Excerpt: Three by Frostlight (likely to change, 400+ times)

There was something about the night air that told him to be on his guard. The traveler worked stealthily and quietly through the forest as it grew denser with underbrush and large elms. Even with the full moon sending pure light through sparse breaks in the trees, it was too dark to be sure about anything by sight alone. The traveler’s ears told him that the forest was restless this night. He paused by a large tree to listen, hearing running hooves, shrieks from birds and a fox’s bark all over the ubiquitous chorus of excited insects. He heaved a tired sigh as he slowly returned his long knife to its sheath and drew a cold revolver from his coat; the warm tension in his gut told him that he was getting close. He left a grey cloud of warm breath behind as he pushed forward into the dark shade of a larger tree. The attraction inside of him was growing ever stronger. As he maneuvered swiftly towards that intangible force that drew him, he found himself caught in duality. There where the things that he told himself were real- the trees, the darkness, the fox’s bark, the revolver in his left hand, but there was something else behind it all. When he blinked, he saw it- the foggy clearing, the hatchet, the candlelight dancing behind a curtain. When he paid no attention to his arm, he felt a cut, when he smelled nothing at all; sweet firewood and gunpowder filled his nose. In silence, he heard rustled footsteps and the cocking of a large gun; in city streets he heard the sounds of an active forest. He was drawing very close.
There was a flash of confused darkness and the traveler was on the ground. He rolled quickly and trained his pistol on the fleeing owl that had struck him. Reluctantly, he holstered his pistol and examined his right arm as best he could. There was a long cut that became suddenly deep near the shoulder where the owl had clawed him. He knew that he’d nothing to worry about, having survived many far more serious injuries. The pain in his arm would soon fade and pass, but in this moment, it was familiar. With a quick thought, he realized that he had been feeling it the whole way. It seemed that every time he forgot his arm, the mysterious pain was there. Again, something of the duality had taken form in what the man considered real- he was SO close. The traveler reached into a holster with his left and felt himself drawing with both hands. He held his right hand open before him to make certain that he had not really done so. Assured that he would never get used to such mad sensations, he pressed on, not fully knowing what to expect. This, at least, was a familiar sensation.
There seemed to be no true time in the forest as the traveler pressed on. Once he finally arrived at a point where he knew to stop, the traveler had neither the ability nor the desire to estimate how long he had been pushing through the darkness. It didn’t matter at all, not with his object just before him. Now moving very slowly, he stepped to the edge of a small clearing. With a sharp, dizzying blow, the duality was no more. The man gripped his forehead as the reality behind his self merged with the true reality, becoming one real present. Finally, everything was crisp and clear without a subliminal, alternative existence. At last, the things that the traveler saw and felt and heard and sensed were all real. He looked passed the peeling white bark of a sycamore tee where he stood to the clearing. A white fog, illuminated by moonlight, was flowing majestically through the meadow, spinning upwards and down with the slight breeze and lingering like pipe smoke. The Traveler faced the side of a modest cottage of wood and brick that stood roughly in the center of the meadow. It was round in front and surrounded by bare flowerbeds. A stone walkway led across the clearing to the front porch from a dark, wooded corridor. On the side of this path, a hatchet was stuck into an old sycamore stump. Behind the small house, a hare sniffed through an overgrown pumpkin patch which lay a few steps from a stone well. Grey smoke rose slowly from the chimney and fed into the white fog that flooded the meadow. In the lone window on that side of a cottage, faint candlelight danced on a drawn curtain.
The traveler took two steps forward but stopped abruptly. After a moment of listening he knew that he wasn't alone. With a sense of calm alertness, the traveler cocked the pistol that was already in his left hand while drawing the other in his right. He turned slowly in a circle where he stood, searching through the darkness with his keen eyes. As he turned his back to a large tree on the brim of the wood, he heard a much larger weapon than his own click into firing position. He stopped instantly and prepared himself to turn and fire with all of the speed he possessed. Just as he was about to jump, a familiar voice held him coldly in his place.
“One move from you and I’ll not hesitate to return you to your maker,” the voice was smooth and menacing. With his back to the aggressor, the traveler could not hold back an unseen smile. Remaining in his frozen position, he spoke as if in light conversation.
“Ah, If it isn’t the good Dr. Roe! Tell, me, how has the afterlife been treating you? Apparently not well as you find yourself here by this same god-forsaken cottage.”
“Drop the pistols,” came the cold reply. The traveler complied, laying the pistols slowly on the ground and standing back up. “Don’t turn around,” the voice from behind commanded. After a moment of calm, rustling footsteps, the captor faced his prisoner. “Enoch! Ha, and I thought I was facing a threat!” The man laughed coolly, his face half hidden in the shadow of his baggy hood. “I should have known it was you, I don’t know how I could mistake that repulsive visage of yours for anything made in the image of God," He kept his shotgun trained on the traveler while he cocked his head in thought. “What brings you here tonight, you beaten old ass?
“You know I’d be on a beach somewhere if I had the choice,” Enoch replied, this time with an involuntary hint of bitterness in his voice. “It’s the dreams; they’ve been driving me mad!”
“You’re having dreams?” The gun-wielding man asked in surprise. “Hell, you haven’t outran grace after all,”
“It’s a race I try to win,” The traveler smirked. “So tell me doctor, how long have you been dead now? I heard six years from a drunken man in Prague, but I’m not sure that he was the most informed of children,”
“Ah,” the man smiled, not moving his weapon from its fixed aim on Enoch’s face. It’s been thirteen in some countries, a fine retirement.”
“The parties in Romania are legendary as I hear it,”
The man with the gun smiled again, his eyes showing now from under the hood. “One more comment out of you, and I’ll have to knock your head off,”
“Do as you will, you bastard,” The traveler looked the gunman in the eye and stared him through, making a connection to him, understanding his thoughts. At that moment, Dr. Roe fired, sending blood, brain matter and tiny skull fragments spewing into the air, where it all shimmered in the moonlight before raining onto the ground. Roe stowed his shotgun in his long cloak and folded his arms across his chest. Enoch lay on the ground with about a quarter of his face torn away by the blast. After a moment, the body stirred twitched. In another moment, Enoch let out an agonizing groan and painfully rose to its feet. In a matter of seconds, his face had completely regenerated. He stretched his shoulders and cracked his neck as if rising from an uncomfortable sleep. With a cold look into the eyes of the shooter and a cruel undertone to his voice, Enoch swore in an old language.
“I’ve got to admit,” Roe said smiling, “That never gets old,”
Enoch laughed and the two men embraced, “It’s been too long,”
“That means something, coming from you,” Roe noted as they released. “Now let’s take care of business,”
With that, Enoch snatched his pistols from the ground and followed his old friend into the small house.