Completed Bitter

[Amalric Urahil]

Cruel wind blew across the frozen bay, a cold kiss to the cheeks of the lone figure on the ice. Face burnt red by the biting chill, hair rigid with frozen sweat, Gwaerendir struggled to put one foot afore the other. The overcast sky grew grim, a pale sword hanging above his head, threatening to bury him and all his efforts beneath white snow.

He wore a thick black coat across his shoulders, hood up to shelter what little of his face the garment could. Under it he wore armor, with plates scratched and scored, maille rent and ruined, and much of it caked with a dried, black residue. The sword belted to his waist threatened to drag across the ground, yet still he wore it and them, hating the thought of going weaponless. Fixed to his face, as though carved by some dwarven mason, there looked a set jaw and scowling brow. For how would Gwaerendir, last survivor of the Blight Watch, trek so many leagues through orcs and wargs and giant spawn only to now bend the knee before a mere touch of the chills.

In spite of all he suffered, he uttered no plea to the gods. It was gods who had left him to die on the tower. And they no longer heard the words he spoke, for if they did they would surely strike him down.

Pride alone drove him on, pure and pagan.

Vand

 

[Vand]

Vand was standing on the shoreline -- The new one for the Winter, which now extended out into the center of the known world… where the waves would be, had they not frozen up entirely. With a few cautious steps, it was Doggrave that joined him out there, curious as to what his compatriot was up to. “What?,” he inquired simply.

"You smell that?"

Doggrave shrugged – His nose was for trumpeting and environmental manipulation, not intruder detection. The mammoth-man glanced to side as he felt the witch, her sour ambiance as arresting as the frigid winds that snitched on the outlander. Taking a step back, he welcomed Signe the Bog Witch into their conversational sphere.

She sniffed at the air. It took only a moment. “Elves,” she confirmed more for the Tusk than the vandal. "An elf," she self-corrected.

“Lousy with ‘em lately,” Vand sneered, reflecting on his encounter with Sanno. He sniffed at the air again, divining further information. “Hrm. Something’s wrong with this one... Stinks of wet dog and offal. It never fucking ends, does it?”

“No knife-eared opportunity with pockets full of finery and ancient magic?,” Doggrave offered, knowingly out of the loop.

“Of course not,” Vand spat bitterly. “We get the awkward twat who chows down on uncooked pig asshole.”

Doggrave widened his eyes, his head reeling back as if he’d been struck.

“What?”

“You’re just so fucking charming sometimes,” Signe answered for the Tusk in her sing-song Disney princess voice.

“Fuck yourself,” Vand muttered, turning out his left hand to Signe, palm open in expectation. “It’s been a long week.”

Signe didn’t miss a beat, reaching into one of her many satchels to retrieve some Toad Stool. Vand nodded in appreciation, then began his trek down the frozen bay in pursuit of that new prey.

“Getting longer," he lamented.

The other two followed.

To the people of Withereach (and Nordengaard as a whole, really) this body of water was known as Haymar’s Folly. This name was awarded by the people to the bay as a mean-spirited joke following a particularly famous battle that occurred upon its surface God Only Knows how many years ago.

In the time of the Nordenfiir dissension, when they rebelled from the slavery of the Vel Anir, or someone else – it changes, they were tracked and pursued across the frozen bay of Haymar’s Folly by an entire battalion of baseline humans lead by the cowardly and idiotic, but terminally vain, Colonel Haymar.

Upon reaching the hard land, the battalion was met by a sizable force of Nordenfiir who kept the small army from advancing. Rather than admit defeat, Colonel Haymar dug in on the frozen bay, building ramparts and setting up camp, continuing his career-making and career-ending campaign against the Nordenfiir on the beach.

The days would pass, turning into weeks, then months, until finally, the Spring came, and the ground in which Haymar had built has staging ground began to thaw. As the ice turned the water and the soldiers had nowhere to go but forward into a bunch of pissing-themselves-laughing Nords, they fell into the waters where they drowned and froze to death.

Colonel Haymar was recovered and shipped back to his handlers, where the bay would become known to the bitter hearts and bitter men, who met bitter defeat and bitter end, in the bitter cold of the bitter depths upon what they would now call Bitter Bay.

To this day, pieces of that lost battalion still occasionally wash upon the shore of Withereach.

But that wouldn’t be for another few months.​

 

[Amalric Urahil]

In the distance, he could see the shore, where the ice would give way to packed earth. Hunger gnawed in his belly, a craving for more than fish, which had been his only succor on the frozen bay. He could almost feel them: the taste of berries, their supple skin covered in a layer of frost, but giving way before his teeth to softer flesh beneath and a rush of sweetened juice like nectar; the warmth of a fire, kindled by wood, damp though it be, and the rich scent of the coiling smoke. But above all he felt a raw ravenousness that set his numb hands trembling, for this hunger would no berries sate.

Heart aching, he lifted a gray gaze once more to the shoreline and beheld some figures who yonder stood. Orcs. Though one looked taller than any orc he had seen. Perhaps a son of Menalus, come to see business finished. Gwaerendir's hand settled on his hilt and when the first tug did not yank it free, he set one hand upon the scabbard and gripped it well, then pulled loose the dwarven steel with a wretched rasp.

