Ank

“Broken bones, flayed skin, eyes removed, and more. You two had it rough, hm?”, said the smiling human woman; who shouldn’t be more than 30 years old, eyes always closed, brown hair and delicate features. She finished her kitchen work, putting down an especially shinny and sharp knife before offering two vacant chairs and a pair of cups filled with some weird black hot tea.

It was unbelievable: it didn’t even look like neither my sister nor I had gone through the horrors we suffered, our bodies healed to perfection, not showing even the smallest scar.

When we woke up, we were already like that, sleeping over a simple bed in what looked like a children’s room. Through the window, I saw a small garden full of fruits and vegetables, and grass and flowers next, then finally a treeline just a few dozen meters away. We were brought to a simple but quite cozy house in a clearing… Somewhere. Exploring, we reached the kitchen, where the woman was already preparing the tea.

“…What happened?”, I asked, holding my sister’s hand. I hadn’t let it go since I woke up.

“Oh, my, if you can’t tell how would I be able to do so? Maybe you were attacked by monsters, or-”

“That’s not it!”, the woman didn’t look aggressive, and wasn’t displaying any negative intentions, but… While we were sacrificed to the [Gods], it was common people who did their dirty work. “How did you healed us?”

“With a [spell], of course”, she explained, indicating the sets with the hot tea.

A spell? I heard about [healers] before, but I didn’t know they were that capable…

“You’re lying. There’s no way someone living in the jungle would be able to heal this good”, my sister said exactly what I was thinking.

“Oh, my; oh, my! Thank you!”, the woman blushed, almost as if she hadn’t get the point. “You see, I used to be an adventurer with my deceased husband, so I got some [levels].”

Adventurers. Who hadn’t heard about them? The guys who solved monster-related problems. I’ve never seen one before, but this doesn’t mean that my village had no troubles in their area of expertise in the past, just that we hadn’t money to employ them: they were supposedly way stronger than common people, and their payment reflected this. No, unless it was an extreme case, the neighborhood would gather, and send groups of men after the monster, even knowing fully well that, probably, at least one person wouldn’t come back.

I exchanged a look with my sister. And we sat down: if she was telling the truth, she would be able to crush us like insects.

“What do you want from us? We… have nothing to pay you with”, I said, as I smelled the tea. It was strange, I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I surely didn’t bring the cup to my mouth until I saw the woman drinking from the same pot.

“As an old warrior of justice, I just wanted to help some dying children by the road. Is it strange?”

It was. Because we were not just dying children, but sacrifices. No one helped them, our lives were supposed to keep everyone safe…

My hands tightened around the cup, and I felt my sister’s grip almost painfully doing the same with my hand.

Even the kingdom our village was part of made sporadic sacrifices. And I, naively, thought that everyone that was killed was evil.

“Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t find your wrongdoer and avenge you two. I’m strong, but not as strong as the God Slayers Twins, for example…”

My heat pecked up, and my eyes widened. What had she just said?

“The what twins?”, my sister asked.

“The God Slayer Twins? Have you never heard of them?”, the woman tilted her head, and we shook ours in negative. “Oh, my, I don’t go to the city very often, so maybe the [Gods] have buried the story since… Well, for obvious reasons. The story goes something like this: long ago, twelve [Gods] of death wronged a pair of twin brothers. The wrong pair of brothers, for they were adventurers, so they journeyed through the underworld itself, overcame challenge after challenge, and gained unimaginable power in the process, with which they decimated the lords of the underworld and their pocket dimension with their own hands… Or something like that?”, she laughed.

“Is… Is this true?”, I asked, mouth opened.

“Did this really happened?”, my sister added, not showing an expression too different from mine.

“Hm? Yes, and yes?”, the woman brought both hands to her face, concerned. “Am I this old? Back in my days, everyone knew about this tale!”

I stopped listening to the retired adventurer, reflecting internally.

There was a chance. For revenge. To realize what I dreamed of while exiting that cave.

I looked back to my sister, this time resolute, and seeing the world more clearly than ever:

My twin, she had purple skin, black hair, pointed and yellow teeth and nails, and pupils of the same color; her eyes, just like mine, perpetually turned in the perfect degree and half-closed, looking as if she was always tired.

“Hunah”, I called her name.

“Ank”, she nodded and said my name.

“Taffy!”, the older woman added, oblivious to what we meant, but excited nevertheless.

And we, siblings, decided to kill every single [God] and their [Priests] that we came across.