The Vile&Violent (Solo)

The war was winding to a close, and the only true obstacle that remained to him was Godhand Striker. The pugilist, the mook, the thug with a face no mother could love - and his oldest friend, the only person who had ever battered knuckles with him, that he thought would be even worth the time. Xem'zund had promised him his little girl, and a world all their own where she would be safe, but the ground shattering fight with Godhand was like a cigarette after sex.

The forces of their blows was sending the dead and the living flying all the same, the waves of concussive force sending red trickles down the ears of the closest elves. Their weapons met again, with Godhand's muramasa nearly cutting through the saraelian's stone spear, spider web cracks growing along its surface, reaching deeper, searching for the fracture point - before they disengaged, and the spear was remade on a whim.

'Enough of this game,' The voice that called out from the back of his mind with a deep, cold echo nearly made him stagger, and he nearly lost his head when Godhand saw the brief opening. The crazed look in Dan's eyes, and the skin-splitting razor smile told everyone that was witness that he had no intention of finishing it.

'Then it is time for you to truly join me.' The voice didn't stop him, but the sudden vertigo that clutched him, spinning his guts like battleships in a maelstrom stopped him. He tasted it on the wind at his back before he turned; a sticky cloying sweetness like rotted plums, a sharp, acrid tang like fresh spilled mustard. Dan had time to let a groan of disappointment before he used the Etherband to teleport himself away. But not before the necromantic blast that sailed over the horizon shredded his left arm to dust and stench.
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Red sticky sinew, fused with sharp, angular gems and metals filled his vision, a mindless winding cackling deafening him before white dominated all, bile spewing unbidden from his bloody split lips as the old familiar teleportation lurch dropped him into the snow. His thoughts were like an apiary; buzzing, frenzied, and visually chaotic, but all with with one purpose, all barrels aimed at the same target - what?

Not everything was white. The eye that wasn't swollen shut gazed onto an impressionist's canvas of reds, magenta, greys, beige, and brown. Licking his bloody lips, Dan grimaced, every breath he took was fouled with the taste of his last meal before he went out to meet Godhand under Xem'zund's banner. He spat out a fleck of cartilage. Pork sausage, coffee, peppered bacon. A breakfast of victory, but it had been soured with cold magic. He could still feel the chill of it singeing the membranes in his nose. A simultaneous stink of pure peppermint and dank rotting flesh. Pushing himself up on his only remaining arm, Dan spat a thicker glob of phlegm into the cold snow under him, hoping to banish the taste from his mouth.

He didn't account for his new center of balance and flopped immediately to his back, his left arm nothing but a ragged stump terminating in a fetid sludge of fibrous reds and greys and blacks. It had been sheared away in fury by the necromancer Xem'zund, a bid to kill his only living soldier, and had missed by a fraction when Dan had refused to kill Godhand. He was still garbed in the longcoat of the Forgotten One, its red embroidered eye staring up at him, and he latched onto that, gripping at it with his remaining numb, white fingers. Blinking rapidly, he realized at once he wasn't breathing and pulled in a great greedy breath, then began rapidly sucking in air.

In, out. In, out. How hard had Godhand hit him? What was the incantation that evoked that blast? Why did he feel so god damn sick?

He had never been a fan of teleportation, even if it had its uses. You could get from point A to point B in an eye blink, but how were you to know you wouldn't end up with your eyes where your teeth should be, and vice versa? While he'd never suffered anything like that, he'd always felt a momentary confusion, but this was an intense scattering of thoughts. Someone had shaken his bag of marbles and then dumped them all over the floor. The pain was not helping - it was as frustrating as it was surprising. Mortal wounds were nicks and scratches to Dan, and it had not been the first time he'd lost an arm but Hromagh, how it hurt now!

Instinct kicked in. His breathing steadied as he ground his teeth together, wide eyes flickering wildly about. Snowflakes fell softly on his blood smeared, gray cheeks. He hadn't an idea of where he wanted to go when he'd triggered the Ether Band. He simply told it to take him away when he heard Xem'zund's rage, and away it had carried him, from the blood, and ash, and piss soaked battlefields of Raiaera to a silent, snowy knoll in Salvar. The green arms of the young pines on the hills reached down to him, as if in pity to the man making a mess on their hill, swaddled in soft frost. The world spun, and the snow came down in a spiral around him. Slowly, a thought dawned upon him as his trembling fingers traced the intricate scarlet thread work of his longcoat.

'I did this to myself,' he thought, 'I accepted it. Remember.'

Dan struggled through the pain, feeling the anger slowly pulsing upwards through the gut wrenching nausea. Another snowflake fell upon his cheek, and the melt that trickled into his bloody mouth washed away some of the vileness. Remember...what he'd accepted...it took him a few moments, but suddenly, it hit him like a warhammer wielded by a minotaur. Before the war, before he called himself Kross. Before he killed Cydonia, before he betrayed Skie dan Sabriel. He'd had a dream, a dream of ancient voice talking to him, wanting him. The voice of Xem'zund, and then his touch. The mark on his heart.

He spat once more into the snow, and this time, a long, sharp tooth fell into the blood and vomit, and Dan began to laugh.

Dan Lagh'ratham had always had a difficult time being concerned about his own mortality. Name the punishment and the injury, and he'd taken it. He remembered a time where he'd had to cram his intestines back into a belly wound. Hundreds and hundreds of times he'd felt the icy waters of the Antifirmanent lapping at his toes, but never once had he paid it any mind.

Not until he was stumbling through a silent winter forest, his skin turning a slight shade of blue, leaving a trail of blood drips and spatters of pus, that was. All his teeth were loose in his mouth, and as he struggled to keep going forward, to keep his momentum, he poked at them, from their sharp tips to the seeping gums. Every few dozen steps, he would spit out a mouthful of pink and brown slime, complete with a single tooth, like some twisted child's prize in a baker's novelty treat. His arm refused to heal, slowly crumbling away into black bits of rotted skin and meat.

The tiniest crunch came to his ears. A foot step, breaking through the rime skin of the snow. He stopped, knees wobbling slightly, and fell back into the tree he was just about to pass, and clutched his disgusting stump against his chest with one arm, peering around the gray trunk. Despite the ice creeping into his veins, sweat beaded on his forehead. Everyone knew his face. Everyone knew what he'd done, what side he'd picked, and even though he'd changed his looks and took the name Kross, he'd been discovered when the clock was ticking two minutes to midnight. Xem'zund wanted his life. The elves wanted his head. The dead wanted his skin. There was nowhere to go, no corner to back up into. He was already in the corner, a Red Beast hunted and helpless. With his strength fading fast, and the necromancer's touch pulling his teeth, there was nowhere he could go, no one he could trust.

Even some innocent out on a hunt in the woods, that never meant any harm to him.

'I'll make it fast,' he thought, reaching to a low hanging branch. It pulled away from the trunk soundlessly, like plucking a flower out of the ground, and he shaped it into a short spear with a wicked point. He ran his fingertips over it, feeling the wood grain, picturing in his head the spin to take him into the opening, and then the abrupt thrust - to heart or throat, it didn't matter. The crunching was growing closer, and he held his breath now, fearing the woodland stranger would see it puffing in thin clouds from behind his cover. His eyes narrowed as his muscles coiled, preparing, drawing some of the last of his energy.

A crunch came right from behind the tree.

Spinning on the ball of his right foot, he came around the trunk like a zephyr, splashing snow up in a great arc around him, and he thrust violently forward - and snapped off a tree branch with a loud crack that fractured his makeshift spear. The axe handle that was aimed for him did not miss though and caught him between the eyes with its own particular wet crunch, blood streaming from his swollen nose. Dan's vision vanished in a brutal starburst of white that rapidly faded to muted blues and pinks, and he barely felt the fall that knocked two more teeth loose in a spray of mucky saliva.

The Red Beast laid there in Salvar's merciless snows, limbs askew in a red spattered halo that framed the tangled black hair that radiated from his skull like a dark crown. He had enough time to see the head of the axe flash coldly in the sunlight before it fell, and the cold and the pain carried him away into quiet oblivion.

'Not dead.' Consciousness came back as swiftly as a scraped match bursting into bright yellow flame. Though instinct demanded he lunge forward, fly into a tornado of violence, he ignored his impulsive fight or flight response for two reasons. One, the pain he'd began to feel after teleporting from Raiaera was now a deep and throbbing ache, thick and heavy as molasses and just as nauseating to him. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before and he found himself briefly thinking of how he'd rather be run through with a dozen swords - at least that hurt until it didn't. The very thought of sitting up alone defeated him before he even tried, and his limbs stayed still and his eyes shut. Two, it was warm, and comfortable, wherever he was. There was a bed, he slowly realized, with cotton sheets and a thick wool blanket, and soft clean bandages. The nostalgic smell of a wood fire scented the room, along with the comforting aroma of brewing coffee, its thick earthy scent almost soothing the boiling pain in his stomach. As his mind continued to wake, slowly becoming more aware, his thoughts increasing like the search party's lantern lights in the hills as they hunted the Red Beast, somewhere, he recognized voices in the Salvar tongue.

