TO BE KRUGLY

[framalam 837]

 

 

 

---

 

---

The sands of the north are not sands at all, but gelid wastes of white. Teal tinged outcrops of ice jut from corries, where the Southron’s spires claw their way from the dunes to the skies. It is the blood of the Firstborn that inextricably ties the Urukim together all the same: at the peak of peaks, the seers, augurs, and shamans meet, whether in snow or sand. The blood, the sacred grizh of their progenitor, loops what would be a scattered diaspora of colored tusked beasts into their hordes, and clans. It is their blood to which they owe their life, in birth, and in life itself. An Uruk alone is nothing but prey to the land, just as the parched gazelle sauntering through the torrid gales that blow low through the wadis is ripe for conquest, slaughter, and feast.

 

So it is in the lowest steeped heads, tusks pointed down in an act of pure submission to the elements, that any Uruk should abandon his horde. It is in shame that you leave. Shame, on your head, on your blood, that you incur onto yourself, and the Oldfather. Shame, shame, shame, but in shame, the humility to forget your pride, and forget yourself. So the tribes of man may never know the exultation found through the shame of the Uruk, through the poisoned kiss of Iblees on their skin, on how it made their jaws jut out to maws, how it made of their teeth tusks like the beasts they conquered. 

 

 

---

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA45VJgQyLk

 

I remarked a lone straggler, a figure in the desert cloaked in tattered robes, and despite the carmine hue of the ferrous sands, that which once was Iron Horde, he persisted as a blanched pillar. The soft ridges, accumulations themselves of millions of small, silt sediments, the floor of an ancient sea, bowed low at his transgression. They gave way to him, the foreigner, reneging on the exodus of his peoples.

Their palette, their make, the metals of their blood, so too they claimed, was unlike that around them. I heard long of the Greentide, but I saw little green. The red of one clan, the green of the first persisted, but more so I saw the tans, teals, violets. Of this colour though, I only saw him: the pale white of purity that betrayed the lands he roamed.

 

 

---

 

To all my children, to the Firstborn, those forsworn of the snow, the exile, I am sorry. I have wronged you and left you pasangs upon pasangs from home, so far that even the stars may not guide you. But know this: I broke no promise. The clans have been shattered by us, as all was before the first sons of Krug. I have led our people away from the oblivion that was the wastes, and I have served my duty as Waghtinka, and relinquished it. There is need no longer to run from our brother sand, for he is us, and we are him; there is need no longer to run from brother lotus, for he is us, and we are him; all our songs are one. I am happy, at least, that we are one.

 

But Skalvor leaves all the same. The augur has shown me that true reflection comes in isolation in hermitage. This is what Krug saw, away on his sandskitter, and here is where he discovered death. The Oldfather saw that he was weak, and he hated it, so he died. I have discovered there is more to discover. I will return to the northmont, the snowcapped valleys and moraines of our home, and I will return to the sands, to the great slate pyres that I have shepherded you to, and I will carry with me the words of the stars, of the snow, and of the flame. I will speak them, as I write them here.

 

Let the stars and their humming guide me back where they wish me to go. To the augur: I will not let your song fade from the thrum of my heart. It will always follow the beat of yours, and the beat of the Firstborn’s.

 

Hearken, Firstborn, and let your heart of hearts sing our song.

 

 

---

 

I would have to think he knows of my trailing him, by his awareness of all else around him, and, also, of the awareness of all around him to his passing through. The sweltering glare above me prevents all hopes of horripilation, yet the grand cats, those prides, raise their backs as if fearful as I follow his tracks. They stare at me with great amber, accusing discs, as if they know. Whether they speak to me, or the pale one, I do not know. I saw this one once, as he chased from out the great Orcish mountain bastion a boy of my ilk. He would know of my intent by the swarth of my skin.

 

A great trepidation overcomes me as I continue along his swiftly evanesced steps, each thudded imprint into the sands filled by more sand thereafter, as if there was nothing to remember. This, I would say, is the great differentiator, the one factor to split us two, that I am of my land, following him to his, as he was of his land, having followed to mine.

I know little of this Urk. I have heard him bark the vile perversions of Common, the civilised descendant’s tongue, that his kind love to bastardise, make their own, and I have seen them listen. I have seen the spear of the Kingmaker in his hand, and I have heard its boom.

 

It is distinct, the clap from that blackened pike. Distinct, in that even the rockfalls that follow the rains, with boulder and stone pouring from through the great canyons of the wadis, do not rumble like it. They do not make me wince, and rise from my sleep, hand pulled by instinct to my hip for a sheathed blade not there.

 

And yet, despite all and every ominous warning, this quarry is mine. I feel no fear as I gander on his nape for miles, and miles after. No man is greater than death, and no Orc either.

