Trial of Fury

[Vorenn]

(When I started playing a variant of Vorenn in the early days of EQ2, it was inspired primarily from a  quick dream of a huge, burly man lying upon an icefloe.  I was viewing him from high above, like a god staring down at the insignificant.  He was cut all over his body, the wounds still seeping, and the ice beneath him was pink with his blood.  No assailants were anywhere to be seen, and this rather handsome fellow was lying on his back, his head thrown back, and he was howling incoherently, like a tortured animal.  I heard a voiceover of some sort over his screaming 'And he wept and howled his fury to the silent gods, for he knew nothing had changed."

The image was so disturbing that when I woke up, I tried to figure out what had happened to him, and why.  It grew into its own tale, and a character came out of it, who was known as Braun.  He was one of my favourites and I buried him fondly.  Now I have Vorenn who is a somewhat similar character, although with a few changes.  Still, the essence is the same, and I give the same premise to him now, as I did then with Braun: if you have to ask yourself any questions at all about where illusion ends and the real begins, either ingame or out, then I've succeeded in telling a proper story, and creating a character one could believe in.

Enjoy the following as I compose it.)

[Vorenn]

"Yer Pickles, are ye?"

The fury trainer of Kelethin bristled, gritting his teeth.   He was waiting for the snickering - it always happened, after all, with a name like Pickles you were sort of asking for trouble really.  Maybe that's why he was such a good fury; he could channel all the teasing into one outlet and let fly.

He was about to spin round with a sharp retort when he narrowed his eyes at the ground before him.  Had his shadow just grown in his own annoyance or was the trainee behind him very large? 

The half-elf turned and looked up...then looked up some more.  Large wasn't the word; enormous was close.  Huge, even.  He'd seen Halasians before in his travels but this fellow was something other; he literally blotted out the light filtering down through the Kelethin trees.  Pickles had only seen ogres get brawnier than this fellow.  However, ogres didn't walk around with the faint air about them as if they were silently apologising for their size, and walking as quietly and carefully as possible to keep from breaking anything.   For that reason alone Pickles was somewhat mollified, but he still felt his hands balling into fists defensively; big guy saying his name usually meant he was about to get teased, pummelled, or both.  Thankfully he had the spellpower these days to make that considerably painful for anyone who tried it.

"If you're going to start in about my name..." Pickles began his warning mantra, his opening sentence to just about anyone who addressed him.

The big Halasian frowned, shaking his head with a sardonic half-smile.  "Only an idiot teases his teacher...I dinnae want t'be flat on th'ground, so no, I ain't gonna.  I was sent ta have a word with ye 'bout ...th'furyin'.  Or whatever it is I does."

Pickles frowned himself - the Halasian's accent was thick, but his voice was mild and measured.   It was incongruous, but then so was the air about the man as well; trying to blend into the woodwork even though he was nearly as tall as a tree himself.  With black hair frosted a silvery-white here and there, even though the barbarian was rather young, not to mention a tan, of all things, he looked like his life had been a trying one.

But then...you'd have to in order to become a fury in the first place.

"So, you tapped into Growth and don't know how?" Pickles asked, trying to loosen up a bit as this Halasian clearly wasn't a threat.  "Sure you aren't a shaman, or something along those lines?"

The Halasian frowned again, shaking his head with the same not-quite-a-smile on his face, his piercing blue eyes set like chips of ice in his tanned face.  "Nossir...there ain't no talkin' to spirits with me, it's all fur an' claws an' blastin' with lightning if I get really riled, but I dinnae know what to do with it, or hows I does it.

"But didn't they teach you in Qeynos?"

The Halasian's face changed, and again, Pickles balled up his fists.  The barbarian's face was guarded, and his jaw set.  "I doesn't go there less I can't help it."  Ah...so there was part of it then; well it was to be expected - again, a fury got their anger from somewhere.  It's what made them what they were.  Pickles was fury enough to recognise it. 

However, the barbarian recovered, and quickly - surprising in his race, actually, he held himself very much in check, and within moments he was back to his somewhat sheepish self, although his voice warmed and the smile was a bit less self-depreciating.  " 'sides, Kelethin is beautiful, an' even though th'Faydark has her troubles, her roots grow deep an' strong.  I can feel it."

"Yes, that's true," Pickles replied, relaxing again and surveying the giant before him.  "What's your name then?  And I hope for your sake it isn't Cabbage or Sue."

"Nossir...Vorenn Frostrime if it please ye."

"And you live here in Kelethin then?"

"Aye, sir, I'm just learnin' ta duck a bit more is all."

Pickles grinned, but he quelled it just as quickly.  Likeable fellow, this one, even if it was pretty obvious for all his size, Vorenn was the most self-conscious Halasian he'd ever met.  As a result, he was going to be difficult to teach...but this was something all furies had to face at one point or another, and Pickles steeled himself for it.  It was one of the most trying parts of being a fury....if not THE most trying.  Some didn't make it through and decided to do something else with themselves.

And so Pickles couldn't afford to like anyone...he had to harden his heart a bit until the trial was done.

"It's said among druids that you don't have to really understand where your power comes from, Vorenn, you just have to feel it.  That's all well and good...unless you're like us.  Then it's pretty important to know where it stems from, as rage and feral nature is well and good; however it can quickly get control of you and become dangerous.   There's a big difference between an affinity with animals, and being a monster.  You've got to be honest with yoursef.  Do you understand."

Vorenn's eyes flickered slightly, and he lowered his gaze, as Pickles had expected he would.  Every fury-trainee who ever came to him quailed like that in the face of things.  It wasn't an easy task, coming face to face with whatever internal demons made you who you were.   

"Think about it for a while, Vorenn, then I want you to go and learn Fayefolk language...because you'll need to speak to the Witch of the Wood; she sees and hears everything that moves and breathes and grows in the Faydark.  She'll tell you what to do.  When you're done, come back to me and I'll train you."

Vorenn shuffled from one foot, then the other, his gaze still downturned.  Pickles could see the huge man visibly steeling himself.  Eventually, bright blue eyes met his own gaze, and the Halasian nodded.

"I'll see ye soon, then.  Survive another day, mate."

Pickles nodded as the Halasian turned and strode off, moving with a oddly quiet stride, slow and stately but ever so gentle, trying not to shake the floorboards, trying not to knock anything over...trying not to be there at all.

"Good luck," Pickles murmured, and sighed, rubbing at his own cheek with a hand and, as ever, feeling a bit of a heel.  He hated that bit the most; but if the big man made it or not was in Tunare's hands, and his own.

[Vorenn]

 MATURE WARNING ENSUES

(One thing I've seen a lot of in rp is that everyone seems to be the victim.  Everyone wants people to somehow empathise with their character so they give them very intense stories which are mostly about how Other People Are Mean and they themselves were just caught up in events.  Everyone seems very forgiving and accepting as well, until the world seems to be one big Hallmark Film at prime time.

Realism gets talked about a lot in roleplaying and I must say that sometimes, realism isn't pretty.  Sometimes, bad things happen because we set those things in motion.  And sometimes, not everyone is a good person.  Sometimes, you do things there's no easy forgiveness for. 

Sometimes there is no demonic possession, no "I'm evil-raced but I'm Not Like the Others".  Sometimes there's no huge explanation other than the simple one:

Sometimes...realism can be awful.))

Vorenn clambered up the massive dead tree, sweat pouring in his eyes.  "Th'one time I'm grateful fer all that rowin'..." he muttered as he reached up for the next bough, shifting his weight and clambering up the tree to the ledge in the Faydark.

He'd been travelling most of the day, travelling in light and shade, moving eastward as he was bidden by the internal compass which it seemed Tunare and Growth had bestowed to him.   He'd never felt like this in his life till he came to Kelethin - even the swamp and jungle of Gorowyn hadn't been like this.  He could hear the trees breathe, feel their roots sink into earth.  He could hear worms and borers under bark, smell the coming rain, hear the nibblers munching grass.  His mouth filled with the taste of blood as prowlers  took down their kills.  He wanted to run, run forever, and howl to the sky and feel adrenaline coursing through every muscle -

And he shuddered, shaking the sweat off his brow and glaring up the trunk for his next handhold.  Half the time he felt like he was going mad, sinking under the swell of whatever new powers were swaying him, pushing him into the depths of what to him merely looked like an abyss.  He fought for his hold, both without and within, before eventually pulling himself over the edge of the broken tree, and rolled panting upon the mossy ledge of rock in the face of the cliff.

Panting and rolling over onto his stomach - gingerly, as the ledge was only two meters wide, he lifted himself up onto his hands and knees, and raised his head, staring straight into the Witch's eyes.

