| Subject: *Grins* Alright! I'm so happy I have a fan! Inside. (Warning, it gets darker and more um...well....you'll have to see) |
Author:
Sekin Brightfall
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Date Posted: 17:32:23 10/19/03 Sun
In reply to:
Jade da Yayishness
's message, "OOOOOOOOOOOO! More!!" on 12:34:10 10/19/03 Sun
Fyrth felt the cool shade envelop him in a welcome relief from the scorching heat, but he did not slow the charging horse until the road was far, far behind him, lost to view in the tangle of green foliage. Only then, did he pull back on the reins. The horse’s haunches came back under its body and it skidded to a halt, its forelegs pawing at the air. Fyrth dismounted when it quieted and stopped, limping when his injured foot hit the forest’s floor.
The horse tossed its head, feeling the rider loosen its reins and pricked its ears, watching him. Fyrth smiled sadly, his eyes still blank and patted its nose. Had any other person touched that black steed, they would find themselves crushed under its hooves in a second, either that, or have their heart ripped out by its flashing teeth. But under Fyrth’s touch, it only flicked its ears and stared into his eyes quietly.
Fyrth shook his head. “There was a time, shetan when this would not be necessary.” With eye blurring speed, Fyrth whipped out a dagger and stabbed it into the horse’s chest. The dagger sunk in up to its hilt, black blood bubbling around the blade and trickling down the horse’s chest. Fyrth wrenched it free as the animal sunk onto its knees, teeth bared, eyes covered by a white film. Fyrth stared at it, his eyes still blank, as it raised its head and stared at him once before it collapsed onto the ground and lay still.
Fyrth knelt beside it and sadly stroked its flanks once with gloved fingers before wiping the blade on the ground. Where the black blood touched fallen leaves or dirt, tendrils of smoke rose like ghostly fingers stroking the air with vicious hisses. The blade itself was untouched, metal glinting like a spark of fire, and only when he was sure that the last traces of blood were gone did Fyrth twirl the blade around and sheath it.
He rose to his slowly, putting most of his weight on his uninjured foot and not a flicker of surprise crossed his slack, blank face when he saw that the horse’s bones were becoming more pronounced. Ribs like the blades of sabers were clearly visible through the taut dull coat. A line of vertebrae marched down the horse’s back like hills rearing their heads to the sky. Its legs seemed to be just pillars of bone and its face was becoming more skull-like by the second. The bared teeth grinned at Fyrth from the horrible shrunken flesh of its face and its eyes had shriveled up.
Fyrth looked at it with as little emotion as a doll and turned his back on it. His eyes were dead as he limped off into the forest leaving the creature lying on the forest floor, more bone than flesh, teeth bared in a twisted smile and eyeless sockets staring mockingly at all around it.
(this part below should be italics.)
The trees reared above him like pillars of strange twisting bone. Their trunks were knotted and scarred and sickly glowing lichen grew in abundance on the scabby wood. Even if he craned his head back as far as it could go, it was impossible to see the tops of the trees. They shot upwards into the vault of darkness that seemed to descend on them like the toothed jaw of some horrible creature. Branches sprouted from the trunks at random intervals like claws bursting from soil; horrible twisting things that lacked leaves and that twisted together like the intertwining fingers of some horrible demon.
He backed away frantically, looking around him in a panic that was growing stronger by the second and threatened to consume him. It was dark in the horrible forest. An unnatural dark that twisted the mind to horror, that robbed the eye of sight, that bound the soul in chains.
Fog curled up from the ground, horrible white tendrils, stark in the blackness. It wreathed and writhed, twisting and fading around his legs, obscuring whatever sight he had left. Where it touched cold seeped through into his skin, a horrible cold that gnawed at the mind.
He backed up in a dire blind panic and tripped over a wicked root, landing on his back. The ground was hard and littered with stones that pierced through his clothes and drew blood. The fog rolled over him, a thick sickly white, dense and moist, freezing cold. He screamed and scrambled to his feet, practically blind. The sword sprang into his hand almost of its own accord but even that bright blade didn’t manage a small glitter in the dark world. He clenched it as tightly as he could. It felt solid at least, comforting in a way, but it was no shield to the dark and he knew it.
His back hit a tree trunk in the dark and he screamed again at the sudden impact. Something alight from the tree. Something so dark it made the blackness look light, something that flew on deathly silent wings. He felt the claws latch onto his face, felt them scrambling for his eyes and he dropped to the ground yelling brokenly, his sword falling from his grasp as he threw up his hands to shield his eyes. Blood was tricking down his face as he rolled and writhed on the ground, the pain was horrible. It felt like red-hot knives searing, skinning, wrenching at his flesh.
