The Pain of Shadow
Erland was just finishing up closing the shutters to the barn windows, and the house, when it started to rain. He looked up to the clouds that were forming in the sky. They were quickly growing, becoming darker, and churning angrily. He could tell it was going to be quite a nasty storm as the wind picked up. He spoke a silent prayer, asking that the great Father would see his boys home safely, and pulled his cloak more tightly around him, then waddled back into the warmth of the house. As he came in through the front door he heard Batrice calling for him to hurry up and eat before the food got cold. He closed the door, but just before it was completely shut a hand reached in and grabbed the edge, halting its progress.
Before Erland realized what had happened, the door jerked open with such force that some of the skin ripped away from his fingers. The wind and rain lashed in through the open entry, stunning him, but what was more shocking was the large man that now stood in the doorway. Erland couldn't make him out completely, for he was covered in dark leather armor from head to toe, with only his eyes showing. Erland didn't see the foot as it came up and struck him in the chest, sending him sailing backwards into the house. His head hit the floor hard, and he blacked out.
When he awoke he was sitting on the floor up against the main support beam in the middle of the house. He felt something warm and soft against his arms. As his daze lifted, he realized it was his wife.
"Batrice, Are you ok?" His stomach turned in knots for her until she finally answered in a low, tired voice.
"I'm ok dear." Her breathing was very light.
"Did they hurt you sweetheart? Are you injured?" Erland heard his voice crack.
"Oh, they pushed me around a bit. I'll make it." She wouldn’t tell him that one of the men had punched her hard in the face, and the whole area around her swollen left eye burned with pain. She couldn't see out of that eye now.
Erland jumped when two men came into the room. The large burly fellow that had kicked him, and another man, tall, not heavily muscled, but he looked deadly just the same. Erland could tell by the way he carried himself that he was not one to be taken lightly, and he seemed to be in charge over the larger man, another indication of his ability.
The leader stared at Erland and his wife as the big man searched the room for something, seeming to become more and more agitated as he looked. "These poor twits don't have a copper to their name!!" He had a bag stuffed with something hanging over his shoulder. "I grabbed whatever I thought we could sell at the market in Ganth. Let's get out of here. This was a waste. I can't believe you dragged me all the way out here for this piddling, thought you said they was rich?"
The large man rummaged through the room looking for something else to steal, the leader still staring at the old couple.
"What are you doing standing there? Let’s get out of here!" yelled the big man.
The leader turned to his partner calmly. "We mustn’t leave. Not until you kill them."
Erland lost his breath, he felt Batrice behind him shuddering uncontrollably. He started to try and get his wrists free but the ropes were too tight, so he just squeezed Batrice’s hands in his own.
The big man dropped his bag. "What are you talking about? This was supposed to be a simple robbery. You never said anything about killing anyone."
"Are you telling me you won’t kill them?" The leader took a step toward the larger man.
"I'm telling you this wasn't part of the arrangement. And I don't like it when someone changes the arrangement!" The last couple words came out in a growl from the large man. He spread his feet out wider giving him better balance, not intending to back down.
For a moment Erland had a spark of hope, the two robbers were beginning to fight. Maybe they would fight each other and just leave. Or better yet, maybe they would be fighting each other when Lucian and Eliath returned.
His hope wasn't long lived.
He stared in shock as the smaller man seemed to close the distance between himself and the larger adversary in a blink. He could see that it stunned the big man as well, for he wasn't prepared for the quick strike to his throat. As he reactively reached for his collapsed wind pipe, the small, but lethal man, side-stepped and snapped out a kick into the side of the brute’s knee.
Erland was sure that if the man had been able to scream it would have pierced his eardrums. As it was, the sound of his leg snapping as it crunched inward was horrific.
The large man toppled to the floor, reaching for his deformed leg with one hand as he held his throat with the other.
The leader stood and watched as the brute went into shock on the ground, gasping for air. When he finally stopped moving and there were no more sounds of struggled breathing coming from his dead body, the leader turned to Erland and Batrice.
They were both weeping now, shuddering irrepressibly against each other. Erland did the only thing he could think to do at that point. He knew the end was near. He began to pray that the great Father would accept them into his kingdom.
The leader pulled out a knife with a blade of black steel, about six inches long. It was straight with an angled point. He squatted down close to Erland. "Praying to your God will not save you old man. If I were you, I would be telling your wife that you love her, before you are not able."
Erland and Batrice already had twined their fingers together behind them and were squeezing as hard as they could. They didn’t have to speak to convey their love for each other.
The leader raised his eyebrows. "Very well, if you are lucky old man, you will die from suffocation or at least pass out before you begin hearing the screams of your wife burning alive."