 

 

---

 

I feel no fear as I feel his eyes on me. Skalvor is chief, and a chief is strong, as he was Waghtinka of the Thaug’Maugrim, as he was Rex of all peoples of the grizh of Krug. He is weak. Skalvor has seen and slain many like him, those Qalasheen pests that only seek to irritate the wounds the Hyspians levy on our land. I wander, but as Skalvor wanders, he hears still the feats of the augur Grommash. His absence was unannounced, but necessary. To exemplify Krug is to exemplify him holistically, not only in the feats, and the glory, and the honor, but in the faults, and in the absences, in the departure and death.

 

Skalvor has not slain Iblees, but Ibleesians, and he has not raised sons, but brothers, but Skalvor will be as Krugly as he can, more Krugly than the zhara, and the herald of a new age. I have decided this for myself, oh brothers. The walk will be long, many years. I have tracked it with the cartography of Gharak’yar, though I lament her loyalty to her clan. I have much to contemplate. Skalvor must ponder in hermitage, as Grommash did.

 

There was little fortuitous of the era that I left in. Many may call Skalvor neglectful, but he is rex, and he is the head of the lion, of the bull, and of the wolf. The head, which would say who to hunt and when to hunt and where to hunt, and where not to. The head which, before all he has heard of Grommash, would have negotiated the expulsion of the Hyspians. Tattered pages have not reached me more than whispers, but the news has reached me all the same, and I suppose I must be pleased.

 

The etchings in the spear grow most Unurukim sentiments deep within my heart of hearts. I feel fear rumbling, those whispers of the Liespeaker. I run my fingers over embossments, and Skalvor feels the successes of his fathers. Of the Rex hammer, he feels the successes of his fathers, and he is incomplete. 

 

He is not enough. I am not enough, to be Skalvor, where I must be Krug. Skalvor is chief, and he is rex, but should chief be rex where Krug never was?

Please, stars, answer Skalvor, where my thoughts answer me with only the noise, the faint hum of the space between you all.

 

 

 

---

---

Spoiler

 

Civilisation granted me a brief respite from my tracking. No man raised arms against the pale orc as he swept through their lands. He stole, from some, and ate from exposed crops in others, and he always, somehow, remained in the forests. These lands are not mine, I know not of their beasts, nor their people, nor their tongues, nor their gods, and I feel alien. I am alien, in all truth.

 

They look at my skin and they hate. They hate for no reason but my skin, for the fact I am not them, I am different, I am other, and it is in these heartlands that I feel most like my prey. For once, I am alien like he is. I am no son of Horen, but son only of Owyn, and I feel that He has forsaken me in these lands afar. He has, by no means though, forsaken the robed man before me. Among the great pines I saw his countenance, for once.

 

His eyes were blue, and not only his pupils, but all of it. Otherworldly. I love my wife, (of course!) so when I say I am attracted, I mean it by this word: otherworldly so. He is not of my lands, this I know, but I doubt now if he is of my world. He wields, as far as I have gathered, the weapon of the Kingmaker, of Rhak, and of Rue, of the imbecile clans Lur and Dom, but by his side, there is the mallet which my fathers have warned me of.

In the forests, I saw it first. A spark, from a strike, and from that spark, a supernova of flame spun out around him in some raging inferno, surrounding him in a whirlwind tempest that singed every inch of green that surrounded him to a dead, decaying black. He made sure I saw, I feel, and I have no doubt he saw the reflection of the sun-light in my eyes, that beaming brilliance that shone directly back unto him.

 

One Bowie, a peoples I have heard greatly of, of their daggers, of their bows, and of their concoctions, their tinctures that aid them in their hunts, told me of him. Skalvor, they said, friend of their Tar - some stupid northerner term for king - and a complacent fighter. A prey ripe for taking. Weak. Weak, weak, weak, and for this, I will kill him. For his occupation of my land, I will kill him.

 

 

---

 

There is a melancholy in traversing lands you once had with brothers, alone. A site where I once would have roasted a hog alongside Uzgk, alongside Grugmak, Moktar, every Thrag that had accompanied me, and those that went back north. Dakag. I am sorry, brother, that the rexdom I forged was not to your liking. Not to any seer’s liking, for that matter, and Ukakaal, I am so sorry. For I have brought to you a people ready for the sands, and I have given you only half of what I promised. I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry, but my apologies will never be enough, nor will I ever utter them.

 

For the first time, brothers, whoever chances upon Skalvor’s writings-journal, I feel shame. Shame, not of my people, or of my actions, but of my soul. That soul which the Liespeaker cursed. The Northmont will bear witness to my redemption soon. The glades of the Numenaranye are beautiful, in their own way. They remind Skalvor of the northern pines that dot the downward slopes of Ailmere, those old saplings arching and creaking toward the Crows, and their smaller cousins gasping for air, and warmth, on the fringe knolls of the valleys. They remind me of home.

 

 

I write in my own grizh beneath the boughs of this ancient fir, its trunk long mossed, and moistened, unlike any imitator of the south. Its bark is riddled with the scars of the centuries, the claiming of its roots by an ouros, or a hound, or a pack, the pecker’s marks leaving a miller’s dust far from any saw. The cold is sharper here than the winds of Skalvor’s youth, the biting gales that etched the frosted grooves into his skin. My pelts do no more than my skin, here. Where they were a hindrance in heat, they are a hindrance in frost. It is not Krug, it is not me. It is else. All is still here, brothers, and I feel expectantly so. Expectantly silent to watch my every move, and await my mistake, to pounce. I know it is what I would do.