Nearer he came to them, and they to he. Not orcs at all, but beast folk and he marked them well, for orcs were not the only servants of the Ash King.

With throat dry and lips cracked, he spake not, but drew to a stop upon the ice.

 

[Vand]

“There he is.”

It was Doggrave who first saw the pilgrim. The mammoth-man’s early days spent as a herder with the people Of the Tusk, he was long practiced in peering through the veil of harsh winds and their impenetrable screens of errant snowfall. It hid the elf well, but not from him.

Vand lifted a hand to shield his eyes – whether it actually helped him pick-out the elf was hard to determine (Honestly, the visual acuity was more likely attributable to the Toad Stool he ingested semi-regularly). He saw something, but what as for what it was, he would have to defer to his brother. The stink of elf, at least, was clear.

“Short elf or Frail elf?,” Vand coughed, subduing it into a snarl.

"Frail elf."

Vand’s brow furrowed. The vague outline he saw seemed a bit broad.

“Yeah? Looks a bit fuckin’ fat, right?”

“He’s armored. Well-armored, a little damaged. There’s at least one plate in there.” Doggrave scanned again, “No marks.”

“Oooh, light plate, then,” Vand chuckled, beginning to count his chickens before they had hatched. High Elves often being weaker, the Rabble-rouser reckoned that it harnessed an accommodating tech or magic that would somehow translate into treasure. The lack of heraldry suggested the equipment hadn’t been paid for by an army, or an organization. “Rich bitch.”

Of course, he could have been an adventurer. The outlander’s equipment could have been plucked from the dead. Vand swallowed, and his mind wandered.

They trudged in the snowfall, their footfalls packing it against the frozen tide in those familiar little sounds.

“Blade sheathed at his side…,” Vand noted aloud in a murmur only Doggrave could hear. The implication being that it was a one-hander.

“It is.”

“…And no shield.” He was grinning now, “'Yograth, puh-lease, let this fool try to fence me...”

Doggrave snickered alongside. He would still have a smirk tucked away under his trunk when the trio finally approached Gwaerendir, drawing to a stop within throwing distance. Certainly within shouting distance.

As the man drew his sword, Vand’s head tilted up suddenly, like “Sup?,” sneering at the armored elf through his bearbone visage. “Yeah, shitbreath--,” Vand taunted, his free hand reaching to clutch the hilt of his own blade secured at his back. " -- you might really want to reconsider."

 

[Amalric Urahil]

Eyes of gray looked on them, edged and hard, like the steel in his hand. The weight of it felt good and right.

He looked from one to the other and weighed them too. The mammoth first, then the others. The one wearing a mask of bone spoke, words fogging from his lips hot and hateful. He moved and spoke like a predator seeking weakness, a limp in the gait, or a tremble in the reply. Something of fear or feebleness, so the pack might spring.

The elf held his gaze, knowing how he would hate it, and removed any sign of submissiveness from his posture. He would not be cowed, but the challenge he presented might give rise to combat all the same. It did not matter in the end. They would either stand aside, or they would be removed.

Of the last nine decades, Gwaen spent them all at war, removing threats to Arethil the way a gardener took a hoe to weeds, lest they choke sunlight and soil from the flowers. Duvain's dwarf forged edge had tasted the blood of Naga, Orc, and a son of Fire. And now, perhaps, the blood of beastmen.

He would not be tarried on his journey home. Not by anyone.

Cracked and wind burnt lips parted to speak in their tongue. "Let me pass."

 

[Vand]

Vand shook his head, more amused than anything. “No,” he simply said, laughter evident in his voice, the tail of his word breaking up into the patter of baffled giggles.

The Elf seemed confident in his maintaining of dominant postures, of predatory gazes, all subjects of Self-Help books designed to Take Back Your Workplace With Better Confidence. However, Vand had no need of savagery when elementary math prevailed – two of his three were the same size, if not larger than this elven pilgrim. Hold that gaze. Lock those horns. Stand that ground – The High Elf was still outnumbered and outmuscled on someone else’s turf.

The brigand shoved his fistful of Toad Stool into his mouth, puffing up his cheek like a gerbil as he chewed over the flavors of sunflower seeds and dry grass and the rotting dead steeped in actual amphibian shit. He chomped it down in his jaws as he took one big step forward, then another, pulling his bastard sword from his back and holding its extended hilt in both hands.

Behind Vand, Doggrave became animated, breaking away to spin like an Olympic Hurler, his aim toward the sky. He would release the boulder, sending it almost perfectly straight up, though it was canted slightly. It would not return to the ice this round.

Signe, on the other hand, broke to the other side, though became much more statuesque. She dipped covertly into her robes, looking for something among her assorted vials and pouches. The slow readying of a caster class.

Vand’s steps became stomps, became a full-bore charge, The Black Bastard, gnarled and profane, was held aloft at similar degrees as Doggrave’s aim, almost as though its point was tracking the boulder potentially now in orbit.

The visible features of Vand’s face twisted and wretched, his expression one of sublime disgust as he consumed the matter.

