The Blood Price - Tarnok Deadsbane

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part 1 - The Making of a Ghost

The crisp morning air tickles the skin and pricks at the senses as the small band of wretched things patrol their hunting lands. The smell of a cooking fire and meat on the wind buffeted them as they approached the ravine. Their noses perk in a predatory way at the undercurrent of smells that assail them. Leather, forest, freshly turned dirt, oil from well taken care of weapons and the out of place smells of 'clean'.

Quickly they encircle the small campsite, small beady eyes glowing with an overwhelming amount of malice and bloodlust as they peer down at the gathered wood folk. An elvish woman lost in her own thoughts, her eyes distant she looks as the snow covers the trees surrounding them. The cold whipping about her and her elves at arms of some sort, sit restlessly. Their fine hair tucked beneath hoods from the cold, they speak to each other in fine lilting tones watching the woman. Their souls ache for her loss, they can see her years showing the once happy show of contentment on her face gone replaced with that of loss and mourning. She sits, barely able and willing to feed herself anymore. They had gone to calling her the Gray Ghost of the wilds. She was there, but not there. Blood and a soul before them, but hollow like a puppet with no strings and no puppet master, cut loose to wander days with no direction.

The loss of her children was something common and known. They had been taken by some rotting undead things in the night, she had fought them valiantly, but she could do little as they were taken. Her body still showed the scars and bites from that faithful night as she had fought like a tigress in her night shirt dagger in hand. When they finally found her she was bruised and bloody in an almost catatonic state. Covered in bite marks, bruises and grave gore as she had uselessly plunged the dagger into her aggressors again and again to no avail. Every day since then she had headed into the wilds, and every day since then she had found nothing of her baby twins. Gone, taken from her by those undead things.

The elvish men continued to talk quietly as the winds whipped about them tugging at their very soul with cold and natures voice seeming to call from them their comfort. Their eyes peering around them in the night as the snow buffeted them on the wind, visibility decreased to almost nothing they waited about their fire for the storm to break.

Without warning, there came a long low bellow from around them. Guttural sounds of twisted evil things assailed them. Quickly to each other the word Orcs, Grays were exchanged and the elves took up defensive positions. The woman, moving not an inch lost in her world of loss and mourning. Their weapons drawn they peered past the snow trying to discern from where their attackers would appear. Suddenly, in the distance a spear cut the night. It flew unerringly towards one of the men at arms, it cut through the air with a shriek of vengeance as it hit him square in the sternum, a ripping and cutting noise echoed in the night as the steel spear tip embedded itself in his chest and through with such force as to yank him from his feet like a rag doll. He collapsed against the ground, pinned like some sort of bug in a mad scientists lab writhing against the pain and futility of his life as his life blood leaked around him turning the purity of the scene into one of a gory and butchered mess. His mouth opened impossibly wide lilting tones transforming to a gurgle of pain and blood froth as he spit his last breath of life’s blood, his eyes slowly dimming.

The other elf turned around to see to his brother and did not see the large finely sharpen ax comming at him in the night. It split the air before him as it laid open his head, gray matter and spittle lost in the surprise yelp of his soul escaping his body. He looked on for more moments blinking uncomprehending at the form of his friend from a ground view, his own feet looking oddly misplaced on the ground before him, attached to a body slowly toppling headless to the ground. His mind barely comprehending his last moments in this land as the scene dimmed going black before him.

The woman, for her part moved not at all. Lost in her own sorrow, she did not see the face of the orcs as they approached her their feral eyes gleaming with thoughts of taking a breeder alive. Mouth dripping with disgusting drool as their small forebrains contemplated their version of fun before removing the 'Gray Ghost' from this world. They descended on her, her face smiling for the first time since the loss of her children. She would meet them soon, they would come to her and they would be a family once more. Her husband would join them in time, but he had things yet to do. As the ring of the smelly orcish bodies closed around her, bloodlust, excrement and sweat on the wind assailed her. She knew what was coming and accepted it, it was the end of her path though it might be brutal, bloody and pain wracked she would accept it.