 

I take no care to this gnawing foreign, zhara feel of fear. I did not feel it when I was entrapped in the marble gates of this land’s hold, and I will not feel it as my pursuer follows the trampled leaves and branches, the downtrodden earth I leave, and the parted twigs that snap at my passing. The Northmont awaits me, and the stars stay watchful. If they do not answer, I will demand it in the howl of the storms to come.

If this be the last of Skalvor’s words, then let them be read not with the numbing cold of mourning, but with fire. Let them be sung in the tongues of the Firstborn, carried on the wind to those who still remember what it means to walk the path of Krug. And if I am to be forgotten, let it be in deed, not in spirit. Let my yukar immortalise me, and my ashes feed the wind, earth, and snow.

For Skalvor walks still. And he will walk until the end.

 

---

As the every stage of the pines’ crowns grew fettered with white powder, weighed down, their needles pointed with accusatory malice at the soil, and travellers, beneath; as the sun dimmed behind a gray sheet of cloud, only its faint smile warming my back; as the air grew more feisty, meandering as it swept through pockets of warmth and cool, then through the clothing I so thought sealed, I followed still.

Evidently, the wraps of the south, designed to keep the air billowing within me as to wipe the sweat off skin never suited for the sun scorched sands, all swell grains sifting along my skin… they were never made for here. I was never made for here. He… look at him. The snow is him, he is the snow. The sun beams off of him, and the land around him opens its arms wide to embrace him, pull him in, make him one with itself. He was not made, for if anything, for the sands he came from.Perhaps this is why he marches north. I know now of his kinghood, and my mouth waters at the glory of this kill. I worry, only, that he is to bring me somewhere unfit for his death. Brutes, savages, but warriors, great warriors, all the greenskins tend to be. I suppose, though, he is not green skinned.

The people here are unlike mine own. They are proud, but unpatriotic, kind, but unwelcoming, faithful, but not devout. There is reason in their monniker, their epithet, of crow. All too fitting, what my babu said of them, ‘They will watch, and they will give you wide smiles and grins and meads, but no Raev will love a foreigner. No Raev will love you, as we would our guests.’ Or something of that sort. He would not mind my paraphrasing, peace be upon him. May he smile on me again from the Skies.

There is no concept of honorary, of wageni, of any guest friendship. Here, again, I find kinhood in my enemies from the south.

 

---

Brothers! I see it now. I see it cresting through the clouds over Lake Mazh’nagran, its great epilimnion shining every minute glimmer of light back to the sky. Back to me. I am this land, this land is I, and there is nowhere else I’d rather be. I feel guilt in my own joy, of course, but… there is so much joy! The tracker behind me, let him track. I would much rather a southron, southron through and through who was born, bled, and raised there, see the glory of our home, than keep him in the piles of dung he lives in!

Of course, I mean not to insult the south. The taint of Hyspia will never be expunged, but I suppose it can be mitigated with the sand-peace. The zhara taint on our lands must not be purged, but cleansed. Treated, diluted, to be as pure as the meltwater of the great caps of Ailmere. Oh, how I missed this water!

Allfather above, allfather, hearken! Why was this not the first land of our people? When the great prophet of Mauloch, Krozhad, sought the spirits of the north in the Stargush, he saw nothing but beauty! They may call him dark, necrophage, warlock, but we know! He was our seer, he was the first, and he led our people, so why could you not do the same, allfather? These lands are ours. Ours, and ours alone, where the sands of the south are contested, poisoned. Poisoned, father, poisoned.

The sky never responds to me. The Northmont will, I hope. I see it, like Skalvor wrote before, I see its peak cresting through the clouds, towering above its brothers. Krugly, the northmont is krugly. Strong, hewn of stone, and ember, and frost, and the great movements of the Disc beneath it, and the shaping of the battles of the skies, and it stays the strongest. It grew the most, strained the hardest, toiled, toiled toiled toiled against the earth and dirt and stone around it, for it had to. And for all its work, it is here. Glorious. Honorable.

Look well, tracker. Be humbled, and know only a fool follows a man to his home with a knife in his hand.

 

---

---

Spoiler

 

I see my breath with every step. Odd, that something I take so for granted is visible, now before me. I am fragile, I realise. My breath is tangible, visible, like a waning spirit, tethered just barely by my lungs to my own being. Each wheeze - I wheeze now, the air here is far too cold - vanishes far too quickly. Devoured. By the night, by the wind, by some inevitability of the land that surrounds. I suddenly realise I am not home. I do not know this land, as I knew the sands and I wandered around him like a lion, pawing its prey in teasing delight, but he does. How much of me has he taken already? How many steps, how many days? 

