The man in torn, bloodied furs stood alone at the opening of a narrow pass—no, not truly a pass. More a jagged scar etched into the unforgiving stone of the mountainside. His cloak, tattered and frayed, clung to his shoulders, its scant fabric wholly insufficient protection against the relentless chill. Each breath which escaped his lips was a fleeting puff of white, dissolving swiftly into the icy air.
The peaks of the Bloodspires loomed above him, lost in a shroud of churning, ominous grey clouds, and he found the silence oppressive in a way he could not quite understand. The stillness was broken only by the occasional whisper of wind through the rocks and an unseen bird's distant, mournful cry. All around him, shadows lengthened as the sun dipped lower.
To try to generate some heat, he stamped awkwardly, the ground beneath his boots uneven, a treacherous mix of loose stones and stubborn patches of ice that defied the warmth of daylight.
The man shifted again, feeling the rawness of the barely-cured furs against his skin. Something had happened to his previous attire. He just could not remember what. But it was more than that, was it not? He could not even remember his name.
Once, he had been someone. Someone important, perhaps. A father? A husband? Shades of grey, fractured images flickered at the edge of his consciousness, phantoms of a life lost beneath the shadow of the Skuggaseiðr's power.
The man grasped the haft of his spear, knuckles turning white. The Dark God’s curse was a heavy blanket over his mind, muffling his thoughts, feelings, and memories. It was a horrifying experience to both forget and yet constantly be reminded of what was lost. He could understand why so many of his brothers had taken their own lives.
The man - was he still a man? - had resolved to do the same this evening: to cast himself from the pass and into the icy river below. But then, the last ray of sun had pierced the canopy of clouds just right, and a sliver of clarity broke through.
There had been a woman, had there not? Her face a blur, her voice a distant echo. Children, perhaps? Or was that just a cruel trick of the Skuggaseiðr, false memories to torment him in his few lucid moments? He did not know. For most of the time, he did not care. He only knew the hunger, the endless gnawing hunger that had driven his people to madness, to unspeakable acts. Cannibalistic feasts in the darkness, eyes gleaming with a feral light.
He shifted his weight once more, eyes scanning the shadowed path ahead. Something terrible was coming, he knew. He could feel it, a dread that clung to his bones, a whisper in the wind that set his teeth on edge. And yet he struggled to care.
The warband's camp lay behind him, a collection of crude huts and tents, more a place of nightmare and despair than a home. As the sun fell, he did his best to remember that he had been positioned as their guardian, their sentinel, but who would guard him from his own fractured mind?
Fragments of memory clawed at his sanity: a bright and carefree woman’s laughter, children's tiny hands warm in his own, flashes of light in the darkness almost more painful than the cloying emptiness. They spoke of a life stolen, of warmth and love now replaced by the cold, relentlessly grasping hold of the Dark God.
But now was not the time for such thoughts. The man had a duty, even if he couldn't remember why it mattered. His grip tightened on the spear as a sound echoed through the pass—a distant footfall, a rustle of movement. He tensed, muscles coiling.
What came next happened too fast for thought. A dark shape charged forward, a whisper of steel slicing through the air. He felt a cold shock, a moment of weightlessness as his head left his shoulders. Then the world spun, the ground rushing up to meet him. His last sight was of the Bloodspires, cold and indifferent, as everything went black.
"I think we can assume whatever the Dark God has done to these poor people, a huge increase in their Intelligence was not it."
Daine glanced back to where Donal was following behind her on the narrow track. "He was looking right at me as I climbed," she said, wiping the blade of her greatsword on the fallen man's cloak.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"Well, since you possess all the stealth capability of a carnival washerwoman, I'm not surprised. Such was the amount of noise you were making, I'm amazed the whole camp did not come out to watch the dancing bear attempt a sneak attack."
Not for the first time on this hunt, Daine profoundly wished her companion had chosen to follow Taelsin on his journey through the mountains.
