Heath of The Hearth

Chapter Two

               Wailing, cries of agony, and primal screams of raw emotion permeate the streets of Scozeg in the aftermath of the thunder toad's attack.

A group of people yell at guards and town officials, needing a direction for their anger and grief, other lie in the ruins that were once their homes looking around as if watching ghost move through the wreckage, some lament over their dead alternating between cursing the gods and begging for their mercy, spirits can be seen hovering over their former bonded partners, small everneace tears following down their faces.

While stone faced men and women with hard set jaws, moved between destroyed streets gathering the dead and clearing out debri left behind, because it needed doing and someone had to do it.

Ingrid Brim and Karl, her husband, were part of the last group. Ingrid rushed from patient to patient, treating the wounded and easing the pain of the dying.

Karl carried the wreckage of homes to a pile outside of town, his eyes refusing to look at the ash pile that was his home, where he knew they would find the burnt remains of his beloved children.

His sweet, sweet, daughter, Nadia would probably be found next to the fireplace hands outstretched for the hearth spirit she loved so much.

Heath, his boy. So clever, he had wanted to be a trekker, despite Ingrid's protests.

Her father had been a trekker, a fairly good one from the few stories he was able to eke out of his wife and mother-in-law.

Karl knew his wife's feelings and understood, but the look in Heath's eyes when he talked about being a trekker, saving people from monsters, diving into unexplored dungeons, discovering lands unseen.It had made him proud.

He had been secretly putting away coin to hire a group of trekkers to help Heath find a strong wild spirit to bond with when he reached adulthood, one that would have kept his son safe. Barely two years and his boy would've been a man.

"DEM IT!", Karl screams, rage, sorrow, guilt, regret, and raw pain claws its way from his throat. Tears fall freely down his face as he flips the cart he was pushing, the grief no longer allowing itself contained.

Karl's feet lead him to the wreckage that was once his home, now his children's grave. Falling to his knees he crawls through the former threshold.

He had poured all his love, care, passion, and pride into making their home something his children could be proud of.

Dem it, his boy was going to be a great trekker, and when his daughter had grown he was sure she would have bonded with the hearth spirit, maybe she would have been a cook or an innkeeper, now they were gone.

Falling forward, Karl sat on his hands and knees in the ash, his tears dropping into the ash making clumps of black and gray mud.

Karl's crying grew silent as his grief consumed him, even the effort to give sound to his sorrow too much.

A sudden wave of pressure in his chest pops, and a small hand wipes at his tears. Karl let a weak smile flicker on his lips before dropping it.

He allowed his eyes to look up and see his own spirit, Batten a wood spirit, its smooth mahogany face framed by ashen bark contorted into a mirror of his own sorrow.

"Thank you old friend, but I don't want to be comforted right now.", Karl croaked out, his voice already hoarse from his outburst.

Batten simply nods, gives him one last pat on the side of the face and returns to his place next to Karl's soul.