My simi digs into my thigh. I should have padded the hilt more. My hand wraps around it, as if it will somehow anchor me to the warmth within. Every step, every one, drives it further, and further, and further into the soft mass of flesh just above my muscle. Flesh that hurts, flesh that grows sore after metal smacks it into it for the hundredth time. I fear the frost creeps into the hilt, as it creeps into me. That my sword becomes brittle in this weather. I have never fought this far north. Do the laws of nature change as nature changes? Am I to change, to perish, to venture so far from where He put me?

How much longer before I fade, perish? Before I too succumb, like all these putrid, yet somehow bland smelling corpses and carrion that dot the roads here. Ominous banners peer down at me. Sneering, even. Is this his kingdom? Is he king of two? Oh, God above, let him send no wicked legions to strike me down. If he so easily subjugated the beasts of the south, what beasts does he command here? Still. Still, I must remember: a king dies all the same. Sometimes, I think I hear whispers on the wind, as it whooshes through each striation on the dark, cold rock around me. ‘Turn away’, they hiss, ‘this land is not yours’, they murmur, curling around the curve of my ear in an alien closeness.

I cannot help but feel so many men have done what I do now, and have died doing it. I have heard of the great drakes of the north, of the liches, of the Black Sun, and I am afraid. Of the prey before me, I am afraid. This is home to him, this fear. And he knows I feel it. I feel his eyes boring through the back of his head, taunting me. They are sapphires in the cloud, breaking through the blank bleakness, and they see me. They see me!

Yet still, I move. If I stop, what was the point all along? I will be home soon, mpenzi, and I will avenge our people. This is my reason.

 

---

He is coming. I know he is coming. He has been beleaguered by the elements. The clouds shift above him, my old friends hinting at his every step. Sandals have no use in snow, fool. Sink, sink, and sink and wallow in the gravity of your mistake. Skalvor is your mistake, I am your mistake, and you will pay for it, your insolence. He stirs the land like a novice. No novelty that should be admired, but arrogant inexperience that should be punished. He pokes the great beast that is Ailmere, with our dragons, and our dead, and our witches, and he continues! He steps on the sleeping body, circles it as if it is his to feast on.

The banners of the Harrower do not sneer, they mark him. They mark his place in the necropolis beneath the snow he knows not he walks on, and knows not he will find his final rest in. He knows not of the necrophages that will raise his body from the firn, puppeteer him to their wicked, Ibleesian wills, who hum of bones, men unmade, of armies of steel splintered and shattered like brittle ice: he does not listen. I have known so many like him, and I have cut them down, bloodied them, and the land has swallowed them without a sound.

This one, though, he is different. He lingers, somehow. He knows he is different, that he does not belong - he stays anyway. He does not turn back, and that is dangerous. Not because he is stronger, larger, quicker, more intelligent, or better in any capacity than those before him, but because he does not yet know he is dead. A man like that will fight harder than he should. The cold has found its way into the rex hammer, and the gael bolt, the frostbitten wood of both wounding my weary palm. The blades of the south seem fragile here, but they will bite the same way they always do: sharper, crueler, but bite like metal all the same. He will still bleed the same color as the others, still break the same, and I will stomp his face into the same hungry dirt. I will feed the dirt with you.

And yet, I wait for you. Why? I know it is not out of mercy, not out of fear. I wait for something I cannot name, something in the space between the stars, in the pauses between the hums of the spheres, in the dry rustle of no leaves on a dead tree, in the vacant caw of a crow’s corpse, the lolling tongue of a long dead dog, in the constant whoosh of the blizzard that surrounds. Something of my home spares you. Perhaps, after so many years, I am tired of being the end of things. Perhaps the augur has saved me, the Kru’un has saved me, and my ultimate imitation of my progenitor has cast out Iblees from my soul. Perhaps for once I want to meet the man who can withstand the cold.

 

 

---

Lord above, why do you work against me so? Mercy, please. The cold, the wind, the snow, it is all too much. I slew a wolf, pelted it, wrapped myself in its uncured skin, and still my bones rattle away. This blizzard. My chase! My chase has been thrown off, all effort in vain for the storm that fell upon us. The storm that falls eternally upon Ailmere, of course he would come here. I cannot follow through this, I cannot see… well, I can. The faintest outline of footprints, of where snow wasn’t allowed to fall for quite as long, snaking its way alongside a ridge upward. I think. I do not know if these are him, or a beast. There are more footprints, or are they from rocks, from snowfall? Lord, show me where.

You are out here somewhere, cretin. You have not lost me, you never will lose me; not in my home, not in yours. I will find you. Did you turn back? Did you fall into the snow, hiding, in an attempt to lose me? I knew your people were foolish, but I never knew just how foolish, you oaf. I will… did you turn back? Did you double back on your own footsteps? Is this why I cannot find you? You… I… you are far too fat to disappear! You cannot merely vanish into the land after so long, you coward! You do not fight… Lord… grant me refuge. What honor is there in surrendering yourself to the land?

