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Chapter 7 - Lurking Darkness

The forest was quiet. The storm blasted the faun rushing in between their thatch houses, many of them were the doctors, the warriors, and the magician of the village, gathering large swaths of medicine and herbs. Baun didn't know what good those items would do for a dead man, and he didn't care either. The wooden cells they crafted were perfect for him, and his brothers, they couldn't break them no matter how hard they punched them.

His own people herded him into one of these wooden cells at the far side of the village, their eyes were filled with a certain quickness that made him hurry, as if they would kill him if he even made a stumbling action toward them. He quickly entered a lone cage, holding his hands up for the guards, and they'd set him free, the enchanted rope falling into their hands.

"Can I have a rest?" Baun quickly asked, rubbing his wrists. "It is my right."

"Rest?" They asked as if they couldn't believe the words coming from his mouth.

"Yes… I've won my battle. I deserve rest."

"You think of rest when the elder is dying?" Guardsman Heiti asked, his expression crumpling.

"Even the elders would give me rest, sick, or burning alive." Baun didn't say his real thoughts, he wanted to retort how a dead man shouldn't be more important than the living him, but he didn't voice his bitterness.

"He's right." The superior guard, Koat answered.

"Fine…" Heiti said, his expression was anything but complacent.

They jerked their head, indicating him to come out of the cage. They did not bother to bind his hands again, this was one of the perks of being able to rest. It was a single free hour the winner of the bout would have to themselves. Accompanied by armed escort of course, and since Heiti and Koat were the first guardsmen to hear of this they were forced to accompany him, unless they found someone else willing to separate from their position.

The rain poured on their heads, wetting their hairs, and drenching their fur coats with water. No one would've liked to be in this pouring weather. Everyone was outside though. The shaman was far more important than getting sick the next morning.

Baun was watchful, keeping his guard up because of a sense that he was being watched earlier from the walk back home. It was normal at first, as he was watched regularly, but he couldn't help but put a little more thought into the eyes watching him as they felt and appeared different. They weren't filled with disgust or hatred, not even pity. It was as if the watchful gaze of the predator watched him.

He had looked to his sides, trying to see if any other faun had felt this. No one did, at least, no one implied that something was off.

There were still people watching him, but the eerie gaze felt small. His sense of ease steadied after walking past a couple thatched houses. A few minutes later he reached the outskirts of the village. The further away from the village center, the fewer people he saw, until he saw only guardsmen accompanied with the occasional short spear and sword on their waist.

The village had no walls, it was more of a temporary camp than anything else with only spiked barriers surrounding it.

He could hear warriors talking, and their words were not pleasant to his ears. They were filled with worry and skepticism. Worried if they lost the favor of the forest god. Worried that they might be attacked by other tribes. Worried about the few magic users that collapsed.

There was no worry for the prisoners. Their fate.

He was the strongest amongst the prisoners, but weaker than a warrior favored by the god. His crime for killing a sleeping warrior branded him as one of the worst prisoners to grace the wooden cages. 'The Greatest Murderer' they called him. He liked the power that came with that title, but didn't seek to keep it either, he'd rather it go to someone else than he would like for him to be summoned once again in a faith battle.

The faith battles were supposed to determine if god wanted death, and usually ended in the death of one of the two sinners who were forced to fight between themselves. If one refused then they'd die, if both refused, god must've wanted their death to happen.

It was a horrible system.

He was less watchful now. The feeling of walking around had lifted the ominous feeling he felt. There was only a faint feeling of being watched now, no matter where he walked.

Heiti's high pitched whiny voice neighed. "Are you sightseeing?" His contempt was clearly evident as he stamped his hooves, twisted his head, and spat on the ground.

"Yeah, I'm looking at small wretches."

The only human part of Heiti's face changed to a crimson red, and he barked at him. "Keep talking like that and I'll shove this spear up your ass."

Baun lifted his lips to show his crooked yellow teeth in a smile, "Keep threatening boy and I'll snap the twig in your arm."

Heiti's face changed and he suddenly turned silent.

Baun knew he was weighing his options. He could try to attack Baun but it would end in disaster, afterall it was his rest and he earned it for glorious fight. That wouldn't work, he'd be stamped out…

But Baun knew that Heiti wasn't a reasonable person to begin with, nor was he a thinker, in actuality, he believed Heiti to be thinking what Baun met by 'twig in his arm'.

Then Heiti, after realizing the threat, barked at him with rage. "You bastard!"

Koat's voice immediately shut them both down. "Shut it." he said. His voice was quiet but strict enough that it gathered enough force to drown out both of them. "He is clearly goading you Heiti, learn to control your temper," Koat said, "And for you I expected less from swine."

