Chapter 5: Into the Jungle

I found my way out of the house of monstrous proportions, and walked down the steep hill, opened the gate and came to a fork in the road. The left road led to the huge city, and the right one lead to a shady forest with a faint campfire lit far off.
I decided to check out the right forest, and I made my way through the thick shrubbery.
Farther east there was a nice fire burning by the bottom of a cliff. The cliff had a few indentions on the surface.
I walked towards it and traced the indentions to a central point, which was something of a demented keyhole, in the shape of a claw.
Suddenly, there was a noise from the bushes. I spun around and surveyed the area. I saw a pair of dark eyes from the northeast corner of the forest.
“Travis? Silver? Whoever you are this isn’t funny…!” I warned. “I know my fair share of offensive strategies!”
The dark eyes disappeared behind the leaves of the bushes, which heightened the danger of the situation… this person could be anywhere…
Someone swung their arm around my neck and held a knife up to my eyes.
“Follow me or you die,” they said in a rather husky voice, tightening their grip on my neck.
“Wh- who are you??” I asked, gulping. The blade grazed my skin, leaving a white mark. “I didn’t do anything… Look, if you want my money, here…” I reached for my wallet in my right pocket, which just so happened to be where my pocketknife was.
“Don’t even think about it.” The person roughly searched my right pocket, tossed my wallet to the ground and took the pocketknife out of my possession. “I’ll be keeping this for now… you can have it back when you learn your lesson… You’re coming with me…” The person pulled my arms over my head, and then shoved me against the wall.
They edged towards the odd indention and thrust their hand into the cavity. The door slid open and they forced me through the small cave.
I could feel my heartbeat decrease, slowly, and everything was relaxed. It was a dark corridor, but as violent as this person seemed, I felt secure in their arms as we crept through the cave.
Then it hit me, this must all be part of their plan! Trying to lull me into the false sense that they would protect me. I couldn’t let this fiend find their way into my head, I have to do something about this situation! I crossly tried to claw myself out of their grasp and managed to dig my canine teeth into their bare hand.
The person briefly paused, uttering a small, low gasp for air. My teeth must have gotten in pretty far, because their skin was broken. I chuckled and slipped out from under their arm, expecting to get my great escape.
“Tsk, Tsk, Sarai… Did you actually EXPECT that you would get away from me?” said a hoarse voice, as a hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed my shoulder. Their sharp claws drilled into my skin and the secure atmosphere faded into the velvety black shadows.
“…How do you know my name?” I asked, ignoring the pain they had just caused me. “For the last time! Who are you and what do you want out of me?!”
I could see a toothy grin emerged from the dimness of the chamber. “My name is Kostya. For all that I have to endure for a final reward– the reward ALMOST seems unreasonable… My reasons for capturing will remain unknown until the last moment of your pathetic days here…”
I could feel the cold blade against my skin yet again, and a small trickle of blood ran down my neck.
“There is more where that came from…” Kostya muttered, tightening his grip on my arm. “That is… if you do not cooperate…”
I turned back to the dimming light of the forest that I had been forced out of by Kostya. Was this the last I would see of the outside world?
We trailed on into the passage for what seemed like forever. As for the outside world’s gleam, it died out a long while back through the cave.
I followed along beside Kostya, who was pacing himself it seemed. He stopped sometimes to check and see if I was still following behind him. I, of course, would never think of trying to get out of his grasp again… that is, until I have more methods of getting my way.
We proceeded on, only to find there was a dead end waiting for us at the end of the hallway. Kostya seemed the least bit fazed and when I tried to make my exit, after finding there was no way of getting through this wall, Kostya grabbed my arm and pulled a keg of dynamite from out of his jacket’s pocket, and placed it in front of wall that stood in front of us.