"You know who he is. We know who he is. Why didn't you cut his head off, instead of the arm? I heard taking his head off would kill him." The voice was aged and feminine, husky and a touch scratchy, a quality only pipe smoke could imbue. It came from the foot of the bed.

"Aye, perhaps, but I've never stumbled upon any dying man in them woods and left him. Don't matter who it is." This one was heavy, male, and had an odd mixture of a mountain-range Alerar brogue and the harsher, stark dialect of the winter lands. Dan nearly gave himself away and almost let out a sigh, but maintained his steady, even breathing. One in the room didn't want him dead. Good. Because he wasn't sure he could even fight back.

"Who it is? It's the Red Beast," came the third voice, farther into the room, and the mocking inflection, arrogance of the tone, and the small clinks of metal under the words told Dan this one was some warrior. A guard maybe, or a passing deserter? "Do you know why they call him that? He's a berserker, a mindless killing machine. They say at the end of his battles, he's head-to-toe red, soaked in blood. I agree...you should have killed him. If he wakes up, who knows what he'll do? Gianna, please, you have to agree with me. We'd outnumber the old man and we could do what needs done. Think of Tilly. Do you think he cares about your little girl? She's meat to him."

"You see a monster." This one was Gianna, he was sure of it, and her voice was defiant, and had a protective quality that could only come from a mother. The tension that had been growing in his muscles continued to slacken, and instinct lowered to a small buzz at the back of his head, like an animal hiding in a small cave. "I see a sick, dying man that Gram found in the woods. I don't care what they say. I hear he's just a man looking for his daughter. You don't think I'd kill for Tilly?" The room went suddenly silent, and as her words hung in the air, Dan finally let out a small gasp and opened his eyes.

"I'm not gonna fucking die like a sick man, pillow pressed over my face. You gotta try harder than that shit." The calm seemed to swell like a pregnant thunderstorm, waiting for the stillest moment to unleash its hell. Dan's head twitched towards the sound of steel's whispering hiss as it came free from a scabbard. He heard the man in the back of the room rise to his feet with the creak of an old wooden chair and the chittering and clinking of chainmail.

"Don't." One word made the floor beneath them rumble lightly, and he heard glass shattering as it tumbled to the floor. The magic that slipped into that one word was thunderous in a way his hoarse whisper wasn't, echoing like an eagle's call through a deep canyon, crashing like stones in a landslide. Instantly, he heard two pairs of feet shuffling and stomping around him, but not drawing close to him, and when he felt the bitter frosty wind flash over him and heard the door slam, he knew the numbers had been dwindled. Maybe they were off to get the hangman? Or soldiers of the Ethereal Sway's church...pushing his worries out of his pulsing skull, he rolled his head on the prickly down pillow and looked at Gianna and Gram.

Gianna was a tall, slender woman with sharp, dark hawk-like eyes that softened as she bent over the bed, to check the bandages on the stump that now protruded out of his left side. Gram - he assumed it was the man that saved him - had acted quickly, and separated the creeping rot swiftly, without hesitation. The top three buttons of her blouse were undone, and Dan made no effort to hide his stare. Her coal black hair was shaved in an unusual undercut, pulled back in a ponytail, and hundreds of tattooed flowers dotted the side of her scalp, their delicate little vines twining around to the back of her head. She was not a soft woman, and her muscles bunched visibly across her pale arms as he tied the knots again that held the dressing in place.

Gram was the tallest dwarf Dan had ever seen. The underside of his square chin was not bearded; instead, it was marked with an unending pattern of thick and gnarled scars that Dan was sure were from burns, perhaps steam. He however had a thick, red handlebar mustache, and a collection of plain black iron rings dangling from his earlobes, beneath a mess of tomato-red hair he'd done his best to clumsily tie back. He was head to toe in heavy white and gray furs, and the saraelian could see the axe slung across his back. It was no woodcutter's axe though, and had a large, square, cleaver-like blade attached to a knobby haft of white wood. Not a spot of his blood was flecked on a single inch of the weapon.

"Burnt the arm. What was left of it. And the coat, too, don't wanna be walking round with that necromancer's mark on you." A bitter laugh bubbled up from his belly, and Dan choked it back down. If only it were that easy to get rid of a mark like that. He'd accept the burn of the flames if it meant an end to the all encompassing pain that was circulating through his body.

"Brought you back here to Geflen after that. Gianna's a good medicine girl, she stitched up your arm, dressed it. Old woman Mabel and Lukas wanted you dead. So, that begs the question...a man like you will recover from that, aye, so are you to move on peacefully? Or..."

"I'm not such the petty prick everyone understands me to be. I've never killed anyone that saved my life. Now though, I...I don't know. Something's wrong with me. Inside me. I need some time. I don't have the strength to go anywhere else. I...I can't go anywhere else. If you people let me stay here, recover, I won't even pick up a steak knife to hurt anyone. You have my word...on my daughter." Dan turned his eyes back up to the ceiling again, watching the light from the fireplace flickering above him.

"If he's here, it might not come down from the valley." Gram looked at the woman, but the saraelian didn't move. He was quiet for a while again, stroking a finger over a side of his mustache.

"Can't stay here. But if you got money, Beast, mayhaps we could find you a cabin. I believe there's one near my little hut."

The tapping woke him long before he opened his eyes. Steady and unrelenting, four rapid fire taps, a pause, then four rapid taps...it went on and on, reminding him of some solemn war drum. A beat marching on, into eons of slaughter in the name of something, anything. It took him some time to open his eyes, to indulge the ceaseless signal. He didn't know what to expect. Mercenaries? Bounty hunters? Soldiers? By this point on his life, he'd made more enemies than friends, there was no argument there. Like so much in his life, what he found at the window, was wildly differently from what he ever expected.

Aside from the cold, gray fireplace, its life crackling and popping to a quiet end, very little in the room had changed. He was now the sole occupant, and the encroaching cold licked at his pale, sweaty skin. A single, nearly colorless candle was set on the edge of his small, square bedside table, and its weak little light made the thing in the window all the more horrifying. Shadow claimed most of its body, but it seemed to be a skinless dog that had learned to walk on two legs. Sharp, rough cut rubies dotted its shoulders, chest, and throat, inlaid into some vibrant red metal Dan had never seen before. The gems glistened along with its raw muscle, not an inch of it moving....save for the long, human-like finger that began its vicious, sharp tapping as he watched. It saw his eyes move to it. It was impossible to tell, as its one foot long snout was always in a rictus grin, but Dan could see it smile in the malevolence in its night-sky eyes.

He didn't move. He couldn't, the thing caught him in its stare, and he could feel sickness climb from his toes to his throat, like a flag unfurling in the wind. Here he was, a man of many names; the Wilmhearst slayer, bane of the undead. The War Wolf, ironclad mercenary, raging throughout Alerar with his teethed axe. Kross, always with a tiny bemused smile, cutting away Raiaera's hope. Dan Lagh'ratham, name bequeathed to him by Ithermoss, the one and only Red Beast. But there, under the carnivorous gaze of the raw monster, its blood gems winking in the flame, he was just Dan, a sick man in a stranger's home.

"Let me in, oh, let me in," it crooned, finally stopping the tapping, instead turning its hand and softly stroking the window pane. Dan imagined its touch to be not so dissimilar to razor blades and salt, but there was an odd part of him that felt...comforted. Nostalgic, even. "I ate them, and I'll eat you too, boy. But it can be ok...just let me in."

'If he's here, it might not come down from the valley.' Gianna's words from his last lucid moments came to him then. She'd been wrong, whatever it was had come, and it had chosen its next meal. A ghost of a smile touched his lips as he struggled to raise his right hand, the wool blanket falling away like a burial shroud. It had chosen wrong. Of anyone in this village, Dan Lagh'ratham was much a predator as the beast sweetly whispering to him, even with the pain thumping heavily through every bone in his body.

"I feel the pain coursing through you. A savage onslaught. I can numb it...take it away...make you forget." As though a switch were flipped, it stopped. It vanished like a leaf in the storm, carried away into oblivion. Dan sat up quickly, clutching his stomach; even the nausea was gone. But it was replaced by a deep, bottomless rage, the sort that swallowed everything inside, and outside. He felt it building, swelling like a massive thunderhead. "I want to be inside you. Peel back your skin. Break apart your rib cage. Slurp your organs, close your heart in my fist. But only if you kill him."

