“You little…” cursed Kunkhen as he looked around in search for the pendant. His hand was pulsing with pain due to the beating it just received. He initially thought that the pendant would just rotate a bit and absorb some of the black liquid but he didn’t imagine that it would keep picking up speed!
Kunkhen could feel his hand throbbing with pain.
He could feel the lines on his palm where the red thread of his pendant had practised violence on. ‘Just you wait! I will teach you a lesson not to do that shit anymore!’ he whispered to himself in anger, continuing his search for vengeance.
Kunkhen was still in the dark prison of Elder Khrom, so his surroundings were still dark and without any illumination. He couldn’t see anything that was further than 1 metre. He could only make out the things especially close to him, and even that with difficulty!
He really could use the light from his turquoise pendant in this darkness but that died when it started to do its rotating trick and now he was left with no sight. So Kunkhen steadied himself and kept searching for his pendant, partly for its light and partly out of spite!
As he slowly walked and looked around for the turquoise pendant, He found it. But Kunkhen’s anger dissipated as soon as he saw the scene before him. About a metre away from Kunkhen, the pendant was floating at a floor’s height.
It still had a tiny shine of light that gave itself away but that shine had no effect in brightening the surroundings. In the dark, It looked like a drunk turquoise-colored firefly. Kunkhen noticed that the pendant was still rotating(faster and faster) and it was collecting everything around it.
Kunkhen could feel the air that the rotating pendant was quickly collecting around itself. Kunkhen also felt the black liquid near him slowly rise from their puddles like tides of the ocean and trode towards the pendant and form a circling ring. Some of the black liquid even touched Kunkhen’s clothes and face as it rushed to join the others.
The burnt Juniper smell also moved along with the black liquid and the active air and filled the surroundings and attacked Kunkhen’s senses. As the pendant spinned faster and faster, the black ring around it sucked in most of the remaining black liquid near it, bits of the dark ground where Kunkhen was standing were beginning to be pulled, and the dark world that was eerily silent earlier was quickly by the loud drumming voice of the massive spinner.
The sight was incredibly terrifying and debilitating for Kunkhen as it looked like a black tornado, seemingly a weapon of death itself, but it smelled of Juniper- a smell of peace and purity.
Kunkhen was in a daze, trying to make sense of everything that was happening, until he felt himself being pulled towards the massive spiral of death. Kunkhen realised that the strength of the tornado was increasing rapidly so he quickly made an effort to move away from the storm and make himself steady.
Just as he was doing that, the black tornado started to move. And like a spinning top it travelled over the wide land, sucking in every remaining black liquid from the puddles and decimating the dark ground.
The amount of liquid scattered throughout the land was definitely not small as the black tornado swiftly grew bigger and bigger until it spanned a radius of a small house with a height of 3 story building.
The burnt juniper odour was spiralling all around and was assaulting Kunkhen’s senses. And the rotating darkness centred around the pendant bereft Kunkhen of the little vision he had. Added to that, like a person in a heavy storm, Kunkhen was gasping, finding it hard to breathe.
“Stop!!! ….What… are you... doing?” Kunkhen shouted in gasps. Breathing was becoming harder for him and he felt himself becoming dizzy. He didn’t know whether the pendant was sentient or could understand him. But he had to stop his pendant from killing him. It would be a cruel joke if the pendant saved him earlier just to dish out his execution itself.
Kunkhen wondered if his pendant was angry at him or had he done anything to make it angry. But he had to take a shot, and try to calm it down, otherwise it might not end the best for him.
Kunkhen spoke slowly with a tone intentionally lathered with warmth and friendliness, while budgeting his breath. “We are buddies, right?... You saved me before, remember?... But I don’t think… this counts as saving me!... So… may.. You…please…stop?”
Kunkhen was not at his proudest look. He was on all fours, holding the ground and trying to maintain his grip and balance so that the tornado wouldn’t lift him off and suck him in.
While Kunkhen desperately fights to stay on the ground, he thinks to himself a thought, a thought that had invaded his mind since he was brought here to this dark world.
‘Why am I here? Why is this happening to me?’
Kunkhen, in his life as far as he can remember, had never faced such trials of torture and indifference. He had an easy life. His parents were good. And he wanted to keep living an easy life, a simple life of freedom, even after he grew up. He had never known anything outside of the normalcy of life.
But one after the other, things were happening to him that he knew absolutely nothing about, that he couldn’t do anything to stop or defend against, and they involved a lot of pain and suffering. From the time he was almost crushed and killed by those black tendrils to this black tornado that was about to churn him into pieces, it was enough to shake his will.
Kunkhen directed his gaze towards the pendant hidden in the curtain of the black tornado and waited for any signs of stopping only to be disappointed. His warm request for a cease-fire went into deaf years.
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The spinning tornado showed no signs of listening and stopping. Instead, it kept spinning faster and faster much to Kunkhen’s dismay. The tornado was growing in size with the spin as its height slowly reached from 10 floors and extended towards the ceiling of the dark dome! However, something did change.
The pendant in the tornado started to emit its familiar turquoise light. The cyan glow had disappeared earlier when the turquoise stone started spinning but it had returned now and this time, the radiance was much stronger and the light only grew brighter and brighter until it permeated through the black tornado and gave light to everything.