Erland started screaming at the man as he walked over to the table and grabbed one of the lamps. He poured out all of the oil around the room and in front of his wife, splashing the last bit onto her. Erland was going horse screaming at the man, begging him to stop as he grabbed the lamp that was lit and threw it onto the floor near the slick of oil. As it shattered, the flames burst across the floor. Erland was still screaming when the leader knelt down in front of him and slit his throat. His screams muffled out as he started to cough and choke on his own blood. He couldn't even feel the deep cut in his throat. He tried not to panic and instead, concentrate on squeezing his wife’s hands. He could hear her praying to the Father as he began to slip from consciousness. Just as the room started to darken and his hearing began to fade, in the distance he heard his wife screaming, the flames had reached her, his one and only love. Darkness enveloped him and the screams died out. In the blackness he saw a small light that was growing. He felt his wife squeeze his hand one last time. They were finally going home to the Father.
When Death Stalks
A tall, muscular woman crouched on a perch, high above her village. She was a guardian of her people, a warrior, as were all the women of Culdora. Her tribe was set apart from the others in that it was dominated by females, as it has been since long before her birth. She was not alone on her guard, many sentries watched over the village as well as their borders, but there was none better than she. Her long, thick, reddish-auburn hair, a most rare trait among her people, flowed over her armor plated shoulders. She gripped the hilt of her perfectly crafted sword with one hand, her spear in the other and closed her eyes, trying harder to listen for the strange sound she thought she had just heard. High in the dense trees of the Culdoran forest, it was difficult to see everything, and on this dark, starless night it was even harder. One often had to rely on the other senses to know of danger. It was those other senses that now screamed out to her. Something was wrong, but she could not place the threat.
Never before had she known this feeling without also knowing the direction of the source. This new sensation did not sit well with her. She pulled out her sentry whistle, fashioned from one of the small chute like trees that grew on her land, and brought it to her lips, breathing deeply to blow the warning to her people. It was the act of leaning forward to blow on the whistle that saved her l
ife, for the whirling dagger sliced just inches from her head and thudded into the side of a tree. Instantly she was in motion, dropping from her perch built high in the treetops and catching a rope that would carry her down to another platform, across a wide expanse and thirty feet lower. But half way to her destination the rope severed, cut clean somehow, for it would not have broken. She plummeted from the tree tops crashing through branches, snapping ribs and taking many deep cuts all the way down until she finally crashed through the thatched roof of one of her small village homes.
†††
The assassin watched the fall with amusement and knew that the woman would not be coming out of the small hut. He retrieved his first dagger, the other, that he had thrown to cut the rope, he knew was lost, and made his way down to the village. He had taken out all six of his appointed sentries and the other assassins would be finished as well and heading in toward the main Keep, a large structure in the very middle of the village. Their main objective was the leader. The secondary objective, and somewhat disturbing even to the cold hearted killer, was the children. He wouldn’t have to worry about that now since the red-headed women he threw his dagger at had been able to sound an alarm before he sent her plummeting to her death, which in turn caused an alarm of its own. Time was running out.
The women guarding the keep were still surprised when the assassins descended on them, and died quickly. The head assassin stalked into the leader’s chamber. The rest of his deadly squad would be going about the task of securing their escape route. The Culdoran leader was asleep in bed with her mate. She never heard the shadow enter her chamber, and neither she, nor her mate, ever woke from that sleep.
The head assassin rushed out of the chamber after accomplishing his mission. As he came out of the Keep into the cool night air, he was not prepared for what stood before him. The blade came in so fast that he could do nothing to keep it from passing easily through his neck, severing his head. The last thing he saw, the vision of the red-headed woman that had fallen, and he thought dead, would stay branded into his dead eyes.
The Rage Within
Every muscle in Lucian’s body burned as he stretched his legs and pumped his arms, trying to run faster, pushing his body to its limit. He had overtaken Eliath and was a dozen yards ahead of him now. His house was just another fifty yards through the woods into the clearing. His lungs felt as if they would burst. He had been in a full sprint the entire way back from the village which was nearly two miles away. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears now that he could hear nothing else. The rain that started half way back toward the house had drenched him but it also worked toward cooling the fire that burned through his core.
Lucian broke through the woods into the clearing where his home sat nestled among some large trees and a pond. The sight that confronted him threatened to take his sanity. If not for the rain, the home that he grew up in, that his family had lived in all those years, the home in which his parents had raised him, would have been a smoldering heap. Nearly the entire house was burnt to the ground as it was. Only half of the chimney still stood, along with some of the frame, and charred walls.
The front door was still intact but was burned through. He charged inside, shattering it into splinters of burnt wood. His watering eyes searched the blackened wreckage inside and then he dropped to his knees. There, in the middle of what used to be their main room, were the charred remains of his parents. He heard someone screaming. He thought at first that it was Eliath, but as his face hit the sooty floor of his ruined home, he realized that the screams were coming from him. He wept and screamed uncontrollably.
When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he spun to attack whoever it was that touched him. As he came around he saw Eliath’s face, set in a deep scowl, his eyes were puffy and red, tears running down his cheeks. Lucian looked to his dead parents again and saw what it was that angered his friend. His parents were sitting back to back against a support beam for the house, their hands seemed fused together.
Lucian realized they must have been holding hands when they died, but why behind their backs? Why against one of the support posts?
Eliath’s gravelly voice startled him. "This was no accident. Look at the burn marks around their wrists, the rope has burned away but you can tell it was once there, binding them to the beam.