Vorenn startled and rocked back on his haunches, smacking the back of his head against the tree behind him.  He cursed under his breath, flushing up to the hairline on his brow and clutching his own head as the Fay witch flittered her wings and smiled, neither laughing nor scolding him for his rather inauspicious and unannounced entrance.  Rubbing the back of his head with a hand - though his pride was still smarting, he stared at the Fay.  She could have rested in his hand; so small and so lovely in the unsettling, eerie way of her kind, but her beauty did not stir him.  Such things never did.

So small...and yet power flowed from her, wove through the very fabric of Growth around him, harnessed it, tempered it, and it radiated out in waves, almost pulsing against his chest like the call of whales against the hull of a ship - and well would he know that, who better?  Slowly, awkwardly, like a gawky boy, he rose to his feet and bowed low.

The Witch of the Wood smiled and gestured at him to be seated - Vorenn's legs gave way as if he were a puppet and she had cut the strings.  He sat down with a grunt, folding his massive legs beneath him and resting his hands on his knees, trying to sit up straight, trying to at least look the part of the wise druid, the fury, whatever it was he was attempting to be.

The Witch floated, and smiled, and said nothing, and seconds became minutes.  Time stretched on, as it always does in the forest, and still...nothing.

What is she waitin' for?

Again there was nothing, and Vorenn found her calm, smiling gaze unnerving.  He cleared his throat, glancing on the ledge.  He attempted to breathe in deep and centre himself as he had learned....well, ages ago it seemed.  He tried to get in touch with whatever it was he was supposed to be getting in touch with.  Maybe it was a test.....maybe it wasn't.  He didn't know.

Maybe this was stupid and he shouldn't have come at all.

Fury.

Vorenn jumped for the second time, but managed not to bash his head - the voice came out of the air, out of the ground, the sky, the tree behind him, and in his own head like an echo.  Soft, sweet, feminine, but old...ever so old. His heart ached...and it frightened him.

Fury.  That smile...it could kill a man.

"I...don't rightly think that applies to me, Missus," Vorenn mumbled, unsure of her address.  Lady?  Witch?  He coughed, shifting uncomfortably and feeling his embarassment rise and turn to irritation.  What a stupid thing to be doing...why?  What was he going to gain from it?  He had no education and no clue about druid-work- his family were shamans.

Fury.

The Halasian set his jaw, taking in a deep breath and letting it out, his anger starting to rise.  It took a fair bit to get him riled, but once he was...once he was, there wasn't any stopping him, was there?

....was there?


Vorenn winced as that memory surfaced and he quelled it back as he always did, until that voice came again.

Tell me of your fury, druid.   Where is your rage?

Again, Vorenn took a deep breath, and with an effort, he halted himself, caged it, brought it up sharp and short and threw it into the deeper recesses of himself.  Once again, he was calm.

"No, Missus...nae worth doin'."   He brought his gaze back to hers - were her eyes black?  Or purple?  Or were they changing every heartbeat?  He couldn't tell.

The minute Fay tilted her head to one side and regarded the Halasian, and he stared back, a stone, un-moving and ...blank.

How old were you when fury took you?

Once more, Vorenn winced, and he pretended she meant recently..."I was on th'ship, Missus - "

It was before.  How old?

It was like being punched without being braced for it.  The air expelled from Vorenn's lungs under the crush of the memory which was rising in his mind, the one he refused to allow to see the light of day.  He tried to push it back, but still it came, and he watched helplessly, and heard his lips moving, his own voice a murmur.

"I was twenty-two, Missus...twenty-two, nearly to th'day."

Silence again...nothing again, but it wouldn't have helped.  He was lost in the throes of memory, could see it rising up to meet him, his heart swelling in his chest and his eyes narrowing as his vision blurred -

"It were Greystone Yard...me an' me lads, we were fair bruisers back then.  I were th'talk of th'wimmin folk for I was considered a fair man, an' a good catch; but none of em...none of 'em suited me."

An' one day, one verra bad one after yet another breakoff from a girl I'd met an' cast aside, drunk as all hell we was...me an' th'other four, staggerin' about an' there...there he was.

Harlin. 

Poor Harlin.


Vorenn's knuckles were slick with blood, some of it his own, but most of it coming from the slumped Halasian in front of him.  The young barbarian supported- indeed, pinned - one on each arm by Cutar and Dronn, and Malk nursing his own broken knuckles and laughing.  They were all laughing - that was the horrible part of it.

It was a game.

Vorenn hauled up on Harlin's golden hair, hauled back and watched the barbarian's eye try and focus - the other swollen shut.  His nose was broken and twin streams of red were flowing down over busted lips and into the faint furring of his first man-beard upon his chin.  One of his teeth lay upon the ground, and he wheezed, gasping round the broken rib in his chest.

"Ye ain't so purty now, are ye?"  Vorenn hissed, and spat into Harlin's face.  Again, Malk made that horsey, braying laugh, and the others grinned.

"M'sorry..." Harlin mumbled through swollen, broken lips.  He'd been saying those same words for the past fifteen minutes, but it made no difference.  He must have known it - should have known it, even as he saw them coming.  After all, he was one of Vorenn's friends, or had been...had been until he'd made his confession, which Vorenn had spurned almost as soon as it was spoken.  Blasphemy - appalling, disgusting, so completely against everything that Halasians stood for in their strength and their prowess.   He'd tried to dismiss it from his mind, but no...he'd been friends with Harlin for years, since they were lads, and he'd never dreamed...never even guessed.

It was like a betrayal.  It was a betrayal.   Harlin had let him down. 

"Sorry?  Sorry yer a disgrace ta Halas?  Ta all our race?"  Vorenn grunted and allowed Harlin's head to drop nearly bonelessly forward upon his neck and he bent from the waist and spewed his ire on the towheaded Halasian.

"Sorry ye can't kiss a girl or give it t'er like a real man, so ye have ta come ta me?  Sorry ye shame me fer't?  For all I know ye been hankerin fer me...and I'll show ye laddie, I'll show ye what happens if ye even THINK it - "

Again Vorenn's arm came back and pistoned forward, once, twice, three times, and Harlin's head snapped back so hard his neck clicked.  Vorenn's lips were peeled back from his teeth, his eyes shone and glared, hard as diamond.

Dimly, he was aware his friends had stopped laughing - dimly, through a red haze, he felt his arm going back again.  For he was raging, raging at the betrayal, raging at how his friend could suddenly be something so different, raging and angry and -

-and something else he didn't want to look at too closely.

There was a hand on his arm, and Malk's voice now.  "Vorenn, he's had enough -"

Vorenn spun on Malk, the look on his face so intense, so fierce, that Malk actually took a few steps back, his hands in the air placatingly.

"I'll say when 'e's had enough!  Have ye not got th'stomach fer punishmen'?  Not got th'stomach fer who an' what we are, wha' this bastard be shamin'?"

"A good brawl be one thing,"  Cutar replied, as he released Harlin's arm, brushing his hands, and scowling a moment at the flecks of blood upon his wrist and forearm, rubbing at it a moment, trying to wash it off.  "This ain't a brawl...yer gonna kill him if ye keep it up.  An' I won't have no part of it."

And now, Dronn also let the fair-haired Halasian go - though not without a kick in the stomach, perhaps he was just as wicked as Vorenn right now, or perhaps just to save face as he hadn't landed a single blow.  Harlin had fought well, no matter what he was -and perhaps because of it, but once against four?  No chance.

"C'mon, Vorenn," Malk called - they were already walking away, taking pulls from their flasks and staggering, weaving their way back to the tavern proper.

Vorenn glared down at Harlin, crumpled on the flagstones of the Yard, bleeding and wheezing.  The rage was still there, but it was flagging.  Betrayal, anger...fear, all rolled into a ball until the one way a man like him could deal with it was to pummel something.  And he had...he had indeed, but now looking down upon his handiwork, he could feel nothing but disgust.  For himself, for his friend - everything, perhaps.  For that five minute talk in which everything Vorenn knew had changed...and everything he believed in challenged.

Vorenn spat in the dust, and turned upon his heel.

"Vorenn."

The young barbarian froze, as Harlin's voice, choked on blood and pain, whispered out across the stones.  Vorenn turned slightly to see the fair man - who wasn't going to be fair for a very long time after this - trying to pull himself up on his hands and knees, spitting blood in the dust and gasping against the pain in his chest.

"Vorenn."  The face was nearly gone under blows, but the eyes were the same.  Deep green, green as moss on stones by a waterfall.  Bleary from pain, nearly filmed over by tears, but the same, laughing, calm, kind eyes...which were staring now at Vorenn with sadness.  And pity.

"If.  I'd known....it was th'same for ye....I would have....been...a better friend...sooner."

The words were like a blow.  Vorenn almost rocked back upon his heels as if he had been struck, and stared in disbelief at the bleeding man several paces away.  For a moment, he was laid bare, for a moment, everything stared back at him, as raw and as bloody as Harlin's face.  Hints here and there, everything came together in a flash, an epiphany, and Vorenn stood before it...stunned.

