When a storm comes red rain falls { Chapter 1 }
Pain is a beautiful thing. For pain, we learn, we adapt, and overcome. It comes in more than one way: physical, mental, and from deep within our souls.
My joints ache from crouching down on this tree branch for several hours while I wait for my prey. My form is hidden in the brown crisp leaves, as a cold breeze brushes past me. The cold never bothered me.
The Rustling of Leaves can be heard coming down the path. The wood is smooth in my hand as I knock an arrow tipped in deadly poison known as nightshade, as I wait to pull the string and bring my target down. My eyes reflect on how my soul feels black like the midnight sky.
*crunch* *crunch* *crunch* A form appears on the path, a magic hangs in the air that is constantly shifting, always changing. The person pulls down their hood, and you can almost hear it as their bones crack. As they change, their ears turn to those of a wolf, eyes like those of an owl.
Upon seeing the beast, this shapeshifter, I release the arrow I had trained on them. The arrow flies through the air as if in slow motion, cutting through the air like butter, striking the shapeshifter. The shifter howls in pain and turns to where the arrow was shot, and a low, menacing growl rumbles in the air, one of pain.
I am already pulling another arrow as the shifter reaches for a large stone. The arrow flies across the air, hitting the shifter in the hand where it was reaching for the stone, now splayed in crimson red. As the shifter clutches his hand to his chest, the opportunity is too great to miss from what the shifter sees: the figure jumping out of the tree from where it was perched. A person clad in black is barely able to make out any discernible details, except the blade of a claymore.
The blade is black, the guard a deep red, and the pommel of a skull that seems to stare into any victim's soul. The handle was black, glistening in the moonlight as the figure moved closer.
He wears a mask of a red skull that makes the shifter lose his form, reverting to his human form as he tries to back up. All is fruitless as the shifter's back hits the tree, and he recognizes this figure fully, now known as the black ghost who always wears black and carries a claymore and always wears a mask of a red skull, his eyes from in stories as the darkness is too hard to see. Are a midnight black, no white to be seen.
I raise the sword I have clutched in my hand, cool and calm fills the senses, no fear, no emotion, as the blade rises. The shifter starts cursing me, and fear fills his eyes. Then, when the blade is fully risen, pushing the blade down with a pull like an invisible string or chain, then... Silence.
Have you ever had a memory or a moment in time you can't recall? Or being in a space where you can see through another's eyes, but you're frozen in a dream. Wishing you could do something instead of holding back the actions that the person is doing.
I am staring at my reflection in the river's eyes, brown and empty, no joy, no innocence left from the child left within. A scar is on the left side of my chin. The water has turned red as I wash my hands in the water, splashing it on my clothes, and some magical force has reverted them and my sword back to my brown pants and my tunic a green, my sword turned back to a mere dagger.
