Aztec Civilization: Destiny to Conquer America!

"Still not kneeling?! Die!..."

The sharp knight’s lance, driven by the horse’s speed, pierced through and then deftly flicked upwards. A Taino strong man fell forever on the land of the ancestors. The fear instilled by the horses left the fleeing strong men in extreme terror, and many knelt on the ground, thus becoming captives ignorant of their fate.

"Don’t kneel! Run quickly! Scatter and run! The Western tribes have said, surrendering to the evil demon leads to a dead end eventually..."

Alamana shouted in despair, with snot and tears streaming down his face. The Taino people were not a warrior nation; they were excellent farmers and fishermen. They had never experienced truly terrifying war, and they were kind and gentle by nature, even to the point of cowardice.

But at this moment, the not-so-brave Alamana suddenly stopped in his tracks. He forcefully grabbed two young men from the tribes beside him, looked into their frightened eyes, and shouted loudly.

"Rabbit Leg! Parrot Beak! Look into my eyes, listen to me!"

"Chie... Chieftain?"

Rabbit Leg and Parrot Beak trembled all over, their fingers quivering. The crimson death was so glaring and so near. At this moment of fleeing from death, not only did the chieftain not run away, but he also grabbed them. What exactly did he want to say?

"Rabbit Leg! You can run. Take this Book of Ama Colley and my ornament, go to the West Bay Tribe! Go west, to the West Bay Tribe!"

"Ah? Chieftain? Go west?..."

"Go west! Find the West Bay Chief, give him my ornament! Tell him..."

Alamana panted heavily, as if he had made some kind of life decision. He looked at Rabbit Leg’s young face, shoved the crocodile tooth ornament and a book into his hands, and said sternly.

"Tell the West Bay Chief! The evil demons cannot be trusted, they are the cruelest and bloodthirsty hawks! They are not something we can resist, let him lead the tribe to escape westward! Let him quickly send out small boats, dispatch several envoys, with the book given by the Western tribes, to seek aid on Haiti Island to the west!... Remember?"

"I... remember! Evil demons are hawks, we are moles. Quickly escape, seek aid from the Haiti Tribe..."

Rabbit Leg shivered as he spoke, and Alamana nodded, giving him a strong push.

"Go! Leave now, take the items, escape through the forest!..."

Then, Alamana looked at Parrot Beak again, taking out the last half of a shell necklace, he forcefully stuffed it into Parrot Beak’s hand.

"Parrot Beak, this necklace was given to me by my daughter Ana, she recognizes it! Take the necklace to find her! Let her quickly take the elderly, women, and children, and escape to the southern tribes, leave everything behind, just run desperately!... Let her escape to the Central Mountain Range to the south, to the Turabo Valley, and seek refuge with the Tubora Sky Chief!"

"Tell the Sky Chief everything that happened today! Ask him to tell all the Puerto Rico tribes as much as possible, tell them the cruelty and terror of the evil demons... and of my death!..."

"Chieftain! No... you can’t..."

"Go!"

After giving these instructions, Alamana pushed the weeping Parrot Beak once again, urging him.

"Run away quickly! Escape through the forest! Those four-legged beasts don’t run fast in the forest... run quickly!..."

And after doing all this, watching the two young men desperately running away, fleeing into the nearest forest, Alamana finally took a deep breath and clenched the only bronze spear in his hand. He turned around, looking at the twenty small trotting "beasts" bringing death, watching the evil demons who were capturing captives with reckless laughter from behind, and he spoke softly in Taino.

"Mother of the earth! We are children of the earth, growing up in her embrace, resting under her trees. And death is the forest ceasing to breathe, the earth’s death traces. The evil demons have brought death, as the land ceases to exist, no longer singing, no longer echoing, just like our village. We also go with her, turning to smoke, becoming dreams without words..."

With that said, Alamana wiped the tear stains from his face with the soil on the ground. Then he let out a loud roar, holding the spear just like that, launching the final charge towards the nearest Castilian heavy armored knight!

"Huh?!..."

Knight Garcia de Sanpero of the Church astonishingly turned his horse, looking at the single tall native who did not flee but chose resistance, even launching a charge. He watched with interest at the unarmored native holding a gleaming golden spear, muttering to himself.