I must master my emotions, mpenzi, for even if they are the drive to my hunt, in the wastes, they will drive me to mania. Shelter. Sightlines. Vantage points. This storm will relent if I climb high enough to avoid it, or if I sleep long enough to outlast it. At this intensity, it surely cannot last long. This reminds me of the rain days in the desert. Heavy, sudden, but instantaneous. A flash of nature. It will not last forever, I know this. There is not enough water in five worlds for this much snow. I heard rumors, on the fringes of Camp Tatiyana, of northern keeps of the Raev, of the kobolds, of phantoms and other beasts. Abandoned and blackened wet stone, but shelter all the same.

I freeze. If not by the cold, then by my own decision. My lungs feel so small in this blizzard. I feel as if the cold swallows them up, a ravaging numbing that paralyses. I… I must breathe, though, and focus. Think. Collect myself. My surroundings are blanketed in thick fog, then in the constant downpour of thick flakes from the sky, column upon column of continuous fall until I am enveloped by an impermeable ring of white. I am no weakling. My fingers are stiffened, by the cold too, I think. I cannot- if he chose to fight me, I would not be able to swing at full force. These things I must think of. Even as I look up, there is nothing. The faint shapes of ridges, peaks, maybe trees, small saplings.

And… at the edge of one ridge, oh yes, a rough, surely not natural at all, no, a roughened, dark shape, could it be a shadow? No! No, no, it is too structured, too deliberate, oh the view I would have from there! As I squint, I see barely the jutting of towers from the body, of caved in walls. Half swallowed, but half remaining. The ridge is steep, but my legs have been taken by the Lord to push me on. The burn I feel, I adore it, the first warmth I have felt in the weeks I have been up here. The snow claws at my feet, trying to drink me in, pull me down like the hands of the dead that are sure to have died here, but I do not care! Bless you, Lord! The pelt around my neck has stiffened with the snowfall, its fur frozen frigid on my shoulders, the smack of the smell of death rich on the ever gaping maw of this beast. I can smell its last breath, I swear, and its blood grazes the tip of every hair, frozen forever. So damp, so heavy, but I must keep it, lest I die. 

My lungs shrink more. Worse, still, with my head down, each breath clouds in front of me to obscure my sight. It is not far now, I see… doors, maybe. One grand portcullis smashed and pried half open, but a door, still. I do not see his footprints here, I am sure, though, in the morning, I will see his tracks from atop these towers. The wind howls again, stabbing through the cracks in the stone like a righteous flood, livening the long dead keep, but it looks abandoned. Surely abandoned, for no guard has yet shot at me for my trespass, as I heave myself onto the door and fall into the great dark within.

I have reached the long dead halls of my refuge. A shattered archway, columns warped and collapsed, with a roof that still hangs overhead stubbornly, and precariously. The blizzard is muffled behind me, now. A silence has taken me. Taken this place. Taken, I mean, occupied, in every sense of the word. It feels like an invader. I see the remains of something on the floor, a battle, a feast, a banal day, I do not know. Finally, I let my chest relax. A long, drawn out breath comes from me, and fogs from the light in the roof. Safety! Everything is caked in dust, everything. Of course, a few tables are clean, some bowls overturned, looters, I would think. There are stairs in the far corner. There… I see a footprint. Too large to be mine. I know this shape, even in its makers absence. Dust… the banister, there is no… dust. And the smell. The air is not dead, it is wet. Not wet by the snow, but, damp. Sweaty, musty… Orc-y.

 

He lingers here. Or something else, something old, ancient, something lingers. All sense of safety has quickly retreated back from my heart, and it drums against my chest like a war drum, shaking my ribs with every thump, a dull ache in the frozen hollow of my chest. I hear it, then. Not the wind. Not the creak of oak. Not the clatter of some vermin. A footstep. Close. Too close. I swivel on my feet. There is nothing. Nothing! A bowl rolls on the floor, I must have… yes, I must have knocked it free with a numbed hand. And that footprint. I inch closer, and, it seems it was a beast after all! Far too small to be the Uruk’s, and, on top of all that… dusted over. Yes, that is… that is dusted over, I believe. I… I just saw it, didn’t I? The stench. It’s in my furs. It’s- it’s mine. He cannot be here, there is no chance I… I tracked him. He is not here! I lay out my pack on the ground. I have my axe. I have my rations, my jerky, my water, my wine, my dates. I have my bedroll. I have my furs. The silence is so loud here, mpenzi, I wish I could… I… I rap my fingers against my axe. Lord, I am paranoid. A shaky breath comes from out me again, and for the first time in eons, I laugh! Heartily, too, mpenzi, with the warmth filling my chest. It is so freeing to shake my head at myself, wag away my worries with a finger, just like babu. All is still. All is well.

 

 I lay back in my roll, and the boards creak under my weight. They whine, and I chuckle, for how much they sound like ours at home. Then they whine again. I freeze. Another step. But I did not move. That means-

 

---

“Ah.” his voice cuts through the dark.

