The #Broken_Dagger Forum

It had been two and a half decades since he'd laid eyes on Myrken. He wasn't surprised that things had changed.

The trail home was a long one, and it led from the lands of the Tobotu bushmen. That sun-bleached ocean of tall grass and the occasional tree was but the last of several different locales he'd frequented. The constant rain and racket of thunder contrasted to the rumors he'd heard of Myrken suffering and becoming dry as a bone overnight.

For a man who'd travelled through so many different climates, and who grew up here, he knew that this mud and muck wasn't Myrken. He expected the comforting pastoral scene of rich soil that brought forth a bounty, smelling of greenery and minerals of the ground. Not this mud that looked as if it had, until recently, been dried out and was now getting oversaturated.

He yanked out something from his shirt, an engraved piece of metal in the shape of an ancient arrowhead, scoured and worn mostly smooth by the vagaries of time and muttered to it.

"I see the homecoming was not the end to all surprises, old friend."

The half-elf was amused. To the passerby, it would be a strange sight. A man dressed like a savage, wearing beaded leathers and fang-and-claw jewelry, wearing a bush knife strapped across his back with the hilt sticking out of his right side, and carrying a bow so worn it looked as if it didn't work anymore. His beard and hair were both blonde, and both equally grown long and un-kempt, and both dipped in some sort of dye that turned the tips a deep red.

He was a walking bazaar of fashion oddities from various far-flung places and cultures. Boots, breeches, tunic, the blanket rolled up and slung over his back, the crudely sewn leather pack he carried the necessities in, the pouch-laden belt, the closed quivers with his arrows. All from different places. Fur and hide and leather; beads, fangs, claws, and tusks decorating it all. His features, human-blunt and elven-exotic bore the fading marks of some sort of dye pattern painted on his face, much as his hands and arms were marked with a combination of the same.

He stood outside the wall that now encircled Myrken and felt compelled; he raised an ancient, battered old horn to his lips and let loose the strident note to commemorate his homecoming; no one but he would remember that he had once lived here. He might or might not find a dilapitated old cottage that was his mother's to live in; but if someone else had taken that land, that was alright.

He had another place to live in, forgotten by man a long time ago.

The rain rattled through the leaves on the border forest and foothills near the Sikasoons. He'd stalked these woods for a long time as a small boy, and then later hunted them as he got older.

He'd bought a large chunk of it before he left, liquidating the assets of his deceased mother, who was a considerable businesswoman until her death, and essentially traded a large herd and very carefully selected and very lucrative pastureland for these virgin, untouched hills.

His discovery in these hills was defended by his property rights, duly submitted and taxed from a fund he'd set up before leaving with one of his mother's few friends.

Here, he wasn't the bastard get of a sherpherdess and some elven adventurer. Here was his real home.

The far-walking hunter watched the rain hit the canopy of these woods from a special hilltop before he finally moved down one side; to a pile of stones carefully placed. He had put them there, to conceal an entrance.

Behind the stones, camouflaged with every artifice of a skilled ranger, was an entrance hewn from the earth and lined with rough granite. He'd marked it years ago with his scent, that it might discourage animal inhabitants.

The squared entrance was ancient, and so was the hall that lay behind it. But the torches and other necessities that he'd laid there for this homecoming were still there, untouched. So were the traps he'd set to keep the thieves and plunderers at bay. Not that it was likely anyone would have spotted this place and yet he'd always believed in being thorough.

All was as he'd left it, decades ago. Well hidden, provisioned and guarded by the right of property that he used the inheritance from his mother for. If she'd known, she would have perhaps approved. This was the place that gave him a role in life which he'd lacked before.

The hallway led deeper into the bowels of the hill, and the cavern became warmer. The simple earth gave way to hanging hides and other decorations; bits of broken weapons, visual record of hunts and wars, prayers. Further in, the corridor became more finished, more carefully constructed and most definitely man-made, but it certainly did not lose the rough-hewn feel.

That gave way to an ante-room of statues worn faceless by the intervening centures, and then a central chamber, with an altar. The braziers and torches burned eternally in a way that they had when he'd left, though they'd been lifeless for decades.

The altar was brown from the blood left on it, and the scenes carved into the stone around the room were of beasts and monsters hunted, of hunters and warriors that defended their tribes against such things. There were other doors, to other chambers. The place was mossy and there was a clear spring that ran through one of the chambers. But instead of a sepulchral chill, it was a warm place.

With a game animal held in one hand as an offering and the artifacts he'd collected in his two decades of travelling returned to their rightful place, he'd finally arrived.

He was truly home.