I wake up from my nap and see a beautiful blue sky. There’s not many clouds and I can see the moon just manifesting. I reach up with my right hand and notice something, I have a little insect on my hand, it’s staring back at me. I flick my wrist and the bug flies off, then I use my arms to support myself off of the comfortable grass.
“Ay, you awake now?” I hear a voice come from my right and instinctively turn my head. It’s my friend Amaranth, she’s looking at me with an annoyed look, but it’s nothing new, she always looks agitated. I get off the ground and stretch, that was a nice nap. I’m still tired as hell though.
“Did you find out what’s wrong with your gun?”
“Yep!” She replies ecstatically
“Ready to hit the road then? I’m sick of the lack of shade.”
Amaranth nods and we start walking through the grassy green hills.
“Me too. I hate how hot and muggy it is.” She whines
“Remember, the nearest town is maybe half a day away. We might be able to make it there by the end of the day. maybe, just maybe.” I respond. She looks at me with puppy eyes.
“Maybe if you hadn’t spent all our money on that useless dagger.. I bet it won’t even pierce a boar's skin.” She lets out a sigh and responds; “fine, I’m sorry for spending our gold on an awesome dagger than on a horse. Is that what you wanted?”
Whatever. I let out a sigh and told her;
“Just keep your eyes on the lookout for anything.” After what felt like forever under the blazing sun, we spotted a small town. I say out loud; “Hey Am, you see that? There might be an inn there.”
“Augh, finally. I can rest.” She remarks. By the time we got there the sun was setting over the distant trees and mountains far off. We roam the streets of the small village, and saw a sign mentioning this place as“Ashfall”. We stepped into the inn/tavern and immediately smell smoke and alcohol.
“Oi, you new around here?” Someone says from my right, I turn my head and see a burly man with a bushy beard. His breath reeks of booze.
“No.” I lie. I’ve never been here but I don’t want anyone else knowing that. Amaranth immediately knows what’s going on and helps me out.
“Yeah, we’re just getting a room for tonight” She turns to the bartender and says; “Two drinks for me and my friend here, and a room.”
“Sure thing.” The bartender replies with a smirk. I take a look around, there’s a lot of people in here; but it’s just the usual tavern, nothing special. But I do hear something unusual coming from someone whose face I can’t see.
“Have you ever heard of the Dream Reaper?” That sparks my curiosity and I listen in.
“I think so.” Another person utters. “Well it’s a being that people sometimes see in their dreams, they wake up screaming. Some tales even say it references something bad. They also say it’s very tall, like the size of a Wendigo, and it has a serrated scythe with a scarlet edge. Thinking about it creeps me the hell out.”
Huh? Why haven’t I heard about this before? I ponder. The bartender snaps me out of my haze. “Alright, your room is 2-8, single bed though. And here are your drinks.”
He hands me and Amaranth a tall mug, I take a drink of it and grimace; it’s really strong. I tell my friend;
“I’m gonna go to our room and check it out, see if you can secure some work for us” She nods. I head up the stairs to the second floor where our room is. I use the key he gave me and step inside, it has the usual inn stuff; bed, desk, washroom and closet. I set my pack down and started setting the contents on the bed, everything was accounted for. I hear the door open and I tense up and flick my head towards the door, feeling relief as it was just Am. I ask her;
“Find anything?”
She nods, then tells me; “Yeah, we have to help someone cut their grass outside of town.”
Our job was to kill people for money, we always had to get our hands dirty. It was also a forbidden job, if the guards or anyone found out we would be publicly executed. We learned to communicate and understand each other through code.
“What time?” I ask her.
“Anytime before 7pm. We get paid extra the earlier we get it done.” She says with a smirk, then adds; “I get the bed tonight too, you can sleep on the floor this time.” I shrug and take out the extra blankets from the closet. Then I lay down and stare at the ceiling, trying to notice all of the small inconsistencies to bore myself to sleep. I yawn, then yawn again, my eyes slowly closing by themselves.
