The plain on the outskirts of the Lesser City of Libertas was littered with bodies. The grass that used to grow there had been scourged, scoured away.

The ground looked like some great beast had tore at it. Scarred. Great rents and ravines appearing here and there.

Half the corpses were charred. Skin and armor were all blackened and peeling, and that was only in the case that the entire body had miraculously failed to completely turn into ash. The other half were simply torn asunder, either ground into paste or pulled into pieces.

The ravens and crows and all other carrion feeders in the area, had a feast. A veritable smorgasbord, one that didn’t require that they go to the effort of pulling their feed into chunks.

Night came and the cloud of flies was forced to flee for the evening as a storm moved in. Rain fell pounding the earth. Turning the red soil into muddy slurry. A few demonbeasts came to take the bigger bodies for themselves.

Thunder rumbled overhead with the sky flashing white before returning to  absolute darkness. The howls of the wandering packs of wild dogs could be heard but eventually even those resolved to nothing. The battleground was left steeped in silence and heavy gloom.

*****

*Squelch, Squish*

One sound broke the silence and then  it became two sounds. It continued till finally there was a loud, wet, popping noise followed by labored panting. A body rose, tall and slender and covered by mud and ichor.

Beneath that mud was dark, dusky, skin, and gray hair, and eyes that seemed to glow, filled with a pale green flame. All over the battlefield similar flames appeared, they weren’t all green but they came as if called, gathering near the figure.

Flowing inside the small young body till a few of them ended up floating back out again. Floating around him as a set of eerie nimbuses. Shapeless, dark masses with glowing eyes. Amorphously flowing around him and in him and through him, like droplets mixing and separating in a solution of oil and water.

The boy groaned, half in pain, half in wariness and then he looked around, picked up a sword and started the long trek home.

*****

Home, was a chateau in the lesser kingdom of Garland, which was itself a territory in the Great Kingdom of Meallan. Meallan of the sand and wind. Meallan of the Mercenaries and Warlords. Exactly as  wretched and decadent as it had ever been. It took him three months to get there.

He walked through  streets of concrete and adobe. Passing buildings that were mainly brick, with a few structures of wood and old world glass and steel standing out as extravagant exceptions to the rule.

Garland was like any other part of Meallan, crowded, the air thick with the cries of merchants and the sweat and the stink of people and livestock. Not to mention the sweet and spicy scent of Meallaner favorites.

The boy passed by gangs of street toughs and companies of armored mercenaries. He passed scantily clad waitresses and well dressed whores. People whose skin tones generally varied from tan, to brown, to green.

With few pale faced northerners and golden skinned westerners mixed into the bunch.There was a brief moment where his journey was impeded and paused as he was forced to wait for entourage of military elites to ride through. Then he continued on his way.

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Eventually though, he did manage to find his way back home. By the time he managed it, the  sun was all but gone, sinking below the horizon. Only a little of its light remaining.  He strode up a walkway, passing a manicured yard with a well cared for garden. A decadent sign of status for  a land where water was hard to find and bought at a premium.

Unseen by the guards, he made it all the way to the front door. He didn’t have his house key any more, but he didn’t need it. All he needed to do to gain entrance was to wait for a maid or manservant to come by and let him in. Opening the doors for him while barely noticing he was there.

The Chateau was filled memories, some of them of painful, others pleasant. He went through the hall where he used to wait for his father to come in. Up the stairs and onto the floor where the marks for his height were once kept.

His hand trailed the railing that his mother must have told him not to slide down for dozens of times. With the lesson only barely sticking around the second time he’d fallen off and actually broken something.

Stacked on the shelves and tables were the vases and sculptures that had had to be taken down during parties and while he was going through his terrible threes and twos.

Finally hidden in a side room that basically functioned as a storage closet, there were two portraits. They should have been hanging above the stairwell, but someone had decided to store them away.

One was a man, not very handsome, but possessing a face with character. His whiskers well maintained. His eyes kind for all that his expression was very stern. There was a woman.

A lycan, one of the beast featured peoples, that one could find pretty much anywhere one Monde. Her pretty face possessing a fierce gaze. Her triangular canine ears hidden beneath her thick black locks.  

“Mom...Dad….I’m home.” said the boy. Gazing at the two faces that he’d lost shortly before he lost himself.

What came next was a long awaited shower. The water was cold because there was no one else to draw and it had been so long since hygiene was last a concern that he’d nearly forgotten how to do it for himself.

All the same it was a very pleasurable experience. After going so long, without form or flesh it felt nice to feel...anything. So he bathed and he enjoyed and he dressed and he enjoyed that too.

Everything he needed was in that storage room, save his clothes, but that was all for the best since he’d been younger when he’d left, small. Thirty-Two googolplex in the uncharted areas of the cosmic sea and six years in Mondian time.

Either way you sliced it he’d been gone for forever and now a little boy had grown and become a young man. Fortunately, while they’d thrown his things away, they hadn’t thrown away his father's clothes. He wore a pair of breeches and a comfortable cotton tunic. Finishing things by putting on a belt that bore the flower ringed moon of the family crest on the buckle.

He sniffed and smiled, he could hear the cooks and servants hustling about in the kitchen. The bubbling of soup in pots, the clatter of pans and the sizzle of heated oil. Something delicious was in the air and he decided that he was hungry.

******

Brutus Maddoc sat in the chateau dining hall at a long table. Olive skin, soft and moisturized. Brown hair neatly styled and swept back. Seated with him were his wife Dionne who held their young son in her lap, doting on him as if she were afraid that even after four years of steady survival, he’d become dust if she let him leave her sight. Seated across from her was his concubine Gwenifer.

Standing in the corner of the room, waiting at attention was the head maid with whom Brutus was having an affair because he took a certain perverse pleasure in it.

Numerous servants, whose names he didn’t need to know so long as the house security knew them, filled in and out of the room. Bringing platters and dishes and expensive bottles of springtime cordial and berry sweetened, iced water.

“Mhm...Looks quite lovely” said Dionne, giving her compliments to the chef, because besides her child, the one other love left in her life was food.  

“Yes, dear.” said Brutus with a sigh. Bored because he had things to do but had promised his ladies at least one family dinner per week.

“Yes...yes it does indeed look quite lovely.” said a voice.

Brutus frowned, not recognizing it. He looked up and saw a young man walk in. Between the ages of seventeen and eighteen. His first impulse was to call the guard then in a moment that filled his veins with ice he found recognized the stranger.

The silvered hair was different, and the eyes belonged entirely to the mother, but asides from that, the stranger was a perfect ringer for Brutus’s elder cousin. A man, who he’d once loved like a brother before more important things came in the way and differences arose.

“....William?” said Brutus, not quite understanding how what he saw was possible and not wanting to believe his eyes.

“Billy!” said one of the servants.  Squealing loudly as she jumped into the stranger’s arms and he recieved her with sly smile. The warmth draining from his eyes as he turned to look upon the family that sat at the table. His table.

“Hello Uncle...Aunties Dionne and Gwenifer. Long time no see. Did you miss me?” said William “Billy” Maddoc, of the Maddoc Family of Garland.

“I...um...of-..of course. I just…” said Brutus, lost for words, his brain moving too fast for proper thought to be born.

“Heh...No, worries, I’m as surprised as you are. ...But we can talk about this later...for now, let’s just eat. Yeah?” said Billy.