3. Deserter: Aenhever's Tale

Deserter: Aenhever's Tale


  • "It'll be late soon", the priestess Lealiel had said, rather earnestly to Aenhever in particular. There was no beating around the bush about it either. A warning more than a suggestion. The others had remarked upon it but the ranger played it off as nothing, or at least a thing of little concern. He'd returned to his room that night and spent a few dull hours playing a dull card game all by himself. He tried not to think too much about the soft 'click' of the big lock on the outside of his room's door. The game might be known as solitaire. Another name for the game is Patience.

    He played on, he drank a little, and eventually he went to bed. A dull and uneventful end to a day that had been anything but. Conspiracy and intrigue, missing persons, and not least of all Goblins. He slept.

    Two weeks ago.

    Water rolled over an oiled canvas that had been pulled into a squared arch over a foxhole, where entrenched sat a pair of Defenders before a small camp stove that kept a kettle on an even simmer. The pattering drum of raindrops on the cover didn't seem to interrupt the rolling conversation between the pair.

    Roy: "...right, and this ghoul jumped out from behind a tree and shook his balls at you before sinking his teeth into your shoulder? It was probably Cormac, you've been nipped by a celebrity mate."
    Aen: "...who said anything about balls? I'm telling you, it was on its hind legs. I think it's infected."

    Roy reached for the kettle and poured some steaming tea into his tin mug, he didn't ask the other if he wanted any and poured Aenhever a cup anyway.

    Roy: "Probably rabies".
    Aen: "It's not ra-"
    Roy: "Could've been a bear..."
    Aen: "It wasn't a b-"
    Roy: "Aye that's it. You were bit by a big skinny bear, it's that time of year you know. They climb out of hibernation looking like hairless, skinny manbeasts."
    Aen, his eyes squinting despite his frustration: "...manbeast..?"

    Something whistled past them and sunk into a sandbag on the opposing side of their dugout. It wasn't alarming enough to interrupt the ongoing conversation. Roy himself taking a casual sip from his cup while giving the Orcish bolt with only passing interest. He winced a complaint, presumably at how hot the water was before continuing.

    Roy: "It doesn't matter Aen', you know as well as I do, I can't just let you know. What would I tell Sarn't?"
    Aen: "Tell him I hit you."

    Roy, a far broader man with a thick black beard who wielded a bastard sword like a dry stick gave Aen a dull look.

    Roy: "Keep it up and I'll hit 'you'. They hang deserters you daft git, they'd probably hang me along with you."
    Aen: "You'd be flogged at best. You'll be alright."
    Roy, by now angry: "I'm not getting flogged because you got bit by a wild dog. You're not getting hanged for deserting..."

    Another quarrel found its way into the foxhole, this time bouncing back off the sandbag wall and colliding with the kettle and causing it to spill. Roy continued in a yell, frustrated at the casualty of his brew; "..and I'm going to kill that bastard Orc what keeps shooting at me!"

    Aenhever gave Roy a look, a patient look, as an arrow slid its way from his quiver and came to rest on his bowstring. Roy was gripping the hilt of his big sword and responded to the look with an impatient grunt. Aen' stood, shot, watched - then sat down. No more quarrels came from that direction for the rest of the night.

    Roy: "...alright. Hit me, but you owe me."

    Aenhever made a fist and wound back, he gave Roy a sorry look and started his lunge forward - he was stopped by his friend's frantic command.

    Roy: "Wait - wait wait, wait! WAIT!" he puffed out a breath and buckled over with his hands on his hips. He drew in a breath and stood, and squared his shoulders. "...alright go...", and Aen' went through the motions once again - and once again was stopped mid action. Roy put his hands up and stepped back as he cried out "...WAIT! Wait a minute. Er..." the big man looked around and positioned himself to fall back onto his cot, and gave a nod. Aen' hesitated, giving Roy a minute to have another change of heart, the big man made no further complaints, and would receive a keen shiner for his devotion to his friend and comrade.

