Hollow Settlements.
Region Scorpio.
18:55, Thor'sday,
29th June, 2204.
The atmosphere deep within the rain forest was heated.
The natives danced joyously without care.
With reckless abandon.
Men, women and children shaking and twirling their hips to the rhythm of the drums and gongs that were played.
Their sacrifice had already been accepted; they believed it so.
The sacrifice of Fifty under aged girls to their Deity of Harvest and Agriculture; Abure was successful.
The girls had been sent into a furnace, left to burn.
Their ashes were collected and spread over an old, shaggy make-believe temple.
The screams and yells of anguish within the scorching flame had solidified the people's belief that Abure had accepted the sacrifice.
The families of these girls danced more wildly than the rest; it was a great privilege for the sacrifice to the Great god of harvest to have been chosen from their homes.
These were the belief of fifty families from the people of a barbaric Faith Sect known as the Gowurs.
They occupied a forest territory within the Region Scorpio, A region east of Region Libra.
They, like every other Sect in the New World, had developed by conquest.
Overtaking, consuming and absorbing all neighboring Sect surrounding their territory.
GOM!
GOM!
GOM!
The ceremonies continued.
The Chief of the Gowurs was a big man, nearly seven-foot-five.
He wore a loincloth that jingled with shinks of metal, and carried a wooden club.
He descended slowly from inside a hut that sat on a barren hill.
He was bushy, with a wild mane that ran across his jaw and heavily scarred face.
The Chief walked slowly.
His decent had stopped the natives from their dance. Each of them prostrating themselves on the floor as a sign of fear and of respect.
Behind him was an old man, worn out and looking to be in his eighties, with a neck adorned with beads of bones and malicious totems.
A Gowurian priest.
He walked quite quickly for a man of his age, having no problems matching the Chief's brisk strides.
The Chief headed straight for the temple; one that stood closely to the river of the Serpent King.
The people made way for him as he passed, all of them silent.
This was an auspicious moment, one even the children were aware of.
He stood in front of the temple chanting indecipherable words. And after a few minutes he turned back; to the people and to the priest, who stood behind him muttering his own share of rubbish, smiling.
"It is done!"
He screamed in the native Gowurian tongue. His words brought ripples of joy into the hearts of people, they threw themselves into the air and resumed their dancing.
The gods would not kill them, this time.
The merriment continued.
"Commence the feast, roll in the carts!" The hefty Chief boomed as he headed straight for his hut in the hill.
"Oooh."
The people screamed frantically in unison. This was their way of showing agreement to a welcomed statement.
A wooden cart was pulled into the Tribes Square; a center for village activities just a few meters in front of the hill.
The cart was pulled by a group of young boys; about the age of twelve, who appeared to take pride in pulling the meat filled cart.
The natives all rushed to the cart in frivolous frenzy, scratching each other, to be first in pulling away juicy pieces of mysterious meat.
From this cart, varying types of meat could be seen, multiples bearing eerie resemblance to a child's body part.
"The body of the children of the southern Sects are surely delicious". A native sighed as he licked his fingers.
His sentence had earned a collective grunt of recognition from the people.
It was clear, known to all the inhabitants of the territory surrounding the Gowurians that the Gowur people were cannibals.
An average man of Gowur stood at a height of four-foot-six, with long, dirty, dreadlocks that reached his waist.
Their teeth were pointed and razor sharp, and their eyes gleamed red with a feral, blazing intensity.
The Chief ate his own share of the meat with his priest in seclusion, inside of his hut, both of them sitting on the rough ground.
Both sat in silence as they gobbled down huge chunks of meat at once. The old man's actions once again did not seem befitting of a man his age.
He tore away large chunks with his unique set of similar teeth and swallowed them as quick as he bit.
His speed surpassed that of the Chief.
Suddenly, and as the feast was ongoing, they felt it.
The earth quaked loudly, unsettling the footing of all the people in the forest.
Trees were uprooted.
Hills came apart, falling as boulders.
huge cracks were created on the ground, the huts in the village and the temple therin where destroyed by the unforseen cataclysmic event.
