This is the first series that I have written on the website. I plan for it to be a fantasy fiction tale that features fictitious creatures like trolls and witches, fairies and pixies and centaurs, etc. I expect it may eventually have a romantic or otherwise aspectthat may include sexual confrontations between characters of the same and opposite sex. It is not real, and is only a storybook told from the point of view of the writer, me, who is also the Enchanter; hence the title "The Enchanter's Storybook".
Set in a medieval world, abundant with magic and fictitious creatures, this story is about Marcus Mallow and his ascent through the dark outer world of his hidden human village of Rocky Pass.
If you are under-aged or lawfully restrained be reading this material, please leave. Thank you.
Finally, if you wish to understand the plot, I urge you to read previous chapters. You wouldn't start a book by reading the fifth chapter, so don't start this series reading the fifth chapter.
Now to start the fifth chapter of the tale.
The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Five
Marcus drew his face in closer to Darius's, staring idly at his lips, and rested his forehead against his. Slowly, their lips pushed towards each other, and:
"What in Holy Hell is going on here?"
The voice was slight, yet sleek, and broke the silence of the hilled valleys drearily. It was a booming voice, sardonic and fumed with emotion and shock. Marcus recognized it, somewhere, somehow.
Yet suddenly, the two jumped, and Darius dropped Marcus's hands. He drifted away from him, slowly, looking gloomily down at the blaze of green grass at his feet.
Marcus scoured the hills with his young blue eyes, and found a drifting shadow in the west. He felt his face blush with redness and embarrassment, and felt the eyes looking down at him. They were being watched. The shadow, he discovered, projected over the west from the east, where the sparkling sun rose from beneath the world. Their shadow was cast from behind him. There, he saw black leather and fiery red hair.
"It's... it's impossible," he mumbled, to no one but himself.
"Not impossible, honeysuckle. Magical would definitely be the word I'd use," Varia spoke back, her voice still soothing and flowery. The words rolled on her tongue, a glimmering accent on her voice. He hadn't noticed it before, but even the trolls had it.
"The witch..." Darius spoke morosely, drifting where he stood. "What do you want?"
"Oh, nothing, sweet boy, strong boy." She strode forward, her metallic heels crushing the blades of grass as she went.
"You died... I saw you. How on earth?" Marcus mumbled, perplexedly. "How are you here? Alive?"
The witch rose an arm to her hair and tousled the straight red locks from her face and behind her shoulders, revealing her flawless face and pallid skin. Her neck was crowned with a fleshy necklace of scars where her throat had been slit, as tight as a noose on her skin. "The trolls did kill me. Here's the scar. But I didn't stay dead for long. My thanks to you, Marcus, for you were the one who revived me."
"Me? I did nothing!"
"Oh but you did, sweetling," she said, striding to his side and stroking his face. "You touched my face with your hands, your tears poured down onto me. You felt it too, did you not? When you touched me, and I screamed? It was your darkness connecting to mine, your darkness refueling mine."
"Yes, I remember."
"When you did, you healed me. It took time, but your darkness returned me to the world, and with only one price," she told him.
"And what was that, witch?" Darius gasped, grabbing her hand and ripping it off of Marcus's cheek.
"My eyes are no longer the same colour," she laughed. "Once black, now grey, it would seem. Oh, how intriguing, I do think. The fighter does not know, does he? No? I didn't think so. You could not tell him, and now here you are covered in the foul blood of the trolls. How, by the way, were two young boys able to take down two fully-grown trolls?"
Marcus looked down at his arms and hands, and found them dipped in blood. It was blanketed all over him, in his wispy blond hair and on his smooth white face. He tasted it in his mouth. He felt so dirty, so disgusting. He had taken a life, yet he didn't actually feel remorse or contrition. He felt... happy.
"It was Marcus's idea," Darius said, a droll monotone in his voice that showcased his hatred to Varia. "He took a vine from the enchanted forests, and I strangled Kryt with it. That gave him time to steal her blade and kill her, then we got the keys from her body and..."