The thing slapped its skull against the window. Little spatters of red surrounded its long, animal skull, its black eyes blazing with intense hatred. The other hand came to the window too, and for a second, Dan saw a greedy child at the window of a candy shop as its pink tongue slithered from between its jagged teeth and slid wetly across the glass. "Kill him kill him kill him KiLl HiM KILL HIM - "

Dan woke with his hand on Lukas's wrist. He hadn't gotten to see the man beforehand, but as he leaned hard into the bed, hoping to push the dagger further into Dan's chest, the saraelian had time to take him in. The man's hair was red, the color of a cooling forge. A deep, vertical scar was carved across his forehead, two inches above his eyes, a wound that would have blinded him. His chin was sharp, like an arrowhead, and completely free of stubble. He was clad head to toe in glassy black delyn chainmail, and his sea-foam colored eyes had a deep, and old hatred in them. Dan felt it himself, and it came in waves. First came a swift, but passing fury that anyone would have the stones to try and kill him in his sleep. Second, a horror that blanched his cheeks with the sudden realization that it had all nearly ended him quickly and quietly. Third, the quick and hardening realization that he wasn't safe, not even here, where they had treated his wounds and saved his life.

"I was there," Lukas whispered softly through gritted teeth, struggling with every fiber of his being to push against the Saraelian's grip. An inch of the dagger was already pressed into his chest, and he could feel the tip of vibrating, hoping to find his heart, buzzing like frightened wasp. His ice and stone colored eyes locked with the man who was trying to kill him.

"I saw what you did. I watched your Rotslayer cut them down. It was easy for you, wasn't it? But a beast never has trouble killing anyone!" Lukas put his other hand on his clasped wrist and shoved down with his weight. For once, Dan felt himself struggling. It had been a decade and a half since a normal man could make the Saraelian struggle, but he was. The veins stood out on his forearm and the back of his hand as he fought with Lukas, striving to keep his life.

"I don't know...what the fuck you're talking about." Dan felt the power around him thrum, all the wood, the glass, responding to his panic. It would be simple to peel a few splinters from the hardwood floor, and spear them through the back of Lukas's head. But he'd made a promise, hadn't he? Though when was Dan Lagh'ratham known to keep his promises?

The half baked assassination unraveled when he felt frozen wind wash over him. Instantly, he felt the fight leave Lukas's hands, and the jittering of the dagger blade ceased. From his spot on the bed, he saw Gram stride in, and throw Lukas to the ground with one rough backhand. "You know how it works in Geflen. You do boy, aye, I can see it in the guilt in your eyes. Stupid boy. How'd you like someone sticking you in the heart in your sleep?" Lukas didn't answer. Instead, he scrambled to his feet, and without even trying to retrieve his killing tool, he went stomping out the door, slamming it shut, sending a shower of snow crashing down outside the window, flashing in the sunlight. Gram took the knife off the blood spotted sheets, glancing it over without a word. The bleeding from the wound had already stopped.

"Guess that's as good as any way to see you mean your promise, aye. Could have killed him swift, even without me coming in, I'm sure. But...ah, never mind." Dan carefully pushed himself into a sitting position. The pain rippled, then renewed; he decided then it was only something else he had to cast behind him, like everything else. It would not cripple him. A forgotten one's curse was to be forgotten. The tall dwarf handed Lukas's dagger over to him. A plain, ugly, and hastily forged thing of iron. A hasty weapon for a hasty kill.

"With the money you gave me, it was plenty for the deed. Had some left, but I kept it, lost it to the card game."

Dan threw his head back and laughed, the wind pulling deep from his belly and booming with true mirth. He'd have done the same, undoubtedly, but if he'd been in Gram's place, he'd never have admitted it. He found himself quickly growing warm to his savior, and not just simply for some blood debt. After a few breaths, he swung his legs out over the bed, and carefully pushed himself to his feet. He tried very hard not to notice the dark green and purple streaks sliding through his arms, a mark of poison roiling in his blood. Gram reached under his snowy furs and tossed the saraelian a thick, black wool robe.

"You seem to be fond of the color, aye. Least from all I heard." Dan slid it over his shoulders, then tucked his right arm in, then the left stump, watching for a moment as the empty sleeve fluttered at his waist.

"Honestly, I only wear the color because it hides dirt and bloodstains. Every two bit fuck wears it like its the only color. Really...my favorite color is purple. Where I come from, they said it was expensive to make. They said it was the color of fucking royalty. But I'm just a killer, now." Gram nodded, then turned away, striding towards the door, into the snows of Salvar. As Dan followed him, he dropped Lukas' knife on the ground, and buried it deep into frozen earth with a gesture down.

For perhaps no more than an hour, it was not snowing in Salvar. As they walked down into Geflen itself, Dan looked up at the drab, subdued sun, surrounded by thick gray clouds, as far as the eye could see. While so very different in climate, Salvar and Fallien were so similar. They were both bleak, somber lands that produced some of the strongest men and women the world ever cared to know. From whirling, burning sands, to merciless, somber snows, they were both countries of austere extremes. But when he found himself on the roads of the village, he saw people from everywhere. People from Corone, their plain, fresh-off-the-boat accents ringing nostalgic on his ears. Elves of Raiarea, many with their hair shorn almost to their scalps, still marked by their elegant, peaked ears. Dark haired and dark eyed tribesmen from the deserts of Fallien, looking uncomfortable in thick fur cloaks. Almond eyed Akashimen, some carrying the long, curved swords of their home. Some half-orcs, their skin shades from olive to leaf green, and a small collection of drow, who paused their dice game to give him a silent nod. Dan paused for a second in the din of the village, staring at the dark-elf women with a small grin. He'd always had a bit of...predilection for drow girls. He recalled one from his days in Gild's Brotherhood - what had been her name? It would come to him, but the night itself was one he happily wouldn't forget.

Gram chuckled and pulled on his shoulder, and out of reflex, he pulled the robe's collar up higher around his face. "No need for that." The dwarf laughed and gestured to the people of Geflen. A hundred strange eyes looked at him, and he could feel the hair rise on the back of his neck, digging his heels into the hard packed snow of the dirt road. The smell of a chicken soup filled his nostrils from a huge pot a few steps up the road, where a smiling family of four were holding out tin mugs to be filled by a laughing man with a huge burn scar that had taken his ear and half his face. Wood smoke, burning tobacco, and the savory scent of foods that made his nearly toothless mouth water - but not even the smallest scent of the metallic tang of blood.

"They know you boy, aye, but I don't believe anyone save for Lukas wants you dead. I think you could travel to the top of the world, and a snowman would say hey, that's Dan Lagh'ratham! If we wanted you dead...well, they'd have killed you by now, aye? You've been laid up in old Mabel's house for a week. If anyone had it in mind, think we'd take chances with someone like you? Well, Lukas did, but you didn't kill him..." Gram trailed off, his attention going to the horizon, then abruptly began walking off down the road, to the west of the village. From elsewhere, not from the depths of his thick coal robe, Dan pulled a long silver pipe from the air, Smaug's Pipe, and tucked it between his lips, lighting it from a crumpled box of matches in his pocket, leaving the family and the scarred man in a petulant cloud of smoke.

The snow banks became deeper as they ventured out of Geflen, the dwarf taking the lead, his pace setting him towards the nearby treeline. The rywan trees grew so close together they looked like a line of soldiers, steeled for battle, their long green needles intertwining into each other like plates of identical military mail. Above their incredibly tall peaks, he could see a thinning column of pale gray smoke climbing into the pale gray sky. "Damn, thought I tossed enough water on the cinders. Well, if my house burns down, I'll sleep at your's, aye? Your little home is right over here," The dwarf pointed to the right of the smoke, his path angling towards it. Dan couldn't see anything through the phalanx of rywan, until they drew closer. The tall trees closed around him, and as they drew closer to his home, for a cantankerous moment, he wondered if the dwarf's house was bigger than his. From the outside, it could be called cozy; the cabin was tucked into the forest, the windows were made of thick glass, warped in odd, abstract designs that curled and twisted, and its red brick chimney struggled to challenge the trees. It was built or rough hewn logs that gave the cabin something of a mirthful, rotund appearance. The hinges of the front door creaked, and Gram murmured something about oil, before turning to the saraelian and grinning, arms outstretched in welcome. Dan said nothing, only nodding, and the dwarf dropped his arms, his frown pulling his handlebar mustache at the corners.

Even still, Dan was suspecting an attack. He'd brought out Smaug's pipe for the sake of the plume of flame it could produce from his lips; if finally, the welcome was revealed as a trick, he could at least begin his volley with that. The dwarf hadn't noticed the large, double barreled gun he'd summoned to his right thigh, nor the delicately vibrating Blade of Death on his left thigh. If anything, he'd been caught by surprise. Even a lukewarm welcome was so very rare to him that the slightest sign of pleasantness immediately put him on guard. Taking the silver pipe from his mouth, he exhaled a long, blue-gray stream of smoke into his cabin, and decided he was going to have to buy furniture, or he'd be sleeping on the chilly floor boards.

