Editing The Dark Woods (section)

==Fall of the Blackmanes==
An ancient, decrepit colo stood high in the air balanced on the top of a tall, ruined stone wall. Her black hooded witch's robe and her jet black hair flagged in the chilling, howling wind. Her eyes emitted a flickering shadow around her, the same way a torch would emit light in the darkness. She plucked thorns from her bleeding hands. The spiteful scowl on her face revealed her dismay.


Two heavily robed colos trudged down a dark misty wooded path. Monks of the Order of Thanatos traveled in groups of at least two. They were were prepared to investigate and if necessary exorcise a haunting on near the frontier of their territory.  The older, in-charge veteran monk, Ruben, was a head shorter than his young, robust and inexperienced companion, Willard. Ruben had aged posture, but still had power in his stride. Willard appeared comfortably over weight, in spite of his height. They now rehearsed the details of their assignment.

“All you do is pound a stake into the heart of the corpse, which effectually paralyzes it, and then drag that corpse outside and burn it, which supposedly purifies it, right?” recalled Willard.

“Right, and stand back when you set it ablaze! These things can explode without warning. Last time I did this my companion was badly burned” shuddered Ruben.

“Why have they sent only two of us to take on such a dangerous foe?”

Ruben sized up Willard with a glance. He had chosen Willard because of his superior strength and size, but now he wondered if he should have selected someone with more appetite for swordplay. “I have dealt with several of these types before. This foe’s not dangerous, so long as you go when they sleep in the daytime, and of course, so long as you follow the procedure. What concerns me is the condition of the castle. It’s been decades since anyone has produced any details of the condition of the castle’s interior.”

“Oh, I see, you’re worried one of us might slip and fall, and the nearest village is a dozen miles off. Well, how did the Executioner come to haunt this place anyhow?” questioned Willard.

Ruben muttered, “Well, all that is really available amounts to little more than old wives tales.”

“Tell me what you’ve heard!” Willard not only wanted to know but felt a sincere need to know.

“Alright,” sighed Ruben, “before colo country was settled, the royal Blackmane family lived here."

"We're headed for the ancestral home of the Blackmanes?! They were one of the original tribes that immigrated from our homeworld! But wasn't Blackmane Manor destroyed in the later wars of purification?"

"Not destroyed, but abandoned, before those wars. The trouble started with a witch. An old hag stopped by one nasty evening, asking for a place to weather the storm. Well, they let her in. In fact, they invited her to eat with them. However, when the time to eat came she was nowhere to be found. Instead on her chamber floor lay foreign lettering, written out in fresh blood” stated Ruben as near by song birds of awoke and started to chirp.

“Fresh blood indeed! Drawn from where?” interrupted Willard.

“I’ll get to that part” continued Ruben, “when the guest disappeared, this became a topic of conversation at dinner. Soon everyone knew of the findings in her room. Arguing ensued as a strange rage took hold of all their hearts. The possibility of a curse was mentioned at the supper table and someone else said the notion was foolish. Then someone raised their voice at the notion that the notion of a curse was foolish, and then someone slapped them for yelling," explained Ruben.

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"A punch was returned for a slap, a stab with a fork for a punch, and a drawn sword for a fork stab. Someone drew a sword to assist, and they were stabbed in the back by another. Two young brothers were wrestling in a death grip, just in front of the castle door, when they slipped and fell, still clinging to each other’s throats, and rolled down the castle stairs into the courtyard. Once off the castle steps they released each other almost immediately. They tried to help, but all inside were too infuriated to listen to their beckoning. Too busy killing each other you see. Fearing the violence, these two did not dare go back inside the castle until it was too late." Ruben stopped to wipe some water off his beak that fell from the leaf of an overhanging tree branch.

“Until it was too late? They went back in?” Thick fog was forming a slippery mud film on the trail.

“They found a sight of unspeakable carnage. The dead and their blood had been strewn all about the castle. But they found the executioner in the cellar kitchen. He wore his ceremonial hood and uniform, and was draining the blood from dead bodies into wine barrels. Apparently he was muttering a strange language to himself.”

“Old wives tales and their strange languages!” jested Willard.

“Well, they ran for it, escaping the executioner. That’s how the story goes, strange languages and all.”

“Ah, but what where did the hag get the newly drawn blood from to draw her archaic symbols with?”

“The brothers fled to near by authorities. After a few days of searching out and questioning possible suspects, an eccentric old beggar was found with bandages on her hands. The servants identified her as the witch. She claimed to not know how the wounds appeared on her hands and, as all wicked witches do, denied any involvement in witchcraft. For her lies, she was bound and burned alive." Ruben's voice had a dignified tone.

"At least the story has a happy ending” chuckled Willard in relief.

“Not quite, you see that was centuries ago. Ever since there have been sightings of this same Executioner, always at night, and always with his ceremonial burlap hood. No one dares approach the castle. Every year or two someone winds up missing in this region. There are hundreds reported missing now.”