    As fate would have, a short ways down the line, a captain ordered his mage to illuminate the field with a flare. The mage tossed a coin into the air and spoke an incantation that made the metal turn dull red at first and then burst into a shower of sparks, and then sink slowly from on high as a great glowing orb that cast a bright white light over a massive area between the front lines and the forest. Aenhever's shape was caught in the beam. As were the shapes and shadows of the Orcish horde that had been sneaking out from the treeline to begin the first of their night raids. The two sides clashed. Aen' left the battle far behind him, and he made his way up the mountain trails to a place he'd heard about, where Selune's devotees could help him - if help was needed.

    The rain followed Aenhever every step of the way it seemed. He arrived shortly before the storm hit, perhaps his betrayal and desertion would herald much misfortune to come. It wouldn't take long for him to start paying dear. For now, at least, the bite was just a bite. The strange vision didn't have to be a premonition, and the howling of wolves meant nothing after all.

    "Why have you come?" The lady had asked.
    "I did my duty." The soldier answered.


  • "You don't talk much about your past" Lokelani had suggested one night.

    This woman whose beauty felt like sin to look upon too long who had command over magic and blade, this Fey-touched who could rob a man of all his senses with a song if she wanted to. A fantastical creature. A knight. She wanted to hear about him? Aenhever brushed it off with something close to a smile and almost certainly said something noncommittal to deflect. What in the world could he tell her - tell 'anyone' in fact. The question troubled him for a long time. Long into that night, into the next too. He found he really didn't talk much about his past or his aspirations for the future for that matter. A philosophy of his great teacher had always been to live and act as if all that mattered was the present. An unshakeable discipline from an archaic Elf. Wasn't he Feytouched too..?

    He could tell her about his time with the Wolves after all. Those once peaceful or at least neutral Rangers who walked the near-beaten paths between the towns and the wilderness. He could tell her all about their silent heroes who always seemed to arrive just in time and then withdraw just as quick once wrongs had been righted. He'd once mentioned a tree that isn't there, a curious wonder of the hidden Den... but what purpose would any of that serve?

    He could tell her about his time with the Defenders. How he was almost locked up, exiled or worse after the civil war. He'd seen the Geese in action not long before that, the courthouse blown to ruin before the fighting broke out in the streets. Aenhever had been in the docks that day when the attack rang out. They moved with purpose, and fought their way to the warehouses by the water's side and had urged the Defenders to keep the peace while they took care of Whyte, and every one of them disappeared inside. The friends he'd lost in the street that day, not just the ones that stood with him but those who'd sold out, the ones that were playing dice a week past and trying to kill him today. There was no time for grief. It was a military tribunial after that, a formal debriefing that seemed more like an interrogation. The city was shaken to its roots after all, they wanted to expose any more seditionists or turncoats that might've been missed. They wanted to make clear their warnings that they would go to extreme lengths to ensure that there'd never be another civil war. The warning almost certainly would include deserters among those who wished to do harm upon the city, and thus face those extreme penalties. But what purpose could that possible serve?

    He supposed she might be interested to hear about the famine and the plague that had burned through the streets like hellfire. Then again did he really want to tell this woman that seemed to glow with innocent light about the depraved things people do when faced with famine and disease. He'd tried his best to push the signs of cannibalism from his mind during the peacekeeping and cleanup back in his early days of soldiering. The hollow look in the sunken eyes of what he guessed were the parents of whatever those gnawed bones in the dirt belonged to. He could tell her that Peltarch was no Silverymoon, but what good would that do?

    That ancient Elven ranger might've given him an apple to shut him up, or recited some meaningless poem that meant nothing in the situation but altogether held the world together like glue. The fact of it would be the same. Aenhever would live in the present. He'd smile, and he'd nod. He might sort his arrows he supposed. The past was the past, the future would be a gift never promised. Today he'd drink cool water and eat, and he'd be thankful to look upon soft - dangerous faces that felt like sin and joy all at once. He'd bear the heartache of having nothing much to say about it and supposed she'd forgive him his silence.

    No-one else ever asked at least.


  • "You can come with us Aenhever", Lokelani had insisted. "..the Druids' Circle would welcome a werewolf on our side..."

