After listening to the forest for a while, he finally began to fall asleep, but before he did, he heard the rain coming and believed he might sleep well tonight. The rain was hitting the tent, and the noise from the forest was replaced with noise from the rain.
From the tent, he heard only quiet snoring and the horse that was standing next to the wagon was making only light sounds. It stood under the makeshift cover that the boys put up every night, so the horse could have some cover in case rain would happen. The rain was slowing down and becoming lighter with the wind only slightly increasing, but not enough to wake any of the boys.
A noise was, instead, coming from up the road, where at least two horses were going. The two boys heard nothing and continued sleeping. The horses never stopped, and instead, they moved towards the road, where the other wagon was headed. A while later, the two boys woke up at the same time.
It was not because of the rain or the horse outside, but because of a loud scream. The boys looked at each other and rushed out the tent as soon as they heard another terrifying scream. As they stood in their underwear and listened in the night, a different scream came, but was silenced from the direction of the wagon they heard earlier that was travelling up the road.
Both boys made a fast move and grabbed their weapons and jumped up on the horse and took off towards the scream that was then silenced. The horse was fast as it carried both of them, and it didn’t take long before they saw a light from a small fire that was burning in the forest. They stopped the horse not too far off, and without thinking, they ran towards the wagon that was now visible next to a few big stones.
It was obvious there had been a commotion here as several things were spread out, as if they had been thrown. And not only that, but there was also another thing that made them sure they had entered into a dangerous situation. There was a man lying on the ground in the rain and the blood on the ground was covering the man’s whole body.
There was also something else that didn’t sound right and was coming from behind the big stones next to the wagon. Someone was trying to scream, but was definitely subdued. They hurried quickly over and were met with a man raping a woman.
She had been beaten and was bloody in her face. She was terrified, and as soon as she saw the boys, she tried to scream for help, but there was not much other than a mumble as the man held one hand over her mouth and a knife under her throat. Jay told him to release her, but the man became angry and told them to leave or get killed.
None of the boys had any intention to leave the poor woman, but there was not much they could do that wouldn’t put her in further danger. He told them, in a higher tone, that he would kill her if they didn’t leave, but then the woman resisted in an attempt to free herself. She tried to hit him hard on the face with her hand, but hit his ear instead that she pulled hard on. It hurt, and he removed his hand from her mouth to try and pull her hand off.
As soon as she was free to scream, she called for the boys to help her, but this also sealed her fate. As soon as she did, the knife that was on her throat penetrated her skin. The man cut deep into her and then rose up fast to defend against Gon, who immediately swung at him.
Jay hurried up to the woman that began to shake and gurgle out noises from her mouth. The blood was too much to stop, and Jay was struggling to help her. Gon had to avoid the knife, but the man suddenly slipped in a muddy spot and, for a brief second, left himself open. Gon took advantage of this and used his staff to hit the man over the head. He fell to the ground and only made small shakes throughout his body. Gon wouldn’t let him get up and used his full range to swing the staff so fast that he could hear the scull crack from the following blow to the head.
Suddenly, another voice shouted angrily out from the wagon that gained his attention. Jay also stood up when the wagon opened up, and a half-naked man came out. He was surprised to see them and also noticed who was lying down next to Gon.
They could see another man inside holding his hand against a young girl’s mouth. As he released his hand, her cries were heard while the shirtless man jumped down with two knives in his hands. The young girl was thrown down on the floor and was told to wait as they would finish with her later. The man that held her then grabbed a sword and got ready to fight. The two boys backed up as the last of the attackers also jumped down.
Jay had blood on his clothes that were from the now dead woman, and he was not letting the last of the men out of his sight as he approached. The two men were tall, but none of the boys had any fear of them. Jay attacked first and engaged with the man in a swords fight. Gon looked at the other man, and as the rain drops were slowly hitting his face, he started to walk towards the man with the two knives.
Gon had always hated men like these that took from others in this way and believed he was meeting an insect he wanted to squash. The man attacked him and delivered stabs and slashes with his knives. Anyone would have been aware of the danger of this man, but in Gon’s eyes, he was nothing that deserved to draw breath. While Jay was fighting the other man, Gon was merely defending and only followed his attacker’s moves.
The struggle did not last long for Gon who, without any problem, delivered a hard strike towards his opponent’s eye using his staff. The man stumbled back and held his eye, and it was clear he would never use it again because he was bleeding intensely from it. With his vision then halved, his stabs became nothing for Gon, and with a targeted swing, he cracked the man’s ribs.
As the man fell to his knees, he coughed up blood, but did not intend to give up as he tried to get up again. From the side, the other man was seeing what was going on and started to run towards his friend, but was halted quickly by a swing of Jay’s sword that hit on the lower part of his leg. He fell to the ground, and when he turned around, he had Jay’s sword towards his head.
Gon walked behind the man he just crushed the ribs of. The man desperately tried to stab at Gon, but got both of his knives taken away from him. With no weapon, Gon didn’t see the need to use his as well. He put his staff behind his back and grabbed the man’s head, so he was looking towards his friend that was being held down by a sword to his head. ‘Rubbish,’ Gon could be heard saying before he made his final move. He broke the man’s neck in one twist of the head, and as the man fell down, the other one’s eyes turned towards Jay in fear.