A small sliver of hope bloomed just then in the most inconsequential of places. One of the Grays closing about her for the first time in his life, thought. It burned, it hurt.. but that small explosion in thought took over his forebrain. He raised his large clawed hand drew back his throwing ax and pitched it. End over end it came rushing for the elven woman. She turned locked eyes with him for one long and fateful moment she saw into him, his soul scared for the first time in existence as he drank in her pain, her anguish. She smiled at him, knowingly before the Ax struck home growing from her forehead as if it belonged there. Stuck, a deep sigh of release escaped her tortured form as she crumpled in the ring of howling and angry orcs. Their forms dancing in rage about her as she descended released from the world by a thing that didn't understand.

They looked back at him with angry questioning eyes. They grew bright with anger and malice as they yelled at him in their brutish tongue. He silenced them with his words, his guttural cries of strength..

"Is am Tarnok.. yous speaker, Do you challenge?"

Not one stepped forward in their bloodlust they still retained a sliver of fear for him. He had them still. But deep inside his soul a small spark stirred. He didn’t' understand the reason for it nor the feeling itself, but he knew it was important.

Only many years later would he label this feeling doubt and never connect it to this moment.

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part II - the Haunting of the Ghost

The sweats come and go. But the dream is always the same. Her smile haunts him and he knows not why. He has slain so many elves in his time he hardly remembers the count let alone the facial features, but this one haunts him still. He has ripped the skin from their bones, chopped parts so he could hear the chorus of their screams like a sweet breeze of terror through the caves of the clan. He would live for it, love it, and yearn for the time to drink in the sounds of pain. But this one sticks in his head. The way the smile tears at his soul, but yet warms it. Fills it with confusion for its very nature was so unknown to him he didn’t understand. To smile at certain death, to embrace it as a release and to use those large eyes that sparkle to almost say thank you, was far beyond his ability to comprehend.

Three days later he had returned to the scene of her death, her body picked at by predators. He had gazed a long while at the bones wanting to defile her form to somehow convince himself the one spark of something in his brain was a fantasy. But he stood there, red beady eyes staring at her form choosing many ways to desecrate her, many ways to show her disrespect in the after life and prove to the one eye that he was worthy. Instead he stood there, that one spot of thought burning within his forebrain. For an entire day and night he stood there over the corpse not moving a muscle, keeping the predators away by his very presence. Until finally, in the dead of the night he began to dig frantically at the frozen earth next to her corpse.

He dug with his bare fingers. His skin and nails first growing cold, then cracking then finally breaking with the flurry of excavation into the hard, packed, frozen ground. Until he finally dug enough so he could move her body into the ditch. He hardly knew what he was doing nor did he understand what the significance was, but lay her form into the ditch he did. Most of the people would lay where they dropped eaten and discarded their worth no longer important to the tribe. But something drove him. As he placed her gore spattered form into the grave he felt a warmth against the inside of his arm. He looked down and something around her neck had caught his eye.

He peered at the silver and gold thing for awhile. Finally he reached down and took it off her neck placing it in his belt pouch. He tried to tell himself it was simply to preserve the thing so it was worth more, a way to buy a mate, taken as a prize as a price for her trespassing on the people's lands. Even in his small mind he didn't believe it as he finished packing the frozen earth over her form. He turned from her grave the morning light cascading over the mountains, warming him lightly as he turned away to go back to the caves. The symbol of a small blooming red rose surrounding by golden wheat lost for a time on his person.

As his form passed from site of the small grave he didn't notice one of his seconds starting after him. A kernel of thought in his small mind muttering words in his own guttural language that sounded of weakness and betrayal, and the one eye no longer smiles upon him.

What neither foul thing noticed in their haste to quit the scene was the single golden ray of morning that caressed the grave. A small seedling suddenly sprouting and reaching towards the morning rays green on a sea of white. The impossibility of fresh growth in this forsaken, winter wilderness lost on both creatures as the seedling looked on its new path and pondered.