It was ugly; alien.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

The stillness of the frozen bay gave way to a flurry of action. They came on like a pack of so many wolves bursting from brush to embattle a wounded and weary stag.

Ice creaked and groaned as the mammoth-man spun his bulk and released a boulder up into the sky with the speed of a dwarven ballista. Gwaen cocked his head, eyes following it, before the sound of stamping feet drew his attention back.

Still wearing the maudlin mask, the speaker rushed him, waving about a long, but crude and misshapen sword. Nordens, ever ready to quicken the burn of their short wicks, like day moths drawn to flame.

Gwaen held his own blade in the stance of Summer, the swiftest style, but he raised his off-hand toward the mammoth-man.

Burn.

With a rushing noise, the air sucked in around Gwaen's outstretched hand, then in a blast of heat, a mote of orange-yellow fire flew forth at the mammoth-man's large, woolen pelt.

 

[Vand]

Some lingering questions would be answered as the High Elf readied a hand…as the frigid air combusted and launched in a ball of flame that defied reason.

Vand went at it as they collided with his trajectory, spinning in a whirlwind and slashing at the ball at an awkward angle, altering the flightpath of the fireball’s tail as it was severed from the overall mass already made less by the heat absorption capabilities of the Black Bastard’s obsidian blade. The now smaller ball arced toward Vand’s feet, the icey floor sizzling as Vand narrowly evaded the fire, using his momentum to once more spin out of the way as gracefully as though he were on ice skates. He would continue his charge without harshing his flow.

“Drrg-grah!,” he attempted to warn his friend, but failed – his mouth still chewing his drugs.

Doggrave’s eyes traced the boulder as it once more came into view, hurling towards the ground like a comet from space. When it finally collided with the frozen bay, it shattered the ice, sending a massive cut that grew substantially as it passed some several feet behind Gwaerendir, cutting off his escape route…

The Tusk’s eyes grew as another break split he and Signe from Vand, as well. “Shit.”

…he turned just in time to catch a fireball on the wrist, the damp fur still igniting up his forearm courtesy of its magical properties. “Shit, shit, shit!,” Doggrave cursed, slapping at his arm. He would dive at the ground, forearm first, burying it in the snowfall that powdered the ice – his weight thrown around so carelessly really didn’t help the growing divide.

“Well done,” Signe congratulated his failure.

The track of ice on which Vand and the Elf stood fell unevenly into the water, dipping back from where the Nordenfiir had come, causing him to rock back jarringly at just that unfortunate moment that he had entered the fighting range – its suddenness causing him to swallow the rest of the Toad Stool matter in one uncomfortable gulp. Ever-suited to this environment, however, Vand worked with the economy of motion to bring his blade up, around in a spin, then down at Gwae’s blade in a ferocious horizontal chop.

“Yeah, yeah...,” Doggrave muttered, chagrined. He was rubbing his burn. “Shit.”

Signe simply shook her head, pocketing whatever she had been working on, then dropped to the ground alongside him, bare hands to the frozen ground. “Just…assist me.”

She took a deep breath. Upon her exhale, melody. A soft song of uncertain words – hidden by their occasional pronunciation in whispers; by her occasional singing in the whisper range. Doggrave got the hint, imitating her posture, providing a long horn back-beat using his trunk.

Cue that fight track:

The smaller cracks began to knit back together, but there was no magic here.

The water wanted to freeze, the ice wanted to be whole. All the Bog Witch did was help it along.

And so, Gwae and Vand’s block would stabilize in the water.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

CRACK

The boulder came down behind Gwaerendir and split the ice apart, breaks spider webbed out from the impact, opening a wide channel of frigid bay water at the elf's back. Another crevasse formed in front of Gwaerendir and the ice floe he and the beastman now floated on tilted wildly.

Before him, the beastman chopped wildly at the fireball with his wretched blade. Gwaen frowned as part of the flame sputtered off, while the rest struck the mammoth in the arm. The creature flailed about in a panic.

Gwaen leaned forward, then back as the floe bobbed, almost losing him his footing. The beastling swung with great force, his sword whistling through the air with a shriek, and Gwaerendir's to meet it as the elf stepped to the left and in, swinging with his right.

CLANG

Fire-forged Belgrath ingot met enchanted obsidian, birthed in volcanic womb and the resounding clash rang unearthly of whispered magics.

Gwaerendir drew upon centuries of experience, but though his roots ran deep, his trunk was weatherbeaten and worn. So many leagues after the Drawa's flow, and then the unforgiving trek across the ice. His fingers were numb with cold and felt the jar through the hilt of the colliding swords, yet still they would serve.

The beastling's black blade, diverted only slightly by the elf's blade, cut through the air where his head would have been had he not moved out and in.

Curling the gauntleted fingers of his offhand into a fist, he drove the cold metal toward the beastman's bone-masked face.

 

[Vand]

The slight impact, that rolling thunder that was as much sound as sensation as his shoddily-honed blade dragged across the Elf’s, depositing him slightly askew of his intention…but not enough to rock his momentum; to neutralize his push.