The fog was clearing.  The silhouette of the fortress roof startled Willard from his thoughts. “Look over there” exclaimed Willard nervously, “we had better get ready.”

At the side of the trail, they took off their robes, revealing backpacks, soft leather armor, brass breastplates and waist sheathed short swords underneath. Emptying their packs, they fastened iron helmets with face guards, mounted a large heavy mallet to each of their belts along with a few unlit torches, and strapped belts of barbed oak stakes on their shoulders. Willard hoisted a coil of rope onto his left shoulder, and Ruben stuffed the robes into the backpacks and hid the packs in the bushes. They continued quietly down the path.

The outer wall of the fortress, three or four stories high, was formed from small boulders and large rocks fitted together with crude mortar. If there had been a mote outside of the wall at one time, it had since eroded into obscurity, as vines and trees now grew up against the outside wall, preventing it's collapse in some places. The log supports used to build the wall were never removed from the inside, and had been used to maneuver atop the wall.

They quickly snuck through the large front gate to the courtyard, which lay broken and open. Creeping through the morning's wet, well-grazed grass to the courtyard, they quietly skirted towards the front entrance to the fortress. Willard gestured at a large, burnt wooden pole sticking up vertically in the middle of the courtyard.

Ruben replied with a shrug and pointed towards the castle’s front door. The castle it's self, a story or two higher than the outer wall in most places, was constructed in the same way as was the outer wall, but it was in poorer repair without the trees and vines to hold it together. From the ground it was impossible to tell if it had a flat roof or no roof at all, as there was some sort of old wooden frame work on top of the castle, but it's function was concealed by it's eroded condition, and by the fact it was covered by noisy, jet black, perched crows.

They carefully found their way to the creaking front steps, then through the main massive wooden double door, which already lay open for them enough to squeeze through without having to try to force the door open further.

The inside of the castle was unusually dark and dry. They stopped for a moment to light a single torch. Suddenly a floor plank gave out underneath Ruben with an audible “crack.” His arms lashed out to keep himself from falling all the way through, but he only broke more rotten wooden planks on his way to the darkness below.

"Are you OK?” screamed Willard, as he lay at the edge of the hole left by Ruben’s fall. Willard knelt down, lowering his torch to offer light into the large chamber below, which was full of old sturdy tables. Willard could see Ruben, who was picking himself up out of a pile of dust.

“I think I’ve found the coffin, hurry!” Ruben pointed to an object not clearly visible to Willard.

Willard squeezed his hands and felt liquid on them. He examined the edge of the new hole in the floor and noticed blood around its edge. However, it was not in random patches as he thought it should be. The blood seemed to form some sort of lettering. What does that word say.. is that a letter… not a letter, a number? No, some kind of symbol I think..." thought Willard, as he jumped back, dropping the rope into the hole, involuntarily screaming, “Ahh!”

“What is wrong Willard?” cried Ruben’s voice from the hole.

Willard shook his head in disbelief. The flickering lighting from the torch was poor; he must have been seeing things. “Nothing, I just slipped. I’ll be right down!”

“Hurry, get down here now! I'm in the kitchen, I'm sure!”

Willard carefully walked through the front hall into a dark cluttered room and then through another. Even with a torch it was difficult to tell much about what the castle's interior had been like before it had been abandoned. Besides the poor lighting, time had taken its toll on the Castle interior. He noticed there were definitely signs of a struggle, with turned over tables and discarded weapons lying about. The struggle had obviously ended long ago, as most everything was covered in dust and cobwebs. He noted that the presence of weapons meant that there had been few visitors since the struggle had taken place.

He found the staircase down and felt his way down using an old rickety handrail. Suddenly he heard an old lady’s voice, which with frozen breath whispered into his ear, “I’m going to rip out your lungs and soak my rose garden with your blood!”

“Ahh!” screamed Willard again, pulling his sword and swinging fiercely at the old witch behind him. However, all he hit was the rock wall of the staircase. A mangy old crow on the step behind him, where he thought the witch should have been, squawked loudly and flapped off into the shadows. He resumed creeping towards the cellar, shaking his head in unbelief and self-doubt.

Even before entering the kitchen, Willard noticed the large wooden coffin lying in the center of the floor. He crept through the cellar basement towards the kitchen, and then into it, cautiously creeping towards the coffin. "Don’t forget the procedure!" remembered Willard as pulled out a barbed oak stake with his left hand and readied his large wooden mallet. Willard paused as he noticed a large, bloody executioners axe lying against the coffin. Where is Ruben? he thought, oh no, the yelling! He must have awakened it! This thing has killed Ruben!

Willard grimaced as his fear turned to anger. He kicked the finely crafted wooden lid off of the coffin, revealing a hooded, bare-chested colo ghoul inside. He straddled the coffin, plunging the stake downward, following it with a massive swoop of his mallet. He struck the stake again a second time, but his third blow was stopped by the ghoul’s hand driving into his chest, throwing him off of the coffin and onto the cold floor, rear first.