    The flash that had blinded him at first had robbed the ranger of more than his sight. He'd prayed in the moment, too, when sensibility had fled him and the beast took over. He saw his friends through eyes that had turned from moonlit pale to a kind of septic yellow - the red/yellow of sweet peach flesh or that of an angry injury moist with infection. He saw each of them all at once for what they were with their weapons drawn against him. The horror in each of their voices, the malice in in the combat stances they took up against him even when that awful man, Zamo, had been right there before the corrupted moonstones. He'd seen their combat maneuvers a thousand times by now, and recognized that all for all they were poised to attack him. Traitors.

    Fury had overwhelmed Aenhever. He responded to their challenge by standing fully upright - his mangled and reformed bones stretched to give him - an already tall man - another foot or two head over shoulders above the others. His black claws were obsidian swords. His dense bone-coloured fur was iron, and no harm could possibly be done upon him. He was Aenhever after all. Lord of all beasts; Malar's chosen. Malar's Chosen.

    He fought doggedly against each of them. His sharp fangs scraping harmlessly off of Ashla's rounded helmet, claws scraping the shields of those who'd borne them. He felt a hammer-blow sink into his ribs, crushing bone and sending shards into his tainted organs. He reeled at the blow but would recover quickly; unnatural healing knitting closed his wounds and regrowing bone and tooth blow after agonizing blow. Spellfire burnt his flesh. And maddeningly -- he would remember all of it. Not the reactions to his becoming - his transformation into the monster, but how he'd felt in the moment. His hunger, his desire - his guts' demand to feast on their blood. Their flesh. Maybe had he not been so critically poisoned and sapped of all of his strength he'd have been more effective. We each must count our blessings.

    He fought with them for an age, swiping and clawing at each that approached or came too close. He slashed the air with his bloody black talons and backhanded at Ashla's shield whenever she came near. He recalled eviscerating a Slaad that was summoned, he'd thrust himself towards it and jammed both his hands - claws first - into the creature, and torn it in two in less than a heartbeat. He swiped at Jackson and missed -- he slashed at Ashla out of range, and as she pulled back the ichorous blood of the Slaad streaked out in ragged ribbons through the air and painted her shield. He was mad with bloodlust, mad and furious with hunger. He wished -- he prayed inwardly -- he might dine upon their flesh.

    It was in that black moment that the voice came to him, riding upon the verse that Jackson or maybe Lokelani, or maybe it was Laura who had spoken it -- who had tried desperately to get through to him even in his current state. He heard the plea from whomever to pay heed and to recognize his friends. The snarl left his grim muzzle and he calmed as the voice reverborated through his shattered/healing bones like a song that buzzed along his jagged teeth. Sense washed over him; sense and regret, and hatred for himself. Guilt. Guilt and urgency. Zamo was on the attack - he was going for Jhaelryna again. Aenhever who'd been too slow as a man to stop the Tiefling from stabbing her in the past caught sight of him in mid leap, aiming his attack at the half-Drow all over again.

    He leapt without thought. A blade grazed his torso, a hammer and an arrow whistled past his head, he collided with Zamo in midair and flung the Tiefling back against the cavern wall harmlessly.

    Aenhever stood over the stunned assailant who looked up to him in horror and disbelif. The werewolf stood fully erect, his head almost scraping the roof of the cave with his piss-yellow eyes staring down at the soon-to-be-dead Zamo. He flexed back and opened his unnatural long arms, and half-howl-half-growled into the dark air, his maw full of dagger-like-teeth wide open and ready to be brought down on the terrified Tiefling. The voice ringing between his ears "No, Aenhever -- no! Don't do it. You mustn't! You mustn't!!", the voice forbidding him from making that final misstep towards Malar and away from Selune, to bite -- to bite and infect... to bite and kill.