The brigand released his hilt with his right hand, continuing the follow-through with his left. He took a step backward and bowed (awkwardly taking a punch on his crown, fortunately softened by the leather of his mask), his left hand carrying on to seamlessly pass the Black Bastard to his right, which would culminate with a beautifully-executed, vicious one-handed cross-slash from Vand’s bottom right to his top left. With all the built-up centrifugal force, the impact could likely launch a dwarf – if it missed, however, the length of his blade might be able to cast Gwaerendir back in fear. Considering that the outlander was going for a crossjab, it’s conceivable this all left him anywhere from "quite unstable" to "bisected."

Vand would press this advantage, stepping into the High Elf’s guard as he drew his own blade back – His left hand reaching for the wrist or the crossbar of the pilgrim’s sword arm, ceasing the weapon’s movement before it could generate any real force. As his right-hand removed his sword from his workspace, however, the Nordenfiir would simply drop it in place, supplanting his grasp, instead, for the coat on the elf’s shoulder. Wrenching his grip on the other man, Vand would leverage these points of contact to headbutt him. Hard. Aiming for the bridge of his nose, the space between his eyes. As many times as he could get away with, coughing in his face the whole time without making any effort to cover his mouth.

It was almost as if he didn’t believe in germs at all.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

The step back opened distance between them, as a rift in space and time, enough to allow a transition of the bastard's black blade too, from one hand to the other. Gwaerendir saw, but did not allow time and space to become his enemies, for his enemies numbered enough already.

While the beastman stepped back, he stepped forward. The black blade came up and smashed well and truly into Gwaerendir, though not as true had he been at full reach, meeting his plate cuirass at the ribs and skidding up. The armor rang out and pain blossomed in a cloud of warm breath that exhaled from Gwaen's lips, between clenched teeth, in a hissing gasp.

He swung his own sword to strike, but the beast's spare hand arrested his movement by clutching at his wrist. Just as quickly, the beastman dropped the wrist, reaching past to grab at Gwaen's shoulder and drag him forward into a headbutt.

They stood now close enough for dagger's work and little else.

Gwaen reacted swiftly. His left hand rushed forward, ferrous fingers still curled, aimed to smash once more into the incoming head, then his armored knee came sharply up toward the beastman's groin.

 

[Vand]

The Black Bastard 's front-end would connect in a burst of Black Ice shards, taking to the sky and pebbling to the ground to in a small hail of razorblades, waiting for travelers like a cruel trap in a Home Alone movie. This stifled the brigand none, and he went for the Elf’s collar all the same, his bicep and shoulder obscuring the Elf’s punch trajectory, causing the blow to glance awkwardly as the knife-eared assailant attempted to reach over his arm.

Vand’s eyes grew red, dilated – eyebrows knitted in rage, but –somehow – not pain, as he was kneed in the balls. Years of combat saw Vand’s nuts battle-hardened and combat ready. What’s more, he was quite on drugs, and the bear-skin skirt tied superfluously at his waist acted as a catch to the High-Elf’s raising knee, breaking his momentum as the attack attempted to pull the bearskin inward between Vand’s legs, only to be hindered by the friction of its finite material as it was passed over his patchwork trouser thigh. Basically, like a baggy jeans. No, the rage came not from agony, but by the insult such an attack paid upon him by the Elf.

This only marginally changed Gwaerendir’s future, the onslaught of headbutts and flurries of spittle now coming at him amidst a madman’s shouting – made difficult to decipher not just because of the coughing and the clunking sound as Vand’s mask gave the Elf a second cranium to rebound off of, but also the oscillating delivery of the madman himself as his head whipped through the air in a fury. Eventually, it would become obvious that Vand was, in fact, yelling, “You would barfight a bear?!”

It was obvious because Vand repeated it. He would do this after he pulled Gwaerendir’s captive sword-arm toward him, and moved his hand from Gwae’s coat-shoulder to push upon his face, using the new leverage on the jarred pilgrim to shove him against the leg lifted for that knee, flipping him hard onto a bed of tiny black daggers, and continuing to drive his face and head back until it slammed into the frozen ground.

“YOU WOULD BARFIGHT A BEAR?!,” he repeated. Vand had retained control of his sword arm, and now moved to try and wrest the blade from its owner’s hand while he lay down. If Gwae resisted, he would quickly strike his face from above, the bear claws built into his gauntlets likely skewered his flesh.

By now, Gwaerendir might be smelling what Vand had coughed upon his face. With the residue of the Toad Stool very much in his saliva, it would wreak to Hell and back with the rot of the newly dead, flavored with notes of shit and never-flossing. The mucus in the compound would see that it stuck on the man’s face, and would need to be manually wiped off to be removed – at which point, the blood present could psyche one out….because…gross…what if it got into your wounds?

Pulling the sword free, he lobbed it across their little arena – the blade spinning through the air to land with its blade plunged into the ice, sticking out in wait for its master as though it were Excalibur.

Vand beat his chest, and roared.

It was the exact roar, in volume and timbre, of an actual dire bear.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

The bone mask cracked against Gwaerendir's brow once, twice, all the while a terrible roar ripped from the madman's throat. Gwaen's world blurred into a haze of pain. He felt the beast sweep his leg out from under him and the chips of obsidian from the shattered sword dig into the back of his head with a detached sensation, as though these were events happening to someone else.

