Ch13. Blood and darkness

"Sorry Run-run." Ruun heard behind him, as the woman appeared behind him, as if out of thin air.

But Ruun didn't flinch. He, however, summoned a fine crafted dagger, and raised his hand towards the back of his neck in a fluid and barely visible movement.

"You appear behind my back like this one more time, and I won't let it slide."

The woman pouted her lips and rolled her eyes.

"Can't you be less boring? I was just trying to hug my future husband!" She said, swiftly turning towards Ruun's front.

The woman was really beautiful, with blood-red lips, long, white, curly hair, bright green eyes, and full of curves.

Ruun, however, stepped back from her, yawning.

"Don't come at me with that bullshit of marriage again. You seem to have forgotten what the stories told, about when a human and an elf created a bond and desired to live together."

"Why you always have to come up with those tragedy stories, Run-run? Of course I know. I was there, remember?"

Ruun rolled his eyes, displeased to be listening to the woman's talk.

"How about you stop calling me that, too? And one thing more, since you're the only one allowed to teleport into Inthyan territory, how about taking me there? I don't want to walk anymore for today, Mirya..."

The woman, Mirya, snorted at Ruun and shook her hair.

After rolling her eyes and accepting the defeat, she took Ruun's hand, and prepared to teleport.

"Came to see your children?"

"Yes, and they're not my children, for crying out loud..."

"Hum, anyway, you know one day you'll be mine." Mirya winked at Ruun, as light surrounded them.

And the next instant, they were in front of the Inthyan Academy.

It was a majestic building, a castle-like structure that merged itself with the trees around, but Ruun didn't pay attention to the details.

He just let go of Mirya's hand, and stepped forward.

"Thank you for the ride, Mirya, now I gotta get going."

"But you will leave a defenseless young lady out there? Alone?"

Ruun rolled his eyes and kept walking.

"I'm not leaving a 'defenseless lady' to her own devices. I'm leaving the director of the Inthyan Academy do her job." He smirked.

Mirya rolled her eyes in frustration.

"One day, you 'will' spend the day with me, I promise you!"

Ruun raised his hand, waving goodbye at Mirya without turning back.

"Don't make promises you can't keep." And he kept walking towards the entrance of the academy.

***

The cloaked man left the mausoleum wearing the ring, and when he got through the door, the zombies and skeletons all knelt before him.

The sky was getting dark, and black clouds were circling above the graveyard.

"Now, my children, let's go home. It's time we call upon them, to finally eradicate this land from Earth!"

The dead followed him, all of them turning to ash, just the same as him, and floating with the wind, towards Sylas' house. And as they arrived, Sylas screeched in fear, curling up in a ball, as the man materialized himself along with his zombies and skeletons.

"Th-the m-m-mm-magic circle is r-r-ready, master..." Sylas announced, showing the picturesque circle drawn onto the wooden floor.

Sylas didn't know what the circle was for, but he was curious about it, with all the strange glyphs that he had to draw in it.

"Good... Very good. Now, I need something from you, little Sylas."

The little ratty man flinched, but had to retort.

"W-what i-is it... M-master?"

The man walked towards Sylas, slowly, and when he got close enough, the man drew a knife from a sheath he carried inside his cloak, fast as lightning, and slit Sylas' throat.

"Your blood."

Sylas dropped dead in front of the man, and the blood spilling from the cut, began to slowly slide towards the magic circle.

It started to paint all the lines and glyphs, shining in a dark red light that emanated from Sylas' blood.

The man, then, began chanting something in an unrecognizable language, his body shaking and twitching as if he was having a seizure.

And the more he chanted, the darker the sky would get, and the more the black clouds seemed to gather over the Alurian skies.

Thunder rumbled and it seemed like a storm was approaching.

And the man kept chanting, his voice rising higher and higher over the wild winds that started to blow.

***

Revan and his group of heroes didn't know how to spread the word about them being wrong about Ruun, and being manipulated by the Great Constellation into believing that Ruun was the greatest villain ever, so they just sat down on the corner of a tavern, thinking.

Gorkas, however, was standing, anxious.

"Gorkas, will you 'please' sit down for once?" A hero with glasses and a bowl cut said.

"I don't know why you guys want to hide your asses here, when Ruun told us we have work to do... And I'm not sitting the fuck down, 'Gart'!"

Gorkas put so much emphasis in the hero's name, that all of them widened their eyes towards him.

"Shut your trap, Gorkas!" Revan squinted his eyes. "What do you think will happen to us, once we go out and tell the people that we fucked up?"

Gorkas just stared at his leader.

"What? Do you really intend to go out there, and throw our reputation through the 'mud'?"

The other heroes nodded towards Revan.

"And who can guarantee that that smug Ruun really is the good guy of the story? He might as well have told us what we needed to hear, so he could kill the Constellation more easily and get away with it." Gart adjusted his glasses as he spoke.

"You're a bunch of filthy scumbags, I'm out of here!" Gorkas announced, turning around to leave.

"No, you're not."

Revan got up from his place, and held Gorkas' shoulder, holding the hilt of his sword with the other hand.

"You're not trying to pick a fight with me, are you, 'leader'?" Gorkas grinned for the first time.

He was the biggest of them all, with short, black hair, and a scar across his lip.

His tan skin only helped his figure look more impressive, and his dark, almost black eyes, made his glare as ferocious as a predator's.

And when he turned to face Revan, he glared into his leader's eyes.

"You..."

But Gorkas couldn't speak anything more, too surprised by the sight of all his so-called friends standing up and facing him with anger in their eyes.

"If you don't want to get hurt, I'd suggest you sit. The fuck. Down." Revan warned.

But before fight could break out, the tavern keeper got in in a rush, panting heavily.

"THE SKY! THE SKY IS SH-SHATTERING!"