"Well, I can see exactly what came after that," she chuckled, staring at Myrdok's corpse. She bent over it and twisted it, to look at the empty hole oozing blood where his lengthy manhood once was. She poked the cut playfully, and giggled. "Who's work was this? Castrating the troll?"
"I did it," Marcus announced proudly. He felt quite proud of his work, and the style of how he had done it. The troll deserved it, he told himself repeatedly.
"Fine work. Just chopped it off? How amusing! I would have loved to see his face. Oh, Myrdok was wrong to think mankind were weak, and I was wrong to think they had no magic. Marcus, you are living proof! I know of no witch capable of such healing powers; you brought me back to life. Not even the gods can do such a thing. Yet there you are, as human as they come, yet with a darkness like no other! You fascinate me, you truly do," Varia exclaimed, smiling brightly.
Darius shifted and knocked the witch back. She struggled to keep to her feet, but she managed. So suddenly, Darius drooped to the floor and armed himself with the blood-sodden sword and murder weapon of Myrdok. He held the point to her.
"What's this?" she asked, starting a startling laugh that made her curdle over. Tears of humour formed in her eyes as she giggled furiously. "Are you going to kill me?" She cackled again.
"If you don't fuck off, now!" Darius screamed at her, his face turning red with an anger Marcus had not seen before.
She cackled again, and said in complete delirium, "Oh, sweet boy," she laughed, "you've never held a sword before today, and I am no easy kill."
"I'll do it," he threatened.
Varia's face suddenly dropped the laughter, and turned deadly serious. "No you won't, you fool." The witch walked toward him slowly, testily. "You don't have the guts!" She dared. Yet, Darius did not draw forth the silvery steel sword.
And, quite alarmingly, Varia plunged herself onto the sword, let it fall into her belly and break out of her back. She slid onto the blade and welcomed its deadly kiss. She laughed again.
"Varia!" Marcus shouted out, running over to her and taking the sword's handle from Darius. He pulled it with gentle care out of her belly, but she kept laughing the entire time.
No blood poured out. No cut or scar was left on her skin, like it somehow hadn't happened.
"Why, Marcus, there is something I have forgotten to tell you," she chuckled.
"And what is that?"
"You made me immortal!" She jumped onto the little boy and tugged the sword from his hands, then pushed him to the floor and pointed it toward Darius. "Now who looks the fool, brave little fighter boy?"
"Don't! Don't kill him!" Marcus screamed, climbing to his feet.
He felt so helpless, he knew he was helpless. The darkness would not just come, and he knew that. Emotion was the only answer, and he only felt scared, terribly scared.
"If I get rid of the fighter, it will just be us. I can take you to Purgador, and my Sisters will teach you the meaning of darkness. We will rule this world, you and I, Marcus, yes we will!"
"If you kill him, then I will kill you," Marcus threatened.
"Did you not hear? I am immortal now, sweetling!"
"If I gave you immortality, then I can just as easily take it away."
"You don't know how. Listen to me, honeysuckle, I saved you. And you saved me. We are bound. But do not think I do not know about the two of you, hugging and hand-holding and the like!"
"What are you talking about?" Darius asked, frightened, defensive.
"You two. I saw it the first time I laid eyes on you sweetlings. Boys, yes, but both desiring more. Your minds are as easy to read as your faces. You both want the other, and from what I have seen and heard this morning, you are both already aware."
The witch fumbled the sword in her hands and pressed her hands against the steel. Then, so suddenly, the blade turned a fiery red. It melted into a white hot mixture of steel and blood that dribbled down her fingers and dropped to the ground like rain.
"I would not hurt you, Marcus. We are bound. If that means allowing this... this friend of yours to live, then so be it. He is brave, I will admit, but stupidly so. Now you have a choice."
"And what is that choice, witch?" Darius asked, his muscles tensing avidly.
"Turn back the way you came and return to Rocky Pass," she she answered, "or... come with me, into the world of darkness. I suppose he may come to. I would wish to take you to Purgador, or Agridor, anywhere in the Witchlands. Mastering darkness is taught in the Witchlands, you know. We can travel the world, you and I. And him. We can accomplish so much, with our ultimate darkness combined, the world can bow to us."
"Don't, Marcus. Say no. We could go home."
