Ashfiend Unleashed

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The creature swept across the plains. Although clad in heavy, scorched platemail armor his booted feet touched the ground only in silence. What wind their was wormed its way through the tears along a tattered black cloak hemmed with golden thread. A hood, which hid his countenance in shadows rippled and bowed but refused to give way; refused to reveal the visage beneath to the world.

Similarly none had dared to refuse him passage. Save for the poor fool who approached. A quick study revealed the farmer to be into his middling years, although his firm and steady grasp upon the hatchet spoke of someone familiar with battle. The farmer possessed a simple, homespun confidence that warmed him like a blanket knit from a mother, or a braid from a wife.

Teron, however, paid the man no need. With each silent stride he approached the pig pen - his course planned to move about the structure and press on. The farmer, in his capacity, stopped before this creature culled from shadows and nightmares. Whatever bravery had called the peasant forth to stop such a phantom quickly drained from his countenance. It fled as a chill began to snake about his ankles and mutter against his spine before descending over him like a wave.

For a moment, a brief moment, the peasant remained. He met the sinister, livid eyes of crimsin flame secreted away beneath a low hood, above a masking grey scarf, and then fled. His hatchet forgotten, the man dared only a single glance over his shoulder and Teron saw that this farmer fled from everything that he had feared in his life. The door slammed, sealing the darkness away with it and, perhaps the fear as well.

Teron hesitated before his foot began to pivot. His first stride carried him towards the house, as did the second while a gloved hand descended upon the long-bladed weapon at his side. The other hand, similarly sheathed in leather, shot out to open the door only to find it barred from within.

As his hidden fingers remained upon the door handle, he turned the burning depths of his gaze eastward towards the rising slopes of the mountains. It would not be much longer before he reached the priory. Apart from which he would need slaves in this unfamiliar land. A single hand, closed into a fist, erupted against the barred door. A second and third permitted him entry.

Announced by the chorusing screams of the besieged family, the looming, armored figure ended their measures with glittering arcs of his blade and punctuated his response by breaking a small, guttering lantern against a wooden table. Heat and fire quickly went to work as he strode from the rising fire.

As ashes sputtered into the air, born aloft by clouds of smoke, those few burning remnants that descended upon his armored shoulders instantly cooled. He waited for the flames to die down before calling out the family with a raised hand that slowly curled into a fist and an ancient word of command.

Now they were fit to serve.

Now he was ready to move on.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

Teron cut a black, blasphemous figure to the world of springtime and renewal. A long cloak wrapped him in darkness while a cold, bitter chill coiled about him in death. The warm, bristling winds that swept about him perished shortly thereafter - their pungant, pregnant scent lost upon both he and his train of followers. Each moved in a heavy silence with Teron's servants occasionally accompanied by the dry scrape of bone grinding against itself.

He had been cautious after murdering the farmers. Although his train had grown following the recruiting incident, they moved with haste. Unfettered by certain fleshly needs they did not bother with food, drink or rest. Teron's simmering, undying gaze flickered towards the setting sun from beneath the great shadow of a low hood hemmed with faded gold thread. With a gloved hand he waved his followers onward and listened to the crisp beat their own bodies provided for their march.

They moved easily over the small, bubbling brook before them that lay nestled amongst the tall grasses. The last struggled with a long step, its childish body not normally equipped for great strides. Yet its endless energy shored up a normally great weakness. Curious, as his slaves passed on, Teron eased himself onto one knee and peered into his muddy reflection.

He beheld the grotesquely worn and mercilessly scarred, fire-blackened plate armor he wore. The metallic injuries and scorch-marks nearly obliterated his ancient and forgotten coat-of-arms: the sword crossed at the hilt by two weeping, wilting roses. The Knight of the Weeping Rose..

His gaze shone like livid funeral pyres hungry to devour the waiting dead and, through his hellish stare, he paused a moment. How long, he considered, had it been since he last looked upon himself? His thought quickly derailed, however, as a sudden motion caught his attention.

A tall, long-stemmed wild flower rested beside the brook. When the knight knelt, it had fallen beneath his shadow. Now, having suffered overlong in his presence, the white blossoms began to fall, each in turn, to the ground while the green stalk rotted and curled pitifully over itself to hide the shame of its death.

He reached out, taking up the flower in gloved fingertips and, as he rose to his feet, watched the stalk crumble into dirt and dust before sifting through his fingertips and raining itself upon the ground. Over the edge of his fingertips, Teron spied his slaves making their way into the foothills. After a moment, he moved to rejoin them.

