Solo Of Cinders and Silver

[Belugnir]

First Bell Past Midnight, 48th of Fall, Forests South of the Northern Outpost:

''Oh whisperer, where do you hide?'', Einar called out, all too casually attempting to mock the tone and way of speech of the creature he hunted. It'd be a full day now that he'd roamed the forest in search of the wolf-fiend that assailed him on his voyage northward at the start of autumn. In light of his recently attained boon of immortality he stepped into the treacherous woods with next to no care in the world, clothed in naught but his laboring garments... and with the mantle of black wolf hide fashioned out of one of the beast's apparent offspring. What he did bring with himself however, aside from the annoying magical marble that apparently refused to leave his side, were his weapons, poleaxe hatchet and daggers all. Never too few things to stab a horse sized hound, he figured. What he also brought was a stock of torches, wrapped up and oiled, just as his poleaxe was, ready to be set aflame at a moment's notice by the one torch he'd ever kept burning as he moved. From what little he knew of their previous encounter, he figured the monster was definately a nocturnal one, what with its apparent fright and weakness when presented with light and fire, thus he only moved during the night and rested during the day.

''Your crippler is here. Your child-slayer has come to visit. We have banter to share.'', now he made mockery of both the beast's way of speech and of the lunatic ramblings that he himself uttered while under the shock and denial in wake of the trauma that came with being brought back from the dead and overgiving along the way.

Frankly, he was a different creature altogether to the man that nearly met his death some five times in the recent weeks, certainly a different creature from the man that fled the city of Ravok some six weeks ago to nearly end up torn to bits by the beast he now sought.

''Are you not so talkative anymore after loosing your arm, eh, you cockin' bloated mutt?'', but he was still Einar Belugnir.

''Must I set this entire forest ablaze before you show your filthy mug? Eh?!'', his torch went dangerously close to some shrubbery he'd just passed by. ''For I'll bloody do it!'', he heard his hollering echo between the trees.

For a moment there was absolute quiet, save for the crackling of the torch in his hand.

''Be gone...'', came a hiss on the wind.

''Be gone. Cinder Fiend. And take your flame with you... Be gone.'', the blood curdling whispers drew closer and closer... yet now they did not at all seem so ferocious and terrifying. At least not to a man who no longer had cause to fear death or pain. ''Be gone...'', the creature pleaded a whimper.

WC: 489

[Belugnir]

''Yes, yes, you keep spewing your drivel.'', Ein scoffed, eyes now bolting between the shadows among the trees, looking for movement. The creature's voice was a useless pointer, for it seemed to crawl forth from every directioin. Only now recalling the raw physical strength of the monster, Ein lessened his focus on the forest and instead spared some time to take helm of his djed. He figured he could afford to let his guard down for a time, remembering just how reluctant the creature was to enter firelight the last time he'd faced it, let alone now that it was a whole limb short of its set of six, and an eye short of its set of four. Flux slowly crept into his forearms in preperation of the coming ordeal... And still the wolf was to make itself apparent.

''Where are you, you ugly whoreson? Eh?'', slowly did he keep making way forward, ultimately coming to a stop at an excuse of a clearing among the trees, all the while the mutterings of the furry fiend echoed about him. He came to the center of the open space that wasn't a full fifteen feet across and unbundled the sack of torches, setting two of them aflame and hurling the one he used to do so among the shrubs.

''Be gone, beseeched be and take leave, be gone...''

''Don't you cockin' beseech me you bastard, I will burn you out, so help me!''

The whispers became silent once again. At which point Ein hurled another torch among the shrubbery. This time it seemed to begin catching fire rather quickly... And then he saw it. A deeper shadow moving among the dark of a moonless night. It bolted for the newborn fire and seemed to wisk it away into nothingness on its way through... yet not without cost. Pained howls the likes of which men were not made to wintess and live shook the forest.

It was with a grin that Einar set yet another torch ablaze and hurled it into the forest, before seeing the fire born of the first torch he threw away be whisked away as well... and yet again the harrowing cries of the abominable creature branched out through the forest. As they did when it had to run and extinguish the third flame, and the fourth... After which Einar simply set all the torches in his stock aflame and lazily scattered them over the clearing. Fire was no longer a hazard to him.

''I can leave if you want.'', came a sincere proposal. ''But it'll only be to come back tomorrow with more torches.'', a sincere proposal indeed. ''How many more do you figure I need before I awake all the dead and the living of this world with your howls and hollers?''

''Why...'', came the distorted voice of the monster. ''Why bring cinder and ruin to bark and leaf... Why torture the forest, why?'', the desperate wounded creature pleaded to know.

