Foticus

You’ve just arrived in a swampy, dim town. As you look around, your gaze is met with shacks and cabins. It smells of rotted wood and wet moss. You duck and step into a tattered tent, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the tent, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town? she begins, then pauses to study your face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a cushion, “Tell me your story.” Sigismund stepped carefully into the tent with a slightly narrowed look, the flickering candlelight casting jagged shadows on his weathered face. His skin was sticky from the damp air around him, but he kept trying to shake off the unease in his belly. But he had been in places like this before, where nothing is quite as it seems... His nerves deepen when the hag speaks with her rasping voice and knowing eyes. "You, expecting me?” he mutters, suspicion drawing tight the corners of his mouth. Everything inside him screams to turn and walk away, but something keeps him in place. The idea that she might know anything about him, even worse, about his past sent a shiver up his spine. Sigismund stands upright, his broad form tense as he looks down at the cushion she offers him. His lips press into a thin line; there's thickness in the silence between them, which is hard to break. Finally, in a low, gravelly voice, he speaks. "I don't sit for strangers," he says, his tone cold and deliberate. "As for my story... It is for myself alone." He instinctively touched the hilt of the dagger hanging from his belt. It stemmed from many acts of betrayal he's received. "Tell me why you had me in mind," he snapped, his eyes boring into the wretched crone. His voice was only calm curiosity. He instinctively keeps his guard up—he's not going to drop it anywhere, certainly not here and most of all in front of a person like her. The blown old hag's wizened lips curve into a thin, crooked smile. Her eyes clouded with age yet still dominantly upon this scene."Oh, I know more than you think," she said, her voice a slow and deliberate rasp. Clouded with age yet sharp from within the living fire of hidden knowledge, her eyes locked onto Sigismund's scarred face. "Your story may be your own to keep, but fate's whispers will bear things that are not easy to reveal: it has found such a forgotten place as this." Sigismund's hand gripped the hilt of his knife more tightly still when she said that, his white knuckles almost visible under dim candlelight. The pounding of his heart heaves in his chest, but his face kept stoic and mysterious. Long ago, he'd learned that showing any reaction at all - any hint of fear or weakness - could be most dangerous, especially in places such as this. The hag's words, though vague, hit too close to the mark. She did know something, and that was enough to unsettle him. "You talk in riddles, witch," Sigismund growls, his voice as rough as the black roads that bring him to this forsaken town. His instincts urged him to walk away, to leave this swamp and its eerie inhabitants behind. However, something held him here - a pull he couldn't define.