Somewhere beyond time, and beyond the physical realm a beautiful elven woman caressed her one found child, reunited with him they looked down at the scene with warm and loving smiles. A place next to them sat empty. The small plant growing from her mortal coil, the confused orc turning unknowingly from what he knew and the fates themselves blowing in a different direction.

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part III – The Coming Storm

The bestial thing ran wild eyed, mouth agape through the forest footsteps crunching in heavy show. Its tongue hanging limply from its mouth, lips cracked from the elemental forces buffeting it, its mind numb to anything but flight. Panic, pure , unbridled panic and a yearning for survival pulled at its innards as it raced on regardless of the danger. The people shouldn’t be hunted like this in their own lands.

It had started within the weeks after the seeker and his party had ambushed that bitch queen of the elf and her stupid guards. It should have been easy tasting of her body and flesh reveling in her blood and fear, but rumors say the seeker had decided differently and they paid for it every day. The one eye had moved his putrid gaze away from the clan, the people. He had shut it at the weakness of the tribe. Shortly after the ‘Gray Ghost’ had returned to haunt them, hunt them one by one. It would come in the night.. silver gleaming, laughter and lilting tones of hate shouted from the darkness. It would strike, vengeance unseen from the darkness, pain anguish the hunter becoming the hunted and the people would fall.

Lost in his morbid thoughts of doubt, betrayal and fear the Gray did not notice the shrouded figure laying in wait. Its mind focused by hatred vengeance and loss it waited. Its fine blond hair barely seen sticking out of its hooded form, skin covered in a painted death mask hunting, and collecting the blood price one at a time. Suddenly, without warning the Gray yelped in surprise as the figure rose before it. The Gray’s beady red, evil filled eyes blinking uncontrollably as its lungs had difficulty taking air, its heart beat slower and a strange salty taste was in his mouth. It sank slowly to its knees pawing at the cloaked figure before it. Finding no mercy, its limp and useless hands began tugging vainly, with childlike strength, at the silvered dagger suddenly growing from its chest as if it had always been there.

As the cold in its legs began to rise to encompass its whole form the Gray looked down, with the last light of its soul still in its eyes, it peered curiously at the silver thing protruding from its chest. It managed to comprehend that of a prancing unicorn holding a vibrant red rose worked into the hilt before an elegant boot of well crafted and cured leather slammed heel first into the hilt of the dagger.

With a snap and retching sound, the dagger disappeared into the brute’s chest inch at a time as the cloaked figure managed to hit it again and again before the gray fell. Each hit proceeded by a howl of anger and the squelch of a small blood and meat explosion from the wound. The abused body of the Gray finally fell, its life blood spilling out of the hole through its chest, contents steaming and then freezing quickly in the elemental dance around them. The soul of its tortured existence taking flight from its body as if the hounds of hell itself where after it.

Showing no further emotion, the cloaked figure extended one elvish hand its long dexterous fingers yanking free the dagger from the chest with a pulling, sucking noise leaving a trail of viscera from the force needed to remove it. He silently cleaned the weapon on the Gray, relishing in the irony of it soiling itself in its afterlife. As quick as the wind he turned and quit the scene leaving the Gray to slowly frost over as the wind and the wilds saw to the dead thing. A finely wrought silver and red rose, sheathed in wheat laying on his chest laying claim to the form.

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part IV – What am I

Weeks had passed since the killing started...

Blood, slush, grime and survival etch themselves deeply in the people’s minds. The traps are laid out daily with an attempt to catch the ‘Gray Ghost’. Sometimes they would be found empty, other times the bloody, disemboweled and impaled form of one of the people thrown in a heap onto the traps to serve as a warning. This isn’t a simple grudge this is an extermination. The musk of fear weighs heavily on the air in the caves of the tribe. They reak of it.