''Why?'', Ein scoffed, barely stopping a moment to even ponder the reason why he wished the wolf dead. It's not as if it had considerably injured him, or even Anya, who'd gotten off considerably worse than him. He certainly didn't care to make the woodland roads safer for some cocksucking stryfer that might end up eaten by this thing... and nobody paid him and sent him on this errand either. ''Because I can.'', Einar laughed, bringing the oiled blade of his poleaxe to flame and setting it alight before hurling yet another torch.

WC: 588

[Belugnir]

To that there came no reply, inquiry, plea nor request. Only the rustling noise of the creature as it bolted for its senseless torturer, hellbent on murder after Einar's brazen revelation.

Still all too full of himself and unshaken by the wrath his purposeless invasion invoke in the harrowing monstrosity, Ein turned on his heels at the sound of torn branches, planting his feet firmly, rotating his hips as hard as he could, and leveling a swing with his flaming axeblade for the charging monster, letting the flux in his arms recklessly burst out into an abundance of additional strength.

Yet the wolf did not flinch, in spite of its fear and weakness in the midst of firelight, of its form diminishing as it sped forward, its one arm-like forelimb swinging for the man who had relieved it of the other. It did not flinch, not until the poleaxe struck it across the side of its neck with enough force to redirect its savage lunge and deliver embers deep into its icy blood and causing the swing of its claw to miss as it flung its arm over the man's head.

The murderous, pained scream that followed would have been enough to break the wills of bravest men, deafen them and turn them to wailing husks... Yet when he ought to have begun crying with horror, Einar laughed aloud, proud and unshaken, mocking the creautre he'd just struck... And he would have kept laughing had the beast not regained its footing, all the depth and vastness of murderous intent behind its contorted mutated face seemingly for naught for the mrecenary didn't budge. Not until the beast lept for him again, yet this time he hadn't the time to rear up a powerful swing like before, instead just barely managing to level the pike of his poleaxe forward so that the force of the beast's own assault saw it impaled onto the long steel tip of his weapon.

Ein grinned at the backlash sensation of recieving the creature's charge head on, feeling the handle of his poleaxe and the bones in his arms and legs giving in and cracking as they forced the massive wolf's assault dead in its tracks. He reveled at the sensation that he knew came from the heated pike of his poleaxe scraping against the bones within the wolf's neck, and then he jerked the weapon sideways as it stood buried in its flesh, calling upon strengh that all mortal men had, yet one that was locked behind the pain of breaking their own body for the sake of conjuring it. It was no sorcery, but plain, senseless hysteria. One he knew would be without consequence save for some scarring at worst.

Yet this time the wailing, dying beast's claw would not miss its mark. Whatever strength lurked within men paled before that of a fiend, human of mind and monstrous of body. Einar felt the lock of his jaw give way and go limp, before his vision went sideways. The next thing he realized was that he was now looking at his own headless body, forearms bent in ways they shouldn't be, tearing a broken, burning poleaxe out of the monster's neck, maiming a vast, open wound.

Mayhaps there would have been an ounce of horror to take over his broken grin had blackness and soothing warmth not taken his mind over again.

WC: 567

[Belugnir]

It was morning when he came to, laid upon the ground where he once fell headless, yet how much time had truly passed, Einar couldn't rightly tell. By reflex did his hands shoot up to his neck, touching to see if it still stood whole. There was a tear through his skin, and he was caked in blood beneath where it went. He swallowed a long, deep breath, and went about moving his head to either side... to see if it would come off. It didn't. He looked upward and downward and made movement with his jaw. It ached something vicious... yet he was whole, and alive. He looked down at his arms, at his legs, strewn before him... then he moved them, each one at a time. Everything ached, yet it was plainly uncomfortable at worst... And it was hardly the first time he had... died.

Then he looked to his right. Where the dead body of the creature he had killed at the expense of what should have been his own life. And laughter bubbled forth from the man. He got up and delivered a hearty kick to the dead beast's side.

''I can't hear you jabbering and hissing, eh?'', senselessly did he mock the corpse. ''Where's my 'cold mudden cradle for all eternity', eh?'', it was a good ten chimes of him degrading the body so before he finally set about ruining three of his throwing knives and completely cocking up the head of his poleaxe in an errand of severing the beast's head and then skinning the hide from its upper body, putting effort into maintaining the map of its three monstrous forelimbs within the tough hide that he peeled off. He figured a parent beast's cloth would be a fancier garment than the less favorably skinned hide of its offspring.

There was naught but smoldering spite and arrogant self-satisfaction in the man as he spat at the exposed flesh of the headless, flayed carcass he would leave behind.

