Maybe a Worg will find me. Maybe one of the Dark Elves' pets, one of those hulking, twisted creatures they use for war, has been left for dead out here. The thought sends a cold spike through my gut, but it's not fear. It's... a quiet, shameful hope.
An end is an end. Atonement, finally.
I find a thick, fallen pine and begin to work, the thwack of my hatchet a dull, rhythmic sound in the silence. My muscles burn, my lungs stinging with the frigid air.
That's when I hear it.
Not a Worg's howl. Not the skitter of a Batlaz.
It’s a groan.
A deep, guttural sound of such profound agony that it stops my heart. It’s deep, rumbling through the soles of my boots. It sounds... big.
My first instinct, the one that every villager has, is to run. To flee back to the weak safety of the palisade and pretend I heard nothing.
But I am here for my penance. And my penance means I don't get to run.
I grip my hatchet, my knuckles white, and move toward the sound, pushing through a curtain of snow-heavy pine boughs.
The smell hits me first. Copper. Sharp, hot blood, so much of it that I can smell it over the pine and the snow.
I step into a small clearing and my breath locks in my throat.
It’s not a man.
It’s a mountain. A mountain of flesh and matted-black hair, lying half-buried in a snowdrift. He’s massive. Ten feet tall, at least, a creature of corded, impossible muscle and scarred, gray-green hide. This is no creature of nature. This is a thing made for war, a living siege weapon.
I’ve seen one before. One of their pets. Left for dead.
His face is a brutish mockery of a man's, flattened and coarse, with thick, yellowed tusks jutting from a misshapen jaw. A massive hand, bigger than my entire torso, is uncurled in the snow. The fingers are tipped not with nails, but with thick, black claws.
My eyes are drawn to the wound. A jagged, star-shaped gash in the center of his chest. It’s black with old blood, but a slow, fresh tide of red pulses from it, melting the snow.
I know that mark. Dark Elf steel.
I should run. I should be sick. This... thing... was made to slaughter people like me. To burn villages like mine.
But he’s not moving. He’s just a victim. Another piece of shattered life left in the Dark Elves' wake. Just like me.
I take a half-step closer, my hatchet held low.
His breath hitches. A low hiss of air, wet and ragged, escapes his tusks.
The eyelids flutter, thick and leathery. They open.
Feral. Burning. Red.
His eyes find me. They lock on me, two embers of pure, animalistic rage glowing in the dusk. My blood turns to ice. My body is screaming, a silent, primal shriek. Run.
But I don't. I can't.
He doesn't roar. He doesn't lunge. He just... watches me. The monster in the trap, his red gaze burning into me, his life hissing away into the snow.
2
THREK
Pain.