    He lunged down, forward, snapping shut his wolfish jaws and delighting in the terrified infernal blood - the wicked, hot, pulsing feast of his lifeblood, the evacuation of all of his living essence from the gaping wound where his head had once been. Now torn and open, a headless wound atop his shoulders gushing its black-red geiser into Aenhever's belly. He savored the moment. ... Savored nothing more than air. Zamo had escaped. Escaped?! The lycan clawed relentlessly and snuffled at the stone where the Tiefling had once been pressed. He dug at bare rock and whined brokenhearted at the rotten loss. How he'd wanted with all his heart to feast on the flesh of that awful devilling that had tried so hard to hurt Jhael' again. A murmered howl escaped him, throaty and distraught. Weakening... weakening until there sat Aenhever - the man - in a stupor, pawing at a filthy wall with the rounded - clawless fingertips that he recognized as his own.

    ...he found himself embarrassed, shamed. He recalled everything. Might've been better had he simply shit his pants or pissed himself. Anything but this. Anything but what they all finally saw him turn out to be. Anything but the beast. The monster.

    His brow knitted to a frown when he finally snapped out of the memory and replied to Lokelani.
    "...you shouldn't invite monsters into your home, Lady-of-Thorns."


  • "..I am sure there are certain presumptions made about 'you', Ranger...", Marielle had said this of Aenhever...

    She wasn't quite wrong. Even among the Locus Operandi there were still those who accused him of being quiet and said openly, often, that he'd startled them simply by approaching. It's not his fault they didn't notice surely, it wasn't his fault that Laura was half blind with her nose pressed against he pages of whichever book; or that Jhael' who presumably could see quite well enough was often likewise engrossed with some thrilling textbook on math or...

    The fabric moved, a makeshift panel or curtain made from crudely cut sack cloth, heavy material - but it caught the wind, and for a fleeting moment was pushed aside by a gust revealing no more than three quarters of a saucer shaped target on a cheap combat dummy's chest. In an instant Aen' had loosed two arrows at it. The first clattering onto the stone wall behind the target harmlessly, the second hitting the cloth as it regained its original position.

    "Well, it went through..." he muttered inwardly as he tugged the arrow from the wooden body. "...though Ashla might not appreciate another one of these striking her on accident...", as he leaned to gather the second arrow. He moved near to his spot albeit at a new angle. He was simulating shooting in close quarters while someone was engaged in melee. When the curtain moved it was safe to shoot, if he struck the curtain - he'd shot a friend. The premise was simple enough.

    His arm ached at the shoulder. Hardly a scar where the poisoned arrow had struck, he'd been shot by one of Jhael's captors what felt like a lifetime ago. A hazy memory, only -- or was it more recent than that? The concept of time was slipping away from him. He'd already forgiven the Half-Drow for conjuring the image of a full moon right in front of him.

    The curtain lifts and ruffles to one side, flapping up at one corner - the sound of a tight bow unflexing along with an almost simultaneous dull thud as one of his swift arrows bites into the target. Another thump, the latter grazing just the edge of the curtain but striking true.

    He surmised, without much celebration at his shots finding their target, that she had done so either knowing fully that it wouldn't affect him - or that it was simply an easy mistake to make. That perhaps he was the fool for making the assumption in the first place that a mere illusion could cause him to turn. Supposing then that he yet had much to learn about this affliction. An amusing thought came to his mind as he drew another arrow and waited. What if that instinctive part of him wasn't fooled because it had forgotten itself. Some subconscious part of him might've forgotten while his frontal brain was terrified.

    Over time he'd include more targets, heavier curtains as well as much lighter ones. Various sized targets that would shift when pulled by the wind to enhance his natural reactive shooting talent. He was training himself out of a soldiering mindset and into an agent who could act independently or as part of a small unit. Yet to Aenhever this was no game, it was life or death for him as well as for the others. He waited for another breeze to catch the cloth, an act he'd repeat again and again, long after his arms got tired and his body hurt from drawing his powerful bow.

    He'd done as Laura had suggested and worn himself out. He hadn't taken up knitting or jump-rope, but exerted himself to the point of physical exhaustion. His body burned, his forearms felt like solid marble - hard, and frosty cold with perspiration. He imagined the warmth of her hand that had clutched him there in terror when the shadows had come. No, perhaps not in terror -- maybe she was trying to protect me. The thought irritated him, a guilty comfort. To have faithful friends.

    There would always be certain presumptions about Aenhever. The easiest ones to guess at, the stalker, the hunter, the woodsman or the soldier.


