Mwuaha! Finally a starting entry for zhee sequel! Hope you guys are satisfied from all that wait. Sorry I didn't get this out sooner but summer was not restful for me.
Disclaimer: I do not own the ROTG universe or its original characters. This story is written within the ROTG universe. The rest of the characters belong to me.
Prologue: Call on Fire
It was night and windy in the forest beside the town of Blacksburg. Though, the sun was already gone from the sky, it wasn't that late in the night. The warm breeze blew through the trees, making the branches creak creepily with the wind. Besides the sound of the branches, there were also small critters chirping throughout the forest, giving life to the dark forest.
But the tiny critters wasn't the only life in the forest. A small group of children wandered through the shrubs and trees, speaking loudly to one another. Their flashlight flashed through the trees like search lights. It helped show the path and surroundings clearly through the thick darkness of the forest.
"Are we almost there yet?" asked a blond hair boy with excited light blue eyes.
"I think it's up ahead somewhere," replied another boy with brown hair and green eyes, who was at the front of the group. "If I remembered what my uncle told me correctly."
"What do you mean by that, Kirt?!" demanded the blond boy, getting annoyed. He walked up to the boy name Kirt and walked beside him. "I thought you said you know the way."
"I said my uncle knows, not me. I'm just following the directions I got from him," explained Kirt. "You should've listened more closely, Christ."
"You should've said so more clearly," argued Christ, glaring at Kirt.
"Would you two just stop arguing!? It's not gonna help us get there any faster!" snapped a dark skin girl with long braided black hair and dark black eyes that were glaring at the two boys angrily. "And you Christ, would you stop whining?! You've been asking the same question like every minute!"
"Oh so now I'm the bad guy?" retorted Christ, glaring at the dark skin girl. "You always take Kirt's side, don't you Sam?"
"What?! What the heck does that even mean?" demanded Sam, confused.
"Every time something happens that involves me and Kirt, you always defend him. Maybe you two are going out secretly and you guys are not telling us," Christ smirked as he said that.
"WHAT!?" Both Kirt and Sam cried out in shock as their face started to turn red.
"Well! That explains everything," said a short brown hair girl with grey eyes.
"Actually, I already had my suspicion," said a black hair boy with grey eyes, cooly.
Even though, these two had different hair colors, everything else about their appearance looked almost the same. It wasn't hard to guess that these were at least related to each other. As a matter of fact, these two were actually twins.
"Jenny! Brian! You two just shut up! You guys aren't helping!" Sam snapped at the two twins walking behind the group. "And to make this clear, me and Kirt aren't dating! We're only in fourth grade!"
"It's called puppy love," teased Jenny, with her hands grasped together and her eyes batting intimately at the two victims, who were the butt of the joke now.
"And we were in fourth grade. We're going to be fifth once fall hits," corrected Brian.
Sam was about to jump on the twins and give her a piece of her mind when Kirt called out to them.
"Hey guys, we're here," announced Kirt walking out into an opening.
The other kids began to walk into the opening as well. Right in front of them was a cliff with a large pile of dirt and rocks blocking what looked like an entrance to a mine. Lying in front of the pile was a small gravestone with dried out bouquet of flowers and two burnt out candles on the side.
"So this is the rumored collapsed mine," Christ said to no one particularly as he stared at the sight before him in curiosity.
"Yep, this was where my uncle and his friends came to explore and the mine collapsed," explained Kirt. "Unfortunately, one of his friends never made it out and that's his grave right there," Kirt pointed at the small gravestone.
"Whoa, neat," commented Brian walking up to the gravestone and shinning his flashlight onto it. "So his name was Jack O. Lanternson," he read the name on the gravestone and chuckled. "That sounds funny. Makes me think of those pumpkins we carved on Halloween."
"Yeah, according to my uncle, the guy was teased for that a lot but he himself didn't mind," said Kirt. "He even had a jack o'lantern shirt to go with it."
"So do you guys think his ghost still roams here?" asked Christ with this mischievous grin on his face. "Maybe his spirit is still here and wandering around. Not knowing that he's dead. OooooOOOOooooo...," he moaned as he made spooky gestures to go with it.