The sight was something to behold as the tornado now looked incredibly majestic. With fine turquoise paint in the centre and black liquid coating, the tornado looked like an artistic masterpiece!
Half amazed and half annoyed by the sight, Kunkhen cursed internally ‘Why are you trying to show off when I am about to die?’.But as if the pendant heard it, a strong wirl of air tackled Kunkhen and his grip on the ground gave way.
He was almost lifted off the ground but Kunkhen dug his fingers in the ground as his final effort to stop his ascend into the tornado. But as the tornado grew in its strength, it started to drag Kunkhen through the ground, towards itself.
His fingers ploughed through the ground for a good length until he couldn’t bear the pain and had to let go! Immediately, Kunkhen was pulled straight to the now massive tornado while accelerating to an incredible speed in just a few seconds!
“Oh, Cmon!” shouted Kunkhen as he unwillingly joined the rotating cluster of things waiting in line to be taken into the tornado. Kunkhen spiralled faster and faster inwards, to the turquoise-black tornado!
His speed was dizzying as Kunkhen fought to stay awake and as soon as he knew that he was entering the tornado, Kunkhen closed his eyes, stopped his breath and braced himself for the impact! 1…2…3… Booloop!
But unlike the loud crash and splash Kunkhen expected, he was met with a soft embrace, sounding like a diver’s clean cut, as he was pulled along the swirling black tornado. His body didn’t hurt like he anticipated but he still had his eyes closed, in fear of the black liquid entering, and hadn't thoroughly checked. Maybe his body was in shock and the pain from the impact would slowly catch up to him.
He noticed that the inside of the tornado sounded like an engine of a plane about to take off but was dampened by the liquid. So the noise was not as domineering as before. Though the noise was controlled, the turbulence was still oppressive as it carried Kunkhen round and round, travelling the natural pathway of a counter-clockwise tornado.
Kunkhen was still holding on to his breath but that was on its last gasp. A minute at most, was his thought on how long his breath would last. He figured he wouldn’t be able to breathe in this liquid so he was holding on to his breath desperately until he could get out.
But as he spinned more and more, his need for air became stronger and stronger. Then in a moment of carelessness and desperation, Kunkhen slightly opened his mouth and nose, and that was his mistake.
His body, by instinct, inhaled for air but instead, the black liquid entered through his nose and mouth. Kunkhen had no power in stopping it as he was about to fall unconscious due to asphyxiation.
Kunkhen was so debilitated, that he couldn’t even think coherently. He could only observe as he felt the black liquid, thicker than water, slowly and menacingly march through his nasal tract and throat.
It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences Kunkhen had ever had. He could feel the slimy sensation of the black liquid in his stomach and in his chest as it blocked all of his tracts. He was suffocating both inside and out.
On top of that, he could feel his inner body corrode by the liquid. His body and head did a few instinctive jerks to push out the foregin substance. But it was to no avail.
The black liquid had already entered his system. Kunkhen had already started to drown. Just a few seconds later, Kunkhen had fallen unconscious while his body kept circling round and round with the rest of liquid. ‘Death’ was the last thought Kunkhen had.
The pendant, dangling taut from the red thread, still seemed to be indifferent to Kunkhen’s predicament, as it kept glowing stronger and stronger and rotating faster and faster. The revolving tornado around it was also picking up speed as it grew taller and taller.
The tornado height was almost unseeable at this point but a strange thing did start to happen. Instead of the tornado growing bigger in horizontal size, it started to shrink. The radius of the tornado was starting to grow smaller.
One could see that the pendant was showing his last grand trick, as it started to pull everything towards itself while keeping the insane rotation. And like a star with its gravitational pull, everything around the pendant moved towards it.
And as the radius of the tornado grew shorter and shorter, everything in it was being compressed. The black liquid was growing darker and thicker showing signs of increased concentration and density.
And Kunkhen’s numb body, which was still rotating in the black pool, started to quickly spiral inwards to the centre as the tornado slowly became thicker and solid! After a few rounds, Kunkhen’s body exited the black liquid and entered the rotating turquoise glow as it slowly spiralled near to the pendant. As the body approached the pendant, the pendant gently stopped rotating but retained its strong glow. The glow grew only stronger but the spinning had ceased! And like it had a mind of its own, the pendant slowly made its way towards the unconscious Kunkhen.
It wraps its red thread around Kunkhen’s neck, and, with a poise that befits a king ascending to his rightful place on the throne, the turquoise gracefully settles on Kunkhen’s collar.
By then, the earlier black tornado had become incredibly smaller in its width but its height extended to the ceiling of the world. The black liquid and gaseous mixture, of before, had turned solid.
What remained was no longer a tornado! Instead, a huge sky-holding pillar, besmeared by night’s darkness, stood in the dark world slowly turning.
The noise had decreased a lot and all that remained was a deep hum as this column rotated slowly between heaven and earth. From afar, it looked like a prayer wheel of heaven itself with its black coat and scattered turquoise hue.
As this heaven-shaking sight was taking place, Kunkhen still showed no signs of consciousness. His blacked-out body was still in the centre of a black column, enveloped by the cyan light from his Yhu.
The light was serving as a protective barrier, holding bay the crushing weight of the pillar! But inside of Kunkhen’s mind, another scene was raging forth!
***