  • "Not there, please..." Aenhever had all but begged, embarrassment deep in the tone of his voice; "I don't want to see him". Words he'd spoken of their Tiefling prisoner. The white lie in the way he'd asked, I don't want to see the prisoner... he'd really meant that he wished the prisoner wouldn't see him. See him as a monster. Chained.

    Aenhever was in his quarters, a washbasin on the table before a shaving kit. He'd discovered that most of the mirrors available were delicate, silver backed with fragile glass panes on the front. He however had managed to scrounge up a severely out-of-fashion mirror fashioned from polished bronze, its high tin content buffed it out to a silver-like sheen. He trimmed his beard and whiskers into the goatee he liked to wear, and delighted inwardly at the sharpness of his knife as it rasped over his stubbled cheeks and neck, leaving behind smooth, clean skin. He tried to smile into the mirror and found that the lips of the man in the reflection barely moved.

    Oh well.

    He dipped his hands into the basin and washed suds off his face. With his eyes shut tight he could visualize his thoughts. A red haired Elf-maiden stretched out on a bed of moss that smelled sweet and earthy. His shoulders sagged as he chased the thought from his mind before he could start to count the flowers in her hair. The man in the reflection gave him a stern look. An unkind look. An impatient look.

    There was an awkward less pure thought beneath the surface of it all. He was aware of it and wrestled with it. The thought of pressing his lips to the wound on that dark-elf's belly and drinking her blood. The prisoner. It was his fault that such thoughts came to his mind - his man's mind. Infected. The man in the mirror looked somber, hurt... maybe a little afraid.

    Black ooze frothed out from the corners of his mouth, he could feel its warm neutrality fizzing as it leaked down onto his chin and dripped in inky spots down into the washbasin. He swished, slurped, swished, and spat the remaining charcoal mixture into the bowl and bared his teeth at the reflective bronze surface. Were his teeth yellow, he wondered - ivory? Did the charcoal scrub whiten them. Since when had he become so vain, he pondered... yet... his thoughts returned to the secluded grove and the song of the Elf. Maybe the charcoal rinse would absorb some of the foul smells of a man's breath and she wouldn't mind his company so much. Maybe his breath would be less hard after all. Dogbreath, he mused. The man in the mirror was not impressed or amused.


  • Lokelani had half-seriously teased him not so long ago, she'd asked somehow with equal parts belligerence and innocence if he might turn in the night and massacre everyone in the keep in Malar's name. Aenhever's response had been honest enough. That he'd hoped he wouldn't.

    He considered the irony of what Laura had said, too, as the last shackle was snapped shut then locked around his wrist. There was a little humor in the tone she'd spoken her words with, gentle and reassuring. "Perhaps you can find a book to read from the library while you wait it out". He thought about asking in the moment if she'd stick around to turn the pages for him in his outlandish and sarcastic, irritatingly dry way of joking. The days of being merely locked in his chambers were over, at least at the turning the Moonphase. When Selune shone at her fullest; this would be it. Chains.

    The door on the far side of the dungeon shut as the last cleric departed. There were no others down there, perhaps more would come. He imagined in some far away part of his mind where empathy lived that perhaps the Wererat they had killed was once kept down there. Maybe in these very chains. Gods, but they itched - the chains... he thought they might be steel but it seemed at least they were forged from some silver-laced alloy that turned the skin around his wrists a rashy red. Small spots on his skin there had started to turn pale and yellowy, icky pus or some other nasty fluid welled just beneath the surface and threatened to burst open each time he so much as breathed. At least while he was shackled.

    He began to wonder in the darkness if perhaps some furnace was lit beneath this room. His skin boiled and his forehead, at first only moist, became sticky and then wet. His dark hair stuck to his temples as the sweat poured off of him, and he realized his body was trembling. Freezing cold, burning hot, itchy and uncomfortable. The sensation irritated him and he wanted to scratch and itch. He rubbed his back and his shoulders off the stone wall behind him but he felt it would never, ever be enough to comfort him. Not the coolness of the stone nor the rough texture that scraped his burning skin. His breath had become labored, he panted from the mouth, each puff of air forcing spittle from between his teeth and silky tendrils of drool began to dribble down and pool upon the stone floor, mixing slowly with the sweat that dripped endlessly from his infected body.