His great bulk sits on his throne of skins and bleached bone. At one time the thought of sitting upon the skin of his enemies would calm him and give him a perverse sort of pleasure. The tattoo which graced the arm of his throne reminded him of a particular worthy foe. He fought well, until a moment of clarity had hit the seeker and he had bit out his eye and ear relishing in the salty taste of his life’s blood and the man’s bellow of pain and anguish. He had further enjoyed the piteous wails of disgust and weakness as the man had cried to his wife and children as the tribe had slowly partaken of his flesh to gain strength from the foe. The man having no knowledge of the honor bestowed in the right of the living death. By the time they had skinned him before the seeker, there was barely a whimper as his flesh was flayed from him. The seeker laughed joyously at the time as the light left the man’s eyes, the seeker inhaling deeply of him at the moment of his last breath drinking in his soul.

His thumb rubbed over the tattoo, the thrill of the moment gone replaced by loathing and hatred for his own actions, for his own thoughts. His brain reeled at the thoughts running through it. In another lifetime he would call these disgust and pity. For now they were a source of confusion.
They. They. The word they again it comes into his addled mind when looking upon the tribe. It runs through his head. A spike of pure pain and confusion concerning the unrealized implications of the word.

‘They’ is usually a prey word, something to be hunted, something on the outside. The Seeker looks about, his Red eyes fading in the darkness as he takes in with pity what was once a look of pride. The people go about their business. Fighting for nothing other than hear the crack of their meaty fist against skin, the piteous wails of injured people left to die, the perceived good fortune of a new born who kills their mother in birthing thus making their first kill. All these things he looks on, confused a lifetime later he would label these feelings as loathing. For the first time in his short life, he does not belong. He is ‘They’.

His breath comes in huffs as he sits waiting for the challenges. The hushed and guttural tones of the tribe ripple with talks of weakness of the one eye turning away. The seeker’s blessing no longer flow from him, the ‘Gray Ghost’ continues to strike unabated, the seeker is weak are all words upon the shadows of the tribe. He still sits, knowing they are true.

There were no dreams of guidance, no one solid red eye on him in his dreams, his own bloodlust abating to the point where the blood song was no longer heeded or even heard. The seeker knew it was only a matter of time.

He sat there, his great bulk on his throne of vengeance and hate, where once he would ask no questions but only give orders reveling in blood, the blood song and the terror of the people. He repeated only one question, the only fully formed question his mind had ever formed. It hammered in his skull and explosion of consciousness far beyond his ability at present to understand.

What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?
What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I?

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part V - A Companion Made a Path Turned From

The morning mist crept across the land of the people. They sat huddled in their caves shivering. Not the shiver of the cold, but the one of terror. The 'Gray Ghost' hadn't relented and had started to work its way into the very fabric of their loose society. The hunting parties had started to paint their faces in their own dried blood drawn from wounds in their own hide. They would cut the gashes deeply so they would continue to bleed. Laying open their own disgusting flesh and saying the write of death before walking out to hunt for the tribe. They considered themselves already dead and responded as such. No fear on the faces of the hunting parties, but so much death around them not of their causing had begun to wear on the people.

They continue to look to their seeker for guidance and he had continued to give none locked in his own internal struggles. If they had one glimpse inside his mind at that moment they would have rushed to him yanking him from his throne and flaying his skin from his bones with blunt instruments to regain the one eye's pleasure. But they knew nothing and still in their own bestial way respected his power. A few young weak ones had stepped forward to challenge and he still wore the scars upon his body where youth and skill had temporarily overcame age and treachery. It was only temporary for their carcasses still lay in various states of disassembly hammered to the walls with their own weaponry to bleed out and slowly rot before the seeker. They were taken as a display of power, a display of strength, but in actually they were the signs of a tortured being wailing against the coming light. The pitiful attempts crawl back into the darkness like a mewling cub want to suckle.

