Rous - Fever Dreams

[rous]

Ok, so my cousin recently introduced my to D&D. Love it. Also, in order to gain more xp, I've been writing a back story for my character, which he awards up to 500 xp for per session. I thought I'd hate creative writing, but I was wrong. It's something that I really like and want to get better at.

If you take the time to read my writing, please take just a minute more to comment on it. I'm looking for constructive criticism so that I can improve. I'd realy appreciate it! ;D

I will try to expand on my story every Wednesday.

[rous]

Cold.
Damp bedsheets clung to his clammy, trembling skin as he lurched awkwardly from his bed. Shivers ran up and down his spine like waves crashing against a river bank. A chill breeze blew in from the open window as he pushed off of the lumpy mattress. The moons' pale, silver light gave a surreal look to the bedroom, giving a faint illumination barely sufficient for him to cross the rough, uneven floorboards to the window and pull it shut.

'Is it the cold or is it the dream that makes me shiver,' he wondered as he plodded awkwardly back to the bed. His dream had been dark, evil, full of deceitful shadows and mocking laughter. He saw his nation devastated by war, the mountains he so loved leveled by some untold force and the forests he spent his youth in burned to soot and ashes.

He was well accustomed to fever dreams by now; he had been running a high fever for some two weeks now and it was not the dream itself that disturbed him. Ever since he was a child still clinging to his mother's apron strings, his fever dreams began to take shape in the realm of the living.

This odd gift, or curse, of his had seldom been wrong. He saw his father fall from his horse and break his leg not long before the event took place, saw his older sister freeze in the winter's cold the summer before the loss crushed his family. He saw the day of his first kiss and felt the bliss of the same experience the week after his fever died down and now, as then, the same sense of foreboding hung in the air.

[rous]

Sorry for the late update, any of you who were waiting. I've been really pressed for time over the last week.

Harvest season was past. Small sprouts of winter wheat poked through the dark silt. Not much work remained to be done on the small farm. It was times like this that Rous hated most, times when he could think and ponder his dreams. This most recent dream disturbed him. There hadn't been a war in his lifetime, only tales of great heroes and villains, last stands and desperate actions that won battles. How could his nation defend itself with so unexperienced an army?
'Never mind that,' he told himself. 'Such things are not for me to worry about.'

His fever had passed nearly a week ago. Though little remained to do on the farm, there was still the matter of hunting, gathering wood for the fire and storing what little was left unpreserved.

It was a bright and sunny day, the sun had just barely reached it's zenith.
'Still plenty of time for chores,' he thought to himself as he slung a quiver and his bow over his shoulder and set out along his favorite hunting path. After all, his family had asked him to go hunting two weeks ago, so he was only obeying their wishes.

The sun had passed its peak some time ago and was nearly touching the distant mountains before he decided to turn back empty-handed. Hours wasted tracking a deer that, as far as he was concerned, the most crafty beast he had ever tried to run down, yet it wasn't the darkening sky that persuaded him to abandon the pursuit. Odd tracks perforated the soil, vaguely wolf-like in appearance but deeper, wider and considerably bigger. What disturbed him further was that these tracks had too many toes to be a wolf. Even though these tracks were several weeks old, he was sure he didn't want to cross paths with whatever made them.

The sun had set. A pale disk of one moon just began to poke over the forest to the East, the other was a waning oval nearly a quarter of its path up the sky to the North. Rous had felt eyes on his back for nearly a half hour now and had stopped and hid several times to see if anyone had been following, even daring to double-back once to catch is stalker unaware. So far, there wasn't a trace of anything. Neither sight nor sound of anyone or anything around him.

It was eerie, the way the night seemed to hang so thick around him; a palpable presence of darkness. It may have been the complete lack of sound around him or the eyes boring into his back like a drill. Then a slight breeze picked up, barely enough to make the drying leaves at his feet rustle, and he caught the stench of some putrid rotting thing not too far distant. It smelled of death and rotting, like a kill left out in the sun for too long. After pulling his shirt up around his nose, Rous continued along silently, putting all of his seventeen years of woodcraft to the test.

He flitted from tree to tree making barely a sound, cautiously scouting the way ahead before leaving his cover. The wind began to blow slightly harder into his face. The rotting stench grew in potency until it was nearly unbearable. The dense forest began to give way to isolated copses only a few yards apart separated by tall grasses and dense brush. Rous darted from cover to cover, going faster and faster and paying less attention to his surroundings. The weight of the eyes began to grow. He ducked into a dense bush, panting, eyes darting from shadow to shadow searching for this hidden presence. Nothing in the trees behind him. The breeze rustled the grass and dead leaves around him, but something stood out from the silent clamor, a moist crunching and squishing that contrasted the dry scrape of the leaves and the swish of grass in the wind.

Rous stood still, petrified from the sense of dread that pierced him to the soul. He scarcely breathed, dared not move so much as an inch. Time dragged on, minutes seemed like hours. The wind had died down, rushing faintly past his ears. He longed for it to come back, for with the wind went his chances of an undetected retreat. He noticed that the wind also camouflaged the sickening sound of feasting that could not have been more than twenty yards away.

After what seemed an eternity, Rous ever so cautiously began to creep from his sanctuary. Inch by inch he crawled, moving only when the sound of feasting grew in intensity or when the wind picked up enough to mask his retreat. The moons were nearly directly overhead now. Faint silver illumination cast short shadows from the trees and bushes.

The breeze died. Rous froze half-suspended, his hand just inches from the ground. Both of his knees ached from kneeling and crawling for so long. Silently, he prayed for some distraction, something to hide his movement. Half a minute crawled by. Two minutes. Still, nothing. The breeze began again, slowly. Rous placed his hand on the ground. His shoulders ached, his thighs and knees burned from the stress of his weight on them. He raised his right hand slowly, brought his left knee up cautiously. Something was wrong, though. Something had changed. He raised his head up to the top of the grass he was crawling through and his eyes popped open with shock and terror. Where the grass had been blowing directly in his face, the grass swayed to the west, carrying the horrid reek of the butchery behind him with it. Now, however, the tops of the cat-tails bobbed to the south-east. The sounds of gorging had been replaced by a hideous sniffing, then the crunch of dry grass against the ground. The sound grew louder and louder. A deep, inhuman growl turned Rous' blood to ice as the nightmarish creature drew closer.