 

---

---

“Ah.” My breath barely disturbs the air with the faintest, spectral fog. “There it is.” I smile, slow, deliberate. Let the firelight catch on my tusks. Let him see how long I have been waiting. His fire is dim. I am brighter than he is, in body and mind. Yes, my zhara, let your own failure wash over you. He stiffens. A good hunter is always calm. Perhaps I overestimated him. His head swivels wildly, spinning around to where I spoke, to where I walk, panicking as his eyes try desperately to adjust to the light. He is slipping. I see his instincts act. Instinct. He scampers to fetch his weapon, but I am too far, the keep is too dark for him to see me. Instinct is slow. “Far, far, too slow.”  I give him a helping hand again. Locate me, little hunter, try. Have you not tried for weeks, now? I watch him like a beast before my spear. Will he lunge? Will he flee? Will he beg? For now, he does nothing. His fingers tap the blade of his axe, over and over, but he never grabs it. He stays still. His tremors level out. He breathes.

 

You are listening. Good. Keep listening. Skalvor shifts his weight slightly, and the boards creak beneath him. A deliberate creak. The tracker does what the rex expects him to. His breath shudders again, and his fingers wrap around the shaft of his axe like an infant clinging to his mother’s hand, though not yet drawing it. Still unsure, little tracker. You are right to be. I let my voice out from my chest, slipping it out into the silence between us. Low. Unhurried. “Oh, don’t stop now!” I taunt.

 

And he turns! Good, good! He turns - too slow. There is no need to taunt him again. He knows he is too slow. A flash of movement. He rises. He means to rise. I close the distance in a heartbeat, splitting the air between us, cracking through the violent raps of his heart on his chest like the skies are torn asunder. My weight drives forward. I slam him to the ground before he can breathe again.  He thrashes beneath me, and I grin down at him, all matter of spittle that gathered in anticipation dripping down my tusks, down my chin. I am heavier: he knows, I know. I know how to pin him down. I know how to wrap my hand around his throat and squeeze out every drop of life from him. My knee - oh, how I love the viscera of it, bone on muscle - grinds into his ribs and he wheezes like a stag. Pathetic. His limbs strain, his nails scratch horribly at my skin, but it is too rough, too thick, and I am unmoved. 

 

He bares his teeth. Good. He is angry. I prefer that over pleading. I cock my head at him, drawing in the features of my prey, as you always must. Is he healthy? His face is thin, gaunt, perhaps from the chase. His muscles seem atrophied. He was stronger, quicker in the sands. I do not speak. Not yet. I see myself in his eyes, the fear in them, too. His pupils have grown big as plates. Look at me, tracker. Look at what caught you. I dig my knee in a little more, I let him feel the silence, the futility, the weight of his failure pressing into his bones. Then, finally, I lean in, letting my words spill into his soul. “How far did you think you would get?”

 

Silence. The fight is still in him. I should close more of his air off. I hear him wheezing already. Was the cold too much for your lungs, little cub? The silence, the thick, dead air of the church fills his throat like gravel, like the coarsely ground dust of bones. His chest heaves again, his ribs straining, the smallest fibres creaking and cracking as I press harder. Still. He does not answer. I cock my head again. “Mm. Not very far, then.” I lean in further, letting the heat, the damp of my breath, thaw the frost of his skin. “You have been running a long time, little hunter.” I cannot help but grin. How pathetic. A little cornered doe, wearing a wolf’s pelt as if it would endow him with the spirit of the hunt. I jab a mangled finger into his throat, at his pulse point, how it races. Throttles. “Babum. Babum. Babum. Do you know what exhaustion does to prey?” Still, he glances up at me. A slight gurgle, a hoarse wheeze comes from his throat. More from the lack of air, than wanting to speak. Silent still. His eyes flicker, analysing. Calculating. Cool. Calm, even. The muscles in his jaw twitch and ache, so I press down harder. He must know there is no escape.

“I will tell you,” I murmur, slow. “It makes them sloppy. Makes them desperate.” His breath shudders, as if his soul tried desperately to waft away. But his fingers move. There it is again. For a moment, the briefest moment, I relent. Not noticeably, not by any weakness that would make him overconfident, but enough. Enough to fan the flicker of rebellion into a flame. Enough to hone the instinct of a hunter so buried beneath the failure. Good. Good. I want him to struggle. I want him to fight. I want him, desperately, to think he has a chance, an opening. The moment his arm tenses, his muscles contract, I slam my weight into him again. All matter of air is thrust out of him in one swoop. His head cracks against the stone, a sharp, clean sound. His vision must blur. He sucks in a breath, but his body doesn’t follow. His arm does not move. And I grin. There. I lean down, close enough for him to feel the laughter curling from my lips. “Too slow.”