Strong hands wrenched his sword away from numbed fingers.

Blood sheeted down Gwaen's face and into his eyes from where and edge of the bone mask had cut into his right eyebrow. His head throbbed, as though a team of blight orcs armed with great sticks beat upon his skull in a frantic tattoo. Tears welled within his eyes and he felt more blood oozing from his nose.

The beastman stood over him and beat his chest, roaring with triumph.

Through blurred vision, one emotion overtook all others: rage. Rage as cold and unforgiving as the water beneath them. Pushing himself up with one arm from the ground, Gwaerendir raised his other hand, finger extended toward the man, and through lips slick with his own blood uttered a series of words that thrummed with power as he called upon nature herself to remember.

Remember.

To remember how the quiet fall of snow could quicken to sheets of white so pure and stark and driving in force as to push out all else. To remember how gray could turn to black in an instant. To remember what it was to bulge, fat and heavy with sleet. To remember the vibrating power of the storm. To reach toward the earth in a moment, a single moment, and connect the two in a strand of awing brilliance.

All at once, the overcast sky's gray swelled to black and from within her depths there came a clap of hideous thunder, then all grew silent.

A soft, buzzing sound emanated from the air around elf and man. Gwaen felt a tingling sensation that traveled the length of him. What hair that wasn't frozen to his arms and neck stood suddenly on end. Steel breastplate, scales, and every bit of metal on him emitted a sudden and eerie glow of softest blue.

Through the blood and the pain, he felt an instant of cruel satisfaction.

Then she spit forth lightning in a single, smiting bolt upon the rejoicing Nordenfiir.

Its brightness blinded him and he shut his eyes in agony. His nostrils filled with a sharp and pungent smell and a second crack of thunder laid him deaf.

 

[Vand]

Vand never saw it coming – How could he?

Even the clouds were caught off-guard, thunder crying out in the sky so long after the bolt had already cleaved it in half.

He could no longer feel where his boots had touched the hard ice underneath. Instead, he hovered like the risen Christ, head cast upward unto the heavens, his palms open and out at his sides, muscle striations that could give any warrior body-dysmorphia. They blistered and crackled with his newborn snowflake scarring courtesy of the lightning arcing about his flesh, tracing the thin field of moisture composed of sweat and melted snow. It was all that had saved from the bolt punching a straight-line through his heart.

This is even how he saw himself, in the moments where all thinking had stopped, someone ripping the power cord out from his personal computer. He was his own icon, floating there in its halo of soft-light Sometimes, his brain would fill his mind with the imagery, the sensation, of his veins and his sinus dried out, a vine of black flowers and mushroom-caps blossoming, replacing his blood. He wanted to cough, but lacked the muscle control.

And then there was the sound…at first a high-pitched screeching, giving way to something more akin to crumbling paper. If this were another place, with different technology, he might have thought it more like radio static, searching for the proper frequency, a voice low and indecipherable just a few stations away.

-- a life that is difficult – where survival is a day-to-day struggle. This makes him virtuous; hard-working. Not gree-– Krkkrkk--vetous, the Noble Savage takes nothing in their life for granted, and as such, must continue to be found worth- -lkrkkkzkkkzz- -tions of shocking violence can still be redeemed. Can be understood.​

They speak their mind, and do not manipulate. They work for what they have, and do not -krkkzkkzkz- Their actions speak for them, plainly – krkkzkkzkzkkk-- what you get. It is Honesty and Freedom that this delusion feels exalts the Barbarian over Civilization -krkkzkkkzzz- its dehumanizing –​

A loud crash of static. The ringing again. Then the voice, clear as day.

Behold, then, as our hero finds the freedom to honestly attack a lone stranger, lost and unacclimated in a strange land.

Such virtue, indeed.​

Vand awoke on his knees, thrashing at the frozen, snowy floor, the pain of the frost like a police siren echoing in his mind from a neighborhood far away. A boxer coming out swinging, he remembered nothing prior to the knock-out, his short-term memory ceasing before making any proper mental notes.

Still, his body tensed, the trail of roaring thunder still registering in the periphery; the reptilian mind recognizing the tightening of the air as it ionized, fearing the coming lightning. Vand darted for the elf now shocked blind, grabbing hold of his face by his mouth and forcing him down to his knees. “Y-y-y...!,” Vand stammered, his brain still too rattled to speak.

He held him there, intent in blowing his face off should the lightning strike him again.

“Y-Y…Y-YIELD!,” he finally mustered.

He sniffed once, becoming aware of the faint smell of burning emanating from his being. It was odd to him.

All he felt was cold.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

Already on his knees, Gwaerendir felt a firm hand grip him by the jaw. Slowly, his hearing returned to him, even before his sight, and he heard the stammering words roared out as if by a bear that had been wounded but did not understand how.

The blood dribbling down Gwaen's face had frozen stiff and it cracked around his mouth when he opened his lips, remembering verses from Fal'Addas. Man shouts at the reed.

