But there were a select few who grew anxious and violent, scouring around for a way to stop it. There was dark power rising, and the very underground was becoming overrun with dark creatures and magic, threatening to overwhelm the entire plane.
The prophecy read:
On the eve of the fourteenth week, when the shadows become longer and the sun sets red, rivers and lakes run dark and the ground trembles, beasts will war, to save the last remnants of a race, and a queen will rise in power to bring peace to the whole world once more.
A dark, booming roar could be heard from the very underground itself, and the very air seemed to permeate with evil, violence and anger.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
"Halle, the bus is here! It's time to go!"
"Ok, Mom!"
A girl around 13 years old, with bright blonde hair, and soft brown eyes ran down the stairs, her heavy back pack jumping up and down on her back, laden with books and clanging with keychains, and she hugged her mother quickly, receiving a kiss on the head before she ran out to the bus.
"Tyler! You're going to miss the bus!"
"I'm right here."
A boy of sixteen was standing behind his mother, his shaggy dark blonde hair hanging in his eyes, which were bright green and looking at his mother with exasperation, shrugging on his own backpack, and she hurried him toward the door after his sister.
"Remember, I'm working tonight, you have to watch Halle!"
"I got it!" He answered as he ran for the bus, just climbing on in time before the doors closed, their mother waving as they left for school.
Tyler sat next to his little sister on the school bus, and she bounced in her seat, telling him about her special book club she had at lunch time today, and he pretended to listen to her the whole way.
Unaware of the shadows that watched as the bus left, a pair of red eyes glowing from the trees on the other side of the road.
The school bus pulled up to the school, and Halle rushed to get off, running to her bestfriends and they all giggled together loudly before running into school.
Tyler stepped off the bus, watching his sister run inside before meeting up with his own friends, fist bumping them and hanging around by the steps until the bell rang.
And still the pair of red eyes watched from the shadows of the trees opposite the huge high school.
As the bell for class rang, the students hurried inside, but Tyler hung back from his friends, feeling a shiver run down his spine. He felt like he was being watched. He took a quick glance around the parking lot and the street, not seeing anything unusual and then shrugged off the feeling to head inside.
The shadows slunk back as the sun began to brighten, fading until they were needed again.
The school day was long and boring for Tyler, the only salvation was lunch time, getting to mess around with his friends, they were having lunch outside today, being the beginning of summer, it was quite warm, so the whole student body spent their lunch time out in the school yard.
Tyler and his friends were throwing a ball around on the grass, girls from various years sitting on the grass around them and giggling to each other as they watched them.
Tyler's friends were showing off and grinning at the girls, making a show of it, and Tyler rolled his eyes at them.
"Tyler!"
He looked over as his sister came jogging up to him, his friends all groaning about little sisters, and he threw them all a glare while he turned to his sister.
"What?"
"Did you take any of my books this morning?" She asked in an irritated voice.
"Why would I take your books Hal?" He asked in exasperation, and his friends were calling him back.
"Well...two of my books are missing." She said and he rolled his eyes at her.
"Well...maybe one of your little friends took them."
"Doubtful." She mused and he shrugged.
"Well it wasn't me."
"Will you help me look for them?" She asked him, looking up at her brother with big eyes.
"Tyler, dude, come on man."
He turned back to his friends with a small apologetic smile and a shrug.
"Sorry, guys got to help my sister with something."
His friends groaned and moaned at him but they let him leave without argument, and he followed his sister back into the school, as she retraced her steps from this morning.
He followed her around the school, as she looked this way and that, and checked classrooms that she had been in, while he casually walked along behind her with his hands in his pockets. As she checked inside a classroom at the end of the hall, he spotted a piece of paper, poking out from around the corner.
"Hey Hal, there's a piece of paper on that corner there."
"Where?"
He pointed and she ran towards it. Stopping to gasp as she picked it up.
"It's from my book." She said and as she turned the corner, there were pieces of her book scattered along the hallway in front of her and she gasped, "Who would do this?"
He followed her as she ran down the corridor, and helped her pick up the pages of her book as they went.
"I don't understand how somebody could do this to a book." She said as they got towards the end of the corridor to pick up the last remaining pages and stack them together.
"Well not everyone in this school is a book lover like you."
"It's not funny, Ty!"
A classroom door banged open at the other end of the corridor and made them both jump and look back the way they had come. A low growl sounded from inside that classroom that had banged open, and Tyler moved closer to his sister.
"I think we should go back outside." He started saying as he took his sister by her shoulder.
The exit door behind them wouldn't open as Tyler pushed on the handle.