 

Silent, still. “Maybe I need to motivate you, tracker.” I spit at him, slamming his head into the ground again. “Speak!” I bark. His eyes roll, dulled slightly in their sockets. He looks at me as if I am not there, not eeking out the life from him like a ferret grasped by the throat. One more, then. I grab him by the collar of his cloak, and slam him into the boards again. A sound between a grunt and a rattle manages its way out his throat. He gasps, and it is the ugliest sound I have ever heard. His ribs, his skull, his body. Too battered to even lift a finger in his defense. But I hear it. A sound, a whisper, the last scraps of defiance on his breath. I lean in. “Louder, little hunter.” A shaky breath comes out from his bloodied lips, the thin flesh curling into a sneer as he runs his tongue along his gums. The taste of blood floods his mouth. I know it. I can tell, by the stain of his teeth. His eyes glaze over, and burn still, and then, he spits. A warm, crimson stain mars my cheek. Weak. Insulting. You whelp. My fingers tighten on his throat, and I see it again now. The flicker. The wavering. The first sign of regret, buried beneath his defiance. “I should break your neck for that.” I lift off him, rearing my fist up to smash his nose. In an instant, then, he forgets all fatigue, all damage, all pain. His elbow soars into my chin, my neck shooting back. Pain shoots up my maw, the ends of my tusks left ringing with my ears. My jaw creaks and groans, soreness overcoming any joint on my skull. How it burns. How alien it all is.

 

 

---

 

His head jerks back. The great rex staggers. He feels it - so do I. The second he is sent reeling back, my lungs drag in a breath like a drowning man’s: my ribs burn, my head throbs. Sound spills out of me in pieces. A wheeze, a ragged breath, with a hoarse bubbling in its back. But I move. I have to move. A sudden hot stench of orc sinks through the air, a fist stabbing through, drag spiralling behind it like a great javelin thrown at where I once was. He is larger, I am smaller, I am nimbler. My eyes adjust finally, and the figure of him coalesces. Every scar, every brand: a scorpion on his shoulder, a great seven-pointed star carved into his chest. He is fanatical, the crazed beast. Dangerous. No hound is more lethal than a rabid one. No man kills as much as a crazed one. No man toys with you like he would with me. No good man, at least.

 

My simi is at my side, thank you Lord. Thank you for this bountiful gift. I will kill the heathen for you, Lord, as you command us. The ground beneath me is waxy. Dusty. There is no grip. Unsteady. A treacherous landscape… a few stones, rubble, collapsed arches adding disheveled bricks to already rotted heaps of wood and stone and mortar. Above it all, worst of all, the thin sheened film of frost. In its thickest patches, ice. Slick. I will slip. More likely, though, he will. Let me backpedal then. Approach, beast, and let your own grandeur fell you. He is stronger. Let me backpedal more. He huffs, an angered smogger of flesh and muscle and scar tissue, the weapons of kingslayers in his hands. But I am lighter, faster. His blades are broad, but mine are sharp. Ibliz has taken him, the daft cretin, I see it in his eyes. The fire. The malflame of the deep, burning deep, as all his thoughts are overpowered by one: kill. He lumbers forward, great hooving stomps through uneven ground, flattening all under him. The fibers under his bleached hide stretch and groan, pulled taut like the string of a bow. The hammer follows. Depictions of a rex of old snake down the broad face of the mallet, down the ashen wood of its grip, down the leather, down onto me. Down, quickly. Away, quickly. I step to the side, holding my simi ready, and his great swing veers him forward. Forward, closer - too close. I rush forth, then, glancing the long edge of my blade against his bare side. A scarlet line spiders across parallel to his rib. Too shallow. No blood seeps out, no roar erupts from his chest. Only a pivot. Only a stare. Only another movement, ignorant of the wound I dealt. I wonder what thoughts course through him now. Did you underestimate me, wretch?

 

I think not. He thinks not. He neglects to think of my attacks, to gauge the distance between us, to maneuver his weapon to crush my skull in. Truly, I think he neglects to think at all. His body reveals his intent clearer than if he announced each attack. His biceps flex once more as he whirls the mallet over his head. If that hit me… it is better not to think. I knew where he aimed before he did. A poorly telegraphed attempt, green king. I surge forward, through and past his swing, my breath quickly appearing, then dissipating, a faint reminder, a shadow of where I was. The hammer whooshes, and the cloud is gone, but I am here, beast. I am here, and I will slice your femoral, and you will bleed in your home snow, as you have made my people bleed in our sands. I jab my elbow quickly back, then forth forward, plunging my roundel into his thigh. I strike true, and it sinks viscerally into his thigh. No roar. No stare. No pivot. His mallet does not move. He does not move. Then, he moves, and I am too close. I do not even know what part of him booms into my temple, but oh… The stars burst before me, the keep retreating to the fringes of my vision. A great white blot shades out the great white cur before me.

 

He thinks he has me. I do not need to see to know where you are. You are far too large for that, no matter how much my head bleeds sound, my vision bleeds white… No matter the pain that bites at every step, that rings out dull in my ears. No matter. No matter, I step back. He thinks he has me. He telegraphs it again. The figure before me, all blurred and white, surges upward. His arms, I would think. I do not need to see you to know where your neck is. One chance, then. I surge forward, my simi’s point boring through the space between us. You will fall. You will spill blood on my weapon. I will take your head to my people. Closer, closer, my arm thrusts, as his slams down. You are so foolish, to fall for feigned retreat. Die. Die now. Victory.