And just as quick, the rage came again, so full, so fierce, it was like a wave.  It blanked out all else, until the only thing Vorenn wanted was to shut all he had just realised out and bury it forever.

By the time Malk, Dronn and Cutar realised Vorenn wasn't following...by the time they turned and shouted, and those shouts turned to alarm, by the time they had pulled Vorenn - who was roaring like a bear, throwing them off him so he could get back to his work, and several men from the tavern who had heard the noise had to come and help -

By that time, the door was shut with the stopping of a heart.

[Vorenn]

Vorenn sat with bowed head, blinking as he stared down at the turf, hands on his massive knees, not looking up to look into the Witch's eyes...he was pretty certain he wouldn't like what he'd see.  It was a grim memory - like a nightmare suddenly remembered.  Only - he hadn't been able to wake up.

He'd gone this far now, and there was no backing out of it.  His voice was flat and soft in the stillness of the forest air. speaking his crimes and his rage for the first time in his life.

"Th'trial were quick.  I dinnae protest after all.  It wouldnae be th'first time we killed onna our own, but I wouldnae say one way or th'other why I'd done it.  There were no excuse fer it...not then, an' not now.   An' there never will be."

The Witch said nothing, and Vorenn hunched his shoulders slightly - like one expecting a blow.  The silence was somehow worse than recriminations; it damned him without words.  He grimaced, and found himself speaking again - to fill the silence up, and by now, it seemed as if once he had started, he couldn't stop.

"They dinnae allow fer execution in Qeynos, though by Halasian law tha' mighta been m'fate, and I woulda welcomed it.  But there was exploration o' Halas to be done, an' th'first they sent were th'criminals."  He took a steady breath, and let it out just as slowly.

"I dinnae go to Halas fer expedition an' exploration - I was sent as part of th'penal colony, an' labourers.  I ain't never admitted tha' to anyone atall."

Still...nothing.  Vorenn frowned, and steeled himself, reluctantly lifting his chin to stare the Witch in the eye; hard to do, very hard indeed.  But her expression hadn't changed.  It hadn't changed at all.  Still, that impassive, gentle smile, remote, cool, compassionate.  There was neither pity nor accusation in her gaze, neither judgment or succor.  She was just...there.

The Halasian felt his face warm again as he flushed in the face of her cool, kind indifference.  He wanted to rant - to get some kind of reaction; at least the reaction he felt he deserved, and his eyes narrowed, his hands clenched to fists upon his knees - but the words wouldn't come.  Locked up in his chest, and smarting him like pieces of broken glass...but he couldn't work them free.

Pirates.

It was partly the unexpectedness...but mostly it was the word.  He stiffened, his eyes narrowing into blue slits.  His jaw was rock hard as he gritted his teeth. 

How long were you in the galley, fury?

Again, he found himself speaking, though now there was a growl in his throat.  Now, the rage was swelling in him again, like a tide, carrying him with it, as he bobbed and spun in its wake. 

"Four years, Missus - but it mighta been more - four years, I rowed tha' damn ship when they came ta get their own captain - even though th'pirate code is who falls behin' is lef' behind.  They went fer us...broke th'ship down.  An' we were dead men sailin' off to icy shores anyway.  So...wha' was th'option?  Serve, or die - an' though I wanted ta die then, I weren't ready ta do it at th'hands o' pirates.

"Most men died after one year o' that...but I remained.

"I remained.  T'were only what I deserved, after all."



"The strength of three men and the brains of only 'arf, is that th'way it is with ye?  Keep rowing, son-of-an-orc, row till it hurts, or the lash will kiss your shoulders again with claret!"

Vorenn gritted his teeth, heaving back upon the oar beneath his calloused hands, back muscles heaving beneath a new working of scar tissue and scabbing from the last time he had been brought out to work from the slave pens below.

He'd lost track of time:  all he knew was this dank, enclosed space with rows of benches, the stench of sweating, sickly men, the smell of tar, and of the sea, dim light, grunting, and the row and pull, for hours on end.  Sometimes they let them walk the decks, and the broken men shambled in their ankle chains, blinking in the sudden light they hadn't seen for weeks, coughing and ill as the Blacksails laughed and sometimes forced them to dance a weary jig upon tarred decking.  For weeks Vorenn said nothing, chained and fillthy as the rest, losing weight yet growing even more muscled and strong beneath the unkind ministrations of the crew. 

He did not join in mutiny plans, or protest his treatment - for he saw how quickly they disposed of those that did.  He rowed for two months, then for six, his hair starting to silver from malnutrition and overwork.  He paled from lack of sun, but he continued to work, when other men had dropped.  Most were gone within a year, dead from overwork and grim conditions.  But still, Vorenn worked, eyes dull and silent, no matter how often they beat him, or tried to get a reaction out of him.  Eventually, they grew tired of their sport and merely walked him round and round the decks, fed him better still as he was well worth three other men, and hitched him to the oar when they needed the speed to get away.  They gave him ropes to weave, decking to wash, and if they shouted an order, away he went to follow it, like a trusted shire horse.  Good ol' simple Vorenn.

He'd locked himself away in his mind; survivng, not living, doing what he needed to do.  He had no hope - for what hope was there?  He had killed a friend, and all that he did was in pennance for that crime.  He was paying, paying in full measure, and thus he did so in silence, each lash of the whip, each straining muscle, each hunger cramp in his belly was a silent prayer to Harlin.

Forgive me.



**************

The Vorenn in the grove sat still, talking, ever talking, filling in the silence with his memories of the Vorenn in the galley.  He couldn't have stopped if he tried.

"In these sorta stories, Missus, there's sposed ta be some tale o' th'brave adventurer fallin' in love with the merciful captain lass.  They're nice stories, Missus...but tha' all they be.  'Sides, bein' as I be...well, a lass wouldnae have turned m'head.  I worked an' I slaved an' I did nothin' else.  I was a dead man walkin'.  There was nothin' romantic about it...if there's a place after death fer one who done wrong, it'll only be familiar ta me - it'll be a galley with me at an' oar, heavy chains on m'wrists and m'ankles an' I row to eternity an' then beyond it."

Vorenn closed his eyes.  "I deserved it, y'see...mebbe Harlin were right - maybe he weren't, I still dunno.   But he were a friend an' even if he were...tha' way...he din't deserve what I did t'im.  I paid, an' I still pay...but it won't bring 'em back.  Nothin' will.

"But I still tried ta do it."

Silence gripped him again, even though the emotions in him stirred and rose and fell.  He wanted to howl at her to say something, anything, but not to gobble his words and memories and give nothing back.  He was picking open wounds and bleeding...but he couldn't heal them.  Couldn't ever dig deep enough to sort them out.

But there was Jarith.

Vorenn held his breath, again feeling as if he had been struck.  It was a pain he could feel, welling in his chest, and unbidden, he curled himself forward, trying to get the pain to ease - some pain wasn't in the body, but in the spirit, and it hurt just as badly.  The Halasian cursed, cursed the Witch with her all-seeing eyes, cursed the Growth, cursed the demon inside him who made him what he was, his fingers curled into claws and his eyes flaring suddenly, changing their hue to a golden hue of a hunting wolf - fury rising inside him, against memories he couldn't change.

But her voice was cool, remote, gentle, and he couldn't fight it for all the blood in his veins.

Who was Jarith?

[Vorenn]

"Damn ye."

There was no fire behind the utterance; Vorenn's voice was flat and toneless even in his own ears.  Beaten before he'd even started; the Witch was sifting through his mind and spirit, bursting down doors it had taken him months to build in an eyeblink, letting the howling, gibbering horrors of his memories pour forth and bury him beneath. 

He lifted his head and glared at the Witch, his blue eyes gone- replaced with the flat, golden stare of a tiger on the hunt.  He was shifting, and not even aware, the rage building in him and the very air around him smelling faintly of ozone.

"Damn ye, Missus, whether it be respectful or nae...damn ye fer digging up what I 'ad almost forgot.  Would ye tear me apart here?  Is that yer test?  Why not jus' run me through with a blade?  It'd be quicker!"

And still, the Witch said nothing; still she gazed calmly, gently, with her sphinx-like smile, cool and serene even while the clouds above began to rumble, the birds nearby going silent as the very forest felt a Fury seething, and prepared.

"Jarith...was a druid wot was onna th'first ta venture t'Halas to tend th'world tree.  They were researchin', sendin' out explorers with th'main settlers an' expeditions.  These ships were always laden with supplies, so th'pirates made sure ta prowl those waters ta waylay 'em before they ever reached shore.

