02-12-2018, 08:43 AM
The small town was improving with every passing day. After the exodus from the Pale Moors, fleeing from the dark creatures that lurked in the land of Dracula and seeking shelter in the outermost reaches of Camelot, the settlers had begun a new life. They had believed their lives to be cursed, that the taint of the Moors would never leave them, but soon the smiles returned to their faces and laughter filled the homes in the evenings after the days of hard work. They had named the town New Darkshire. A new beginning with new hope.
Who would have thought that its settlers were fated to such a terrible end?
Father Urthney was one of the older people to have inhabited Darkshire, and among the settlers he was the oldest. His old bones had served him well in his younger days, but now they were brittle and tired. Why had the settlers not just taken him along, but welcomed him with open arms when he had followed them? Because he was a priest, a man of the church of Omni, and the people of Darkshire, as many Secondaries, believed in higher powers. After all it was no secret that Omni brought the Primes to the Omniverse. What creature could have the power to give life and bestow such immense powers as a Prime had on others, but a great deity? That was where the faith of the church of Omni stemmed from, and in the Pale Moors faith was a strong pillar that kept the people from falling to despair.
That evening the Father held a sermon, preaching about the sacrifice of Tyrael and the hope that he had given them all by giving himself to the darkness so that the Omniverse may be safe. He held it alone, because the altar boy had fallen ill and was bedridden. The people of Darkshire attended and together they prayed. After the mess they left and the Father went to extinguish the candles and close the doors of the church for the night. But in the dusk’s fading light he failed to notice the single wet leaf on the ground that one of the settlers had brought in. As he climbed the stairs to extinguish the last two candles to the left and right of the central altar, he slid and fell to the ground, his outstretched arm knocked over the candle and it fell onto the white cloth that was draped over the altar. And because Father Urthney hit his head on the stairs and fell unconscious at the foot of the altar there was nobody to stop the flame from spreading and growing.
New Darkshire, praised by its inhabitants to be their second chance granted to them by the merciful lord Omni, would be consumed that night by the fire born from its church. What an irony.
When the flames snuffed out the stars and illuminated the forest with their flickering orange light Karil saw it. She saw how the flames licked the sky, how they emerged from the clearing that the human pack had made by cutting trees. And she knew what it meant.
She had gathered what little remained of her belongings in the burrow near the village, intending on bringing it to her new home along with the rest and never to look back after that, so she was close. The angry, vindictive side of her wanted to go closer and enjoy the spectacle, to see the human pack burn. Had they heeded her warnings they might have survived. Her other side wanted her to help the human pack, for they did not know better and they did not deserve that horrible fate. And so she ran through the forest, dropped on all fours, to the clearing that she had wanted never to set foot on again.
The human pack were screaming, running around, frantically searching for the others. Some were throwing water onto the fires, but it was of little use: the wooden structures had caught fire and the mild winds were spreading the fire faster than a handful of people could extinguish them. A few had realized it and were retrieving what items they could from their homes, or letting the animals out of their stables and pens so that they could run away. Others were trying to get into the burning homes to help others escape.
Karil stopped at the edge of the clearing and closed her eyes. The scents. Like colored vines they filled the air around her, each linked to the human that it belonged to. It was like a giant ball of wool but Karil had no trouble with picking out the scents she was looking for. She forced herself to ignore the strong, stinging smell of fire and focused on the human pack. Then on the pups from yesterday.
There was the boy. She smelled his fear, but he was close to an adult. Perhaps his mother. The girls however… their scents were faint, suffocated by the fire, but they were there. In a house. She opened her eyes again. There was one man trying to rip the door open but it was stuck. The house was burning and would soon crumble. The two pups inside would die a horrible death.
As she sprinted through the crowd few took notice of her. She heard a scream or two but most probably mistook her for one of the dogs. She lined herself up with an unstable wall on the side of the house, away from the view of the man. She charged forward, her teeth clenched, as she drew upon the force of her cervidae heritage. Then she collided with the wall.
The force of her antlers broke the flame-touched wall and she broke through into the flame-filled room. The two girls were huddled up in a corner as far away from the flames as they could, crying their eyes out. The older one had the younger wrapped up in her arms. Fearfully they were looking at the door, listening to the cracking sounds of the sharp item that the man was now using to try and break down the door. Karil remembered that item. It was what they used to cut down trees. But he would not be fast enough. The beams supporting the roof would soon break and everything would collapse. She had no time.
