Grim Intent

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The Chapter House lay in ruins. The shattered wreck of one man’s dream for defending Myrken Wood stood as silent testimony, broken and battered, to those who would oppose the merciless hand of the Ashfiend. The quiet thrum of a living presence, voiced in the bleating of sheep, the creak of wagon wheels, and the passing conversations of knights, squires and common folk all lay hushed within the makeshift sepulcher.

Atop the turret of the fire-blackened keep, that had once been merely a very large barn, the grim figure of the Ashfiend stood in the midst of day. A chill winter wind scourged about his armored frame and loosed the great black cloak behind him as an unfurled banner of smoke and ash. It was a hopeful promise carried in that spread cloak, the hope of ruin and burning destruction as a baleful gaze, full of livid crimson fury, spread out from the center of Myrken Wood towards the Silver Lake, the inn that squat nearby, and to the fortifications beyond.

It needed to disappear, the thought echoed within a vast and cob-webbed mind that refused to linger into certain interior corridors and the shrouded ghosts that lingered there, intruding upon the present at the very edges of his vision. The expanse of forest and plains, peppered with people, must all be swept away. It was the only way to make the future manageable.

It was the only way to ensure that she would be safe.