CHRONICLES OF THE FOURTH HORSEMAN

HUNT

There was a brunt pain on my face, then another and another.I had gone unconscious for some time and I was just coming to.When the pain didn't work, Duke poured some really cold water on me and i jolted back to life.The look on his face was a sight.He seemed to be pretty hardcore but at that particular moment there was fear and confusion.He seemed like a totally new person.The stone face was replaced by a soft scared face.

"Where are my friends? What did you do to them?" I said after recovering from the shock caused by the cold water.I had scanned around and realized I was in a different room and my friends were nowhere to be found.He hesitated for a bit before answering my question.He assured me they were fine in the next room.He went on to ask me about them and I answered him truthfully.I was ready to learn what he knew and if that meant I had to trust him the I was willing to give it a shot.

"I am going to untie you know, but you have to promise me you won't run away or hurt me," He said making his way to cut the ropes on my arms.I knew I couldn't run, after all I was not familiar with the place.I could also not hurt since he was way stronger than me and honestly I couldn't even dare try to hurt him.The complicated drawing was still intact and i was a bit scared to cross it.The last time I tried it had some sort of force field that zapped me every time o touched it.He saw through me and he knelt down and made a gap by scrubbing some the paint.

I could tell he had one too many questions to ask and I prayed to God i had all the answers.I was not sure whether my friends were hurt or not but as much as I could remember, the guy had only used his t*****e toys to scare them but for all I knew he had not hurt them yet.I was eager to see Tom and John.I followed Duke slowly, completely aware of the surroundings and the confused air around us.He made his way through the door and up the stairs.For all that time he had me on the basement of his house.

Thankfully, my friends were still in one piece and they didn't seem scared of Duke anymore.But from the looks of it, John was a little freaked to see me.They were busy munching on some food but they both stopped when they saw me.It seemed like they had made friends with Duke but why were they behaving differently?Did I do something bad while I was out and they saw it? did Duke tell them something about me that spooked them?

I made my way through to the old flowerly couch that Tom was seated on and instead of stubbornly telling me to find some place else he moved to the end of the couch.Almost as if he was trying to get away from me."Hey did I do something wrong?" I asked hopping for an answer but none came from Tom.John on the other hand moved his head side to side in an attempt to answer "no".I fell silent knowing Tom would probably explode into one long single sided conversation spilling out everything he was holding back from me, or at least I thought he could.A minute passed, and another, I knew Tom wasn't going to tell and I thought of asking Duke who was by now parking some weird looking tools into a bag while whistling loudly.

"Who the hell are you and what did you do to our friend? Did you like posses her or something? Why don't you leave her be?" John asked looking at me dead in the eyes.I thought for a moment he waw just kidding but then he stepped back in fear when I started smiling.The look of fear on his face was way too real to be fake.I stood up to walk towards him but he moved even further back slamming into the couch and holding his hands over his face."Don't come any closer, please," he said now almost breaking into a cry.He was trembling.I stood back and tried to explain that it was still me, their friend but, they were not at all convinced.

"First you faint with a scar on your face just to wake up all healed and strong just to faint again after beating up your mother while behaving like a zombie just to wake up with the story of being astral projected into a trap and now you have freaking wings? What else are you keeping from me?Who are you really and what should we expect next? Angel blades, oooh or maybe a scythe.The ghosts...what do you know about them? Duke here says that you control the.Does that mean you made them kill the guys at the hospital? The doctors said that the guy who got killed that day had confronted you minutes earlier.Did you kill him? are you going to kill Duke too? or maybe us,"Tom finally rushed out.I know had a chance to explain myself but words failed me.I opened up my mouth to talk but nothing came out.I just stood there with my mouth open for some five minutes.

"Hey people, let's sit down and talk about this calmly," Duke said."Sit down? with freaking death over their?" John retorted ready to walk out.Duke however held him by his shoulder and forced him on the couch.Tom who was by then pacing and biting his nails as expected sank on the couch without question.Duke sat down on an arm chair that was previously used to bound Tom.He put one leg in top of the other.Reached down to his pocket and took out a cigarette."Want a puff?" he asked John who immediately answered with an yes.It hit me by surprise since I knew him enough to know he was not a smoker.He had never even tried it ones.