“The Lord of these lands sealed this not too long ago, after defeating his Father’s dark side and killing his brother… Some say that the only reason he locked it was because his father’s dark side was far too powerful, and his spirit still lingers…if this enhanced dynamite doesn’t destroy the lock… hmm… you shouldn’t worry that much. This dynamite breaks even the toughest seals… I’ve been reading up on shadow magic… hehe…”
Kostya light a match and set the dynamite on fire, then pulled me down with him to dampen the damage that the explosion would cause us.
As soon as he heard a boom, following by the crumbling of a wall, he jumped up and continued into a new room, revealed by the wall that had disappeared into nothingness.
Kostya noticed I wasn’t following, but instead frozen in shock on the floor, and picked me up in his arms. “If you refuse to come along with me on your free will, I will just have to make you come on my own…”
I didn’t struggle to break free, because yet again, the whole atmosphere felt warm, as if his attitude wasn’t quite right, or was once, not too long ago, a lot more loving of humanity.
There was something, for sure, that wasn’t right. This man, Kostya, had no heartbeat whatsoever.
And also, amidst the speedy and violent motions, a dark pathway, and many more misadventures, I hadn’t seen Kostya’s face. What I did know is that he wore a leather jacket and grayish jeans, and there was a medallion of some sort hanging from his neck. On his left hand, there was a ring, which was encrusted with a very small dragon figurine.
Kostya lit several candles, then picked up a burnt stick, covered in dust, and traced a symbol of an X, a cross, and a circle that had already been drawn about twenty or so years ago, judging by the fact that the area was coated with grime.
“And now, for the role you play… a sacrifice… just like me…” Kostya held up the knife again.
I jumped out of his arms, the least bit motionless, and backed up in the farthest wall. “W-Why have you chosen me? W-Why do you have to sacrifice me– and yourself?”
Kostya’s smirk turned dark, “… Two bodies lain before a great emblem… bringing back a great king… granting two final wishes… for the final departure of these two freshly killed souls… massacred with a knife of shadows… brought by one of the dead bodies…” he paused. “That’s all I could read before the words became faded, so I could no longer make out the manuscript. You see… I must kill you and myself with this knife I got from the shadow… and I can have my final wish! I can finally bring back my family…”
“What happened to your family?” I asked, consumed by his solemn story.
“They died in a great fire… I did too… but they got lost on the way to this world. I tried to talk with the Lord of the lands, but he says he can bring no lost souls back… that they will remain lost… forever. So I read up at the library and found this. As for you, you have a strange aura around you, almost as if you’re not a soul… it’s fascinating, and this great kind would be fond of having someone like you as a sacrifice. And this knife… a friend owed me a favor… so he gave me this knife he found one day at the Black Market… there’s only one…. he checked…”
He paused many times, as if he didn’t really want to go on telling me this kind of stuff.
“Please, I want my family back…! You’ve got to help me. I promise, if we are ever reincarnated, I owe you big time!”
This was a hard decision. Why choose my life over many others? It seems almost too easy for one to get this. There must be a catch… and this is a huge risk. I guess this is my time to die…
My mind has been made up… if Kostya answers my one question.
“Kostya, if your family is going to come back… you are going to die, you know, and you will never see them. Is that what you want?”
“I have thought that over many times. My answer is: As long as they are alive, I will be happy, even if I am dead…” Kostya seemed tender to these sentimental questions about life and death.
Now it was for sure. I was going to let Kostya get this over with. I mean, if I don’t die here, I’m probably going to drown anyway. Plus, I get bonus. Staying in the Spirit World couldn’t get that bad, could it?
“I’ll let you take my life… for the sake of your family.”
Kostya sort of smiled, and then partially hugged me and his lips grazed my cheeks as if he was trying to kiss them.
“Trust me, we will get our wishes… and you won’t feel the least bit of pain. I put some potion on the blade… it won’t hurt at all.”
Kostya readied his blade, looked away murmuring, “See you in heaven, darling…”
And he was right. There was no pain, but the entire world became black and white and eventually all my surroundings faded away, leaving me with the pitch black of a void of nothingness– death.