The Rising Shadow
Even from a distance the scout knew that something was wrong as he rode toward Rendell Castle. The drawbridge hung halfway down and looked splintered and broken and there were holes in the stone towers and along the outer wall. Garin’s suspicions were confirmed when he rode around to the back and saw an entire section of wall scattered around the surrounding area. Pulling his spear from the safety latch he cautiously entered the abandoned keep.
Everywhere some form of plant clung to life on the stone buildings. Ivy creeped up the walls, slowly covering them and grass slowly engulfed broken arrows and other weapons, smashed carts, and overturned tables. There wasn’t a single sign that anyone died here--no bones or armor anywhere. That could only mean one thing. Shadow beasts and orcs. Orcs broke down the walls and shadow beasts took anything living they could sniff out and left their cursed mark on the ground. All he had to do was look and...there! His lips curled as his eyes found a dark spot on the ground where nothing grew. Someone had probably died there and been eaten. It would be a long time before anything green touched that soil. Garin shuddered as he walked by it. The fear was faint and nearly gone but it must have been extremely powerful to have lasted this long.
Garin slowly made his way around the keep, his horses clip-clops sounding loud and echoing off the empty walls and buildings. He stopped his horse and fingered the leaves of a young aspen tree. It couldn’t be more than five years old and it would have taken a year or two for plants to move into the cursed keep. That means that the Rendell had fallen perhaps seven years ago. Garin felt a twinge of regret that it had taken so long for his own castle to wonder why they hadn't heard from Rendell in a while and send a scout to find out. With a final look at the aspens in the courtyard, Garin slid off his horse with one fluid swoop of his leg and strode up the cracked stone steps and into the castle where Lord Ren had lived. He didn’t know what he expected to find but he had to at least look for some clue as to what had happened.
The tall oak and iron door was splintered and broken though, amazingly, it still stood upright. Unwilling to disturb it, Garin lightly stepped through the hole made by an orc launcher and shuddered as the feelings of the fallen hit him. Fear, terror, hatred, pain. He nearly groaned. He hadn’t felt such strong feelings such as these in nearly twenty years. Outside, nature had eased the ghost feelings but not in here. Garin had to take several steadying breaths before he could continue. He hated this power and not for the first time wished his father had chosen a woman from anywhere besides Mystic Castle to be his wife.
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