The next thing I see after the darkness of my closed eyes is a dimly lit room. With a single candle illuminating it in the centre. My head is static, stuck forever forward, I start to inch towards the candle, but I can’t move, my legs aren’t in my control anymore. I see shadows dancing in the dark spots, barely illuminated by the candle, and I feel a pair of eyes watching me from somewhere. As I get close to the candle I see that it’s not melting, a static candle, and the flame isn’t moving either. I try to move my arms, but no luck, I’m in a fixed state. Then the room starts to brighten, the candle getting more and more powerful too. Then it gets light out and I see what room I was in, something that closely resembled the inn room I was in before I passed out. With all of the furniture removed, my body moves towards the door. As I’m reaching the door it opens to a foggy sprawling field. Without my mind telling me to, I slowly start moving through the field, I can feel all kinds of eyes on me. It’s ominous and blood chilling. As I was moving through the field I saw a shadow dart through the dense fog, I was on guard, thinking of what that could possibly be. I blinked and at once a large silhouette appeared before me. I stared in disbelief and then I saw something that frightened me to my very core.
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A giant scythe appeared from behind the massive figure, it was about as big as me, with a scarlet tipped edge and a talon gripping it. And in one swift motion I saw as he swung it down towards me. Every molecule in my body was jumping and I wanted to scream so bad. I saw it come within an inch of my face, I could see the etching of the metal. And I looked into the black silhouette, and the nothingness stared straight back at me, putting fear deep into my soul. It’s gaze was cold enough to freeze flame. I close my eyes and try to wish it away, I can’t hear anything besides the rolling fog, it doesn’t breathe. The next time I open my eyes I see nothing, a black abyss. I can feel movement, and it’s picking up. Soon I’m moving at tens of steps per second. I’m on the verge of falling over, then I see a white silhouette, and it looks like it’s swinging something towards my skull..
I wake up in a fierce cold sweat. I’m still in the inn, and it’s early morning time. I look over at Am and she’s still in a deep sleep. I get up and put on my gear and pack, then I head outside to relieve myself after what occurred last night. It’s foggy outside today, just like it was in the dream. I’m immediately put on edge by that. I get done and walk back inside, everyone must still be sleeping because the inn is dead silent, even the bartender is gone. Although I see one person in the bar, sitting lonesomely. I walk by him and he hears me, then he turns his head and stares at me, examining me slowly. I stare back and notice that he has a complete face mask on, his face isn’t visible at all. Then he looks away, I go back to our room, and once I open the door Amaranth greets me;
“Where’d you go off to?”
“Nowhere special, just outside quick. What time do you think it is?” I ask her. She stops and thinks for a second, then says
“I think it’s 6 in the morning? I haven’t seen a clock around anywhere, so.”
“Guess we have a little time before 7pm, let’s take in this small town.” I respond. She nods and we start to get ready.
“You got your soap stick?” I ask Amaranth. She pulls it out of her bag. “Okay good, we might have to stop by a river or something. I smell horrible.” I mention. She doesn’t say it outloud but her face tells me that she agrees. We finally leave our room and go down to the first floor, by that time it’s got a few people and the lonesome guy is gone. We wave to the bartender and thank him for letting us stay the night.
“Hey Am, how many shards do we have? I know the room and drinks weren’t that expensive. I just want to stop relying on negotiating.” I ask. “Hmm, I think 43 in total, depends on how many you have. What are you planning to spend them on?” She replies. I shrug, I didn’t have anything in mind. I just assumed she wanted something, she always wants ‘souvenirs’. The town itself was small, but very compact. Houses and stores all surrounding the main square, delicious food smells coming from every direction. it would be easy to get lost here.. I thought. There were many little trinket stores that you could look in for hours, by the time we finished looking around it had gotten to be around midday. We decided to go check out the house where we had to do our job, Amaranth looked at where the guy circled on the map, and we started walking out of town. It was a medium distance away from the main town. When we got there we noticed how quaint it was, just a little three room place with a carriage in the front. Probably for trading.. I assumed. We looked inside to see no one, a strange thing to be sure, I expected a wife and kids to be back home.