He sat gazing upon their carcasses, feeling the skin of his enemies adorn his throne, his face expressionless as the wounds slowly healed. The blessing to heal, once granted by the one eye, long gone. He gazed at each trophy adorning his throne cave. Each one served as a disgusting reminder of the pitiful attempts to rekindle the feelings he once had. These pitiful meat things, some dead and rotten others mewling pitifully against the darkness that slowly gripped their souls, brought him no pleasure. No reminder of strength, they only further divorced him from these feelings and thoughts. They were disgusting testaments of who he once was and not who he was now. The feelings in him, much later named pity, wretched his gut and caused him to awake in the night howling with memories that once brought him sadistic happiness, but only now bring feelings of pity and anguish.

The morning broke, its light finally making it past the lip of the ravine in which the cave of the people lay. A small commotion from the guards and his great bulk moved bringing the smell of stale sweat, excrement, and fear with it. The traps had caught something and he claimed the right to look first. His tribe stood back allowing him to move towards the light. The trap all but obscured by the sunlight streaming in on the morning. The seer peered but could see nothing beyond the rays though a pitiful whining could be heard. Like a trapped animal, followed by a tearing grinding and gnawing sound.

Taking a deep breath of frozen air, which crisped his nostrils on the way down, he took a step forward. Later he would play this over and over again in his head. Every foot that came down in the snow making a squelching sound as it moved through it. The wind howling around him, pulling at his skin as if pushing him forward away from the tribe and what he knew. Suddenly, without warning he was before the sunlight, the blinding radiance of the morning cascading across the contents of the trap. His eyes burned with that radiance as he continued to try to peer into the light. Fresh salty tears ran down his cheeks flowing unabashedly now from his beady red lit eyes.

He recalled walking into the light, its blinding radiance piercing his skull. The pain of it flowing through and around him. His skin seemingly on fire as his eyes slowly painfully adjusted to the light. Before him laid a creature of evil. Its eyes shone red, its tongue hanging limply from its mouth its unhealthy fur matted with blood. It had defecated itself in its pain, eyes barely open as it had repeatedly throughout the night attempted to gnaw its way through its own leg to be out of the trap. Its battered, bruised, gnawed leg showing bone, meat and gristle gnashed within the jaws of the trap.

The seeker looked on the form blinking. Thinking back to the times dangerous foes had been caught. It was now time to break open its ribs, savoring in the cracking sound and the struggle. Tearing free the heart of the beast while it still steamed on the morning air. Reaching down to it, and taking a large bite from it drinking of its soul and strength. Relishing in the wash of warm life’s blood down his gullet and chest as he savored the moment of its demise. Its ending to its weakness.

Instead, he bent down low, the red evil eyes of the thing watching him passively. He waited for the jaws to strike wading in for one last rending of flesh. Tasting some of its tormentor. The gnashing never came. His large meaty, orcish hands laid open the trap laying the wounds of the worg bear. He placed his hands over the wounded thing slowly stroking it. Where his hands touched, the leaking of the things lifeblood slowed to a trickle, its pain filled eyes slowly becoming less so. The Seeker confused beyond reason reached down to pick the broken thing, half alive from the trap up into his arms and walked away from the light. He walked to the people that said nothing looking at them a moment and then passed into the cave holding the worg’s form hurt but not broken and began to care for it with skills he didn't know he possessed. He knew something had changed, he knew it would not be long, but this was important.

As the people watched him go they began to whisper. Words of disfavor, words of his eyes. Those sunlight touched golden eyes.

Lost in the commotion was the trap which brought this situation to the fore. Laying silently, asking for no thanks the metal doomed to be forgotten to the slow march of time. The words "Bairil Shipping Company" to be obscured and scoured away by the thrashing of the elments. A small ring of thawed snow around the trap showing an unknown crop growing in the winter, a human crop of golden wheat. No one took heed of the cloaked elvish presence of hate walking slowly to the traps. He looked down on the one, eyes growing wide in shock and doubt. Long elvish fingers reaching down to the trap taking it with him, stealthing into the morning mist.

Beyond looked the insubstantial figure of a woman holding a scythe bathed in sunlight, a young athletic looking man holding her hand both looking down for no one to see, smiling with knowledge beyond time.

