Entry Writchal 1
Tema: Alternate history, Kaderisasi, Masjid Salman
Cimon : The Beginning
“hmnnnn…..”
A flash of light woke me up from a long dream. As my feet touch the floor, I feel the floor is not stable at all. I spent my night sleeping in a hanging bed at the passenger cabin. Just as I feel the surface, I realise that I was traveling on a ship for over 10 days before. So, I think this morning I could see my destination from the deck on the horizon.
After I wore a sufficient outfit, I rushed toward the ship ‘s deck. And then, my view was captivated by the beautiful scene of Suryan, Capital City of Civilized Monarch,The Center of the world, or The Mandala. According to my master, a former legion, or the regular army of the Civilized Monarch, or Cimon for short, Suryan was the most advanced, Crowded, and prosperous metropolitan in the world. Although I was always hearing if this was only in the shadow of its former fame and prosperity, it was still the greatest city I’ve ever seen. Or, it was because I had never seen the city at all. Nevertheless, the appearance of Suryan made me so excited.
After years of training with my master, my master thinks I have grown enough to see the world with my own eyes,and start my own journey of course. My master told me that he had transferred all of his knowledge to me . And now it was time for me to enrich that knowledge with my own life experience. That one , to be said. And then I decided the city of Suryan would be the place for me to start my own journey.
However, the voyage itself was not as smooth as I thought. After leaving my master’s estate , I’m going to the nearest port city from there. To earn enough cash to fund both my voyage to Suryan and my daily livelihood, I was working at this port as a hard labour. It was not a big deal for me. Even if I was a girl, I was blessed by an extraordinary strength, both in form of physical strength and spiritual strength. And, it was a bizarre view to see a girl doing hard labour like it was such an easy task to her. She was not even shown any sight of fatigue after doing such heavy labours. And after the day of work, in the evening, I also shared some of my earnings to my fellows, and I was quickly made a favor from them. After a brief time, finally I had sufficient cash to fund my voyage. Before my departure, my fellow port’s hard labours surprisingly held a farewell party for me. It made me so touched.
During the voyage, the storm hit our ship. Even the storm had spared us, but it made even my seasick worse. I wasn’t even moved from my cab, until finally I had overcome my seasickness. And after the days of my voyage, decorated by my seasickness, I reached my destination. The City of Suryan was before my eyes, and my own journey would start from there.
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I spent my daily life in Suryan peacefully, until I realised the dark side of Surya, and Cimon in general. Firstly, the taxation was absolutely inhuman. Taxation was even imposed on the hard laborers in the port like us. The taxation really took a tool from my fellows, and threw them even deeper in poverty. While the richman,
bureaucrat, clergy and even legions can bribe the tax collector to undermine their taxation. There is no law enforcement as many of the high-class dodged easily from the state’s law. When the weak had no power to do so. In short, the corruption of the CImon officials had reached a critical level.
Secondly, the discrimanition to non-citizen residents was so intense. They were not only being the treated as second-class people, they were also being exploited heavily, in terms of taxation and forced slavery. We , including myself, were the barbarian’s origin peoples, so of course we were second-class citizens in Suryan. The only reasons they were reluctant to do so, only was my physical appearance and power.
But, that day, for the first time, I felt so powerless. That was the day when I chased a certain thief. He wore a weird emerald scarff that covered his neck and shoulder. He was so agile, so even a veteran legion couldn’t caught him. Luckily, I had cornered him because I had blocked his escape passage. But when I fought him, I couldn’t fought him properly. Unconsciously, I was afraid to land a hit on him. He also was a good, experienced fighter. He read my moves, and took advantage of it. In the end of the fight, I was defeated by him. Then, he ran away.
Despite it not my first loss, the fact that I was hold myself in front of him made me so confused. Why I done that ? Why did I let him run away ? I wondered. As time flew by, my memory of him didn’t even faded. I couldn’t erased him from my mind. And everytime I thought about him, my heart beating faster. I didn’t knew why I became like this.
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My curiosity about him made me look for more information about him. I even joined the legion for this purpose. Being the legion, the military backbone of the Cimon, wasn’t as easy as I thought. I was being indoctrinated to be loyal, only for the Civilized Monarch cause. But, as I knew the dark side of the Cimon, and the segregation of the human race on it, especially for my people, the Barbarians. So, this indoctrination did not raise my loyalty to the Civilized Monarch at all. Instead , it felt so disgusting for me.
My daily life at legion’s barrack, actually much better. My daily livelihood was guaranteed, and all I had to do was just doing soldier’s training. Sometimes, I was assigned to patroling or guarding taks. I also finally got the clue about the mysterious thief that made my heart slightly moved. He was also a former legion like my master. From the documents I had read, he was found in front of Saruman Temple, after being abandoned by his parents. Saruman Temple itself was a temple that was attached to the Cimon Legionaries Academy, in Highland. Highland itself had broken free from Cimon rule some decade before because of the ongoing turmoil that stirred up in the Civilized Monarch central power. Now, the Highlander had established an independent kingdom, The Salajar Kingdom.
He was adopted by Cimon officials and trained to be legion commanders. And for some reasons, after he graduated from the military academy, he joined the Salajar militaries instead of legions. And for some unknown reason, his scarf was similar to the scarf used by the old, centuries long Highlander’s insurgency
movement. They had fought against the Civilized Monarch authorities from the establishment of Sandarand Province in Highland, until the foundation of Salajar Kingdom. The Salajar Kingdom ruling dynasties also were descendants of Highlander Insurgency Movement leaders. So, this man has Highlander origins.