The fog enveloped him again as he wrestled with the creature, he could see his blood falling from his face, the red highlighted in the white fog. The claws dug deeper. He felt one pierce the skin right below his eye, felt it wrench upwards, felt it puncture his eye with a pain so terrible, he thought he was going to die.
And then, suddenly, the thing was gone. The pain was still there, intensifying instead of diminishing. He raised a hand to his face, afraid that his eye had been torn out of his head, but it was still there. His fingers touched sticky blood and he rolled onto his feet. It took three tries before he could stand.
The panic was overwhelming him now. His mind was a torrent of pain, of fear, of terrible knowledge. He stood where he was, blinded in the dark, with fog curling up around him like ghostly ropes.
Laughter. Laughter reverberated through the forest. It seemed to come from the trees, the fog, the ground, all and none at once. Cold seeped through his body, the laughter penetrated his mind like knives, digging deeper and deeper, rooting him to the spot. Terrible laughter, slow and soft and sick, like oil sliding over ice. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t see.
Suddenly, thoughts that weren’t his own pierced through the swamp of his mind like a bubble slowly rising to the surface and bursting. ‘Fool’, came the thought, as strong and vile as the laughter that still swept through him. ‘I had expected more of you…Much more…Your mind is breaking already, tearing apart like mist caught in a gale or a spider web in a storm.’
He tried to move and couldn’t, not even to clamp his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to shut the soul piercing voice out. ‘Breaking, tearing, ripping. You won’t last much longer…And the Hunt hasn’t even started.’
An iron fist seemed to clench around his head like a vice, squeezing tighter and tighter, nails digging into his cheek. He screamed again and the laughter intensified. The pain grew stronger and stronger, more terrible, and then, the pain and the laughter were gone as suddenly as they had came. He could move again. He sank onto his knees, legs no longer able to support him. He was shaking violently, his whole body dull with pain, his mind numb with terror and cold.
A howl cut through the air, twisting and echoing as it built up power. It boomed through the forest, tearing the mist apart as if with claws, causing the trees to bend and creak in agony. His blood ran cold. He shook even more his face contorting in fear and pain. His hackles rose as a second howl joined the first, pining, snarling for flesh, twisting the air. The trees seemed to groan in response to the horrible noise and he stood quickly.
Dark shapes flitted across his ruined vision. Dark shadows padding through the trees as silently as death itself. Huge shadows that wavered and smoked as if they were made of mist. Huge shadows that were coming towards him.
He wanted to scream, but couldn’t. He backed away, and felt a horrible pain in his foot. Looking down in horror, he saw only his sword that he had stepped on. He stooped quickly and retrieved it, though something told him it was useless here in this half world of dark. Still, the hilt felt real in his hand, more real than the ground under his feet, more solid, more comforting.
Pinpricks of dull yellow lit up the night in-between the tree trunk. Eyes shining and reflecting some hidden tainted light. More eyes flared into life in the dark misty bodies of the dark shapes. He whirled, trying to find a way out, a way to run, a way to hide. Behind him, the dark was lit up by more eyes, more dark shapes sprung towards him, fencing him in a wall of shadows.
He pivoted uncertainly, facing first one group, then the next, panic clutching his throat, making it hard to breathe. His breathes were ragged gasps as if he had just run miles, sweat beaded on his forehead, trickled down his back in a warm torrent.
The ground vibrated beneath his feet and he almost fell with the shock and terror. Dull, muffled thuds that came in a regular rhythm. Hoof beats. Hoof beats of some creature. They intensified as they drew closer, and behind the huge shadows, he could make out several larger ones, traveling at great speed towards him.
His hand clenched on his sword, his mind screamed at him in tortured panic, the darkness seemed to tear away his courage, his hope. The smaller shadows came to a walk, circling around him in a ring. Their eyes glowed a diseased ,lambent yellow, and his eyes could make out their forms. They were huge dogs, more like wolves, with a shaggy coat of black mist. Their legs were thicker than his were, and they padded as silently on the ground as if on air. He could see twin ears on the dogs, rising like knife blades, could see black lips curling away from fleshless gums to show teeth that sparkled. Teeth as long as his hand and the claws that sprung out of their padded feet were twice as long.
Their eyes never once blinked; they were riveted on him. He turned, seeing only a wall of the hellhounds, all pacing restlessly, blending and vanishing into the darkness. Their forms wavered but he had no doubt that their teeth and claws were all too real. His stomach was a mass of knots. It writhed and twisted, his mouth sour with fear. He wanted to run, as fast as he could, away back into the light. He wanted to shut his eyes and re-open them, finding out that this was just a hellish nightmare. But the pain wouldn’t let him believe that. It was too real, too sharp, too clear.