“He might be alone, this should be easier for us then.” I tell Amaranth. She let out a noise to indicate that she agreed with me. We stayed silent in the bushes and kept watching to see if anyone was in there, after 10 minutes of silent waiting we got impatient and decided to check out the inside of the building. As we got closer to the door we saw something that peaked our interest. The door looked like it had gotten kicked, there were splinters dotting the stone path that led to the door. Strange enough though, the door was unlocked, and after opening it, that’s when we smelt it; the familiar metallic scent of blood.
We looked at eachother and silently agreed that we could both smell it. I motioned Amaranth to get our bigger armaments from where we hid in the bushes. And I slowly opened the door, revealing nothing but a normal house, no indications of a struggle or blood to be seen. That sparked my interest, so I waited for Am incase something bigger was lurking here. The smell of blood was stronger inside of the house, I was sure that something was here, and it might be eating our target. After another minute Amaranth met me outside and silently we took our weapons out of our sheaths and walked into the house. Once we were both in we checked one of the two remaining rooms in the house, a simple bed with a rifle on the wall. Then we braced ourselves and opened the remaining door. And immediately the smell of blood got fiercely stronger. And we saw what the blood was coming from, a young man who matched our description. What frightened me though was that the blood was still red, whatever killed him is still lurking around, and what makes it worse is that the window was completely cracked, leaving shards of glass on the edges of the window; as well as contorting the wood surrounding the window. We didn’t see this side of the house before. We prepared to leave but heard a noise and readied ourselves quickly. It sounded like something snapping, we watched all the windows as we walked through the house. Then Amaranth screamed and I turned towards her, I saw what scared her; an enormous mantis bigger than the carriage outside. Looking through the window, at once I saw it’s claw smash the glass and warp the wood frame around it, just like in the room. I saw Amaranth stab it and it recoiled back outside. Before we both ran outside I ran and grabbed the rifle.
“Run into the bushes, I’ll distract it!!” I yelled at Amaranth. She nodded and ran for the bushes where our gear was. I shot the rifle at the ginormous beast and it turned it’s head towards me. Then it turned its body and began to scuttle towards me, at once I saw it’s claw swipe towards me and I dodged it, cutting it’s claw with my blade as I dodged. It drew back it’s injured arm and tried again with it’s other claw, this time cutting me deep on the left arm. I shrieked in pain as I looked at the giant insect, It had blood dripping down it’s claw where it sliced me. It started towards me and I kept it’s pace, getting farther and farther away from Amaranth. I started to circle back around towards her and then I saw a bolt hit the mantis. But it must have seen her fire it, as it only hit it’s arm. My ears were ringing from the small explosion, I steadied myself, looking right at the giant bug. I heard the next bolt shoot out of the small ballista, it flew right past the mantises head, nearly missing it’s mandibles. It started walking towards me and I motioned for Am to fire. But nothing came, instead I saw a silhouette of a person behind the massive bug. I know that Amaranth saw it too, that’s probably why she hesitated to fire.
“Hey watch yourself! We have bolts and don’t want you to get caught in it!!” I yelled at the mysterious figure. But he ignored me and kept walking towards the creature. Whatever.. I thought and motioned for Amaranth to fire, and I heard the bolt whiz through the air and hit the bug. This time I heard it roar, even through my damaged hearing. Then I saw a blinding flash of light over the mantis, and then as fast as it appeared it disappeared; and the mantis was laying on the ground, presumably dead. My mind was trying to comprehend what just happened. The silhouette was now visible, a girl with long flowing hair. She looked at me and Amaranth and then started walking towards us..