Six Warriors

Dark Village - (Ethan)

A thundering sound and the light of lightning in the skies woke a confused Ethan. He was soaking wet and it was raining heavily, though Ethan didn't feel the water lapping against his body and a faint light and faint heat were felt by him. He was in a small hut, made of wood and with a thatched roof. A dim fire was burning there and a smell of something cooking was felt.

"Hello, adventurer, you're awake." greeted a female voice, but not Aretha's. He saw the silhouette of a person, a woman, kneeling by the fire, which had no smoke.

"What happened to me?" he asked, his voice still weak for the woman. She turned and the lighting once again lit up. She wasn't a woman, she was just a girl. She must have been about fifteen.

"I don't know, I found you in a ditch near a road, I thought you were dead and had some gold with you, but neither of those things proved right." The girl shrugged. "You were alive and had some weird equipment with you. I figured you were an adventurer and so I helped you out. You're welcome, by the way."

"I don't know what might have happened on the crossing, but for sure something went wrong."

"That's what going through cheap portals. Portals. I don't trust portals."

"Was there someone with me?"

"As far as I've seen, you were alone. As far as I know about portals, your friends may have just been torn to shreds. That's why I don't trust portals."

Great, great, Ethan thought, he was just in the dark, literally and metaphorically speaking, Aretha was missing and so were those other two guys on the team and now Ethan was in some tent with some unknown girl. Worst of all, I couldn't even see if she was pretty.

"Where are we?" he finally asked.

"I don't know, in any forest." The girl spoke as if she didn't care that she didn't know.

"You don't live here?"

"Of course not! Who would live here? Frankly, do you think I look like Bigfoot? A sasquatch? I'm an adventurer, like you. And by the way, you better change these clothes. You don't want to catch a disease."

"But…you are here."

"Are you worried about it?" The girl laughed, "don't worry, I'm not interested and I say more, if you try something funny, know that I was trained by the best swordsmen in Prawfair, I would rip you to shreds in no time."

Ethan changed out of his clothes, which were dry inside the travel bag he carried with him, conveniently that strange girl had brought his luggage with him.

"So what's your name?" Ethan asked the girl, trying to see features of her that looked pretty in the smokeless firelight, though it was still dark enough for him to risk being wrong.

"Elza. Just Elza."

"Ok, just Elza, I'm Ethan Celestian."

Ethan sat closer to the fire, warming up better now dressed in dry clothes.

"That's interesting, isn't it? A smokeless fire, good to light indoors, it burns like any fire. It's called Stone of Fire, small comforts of magic.You're lucky, Ethan, very lucky, any other adventurer would have taken all your equipment and left you there in that same ditch to die, but you were conveniently saved by me, who hadn't left the last village in a long time, so I got some equipment there and you can even afford to eat something relatively tasty."

"Luck favors the righteous in heart."

"How will I know you are an honest adventurer?"

"You won't know unless you let me prove it. Assuming you saved me without expecting anything in return, I imagine you're just as fair and willing to give me a chance to prove the same."

"Yeah, right. I don't know, something about you told me you were trustworthy. In books, adventurers are almost always depicted nobly, but when I started my journey I could see that most of people these days are petty, selfish and ambitious. It's a high-risk, high-reward profession after all."

"I also started my journey just a short time ago, now I'm not sure what to do without my companions. I know I should have information about a certain item and then go to Lightland."

"Lightland? Really? That's where I was supposed to go! After all, maybe it was fate that got you in my way."

"I think I like that idea."

"Well then, let's eat."

Elza brought him white bread and a goblet of some sort of grape juice. When Ethan ate a piece of the bread, he realized it was stuffed with meat, melted cheese, and corn kernels, and it was hot. He ate very quickly. After eating, Elza and he stayed there and awake until the storm passed. There was a certain silence there, only interrupted by the sound of the drops falling to the ground. Ethan watched the rain fall. He was sad and confused, he felt alone in an unfamiliar place. He thought of Aretha, wondering if she was okay. With the cold and the noise of the rain, he fell asleep.

"Nice guard you are, huh?" Yelled Elza, shaking Ethan. "What if something broke in here and we needed to fight? A bear or… worse."

Ethan still wanted to stay asleep.

"Hey wake up!" Elza yelled. It shook him even more. "Wake up! Wake up!" She ended up being furious. "Waaaake up!" Kicked the boy. Ethan finally woke up.

"Oh… wow… you can't even sleep peacefully. You're a pretty aggressive girl."

"We have to go, let's go. Unless you want to travel alone, but I bet you wouldn't last a whole day."

