17 CHAPTER 17: The Darklands
Deep in the cold and unexplored northern lands strewn with withered bones and stormy winds,
An abandoned castle laid, with bleached colours, bare and dry enough to make anyone's imagination run wild and easily picture the dark things that went on inside even before parts of it, broke down.
Andra was a miner living in the town of Derring*, one of the few towns in the north,
He had stepped out like any other day to go to the mountains where the mines were located to dig for crystallines,
He climbed up regardless of the weather, thankful for the benefit of being born in the north, since the most important benefit was his resistance to the cold,
Normally Frayal, the seventh day of the week was "the day of thanks", a day the people of Derring* set aside to thank the snow mother for their lives in hopes that the weather would always favour them and in exchange, they would be able to find more deposits of Crystalline, an expensive gem that was the foundation which they lived on,
Andra knew he wasn't supposed to go to the mines on such a day being the loyal believer he was,
Yet, he was also in desperate need of money since the taxes the entire Town needed to pay to the Master of the north, "Holank" who was the overseer of all the northern territories, suddenly skyrocketed,
Payment for protection against the unknown evil yet all they ever did was collect more and more money the moment they noticed the prosperity of the town,
"Maybe, I should have listened to Ada, when she warned me not to go," Andra murmured to himself as he recalled the adamant way his wife had stood in front of him, unwilling to allow him leave until he convinced her otherwise which wasn't hard since they were already desperately running out of food for their two children, and especially since they had one more on the way,
He continued steadily on his way and he finally breathed a sigh of relief when he eventually laid eyes on the mine he was heading to,
In an elevated mood, he continued walking on the familiar footpath he had walked on since he became an adult, only for a strong snowy wind to blow and descend from above which was strange since it went against the nature of wind itself,
"Bloody hell!" Andrea fearfully cursed the moment the wind dissipated in the same way it appeared, only for the mine he saw to have disappeared along with it,
Looking around, he saw nothing but an old castle which the people of his town made ghost stories and tales from used for warning young children from ever moving close to it, not to speak of entering past its gates,
With crazed eyes and a heart that wouldn't stop pounding in his chest, Andra turned around running in the opposite direction from the gloomy castle that was in the dark lands at the edge of the northern kingdom,
A split second was enough for him to induce the fact that magic had brought him so far away from home and it would be days before he could get anywhere close to his village without the help of the same magic,
"Snow Mother...Ruler of the north and bringer of storms, I be...beseech you to help me," Andra began praying, murmuring to himself even as he picked up his pace, while waddling through the snow which reached his ankles and seemed to be falling faster by the second,
"I promise to sacrifice my...my...my left arm to you," struggling to come up with a suitable sacrifice that would enable the snow mother to help him,
Two seconds went by with no response as he began to slow them out of exhaustion when he suddenly saw two hooded people appear in the skies above him,
At first, Andra was delighted as his first instinct was to immediately shout for help only for the wind to suddenly blow the dark hoods back, away from their heads exposing the smooth skeletal structure of their faces without blood, tissues or flesh,
"Snow Mother!…," Andra gasped in fear as he suddenly saw his worst nightmares come true,
Lightbulbs sparked in his head as he tried to grasp the fact that the rumours about monsters and ghosts living at the edge of the northern lands to be true,
Thinking of his family and his need to get home, Andra again changed direction the moment he noticed that he could no longer go forward and neither could he turn back,
Diving to the side, seeing the two skeletons dive after him from the corner of his eye, while brandishing swords in each of their hands, Andra pleaded,
"I...ah...I promise to givve you both my aaarm and my unborn child if...if you help me," Andra again prayed, running as fast as he could, following the instructions of the priests who taught that if your prayer wasn't answered then it meant that your sacrifices weren't enough,
A few seconds went by as again Andra waited for his prayers to be answered and for him to be lifted into the sky, or entirely taken back to his home only for none of that to happen,
One second, he was running as fast as he humanly could, the next he was frozen on a single spot, unable to move even his eyelids not to talk of him dodging the sword that was suddenly plunged into his neck, as he helplessly stood and watched it happen,
Andra's death was mild as even his blood didn't splutter since, without the deadly wound to his neck, Andra's heart had already been frozen solid, unable to pump blood to his body any longer.
