Chapter 1: The Death of Thermoss and His First Encounter With Lalartuzi
The jungle lands of Agrios were vast and unforgiving. It was said these dense jungles were protected by an enchantment; a dark spell that brought peril to any invaders. Magic or no, the reality of these wild lands was perilous enough that those who believed in these superstitions certainly had reason to do so. They were inhabited by millions of venomous snakes, and even more poisonous insects. Jaguars and Panthers roamed the jungle as well. Piranhas and Caymans ruled the numerous rivers. There were some plants that could kill a man at the touch of their leaves, and many others that caused great sickness if not death.
On the other hand, food was plentiful. Fruits and vegetables everywhere one looked, and countless prey animals available to a skilled hunter. Very few humans could survive here, but those who could did so as easily as one would stroll through a park. The traditions of these people protected sacred knowledge which helped them understand the Jungle as a kind of Goddess. This perspective allowed them to bargain with the wilderness, and therefore thrive in Chaos. There were a few small tribes that roamed nomadically throughout the Jungle, sometimes settling in villages for a while but never for more than a few seasons. They rarely encountered each other. When they did, they typically traded resources or trinkets and moved on. Occasionally, however, cruel men gained enough respect in their tribe to become leaders, leading to atrocities against other tribes and ultimately war. This will happen in Elefthera's time, as she comes of age.
Elefthera's tribe consisted of 108 members. At this time, there were 53 adult men, an unusual majority. The women of this tribe were active and capable, so the number of people that were capable of hunting, gathering, and fighting was 81. The rest of the members were children and elderly. The other tribes had dwindling numbers of capable adults. The leaders of the tribes had good relations due to longstanding trade relationships. The younger adults, however, did not have such an appreciation for their neighbors. A spirit of competitiveness and jealousy had begun to cloud the minds of some of the young men in Elefthera's tribe. They knew they were more powerful than the other tribes, and yet still shared the Jungle with them equally by order of the leaders. This caused whispers of dissension to arise among the warriors.
Thermoss was renown among the other men of the tribe as a skilled hunter and fighter. He was the sole survivor of the last violent event between the tribes, which occurred 13 years before the beginning of Elefthera's story.
He was a young man at the time. The tribe was facing a plague, and many of the most capable adults were weak from sickness. The healthy ones were working triple time to care for their fellow tribe members. Their Shaman, or healer, claimed to have fallen prey to an evil spirit, which "clouded his mind against the sickness", and so was useless. Someone had to get help. They had recently traded with one of the other tribes, at which point they heard rumor of a powerful Shaman that lived alone in the center of the Jungle.
Thermoss's mother was one of the sick, and badly so. He knew that something had to be done. He recruited a few of the other members whom had been spared of the sickness so far, and took off on a desperate quest to find the famous Shaman. The group consisted of four men and one woman.
The journey to the center of the jungle took a little over a month, and was hard and perilous. One of the men had been killed by a Jaguar in the middle of the night. Thermoss was the man on watch duty, but was drawn into his thoughts and therefore not paying well enough attention to the jungle around him. He let the fire die down enough that the Jaguar, which had been following them for miles, was no longer intimidated by the flames. It fell from a tree into their campsite straight onto a sleeping man. Thermoss and the other members grouped together with their spears and tried to drive it off, but the cat did not intend on sticking around anyways. It dragged the man off into the darkness, and the man's screams ended abruptly as they lost sight of him. The only survivor of the attack who blamed Thermoss was himself. This guilt would haunt him.
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