"Jarith was on tha' ship...an' he fought lon' an 'ard.  Killed three pirates, wounded several more - th'only way they stopped him was by takin' women folk hostage an' threatenin' ta kill 'em if he didn't stop.  Ta serve or die...those were th' terms they gave 'em.  I dinnae know why he chose th'way he did...but he chose ta serve, if they put th'wimmin an' nippers in a dingy with enough food ta get 'em to shore.

"Damn ye, Witch...who was Jarith?  I tell ye.

Jarith...was everythin'."




"We're eight men down because of ye, so ye'll have to do your work jus' like th'rest.  Even Ol' Vorenn cinnae do tha' much, no matter how hard we whip 'im."

"He'd do better if you fed him properly and didn't whip him at all."

The bosun glared down into the human druid's eyes - there was so much tension in the air that most of the pirates could feel it and steered well clear.  It had become obvious that the druid they'd taken on might have been more of a curse than a blessing.  He wasn't as tender as he looked; fierce as a cornered boar, strong in magic as well, and a good healer, but his contempt radiated for those who had shanghied him, and it was getting to the point where they weren't quite sure what to do with him.  Whispers of killing him and dumping him over the side were circulating, but no one seemed willing to dare - he wasn't easy to catch unawares, and he had more power than the sword they had confiscated from him.   Dangerous cargo...and now it was more a matter of getting to land quickly enough to get rid of him without invoking the wrath of the god Jarith followed, for sailors are superstitious, and angering a devotee of the Father of Storms spelled woe for all.

In the middle of the harangue, Vorenn stood, his shoulders seeping fresh blood, his eyes downcast.  He could feel the pain as a remote thing, but nothing more.  It had been three years now, and his spirit was asleep in a self-constructed purgatory for his crimes.  He didn't even lift an arm when Jarith came round and eyed his wounds, testing the ripped flesh with his fingertips, his lips set into a grim line.

"You've broken a son of Halas.  No small feat."  There was a coldness in his voice that a few of the sailors winced and looked away from.  But the bosun was a hard creature, and a troll at that.   He merely grinned a cavernous, gap-toothed smile. 

"He was broken before we ever came into it, but now he's a good packhorse when needed."

"He won't be if you treat him like this any longer," Jarith replied as he came round again, looking up into Vorenn's filty, blank face.  A human male, pale - sunburnt here and there now thanks to being on the waters.  He was older than Vorenn perhaps - thirty five years, maybe a little more than that by the lines on either side of his mouth and the corners at his eyes.  Brown hair starting to turn blond here and there from the sun, but his eyes were his glory:  gold as a wolf, and just as piercing.  There weren't many of the pirates who would stare him in the eyes for long without looking away.  Vorenn stared, blank and impassive, and Jarith stared right back.

All this Vorenn saw, and didn't see, at the same time.  A world apart; though the colour of gold triggered his mind somehow...some distant memory he couldn't quite place, and the huge man flinched slightly and looked away.

Silence again, and Jarith turned back to the bosun.

"He's malnurished and won't last much longer if you don't feed him properly."

That's a mercy... thought Vorenn, but he wasn't sure why he thought such a thing.

"I'm aware you hardly care - you'd tip him over the side and not think twice, I'm sure, but then you'd be down even more men, and you can't afford it, not with the Sea of Tears ahead of us.  You're going to need every hand, and if you leave him in my charge, then I'll see that he's fit for it, just as I'm tending the men I wounded before.

"But I'll have you remember," Jarith said with an edge to his voice as he turned his gaze to the bosun, his back to Vorenn.  "I'll have you remember it was me who wounded them in the first place...and I can do it again if need be.  Right now, we're all allies, whether we like it or not.  So no arguments, if you please."

The bosun glared, but just as the rest always tended to do...after a time, the face-like-an-orc creature grimaced, spat upon the decks, and slunk off.

Vorenn stared at nothing at all, as Jarith turned back and nodded to him.

"Belowdecks, Vorenn...let's get you tended."

[Vorenn]

(sorry this one is so short, I see where it's going but I don't want to rush)

Vorenn was still learning forward round the pain in his belly, his hands pressed against the mossy gnoll and stone beneath him, his fingers curling as if he were trying to rip the rock with his bare hands.  His breath caught in his throat, in the stillness and scent of a coming storm - even though there was not a dark cloud anywhere upon the horizon.  The storm whorled above...and it tore asunder within.

He spoke into the stillness, beneath the remote, aloof gaze of the Witch, spoke to the forest and the air, to the stone, the grass..he couldn't stop it now.  The dams had broken, and he let the waters roar and push all before them aside.

"Sympathy fer beasts...tha's how I had th'druidin' put ta me one day.  Sympathy fer those tha' have no voices, tha' cannae speak as we do.  I was told that th'druid had more sympathy for nature an' th'unseen than fer their fellow two-legged men, or elves, or whatever else we call "intelligent bein's".  An' mebbe that be true.

For Jarith saw somethin' in me he felt sorry for, even on tha' damn ship, his own life hangin' by a thread an' well he knew it.  But he risked it...risked it anyway...fool that he was.

An' wha animal that were ever saved by kindness dinnae return the favour with love?"





There were no more beatings for Vorenn to suffer, and though the current scabbing wounds were healed over without a trace, four years of the lash had left their mark, and even Jarith's skill could not heal them.  Fish was brought up out of the sea, cooked, and fed to all the crew - some of it raw, to their protest, but Jarith was insistent, and the pirates grudgingly admitted that they found their loosened teeth were setting better in their gums, and their joints didn't ache as much.  There were two more raids upon ships for supplies, but not even the captain would cross Jarith now, and the ships were raided of cargo without any loss of life, the ships set back to sail away home.

However, in return, rowing was no longer necessary, for a fair wind seemed to blow behind their vessel wherever they fared, and the sea stayed calm for a mile in any direction as long as Jarith stood on decks, his arms folded and gazing over the horizon with that calm, barely contained frown upon his face.  He'd stand at day, or at night, like a new masthead carving - surveying the sea and, for all the sailors knew, ruling it as well.

As for Vorenn, his hair stopped changing colour, though that too remained to stay.  He bulked up even more than before, and though he still said not a word, it didn't stop Jarith.  He told his massive charge about the ruins of Karana, and of Kelethin - he told him of the druid's path, and the codes of the Wild Men, of the language of faeries and of trees and of living things. 

Speaking like a man trying to soothe a hurt beast, he'd heal Vorenn's wounds, wash the grime from his face, cut his hair and would gently lift Vorenn's head up to stare into his blank, blue eyes.

"Everything happens for a reason, Vorenn.  I don't know what landed you here, or why you're hiding inside your head, but if Karana put me here on this cursed boat to find you for whatever reason, then I accept that fate and will do all within my power to aid."  Jarith frowned, his golden eyes searching Vorenn's own - perhaps looking for a sign, a reaction, a spark.

Vorenn stared up from the murky depths in his mind.  He blinked, and struggled, then sighed, resigned, flat, hopeless.

Again, that frown, the furrowing of the brow which came often to Jarith's face, though his patience with the mute Halasian seemed infinite even so.  "What did they do to you, Vorenn," Jarith murmured softly.   "Or did you do it to yourself?"

...was there an easy answer to that? 

[Vorenn]

Vorenn reared back upon his haunches upon the stretch of moss and stone, staring up into the stormy skies barely glimpsed in the canopy above without really seeing it - his eyes were turned within, and he continued talking, though it was doubtful who he was talking to now.  A monologue of one, to no witnesses, not even the Witch...or perhaps to the entire forest.  Or himself.  It was hard to say.

But even though the clouds whorled overhead, faint misty colours began to drift down - blues and greens and yellows, the likes of which the Faydark had never seen - dancing mists like organdy scarves coiling and twisting their nebulous arabesques through leaf and bough over the fury's head...and for the first time, he smiled, though it was a smile edge with bitterness along with the sweet, as one might expect.

"Ye've never seen the Sea-lights, Missus - I wouldnae think ye did, if ye know nothin' about the open waters.  The ocean is a desert fer all its length an' breath o water ye cinnae drink, but it has its wonders too.  On tha' ship, I learned ta love th'moon an' th'night, becomin' a creature more o' night than o' day.  Moonlight on water turnin' it ta silver, moonlight on glaciers until they transformed inta ice-palaces...I suppose it's how m'blood woke up, an' my mind as well.

An' other things, Missus....other things too, though I ain't never said so till now.  For they tells me Erollisi's arrows are swift an' sure an' strike yer heart.  But fer me, it were always like a thunderbolt. 

An' ye only has it once."


************

"Do you see it, Vorenn?"

Dumbly, blankly, Vorenn raised his head where he stood nearby to Jarith.  The Halasian was healed of the wounds of his body, but his spirit ailed, and his mind.  Jarith never flagged however, though he tended all the men in turn as they travelled the Sea of Tears to their next call of port, through the empty expanses, the water wastes.  But tonight was something different entirely, and the note in Jarith's voice had even travelled through the haze of Vorenn's mind.

