Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity

Chapter II

It had begun to rain in the night. Kira said goodbye to Kieko at the fork in their path, and as she walked away avoiding the collecting pools of raindrops she felt the urge to follow him with her eyes. She could hear his footsteps fading away upon the crushed seashells that lined his path back home. They had not embraced in their goodbye, but she had felt his desire to reach out and hold her, as she so wanted to reach out and hold him. She began to see him in her mind's eye as she walked. His eyes were dark and brown, deep and mysterious like the eyes of a stag that protects an ancient moon forest.

Kira often likened Kieko to a deer; she never spoke of these thoughts to anyone but her mother. She began to dwell on the tale of the deer spirit who protected the hallowed grounds of the Ikishi forest, as told to her by her grandfather and her great uncles when she sat on their laps as a child before a warm hearth.

It was said in the fables of the old tongue that deep within the forest there was an enchanted center, a sacred ground forbidden to mortal man. No one of flesh could ever see or penetrate this center for it was the center of all things, of all life, in the lands of Kadek. It was to where the souls of animals and trees traveled to in the wake of their death to become one with the Great Spirit before returning to the Mother through the womb of all things.

It was said that if ever the Ikishi forest was destroyed its sacred center would be lost and all life would cease in the lands of Kadek for the spirits of the animals and the trees would travel far and away in search of new lands of pasture.

In the age before the birth of the Ikishi forest the lands of Kadek had been a terrible wasteland. Black soot filled the air from the fume column breaths that arose from the mouth of Mount Kadek. The spirit beast of the mountain had been a seven-headed dragon whose eyes bore red flame into all things.

The dragon had come from the land of the setting sun with a mind bent to destroy the guardian doe of the then lush Kadek land for it despised her and all her precious makings:

Cleverly did the dragon beast seduce the guardian spirit with its lies, and swiftly did it slay her in her sleep. And for an age did it, the dragon, live in the heart of Mount Kadek, blackening it with its eyes, spitting fire and scorching the earth into a horrible dark of stone, ash, and smoke.

Centuries had turned into millenniums and the lands of Kadek were avoided by all life.

Then there came the day when a young boy, clad in an armor that shined in a bright, divine light, and armed with the sword of his father's line, entered the black lands of Kadek to challenge the beast of the mountain.

The dragon lashed fire and ash upon the boy, but he did not burn.

The boy attacked! And easily did he cut the seven heads of the dragon from their long slithering necks, spilling thick streams of blood into the land as if from the cracks of a river dam.

The sword ...

The boy then poured his water drink from his flacon upon the ground and life returned.

... had given life.

The winds blew the foul air to the west, and the sun shined in a heavenly sky that beckoned the grass to grow and creep up through the charcoal of stone and volcanic ash.

The boy then sheathed his father's sword and gave it to a wandering Ki priest who had followed after his light.

The priest had been the first mortal, in an Age, to enter the once lifeless land. The boy said unto him:

"This sword wields the power of life, but it is an instrument of death. It is the sword of my fathers. It is now the sword of your people. It is a divine instrument forged by the hands of the Gods in the Heavens above. You are now its guardian, its keeper.