"What is this? A native warrior holding a bronze spear? How interesting... The Almighty be witness! Since you’re a warrior, I’ll give you a warrior’s death! Just like those Moors we dueled with... Giddy-up!"

Knight Garcia gave the horse’s side a strong squeeze, leveling the knight’s lance in his hand. The tall Andalusian warhorse burst forth with powerful speed, covering ground like a shooting star in just a few breaths. This fearsome momentum made the Earth Chief Alamana tremble all over, but he still mustered all his courage to fiercely stab the bronze spear towards the monster he had never seen before!

"Earth Mother!"

"Wow!"

The golden spear fell powerlessly to the ground, and the knight’s steel-headed lance, long and swift, pierced through the entirety of Alamana. The knight then let go, and Alamana, with the two-meter-long lance, fell obliquely to the earth.

The spear swiftly carried away his life, like the greedy plunder of the God of Death. Alamana took one last breath of the earth’s scent, and his soul drifted away with the crimson blood, merging into the embrace of the Earth Mother, just like so many Taíno who had died before...

The death brought by the Castilian Expeditionary Army, relentless in its continuation, was like the colonizers’ never-ending greed. This sudden massacre killed four to five hundred Taíno strong men and captured two to three hundred, with only over three hundred tribes escaping.

"Haha! These weak Eastern Natives are truly too fragile! Chain them in slave bonds, let them dig stones and cut trees to build fortresses for the Queen! Any who dare to resist or try to escape, cut off their limbs and feed them to our hunting dogs!..."

Watching the blood-red battlefield, Fleet Commander Columbus laughed proudly, and Deputy Commander Antonio was similarly smug. The two usually argumentative fleet commanders were unusually united in bringing suffering to the Taíno.

The Church of the Cross chanted scriptures, and Father Ramon came out, looked around with a frown, and went back inside. It was not yet his time to act; it had to wait until these more than three hundred native strong men endured enslavement and the punishment of amputation before selecting the docile and obedient dozens to convert into initial followers of the Almighty! Faith comes from salvation, and salvation requires fear and death.

"Witness of the Almighty! Sir Columbus, I believe we should pursue the victory! If these natives can offer so much gold in tribute... surely their villages have more!"

After two days of rest, Deputy Commander Antonio proposed the idea again. The Castilian noble officers’ faces were full of greed. Veteran Camp Commander Pedro bluntly spoke out with a loud voice.

"The gold loot obtained this time must be distributed according to contribution! Commander Columbus, even with the Queen’s contract, you can only claim ten percent at most!"

"What? The Queen’s contract clearly gives me thirty percent of all new territories’ revenue..."

"Clang!..."

"..."

Seeing the Castilian officers drawing their swords, Columbus wisely closed his mouth. To vie for the spoils of war, these officers were truly capable of stabbing him in the back with malice. Once he nodded in agreement, the greedy Castilian army set out in full force once more! They aimed to find this Taíno tribe and plunder the unimaginably vast wealth of gold.

However, after three days, when the armored Castilian army finally reached the village of the Earth Department, they did not see the imagined prosperous Eastern village. They only saw hundreds of Taíno elders smoking tobacco, beating drums, and hoarsely singing tribal songs in the ancestral house of the tribes. The whole village had no trace of gold, nor could they catch women or young and strong men. Soon, the colonizers’ anger turned to cruelty, to curses, and to knives cutting into the Taíno elders!

"Taíno-daka, hijos de la tierra,

We are the bones and roots of the earth, children under the tree, spirits in the smoke."

"Esto es la muerte: el aliento de la selva que cesa,

Death like the wind stopping in the forest, ancestor spirits silent, stars extinguished."

"Cuando el demonio llegó, no lo oímos venir.

The Evil Demon arrived silently, the sound of gold and iron covering the divine words."

"La tierra fue abierta, como vientre herido,

The earth was torn open, like a mother’s ruptured belly, blood gushed and dried."

"Y así también nosotros: nos desvanecemos con ella.

We too fade away with her, falling into the land of no dreams."

So sang the Taíno elders, so they bled, and so they died in the ancestral house. Then, the roaring flames rose, consuming their aged bodies, consuming the ancestral house of the Taíno handed down through generations, and swallowing the peaceful village of the Earth Department~~