"Stop it, Christ. It's not funny," said Kirt, getting a little nervous. It was already creepy with the dark forest atmosphere and Christ's ghostly sounds adding to it wasn't helping.
"What? To scary for ya, scaredy cat?" teased Christ, giving Kirt an annoying look. "Why don't you just man up? It's not like ghosts or spirits exist anyways."
"I wouldn't say that," argued Sam. "Who knows what happens after we die. Maybe we turn into ghosts like what those people said on TV and in those books. It's not like it has been proven that ghosts don't exist."
"Well, mom said that if we are good, when we die..." Jenny said but her sentence was then continued by her brother.
"We'll go to heaven," Brian finished his sister's sentence.
"But if we are bad..." Jenny continued.
"We go to hell," Brian finished the sentence again.
"Uh guys, since when did our topic become religious?" Christ stared at the twins.
Both twins just shrug. They just spoke out what came across their minds without really caring if it correspond with their conversation or not.
"Um, guys, since we already checked this place out, can we go now. It's not like there's anything for us to do here," suggested Kirt, wanting to get out of this creepy place as soon as possible.
"Oh come on! You're such a coward! We just got here," complained Christ. "Can't you just grow some backbone to toughen yourself up? It's like you're scared of every little thing."
Kirt stared at Christ with a hurt look by this comment, but he didn't say anything. It wasn't like this was the first time Christ complained about his cowardliness, but it didn't mean he didn't feel anything when he got told that he was a chicken or scaredy cat. He can't help it if he jumped easily at sudden noises or easily freaked out at scary stuff like ghosts and spiders.
"Stop it, Christ!" cried Sam, sensing that the situation was going south.
"And you, Sam! Stop babying him! Kirt, needs to man up. He's so easily scared that he would probably scream at the sight of his own shadow one of these days," Christ continued to criticize Kirt.
"Christ!" Sam called out loudly for him to stop, but Christ just ignored her.
"And you, Kirt, stop hiding behind a girl and stand up for yourself! You're too scared of everything and you don't even try to be more brave. It annoys the hell out of me!" Kirt stare at Kirt coldly.
Kirt's face started to turn red and his fist clutch tightly as he tried to hold in his anger. "Sure... I'm a scaredy cat..."
"What?" Christ called out with confused look, can't really hear what his friend was saying.
"Sure, I get scared easily," Kirt continued to speak. At first, his voice was low, but it began to get louder as his anger was starting to rise. "I freak out at everything like you said. I'm not brave like you who can act like you're not afraid of anything."
Everybody started to stare at Kirt in surprise, never seeing their friend getting heat up before. Even Sam looked shock.
"I may be a coward and a chicken and a scaredy cat, but...," Kirt took a deep breath at this point before he yelled out the rest of his sentence furiously at Christ. "BUT AT LEAST I'M NOT AFRAID TO ADMIT!"
Kirt finally released out all his anger that he kept holding back all this time. Before, he tried to stay quiet and not argue too much. Most of the time, he wouldn't say anything. But this time, he just had enough. Christ had always criticized about his fears and he held himself back since he knew Christ was right, but enough was enough and he just let it out. Now, he was breathing hard, trying to get some air to calm himself down.
Everyone went silent in shock.
The first one to break the silence was Christ. He folded his arms together and gave Kirt an approval smile. "See? You can stand up for yourself. Though, it took you awhile," said Christ.
"Really, Christ?! You seriously had to keep pushing him like that just to prove your point?" Sam retorted, not looking pleased at Christ. "Sometimes, I seriously don't get you at all."
While Christ and Sam were having a glaring contest, Kirt just scratched his head since he wasn't sure what to do with those two. He pretty much blew up like a volcano, but now, he cooled down. A little unsure what to do with those two, he decided to let them go and have their glaring contest. It wasn't the first time they do this and he definitely knew it won't be the last.
He might as well check what the twins were doing. Now that he thought of them, they were unusually quiet. Actually, he felt something wasn't right. He turned to where the twins were and noticed the look on their faces.
