Ode to the Wilds

[Rig 17580]

 

The tree line rose across the horizon as a lone bearded figure traversed the wilds, his sea green eyes examining his surroundings. He stooped low beneath a tree as the sun in the distance began its descent, the orange tinge in the skies reflecting as the sun fell, his tall frame resting idly against the base of the tree trunk. The pilgrimage to Athera had not gone smoothly, as he was marooned by the coast of Old Oren weeks earlier. 

 

Travel was difficult and wherever he went, he was mortified to find places he had once roamed as a youth devastated by floods, fires, and wracked by instability. As he found himself roaming the woodlands encompassing Laureh’linn, he pondered his next move. He had now arrived at the place of his reckoning. The place his life had truly begun following his escape from slavery. In these same woods centuries before he was among the guerrilla fighters who launched raids on Haelun’or, and whereupon the Sohaer Kalenz Uradir and his lackeys had slain King Andrik Vydra resulting in the forcible imperialization of the Elven Realm by King of the Kingdom of Oren Olivier de Savoie. 

 

These thoughts plagued Leatherback endlessly now as he was struck by a sense of nostalgia. Of love, of self-professed admittance that the boy he had been here no longer existed. He purged himself of his sentimentality and continued his journey into the old barrow which was once his home. Covered with cobwebs and dust, the aged warrior sneezed as he paced down the steps into the burrow beneath the tree. The door was broken and where he had once lived was worn down, with piles of his old things remaining in the trove.

 

Leatherback reclaimed one such belonging. A pendant of intrinsic value to him, a gift from his ailing mother in her final days, before she was killed by her dementia. Although the Bronze Code forbade emotion, he felt a surge of guilt for what had happened. Her death was on his conscience, but that too he purged from his system as he pondered his master the Owl Druid’s words from last they spoke. He remembered his vision, and the things that it entailed. 

 

The old elf left the burrow and resumed his search. Long had Leatherback been reclaimed by the wilds, beset upon by the wrath of nature. He had struggled to remain properly fed throughout his journey, though he was an adept scavenger. Running his hands through his beard, the elf journeyed now away from the city and deep into the woods once more. The night had fallen hours ago but he felt no fear. As Brother Shadow had once told him, there was nothing in the world that could be feared, as death was inevitable and would come whenever it deemed fit. 

 

Death. Arianna. Valor. Carellith. His mother. Illynora. It seemed that all those he loved perished endlessly, and he was destined to be alone. His other children would die as well for his crimes, and for a moment he thought that perhaps his entire line would be extinguished before his very eyes for his treason against the Gods. 

 

Leatherback froze however as he heard howling in the distance. It was a soft noise, barely audible to him. He paced quickly for the source of the noise before he came across the creature, a small wolf-like animal. No, he thought to himself, not a wolf. The vision came to mind as he remembered that feeling of being carried adrift in the skies. The animal he witnessed was a coyote, and his quest had finally borne fruit. Leatherback knew it was his destiny to comfort this creature, a whelp left behind. He gripped it by the skin of its neck and hoisted it up, before carrying it off back to the old hovel. Dubbing the creature in his mind as ‘Kairn’, he fed the small creature strips of regurgitated bird flesh, while saving the bulk of the meat for himself. Over time he struggled to feed them both, but it did not matter to him. He whelped the beast until it could hunt on its own and the two of them formed a pack. Although remaining aloof, the worn down Leatherback fancied himself the King of the Coyotes, the Chief, the Alpha. As he taught Kairn to rule, the beast languished in silence, coveting the position and all it would bring the beast. 

 

A weaker, baser creature, Kairn never lost sight of the path. As Leatherback guided the creature he only felt envy of his strength, but was faced with a dilemma: the Self. It was within its nature to seek opportunity, and there was no ability to rise within this pack as long as the juggernaut that was Leatherback survived. For the duration of nine months the two endured this, before Leatherback would defend them both from the wrath of an angry bear. With a spear grasped in his hands he bade the creature adieu, drawing blood over and over in successive moments. He regaled himself with the tale of his first bear fight with Kalina, where they had invaded a bear’s den in Vailor. But henceforth he was not that boy, and he knew he would survive this encounter. However, when he was struck in the creature’s dying throes he now bore a grievous wound, and now recuperated on the floor as his beast abandoned him. Snarling beneath his breath as Kairn left him, he swore he would have vengeance upon the beast for its betrayal, its egregious abandonment of its chief. He was filled with fury at the disloyalty. And it would be paid for in blood, as he took his time to recover, nesting himself in another old burrow as he fermented his rage. He struggled now with breathing after his encounter with the bear, but it mattered little to him. Kairn had promised his loyalty, and repaid him with betrayal. 

 

For once Leatherback called upon his gift. First he asked the trees where the creature had gone, and he found himself moving southward to the hilly countryside, a spot that once had paved roads intersecting between the Red Rose Tavern and the bridge. It was there he had found his opponent and the two battled. Their bond was strong, and their semblance made them one in the same. That day Leatherback faced his own cowardice, his fear of betrayal, his hatred of those who had wronged him. Kairn, the beast, sought only to covet and destroy -- there was no speck of loyalty within the beast, only the desire to be the pack leader at all costs.

 

Leatherback felt Kairn’s infernal bite dig into the flesh of his one remaining arm, tearing through flesh and sinew with terrible proficiency. But he exacted his toll and wrapped his metal fingers about the creature’s throat, before wringing out the beast’s life beneath him and striking it in the cranium with his steel elbow. Kairn was dead and Leatherback was alive. The infernal foe had been defeated, and now Leatherback would realize his destiny. Within old Laureh’linn, the place of his greatest defeat, he had found himself. And now astride the lands that once brought him much dismay, where he had dueled the King of Oren and been handily ridiculed by his own kinsmen, he slew himself and returned himself to balance. He mourned the death of a piece of himself, but knew it would not be forever. He left those lands, possibly forever to return to the land of the living rather than the realm of the damned, garbed with the pelt of the beast atop his shoulders as he returned to his homeland.