<div dir="ltr">Cheep nervously remained motionless against the side of the wall, halfway up, as the light from the torch moved closer to where his hook was wedged against the wall, and he hoped furiously that the patrolling watchman would not see the hook. He held his breath as the light stopped right above him. The guard might have heard him! Cheep waited anxiously as the light remained, flickering slightly, and then disappeared into the tower. He released his breath, relieved, and let himself down the rest of the way to the ground. Jerking the rope to get the claw to unhook from the wall, he caught it as it fell and quickly coiled the rope back up and stowed it in his small pack. Moving cautiously down the steep incline from the wall, he glanced back to the city wall. Satisfied that no patrolling guards on the wall top had seen him, he stealthily moved off to the west until he was concealed by the woods. <div style="border-style:none none double;border-bottom-color:windowtext;border-bottom-width:6.75pt;padding:0in 0in 1pt"> </div> Kriid remained stoic as he took the first watch of the night. It had been almost three months since he had lived in a civilized place. He had been pursued by mercenaries and assassins since he offended the baron of the city he had been living in. Well, he offended the local government at least. The dead usually find it difficult to be offended. January, 708 C.R. The corrupt baron had tried to manipulate Kriid into working for him by threatening his fiancée. Kriid had refused to stoop to the level of a common thug by shaking down citizens and taking their ‘extra’ gold for the baron, and the baron followed through on his threats. He underestimated Kriid, however: he woke one night to the sound of ice cracking and found himself pinned to his bed by his hands and feet, frozen to the bedposts. He looked up and saw a man with steely-blue eyes boring into his, an expression of contempt and rage filling his face. He tried to cry out, but when he opened his mouth, it was instantly filled with ice and he couldn’t make a sound. “You fiend,” Kriid breathed. “If you had come after me, you might have lived. But SHE DID NOTHING TO YOU!!” His face turned purple as he shook with emotion. “You think everything belongs to you to do with as you please. You have no idea how wrong you are. I will end you. AND your pathetic regime. Do you have any last thoughts?” The baron’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets as cold sweat poured down his face. He struggled back and forth, but to no avail; born into pompous nobility, he had never seen the need for physical prowess (why bother when servants did everything?). Kriid held out an empty hand. A blue nimbus formed there, and as he clenched his hand into a fist, magic ice coalesced in the shape of a wickedly sharp dagger. The baron tried to scream but couldn’t as Kriid plunged the hate-formed blade downward into his chest. The dagger glowed for a second, and the man convulsed and then stopped moving as the intense cold of the magic dagger froze his heart solid and his body crystalized. Kriid dissipated the ice and froze at the sound of a knock at the door. “Sir, are you all right?” came a muffled voice from the other side of the door. Kriid put out a hand and cast a ball of ice onto the lock. That should slow them down, he thought. He leapt out the window at a loud THUMP as the guards attempted to break down the door. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. THUD-CRACK! The door splintered as it was smashed inward. Three armed bodyguards burst into the room, ready to fight, but the room was empty of life. They found the cadaver of their employer stretched out on the bed, an expression of sheer terror frozen literally onto his face, with a surprisingly clean and bloodless wound in his chest; his entire body was frozen solid, and vapor still condensed around it and poured off the bed to the floor. The guards gaped in wonder at what had caused this, but raised the alarm, throwing the entire castle into a frenzy trying to discover what had happened. The baron’s personal servants wrapped his corpse in the sheets and carried it away. Kriid had hit the ground running. He was not usually one for physical exercise, being one of slight frame, but he soon found that when one is fleeing for one’s life, the motivation to exert oneself is dramatically increased. He mentally noted the tactical error of immediately fleeing when most people had no idea what he’d just done, as they would immediately be suspicious now. He cursed under his breath and continued running. The people in the town heard cries of ‘MURDER!’ from the castle and began chasing him. He was glad of his black cloak, as it would greatly aid in his midnight escape. He darted around a corner and leaped straight up, pulling himself with some difficulty onto the roof of the house and rolling away from the edge. He carefully lay flat, motionless and silent, as the crowd of angry guardsmen tore around the corner he had just turned seconds ago. They ran on, not realizing that they had lost their quarry, and Kriid breathed a sigh of relief. He waited a few minutes longer, until he could no longer hear them, and then stealthily made his way to the stable at which he had left his horse, a beautiful black mare. He found the stable quiet, thankfully, and carefully saddled and bridled his horse, grabbing the pack he had concealed in the straw which contained travel provisions. He quietly led the horse to the door of the stables and looked out, checking all directions for guards. He continued to lead his mare apprehensively toward the edge of town, hoping to remain unseen. He heard a shout behind him and immediately leaped into the saddle and spurred the horse into a gallop. He wasn’t sure that the shout was someone coming after him, but he wasn’t about to take the chance by looking and wasting precious seconds. As he fled through the gateless opening in the wall, startling the few sleepy watchmen who were guarding the hole while the new section of wall was under construction (luckily), Kriid briefly glanced back to see a dozen or so men on foot and a single rider in hot pursuit. Seriously? Only one of them thought to get a horse? he thought. NO! Stop. Focus. Getting away. Yes. Focus on that. He spurred his mare on toward the slightly distant woods that would ensure his escape if he could but reach them and looked behind him again. The footmen had returned to the town, presumably to find horses of their own, but the sole pursuing rider was gaining on him. I can fix this. Let me see… Kriid went through a few possible spells in his head, finally selecting one designed to disable rather than kill and summoning the necessary magic to his free hand. He rose up in the saddle, twisted his body around to face his pursuer, and raised his arm, palm outward. A ball of misty blue light coalesced in his hand, swirling faster and faster as he structured the magic into a spell. When it reached six inches across Kriid hurled the spell backwards and quickly resumed his focus on riding furiously for the woods. <div style="border-style:none none dotted;border-bottom-color:windowtext;border-bottom-width:3pt;padding:0in"> Clouds poured from the swirling orb of magic as it flew toward the rider, who pulled back on the reins to try to avoid it, but to no avail. The spell hit the horse square in the chest, exploding into a storm of ice, which slashed all around them, cutting through the halter and saddle straps with flying ice shards. The man yelled in pain as hundreds of little cuts decorated his body, which was also growing stiff from the cold. He and the horse’s tack slid off the ice-encrusted horse and onto the hard ground with a crunch. The storm slowed to a stop and the horse collapsed from the cold beside his fallen rider as Kriid reached the woods. The sky lightened gradually and the sun rose as the men from the town arrived on horses to find their compatriot wounded and unhorsed. The other men helped him back to town to a healer, and when they reported to their captain he clenched his fist and summoned mages skilled in tracking and the assassins. Thus quickly set in motion was the plot to hunt down this rogue mage and end his terrestrial existence. From then on he had been avoiding any sort of civilization, living in the woods and traveling constantly to avoid the assassins. He had been attacked four different times by people who appeared to be fellow travelers but who attacked with enchanted daggers when they got close enough. He still wore a bandage on his left forearm from the first attack; the dagger must have been enchanted to keep the wound open, and he had not been able to single out the thread of magic that tied it to the wound, as his arcane sight was not as clear as some. The rest of the attackers had shallow graves along the roads where they found him. He had only seen one assassin since he had stopped traveling on roads, and he had already seen the mercy of the local wildlife. Kriid had found a dagger similar to those used against him before in a pile of bloody tatters of clothing, most of the flesh having already been carried off by scavengers. He had turned at the sound of a twig snapping to see a man dressed in green and brown, carrying a bow and gear typical of those who are living in the forest for a short time. The man approached calmly, starting slightly at the gory sight near the mage, and asked if he had known the dead man. Kriid simply shook his head, and the man retrieved a small shovel from his pack and dug a small grave. He buried the remains of the assassin, and picked up the dagger off the ground, polishing it on his shirt. Kriid warned him that it was enchanted and to be careful, but the man told him to ‘chill out’ because he could ‘totally tell that’. </div> "Are you out in these