Jay had been watching, and for a moment lost concentration, which the man realised. He tried to grab his sword, but Jay quickly saw what was going on and stuck the sword into his body. The man gasped for air and immediately blood came out from his mouth. The sword was still in his body, but he slid off the blade down in the mud a few seconds later. It was clear he had his lung punctured as his breath was heavy, and when Jay took aim for another strike, Gon said, ‘No, let him die in the mud by himself.’ As the boys walked back to the wagon, the last breath went out from the man, and he died with the rain increasing slightly.
When the two boys came up to the wagon, Gon jumped up to see if the young woman was hurt. He saw her crying on the floor and he told her there was no one left to hurt her and she was now safe. The young woman was almost naked after the two men had started to rip her clothes off, and she was seemingly hurt from slaps given to her by the men. When she heard the words from Gon, she leapt up to him and hugged him tightly. And for some time, she cried in his arms. Jay was taken aback by what had happened so he rode away back to the camp and packed their gear up. He tried desperately to wash some of the blood off his clothes but it would be hard, he knew. It wasn’t too long ago he had to wash blood off after the meeting with the masked men.
When he eventually went back to where he left Gon, he saw him on the ground next to the wagon. Gon told him that the girl fainted, and he laid her down to rest in the wagon. The two boys did not get any more sleep that night and guarded, instead, the young woman that was sleeping in the wagon. Morning came and during the night, the two boys had buried the man and the woman killed by the three attackers. They dragged out the attackers
in the forest and left them there to be someone’s food.
While they had the fire started and were cooking, a snivelling noise came from within the wagon. Jay looked at the wagon and asked if they should go up but Gon said no and thought it was better the girl came out by herself if she wanted to so they didn’t scare her. The snivelling noise stopped and there were movements from the wagon. After some minutes, the girl put her head out and asked for the two boys to come up. They were standing next to the wagon and watching the girl that had put on new clothes and the boys were looking down onto the ground. She asked if her friends were still lying outside. Gon said they had been buried on the side of the forest. The girl asked if they would please take her to them, and Gon helped her out from the wagon.
At the graves, she said a prayer and lay a flower each at their graves. She walked back to the camp and sat down by the fire. Jay asked if she was hungry and offered some eggs to her but she said no. Her stomach replied differently and Gon said she must eat to gain strength after what happened. She turned to him to look him in the eyes and then at Jay. She stretched her hand out and grabbed one of the boiled eggs to eat it. After a few moments of silence between them all, she opened her mouth and said she was going to a gathering of people from her temple. It was going to be the biggest turnout in the country, and she was travelling with the other two from the same temple. She said she was a mixologist and gained much of her knowledge from her temple. Her parents were not happy for her to become one and didn’t like the temple. They had even disowned her for it since they believed something else. She never asked them to change but only asked them to respect her wish to work with healing others since that was the more important part. That’s why she asked to join the followers of the void temple because they had the knowledge to teach out about that and other things.
Jay asked if she was a good mixologist and she said she was one in training and specialised in enhancements. Powerful potions that could make people sleep for a long time or make you feel power through the body; elixirs that made some see beauty or horrible visions; tonics that could cause some to not sleep for weeks were only some of what she could do. She said the temple teaches some other mixing techniques that was the opposite of healing such as death but didn’t have to learn that. She did know how to easily kill someone but hoped to never have to. With her being the only one in her family of 12 children that wanted to leave, she felt her parents thought her to be less important than the other kids that wanted to stay at the farm. And that was also one of the reasons why she left for the giant mass gathering.
When they had stopped at the camp, she was asleep, but got awoken by a scuffle outside and her other friend had screamed when she saw the man kill her travel companion. The woman had tried to hit one of the attackers with a piece of wood but when she missed, he then proceeded to beat her down with his hands. She began to cry some more and said she heard how her friend was getting raped outside. They were just about to rape her as well when they interrupted them. It all went so fast, so she only had time to scream once when one of the men had held her down and began to rip her clothes off. She thanked the boys for what they had done and asked to join them, if only a short time on the way. The boys replied that they would be happy to bring her with them, but they were not going in the same direction as the temple masse. She looked up at the sky and said she was only going to the masse for a direction of her journey and was not really a true believer. She added that maybe the road they crossed had meaning and perhaps she was meant to find what she was looking for with them.
The two boys immediately offered her a place on their journey and said she would be welcome to stay as long as she wanted. The two boys told her about their journey so far, and she sat intrigued listening to them. The boys told their story with such life that she didn’t notice that she was eating a lot of the yummy food. She told of her own knowledge of plants and how she was very good at making different high-powered water mixed with some well-placed herbs. Jay remembered something he heard about the followers of the void and turned to her. He told her he heard once that the temple she was part of hates the royals of Redonia and the girl told him it was true. She said it had something to do with the past, but she never asked why since she was more interested in the knowledge of the mixology.
