His mind swam. He was warming up, yes, he was sheltered from the cold outside, kept from the harsh wind.

Adebar didn’t know who the old crone was. She had showed up, bent over her staff, and taken them with her, to this hut. Her fire was small but fierce, producing acrid smoke that wafted up, preserving the herbs and small animals hanging from the rafters.

“So, Herr…” began the woman, nestled on top of a small stool, like a raptor on a mountaintop. Her skin was wrinkly, tanned like an old hide, from a life in the woods.

Her eyes twinkled with a shrewd kindness. She asked him why they had been out in the woods, out in the old chapel. He told her everything, speaking without thinking much of it. It felt right to speak to her. His head droned, his muscles ached, but worst of all was this impending sense of futility. Why not tell her? Was there a point now? Here?

She listened, she nodded along. He drank some brew, he knew because his hands warmed as he held the clay bowl. He hadn’t asked what it was...or had he? He couldn’t recall. Adebar talked and talked, he spoke of Diesdorf, spoke of the trials and tribulations. His oath to Count von Gostahof. She didn’t seem to judge, didn’t seem to mind listening.

“Well, young Herr,” she spoke, wizened features contorted into a deep frown, “I fear the Count has deceived you into another needless errand.” She shuffled over to a far wall, shaking her head as she went. “You see, I am Fulda.”

The revelation should have prompted terror or shock, but it fell on deaf ears. He’d known it, somehow. He’d been deceived yet again.

“I am old, yes, but I am not that old. The Fulda the good people of Gostahof have known isn’t one woman. I am the last of a line, in a manner of speaking.”

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Now it was his turn to listen, though each syllable she uttered brought him only greater anguish. She told of the generations of wise women. How they had served the people, had known the ways of Rhya, to heal through nature’s bounties. The cruel injustices, the persecution at the hands of the early Sigmarites. She also told how the Count had come to hate her, when she had denied him access to knowledge only reserved for the women of a clan to know. He felt shame, the pangs of the disillusioned. She spoke, and he listened. His aching skull was filled with honey. Fulda told him what to do. She told him to escape, to flee the false Count, to make his luck elsewhere. He listened, and when she bid him to stay the night, he slept a deep, dark slumber.

His dreams were haunted, bleak things, clawed trees, fanged vines, coming to strangle him, horned figures skulking after him, running him down. Arrows, spears, axes, stones, flailing tentacles. Twisted, hulking monsters threw him around, teeth dug into his flesh, tore him in half. Each time he woke up, each time he found himself only deeper in the forest, strapped to heathenous altars, while infantile monsters cut him, lashed him, bit off his fingers, cut open his throat and stuffed him with herbs and mushrooms, or other, viler things. He cried, cried out to the heavens, but no answer was forthcoming. The gods were cold, harsh things. Callous Taal and Ulric preyed on man, maybe, even darker things lurked in the shadows, lording over puny mortals! It was futile to think of Sigmar. Sigmar was no god, maybe he’d not even been a man. He’d died in a far away land at best, his soul devoured by rapacious daemons and deities of violation! Sigmar was dead, and so was all hope. Mankind was doomed. There was no point in trying to keep up the noble appearance. Adebar knew one thing then: the End Times were coming. The world’s end was nigh. There was no purpose in fighting it anymore. Why pretend?

He deserved better than to be the outcast-lackey of countryside nobility! He would go to Ostermark, maybe, the “Miniature-Empire” of the east, see if life could hold any enjoyment for him, while he waited for the inevitable, primordial devourers to claim his soul alongside with the very earth itself.

Faith meant nothing.

Salvation was already lost.