"Jean, Run!" my fathers voice rang out. A skeletal arm was holding onto his leg. A chill ran through every corner of my body. The dead were rising. My father drew his sword Ezzance and began hacking at the arms of the skeletons. My eyes wide with fear I backed up. Something cold latched onto my left foot. I fell screaming to the ground. The head of my father immediately locked onto me. Distracted the undead obtained the upper hand. An arm pulled his body to the cold hard ground. I heard yells of distress that would forever echo in my mind coming from my father. I had not noticed but a grim mist now covered the ground.
"Father!" I shouted. I struggled to get out of the cold dead grasp I was in.
"Your struggling is futile, give up now mortal," a strange voice spoke in my mind. My body halted its listening to me and calmed down. A strange darkness rose up from the ground like flames. "HAIL OUR KING!" the voice sounded. A large one of the shadow flames rose up to form a figure, the thin figure of a man. He was dressed in a black shirt who's sleeves had purposely been designed to get wider as it got to his wrists. His black shirt and pants were both made with the same material and blew like flags in the wind, giving him an unworldly look. in his right hand he carried a huge grey sword who's inscriptions glowed in a violet light. The language was that of the elf people. Across his eyes he wore an old bandanna, beaten with time. His long shaggy black hair almost covered the bandanna. He slowly moved toward my father his feet were bare and were unscathed. I could feel the darkness he emitted sucking every ounce of happiness out of my soul. Within moments all I could feel was pure and unaltered sadness.
"Hallen, your end is nigh, your soul belongs to me now," the mans chilling voice commanded, "Come to me!" A transparent circular sphere rose from the body of my father and floated toward the man, my father was screaming in pain. The instant the sphere reached the man's huge sword the screaming stopped and my father's body went limp.
"FATHER!" I screamed nearly crying. Thousands of tears flooded my face as I came to the cold realization. My father was dead. The man walked toward me. He pointed directly to me with his left hand.
"Your soul still has potential, your soul is not ripe yet," he spoke darkly, "I am nothing more than a phantom. Believing otherwise would be quite foolish, it could bring your end closer yet. Fare well boy." The shadows reached over him like a wave of the ocean and swallowed him. Within seconds the shadows vanished. The undead let go of me and became as they had been before, dead. I stood up shaken by the event that would not just scar my life but also shape it. I walked over to the body of my father tears flowing to the cold ground below. I grabbed his sword.
"With this sword, father, you shall be avenged!"
My eye lids slowly opened revealing that I had been dreaming of what had been once again. I looked around it had been ten years since that event. I, now sixteen, lay in the camp that my friend Nielle and I had made. The fire in the fire-pit had been put out only the black charcoal remained. The night was still present she was awake and sitting up looking at me. I looked into her eyes.
"You were crying.... and screaming..." she mumbled. I touched my face it was wet with tears.
"I'm sorry bad dream," I stated smiling a half smile. We sat there in silence looking at each other for what seemed like hours until she laid back down I looked at the night sky and the trillions of stars you could see. That was one of the benefits of mountains. On mountains the sky is much clearer. We were passing through the Sayain mountains, we would reach my sister's home by tomorrow. Though tomorrow we probably would run into some bandits. The local people here had mentioned a group of bandits had been giving travelers their share of woes, they were on our way. I suddenly had a really bad feeling. I stood up and looked around raising an eyebrow. I heard something move in the bushes. I reached for my sword. My eyes locked onto Nielle who was asleep... how unusual... she usually had trouble getting to sleep. That's when I noticed a a dark substance on her neck along with a line, no a cut. Because of the shadows of the night I had trouble seeing color. Nielle usually was as quick as an arrow when it came to people hurting her, thus one could deduce it had not been a human who had made that cut. I Quietly moved over dipped my finger in the substance and tasted it. Immediately I spit it out. A sleeping venom! I reached for my sword gritting my teeth whatever it was that had done this to her would pay. Whatever it was, it probably intended on coming back to eat its meal.
Another movement in the bushes. I stood perfectly still. It took a couple minutes before I heard a thump of some sort of foot. A couple more thumps came before I could feel the cold breath of the creature on my neck. Within an instant I drew Ezzance flipped around and had swung it at the creature. My sword had been blocked by its steel-like claws. The creature was similar to that of a werewolf-the figure of a human, but the fur, fangs, snout, eyes and other things were wolf-like. We stood there like that for a couple of moments. We suddenly engaged in combat, an explosion of violence.
It was no longer safe here. I stepped over to Nielle. I could only hope that venom hadn't been a poison.
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I opened my eyes with great difficulty. I had been trying for hours to force my way into reality, but something was holding me back. A sharp pain across my neck informed me that I was injured. What the heck?
I felt a little groggy, but otherwise I was mostly okay. Feeling my neck, I realised I'd been bitten by something, and some sort of poison was injected into me. That explained the unusually thick night's sleep.
I groaned a little as I pushed myself into a stiff sitting position. Looking around the site I realized a great battle had gone on while I was out. Now I was REALLY irked. I missed all the action because I was asleep! I never slept through anything, being such a light sleeper.
"Jean?" I looked around to find him fast asleep against the tree nearest to me. His sword, Ezzance, was laid across his lap, ready for him to grab. I crawled over and stood up beside him.
After a decent minute or two of stretching, I bent over to wake him up. I shook his shoulder-no response. I shook it again, harder this time, and repeated, "Jean! JEAN wake up!"
He jolted awake, grabbing his sword and slashing it so fast, it nearly sliced my head off!
"Whoa there, its just me. Or did you already know that and nearly kill me on purpose?"
He rubbed his eyes and shuffled to his feet. "Oops, sorry I- Nielle!"
I furrowed my eyebrows, "Yeah, that's me." He looked like he was trying not to jump up and down, or at the very least hug me.
"I thought you-what I mean is...uh,"
"You thought I was dead? Well, so did I, for a minute."
We stood in awkward silence for another minute before Jean cleared his throat. "We should probably pick up camp. Whatever attacked will probably be back."
Dawn crept over the horizon, reminding me of the little time we had left to get to our destination. I began gathering my things and bent over to pick up the spent firewood.
"Uhhh..." A sudden pang of drowsiness hit me along with a pounding headache as I collapsed. I pushed myself back onto my feet as soon as I could, trying to hide my state of being from Jean. I'm fine. just the poison's after affects. I told myself. Grrrr, I hate feeling weak.
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