Mark Malone - The Power Within

The Power Within

By Mark Malone

Text copyright 2014 Mark Malone

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

Chalsia and the known world

Chapter One - Stone Grove

The morning sun glinted off the Tassex River, a thousand brilliant pinpoints of light dancing in the ripples of the fast moving current. A warm spring breeze gently caressed Darians face and ruffled his unruly chestnut hair. Darian stood in the old stone schools doorway watching the Tassex rush away from the town of Stone Grove as he awaited the arrival of his students. He reminisced about a young man who had wanted desperately to rush away from Stone Grove as fast as the waters of the Tassex whisked away from the town and the encroaching Mist Mountains, but that was a lifetime ago, before Darian had lost the love of his life, his wife Marda, to the Night Dwellers.

An unbidden shiver racked his narrow frame despite the mornings soothing warmth as images of that terrible night flooded back in unrelenting clarity. Eight years had done little to blunt the guilt and sorrow that night had brought. Marda had woken him, deep in the night hours, complaining an animal or a sneak thief neighbor was attempting to ravage her prized vegetable garden tucked behind their little stone cottage. Darian, reluctant to interrupt his deep slumber, groggily argued that the stone walls surrounding their garden would dissuade any raiding animals and what neighbor in their right mind would be up at this time of night fumbling in the dark for a carrot or two? Darian had been wrong though, terribly wrong.

Despite Mardas pleadings, Darian had refused to rouse himself from his pillow. Oh how he regretted his indifference to her pleadings. She refused to be mollified by his slurred assurances that her garden would be fine. She was such a determined woman. She had marched out of their small bedroom mumbling about the laziness of men and lessons she was willing to teach both Darian and the perpetrators. Her back set lightning rod straight and her shoulders held in defiance of his lethargy and the audacity of her perceived sneak thief. Darian knew she would scoop up her broom by the rear door to shoo away a marauding rabbit or any other nuisance to her garden and almost felt sorry for man or beast that faced her building rage. He allowed his eyes to flutter shut, a small smile on his lips, proud of his beautiful young wifes willfulness.

All smiles and lassitude quickly fled from Darian when Mardas scream pierced the night and his hazy dreams. Alarmed, Darian leapt from bed, instantly awake and ran to the back door. Other screams began to fill the night, but they barely registered in Darians mind as he faced a horror straight from tales told in his childhood. The terrifying stories of night creatures that stole people away and consumed their victims flesh came flooding back to challenge the reality of this night. The twisted, evil creatures known as the Night Dwellers, transformed from a childish fantasy into a very solid reality. The Night Dwellers were said to slink through the night in search for wayward children and were occasionally rumored to raid the towns along the Mist Mountains. The legends told of how the Night Dwellers found light abhorrent, and were as pale as bleached bones with twisted hairless bodies and red eyes belonging to demons. Darian found the legends were irrefutably true.

Frozen momentarily by fear, Darian watched as a pair of childhood nightmares dragged Mardas struggling body over the ineffective stone wall. One of the creatures looked back at Darian, flashing its red eyes at him triumphantly with what could only be described as a malevolent smile before dropping over the wall. A shudder racked Darians slender frame again at how the evil creature almost looked... human, although twisted and warped into an abomination. Darian realized that he lacked bulk, a slight man at best, but though he couldnt suppress his fear, his greater fear for Mardas safety galvanized him into motion. Grabbing the garden hoe leaning near the cottages door, he bounded after Marda and the creatures that he knew could tear him limb for limb if they wanted to. It didnt matter. He had to try to save her, no matter the consequences. It was his fault she had been taken, if only he hadnt ignored her pleas to check the garden.

He remembered how his body had tingled and the hair on his arms had stood on end, as if he were charged with power, but that power hadnt helped. He struggled over the wall instead of bounding over it as he felt he should be able to do. Once on the other side, he realized the futility of his actions. Nearly a dozen Night Dwellers with four young women being carried among them disappeared behind the stables at the end of the row of little stone cottages. Horses suddenly added their screams of terror and Darian just avoided being trampled to death as the horses fled from their opened pens in all directions. Three barrel chested plow horses flight carried them directly at Darian and only an escape back over his garden wall saved him from being run down by the terrified animals.

Bounding back over the wall, he pursued the Night Dwellers, but the screams of their victims became eerily silent as the ghastly pale demons melted into the mist that gave the mountains that towered over Stone Grove their name. Foolishly he plunged into the mist, but the night and veil of moisture only served to turn him in circles. The Night Dwellers escaped without a trace and Marda, dear sweet beautiful Marda, was gone with them. As the morning sun encroached on the darkness, Darian found himself on the outskirts of the ruins at the mouth of Tassex Pass, lost, forlorn, and flooded with grief and guilt that continued to haunt him every day, even eight years later.

The idyllic beauty of Stone Groves pale stone cottages with timber roofs and perfectly manicured gardens surrounded by low stone fences lost its charm to Darian. Seeing the small town, nestled on a large hill sloping toward the larger stone cutters warehouses along the Tassex shoreline, framed by evergreens and the towering Mist Mountains usually moved a man by its beauty and serenity, but to Darian, the beauty was tainted by the pain of loss and the appeal of escaping Stone Grove returned to him. Darians dark memories were jolted from his awareness by the arrival of two of his students. Two teenage girls came bounding up the path to the school. Instead of the usual unrestrained joy he came to expect, the girls arrived red faced and teary eyed. Dread flooded Darian as the horror of the past swept through his consciousness. He suppressed his own fear and asked the flustered girls to tell him what was wrong. Ceyla, a blonde girl with a pert nose and a little rosebud mouth explained between sobs as raven haired Meesa stared at him with dark eyes, each seemingly the size of full moons.

Tern and Bentock went to the ruins to catch a creeper. A small quiver in Ceylas voice was interrupted by another abrupt sob.

Tern said you were wrong when you taught us that the ruins were dangerous and that Night Dwellers and creepers are just creatures in stories meant to scare young kids. He said he and Bentock are men now and arent afraid of nursery rhymes and scary stories and if there is such thing as a creeper they would kill one and bring it back to Stone Grove. Meesa continued in a small voice.

Tern said you were just afraid because of what happened to your... seemingly impossible to be any larger, Meesas eyes widened in shock at what she almost said and stammered to silence.

Its okay Meesa, go on, he urged her.

Im sorry, but he said he thought you were just afraid because bandits had taken your wife and you make up stories to cover it up because you couldnt protect her.

Sorrow surged through Darian at how close to the truth Tern had come. The bandits Tern believed to have raided Stone Grove eight years prior actually were the nightmare creatures of childrens scary stories, but Darian had been completely helpless to defend his wife and probably would have been just as ineffective against the armed bandits that raided farther east along the Tassex River trade routes. Darian allowed a bit of self-contempt to color his cheeks, shame at his lack of strength and wiry frame. He knew in his heart that Stone Grove hired him as the towns teacher by default because he lacked the strength to be a stone handler.