"Do you see it?"  And Jarith pointed, his quiet voice tinged with a breath of excitement, golden eyes fixed to the east as the ship sailed through the light of a half-moon.

Vorenn turned his keen blue eyes where Jarith pointed, and blinked...for lights were dancing.  He blinked again, but the lights remained, and his brow furrowed slightly.

Ribbons of smoky colour, dragged through the sky in a lazy waltz by an unseen hand, dancing upon the waves of a silver-black sea.  Yellows fading into greens fading into blues, round and about into the sky, and then down over the crests, and back again. 

"The sailors of these seas call those "siren's tresses", Vorenn,"  Jarith said quietly to his mute charge, leaning forward against the prow, golden eyes gleaming.  His normally grim face was creased with a smile - it transformed him, changed him, turned him into a man several years younger than his age.  All care forgotten, as he marvelled as a child through this dancing sailor-rainbow.

The ship steered on - the helmsman might have tried to veer out of the path of the dancing lights but by now they bloomed so far to port and starboard there would be no avoiding them.  It was held to be bad luck...but with Jarith among them the men were bolder, and no alarum was sounded, nor did the course change.  Instead, straight on they went, into the cool-tone fires which coiled and twisted upon the waves, into the sky.

Vorenn watched as the smoky mists danced over the prow, and decks.  They wreathed themselves round the mast, flitted over the ropes and lines and billowed into the sails.  The oil lamps hissed and glowed a deep mysterious blue, and the crows-nest became a blue-flamed pyre.

And Jarith - Jarith was a marvel; a wonder - golden motes and blue strands weaving over his arms and hands.  The druid beamed, staring as his own limbs flared with fire and turned into something unworldly, a creature of water and wind.  He chuckled under his breath, and Vorenn stared, his eyes flickering blue and silver and golden and green...and sparking deep within his brain.

The one who had healed him, who talked to him and guided him, feed him, bathed his face and stared into his eyes for a spark, for a sign, that there was a man still within.

A pain seared through Vorenn's mind - so sharp and quick he had no time to cry out, no time to howl, barely time to reel at the shock of it.

"If I'd known it were th'same with ye, Vorenn...."

Vorenn reeled, his eyelids fluttering as his knees started to buckle.  Jarith blinked and was there in a moment, calling his name with a note Vorenn hadn't heard before.  The human male's head barely came to Vorenn's shoulder but he still made a grand effort to try and catch the Halasian before  he fell and cracked his skull against the deck - which Vorenn probably wouldn't have felt.

The Halasian blinked rapidly, staring up in bewilderment at the changing sky, the colours dancing, and Jarith transformed inot a work of art, a wonder - and it was like a blow.

"Yer...ahhh...."

Jarith blinked himself, staring down at Vorenn blankly for a moment, the wheezing whisper of the first word Vorenn had spoken in years, hoarse and rasping, but clear enough.

"Ye...are...a vision, Jarith."

Jareth stared again, for a moment, then two, and Vorenn blinked, confused and then with a rising embarassment which turned his face to crimson.  Of all the idiotic things to say to break a four year silence - this...this admission which should never see light of day.

Before he could shrug the druid aside, before he could struggle up to his feet and flee, Jarith merely smiled anew.  "Welcome back to the living world, Vorenn.  You'll find it not as bad as you left it."

The human rose, turning again to stare out at the sea in a relaxed repose, pivoted upon one hip, his torso turned, his face in profile - the eerie lights still dancing in his hair and on his fingertips.  To Vorenn's eyes the most perfect thing beneath the stars.  He didn't question it...it merely was truth.

Jarith turned now to Vorenn, still sprawled upon the decks, his golden eyes gleaming.  Calmly, assured, he extended his hand to the Halasian, a god extending his favour to a lesser mortal, though Jarith would have scoffed at such a notion.

"Stand tall, Vorenn, and watch the night with me."

Vorenn hesitated but a moment, and then placed his massive hand in Jarith's own - a shock which travelled through his arm and made him catch his breath in his chest at the touch, but then was gone.  He rose, and towered upon the decks, dropped their hands and leaned upon the hullside, staring at the sea, the waves, and the fae-fires which now were left behind them.  No longer touching, no longer needing to.  Some things were understood.

Four years of silence broken...and yet there was really nothing to say.

[Vorenn]

MATURE CONTENT WARNING (I am keeping these as chilled as I can, but not everyone wants to read Brokeback Frigate on the Sea, so just sayin'; avert your eyes if such things alarm you!)


Vorenn sat upon the mossy ground, his blue eyes closed tightly - he was tracing the memory in his mind's eye; the furrow in Jarith's brow, the brooding shade of his golden eyes in the evening light, the hair turning blondish-brown in the bright sea-sun.  He'd scribed it to memory...and it hurt him, as such things often so, and yet still, he smiled, opening his eyes - brilliant blue as the sea - and turned his gaze to the Witch's own for the first time in an hour.

"I suppose it's all th'rage to tell a tale o' two men...gods knows there's dozens of books about just tha' being scribbled all over Norrath fer women ta coo over whilst eatin' choccies in th'evening.  But there's little ta tell; I dinnae expect you to believe me, but we never did anythin' o' any kind.  No kisses or whispers o' found love, no handholdin' or anything like that.   It was a ship, fer one, and secrets dinnae stay secret long with that many men crammed together afloat on th'sea.  It could be dangerous too - mebbe not as dangerous as back 'ome, perhaps, as sailors are...opportunists, if ye unnerstan'. "

Vorenn shook his head, still mindless of the storm that was turning the clouds nearly black overhead - so incongruous to the smile upon his face, but on either horizon which was dimly glimpsed through the high leaf canopy, there was never a cloud - the vortex was centred and fixed over the Halasian alone.

"We jus' ...din't need to.  It was understood.  Never was voiced.  Never had ta be - as men prefer, Missus, if ye were to ask them truly.  It is not about what we says, but what we does.  An' he did enough, an' so did I, that we need say nowt a thing atall."

Eventually however, the smile faded from Vorenn's face, faded as the sunlight was fading from the darkening sky.  Fading even as a peal of thunder rumbled overhead, like distant drums...or a warning.

"But I'll tell ye, Missus...if I had known what was comin', I might have dared ta do an' say more.   I might have dared, even if it frightened me, and frightens me still.

Aye.  I would have done more.  Even if it were only th'once.





Vorenn and Jarith were not glued to the hip  -there was too much to do, even aboard the ship, but they did spend a fair portion of their time together, especially at night; Jarith seemed to never require sleep, and the twilight and midnight hours were the best for him.  Vorenn attuned himself to such a schedule, and would stand upon the decks, listening, ever listening, to everything Jarith had to tell him.

"Tell me o' Kelethin again, please Jarith,"  Vorenn asked quietly, staring down at the druid standing upon the decks beside him beneath a starless night. 

Jarith chuckled softly  - it was music, a symphony, for he rarely showed mirth at all.  "Bless you, Vorenn, I've told you dozens of times, surely you're getting tired of listening to me bleat on and on."

"Please?"

Jarith turned his golden eyes to Vorenn, and smiled; carefree and without a qualm, as if he were in the forest and not on a rocking boat upon the ocean with the scum of the seas.

"All right then."

Vorenn heard of Kelethin, and the Faydark, of the druids travelling through all the Shattered Lands seeking to relearn their secrets.  He was taught of Karana and his teachings, of the importance of rain, and of the acknowledge of the power of chaos and storm; how to tap it, how to harness it, how to work with it and not against it.  Vorenn drank the knowledge like cool water, and nourished his spirit with it.  Never once did Jarith ask how Vorenn came to the fate he'd been found in, and never did Vorenn offer it.  It didn't matter; all that mattered was getting through another day.

"A tiger or lion, or wolf, or tree, never thinks about tomorrow, Vorenn.  It just lives for the moment, as much as it can, as hard as it can.  Worrying about the future only goes as far as hiding a kill beneath some stones, or growing a winter coat."

"A carefree life then?"  Vorenn asked, but Jarith shook his head.

"There is no such thing as a carefree life.  Each hunt might mean injury or failure for a predator, every deer might become prey.  There's famine, disease, poaching men.  Even the wolf suffers, Vorenn.  The thing is that it's just a part of living.  All you have to do is get through that regardless.

"All very well of course, as most philosophy is.  Spoken from the comfort of a seat on deck in the clear morning is all very well - but to apply such flights of fancy to the world when it bears down on top of you...that is always something else entirely."

Those words were soon put to the test...to the hardest lesson of all, as most of the best, and worst, lessons often are.






