[center][b][h2]The Song of the Crypt[/h2][/b][/center]

His mind was sharper and more focused now than it had been since he had awakened in this world. He pushed the hunger and thirst he had been feeling since embarking on his long trek away from the forest down and away to focus on the hunt. And so, he sat and waited, holding himself up as much as he could in the crack with his arms so as to not crush his crossbow beneath him; it was an awkward position to aim in but he managed to maneuver the bow to aim straight down the crack and onto the stair beyond. Where it would strike his target depended entirely on the shape and size of it. If it were human in shape and around average height the bolt should strike somewhere around the legs; if not it could very well strike higher up the body the shorter it was. If his pursuer wasn’t humanoid, it was hard to tell where the bolt would strike the thing. He hoped it were at least human in shape. He did not wish to meet whatever devils lurked in the walls of the dead he found himself hiding within.

Soon he heard footsteps coming down the dark stairway and then a light brighter than the lantern he had placed on the steps came near his hiding place. He saw a shadow break the light while something pulled at his foot just as he squeezed the trigger of his bow. The string snapped forward, propelling the bolt and making the all too familiar noise that echoed off the walls and bounced around the crypt. The bolt flew as straight as possible and struck his target. The pursuer lurched forward and fell into the darkness, their lantern bobbing away after them as a tiny yellow dot in the blackness. Rook turned around to see what had pulled at him in the small tunnel only to see the skeleton he had kicked before hanging onto his boot and pulling at it, trying to drag him down the tunnel. It looked as though its lower half was hanging over an opening of some sort, but he was not concerned with what lay beyond the tunnel. He kicked at its head in panic, but it did little in the way of shoving the monster off and away from him.

Panicking, he pushed his crossbow out of the crack and pulled his hunting knife from his belt as it was the only weapon he had that could be maneuvered in the tunnel. The skeleton sank its fingers into his leg, stabbing into the skin and raking down as it gave another pull. The cuts were deep, but he ignored the pain as best he could and stabbed his knife awkwardly at the skull of the his attacker; the tip of the blade made contact, but to no avail. The skeleton continued pulling the hunter, stabbing its fingers into his skin each time he edged closer as if climbing a mountain with picks. Rook flailed his body about, trying to knock the fiend away, but its hold was too deeply rooted in his skin now. With nothing left to him, he began pulling himself back along the tunnel, still on his back with the skeleton attached to him by its fingers.

He fell out of the crack with a thud and sent his crossbow falling down the stairs and into the abyss of the crypt. In the open he was able to turn and twist until the skelton’s hold finally faltered, and it fell away, hanging out of the crack. Out in what light his lantern could shed, Rook finally saw that the skeleton was only an upper half, and where the lower half should be was what looked like a piece of darkness itself threaded up through the ribcage and arms. The skeleton he had kicked was being used as a puppet now to pull him in as a victim to whatever the puppeteer was. The skeleton flailed its arm in an attempt to grab hold of him again, but had managed to crawl out its reach. He watched, heart thumping and pulse racing, as the piece of darkness removed itself from the skeleton and slithered back into the crack, surely to await some other victim to crawl into the wall or to find some other hunting ground in the crypt. The bones now lay at the foot of the crack, a discarded fishing hook of whatever lived within the wall of the crypt.

Gingerly, the hunter got to his feet, blood dripping from the six or so puncture wounds on his legs. Fire shot through his legs from the wounds as he limped onward into the abyss of the crypt and toward his prey after snatching his lantern back. His steps were not as measured or soft, but instead sounded as though he dropped each foot as he walked. The hunger creeped back slowly, followed by the thirst he had been able to shove down until now. His crossbow had fallen down the staircase a good twenty steps with a loud clattering that still echoed and bounced down into the pit of darkness, chasing on the heels of the twang from his crossbow string. He stooped to gather his bow back up, pain shooting up his legs from the small movement, and then fitted the lever onto the body of the bow, pulled the string back into place, and then set a new bolt in the bow. He pressed on, a predator after its prey, or more accurately an escaped and injured prey after a more injured prey.

As he saw a soft light far below him, a gibbering of the most insane kind gradually grew until it sounded as if the walls themselves chattered away in the tongue of the insane. This sent shivers up his spine and caused him to come to a halt along the stairs. He listened to the mad gibberish, hearing it broken every so often by a slow tapping noise. Something had awakened in the crypt. Was it the puppeteer that had already assaulted him come to finish the job and claim its prize or something else living in these dark halls? Either way, he had to find his pursuer first and then either flee this place or hide from the roaming beast. So, with as much quickness he could coax out of his injured legs, Rook made his way down the staircase and toward the faint light from the lantern of his pursuer.

He stepped off the final step of the maddeningly long staircase of the crypt and set to scanning the area he now found himself in. It was just a dark as the staircase, but his lantern shone through as a beacon. What he could see was old stone set in the earth however far down he had walked into it and coffins lining the walls in neat rows, some of which looked as though they were opened and robbed from with their occupants hanging out here and there. There were also arched doorways leading off into the bowels of the crypt. It was near one of these doorways, Rook spotted the dark shape of his pursuer. He limped over to the shape, examining it from afar first; it looked to be a man in a dark coat with light hair. Something glinted in his lantern light near the man, a cleaver bigger than any he saw a butcher carry before. Ever the hunter, Rook took careful aim at the man as he limped coser, stopping somewhere around five feet out of the man’s reach.

“Why were yeh followin’ me?