A sliver of blood snakes out of the corner of his mouth and drips on the mud floor of the hut. He is on his knees in front of the shaman, head bowed, eyes staring into the smoky gloom of the hut. The herbs burning on a brazier in the corner sting his nostrils every time he takes a breath.
The shaman stares at him and then slaps his other cheek.
His face is numb but not even a sigh of protest escapes his lips.
"How dare you?" the shaman's voice croaks in the silence of the hut. The crackle of the flames in the corner add to his misery.
He says nothing.
"How could you think we will give up in the face of steel and thunder? Do you think the gods have abandoned us yet?"
He says nothing.
"We will stand our ground. We will not step back. If they have to gain an inch, they will have to snatch it from the jaws of death."
"How?"
The word falls from his lips like a hammer, his voice rough like gravel, torn with pain and anger. He needs to say no more. The question demands an answer.
It's the shaman's turn to stare at him. The stare turns into a rotten toothed grin.
"How, he asks. Why? with magic."
In a blink, the hut is filled with a light so bright that even the warrior is forced to shield his eyes with his forearm. The light creates afterimages on his closed eyes in which he sees the shaman turn into a wolf, a tiger, a lion, an eagle, a dragon and several other shapes that his primitive mind cannot decipher. The light is almost painful now and he stumbles out of the hut on his arms and knees. The afterimages make his eyes water and he rubs his eyes to get some sort of vision back in them.
The torrent of blazing white light still pours forth from the hut. He dares a look into the darkness of the night and sees twelve blazing forms falling towards the planet. They look like meteorites but in his scared heart, he knows what they are.
He hears the shaman cackle madly from inside the hut and he hopes that the magic would be enough.
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