"And the reed bends..."

So the Man, thinking he has mastered the reed, does not understand why it rises once more. For Man, so engrossed with his own power, sees everything as a contest of wills. But all his screaming will not cease the wind from blowing. In his folly, he will burn all that does not obey and be left only with ashes. For that is the way of mankind, who have set themselves as enemies against Time and Earth. A war they can never win.

"And the reed rises."

The man still had his hands clasped around Gwaen's jaw and like as not did not see the chunk of obsidian, broken from the blade, which appeared as suddenly in the elf's gauntleted hand as if by magic. Gwaerendir thrust the wickedly chipped obsidian blindly for the closest thigh of the Beastman, once, twice, thrice - the point keen enough to puncture any leather girding the loin and dig deep into the flesh beneath.

 

[Vand]

Vand’s teeth clenched, eyes widening as the High Elf waived any mercy that the barbarian might grant him; made him regret offering it at all. These blind attacks to his thigh had the potential to be catastrophic, the best thing going for Vand being that Gwae was attacking from the outside. That he, himself, was quite fucked-up on mushrooms.

Once – Vand did not deliberate, did not let the High Elf delude himself for a second into thinking he had made the right choice. His hand on his face, he simply flicked his wrist forward, the claws on his gauntlets digging deep into Gwae’s cheek, wrenching behind his jaw, and prying it from its latch in his ancient skull.

Twice – The edges of the obsidian shard would be wreaking untold havoc upon Gwae’s own fingers by now, the impact as it pushed into Vand causing it saw back through the lesser armor of the pilgrim’s mitts, turning tendons into red ribbon. Vand faintly recalled his summers as fishmonger, his cleaning hook wedged in the underbelly of the day’s catch, as he used his claws in Gwae’s face to lift him and slap him down hard on the ice, landing on his belly and face, aided by the displaced momentum of the thrice stab gone wild as Vand pivoted away to complete his own action. There was a dehumanizing crunch as his claws tore away from the man’s face.

“And the reed BREAKS,” Vand snarled, steam and smoke still rising from his form.

The Rabble-Rouser wasted no time, closing the distance – the drugs in his system limiting the pain that would have stifled his movement. He drove his foot down on the fallen’s shoulder, pinning the arm potentially still holding the shard, and reasserting that the Elf remain flush with the cruel cold of the ice.

Touching his fingers to his trousers now soaked in his blood, he sought the bright red color indicative of damage to his femoral artery. It showed dark upon his fingertips.

So far, so good.

 

[Amalric Urahil]

The hunk of obsidian did cut through his own leather-bound hand, scraping tendon. The claws of the Beastman sank into his neck, fresh pain erupting there, hot blood steaming into the cold air.

He felt himself lifted up, then thrown. His skull slammed against the ice beneath them and he felt a crunching snap in his jaw and a blast of blinding agony that burned his consciousness into blackness and put him into a bloodied sleep, from which he might never wake.

 

[Vand]

Vand wasn’t stuck for a line. Or, he shouldn’t have been anyway. He could feel the logic equations being calculated, the metronome ticking down for the optimal comedic timing. And yet, his brain was a fog – an electric trail, leading directly to a door that refused to budge.

And then everything refused to budge.

“YAAGHH!,” Vand cried out, the muscles in his spine tightening, echoing into a clenching of every muscle down to his fingertips, his toes. Paralyzed, he fell to the ice much as the Elf had, falling across his opponent in a perpendicular, T-shape, as if trying to signal a passing airplane. He spasmed briefly with the errant arc of magic shock, drool involuntarily leaking from his lips. It was black, he noticed.

Ringing in his ears, that newly-familiar crash of static. Babbling in the background. He closed his eyes tight, pushing himself up from the ground, regaining his composure, his height. The fallen, however, remained that way. He’d –

He had won, but what?​

Scars. Neurological disorder.
​

Vand sniffed at the cold air, drawing it out into a hack, a cough, a spit. Black. His saliva, as well as the obsidian debris.

Even his sword lay broken.​

The Rabble-rouser kneeled, carefully retrieving the broken end to the Black Bastard and storing it away in his pouch. He would recover the sword from where he dropped it, girding it disappointedly onto his back.

And the alien from which he might have learned much, he instead, learned nothing. His corpse, abandoned before him.​

“Smart fucking mouth,” Vand cursed the voice, as he returned to the Gwarendir and nudged him with his foot. There was a crack.

But not from the Elf.

Signe’s magic had been successful, but it could not undo the damage that had been done. He and Gwae were separating from them, the divide of frigid water growing exponentially. He did not even have the time to steal the man’s armor. He shook his head and growled, his muscles tensing in unspent rage.

Finally, he just turned and called for his accomplice, “DOGGRAVE!” He was already darting for the divide.

Doggrave quit his trumpeting, and almost immediately, there was another resounding crack. The song was degrading. The ice was no longer knitting. Doggrave moved quickly, unrolling the slaver’s chain his kept wrapped around his forearm, spinning it around to throw for the Berserker, darting closer and closer, ready to make his jump.

