Commander Braghaman Larethian

A Lone Candle In The Dark

The main room of the home fit in the with the rest of the house.  Small.  Some might have tried to be polite and call it ‘cozy’, at least as much as any home on the outskirts of Darkshire could be called that. It was small house, but it was built with care. The floors and walls were made with a deep red wood, though they had started to darken over time and with use. The woodwork shone with the thin slivers of moonlight the managed to sneak through the canopy outside and dove past the torn curtains that hung limply from the rod above the window, casting a pale glow into the room.

In one corner sat a small table, a lone candle sitting on it and sputtering as it was nearly burnt out. The flame cast shadows around the room that danced from wall to wall as if trying to find some way to escape. They leapt across the overturned chair and moved around the broken mugs that lay on the floor, ultimately trying to dive behind the couch that sat broken in two.

The light from the candle and the moonlight mingled together and fell upon the floor. The light followed lines of red that creeped between the floor boards until they climbed up, like rivers flowing through a valley only to finally escape into a pool.

At the edge of the pools of red lay two prone forms. The one closest to the pool wore a woolen dress, the shoulders and neck torn and tattered and stained deep crimson. Next to her, the other wore the overalls of a farmer, covered in dust and dirt, and lay on his back with a knife handle sticking up from his chest.

On the floor, next to the small table in the corner sat another. Her back leaned against the wall and long dark hair hung in front of her face as if to block the scene of the room in front of her. Her breath came quickly. She held her arms around her legs and she rocked from side to side. Slowly her head rose, causing her hair to part and reveal eyes wide with terror and surrounded with flecks of red. Those eyes locked onto the two bodies in the middle of the room. At first, she shuddered and then began to whimper. Slowly the whimper grew louder and louder until to became a wail that flew through the walls of the small house and fled into the forests of Duskwood.