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part VI

A Path Found

The days drug on, as the cold battered the people’s cave. The seeker sat in his throne room cold, mist exhaled from his mouth, brooding about the passing of events. The stench of decay lingers as the bodies of his once trophies continue to rot. He sits there inhaling the scent, disgusted at his actions and confused by the racing of thoughts. Every once in awhile the Worg would turn over and look at him with one baleful glowing eye speaking of a constant evil that no longer seemed present. His matted and sickly fur, slowly over time being restored to a healthy look and sheen. The Worg would do nothing but whine lightly and lay by the fire.

Twice now the seeker had picked up the stone coming upon the sleeping animal, visions of brains and viscera smearing his chest and cave walls as he would bash the brains of the inconsequential beast on the walls of the cave. Twice now he had approached picturing the blood and excrement that would surely follow his reassertion of his true nature upon the beast. Twice now the rock had fallen from nerveless fingers to thud finally at his feet. The rock lay there even now, half way between the throne and the beast seeming to laugh at the futility of his inability to assert his strength on this wretched thing.

His eyes went in and out of focus as he played back the moments after his coming from the light. The half hearted challenges, his feigned violence and shouting down of challengers. The way the hollowness ate at his gut and heart, the wrongness of his place here. His animalistic forebrain quelled at the terror of displacement, but the thinking side knew he no longer belonged. He knew not where to go.. or what to do, but he understood that one young bull would not be fooled by his mockery of tribal posturing and would bring the fight to him.

The worg was back to health by now. The sickly sweet stink of its rotted, infected flesh no longer permeated the throne room, but yet it still lay there waiting and watching. The seeker would awake at night from the same dream, coated in sweat only to feel those baleful eyes upon him. Looking to the worg he would see him staring making no move to attack or gnash its teeth around his throat in his sleep as its kind is wont to do. He was tired of this cycle and had surprisingly started to feed the thing. It sniffed the meat at first, not used to the cold of dead flesh being consumed and turned its nose. Eventually, starvation and survival gave way and it began to gorge on the dead meat on a daily basis. Every day growing bolder in approaching the seeker, but always staying at least an arm’s length away.

Finally, the day came when the young bull challenged him. The words were ritualistic in nature and were meant to stir the anger of the seeker so a true challenge to take place. They were spit out with anger and fear, accompanied by a spray of animalistic spittle and hate. Words thrown to insult the virility of males, speak to their inability to mate, fight, rut and provide. Finally when the challenger was done and the blade was drawn the Seeker looked from his throne.

Golden eyes piercing the challenger with a gaze of apathy. No ritualistic response was coming. No recalling of furious events and strong foes bested. Nothing was coming. The seeker looked on him the futility of it all and slowly walked towards him weapon not drawn. The young male yelled and screamed obscenities, but still the seeker did not react he walked past the young one saying nothing.

Ending the diatribe of hate the young one asked “You do not accept the challenge for the right to lead, you refuse to fight.. you are truly boneless? There is a place for you in my tribe if you fight, if you do not your weakness will not be tolerated your bloodline not allowed to continue you will be not of the people!!!” The screaming rage of this statement delivered reverberated off the walls, for no one of the people had refused to fight and all believed that the exile had never been used.

The new seeker spat his loathing and hate as the old one slowly walked to the entrance to the cave of the people. He turned his head slowly and began to speak finally responding to the statement of the young bull. With eyes watering from the pain of his loss and the light which was bathing his form from the land beyond, he spoke two words “I know.” Taking a step forward into the wind Tarnok left his life and what he knew. The Worg padding after him for reasons neither knew.

With that Tarnok’s name was stricken from his tribe. No one would speak of him no one of the people would know of him and his bloodline would end. His children would be placed under another male, his breeding rights handed to another. Everything about him would be stricken.

Years later a party of human adventuer’s would come to the cave of the people. They would find no Gray’s for they had been hunted to extinction years before. The snow had blown into the cave obscuring what little form of civilization has touched the tribe. The once throne of the seeker broken in the corner, the adventurers looking on in disgust as the flesh from once great victory’s a tattoo still visible in the flayed skin laying unkempt and unused defaced. But that is another story.

