In Time
Every toskal is born with the same amount of time upon their wrist. During puphood and part of adolescence, the clock is still and no time is used at all. But once a toskal reaches it’s tenth year of birth it stops aging in appearance, and the clock turns green and your time begins to get used up. Be careful that you don’t get to 0. For the moment that last second is used, you fall where you stand, and there’s no coming back from that. Worse? You’re time only starts with one year on it. Time is the currency of the world. The more prosperous get more time, and the hard scrabbling lose it faster. Some steal and take the time of others, others gamble their time away.
Furiosa sighed as she looked down at the time on her wrist. 20 years. It was a long time, and time that will place her well into being elderly. At least 10 of those years had come from the giant that had slaughtered her tribe. He stole others time through trickery and then killed them once he had a majority of it. He even stole time from his own people...for safe keeping, he had told them. Truly despicable.
The Queen found through tradeds and treaties she had more than enough time. In fact her entire family would live to easily be in their 50s, thus all time they now gained was distributed amongst their people. Through trade and gambling they made a good amount of time for their people. Mesquisa had become well know for warriors that seemed to always live until theyre lives were lost in battle.
Time almost didn't matter to them and she preferred it that way, the safety and security. Of course there was also the danger of an unnatural death or loosing in a duel and being put only minutes away from deaths door. She sighed as she stepped from her home another day, another duel.
She headed down the mountain and to the center of her tribe she had been about to get on War Rig when a spear tore through her shoulder. The Desert Queen grunted and broke it off, leaving the rest in her shouler. A growl tore from the toskal as she looked toward her ambush. A brute of a toskal named Ricochet.
"Too afraid to fight a fair battle I see." She snarled out as he laughed. "Nothing is fair in war." "This is not a war Ricochet, unless you'd like to start one against all of Mesquisa?" She gestured grandly to the magnitude of toskals watching the duel. War against Mesquisa without being thoroughly prepared was suicide. The male seemed to realize this.
He lunged for the Queen hoping to snap her neck, but he'd underestimated the speed of a toskal that was large, even for an alpha. He was a mere normal toskal who thought he stood a chance, Furiosa would quickly remedy that. She sent her tail into his ribs knocking him to the ground with an audible pop. He was on his feet in time to just barely miss the snapping of the tip of her tail, the whip like sound echoing off the mountain.
Blood ran from her eyes as she let out a harsh snarl returning his earlier lunge with one of her own. Her teeth sinking into his shoulder. He shrieked in pain but didn't retreat, instead he gripped what part of the spear was sticking out of her shoulder and twisted it as her yanked. The spinning spear head carved a hole in her flesh. She howled in pain and released him, seeing nothing but red as she dragged her claws across his face.
He struck her with his tail so she bit down on the flesh and using all the static she had, shocked Ricochet. The male screeched and fell to a knee. He had lost. He looked at her defeated as she stood. The male offered his hand and honored the time, giving her some. Then he stood with her help. "Now leave my desert." And with her final command uttered Furiosa turned heel and left him the leave. She after all, had to see who would get the time she had just claimed.