Raven

Hunter

Myrandus was being hunted.

It became evident mere hours after he had set out from Aureum. Dusk had begun to cast its murky cloak upon the sky, and the sun spilled its blood upon the horizon.

Myrandus tread heavily upon the beaten dirt path that cut through the fields of Aureum's wheat, hearing nothing but the sigh of the lonely wind sifting through the tall stalks.

Footsteps.

Little more than a murmur.

Not his own.

Myrandus kept walking.

The path opened onto a vast plain, with shallow hills said to be the barrows of long-dead monarchs, men who had seen kingdoms rise and fall and tasted the blood of their enemies and had forged empires from dust and had died.

Beyond the Edotun Plain, the edge of Leafdeep was visible, the outskirts of a forest who's true name had been buried in its most ancient denizen's roots long ago.

The last of the sun's vermillion light trickled away, and night descended.

Myrandus was alone as he traversed the barrows, the alien footsteps naught but a ghost in his memory.

Myrandus was no stranger to the numb thrall of fear. The silence tore at his mind like the claws of a nightmare, relentless and agonizing and omnipresent. He lived for the rush of blood and the clash of steel and the bite of a blade, the only burden that of his solid armor.

The tormented mind has no such sanctum.

Myrandus whirled about, his stormy eyes razing the forlorn landscape. Humans could be analyzed, picked apart, manipulated. Humans had motivations, and passions, and hatred, and lovers, and fears. The grim barrows offered no such expression. You cannot not sway the cold earth.

Myrandus' pursuer was nowhere to be seen. The only footsteps to depress the ancient ground were his own.

Until they weren't. Ever so softly, at first seeming to be a trick of Myrandus' eyes, footsteps began pressing into the ground, phantoms not tied to any body, stealing out from behind a barrow. The shadows, darker than the ebon steel of Myrandus' armor, pressed against him, suffocating him and holding him, paralysed as the footsteps ambled nearer and nearer. Suddenly, perhaps thirty yards from Myrandus, the footsteps broke into a charge, bearing down on Myrandus, closer and closer and closer. Blood rushed in Myrandus' head and his vision blurred and darkened until the footprints, as abruptly as they had flown, stopped at Myrandus' heavy boots.

The air was still.

A sharp blow to the back of his head lined his vision with a red veil, which faded black as an ember fades when it is spent.

***

Myrandus awoke to the sensation of rope digging into his wrists.

He painstakingly forced his eyes open, his eyelids seeming to shrug off the weight of a lump of raw iron. His vision was a haze of brown and black pierced by a tongue of orange, a small campfire lapping at the still night air.

Slowly, the earthy kaleidoscope came into focus. Myrandus was bound to a sturdy beech tree, which rose proud and knotted before spreading its gnarled arms to join the sparse canopy overhead. Myrandus sat in a small circular clearing, the flame dancing vividly in the center. A small pile of gleaming black metal lie on the opposite end of the camp- his armor. Myrandus became acutely aware of the night's chill penetrating his roughspun tunic, the trees reaching at him like the fingers of a corpse clawing its way out of the dirt.

"The world is very different without skin of metal, yeah?"

The unfamiliar voice pierced the air in a muffled tenor, stabbing at Myrandus' senses. A masked figure leaned on a nearby tree, one foot casually propped up against the trunk. In their hands was Myrandus' scarred heater. The figure's hidden gaze swept over it intently.

"And a nice skin, too. A skilled smith."

Myrandus' captor was shrouded in a dark, leathery coat which fell to their knees. Close-fitted trousers of a similar hue ended in high boots. The stranger wore a vertically riveted breastplate and gauntlets, each oiled so as to not shine. A flamboyant triangular hat topped their appearance, but it paled in comparison to the mask.

The mask was a smooth alabaster plane with naught a single aperture save two severe eye slits, a striking vermillion tear emblazoned under the left eye.

"Not befitting of a bastard."

At this Myrandus hurled his weight against his ties, a wolf chained to a post. The tree, his cell, creaked against his force. The masked face held his burning gaze, looking up from Myrandus' shield.

Myrandus' jaw stiffened with conviction. "You've made an enemy of me," he spoke, barely higher than a whisper.

The glossy white surface loomed like a full moon, the red tear boring a bloody hole in its pristine surface.

"Gladly. My name is Keias."