The Cannibals of the Jungle

Of all the places of terror I have walked few have the intricate designs of slithering serpents, exotic poisons, gruesome curses, and savage carnal rituals than the Karak Jungles and the cannibals that dwell there...and at its rotting heart sits the most evil and manipulative demon of demons: the Old Woman...the Sultra Sagara.

In this tayle I walked those fetid jungle paths with another cursed soul, a nagura, as the Tribes call one who walks tribeless.  In this tayle I arrived but a few years after the vile Black Spider tribe's Elder was poison in retaliation for slaughtering the Creeping Fox tribe with an item of ancient and mysterious power garnered from the Old Woman through bribes.  In the end, with the Elder of the Black Spider tribe lying dead from her poison in his veins only the Sultra Sagara walked away from that tangled web the victor.  My guide, the tribeless nagura was one of the few survivors of the Creeping Fox.

In the middle of this bloody fetid web I walked in search of the Arc, one of the Machines that litter the Jungle like a graveyard of the previous age and a memoir of the previous Cycle after the Passage opened the last time.  I was a lot younger then; the same, but with less memories...less to regret...less tayles.

Along the way we were ambushed by one of the "nameless" tribes that are not strong enough to attend the Council of Midnight so must live on the fringes of Karak-life preying on those that they can.  A bone-covered shaman cast a cruel black net over my guide and with strange dusts and magick literally sucked his soul out of him and animate the body under his control.  Although their magicks and their weapons cannot harm me I am still a physical object that can be moved as readily as any other object: I let them take me and my guides body with them as they darted through the trees and creep through winding paths beneath roots of great trees that have seen numerous opening of the Passage.

I spent three full nights strung up in their human cages with others they had caught; one by one each of us disappeared to the cauldrons bubbling below to be served upon those ghastly tables of human spoils.  My guide had told me before his death about the virugra gamangre or the "eating of enemies" as a means to steal their powers through the consumption of their flesh.  As the numbers in the cage grew less and less I began to become determined that I shall use my curse to leave this hindrance keeping me from my goal.  I understand that each time I use it I am just a little closer to the one that gave me it...but given the circumstances in that nest of cannibals I could justify its use as my immediate survival.

Whichever way I could convince myself, it didn't matter because apparently I was quite a prize to these savages: in return for a place within the Poisoned Monkey tribe one of the nameless tribe had traded all his tribes lives and me as the crown jewel to an ambush that swept like silent death below the sleeping village.  The waking cycles of these savages is basically nocturnal, as they sleep through the hottest and most humid part of the day to be active when the jungles cool: so, awake in the middle of the day I saw Poisoned Monkey warriors slip through the jungle foliage, casting silence before them and misting the air thick with poisonous smoke burn by their shamans and wafted over the village.  Archers and blowpipes dotted hidden amongst the trees that reach towards the sky; as the nameless tribe awoke to poisoned air and came stumbling outside poison-tipped arrows flew silently through the air to impale the walking dead.  Shaman's summoned strange undead monkeys from the ground that scuttled with only the sound of rattling bones into the village--oblivious to the poisoned air around them they leapt to their victims throats with gleaming white bone claws to choke to death those few that had survived this far.

An entire village had been slaughtered before midday with less than a whisper and a creaking bone to alert any onlookers.  All this to claim their prize: me.

The Sultra Sagara wished to speak to an old enemy and the Bananag rolled in its sleep.

--Anonymous Monk