The Dark World

Chapter 10: Secret

Cairn

I hated being dead, our souls could not die nor cross over, so it meant being stuck in your dead body for hours until it re awoke. With the body lifeless it meant I were u able to see, hear, smell, feel, nothing, all senses gone, a t.orture in itself, the soul was still conscious, so I could still think and feel emotions and right now, I was feeling rage, if I could have torn through my body and hunted down Ezekiel right now, I would have.

Coward, killing me with me unaware of his intentions, I would kill him too, but I would make sure it was slow and painful.

It wasn’t as lovely and miraculous as it sounded, never being able to pass on, always coming back to life, the death was still painful, the reknitting of the injuries hurt, and being vulnerable and trapped in your lifeless body was not pleasant either, bandits would sometimes rob your lifeless corpse, or worse could happen, sometimes one of the monsters would come across it and eat parts of you, and you would have to wait even longer to come back.

When I finally felt my body come to life, I moved my feet, then my legs, when I was able, I got to my feet and stalked from the room, sword in hand.

Anyone in my way made a path for me, wise choice because right now, I would kill anything in my way. When I reached the woods I cut my way violently through the tall grass and the thick vines, I marched on never slowing down until I reached the campsite.

They were all asleep by the time I got there, I found Ezekiel on one of the branches and I climbed up to him. “Wake up,” I growled.

His eyes sprang open, and I smiled coldly at him before kicking him off the tree, it was pretty high, and I smiled hearing him break his arm as he hit the ground, it wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been because he did not cry out in pain, I knew he would not give me the satisfaction.

I jumped down to the ground and stabbed my sword through his throat before he could get to his feet, I watched him choke on his own blood, and then I snarled, “now we are even, try that again, and I shall come up with a slow and t.orturous way to prolong your suffering.”

I walked off and felt a sharp pain in the back of my leg, looking down I saw he had thrown one of Marisoll’s daggers at me, for a moment I was distracted wondering how he had one of her daggers, had she given it to him?

I turned to go and cause more pain but mystic Zerena appeared from nowhere as she so often did and warned, “enough, the pair of you, this is foolish. We have a battle that we more than likely will not walk away from, we should be working together to make sure we have the best chance of success, we have already failed and may as well quit now if you cannot even put aside your silly feud with one another.”

I choked on a laugh as Ezekiel died before he could answer her, mystic Zerena cuffed me round the side of my head and then shooed me away from Ezekiel’s body.

I climbed the tree and went to lay on the thick branch opposite Marisoll, but she glared at me, daring me to try it. “Sheesh, ok woman, I won’t sleep near you,” I smirked only filling her eyes with more fire, I do not know why I liked riling her up so much, but I stopped bugging her and climbed further up finding my own space away from the others.

When I awoke from what little sleep I got, it was to a snake moving across my chest and up to my face, sighing I threw it off me onto the ground below and watched it slither away. I sat up and ran my hand through my tangled mess of loose curls and swung my legs over the edge of the branch, I sat there for a moment just enjoying the peace, that was until Marisoll ruined it by shouting up, “you’re awake, good, let’s train!”

I growled inwardly, but jumped down to the ground where she was already waiting.

We found a quiet spot to spar so as not to wake the others. Marisoll threw the first hit and I blocked it with ease, I threw one back, and she blocked mine, it went on like that for a while and I grew frustrated halfway through. “What is the point of sparring when we both already know these moves and blocks, it is a waste of time.”

She hit me in the jaw and I stumbled back, grinning she said, “because you still become easily distracted, when we fight the dark lord we know not what to expect, there may be more enemies fighting alongside him, or her, we do not even know the gender or if the dark lord even has a gender, we are going into this battle blind and I, for one, would like to make sure that we are as prepared as we can possibly be.”

She had a point, but I said, “I doubt we will be using our hands and feet to fight the dark lord, if it is a beast then all the sparring in the world will not help.”

“It’s not just about the sparring, it is about concentration too, focus, there may be magics involved that the dark lord may use against us, illusions even, we must learn to stay focused only our target and nothing else, anything else will surely be the death of us.”