"Tyler!" His sister screamed as she pointed down the corridor, her eyes wide with fright, and he turned quickly.
Coming out of the classroom at the end of the hall, was a big hulking black mass, it looked like shadows, and smoke all curling around, with two red glowing eyes in the centre.
"What the hell!" Tyler exclaimed as his face took on a confused and scared expression like his sister, and he tried the door behind them again.
Halle backed up until she was right against him as the creature surrounded by black smoke started to move slowly towards them. The exit door wouldn't open.
"Shit!" He said as he turned back, the creature was still ambling towards them slowly, a low growl permeating the air and it sent chills up Tyler's spine as he tried to work out how to get out of this school and away from the creature.
There was a classroom door to their left, so Tyler slowly inched towards it, pulling his sister with him. He tried the handle and the door pushed open. The creature seemed to realise what they were doing and it charged towards them with another loud growl, as Tyler pushed his sister through the door and banging it closed behind him.
"Quick, Hal, the window!" He said as they moved through the classroom quickly, the creature outside colliding with the door, as they moved.
Tyler helped Halle out first before he followed her through, as the creature burst through the door, and they both ran around the side of the school as the bell sounded for the end of lunch.
As they got to the court yard, Tyler could see his friends leaving for class, and he ran over towards everyone.
"Tyler! It's not following us!" Halle said as she pulled them to a stop, and Tyler glanced back in the direction of the window they had climbed out of, nothing was there.
"What the hell is going on?!"
"I don't know," Halle said as she clung to her brother's side, "But I want to go home."
"Yeah, me too," He said as he grabbed his sister's hand and dragged her back through the doors with the rest of the students, "Let's go and see the nurse and pretend you're ill, so I can get us home."
She nodded and they ran towards the office area, and the nurses office, making sure that they were still surrounded by others, and not alone in the corridors.
Just as the rest of the population was thinning, students entering their classrooms and leaving the corridors, they made it to the nurses office and walked inside.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Tyler watched his sister as she curled up on the couch, the event today really took a lot out of both of them, and after they had got home, his sister had fell asleep on the couch. He had tried to call hi mother on her cell, but she wasn't answering, he just hoped that nothing else happened until he could talk to his mom.
He was starting to believe that what happened was a figment of his imagination, but his sister had seen it too, so he knew it was real. But what the hell was that thing?
Could it be possible to have the same delusion? Probably not...
But what the hell was he supposed to tell his mother, that something creepy was lurking around the school and tried to chase them down, he would probably be labeled as insane.
He slunk down in his chair at the kitchen table, eyeing his sister across the room, she seemed to be peaceful enough in sleep, it was starting to get a little dark outside before he decided maybe he should wake her up.
She was groggy but not that hard to wake up, and she sat in front of the television, while Tyler tried his best to make them something to eat. Grilled cheese sandwiches would have to do for now, he knew his mother hated them eating greasy crap, but it was all he felt like doing, his mind still on what happened today.
"Hey, Halle," He called out as he set their dinner on the table, "What do you think that ting was today?"
She sat at the table quietly, and he watched her face lose a little of it's colour as she looked up at him.
"I don't know," She responded quietly and he sat opposite her, "What did you see?"
"Black smoke with red eyes."
"You didn't see it's teeth?! Or the horrible slime?! Or it's bad smell?!" She added as he sat and looked confused at her.
"Teeth? Slime? Smell?" He repeated and she nodded her head quickly.
"Yeah, it was shaped kind of like a dog, but it wasn't, and it had long claws, and it's skin looked like it was rotting and it had slime over it's head, it was surrounded by black smoke, and it's eyes were crazy red, and it's teeth were pointed and huge, covering it's whole mouth," She explained what she saw and he shook his head a little, it was starting to scare him more, knowing that she had seen something completely different, "and it had a horrible smell, like a rotting animal in the sunshine, you know like when a hedgehog gets squished in the road and-"
"I got the concept, Hal."
"You only saw smoke?" She asked after both of their appetites were affectively ruined, and both of them sat staring at each other with matching scared faces, "How come we saw different things?"
"I don't know."
They didn't eat anything that night, but Tyler managed to get Halle to at least drink some milk and then some orange juice before bedtime. She went to sleep after some light coaxing from him, and her nightlight turned on.
He wandered around his room, thinking over all that she told him today.
There was no way that it was plausible, it was like something from a bad monster movie, or an alien or something.
Tyler never believed in ghosts, the paranormal, aliens or monsters, or Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. It was all a load of bull crap...but today.
