Enderal:Night (Good Ending)
The night surrounded the farmstead more intensely than usual. Thick clouds covered the night sky, blocking the light blue glint that used to be cast over the land. Except for some trees further uphill, fields surrounded the farm, but this night the soft green they shared with all fields of the Farmers Coast couldn't even be guessed.
At the attic of the house, a boy was still awake. A diffuse disturbance crept inside of his head. It might have been the oppressive darkness that kept him from sleeping, but the uneasiness wouldn't go away, so he took the courage and decided to go outside for a walk, where he might have freed himself of this feeling. To cast away the darkness at least a tiny bit, he took a lantern with a candle with him.
He knew exactly which steps of the old, wooden staircase were creaking, so he carefully avoided those and reached the kitchen in the basement almost silently. Through the window he could see the road behind the fields and noticed a cart, completely unlit, creeping forth the road to Ark. Quickly he turned around, stepped through the corridor and escaped through the back door into the night. He had just lit the candle to see the ground before him and passed the herb garden. What used to be a colourful and varied collection of all sorts of herbs became an unshaped grey-green in the dark. He then passed the well and went further to the big barn, when he noticed that many of the animals were nervous and awake as well. He climbed the ladder up to the attic where the hay was kept for the animals just below, and put the lantern on a workbench at the side. Then he stepped over to the large pile of hay and laid down on it like he often did on warm summer nights. He listened to the animals below, their snuffling, rustling and breathing, and closed his eyes. The animals could hear him as well, and they were used to the child's feet walking on the wooden planks above. He quickly fell asleep…
A loud squealing jolt him awake. Or did it just seem so loud as the silence sharpened his hearing? But before he could tell which pig woke him up, they calmed down again. Then he saw some light shining through a small window in the roof. He slowly got on his feet, and looked upwards through the wooden frame, where he could see some of the all familiar starlight breaking through the clouds. Then, all of a sudden, something grabbed him from behind, like claws clenching his shoulders. He tried to scream but he was voiceless. His gaze blackened, his arms got limp, his knees weakened. He was pushed forward, pulled back, thrown to the side, but not knocked over. Then, the grip loosened and the boy tumbled backwards, and before he could regain his balance, his right shoulder crashed into the workbench, throwing the lantern to the ground, where the glass shattered and the burning candle fell out.
Within a second some hay caught fire and, as if it was an innate reflex, he jumped and threw himself onto the flames. He could feel his shirt getting torn by the raw planks, and the glass shards and burning hay pressing into his skin. But the certainty of having prevented a fire and possibly the death of all animals was too much of a relief for him to notice. It must have been Malphas' favour that gave him this inhuman reflexes. Slowly, the boy turned around and looked upward. For a moment, through the window he saw the hideous, horned head, staring at him through horizontal pupils. A terrible coldness embraced him, but the creature disappeared and left him alone in darkness.
But if Malphas saved him, why did this creature appear in the first place? Why did it attack him, why did it let loose, would it return, was it a test, a trick, a curse or a spell? These questions whirled around in his head and kept him in this state of mind between consciousness and dream. And only as dawn had broken, his wounds slowly pulled him back into reality.
