The Raven's Chronicles. Rage of the Wraith

Chapter 1. The Hunt

Hidden on the branch of an oak tree, a skinny boy holding a recurve bow observed the cemetery hill. The sun had bled out on the darkening sky. The reddish glow over the forest's edge remained as the only reminder of the dying day. Now the night welcomed the graveyard into a gentle embrace. Over the tombs, ripped open like wounds in moss-covered soil, ghosts awoke from their eternal sleep. The boy watched them hovering over their graves, their figures weaved of gleam and mist.

The boy raised his hand. His eyes - one hazel, one icy blue - gleamed with golden veins. Between his fingers, the air swirled and sparkled, forming a bluish, glowing ball. When he pushed it up, it soared into the sky like a lightning bug, flickered and then died away.

"There you are, Jules! I couldn't find you!" A gust of chilly wind sent shivers down the boy's spine. The air turned stuffy with the musty odour of dead flowers. She appeared just before his face - a misty bride in a gown like a spider's web and a rope tightened around her neck. "That damned creatures ate my skull last night! I want them dead!"

"Lichers feed on bones," Jules regarded her with a short bob of his head. With curly hair falling over his eyes, he didn't see the grimace on the ghost's face. "Don't take it personally."

She huffed, "Try not to take it personally when a smelly beast chews on your bones!"

"Let's stay focused, shall we?" he turned to look at the edge of the woods. "It's my first hunt, and if I screw up, it'll be my last."

"I've never understood you, hunters" The bride sat on the branch beside the boy, playing with the rope. "Even when I wanted to marry one, I still didn't... I haven't told you how I've died, have I? It was on my wedding day, but they came, the priests of the Order, and they murdered him for being a mage and hanged me for wanting to marry him... Have you ever thought about how people can kill in the name of the goddess of life"

"The priests of the Order of Ziva, they killed you?" Jules' face turned white, almost as pale as the woman's.

It was the name haunting in his nightmares, back when he'd been living in a little fishing village before he became an apprentice hunter. It was the very name his parents used to sow fear into him, forcing him to cover his blue eye with a bandage. "They'll kill you if they find out" - his mother would say, hurrying him home when the priest came to pray with the fishermen and bless their boats, "I've seen people burn on stakes. Ziva's Order doesn't practice the mercy it preaches."

"That man with the scar on his face - your master, isn't he? - he's scary," the bride's voice woke him up from his thoughts. He relaxed his hands that were clenched on the handle of his recurve bow. "Does he ever smile? But the other one, the younger -"

"Raimont?

"Well," she smiled, her tone kittenish and velvet- soft. "He's handsome. And really charming..."

"And very much alive," the boy arched one eyebrow at her. "No offence."

"None taken," she swung the rope forth and back. "But life's fragile, and hunters tend to die young... I wouldn't mind sharing my cemetery."

"You're not helping, you know?" Jules glared at her until the smile on her face faded. He turned away, not wanting her to see the wave of fear gripping at his chest. It was the fear he learned to live with; whenever Ravin and Raimont were hunting, he could only hope they would come back unharmed. He remembered the many scars marking his master's arms and torso, each of them a reminder of fights the man had barely survived.

"Oh, the living are so soft these days," the bride rolled her eyes.

Ignoring her comment, the boy reached for the steel badge on a rawhide that he wore around his neck. He ran his fingers along the shape of a hunting raven engraved in the metal. Around it, there was a carved inscription. The letters, deep wounds in the metal, read: 'Till the last breath'. It was the motto of the hunters - warrior mages whose calling was to fight monsters and demons.