be out of his mother’s womb and not a moment before or after… else all would be for nought. And for the last 300 years they had failed, every time a mother would be ready to deliver a child, they would try for that exact moment, but either the child or the mother gave out before the time was upon them. Many lives had been lost in this effort, many of his own men had lost their wives and children to the cause, many had failed once and tried again but slowly and surely death had engulfed them all. If not from the pain of delaying the childbirth then by torture, extreme torture in the hands of those foul beasts who had been in existence since time immemorial to prevent this very event from occurring. And today once again these were the very beasts that were chasing them, chasing the baby, chasing what little hope remained for this land.
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What the voltz captain was however not aware of, was the fact that this was a tale more than 10,000 years old, when the first time this event had occurred. In the royal palace, the queen was waiting to give birth, and with predictions for a great king, all attention was focussed on the waiting mother to deliver her baby. The numerologists and the king’s mathematicians had given their predictions, and there was not a doubt in anybody’s mind over the greatness of this baby when it grew up and of the resulting prosperity in the land. People had exclaimed about the wealth of the lands, the gold flowing through every home, the health of every child, the tall green fields of the farmers and the width of the boundaries of this great kingdom. Calculations had failed to match to the levels of his potential upon birth, and even the wizened soothsayers from far and away awaited this event to occur in the belly of the mother queen.
The queen was a lady of immense beauty, she was rumoured to be Egyptian in birth and was a heir to one of the oldest remaining tribes of the Old Days. Her wholesome face resplendent with feeling was not devoid of strength, her firm jawline told of her strict decision and anybody who had seen her swordplay would do well to think of her as anything but weak. She had been a just queen, and although it had taken the people some time to accept her, today the land spoke of her as their own, as their one. On this night while she lay on the feather bed, in between her sweat streaked brows she breathed lightly, it had been 5 days since she had slept peacefully; she was bearing a mother’s pain, the boy would not sleep, always kicking, always moving…thinking on these same lines, she smiled; this would be a naughty child, and one with bountiful energy. Yes she had heard the priests, their predictions over her bearing a son probably even more renowned then the old fathers, whose names had been carved in gold and placed in the high court for all to see. It was a lovely dream, and she imagined him as she always did, with blond hair, fair skin, perfect teeth and jumping running walk, always challenging someone to a fight, rolling in dirt like there was nothing better and then making a face when she washed it off him. The Royal prince would be a beauty, she thought, she had never come to accept that her son maybe black, even that it may not be a son at all, if there was one thing that she despised in all these people, it was their colour, their blackness, as if they were scoured from the very burnt face of earth before being born. This was her one deep desire, she wanted to see her son like those of her own tribe, and in her depths she hungered for her tribe to regain the pride and honour that they once had, her son at the front of this dynasty, and she the ruling mother over these masses.
She had secretly contacted her old priestess, who had been banned from her own kingdom due to her knowledge and misuse of the black-arts, and through her she had gotten a potion that would make the child fair. Every night she fed the child this potion, making sure the drops went through her throat to her womb and to her waiting foetus. But mixed in that potion, she had also asked for strength, for power, and for long live, and ensnared by the royal ritches the old hag had provided what the queen mother asked for….to the extent that now blinded by her greed she had only to be asked for something for the queen mother and she would mix it in the child’s potion…a wrong far far disastrous than could even be thought. Cause within her cauldrons the various elements mixed and fused, that were never supposed to be, and split into the two elements called ‘rithmous’ & ‘arihant’; ‘rithmous’ the lighter one floating at the top, shiny, bright & volatile, providing extreme energy, long life and terrible anger, terrible addiction and terrible visions while similar but a mellowed shine, almost pearly “arihant’ provided acumen, speed, agility & great health to the drinker. Such was the mixture that only the most coveted charms, the most skilled couldroners could separate one from the other, a pain-staking process taking drop by drop to perfect. But the old hag was greedy, forced by the queen mother & gouged by the riches, she filled vial after vial for the mother, forsaking to check what lay inside.
And inside the Royal Palace, the queen mother consumed all and remained happy, dreaming of her fair son and her eternal pride. She thought in vain that she had cheated fate, that her mind and her riches would bring back that which was once lost, and one day she would be crown mother of her own tribe, wiping the face of the earth of the darkness of blacks, brought through her own Adonis son…
Fate, however had a different plan.
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Far below the mother’s throat rested in her womb grew not one, but two kids. Two sons, resting within the same folds of the mother’s lap, they grew and the liquid from the vials poured through. They were born entwined in the same placenta two kids feeding through the same tube. And the lighter boy clinging to the top, and with every vial he drank the ‘rithmous’ while the heavier ‘arihant’ flowed on, into the lower child who for all matters was forgotten and unknown to the world outside.
