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Soul Edge
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Soul Calibur 2
Nature does nothing in vain... There are no Grotesques in
Nature; not anything framed to fill up empty Cantons, and
unnecessary spaces.
-Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
The moment Spain declared the Philippines as part of its empire, Southeast Asia was thrust into an age of turmoil. The westerners introduced their new culture without giving any regard to the indigenous culture or people. The foreigners stayed near the shoreline at first, but it was only a matter of time before their influence reached all the way to the mountains.
As if they felt the need to hide from the encroaching footsteps of the foreigners, a tribe of people secluded themselves in a small village nestled deep within the mountain valleys. The tribe honored the Wind Deity and lived as one with nature.
Talim was born during this era into a family of shamans. She was raised as the Last Priestess of the Wind during a time when western influences grew stronger, and faith in the Wind Deity gradually waned.
One day, Talim was reading the winds, just as she had done since she was a young child. That day, however, something about the winds felt odd. Unlike the normal, soft whispers of the winds mixed with murmurs of distant cities, the winds were tainted with an evil aura that seemed to devour everything in its path. The screams, hopelessness, and madness of faraway places carried by the evil aura surged into Talim before she realized what was happening.
This occurred on the day the Evil Seed spread across the world.
Talim crumpled to the ground and lost consciousness for days. The people of her village were on the verge of losing all hope when she finally awoke. Talim's eyes were filled with deep sorrow, and she cried without knowing why.
By Talim's fifteenth year, it was common to see western merchants and explorers in her once secluded village. One day, a westerner brought a "vitality charm" to the village. The elders expressed concern when they saw the unusual metal fragment. They sensed that it did not belong in their village; it belonged somewhere else. They also felt that its presence would have an evil influence on those who came near it.
Talim immediately recognized the evil in the piece of metal; it was the same malevolent energy that she felt on the day she collapsed. "I must return the fragment to its rightful place!" Talim exclaimed.
The elders tried to prevent Talim from leaving the village with the metal shard. They feared that the purity of the Last Priestess would be tainted if she were exposed to the outside world. Her parents disagreed. On the contrary, they felt that by experiencing the world, Talim's purity and love of nature would grow. The young Sibyl left on her journey with her parents' blessing.
As her village slowly disappeared behind the mountain range, Talim sensed the resonance of the same evil aura from other parts of the world. She could feel it in the winds that traveled across the seas and continents, circulating throughout the world. She knew that everything would soon be consumed by illness if the evil force continued to spread with the wind.
Talim reasoned that there were more of these metal fragments. And like the one she possessed, unwitting people carried the pieces to all corners of the world. Talim knew she had to find all of the fragments and seek their rightful place.
Although Talim had never set foot outside of her village before, she was not afraid-no matter how long the journey, she knew she would be fine as long as the winds were with her.
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Soul Calibur 3
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee...
-"Ode to the West Wind," Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ever since leaving the village of the wind, Talim had followed the aura of the evil fragments scattered throughout the world. Despite her nervousness at entering the outside world for the first time in her life, she continued her journey and collected several of the fragments, eventually learning that the source of the evil energy was an evil sword called Soul Edge.
Having sensed another source of evil energy, Talim traveled to a mountain range in a certain land. She gazed at the steep ravine and the giant row of waterwheels built in the flowing river. As if guided by the whispers of the wind, she arrived at a small watermill, where a group of small children lived. Learning that one of the children was ill, Talim entered. The area around him was filled with waves of evil. Talim realized that the boy himself was giving off the evil aura. Talim asked the boy what was causing this, but the boy, who appeared to be the leader of the children, just smiled sadly at her. Talim could not just leave him, so she decided to tend to the boy.
A young man paid them a visit about the time that she had grown accustomed to life in the watermill. He was a cheerful young man who carried a long sword and went by the name of Yun-seong. He announced that he was searching for clues regarding Soul Edge.
Upon hearing this, Talim warned him about the dangers of the sword. The young man appeared to give in to her harsh tone, and chose to stay in the watermill for a while, slyly waiting for an opportunity to obtain information. At first, he made Talim apprehensive, but she felt no evil from the young man and eventually came to accept him.
The boy's symptoms gradually worsened. After much thought, Talim came up with the idea of passing the evil energy through her own body and out into the wind currents flowing through the sky.
The treatment continued for several days. The evil energy released little by little would be purified in the atmosphere, but the impurities that remained behind in Talim's body slowly piled up like sediment, eating away her purity as a priestess. Talim's ability to read the wind grew weaker and weaker...
It was the first suffering she had ever experienced, and the greatest she could have imagined. She was losing something that had always been with her, something more important than words could express. Seeing her sunk in sorrow, Yun-seong said to her,
"There are some things you can't do anything about. When that happens, you just have to do what you can!" His words were largely meaningless, but hearing him say them somehow gave her courage.
Despite her best efforts to treat him, the boy's symptoms worsened. His fever persisted day and night. He would not last long at this rate. Talim pondered releasing all of the evil energy from within the boy into the wind at once. It would be more of a large-scale ritual than a "treatment." Performing this with the impurities inside her would be extremely dangerous. Even so, she knew it had to be done.
The boy, however, flatly refused her idea.
"It hurts too much...my body, and the burden I'm placing on you all, too. I just want it all to end." The boy vented his anguish. It was Yun-seong who stopped Talim and the other children from arguing with the boy and stepped forward to convince him.
After a long conversation between the two of them, Yun-seong grinned and spoke.
"I gave the little troublemaker a good talking to. The rest is up to you."
Talim gently embraced the frail body of the boy.
"No matter how bad I feel, I won't give up. So I don't want you to close off your future, either..."
It was quite possibly a miracle. When the ritual ended, not a single remnant of evil energy was left in either of their bodies. In the instant that Talim had opened the boundaries of her heart, overlapping her being with the serene winds that cross the heavens, something had flowed through their two bodies and exorcised the evil energy.
And in that instant, she had seen it. Past where the winds blew, far to the west, a shining light had appeared. Overflowing water, pure blue sky, and a single sword...It was a beautiful and fleeting vision, like a crystal formed over countless ages.
"It's beautiful..." Talim murmured. Without even understanding why, Talim felt her heart grow hot.
After watching over the boy to make sure he had recovered, Talim set out on a new journey, with the children's many thanks echoing in her ears.
Something waited for her to the west...
Every time the pure breeze touched her, her heart fluttered quietly with that premonition.
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Soul Calibur IV
Amidst a blue light that brought to mind shimmering waters, a snigle blade shone briliantly. Talim had only glimpsed the sword for one halucinatory moment upon saving the youth who was being ravaged by Soul Edge, but it came back to her time and again in her sleep.
She had been passing her days with Yun-Seong, a young man who was searching for Soul Edge. Despite countless efforts to preach the cursed sword's dangers to him, she could not be sure he had taken a single word seriously. Then, almost immediately after they crossed paths with Yun-Seong's kinswoman, Mi-Na, he vanished. He must have sensed that Mi-Na would ry to take him back to their homeland and fled. "He's headstrong," Talim explained to Mi-Na," But he's a good person. In the end, I'm sure he'll make the right decision." And he'll want to make it himself, she added to herself.
She parted ways with Mi-Na and went on alone. Then, one night, she beheld countless lights shooting into the west. It was a beautiful sight, but Talim sensed evil behind it. Soul Edge had grown in power, and time was running short.
From that day, the vision visited her more frequently. The sword whose power at first seemed so pure grew more formidable before her, until finally it seemed capable of wiping away all that existed around it. Talim grew anxious; power that great could only warp the balance of nature. As the winds circled the world, she could hear them screaming.
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