Vand froze, however, his head darting around, determined not to see this as a complete loss. He ran for Gwaerendir’s fallen sword, his face almost as disappointed as he was with his own broken weapon as he lifted it. “Useless Prick,” he snarled, and ran back from Doggrave, launching himself as the Mammoth-man hurled his chain in the general direction.


SPLASH


The jump was impossible, but as the chain dangled in the water, Vand might yet survive. With a hoist and heave, Doggrave pulled Vand back to the other side, Gwaerendir’s sword still clutched in his left hand.

And Vand was shaking. And then he was coughing. And then his blood-soaked leg gave out on him, and he collapsed back onto the ice.

Scratch at the walls all you can, stupid ape-boy. You will never get out that way.​

 

[Amalric Urahil]

The beast man picked Gwaen’s sword up from the ice, then he and his coterie stalked off into the tundra. Leaving Gwaerendyr alone, his face a ruin, the last of his blood pumping out of his rent throat.


The sun set swiftly and in darkness the blood stars shown brightly in these northmost climes. Full Pneria rose in the night sky like a rusted orb, crossing the face of ringed Lessat to become haloed in her light. The wolf’s eclipse they called it, while others named it blood shadow. A rare and terrible portend.


Righteously did villagers, huddled by hearth, speak of the moon in such terms, for as the pale light fell upon Gwaerendyr’s still form his body and blood began to quicken. He shook as if from seizures and thrashed upon the ice as his bones snapped and his skin bubbled and bulged. Maille rings burst and leather tore as a horrific shape arose from this cocoon of metal and flesh.


Eyes possessed of a wicked and cunning light stared out from a maw which fair did ooze slavering strands. Furred and fanged, this foul lupine stood upon hind legs like a man, though the fingers of its hands ended in cruel claws. He scented the air once, twice, then prowled into the night.

 

[Vand]

The Following Afternoon
​

Vand stood on the snowy slant of a hill midst the grey-white all-around. He looked back at the town, smoke rising into the sky from their brown specks, reaching for the heavens at the big, red moon that still shown visible in the afternoon sky. It hovered ominously over the rocky peninsula that wrapped around one side of Withereach like the protective arm of her man.

“Fuckin’ ‘Pig Rock’,” Vand said to nobody, an echo from across of time and space.

He did not reflect on how the animals had been acting bizarrely, howling late into the early morning hours. It went without saying that weird moons brought weird tidings. Instead, he clutched the Useless Prick – the Dwarven-crafted sword he stole from Gwaerendir – and chopped at the air and superficial layer of snow, trying to get a feel for a weapon he never would have chosen for himself.

It was light --at least, for him and that might which was typical of his people --, but it wasn’t supernaturally so. Didn’t appear to have been the case by design, either. Vand turned it over in his hand, appraising it with the blade pointed outward, but found he really could not admire it for much other than its material and its craftsmanship. It was not beautiful. It was not rare. It was not legendary. It was only a quality blade, like a quality chair, or a quality sandwich.

Vand’s gaze continued down his gauntleted wrist to his bare bicep, his runic tattoos gilded with the fractal, crystalline scarring of being shocked by a lightning bolt. The price he had paid for this trophy that, in essence, was little more than that of a 50 Dollar gift certificate to Starbucks.

With a pre-emptive hack, he caught a cough before it arrived and spat it into the snow.

The usual suspects had happened upon the Rabble-Rouser as he performed one of his adhoc, barbarian katas, swinging the arming sword as he saw the Elf had, trying to glean if there was anything in the style he could benefit from.

Vand had smelled her on the air. Vand had felt him in the earth.

“It’s not aggressive enough...,” he accounted to Doggrave and Signe the Bog Witch as they made their approach. He slashed at the open the air, drawing backward as he imagined a Nordenfiir coming at him with an axe or an oversized hammer – the Dwarven-Steel arming sword helpless under their assault. “It’s not long enough to reach anything…I’m withdrawing constantly. It’s like a back-up plan for anything that might be faster than me…” It was a mime; the choreography was expertly performed. It was as though Vand’s being was literally tethered between two planes of existence.

“TT,” he scoffed, moving to engage. In reflex, his other hand had went to grab the hilt to add strength, to assert as new path of travel for the elf’s former blade…only to find the arming’s sword handle not nearly long enough. He grabbed nothing, and the dance was dispelled. “But nothing’s faster than me,” he said, masterfully twirling the sword around the back of his hand. He cast it into the air, letting it spin in rise and fall, only to land tip down into the snow per his intention, like Excalibur awaiting its King.

“It wasn’t worth it.” Vand had turned to face the others, the expression that was visible on his face was both livid and chagrined.

“Have you considered having the Smith extend the handle?,” Signe asked, helpful in her sing-song voice. The question seemed loaded somehow. Though, it didn’t matter.

“It would fuck-up the essence,” Vand shook his head. “If I wanted a sword to spec, I could have made one.”

A tight-lip smile spread across Signe’s wrinkled face, and something changed in Doggrave’s posture. The world locked into place almost audibly as Vand gave the perfect answer for this trio, reaffirming that they were all shared in their worldview. That Doggrave and Signe’s guidance, from either of their tribes of thought, was not going unheard.

