The Prophet and the Twelve Wickeds

Red Pieces with irregular shapes move around her. It appears to be diamonds while others looked as if they were an unformed circle. Some looked like diamonds while others looked as if they were an unformed circle. But one thing was common among Pieces, they appeared every time someone had successfully cast a Chant.

Nefaaya slashed her sword forward. She wondered how many times she had slashed her sword forward. One thing was sure, she was doing it for hours. No, not just for hours. She spent the past few slashing the wooden sword forward. She sighed and slashed, the wind hissing as she cut through it.

"You're slacking," her father said as he sipped on his coffee. Fumes rising from the cup as he narrowed his eyes on her. *He's strict!*

After the incident when Nefaaya had almost burned the village with her fireball experiment, Learo had become more strict than usual, especially in the sword fighting class.

*At least he was still acting like a child sometimes.* She nodded, as she remembered him breaking random jokes that felt so unlikely with his strict personality.

"How long should I do this," she complained. "I'm just three you know."

Nefaaya stopped and swatted away the sweat on her forehead. The class starts an hour after morning. Right now, two hours have already passed. The sun was not even reaching its peak and Nefaaya already felt she wanted to just drop dead on her bed.

"I'm also three when I first took the sword, and I was eight when I left the village." He continued, "you would stop when you're ready."

She wanted to asked, what she had to be ready for. But just speaking while doing this tiresome routine had almost taken her breath away.

---

The lesson in language continued like usual. Nefaaya was given poems or prose to translate while her father scrutinized her work. This part of the day was what made her happy. Because truth be told, Nefaaya likes things which involve using her thinking skills. But aside from that, she also likes listening to her father's story.

"How come, did you learn this language," she asked once.

His father looked up and stared at the drifting leaves of the nearby tree. "I first worked as a caravan knight. Before I became a mercenary. During those days, I had been hired by many different people and had traveled to almost every part of the continent. During my stay in one place, I always tried to learn something, and language always fascinates me."

Nefaaya smiled, perhaps her father has the making of a linguist if he was in her world. He looked up. Learo was looking from a distant memory. Faraway to a place that she couldn't reach. He looked so philosophical at that time. Nefaaya wondered if he still misses the way he used to live before. Perhaps he was thinking of the days when he was still traveling around the world.

"Then you learned so many languages?"

His father smiled proudly, "I can speak ten and can write in seven different languages."

*How could he not longed for it? I'm almost like him. Living in two lives, always wondering… sometimes I was still wondering what my life would be like if I didn't get here... sometimes I still woke up on the thought that I have to hurry or else risk myself going to class unprepared.*

---

Eight seasons had passed. It was now winter and Nefaaya was five. The wind blew hard on their walls, almost lashing as if a whip was being slashed repeatedly, eager for their walls to break. In those days, Nefaaya wondered while sleeping on the floor near the fireplace about the possibility that winter would never stop—like how it was in the prominent legends of this world.

Being five years old, she had read many books. She finds the literature in this part of the continent to be about the Eternal Winter. A fictionalized era, almost the same as an apocalypse where the world had suffered a long winter caused by an Evil Saint. She figured that it was just a short ice age. But since this world is comparable to what seems like a Medieval or perhaps Early Medieval era on Earth, the people still have a need to cling to faith to explain things that they can't understand.

At one time, when Nefri was busy knitting a scarf for her, and Learo was sharpening his sword with a whetstone, her father suddenly asked about one of the Ten Wicked who was believed to be born this south of the continent.

*What was he talking about?*

"And he was born during the hardest winter ever recorded since the last few days of the Eternal Winter," her father said as he glanced at the book Nefaaya was reading.

*Thankfully, it wasn't random. Father has a habit of asking questions that seem out of place!*

Nefri looked up from her knitting, "Hmm, according to the stories, Wicked Cernalis has the blood of Feyrin in him."

Nefaaya looked up, "he was related to us?"

She had learned that Feyrin was a subspecies that had come from the long history of mating between human and Elf. So in a sense, she was really an elf. Elf was an extinct species of hominid that used to live in the mountains that she could see every morning. The Adril Ranges, they used to have a city high above that mountain called Adrina'lanar. Elf are remarked for their sleek and tall figure with antlers growing in their forehead. Most of them were white-haired and have emerald eyes, a feature that was given to them by the All-seeing God as they were assigned as the Folk of The Trees. But they all perished during the War Of Ascension.

