The stagecoach containing our party makes it's way west on the over-land route toward Mikka, drawn by two horse-lizard creatures and loaded down with mail and packages headed in that direction. Inside the coach TRITHAL and CHRIS sit on the back seat facing AXEM and Ali on the front seat. The inside of the coach is a little cramped, but comfortable.
AXEM: "After what we saw and experienced yesterday, there's obviously more to you than we know, Trithal. What exactly happened when you were in the Valleys of Morgura?"
TRITHAL: "Well, as you, Thrax and Chris know, I up and disappeared five years ago after being accused of assaulting that fucker in the pizza shop we worked at. I had grown tired of being a loser, so I went south to Morgura prefecture to seek out some form of martial art training. As you know, Morgura is a mecca for kung fu in this land of fantasy. I happened to meet a man who was a master of swordsmanship, Hitukiri the wind-master. He took me in and taught me how to handle a Japanese sword. Hitukiri had an adopted daughter who was about my age living with him. Her name was Minako. Her parents were killed 15 years earlier in a massacre in the west, and Hitukiri took her in and raised her. She wasn't a complete knock-out, but me and her fell deep in love. It seemed that our souls connected on the deepest of levels, and we were meant to spend our lives together. It was her who convinced me to grow my hair out get these tattoos on my face. I think I look cooler now than I used to!"
CHRIS: "I think you look like a freak!"
TRITHAL reaches off-camera and grabs his trusty CHRIS-whacking pillow and whacks CHRIS with it. He then places the pillow behind his head and continues with his story.
TRITHAL: "As time went on I became quite skilled with the sword, and me and Minako grew closer and closer. Eventually we found our own place and wanted to start a family together. But, sadly, she was stricken with a mysterious illness that none of the doctors in the prefecture knew how to cure. This illness took her life on my 23rd birthday. As I sat next to her on her deathbed, we talked about how much we loved each other and how it would be hard for me to go on living. She then took my hand and a mysterious blue aura emanated from her, then grew to surround me. Then, with her last breath, she said, 'I give to you my soul'. Right then I was bombarded with images and memories as her soul left her body. It took me a while to recover from what happened, and when I came to, I realized that her soul was within mine, and I now had all her thoughts, feelings, and memories. Her final memory was a message to me: 'My soul will live on with yours, so I will be with you forever. My death will not keep us apart.'"
Ali was brought to tears over the story. AXEM offered her a kleenix.
CHRIS: "Man, what a downer! I'm depressed now!"
TRITHAL offers CHRIS a prozac.
TRITHAL: "Soon afterward I realized that I also had the memories of many other people, some who lived centuries ago. I then found that my skills with the sword improved exponentially. Master Hitukiri engaged me in a sparring match in which I stopped short of slicing his jugular vein open. When it was over he told me that I had superseded his training and gave me the name 'Trithal the Divine Wind'. That same day I left the Valleys of Morgura and headed north back toward Mount Sabretooth. Along the way I made sense of what all was happening in my soul. I learned that when Minako's parents were killed in Kureganu when she was four years old, Macha-Rei found her alone, crying next to the bodies of her parents. Having just been expelled by a previous host, Macha-Rei assimilated Minako, both to save her and to make an escape."
Ali: "An escape from what?"
TRITHAL: "The armies of Liiche, or Macha-Kun."
AXEM: "My whole life I've heard fairy-tales of the macha, but never really knew who they were."
TRITHAL: "Over a thousand years ago, there were 100 of them who came to this land. This was back when the land was ruled by chaos, and all the different races fought each other. Originally the macha were nothing more than forces of energy... much like what you witnessed when Macha-Kun left Liiche's body. They have no gender, so they can't reproduce. Because of this, many have died over the years. Now that Macha-Kun is dead, there are only 12 left in the world. Their survival has been based on self-preservation, up to and including symbiosis. But, there are those who found misfortune along the way and have died due to various reasons. Symbiosis, apparently, is a tricky process that can have disasterous consequences if a macha doesn't know what they're doing. If done correctly, however, a macha can take a host and, within an hour of absorbtion can re-create the host into whatever suits the macha. It's even possible to alter faces, bodies, and even genders. If the macha wanted to, they could be the same person over and over again... and many have."
TRITHAL's words remind Ali of what happened to her father when she was little, and she curls into herself with a sad/pissed off expression.
CHRIS: "But, if you've been assimilated by a macha, shouldn't you look different now? I mean, other than the tattoos and the long hair."
TRITHAL: "It's just as Liiche said... my assimilation was incomplete. Minako wanted me to stay exactly the way I was, and did not want to live without me. Love, apparently, is a powerful force. Not too many macha have experienced it on the level Macha-Rei did. When she came into me, it was more like Trithal was assimilating Macha-Rei instead of the other way around."
CHRIS, Ali & AXEM: "Ohhhhh....."
TRITHAL: "But anyway, back to what I was talking about... when the macha began to assimilate the people of the land, they helped teach them how to live togeter. In fact, the macha had a big hand in setting up the prefectural government system we have today. The Land of Fantasy was more in harmony than ever. But, as the Buddha taught, you can't have good without some evil. And that evil came in the form of Macha-Kun. For centruies he was a voice of opposition to the harmony created by the Grand Macha and the others. He was able to convince many people.... even a few macha including Macha-Rei... to join his side. He had a strong enough influence to raise an army, which upon his command was prepared to go up against even the Grand Macha himself to impose Macha-Kun's ideals on the prefectures."
AXEM: "You're talking about the Great Insurrection. I remember reading about that in history class."
TRITHAL: "Correct. Macha-Rei served under Macha-Kun for three lifetimes. The cause seemed just until Macha-Kun went into the land of the ice demons. While there he learned how he could assimilate one of them, and then provoked one to kill him. Thus, Liiche was born. He returned to gather his army and march into war with the prefectures. I won't go into any details about that since anyone who's paid attention in history class knows what happened. Anywho, after almost two centuries of scattered warfare, Macha-Rei joined a detachment of troops led by Liiche himself into Kureganu. There, she witnessed atrocities that no sane person would ever commit. That's when she decided to bail."
Ali: "I understand what you're talking about. Liiche's army came and massacred my village when I was very young, too. To this day I still have nightmares about it."
TRITHAL: "I know. I know all about what happened to you and your father. He was assimilated by a macha named Macha-Bou. A few years after Macha-Rei disappeared, Macha-Bou made an attempt to find her. This was when Minako was still young. Macha-Bou told her about what happened in Tanchi City. He said when his host was killed he was able to assimilate the prefect of Tanchi, Duke Annan... who also happened to be the brother-in-law of King Midus. He told me about how when he was assimilating Annan there was a little girl calling him 'daddy' and being totally freaked out at the sight of him."
Ali: "I remember that like it was yesterday. I saw my daddy who, just minutes before, was telling me that everything was going to be allright, that the enemies weren't going to make it to the tower where we were hiding. A split second later a muscular soldier burst in through a window. Father was able to kill him, but right afterward a black orb of energy shot out of the bad guy's mouth into my father's, and then he started to transform. The next thing I remember was being rescued by soldiers and taken to my uncle Midus's castle."
AXEM put his arm around Ali to comfort her. About the same time, the coach driver alerted his passengers that they had arrived in Mikka.
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