Duke handed him the cigarette and without hesitation John took it and put it between his lips.Duke reached back to his pocket in the hunt for a lighter.After a moment he found it and lit the cigar on Johns lips.He seemed to doing just fine until he broke off into a deep cough.In any other occasion I would have bursted out with laughter but given the dull climate around I just watched in silent without even saying sorry.Duke smiled and took the cigarette from Johns hands.He offered it to Tom who nodded a huge noo.It took john a moment to recover.

Duke was experienced and he smoked over and over again releasing a puff of smelly smoke into the air.He was preparing to say something and from the looks of it, the news he was about to broadcast were going to suck.We waited in silence.

"I know you are all scared," he started looking at the boys in turn.He then turned towards me and continued." I was also scared at first but now when I think about it, maybe I was overreacting.Knowing what I know now I could have aproached things diffrently," he said and then smoked in silence for a while.I observed that his hands were shacky and the nail on his dhumb was missing his middle finger was also missing half.Apart from that the hand seemed pretty strong.I felt the urge to ask questions but I held back.When he opened his mouth again to talk, he was talking directly to me.

"I know now it is not your fault, even if I killed you, I wouldn't have stopped anything from happening.I would have just made you much more stronger by taking away your physical body.I just learned that it is impossible to kill your true form.The physical body is the only thing holding you on this earth.It is the only reason the world is still spinning with us still in it.Apparently you have been trying to stop the world from ending by squeezing yourself in the very fabric that holds the world together, the time line.You have all the answers to the questions your friends here and I have.I have told them about you and they are having a hard time understanding it.It is going to take them a while but eventually they will understand.I don't know how you have warded yourself against me.I can't bind you or even hold you anymore.The seals are breaking real fast and if we don't stop it the world is surely going to end," He said and went on to smoke.

I was caught by surprise by the words.I then understood why my friends were scared by me.It was finally out in the open I sure am the angel of death.Their was no denying it." What about the thing Tom was saying about wings?" I asked." Yesterday I tried to hyptonise you, see what you knew about the pending doom.But it seemed like you were protected by something.You have the knowledge but you just can't tell, when I insisted too much, a pair of wings popped out from your back and that's when your skeptic friend here believed." He concluded.

It was my time to get scared.The only diffrence was that I was scared of myself.I tried to remember anything that Azraek knew but I only knew Mall's life.A pretty simple girl with a bad life and a busy father.There was nothing out of the ordinary.I needed to find out the truth if I was going to get my life together.Now I knew that my I didn't need a mental doctor, I needed someone like Duke only much better and much equiped.I had to dig the truth out of me.

Duke was busy lighting a second cigarette.He seemed unbothered by the fact that he had just dropped a nuclear bomb on us.He had gotten used to that kind of stuff and he had come to terms with the teasing .People around called him crazy, paranoid and a conspiracy theorist.No one bothered to listen to him even after he had foretold an earthquake that actually happened a few weeks later.He believed that after every seal was broken a weird natural phenomenal would occur.

We needed him to tell us everything he knew and he was more than just willing to tell us everything starting with how he came be Duke the believer of the supernatural.His story took almost two hours and we sat quietly listening and making sure nothing by passed us.

"I was out in the woods with my two friends two years ago.We were hunting for fun.Normally we would just go in and come out with whatever game we caught in a weeks time.It was going well until one weekend.Their were news about an expected minor earthquake which according to the experts would last for three hours and people would barely even feel it.Me and my friends took it as just another day in the office and off to the woods we went.

The first day was just fine we felt no trembling.Then came the fatefull sunday.Ee were on the heels of a grizzly bear, my friend Lex had his riffle ready, he was the best shooter while Mike was the tracker, personally I was just useful when it came to stuffing.I was not used to hurting living things back then.I could wait for them to do the b****y work while I prepared to create the trophy.There was a tremor, a tiny one but we felt it.Then a second one came minutes later, this time bigger and more intense, it lasted for three minutes.Lex lost his shot and was about to take another another one when the third tremor hit.