That would've hurt if Baun cared, and he didn't. "I want to take a walk." he changed topic, "I believe I can walk at least a few paces from the village."

He looked at Baun steadily. There was an evaluation happening. Koat nodded soon after, "You will be bound by hand, and weights shall be tied to your legs. Acceptable?"

"Fine." Baun consented.

Now Koat paused, thrown by the quickness of his acceptance. He looked toward the forest closely for a few seconds. Then he nodded toward Heiti, who had the enchanted rope on his person, and the weights were grabbed from a nearby guard's hut.

They made sure to tightly affix the items onto Baun's body. A stress test found that Baun couldn't break out of the ropes if he wanted, and he was forced to run a few paces within the village to find whether or not the rock weighed him down.

"Are we done?" Baun said as he grew tired of the activity.

"Yes." Koat said.

Heiti looked offended, and readied to jump onto Baun and lay him out flat with a few punches.

Baun merely glanced at the smaller faun as he walked by, his huge heavy steps weighed further down by stone, and his comfort robbed away from him by the scratching of the rope on his wrists. He enjoyed the sights of the forest, even when it was basked in rain, it was a home to him. The best reward he could ever receive from winning a prison fight. Was the times he was able to leave the cage, and walk freely amongst the forest, not needing to worry about the next fight, or how he would need to beat new prisoners into submission.

There was movement in the left of his eye, and he looked, seeing a blur of darkness in the corner of his vision. The feeling of being watched resumed. It was the same predatory feeling that he felt when he was returning home, and this time it was amplified a couple of hundred times. He could see the dark shadow clearly.

He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but it was real, and it did not move a single inch. He looked to his side following the eyes of Heiti, and Heiti stared numbly into the forest, not seeing a thing. Then he looked at Koat expecting a worried expression, but found his stone face gazing back at him with a frown.

"Do you see something?" Koat asked.

Baun looked at the shadow, it had not moved, its gaze clear, and its figure unmoving. It was being beaten to shreds by the running storm, which turned to steam, and preserved the figure like a deep darkness. "Do you not see it?" He asked, "It's over there." He pointed directly at the figure, and what he suspected to be two long horns in the shadow tilted.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" Koat said his suspicion toward Baun clear.

The fear took a tight hold of his heart. Could they truly not see such a massive shadow in the dark? Or was that a spirit of the village, and he was seeing a grace, godly sent. Baun was not religious according to the people, and he did not act religiously. He did not pray to the forest god. He did not wish to either. The sight of looking at the darkness in the forest made him feel religious.

The darkness moved, a slow and deliberate action, raising what he thought to be their arms slowly forward. Baun saw a reflection of himself in the shadow. It was similar to him. In all honesty, it looked like an overgrown faun. A minotaur? Did those things ever come this far from the temple?

The elder's death might've drawn the beast outwards.

When Koat finally saw what Baun was looking at there was no expression of fear on his face. The sight of seeing the figure was a great shock. There was an expression of happiness actually. A guardian of the forest stood gazing at them from afar and it approached, a mystical experience, and a fortune to all. But Koat looked to Baun who had seen it first and wondered how he knew it was there.

"Minotaur." Heiti said, his expression brightening. "It's a guardian of the forest!"

If koat was happy, Heiti was exhilarated, raising his arms to cheer, and hail the good doer.

Baun did not replicate his sentiment. He did not trust the minotaur. It was too tall, too far from its home, and he could smell the scent of blood from all the way over here. The rain raged against it, and the smoke turned into a thick cloud making the discerning features of the minotaur harder to parse. The only thing they could make out were its long cow horns, and its legs, so similar to theirs.

Baun didn't like it one bit. He pulled backward, eyes filled with a gentle kind of fear, and his powerful limbs trembling ready to give way for a violent outburst of strength. "Is that really a minotaur?"

"Of course it's a minotaur!" Heiti spat.

Koat glanced at the minotaur. "It's a minotaur."

"I don't have a good feeling about this, we need to run."

"Run?" Koat questioned.

"Only a fool runs from a minotaur!" Heiti began, "Sit still Murderer, I'm sure the Minotaur has come for you. The gods probably made a mistake in the last faith battle."

That couldn't be a minotaur, Baun thought. It was darker, and it did not give the presence of one blessed by the forest god. It was a god in its own right, and it was drenched in the smell of blood. His eyes saw clearer than both of them. He only caught a glimpse of it, and he thought that he was crazy. But was it dragging something? Its arms were low to the ground, and it moved normally, but the awkward slouch and the rain beating on something other than the minotaur was heard.

It was dragging something, he thought. It was dragging a corpse.