I don't own Drakan. Does anything else need to be said? On with the story!
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Light A Candle
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A Drakan fan fiction written by Random One-Shot
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The waves were roaring in his ears, the waves and something else, something that made the island quake and sent the entire village trembling. 'It's down there. It's waking up,' he thought. And then, 'what?' The sky was dark, but the moons were bright and his feet kept carrying him further and further down the path. He knew the path, had walked it many times before, but it seemed different this time, more ominous.
The white creature led and he followed. They went down, went deep, and the air became wet with spray. The crashing of the violent waves that he had known, always, gave way to boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM! Ba-dump. BOOM!
It was a cave, bigger than any other he had ever come across in his explorations as a child. A massive pile of stones lay in the center, curled in one big spiral that grew to be more than the size of his hut.
"Koda, he waits for you."
"Koda."
"KODA!"
Koda woke up.
Krod had grabbed his arms and was pulling back on them. After blinking the sleep from his eyes, it was not hard to see why. Another step and he would have started down one of the many twisting, slippery paths that led from the cliffs to the caves beneath the island.
The strength in his legs gave out as he gazed down to the foaming white waves below and only Krod's arms kept him from hitting the ground.
"How…?" Koda began, but could not finish.
"You tell me, boy," Krod said irritably. "I woke up at night, thinking I'd heard the door open, and rise to find you missing. I go out, see you walking away at night with no coat, no cloak, no bloody shoes even, when we're only a sneeze away from a storm and you don't turn around when I call you. Then I chase after you and find you ready to go down the cliffs in your sleep. What happened?"
"I had a weird dream," admitted Koda. "I've been having them for a while. There's something down in the Booming Deep that I have to find. I… I guess my body just decided to go with it tonight."
Krod frowned at him and started pulling him back towards the cabin. "I'm going to start dosing you with a sleeping tonic. No, don't give me that look. Either you sleep so deep that you don't dream at all or I tie your feet together each night. Take your pick."
The mention of Koda's feet made them begin throbbing. He had walked over the rough path during a cold autumn night with no shoes and they were letting him know it. Entering the cabin, with its banked fire and worn floorboards, was a relief. Koda sat himself down in the kitchen and waited for Krod to return with whatever ointment, salve or powder he dug up out of his workroom.
The medicine turned out to be a yellow, bitter smelling goop that stung fiercely when Krod began slathering it on the cuts. Koda let out little hissing sounds whenever Krod added on more.
"Don't be a baby," snapped Krod. "An infection would be worse. If you want to take your mind off of it, tell me about this dream of yours."
"Well, I start off in my room," began Koda. "There's something – it's white and I can never really see it. It just flickers in and out of the corner of my eye. Anyway, it's calling me out to the cliffs. It says there's someone waiting for me down in the caves."
"The Booming Deep?" Krod asked.
"Yeah," confirmed Koda. "Tonight was the furthest I ever got in the dream. Usually I wake up when I get into the caves, but tonight I kept going through the tunnels and I came to this massive chamber. I think it must have been a hundred feet high and even bigger around. There was this big platform in the middle, even bigger than our cabin. Then you woke me up and I just about pissed myself," Koda finished, laughing weakly.
"Humph," Krod said, and nothing more until he had finished picking the debris out of Koda's feet and slathering the ointment on.
When Koda's feet were both wrapped in fabric strips to serve as bandages and the ointment pot put away, Krod eased himself into the other chair and steepled his fingers beneath his wrinkled chin.
"Any idea what this thing wants you to find?" asked Krod.
"It's a person. I mean," Koda hastily corrected. "They're both people. The thing that's calling me and the thing it wants me to find. It said, 'he's waiting for you, Koda.' Definitely a he."
"Hm," Krod murmured.
Koda watched his master nervously, waiting for his advice or, far more likely, his condemnation for not mentioning this sooner. Their island was an isolated place, but evil spirits and the like were dangers the world over. There was every chance one of them had come to the island or simply woken from slumber in the caves below.
This was why Koda was beyond amazed, was flat out stupefied, when Krod opened his mouth and said, "Do you want to find out what's down there?"
'What?'
"Go into the Booming Deep? Myself?"
Krod rolled his eyes. "Stupid boy, I'd go with you. And a few men from the village, no doubt. But if you've been having the same dream for, how long now?"
"Almost three weeks."
"If you've been having the same dream for that long, every night, then I think it's safe to say that it isn't just your dinner playing with your mind at night. Something wants you to go down there. At worst, it's some devilry at work and we have to end it before it ends you. Or someone else, for that matter. If not, then we should see what is so important that someone feels the need to drive you over a cliff."
"But how?" asked Koda. "If it is a sorcerer or something like that, how do we deal it?"
"By killing it," Krod said simply. "Magic doesn't make a man immune to a spear through his heart, boy; I know I taught you better than that. A ghost can be harmed with silver or iron. A lich is purified by salt and fire. Nobody in this village is a professional fighter, I grant you, but we're a fishing and, I stress, whaling village. Throwing heavy, sharp sticks at creatures that can kill us with a flick of their tails is this little community's way of life. I dare say we'll have all the help we should need."
And somehow Koda believed him.
"More importantly, do you think you could find this place outside of your dreams?" asked Krod. "I explored those caves in my youth, as I'm sure everyone on this island has, but I've never seen nor heard of a chamber like you've described. If it's there, it must be someplace no one has ever managed to reach."
Koda thought about that. The memory of his dream had faded already, aside from the general points of the thing: the white creature he could never truly see, the walk to the cliffs and to the caves below, the booming of the waves and something else, something that he should have known, but could not pin down. He thought about the endless nights of repetition, of the creature calling him again and again. He thought about waking only an hour earlier, only Krod's intervention saving him from an almost certain fall to his death.
"I think," said Koda slowly, "that when I start looking for it, that thing will help me. I think it's too desperate not to grab a chance like that."
"So, you're willing to go along with this then?" asked Krod.
The waves beneath him had looked so cold. His body would have been bashed to pieces on the rocks.
For what?
"Yes, I am," said Koda.