Yet, somehow, no one died. Not even the little kids, they had mysteriously managed to survive, but their settlement couldn't, all that was left of it were shambles.
"What was that", the Tribesman who had commented earlier in the meat's flavour; a dark skinned fellow, darker than the rest, had questioned.
And silently, at the centre of the Tribe square, a female figure emerged from the earth, passing through the ground as if it was water.
The female was tall, tanned, with long ebony black hair.
Her face was a delicate artwork of perfection; chiseled, dark and beautiful. She wore an aloof expression on her face and bore an overbearing aura around her.
Her eyes were completely brown, like the earth of the jungle she had just emerged from, unannounced.
She tilted her head a bit to the left, and, just like magic, the earthquake resumed; shifting the earth beneath the Tribesmen like a kaleidoscope, to the left.
The Natives screamed, some were for defiance and some came out of fear, the warriors of the Sect all rushed towards her, brandishing their sharp razor like teeth.
At the time, dusk was setting in.
The sun had already sunk deep into the horizon, casting the Gowur territory into a cascading penumbra.
The darkness accentuated the blazing red eyes of the angered Gowur people; who ran madly towards the intruder.
The female intruder bent her head to the right, tilting the balance of the earth beneath them to the right as well.
It was magical.
This action disoriented some of the attacking barbarians.
A few of them had leaped into the air, managing to hover for an unusual amount of time while attacking.
The intruder seemed to have noticed that her actions had little effect on some of the Sects members.
She let out a breath.
"Minor inconvenience."
She began tilting her head speedily from left to right to left to right, not giving the Tribesmen time to catch themselves.
Soon enough, she lost interest in the Barbaric Tribesmen and with a sharp inclination of her head upwards,she rose a countless number of huge earthen spikes from the ground.
One by one the spikes impaled all the Tribesmen in the Square, some stretching high enough to impale those still in mid air. Children, men, women, and the elderly, all were impaled by the earthen spikes created by the Tribes intruder.
The Chief; who had been watching solemnly from afar together with the priest, unleashed a loud bestial roar.
He crouched down, and with a steady heave, he pushed himself off the ground and into the air.
He landed beside the intruder with a shockwave, scattering dust and debris to the atmosphere.
In turn, the earthen spikes that held the corpse of his people shattered.
The corpses fell to the ground.
The priest chose to remain watching from afar.
"Who are you?" The Chief asked in the Gowurian tongue. He seemed to hold himself back from attacking, basic instinct had cautioned him, for he did not know the opponent's level in strength.
"A person a foot away from death need not know my name", she spoke slowly, word for word, her voice sounded eerily deep and masculine.
"Insults!!"
The Chief screamed, not bothering to check on how she had understood him.
"You heathen dare spout insults after killing my Tribesmen and destroying our land"
The Chief didn't bother asking the reason for her appearance, for he knew.
He had done it to other small Sects as well, Tribes included: Conquest, to steal the Ur-relic.
"I am here for three things" she answered, not bothering if it was the correct reply to his question, "To steal, To kill, and to Absorb".
She stretched her right hand towards the Chief's direction and made a grasping motion with it. "I need not waste a morsel of Graded Ability with you, you are pesky and dirty".
The earth beneath The Chief's location burst out as if under pressure, terra forming into the shape of a clenching hand, the hand made to squeeze The Chief of the Gowurs.
The Chief, with his wooden club attempted to shatter the encroaching earthen hand, clabbering it, his muscles enlarging as he did so.
The hand did shatter and The chief jumped backwards to escape any further attacks.
The female Intruder seemed to have expected this, for as soon as The Chief landed on the ground a few good metres away, another earthen hand appeared and quickly enveloped him.
He tried struggling, but the hand wouldn't budge. He was trapped and out of options. Apart from his barely surmountable strength he had no other gift to boast of. It appeared that the tribe of Gowurs didn't have a supernatural.
She clenched her hand, and the earthen hand clenched with it . easily destroying The Gowur chief that it held inside .
"How pitiful", she shook her head slowly, turning to the direction of the priest who had in turn turned to flee.
"How pitiful" she shook her head again.