In the dark forest, the creature of the ancient order crawled out from a tiny primate-shaped creature, black and scaly skin, 2 foot or an inch shorter with sharp long ears which bore 7 rings on each, curled red claws, crawled out from the opened portal.
The portal which led to the realm of the extincts opened up and let out the Rallir. A creature which stalked in darkness with a great telepathic ability to read one's thought and mind, a creature that fed on vengeance, a creature which hungered and waited to lead them astray, the people of Vrochí.
52,000 YEARS AGO
In Vrochí, a small village in the Eastern side of ancient Greece. A small group of people who lived beyond the forests, in the grassland. They built tents and laid brick walls within the forest as shelters, and they made clothing out of fur and cotton.
THE STORY
Little Benigno walked into the tent. “Mother, I just finished what you asked me to do,” he said. Benigno's stepmom asked him to gather some woods that could get them through the night.
Sending a 12-year-old to the forest beyond Vrochí could be a cruel thing to do. The wild beasts were always roaming the forests looking for prey without humans being excluded from their list of lives to devour. The burning woods at night were the only thing that scared off what came out of the wild. Then it was the best bet for those who wanted to keep their lives.
“I’ve warned you several times, I’m not your mother. Your mother is dead!”
“STEP-MOTHER,” would have been a better choice of words for Benigno.
“Show me what you’ve brought!” She gets up from her bed and follows him out of the tent.
“You foolish boy!” She was rather disappointed in what she saw; 10 feeble branches of dry shrubs.
“But this was all I could collect. It is night already, I could hear the lion’s roar even a Kilometre away from the forests.” He knelt down before her, putting his hands together.
“Is this an excuse for your laziness? I want you to go back there and get more wood. I don’t care what the lions or the beasts of the wild do to you, but get me wood before midnight!” She insisted, with no attempt to consider the poor boy’s safety.
She pushed him to the ground and walked back into her tent. “I don’t want you coming back in without enough wood to get us through the night!”
Benigno got up and dusted himself up. He walked two kilometres back to the forest with a torch. The chirping sounds of the birds, and the sounds of reptiles crawling on the dry leaves caused him to tremble several times.
He reached the heart of the forest to seek for more wood since the wood which were outside the forests were already all cut down by those who couldn’t even enter the forests by day.
He planted the end of the torch between two rocks, so he could get one more free hand to get the work done faster. “Why do I have to do this at night?” Benigno asked himself and he heard echoes, a reflection of the sounds from his mouth.
He heard the noise that came out of the bushes behind him and he thought it was the sounds of tiny animals which were walking through the bushes.
“I wish I could trade places with my step mother right now. She deserves to be devoured by the lions,” Benigno talked to himself. He felt nothing but spite for his stepmother at that moment.
“But you don’t have to wish it.” A Ralir crawled out of the bush behind Benigno.
Benigno trembled as he heard the creature intone behind him.
He turned to the direction from where he had heard the voice, and the bewilderment made him fall backwards. The creature crawled closer to Benigno, but Benigno never stopped crawling backwards away from it.
“What are you? Get away from me!” Benigno, as scared as he was, asked that one question.
“Get away from me!” He yelled, and the creature stopped crawling towards him, and stood erect.
“I’m here to give you what you want!” It intoned to Benigno’s hearing in a low and trembling voice.
“What do I want?” Benigno asked, while still sitting on the ground and resting on his elbows behind him.
“Boy, boy, boy! You know what you want, I heard you say it,” The Ralir said to Benigno as he started approaching Benigno again.
Benigno grew less scared of it as it approached him closer. A boy who had been into the forests several times at night was not so scared of the creature.
“She has been cruel to you, hasn’t she?” It asked the little boy, and he nodded.
“Yes! But I can’t pay her back for what she has done to me.”
“Of course you can!” It said as it gave Benigno its hand, offering to pull him up.
Benigno was scared, but it didn’t stop him from clutching onto the Ralir's hand.
After clutching onto the creature’s hand, Benigno saw himself in his stepmother’s tent.
