The crimson Balverine
Prologue
Long ago, there was a land called Albion. This land was ruled not be any lord or king, merely by its people and the choices they made.
The people also had protectors called heroes. Men and women who trained themselves in the way of the will, a practice of magic that required affinity with light or dark alignments. They also trained in stealth and power.
These warriors protected the people and did quests for them to gain renown and fame, from escorting traders from town to town to slaying monsters that had been damaging crops to killing residents of the towns.
One of these monsters was known as the Balverine. A horrible werewolf like creature with speed grace and power, as well as a mind that could think and devise plans to capture its prey. But even more terrifying was that these creatures hunted in packs ranging from two Balverine up to at most six.
However, even though Balverine are fierce they are merely the more common of the species, at the top of the Balverine food chain is the White Balverine. A beast resembling its brown counterpart but standing at a height of eight feet while it's brown relative is only six feet. The other noticeable difference between the common Balverine and the White Balverine is that the White Balverine' fur is a luminescent white that feels as soft as silk. Though normally if you can feel the fur of either balverine chances are you are already dead.
The white Balverine is rarely seen do to the requirements for one to be born. Not only do you have to be bitten by a regular balverine and survive but you must be bitten on the night when the moon is at her fullest to become a white balverine. Another even more rare method of the transformation is to be bitten by a white balverine, but that event is few and far between due to the fact that white Balverine tends to kill their prey before biting them.
Enough of the monster history though.
Our story begins in the midst of Dark Wood, a terrifying forest pitched forever in eternal night, during the night of a blood moon, an event that occurs only once every thousand years in Albion.
Trekking through the forest is a young lad barely into his eighteenth winter carrying a load of meat upon his shoulder dripping with blood from his impatient of waiting for the butcher in Bowerstone to bleed the meat dry before setting of for home in Oakville.
Now there are only four types of people who travel through Dark Wood alone at any time.
Hero's who are trained to deal with any situation the find themselves in. Traders who must travel to make their living. Bandits who are looking to kill and steal from afore mentioned traders and finally those who have no clue what they are doing and have an obvious death wish.
Our future hero is unfortunately at this time is none of the first three mentioned groups.
Chapter one
"Bloody freakin' butcher! Twenty gold pieces to cut up a piece of meat I hunted, skinned and d-gutted! Honestly if he wasn't the only butcher close enough to Oakville I would put up a mission card for a hero to...dispose of him" came the aggravated mutterings of a young man.
This young man's name was Darrious. He was of large build with shoulders as broad as bull a horn, his face was unshaven with much hair decorating his lower jaw and especially so on his chin. His brown dirt hair was course and curly, if you looked close enough you could see a few comb teeth tangled in its constricting mess.
His eyes however where a different matter, the irises that with all people where coloured, but his where bone white. A description that was once used to describe them by a little girl of five winters was, 'his eyeballs look like my mummy's dough balls with little black stones in them.' Needles to say that Darrious's eyes where enough to set most villagers on end with superstition, add to the fact that he was found on the orphanage doorstep at the age of six with no recollection of where he came from or how he got there really set him off as Oakville pariah.
On this winter night Darrious was making his way from Bower Stone after obviously visiting the butcher back to his 'home town of Oakville'. There was only one problem with his journey... well actually a few things where wrong.
First he was travelling through Dark Wood without an escort, something only the foolish would attempt. Second thing, it was night when all the monsters would be walking up looking for their breakfast. Third thing that he did wrong, travelling through Dark Wood during a full moon, when Balverine sittings had been at an all time high. The fourth thing that was wrong with his idea of travelling home through dark wood on this cold winter night was a fact that was not entirely his fault. He travelled through dark wood on the night of a full crimson moon.
The crimson moon was something that only happened once every thousand years in Albion, so the superstition and stories pertaining to it have been lost for over five thousand years. But tonight Darrious is about to learn one legend... by becoming it.
As Darrious was trudging through the snow covered ground, talking all do precaution to not trip over any knurled roots that maybe hiding underneath its virgin cover, a sound caught his ear, a sort of
growling that sent cold spikes through his spine and ripped his stomachs lower casing straight out of him.
It was a sound he knew well from one of his 'adventures as a child'. It was a growl of a Balverine.
With his neck stiff as bone, Darrious turned his head slowly almost begging with himself not to look. So it was with his lone black pupils shrunken to the size of a small ink splotch that he viewed not just one Balverine behind him, but a full back of six.
Staring into twelve sets of blood red eyes that where jerking between him and the slab of meat he carried upon his shoulder that was dripping blood down onto his cloth shirt straight down to his faded blue farm jeans.
"I got to get out of here." Was all that was running through Darrious mind as he trembled like a rabbit before a hungry fox. "Run you idiot" something growled from deep within him "RUN!" and so with that Darrious flung the meat toward the six Balverines, turned tail and ran off the path and straight into the true depths of Dark Wood.