- Messages
- 300
- Character Biography
- Link
He drank the last of the bottle.
The alcohol burned his throat, seemingly purging the freezing cold he felt as it poured down - at least momentarily. He set the glass vessel aside and came to lean on his hands, his arms supporting his torso as he sat on the fringe of the cliff, his feet dangling haphazardly over the edge.
Falwood moonshine had always been a kicker for him, and this time he felt he had overdone it, drinking the entire bottle over the course of a couple of hours. That moment, so far removed in the past, when he had opened the bottle, seemed an eternity ago now, his mind having raced through topics far and wide as he strove to finish the drink.
It was doubtful whether he really needed the spirit, however.
It was not as though this was a watershed moment of his life; as though he was about to undertake something so great that his life would be forever changed by its outcome. No, rather it was something that he felt he ought to do, though the circumstances warranted a dulling of the senses before he could truly bring himself to undertake the deed.
He breathed heavily.
In front of him, the dark fortress of Valdorren had proven itself a dull drinking partner; its claw-shaped towers of black stone standing menacingly across the gorge, ensconced by the morning mists with an air of sepulchral silence about them.
He had been there before. He knew what awaited him within, and what horrors those dark halls hid beneath their desolately serene facade.
Still.
The castle was his property, but more than that, it was his right, his birthright, and he would not be turned from it. It was so, as he sat there, at the edge of that frigid cliff, that he recalled how poorly his first attempt at breaking into the fortress with Leander Urahill had gone.
Chased from his own home by creatures he could not even begin to describe.
But he would not be denied; Ivan Skender was not known for taking ‘no’ for an answer. And he wouldn’t, especially not on this day.
It was his birthday, after all.