This fact made me wanted to Salajar to look for more information about that mysterious thief. But my duty as The Legions now didn’t permitted me to do that. So, maybe I would like to asked for resignation from The Legion. It may be difficult, but I would worked hard for it. Because, the whole reason why I joined The Legions was to looked for any information about that mysterious thief. But, reality sometimes didn’t worked as smoothly as I thought.
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Suryan fell into chaos. Many places were under fire. Looting was done in every corner of the city. The situation was so dire, even the emperor and his family and the Cimon Government were evacuated from Suryan. I didn’t knew how it started. But, as The Legions, I must helped the Suryan’s civilians. With my raw powers, and of course the help from my fellow legionaries, we tried to put down the rioter, punished the looter, and protected the weak civilians like women and children. But that was not enough. The order in the City of Suryan was hard to be restored. We felt desperate. We felt so powerless to restored the order of the City. The City was too big, while our numbers were too small. That was because the bulk of the legion were diverted to guard the evacuation of the emperor, and his governmental courts.
“Fight with me, my brave legionaries! For the emperor! ” shout the legionaries commander.
Even though the situation was hopeless, my fellow legionaries were still on high morale. The commander was so skilled so he could kept the morale of his men high. An outstanding quality of the legion. This was the reason why the Civilized Monarch could once rule the world.
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When we reached the armories, it was still intact. When chaos ensued throughout Suryan, one-by-one, the warships and the armories, along with the army’s barn were blown up or burned. The process was planned so well, and it was perfectly covered by the chaos that broke out as diversion . There is the mastermind behind the explosion , along with the chaos. So, along with some legionaries, set up a plan to trapped the mastermind, or someone who is behind this chaos. When it was my turn to patrol around the armouries, I heard the screams and explosion sounds coming from armories. I rushed back to armories and found out my comrade was entirely slaughtered by who I looked for recently. That was the mysterious thief, with his remarkable highland scarff, and his torso lamellar plate armour, stained in the blood of my comrade. When the armouries were trusted to us, they were blasted and burned to the ground.
What a magnificent scene ! WhiIe has complicated feeling about this. Happy, sad, angry and furious, sorrowful, depressed, also amazed at the same time. I couldn’t even expressed it in any words.
“What you have done! Why did you do this! Why must the innocent people suffer, only because of your action!” I shouted to him.
“…..”
“Why do you keep silent! Please ! Give me the answer ! ! ”
“There is so much reason for me to do this.” He finally replied.
“Then just say it to me! NOW!” Shout me.
“I know…. what they had done to your people, the Highlander. They are also doing that to my people, the Barbarians. But that’s not the reason to make those innocent suffer, you know!” Said me in a high tone.
“Ahh… I can say, they aren’t purely innocent….You know, they must pay for their ignorance…” Said him lightly.
(Hand cracking noise)
“Yeah… I think our conversation was futile! So, Let’s our fists talk instead!” I said while furiously cracking my hands.
I swiftly shortened our distance, and made him fell under my punch range. I launched a barrage of punches on him. But, that wasn’t sufficient. He dodged all of my attacks. He instead managed to land some hits on me, with his throwing knives. I realised the direct approach just allowed him to score more hits on me, so I changed my approach. I attacked him with more indirect approach, like areal attack or using surrounding objects and environment as weapons.
But it backfired on me. He was really agile to catch up. And he could use the environment better to get advantage over me. I knew I was lost at our first engagement, but that was because I hadn’t prepared my heart before the fight. I suppressed my feelings for him, so I could fought him more properly this time. But, even though I had overcome my previous weakness, his battle prowess was still better than mine. He landed many hits on me with his throwing knives. However, i still managed to fight back, even after I was direly wounded.
My body was weakened. I barely managed to stand up and fought firmly, as before. My wound started to hold me back. I suspected he was planted something on his knives. Something that weakened my body.
“Hey, maybe this is the time for you to give up on me! I had planted deadly poison on my knives! Surender, and I will give you the antidote!” He said. “Cih….! You…… treat me……like…..some-one…..who……fear…. of….. death, huh? Fight …… me! Fairly,…….. fight…… me! I ….will …..give you…. the taste ….of my punch!” Replied me, weakly.
“What A stubborn girl! Ok, I will make you down!, surely this time” Replied him.
My consciousness faded away. I hardly couldn’t keep up my fighting stand. So, before I fell unconscious, I must landed a swift, and decisive blow to him. I only has one chance to do so.
I tried to lure him into the trap. I suffered another significant wound as result. But I finally could into the trap, without any prospect for dodging the attack.
“Taste this!!!” I shouted.
Everything was gone well, all according to my plan. When the victory was seen on the horizon, suddenly, everything became blank. My vision became dark. I didn’t realized, that i was fell unconscious before I managed to finish my finishing blow. I don’t knew anything happens after that.
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Ah…. again i could cornered and defeated her. She was as tough as before. She even learned from her previous battle against me. She was a terrifying fighter indeed. If i didn’t realized her trap sooner, maybe she could defeated me this time.
“Surt! Are you okay ?” Said my teammate that was tasked to did another jobs. He also had finished his jobs.
“Yeah! I also captured these dangerous girls.” Replied me, while pointing to the girl.
“Good jobs, chief! That civilized bastard wouldn’t used this girl again after this.” Said my teammate.
“Of Course, she was too dangerous to became our enemies!” i replied.
Then I tied up and then picked up the girl and brought her to our headquarters. So, at least she will not be used again by the Cimon.
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Penulis: Narusaka