The Feyrin looks down on humans. When in truth there was little Elf in them and more human.

Her father nodded and moved closer to her as if to whisper, "not entirely. Cernalis' mother was a human woman that our prince had taken a liking to, or so what the stories told."

"We have a prince? This small village has a prince?" She asked doubtful.

Learo looked at her sharply, "of course we have! What kind of civilized nation wouldn't have a prince. Our village was in the outskirts so we didn't see much of the Royals but I assured you, in our capital. Farsain, the King and the Royal Family were there."

Her eyes widened to what her father had said about the civilized nation. *What the hell?* A truly civilized nation wouldn't have someone take all the responsibility in running a country. A country should be run by someone who had the merits to do so.

"Our prince would not marry her. And her hatred grew, they believed this what led for Cernalis to be born—her mother's thirst for revenge."

Nefaaya blinked at her father. Learo was staring right at her, she asked herself why he was doing it. *Did he expect a reaction from me?*

"Did Cernalis take revenge on his father?" She asked.

Nefri shook her head, "the one he bore hatred with was to her mother. He killed her. And later he became the worst abominable. He became one of the Twelve Wickeds of the Prophet."

Upon hearing the word Prophet, Nefaaya froze. The book in her hand dropped on the floor. A memory was struck at her mind. She heard it, she knew but she was forgetting it.

She gulped, "can you tell me more about this Prophet and Wickeds."

"I still haven't talked about this story with you?" She asked. Nefaaya shook her head.

"It is because those stories were not something you usually told to a child," Learo said. "Especially during a hard winter."

For a minute, Nefaaya had lost faith that her father wouldn't tell anything more about the Prophet and the Twelve Wickeds. He sighed and put his sword back to its scabbard, the blade screaming as he did so.

"Two thousand years ago, the world we have right now is different from the world we used to have before," he said. "There was no Six Continent. The world was one, living in a single landmass."

"The world didn't know how it happened or when the Prophet appeared," he continued. "But all the stories agreed. The Prophet was evil, same as his loyal servants, the Twelve Wickeds. They roam around the world, causing disaster and destroying the Power that unites the world.

Learo sighed and gestured a sign. In the door.

"What was that?" Nefaaya asked.

"A sign to ward off Madness," he said.

*So they also have those gestures that were also prominent in my world... How interesting.*

"How could thirteen people severe the world so much? Did he shatter the continent?"

"At first it started in small skirmishes and the kingdoms didn't give them much attention, they figured out that they're just extremists who needed some attention," her father turned to her. She heard the wood in the fireplace crackled. And the flames danced on his face. "But everything changed when a certain group called Rotseekers pledged their allegiance to the Prophet... that's the start."

Nefri nodded, a shadow was casted on her face. "He divided the world into six. The Prophet had gained his followers in the parts of the south."

Nefaaya's eye widened. Nefri abruptly shook her head, "not this south. But on the land called Lohra'in Continent. They believed on the Prophet, as a force that was meant by the Path of the Flow to happen. The Followers believed that the Prophet was sent to change the course of destiny. Before the Prophet arrived despite living in a single continent all species were divided. Man wage war against man. Every species waging war in other species or on with the same species. While most people of Loh'rain love the Prophet and the Twelve Wickeds they hold contempt to the Rotseekers."

Nefaaya looked at her curiously, "why?"

"Because 'Those Who Lose Their Grace are evil' they said. And the Pieces don't want anything to do with them."

"But same goes for the Prophet, he was also evil. He slaughtered so many, to what purpose?" Learo said. "No one knows the purpose of the Prophet but the Prophet himself."

Over the course of the night, Learo continued telling the story of the Prophet and the Wicked. According to him, the Prophet moved around destroying kingdoms, raising rebellion causing disloyalty to others. The whole world was brought into ruins. Until the arrival of the Saints, who slowly rallied the last forces of mankind to slew the Prophet in a decisive battle in Yanal Mondurya, a desert waste in the Western Continent.

Later that night when she was about to sleep, Nefaaya suddenly remembered the unsettling dream that she had when she was three. The rest of winter was filled with nothing but dreams about the creature… with Nefaaya being unable to identify what was real or not.