The smell

Cael, Hanna and Remm continued their journey to the north. They still could not shake the ordeal off their mind which they had with Mezzel. Even with the light sources, they felt like sitting ducks.

One thought were occurring in their minds, what if someone as powerful being like Mezzel were to come in their path... What then?

''I'm scared to continue our journey, i can't help thinking if someone as powerful being as Mezzel were to come in our path... We were lucky because Mezzel needed something, but how about the next one? What prevents the next one from killing us?'' Hanna said to end the silence.

''I'm not that concerned about beings of darkness anymore.'' Cael answered with a smile.

Hanna and Remm looked at each other thinking if Cael had lost his mind?

Cael pulled piece of fabric out of his pocket and unwrapped it in front of Remm and Hanna. When he removed the fabric, bright light illuminated the whole area around them.

''This was the stone that emitted all that light inside the temple'' Cael said.

''Even someone as powerful as Mezzel were powerless against the light emitted from this small stone.'' Cael added.

''Why have you been hiding it in your pocket all this time? With this, our journey will become easy one!'' Remm asked.

Cael had a troubled look on his face. ''The moment i pulled this stone from the altar, the light has become more dim. I'm afraid the light from this stone keeps getting dimmer and dimmer.''

Hannah took the stone and the piece of fabric from Caels hand and wrapped it back inside the fabric. ''In that case, we only use it if the situation requires it. How about the other stone you got from Mezzel, is it similar to this one?'' Hanna asked.

Cael pulled the other stone from his pocket and then he took the pouch of stones from his backpack and started to compare the stones to each other. ''Mezzel said that this larger stone is a star stone, these smaller ones are similar but are black. While the light stone is bright white. To me these stones look regular, well polished regular stones.''

Remm and Hanna looked carefully at the stones in Caels hands. ''I remember Kahim mentioning something about Sinirizi monks and their magical abilities, these might be some type of runes you need to activate with a spell or something.'' Remm wondered while inspecting one of the smaller black stones.

''Magic? Are you serious? These stones are then useless to us, everyone knows that humanity lost the ability to use magic when darkness emerged from the depths of void.'' Cael said with a disappointed face while shoveling the stones back to backpack.

''Let's continue moving, at this rate we never make it to the kingdom of Hymn.'' He added.

While moving trough the darkness a weird smell started to linger around their noses, the smell got stronger with each step they took. Smell started to get so bad that they had to cover their noses and breath trough their mouth.

''I don't know where we ventured into, but i want to get far away from this place. The rotten stench is so strong that i have started to taste it in my mouth.'' Hanna said while holding hand in her mouth to prevent herself from puking.

''This is nothing, i have smelled far worse smells, like that one time...'' Cael tried to say while ended up puking. ''Oh god, i accidentally breathed trough my nose... This smell is far worse than anything i have ever smelled before.''

After few more steps a sizzling sound started to arise. They saw countless of dead beings of darkness laying dead on the ground, rotting away. When their light from lanterns hit these dead bodies, the bodies started to melt right away and sounds of splashes followed after that.

''This area looks like a war zone, what in the world happened here?'' Remm asked.

Cael was running around the area with his lantern vaporizing the bodies of dead beings.

''Begone! Begone foul smell!'' He yelled.

Suddenly Cael stopped yelling and went silent, this made Hanna and Remm nervous if something had happened to him.

''Cael, are you okay?'' They asked.

There was a moment of silence before they heard a reply.

''Umm guys, there is something you should come and see.''

Remm and Hanna looked at each other thinking what was it this time and they ran to where Cael was. Cael was squatting and in front of Cael was a dead being of darkness.

''What is it?'' They asked from Cael.

''Look, this being does not vaporize even if i put the light right in front of it.'' Cael answered.

''That is not possible, beings in Dark World cannot stand light.'' Remm said while pushing Cael to the side and trying to make the body vaporize. Nothing happened, the dead body was unaffected by the light. They looked at each other and the body laying in front of them that was unaffected by the light. ''This is bad... If beings of darkness starts to be immune to the effects of light, it could lead to the extinction of human kind!'' Remm said.

''Relax, we vaporized hundreds of beings in this battlefield... This one seems to be the only unique one. Also the beings avoids light no matter what, even if they were immune, they would not know that.'' Cael assured.

''We better get the hell out of here, there might be some beings still lurking around here and we simply cannot handle beings that are immune to the light. Let's just hope that we do not encounter one of these things.'' Remm said.

They left the area and continued their journey towards north. Hanna was the only one to look back, she could not shake the feeling that something bad might happen.

After a half day trip trough the forest, they arrived to a ruins of an old castle where they decided to rest for the night. Cael leaned towards one of the crumbled walls and pulled the book from his backpack which he found inside the temple earlier. He started reading it just to find out that he does not understand a word that was written inside the book. However he understood that it had something to do with the stones as there was pictures of different kind of stones. As he was reading trough the book, he stumbled upon a picture which had a huge beautiful white rock and inside that rock was drawn black fog.

''Hey, come look at this picture and tell me what you think about it.'' Cael told to Remm and Hanna.

They observed the picture. ''You think that rock has something to do with ending the darkness?'' Remm asked Cael.

''Mezzel said something about being 1 step closer to end the darkness. What if that rock is the container of darkness and it's shattered? And the stone i got from him is actually a piece of this rock in this picture?'' Cael was guessing.

''What else does the book say?'' Hanna asked.

''Well, i don't know what kind of language this is so i can't read it. We can only guess... But one thing is for sure, this book is definitely holding the key to end the darkness.'' Cael said.