A True Hero

30 - Guardian of Life

The skinny black trees stretched taller than my eyes could see as I looked up and ran through a dark forest. My breath was short as a careened my neck to see the tops of the leafless skeletons, but they disappeared into the dust-colored clouds above. Dry, dead leaves crunched under my feet as I sprinted toward a distant black, round castle resting on the edge of a precariously steep cliff. Dead vines, while alive, had crawled up the sides of the castle walls and turned a moldy dark blue. The once red circular ceiling on the main spire of the castle had been destroyed, and all that remained was a portion of the dome and smoldering black bricks. The drawbridge was hanging wide open over a thrashing black moat.

A strong wind picked up my hair and blew it in front my face and into my mouth. I spit it out when I tasted something foul and bitter. When I risked a glance down at my arms, I saw I was covered in slime.

A tall skeleton tree crashed to the ground in front of me and I jumped over it. The beast behind me shook the ground as it pursued me, growing ever closer. A long, black, pointy leg stabbed the ground to my right and I instinctively moved away. The trees thinned out until quite suddenly I was running on a thin road up a hill toward the black castle. I didn't know why that castle was so important to me, but my sixth sense was screaming at me that I needed to get there.

Then the thing behind me screeched; it was louder than anything I had every heard before, yet I could not physically hear it. Then I remembered a memory I had never lived before.

The creature's like me, I thought. I ran harder.

My breath nearly gone and my lungs burning, I put on a burst of speed and cleared the gap between me and the castle. Sprinting over the drawbridge and into the broken courtyard, I found the lever to the drawbridge and pulled it as hard as I could. The frail rope groaned with effort against the pulleys and yanked the drawbridge sharply upward. Over the tall ashy wall of the castle courtyard, I saw the vague outline of a gigantic lizard-like creature with spider-like arms that stretched taller than the pine trees I had been running through moments before. I couldn't see its face, for it was so tall it disappeared among the clouds.

Why am I even pulling the drawbridge shut?! I thought desperately, then abandoned the task and ran into the darkness of the castle.

Something was distinctly familiar about the halls that I ran through, for I knew every twist and turn and hidden passageway. I ran until I reached a large throne room with a red carpet leading up the middle of the floor to where an oversized mechanical throne sat empty. An old TV screen, displaying static, hung over the throne. Around the chair and guarding the door were creepy open-mouthed statues that resembled a fat penguin dressed in robes. Something about their appearance was oddly familiar, too.

Another underworldly groan from the creature pursuing me sounded closer. I heard the cracking of the stone over my head and I dove under the large throne, arms around my knees and katanas in hand. Yet I felt that my powerful swords were toothpicks compared to this beast. Fear and adrenaline coursed through me as the fractured roof over my head crumbled and the beast peered in. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up as my sixth sense told me that it was coming, coming and I hadn't done enough-enough of what?

Several moments passed in silence, so I glanced up. I immediately regretted it. Its smoky gray scales moved like gills on its face as if it were breathing through them, and its murky purple eye flashed when it saw me. I gasped, and before I could move, one of its legs came down through the wall and stabbed me in the neck.

For an instant, I couldn't feel anything. Then I started to shake uncontrollably and I lost my sense of time and reason. The edges of my vision filled with a dark purple goo and the sharp prick in my neck turned to a dull throb. I collapsed to the ground...