Should have taken my head off two months ago when it would have had effect, cocksucker., he chrotled, fierce and fearless on his stride back through the woods. It took a lengthy while to find the road back to the outpost, and he had naught but the starfire marble, his broken weapon's head, the clothes on his back, and the trophies he'd taken from the monster. He'd lost his way through the woods several times over, night fell as he strode on. Yet he did not care. He had naught but time now. He was immortal.


WC: 429

[Belugnir]

The Morning of Fall 50th:

Eventually his careless wandering along the paths he took to find his prey did see him to the road that led northward to the outpost. And though immortal, Einar still found that he could succumb to a need for slumber, if less so than before, thus, after a full day of walking through the woods, he'd descended into a seat and fell asleep by the roadside. Without a campfire, without any thought given to safety. He had no cause to do so...

What woke him was not a nightmare, it was not the warmth of sunshine that he could barely feel anymore, announcing a new day. It was pain. Screaming, wailing, unearthly pain. Pain that brougth the beating of his shaded heart to a still, a leaden stiffness to the limbs that he'd broken so many times over the last couple of weeks... Pain that locked his recently severed neck in place and ground his teeth against each other, pain that forced his eyes widely agape in expectation of death... yet it never came, and before he'd realized it, he was clutching the silver-sheen marble that originally bestowed him with immortality in his hands, staring at it numb, mute and deaf... He could hear a voice resonating from it as it began to turn into dust.

No, no, no..., he fealt tears welling up in his eyes as the voice began to speak, indifferent and completely absent all prejudice and condemnation.

“As the rays of my beloved Syna reach across the horizon, I wish to give you this bit of insight. The changes you’ve experienced were not without a purpose. They were meant to serve as a source of reflection. Change is an important force that drives all life. How you dealt with the changes you were faced with; changes in body, mind and even in the minds of others, speaks greatly to who you are as a person. As you continue to live your life, take time to reflect on what you experienced and ponder your reactions to the change. Did you hide them or hide from them? Did you embrace them? Did you exploit them or use them for the betterment of others? As you search for the deeper meaning of change and how you deal with it, know that I, Leth, God of Thought and Change have gifted you that opportunity. Also, as a gift and a reminder, I offer a piece of my light. The stone you discovered contains a piece of starfire. In your hands, it will undergo its own change.

Take it with my blessing.”

By the time the god of change had delivered his announcement, Einar was left a curled up, sobbing shell of the ruthless thing that he was but two eves ago, cradling a shimmering silver flute to his chest with hands that had endured more trauma in two months than they previously had in twenty years. Pain and fear of dying as many times as he did came back to step over him, doubly so for the time their right to do so was denied, to put the arrogant fool in his place. For hours he laid there, blank, whimpering and wailing through a cramped jaw, before he could muster the weakness to so much as tremble.

WC: 552

[Belugnir]

Blessing? The spite in him scoffed as breath finally made way into his body again, making him feel as if his lungs would burst. He took ten chimes of scrambling to get into a seat, eyes falling on the tiny musical instrument that rested in his shaking hands.

Insight? God of Thought and Change?

He had become himself again, almost as much as he was before Leth's bloody marble ever found him... It was as if Einar had finally dived out for breath after being held down underwater for days and weeks... and a wish rose in him to simply snap the stupid flute in half... still unable to cease his weeping, unable to properly clutch his hands into fists about it and tear it from itself.

I never asked for your cockin' blessings and insights.

Ah, but we reveled at them, did we not?

No. Fuck off. I am not having any of this.

Why are we so resentful. It is a fair gift, is it not, hm? Yes, yes.

Whoreson can take his gifts and shove them up his arse!

It felt worse than being stolen from... Worse than dying. Not the fact that he was no longer immortal, not the fact that pain and desperation were reinvigorated in him to the edge of shattering his psyche. Einar had single handedly ended the man that had marked his life with a stigma of disgust, disdain and spite toward the world, of him and three of his filthy lackeys, clueless children shedding blood for a crum of bread... He slaughtered a beast at whose memory he now shook like a leaf in the wind. Whoever in the cocking blazes this Leth was, their involvement in the last two weeks cast a vast shadow over what Einar had accomplished... and though it was only natural and stood to reason, he felt so merciressly robbed and humiliated that the memory of the things Rastmo had done to him as a child paled by comparison.

What the sodding hell am I supposed to do with this thing anyway, play so the scum of the world can dance at my unceremonious funeral?

Why not give me a new poleaxe so I can kill my way to you and shove my foot up your ass properly, you cheap bastard?