    The change was neither sudden nor painless. There bound in chains a man became something else. From itching skin burst at first patches, and then whole swatches of mottled greyish fur. It spread like water spilling over any flat surface, little by little - but rapidly, growing to meet those renewed spots as they formed. The fracturing and elongating of his jaw, and skull, the twisting and snapping of arms and fingers, legs, and toes that would become lethal caw. His back curved and his ribs thickened. He, quite madly, could 'hear' his teeth growing as his bones re-set.

    Frantic thoughts rattled through his head. Terror, and contempt. He was starving to death, he knew it was so - and his growling belly made certain of it. Demanded of him and all who would be in earshot (mercifully none) food - immediately.

    Food.

    He could still smell the blood of Ashla, he could smell it on himself. The thought of it sickened him to the core, though the sickness was a delight in which he reveled. She was, he suspected, far more than just another woman. There was something delicious in her blood, something corruptible. Something that could be ruined, if he could only have a little bite. A throaty inhuman whine bubbled out of his maw, as his sharp teeth snapped at the air. The chains that held him rattled noisily as he fought and struggled against them. The silvery steel bindings around his wrists hissing against the lycanthrope's skin as if they were red hot. Fine, perhaps not Ashla then. Not tonight anyway...

    ...but what about Laura, poor blind Laura, whose fingers - he realized - stank of vellum, and dead animals. The glue from her books, the spicy uncommon scent of the ink she used to write with. She was tough and soft all at once. He wondered in his sick mind if the woman's eyeballs would spill foul goo into his mouth as he bit them from her living skull. He hoped they might. Wished it, even. Aenhever in his current stated actually hoped that his friend Laura's eyeballs would eject infected gore into his mouth, and that it would be warm as it slid down his throat. He was starving, and the thought of such a meal maddened him yet further. He frenzied endlessly against those damned chains and screamed/howled in the dark. Frantic and furious, he commanded the keep itself to release him. But in chains he remained, and Laura would be safe this night...

    Aenhever craned his neck and bit down into his own arm, jerking his head to try and tear the flesh and bone away that he might be free. The silvery chains made the taste of his own flesh unbearable, he was unable to commit before a mess of hot vomit splashed onto the floor around his feet. Simply famished, the words echoed in his swimmy mind. And he thought about Lokelani once more. "...I'd start at your ankles and eat my way up..." he'd joked as a man. As a monster he could think of nothing more splendid, the idea was nothing short of culinary genius. Foamy drool pushed its way out from the corners of his muzzle as he whined into the dark. He tried to guess how many bites it would take to reach her knees, her thighs. He thought about how delicious it would be to lift her halved body above his head and squeeze her till her guts spilled out - right into his starving tummy. Would he discard the rest or --

    A voice he'd heard before, not from within the darkness but perhaps from within the hidden part of his consciousness. STOP, she commanded him. She'd asked him once before what his mission had been... or maybe asked his purpose. Wolves had howled that time once upon a before, but no wolves now. Just the voice.

    -- clarity, came over Aenhever. He stopped thrashing momentarily. But the hunger was still present. He was aware of how much it hurt to starve like that, he belched air and gulped it back down as if he might be sick again. Crazed, wild eyes scanned the darkness. His man's mind was aware, too, of the burning of the irons around his wrist and -- oh gods -- his hands were claws, he couldn't speak, terror overtook his mind again and... he was 'so' hungry, so hungry he could eat a --

    -- Jhaelryna, the Dark Elf, .. Aenhever would never call her a 'Dark Elf', but the monster saw her that way. She smelled like porous rocks after rain. Like earth and ozone, like lichan and spice, to his nose anyway. He heard it in her voice sometimes, the way her words would catch. Uncertainty. He wondered what it was that made it so, he wondered if she'd try to fight him off. Or if she'd simply submit and allow herself to be devoured. He imagined she would bite. He imagined...