Vand looked back at the sword, shaking his head. “Just one more fucking ‘Nothing Fight’ to the pile. It should not’ve happened.”

Vand’s emotional content wasn’t really altering. It remained flat, like he was sharing the process behind his math homework. It was a comparing of notes – his against the voice, now checked by his friends. “Is this all I can do? Am I stupid?”

Doggrave’s brow raised, apparently startled by this question. However, Signe fired back without missing a beat – She saw where this was going a mile off, listening to its whistle along his rhythms.

“No, I’ve never thought such a thing.” Her eyes followed Doggrave as the Tusk moved nearer to Vand, but she remained stationary. She was not consoling him. This was just honesty. “You make hard choices, and you bear the weight of those choices. It’s admirable, and sometimes, it might appear foolish…” She grinned, both in play and adoration. “But it’s You, and the consequence of You.” Digressing, she looked out over the frozen bay as though it were her past stretching out before her, “… I’ve watched many men never dare and achieve only mediocrity.”

Vand’s mind was not soothed, heat building against the flowers in his brain. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes in a vain effort to fight off a migraine that was never coming anyway.

“But – the mystery remains: Why had he come? Why had he walked Haymar’s Folly--? To fucking…break against the Tundra?”

Doggrave got ahead of it, this time, interceding on Vand’s behalf.

“And, as I recall, you were not the aggressor, Vand. You refused to yield, but you gave him a way out. You were irresistible forces, colliding.” Doggrave lifted his Story Boulder in a single hand, balancing it, his eye moving from Vand to the inevitable. “There are many reasons why he may have doubted your intentions. Many reasons why he could not have accepted your hospitality, anyway.” Slapping the boulder with his other hand, he spun the boulder around on a single finger like a Globetrotter. He would bring his finger to it again, lighting tracing it with his pointer as if randomly selecting where to travel next on a globe. “Not all options are available to all people. You are bound by the story, and your role within it.”

“And what is my role, then?” Vand seemed irritated. Doggrave appeared non-committal, tossing the boulder over his head. It rolled a little ways down the hill before getting stuck in a mound of snow.

This lack of answer was no salve. “I need more options,” Vand reflected, staring at the ground. To Signe, “I need more room to move around.” His upper arm visible tensed, his feelings of being trapped obvious. Again, his eyes wandered to the sword, “And I really fucking want to know what the frail was looking for up here.

Signe nodded slowly, mulling it over. “Okay.”

She gestured to Vand’s sword. He took the cue and walked over, retrieving it. Signe searched her clothes and pouches, not clearly finding anything as far as any outside observer could tell, then kneeled down and grabbed a handful of snow.

She approached Vand, “Hold out your sword.”

Vand obliged, arching a brow – though it was hidden under the mask.

“The sword belonged to the Elf, and the Elf had a spirit…,” Signe provided the theory, peppering the blade with the snow in her hand. “The elf is dead, so the spirit now belongs solely to the blade.”

Suddenly, the blade *pinged* with resonance as a stone hidden in the snow rebounded off of it. “Perhaps it can inform you…” Signe closed her eyes, a light, lilting tune coming from her mouth. Meaningless words, there for sound and sound alone. Another ping from a stone, different in timbre from the continued coating of snow.

Doggrave, ever-helpful, approached. His nose raised, he attempted to trumpet in rhythm.

Signe’s eyelids visibly tightened, grimacing. “Stop,” she said curtly. “Shut up.”

You didn’t need to see Doggrave’s cheeks to know he was embarrassed. Vand snickered at his friend’s expense.

The blade was white now – not from any otherworldly glow or supernatural spectrum. It was just covered in snow. Idly, Vand’s wrist turned over, dumping some of it upon the ground. A stone bounced awkwardly along the blade, along the leather and fur of Vand’s glove.

Slowly, Signe opened her eyes, her harmony drawing to a close. She looked to Vand. He blinked at her.

A silence passed between them. It occurred to Vand that, whatever was supposed to have happened, should be happening already.

“Well, that was…well, it was stupid, really.”

“Nothing? Really? Are you certain?”

Vand drew the blade back, running his hand along the flat to brush the remainder of the snow off of it. “I don’t see any spectre, any phantom – Do you?”

“That’s not…,” Signe wrinkled her lips, stopping her explanation. He knew better, or he should have – and if he didn’t, it would take way too long an explanation to set him right to be at all prudent for the matter at hand. “Still your mind,” she coaxed him. “Listen. To all of it. Tell me everything you feel.”

Vand sighed in exasperating, a slight smirk tugging at the edges of his lips. It was a bunch of guff just for show. His eyes lilted closed – a physical indication of his newfound susceptibility. Signe took the cue and once more tapped the frosted blade with little stones.

The Rabble-rousers hand twitched, turning slightly. A little beacon going off in his head, nudging him East.

“It wants me to go somewhere…It’s leading me,” Vand’s eyes opened, looking in the general direction of where the sword directed.

He looked to Signe, “The Useless Prick's looking for its master.” His face slashed wide open in a grin.

fin.

“The motherfucker’s alive.”
​