HADAGERY, Book of Elysium

Chapter 4

Chapter 4: In the Face of Evil.

“Zombies!” Hadge frantically yelled. He could feel an icy sensation lingering upon his cheek, as something had touched him. While sorrowful moans shuddered terribly close to his ear, rousing a cool breathy draft across his neck, and a chill down his spine. His minds eye instantly visualizing the rotting corpse of the old man, hovering dangerously above him. Its long cold skeletal fingers wickedly aimed at him, and its rotting mouth breathing down his neck. He was certain of the disturbing implications, as the unsettling words rang through his head, “Dinner is served.” He sat bolt upright in the unusually silent field of flowers, expecting to see a deadly man-eater drooling over him, with the unnerving notion nauseously boiling up all over again, “Dinner is served.”

At that time the sluggish scenes of the fairies flashed like still photography. They had led those lifeless fiends away, leaving behind no sounds, no fairies, as he confusedly wondered, “Did any of it really happen?”

The foreign feel of dampness trickled down his cheek, every nerve and discord grimacing to the touch. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!” He bellowed, quick to believe it to be slobbers, reacting to the chilling moisture like everyone would. Hadge swiftly wiped the substance from his face, as the thick pasty feel eerily spread athwart his skin, and his fingers were smeared red, the gruesome shade of blood. Then another drop struck his face, and another, and another. Even as his disconcerted vision staunchly followed the route the bleeding drops had plummeted, it was tragically raining blood once again, a true omen of death.

Dark clouds ominously churned overhead. Heathen spires had rose from the murky depths of the planet, volatilely heating and contaminating the air, as it ushered its foul pollution from the very bowels of hell, from the reavers factories. The evil factories had emerged out of hibernation once more, where death may not come only once, or even twice, but an unending demise, where sanity and pain may truly wish there were an end. The reavers hunted once more, sending their dark army’s to unearth new victims to torture, and no one would be safe.

The declaration of safe unbearably struck home, he couldn’t help but to worry about everyone in the caverns. Hadge wrestled with the recollection of seeing a reaver inside the caverns before he left, gravely asking, “What if it wasn’t the soama, or a dream?” Which evoked more memories, “There were more reavers outside the Cemetery.” Feeling his body nervously quake, “Oh my Yahveh.” He cried, “They’re all in danger!”

All at once bloodcurdling shrieks pierced the rigid silence, like the grisly sounds of prey captured within the razor-sharp claws of its predator. At once he thought of Uwee and the others, begging to ask that terrible question, “Could the screams be one of them?” There was no time in the trivial pursuit of answers, as he frantically attempted to trace the sounds. Scanning the darkness from his hiding place, he was despairingly drawn towards Grendlocke Cemetery, certain the reavers had to be there. By this time he had established the identity of the distinct tonal shrieks it was Uwee. With much dismay trouble seemed to find the grubb no matter where he may be, however the blame this time had grown heavy on Hadges shoulders, miserably requesting, “What have I done?”

Hadge leapt to his feet, recklessly dashing towards the distraught sounds. Oddly a startling noise swished the leaves mere feet away, shifting beneath the weight of something heavy in his wake, something moving hard and fast in his direction. He turned just in time to see a massive dark shape leap up from the shadowy foliage, his mind at once associating the shape with a reaver, and his heart skipped a beat. Then a closer inspection revealed the shape was strewn with haphazard flesh-like growths, as it quickly out ran him, and the massive figure had become identifiable. It was the dog Reybe.