That threw a spanner into the works...maybe there was something else out there that they didn't know of. He had no idea, but all this thinking was giving him a headache.
He lay down on his bed and tried to sleep. Sometime during the 15 minutes he lay there, in the dark and quiet of his room, he heard a clash of garbage cans outside. He jumped. Maybe...
No, it was common knowledge around here that raccoons invaded the trash at night. That's all it was...right?
Another bang and a clash.
He bolted up from his bed, and ran into his sister's room, she had an easy escape route out of her bedroom window, he had used the big tree outside hers to sneak out plenty of times. He walked into her room and shut the door as silently as he could before he walked over to her window.
Keeping low and only peering through the bottom of her blinds, looking out into their front yard, he saw the trash cans that had been on the curb, over turned, and a raccoon rooting about inside it. He sighed a little in relief, turning to watch his sister sleep for a moment.
He heard a tiny screech from outside and turned back in time to see the raccoon run off like something scared it. He gulped as a black mass made it's way around their neighbours car and into their yard. His eyes widened as he watched it disappear from sight, moving towards the house.
"Halle, Hal, wake up!" He whispered as he shook his sister awake, and she sat up groggily with a "what?", "ssh, there's one of those smoke things outside in our yard."
"What?!" She nearly screeched but he place a palm over her lips, shushing her.
"Quiet, we can get out of your window-"
CRASH!
"Shit!" He exclaimed, recognizing the sound of a window breaking downstairs, and he turned to his sister who had a matching expression of horror on her face.
"We have to go." He said as he moved his sister towards the window, and she placed some socks and shoes on her feet before he grabbed her and placed her feet out of her window, making a motion with his finger over his lips to keep her quiet and she nodded.
He climbed out with her as they heard another crash from downstairs, and he grabbed hold of the tree branch that was within reach before he motioned for his sister to do the same. She could only just reach it, so he helped her place her feet on it to climb down, and they made their way quietly down the tree. As soon as their feet touched the grass, Tyler grabbed his sister's hand and they ran.
He though about going to a neighbours house, but if that creature was still around they needed to get out of their street.
"Where are we going?" She asked as they ran through the street, Tyler was looking back every now and then to check they weren't being followed.
"Mom's work." Tyler said and she nodded as they ran a little faster.
They became out of breath a short while later, and he had to stop so that his sister could catch her breath, they were downtown now, and their mother's work place was only a few more blocks away. Tyler heard a low growl from behind them.
"Shit...move Halle!" He screamed at his sister and grabbed her hand as they ran, hearing the creature now running behind them.
They were about a block from where their mom would be before they realised that it had gotten a lot darker all of a sudden, like there were shadows surrounding them. Tyler looked back and could still see the mass following them, and he continued to pull his sister along with him.
"Tyler stop! Look!" Halle said as she pointed in the direction they were running, only for Tyler to stop them as there was another one of those black masses, with glowing red eyes in front of them.
"Shit!"
He turned around and noticed the other one, two of them?
He darted down a back alley which he knew would also lead them to their mother's workplace, but he came to a stop as he realised that they were surrounded by those things.
There were at least four or five.
"No..." He whispered as he pulled his sister closer to him, trying to shield her from the horrors around them.
The creatures moved an inch closer and Tyler felt cold shivers travel down his spine, as he realized the dread he and his sister were in. He closed his eyes and hugged his sister closer to him.
Readying for being eaten or whatever those creatures wanted, when-
Clang! Bang! Crash! Crunch!
He opened his eyes to see the creatures disappearing one by one, only to be replaced with another, as they appeared to materialize out of the shadow around them.
He looked around at the cause for them disappearing, and spotting a man, wearing some kind of leather armour, a vest and tight jeans, guns in his hands, that shot light, and dark hair coiffed over his head, he was lean but strong and the muscles in his arms bulged slightly with every shot he fired and every beast he hit.
Tyler was shocked, he couldn't move, he and his sister just watched this man fight these things, and more and more of them appeared as he did, until-
"Rrrrroooowerr."
Something big, black and full of fur, fell on top of a couple of the beasts, crushing them and then turning to wrap his jaws around one behind it and crunched with his teeth until they disappeared. Tyler and Halle backed up a little as the big furred beast looked their way.
As it walked towards them, a man appeared beside them both, and as the furred beast turned to the side, the man picked them both up and threw them on it's back, and told it to run.
Tyler grabbed hold of handfuls of fur, and wrapped his arms around his sister who had buried her face in his chest, as the beast they sat on top of, ran away from the smoky things in the alleyway.