Dordor. The name was given to the man-eating creatures with a peculiar human form. They were far from human of course, mostly undead, bigger than the average man - on average, a young dordor would weigh twice a human adult and an adult dordor would weigh five times the human adult - and with a varied skin color ranging from black, white, red, green, blue and many other colors. Another difference the dordor had with humans was the number of heads each one of them had. Many of the dordor that came in contact with the public had one or two heads, but there were many with more. It was speculated that the heads corresponded to the number of humans they ate, and some said their intelligence significantly increased with every head.
It was one of these creatures that sneaked behind Armad. It was the same creature Hasanu had sensed earlier, and the same creature Nostalgia just saw and was trying to help him out.
As Armad turned around, he locked eyes with the creature and its image hit him hard. At that moment, Armad was convinced he could die.
The dordor was dark-green in its entirety; from the top of its head to the sole of his foot. It had one head, which made it look very human. You could take it as one if it weren't for the crazy long hair that was touching its feet and covering its body all around and the dark-green skin and eyes that glowed like a lantern.
In the book 'The First Creatures in the World', B. Zinaria wrote:
In the first human civilization, the First Dawn, the Fulan people of the west decided to migrate to the east. As fate would have it, the Fulan encountered several terrifying creatures during their journey. The worst of them all was the Dódo. It was the worst the Fulan had ever had. They lost more than two-thirds of their population.
Many years later when the Fulan finally reached their destination in the east, the adults of the tribe stopped speaking for a month to mourn the people they lost during the journey.
Over the many years, the pain of their loss began to subside, and the masters of eloquence and storytelling among them wrote stories about the bravery of their people who had fought against the Dódo.
As a result, the name Dódo spread to many parts of the world. It became a source of fear and anxiety for the children. Whenever a child misbehaved, the elders would ask them to stop or 'they would call a Dódo'.
In the same book, B. Zinaria described how the Dódo looked. The description resembled that of the dordor in this era. Because of this, many people assumed that the two creatures were the same, just an evolved species. A few argued that the dordor weren't the same species as the Dódo, but they also agreed that the two species shared a striking resemblance.
As Armad looked into the glowing, unforgiving eyes of the dordor, he couldn't help but tremble. It was said that the Ururu protected people against the creatures in the last six months of the year. During this period, any who wished to travel on the two walls must register with the Ururu. Registering would protect you against the dordor and enabled you to travel safely. Armad didn't register. He didn't know about his captors.
Thinking back, a lot of things had happened ever since he set out from home. The princess and her siblings had been in the dungeon before him. They were looking for something, probably the same thing he heard from the voice in the board, and he understood why the princes wanted him dead, but why save him? Nostalgia was an odd one. And he didn't have enough information to make any assumptions yet.
As he hung there, the green Dordor raised its fleshy, green hand and tried to grab him.
That was when Hasanu and Kiru came close enough to grab their sister. Having arrived a bit late, they could do nothing but stare at the situation dumbfounded.
Nobody could touch a dordor and survive. It was common knowledge. The creature's sweat was poisonous to humans and was easily transmitted by bodily contact. So if the Dordor touched Armad, the poisonous sweat would pass through his body to Nostalgia. There was no cure for it. And if Hasanu tried to save her, the poison would enter his body as well. So he could only hopelessly wait for Nostalgia to let go of Armad before the dordor touched him and before the poison entered her body.
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At that moment, something the brothers didn't expect happened. Armad snatched his hand from Nostalgia's just as the dordor was about to grab him. He drew his sword while still floating in the air and slashed at the Dordor's hand.
Seeing what Armad did, Nostalgia trembled in fear. She reached out to hold him back.
But Hasanu and Kiru arrived just in time to grab her. They ran back to safety with Kiru vehemently restraining her.
It was only when they felt safe that they stopped, and with their mouths wide open, they stared at Armad.