Their eyes were wide and their face were pale as a ghost. The look of fear in their eyes shone clearly on their faces that it made Kirt completely baffled. What was making them look so scared?
"Jenny? Brian? What's the matter?" Kirt asked, confused.
This halted Sam's and Christ's glaring contest and made them turn to the twins out of curiosity.
Both Jenny and Brian didn't say anything right away. It took awhile for Brian to finally speak up. "Uh... Wa...Was that... candle... li.. lit... before?" he stuttered as he pointed in the direction he and Jenny were staring at.
All three heads turned to where he pointed at. It was the small grave. There wasn't anything unusual about the stone tablet, but it was the candle that stood beside it. There were two candles, each standing on opposite side of the gravestone. They were the short and wide kind of candle and they were already almost used up. But what was strange about the candles was that one of them was lit.
And no one there was remotely close to it, much less light it up without anyone noticing. Not to mention, none of them had anything to light it up with. They only had flashlights!
It took only a second for all the kids to jump and huddle together in shock and fear. Even Christ didn't look like he wanted to go near it.
"I swear that I don't remember it being lit, man!" Christ confirmed everyone's question.
"Then who lit it? It definitely wasn't me because I was still arguing with Christ," denied Sam.
"Not me. I don't have anything on me to light it up," Kirt also denied.
"Me too," cried Jenny.
"Me three... or would that make me five?" wondered Brian.
"This isn't the time to be wondering about that!" yelled Sam, annoyed at Brian's untimely and unhelpful question.
Then suddenly, the small flame on the candle began to flicker wildly. The flame began to grow and extend like a ribbon of fire, slowly forming some kind of vortex.
The children watched in terror as the flaming vortex grew larger and larger before them. None of the kids dared to move as if they were afraid to look away. They could feel the heat of the fire brushing their faces like one would feel sitting in front of a campfire. The fire roar softly as if it was alive. The kids would only stare inside the vortex as if they were expecting something to come out of it.
As the flaming vortex grew to almost their size, something came stretching out from within.
The kids didn't need anyone to confirm what they saw, because what they can clearly see was a hand, reaching out from the spinning fire as if trying to grab something.
Then someone screamed.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
No one knew who screamed, but it was enough to shake off their shock. They quickly scrambled like crazy and ran into the trees, hoping to get as far from here as possible. None looked back. Only setting their eyes in front of them. Hoping to see the break in the trees to where the town of Blacksburg was.
Thank you for reading. Please comment or leave feedback or suggestions.
I already said this, but I'll say it again. Apologies for not getting this out sooner. I originally had this planned to be release in May or at least over summer, but stuff happened that kept me busy. A part of that stuff is my aunt. She really made sure I was kept busy and productive for my portfolio. I also have some writing projects with some DA friends, so that's a another stuff that kept me busy and I'm still working with one of them right now on an arc story.
So I'll be honest, I've been writing this sequel since January after a 4 months break and school stuff. Then when 2nd semester came, I slowed down in writing. Summer projects were also not helping. So currently, I have 5 chapters of sequel and the prequel only has a prologue and 1 chapter. After trying to do both at the same time, I realize the progress was getting too slow, so I decided to put the prequel on hold for now until I finish the sequel. I'm not into this story like I used to anymore so it has become harder to write, but I'm holding on to finish this series once and for all. Also, I won't be able to do weekly updates for long, so once my updates reached the current chapter I'm writing, then it's an unschedule update from there.
I hope you guys understand that my enthusiasm for this story is almost entirely gone after a year. If you guys have ideas or suggestions that you like to see that doesn't effect the whole plot entirely, you can comment on it if you want since I'm just about to run out of ideas to fill in certain areas. If you have a question, don't mind asking and I'll try to answer at the end of each chapter or explain through the story. Compliments are nice. Helpful feedbacks and criticism are great. Burning and unhelpful ones are not. It will kill my mood and I might stop writing due to such things. That's how sensitive I am. I had a terrible and unhelpful review once and I couldn't write for a few months because I was in such a horrible mood. Please be polite and respectful since I'm barely holding on here and I'm very close to going on an unwilling hiatus.
Thanks to RainSonata for helping with editing and proofreading.