2 Part Red, 1 Part Death

Chapter 3: Blacker than Ink

Rai's POV

I remember being on the edge of a cliff with my father when I was very young. We stared at the ruins of the castle that seemed to he about three to four hours away. Over the years, I heard stories and rumors of the place,yet no one has been there, or if they have,they were never seen again.  The first time I saw the treeline and saw the hundreds of corpses hung like decorative items along the trees, it was enough to make me bury my face into my father's clothes and soak them with tears. I only saw it for a minute or two but that was enough for me.  Even at the time, I don't really know why I was so scared, probably because it was a primal instinct.  Usually kids are too stupid to know  whether  they should be scared or not,but this....this was something much more than that.

It took about an hour to calm down and by that time, we were back home. Ever since, I been wanting to go back and get a better look at the tree line. I wanted to go inside the forest. Don't know why but it was like something was calling out to me, begging me to come back.  I quickly shook my head to get that thought out of my head.

"Time to go. I have a lot of ground to cover and not much time." I said.

I scaled down the cliff side and began walking.  It didn't take too long,but it appears to be everything and everyone was trying to avoid the area. Luckily for me I didn't run into anything too dangerous. After what felt like hours of boredom and the same scene for miles of nothing, I finally make it to the tree line. It was just as horrifying as it was when I was younger. On almost every tree was pieces of a corpse or two. Each corpse looked like it has been killed in different ways. One was just missing the head, another was missing the arms and legs, and some even looked like it was split in half or had a hand size hole in the chest or throat. A cold shudder ran up my spine as I just stood there, scared to move.

After what felt like minutes of building up the courage, I began to slowly walk past the tree line. But, it wasn't like I was in control of my body, it was more like something deep within the forest was pulling me in. It took almost 3 minutes to get past treeline. It was quiet, a little too quiet. Usually in a forest, you hear birds singing and the wind dancing through the trees and their leaves, you would hear the woodland creatures in their natural habitats. But there was none, the forest was completely dead. No bird singing, no wind dancing  through the trees and their leaves, not even a mouse running over the grass and sticks. All I could  hear was my heart pounding in my ears.

Suddenly, a blood curling cry broke the silence, like an animal was in extraordinary pain. Of course being the curious one, I went towards it. I drew an arrow and docked it, ready to shoot whatever it was in case it attacks me.  As I got closer, it wasn't an animal, it was a grim.

A grim is the evil spirit of an animal. All animals have them. If the animal does not get a justifying death or the goddess of hunting isn't thanked for the successful hunt, the evil spirit within the animal takes its form of the animal but is 4-6x bigger and the skull of the animal becomes its mask. We tribe people call them grim. They always wreck havoc when close to human villages. They are a pain in the ass. Even the largest or the smallest animal has this, all the way up to tho the thin haired mammoth and  all the way down to the smallest mouse.  All animals have them. It was always best  to avoid them and not get in their way.

The grim before me seemed to be a hybrid of a Unja  Bear and a what looked to a Bane Wolf attached to it's back. Seeing a grim fused with another is very rare and can happen but it's really rare to see one. It was howling and whimpering in pain but I couldn't see what was causing it to make such a terrible sound. I made the mistake of letting my guard down as the bane wolf head upon it's back noticed me. The bear turned it self towards me, growling. It looked like they were connected in more ways than I thought.