“D-doggy?” a meek voice asked, followed by coughs. The pup were breathing in the black smoke. They had done so for a while now, given no choice. Soon they would pass out. They would not be able to walk, Karil knew.
“Pups no die today… pups not bad, no deserve death”, she said. She stood on her hindlegs and grabbed both girls, one under each arm, then turned around to run back out through the way she had opened.
CRACK! With a horrifyingly loud piercing sound the central beam broke in the middle and its halves dropped down. Karil was weighted down by what she was carrying and was a moment too slow to dodge. One half hit her on the back of her head. Her field of vision exploded with pain and turned red, everything went blurry. A stinging pain formed on the back of her head and moments later against her chin, and she realized that she must have fallen to the ground. From her hazy vision she could see that the collapsing roof had blocked their exit. The way out was no more.
Was this how she would die? Helping out the human pack who had brought nothing but trouble to the forest? Rescuing two of the only three humans that had ever done anything friendly for her?
She refused to believe that. She did not want to.
Her grip around the two girls tightened again and she stood up, shaky on her feet, mobilizing every bit of energy that remained in her body. Though the roof had collapsed it had also created a new opportunity, a way for them to escape, that was riskier than all the others. Like a burning ramp the collapsed roof, proof of its architect’s great craftsmanship, had sunk into the house in large chunks which were quickly burning as the reeds that made it up burnt like tinder. One wrong step would cause her to get her feet stuck and her fur would catch fire. Yet there was one way… the support beams that the roof was placed on, if she could walk over them she would reach the top. It was a daring move, but she had no other choice.
She walked. She balanced herself along the edge. She felt that she would slip and accelerated her steps. Her paws caught pointy splinters but she clenched her teeth and forced herself to ignore the pain. Not now. The fire cleared before them as they arrived on the top point where the house-wall and the collapsed roof formed a triangle with the ground. There Karil jumped as far as she could and landed belly first on the ground with the two girls to her left and right.
She could hear screaming, crying, names being shouted… hers, too. Her energy was gone though, and the smokes she had breathed in were further making her dizzy, along with the throbbing pain on the back of her head. She caught glimpses of the two pups running into the outstretched arms of a human-female. Then things went black. Just before she passed out she felt how she was lifted up and heaved over something soft.
She knew not how long she had been unconscious, when she woke back up. She was still on top of something soft that was bobbing up and down. She felt the breeze of air on her fur. They were moving. Her head still hurt, as did her arms and legs, her hands and her feet. Around her she could see the greens of the forest, bathed in the darkness of the late dusk. So it could not have been long… just as she thought this the bobbing stopped and a pair of strong arms heaved her off the soft surface, then dropped her on the ground. More pain shot through her waist. What was going on? A nudge to her shoulder made her roll onto her back. Her blurred vision slowly cleared up. A human stood there. The hunter-male that she had saved from the Catoblepon long ago.
“Still kickin’?” he asked.
“... yes…” Karil replied. Her voice felt hoarse. Was that because of the smoke she had breathed?
“Good”, said the hunter-male, knelt and leant over her. He did not do anything but Karil saw the burning hatred in his eyes. Whatever he intended on doing, it was not good.
“What… human want… from Karil…?”
“So Karil really is your name, eh?” the man asked. “I thought as much. So tell me, Karil. Are you happy now?”
“...”
“I asked if you’re happy now”, he repeated. “Don’t play weak, I know you can hear me.”
“Karil… not understand…”
“Yeahright”, he scoffed. He took the curved piece of wood off his back. Only now did Karil notice that there was a fine string hanging off one end, which the hunter-male grabbed and attached to the other end of the wood too, so that it was very tense. “Don’t bother denying it. We all know you wanted us gone. We were all afraid of that creature that tamed you, who had you deliver a message, but I believe that there is really no such creature, right? You were the one who made that carving.”
The carving? Oh, yes… the piece of wood from months ago, when she had first told them not to stay. “Karil… wanted humans… out of forest”, she admitted.
“And you warned us, didn’t you. You even set that Kato-thing off on us. But to go that far… to set fire to our entire settlement…” He spat on the ground. “Not even I thought you could go that low, beast.”