The Captain of the Blacksails was a half elf male, pierced and tattooed from here to sundown.  He only looked young, but wasn't.  He also was far from stupid, but he had a streak of cruelty that could loop to the horizon and back and still leave some slack to hang a man with.  He had certainly not been impressed with the silent mutiny on his ship - his men would listen to Jarith before they'd listen to him, but he had bided his time, and waited for his moment to usurp the druid's hold...and to do so with finality.  However, perhaps, even he would have chosen better circumstances, for getting rid of the druid was the least of his concerns now.

The crew was on deck, and the Captain lowered his spyglass as he gazed at the black clouds which stretched from edge to edge on the horizon.

"Your Storm Father seems angry," the Captain said calmly - his voice as smooth as a purring cat; a cat hiding its claws and sharp teeth from a mouse.  "Any advice on how you're going to get us away from that?  It's coming too fast."

Vorenn shifted from foot to foot, darting a glance at Jarith, who stood grim, yet resolute, upon the decks.  No fear in his face, but he eyed the coming storm with a furrowed brow, his golden eyes gleaming in the choked rays of the sun - dying even now as the clouds swept in and a far rumble could be heard; the storm's wardrums sounding.

"I'm one man against the sea," he replied, gazing back into the Captain's cold eyes. 

"Then no lucky piece are you," the Captain shot back, striding forward and then stopping with his hands upon his hips.  Vorenn stiffened, but Jarith never moved, and the men rumbled uncertainly, echoing the voice of the storm.   "Merely ballast, or perhaps...too much weight."

"Don't be a fool," Jarith said flatly in the tense air.  "We haven't got time to argue.  Only time to run.  I can give us a breeze, if we can make for land."

"Closest land, Mr Hargrin?"  the Captain bawled out, and the navigator - a gnome which only looked harmless, but wasn't; Vorenn had seen him kill three men nearly in an eyeblink - piped up without needing to scratch his head.  "Gorowyn's shores like to our west, Captain."

Not good news for the men, of course - the Sarnak were perhaps no friend of Freeport or Qeynos, but they had no love of outsiders and a code of honour all their own.  Still, land was land, and they needed to make for it as swiftly as possible, or take their chances with the storm...and more than likely drown as well.

But that seemed a remote point, a niggling detail, a mere side matter, as the real issue, the pressing issue, was what was happening on deck, Captain and Jarith staring, each to each, neither moving, and neither backing down, even while the storm rolled in.

"If I have to sacrifice you to appease the waves, I will, make no mistake,"  the Captain purred in his mild, cultured voice, and Vorenn's eyes narrowed, his hands balling into fists.  He could see the half-elf's eyes from here - the Captain intended on doing it anyway.  Jarith's death was in his eyes, storm or no storm, and even Vorenn could read it if no one else could.

"We'll see."  Jarith responded again with a calmness, but there was a hint of a growl, and a flicker of green in his eyes.   The Captain blinked - and a few men nearby backed away.  Such a  rage had come onto the Fury when they'd first acquired him that his eyes and hands had glowed green with fae-fire, and burned to touch.

Still, it was Jarith who turned away, brusque and without preamble, eyeing the sails which were barely full.  He turned to the Captain again, and mockingly raised both brows.

The Captain bowed his head in snide assent, howling out commands.  "Full sail!  Hoist her up like a lady's skirt and turn her full to Gorowyn!  Heave to, you cockroaches, heave to or abandon hope!"

"No sweeps," Jarith interjected tersely, and the Captain merely grinned, giving a flamboyant bow even while the men scurried to and fro.

Jarith turned to the stern, standing on the deck behind the rudder wheel as the ship wheeled and the storm now ran behind them...but gained fast.  Flashes of lightning blazed like silver threads, here, and there, and the rumbles now were even louder.

"He means to have your head whether we make it or not," Vorenn murmured, holding to the ropes with one massive hand, though Jarith held onto nothing, standing stock still as if he had rooted himself to the boards, both arms folded across his chest.

"I know."   The note in Jarith's voice made Vorenn's heart skip - it was the sound of resignation, of a man seeing his fate before him, and accepting it.  The Wyrdd, the Halasians called it.  It was always spoken of with awe, and almost of pride, but Vorenn felt none of that - merely desperation.

"Jarith - "

The Fury shook his head, and then turned, looking up at Vorenn with his calm, golden eyes.  "Whatever Karana has in store for me, I accept.  It's all any fury can do, Vorenn.   We make choices, but some choices we cannot run from.  And why?  Standing and fighting is what a Fury does; tooth and claw, to the dying breath.  Get to Gorowyn, and find the Prophet, if I do not get to there with you."

There was so much more to say....but Vorenn couldn't force the words out of his chest.  In a book, or in a story told round a fire, he would have gathered the Fury in his arms and kissed him, deep and wild -but this wasn't a story.  There wasn't time.  And before he could unfreeze his tongue from the roof of his mouth to say what he desperately needed to say, Jarith had turned away, raised both his arms, taken the deep breath he took to always steady himself before such work, and curled his fingers into fists.

"Now, let me work, Vorenn."

No dramatics, no lightning - merely the breeze which seemed to come out of nowhere, lifting Vorenn's frosted hair from his brow and blowing Jarith's hair straight back.  The wind filled the sails, full and snapping outwards, the ship lurching forward with vigor beneath their feet so that every crewman staggered slightly, and then gave a feeble cheer as the ship sped forward like a horse given its head.

"There goes the Fury!  Fill the sails, lad, fill the sails!"

The Captain looked up, then down to the horizon, and then to Jarith's back - throwing daggers with his gaze.

They ran long, and they ran hard - but in an hour, the storm was upon them.

[Vorenn]

((Sorry for the length of this one; I whittered on a bit, but that's the problem with such things - I honestly didn't think it would go this way as I thought it would be a bit trite, but sometimes one doesn't get to have any say in what occurs to one's characters.  Sometimes, you're not actually a writer - just a conduit.))

And what then, Fury?

Vorenn had halted in his telling, sitting silent, unmoving, his voice stilled.  The words were there, the vision there in front of him - he could feel the lurching in his belly like the remembered sensation of being tossed about by a storm when on a ship's deck...though that sickening sensation wasn't merely due to that alone.

He didn't want to answer.  To speak the words would somehow make it all true.  Make it something he had to face.  Words have power, as every caster of magic knows...and words can never be taken back.  You could think whatever you like...but speak it, and that was power inherent.

And he didn't want to.

What then, Fury? 

Nothing.  Vorenn blinked, once, twice, and above him, the vortex storm began to blacken, rumbling high overhead above the canopy.  The birds were silent now, the animals as well, taking shelter.  But for Vorenn there was nowhere to go.  Run where?  His thoughts would follow him.

"I can't."

His voice was flat, almost broken, partly pleading.  A murmur, nothing more, but it sounded like a shout.  Begging in his deep yet mild voice not to see any more, not to say it.  If he had the strength, he might have stood up and decided to walk away, to give up and choose a different life perhaps...to hold the fury in and not continue on this path of pain.

But he didn't...perhaps he couldn't.  Or perhaps he was of stronger stuff than even he was aware of.  He didn't know.

What then?

Vorenn's tongue felt as dry as leather, his teeth clenched to hold back the words he didn't feel he could say.  The pain in his chest grew and he shuddered, learning forward with his brow nearly touching the moss beneath him - the thunder rolled above, and the first few droplets of rain began to patter upon the giant leaves.  A storm without - but it was merely the storm within.

"What then?"  He murmured softly in answer, speaking into the moss and fallen leaves, speaking into the earth as if hoping it would suck up his words before they'd hit the air - absorb them, take them in.  Before it could make any of it true.

"What then, Missus?  Plain an' simple: I died.   Jus' as sure as if I was slain with a blade." 






"Hold hard, men!  Hold hard!"  The Captain's face was red with yelling, but his sound over the gale sounded a whisper.  Yelling in this wind was a joke.  The men needed no direction in any event - each was goaded by one thought: surviving the storm.

Vorenn's muscles strained as he fought the massive rudder reel, which at every moment threatened to spin out of his hands as their ship was tossed back the waves and thrown up again by walls of water.  The storm howled and roared and surged round and about, the wind screaming, the skies as black as smoke and pouring down rain in buckets.  Men cursed and slipped and scrabbled on wet boards, trying to hold on, and some failed and went over.  The helmsman had gone over, and so Vorenn had lashed himself down and being as strong as an ogre, held fast and tried to work with the sea, not against it.

Yet even through the stinging salt in his eyes, even through the fear that every sailor was feeling even as he cursed the sea, cursed the storm, cursed the day he had been born - even through this, Vorenn kept his eye on Jarith before him, Jarith standing rooted to the deck, needing no ropes, no handhold.  The waves swept the decks, cast the boat sickeningly to the sky, then back as it crashed down to what felt to the be the very sea floor.  The druid's eyes were hunter-gold, his hair plastered to his brow, soaked to the skin, and still he prayed, still he worked, but his face was pale, gaunt, as if he'd been starved for weeks.  He'd set them on the right course, filled the sails with a fair breeze, and even when the edge of the storm caught up with them, he had somehow held the worst at bay, but and as strong as he may have been, he had spoken true; Jarith was only one man against the sea.  And he was at the end of his strength.

