Chapter 4 - The Village With No Light

————————————————

"Ben?" Eric heard Will spoke, he tried to go down the slope to see but stopped when he heard something moving behind him. Eric frantically turned around and saw a huge shadow rushing across the woods. Eric grabs his crossbow from his shoulder and arms it, the sounds of chittering echoes across the forest. "**WILL!**" Eric screams before he runs down the slope, Eric brushes the leaves aside and sees William with a tattered and smiling Ben. "We need to go! Now!"

Eric grabs William’s hand and pulls him, but not before Ben grabs Will’s other hand and stops them from running. "**It** steals light, Will", Ben speaks with a tone of desperation, "Kxakuluth steals light, Will-", however his sentence gets cut shortly as Eric pulls William away from Ben and starts running.

Eric and William run as fast as they could, going through tall bushes and avoiding the chittering noises coming from the darkness. William’s legs couldn’t keep up with Eric’s fast pace and caused William to fall, which in turn made Eric fall too, Eric tried to get up while something began making noises similar to a monstrous laugh. Eric got up with a bruise on his leg, he then helped Will get up.

The creature was behind the two, hiding behind a thick oak tree, staring at them with ghostly eyes, it attempted to move closer yet decided to back up and refrain from attacking the two. Will and Eric looked around, checking whether they were safe or not, they saw nothing. In a quick swift, William and Eric ran away, heading towards the village. The thing looked on, watching in glee as the two humans headed towards their village, the thing then chittered and disappeared into the darkness.

William ran out of the forest and reached the river, gasping for air as he looks back and sees Eric running towards him. Eric stopped beside Will and drops to his knees, Eric falls onto his back and groans in pain. "God, dammit. What in the heavens just happened back there?", Eric asked as he heaves himself up and examines his leg bruise. "B-Ben… We have to go back, h-he’s… w-with that thing!" William panicked, he attempted to run back to the woods but Eric grabbed and stopped him. "ARE YOU INSANE?!" Eric furiously yelled, "You’ll die going back there!". "So I’m supposed to just leave Ben to die?!" William pushed Eric aside, "No! But we gotta warn the others. Cause going back there on your own is suicide!" Eric replied.

William sighed, "Fine, let’s warn Ryan first" William then ran away. "Holy- Hey! Wait!" Eric was staggered after William suddenly zoomed off, he then chased after Will.

William and Eric told the village head Ryan about the thing in the woods, they told Ryan that the thing has been killing livestocks, after that they asked Ryan if there were any disappearances lately, to their shock there have been several reports of people suddenly disappearing from their homes. Ryan assured William and Eric that he will orchestrate another patrol to safeguard the village, until then he told the two to go home and rest up a bit.

The duo went inside the medical center, there was no need of explanation as to why they went to Room 108. After opening the door, William was stunned that Drew was sitting on the side of the bed accompanied by Crystal, he felt relieved that Drew was finally awake. "Drew…", William rejoiced, he walks closer towards his friend and inspects him. Drew looked up and smiled weakly, Will looked at Crystal who gave him a worried look. "So… did you guys find anything in the woods?", Crystal inquired, Will nodded and spoke, "We found… Ben. He was lost, we tried to get him out of there but something was following us". Crystal raised her eyebrows, "Something?" "Some type of monster or something, we couldn’t see it-" Before William could say more, Eric intruded. "Ben murmured a name, i think it might be the creature’s name". "Oh yea, it was uh, Ca-ka lu-"

"Kxakuluth", Drew spoke whilst blankly staring.

"Yea…", Will looked at Eric, the latter then asked Drew. "How did you know that?"

"Because Kxakuluth was there, in that alleyway", Drew blinked rapidly and continued speaking, "it wanted me to…, it’s not some mindless beast acting out of pure instinct, it wants to- it’s very aware of what it is capable of."

Crystal, Will, and Eric all felt a chill in the room, "Drew… I think you should get more rest" Will suggested as he nonverbally urge the other two to leave Drew to rest. Once outside Room 108, they discussed the elephant in the room. "Okay, what the actual HELL is a Kxakuluth?!" Crystal shouted, resulting in some of the nurses shushing her and kicking the three out of the medical center, the three decided to go to Eric’s house for the night to research more on this new threat in the horizon.

"Okay! Enough mythology reading", Eric sighs as exited his personal library and entered the living room, "Did you get any information on this thing?", Crystal asked whilst reading a book with a picture of spirits taunting a man, Eric rubbed his eyes and spoke "The amount of different mythologies and legends pertaining this thing is absurd". "So what exactly is Cakaluth?" William inquired, "And more importantly, how do we stop it?" Crystal added.

Eric nodded and placed the book on the table while Will and Crystal sat there:

"According to the legends stemming from the extinct civilization of Luzoreina, Kxakuluth was once a grand celestial being from the stars, however it’s bloodlust and unholy needs for violence caused it to be expelled from the heavens and forever condemned into the darkness below, it is bound to the shadows as light severely harms it."