This one was not just big but destructive too.Trees started to fall all around us and we knew the only way to go was towards an open ground.That was about ten miles ago.Their was something about the tremor though that didnt feel right.It wasn't just an earthquake, there was thunderstorms too, and lightning.The tremors seemed to be following a certain route, almost as if someone or something was controlling them.We took to our heels avoiding the falling trees to our level best.Lex had dropped his rifle since it was slowing him down.It was a life or death situation and the guns didn't feel important at that particular time.

We were about two miles out when Mike let out a sharp cry.We looked back in time to see him get crushed by a huge tree and there was blood all over.I made as if to turn back but Lex pulled me.He told me there was nothing we could do for Mike, we had to keep going.At this point we were just running without any specific direction.We had no clue whether we were running towards the open ground or deeper into the woods.We were just running.The earthquake seemed to following us.We kept running and running but then the lightning hit the tree that was about two meters ahead of me.A brunch fell and hit me right in the face dropping me backwards to the ground.I felt a numbing pain on my right hand but there was no time to dwell on it.Lex helped me up and we kept on running.The earthquake seemed to be slowing down but a dark cloud was forming on the skies above ,thunder and lightning were getting much more intense and loud with every passing second.

I was trembling with fear.My feet could not move any more.We had been on the run for about an hour and some minutes and it felt like forever.My hand was numb, my breath was out and I was sweating badly.To top it up, the fear made my stomach twitch and turn and the left side of my ribs was on fire.As much as I could have loved to keep going for God knows my damn life depended on it, I couldn't.I stopped to take a breather.I needed a break.Lex was still a little bit ahead of me and it took him a moment to realize I had stopped.He could have just run on and leave me behind but he didn't.Lex was the kind of guys that doesn't care much about others if they could help it.He was about six feet two inches and had some really bold shoulders.His face was a permanent frown and I could count the times I ever saw him smile.He was the " everyone for themselves God for us all " notion kind of guy.It was my first time time to see him turn back to help.In every other day he could help you up if you fell while he was behind you but he could never turn back if he was ahead of you already.

They say there is a first time for everything and that was a first turn back for him.He was about ten meters ahead.He had seen a bare branch over my head sway dangerously and for some reasons he came back to save me from it.He got to me fast enough to push me away from the down coming branch but he was not fast enough to get himself the hell out of there.The branch fell on him tearing through his fresh before crushing him to the ground.Almost every bone on his body was broken and his skull was crushed to a point that his head looked like a flat disk. I have never recovered from that sight to this day.Death was right at my door and there was nothing I could do to hide from it.The earthquake was catching up with me and the dark cloud was soo close that it almost seemed like it could fall.A strong whirlwind formed and it blew up everything on its way growing bigger and stronger and for a moment there I thought I saw what looked like a huge face with red eyes.

I was too scared to run, I froze in place waiting for my death.It was about two hours past midday but judging from the darkness and the dust I could have sworn it was seven in the evening.I was however not completely dark and I could still see but not very clearly.But then, the whirlwind stopped moving, the earth made one last tremble and calmed , the lightning hit ones more and the toad echoed through the woods.In a matter of seconds the clouds cleared and everything was calm again.

The last tremble had dropped me to the ground where I lay curled up with my hands on my head.I knew then that was the last thing I would hear, "the roar of death".In all the millions plus ways of dying, I never pictured myself dying like that.It would be the worst ever way to die.When everything calmed down, I thought I was dead for sure.I slowly moved my hands and opened my eyes.I couldn't believe it! The clouds had cleared and the afternoon sun was shining as usual.The trembling was gone and so was the roar and the lightning.I got up, straightened myself up and started towards the edge of the forest as I could see it now.

At that moment I noticed the whirlwind that was still going on about it spinning only it never moved from the spot.Something weird was happening.I decided to move up closer out of curiosity but I was still scared and I decided to take cover behind a huge tree that was still standing and peep from there just in case the wind went rogue again.

