Edan & Hima: The Awakening

Chapter Ten

The two shifters stood in the room while silence collected around them.

Taryl couldn't believe what she was seeing. Two of the legendary comrades were standing before her. She had so many questions she wanted to ask them but felt as though it was out of place. There was a more important situation at hand: the matter of her harboring the spirit of an ancient shifter.

Michael turned so to face Taryl. "Is something troubling you, Taryl?"

His question brought Taryl out of her trance and she gasped before shaking her head. "No," she answered with a shaky voice.

The strange and ancient shifter narrowed his eyes. "You cannot lie to me," he told her.

Taryl turned her head away and cursed under her breath.

"Now, what is it?"

"I... I just don't understand how you two can be comrades of Edan and Hima," Taryl expressed. "You would be hundreds of years old, and dead."

Althia began to laugh at Taryl's words. "Kid, you shouldn't let those thoughts bother you." Taryl looked at the Healer with confusion. Althia simply fixed her posture and placed her hands on her hips. "Let's just say, there are a few things about me and Michael that should be left in the dark."

"Or," Victor interjected, "you could just spill the tea of your immortality."

Althia shook a finger at the young man. "Now that would be breaking the code of our tribe."

Michael nodded his head. "Though they are long faded in the minds of many, our tribe still rests within us, and we wish to honor their memory by keeping true to the code."

Taryl became confused once more. "Tribe?"

"The comrades all came from different tribes," Althia explained. "Back then, shifters were segregated in tribes according to their spirit animal." The Healer glanced at Michael and smiled. "The two of us were part of the Beast Tribe, which had always held secret powers."

"However," Michael piped in, "many people in the tribes were not shifters. The entire being of a shifter was brought on by a curse. A curse that was laid onto each tribe after Edan and Hima awoke a malevolent spirit—the Goliath."

This part of the legend was never shared with any other shifter that Taryl had met. It was never even taught in her classes; this was all new information.

"The six tribes affected by the curse went into hiding, simply to protect their loved ones that had succumbed to it," Michael said while his head slowly dropped. "But a few shifters were given a worse curse that separated them from the others."

"Tala and Sike from the Wolf Tribe," Althia began to list off, "Dakota from the Bear Tribe, Adahy from the Horse Tribe, Michael and I from the Beast Tribe, Rujani from the Bird Tribe, and finally, Edan and Hima from the Wildcat Tribe were all given four different forms compared to the one that most were cursed with."

Taryl glanced at her brother as a look of confusion had stained his face. Spencer then stepped forward. "Hold on, but that's eleven shifters. Take Edan and Hima out, and that makes nine comrades."

Althia nodded her head. She, too, looked to the floor with guilt. Michael heaved a sigh. "Rujani... she was taken by the Darkness amid the battle against the Entities; she was taken by the Goliath."

Now Taryl turned to look at Victor. His eyes filled with sadness and he looked at his hands. It was almost as if he had seen something that he didn't wish to see.

"She was the youngest of all of us," Michael went on. "And also an orphan. Hima became close with the young bird shifter and even thought of her as a daughter."