~Chapter 5~
The echoing and distorted screams of suffering souls rang in the darkness as the crackling of cinders and the roaring of flames filled the pitch-black emptiness that seemingly stretched forever, into an invisible horizon. I stood in a void of black, like a colorless dream filled with nothing but the stuff of nightmares and feeling cold breaths against my neck as if death herself were kissing my collarbone; freezing the cold sweat on my shivering skin. Like a statue, I stood still, unable to move nor to express my dread. Thinking myself dead, I screamed a soundless scream drowned by the wails of the suffering that surrounded me in the dark. The suffering, whose wails grew louder and drew closer with each passing moment, clawed against my stone skin like daggers on a rock. Their voices drowned me in sorrow as they got louder and louder until all I knew and all I could ever hope for, was pain.
As ominously as the voices had begun, they just as mysteriously ceased their cries and left the darkness quieter than the most ancient of cemeteries. Through my stone skin, I could feel my heart beating, and amidst the soul-numbing silence, I could hear it thumping in my chest like the last song in all of existence.
"Beuren…" Whispered a soft voice in the dark. My name lightly echoed and faded away.
As sudden as a lit candle in the wind, my heart stopped beating.
"BEUREN!!!..." Roared a monstrous voice in the dark.
I snapped open my eyes with the blurred flames of candles flickering above me and the smell of fresh stew lingering in my nose. My body felt weak, as if it were a newborn baby's, though I managed to sit up as if waking from a bad dream. I found myself in a bedroom fit for a king as my vision began to clear and noticed the silver-plated bedposts, the fine velvet silk sheets that I lay in, along with the fresh fruits in a bronze bowl on the bedside table which my shocked eyes could not waver from. Cautiously, I threw the sheets off and reached for a green apple sitting on the top of the bowl, all the while looking around in disbelief of where I was; A lavish suite fit for a lord of the highest order and far different from the life I had known.
While reaching for the apple, I noticed the bandages wrapped around my left hand, with a sharp pain making its way up my arm. The bandages having a bloodstain on the palm side of my hand, running in a straight line as if I had cut myself on something. Not knowing how I had been cut, I stared at the bloodstain in shock and awe and continued to snatch the apple from the bronze bowl all the while looking around in all directions, wondering where I was and how I had gotten to this wonderfully strange place.
With the apple in my mouth already half-eaten, I ran across the room towards the door and passed a superannuated painting of a strange man wielding a sword in front of him. The sword was pointed to the ground and the man was standing in a straight sturdy posture, like a soldier in a lineup. Everything about the painting managed to stop me in my tracks, as the gold of its frame shined as I had only seen in my dreams. As I gazed at the man in the painting dressed in silver armor and black leathers, a symbol on his chest caught my eye and as if putting me in a trance, my eyes stopped blinking. Suddenly, I found myself in crippling darkness lying on the freezing floor with the full moon above me and the searing heat from a blazing fire kissing my cheek.
Looking down at my chest, I found my bloodied hands holding onto a wound that ran deep from my gut to my chest, like a knife wound that wouldn't stop flowing red with blood. With my bare hands, I desperately tried to stop the blood which was flowing onto the ground, reddening the soil and dying my clothes in a crimson mass. I rubbed at the wound with my hands to no avail, all the while crying out for help as growls and screeches echoed from the darkness around me. As I lay there on the ground as helpless as a hatch-ling, a shadow emerged from the flames and hastily made its way towards me.
"Is it you? Is it my time already? I'm, I'm too young. I'm not ready mister" I whispered to myself as whom I thought was Death himself came towards my motionless body; coughing out puddles of blood as I looked on.
The shadow dropped to its knees as I finished my prayer, as I spoke my last words. I looked up and saw the face of a man, a priest dressed in silver armor and collar, cupping my head with his hands and resting it on his lap. His eyes glowing like the moon filled me with peace, for I would not die alone. The light of the flames complimented a strange symbol on the breast of his leather jacket, a symbol that caught my eye and filled my literally bleeding heart with tranquility and peace as a smile formed on my battered face with everything around me fading away into the cold darkness like sunlight at dusk. The sand in my palm blew away into the wind, and as the last grain fell from my skin and hit the ground, a burst of light broke through the darkness almost blinding me like a solar flare.