"I'm not exactly used to saying thank you," Dan replied after another hit off the pipe, the smoke hanging in long, ethereal tendrils in the cloud-drowned sunlight struggling through the windows. "But...thank you, Gram."

The grin returned, and the dwarf perked up, snapping his fists to his broad waist, puffing his chest out - indeed, it swelled visibly under his furs - and let out another loud laugh that shook the dust off the rafters. "No need for thanks, boy! I felt responsible for you, after I found you half dead out in the deeper woods, aye! Now, what say you about getting some exercise? Been in bed for a week, aye? Come out on the hunt with me. We'll put some fire in that belly, and some thunder in them bones again! And you're already ready, you got that big gun on your hip!" Chuckling, the dwarf pushed past the saraelian and out back into the snow again, but Dan didn't immediately begin to follow. The coal in his pipe had almost breathed its last before he turned, shaking off his astonishment. He'd always seen dwarves as rock skulled clock junkies. Gram was a different sort it seemed.

Before he followed the dwarf's broad footsteps, he pause by his door, and reached into the else where that he'd dug his pipe out of him. A long, dark green ribbon, spotted with old blood came to his hand. He held it to his nose, but the smell of his little girl had long since faded away. Looking at it made him sick. Looking at it brought him back to the other cabin, in golden sunshine, drenched in blood. It brought him back to Claire's dead, glazed eyes. To Meredith's shattered window, where he'd found the ribbon. It was a pain the necromancer's curse could never match, even as the strength left his arms and the death edged through his veins. It was a deep, throbbing ache that never, ever stopped. He tied the ribbon to the door handle with great tenderness, careful not to tear it. It had gone threadbare, little spots nearly worn colorless by the absent stroking of his thumb.

It was important not to forget that pain. With it, nothing could kill him. Nothing in this blood soaked world could hurt him more. "I'm sorry, baby," the whisper was so low, it was almost soundless as he stroked an end of the ribbon. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I won't let this kill me. Not until I can bring you back here, safe." He heard Gram call his name, and his hand flashed to the butt of his gun. Anger flashed quickly; how dare he interrupt the saraelian's moment? But within a few, choking breaths, he pushed the hate down, let his hand fall to his side, and then quietly shut the door of his new home.

As they moved into the treeline behind their cabins, Salvar's brief break crumpled as thick snowflakes began to fall. They fell between the tree limbs, gathering on the shoulders of his cloak, and Dan pulled his hood up, knowing if he did not, the cold would be burning him as harshly as the curse. Not a single new centimeter of skin had grown from his amputation. The pain was all encompassing, and if he chose to regenerate, he'd never feel the morphine drive the agony of the curse away, giving him a scant few hours of relief. The second time he'd woken in the empty cabin, he'd found the brown glass vial, half the size of his fist, beside the candle on the table. He'd quickly tucked it into his pocket. Gianna or Mabel, whoever had been dosing him, had been giving him what they'd give everyone else, but for Dan, such things wetre never enough.

He found he hated them for that. And he hated Xem'zund most of all, for the way his blood pumped sluggishly through him, carrying sweetly-sick suffering through him. When he'd defeated this curse, he would find the necromancer, tear him into bite-sized pieces, and bury his bits hundreds of feet deep all across the world, anywhere his feet would take him. For good measure, he'd piss on every grave, too.

Gram didn't speak a word as he moved through the forest - he didn't even make a sound. His thick feet were wrapped in arctic beast mocassins, but every step he took didn't make even the smallest crackle of ice. 'He knew I was there, long before I did,' Dan thought, carefully stepping in the dwarf's footsteps, trying as hard as he could to be as silent. Dan had never been a hunter, and certainly never an assassin; he'd always preferred to kick in the front door, eyes wild, gun and axe in hand. Likewise, every dwarf he met was a lumbering brute without even the hint of subtetly to their step. Aside from being exceptionally tall, Gram was nothing like any of the Kachuck residents he'd ever met.

Five minutes after picking at the icy bark of a rywan tree Dan judged as being nothing at all, they strode up to a hoof print nearly four feet across, and the Dwarf grinned broadly, showing off a handful of black iron teeth. With Gram motioning to him, Dan followed another few minutes until they came across a series of broken and bent trees, snapped and pulled into a bowl shape by something with monstrous power. Patches of white snow had begun to collect on its edges in a broken belt, and some in a small, but growing plot in its center.

"Its near by, aye? See the absence of the snow and ice? It ain't come down in an hour or so, but if the nest was abandoned, it'd be totally covered. Picking up what I'm putting down, aye? The animal went off to feed, couldn't have gone far. And its a big predator," Gram pointed out some mounds of snow around the edges of the nest, that looked suspiciously like the angles of rib cages. The dwarf dropped down on a nearby broken tree with an audible groan, rubbing at his back through his furs. "So, no need to cover our scents. It'll just come at us, fangs bared! C'mon, have a seat, aye, watch the sky in through the trees." Dan sat down, ignoring the snow on the cracked trunk, and began to pull out his pipe again, until Gram swatted at it with a frown. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind sighing through the forest, watching the fluffy snowflakes dance through the air.

"You can ask, I ain't never lied about it."

"What's a dwarf doing in Salvar? I thought you preferred fire and stone, not this shrivelling cold."

"Everyone expects that. But we weren't all born for one singular purpose, aye? My father told me, you'll be the one to inherit my name, the first to it! The forges and the gems and the precious metals, aye, all of it. Did you know most dwarves are born in the tunnels of Kachuck, and never hope to see the blue sky? Or wish for it? The pickaxe and the hammer is all they know. They only go deeper into the world, like they're running from it. Sure, some of the kin take up arms and adventure, but they long for their cramped tunnels and the sweat from the forge fire. When I was a boy, my father took me to Corone to sell our wares. And I saw the sky. And the oceans. And all the birds and fish and beasts in them. Their calls, they rang in my breast like a bell. When I went back to Kachuck, the picks were hollow sounding. They did not have the call of the world to them, only an empty din. So I left. Became a hunter. The forge is one thing, aye? But the world has so much more..."

The thought rang very true for him. The Wilmhearst hoped his one singular purpose had been to unite their deeply troubled, militaristic family. Xem'zund had hoped having the Red Beast, and one of the last living saraelians with him, would make his conquest much easier. But Dan had always gone left instead of right. The path the Thaynes had given to him had never much interested him. Hromagh wanted his violence, and he was sure N'jal wanted the death he scattered across the world. Everyone wanted a turn at his puppet strings, and Dan had always done his best to bite them off, when he noticed them.

Before he could answer, a great crashing and stomping came to them, to the east of the nest. While Dan visibly stiffened, his posture straight as iron, Gram didn't seem to notice, staring wordlessly at the gray sky, the rywan's peaks trying to strangle it in their long, green claws. Snow trickled from theirf boughs as the crashing grew closer, and the forest shook with the primal power of the carnivore closing in on its nest. The saraelian burst to his feet as the beast smashed through the line of the clearing, great trunks smashing to the earth, one of them slamming down on the broken tree they were sitting on. Gram was laughing when it crushed him.

An explosion of snow birds scattered under the falling tree, flapping and fluttering in the chaos of the clearing, cutting through great billows of snow and splinters. Dan spun on the monster, unable to process his new friend's death, and the enormity of the beast. Tailless and massive, it stretched above him, three times its size, making him tiny from its four black, scarred hooves to the tip of its head, wolf-like in appearance, save for its snout, shaped like a hog's, and the four bone crushing tusks that jutted from its maw where its canine teeth should be. Powerful muscle rippled under its storm-cloud colored fur.

As he was, one-armed, sweating cold, unable to lift his own axe, the huge Salvarian animal would have had a rare meal. But as it threw back its head, ready to release an ear-shattering call, four arrows the size of his forearm slammed into its flank, and it let out a pained shriek, stumbling into more trees with a collection of vicious snaps and crunches. Following the flight of the arrows, he saw Gram on the west side of the clearing, crouched in a tree, holding a thick bone long bow, his face absolutely blank. For a brief second, he almost pulled his handgun. Sure, it could turn the head of a man in plate mail into red mist, but against something the size of this beast? Maybe if he put every bullet he had in it, right into its skull, but ammunition was expensive. When it came down to it, the gun was a showpiece for fear, and not much else. Once upon a time, he'd had the belief that nothing could take a bullet and keep walking, but he himself was solid evidence against that. In the Dajas Pagoda, Jamie Whitizard had once shot him point blank with a shotgun, and Dan had still managed to kill the boy.

Instead, he slammed his palms into the snow, and ripped at the ground underneath the wolf-hog. It hadn't managed to find its balance from the impact of the huge arrows, and as the ground split under it and churned, it went spilling onto its face. He had no time to leap away - it lunged forward, roaring so loud that the snow on the branches of the clearing all fell away, and Dan barely had the time to pull up a column of stone, smashing it in the chin with a hard thud.

