Prologue; No More Fear

Blun's heart rode with a strong, crushing sensation of fear. His head pounded as he steadily scaled the deep pit. The closer he got to reaching the outside, the more his body heated up. 

His fingers wrapped themselves around the rusted metal bars of the ladder, over and over. He pushed himself up with his bruised ankles, aching them more every bit he moved. 

He heard something up there. A screeching. It was the sound of an army of men being slaughtered, the sound of a forest being exterminated. It was not a sound Blun should hear, 't was not a sound anyone should hear in an empty place like this. 

He took another step up the ladder. 

A maniacal laughter. 

He took another step. 

The sound of bones being pulverized.

Another step. 

Sounds of iron meeting stone. 

Another step. 

The sound of something being ripped from the ground and thrown, coming down in a large thud that shook the ladder. 

"GERDRICK!" Blun shouted as he scaled the ladder. 

"GERDRICK!" He screamed desperately. 

A thin beam of moonlight hit Blun's eye, he had reached the outside. He ran both his hands across the wrinkles and scars of his face as he let his eyes adjust to the light. 

As the servant climbed out of the grave the pit lay under, he felt a spark of relief come over him. 

But then he saw the corpses. Men, Koborn, Women, Children. The relief was instantly gone. Everywhere Blun looked he saw their rotting cadavers, inside the graveyard and out. 

But no Gerdrick. 

The man's mind was drowning in fear, a fear no man should ever experience. 

The trees rustled. "Who goes there?" He called out. As the words left his mouth he felt the uncertainty in his challenge. He stopped moving; he listened; he watched. 

The woods gave no response, not even the howling of a wolf, nor the hoot of an owl. No sound other than the soft rustling among the leaf bed. 

Blun saw movement in the corner of his eye. Dark shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, catching a glimpse of a dark shadow penetrating the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches screeched in the wind, scratching at one another with their wooden fingers. Blun opened his mouth to call for help, but he knew no one would come. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it was just a bear, the moonlight reflecting on its fur, some trick of the night. What had he seen after all?

"Blun, come quick! They're after me!" Whispers of Gerdrick's voice sounded deep into the woods. His head instantly spun around to the direction of the sound, charging at it. 

He felt fear. He felt anger. He felt a care for his brother. 

His ankles ached as he plunged them deep into the bodies with every step, leaping over the gate. "Gerdrick!" He called.

Blun ran into the forest, no worry of anything but saving his brother. He huffed. Branches pierced his clothes, his skin. 

"Gerdrick! Brother…" He heaved the air from his lungs. "I'm… Here…" 

Something happened. Something disappeared. The wounds on his skin were still there… Yet Blun felt nothing. He rubbed his palm on his neck, it was drenched in sweat. But Blun felt no cold, nor heat. 

The strain on his ankles was gone, the ache on his wrists too. The man felt nothing. 

A shadow emerged from the dark leaf bed above him. Dropping down before him, stood against Blun. Tall, it was, yet still resembling something of a human. His eyes had turned dark, shooting out ebony roots. His right arm and leg had been completely decolourized, bearing no clothing nor a shade other than black. Half his face had been coated in an oily black substance as well. 

But Blun recognized something in it. It was Gerdrick. He wept a single tear. "Brother…" The creature wept, laying his hand on Blun's shoulder. 

"Br-" Blun's lungs were squashed as the creature tore off his shoulder, dropping his arm to the ground. Blun screamed, yet felt nothing still. "What are you doing!" His voice cracked like a boy's. 

He stumbled back, tripping over the corpse of a man. 

The creature slid forward in silent feet. His arm had formed into a sharp blade. It looked sharp like Blun had never seen, no human smith could craft anything like that. There was a faint red shimmer to the blade's edge, glowing as it was soon to be fed. 

"Don't do this," Blun firmly gripped Berard's blade and held it before his torso. "I will cut you down." Blun felt nothing but one thing. No empathy, no pain, no agony, no nothing. The only sense in his body was that of fear. 

A faint smile appeared on the face of the creature that Gerdrick had become. Blun wrapped his fingers around the blade's handle firmer, ready to parry. His hands trembled from the weight of the blade, from the fear. Yet in that moment, Blun thought, he was a servant no longer, he was a Ravendal Brother. 

The creature halted. Blun saw its eyes; empty, nothing within them but void, darker and deeper than any human's eyes. They had focussed on the longsword raised in front of him. 

For a heartbeat he dared to hope. 

The dark blade cut through the air. 

Blun met it with steel, yet it was of no use. The blade slid through that of Blun's, cutting through the flesh and bone on his right leg and his blade in one swing. 

He wanted to cry in pain, but he felt nothing. His arm and leg were gone, and his only hope of survival had been split in half. The sword clanged as it dropped to the ground.

Blun had accepted his fate. 

…

…

…

"Go." Gerdrick called. 

Blun's eyes shot open. The creature stepped back, wriggling around in pain. It ran towards Blun. Then it stepped back, falling to the ground. "Kill me," Gerdrick's voice came from the creature. "Kill it." 

Blun reached for the blade with his remaining arm and crawled over to the being. He rose his blade high above him, shivering under fear, before plunging it down into the being. 

It lay in a fetus, balled up. The blade had pierced its heart, and slowly the dark covering on Gerdrick's body disappeared. Blun crawled over to a tree stump near the body, resting backside against it. 

As the body decayed, his pain returned. It was grueling. The pain of an arm and a leg being ripped off his body. He felt all the pain in one moment, wreathing with pain and fear as he saw the body of his dead brother. 

The man was ready to die, but he saw something. The dark essence stored on Gerdrick's body slowly formed into a gray… something. 

It was the sigil. As Blun wriggled towards it, he heard the voice of a woman. 

"Thorley!" She wept. "Víti!" He screamed. 

The young Lord's wife ran through the branches to his voice. 

"No… This can't be…" She fell to the ground. Gerdrick's body lay face down in the dirt, beside a wounded Blun. "My love." He whispered. 

"No," The woman stood back up, pulling her white hair with realization. "You didn't." 

"I can expl-" Before he could push anything more out of his rotten lungs, the Lord's wife stuck a peeling knife through his stomach. 

One of the stones he held from the blade fell from his nerveless fingers. He closed his eyes to pray. Soft elegant hands brushed his face, all the while sinking the blade deeper into his stomach. 

"My," He coughed. "My love."