The Blackened One

Chapter 2

The Wild Woods pt2


"Let nature run its course." - The Leader


A small group of people are running through dense foliage and dried mud. Small branches and twigs are snapped underfoot. Bushes are rustled and their delicate leaves break off, swept in the wake of their rushing bodies. They weave through low hanging branches and leap large stones which clutter this area of the humid woods. The wind picks up and the branches knock against each other and their trunks. Knocking sounds can be heard all around for miles for many of these trees have been hollowed out by insects and decay. The fungi can be seen replacing sections of bark and if one were to pull off the mushy mass you will discover a nest for all kinds of creeping things that dwell beneath the earth and inside wooden mass. The small group suddenly shifts direction from east to northeast. Their armor and weapons making chinking sounds as they run. Pots, pans, wooden stakes, hatchets, hammers and other camping items make clunking sounds as they're jostled on their backs.

Now they're slowing down and looking behind them every few trees they pass…

A screech from far away echoes and reaches the people. They spread out. Some kneel, pull their packs around to the front and pull out unusual tools. One climbs a tree with a rope in his mouth. If your eye follows the rope hanging from his mouth you will see something slim and long tied up with more rope and fabric.

One would wonder what they're doing and might assume they're planning a trap.

Well, maybe they will reveal their plan in the next minute. A squirrel sprints out of it's hole of a tree many feet above the people. Then it looks at the other person climbing a tree, a slim thing hanging by rope. From the slim thing came a drop of blood and when it was swung around and hit the trunk…two hollow sounds were produced.

Something or things were wrapped up and dripping blood. As far as the squirrel was concerned, blood is never good. Back into it's hole the squirrel goes…


Red eyes survey the landscape. Covered in foliage lies this aged super predator atop a hill. The eyes blink revealing a thin layer of soot on the eyelids. Lips maintaining their seal, the jaw is at rest. Legs spread a bit, arms outstretched.

He refocuses on the ancient castle.

He recalls the four bipedal entities that occupy that location. To call it a castle is a stretch, but what remains is defendable to some extent. Ruins are ruins and it takes a long time for stones to age. The enduring, stoic scribes of the earth whose language is history, nature and time.

Today the Blackened One makes his move.

Fourteen minutes.

Thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds till the occupants return.

One minute to run from his hill and reach the treeline.

Subtle magnetism manipulating air compressions to muffle and if possible, mute sounds produced as he runs on the grass and dirt.

Five seconds to reach a deep ditch.

Not like he counts in his head anymore.

With his velocity a mere hop is sufficient to clear a trench and a jump over the thick, olden walls. Many feet of stone, mortar and brick proved futile to the wild man's strength and agility. Just enough energy spent for a large arc, the apex nearly centered over the wall. He tucks himself into a ball spinning forward. His head barely missing the protruding stones from the wall. As he forms the obtuse angle and passes the wall he quickly uncurls himself. One leg forward, the other folded, he leans back the moment he touches the ground as he slides a few feet and takes off running.

He looks up and runs straight for a couple yards and makes a sharp left, leaps up and over the shoddy ramp made of rubble and infiltrates the remnants of the keep.

Lifeless.

Dull.

Empty.

Void.

The occupants are careful to leave the impression that death still silently presides over these ruins.

Silence.

Dust float aimlessly as if the particles are unwilling to determine their own path. Thick layers of dust lie on whatever remains. Even the cold stone seems unsatisfied with the dust…

Cold.

Unsatisfied.

Silent.

Forgotten.

Even the wind taunts the lethargic keep as it barely echoes. The wind that brushes against the keep's walls as if the wind wants to breathe life into the keep. It is futile.

The wild man's bare feet are covered in dust as he rummages through the occupants' belongings. Only the muffled knocking of his tools in his fur pouch around his waist are barely audible to his extraordinary hearing. He moves silently as if he were haunting the floors.

He goes up another floor.

This one has a window, but wood covers the opening. Rays of light struggle to penetrate the shadow. But in this low light, his eyes adjust. He sees a few beds.

Mold.

Search fast.

He quickens his pace, feral ears up and alert. He places one hand on the bed and it's cold. He does this with the other 3 beds. Aside from the beds is a small, wooden stand barely big enough for a simple book, a fragile wooden chair and a large sack of spoiled flour laid against the north wall below the window.

He climbs the next floor and it's the same arrangement.

The top floor, unlike all the other rooms, has a door.

