BELOW

  The forest was to be avoided after sundown. Cole knew that, everyone did, he just refused to listen. He was not afraid of the old stories, the night songs his grandmother sang to him and his brothers about monsters, demons and serpents. Cole had never seen any of those things in the old forest, only the black birds that sat watching from the tree tops and the wild dogs that roamed its borders.

 Day after day for almost two summers now, Cole had ventured into the woods, deeper and deeper each time. A game it was. How far could he go and come back before the torches and lamps of the first Watch came on. The shadows were growing longer as he made his through the brush and massive black barked trees. The wind whipped around him with a slight chill, it was Autumn, and the cold was returning, the leaves would turn gold and bronze and the nights would grow longer.

He was well into the heart of the forest now. The river was ahead, which meant he had already gone beyond the border of the townsfolk. He let out happy sigh and marched through the water like a proper soldier, off to battle. Though he only had a walking a stick and a small bag with some bread and fruit, he held his head high and squinted his eyes and grimaced like a real warrior.

Cole had grown fearless this last summer. He was a full ten summers now, a grown man by his reckoning. Soon he would leave his home to train in the Scout Wing before being joining the Legion. He had only this autumn and winter really. Then he would leave, just as his brothers before him did.

 It was because he was leaving that he this new found sense of fearlessness had burned inside him, hotter each day. He was determined to.... to what? He began to think to himself.

It was then that he stopped under  a particularly massive black oak that seemed much older than the rest of the forest around it. He sat on of its many tendril like trunks. What was he after? Adventure? To prove to there were no monsters? To prove he was brave like his father? He shook his head while moving fallen leaves with his feet. Quite frustrated that he did not know exactly, what he was looking for.

Somewhere, someone let out a low, rolling laugh. It was long and boomed like thunder. It made the hair on Cole's neck and arms stand straight up and he instinctively sprawled backwards toward the tree, hoping to feel safe against the mighty trunk.

Instead, the earth spilled away and roots opened up behind him and Cole fell into the dark heart of the old oak.