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As the golden orb set east, its tender rays fizzled at the sight of the carved-up snow, puckered by the black flimsy canvas tents littering the neve. A stained pallet with a flimsy wool bed roll laid half crumbled in the corner as Otro tore a thick ash gambeson over his head. Wind whistled through the flimsy tent walls and they shook like an old man's lungs with the effort. His fingers fumbled with the fat buttons, layers of animal organs resting underneath in attempts to keep his own functioning.
Otro had been up since the early morning, charting out his plan with Commander Alexander, who had not been surprised when word of Otro's bluntness reached his ears. Exhaustion splattered like mud across his boyish face and even now, his sporadic movements were like a helpless kitten caught by the scruff in the mouth of their mother. Dragging a small golden cross over his head, its heat pulsed like a living creature against his pasty skin, an amulet that would keep him blessed and warm for his journey.
Shrugging his cloak on, a survival knapsack tucked under, and a small dagger placed at his waist, he fought the tent lip open to emerge into the frozen landscape. Hesitantly, he touched the death inducing material at his side. In moments it appeared as if the whipping wind would swallow the man's body and soul, his shadow snuffed out across the muddled ground like an exile. Small pit fires rose up from the splattering of tents, their ruddy light enhancing the cobalt ink of the snaking trenches surrounding them all. Tugging his cloak hood up, he pressed a thick wool face mask against his cheeks, the hail cracking his exposed skin raw. He forced his head down and urged his body that was heavy with sleep towards the crumbling village near the barracks.
As he passed under the tar blackened cobbled walls, window hinges slammed close and shouting voices could be heard gathered near the well. Two men could be seen circling each other in the desolate night, faces covered, and knives unlatched. Pirates. Their faces seemed to wax and wane in a hysteria like the moon they followed. A small crowd was formed around them, coins passing through hands, the air thick with the smell of drink. Overhead hung ice caked clothes and buildings slimly stripped of wood to build fires, little warmth spilling out of the local tavern hiding dubious deeds. Ducking past the darkened well, he hurried down the shifting alleyway.
Each step was like walking on a dune of black sand and he shifted his weight clumsily in attempts to stray away from the fraudulent path. Turning a corner, he nearly collapsed into a gaping crack, the burnt sea beneath raging. He pulled away from the lip, heart pumping, turning down a different alley. Distantly, a rumbling could be heard as snow slid down a mountain face, enough to cover the eerie pattering footsteps of those racing across the ice laced slate roofs. After a while, he came upon a simple tucked away stable and showing his olive ringlet to a chain mailed guard, was led to a horse in the corner with smoking silver eyes. As Otro neared it, the creature reared its head, steam rising off its intricate blackened beefy body and heat flaring from its hooves. With a gentle murmur and a single coin, Otro guided the soot-stained animal to the edge of town, and raising a blue coated flame lamp was swallowed into the hungry mouth of the hostile dark.
✧
Within the cavern, the wind whistled, drawing out the smoke from a sputtering spark. Snow beat against the split rocks leading into an infinite absence of light. In it, a man gilded in gold, laid on his bloodstained side like the carcass of a mangled angel. He stared at the blowing snow outside and the air that hung like a frozen cloak. In his peripherals, a fur covered man surrounded in an ethereal blue light neared him, smoke rising from his side. The storm obscured his vision and allowed him to ponder the gravity of a clear hallucination.
The man disappeared into the wreckage and patches of ice like phantom white and grey water lilies that swayed in a much purer water, reminded him of the beginning of the world. Beauty rendered in clear white with long slender shadows and sculptured shapes. Unattainable now for him. The one who had fled his own kingdom, his own army, who had made the rivers of this mountain face run red with blood. Who had killed and killed and killed again in attempts to escape from a suppressive position. Who had betrayed his people to climb Mt. Deicidae. Who had attained freedom only to not know what it is. This had been so since antiquity. Turning his face away from the burnt village in the distance, he closed his blue eyes and thought of the blood mixing like oil and water with the snow below.
✧
Otro knew he was there once the snow shifted from that of a reflective crystal to one dirtied with tobacco tainted mud. He dismounted from the horse; his own body half frozen as the creatures' sides heaved with effort. It had taken him two days to ride there, and the cliff had spread itself out in front of him as pillaged waste. The entirety was imbued with soot and as he neared the soldierless village, the horrific reality of the situation exposed the haze of his righteous mind. As the hail pelted into him, Otro struggled to raise his weak blue flame to enlighten the ravaged massacre. The sapphire bodies of frozen men laid slaughtered in expressions of terror and surprise, their blood already hidden by the plumes of snow cascading from the mountainside. Their skin turned rubber and became covered in translucent ice crystals.
