The grass sways as the wind blows through the narrow valley. The mountains direct the wind and keep it from escaping. The sun shines high, shining’s its warmth on everything. The very source of life; the rise of the sun brings life comes back in the valley.
Where there is light there is darkness… Within the valley, the wind carries with it the scent of fresh blood; blood spilt during the crack of dawn. The body lays dying or dead, only the soul may tell. Blood pours out in a steady stream from where the cruel bullet hit its prey.
A boy, no more than 17, walks to his kill, a kill he committed without a second thought, as though it were the most natural thing he could possibly have done. It was not the first kill he had made, and it would not be the last.
The body of the winter fox, now with its snow white pelt tainted with the nectar of life, lay motionless on the muddy ground as the boy walked closer and inspected his kill.
A hunting trip was what his father called it, a trip to relax the mind and enjoy nature. But did taking the life of another truly give him relaxation?
The boy was not ordinary, all who knew him could tell. He kept to himself, doing what needed to be done, and did it well. There was nothing he could not do; hailed a genius the boy lived his mundane life without excitement. A life lived with the praises of others, praises that start of as sweet but turn into the most bitter of poisons for the mind.
The boy walked to his kill, inspecting where the bullet entered and exited the poor animal. He should feel sadness, distraught, queasiness, unhappiness, or maybe joy. But the boy felt nothing. Taking the life of another being, to him was the same as walking in a park. It did not mean anything to him, and activity that was but a forced action placed upon him by his father. An action which allowed him to waste away another day of the mundane life he lived.
The kill, which for all intents and purposes should be dead, with a bullet stuck in its body and blood flowing form its wound… moved. Something that should not have happened indeed happened. The boy passed it off as nothing but one of those twitches that corpses are told to have, nothing more than the muscles moving one last time by an impulse from the brain.
It should have ended there, with the boy taking the kill and returning to their family’s cottage down by the riverside. The world should have continued with its mundane functions, continued on as the boring place it was… But fate had something else in store for him.
The earth shook, the sky cracked, and the rocks fell. It seemed like the end of the world for the boy, something which should never have happened.
Then it was still again, as if nothing had happened. The birds continued to chirp, the sun rose from the east, and the smell of fresh blood once again entered his nostrils.
That was strange, the boy thought, he had never had a moment like that before. A boy hailed as a genius, a boy who was seen as the embodiment of perfectness, should not have even for a moment be hallucinating.
The boy looked around once again, but the world stood still and continued on as if nothing had happened in the first place. The boy vowed that that moment would forever be kept hidden; a moment which could be his weakness could not be known by anyone. The embodiment of perfectness could not be known of having mental hallucinations.
Once again it should have ended there; the world should have resumed the way it was in its mundane and routine way. The moment completely sealed away in the memory of the boy, the world should have resumed.
But the fates would not have it.
The ground ripped apart from right under the boy’s feet. A surface of dirt and rock split apart right from under him as if hoping to devour his very existence.
“Is this the end, anti-climactic I might say, dying from falling into a crevice in the ground? I wonder if anyone will find my body,” thought the boy. There was no struggle, call for help, or any desperate attempt to preserve the life of one. The boy simply waited for it to all end. The life which had been nothing but mundane and routine had finally come to an end.
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“Will I be able to get away from it all now? Can I finally ‘relax’?”
The most unexpected of event happened, or could it be said to be predictable? With a THUD his body hit solid ground. But it did not hurt, no, what should have been pain was instead the feeling of nothingness. “So this is how I go eh? Very well, anywhere is better that that shithole of a place I called my world…”
Darkness took him, took his consciousness, and took his mind. Was it truly the death and eternal rest he was expecting?
But once again, the fates would not allow it. There glowed a circle with unintelligible characters under the body of the boy. For five minutes the circle glowed, and slowly the glow enveloped the boy.
The next instance, it was gone, and with it the body of the boy. The body which was neither dead nor alive, but in a form of stasis, was transported by the power of the circle.
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Out in the wilderness there laid a foundation. Constructed of stone, there lay a circular foundation of stone interlaced with white marble. Surrounding the foundation were seven massive pillars, each representing and transferring the power of the seen elements into the stone and marble circle.
Within the confines of the pillars, surrounding the circle stood seven hooded figures. Figures which chanted words with the utmost concentration knowing that a single mishap could spell the doom for all that were present in an area of miles around.
Time passed, seconds which became minutes, minutes which became hours, hours which became days, all throughout the chanting did not cease. None dared to stop at such a critical juncture.
It had been seven days, and on this day the chanting finally stopped. A magic circle formed in the circle of stone and white marble. A magic circle formed with the unlimited power provided by the pillars of the elements. The circle grew in size and filled with intricate designs as it needed in order to fulfill its purpose.
Minutes passed as the hooded figures waited patiently yet anxiously for the circle to finish. When it finally did, it started to glow. A blood red glow came out from the magic circle, indicating the magic had located a good candidate.
The glow grew in brightness, to the level that all present had to avert their eyes, even the hooded figures dare not look at this light. Seconds passed and all was normal once again.
The magic circle now gone, and in its place…..
A boy, a boy of an age that could not have been any more than 17. The figures all around looked at one another with delight. They had been successful. They had succeeded in summoning the candidate. Now they must access the boy. But the boy slept, more as if he were unconscious. The hooded figures dare not take chances with this most dangerous of rituals and looked at the boy with uncertainty.
One of them stepped forward, and with a wave of their hand, levitated the boy into the air. And as one they all disappeared from the setting. Making it seem as though there had been nothing there in the first place.
They would nurse the boy; wait till he awakens before they could continue on with what they had planned. There were no second chances. There was no room for error, the boy must be kept safe even if every other life needs to be sacrificed.
Like this days passed, the boy would not move, his body showed sign of lack of nutrients and water, even with one of them always trying to feed him and make him drink. The boy was unconscious after all
Days passed and all became anxious. Had something gone wrong? Had someone messed up? The sacrifice to get here was too great; a mistake could not be tolerated. The perpetrator would be punished with death. But that was for later, now they waited, and waited.
A month had passed with nothing changing, many of the seven had given up hope, the boy must be dead they thought. The rest were starting to believe the same. But the most unexpected of events happened.
The boy opened his eyes… “I am not dead?...”