Oh no. Not the bell. Please anything but that bell. My mind is racing as fast as my body. My legs are pumping furiously. I hope I make it in time. The whole while I'm running that bell tolls. Its deep, bone shaking sound vibrates through the trees. Its the mourning bell. Something terrible has happened.  

I see the barracks as I round one last corner. I see no one, not even the guards and sentries that are always posted. Always on guard. And that bell, that blasted bell. Why is it tolling? I see no smoke, no fires, nothing. 

I run inside to see everyone staring up at the bell tower. I see Jacin ringing the bell. his little body is getting pulled up and down with the momentum. One moment hes on the ground pulling with all his strength, then the next the rope he's holding yanks him up in the air and his feet leave the ground. I see tears running down his face.

Jacin sees me at last and lets go of the rope falling about six feet but never breaking stride. He slams into me, wrapping his hands around my waist. I feel my shirt getting soaked with his tears. I look up and see drops of red under the bells rope, and small a splattering behind Jacin. Glancing down at the small boy wrapped in my arms I see the side of his shirt is soaked in blood.  I yank him off me and pull up his shirt, it's torn and dripping blood. Looking at his side I see why. My brother has a large jagged slash on his side, as if he was cut with a crude knife. I can tell it pains him, and that he's losing blood. 

I scoop him up and run towards the infirmary. The doctor's not there but it doesn't matter. I grab bandages and gauze, ointments and towels, then finally a needle and thread. When I make it back to the bed Jacin is on I drop everything and get started. First I pull off his shirt, then clean the wound, which to my relief is not as deep as i first thought. I knock him out using a pressure point on his neck. Once he is unconscious I sew and wrap his wound.   And now to find out who did this to him I think darkly.

Following Jacin's blood trail I run to the door of our barracks. The door's ajar, and I hear the  clashes and clangs of a fight. Peeking inside I see my eldest brother Mikeal meeting swords with a strange creature. It has black wings such as a raven or crow but they are covered in skin, not feathers. It has fiery red eyes, it looks almost as I imagine a demon would. The creature has long claw like fingers that grip a sword the likes of I have never seen. It's made of  a jaggedly cut black substance, not metal and not wood, it looks almost like glass. 

 I break my focus from the strange creature to scan the room. There's blood everywhere, on the walls, the windows, the paintings.  I see smears of it on the floor. I follow the trails of it only to find a horrible sight. Bodies litter the floor, most are of the creatures, but some are of wolves. Those that are of us are guards, or so I think at first, but as my eyes scan the bodies faces I see two that I had been praying not to see. Aryn and Kio. My twin older brothers.