Athron's Tale

### After the Massacre

He stared down at the muddy feet, the swirls of mud, blood and paint melting into the earth. For a brief moment, he wondered if this was what his father's heart looked like seconds after it met the sea stones.
He remembered holding his sword, he remembered the flames surrounding his home, he remembered the glistening wetness of orc blood and how it smelled like spoiled crops when it shot into his nose. He tried to forget the screams of the children, women, even the warriors, but he remembered those as well.

What he could not remember was why the world was sideways and rested at ground-level.

The feet came back again, and the boy froze. Not a single breath, not a single movement, not a single flicker of the eye. Not a single sign of human life. Anywhere.

The bloodied feet were shifting slowly through the homes and bodies. No howls of triumph, no searching for man-flesh to feed upon. These black, splattered, tattooed feet came only to slaughter Eryndor, and their task was complete. The feet only had to trample the remnants and search for survivors, to turn them into victims.

A pair of feet stopped a stone's throw away from the boy. The time to hide was over. Hoisting himself upright, Athron felt the world swirl and shift back to normal.

In another time, another situation, Athron would have collapsed in despair at the current sight of Eryndor. His home was nothing but crippled ashes, torn bodies and crushed dreams. But, as he stared at the heaving, wetted back of the black orc, the only sense he could feel was that of revenge. He sprinted silently at the orc, the cloud in his head twisting and thickening, clouding his vision -- but at the same time focusing his thoughts into a sense of purpose.

In the final moment before he was upon the orc, the black-skin wheeled on its muddied feet and caught the boy with his eyes. In that final moment, the boy's rage faltered as he realized he neglected to search for a weapon before his attack. He raised his arm in an act of desperation, and brought it crashing into the sinewy muscle of the orc's throat. The orc's mouth curled into a battle cry, but no sound escaped through its lips.
Staggering away from the orc, he watched as the orc's throat spewed forth a filthy black tar, making a pool for the orc to collapse into. Looking down, Athron stared into the glistening surface of his father's sidearm, a pearl-colored short sword. Athron quickly holstered the blade back into its sheath and thanked the spirit of his father, Avius, for protecting him.

Spinning away from the smoldering village, the final surviving warrior of Eryndor sprinted away from the massacre and into the depths of the Everledden woods.

### Lost in Hithdor

Years after the horror of Eryndor, little had seemed to change in the western bastion of men. Hithdor, now the last great hall of men, knew of the evil brewing in Belegar but had done little to deal with it. It was agreed by all that Maegamarth was a threat to the entire continent, but as of yet the dark king had not made any serious attack outside of Belegeria. There were reports of small bands of black orcs ravaging small towns on the eastern edge of the Pale Mountains, but this sounded no different than the raids the wood orcs of the Fuintaur Forest had done years ago. Talks of creating armies and sending them to march on Belegar were constantly heard, but through the years only border patrols along the river had been formed.

In other words, bureaucracy was constant, action was sparse and misdirected. The city of Hithdor was the same as always.

While the army of the city remained inactive, there was one person who was preparing for the attack on Belegar. And, if it had to be so, entirely by himself.

Carrying a warped, wooden shield that was scavenged from a tournament joust, a lonely squire walked away from the city and marched southeast along the river.

Years ago, a boy entered the city without a name. Years later, another nameless face, vaguely recognized as a squire for Hithdor's knights, walked away from the castle's towers. The years had aged the boy into a man, making him nearly impossible to recognize. One thing that had never changed, however, was his eyes. Deep green and ringed with yellow fire, the man's eyes still burned with a flare that had, if anything, grown even stronger since his youth.

The boy was returning home. To reclaim the soul of his father, to reclaim the land of Eryndor, to reclaim Belegar and to send Maegamarth back into the void from whence he came. Athron marched into his past, to change the present and bring light to the future.