My eyes turned from a deep black, back to their usual brown as I found myself standing in front of the old painting in the suite. My body almost collapsed as I tried to keep my bearings, with my legs feeling like lead and my eyes now filled with terror not knowing what had just happened, not knowing what I had just seen.
"What in the hell!?" I shouted out loud, as I looked around once more.
"How on earth did I just...?" I asked myself as I ran over to the mirror on the wall, rubbing and feeling my chest trying to lift my white shirt so I may gaze at my bare skin for what I hoped was only in the strange but extremely vivid vision I had just had after gazing at the old painting. My blood chilled in my veins, sending a shiver up my spine as I looked at myself in the mirror with eyes as wide as the bronze shields decorating the room's walls. From my gut all the way up to my chest was what seemed to be a scar, the scar tissue being made of pure glistening silver with strange symbols and characters tattooed along both sides of the scar, symbols, and characters of a language I did not speak or even knew existed as if it had been forgotten by time.
"Th, this can't be," I whispered to myself as I run my hand upwards along the scar, the silver scar tissue feeling as cold as ice to the touch and looking like it was keeping the large gashing wound I had in the vision from opening and spilling my guts onto the floor. Across the surface of my chest, there was more silver scar tissue going horizontally across to form a silver crucifix on my body surrounded by the strange tattoos. With a distraught expression on my face, I slowly backed away from the mirror and continued for the door, all while my heart raced as cold sweat flowed down my face and down the back of my neck, dripping onto my chest and down the length of my spine with the light from the candles in the room being reflected off the silver scar and making the sweat glisten on my goose-bump riddled skin.
As I approached the wooden door embedded with silver work and a silver wolf's head in the middle of it, I hastily stretched out my arm and reached for the doorknob almost hitting my head against the hardwood door as I swung it open. My heart skipped a beat as the door creaked and opened wide revealing a man standing in a hallway, a hallway with smooth black marble floors so clean I could see my horrified face staring right back at me. With my eyes not blinking and my muscles like cement as my body froze like a statue unable to move, unable to run, I stared into the eyes of the man I had just seen in the ancient painting hanging on the room's wall, a painting dated over three hundred years and yet here he stood before me looking as if he was barely in his thirties.
Just as he did in the painting, the man wore a black leather jacket with silver buttons running down the middle of it, and a medallion of the Kolte sigil pinned above his heart. Silver armor in the shape of wolf jaws protected his shoulders and upper arms, along with silver gauntlets around his fists. Gauntlets engraved with the Kolte sigil and strange symbols similar to the ones on my chest.
"Ah good, I see you've awoken," He said to me, while he looked right back at me with his hands crossed behind his back and a welcoming smile on his face as I stood there, motionless and speechless; my eyes fixed on what I thought was a ghost standing in front of me.
The man anxiously cleared his throat.
"How are you feeling? Hungry I reckon." He jovially asked me as I swallowed air and fell backward into the room hitting the floor with a loud thud, once again being knocked out unconscious.
"I probably should have expected that." He says to himself as he looks down at my motionless body, laid out on the tiled bedroom floor.
"Probably should have caught him as well." He continues, as he once again clears his throat.
"Oh Van Kolte, you are just a fountain of hindsight aren't you?" He continued to say to himself while scratching the back of his head.
The half-eaten apple fell from my hand and rolled to his feet as he bent over to pick me up and carry me back into the lavishly decorated room. The stranger lay me on the bed and said a prayer for me while dabbing my sweaty forehead with a damp cloth, his words lightly echoing in the darkness of my dreams.
"You were meant for great things young one. One day you will save this dying world. You will save Never-realm."
Although I was in a deep sleep, his word's soothed the storm of terror in my mind and calmed the thundering of my heart, I was safe and he had saved me. The strange man need not say it, but I knew he was the one whom I had seen in my vision, stepping out of the flames like a phoenix from the ash and battling the monsters that lurked within the darkness that I lay in.
For the rest of the night, I slept like a newborn babe in its mother's warm arms for I was safe, I was home.