Hunter’s Wrath
Outline
Zachriel Mc Coppin
8/9/2016
Part One
Rage & Grace
People used to say that it came to them in shades of red, but for me, everything fades to black, and the darkness never leaves, not completely anyways. Instead, it looms about on the fringes of my mind. Elusive and intangible, it resides inside of me allowing me to take charge on occasion.
Trying to locate it is as useless as trying g to catch smoke with your hands, and yet after all these years, I still bumble through the mist with my hands stretched forth. When it chooses to manifest itself, it always starts off as a low rumble like the tribal drums of the ancients beating in my head and chest. It grows in its intensity until the wave spreads throughout my body, and like a rolling thunder, the intense rumble is all I can hear.
I fight to hold my breath because I know somewhere in the back of my mind that it is the first of many things I will lose control over. I don’t know why, but I always seem to think that if I can hold my breath, I will be able to quell the beast and gain control. But it’s not my breathing that I need to master, it’s the panic I feel the moment all that blood starts rushing through my body. My lungs begin to burn, and I know I’m seconds away from being swallowed up.
The darkness, the evil I become, I feel it creeping slowly at first, sauntering forward until it gains a stable foothold in my heart and then begins to rush lime a mighty torrent, a powerful juggernaut cutting its way through a mountain. It erodes me away until there is nothing left of me to be recognized.
I no longer fight it. Swept away in the powerful current, I embrace the rage, I harness it, and I use it to drive me to feats of physical prowess beyond my normal capacities.
My mind is blocked off from friend or foe, encased in an iron clad case of pure, unbridled rage that the enchantments and bewitching cannot penetrate. I know that I could never reach this new plateau of power while in my rational mind. After all, why be the calm center of the storm, when you can be the storm itself in all its beautiful, disastrous glory?
My focus becomes one of singularity that even the most exalted Magi and Druids would envy. Everything else falls away to oblivion until nothing is left but my goal and the unfortunate damned who stand between it and me.
What have I become? I can no longer say with any certainty, when the grace is gone and only the rage remains. The slings and arrows of the centuries that have been aimed at me, the anguish I have felt over those I have loved and buried, it all melts away when I submit my will to the darkness within.
Sometimes I tell myself that it was not my fault that I am so hardened, and that I didn’t have a choice, " fate had dealt me a bad hand" as Tyler used to say. However in a small corner of my mind I try to keep hidden, I know I am lying. Because I know that in the depths of my heart, at the center of my soul, I do not believe in the existence of fate because it removes our free agency, our ability to take charge and choose for ourselves how to write our own stories. To say that a man is born, and no matter what life he chooses for himself, be he a holy man, or a cut throat murderer, he would end up in the abyss and nothing could have been done from the most end of his conception to his terminal breath could alter his course because it was his fate, that is not a belief I can subscribe to.
I believe that this is where grace plays its hand. The ability to choose our own direction and adventures, to decide what is right or wrong, to give in to rage or too abstain from it. It is by the grace of the gods that we are able to do this. Rage would condemn us to walk only one path, because rage is enslaving the mind, where as grace offers freedom to choose for oneself a variety of alternatives.
I have yet to master between the rage and grace in my heart, but I know all I have to do to refuse the rage, is to magnify the grace, by simply walking a better path than the previous day. Right and wrong, love and hate, light and dark, rage and grace...only grace offers the freedom to choose one or the other.
Chapter I
1362: Year of the Dark Wanderers
As the clouds parted, revealing the splendor of the full moons Faeora and Liristia which they jealously guarded, Runningwolf silently emerged from the edge of the woods and into the Sarothian plains. They sprawled out before him with such vast grandeur, that they commanded all of the hunter’s vision with waves of silver and sapphire colored grass in the moonlight as far as the eye could see. The sweet smell of these grasslands wafted in on unseen currents of wind, and like the ebb and flow of the far off ocean’s tides, the nights wind caused the grass to pitch and roll like waves breaking against the trees.
He turned and looked back to the forest’s end. It had been dark under the canopy, but the hunter known only as Runningwolf did not need light to guide his silent step. Living in the deep wilds of the Luithinar all of his life, he had learned to operate on his other four senses alone if need be, which had not slowed him as he had moved through the leaves and brush with such simplicity, he would have seemed no more than a slight breeze among the trees to even the most seasoned tracker.
Stepping with a soft step that came natural to him, Runningwolf stepped out from the shade of the trees fully into to moonlights. The lunar twins were more luminous than usual. Had Runningwolf been one of the folk common to the human lands, he may not have perceived the slight changes that had taken place in the night sky. He was not common to these lands however, nor was he human, like those who ruled the empire he had just crossed over into. He was an elf, and unlike those of the High Court of the Elven Nation, he was a wild elf, and those same finely tuned senses that allowed him to survive in the savage heart of the deep wilds, told him now that there was a difference in the heavenly bodies overhead. As the hunter gazed skyward his keen elven eyes revealed to him something bizarre.