Soon they would reach the priory.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The path had carved its way into the cliffs beneath a cruel hand for each step demanded a wearying toll of breath and strength. Grey cliffs rose on each side as a grim honor guard to escort those who sought out the Priory of Snowstill. Without hesitation or a pause to collect his breath, Ashfiend continued the steep climb. The height of each step gave pause to only one member in his train of followers. Though the diminutive figure scraped her knee on every step she had since passed beyond caring.

They all had.

The stairs eventually widened as they neared the top. Ashfiend stepped aside as the mountain wind tore at his ruined cloak and tossed it about a darkly armored frame. From beneath the edge of a rippling hood, his searing gaze fell upon each servant as it passed by. His gaze lingered on the last, a small, pale girl whose left arm had shriveled and twisted into a gnarled, warped thing in the flames that stole both home and life. She had scraped the knee raw against each coarse lip of the steps.

Teron's mind drifted as he watched her stumble and claw her way at the rear of the train. He recalled the farmhouse and barn her family once possessed that he had reduced to ash and waste. He wondered how she might have spent her life, whether she would have become a simple farmgirl or struck out on her own for adventure in this new land... or done something else entirely.

His musings passed as a cloud slid between him and the sun. He ascended the last few steps behind her, his cloak spilling across the stone. Atop the broad plateau squatted a pair of buildings. The windows and doors stared, open and gaping, towards the recent arrivals and regarded them with the same stare that Teron saw in his recent acquisitions. The buildings bore great black swaths that spoke of a wrathful fire that had scorched the walls, the fields, and possibly the life inside.

He crossed the breadth of the fields. What few, sporadic strands of grass remained licked against the equally scorched plates that armored Teron's legs. As he reached the smaller of the two buildings he ascended the three steps, tore the door open easily and beheld a chapel that had not been spared the flame. Overhead the celing angled suddenly inward and came to an edge that ran the entire length of the building. The pews had fallen against each other and now leaned over the lone rat and handful of large bettles that crawled amongst the dust and scattered puddles of tepid rainwater. He took a few steps inside as his surroundings rippled, melting into a church he once knew in the past. Instead of the ashen remnants of pews he beheld the scattered bodies of friends and family. Instead of the cool spring air he caught the stale, suffocating stench of blood.

And, in a moment, his senses perished with the passing of the memory and left ash in their wake. Awoken from the reverie, the armored figure ran a gloved fingertip over the back of a pew and watched the blackened wood begin to split beneath his touch.

It would serve, he considered, as his other hand fell to rest upon the pommel of his blade. It would serve quite well - at least for now.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The ceiling, Teron noted, gaped with holes. He stood below one of them as droplets of leftover spring rain swelled at the jagged edges of the whole, ripening with fullness, before plummeting to water the floorstones about him. The weak sunlight bled through and surrounded him in a faint though bright haze in the midst of which he stood as a cold, dark tower.

The mess hall, indeed the priory as a whole, stood as a monument to sudden death and decay. Whatever cause the fire might have had it only served the purpose of undiscriminating desctruction. Whatever remained spoke very little of the compound's original function.

Teron glanced towards the book he had discovered. A symbol had once embossed the cover, in gold nonetheless, but had been obliterated by soot and rain. The only thing of substance he had discovered, apart from what remained of several beds in a dormitory area was the mace that now hung upon his belt, opposite a long-bladed sword. The entirety of the mace was solid iron. Most of its decoration, though still simple, had been covered with rust - even the flangs along its head - save for the apparent symbol of the faith: a hollow X swallowed by three concentric circles.

Still, he considered as he stepped from the diminished halo of light and towards the door that led outside; the chapel bespoke of a religious purpose. That building also hinted at a particularly violent history, though whether or not it was contained in a single act or spread out over time he could not say. What intrigued him the most, as the towering figure stepped back out into the sunlight and turned his searing gaze upon the ramshackle chapel, was that the building reminded him of one all-important memory.

As that memory threatened to lay hold of his senses, Teron strode towards the center of the courtyard. The handful of skeletal figures had been dispatched to wander the area and keep a stalwart, if not entirely perceptive, look out for any who might approach. While the complex itself stood in ruins, this place, this... Myrken Wood... as Swinton had answered him, was an inhabited place.

Some of those inhabitants, Teron recalled, were worthy of visiting in person. The woman had offered not even a handful of names but it was all he had to act upon.

And act he would.