I've never played a cocking note in the life of me. He brought the flute up to his lips with a desperate snort of laughter and irony. It was inhumanly painful to purse his lips and blow a breath into the instrument. God of change, huh?

WC: 431

[Belugnir]

An odd and unusual sound it was that came born of the air he breathed into the instrument. It was the calming sound of soothing warmth. The peaceful stillness that would take away his aches and angers whenever he would be pushed over the edge of death... and it did so now. Yet it hadn't taken away consciousness as it usually did. Instead it slowly ate away at the unbearable pain that ransacked the body he had ruined over and over across the last half a month... Yet he still wept on, not for the weight of pain, nay, shedding over the ruination of his own body was something he'd overcome as a child... The flute's still, calm music made him ponder and remember... and regret.

First his eyes fell on the fiend wolf's severed head beside him.

I am sorry., he admitted with a painful sigh. I shouldn't have ended you like this... I shouldn't have let myself rest after you first came to me. I should have chased and killed you then and there. As a mortal man, bruised and bleeding and limping with pain...

Memory brought him to the faces of the three of Rastmo's lackeys he'd seen to their demise. To the ambusher whose head he caved in with his poleaxe, to the fool who ran him through with a sword and whose throat he bit out, to the boy who put a bolt through his head, whom he'd driven against a tree and whose neck he snapped without a second thought.

I am sorry... I wish you hadn't lost your lives working for the piss coppers of scum like Rastmo... I wish I took longer killing you so that you could regret it.

He recalled the fat associate and coworker of the old slaver who'd escaped the encampment unharmed while Ein succumbed to his mortal wounds for the second time after his rampage.

I am sorry... I am sorry my legs gave out under me. I wish they didn't. I wish they'd let me run you down and skewer you like the pig you are. I wish you never left the forest with your swine head on your shoulders.

His muscles relaxed at the caress of silvery light that now enveloped the scene, creeping gently forth from invisible crevices in creation, from tree and stone and soil alike. His heartbeat was still and his face was absent frown and contortion, yet somewhere in him wrath and fury stirred up a storm of bloody murder, one that yepled to have its desperate cry heard from the lake of soothing silver that drowned him. His thoughts went to the image of Rastmo.

I am sorry you saw as many summers of sunlight as you did. How I wish I clawed your throat out twelve years ago... Before you laid a hand on me. Before you looked at me. I am sorry. I was a child. I wasn't strong enough...

His tears dried up at the memory of Rastmo and at all the atrocities he felt that the slaver would have been put through instead of abandoning the world with naught but the sudden snap of his neck. He put the flute down... making peace with his regrets and listening to his mind and body slowly beginning to mend...

He remembered Rook and Kylar and Elias.

I am sorry for all the trouble I've caused you.

Then there was Shiress. The slave girl whom he'd beaten, kidnapped and brought to a sick bastard to be tormented. And after she had saved his life without ever laying eyes on him prior.

I am sorry for what I put you through... I wish we'd never crossed paths... I wish you'd let me bleed out upon that dock...

Nay.

I wish I'd never left the streets of Sunberth. I wish I'd never met the two knights. I shouldn't have had stolen those apples. I should never have cut that man's purse. I should never have found that silver coin on the street. That kind old fool should never have treated me to a side of bread. I should have starved to death. I should have spared the world of my presence.

The pain of body faded, yet Ein felt something else began bleeding in him, something that no bandage nor thread nor a magic stone of the gods would hold together. He laughed and cried his heart out a thousand times over.

It should have been me.

I should be dead.

I should be...

But we are still here? Yes... Yes.

...

Aye.

It took him one eternal chime to stand up from the ground, tuck the silvery flute into his torch sack, put the wolfs head under his arm and its hide over his shoulder.

Aye, I am still here., Ein made peace with himself, limping his first step back through the woods.

He would make it back to the outpost with the night's next descent.


WC: 814

[Zavya]

Grades!

 

Belugnir

Skills Earned:

Butchering +1
Endurance +2
Flux +1
Intimidation +2
Observation +2
Tactics +1
Weapon: Poleaxe +1

Lores:

Butchering: Skinning a Gaur
Endurance: Decapitated
Immortality: Why be careful when you can't die?
Leth: God of thought and change
Self: Bitter about Leth's interference
Self: Cheating death alters perspective
Self: The searing pain of regret
Tactics: Trapping a Gaur with lit torches

Rewards: Leth's flute

Penalities: Decapitation scar, no more immortality

Comments: That last post. ;~;

Really, though, this thread was great in general. I loved seeing deeper into Einar's psyche, the physical and emotional havoc wrought by such an unnatural state... Well done.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me!