The Inner Gambit of Darkness - Continued (Part 3)

"Go ahead." the guard plainly said as he let Dalikos enter the house of the sobbing woman.

The woman was sitting on an old green couch, sobbing into the arm of it.

After much meditating in the darkness of the old caves, Ryan left the mountains to find something to do for the day.

Dalikos looked around. It was just like a normal house. Nothing to special. He slowly approached the women.

"Um... Ma'am?" He said.

The woman looked up with red tired eyes and a wrinkled, worried face. "What?" she snapped. "Why are you in here? Can't you see I'm mourning the loss of my son? Those damn guards won't do anything to help him, so he may be as good as dead..." she said in a trembling voice.

"Hey now. I know the guards wont do shit, but what about me? I could look for your son."

Dalkikos offered in a kind gesture.

The woman fell to her knees and made her way over to Dalikos. "Thank you, kind man. You are a brave soul..." she said before breaking into sobs again. "He's somewhere out there! I know it...find him...please..."

"No problem. I- Wait. I can see a problem already. The guards probably wont let me out right now..." Dalikos thought for a moment.

"Do you know any secret way into the woods? Or perhaps, a secret passage leading to the Ordon spring?"

The woman got up and tried her best to calm down. She made her way into another room and began to talk. "My husband was an alchemist...before he gave up the arts of necromancy. Don't get me wrong, he was a good man." she began as the rattling of glass could he heard.

"He was just desperate to bring back his sister. I talked him out of that black magic, and he took interest in alchemy...making potions to help people." she said as the sound of pouring could be heard. She came back into the room putting a cork onto a glass bottle containing a clear yet sparkling liquid. "I've kept all of his potions in my cabinet...in memory of him..." she said in a sorrowful tone. "This is an invisibility potion. Take a sip of this and you can walk out of here without being detected." She handed him the potion.

"Please...please bring my son back. He's all I have left, and I can't take another loss...please..."

Dalikos thanked the woman for the bottle then got ready to leave.

"Might i ask what your son looks like?"

"The Matrem. That is all you need to know." Prometh replied.

He stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face Deserax. "Tell me Deserax; what do you think of when you think of fire?"

"Oh, he's a young lad. Brown messy hair and blue eyes like his father..." she replied. "I wish you luck, sir. You are a good man."

"So what are supposed to do now everyone's split up?" Konbei asked Gwene. "Waste more time finding them when we should be at the Evil Realm?"

"I'm just doing whats right." Dalikos said. He took the bottle and drank a little bit of it, and soon felt a tingling throughout his body. Once it was over, he looked at the women. By her expression, it had worked. Dalikos opened the door after putting the bottle away again, and started through Ordon. A few times, he had close calls of almost being discovered, but he soon came to Links old house. From there, it was a straight shot for the woods. He broke out into a sprint and didn't stop until he was past the bridge. He looked back, making sure no one was there, and then started out on his mission.

-----

"I usually think of hot things, like lava, or anger." Deserax said, coming to a stop as well.

(It's nighttime right?)

The woods were silent, not including the gentle rustling of tree leaves and occasional owl hooting. It didn't seem so dangerous...

Suddenly, there was the sound of footsteps as a simple Bokoblin came running towards Dalikos with a club. It seemed wounded...

"Well, sucks to be that thing right now." Dalikos went to stab the poor creature in the chest.

(I'm pretty sure it is.)

The Bokoblin was easily disposed of, and slid off the blade. Through further inspection, the wound on its side seemed to be a bitemark. There were also teeth marks on its leg and feet possibly left by a bear-trap of sorts. The Bokoblin left a trail of blood deeper into the Woods...into the Heart of Faron, where no one dared to tread through.

Every natural instinct told him not to go follow the blood, but his knowledge in what happens when you get that feeling, told him to follow it. Dalikos listened to the knowledge and ventured further into the heart of the woods.

The deeper Dalikos ventured in, the darker it got. The treetops were blocking most of the light, making it harder to see. Dried and old blood stains would be occasionally seen on the bark of trees. This place wasn't right.

There, beside a tree, was a bizarre scarecrow of sorts. It was the skeletal remains of someone, positioned on a sharp stick with the skull upside down with the hands somehow attached to it like horns. The legs were put on where the arms should be, and the arms were where the legs should be. It was a rather disturbing sight, something that Bokoblin wouldn't do...

The sound of pained Bokoblin screams sounded in the distance. This was followed by an unearthly roar, and then silence.

"Welp! This place marks my list of where to set up my Halloween party." Dalikos said, trying to make light of things. He heard the scream, then the quiet, and went toward it.

Dalikos passed by rotting corpses of Bokoblins, presumably the band that the one he killed was part of. There was an opening in the woods, and the scene of where the screaming took place.

There were no survivors, just dead Bokoblins everywhere. Some where covered in strange arrows, others pinned against trees with spears. Most of them looked partially eaten, and had limbs torn from their bodies. Besides a beheaded Bokoblin leaning against a tree, was a binding rope and a torn shirt hanging from a tree branch. The shirt looked bloodied, and a second blood trail led deeper into the woods where there were no trails.

Suddenly, there was a violent rustling of leaves and then a low growl. A pair of red beady eyes looked at Dalikos through the darkness and then darted off.

(Sorry. Went to grab Mc Donalds.)

Dalikos moved over the dead bodies over to the shirt. It looked to small to be a Bokoblins shirt. When they had them.

"Well that doesn't seem good." Dalikos grabbed the shirt for no apparent reason and stashed it away. He saw the second blood trail and followed it, but made sure his sword was in front of him.

Celeste looked out the window of her house into the dark forest with a slightly worried expression.

"What do you think we are going to be met with when we get to the Evil Realm?" She asked Gwene. "If it's a repeat of what we were faced with today, then we don't have much hope, do we? And I worry about you fighting, Gwene. What if something bad happens to you..."

"Then you are only using a narrow aspect of your element."

With a wave of his hand, the tall windows of the room were covered by large banners of black and white scales. As each window was covered, the light in the room grew darker, until all the sources of light were blocked. The room was immersed in darkness.

There were more clicks as Prometh walked away from Deserax. The echoes made it difficult to track exactly how far he had walked, or in what direction he had gone.

"Come find me." he commanded.

"A narrow..." Deserax didn't have time to finish his sentence be fore he couldn't see his finger even if it was in his eye.

"Ok then!" Deserax lit a fire ball, about the size of a base ball, to provide a little light. Though, it wasn't the level of brightness he had hoped for.

"Oh this could take a while." Deserax started walking around, trying to find Prometh.

The blood trail eventually stopped at another open area, where a small shirtless boy seemed to be crying. He was huddled up against a tree in the middle with a small gash on his right arm and a claw mark across his chest. The boy looked up slowly and saw Dalikos, but then whimpered and began cowering again.

Suddenly, something humanoid leapt out of the foliage and pounced at Dalikos with a tomahawk.