    Nergüi, and all the blood - wasted blood, it made him furious, it made him hungry. He licked his lips and called out/howled for all to know that he was down here - starving. He thought most of all on how Nergüi had thrown himself at that damned shark. That lucky shark, all it had to do is 'be', and he threw himself right into its jaws. He whimpered in the night, pleading with the out-of-sight door for the Tuigan to come bursting through and throw himself into his jaws like a fool. But there was more to it. He'd leave the man's head alone, empty as it seemed to be. No feast of brains there, no, but guts he had -- guts for miles, he could gorge himself on guts for days. The beasts toes curled at the thought. And his liver, yes, a 'warriors' liver - it'd probably taste like iron, and blood. Perhaps the next time he sees Nergüi he'll bury his face in the man's chest and try to smell if he has a warrior's heart too. He dreamed of how such a heart might 'pop' in his mouth, the hot blood cascading down his throat. He thought of ---

    STOP the voice commanded.

    ---...thought of Selune, thought of mercy on his own damned and wretched existence. He plead with the night, begged of it - of Her - no more. What did he have to offer that would stop these awful dreams -- no, thoughts, for he was still awake -- what would stop these awful thoughts that made him think of evil things. His heart prayed furiously, begged for...

    -- that man in the halls, the visitor, the one that sought 206-Jaxon, idiot, his name is Jaxon-206 and the other, Nezzer. Deserters just like him. Another fine pair, devoid of honour just like him, but no... the man, the Zhent', he reeked too. His unwashed body and the stink of his unwashed companions all over him. The scent of a woman on this villain's cloak excited him, he salivated at the thought of her shrieks of horror. The man reeked of many campfires and campfire cooked meals, he could remember all of these smells that Aenhever - the man - never even noticed. The man smelled dirty. The man smelled like dinner all the same, but he stank. His body stank. Not like --

    Florian, whose skin smelled like perfumed nonsense. Florian whose hair made him gag, and want to puke. Florian whose fingers and legs are far too skinny, who had no guts at all. ... He might scream, at least. Aen's ears perked at the prospect of a screaming Elf. Even if he tasted like poison it would be fun to hear the torment and pain in his voice, pain inflicted upon him to match the pain that the Elf had forced upon Aenhever; to starve him. No greater sin could there be after all than to deny him a meal, poor, hungry Aenhever - who'd surely starve. ... if only he could get out of these wretched chains...

    The beast wanted to break free to slaughter them all. Perhaps in Malar's name after all.

    The man, Aenhever, was honest when he said he definitely hoped he wouldn't...


  • "Accept your fate, or deny it". This is in essence what he old mother, the old Selunite priestess had said. Bit by a wererat and told point blank - fatally, even, that "it is what it is". Aenhever was unimpressed. Hadn't he come to this place with similar quandary? He'd asked in his own words if such a fate awaited himself, to be laid out on the stone floor with a moonstone gem placed upon his chest whenever he might finally turn. That was the finality of it, though he'd used vague language to misdirect his concern to the other with fresher wound.

    Fresher wound. Yes, fresher by days. By weeks at that.

    Last Moon~

    A thin roll of paper-bark, usual dead-drop. He used his thumb to scrub out the black text, and the scribbled mark of the Beastlord that accompanied it. The secretive group of Rangers and Druids had driven Malar from their forest before, they'd do so again. As he scrubbed the words from the bark scroll he'd scrub the enemy from these lands. The thought, he imagined, was profound poetry.

    Riverbanks and mud-wallows offered no sign. He tracked a black bear for a day or two but never saw the animal. His camps were sparing and he kept only a small fire some nights, when the rain would hold off long enough to bother with the hope for such small comforts.

    Aenhever never did mind.

    He whittled some of the time and a spoon was taking shape, albeit rough. He'd found a piece of larch, an unassuming hunk of wood within which only a very hopeful whittler might see the shape of a spoon. But it was at last taking shape, albeit roughly. Amusingly enough - at least to Aenhever - the hue of the larchwood was silvery to the eye. His wooden spoon would finish up looking metallic.