'If this is hunting to that fucking dwarf, I want no part of it,' he thought as he yanked another column out of the ground under him, sending him vaulting high into the air. The icy wind ripped his hood away, plastering his black hair to the sides of his skull. He weighed his options in machine gun fire speed as he neared the apex of his jump. His gun didn't have enough bite. His axe was too heavy now, even with both arms. The Blade of Death could bite through the skin, leave a nasty gash, but it wasn't long or heavy enough to cause a lethal blow.

In times like this, he missed his Rotslayer.

The clearing underneath him suddenly exploded with brutal sound and motion. It grew quickly as the tall rywan trees, most likely growing for dozens of generations began to crash down, snow and splinters almost clouding his vision.

Almost.

A great white snow and dust colored bear was grappling ferociously with the wolf-hog, a beast almost its whole size on its enormous back legs. A tale older than tales themselves; animals clashing in the wilderness fro territory, for food, for their young. Dan didn't wonder where the dire bear had come from, and didn't care; its huge claws ripped a deep furrow in the wolf-hog's left side. The saraelian reached down as he fell, to the broken stones among the scarred clearing, and lifted four thin shards, as tall he was. They rose into the air as he dropped, and with a sharp swing of arm and stump, sent them deep into the wolf-hog's legs, ripping through hide, smashing bone. It collapsed to the ground with a horrible keening wail, and Dan landed on its torn side, blood splashing up around him, groaning at the creak his knees made. Wasting no time, he raised his hand to the air, and crude facsimiles of fists burst from the ground around the wolf-hog, snatching at its legs, its tusks, its dirty mane. His feet slipped in the pulsing wounds as he turned on the huge bear, trying to decide on the best plan to kill it.

But the bear wasn't moving. It had sat down on its back haunces, clutching its front claws together, looking like a polite man waiting on his newspaper. Its huge legs, arms, and great furry head all suddenly sunk into its bulk, and then its fur began swirling, shifting, all spinning and shifting in every direction at once, shrinking, further and further, until it was a man sized ball of fur that drew back its deep, heavy hood and revealed Gram's black toothed grin under his bright red mustache. The wolf-hog struggled viciously under his stone hands, and Dan worried for a moment it would break free, until he gritted his teeth, and tightened the grip around its muzzle.

"You'd make a fine hunter, aye! Good instincts! Pull its feet out from under it! Now, hold it, gets its head down, if you can, boy." The dwarf reached over his shoulder and pulled down the heavy axe on his back. Grunting, Dan forced the wolf-hog's head flat against the floor of the trampled clearing. Its blade glinted in the winter sun, just as it had before it had dropped the Red Beast, and the dwarf mumbled something under his whiskers, before killing his quarry with a heavy cleave between its eyes.

"I was expecting deer! Something my fucking size!" Dan jumped down from the dead animal, his eyes flashing as he stalked towards Gram, who only laughed.

"Boy, you think I left them mines to set up snare traps and kill squirrels?!" Taking another step, Dan froze in his tracks as a fresh wave of pain rippled through him, and a surge of stinking chicken broth and cold coffee burst from his lips. Stumbling, he fell face first into the puddle of vomit, gasping as he clutched instinctively at his missing arm.

"Pushed yourself too much, aye? You were on death's doorstep boy, mayhaps I shouldn't have brought you out. That's ok." Dan tried to get to his feet, but another stomach spasm snapped his head back, and he threw up again, splashing the arms and chest of his robe. He dropped back down to the ground, with its soft snow, its welcoming stone, its call to rest. The thought of moving a finger or a toe was an absolute nightmare to him. Gram's thick fingers wrapped under his arm pits and hoisted him high, and the saraelian let out another thin stream of vomit as the dwarf's shoulder pushed into his stomach. "Don't you worry boy. We hold out our hands to the outcasts here. I'll get some boys from Geflen to drag this meal back. You've got all the time you need to fight this, aye?"

Darkness folded over him before he could say he didnt. There was no time. There never had been. Every minute wasted was another he didn't have with his daughter. Every second thrown to the wind was another she was in danger.

But death waits for no man or woman. The grains fall, regardless of the wishes cast on them, and time came to be all that the saraelian had.
_____

Six Months Later
_____
"You pathetic shit." Dan stared out of his pitch black window into the eyes of the skinless dog-thing, the orbs in its sickeningly glistening face so much darker than the shadows. Its form was warped and twisted in the window. The scarlet metal and darkly twinkling crimson gems impressed into its deformed body slithered through the whorls and spirals, shining like a bloody pools on a battlefield beneath a noon sun. It had tormented him nightly for months, until he simply stopped fearing it. So, it had changed tactics.

"The grains fall, and everyone is still breathing in this little latrine in the snow. Lukas talks every day about killing you. But you can't bring yourself to kill him, can you? Flaccid Beast. Impotent Beast. You're nothing but slave-shit now. Can't even lift your axe." He'd discovered long ago that talking to it did nothing. It only increased its fervor, and it demanded one thing - to be let in. He'd paced, he'd reasoned, he'd ignored it, had even went off into a classic rage, but that only seemed to make it smile. It would stroke the window lovingly as he viciously cursed at it, throwing every obscenity he'd ever learned, in every language he'd ever learned at it with white knuckled fists, drawing close to the window, baring his new teeth.

"You're not even a shadow of yourself. You shook the earth once. You broke hundreds of people with just your hands. I can make you that again." There was a time when he would have leaped at that chance, the stupid, dumb animal he'd been. Anything for more. A part of him screamed out, how? But he strangled it down, as he strangled down his old killing urge every time he saw Lukas trudging through Geflen's roads, anytime he saw him in the town's center, surrounded by young men and women armed like him, being trained by him to protect their homes. He saw deep, old hate in the man's eyes, a look that once upon a time, would have had him torn limb from limb by the saraelian. For a while, he wondered who in Lukas' family he had killed. A child, a parent, a spouse? But those thoughts fell to the wayside as he spent more days and nights secluded in his cabin, pouring over dozens of books on curses that the sour old woman Mabel had.

"Know what? I'll just let myself in." The thing suddenly moved away from the window and vanished seamlessly into the night. His little cabin, with its furniture shaped from the walls and floor, didn't make even the softest creak or groan that it usually did in the frozen nights. Absolute and complete silence buzzed in his ears. Holding his breath, he listened for anything, the scrape of claw on stone, the skin crawling noise of wet meat being drug across wood, hissing breath across wickedly broken teeth. Dan Lagh'ratham laid there in the pale yellow candle light in his bed for what felt like hours of sheer, unadulterated stillness.

A huge wet, red arm burst out from beneath his bed and snatched his face, folding it completely in its grip. It stunk like hot copper and the damp, rotted garbage in a city's sewer pipe. Dan grabbed at its wrist but its strength was an echo of day's past; titanic, immovable, and merciless. His hand flailed blindly in the air, the fetid, gummy claws closing tighter around his skull, smothering him with its power and stench. His fingers hit the shelf over his head, and his fingers scrabbled across it, searching desperately. The handle of his gun slid smoothly across his palm, and he whipped it around, shoving the barrel against the forearm.

At once, he realized he could breath. The pressure that had threatened to crush his head was gone, and the stink too...now he could smell jasmine flowers.

"What the fuck?!" He dropped his gun instantly onto the mattress when he heard the familiar sound of Gianna's voice. She pulled the warm, damp washcloth off his face, and blinked, taken aback by the wide-set, lunatic look in his eyes that vanished the second he drew in a deep, long breath. "I don't think I've ever had a gun shoved into my face for treating a fever. What is wrong with you?"

Dan groaned, and pushed himself up to sit against his head board. The dark wool blankets fell to his waist, revealing a long and horrible story ripped across his torso, the calligraphy of the tale in heavy knotted scars. Webbing of dark and green purple sewed its way through it, the Forgotten One's curse sliding its hateful fingers down his skin, inching their way up his neck, melting into the darkness under the blankets. He ran his fingers through his sweat damp hair, only making it curl weakly at the gesture, and he stared quietly out the window, expecting to see a flash of crimson in the heavy white snow drifts.

"You look worse than when Gram brought you here." Her tone was almost scolding, as though she expected the saraelian to just wish himself into good health. "It's been six months since we brought you here. You re-grew your teeth, but not even a finger of your left arm. Why?"

"Fuck off," he mumbled, still staring out the window. He hoped she took the not so subtle clue. He hated visitors. For a while, new visitors to Geflen would trek up to the cabin; some to spit on his door, some challenge him, some wanted to just talk to him, only Hromagh knows why. They stopped in three months, either from his obscenity filled rants, or just plain physical threats. Gram had stopped coming by a month ago. Gianna came by often, but he barricaded the door when he was awake, and ignored the pounding.

It took him some time to accept, but when he'd read through Mabel's books, all one hundred and ten of them, the second time, he finally accepted that he was going to die here.

