Outside Hell (3 page)

The orb though had sensed the danger too, and
then blasted out thick crimson red beams of energy in all
directions that turned the castle invisible, so the beasts couldn’t
see it.

These Dragons were over a thousand feet in
length, with flames bursting from their massive fanged jaws, and
scales so tough that you’d think they were armor plated, and talons
that were forty feet in length too.

Vrakug then aware that the orb was protecting
him, and as he’d heard wailing screams, then looked across at the
witches cave and saw them outside its entrance, with their arms up
in the air as if they were controlling the beasts above him.

Every time they’d lowered their hands, the
Skylark beasts would fly down towards the invisible castle and
breath fire towards it.

Vrakug was furious that they were playing
with him and then after concentrating on his evil, and summoning up
more powers from the orb, he’d opened his window and tried thick
streams of magic against them. Only because of their massive armor
plated scales, it simply bounced off with absolutely no effect.

Vrakug was furious and spent many years
trying to kill the beasts but everything he’d summoned up and
blasted at them did nothing to the dragons at all.

Then his hounds that hunted the wild Boar,
Biodorph beasts, or Cryotiercks finding them easy prey unlike the
armored knights who’d sometimes succumbed to their vicious tusks
and claws, found danger lurked for them too.

The Parchaka killers another creation from
the witches, also forty feet tall, roamed the wastelands with the
pure intent of finding Vrakug’s death hounds, and fully enjoyed
their rich texture when eaten raw on the battlefield.

To look at them and from their faces of many
lines, they’d looked like the witches in that they also had black
veiny heads too. Only they had an eye that was centrally located
where a human’s nose would be, and their hair that looked like a
pony tail was long and bright orange in color, flowing straight
down their backs and finishing near their waists.

When created from the powers they held, the
witches gave them intense power to match their heights. Their
bodies in that they had two arms and two legs, looked with their
massive muscles like they were Trolls from a fantasy tale.

The hounds though would gang up, and often
even though they’d charge these Parchaka killers who wandered
around on their own, the victor of the fight was undecided. Armed
with a tree as it club, the witches Trolls would swing them
violently into them and decapitate the hounds before they could get
close enough to bite.

The winds from the wastelands though and the
dirt that it brought with it at extreme speed, helped the hounds by
blinding the Parckaka killers enough so that they could get close
enough to rip them to pieces.

The wastelands were full of bones from these
two evil creatures, and others too, like wild Boar, Biodorph
beasts, or Cryotiercks after the hounds had fed on them.

Only both the Trolls and the Zamourn death
hounds had another creature that thrived since the skies had
darkened, by eating both of them.

The Ekari beasts were placed their in Eldor
by the god Lianor, for a reason that was undisclosed. Maybe she’d
seen the future and was aware that the planet needed a protector,
who knows. Only these creatures were also unaffected by the Skylark
beasts too.

The Changalk people had found them no threat
to them either, and when they’d entered the forests to hunt, they
could locate them and also know that whilst close by, they were
always save from attack if ever the wild Boar, Biodorph beasts, or
Cryotiercks tried to charge them.

Only the forests had other creatures within
too, that none of the king’s knights ever survived from, and made
hunting for food an intensely dangerous experience.

*****

Dracus though as he was growing up in the
foreboding forest and the harsh wastelands as a discarded six year
old boy, had known none of Vrakug’s entrance into Eldor or the
history of the planet either.

Daily Vrakug only allowed ten hunters out of
the village walls to hunt, and if they hadn’t returned by an hour
before nightfall, his death hounds would find them, and then they’d
be dragged back limbless, and dumped outside the main gates of the
village.

A lesson to all who may be thinking they
could ignore his evil ruling.

One day though and at the age of ten and
struggling to survive, Dracus was found by the hunters and then
brought back to the village inside the hunters bag covered in the
blood of a recent kill. The hounds had sniffed the bag and thinking
that it was a dead animal inside, they’d let them enter the gates
of the village.

When Dracus was fourteen he’d spent many
years by then living in caves with the villagers who’d found him
all those years before in the wastelands, and in that time he’d met
his love Janus.

Janus was a beautiful girl of the same age as
him with extremely long to her waist, sandy brown hair that framed
her exquisitely beautiful features. Then apart from her skin that
was similar to his, but lit up with soft hues of golden brown,
she’d the most gorgeous green cat like eyes, and when he’d first
seen them, coupled with her shiny teeth and beautiful lips smiling
naughtily back at him, he’d been taken by a powerful spell of love
that’d washed over him.

Then four years later the evil lord Vrakug
had appeared in the cave where they’d slept looking for another
woman to pleasure him, and when he’d seen her, he’d tried to grab
her wrist and take her up to his castle. Dracus had leapt on Vrakug
from behind and tried beating the lord but it hadn’t worked, and
then resulted in him being thrown over his shoulder and
subsequently crashing down heavily into the rocky floor beneath
him.

The lord whilst towering over him had just
looked at him laying there and laughed.

Then as his hands were beginning to glow
crimson red and he was about to kill Dracus, something came over
him and then in response to it, he’d said that rather than kill him
for the insult, he’d take him as a cleaner for the castle instead.
Dracus had tried to refuse but then as a second had past, suddenly
and by the lord’s dark magic, he’d found himself in the pitch black
of the castles dungeons, and rolling around in horrible squidgy
liquid.

Then two years later and as he was being
released by the lord to be a cleaner of the passageway outside the
cells, he’d glanced back into the dark cells and only then realized
that the squidgy liquid that had stunk so much, and had also made
him puke daily, was actually shit.

