ONE
Summer of 2010
The Spirit flew through the night, traveling with ease over the valley, unseen by the human eye. It moved as a dark cloud would over the land, building in size as it moved ever closer to its goal.
When it neared the ancient Cherokee burial ground, it gained form, becoming shadow and moving toward a specific grave, belonging to one particular Shaman. There were wards and warnings placed around his resting place. However, they were no threat to the spirit. It moved past them with no difficulty at all.
The Shaman was a thing of legend. He had been a kind soul in his youth. His people had believed he would be a great man; A leader among his tribe. He was a truly powerful leader among his people.
He had fulfilled the hopes of his people in many ways, until a certain event changed his entire outlook on life. No record was ever kept of what it was that changed him, so it was no longer remembered after so many years. Desolate and inconsolable, he had turned to the darker spirits that were taboo and forbidden among his tribe.
They answered his calls and the powers those spirits gifted him with appealed to his darker nature, making him power hungry and sick with an ever growing evil within his soul. He began to have a taste for evil. He enjoyed torturing creatures weaker than himself. Many women of the tribe learned he was not someone they could trust if they were alone.
But still, the tribe was blind to his evil habits and appetites, until he had attempted to sacrifice a newborn to dark gods that were not among the one’s they worshiped. They were unable to exact justice on him for his crimes for they feared his insanity. If they had only known of the depths of his crimes, they would have burned his ashes to dust, making his return impossible.
Instead, he was always guarded, and treated with the reverence of the insane. In those days, they had always been treated with respect. For it was believed that such people had been touched by the gods.
Upon his death, he was buried upon the hallowed ground, among his forefathers. His people had breathed a collective sigh of relief, believing the horrors he had caused to be at an end.
However, in his youth, he had made an agreement with the dark gods he followed. An agreement to give his soul over in service of the very evil he craved.
When the spirit reached the grave, it drew a symbol in the ground with a whisper that was swallowed by a sudden gust of wind as the shadow seemed to sink into the earth. Then, all went still.
For several minutes, everything, including time, seemed to come to a halt. Slowly, the shadow emerged, seeming to become more of a smoky consistency as it rose.
Then, as if a scene from a horror movie, the skeletal body dug its way clear of the bowels of the earth to join the dark spirit that summoned him.
In the darkness, they were hidden from the eyes of man, but the beasts knew they were there. They shrunk away from the invaders in fear, calling out to each other in warning.
That night, there were no animals stalking smaller ones. Snakes and mice huddled together for protection. Mountain Lions and rabbits alike trembled side by side. Each and every animal watched one another’s backs. Each creature born of this world passed the night in silent truce.
For what this Shadow and Corpse stood for was an abomination that endangered all. The right of man to exist was about to be challenged. If this new evil succeeded in what drove them, then the human race would be forever lost. And it would not matter who may have been chosen to protect them. This enemy was as dangerous to the Eternals as it was to any other born of this world.