Gon told them perhaps they should travel to Redonia instead. The girl nodded but said for now they should keep themselves on Nanta. Jay looked behind them and asked her what they should do with the wagon. She became silent and looked into the fire. She said that they would leave it and only bring what’s hers in it. There wasn’t really much in the wagon except clothes and some money, but she said they should leave anything that was not hers except the horse that they should bring. When they had loaded their wagon with her possessions, she looked over to the graves and said sorry. She then silently said thanks to them for taking her with them.
The two boys, with their new travel companion, took off and then had an extra horse with them. She told them that her name was Senji, and they all smiled as they left on the road towards the next stop on the way. Gon asked her if she was the one singing before, and she was embarrassed as she said she was. Jay told her it sounded beautiful, and she thanked them both for their kind words. When she heard Jay say they were from the town called Dofamu, she said she knew it but had never been there, but perhaps she would see it one day.
Coming to the Great City of Shetana
After travelling for a couple of days, they all seemed to be very good friends. Senji had been able to sleep in the tent by herself first and the boys had gone back to sleeping on the ground. They knew it could be scary for a young girl to be with two boys she didn’t know and gave her some space. On the fourth day, it, however, rained again and Senji asked them to please join her in the tent as she didn’t want them to catch a cold. She knew the boys had been very nice and had made something that covered her side so they didn’t need to feel like they were making her uncomfortable. The tent was big so there was plenty of room, so even if the three friends were inside, they still had some room for movement. So, it turned out not to be so awkward for them in the end.
At a later time, they came across a sign that said the great city of Shetana was only three days away, and they were talking about what to do first when they reached Shetana. Gon asked Senji if she really would be comfortable with going to a place with so much fighting and other pleasures. She said she would be fine and had her friends close by anyway so nothing would happen to her and hit Gon on the shoulder. Senji said that she never told them how old she was and wondered why they didn’t ask her. She told them to guess and Gon guessed 17 and Jay said 18. She laughed and told them they were both wrong as she was only 16. She got Jay’s age of 16 right away and looked at Gon for a while. She grabbed a hair from his head and pulled it off. He said ouch, and she looked at it. ‘17,’ she said and she blew the hair away from her hand. Gon looked at her and thought it was amazing how she could find that out by just the hair. She smiled and said she had always been able to tell ages easily. She then said that it helped that Gon talked in his sleep and she heard him say he was going to bake a cake to himself on his 18th birthday next year. Gon smiled, and she started to laugh again with the other two joining in.
Senji, Gon and Jay were finally reaching the outskirts of Shetana with many big farms growing a variety of vegetables. Senji had proven her skill in a water blend that the boys were interested in trying. After hearing about her skills, Gon asked her to make something, and she was able to do so with what she found on the road. They could feel the difference after drinking the water blend and seemed to have an abundance of energy rushing through them. They had to run next to the wagon to not get over energised for a while. ‘Not a bad result,’ said Senji, who now had the wagon all to herself. Only a few hours were left until they reached the great city, and the light had started to disappear, so they decided that they would hold on the outside until the next day. There were more people doing the same thing and stop
ping at the same place. It was usual to see many people there to keep up the numbers. In a time of bandits and bad people, it seemed like a good thing to do.
There were a lot of people around and they were a mixture of people from families to fighters ready to test themselves in the competition. The boys looked at the fighters that came in various sizes and checked them out. Gon and Jay would not be seen as warriors amongst the other men that were looking really well-built and confident about themselves. Senji was not interested at all in the people around her and instead was mixing some of her many powders that she then would blend with the water. She had thought about something new to add in the potion that would hopefully keep the adrenalin flowing for longer.
During the fairly noisy night, one of the bigger men with no hair on his head came up to Gon who was eating one of his buns. The bald man pointed to Gon’s stomach and tried to gain attention by laughing loudly. He said to Gon that if he would ever grow up to be as great as him then he would have to stop with the buns. He then laughed again loudly and got other warriors to follow in. Jay was about to say something he would surely regret but Gon stopped him. He gave the half-eaten bun to Jay and rose up. When Jay stood up to join Gon, he told Jay to relax and not to worry. He should just sit down and enjoy the show that was about to happen, he added. Gon asked for the man’s name who responded with being Thano the Great.
Thano saw how Gon was looking at him from top to bottom but said nothing. When he asked what he was doing, Gon replied that he was trying to find what was so great about him. Thano’s face turned red and said he should be careful of how he spoke to people he didn’t know. Gon said to him that if he ever wanted to grow back that hair on his head, he should eat more buns. As well as that, he should wash himself because he stinks so much, the hair must have run away from him. The other men laughed and Thano gave a fake smile to him. He had a couple of teeth missing and his smile was more scary than friendly. He said to Gon that maybe he would like to be his student and learn from him then laughed even louder than everyone else. Gon was not impressed and had watched Thano as he tried to impress a few women before. He walked closer and told Thano that if he lost, he would study from him. Gon then stood in a hand-to-hand combat position but very relaxed as he didn’t seem to think the treat was very big.
World of Taroo Page 4