League of The Lost Empire

 

 

“Ethan! The plane is going to crash! Jump!! JUMP!!” Alex shouted as he pulled his best friend out and jumped.

The duo jumped out of the plane, nearly missing the debris which was falling out of the plane. Alex closed his eyes counted till 8, then pulled his parachute string, which opened in an instant and slowed their fall greatly.

The plane rushed past them, with its nose on fire. It crashed right down on the desert ground. The debris of the plane was set on fire and it stood like a flag post, with its flames acting like that flag touching the ground.

 

Slowly and steadily, Alex landed on the sand with his buddy. The sand almost felt like it was going to give way. It was having great liquidity in its structure.

“All those people in the plane….. You think they made it?……”

“Now what?” Alex asked, nearly talking to himself. Ethan got up from the ground and looked around him. He saw something shining in the sky which was heading towards them at a high speed. “Move now!!!” shouted Ethan, tackling Alex and pushing him away from the expected point of landing of the shiny thing.

Suddenly, a cargo crate landed with a huge crash where Alex was standing just a few seconds ago, sending the sand flying everywhere.

“Hey? Alex. You alright?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah… I think so.”

The duo got up and took a closer look at the cargo crate.

“Maybe we could find some water inside it.” Alex mentioned and started helping Ethan in opening  the crate.

They found some supplies and little water.

Alex was holding a map and was looking at it intently.

“From where did you get this?” Ethan asked Alex, looking at the map.

“The crate made a pretty big hole around the spot where it crashed. I found it buried under a broken wooden box which was crushed under the crate. I picked it up thinking that it is a map to some nearby settlement.”

3 Days Later………

 

” Hey! Alex!??” Ethan cried out after seeing his friend topple down a sand dune and stopping at its bottom without any motion.

Ethan made his way towards the bottom of the dune. “Hey Alex. Get up dude. Get up!!……”

—-^—-^—-^—-

As Ethan pulled his unconscious friend in the night, wandering hopelessly, without food or water for almost two days, he started feeling a little dizzy, and then fell on the ground, facing the sky.

 

Next morning, Ethan woke up to find himself lying in a tent. He walked out of the tent and found other people who looked a lot like Bedouins. He still felt a little dizzy. He looked around and realized that he was in an oasis camp.

 

He walked slowly towards a tent with a red cross on it. On entering the tent, he found Alex lying on a bed, surrounded by other men and women alongside their children.

On seeing Ethan standing outside, Alex called him in and told him everything.

“These kind people saved us Ethan. They found you lying unconscious in the desert. So much for trying to save me! ”

“But why are they treating us like a ruler of an Empire???”

“Good question friend” A settler got up and walked towards a bench. “According to our legend, Long ago, there was an Empire ruled by a great king of the desert. He had many great policies. Under his rule, the people of this very desert flourished and lived happily. he had amassed lot of wealth, but he used it all generously to help our people. Amazingly, he never ran out of it. Everything was fine here… until a gang only known as the…. Devil’s Demon’s…. I think that is what it roughly translate into, came here and looted and murdered the empire.” The Bedouin said in his Arabian accent.

 

He slowly picked up a map and looked at it intently,”We used to think that the emperor got killed in the attack, but in one of the emperors manifesto, we found out that the attack was planned!” He took a small break, “The map which your friend gave us, is made by the same emperor!”  He smiled, with eyes almost welled up with tears, “And it has the location of the treasure which he hid away. In our religious texts, ‘A place where a trusted person who has turned a traitor has hidden the wealth of the Empire’s hard-work’  is called,” The Bedouin stopped and looked around for help in translating the word in English. “Ah! ‘League of the Lost Empire’.”

—-^—-^—-^—-

 

As the duo accompanied the small group of Bedouins through the scorching desert, the hopes of finding the treasure started diminishing. With every passing day.

The sun mercilessly joined many poor Bedouins with the divine light. The group was out of supplies when Alex found a vicious looking gate.

 

The group slowly moved towards the gate and pushed it with all their might, but it didn’t open. Ethan found a small rock embedded in the gate. He pushed it.

For a while, nothing happened, but after a few seconds, the door made a creaky noise and lifted up, uncovering a set of rocks with Roman Numericals on them.

Alex turned the map around and found a faint etching on the side. It had the numericals XVII on it.

After pressing the rock with the XVII on it, a wooden door with a little hole came up, with something imprinted on the center.

“We must be willing to sacrifice the guide, to hide the hard-work.”, a Bedouin translated it.

After much brainstorming, Ethan understood that they must sacrifice the map, but how???

 

“AHHHH!” Alex shouted and kicked the door, which fell down in an instant and revealed a few dead bodies on the ground. “They must have killed each other because of the treasure. Because of their greed.” Ethan said.

 

“Look ahead gentlemen…” Alex said, stepping forward and ignoring the bodies, eyeing the glittering piles of Gold and other precious metals.

 

“…Welcome to The League of The Lost Empire!!!”

 

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

&Survival