CHAPTER FOUR: ALL CANNIBAL

grab two special daggers of mine from my belt, they are a gift from Karen with which she congratulated me on my very first kill. I throw one of them expertly at one of my attackers and get lucky because it lands on his skull and he falls backwards but before I can turn my attention to the other, he dives at me with his sword in the air aiming to cut my throat, wrong move, now he is vulnerable to my attack!

I bend backwards quickly till I hear the bones of my back crack in complaint as I view his sword evade my skull and slice the air before my eyes with his body following through but then I stop his body with a stab of my second dagger on his chest where his heart rests and he halts in shock and looks into my eyes as his warm blood trickles down to his white skirt.

“you are an abomination.." he says in the Egyptian tongue amidst the chaos as he observes the color of my eyes with his blood dropping from his mouth.

I understand his tongue because we Neems are trained to speak most of the known languages of the world from our tender years in the Crypts.

“You… should… not …live… ” he manages to say and his voice seems to cease as he gazes into my eyes.

I become enraged!

How could he, a backstabbing Egyptian say those words  to me, a prestigious Neem warrior? It is he who should not live, for the betrayal of the Assyrians by their Pharaoh. And for the record, no Egyptian can survive what we survive here in the Crypts of Bane to become who we are! So he can not disrespect my race like this.

I angrily drag my sharp dagger downwards with so much force that his ribs give way to his abdomen and I tear the flesh of his stomach open with it and deep my two hands forcefully in to emerge with his organs filling my two bloody hands.

He drops dead on the dark sand as I lift his organs up in the air with his blood dripping down my hands and I yell;

“Kooobaayaaaaasshh…!”  the war cry of the mighty Neems with my eyes wide open and my bloody face fierce!

And just then I realize that although I am weak by Neem standards, I just might be able to hold my own in a battle.

All my years in these crypts were not in vain after all...

That war cry scares our enemies and causes them to pee on themselves, at least that is what we are taught!

My fierce war cry seems to attract a host of Egyptian soldiers as they begin to swarm in on me hence I react with my pure human instinct, I run! They follow.

The dust particles partially obstruct my vision as I race the race of my life towards the temple and all I can think of is to stay alive! I can not even feel the thump of my heart or hear the cries of the young children being slain. This is what war is about! In the real sense it is just the survival of the fittest – a natural state where we become what we are not, mere animals who must spill blood to stay alive!

I keep running as fast as my feet can take me as I draw near to the steps of the temple but then a horse rider attacks me fiercely with his mighty horse but I am Neem and war is my job hence, I dive onto his shield pushing him off his horse and with one of my hands I grab the horse belt. He falls off and I am left struggling to hold onto a galloping horse as it drags me along. So, here I am on the floor inhaling all the poisonous black dust and hitting my head and parts of my body on a few hard rocks.

I count myself as fortunate as the horse begins to gallop up the steps towards the door of the temple! With me enduring unimaginable pain as it drags me along it’s race up the cruel elevation.

That is when the door of the temple forcefully breaks open and my guardian angel emerges riding on a gallant white horse and on seeing this, a tingling feeling of joy and victory invades my senses. She gloriously rides on with the nine years old Prince of Assyria held tightly between her bosoms.

I see her from the midst of the dust that beclouds my struggle to hold onto the stubborn horse, she rides down the steps with her gray eyes glowing in glory!

“Kobayaaaasshh!” she shouts the war cry of the Neems as she races down the steps and this seems to trigger some feeling of patriotism for Assyria in me as my inner strength and courage begins to grow, so I struggle and struggle until I finally mount the brown Egyptian horse, turn it around and follow her lead as I officially draw my sword against the army of Pharaoh.

Karen slices through the army of Egyptians with her sword as she races the fierce horse through them non-stop, evading all their arrows and protecting our king to be like a god!

She is the true Neem and I, a tag along. I cut down as many as are left of her wrath as we race away from The battle for The Crypts of Bane, a lost cause.

However, our mission is not accomplished yet because about ten Egyptian horsemen ride after us with their bows and arrows aimed at our heads as we run the race for the preservation of our great empire…