It was as if the firmament was opening up, like the heavens were revealing their most intimate secrets to those who cared to glance up from time to time. As Runningwolf continued to gaze up, he noted a multitude of new stars that had recently appeared, changing the constellations he had depended on for the last century to travel by.
That was not the only transformation that had taken place in the heavens, Runningwolf also perceived that the moons were closer, the sisters Faeora and Liristia appeared closer and much larger than they ever had before. Even more troubling to the elf was that beyond the lunar sisters, he could see three smaller moons he had never seen before looming about in the cold night sky. Every fiber of the nomadic hunter told him things were changing again. It caused a chill to course up his spine like an ice demon of the frozen northern wastes was using its frigid dull claws to scale up his spine. The heavens were rearranging their alignments, no inconsequential matter, something was happening, and all the hunter could say with any degree of certainty was that times were changing.
Runningwolf could feel the friction and stress of the leather armor he wore. He had come to realize he would never truly be comfortable in it. It was altogether beautiful he had to admit beautiful knot work of vines and leaves of silver and gold over leathers of green, brown and black. He looked back over his shoulder again into the forest known as The Spires of Witch Haunt here in the human lands, but he grew up calling them the Luithinarian forest, meaning the "sheltering forest" in his native tongue. It had been his home his entire life and he had never needed armor to there before. Just quick reflexes paired with a fair dose of common sense. The leather cuirass, shoulder guards, and bracers he wore were stifling and dulled the fine edge of his agility. It would only hinder him when he finally caught up to the Balvorian swordsman and likely get him killed. Though in honest inner scrutiny, he never expected to walk away from that inevitable encounter, nor had he necessarily care to.
The wild elf ranger stood up and began to unfasten the bindings on the armor. He removed the cuirass, from his torso, and then moved onto boots, which he had decided to keep as well as the bracers, one could truly anticipate the terrain outside of his normal realm, choosing to leave the cuirass and shoulder guards behind. He felt the cool night’s air wrapped around his body, like the instant emersion into a pond of cool refreshing water. Immediately it relieved the tension. The High Elves of the court patrolled the border of these woods and would be along soon enough and retrieve the beautifully crafted armor they had gifted to him to aid him in his trials to come. Runningwolf knew they would never truly understand his appreciation for the wondrous gift despite his decision to leave it behind, but he was soon to be in great haste after leaving their kingdom city of Faedrin Falls and would need to move fast in order to catch up to his mark.
He was tall, even for a wild elf, and muscled well, as if he had been carved of wood, one of many defining traits separating his people from the less reclusive High Elves of Faedrin Falls. Eyes of emerald searched the ground for signs of recent passage left behind carelessly by the Balvorian from behind a mess of copper colored hair that tumbled down to his hardened shoulders. His bronze hued skin was not only a testament of his heritage, but also showed of a lifetime of one who had endured the elements in the wild. Clad only in leather pants, a loin cloth and bracers, Runningwolf carried with him a black tattoo of a wolf’s paw on his left shoulder that signified his place in the tribe of the Runningwolf. Other than that he carried little with him other than a recurve long bow made of oak, a full hip quiver and a pair of curved hunting knives he fashioned from the rack of a bull elk that rested with much comfort and familiarity in a leather harness designed for quick draw under each arm.
Runningwolf’s own father had aided him in the twin blades construction during his first hunt. The bull had been a worthy challenge, and after felling him, they gave thanksgiving to their elk brother’s spirit for his sacrifice, that they might feed their family. They had gained enough meat for the coming winter that year, hide for clothing, and the bulls rack and bones to make a variety of weapons. The elk gave their lives that others might live, then when the hunter’s died; their bodies went back to the earth to enrich the soil and nourish the grass that the elk fed on to live. This was the way of the eternal hunt which had been passed down to him from us ancestors.
The handles were expertly carved from the dark antlers of the magnificent creature of the wood to fit Runningwolf’s personal grip in order to ensure that no one could wield the twin blades quite like him. Strips of the elks he had been cut and wrapped with loving care around the dark handles to prevent against any slippage.
The blades themselves were of a rare and curious works. They had been conceived from a star that had fallen from the sky. The only metal of its kind, Thale, father of Runningwolf had taken the celestial ore to the High Elves to forge them into a fine twin set of blades that carried superior edge. Beautiful a and sweeping in design, the shape of the blades flowed like water, and with the skill of the High Elves the ore had been shaped into the blades and then folded over many times and hammered out to ensure their razor sharp supremacy.