He wondered how he got out of the forest without walking 2 kilometres back home.
He looked for his stepmother and she was no longer in her tent. He ran out of the tent and he saw that his stepmother was nowhere to be found. He remembered clutching his hand onto the Ralir’s hand in the forest and had no idea of what happened after that or how he got home.
The night passed and when it was mourning, a man who also lived in Vrochí came to Benigno’s tent, and told him they found his stepmother dead in the forest. They concluded that a wild animal devoured her, as they could only collect her remains.
Benigno cried even though he wished for it the previous night while he was in the forest. He only said it out of spite, but didn’t really want it to happen considering she was the only one he had.
TWO DAYS LATER
(MORNING)
“Please, Amyas!” Soriya pleaded with her husband, who was tying her to the tree outside their tent to punish her for seeing her exchange greetings with another man.
Soriya watched her husband tie her to the tree just for exchanging greetings with another man. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he brought a sack full of rocks and dropped it a meter away from Soriya, intending to stone her to death.
“Please, Amyas!” She cried, hoping that Amyas would realise how bad what he was about to do was, but Amyas never listened.
He picked a rock and before he could cast it, Soriya closed her eyes as she waited to be struck by the rock.
“If only he could eat up his own rocks” She thought to herself as she waited for the rock to hit her. With her eyes closed and tear drops squeezing through her closed eyelids. She waited for what felt like a minute, and she still didn’t feel the rocks tearing through her skin.
She opened one of her eyes and then the other, and she saw her husband sitting and feeding on the rocks in the sack.
“What are you doing?” She asked, and Amyas ignored her, as he looked like someone who was obsessed over rocks.
“Stop it!” She yelled, she still loved him even though he was clearly a lunatic. She forgot he tried to kill her.
Amyas fed on the rocks until his stomach couldn’t contain the rocks he had consumed anymore.
The Ralir crawled out from behind their tent and Soriya screamed at the sight of it. She was bewildered, and so she forgot about her husband, who was shoving rocks into his mouth and gulping them down.
“You have what you want.” Ralir sang as it crawled towards her.
“No! No! No! Amyas!” Soriya cried as she saw her husband drop to the ground and lost his grip on life.
“What are you!” She cried, speaking to the creature.
The Ralir ignored her as it crawled away into the bushes.
After the death of Benigno’s stepmother and the death of Amyas, seven other villagers died. The people who were the victim of their abuse and oppression recounted seeing a creature who was there when their oppressor died.
They brought it before the leaders of the tribe. The elders of the tribe were the only ones who had knowledge of the creature, as it had gone extinct as far as when they were children. The elders made known to the villagers that the creature was sent into extinction by their fathers as it caused many deaths. The creature was created by their ancestors to uphold Justice in their time, but was found to be too evil, and was cast into the realm of the extinct.
The elders seek for the spell book which their ancestors used in its creation and had luck finding it. The Ralir only came out when people were being mistreated, so for them to call it out and proceed with the spell, they had to be someone who would volunteer to be flogged.
Cicero, a young man, volunteered to take the whips in order for the Ralir to crawl out from wherever it was. An elder came out and whipped Cicero. He whipped Cicero only three times, and the Ralir crawled out. The elders with the spell book, and all the villagers hid behind the bushes, leaving only Cicero and the elder who was whipping him in the open.
The Ralir crawled out and the elder who was whipping Cicero pretended not to have seen the Ralir crawling towards Cicero.
“Are you going to allow him to peel your skin with his whip?” It sang as it crawled up the tree on which they tied Cicero to. He whispered into Cicero’s ear, and Cicero grabbed it by its ears and pulled it down from the branches of a tree.
The people in the bushes came out and encircled it quickly. It stood erect in their midst and screamed as the elders recited the spell which caused it to burn into ashes from its foot, spreading to its head until it returned to dust.
Few days after the Ralir was burnt, the elders set out new laws to abolish all forms of maltreatment within their tribe, and anyone who violated the laws were going to be penalised.
The community grew to become so peaceful as the laws stood firm.
THE END