"I... I... I wish to see the world. Darius, what will life bring in the Pass but boredom and shit? We can see the whole world, we can meet new people and creatures. I want to."
"I will go where you will go," he announced, smiling.
"Then it looks settled. Purgador it is. The great city of Purgador. You will see nothing like it. Yet, what do we do with the bodies?"
"What about them?" Darius smiled.
"We cannot simply leave them in the open."
He looked confused for a moment. "Well, why can't we? It's what they deserve."
"They deserve respect, dead or no. I shall not leave them to be feasted upon by vultures and vermin. We must lay them to rest, return them to their gods. For the horrible people they were, they deserve to rest in peace."
"I refuse to touch them," Darius announced.
"Trolls are born from sacks, did you know? Like eggs, the mother lays them, and then buries them in the ground. The mud and soil gave them life, and they must be laid to rest to the mud and soil that gave them life," Varia spoke.
She squatted over Myrdok's corpse and hovered her hands over him. His body began glimmering golden and bronzed sparkles that drifted into Varia's skin as the witch stole the pitiful remains of his darkness. She murmured in their foreign language, and his body sank into the ground like it was water, his dismembered limb alongside it.
"It is done. Where is the other?"
Darius pointed beyond the hill from whence they had came, and she scurried on in that direction, no doubt to repeat the respectful funeral.
"What was she talking about?" Darius asked, once they were alone. He looked at Marcus with his deep, vast hazel eyes that looked like they might cry at any moment.
"She thinks I have darkness, magic, I think," Marcus replied innocently, shrugging as if it was nothing.
"I meant, when she said that she could read our minds, and she said that we... the both of us...no, it doesn't matter."
Marcus knew just what he meant. Varia had told both boys their secrets, or one Marcus felt only he carried alone.
He smiled, and touched Darius's cheek. "Before she came here, you said something to me," he said, slowly.
"You said it first," was his sullen reply.
"Did you mean it?" Marcus asked abruptly.
"Of course I meant it, or else I wouldn't have said it, and you wouldn't have, an we wouldn't have tried to...just before she... I wouldn't have tried to... kiss you."
Marcus smiled again, and suddenly jumped into Darius's arms and embraced him frantically. He felt his sudden warmth and smell of strawberries burst into his nose in an essence of fragrance and fruit, as he flopped him to the floor.
All too suddenly, they were back in the Pass, together, young little boys wrestling on the dusty old ground. Their embrace turned from passionate to jovial in an instant, and suddenly they were playfully fighting like they always had. Darius twisted from under him, and slid up behind him, wrapping his arms around his neck and forcing Marcus to the ground. Darius then slid over the top of him and held him down with utter ease. Marcus tried to struggle, but it was as futile as ever.
His eyes were a boom of great brownness, like a thousand-thousand hazelnuts and cocoa beans melted together to form two teary-eyed, beautiful orbs plastered into Darius's face. Marcus couldn't resist staring into them.
And suddenly, Darius pushed himself down toward Marcus, pushed his face further down, looking from his eyes to his lips and back again. Marcus did nothing but hold his breath. Darius pulled his forever-perfect smile, and brought his lips to meet with Marcus. Yet, just as Marcus lifted his lips to meet Darius, he shot up off of him and smiled a devilish smile.
"I'll kiss you when you manage to beat me, for once," Darius smiled, just as Varia appeared behind him, creepier than a shadow and by far more dangerous. Marcus pulled himself to the ground and wiped the dust and dirt off of him, but the blood was still there, horrible and sticky, drying and turning a dark and tainted crispy crimson against his skin.
And the three strode on through the hills to the west, soaked in blood and darkness, deep into the magical world beyond.
Closes the Enchanter's Storybook
That was The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Five. Thank you for reading, it truly means a lot to me. Donate to Nifty. Places Storybook onto the highest of bookshelves, beside cobwebs and dust, and other tales of darkness
Please remember: this email adress can be used for you to message me about ideas, plot-lines, comments - anything you have to say, please email me. Even questions, because I understand that the story may be somewhat complex to some people.
Have an enchanting day, my honeysuckles. Love, your wise old friend, the Enchanter.