Then I noticed another weird thing. The earth right next to the wind had splitted leaving a gap that had red hot fire shooting from it.It was like a scene from a horror film.There was yet another opening that shot water out of it creating a gayser.A piece of earth protruded up forming an anthill like bump.The sight was crazy and at first I thought I was loosing it.Maybe it was my mind trying to make sense of what had just happened.Or maybe it was a way to grief my friend.Either way I was seeing things and I didn't like it.

I was still standing there rubbing my eyes hopping to see something else when I opened them up.The I heard voices.My first instinct was to shout out for help or look where the voices were coming from, but for someone who had watched one too many supernatural movies I decided against it.I opened my eyes and looked around in silence.The voices had to be coming from somewhere close since I could even make out what the were saying and judging from it they were not voices from people with good intentions."I have looked for that sneaky bustard everywhere but I didn't find her, she must know we are looking for her and she is protecting herself," one of the voices said."Another seal have been broken and looking for her and letting her understand her role and even take it is the only chance we have," another one said.It took me a moment to realize where the voices were coming from but when I finally figured out I freaked out even more.

There was no one else around apart from me.The voices were coming from the four elements of life.Crazy right? Well that was not as crazy as what l learned next.The exchange between the four was getting much more intresting to a point I found myself moving closer and closer to them leaving the comfort of my hide out.I moved close enough on the tip of my toes to make sure not to take their attention, who knew how much more they could do apart from talking.I sat down on a clearing close to them slowly and carefully and I opened up my ears wide.One of them which I figured to be the fire asked a question." why are we looking for the angel of death anyway?"

The wind answered, a long juicy answer that ended up with me asking another question and blowing my cover.

"She is the only one who can stop this madness, or at least know how to," she started."There are sixty four seals of which if thirty two get broken, the seven seals in the Bible becomes possible to break in which case the world as we knows end.Of course their is the part about a new earth and a new heaven but I love this one and this one is the only one I get a chance to be on.We can't let it end.By now, at least fourteen seals have been broken and six more are about to be broken.We have tried to stop them but soo far we have only saved one.We need to up our game.We need to find the angel of death as soon as possible," she continued.

"Why are we looking for the Angel of death amongs humans?" fire asked.

"She knew she was the key to the end and for that reason she decided to operate in the shadows hoping with her disguised enough she could probably miss the call from one of the seven seals that would make her go forth and kill with no mercy.She could be cold and silent and heartless but she doesn't want the world to end either.Human beings thinks of her as an awful occurrence that leaves nothing but pain and loss behind but all death ever intends to do is take pain off those who are suffering and can't recover from it.

When she realized she bever had a choice, she disguised herself as a human.She probably disguised herself as a week ,sickly child or teenager.Which is why we can't seem to find her anywhere.Without her the world doesn't end and that is what we have to do.Take care of her.For now we have to part ways and we can't meet like this again as it is risky.We have to keep looking for her anyway.," Wind finished.They were ready to break it off but I felt a burning question which I asked without thinking twice.

And what exactly does taking care of the angel of death mean?They all fell silent for a while before whispering stuff amongst themselves.I was sure I heard one of then suggest they kill me since it was too risky for a human to learn that their magic really existed.After a brief session of whispers air finally answered and according to her death needed to seize from existence.But how? how do you kill death?

They gave me an address and told the person who once lived there had answers or clues that could lead me to answers. They had decided to spare my life and in exchange i had to look for death and make sure she seized to exsist.How I was to do that I didn't know.All I knew is the world would end soon if I didn't and I wouldn't even live long enough to see it end since the elements woukd have killed me before.My life depended on it and soo did the lives of billions of people who called earth home.

The meeting was over and just as it had started, it ended.Only this time they protected me since the didn't want me dead.Not that time anyway.I went back home feeling crazy.My finger was broken beyond repair and the doctors had to cut it off.That's how I lost my finger and my nail too.