Karil blinked, looking puzzled. “Karil… set fire? No… Karil no know how set… fire…”
“Until the bitter end you lie, huh”, the hunter-male said. He took a feathered stick out of his quiver, looked at it, then put it back. He took another, this one with red feathers, and seemed satisfied. The stick’s feathers reeked of human blood. “It’s no use. I’m gonna kill you anyway, you know.” He showed her the red stick. “See this? This was one of Frank’s arrows. I promised him that I’d kill you and marked his arrows red with my blood so that I could tell which ones were his. I promised that it would be his arrow, delivered by my hand, who’d get revenge on you.”
“Karil… no set fire…” she replied. “Karil also… no make Kato-Blepon attack humans… Karil rescue… pups from fire…”
“Pups? You mean children?” the man asked, looking confused.
“Human pups… females…”
“Mei and Alice? The only two girls of New Darkshire, my own two daughters? Don’t be ridiculous. They escaped the fire when the house collapsed, by the mercy of Lord Omni alone. The collapse opened a hole in the wall and they escaped through that.” He put the feathered stick, the arrow, on the curved wood and pointed it at her. “Your lies aren’t going to save you now. Pfah, but I’ll at least grant you the mercy of speaking some last words.”
Karil was disillusioned. How could a man deny so many truths even though they had been right before him? She found herself unable to speak a word.
“That’s what I thought. Frank, this one’s for you.”
Twang! The arrow, loosened from the bow, pierced Karil’s chest and dug itself deep into her. Whether by mercy or sadism of Omni or simply pure coincidence it missed her vital organs, which would mean a slow death from bleeding out. The hunter kicked her body backwards, off the side of a cliff where he had brought her to. As she rolled down, unable to break her descent, he spat on the ground again, then turned around and left. Only after he had walked a few steps did he realize that he could have cut off her head and claimed those beautiful antlers as a hunting prize. Ah well, he wouldn’t go down that hill to retrieve them now.
Karil’s lifeless body stopped by a small lake. The arrow shaft had broken in half during the fall and the remaining length just barely stuck out of her chest. Her magnificient antlers were sullied with bits of mud and chunks of planks used to build houses. Red blood stained her brown shirt and fur.
If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of the lifeless body of a wolf with antlers on its head laying at the foot of a hill, near a lake. And why would they not stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot? There are no predators to fear.
Who would have thought that its settlers were fated to such a terrible end?
Father Urthney was one of the older people to have inhabited Darkshire, and among the settlers he was the oldest. His old bones had served him well in his younger days, but now they were brittle and tired. Why had the settlers not just taken him along, but welcomed him with open arms when he had followed them? Because he was a priest, a man of the church of Omni, and the people of Darkshire, as many Secondaries, believed in higher powers. After all it was no secret that Omni brought the Primes to the Omniverse. What creature could have the power to give life and bestow such immense powers as a Prime had on others, but a great deity? That was where the faith of the church of Omni stemmed from, and in the Pale Moors faith was a strong pillar that kept the people from falling to despair.
That evening the Father held a sermon, preaching about the sacrifice of Tyrael and the hope that he had given them all by giving himself to the darkness so that the Omniverse may be safe. He held it alone, because the altar boy had fallen ill and was bedridden. The people of Darkshire attended and together they prayed. After the mess they left and the Father went to extinguish the candles and close the doors of the church for the night. But in the dusk’s fading light he failed to notice the single wet leaf on the ground that one of the settlers had brought in. As he climbed the stairs to extinguish the last two candles to the left and right of the central altar, he slid and fell to the ground, his outstretched arm knocked over the candle and it fell onto the white cloth that was draped over the altar. And because Father Urthney hit his head on the stairs and fell unconscious at the foot of the altar there was nobody to stop the flame from spreading and growing.
New Darkshire, praised by its inhabitants to be their second chance granted to them by the merciful lord Omni, would be consumed that night by the fire born from its church. What an irony.
When the flames snuffed out the stars and illuminated the forest with their flickering orange light Karil saw it. She saw how the flames licked the sky, how they emerged from the clearing that the human pack had made by cutting trees. And she knew what it meant.
She had gathered what little remained of her belongings in the burrow near the village, intending on bringing it to her new home along with the rest and never to look back after that, so she was close. The angry, vindictive side of her wanted to go closer and enjoy the spectacle, to see the human pack burn. Had they heeded her warnings they might have survived. Her other side wanted her to help the human pack, for they did not know better and they did not deserve that horrible fate. And so she ran through the forest, dropped on all fours, to the clearing that she had wanted never to set foot on again.
