The King of Coal (A Dartron Fan Fiction)

Chapter Three- The Dark Figure

He had only slept for a couple of hours when Dar lurched upright to a sound one only hears in nightmares.

Boom.

Dar's heart recede from its flooding of blood, as he patted himself up and down to check if he was still in one piece.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Dar's shoulders relaxed, and he fell back against the post. He had survived the creeper's explosion.

But this miracle seemed to much out of place to him.

How was it that even as a sitting duck, sleeping against a lamppost, that the creeper still hadn't managed to get close enough to finish off the prince?

Dar looked at the ground near his feet.

There was no crater.

"What?" He whispered, franticly scanning the entire path around him.

There was no sign of a creeper explosion.

Dar plopped back down against his lamppost, trying to ponder what had occurred the moment he woke up.

"If the creeper was not in my range when it exploded, then who could have been pursuing?"

Relief washed over the prince. A guard patrolling the village must have seen the creeper and attempted to fight it off-"

Dar's eyes dilated.

No guards patrolled that part of the village. No villagers lived in it.

"But if there aren't any guards or villagers to make the creeper explode, then..."

Dar was not alone in the village.

He shuttered as a thought ran through his mind, a question he dreaded asking himself.

What if they had been watching him sleep the entire time?

Dar stood up, trying to conceal the terror in his voice.

"Who goes there?" He stuttered, wrapping a hand around the lamppost.

As lighting beams out of the sky, a dark figure bolted from the side of one of the wood huts left of Dar, and ran from the village in the direction of the forest.

"Hey!" Dar cried out, running after the figure. In his first few steps, Dar had not watched his footing, and tripped and stumbled on the stone. Not fazed by the fall, Dar leapt to his feet and continued to sprint toward the forest, his visibility dying every moment as his lamppost and himself grew farther and farther apart.

Dar watched as the figure, now only fifty blocks away, jumped into the foliage and disappeared into the trees.

At that moment, Dar was faced with a decision. He would either risk dying to any possible mobs in the forest (or even die to the dark figure that had been stalking him), or he could turn from the trees and walk back to the village, giving up the chase, letting this night and the mystery of the dark figure haunt him for the rest of his life.

Dar did not slow down.

Dar rocketed over the bushes and into the deep foliage.

The darkness in those woods seemed so tangible it was claustrophobic. Being poked in the eyes by branches and bumping into tree trunks, Dar could barely make out his hand in front of his face.

The pitch blackness of the night was the only reason Dar's eyes could have snapped attention to a tiny light that glowed on the side of a mountain that rose high above the forest. The mountain side of the summit where Dar would someday stand and make the hardest decision of his life.