One of the giant dogs threw back its head, its muzzle seeming to blend into the night as it uttered a long piercing, penetrating howl. The air boiled and frothed as if tortured, the trees groaned and bent their twisted branches, and the other dogs padded closer.
And then, the ranks of the dogs parted like an aisle of shadows and the large dark shapes that he had spotted earlier, walked down it. They were horses, he thought at first glance. Steeds with coats blacker than the hounds, steeds whose hooves caused the ground to tremble. He could see the tall, erect figures of black clad riders on the horse’s backs, counted sixteen of them.
He backed up fearfully. He had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He could smell something rank emanating from these horsemen, their faces veiled in darkness. Something that was far worse than the dogs or even the blackness. Something that caused him to drop to his knees, bowing, his body trembling.
The first of the horsemen spoke, in a voice that seemed to make the air thicken, the shadows boil like hot water. “Run. Run you wretch of darkness. The Hunt begins.” Without knowing why or how, he stood, shaking like a leaf blown by the wind. The horse’s eyes suddenly were replaced by whitish blue fire and he screamed in alarm as they sprang forwards.
He turned and ran, his black cloak trailing behind him, the sword clenched in his hand. The dogs in front of him vanished entirely into the night, his way was clear. The ground vibrated under his feet as he threw himself forward, the sheer panic lending him speed, crucial speed. Another howl rose behind him, but he didn’t look back, he just kept running, hoping the dark could veil him as successfully as the horsemen or the shadow wolves.
He leaped through the trees, twisting and turning, striking out at the shadows with his cold steel, fearful of what he couldn’t see. He felt the ground shudder under the hooves of the horses, felt the air writhe to the wolves’ howls. He turned to the left, hoping to loose his pursuers, his mind a swamp of fear. The trees rose like columns in front of him and to the sides, horrible twisted columns.
The ground suddenly dropped before him and he stumbled and fell, rolling down a small slope until he splashed into a pool of something. Something deathly cold, something that bubbled and boiled when it came in contact with his skin, something that burned his flesh. He screamed and thrashed violently, feeling his skin bubble in the heat. He turned, trying to seek a way out and then the pool was gone.
Panting harshly, he collapsed on his side on the ground, heedless of the stones that raked his back. He curled up into a ball, his left side a mass of pain. He ran a hand gently over it and felt burned and blackened flesh, cracking and blistering. He bit his lip to stop himself from screaming. It was only the fear of his pursuers that drove him to his feet once again, staggering and spitting out blood from his bitten lip.
He began to stagger forwards once again, limping, a hand clutched to his ruined side. He was afraid to stop, afraid to keep going. Afraid of other dangers in the dark, afraid of more pain. The pain. It was all he could think of. It twisted his mind, knotted hi stomach. Traps lay hidden in the dark. Traps and pain. He couldn’t take it any more. His eyes blank from the anguish he endured, he sunk onto his knees, dropped onto the floor, and rolled onto his back.
Let me die! Let the pain go away! He hefted his unmarked sword, positioning it over his heart. Let me die! Without a second thought, he plunge the blade into his heart. A terrible pain seared through him and he screamed more horribly than ever before. But instead of his world going dark, he could still make out the shapes of the trees towering above him. He writhed and withdrew the blade from his chest, a gaping hole right over his heart. Still alive…The pain…
The first voice he had heard, the one that had laughed at him pierced his numbed mind again. ‘You cannot die fool unless I wish it so…And you still have many lessons to be learned, many punishments to endure…The Hunt continues…Run!’
Fyrth rolled over onto his side, shaking. His eyes were clouded with remembered pain and his hand clutched his chest, right over his heart. His foot throbbed with the injury it had taken earlier but Fyrth paid it no heed. He rose quickly, scrambling to his feet, his hand still clutching his chest. He stared around him at the dark woods, his dull eyes shining with fear.
The small embers of a fire were at the middle of his campsite, glowing dull red and pulsing but Fyrth had eyes only for the shadows that lurked at the edge of the light. His hand dropped from his chest to clench the long knife at his belt, but he didn’t draw it. Instead, he moved over to the fire and piled more branches onto it from a heap he had gathered earlier. The added wood caused the embers to leap into life, whooshing upwards into a crackling blaze that threw back the dark. Fyrth stooped and gathered his cloak, fastening it about him securely. He dropped down by the fireside drawing his cloak about him for warmth. With his chin resting on his knees, Fyrth stared at the fire, reflecting the leaping flames in his dead eyes. The wind howled through the branches of the forest and he shivered, remembering what he so longed to forget…The pain…
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