The human pack were screaming, running around, frantically searching for the others. Some were throwing water onto the fires, but it was of little use: the wooden structures had caught fire and the mild winds were spreading the fire faster than a handful of people could extinguish them. A few had realized it and were retrieving what items they could from their homes, or letting the animals out of their stables and pens so that they could run away. Others were trying to get into the burning homes to help others escape.
Karil stopped at the edge of the clearing and closed her eyes. The scents. Like colored vines they filled the air around her, each linked to the human that it belonged to. It was like a giant ball of wool but Karil had no trouble with picking out the scents she was looking for. She forced herself to ignore the strong, stinging smell of fire and focused on the human pack. Then on the pups from yesterday.
There was the boy. She smelled his fear, but he was close to an adult. Perhaps his mother. The girls however… their scents were faint, suffocated by the fire, but they were there. In a house. She opened her eyes again. There was one man trying to rip the door open but it was stuck. The house was burning and would soon crumble. The two pups inside would die a horrible death.
As she sprinted through the crowd few took notice of her. She heard a scream or two but most probably mistook her for one of the dogs. She lined herself up with an unstable wall on the side of the house, away from the view of the man. She charged forward, her teeth clenched, as she drew upon the force of her cervidae heritage. Then she collided with the wall.
The force of her antlers broke the flame-touched wall and she broke through into the flame-filled room. The two girls were huddled up in a corner as far away from the flames as they could, crying their eyes out. The older one had the younger wrapped up in her arms. Fearfully they were looking at the door, listening to the cracking sounds of the sharp item that the man was now using to try and break down the door. Karil remembered that item. It was what they used to cut down trees. But he would not be fast enough. The beams supporting the roof would soon break and everything would collapse. She had no time.
“D-doggy?” a meek voice asked, followed by coughs. The pup were breathing in the black smoke. They had done so for a while now, given no choice. Soon they would pass out. They would not be able to walk, Karil knew.
“Pups no die today… pups not bad, no deserve death”, she said. She stood on her hindlegs and grabbed both girls, one under each arm, then turned around to run back out through the way she had opened.
CRACK! With a horrifyingly loud piercing sound the central beam broke in the middle and its halves dropped down. Karil was weighted down by what she was carrying and was a moment too slow to dodge. One half hit her on the back of her head. Her field of vision exploded with pain and turned red, everything went blurry. A stinging pain formed on the back of her head and moments later against her chin, and she realized that she must have fallen to the ground. From her hazy vision she could see that the collapsing roof had blocked their exit. The way out was no more.
Was this how she would die? Helping out the human pack who had brought nothing but trouble to the forest? Rescuing two of the only three humans that had ever done anything friendly for her?
She refused to believe that. She did not want to.
Her grip around the two girls tightened again and she stood up, shaky on her feet, mobilizing every bit of energy that remained in her body. Though the roof had collapsed it had also created a new opportunity, a way for them to escape, that was riskier than all the others. Like a burning ramp the collapsed roof, proof of its architect’s great craftsmanship, had sunk into the house in large chunks which were quickly burning as the reeds that made it up burnt like tinder. One wrong step would cause her to get her feet stuck and her fur would catch fire. Yet there was one way… the support beams that the roof was placed on, if she could walk over them she would reach the top. It was a daring move, but she had no other choice.
She walked. She balanced herself along the edge. She felt that she would slip and accelerated her steps. Her paws caught pointy splinters but she clenched her teeth and forced herself to ignore the pain. Not now. The fire cleared before them as they arrived on the top point where the house-wall and the collapsed roof formed a triangle with the ground. There Karil jumped as far as she could and landed belly first on the ground with the two girls to her left and right.
She could hear screaming, crying, names being shouted… hers, too. Her energy was gone though, and the smokes she had breathed in were further making her dizzy, along with the throbbing pain on the back of her head. She caught glimpses of the two pups running into the outstretched arms of a human-female. Then things went black. Just before she passed out she felt how she was lifted up and heaved over something soft.
