When you care not where you roam, every road will lead you home. (solo)

[The Crooked Knight]

The Grym reached down into the mists, it’s overly long arms created in a misshapen effigy of a man, and drew out a large hatchet, lifting it with a rumbling chuckle escaping the over-sized mouth.

The wolf seemed unsure of what to do next, it had seen the lone, frail traveler as an easy meal. Upon seeing the strange thing with the large weapon come out of nowhere, it began to hesitate.

As the wolf weighed its options, the storyteller sat down on the rocks once again, his clay pipe casting an orange glow over the grinning visage.

The Grym lunged at the wolf, swinging the large ax down attempting to split the wolf in half, just like the story. The beast narrowly managed to duck aside, receiving only a glancing blow to its hind leg that caused an anguished yelp of pain.

The wounded animal, unable to use its usual trick of circling and darting any longer, gave up all pretense and simply lunged at the Grym, attempting to take the dangerous foe down before it could harm it any further.

The Grym was knocked to the ground as the wolf bit and clawed at it’s arm. The creature, appearing to be made of the same straw that protruded from its shirt, seemed merely inconvenienced by the loss of the arm, and with a ripping sound, knocked the beast off it.

The scene would have looked grisly from an outsider’s point of view, a man with a head wound sitting on a rock, another man, standing with an ax in one hand, and his other in the maw of a large wolf.

The Grym walked closer to the wolf, it’s large steps covering ground quickly, as it raised the ax once more. This time it brought the ax down on the wolf squarely on the side, causing a sizable wound to the beast, and causing another loud yelp.

The wolf at this point, had to struggle to rise, as the blood left swiftly through the wound. It took only one more swing of the large ax to finish the beast, and with the battle finished, the Grym turned its empty, soulless eyes back on Sketch.

Sketch was waiting, hoping that this one would attempt to speak to him as well. To his sorrow, the creature only lifted it’s ax over its shoulder, took it’s arm off the ground, and retreated backwards into the mists, a deep laugh echoing through the darkness of the woods.

[The Crooked Knight]

Sketch stood up from the rocks, and walked over to the dead body of the wolf. He took his walking stick and poked it’s side. No response came from the body.
He bent down and examined the body, looking it over carefully. The auburn beast seemed abnormal to Sketch. It was larger than a normal wolf by about 100 pounds, it’s teeth were too long and exaggerated. And to top it off, it was unusual for a wolf to hunt alone.

Sketch stood up, and brushed the dirt off his clothes. He lifted his head to the cut on his forehead, and brought his fingers back covered with a decent amount of blood. “Bloody head wounds…Bleed like crazy…”He muttered to himself.

Not knowing how far away from the next town he was, he cleared the brush from a large circle, and set up a small fire. He set water to boil as he looked around. He found a few wild onions growing near the rocks he’d sat upon before, and cut some bark from a rather lively white oak.

He made a thin decoction of the onions and bark, letting the water simmer for a while. He allowed the juice to cool as the took strips of cloth and tried to clean them with a small amount of lye. After the water had cooled, he soaked it up in the clean cloths and began to clean the cut on his forehead, and treat the various other
small scrapes he’d received.

Sketch always tried to be careful when it came to injury, he’d heard many stories about campers getting into dreadful situations just because they lacked the basic common sense to not run around the woods bleeding all over.

He looked over at the wolf once more as the fire went on, contemplating if the meat was any good, and decided against it. Strange meat rarely agreed with him, and that wolf was a textbook example of “strange”.

As the over cast sky darkened into night, Sketch sat down and cooked some of the wild onions over the fire, with his usual fare of trail rations. The night was quiet, not a sound had been made since the wolf appeared, yet Sketch had a hard time sleeping, both from the memory of the last night, and from the prospect of having more wolves try to ambush him.

Once dawn had risen, Sketch got up, and rubbed the weariness from his eyes, and packed his campsite up. He attempted to find his way back to the roadside, and continue back towards the next village.