He cinnae 'old it any more,  Vorenn thought to himself, his arms straining to hold the bucking wheel steady, even while he began to work at the wet ropes round his waist.  If it's comin', it will be now.

And sure enough, against all sanity, against all sense, even now where it hardly mattered, here came the Captain, clinging to the heaving deck, but making his way steadily to Jarith, murder in his eyes - and a twisted satisfaction as well.  It was nearly impossible to believe that the man would be more bent on fixing the cause of his hatred rather than focus upon saving his own skin, but the Captain was doing it.

Desperately, Vorenn tried to work himself free of the ropes he had secured himself with - and was now cursing as they resisted him.  Even cutting through with the rudimentary dirk he carried took some doing, and he had little time.

Even as exhausted as he was, some second sense Jarith had forced him to turn, and he staggered, as if the real world with its bucking and surging deck was finally catching up to him.  His back was to Vorenn, but Vorenn could see how he slumped against the mast beside him, even now working his sabre free - the fury was taking no risks, but he still held the naked blade down beside his leg, and not forward to the advancing half-elf bearing down upon him.

" - no time - "  Vorenn heard Jarith's words, or at least a portion of them; they were swallowed by the wind.  However it wasn't stopping the Captain at all; for the other man had also drawn his sword.

Cursing under his breath and straining with an effort, Vorenn snapped the wet rope round his waist and glared at the Captain who still made his way toward Jarith.  The Halasian eyed Jarith's handhold, and noted the Captain staggering, his arms free as he fought his way up the deck.   And thus, Vorenn let go of the wheel.

The rudder had a mind of its own now, and it jolted wildly, at the mercy of the waves.  The entire ship heaved to starboard and nearly spun in the circle, sending men flying across the deck.  Vorenn's own feet skidded on the boards, the wet rope burning in his hands as he fought for a grip, then hastily looped a knot round the wheel and made it fast with an expert twist. In the resultant chaos, the Captain had been flung against the side, his blade sailing out of his hand, turning end over end to be swallowed by the waves, with Jarith's own sword skittering across the deck and lost amongst the flotsam.  One pirate was lost as he fell over the side - there was no chance of saving them so no one tried, another clinging desperately and screaming with all the air in his lungs.   Jarith had kept his hold but only just, and now, it was Vorenn lurching forward, hand over hand, over rope and rail to try and get to the Fury before the Captain.

Vorenn swung round like an ape, clinging to the mastlines with one hand and managing to get one arm round Jarith - the best embrace he'd ever dared, and if he'd had more time, if they were not fearing for their lives, he might have enjoyed it better.  There was no time now, even so, and he merely held the druid steady in his fierce grip, swaying to and fro on the decks.  He could feel the weariness in Jarith; the fury's training had taught him that much, taught Vorenn an attunement which he had somewhat understood, but didn't feel till now.  Perhaps the stress awoke it in him, perhaps it was just his fear - but as the fury sagged against him, almost too spent to cling to the ropes, Vorenn could feel his exhaustion; he could feel the storm as well, surging in his breast, filling him to the brim and spilling over.  It was like filled with energy, but energy that could kill a man - he wanted to shriek with the shock of it, but he bit it back, and took a shaky breath that was half air and half water thanks to the storm. 

Awakening, or Wyrdding?  Who was to say it wasn't one and the same.

Well then...if this is death, so be it.  It could be worse.

Jarith blinked his salt-stung eyes up at Vorenn, trying to focus, and then - marvellous thing - gave the Halasian a weary, but brilliant smile.  A shared thought for a shared farewell.  Again, no need for words.

But words came regardless, unexpected, like a blow.

"Land to starboard!"

Vorenn blinked, like a man in a dream and his eyes cast round, disbelieving.  Hope had been so far from any heart upon this deck but all the men stood frozen a moment, as if unable to believe it.  All eyes turned and cast about, and all eyes squinted to the starboard side where the Kerran, Flix - and the most keen-sighted of the lot - was pointed a fur-matted hand.  And yes, there, upon the horizon, barely glimpsed between the surging waves, there was a flat stretch of black that never moved, even though the perception of the waves seemed to swallow it and bury it again and again.

All eyes upon this hope, all mouths taking up the cheer, all spirits lifting, all men surging on the deck and even Vorenn felt new energy fill his limbs, even Jarith brightened and set his lips in a determined line and he straightened in Vorenn's grasp and seemed ready to give one final effort to shore.

All eyes...but two.

"I will have enough in me to get us -" Jarith began, finding enough puff to yell into the storm up at Vorenn as he gathered himself.  Vorenn was still gazing landward, but then Jarith's voice changed and brought him back.  "VORENN!"

The Halasian, startled, stared down into Jarith's face, which was wide with shock, and a searing rage.  Vorenn started to turn, when his shoulder exploded with agony, and his teeth locked upon the howl fighting its way from his throat. 

Jarith's blade had gone off the mark - it wasn't deep enough to have pierced his lung, but it had sunk in deep enough for all that, and the pain of it brought Vorenn to his knees, losing his grip on Jarith as he fell, only just able to hold on and keep him on deck instead of into the sea.  Jarith made to move round, but the Captain's fist flung itself forward - and Jarith seemed too stunned, or too weary, to duck.  His head snapped back and away he fell, toward the portside of the ship, out of Vorenn's reach, who even now was attempting to bite back the pain and stagger to his feet, but it was hard going.  The water sluicing the deck beneath his hands was red with his own blood, which was pouring over his sides and dripping from his chest.   Vorenn's pulse beat in his temples, a drum almost as loud as the thunder overhead.  He scrabbled for a purchase on the decks, and felt the anger welling in him - it had been a long time since Vorenn had felt this angry - indeed, it had only been the once, a lifetime ago, when he stared down at his victim-friend in Greystone Yard.

The shore, so close ...if they worked as one they could reach it; but no, the Captain wasn't going to allow it.  Vorenn raised his gaze, glaring at the Captain who was stalking to Jarith on the decks.  Jarith who even now was struggling to his feet, his own anger rising in his eyes, although to Vorenn's shock - and the Captain's as well, he began to grin, and then, to chuckle, and finally, to laugh.  Even over the howling storm, Jarith laughed and laughed, his eyes sparkling with the mockery of it; pale and gaunt and tired and nearly defeated, he laughed in the Captain's dumbstruck face, laughed at the blood of his heart-mate upon his own blade in the hands of an enemy, laughed while half the remaining pirates tried to steer the ship, to save their own skins, and the other half were staring at the drama upon the decks as if they couldn't tear their eyes away.

And then, with a sudden finality, like a conductor motioning for silence of an orchesta in a Qeynos theatre, Jarith cut at the air with his hand.  Again, that surge of power seemed to flow unbearably through Vorenn's veins, and he writhed and gasped as he felt it, truly felt it, the arc of raw energy which stilled the air around the ship, like a bubble had been blown and expanded round them.  For a hundred years off port and starboard, off bow and stern, off the masts above, and beneath, it was as if they were encased in glass.  The water was still as a mirror.  The ropes went slack, and the men staggered anew - more due to the utter lack of motion than anything else.  All outside the force of whatever Jarith held, the storm raged and tossed the waves and the sky roiled with stormclouds and flashed with lighting.  But no thunder, no peal of wind, nothing. 

The men all stood in silence, staring in awe and more than a little fear - this wierd magic almost worse than the storm, perhaps - and even the Captain now had frozen in place, Jarith's own blade raised but unmoving, Vorenn's blood dripping off the tip.  Vorenn himself struggled to his feet and swayed, still seething, still feeling the anger welling in him, but Jarith stood tall and proud as a king, though Vorenn could feel, somehow, how much such a feat had cost.  The druid was on his feet only by force of will.  His lips had gone blue, his face was bloodless, and he swayed back and forth upon his feet as if still in the grip of the storm.

"So, sirrah," he slurred, his voice was strong, but he was lisping - with effort, or with pain, it was hard to say.  "So then...is this what happens when you get 'no' for an answer?"

The Captain stared, crimson creeping up from beneath his collar and meeting the colour upon his cheeks, and now, every man's eyes were upon him.  Again, Vorenn felt his anger mounting.  So, that was it then.  That was what all the fuss was about.  All men stood now with first a dumbstruck disbelief, and then a dawning, sullen realisation and overall damning of what they saw.   All this...all this for a refusal for a tumble?   A Captain was only captain if he had the favour of his men - this one had kept it through cruelty and cunning.   

"How do ye dare?"  Vorenn forced the words between his teeth.  He barely realised he was saying it.  His rage was talking, surging in his guts and pouring out.  But he was saying only what the others thought as they stared at the Captain.  "How do ye dare?"