Lucian saw what Eliath was talking about. Shock, and rage, all at once, started surging through him. "Why would someone do that?" He held back tears and the desire to vomit, as he looked closer at his parents. Something about his father’s neck drew his attention. An icy chill shot up his spine.
"His neck has been cut! Why…who would do such a thing?"
†††
Eliath could see the whirlwind of emotions on Lucian’s face, anguish, confusion, and anger. Anger seemed to be washing the others away. That’s when he heard the sinister laugh. He first looked to Lucian, who seemed not to notice, and then over his shoulder. The laugh was coming from the woods near the side of the house. It was an inhuman laugh and Eliath knew the source. He slowly stepped out of the rubble, looking toward the woods. The laugh was louder now. He could hear it through the rain easily. It was a raspy, wheezing laugh, yet it echoed around him.
Eliath heard Lucian call to him, but he ignored it. Lucian wouldn’t understand.
A voice came from the woods, calling out to Eliath. It was a wretched sound, filled with hate and contempt.
"It would seem that all your attempts to hide have failed my long lost brother."
Eliath’s eyes narrowed as he tried to find the source of the voice within the darkness.
The raspy laugh echoed out of the woods again. "I, and the others, still can’t fathom why you would have agreed to be cast into this world, to suffer the fate of mortality."
"Your lack of understanding ages ago is what got you, and your fallen brothers, where you are now." said Eliath. He could hear Lucian's voice again, calling for him. Asking him why he was staring into the woods. He had no idea of what lurked in the shadows there.
The voice came again, louder now, angered. "You have no idea of the understanding we have been forced to endure! You think yourself greater than us? For not having made the same choice?"
"You will not gain my sympathy.” answered Eliath, his eyes still searching the darkness. “You said it yourself. You made your choice and now you suffer the price for your betrayal."
The voice echoed louder from the forest, Eliath could hear the anger and hatred rising from it. That was just what he wanted.
"Don't speak to me as if you were Father! You are a dog, sent here to die for a hapless cause! The Father has abandoned you as well!"
A small smile stretched over Eliath’s lips, "Poor Banrael. Has your decent caused you to lose all your sensibility, so that you would claim such a thing?"
Instead of outraging the voice even further, like Eliath had hoped, it seemed only a whisper now.
"We will soon see how strong your faith is."
Blue eyes seemed to float from the darkness toward Eliath. As they came forth from the deep shadows of the woods, the black form that held them emerged.
"A man?" said Eliath to himself, stunned to see the human walking out of the woods. Tall and slender, and covered from head to toe in pitch-black, leather armor. He looked like a living shadow.
Eliath saw more than just a man now. He saw the being that had been talking to him, the being that possessed the man.
The assassin smiled and the voice came again, but his lips were not moving. "Surprised, Eliath? What, did you think that I came only to speak with you?" The black figure laughed, it wasn't the same raspy evil laugh as before, but his true laugh, an equally wicked, high-pitched cackle. Eliath heard a footfall behind him. He turned to see Lucian walking slowly toward the man in black. His eyes were wild with rage. He looked like a lion ready to pounce.
Eliath put his hand to Lucian's chest. "Lucian, wait."
The man’s high-pitched voice spoke to Lucian now. "Do you like
what I did to your parents young Lucian? I promise you, their screams were exquisite."
Eliath realized what was happening too late. He tried to hold Lucian back but his rage had overtaken him. Lucian swatted Eliath's hand out of the way as he charged for the assassin, screaming in primal fury.
Panic pressed in on Eliath. "Lucian stop, he is more than what he appears!"
It was too late, Lucian had closed the distance quickly, the assassin didn't move. His hands were empty, hanging casually at his sides while Lucian came on hard. The assassin’s lips stretched over his teeth in a sinister smile as he watched him approach with those icy blue orbs.
Eliath was in motion, dashing toward the assassin, when he saw the man’s arm move in a blur. Suddenly there was a knife in his hand with a slender black blade and an angled tip. Eliath screamed as Lucian dove forward with his own knife.
With amazing speed the man reached across his body, snatching Lucian knife arm. He jerked it back across, spinning Lucian in front of him. Lucian crashed into the man's chest backwards. It was like slamming into a wall. In that split second, the assassin had his arm around Lucian’s throat while still holding Lucian’s knife arm locked up over his chest.
Eliath was pulling his own knife free as the assassin held Lucian up effortlessly, choking him. He grinned at Eliath as he slammed the black blade into Lucian’s ribs.
Eliath saw Lucian’s eyes go wide as he gasped in pain. He let loose his knife and it spun through the air with deadly accuracy. But before the blade could strike the assassin in his left eye, he let go of his own weapon that was imbedded in Lucian’s side, and brought his arm up. Eliath’s knife sliced into the assassin’s forearm. The tip of the long blade burst out the other side of the arm, coming to a stop a centimeter from the assassin’s eye. He showed no reaction to the injury and hurled Lucian's limp body to the side as if he were a sack of cloth.
Revelations of Doom Page 5