The wild man instead heads down the stairs part way to a window. He pokes his head out, looks and sees enough damage on the Keep's exterior to serve as surfaces to climb.

Six minutes.

Dense foliage.

Could he be seen?

He reaches the only window of the top floor facing southwest and sees it has no obstructions. And as he sticks his head in…Musket fire is heard from within the woods. An explosion in the next moment followed by the roar of the creature he lured. He retracts his head to twist his body and he looks southwest. He sees a small plume of smoke through a hole in the leaves.

Blinks once.

A long moment passes.

Blinks again.

He can hear wind scrape along the vigilant stones.

A second explosion is heard followed by two muskets firing.

He decides to climb into the window and as his eyes adjust he sees floor. He removes the stone from his mouth, obtained earlier, and throws it into the center of the floor. The stone shatters.

He deems it safe to walk on the floor.

Two minutes later the group of men are near the wall. They spread out and inspect the immediate vicinity. The wild man's tracks are discovered.

The wild man grabs a few shards of the stone he threw earlier and throws them against the door. He hears the heavy footsteps of a well-armored warrior rush up the stairs and the lighter steps of a likely less-armored combatant. The two people silently open the door, a shield is brandished by the heavily armored person...they clear the room finding nothing. Wordlessly the lighter equipped person quietly descends the stairs and readies a knife and short bow. The Ranger, holding his knife nears the window and slowly peeks through to the outside.

Nothing unusual to see. But the Ranger pulls away from the window, leans against the wall and listens as the grip on the knife tightens.

The wild man is outside on the wall, holding his position on the damaged surface in between floors.

The wild man slowly climbs and scrapes on the wall a couple times. He uses one finger and picks at a hole in the wall. The wild man scrapes on the wall again and resumes his silent descent along the wall's old scar.

As the wild man passes by a window he hears speech.

"...a Kouluk bird again. We know a pair have been nesting on the damaged south wall right before the last floor."

"Let's be sure. How many…"

The rest remained unknown to the wild man as he climbed down the keep's exterior. The other two men, however, were still outside. One was inspecting the tracks by the ditch and the other tracing the footprints inside the walls. Nobody was able to notice the wild man leave at the northeast barricade. Though this "barricade" was made of branches and large stones.

Normally one wouldn't think of crawling through that without leather armor. Back in the keep's heyday, people who tried to crawl through it, under it or climb over it would suffer cuts all over their body. Many would-be infiltrators and criminals tried to cover up infected wounds and their blood gave away their trail. But the wild man's skin is thicker and tougher. His fur pouch got caught a couple times, but his slow pace made it easy to undo.

Now it is late in the afternoon, the wild man waits hidden high up in a tree with a squirrel in his mouth, watching the defunct castle and its four occupants.

"...and don't blame yourself for looking for patterns."

"Sir, how long have you been doing this?"

A pregnant pause…

"About three-hundred years now."

The Scout apprentice finished cleaned his scope and whispered another question.

"So why the scars?"

The Leader answered, "Sometimes ya need to take a hit. So it's good to know where ya can. It's always risky and everyone has a different body. Even with about three centuries of experience, trying to calculate whether or not I will be struck where I want always introduces more risks that can't always be controlled or at least influenced."

The Scout apprentice grabs another scope, dips his rag in cleaning alcohol and wipes a lens.

"My time module is bugged again. Sir, what was the line of code again?"

The Leader chuckled.

"Ya don't always have ta call me that. Ah know we're brought up with regulations, but remember: we ain't even paramilitary. You don't always have to refer to me as 'sir'."

The wild man awakens from the memory. He recoils, hitting the back of his head against the tree and it echoes.

He looks south and sees a fire be put out.

Phantom images of the memory refuse to go away.

Hearty yells and fingers pointed towards the trees.

An archer readies his bow.

"Oh, uh. It's not that-"

Slashed, blood flows.

A hand, grips and tears.

"How long do you think we'll be fighting?"

"I'm unsure. War is never certain. But this isn't war. We're fighting to survive."

"Samson told me that."

Steel is penetrated.

A shocked expression.

But the voice is quiet.

Lips move, but no air passes.

The Leader sits and sharpens his knife with his teeth.

"Why bone?"

The Leader stops and silently looks at his bone knife gripped in his hand.

"...feels right."

"Why not take the standard issue?"

"This feels right."

The Leader seems to be lost as he murmurs things. They're intelligible.

The hatchet crushes more bones, the ribcage is shattered.