I rolled my eyes, but continued to spar and train with her a while longer. Ezekiel joined us and all three of us sparred for you never knew if there would be more than one enemy, more often than not there were.

We spent most of the day training with one another, a rare moment between all three of us where we weren’t trying to kill each other or fighting for real. Mystic Zerena practiced her magics somewhere private, she did not like being watched.

When evening came I was starving, my temper was starting to flare and Marisoll noticed it. Ezekiel had stopped training an hour earlier so it was just us two, and she snapped, “you are being more rough.”

“The enemy will be a lot rougher than me,” I snarled back.

“Cairn, you are bleeding me now, I cannot afford to be injured, if some beast or creature stumbles upon us, I will be weaker than usual.”

“Fine, let’s stop training for now, I’m hungry,” I dropped my sword to the floor and started walking away.

“Where are you going!” She called out.

“To hunt!” I didn’t wait for her reply or wait for her to offer to join me, she couldn’t anyway, I needed to do this alone to calm myself, to calm what was within me.

I reached a thicket and pulled off my armour along with my clothes until I stood naked, for a moment I enjoyed the quiet, the earth beneath my feet, the wind caressing me, the soft sway of the trees in the breeze, then I got down onto all fours and began my excruciating transformation.

I lay panting heavily afterward and when I was ready, I stood up and shook myself before walking to find some food. I passed a river and caught sight of my reflection, dark yellow eyes, sharp fangs, dark blonde fur. I was a werewolf, considered a beast to those like Ezekiel, and this wasn’t my only form, stories of werewolves were only half-truths or entire fabrications, man that turns into a beast, the more accurate truth was beast turned into man.

My bloodline originated from wolves, true wolves, we evolved somehow, or magic had a hand in it, none of us quite knew, but one day we found we could turn into men, wear their forms, walk like them, even talk, the talking had taken some time to learn.

We slept with their wives, shared our seed and found our babies were still like us, no trace of human, not half human and half werewolf, still werewolf, it was a disappointment, we hoped to live among the humans, so instead of bearing half wolf half human, we had to learn the hard way to fit in, to be more like them, to hide among them.

We had control over our forms, so it was easy to hide for the most part, but not changing regularly would upset our wolf side, we would become quicker to anger, more irritable, more violent, so on a full moon once a month we found somewhere to change and run, to calm the beast within us away from prying eyes. Always late at night when everyone was sleeping, the moon was our only light to see, which is why we chose the night of a full moon, that was the truth of the moon’s involvement, not that it forced us to change.

Lack of control was true to an extent, we somewhat had learned to control ourselves in our beast form, but it was not without great difficulty, we had to fight against all our animalistic urges and instincts, we could to a point, for example, stumbling upon a human was ok if the human was unaware and sitting or walking or something simple like that, however, if the human were to run, or we came across one simply jogging it would send our wolf mind into a frenzy, and we would chase, the instinct to hunt, the instinct of seeing something run meant prey and we could not control that no matter how hard we had tried.

Right now, I was in my less dangerous form I suppose you could say, I was twice the size of a normal wolf, we retained our human size in wolf form, so I was big and fearsome, but not half as fearsome looking as my other form, the lycan form.

My lycan form was around eight feet tall, golden blonde fur as our fur always stayed the same colour as our hair, my hands had razor sharp claws, my body rippled with muscle, my face was that of a full wolf’s, and it was even harder and damn near impossible to control ourselves in lycan form, the wolf was even more at the forefront of our mind in that form, I rarely used it unless I was alone and up against a dangerous beast.

My full form that I was in now was usually more than enough to fight off beasts, and it was great for tracking and hunting and stalking, or moving around unseen.

I used my nose to hunt for food, in human form I still had my animal senses and I had supernatural strength, it took effort not to display any of that, even with Ezekiel when fighting I could not use my full strength, no one could know what I was, to them, I was no different to the beasts born from the darkness, and I did not blame the humans for thinking that way, some werewolves chose not to control what they were, some thought themselves better than humans and would destroy villages, take them over kill everyone in sight, women, children, men it mattered not to them, in other cases it was because the werewolf could not control himself even if he tried, it was so difficult and the smallest thing could set the wolf off.

I stopped thinking so hard and concentrated as I came across some deer.