 

 

---

 

So feeble. So meek. So docile. Scampering again, like a cornered dog. They say a cornered dog is the most dangerous. It has nowhere to run, so it will fight. But something that has nowhere to run is not dangerous. It is vulnerable. Mortal. Closer to death than any time before. No grand parry. No great duck, dive, stab, swing. He tries, though. He tires, and he must think himself much closer than he is. His little scimitar, the flimsy falchion that bit my side softer than the granite scree peppering the floor shoots out. That rock that must have left so many little cuts, scratches on his nape. Do they burn now, when the air bites into them? When it fills them, numbs them, only to rip the warmth away?

 

Ah. Yes. The falchion. No matter. He is too low to hit my throat. I am faster. I am larger. My arms are longer. My hand shoots out around his wiry wrist. So delicate. I could snap it, I wager. Let him stand. Let him face me, even if but for a moment. I wrench him up to his feet, slamming my forehead into his, as if to greet him. Throm’ka, little tracker. I can only imagine the pain splitting through his skull. Down every seam, down every suture of his skullcap, through it, as his brain rattles on the inside of his head. I suppose his skull must be quite dense to follow Skalvor so far. His body falters. So, so feeble. I raise him by his windpipe, then, closing it. Not fully. I loosen, every second or so. Let him breathe when I choose, and only then. His feet hopelessly lay limp above the ground, pointed down, yearning to live on their own terms again. 

 

“You have fought well.” Oh, my voice. He twitches at it. His eyes widen, then blur again, his pupils shot. The timbre in this hall. Do I rouse fear in this poor man? I hope so. Then again, he has hurt me. Not much, but he has. I hear it in my own voice. In the difficulty I face even pushing my breath out and up my neck. “But you were never going to win.” I say as assuredly as he knows it. He knows, he always knew. I wonder what motivated him so far. Perhaps we were born of the same metal. One of courage. That of Mauloch. His strength leaving him. His fingers jerk, his limbs trembling, contracting defiantly, as if begging for air to return to them. His scimitar, then, clatters to the ground. Bang, bang, bang. The sound repeats again, and again, and again, reluctant to leave the hall.

 

“Stay down.” I order. He obeys.

 

 

---

 

“Enough.” he calls again, shaking his head. He releases me, letting me splay out on the floor. I must look like a corpse. I should be one. He does not strike. He does not advance. He stares down at me. Disappointed, almost. I feel like a boy again, stood before the sultan after yet another sparse hunt. No quarry. Failure. Failure, I feel failure, and his eyes inspire it in me. He cannot be human. He cannot be born of normal means, I doubt it. I know it.

 

He continues. The sound surrounds me. Envelops me, coldly: I feel no warmth from it. “You’ve proven yourself,” Skalvor continues, voice steady despite the cold. “You are not weak. You are not a coward. And yet you fight a battle that does not need to be fought.”

My hand slowly crawls behind me, hesitant to clasp around the roundel that he pulled from his thigh.

 

His nose crinkles, shrinking into his skull in distaste. A furious stare comes next. A warning, a silent one. I understand it, and raise my hands, palms out to him.

 

“Good man. The Northmont awaits, tracker.” he gives cryptically, chains, trinkets, and small skulls all clinking against each other as he shrinks back into the dark of the keep, the shade enveloping him.

 

 

---

 

Dawn in the snow is more brilliant than the sun itself. The light reflects into itself, each slope and crevice covered in ice refracting each and every pillar of light until the entire tundra is enveloped in white. My white. My being. They say the Urukim of the north are brighter for this very reason. Our pigment warped by the spirits, by the nature we revere, to better fit. Red, to purple, green, to blue, each color being lightened, brightened, bleached. And yet, very few have ever been so blessed as to inherit the snow itself. Very few. Skalvor among them. Oh, how you have blessed me father.

 

The rafters here provide ample covering to the gale of the north. La’bitz, we call this wind, from the northern storms. It comes south when the first flowers break through the foothills of Ailmere, frightening them back into the soil for a few more weeks. The human stirs. Not awake yet. His breathing is too regular. His motions are typical of a dreamer’s. Twitches of the face, of the fingers, all across deep, consistent breaths. Let him sleep. I will survey our path from up here.

 

The mossed wood provides surprising support under my weight. Slick, hard to grab, yes, but I am no stranger to holding my own in unfavorable conditions. The Braevosi Kingsroad snakes its way through the valleys even here, but this is not the road I intend to take. Far, far further north, where the Void invaded, and then retreated, to the east of the collapsed gateway, the Northmont stands proud. Unshackled. I have not seen it unshackled yet, as the Templars and Jizamurai looted through the Harrower’s corpses made corpses again.

 

I return home, my sons of Krug, my brothers of the Allfather, my fathers before me. I return home, then I will return home again. 

 

Spoiler

yes i ran out of willpower to finish and format.