Bodies littered the mush, their skin and faces concave with time of sunken cheekbones and shattered jaws. Of scattered dreams and long cast aside flaws. Devoid of liquid, their bodies laid crumpled and shriveled like a thrown away handkerchief; dirtied and unusable. As he moved to step forward, a crunch resounded, and looking down he saw the broken off fingers of an ice cased hand rising from the snow. The sound echoed eerily across the dampen land as if it had picked up the song and made it their own cry of nature, an animalistic instinct. Black spots rose behind his eyes, and he stumbled drunkenly to the side only to trip over an exposed body laying across the snow.
The armor of the small body was streaked in blood, a broken wooden sword laying at its side, a shield half buried in the snow. Otro could see that beforehand he had been crawling. Reaching. Desperate. Throwing his body towards the village like a crazed man as his life source slowly drained out of him. A wooden sword laid broken near his side and upon closer inspection, red ice crystals decorated it like some tortured rubies. Following the direction of the sword, Otro landed upon the raw hacked off neck to see a head rolled on the side a fair distance away. Exposed bone rose from the collar like a crown and the crimson gelatin of tissue solidified into stone. The snow seeped into his bones, the innocent whiteness betraying the dirty things that laid underneath.
Gagging, Otro forced himself to crawl and gently roll over the frostbitten face to see one of a smooth skinned boy who had called, his mouth too chapped to scream. The body withered and rotted. He would remain immortally still, brown eyes with the light eternally snuffed out. A look of pure shock encompassed his dead eyes, like a fish with its guts removed. Tremors overtook his body, and he struggled in plucking off a beige leather glove. Reaching out with quivering hands, he tenderly brushed aside the blood smothered bangs of the ice encased boy. Tear ducts overwhelmed; they flowed down his covered face to land like holy water sprinkled on a babe across the boy's broken face – the last blessing. Juddering ran through his body and with a shuddering hand of living skin against the dead, he closed the boy's shocked eyes.
Otro remained on his knees for a long time thereafter, the wind unforgivingly brutal.
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The wooden fence surrounding the village was half smashed in, the torch of the watchtower extinguished, and the door hauntingly swinging in the storm as Otro approached. It was bleak and depressingly bare, devoid of all that was placed in its humanity. Many of the buildings were empty and the few people that remained wandered like drugged fools, expressions visibly haunted. Leading his horse in, he tied it under the cover of a half remaining roof at which a mound of dead pig skin rose like the marred turret in the Citadel. The creature reared its head, flashing its silver eyes in discomfort, refusing to acknowledge Otro's attempts in pacifying it. The storm had already covered any visible tracks, the only clues coming from witnesses and the bodies outside the fence. He picked his way down the singular main street, ashen dust rising like lassos to the sky of twisting gray clouds, and cinder streaking his shoes like paint.
A lone scuffed child's boot laid in the middle of the path, and he crouched down to inspect it. As he did so, he spotted a man hunched over against a singular building with smoke climbing from the chimney. Quietly, he stood and ambled over to the shadow cast by the alleyway, watching the man raise a pipe to his cracked lips. The sticky scent of myrrh twirled upwards, and the man raised a fur covered head to reveal eyes hooded in hysteria. A crinkled smirk decorated the man's lips, black spittle running down his chin, a molted ragged mess of training gear hanging off his body like a skeleton. His very expression showed that not all were welcomed here. After warily keeping his distance from the man, Otro raised his wool face covering to expose only his eyes. Clearing his throat, a husky voice with a boisterous accent long since used hurled itself from his lungs.
Greetings.
The man eerily tilted his head before dumping his pipe into the slush their boots struggled in and stamping it out with his foot.
Greetings traveler.
Whats happened heres?
Depends on why you be here boy.
Just passin' throughs.
He squinted at Otro, an uncanny lolling of the mouth revealing itself in stark contrast as he eyed the heavy wear of Otro. He scoffed, wiping his mouth with a tattered grey sleeve.
Don't be a looking like a simple "passin' throughs".
I's be always passin' throughs. Guided by the God. Likes any pilgrims.
If God exists, He certainly don't be a watchin' here.
Whys so?
T'was four nights ago when that thing rolled through here. Worse thens a stormin. The dead don'ta be askin for nothin but honor yet Landini can't even be a sendin' rations for us survivors. That golden thing be prawlin like somes low life.
Otro raised a hand and reverently made the sign of the cross with intent, unmistakably Landini.
A prays for theirs reposed souls. Do yous knows wheres the tortured killer be?
A cackle ripped itself from the man's throat and he lunged towards Otro, his body stiffening like a live wire. In seconds, a re-curved bone knife laid calmly in the man's hand as he circled him.
Yous one of hims?
Otro followed the movements of the man with his eyes, fear clawing its way up his brain, apparently distracted enough for the man to assume so. Maybe his quick cover up of dialect had not been so useful. The noises of the world roared in his ears. He hadn't known a villager would be so vile. That the people he wished to protect would try to kill him for questioning what they didn't want to know the answer to. The man scanned his covered face.
No I's not be.
Seemingly happy with that, the man sheathed his weapon and spat into the ground before pointing to the cavern above the village.