Initially, they didn't have time to be surprised, but now that they had rescued their sister, who was still trying to free herself from their custody to save Armad, they calmed down a bit. Even Kiru had to commend Armad for confronting the dordor alone and head-on.
He wanted to fight Armad now more than ever. "If only he won't die here," he murmured to himself. "He would help sharpen my sword." He sighed, shaking his head. "Well, it was fun fighting him."
Hasanu, who was holding Zahra's left hand, muttered to himself, "I should hurry home and confirm my suspicion."
From the beginning up until now, he'd been studying Armad and following up on what he was doing. Now more than ever he was suspicious of the young man's origins.
From the other side, Armad and the green Dordor had exchanged over twenty attacks as they floated in the air. Armad used his sword while the dordor punched him and at the same tried to poison him by touch.
As if telling them it could deal with all four of them at once, the Dordor opened its mouth and fired a thick, black liquid at Hasanu and his brothers. The ball of liquid flew with an unnatural speed and expanded to engulf all three of them.
The black liquid was a concentrated poison, as the spit of a viper, with only one purpose: to kill. It would melt muscles and bones like ice under a flame.
Almost simultaneously, the dordor breathed another ball of the same poison at Armad. Armad was closer to it, so the attack would hit him much sooner.
Desperate to save himself, Armad raised his sword in the air with a deep breath, and he slashed.
"Wilberforce Sword Dance!'' He enchanted at the same time as the slash.
As the words left his mouth, his sword glowed with milky light. The world suddenly stopped. The ball of fluid that was about to engulf him stopped midair. Hasanu also stopped with his hands raised midway in the air. And the dordor stopped as well.
The milky light around Armad Armad's blade exploded with small ethereal stars, blinding everyone.
It remained like that for a few seconds before the light diminished and eventually disappeared.
Hasanu and his siblings looked around them with wide eyes. The poison ball that was about to engulf them wasn't there anymore. The dordor was gone as well, and Armad was also gone.
"He's gone!" Hasanu exclaimed, staring at Nostalgia as if demanding an explanation from her.
After seeing the last Bend Armad had used, Hasanu was certain about his suspicion. All the more reason to bring Armad home and experiment on him before killing him.
"Why?" He thundered, looking at his sister. "Why did you help him escape?"
"I didn't help him escape," Nostalgia said, attracting a glare from her elder brother.
"Then what did you do?" He asked slowly and with bated breath.
She hesitated, but after seeing the murderous look on his face, she decided to tell the truth. "Aren't we supposed to be the good guys fighting the bad guys? He's just a boy. An innocent boy who didn't choose to be here. If we start killing innocent people then we will be no different from the first worlders."
"What?" Hasanu said, unable to believe what his sister had just said. "That's absurd even for your twisted mind. We're as different from the first worlders as black and white." He paused, pacing around as he furiously thought of a solution. "That secret can destroy the world as we know it now. And you let him go. Dammit, Nostee, this isn't the first time you have gotten yourself in trouble. Does mind reading teach you nothing?"
"Then tell me, brother," Nostalgia said. "Will you still kill him if I tell you he's the last remaining child of his dying mother, and the only reason he was in the dungeon was to find a cure for her?"
"To save millions of others like him," Hasanu said without hesitation. "I will kill him, over and over again. And you should have killed him too."
"I can't do that," she said, looking him in the eyes.
"Are you disobeying a direct order from me?" Hasanu said, mouth fuming with anger.
"I'm sorry, brother," she said. "But justice must be absolute. If I can't save one innocent soul, then I shouldn't even attempt to save many."
Kiru, on the other hand, just kept wanting to fight a little bit more, having realized that Armad could pose a reasonable challenge to him.
Hasanu clenched his fist so hard it cracked. "I won't punish you, little sister," he said finally. "But you'll have to take full responsibility. If the boy talks, you will kill him with your hands. And if he falls into the enemy's hands, you will kill him before he talks. That shall be your fate, Nostalgia Sisiyù of the Sword."