The judgment had been cast - wordlessly, but he could feel it.  All eyes turned now to Jarith.  All eyes now to the new captain - awaiting the command.

"Make for land," Jarith rasped, his eyes still locked on the half-elf's own hate-filled gaze.  "This fool has given me enough anger to keep my strength for a little while longer."

Vorenn's own anger was still rising, fuelled by pain, and by the protective streak of this interloper or what he had claimed for his own.  He blinked back red - thinking it blood in his eyes, but it wasn't - with every intention of tearing the weapon out of the former Captain's grasp and carrying him bodily to the brig.  He was closing the gap, and knew no man on the deck would stop him.

If he'd been faster, so it might have played.  Indeed, he knew in that moment the men themselves would have moved faster still to prevent the next few moments.  Pirates they might have been, but Jarith had their respect; he'd save them if he could, where it was obvious the Ayr'Dal would not.  They might have tried; Vorenn couldn't say.

Even so, it didn't save them.  For when the outed and jilted Captain saw his fate in all the eyes around him, he didn't bother closing the gap - he'd been throwing spears at whales for the past ten years, and he had the strength of his arm still, and a murderous aim.  Only the tossing of the waves saved Vorenn...but nothing could stop the cast of the sword as he flung the sword up into the air, twirling it in his hand in what might have actually looked a beautiful move if it wasn't so deadly.  He held the hilt like a javelin, and flung it at close range straight for Jarith's belly. 

So quick...so impossible to stop.  No one had time.

Jarith groaned, curling over the blade in his guts, falling to the deck on his hands and knees.  Somehow, the magic held.  Somehow, even in the thick of it, the magic held at least for a moment.  Even dying, Jarith was strong.

But it was only a moment - because in Vorenn, the shock and horror rose up in him.  Blond streaked hair upon the floor beneath him, a dying man at his feet.   He felt the anger build and well up, saw Jarith's blood begin to seep along the boards, felt the rage welling in him as he turned his gaze to the Ayr'dal. 

He ignored the storm, ignored the fury, ignored the sea and the pirates and the sky and the island ahead.  Chaos filled the Halasian's heart, crackled in his lungs, set his blood ablaze.  He was only dimly aware of the smug satisfaction in the half-elf's face turning into a blank terror as the former Captain focussed on Vorenn's face.  He did not know his blue eyes had flared into hunter-gold.  He did not feel his bones crack and shift beneath his skin. He only felt his ire rising, living and white and hot -

And the howl Vorenn let forth split the bubble of calm, tearing it from end to end like paper, letting the storm in even stronger than before.  The storm without was the storm within.

The Fury awakened.

[Vorenn]

Thunder crashed through the trees, rain spattered and hissed down in a torrent from steel-grey skies.  Lightning tore and hissed through the air with the scent of ozone - so bright it blinded the eye for a moment and casts its afterimage of blue-green upon the mind's eye for several seconds thereafter.  A wind howled and screamed, battering down the leaves from the canopy above, calling like a tormented thing, shaking bough and branch with its fury.

And Vorenn's head was thrown back, the cords standing out upon his neck, his eyes flaring a bright gold, fae-fire dancing upon his skin like the Siren's Tresses upon the sea.  He howled with the storm, howled like a wild thing, storm without, and storm within.  Lost in the moment of the past, and bringing it in the present.

And the Witch never moved, merely floated on organdy wings, and smiled her secret smile, waiting.

Still your rage, Fury.

It was like a slap to the face, or water poured on a two fighting dogs.   Vorenn blinked, and choked, and gasped a breath in, uncurling bleeding fingers from the mossy sward beneath him, his howl dying in his throat.   His eyes were still golden - the rain still poured down in the localised vortex of storm round this rock of painful confession - but he was back a little, back from the feral place where he had lost himself in his awakening.

He gasped like spent fish, swaying drunkenly on hands and knees, his head whirling and a sickness in his belly which he fought back with an effort.   For the first time since he had been a young boy, Vorenn felt his eyes stinging, and he blinked rapidly to clear him, though it didn't help.  The fury was burning out, and he was crying now, in broken sobs which came up from his chest, no matter how hard he bit them back.   Tears lost in the rain, but there all the same.  A dam breached, a seal broken, he couldn't stop, once he had started.

Do you remember anything at all?

Vorenn shook his head through his grieving, unable to speak, unable even to think, the ripping pain in his chest only now starting to ease.  To speak words made it true.  He'd have to say it...she was forcing him to put the words into the air, flat and final; to acknowledge what his heart knew, but he never dared to say.

"I blew the ship apart.   I brought th'storm in.   I jus' remember - th' smell o' burnin' an ozone - lightning, it musta been.  Screams o' dyin' men, burnin' meat that was nae meat.  I...think I remember's th'Captain's face, but it's quick.  I spose I best be glad o' that.   

But Jarith...I had his hand...tryin' ta 'old him above th'waves,  bits o' wood an' rope an' sail all roun'.  He jus...smiled.  Blood flowin' out of his mouth.  He wrenched his hand outta mine - an' he sank.  Like a stone.  I dove an' dove, an' I howled, an' screamed - but 'e was gone.  Gone ferever.   An' I dinnae remember nothin' more.

Jarith died on th'sea.  An' I died with 'im."





Flotsam washed up upon the shores of Gorowyn -  bits of mast, and rope and tattered sail.   No bodies, thankfully; the sea claimed those, but by  mercy - or, perhaps not - Vorenn washed up upon the shore, waterlogged, more dead than alive, lashed to an empty barrel and baking unconscious beneath the jungle sun.

The Halasian's eyes opened upon a dawning sky - and the mouth opened to let forth a howl, nothing human in it.   The seabirds which had come down to pick at him experimentally leapt into the sky in terror, and he reared up, tearing with hands more like claws at the bonds which held him, his eyes a brilliant gold, gold as a wolf, gold as a tiger, with about as much soul within.  Everything he had managed to claim after four years on the oars was gone again in a midnight storm - sanity, sense, and a reasoning mind.  The Fury had awakened.

And the Fury was a beast.

Word spread through the Sarnak ranks that something was wandering the jungles that even the aviaks tried to avoid.  It wasn't a gorilla, or a tiger, or a raptor, but it was lethal all the same.  No description - for that would mean there had been survivors; only feathers which marked a kill of even the strongest warrior, but no animal scent, and not even any tracks.   The territory seemed to vary, and even though several aviak groups were sent out to hunt the creature, none returned.   There were reports from neighbouring watches of sudden stormclouds, and then the howls and roars of the dying - and whatever it was that was killing them - but the predator moved like a phantom, and left no traces behind.

The Sarnak praised whatever was stalking their enemies openly, but privately worried as well - they didn't venture into the jungle if clouds seemed to appear from out of a clear sky.  They watched, they waited, and they found the gnawed bones and scattered weapons of aviak and, sometimes, Blacksails which had somehow managed to venture inland from the sea - but they left whatever-it-was very much alone.

The only other sentient creature down in that Valley was the Prophet of Karana - and it wasn't their concern if some strange old man wanted to take his chances in the jungles with nothing but a shrine and his convictions?  No one could rightly say when the elderly human had showed in Timorous Deep, but his presence was reported by several scouts, and even though he had been interrogated on occasion, the Sarnak eventually left him be.  He was harmless - mad, possibly - but harmless.   Let him do as he pleased, muttering his prayers to long-dead gods.   Once or twice, a Sarnak reported that the Prophet sometimes glowed and sparkled like a diamond in the sun, but such youthful recruits often let their imaginations get the better of them after too much excitement and sun.

Myths and legends of long dead gods ...but every myth had to come from somewhere.





The Prophet sat in the shade of foreign, rainforest trees.   This was not the Plains - long destroyed - and the people here did not believe, but he still knew this was the right place.  The sea's was just to the east, the scent of brine ever present; and what water source was ever so turbulent and at the mercy of chaos than the sea?  It was a portent, perhaps, or had felt like it when he first came here a few weeks ago, and had heard the rumours from aviaks overhead, or from Sarnak on patrol - or from the whisper of the wind itself, for he knew it well - that here was where he needed to be.   

Here was Awakening.

He sat himself upon a bed a leaves, his hands upon his bony knees.  He looked half-starved - the voluminous robes didn't help, as they seemed to swallow him - but even though the Prophet looked spindy and pale, his carriage, the way he sat, seemed to denote otherwise.  He sat in the leafmould and rotting fruit and constant drip of rainfall like a king upon his throne.  Regal, serene, and all commanding - surrounded in an aura of silver-white, which flashed and stormed and murmured like a thundershower several miles still distant.

The Prophet sat, and watched the sky ...and waited.

(...don't shoot me, I realised how late it was.  More later)