They would bury him in Geflen.

The hard, open palmed slap snapped his head against his left shoulder, and he whirled around to face Gianna, eyes flashing dangerously. "Snap out of it. Do you think you deserve this?" Yes, yes he did. It wasn't just the skinless dog that visited him. His nights were violated by hideous swirling nightmares of bone and fire and the nauseating stink of copper. Faces all too familiar rising up from pools of coagulated blood. Claire's face, weeping and asking one word, again and again; why?

"Damn you, listen to me! I used to hear tales in camp of the slayer of the rot. The man that waded into the undead, let them rip at him as he tore them apart, just to save a few scared families. I was told of a Lagh'ratham of the Black Hand that once protected Ithermoss and the Red Hand like blood family. You were a man before you became the Red Beast. People still need you. Your daughter needs you."

"MY DAUGHTER IS DEAD!" He roared the words into her face, every ounce of pain and grief and regret on his tongue. Both of them fell under a stunned silence. Gianna pulled back away from him, her fingers clutching at the collar of the purple blouse she was wearing. Dan's mouth hung open for a breath more - and then his face crumpled into a tumult of emotions, all slashing down like a lightning bolt, cutting away the illusion of stoicism and bitterness. Slowly, the saraelian raised a hand to his face, turning towards the window again as he felt the stinging at the corners of his eyes. Oh, it hurt. It hurt so much more than thinking it, having it there, in the open air, right off his tongue. The words had burrowed bluntly at his tongue and cheek for the past month and a half, but he had never had the strength left in him to admit it.

"It's been...too....too long. I failed. I failed as a father. I've killed men in every corner of the world because they didn't know where to look. Nothing....nothing I've ever done ever meant anything. For all the strength I had, for all the blades and the guns, it was for nothing. Everytime....every time I pulled myself back together, every time I took another step forward...oh, Hromagh. Derium lied to me, my little girl died there, I....I..."

"Coward." Gianna's quiet insult couldn't reach him. Its barb was nothing to him in the moment; even the steadily growing pulse of pain was tiny compared to the words he'd just said. "You can't be serious. If you really believe that, you owe it to her to put her to rest. The least you could do is bury her bones." The woman watched his shoulders shudder, but there wasn't any sound as the tears fell. Without a word, she picked the gun up off his bed and set it quietly down on the shelf above it, then carefully sat down on the edge of the bed, waiting.

"You wouldn't cry if you believed that though. Deep inside you. If you did, you'd already be dead. Nothing could kill a parent quicker. So why are you giving up? Why are you so content to waste away?" Instead of answering, Dan groaned, reaching to his bedside table, where the brown bottle of morphine sat. He wasn't looking, so Gianna had no trouble hopping off the bed and snatching it from his trembling hand.

"Really? Did you think you could just numb this fucking pain forever? Oh, you stupid man. You really want to drift through some dream, and hope the world stops caring about what you've done?" She stomped across the cabin and practically ripped the window pane free from the wall as she wrenched it open, cocking her arm back, primed to throw. Everyone that ever heard of Dan Lagh'ratham knew he was a man who loved his vices, but falling into a morphine dream was the least thing she'd have expected about the beast that shook Raiaeria as Kross.

Dan's hand clamped down on her wrist. She hadn't heard him get up, and she was a bit surprised with how fast he'd moved, considering how drawn and gaunt his wet face looked. Even with gritted teeth and huge, red eyes, she could see Killian there, in his features. Killian, floating face down in the waters of the dock. Killian, who had loved his wife and little girl so much, he'd died for them, smiling his last when he'd plunged dead, into the waters. It only strengthened her resolve.

"If you throw that out the window, I'll make you wish Gram had killed me in the woods," Dan gasped out. Her scowl deepened, and she spun her head back to the open window. The flowers tattooed around her ears and the back of her neck swam as he watched her. Wildflowers, purple and blue and orange and red. He remembered the way that the wildflowers looked in the fields outside the cottage, through the window that was splashed with Claire's blood. How they'd danced in the wind. His fingers lost their strength, and Salvar swallowed the brown glass bottle in its enormous white maw. She raced out of the cabin and slammed the door hard enough to knock loose the snow from his shingles, sending it cascading over the window, blocking his sight. Dan sank to his knees as a fresh hell of pain tore through his body, starting at his heart, sliding into every inch of his body like the searching legs of a great spider.

The morphine got him out of bed. The morphine kept the agony of the curse away. The morphine took him away from a world of regrets and slaughter. Another drop could have taken him through the day. Maybe it would have been the day he fit the puzzle pieces back together. Maybe it could have carried him, swaddled in a cocoon of comfortable numbness, to a weapon that he could have wielded against Xem'zund's last curse.

When he looked up, drool hanging off the side of his lip in a long, cold string, he found Gram there, leaning on the window sill with his huge, beefy forearms. The look in the dwarf's eye was pity, and a shade of disgust. "Get a shirt on, aye? Mabel's wanting her books back, boy. And mayhaps it won't hurt to talk a bit."

Desperate whispers in his head told him to rush out into the snow, to dig it up, throw it around, find the bottle. But common sense told him it was gone. It was most likely shattered, its contents soaking down into the permafrost. Taking several deep breaths and bracing himself, he reached out to his dining table, and hauled himself to his feet, glaring wetly at the dwarf. Carefully, he gathered a dozen of the books, pulled his leather belt free of the loops of his trousers, and wrapped it around the stack. He had no bags to carry them, and Mabel would complain endlessly if he only brought one or two back. "We don't have dick to talk about. Unless you wanna tell me what the fuck Gianna's problem is."

The dwarf stared patiently instead as Dan dressed himself, threw a bucket of water into his fireplace, packed his thin silver pipe, and finally slung the belt and the books over his shoulder. The flakes falling outside were thin, but he immediately felt the cold through his vlince clothes. Despite the relative safety and warm welcome he received those many months ago, Dan was starting to hate Geflen too, with its never ending snows and eternal gray sky. Gram came around the house, and tossed a fluffy bundle his way. Catching it, he carelessly let his load of books fall on the thick flat rocks on his door step and unfolded the furry package. He instantly recognized the white fur, spotted with small, cyan colored spots. The dwarf had made him a knee-length coat out of the hide of the wolf-hog they'd killed. He wondered how long Gram had been working on it, with those big, rectangular fingers of his.

Instead of following the path into town, the odd pair trekked off into the nearby tree line, seeming to follow the path in parallel at first. Every step he took was worse, pain pulsing from his scalp, to his fingers, to his belly, down to his toes, and the nausea that shook his stomach made it no better. His mind screamed to turn around, sprint back to the cabin, and take his chances ripping up the drifts. He could find the morphine if he looked hard enough. Dan was snapped out of his slavish thoughts by a rough rumble from Gram's throat.

"She only told me once, and only cause of my charm, heh. We folk in Geflen like to leave our past right there - in the past. So, don't tell anyone this, or I'll beat you bloody, aye?"

"I'd like to see you fucking try, short stack," Dan growled, and the dwarf sighed and shook his head. The snow was deep, and a pain in the ass to walk through. The books thumped him in the small of the back with each lurch forward. His patience was already worn thin as decades old paper.

"Gianna's a very smart girl, and she grew up in Corone. Took to medicine when her father died in the war, got trained by some high class doctors and alchemists. We're lucky to have her, aye, that we really are. Well, her learning was put to the test on soldier's wounds, and there she met her husband, a boy named Killian. Had a girl, named her Tilliana, probably had a laugh about that, aye? Well, don't know if you noticed it, but Gianna is quite the looker. Some other soldiers noticed it, too, thought, why does Killian get to have the fun? I'm not gonna mince words here, boy - three of them soldiers took her to a far side of the camp, and they...they raped her. When they were done, careless and dumb, Gianna killed them as they took shifts out pissing. Well, their buddies didn't like that. Wanted to do worse to her. Killian took her and the child down to the dock, got them on a boat. When the soldiers caught up, they were too late to stop the boat...but not too late to take it out on Killian. They did it slow. She saw most of it." Dan blinked slowly, then looked around, surprised to find they'd gone farther into the forest. He couldn't even see the road anymore. But, he could see that they were back in the clearing with the huge wooden nest of broken trees, where they'd hunted together, all those months ago. He'd been listening so intently, he hadn't even noticed where Gram had been leading him.

"The way she looks at you, I think she sees Killian in you. It ain't the tales of what you used to be, aye? What you were don't make you special, there's a hero in every tavern like there's a whore on every street corner. She wants you to be like Killian."

"I don't care," Dan replied callously, his frown deepening. If anyone had ever done that to Claire, he would have done worse than kill those men. He would have killed their entire families, broken them slowly, peeled them like apples. The dwarf groaned, slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead.