Ethan jumped to his feet. It was already dawn, and although it was still cloudy, the sun's rays managed to illuminate it far better than the bonfire of the night before. He now saw Elza's features more clearly. She had short, choppy hair, was brown with a red streak that fell over her face, her eyes were lively and her chin was fine, delicate. She wore a shirt with only one strap, showing her pale skin, and shorts of something like denim that went above the knee, which left her beautiful legs exposed. She wore a black boot with white details that almost reached her knee and had a dagger in her right hip and a sword sheathed in her back. She was really a beauty.

"What's up, Ethan? Are you going to stand there and look at me with a goofy face?"

Ethan desperately reached into his pocket for his comb, which he had put the next day when he changed clothes. He then combed his hair and tried to straighten his pompadour even though he didn't look at himself in the mirror. He hoped he had done a good job.

"It's just…it's just…last night when the darkness didn't do your beauty justice, I hadn't realized that I'd been saved by an angel."

Elza couldn't hold back a laugh.

"Really, man? Come on boy, don't make me regret this."

Ethan was disappointed. Apparently he hadn't done such a good job with his pompadour, if only he had a mirror...

Well, he didn't blame Elza. After all, how could Ethan look attractive with hair that should be so messed up? At least that's what he thought.

They continued their journey, Elza from time to time took a look at a map she was taking from a case attached to her adventuress backpack. The sky was gray and dark, giving the feeling that even the day would never come. The ground was slippery and muddy due to the vegetation and wet earth.

"Don't you have a weapon?" Elza asked as they walked.

"No. I was going to get one from a teammate, but well…she's gone."

"An adventurer without a weapon. How can that be?"

"I have my fists, which are like weapons. I also have something special."

"Like what?"

"Something special."

"Magic? Can you use magic?"

Elza looked excited, so Ethan couldn't give an answer other than:

"Yes, do you wanna see it?"

Elza smiled like a little girl.

"Obvious!"

Ethan started to focus. He didn't feel any different, as if he didn't feel his power anymore.

"And then?" Elza asked, looking disappointed.

Ethan gritted his teeth. He focused even more, but nothing.

"Damn! What's going on?" He yelled angrily and a small, thin, weak stream of pearl white shot out of his hand. Elza laughed.

"I hope you're better with your fists."

"I don't understand. This…this has never happened before."

"The instability of the portal you went through could still be affecting your performance, don't be so depressed about it, I've seen it happen before."

Around noon they made a brief stop and ate some type of dried meat, then continued their journey and found a mud road, which according to Elza was on the map and they were approaching a village called 'Murdar'. The entire day remained gray, so it was difficult for Ethan to determine what time it was, but they walked for a long time and the boy thought it was around four o'clock when in the hazy atmosphere they heard crows croaking and corpses strewn on the side of the road. They were in an advanced state of decomposition and were crucified, the humid and misty air of that place was also rotten. It was one of the most grotesque things Ethan had ever seen.

"What kind of place is this, this village we're going to?" The boy asked Elza.

"I don't know, honestly."

"I don't think it should be a very welcoming place."

"Many villages are not receptive to outsiders, the crucified men are probably criminals and due to the state of decomposition they must have been there for a couple of years."

"About two years ago? Are you a decomposition specialist?"

"Like that."

Ethan wasn't enjoying this one bit, the whole atmosphere was like a horror movie, when in fact the young man would have much preferred to be in a romantic comedy movie.

Still they continued on their way, what he found strange was that he didn't see anyone else there, no one who wasn't dead, no other travellers, the rotten road signs indicated that the village was getting closer and closer. Ethan heard a different noise now, it was a noise of someone digging earth and there was a cemetery near the entrance to the village, in fact the cemetery was right next to the village, there was a very old gravedigger digging his graves and several corpses waiting for be buried. The gravedigger looked back as if he sensed the presence of Elza and Ethan there, he then gave them a very dark look, Ethan felt a shiver run down his spine, but the next moment, as if they were nothing, the gravedigger just went back to dig their graves.

"Apparently a lot of people here are leaving for the afterlife."

"No," the old gravedigger said, not even turning around, continuing to dig, "they're going back to where they should be." And then he didn't say anything else.

How had that sinister old man heard? Ethan didn't even want to know, he asked Elza if it was really a good idea to go to this village, she said it was better for them to stay in some inn than risk sleeping in grass and forests. The town sign just said "this is Murdar village, number of inhabitants: 444". And on the same old wooden pole where this "welcome" sign was attached to a chain was a cage with three corpses, what appeared to be a grown woman and two small children hugging her. They were also well decomposed.

"Ethan, maybe you're right" Elza said looking at that "you know what? I really don't think it's a good idea to spend the night in this place."