The Chronicles of Protan (Book 1): The Shadowed Man

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 

“I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!! YOU THINK YOU CAN ESCAPE ME!? I MADE YOU WHO YOU ARE!! NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO. WHERE YOU HIDE …AS THE GODS HOLD WITNESS, I WILL FIND YOU! I … WILL … FIND YOU… WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT! AFTER HIM!!!”

This voice thundered through the entire jungle set between The Creek's central mainland and one of the portals that allowed emergency access and escape for Earth’s agents in and out of The Creek. One would be lucky to find it open and accessible.

From a distant aerial view, one could see a human figure tearing through the dense tree and bush, making his way toward the portal at a speed that was humanly impossible. A weakened Heathen demon helped open more ground between the human and the voice’s troops when it attacked them in their path, finding opportunity in the darkness.

The creature fought briefly, roaring as it swept through them with its burly arms, and using its girth and horns, it rammed through a few more leaving them dead in its wake. However, the more alert of the troops kept their composure and dealt with it as quick as they could. Clinging to its limbs, they brought it down and severed its head from its body with a quick snap and pull, and darted off leaving the body parts to rot on the maggot infested ground.

 Within the thick, dense jungle and darkness, one wasn’t able to tell tree from animal. The human figure stumbled hard and furiously to the ground many a time, but through his intense bleeding and broken bones, his will drove him. It drove him so that because of pure tenacity, he suffered an intense clothesline by a random tree branch, and so went hurling to the ground screaming in pain. His abused and broken body could no longer bare the pain that had been so excruciating for the past day it seemed that he had been running.

 He looked up with a twisted neck and his good eye, and never had such joy surged through him. What hovered before him was an energy force that he had been seeking for years. The portal, glowing a faint green, was dominated by a strange water-like flow through which one could see their own, slightly warped and wavy reflection.

 He crawled with the last drop of energy that he had left toward the portal while coughing up blood that had been lodged in his throat after he had fallen earlier. Not even this could taint his will to be freed. As he came closer, he found himself able to stand and see his reflection. Where others would’ve been startled at their appearance, he forced a smile through his brutally battered face and said quietly to himself, “Thank you Lord.” 

His eye slowly closed, and as his body collapsed forward into the portal, it swallowed him in as if it waited for him alone, then immediately closed. The putrid amount of light the portal had created literally followed him in, and disappeared. The troops came storming into the clearing where the portal once was, and found nothing but darkness. They were clad in all black, the colour of The House of Yakuza.

 A figure came rustling through the bush, and jumped into the area as he had finally caught up with the rest. He was Yung Yakuza. His eager expression changed immediately to a pent up rage upon the realisation of him seeing nothing.  His eyes widened, and slowly looking to the heavens, he screamed at the top of his lungs. His loyal troops stood and stared into the nothingness with a vacant expression, as they always did. 

They lost him.

The portal opened on the other end into Earth where the human fell hard and face first to the concrete floor, going into semi-consciousness. Two male security guards walking through the room were having an innocent conversation: “Yeah man you missed out! Great game last night. I spent my night off with some chicken and beer, sat on my ass all night.”