"You do, aye, I can see it in your eyes! Is that all you can do, boy? If you can't hate it or kill it, you just run from it?" Dan dropped his bundle of books and surged forward, clenching his teeth as he leaned down and jabbed a long, pale finger into the dwarf's scarred chin.

"I've never ran from shit. I've stared into the jaws of dragons, been hunted by bladesingers, been abandoned in a world overflowing with the walking fucking dead. Don't ever accuse me -"

"Just us out here boy, no need for the blustering! You change names as often as I should change my underwear! You're still running, you'd be running back to that morphine bottle if you'd think I'd let you! I can't believe you've lived this long, aye, as blind by hate and anger as you are." A muscle jumped under Dan's gray eye, and he fought hard not to wrap his fist around the dwarf's burly neck.

"And what. Could you ever. EVER know about that?!" Gram scowled, then pulled the furs away from his body. They fell at his wide feet in a huge pool to reveal hundreds and hundreds of scars all of his bare arms and neck. All sorts of different ones, puckers and zig-zags of blades, craters of gunshots and arrows, rippling taut waves of burns. "I am Gramyr Coaltongue, son of Yggdrike Coaltongue, twenty-eighth of my name, sixth axe of Kachuck, and once, heir to the Breath of the Mountain."

Dan slowly drew back, his irritation and anger gone from his face, and without a word, lit his pipe with a match. The reek of stale tobacco was both offensive and welcoming to him, even as it tried to sting his eyes with transparent gray fingers. Coaltongue. The only true warrior caste, born and bred of Kachuck, guardians and killers of the mine. The only time they touched a pick, was to sink it into someone's skull. Their rite of passage into adulthood was an age old tradition of swallowing a white hot coal from the forge. If it didn't kill them, they were given the name.

"When I told my father I wanted to be a huntsman, he told me he'd see me dead before his heir would leave the mines to chase sparrows and squirrels. He raised his axe on me, and I killed him. And then I left. I kept my name, and I began again. I ran from my life of killing aye, but I didn't run from my past. It's as plain as these scars." Dan stared at the dwarf for a while longer, then looked around at their old hunting ground, feeling it all roll around in his head. Uncomfortably, he shifted his feet around in the crunching snow, then looked up, watching the pipe smoke rise through the rywan branches, seeming to shift ever so slightly out of the path of the falling snowflakes.

"Okay. I'm starting to think Mabel doesn't give a shit that I still have all her books. So why did you lead me out here, to the nest, and the clearing?"

"Well, boy," Gram rubbed his huge, scarred forearms, then threw his head side to side, making loud, rough cracks and snaps, "I think it's high time someone showed you a different path, aye?" The snowflakes suddenly became smaller, then simply stopped. Sighing, Dan knocked the ashes, and the tiny little ember out of his pipe. It glowed like an infernal eye at his feet for half of a breath, before the snow snuffed it out.

Despite the dwarf's warm ups, Dan made no attempts to brandish a weapon, or even adjust his footing. Instead, he reached over, and shook the limp, empty sleeve of his coat, knocking snow free, then reached into his pocket to fetch his snuff box. It was a crude thing, like its owner, that he'd shaped himself with his power, which were about the only time he used it anymore. What had once been a fearsome tool, had become just another facet of his laziness and procrastination. Certainly, he could have spent delicate time carving it with hand and tool, something to keep his mind off the approaching chill of death, but like all his furniture, he'd just shaped it out of the floors and walls with indifferent waves of his hands. It was better to spend his time in the morphine bottle. He clumsily loaded his pipe one handed, clenching it tightly between his teeth, then puffed a wobbling smoke ring in Gram's face after lighting it.

"Look, that's real cute. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I made my name as the Red Beast walking the same path I always did. Worked then, and always will. I got enough strength in this one arm to break every bone in your squat little body. Now, if that old witch doesn't want her shit, I'm going back to my cabin. I wanna crank one out before I take a nap." To his surprise, Gram didn't back off, and instead reached down to the old nest. Most of it was buried under drifts and banks of the relentless snow fall, but pale brown patches of rywan bark shone through. The dwarf's thick fingers grabbed the long, then sunk in with soft crunches and snaps. Snow and dirt and bits of frozen broken bones fall off it in great billows. He lifted it with ease, letting it hang at his side, like a child playing make believe would hold a stick.

"So, if you got the strength, why didn't you punch that great bloody beast to death, that we hunted here? All I ever heard, that was how you fixed problems, aye? Just holler and smash them. So if you can smash me, like you say you can, you can catch this one handed, right?" Without another warning, the dwarf swung the log back handed at the saraelian. Dan dropped to his haunches, and the huge makeshift club passed over his head with a low roar that briefly ripped the cold air off his shoulders. The assault wasn't over yet; with a fluid motion that could only be executed with years of martial practice, Gram moved his blow into an over head swing, and Dan managed to throw himself out of the way just as it smashed into the ground. The impact sent a surge of frozen air, dirt, and broken stone into the air, right into Dan's face.

Then, the log connected.

The swing took him in the belly and off his feet. It tore the breath out of his chest and sent masses of pale color splashing across his vision in bruised starbursts. He didn't know how long he tumbled through the air, but when he slammed into a rywan and folded around the trunk, spine creaking and ribs screaming, he knew he wasn't just going to get to slink back to his cabin.

"C'mon now, you daft boy, do the stupid thing you always do," Gram muttered under his breath, watching Dan climb slowly to his feet, blood dribbling steadily from between his lips. For a moment, he thought he'd been wrong; maybe it had all beaten the fight out of the man, leaving him a simpering mess, all the bite and no bark. But Dan Lagh'ratham had never been a man to disappoint. Throwing his head back, he unleashed a monstrous roar of savagery that echoed through every branch of the forest. The ground at their feet trembled violently, shaking at the call of the saraelian. He surged forward like a bullet, teeth clenched in a lunatic smile, eyes wide and wild and absent of a single shred of humanity.

Dan's rampage stopped as abruptly as it began, as he slammed bodily into Gram, and found the breath knocked out of him again. The dwarf didn't even flinch; it was like he'd tried to tackle an adamantium wall. A smart man would have retreated, but a beast would just continue to lash out. From the shadows of his coat, Dan slashed out with a flash of silvery titanium, letting the Blade of Death do its work, its hungry tip making a straight jab at the dwarf's heart. Big blocky fingers slapped it away with what could only be apathy, and continued to do so as Dan continued his frenzied, brutal hacking. Gram didn't even bother dropping the man sized log in his other hand as he thwarted every violent swing.

From behind him, a long, curved spine of stone rose; the tail of a rockrats. While mostly content to simply feast on unrefined ore, the rockrats that rumbled through the tunnels of Kachuck were just as partial to dwarf flesh, and were often a Coaltongue's first kill. It had also been the first spirit of nature that the dwarf had taken into himself, just like the dire bear he'd become to kill the wolf-hog. A rockrat's four legs and long tail were the only similarity they shared with common tavern rats. They were nasty things, the babies always twice the size of any dwarf, their stone like skin meant to deflect any steel blade. But a Coaltongue's axe? Few beasts ever could, and once he'd ate its sinewy heart, Gram had taken it into himself, and started his first steps onto the path of the rest of his life.

The rockrat tail slammed into the center of the snarling saraelian's chest, knocked him to the ground, and pinned him to the snow. Dan flailed wildly, beating at the stone tail, cursing with no rhyme or reason in a nearly incomprehensible stream of babble, then hurled the Blade of Death at the dwarf's face. Gram tilted his head, and it slashed off into the afternoon sky. He opened his mouth to speak, but Dan had summoned his handgun from the cabin's shelf, and had both barrels aimed at both of Gram's dark brown eyes. The gun barked twice loudly, its report sounding through the forest like twin thunderclaps. Shifting the tail slightly, without releasing the pressure, the big bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the stone hide in great puffs of rock shard and dust. Gram snatched the saraelian's wrist and squeezed until Dan let out a choked obscenity and dropped the gun.

"Done? I could just smash your head like a melon, right now. Hate has crippled you."

"I didn't...didn't know they stacked...shit so high as you," Dan gasped out, still struggling to rip free from the tail and grip, and sighing, Gram twisted, snapping the arm in his grasp.

"All you ever do is yell and charge. Sure, going berserk makes you unpredictable, but it makes you sloppy, aye? I kept my cool, remembered what tools I had at my disposal! I expected you to try and rip open the ground at my feet, but no! You just ran at me, yelling! Who taught you to fight?" The stone tail raised up, then slithered away, disappearing over the dwarf's shoulder, and he let go of Dan's flaccid arm. The saraelian pulled it instantly against his chest, scowling as he finally let his body start healing itself.

"Me. I taught my damn self. You don't need fancy katas or peregrinations or some old swordmaster with shit in the corner of his lips to figure out how to beat a man to death."

