Slash! Slash!
Swish! Slash!
The ancient blade
was blood thirsty, hungry for muscle, vein, bone. One thousand
years of slumber. Awaken Kyōkimon,
kill. Cut evil. Cursed blade of madness. Bath in the warm blood of
your enemies like you once did.
A man of unlikely
origins at an unlikely place with an unlikely destiny. A no one, a
shadow in the wall, a wingless mosquito, once barely a man. This man
was born in a small city of Colombia. This man became a samurai and
it is the hero of this epic tale, this tragic tale, this sad tale of
insanity. For being a hero is the most unfortunate of fates. An
unfortunate tale that must be told indeed.
It was the 1st of July of 2012 when our hero, Tito Córdoba, and the one
thousand years-old sword, Kyōkimon,
met for the first time. Tito was at the British Museum strolling
around a Sunday afternoon, fascinated with the sight of the Rosetta
Stone and the Mosaic Mask of Quetzalcoatl. A day like no other. It
was 17.00 when Tito entered the Japanese gallery.
You see, when men or women have been trained in the art of war since childhood
their mind, body, and senses are finely tuned with the intent of
people. Tito felt an aggressive intent, a killing intent. Was it a
subtle smell, a fingerprint molecule expelled by an evil creature? An
infinitesimal anomalous disturbance in the room's temperature caused
by this creature excitation? Who knows, but Tito felt the
presence of a murderous being, hidden, lurking.
Too late. A head
rolled on the floor to rest at Tito's feet. A child's head still with
a smile on its little pink chubby face. ROAR! ROAR! SMASH! Shattering glass, screams, shrieks.
The alarm went off. People ran but some could not scape death.
At the end of the
room a human-like creature stood with what might have been a stomach and some intestines from a person in its mouth. It was twice the size of a man, thrice the speed, ten
times the strength, a hundred times the savagery. Dripped ruby blood. Where it
came from? What was it doing at the British Museum? It will all make
sense later, I promise. The beast, swallowed the guts and found them delicious.
In a glass case, Kyōkimon.
Black scabbard, night of ends. Sleeping within, the purest steel,
silvery, tears of the moon. And madness, raw and undistilled madness made metal.
Behind the glass case and at the other side of the room, Tito stood, a samurai without sword, without master.
In between him and it, a mother knelt
clutching the headless body of her child. True
terror was the only expression on her face.
The creature was
known to science as Homoabiectus terribilis.
A monster that might have diverged from Homo erectus five
hundred thousand years ago, or might have not. A monster nonetheless.
Like an avalanche, it sprinted toward the woman, propelled by irrational anger and an appetite for
death. Sharp
blackened teeth, open jaws seeking flesh.
Slash! Slash!
Swish! Slash!
“Three steps to
madness.”
Blood gushed out a
chest, a neck, an arm dropped to the ground. Homoabiectus found
eternal peace.
Tito did not know,
but Kyōkimon
had brought the ultimate punishment to five thousand and one enemies.
Tito did not know the blade's name nor its history, yet he could feel its voracious
thirst. Tito did not know but the more Kyōkimon
cut, the sharper its edge became, the greater the horror that would
befall the bearer. A samurai without a sword any longer, a samurai without
a master.
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