woods by your lonesome? You don't look like you've had a bed or a bite to eat for at least a week." "What if I am? Why would it matter to you?" "Dude, I’m just trying to help. All men are brothers, y’ dig?" "Right. Well, I do not want your charity. You might stab me in the back or something later." “Dudebro, I totally don’t roll like that. And even if you don't want my help, anyone could see you totally need it. You don't know a dang thing about livin’ in the wild. You leave a trail plain as day to even a crappy tracker, and judging from your looks, I’d say you’re running away from somebody. That cut on your arm just isn't going to heal right with a bandage put on like that, and even if you did make it this far without shelter, winter’s gonna be reeeally rough, man." “You seem to know so much about me, why are you here? You cannot expect me to just trust you.” "No, dude, you don’t need to. But you totally want to survive, right? You’re gonna need a guide or at least a little ‘woods survival’ knowledge. I mean, dude, you probably can’t even make a fire right." "Hey, it's not that hard. Only took me twenty minutes last time." The man smirked and shook his head. "And you totally didn’t put it out and get rid of the ashes, like somebody on the run should do if they wanna stay low-profile. I knew I was following somebody for a few days, but I couldn’t figure how you made it this far without weapons of some kind until I saw you’re a mage. That can sure make life easier, can't it?" Kriid gasped. "What makes you think I am a mage?" "Well, DUH. You don’t even have a decent knife, but you got more blood on you than you got in you. You’re two days walk from the nearest path, but you got no tools or shelter. Although you leave an obvious trail, it shows you tried to hide it a little. Obviously, you were somebody on the run, and only a dude who knows magic could have made it this far without bringing food. What do you do, catch squirrels? Also, dude. You’re wearing a mage robe. That, and you were totally all up in spell-casty mode when you first saw me. Like I said, duh." Kriid just stared, clearly in awe, and trying to decide whether to be offended or not. Then he looked thoughtful for a second. "If what you say is true, and I can see that it is, you could easily have struck me down before I knew you were there. You've already offered to help me twice, even when I didn't want you to. What do you want from me?" "I’m on the run too, man, and I think it’d be totally cool for both of us to travel together. I was born into the upper crust, but life there sucks, man. I ran away from being duke of some boring province." "You gave that up?" Kriid queried, incredulous. "That kind of life just isn’t for me, man. I don’t wanna worry about all that political crap, and wearing all that uncomfortable crap, and going to all those stupid social events… I prefer the simpler life, livin’ in the wild. I feel kinda bad, running from my dad, but he understands. Besides, you sure aren’t going to make it wherever you’re going by yourself, especially with people following you." Kriid thought for a minute. "What's your name?" "Name’s Dosh, man. Dosh Marleigh." "I go by Kriid. Kriid Hallůw, if you need a surname." "Awesome, dude. Kriid; that sounds like a name you made up yourself." "I did. Anything wrong with not wanting to be associated with the past?" "No, it’s cool, man." Dosh then pulled a small pipe and pouch of plant matter and began to smoke. The smell that filled the air was sharp and sweet, but heady and overpowering. Kriid would eventually notice that he did this fairly often. The two conversed for a while, and eventually Kriid agreed to travel with Dosh, who he discovered was heading for a place called Metamor. There, he had heard, you could start life anew, take on a new identity, live life how you pleased. Kriid decided to go there too, as he had no real destination besides away up to that point and it sounded wonderful. So the two became friends, relying on each other for everything, learning much from the other. Kriid learned about woodsmanry, while Dosh learned a bit of magic theory. They traveled north for the next month, eventually holing up in a cave to pass the winter. The duo left the cave and continued their journey just as winter was breaking in the early months, taking turns sleeping and watching during the night as they only had one small tent that Dosh had brought. Kriid grew used to the outdoors, and the cold never bothered him as he could manipulate it with a few easy spells. They made their way further and further north as the weather grew warmer, occasionally stopping in tiny hamlets for supplies and direction if they could provide it. They both remained on guard after the first assassins of the year came. Without Dosh to hear them, they might have succeeded in killing their target, but their graves marked a testament to his scouting (and combat) abilities. </div>