[EPILOGUE] Song Of Rain And Fire

“Long ago, the world was once whole, and its people lived in harmony.

But an ancient god, a greedy serpent stole all of the world’s water and kept it as its own. It took the effort of a benevolent god to slay the serpent and return the water.

However, his efforts weren’t enough. While he managed to kill the serpent, their battle had split the world into two. On one side, the sun shone on its land for eternity, drying out everything that it had. The nation would soon bear the name “Drought”. On the other side, rainfall was the only thing that it knew, and it was aptly named “Drizzle”.

Drizzle and Drought were then locked into endless war, as one side craved the resources of the other. The war spanned for generations, before finally, a hero emerged.

He was a young prince of Drought, the same land that the god once hailed from.

He awakened the power of the god of fire within him, while his bride-to-be held the power of the original god of lightning, the one that vanquished the serpent.

But the god of lightning had gone mad, and as such, turned the prince’s fiancee against him. The prince had no choice but to ask for the help of the serpent itself, now awakened in the soul of an otherworldly hero.

Together, they managed to defeat the armies of Drizzle. But the serpent, true to its nature, turned on the hero after stealing even the lightning god’s power.

An epic battle ensued, one that spanned for days on end. Mountains fell. Earth crumbled. It was a battle worthy of their statuses as divine beings.

But in the end, justice prevailed. The serpent fell once and for all under the prince’s blade. He united the two nations into one, bearing it the new name “Insaan” — Human.

The prince’s name was Arja, and his feat would be sung for generations to come.”

“And thus concluded our lesson for today,” in a marble classroom, a man in a white robe concluded. “Are there any questions?”

“Yes, sir!” from a corner, a certain red-haired boy raised his hand, his voice booming through the classroom like it was on speaker. “Why did the serpent steal everything after helping the hero? Shouldn’t it already be compensated?”

“A good question indeed. Can anyone answer?”

From the opposite corner, another boy raised his hand. Contrary to the first boy’s hotheaded nature, his form was cool — like the azure hue that his hair was.

“Of course you’d be the one to ask that kind of silly question.”

“Hey, what does that mean?”

“Well, for one, this is history class,” the blue-haired boy answered, pushing up his glasses. “This is just a rendition of old mythologies to fit our nation’s creation. And second of all, the serpent is supposed to be representative of humanity’s greed themselves…”

“I would refrain from saying that, young Amir,” the man interrupted. “Unfortunately, we’ve lost most of the historical documents from those thousands of years ago, but there hasn’t been any proof that dissuades the retelling of that myth. And our technology has already reached a level of replicating the divine magic of old, so who’s to say that the old stories are entirely fake?”

The boy, now Amir, scratched his head in embarrassment after being scolded. But to save face, he continued to ask. “But… my interpretation could still be true, right, Teacher?”

“Of course,” nodded the man. “There are still debates whether the serpent was just a single being, or it was an idealized image of our civil war circumstances. But the account of Prince Arja was indeed real as proven by our Rahan here, and truth be told, many of us nowadays still choose to believe the myth rather than oppose it.”

“Hah! See who’s the dummy now!” The red-haired boy laughed in glee.

“Oh shut up, Rahan,” Amir clicked his tongue in annoyance. “You’re just gloating because your lineage is ‘proven’, right?”

“You’re just jealous that your family isn’t cool like mine,” with a big grin, Rahan answered.

“Yeah yeah, great prince who founded Insaan, big whoop. If he was such a good person, then he should have stopped this serpent from causing trouble in the first place.”

“Hah! So you do believe the serpent was real!”

“Tch.”

“Now now, you two. Discussions can be left to another day,” seeing that the arguing might never end at the rate it was going, the teacher soon interrupted the boys and sent them home.

Naturally, they continued their heated discussion on the road — now filled with green pastures and tropical plants all around, with no signs of the desert that it once was.

“But wouldn’t you say the serpent was kinda cool?” Rahan was the first to open.

“Are you for real? You’re even part of the hero’s lineage, are you not?”

“I mean, sure, but we’ve abolished monarchy ages ago. And besides, what’s good about the hero’s name anyway?”

“What do you mean ‘what’s good’? He’s the only one who could stand up against the serpent in the old tales.” Amir argued.

“I mean, the way I see it, our forefathers had to do something to incur the serpent’s wrath,” Rahan shook his head. “Maybe it was just protecting itself or something.”

“Perposterous,” answered Amir. “The serpent is all humanity’s evil made into form. It doesn’t need a reason to cause misery to all of us, and it certainly was more than capable enough to do anything.”

“Then maybe it was just a test. The serpent couldn’t fall that easily!”

“Again, why do you sound like a serpent’s fanboy? You have every right to hate it.”

“You wouldn’t get it, man!” Rahan raised his hands in the air, gesturing around himself. “Sure, the hero always beats the monster, but the monster giving it all against the hero is cool in its own right!”

“Yeah yeah, you and your twisted tastes,” Amir could only sigh at the answer. The conversation had ended many a time with this line, so much that he had trained himself to not think about it whenever it occurred.

“I’ll tell you man, the monster is the coolest! Why, if I were to…”

The moment the words came out of his mouth, a sudden gust of wind blew. In the sky, a nearby chopper flew past the boys, while a certain box left the container and dropped down to where they stood.

“The heck is this?” Asked Rahan.

“Probably a delivery package for our research center. Remember what the teacher said before? We’re now able to replicate the old divine tellings with our own scientific advances.”

“It’s not a one-to-one replica, right?”

“Of course not. Just the visuals — who the heck knows if the old records were even true or not.”

“So… should we open it?”

“... I can’t say that I’m not curious.”

The boys opened the box before them. Inside were two belts, but the buckles were unusually large — it was almost twice the width of the belts themselves, while the center was an empty indent for something.

And those “somethings” were right beside them. Two round chips in a small plastic bag. One was blue like the seething ocean, while the other was as red as a passionate flame.

“Haha, if we don’t know any better, this is probably for us,” Rahan laughed.

Amir didn’t answer. There was a certain charm that the buckles and chips had on him, something that he couldn’t help but wanting to have a feel of them.

“Perhaps, the old stories were true after all…” he mumbled. Underneath the bright sun, even with the plastic bag covering them, the chips still gleamed. The red bearing the image of a dragon shone a bright gold, while the blue with the picture of a black serpent exuded a mesmerizing darkness like no other.