The Bard of Faith Part 5

“I hate the rain,” Ariana shouted over the thunderstorm.

                “I know,” Raven shouted back at her wishing there somewhere they could hide from the storm, but they were long on the road, and there was nowhere for them to go. They had to beat out the rain there was nothing else to do.

                Lacey stayed near them hiding her face under her hood against the rain, but she felt something dark moving after them. She came moving closer to them, and Raven was quickly noticing.

                “What is wrong?” Raven asked.

                “I don’t know,” The Bard said, “but can’t you feel it?”

                Raven glanced out over the darkness of the forest feeling the same kind of evil moving toward them. He stared hard trying to find the eyes on them, but the eyes were hidden too well for him to see them.

                “It better not be magic,” Ariana yelled.

                Raven stopped making the other two do the same.

                “It’s magic, isn’t?” Ariana moaned.

                The Knight dropped down from the war buck pulling his sword free waiting for something to attack them. The other two quickly followed him letting his weapons out as well as scanning the night. Everything came still expect for the following rain, they all stood their ground waiting to see what would come from the cloak of darkness around them.

                Suddenly, like the creaking thunder, something moved in the dark. Their ears followed the sound, but their eyes didn’t move to worry it was a trick, to worry it was a skillful diversion by cutthroats or assassins. The sound broke again over the rain against Raven’s armor, but this time it was on the opposite side of the woods. It was a trick or a spell design to keep them guessing and it was a game Raven wasn’t going to play.

                “This isn’t right,” his father soul whispered from the steel of the perfect blade.

                The rain poured on to them not just soaking their cloaks and armor but drenching them in utter fear. All their fur stood up on edge with the sounds going around them like death taking him on them with his bow. The wings of the Bat known to all as the herald of the archer of death flew overhead. Their hearts ducked under the flight of their ends, and everything seems only to grow darker in the night.

                Eyes grew on them, not just the pair before but many eyes watched them. Out of the shadows of the dark, the feeling of thousands of bat eyes filled their bones with all the horror of a demon dreaming. They shutter under the weight of the eyes, but they were still unseen to them.

                Something dark filled the cries of the dead ripped from the world of the living through means only fitting a servant of Hell stepped from the woods. At first, was nothing more than the dark shape as someone had drop ink into the rain storm but as it moved the ink, blacker than the night around it, grew in from. The squirrel stood in front of them with a cloak hiding its face, but the monster had its eyes on them.

                Raven found everything in his soul, all the bravery of a true Knight, and stepped forward under the weight of the despair of this gaze. Lacey and Ariana moved in behind him, but they soon found themselves stopped before coming any farther near the demon.

                “What are you?” Raven question the shadow before him.

                The monster looked past him to the Bard of Faith and hissed at her sighted. The Knight tried his best to step between the eyes of the beast and Lacey, but the hellish gaze flew through him like arrows.

                “I asked you a question,” Raven said.

                The unseen eyes of death and the dead turn to face Raven. At that moment, he found his weakness in his mind as he wished those eyes would have never looked at him.

                “You a foolish Knight,” the shadow said, but his voice was a whispered in the wind, and yet, they could hear him as if he was shouting.

                “That might be true,” Raven said. “But what are you?”

                “I am death, my boy,” the voice said, “and if any of you enter my town my arrows will find your heart.”

                “You are from Ghost Stones?” Raven asked.

                “I am Ghost Stones,” the demon told him. “All those who die there are mine, and their souls are mine. If you come to take what is mine from me, then only Hell waits for you. This is your only warning.” He looked over everyone once again, and they all stepped back from the eyes.

                “Fear,” the monster said with a nod, “is my weapon.”

                Indeed, it was a weapon the shadow monster knew how to skillful used against his foe.

                “Are you Dagobius Earthvile?” Ariana found her voice to ask.

                “I once was,” the blackness said, “but now, I am much more. I warn you again, do not be foolish, do not walk to your deaths.”

                A thundering crash and a flash of perfect blue light filled the space between the trees leaving all of them alone in the rain. The fear that warped the tightly was gone, and they all could breathe again once more. The air was pulled into their lunges as Raven turn to see the other two dealing with the terror brought by the monster.

                “Well, that wasn’t fun,” Ariana said.

                “We need to keep moving,” Raven order glancing over his shoulder back to the darkness of the night. He couldn’t feel the eyes on him but somehow knew they were still there in the dark.

                They travel a little longer in the storm until they saw a massive half cave near the road. A little hut in the ground with a tree overhead but they weren’t going to argue with it too much. They raced into the hole letting the earth shield from rain and unpacked what they could during the night.