As Willard rose to his feet, so did the creature, struggling to remove the stake from its body. “Oh no! I’ve missed the heart!” thought Willard when he saw that the stake protruded more from the throat of the ghoul than its chest. It waved at him with one hand threateningly as it pulled futilely at the barbed stake, causing a light spray of blood to darken its chest. Willard readied another stake and charged, thundering angrily “this one’s for Ruben!”

The creature side stepped out of the coffin off the line of Willard’s charge, grabbing Willard’s available mallet arm and swinging him into a cold stone wall head first, causing an audible “clang” from Willard’s helmet. The impact stunned Willard, and he dropped his stake and mallet as he stumbled to the floor.

Willard shook his head in pain, climbing to his feet. He could not believe the power of the creature he faced. He attempted to draw his sword, but was denied by a forceful boot to his mid section, which threw him back out of the kitchen into the darkness of the cellar. The ghoul chased after, half screeching, half gurgling.

Willard watched as the ghoul held the stake with one hand and lashed out in the dark with the other. He tried to quietly draw his sword. The ghoul turned and charged right at him, but this time Willard was faster; with a massive thrust he impaled the left side of the its lower body with his sword. For a moment it was stunned as Willard twisted the blade, causing vital fluids to spill out onto the floor. As the ghoul’s weight retreated, it slipped on some of its own drippings and stumbled. Willard let go of his sword and kicked at the creature’s legs will all of his might, sweeping it to the floor. He drew a stake and plunged downward with both hands.

Willard secured the stake with a series of stomps, but the ghoul kept writhing. He secured another stake, and then another. First binding the colo like feet with rope, he dragged the corpse by the rope towards the staircase. His sword scraped loudly as it was still impaled the creature, its point dragging on the cobble stone floor.

As Willard dragged the ghoul up the staircase, it finally quit writhing, its head sounding “thud, thud” with each step upwards. The sword made the dragging difficult as it snagged, making a clinging sound step after step. The body seemed to get lighter and lighter as he dragged. Someone stirred far off in the fortress, causing creeks and faint weeping sounds. Is that just crows, or is Ruben still alive? I’ll have to go find him after I finish this.

Willard dragged the ghoul through the dark cluttered rooms into the main front hall where Ruben had fallen through the floor. He stopped to catch his breath. He took off his helmet and breastplate to ease his burden. He debated whether to take the ghoul outside to burn it, or to risk burning it inside the dry interior of the fortress where it lay. Then he noticed the amount of damage done to the body, and how its loss of blood and other internal tissues had been the cause of it becoming lighter, forming a bloody, lumpy trail back into a cluttered room.

“Willard, thank goodness you’re safe” came Ruben’s voice from out of the shadows behind Willard. Ruben’s hunched, armored figure approached the downed ghoul. The creature spastically jolted to its hands and knees, desperately trying to get up. A massive sweep of Ruben’s boot sounded in the specter’s rib cage with an audible “crunch”, smashing the creature against a narrow pillar into a vulnerable prone position. Ivory tusks now protruded from the dripping, bloody, torn skin of the ghoul’s rib cage.

Willard walked to the front doors to put down his armor and to let more light into the structure. As he was pulling a door open he noticed that there was a large cluster of rose bushes very near the burnt pole in the courtyard. He scratched some dried blood off of his face, wondering why he hadn’t notice the roses before.

Then he noticed the burnt pole was no longer there. Willard panicked, pulling the door open with a series of forceful yanks, trying to protect himself with twilight from the confusing darkness of the fortress. Each yank produced an unsettling creaking, cracking sound as the door resisted Willard's force. When he finally got the door open wide enough, he glanced back inside. They had created more of a mess than he thought, with blood splattered about from the corpse. “Take off its hood, let's get a good look at it” insisted Willard desperately.

The hunched figure hefted the corpse by the throat into the air with one hand, yanked the hood off with the other, and chucked the body across the room into Willard, knocking him to the floor. Ruben’s face gazed up at Willard from the mutilated body. “Nooooooo !” cried out Willard as he realized his mistake. Willard knew he had tortured and killed his own mentor. "Back in the cellar someone must have dressed Ruben up to look like the ghoul!" he realized suddenly.

The ghoulish figure removed Ruben’s helmet it had been disguising itself with. Willard could make little distinction between the darkness of the shadows and the shadowy evil of the head of the creature, because of a dark fog around it's head.  He was bare able to make out the beak of a colo.

The creature glared over at Willard, stake in hand. “Now we will see how you like it…” screeched a familiar, yet twisted voice of an old lady. Leaping to his feet, Willard pulled a stake and charged. The burlap hooded ghoul intercepted Willard’s lunge, impaling Willard’s chest with a barbed oak stake. Sudden darkness ended all of Willard’s pain and confusion.


An ancient, decrepit colo stood high in the air balanced on the top of a tall, ruined stone wall. Her black hooded witch's robe and jet black hair flagged in the chilling, howling wind. Her eyes emitted a flickering shadow around her, the same way a torch would emit light in the darkness. She plucked thorns from her bleeding hands. The spiteful grin on her face revealed her wicked glee.

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