Mixed Blood

Chapter Four

So much had changed in a year. I had almost doubled my summoner's ability, and Pelt had become a prison. 

Didiric's threat wasn't one any more. Everything he had promised was right in front of my eyes. Tenfold to my worst fears, my darkest nightmare was in my woken sight, and my heart pounded at the pain it brought to me. A tear fell down my face, another pooled in the corner of my eye.

But now I was one of the convicted, and I could all too easily imagine the pleasure it would bring Didric and his cronies to see me cry. Pelt had never truly been home anyway, the other children had always outcast me for reason I was never able to control. It started off with my darker looks and orphaned state, but as I became more educated and all the better a hunter, there were just more reasons. Why cry for this little town when only one man in it had cared for me?

So I dried my eyes with the hand that wasn't holding the woman up in front of me with small, deft and subtle movements I hoped no one would see. I had no reason to cry. I was a man, a powerful summoner not even the nobles had fairly beaten, top of not only my year, but also the one above. I had seen orcs - if only in my dreams - and controlled a powerful demon.

The wooden wall surrounding the settlement once stood defensive on only one side, now they were so on both with locked and guarded entrance ways to the inside and top. Stone plated over the thick, erect logs, large slabs as often as not my size. I could clearly remember being as thick as an alley rat's behind when I passed under them and the wall. Claustrophobia began to pull the air from my throat with increasing strength as the mean of this wall, more fortified within than without, truly meant. Pelt was a prison.

The woman stirred in my arms, sounding a moan too silent to be heard and shifting a distance too small to be seen. The flaxen mess of gold crowning her head brushed my face, gently brushing my face and passing my nostrils so delicately I suddenly wanted to sneeze. Very badly.

Before I did, however, I saw Berdon's hut, smoke spreading like a disease into the expanse of sky above. The floating ashes cast a shadow on everything, turning this once colorful township bleak. I could feel what little joy still welled withing begin to wilt and drop away with the white ash, staining the muddy snow piles.

As my horse padded closer and closer, despair raised in front of me with the high fence that surrounded my old home and forge. The loud hammering increased with every step my horse took, until those metallic clashes came to a sudden, silent and jarring halt. With the sound arrested, I could hear large feet travel the padded dirt on the other side of the wooded barrier.

A hidden gateway was pulled open, marring the perfect blend of rough saplings, to the left of my mounted party. The face was gaunt with sunken eyes confined by deep purple shadows. A strangled beard unevenly dipping over the sharp edges of the cheekbones, as sharp as the stiletto blades this man had taught me to smith. He was a ghost of the man I called father, but I could see a strength in those pits below his eyebrows that still burned, a strength that I hoped would still burn as the times became darker and darker.

In front of me stood a shade, but still a father. In front of me stood Berdon.