Bwenjili burst onto the forest floor with a lithe bound like an athlete at a marathon race. Armed with his dagger and sling, the forbidding forest swallowed him deeply into its guts.

He wore a fierce facial expression, like that of a wounded tiger spoiling for a revenge attack. His red implacable eyes told the full story of his anger management crisis. Although he had suffered a setback in the last clash against his bitter rival, he was determined that this time around he would come out triumphant.

He scoured his immediate surroundings with a sharp eye for detail. He had learned from his previous encounter with his rival. He knew how the element of surprise could turn a fight completely on its head. Bwenjili fully understood his opponent’s sleight of hand in the battlefront.

It didn’t take long before his rival gave him a glimpse of what was to come, living true to its reputation as the master of deceit. High above the forest canopy, an owl roosting on the shoulder of a precipice sounded a clarion call to arms. In that very instant, an alarming shrill cry rang through the air. The sound rose to a high crescendo then ceased abruptly. In the seconds that followed, the sound trembled in the stillness of the evening air, as though a weapon of mass destruction had detonated above the ground.

Bwenjili felt the hairs on the nape of his neck stand erect. Although in the past he had rubbed hands with death and smelt its foul breath, nothing could have prepared him for this intensely bruising and intriguing encounter.
With dramatic suddenness, the outrageous figure of a beast broke out from a mass of dark cloud cover above the dense forest canopy and swooped on him with savage deliberation, like a predatory desert eagle attacking its prey.
Bwenjili was caught napping. Large forked talons tore at his upper body, opening his face like a ripe pomegranate. The relentless attack continued, with blows raining on his upper body from all directions. Although he tried to duck and dive, most blows found their mark. His vision was filled with flashing sparks of stars, and then it blurred instantly.

Bwenjili roused himself to stare defeat in the eye and felt powerless to do anything about it. The beast sealed his fate with one last blow packed with unbelievably devastating power. It caught Bwenjili on the bridge of the nose, fracturing it instantly. Blood squirted out like water from a hose. A double kick to the temple followed, sending him tumbling to the ground. For a moment, Bwenjili lay sprawled on the ground and then gradually gathered himself, wobbling onto his feet with his ears still singing to the reverberation of the blows he had received.

The biggest injustice of all was that the referee who had been so swift to start the contest seemed too absorbed in the thrill of the fight. She completely ignored her responsibility to declare the winner within the allocated time. If she had done so, the bell would at least have saved Bwenjili.

The awesome fighting skills displayed by his rival forced Bwenjili to dive deeper into his bag of tricks. He was determined to up his game. He identified two glaring weaknesses that in all probability had led to him suffering such an early setback. On the one hand, he noted that he had allowed the beast too much room to launch attacks. This meant that he was unable to timeously and effectively defend his flanks. Secondly, he realised that the fight had been decided on too much close range action. The beast had exploited this to its full advantage.

The solution therefore lay in Bwenjili completely adjusting his battle plan. He gathered himself up for the second round of action. He felt red fire ants of anger crawl all over his body. He found himself sweating with an overpowering lust to shed blood. His full warrior instincts flared to the surface, like steam from a boiling cauldron.

Sensing victory, the beast relapsed into the comforts of complacency. It released a guffaw that echoed across the mountain pass long after it had issued from its throat. But this new approach proved to be its single biggest weakness.

***

Tell us what you think: What is this mysterious magical beast? Will Bwenjili the warrior succeed in defeating it?