"Another myth, this one from the ancient people of Uhklúd, implies that Kxakuluth is a being hailing from an endless sea of darkness called the Void. Kxakuluth, also known in the myth as The First Brood, lived in the Void with it’s family, however it began developing a lust for cannibalism and ate it’s brothers and sisters and parents, eventually Kxakuluth crawled out of the Void and into our realm out of curiosity." Eric added, Will and Crystal looked at each other in confusion as the man kept on speaking.

"Now… The final information I could find about Kxakuluth comes from the mysterious civilization of Hormlash", Eric drank a glass of water to ease his throat, "And?" William asked, Eric puts the glass down and continues speaking, "The Hormlash civilization believe Kxakuluth as a being of pure darkness, they even worship it and make sacrifices in it’s name according to the text I read. The people of Hormlash hold strong believe that Kxakuluth is the bearer of the throne of Apophis."

"Wait, who is Apophi-" "We don’t have time for mythological mumbo jumbo!" Crystal interrupts, she gets up and stares at Eric. "What?", Eric stared back, "You said this thing is harmed by light, right?" Crystal asked, with a serious tone, Will leaned away out of fear. "Yes, Kxakuluth is a being of darkness in most interpretations", Eric answered, "So how about if we just tell everyone in the village to keep the lights on and add more lanterns across the village? We are not letting this thing hurt anyone else."

In a house just a couple streets away from Eric’s, a mother who’s name is Ella is tucking her child named Cyrus to bed. "Mom, I want to show you something", her child got off the bed after she already tucked him in, "What do you want to show me?" Cyrus then grab a paper with drawings on it from under a stool, he looked at it for a bit and giggled before showing it to his mom. "I made this, momma", little Cyrus apparently drew a crayon drawing of Ella and him with them being stick figures, Ella chuckled slightly as she looked at the drawing, "do you like it?". Ella patted her child’s head and smiled at him, "Of course I do, I love it". Cyrus and his mom then embraced in a hug, after that Ella looked at the drawing again and noticed another smaller figure right near the edge of the paper, it didn’t look like a stick figure and looked more like a shadowy person, Ella looked below the figure and saw it’s name but couldn’t make out what it read. "Um, sweetie, who is this?" Ella showed him the mysterious figure in the drawing, "That’s Kyle". Ella raised her eyebrows, "Who is Kyle?", "He’s my new friend, he likes to play hide and seek at night." Ella felt a chill run down her spine, if it wasn’t bad enough, she could her something making faint noises on the roof of her house. "I think it’s time you go to bed, you need a lot of energy for tomorrow".

Ella went downstairs to blow out all the lanterns before heading upstairs, these past few days flames from lanterns and candles seem to randomly extinguish. She tidied up some utensils and sorted them into cabinets where Cyrus couldn’t reach them. After finishing up, Ella made sure everything was locked before walking towards the staircase and taking a step up the stairs, but the sound of wind sweeping behind her caused Ella to turn around. Ella just stood there as her heart pounded faster, "There’s nothing", she assured herself as she turned around to face the stairs, just before she could take another step up the staircase, a low growl occurred right behind her. Ella’s eyes widened as she hold her breath, something was behind her. Ella spun around and caught a glimpse of a large shadow disappearing into the darkness. She darted towards the kitchen and wasted no time opening the cabinet to grab a knife, she turned around while pointing her knife. Suddenly, a force from the darkness knocked her off her feet, she fell onto the wooden floor as the knife flied off her hand. Ella blindly search for the knife, panicking as the sound of something loomed over her. Finally, she felt the coarse texture of the knife’s handle and instantly grabbed it, she then looked up and thrusted her knife. But there was nothing above her.

Ella looked around in fear, there was nothing. She rose to her feet and placed the knife on a table, she instinctively hurried towards Cyrus’ room but… **Shnk!** Something sharp pierced her left shoulder, Ella tried to cry out in pain but nothing came out of her. She was then launched back into the kitchen with considerable force, her head collided with the wood. Ella put her hand onto her shoulder as she felt blood rushing out, when she looked at her hand, her vision became blurry as more and more blood exited her body through the wound. Then, another growl, this time right above her, Ella looked up and saw four ghostly white eyes staring back at her, just inches from her face. She saw two solid-black mandibles appearing into view while the rest of this figure’s body, besides the eyes, are hidden in the dark. Ella tried one last time to scream but the figure pounced on her and slashed her across the stomach. Ella closed her eyes as more and more stabs pierced her body, tears streamed down her cheeks as she screamed in agonizing pain. However, the stabbing momentarily stopped for three seconds before she felt two stabs on her right leg, she screamed out as she was dragged away into the shadows.

"Mom?" Cyrus walked downstairs as he grabbed on the railing after being awoken from the screams, after he went down, he saw nothing. "Kyle?"

Continue to Chapter 5