He was a seen to flee into the cliff cavern above. Mighty 'angerous climb. T'was by himself. Wounded probably.
Thank you.
Hastily Otro backed away, forcing himself to slow his walk, but not before he heard the man mutter.
I hopes this empire crumbles. Mays they all die deaths worth-tee of sinners. May their repentance reach deaf ears. Ree approachs be ah worthless nows. If we die, we 'ill be at fault. If we live, we 'ill be the cause of that. This 'hat stands between us and our fates.
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A hand pressed over aching ribs and mouth dry of spittle, night covered the sky in an abyss, and the air grew so cool that breathing was like being stabbed with a knife. Otro had left his horse in the village below and each step was covered behind him like he had never existed. The cavern loomed above him, his blue flame squeaking in the wind, as he fought the gravity that pressed him back down the mountain. Snowflakes glided into his hair and disappeared like the frozen sun. Beneath the gloves, his hands grew raw with the climb, boots squeaking as he slammed them into the mountainside face. The bitter air carved into his face, leaving flushed skin in its wake.
As the sun fell, celestial objects painted themselves against the inky, black abyss but there was no holiness here. The lamp swung eerily from the small hook on his belt and he hissed as a hand missed a stone in the darkness, slicing his palm open ruthlessly. Droplets landed on the grisly rock, and he slipped, slamming his clumsy knees into the rocky face. All he could see was a swirl of white and shadowy shapes. The howling wind pressed deep into his ears and made it hard to think. Every breath was hard and cold, freezing him from the inside out as his eyes swam with petrified tears.
Otro hauled his body over and onto the final craggily lip, the red in his body roaring from heat that dispersed when contacting the frozen air. He stilled as he grew close and watched the wind swish around the snow like dancers, before examining the cavern. He was planning on attempting to speak to the Hedmark first, knowing that the battle below would have likely left him injured. To see if he was also a pawn or a player of a much larger game. He still wanted his hands to remain clean from the same crimson that brought in life and ended it.
A seemingly insignificant plume of smoke rose from the cavern as Otro neared, his heart pounding out of his skin, snaking a hand beneath his cloak to rest on his dagger. Each step caused the snow to squeak, threatening to blow his cover. Tweaking the oil in the lamp, he snuffed out the flame so that all was plunged in darkness. He placed it into the snowbank next to the opening, kicking snow over it with a fur lined boot.
Pressing his body flat against the bare boned rim, he peaked around the corner to see a recently extinguished fire reduced to ash. He listened. He waited. He watched. After what felt like hours, he edged into the cave to see a streaked puddle of blood dried across the floor. A few animal bones laid scattered around the fire and Otro allowed his eyes to adjust to the dimness. Feeling the ground out, he slunk into the cave being careful not to make a sound, the howling wind covering up his breathing. A mistake could mean death.
A light shuffling could be heard behind him, and he turned to see a hulking figure backdropped against the outside world of the cavern. The last rays of the moon lit up the golden armor before becoming swallowed by the dismal aura of the cave. Otro felt fear. Utter fear as he remained plastered to the rock. Not a cell of his body would remain uncoiled by him. The Hedmark knight shuffled into the limited space and dropped a small pile of twigs in the corner near the diminished fire. The loudness surprised Otro and he jumped, only to kick a small pebble towards the side of the knight. The Hedmark stilled and turned his face, his helmet illuminating his head in the shape of a half halo. He saw the way the blue squinted beneath the visor and how their gaze met in the darkness before either of them moved in frozen stupor. Light met darkness.
Hand against hand, knife against bone. They struggled, the world moving in a mess of combined color. Connected they were, man against man, body against body, tussling in the dirt-stained snow like lions over watered downed prey. Head slammed into ground. A seemingly sickening crack.
Sometimes you must let the violence that begets violence rain down on one who isn't involved. Sometimes, the unworthy take the punches. Sometimes you can't fight, and you can't talk, you must just live. You must survive.
Stars rang out in your vision and the blonde man squirmed furiously in the larger one's grip. Closing your eyes. Slamming the hilt of an elbow into the other man's pelvis. Meeting metal but hitting an exposed wound. Crumbling the dark haired one. Panting like dogs. Saliva coating your ravished faces. Circling each other in attempts to live. Being struck in the side by a stone. Leaking. Dark haired one lingering over the golden. The dark haired one bleeding much from wounds you had not inflicted. The burning pain in your rib. The metallic taste in your mouth. Gasping in the shallowness of the ground. Rolling in the dust. Drawing a dagger. Being kicked in the side. Tussling until exhausted. Being naive. Raising your voice. Knowing that what we do in the dark remains hidden. Retreating.
As his face pressed into the snirt, the cross slipped out of his chest to catch the attention of the other. For reasons unknown the knight released him and stumbled to his feet, leaving Otro thrown aside and unconscious. Outside of the wounded souls, a swirling mass of darkened snow slammed against the mountainside like a tortured animal, howling a mourning call.
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