    He began to doubt the message he'd received. The northern world was still holding firm onto winter, though the quick nightly frosts were growing hoary as the chill battled with warmer days. The eerie still of moon-glowing trees that were still in their deep years-end sleep made everything seem broad, and distant. In the frigid night he could hear the groaning song of the trees all about him who'd been awakened by the tease of a sunny afternoon mere hours before a predictable blanket of darkness, and the weight of the cold that followed in its bleak wake.

    Cold followed dark just as the huntress had followed Aenhever. She tracked a man who'd visited riverbanks and mud-wallows, she'd knelt before the spoils of sparse fires that littered dewy early-morning ground and sank her fingertips into cool - not cold - ashes. She'd largely ignored the tracks of what she gathered to be a black bear that trailed ahead of the lazy human tracks. Her cold eyes pondered the platinum, curled shavings of what smelled like larch wood. Her quarry was probably making something foolish, an idol - the thought of a carved unicorn's head came to her mind, then a stone-coloured wooden bowl, or a child's toy. Perhaps, she considered with fleeting amusement, the man she pursued was carving a little bear.

    She would find out soon enough. The huntress had counted down the days, she'd committed fully in spite of herself, to her hunt. A brutal trap laid by celestial bodies, The Black-Blooded One's black blooded deed would be done. The sweetness made her mouth water, her target - a Selunite, delicious in its own right - but also one of Narfell's fabled Wolves. Her blood warmed at the thought of it. Beneath the full moon she would strike. Not with dagger, or with arrow, nor poison at that. She would descend upon the useless Ranger with fang and claw and devour his guts, she'd howl to invite the rest of her pack and they'd indulge in a frenzied feast of blood and gore, and the message would ring out loud and clear through the Rawlinswood. The Wolves of Narfell are dead, and Malar has returned.

    Aenhever sat on his blanket staring down into the greasy red coals of his evening fire, the flames were low and sputtery. It was a miracle that the wet, frozen wood even burned at all. He was quite proud of himself. He reached for his small knife to resume carving. A noise, somewhere out to his left. Twigs snapping, a rumble of activity - something rushing, running towards him. Yellow eyes that shone like lit candles illuminated by moonlight, fangs like daggers spit-shiny in a cavernous maw. The brown bear reared up on it hind legs and spewed out a roar, his paws up high as he readied himself to collapse and bear down with all his ferocious might. The huntress, who at the same time had leapt forth from behind Aenhever caught sight of what was happening as her jaws clamped down, fangs scraping bone at the base of the Ranger's skull as she'd tried to decapitate him with a bite.

    The awkward angle lent itself to the downward swipe from the bear, and in a dizzying yet not entirely bloodless moment the fight was over. The huntress was soundly checked, the maddened bear chasing her and batting her like a cat with a plaything. Aenhever lay face down and unconscious by his sputtering fire. The thin handle of a rough - but passable - spoon of silvery wood snapped beneath him. The world was black and silver, and blood red. Fever rose and faded and the forest aged and grew quiet around him. His wound scabbed and the headache passed. The bear did not return, nor did the huntress. He knew this as a fact, as he stood pondering the scene what could've been a day if not days later. No, the coals are still warm. Less than a day later, probably. He traced the path of the bear, and returned to his camp site. He traced the path of the huntress, though he barely left his camp site before losing her trail entirely. He followed the path of the battle between bear and huntress and found that it ended in chaos. No bear, no huntress. Just wild war.

    He returned to the dead-drop and left a message of his own. [Inconclusive].

    The Orcs past the Western Wall had been engaging in raids after the melt. The Defenders were ordered out as a deterrent. Foxholes and trenches, lined with timber and sandbags. Aenhever was the longbowman counterpart that was posted with big Roy, an oftentimes ill tempered yet remarkably chatty Norwickian transplant who'd proven himself more than capable of bullying Orcs.

    A crossbow bolt fell short of their dugout, the muddy 'splat' barely perceptible above Roy's chatter.

    Roy, after inspecting the mostly healed injury on Aen's neck: "...mountain lions bite like that. My mate Paul's ram had its head ripped right off, them big cats use their in-size-ors to get right into the backbone and it's lights out."

    Aen: "...wasn't a mountain lion, I was in the forest..."