But the killer is relentless. Repeatedly hacking away into the body as life itself is chopped in pieces.

There is blood all over.

The shield became the sword.

They went on a quick excursion for some food. He flushed out the game from the pond and beneath the hot pink sun the creature shimmered. Automatic fire pierced the natural armor and the game fell. He used his bone knife to make an incision into the throat. Then used a scraper to separate the flesh from the bone.

The cuirass now had a few fist-sized holes. A corpse had a unique hole where you could see segments of the spine hanging by thin sinew, but that's because a large portion was broken, ripped apart.

He breaks from his trance.

"Sometimes I have visions...of...running through valleys and hiding in...tall grass and...stalking bigger, sleeker predators. Tall, heavy beasts...with bones curling...from...their faces...and thick, warm...fur. Stone, bone and sun. Caves. Caves...caves...caves…...and fire. And I'm scraping skin from bone."

He returns to his visions, caught up in some rapture of unknown design. But he manages to say one last thing, "We are all we have left."

The wild man looks at his kill, straddling the waist. He removes the heavily dented helmet, cutting flesh as it's removed.

Human.

The wild man sees the face of an aged man. Thick, brown beard and greying in some areas. Copper colored eyes, Long, thick, dark colored hair with small braids on the left side.

But was overcome by him.

Weathered, hardy and enduring. Dirt and fresh blood are specks and streaks on the knight's face. Patches of the knight's beard was missing and replaced with dark, ugly burns. Blistered, red skin on the right cheek and above the left eyebrow; second degree burns.

The Scout apprentice watches his Leader tend to the kill. With great care, he reverently uses primitive bone tools. As he describes his visions, the Scout feels like he's looking into the past. Suddenly, the Leader looks up. He looks the Scout square in the eye and says, "This is what we are. This is why, despite all our technology, our sciences and maths, guns, gunships, tanks, APC's, high-frequency weapons, nukes, nuclear stuffs, atomizers, flux storage and so on...this is why we must remember what we are, who we are, where we come from. All of our progress will be meaningless if we abandon what makes us great. What makes you great. What makes myself great."

The wild man sat there consumed by phantoms of the past.

Centuries ago he was a different man.

From memories come pain.

Pain must be suppressed.

Pain must be suppressed.

Forget.

Forget.

...a breeze picks up…

The feral man sniffs the air once and smells blood. The third man, a triangle class mage has rolled over to his stomach. He has something in his hand that he looks at. He mutters something and his head is slowly lowered into the moist, red soil. He rises and walks over to the dead mage. With his foot he lifts the body high enough to see parchment in the dirt. Kicking the body away a few feet he grabs the parchment.

Can't read.

Throw it away.

Though the Blackened One is unable to read Romalian, it read more or less like a sorrowful goodbye from one lover to another.

The feral man did notice one thing before throwing the parchment away: the seal of Romalian Papacy.

Seals, logos, emblems, crests, ect. Patterns usually imply a group of people and where there are groups of people there tends to be settlements. And if there are settlements there must be supply lines. And who would organize and coordinate them? And from where?

The Blackened One stands tall and looks at the treeline. He runs into the wild woods again.


The Beast has wandered the barren land many times now. How long? The Beast has forgotten, stopped counting. Stopped counting the years since the Master began his long slumbers.

But this is the longest one yet.

The Beast yearns for his Master to awaken.

The Master has aged. A long, white beard. Balding. But his body is still as muscular and bears all the scars from a long, long time ago. Experience, the story of his life etched into his body. Embedded into their minds are lessons taught by Experience and the Enemy. Both in their lifetime and from times long before. What great a time it must have been…

But the Beast hasn't forgotten. The Beast will continue to watch over and defend the Master as he sleeps.

Once every so often, the Beast attempts to wake the Master. Soft nudges, low growls and guttural barks.

Nothing pierces the veil of silence. The Beast silently carries the fear that this will be the final sleep.

The Beast doesn't want the silence to last forever. So the Beast sits beside the Master and quietly looks at the Master's face. Wishing to go on more hunts together.

"Please…"


Author's Notes:

Hey hey heeeeeeeyy! Guess who updated? ME! I've decided that, from now on, all the flashbacks that are in italics will be Align Center instead of Align Left. If there is any italicized text that is not Center Aligned then it's part of the flashback that I missed.

About that letter at the end, if y'all want to know what it says then vote at the poll on my profile! It will offer some insight about...well, I won't say it-that would be spoilers. :P

Y'all have a good one and thanks for reading!