The Wanderer's Path: Return of the Beasts

Chapter 2

The dampening heat that battered against Reaper promised a thunderstorm later tonight. Once again Reaper cursed his luck as he trudged down the meandering path that led away from his newest of sins. The sky had begun to glow with the orange bath of the falling sun, painting the clouds in a fiery hue like a gods beautiful artwork. The slight breeze that drifted through the interspersed trees across the vast rolling hillside did little to ease the oppressive heat. In the distance, Reaper could see the mountain range Ellaniad running across the land like an oversized boundary wall. The deep rainforest that covered the mountains would be his greatest challenge before he could cross into the forest of the elves on the opposite side.

It had been three hundred years since he had visited the high elves in their excessively lavish city hidden deep within the forest. Reaper hoped elven memories faded as well as humans did, the last time he had visited he had been banished from their lands. Abomination they said. Let me rot with the half breeds. If only I could. Surely one of their high mages would know how to end this curse.

Reaper paused as he noticed a small, crudely built bridge that crossed a meandering creek. Its imperial build told of a time when this path to the high elves had once been a popular route. Now, the high elves were better left alone, bitter and swift to anger from their misguided sense of betrayal. Reaper spared them no pity. The fools cursed themselves. For all their so called wisdom, they were naive to think the ramifications of their union with the Elder God Liandreth’iel would come without a price. The once beautiful men of pure elven blood had been forever tainted. Their once perfect features now wrinkled and hardened, their soft skin grew rough and weathered until they were little more than humanoid trees. The still beautiful women were repulsed by these decrepit ancient fossils they now were sworn to love, and it wasn’t long before a new generation of half elves filled the lands as their women escaped their shackles with their roguishly handsome human counterparts.

Reaper was half way across the bridge before he slowed down, noticing a figure appear from the side of the road before him. He didn’t need to look to know there would be others behind him.

“Tollz iz neededz. Onez can’t crosses without payin the tollz,” the creature in front of him declared as he strolled closer. Great, trolls, just what I need. He had overhead some of the villages this far west were troubled with bandits and brigands, but he hadn’t expected to be so lucky to have stumbled upon some of them. The troll in front of him stood just before the end of the bridge, his dark brown skin hinted a hue of green. The troll was surely a half breed for he stood over six feet tall, his long, sharp jawline revealed filed teeth as he unhooked a throwing axe that hung at its leather belt. So he didn’t plan on waiting to see if Reaper would offer any recompense. The troll either did not care about his companions on the other side of the bridge, or he was an exceptionally good throw with that axe.

“How about you let me go, and you will live to rob the next passer-by.” Reaper asked as he heard the rasping of blades leaving their scabbards. So the trolls behind, plan to finish me off after this one’s axe sinks into my chest. The troll’s growing smile turned to laughter, and soon his companions behind were joining in. Reaper glanced down to check his chest wounds from earlier, they were still closing. No wonder he had been short of breath. Reaper sighed, I don’t particularly feel like dying twice in one day. Reaper reached behind his back and grabbed the one thing he had woken up with all those thousands of years ago, and the first thing he could remember, the hilt of his bastard sword Kael.

The troll cursed as he hurled his throwing axe at Reaper. Unable to draw his blade in time Reaper twisted his body, leaning heavily to his left as he watched the axe fly past him. The blade sliced across the top of his shoulder where his neck had been a second earlier. He heard a sickening crunch as the axe plunged into another trolls chest, driving him backwards, his arm still outstretched in a wide arcing sweep of his rusty scimitar which now clanged to the ground.