Donal reached her and knelt, searching through the dead man's belongings. He pocketed a few coins and what looked to Daine like a necklace of teeth. "Seriously?"
"You never know, my Lady. You never know. Imagine that at some point in the near future, we will need some extra incisors. Think of how foolish we would feel if we remembered this moment and how we had left our foes unlooted."
Daine stood and, with her foot, nudged the corpse of the beheaded man off the side of the track. His body fell silently, end over end, before vanishing into the rushing stream below. "Find his head and send it down after him," she said, then paused as he began to walk away. "And, for the sake of clarity, I am certain we do not need any more scalps."
"As you wish, my Lady."
Daine watched him go, a thoughtful expression on her face. The two of them had been tracking the progress of the Skuggaseiðr through the mountains for nearly four days now. During that time, they had decimated three feral warbands and soundly defeated a - what Donal had called - MyrkrÞræll. And yet, despite standing side-by-side amid terrible slaughter, Daine was still unclear what Class the man at her side had evolved into.
He has concerns as to how you will react, the Goddess had whispered, which hardly allayed her fears.
"From which I take it, I should be concerned?" she had asked.
The Goddess had sounded amused when she replied. You have ever been the most judgmental of my chosen. In a world of flickering shadows, you have always wanted the certainty of light and dark. Good and evil. I had hoped time and experience would allow you to appreciate that beauty can be found in the grey, but I was mistaken.
Daine had opened her mouth to protest indignantly, but the Goddess hushed her with laughter. Do not mistake my meaning. I would not have it any other way. But you must appreciate that, alongside your undoubted talents, there are times when I need the talents of those more comfortable with liminal space—now, more than ever.
Daine thought back to the siege of Swinford and the choices Donal had been required to make. She knew he still mourned the death of Angharad, the Archmage he had used to lure the Stonehand into an overreaching attack. Could she—with her clear picture of right and wrong—have conceived, much less enacted such a plan? She doubted it. And without a willingness to make that sacrifice, would any of them have made it out of the City alive?
The Goddess's words had given Daine pause, and she had thus been doing her best to remain neutral about whatever Class Donal possessed. She trusted his choice would have been made for the best of all possible reasons. It would be much easier to do so, though, without the excessive gothic creepiness, she thought.
"MyrkrÞræll ahead," Donal said, appearing at her shoulder without Daine hearing his approach. "Maybe two." All humour had vanished from his eyes as he unslung the second war axe he had appropriated.
"Two?" Daine puffed out her cheeks. Due to the increased Strength of Donal's new Class - as well as his
"I mean, if we want to take the positive out of it, I imagine this means something is taking notice of us. The creation of these things is hugely resource-heavy. If the Dark God has his Skuggaseiðr doubling them up, then I would suggest there cannot be too much attention being paid to Taelsin and the rest of the refugees. There are limits even to the Dark God's reach."
I am happy to confirm this is so, the Goddess added. My son's presence is troublingly powerful in these mountains, but his reserves are not unlimited. He will be paying a considerable price for his intervention here. In fact, the musical voice suddenly sounded distracted, this should lead to all sorts of opportunities elsewhere. Forgive me, I will return.
Daine felt a twinge of frustration as her patron withdrew from her mind. If there truly were two MyrkrÞræll in the camp at the end of this pass, she would have felt more confident confronting it with access to her full powers.
Glancing at Donal before replacing her dark helm, she was struck again by the slight ridiculousness of his new physical form. In this Class, he was at least half a foot taller, with the increase in breadth to match. His face, though, remained essentially the same, with sharp eyes glinting out from beneath a furrowed brow. If you could ignore the twin giant, axes resting on his broad shoulders, he could still be the same, slightly acerbic Secretary she had met on the road outside the Village. It was a fairly sizeable 'if', though.
"Well, shall we get on with this?" she said, hands closing around her own blade.
"It will, quite honestly, be a pleasure," Donal growled back.
Trying to ignore the new, bloody scalp swinging from the belt at the man's waist, Daine led the way up the path.