She knew not how long she had been unconscious, when she woke back up. She was still on top of something soft that was bobbing up and down. She felt the breeze of air on her fur. They were moving. Her head still hurt, as did her arms and legs, her hands and her feet. Around her she could see the greens of the forest, bathed in the darkness of the late dusk. So it could not have been long… just as she thought this the bobbing stopped and a pair of strong arms heaved her off the soft surface, then dropped her on the ground. More pain shot through her waist. What was going on? A nudge to her shoulder made her roll onto her back. Her blurred vision slowly cleared up. A human stood there. The hunter-male that she had saved from the Catoblepon long ago.
“Still kickin’?” he asked.
“... yes…” Karil replied. Her voice felt hoarse. Was that because of the smoke she had breathed?
“Good”, said the hunter-male, knelt and leant over her. He did not do anything but Karil saw the burning hatred in his eyes. Whatever he intended on doing, it was not good.
“What… human want… from Karil…?”
“So Karil really is your name, eh?” the man asked. “I thought as much. So tell me, Karil. Are you happy now?”
“...”
“I asked if you’re happy now”, he repeated. “Don’t play weak, I know you can hear me.”
“Karil… not understand…”
“Yeahright”, he scoffed. He took the curved piece of wood off his back. Only now did Karil notice that there was a fine string hanging off one end, which the hunter-male grabbed and attached to the other end of the wood too, so that it was very tense. “Don’t bother denying it. We all know you wanted us gone. We were all afraid of that creature that tamed you, who had you deliver a message, but I believe that there is really no such creature, right? You were the one who made that carving.”
The carving? Oh, yes… the piece of wood from months ago, when she had first told them not to stay. “Karil… wanted humans… out of forest”, she admitted.
“And you warned us, didn’t you. You even set that Kato-thing off on us. But to go that far… to set fire to our entire settlement…” He spat on the ground. “Not even I thought you could go that low, beast.”
Karil blinked, looking puzzled. “Karil… set fire? No… Karil no know how set… fire…”
“Until the bitter end you lie, huh”, the hunter-male said. He took a feathered stick out of his quiver, looked at it, then put it back. He took another, this one with red feathers, and seemed satisfied. The stick’s feathers reeked of human blood. “It’s no use. I’m gonna kill you anyway, you know.” He showed her the red stick. “See this? This was one of Frank’s arrows. I promised him that I’d kill you and marked his arrows red with my blood so that I could tell which ones were his. I promised that it would be his arrow, delivered by my hand, who’d get revenge on you.”
“Karil… no set fire…” she replied. “Karil also… no make Kato-Blepon attack humans… Karil rescue… pups from fire…”
“Pups? You mean children?” the man asked, looking confused.
“Human pups… females…”
“Mei and Alice? The only two girls of New Darkshire, my own two daughters? Don’t be ridiculous. They escaped the fire when the house collapsed, by the mercy of Lord Omni alone. The collapse opened a hole in the wall and they escaped through that.” He put the feathered stick, the arrow, on the curved wood and pointed it at her. “Your lies aren’t going to save you now. Pfah, but I’ll at least grant you the mercy of speaking some last words.”
Karil was disillusioned. How could a man deny so many truths even though they had been right before him? She found herself unable to speak a word.
“That’s what I thought. Frank, this one’s for you.”
Twang! The arrow, loosened from the bow, pierced Karil’s chest and dug itself deep into her. Whether by mercy or sadism of Omni or simply pure coincidence it missed her vital organs, which would mean a slow death from bleeding out. The hunter kicked her body backwards, off the side of a cliff where he had brought her to. As she rolled down, unable to break her descent, he spat on the ground again, then turned around and left. Only after he had walked a few steps did he realize that he could have cut off her head and claimed those beautiful antlers as a hunting prize. Ah well, he wouldn’t go down that hill to retrieve them now.
Karil’s lifeless body stopped by a small lake. The arrow shaft had broken in half during the fall and the remaining length just barely stuck out of her chest. Her magnificient antlers were sullied with bits of mud and chunks of planks used to build houses. Red blood stained her brown shirt and fur.
If someone had wandered the forests of Camelot, and if that someone had left the path and come to the forest a a few miles from the Pale Moors gate, they may have been greeted by the sight of the lifeless body of a wolf with antlers on its head laying at the foot of a hill, near a lake. And why would they not stray from the beaten paths of the forests of Camelot? There are no predators to fear.
Quote:Karil is bleeding out and will die on February 19th unless she gets help.
THE END