He’d been imprisoned in those heinous cells
for two years, and in that time of being freezing cold with no bed
and covered in the excrement of the other prisoners, the only thing
that had got him through it all, and kept him sane, was the thought
that he might see Janus again.

Then as a couple more years had passed
cleaning the outside of the cells, but still locked behind more
impenetrable steel doors, when Vrakug had appeared offering him a
promotion to clean the castle instead.

He’d wanted to see if he could barter with
him first though before accepting it, and if that didn’t work then
demand that the lord let him see Janus or he would say no, only
sense had reasoned with him and he’d kept his mouth shut. Dracus
had realized that if he did do that then the lord would probably
laugh and just lock him up again, and he’d loose any chance in the
future of seeing Janus too.

So accepting the new position and with the
pain of not seeing her for just over four years growing
exponentially, Dracus kept his head down and worked tirelessly
cleaning the castle. He’d only the distant memory of Janus’
beautiful face to get him through it.

Then as time had passed by he was given more
freedom to walk about the place, and one day coupled with a memory
from when he was a child in the wastelands, he’d realized that he
could do things, powerful things that he was sure his own people
couldn’t do.

When he was about seven years old and alone
fighting the harsh baron wastelands for survival, he’d been
starving hungry from days without food, and knowing that he could
find it in the foreboding forest of death he’d entered them.

Only he’d known that by doing, so he was
breaking his cardinal rule.

The year before at the age of six his mother
had viciously torn apart in front of him, and he’d vowed never to
return to the place afterwards.

Only the wastelands had turned out to be far
worse than he’d expected, with nothing in them to eat, and vicious
winds blasting dirt and debris at him, plus the constant watching
and listening past the howling wind, for sounds of the death hounds
hunting for prey.

The day that he’d given in though and
realized he’d have to return to the forest was when he’d been so
hungry, that as a result he’d been consumed with sickness.

Then as he’d headed for them shielding his
eyes and face from the winds, with just rocks because he’d had no
clothes, finally the sickness became so severe throughout that his
little frame couldn’t resist any longer, and he’d past out.

When he’d awoken, apart from the intensely
nauseating headache and the desperate need for water, he’d found
that his mouth was full of dirt, and he was struggling to
breath.

That day he’d literally crawled a mile to
reach the dangerous forest.

Then once inside and listening to all the
noises that were about him, and as he’d scavenged for food in the
undergrowth of the blackness, searching out any bug that he could
find, he’d heard a noise. Panicking, Dracus had then desperately
tried to wearily immerse himself in cover; only the creature that
had made the rustling sound had seen him. Then from twenty feet
away and keeping in the cover of the darkness itself, and for the
briefest of moments, it had just stood there looking back at
him.

The animal was like a large dog and similar
in height too, only it had six legs and a rough from the evil life
of Eldor, short red coat.

The creature didn’t attack him though as he’d
first thought it would, instead it had walked over to him and then
with its tongue that was like sand paper, it had started licking
him across his dirty and cracked face.

Then as few days had past and with his
desperate need to feel loved, and completely unaware that a
powerful bond was forming, Dracus and the creature became friends.
He’d named it Reizer and from then on they were inseparable,
sleeping together, hunting together, and generally watching out for
each other in the heinous and foreboding forest of death.

Only one day they’d been attacked and he’d
crawled to safety in his hole, but Reizer was killed.

Inside the hole and unaware that his best
friend was savagely torn to pieces, Dracus had dug frantically as
the beast had also reached in and tried to pull him out to eat him.
He’d felt its claws or the wind that they’d made close behind him,
whilst he’d pulled himself as deep into the ground as he could
go.

Then after some time and without success, the
monstrous beast had finally grown weary, and then stopped sniffing
at the hole with its large nostrils, and went off into the forest
looking for easier prey.

Dracus some hours later, and after he was
sure that it was safe to crawl back out, had seen Reizer’s lifeless
body only a few feet from the entrance, and the pools of dark blood
that were surrounding it.

Instantly the young boy who’d lost his mother
only the year before to the vicious beasts of the forest, had then
been racked with pain when he’d seen his only friend in the world,
and ever likely to be; laying there dead in front of him.

Dracus dropped to Reizers side and wept.

Rivers of tears had flowed, and through that
time he’d pulled his friends body up into his arms, nestling his
blood soaked fur into him, and that’s when it had happened.

His mind had gone strange and all he could
see was swirling mist. It had formed blocking out most of his
thoughts, and looked like white tornados that were floating around
his brain. Then as a garish light had appeared behind the mist and
grew even brighter in its intensity, he’d tried to open his eyes to
escape but couldn’t, before suddenly the memory of Reizer had
strangely appeared in the mist too.

It had felt like hours that he’d been in
there, but when he’d opened his weary eyes again, and to his
immense joy and happiness, Reizer was alive again and licking his
face with his sandpaper like tongue.

So never telling anyone about it, and fearing
the consequences from his villagers should he have done so, he’d
kept it a personal secret. He’d thought that if he did tell them,
then they probably wouldn’t have understood and in turn then deemed
him a spy, or worse, the son of Vrakug because of it.

The second thing that happened was when he
was in the castle after doing his two years in jail was when he was
sitting in his cold stone room on his small bunk, with just a piss
bucket to his side. He’d imagined a doorway that would take him
down through the mist and nothingness beneath the castle, so he
could see his love Janus.