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[Arahim]

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He spoke slowly while kneeling in the dew-damp grass, watching his small party.

A fey light in his eyes.

With every word, he unrolled more of the burlap sack. Muffled metal on metal sounded a solid, heavy toll.

"The kills need to be fast...the heads intact. No fire, no explosions."

Laid open, glinting against the dull, worn brown were skinning knives, long handled froe saws, and axes of varying size.

"She needs them to have their eyes still within their skulls."

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Arahim, Corvus, and Genevieve set out from Ashencrosse in the early evening as shadows lengthened under the blaze of many torchlights lit upon the wooden walls of the town. They themselves seemed touched of the dark , and cloaked heavily in its secretive embrace. Leaving comfort, and home behind on the word of one man. A word that said he needed help, and little else.

Genevieve knew quite alot more about Arahim's tasks, and knew too that he was in his most tottering first steps in accomplishing what, to others, must sound like the daydreams of a child who took story, and song of impossible deeds as the lyric of his own life. Wishing to become these things, rather than simply learning their ageless music by rote.

Ebon clad, Corvus did not question him too closely on the nature of their endeavors. Perhaps on the grounds that Arahim had never pried into the recesses of his own life, cryptic, and leading as many of the Ravenshadow's comments often were. He came nonetheless, citing the bonds of friendship as reason enough.

Without fanfare, or witness, the three entered the wilds of Umbra on fleet horses that seemed cut from some small part of the Night -- as tall, black shades they sped.

It was a beginning.

Yet something in Arahim was loth to have begged their fellowship, and he began to regret the grim work which they would put their hands to before all was done. But for the misgiving he felt in his heart that without aid he would surely fail, he would have gone at it alone. And in the bargain, lose the pieces that made him who he was.

[Arahim]

---

The room was daubed in pools of soft, pale light from several candles placed at regular, even intervals. The still air was cool without being uncomfortable, and in being without draft, did not stir the the small spears of flame or set them to dance atop their waxen hafts to chase away the thin shafts of shadow in liquid-like waves. It lent the walls and surfaces where the interplay crawled across an angular, almost dreamlike look and the dark places therein were like placed lines in a painting.

The floor was fragrant, heavily grained wood stained to a dark finish with the barest hint of gloss that shone in white squares wherever the candlelights spilled their shimmering glare upon it.

The walls were lined with well kept bookcases plainly made, and of the same wood as the floor but a shade lighter. The rows and rows of books were without dust or cobweb.

There was a measured order and sobriety to the study that ran a course that bordered on being obsessive, even extending to the symmetry of the lone desk and chair set against the far wall away from the shelves, and the thickly embroidered twin rugs of burgundy that bisected the room into even halves.

And the display cases in the corners.

When Arahim spoke, he did so without boast or pride. He stepped slowly, stopping now and then to point out some small thing of note in each trophy laid out upon the field of red velvet in the long glass case.

"I took this one when I saw thirteen Winters," he said, lifting his chin to indicate the polished orc skull whose bottom jaw protruded to a ghastly degree and seemed to be full of too many teeth.

"This one only last Autumn."

If Mistress Nightshade had any inclination towards being impressed or surprised, the small smile she wore gave no indication either way. Interested, perhaps even amused, but then the green-tressed woman had always seemed amused to Arahim.

Her eyes flashed with the briefest glow of emerald as she touched his arm to turn him.

"What do these things mean to you, Arahim?"

Before he could answer, he saw in her face a look of delight, and thought he felt her sudden recognition that there was something kindred in them...some trait unlooked for that was now realized.

Arahim felt very young under her gaze.

[Arahim]

---

Wild cries of pain, and fury cracked the early hours of Night as the trio of horsemen swept through the crystal fens scattering a small tribe of feral orcs with their sudden charge. Slashing hooves and tall swords clove a red path to the rough wooden structure before them. The uneven pikes that made its walls were garishly decorated with impaled skulls of various animals, and gaudy, hanging totems.