As he lovingly looked over the blades he had unsheathed and slowly twirled in his hands he could hear the lost echo of his father’s voice in his head still after all these years.
Do not loose these blades my son. They are eternal companions, like your mother and I. Either one can protect you well enough on its own, but were designed and I tended to be used in unison to realize their true worth. Make sure that they always return to their sheaths in honor.
Each of the hunting knives had Elven runes inscribed in them, "Thale " on one and " Thalia " on the other, his father and mother. Both of whom had been laid low by the Balvorian’s minions as a blood tithe to their dark master, along with everyone else he had ever known or loved. Even after all these years, the pain of the loss had never dulled, and his hatred waxed strong. Like a wound of stabbing, it throbbed with sharp pain, ever reminding him of his folly. The Balvorian had walked like a man, and more than likely still wore the guise of one, but there was no name for his brand of macabre evil that left a sinister aftertaste in Runningwolf’s mouth.
Looking back to the past was a haunting ritual indeed. Runningwolf used it as a source of motivation when he needed to rise to greater feats on occasion. He still could see their faces, his tribe, could hear the screams of the women and children. He missed them all dearly, but he also knew that the arrow that is time points in one direction only, and so the hunter moved forward.
At least I have purpose he occasionally reminded himself as if bolstering a defense against his own jadedness. He was the last of his tribe, and found a grim sort of satisfaction in the abandonment of his birth name, and taking on the name of his lost tribe as his own. It would be ironic and fitting for the Balvorian when he caught up to him, he would have vengeance and hit the Balvorian with the force and rage of an entire people.
As Runningwolf stood out in the open night, it occurred to him that his mark would likely head to Clansdale, to feed again before moving on. The little village, from what he had been told by his High kinsmen of the court, was the humans last outpost on the fringe of where their empire far away from the cities that populated the western coasts. Runningwolf was grateful for this gift of information, it offered him direction, something that had become a scarce commodity over the last half century as he trailed the Balvorian’s movements and gathered knowledge about his mark. Direction would grow scarce as well with the celestial malformation in the night’s sky.
Runningwolf knew the Balvorian could not resist Clansdale, he needed to eat, he always needed to eat, more than likely though he would plant seeds of evil there for the hunter and then cultivate them near to fruition before moving on. As the years passed it seemed the Balvorian did love to test Runningwolf’s worthiness for the chase, and the elf often wondered if he ever failed a test, would the Balvorian leave him to twist in the wind? After all, this seemed to be no more than a game to him, and if he ever grew bored of it...
Eyes closed and taking a deep draw of the crisp night air into his lungs, the weariness of his long journey disappeared from his muscular shoulders as he bathed in the moonlights of the lunar sisters.
"Sylph” came the still, strong voice of Runningwolf.
The large dire wolf sauntered out from the shadows of the woods to sit next to him. He gazed up at Runningwolf with intelligent yellow eyes. He was massive. Sylph stood a full head higher than Runningwolf as he sat next to him, with beautiful silver fur as well as the blue and green tribal feathers of the Tuwallah bird braided into a tuft of fur behind his right ear with a beaded leather string. He was last of Runningwolf’s family still living, and the Elven ranger loved him dearly.
"If we hurry, we might catch a signal of smoke in the grasslands ahead during the sunrise signifying the second death of the Balvorian, as well as the end of our hunt." Runningwolf said aloud.
“Patience elfing, he has proven to be more resilient to the effects of sunlight and endure a great deal more pain than his comrades "Sylph responded in the silent mental speech shared between them through their empathetic bond.
Dark clouds began their creep that night out of the north east dropping low and encompassing everything in their path as if the foreign land had called down the mist itself, not yet ready to divulge all of its secrets to them yet. The two companions started off again through the mist in an easy gainful trot that was so silent, that the grazing antelope of the plains did not stir as the two hunters passed within mere feet of them. They continued on through the obscured land until the last of the sky’s guiding lights were sacked out and Runningwolf called for a halt. The sudden change in weather so soon after they discussed continuing on had Runningwolf more than a little skeptical. Besides, they needed rest, they both knew it. The pursuit of the Balvorian the past few months after picking up his trail outside of Faedrin Falls had been dogged, but Runningwolf had felt closer than he had in the half century since their first encounter.
Feeling securely hidden in the dense mist that blanketed the ground, Runningwolf and Sylph urinated around the outskirts of where they intended to sleep as a deterrent to other predators and then bedded down in the tall grass. Not wanting to risk their sense of security by giving away their location, Runningwolf elected to not start a fire, instead choosing to sleep in the warm insulated center nook created by Sylph’s body as he curled into a large ball. As Runningwolf lay nestled in his companion’s warm fur, his mind drifted back over the last half century when he first prepared to take on the endeavor of ridding the world of the Balvorian, and he began to dream of days gone by.