[HaberdasherofDoom]

Part VI - The Hunter Comes

The scrunching of the snow under his feet was like a small imp pushing him forward. Step, scrunch, step, scrunch. The wind and snow had long ago snow blinded him, his face a cold mask of half dead flesh from the pain he continued to trudge. He could hear almost nothing and longed for death’s cold embrace to take him, but the stubborn part of him terrified of his changes continued forward. Curiosity and pure tenaciousness refusing to allow him to simply drop to the snow and give up. The hot, unforgiving spike of pain from the sun bathing over him from above continued to commit a violation of his brain with every step.

How could he survive like this? The warmth of the people ached deeply within him, but the new found feelings fought against it at the same. To go back to that warmth was to embrace those things which he could no longer. It was no longer his place. He yearned for it and was repulsed. He could still hear the padding behind him, but he no longer cared.

His lips were gone from feeling, his face frozen he trudged up one more snow drift, like so many before. His feet numb from walking he reached the top and faltered. His eyes blind and frozen shut from the tears of pain, he stood there. He could hear the sound. It sounded like the howl of some daemon on the wind, something wracked with vengeance and self-loathing. He could smell something too. The oil from well taken care of leather, the stench of the elven people assailed him. He could see nothing.

The wailing was growing closer in his world of black and white. Suddenly, with no remorse and almost no warning a searing bolt of pain passed through his shoulder. With an explosion of blood, gristle and ripping skin the arrow passed through his shoulder and stuck fast. A howl of rage and pain built within his lungs as he spun around clutching his shoulder the sound escaping in a blurt of rage and pain. A cascade of blackish dots frozen on escaping the wound pattering harmlessly against the snow covered landscape. The bloodied symbol of Chanteau spinning out of his tunic to hang loosely outside of his clothing.

The rage gave way to a quiet calm mixed with a throbbing pain as his momentum forced him to the ground in a slow motion that only his mind registered. He could feel the ground rushing up, its cold clutches reaching out for him as he landed in the snow. It enveloped his as blackness rushed in, his unconscious form tumbling rag doll like down the drift, the form of the hunter following quickly with blades flashing and vengeance howling against the wind.

He could taste stale air, a warmth. Blackness. The light would peer at him from far away. Blackness. The heat again. Blackness. Finally, he drug himself to full consciousness his rummy, snow blind eyes caked with sleep slowly opened to reveal unidentified blurs. His ears adjusted to the sound of a crackling fire nearby. Something unidentified was cooking slowly on the fire. As his senses came more clear he was able to identify a form sitting and waiting, saying nothing. It smelled not of the people, but of the soft ones, the elves. It sat there gazing at him, he could read the hate and confusion warring in those eyes staring at him.

Tarnok waited until the pains of his body subsided to a dull ache, and then lunged for him. The animalistic instinct of survival over-riding anything within his form. He could picture in his mind’s eye, the rending of flesh from this elf thing, the breaking of bones, the giving in to the blood song as he jumped upon him. What his mind’s eye could not anticipate was the quick choking yank of an iron collar trailing a taunt chain nailed to the floor in the middle of the cavern.

The mind’s eye could not calculate what the clanking noises were for until the quick yank, caused his breath to explode from him. The way his arms splayed out in front of him as is momentum was arrested by fine dwarven forged steel. The way the elf thing lashed out quickly cutting his arms. His rage spent he floundered to the ground uselessly puffing for air, like a landed fish. Only later would he awake to find the dull ache in his arms from the shallow cuts and the elf thing still sitting there.

As his form slipped to blackness he could not see the hot tears of rage and confusion from the elf thing as he sat staring at the symbol of Chanteau sitting readily on the neck of the brute. Not as a prize but as a symbol of pride. He sat there and wept quietly wondering what to make of this disgusting murdering, creature and the force that seemed to stay his hand.

In another land an elvish woman looked down, her child off playing, the empty seat still next to her, a smile of sadness and regret crossing her face, her vision looking on.