A reeking fume billowed out of it, blotting the sky just above. A horrible blight in a place that otherwise glittered with the gems of a thousand earthbound stars.

In one single motion, Arahim reared Temerity, dismounted, and tied her to a tree, allowing the others to drive forward into the fleeing greenskins. He had but the space of a breaths warning, as the spider in his hair curled its legs, before he was doused in a fit of cold that welled up from within, and froze him in his tracks. Every ounce of warmth from him was stolen, so that even a shiver was cause for pain, and long minutes passed before he was able to again master himself to see to his work.

Genevieve went forth with a gold circlet upon her brow set with a bright topaz that blazed like the sun on the verge of a new day. Her bright sword flashed as tongues of flame, though she took only every other orc whose path she crossed, allowing the rhythms of battle to echo just past her to Corvus.

Where the Ravenshadow was less in fervor than his companion, less frenetic, he was greater in deftness, and managed his strokes with a quiet efficiency that to the eye seemed languid, and deceptive. For every swing, a subtle shift in his saddle so that he appeared shapeless, and flowing. A snaking thing was his black blade: its awful arcs left trails of ash in the air.

The clamor in the distance did not deter the speed of Arahim's hands, nor did he look up. The bodies left in their wake were what they had come for, and he meant to collect as many as time would allow.

A practiced, deep pull of his skinning knife severed skin, and tendons, and muscle at one go. The blade scraping the bone of the spine on several whose heads he took. And it was at the spine where the task became heavy and loathsome. The killing was a small matter, but Arahim had never been able to abide the grinding scrape of the froe saw, and how it put his teeth on edge.

[Arahim]

---

Three times thrice Arahim passed the glowing crystal over the small take of orc heads Willow and himself had won at the fort near Cove.

The sea was in his nostrils, carried by a cool wind from the West over waters that pearled white as glassy milk beneath a fleet Autumn moon. Clouds like star-set sails pulled at the purple sky.

Tchort sat quietly with growing amusement. The scene before him made no sense. His man made great sport of the odd smelling female. Or she made sport of him. He could not tell. Laughing, he padded off into the woods. The breeze ruffling his fur.

"A gift from your mother," he said to the lingering, unspoken question, "To speed this first leg of my journey."

"My mother has a strange sense of humor in her gifts, Arahim. Have a care," the green haired warrior replied.

No change took the gruesome trophies laid out before them under the liquid light, though the gem throbbed with the beat of a heart. Strong, steady, but unrushed, and constant.

"Nothing."

"And why have you not tried that one?" she asked, pointing her kryss at the shining black skull at his feet.

Without a word, Arahim stooped and wrapped the curious totem in white cloth, and hid it within his pack.

Rolling her eyes, Willow sheathed her steel, and pulled off her gloves.

"I wouldn't touch that thing either," she sneered, "But tell me, will any of...this...soothe your ego? Is that all there is to this errand of yours?""

"It is not just ego."

"Returning a treasure..." she rolled the word over in her mouth, tasting it, "...to a people who probably don't even remember it?"

Willow smiled slightly. Set emerald-green eyes fixedly upon him, and held them there as if now they two strove silently against each other armed with individual wills alone. Grinding the edges and grains of who they were on their opposites.

Neither broke.

"Perhaps I will bear it." he spoke at long last.

"So it is simply ego."

At the call of the easy slide of tide across the rocky shores, Arahim turned and let his his vision stray towards the ends of the world. Counting in his head the silver crests that hurried home from afar, he envied them suddenly though their ends were final come the land he shared with the Lady Enforcer, under cloak of Night, in pools at his feet.

He stood long, as one carven in place, calming his thoughts, before he found again his voice.

His words came from another place far away, and he was at once perilous in mood and mind.

"E'er I leave it, I would have the world take pause, and breathe aloud my name...just once. And for those that hear it, to wonder."

In a voice quieter than he was accustomed to, Willow sought her truth:

"Will this do that, Arahim?"

"I cannot see that far," he smiled, "But I will do this thing, or make such an ending in the attempt to be worthy of song."