I told the police what had happened up their and they all suggested I get myself to a hospital since it seemed I was going crazy from the trauma.The believed I had created that illusion in my mind because I was trying to deal with the incident and the death of my two best friends.I was convinced enough and a month later I checked into a mental hospital for rehab.But then the elements started coming to me one after another.Reminding me of the task ahead every time they visited and reminding me of the consequences.

I had to break out of the hospital without checking out since the water element had sworn to kill everyone in it if I didn't get the hell out of there.I wasn't ready to chill out and see the outcome.I couldn't deal with any more weird death.After I ren off the hospital I went in search of the address they had given me.All this while they guided and protected me and I promised not to tell anyone about their magic.

The however told me that some other people knew but they had promised you never tell anyone about it.If they tried, they died, just like the lady they had given the address to.I knew I had to move carefully and I did that at first.But then I started letting the frustrations get the best of me.I also started to believe I was the chosen one since the elements had been putting those thoughts in my mind.I slowly became mean and fearless and angry.I started to believe in doing whatever it takes to get what I need.I lost my humanity and my faith in it.I became an animal.

Ever since then I have been hunting for the place where the address they give me belonged to but I haven't found it yet.I have met a huge deal of people who knows about the magic of the elements and the existence of Angels and demons and heaven and hell and a lot more than you can ever dream of.None of them can however prove that it is possible to eliminate death without eliminating life.I believe there is no way to take death out without destroying the very fabric that holds the universe together.Just as there can be no light without darkness, there can be no life without death...

Even though I knew I couldn't really kill death, I had to look for her if I wanted my life.I never stopped searching.Until half an year ago I thought I was doing zero work but then the four of you happened and I finally found death and her three trusted minions.I came after you, got you but then you slipped through my fingers.I thought by then that the bones of a true saint would kill the angel in you but leave the weakly tiny girl still alive that way death would be no more but Malaika would still be there.

One of the magix people had told me that but apparently it doesn't work.I am back right where I started and now, I don't know what to report to the elements."Duke finally concluded.I wasn't sure whether to be mad at him for wanting me dead even though he really didn't know me or to be sorry for him since he was in deep s**t he could probably not get himself out of alive.Either way I felt something, and that something was confusion.Tom and John were up there on the confusion pyramid with me.

We were all dumbfounded and lost.We had no words to say and honestly I had no thoughts either.But idea hit me.Maybe I could use Duke to get to the elements and maybe then I could fully understand who I really am or atleast have a clue on how to know what Azrael knows.I knew pretty well it would not the safest way to do it but it was the easy way.Following the address was the other way but it was also not safe.What if we found a way to kill the angel and Duke decided to kill her instead? what would become of me? would I be left a saulless meat suit just breathing and hurting people around me without thinking twice.

I was exploding from inside out with thoughts but I wasn't ready to share.Of course Tom figured I had something in mind and he asked.I had to give him something.I also understood the two boys needed sometime away from me to figure things out.I also needed time off to think of what I really wanted to do with information I had just received.The madness had to end and I knew just how.A treasure hunt.

I planned on sending Tom and John in the hunt of the secret house with answers while I went after my own answers with elements.I explained that to them sounding completely persuasive.In a way they also needed the truth, if they were to be friends with me, they needed to know me completely and decide whether they were ready to keep going or realize that they needed a break in which case I was willing to give them as much time as they needed.They were convinced.

Duke could see through me though and he knew I had a hidden agenda.He had stayed with the magix long enough to see through one and even though I am an angel, I was also a little bit like the Magix since i merged with the humans.He had immediately planned something and I saw knew it due to the evil smile on his face.There was still something about him that I don't like.How could a person soo mean be soo good to three black youngstars who didn't even understand what they wanted in life.

He also had his own crazy agenda.I didn't know what and I didn't understand why but I felt like I needed to let him go on with whatever plan he had.It was probably not on my best interest but atleast I could understand why he was being soo nice.I could feel it in the air around me that Duke wasn't a friend but I didn't feel like he was foe either.He was something else.He was my game and I was going to hunt him down until I found out who he really was and what he surely needed.The hunt was on.Tom and John were hunting for the truth, I was hunting for a way out and I was pretty sure Duke was hunting me.It was time to gear up.