"Boy, we take great risk harboring you here. Rest of the world don't really think you're dead, and its only a matter of time before bounty hunters are in Geflen. But I don't care about that. I care about that thing in the valley, aye, the thing that came down while I was on hunt, first week you were here. Great dark bloody thing, throwing fire down on everyone. Now, Lukas has done a good job, throwing together a guard, but there's only so much a soldier with a sword can do. That thing comes back, its gonna be just you and me! What...what are you laughing about, aye?"

"I don't know, who told you that...thing in the valley was some fire breathing blob. I got fucking news for you, Gram, you might wanna sit on your broad pimply ass for this; it has come down from the fucking valley. Every night that skinless thing is at my damn window, trying to get in, and last night, it did." Dan felt his anger rising again as the dwarf gave him a puzzled look, tilting his bucket shaped head curiously to the side.

"Skinless thing? No boy, you best apologize to Gianna, have her look at your head. Every single soul in Geflen saw that great bloody thing blot out the moon before it started throwing bolts of fire." Staring at Gram in stunned silence, Dan pushed his forearm against his chest, trying to set the bone straight as it reknit itself. If the skinless dog wasn't the thing in the valley...was it the curse? He'd never heard or read of a curse like that; the poison coursing through his veins was a hallmark of the dark art, but manifestations of a sticky red dog monster was new to him.

"You...made your point. But you can't teach an old dog new tricks, Gram. I'm getting sicker as the months pass. Just...let me go back to sleep." The dwarf sighed, then helped the saraelian to his feet, shoving something into his pale hand. Dan looked down, surprised to see the fraying, threadbare ribbon that had once been tied to his door handle.

"She wouldn't want you too. You don't need a new trick, aye? Or a new weapon. Althanas is your weapon. The trees and the dirt and the rocks. I can do it too," he demonstrated with a small, peach pit sized rock at his feet, which he shaped into a tiny assemblage of working stone gears within a few seconds. "But I can't do it like you. You're neglecting your bloodline, boy. All you have to do is focus your power, refine it. Its the difference between a bar room brawler and a world champion pugilist." Dan nodded slowly, watching the little gears work. He could make spears, and swords, and all sorts of weapons, giant living stone hands, and slabs of armor, but something so fine and delicate was far beyond him.

"Ok. Show me, sensei. But let's go into town, I gotta...say sorry to Gianna."

"Aye, now you're getting it, boy." Chuckling, Gram clapped him on the back as he snatched up his book bundle, and they hiked away from the clearing, and out to the path.

The smell of herbs and tea were heavy in the air as Dan stepped into Mabel's house behind Gram. He sniffed a few times; chamomile and lavender, orange peel and chicory. The smell alone was enough to settle his nerves a notch after the humbling thrashing he'd taken at the nest a little under a half hour ago. Not that anyone could tell. The ugly dark blue and purple bruises had faded to wilting greens and yellows five minutes after they'd found their road, and by the time they'd reached Geflen's edge, his remaining arm was straight and strong again.

The home fit the old woman well; dour, drooped, and gray. The bricks, once a rusty red, were fading in time from the winds and the snow. Gram told him it was the oldest home in Geflen. The chimney sagged, tilting to the right, seeming to be waiting for one good, powerful gust so that it could give up the ghost. Even in the middle of the day, the interior was cold and gloomy, the only light coming from a creaky old lantern with yellowed glass, and the glint shining from Mabel's amber eyes. Bent as she was, her gaze was sharp and young, like a new forged dagger, straight from the whetstone. While most of her tarnished silver hair was gathered in a lopsided bun atop her head, long whispy strands of it fell around her neck, seeming to rise from the wattles there like smoke.

"Well, I haven't seen you in some time. I was thinking you mught have died. What an unpleasant surprise to see otherwise," she croaked, her feet shuffling through the shadows, brushing past them to throw open the door to her cast iron furnace. The red glow bathed the entirety of the home in its hot light, revealing dozens and dozens of books, each stacked as high as the old woman's stooped head. The light shifted to a brighter yellow as she tossed another small log rywan into the metal belly, shining and glistening on the surface of hundreds of wax and cork sealed jars, sitting on some of the book stacks, old dusty tables, and crooked shelves. Some of the jars had dried leaves and flowers inside. Harmless enough. But many others contained yellow or green or white liquids in which soaked a grisly motley; small body parts - many a collection it seemed - bloated strange snakes, bizarre thorny and fat insects with too many legs, and some bulbous fleshy shapes crammed so tightly inside, he couldn't tell what they were, even if they were in one piece.

"Always a ray of sunshine in my life to know that someone, somewhere out there is thinking of me." He flashed her a crooked half smile that dripped of arrogance. She fixed him with a yellow stare for a few breaths, then spat on floor and shuffled past them again. Dan rolled his eyes and laughed.

"You know, in my culture, that's a marriage proposal." Mabel gave a bit of a grunt and a grimace as she forced herself into posture she had perhaps fifty years ago, a hand braced against the small of her back, then shuffled close to the saraelian, her tawny eyes flashing.

"I hope you're torn apart for all time in the Antifirmanent!" While she was still just beneath his collar bone, he was sure if she hadn't just spat on her floor, she would have done her best to to spit in his face. He felt Gram's big scarred paw push against his chest.

"I think Gianna's down at Stihl's boy, why don't you head down? I could use a cup of tea about now to warm my bones, but I'll find you later, aye?" He glanced down at the dwarf, then sneered at Mabel, before spinning around and walking briskly back out of her home.

"And bring the rest of my Thaynes damned books back, demon!" A year ago, he would have absolutely levelled the sagging home with how hard he slammed the door, but now, all he did was shake the doorframe and rattle the windows a bit.

Stihl's pub was the only one of its kind in Geflen. You could get food anywhere, on the side of any of the winding little roads. Soups, roasted and fried meats, candied fruits and vegetables from any corner of the world, the recipes brought here to a corner in Salvar by dozens of immigrants from all over. But a mug of beer, or maybe some wine, or even a good glass of whiskey? Only at Stihl's pub. Stihl himself was a man of great averages; average height, average weight, brown hair, brown eyes. The only things that could catch the eye about him, were the missing top digits of his index, middle, and ring finger on his right hand, and the glass sheen of his left eye, a shade paler brown than his right. He'd shown Dan it was fake on his first visit to Stihl's, when he found the glass eye staring up at him from his whiskey glass, the one eyed man himself breathless with laughter in the back room. He was a jokester and a prankster, who liked to tell people he'd lost the bits of himself in some of the most hidden, best kept secret gambling circles that ran both gold and red.

While at night, the pub was bright and obnoxious, the raucous sometimes echoing all the way up to his cabin, in the afternoon, there were only a handful of people visiting Stihl's today. Several were still wrapped tightly in their fur coats and hats and robes, most were quiet, eyes fixed on their mugs and glasses, lost in their own stories and worlds, sparing him a quick glance as he paused at the door to kick the snow off his boots on the frame. 'Must be new, off the boat today,' he thought, scanning them before turning his eyes to the bar. Most everyone coming in from the icy docks where the ships drew port walked into Geflen staring at their shoes, their faces gaunt and drawn. While he occassionally wondered why they were so gloomy, he never really cared to ask. Refuges, maybe, but so many? It was odd, but it was rare he gave it a thought.

He spotted the brilliant splash of color of Gianna's flowers they second he looked at the bar. She had the same posture as everyone else; hunched, elbows tucked in, as though guarding...something. Dan took the stool next to her, took his long silver pipe out of thin air, and waved it at Stihl, down at the other end of the counter. Tucking it into his lips, the one eyed bartender strolled down, struck a match from underneath the bar, and lit the saraelian's pipe.

"Glass of Knockwood, on the rocks, no fucking eye please."

"You're no fun, you big bruiser!" Stihl laughed and spun away, rubbing his hands into a dingy old towel he had tossed over his left shoulder. He turned just slightly towards Gianna, exhaling a plume of smoke from the corner of his mouth, away from her. He blinked slowly, groping about in his head, stumbling and falling. Being in Geflen had taught him to say thanks again, after years of taking whatever he wanted, but his time hadn't tutored him on how to apologize.

"Uh...sorry I pointed my gun at your face." She didn't move at first, and for a second, Dan thought she might be sleeping, passed out early in the day at the counter. But then, she turned her head to him, and from from the sleepy smile on her face, and the droop of her eyelids, he could tell she'd been here since she'd stormed away from his cabin.

"Bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only the lucky ones." Stihl came back, and set down the glass of Coronian Knockwood whiskey in front of it, both his eyes closed. Dan's lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl and he pulled the glass towards him, but before he could see if the whiskey was going to watch him while he drank, Stihl popped his eyes open and laughed loudly as he turned away once again, off to wipe down some of the tables. Gianna lifted her own glass into the air, the liquid sloshing and nearly splashing out of it. Dan lifted his and they clinked the glasses together in a toast.

"To the lucky ones," She announced, but her voice had gone flat, the drunken humor quickly bleeding away.