Somewhere in South America
The warm night air was smothering. There was something in it that leaves a sense of dreadful hopelessness hovering in the mind, a sense of inevitable doom that could not be fought – only accepted. Even the swaying of the trees was lethargic, as though they were just going through the motions but if given legs they would have stampeded for the hills long ago and leave with just brown fallen leaves and trampled ground as evidence of their passing. There were no animals about, not even the birds go near the place. It was a silent place, a lonely place, with nothing but the mournful howling of the wind to break the monotonous silence.
It was an empty rolling landscape for miles around. The only source of light was the twinkling of the stars and the silvery glow of the moon in the vast cloudless sky. The villagers of Valencia, the nearest human habitation, called the place “the playground of the devil”, a place uttered in frightened whispers and hushed tones, if talked about at all. Even the most skeptical villager dare not go there. They all agree that devil or not there was something unnatural about the place, something frightening that must not be bothered by the living. In the past there were several brave but foolish souls who went there – a show of bravado – they were never heard from again. Those who came looking for them met the same fate.
A farmer, several decades ago, accompanied a sortie of two dozen men that came after a couple of robbers who killed a fellow villager and his family. Night overtook them and, in the darkness, they did not realize that they had crossed the unholy ground. The farmer was told to go back and tell the village that they will setup camp for the night and continue the search the next day. Happily he departed for he did not like spending a night sleeping without a roof and a soft bed, but he was barely out of earshot from the camp when he heard screaming and gunshots, thinking that his friends were ambushed he turned around and rode back as fast as possible back. What he found hunted his dreams forever: the corpses of the horses were scattered around the camp, all gutted and torn limb from limb, blood coated the brown soil in thick syrupy puddles, but there was no sign of his friends and fellow villagers, not even a whimper from the shadows. They were gone, as though swallowed by the darkness itself. Only the stars bore witness, but the stars kept their silence. His was the only story told of the doom that awaited any wandering feet that dared lay foot on the accursed soil.
Atop a small barren hill about a couple of miles before the unseen boundary stood the skeletal remains of a house, it was once a farm of sorts but the owners died or left long ago; the roof already caved-in in most parts, but the stone walls still remained. For years it stood there with nothing but the fading memories of the dead and departed haunting its wall, but on that particular night there was something afoot behind its walls. To anyone who might pass-by they would have not notice anything particular about it but, after all the years of neglect and emptiness, someone inhabits the house once again. A group of men in black hooded cassocks had engaged the house as their camp. With their attire they might have been mistaken as priests but their straight bearing and precise movement brings any observer to the conclusion that their line of work was more militant than spiritual, that and the fact that the features under their drawn-out hoods were all obscured by thick shadows that seemed to cling to their faces like masks.
They were members of the Order of Kath'arinan, the Keepers of the Covenant. The men that stood before chaos and held it at bay. Where there were men who wielded great power that can wreck havoc to the world the Order was there to make sure that those men have something to fear. And fear them they all did.
Two straight backed figures, standing opposite each other just behind the threshold, stood as sentries. Something must have alerted them of someone coming for they quickly drew out from their sleeves thin wooden wands and pointed it at the door. “Who goes there?” said one of them.
