Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed the first installment in this particular adventure. There's so much more to come for Thrasamund. Exactly what? I have no idea. I know where I want to go with him. The dice and prompts may decide otherwise. Yesterday, I actually wrote two prompts worth of passages. I concluded the one yesterday just to ensure that it wasn't too long. Well, I'm sure you're sympathizing with Thrasamund's plight by now. Let's see what he's been up to since he's killed Nerthuz.
Flight!
I spent a few days traveling to a small community. I spent the next ten moons sheltered in the forest until I was able to find another cave along these mountain ranges. The passages were dark and narrow, perhaps two men standing side-by-side at the most. There were recesses in which I could rest. As I explored, I realized that there was a large opening into a cavern. The floor had terminated at some point and the drop was treacherous at best, lethal at worst. I didn't explore past the large cavern. From my perspective, this, for better or worse was home for the time being.
I withdrew for the first two months. I fed only by hunting animals in the forest. Adalrik, my father, taught me that every part of the animal must be used. Were I lucky enough to quickly overtake and fight a deer, I would consume both the blood and the heart. At first, the act disgusted me. I had to remind myself that it was no different than eating venison. Cooking the flesh I was eating would not do in my current state. With no one to reverse the curse now applied to me. I don't know why there's such a difference. It's something that I can not explain. I hadn't seen the Boeman, a fact, for which, I found relief.
I began taking the rest of the meat, using my dagger to butcher the meat. I would take the hide and wrap the meat that I had harvested. I buried the rest of the offal from the inside of the deer and then, I would take that into town. A local mead hall that served as a tavern seemed surprised that a man would appear in the night with meat for them. I was paid in a few coins, sometimes a small jewel and I was told I could drink my fill.
I tried.
Two ales in and I would need to find a reasonable excuse to be sick outside. I learned very quickly, the ale was safe to sip but not to drink as others do. The food, of course, did nothing in the way to satisfy me.
I still heard the stories from weary travelers stopping in for a moment's rest before moving on. Stories were that of an older man had spent his days telling everyone that his son deserted and fled the battlefield, entered into a dark pact with Frau Hulda to bring Helle itself to Middegeard.
Part of it was true. Helle was here in Middegeard ...for me.
Frau Hulda does believe in subtle torments. Her table is a mockery of mortal feasts and it required no crossing of icy realms for me to come to rest within it's gates
At my own dwelling outside of town, I had collected the bones of the animals that I had taken. I still remember the night that Nerthuz died by my own hands. She said her wards would not allow me in. I didn't enter until the Boeman beckoned me and kept urging me to feed, to kill her because she would expose me. She had wards. Perhaps, I could have my own. I began to place them just into the darkness of the cave. I arranged and bound bones together, standing them in twisted mockeries of their former form.
Understand that I know nothing in the ways of magic, dark or otherwise. Nerthuz, I no longer have doubts, knew. The bag that I had taken from the small table contained nothing but her runes that she had carved herself. I placed them in my pack, not that I wanted to ever truly learn the runes...perhaps I should. I knew the runes enough to communicate with others in languages they may not know. Another language to have to learn. Perhaps one that may be useful. In the meantime, I merely wanted rest and to fend off anyone that would happen upon my sleeping form, accidental or otherwise.
I had given no one my name. I was doing my level-best at the time to stay as unnoticed and anonymous as possible.
It was during my sleep that a sound awakened me. One of the bone wards had been kicked, coming apart and scattering bones. I sat up and immediately slipped into a nook across from where I slept in the darkness and waited. I watched as they went by, two at a time. I slowly moved into position. According to my count, twenty men had entered my dark recess. I saw one man lingering behind and immediately I bolted into him, putting him into my alcove where I slept. I slammed him hard against the stone wall, his torch fell from his hand into the room. I clamped my hand over his mouth and nose and immediately, forcefully removed his heart and consumed it. I let him drop to the ground when he began going limp. I extinguished the torch. I used the tactics in which I'd been instructed in Teutoberg Forest. There was no chaos this time. Each man I killed, the act was quick, though not clean.
To whomever may find this chronicle, it's important to note that, in the consumption of blood, for one such as myself, the flesh and blood of animals, it will sustain me but it is wholly unsatisfying. That from a human such as yourself...there is truly nothing like it. Combined with the consumption of the heart and it is a feast unlike that of which even Wotan can provide.
I had silently killed four of the twenty but it was on the fifth man that I stopped relying on my stealth and I killed him by forcing my hand through his back and out the front, his heart in my hand. I pulled it back, leaving him to finally drop, the hole in his leather armor and body a glaring reminder to all that saw him when the remaining fifteen turned to find themselves faced with me and I continued devouring his heart as they watched.
Their expressions were that of surprise mingled with abject terror, despite being armored to a lesser degree but well-armed.
The corpse of their compatriot whom I'd dropped to the rocky floor was illumnated by the torch he once carried.
When the first one responded with the fire of courage burning inside, I grinned. I was not armed by traditional means but that hadn't stopped me from killing five of them before anyone truly noticed. In the midst of the war being waged in that narrow corridor, I'd managed to push the force back into the cavern. I did hear one man foolishly not watching as he backed himself right over the precipice, down onto the rocks below. The rest made their stand, eleven out of the fourteen remaining and one had died by his own foolishness. I broke necks, ripped out hears, lacerated throats and even, in one case, completely removed a man's head with mine own hands. Some of them did land glancing blows, I pulled a few crossbow bolts from my own chest and shoulder. Wounds would heal in a matter of hours.
Some of these men were men from the town at which I'd been selling meat at a price that kept the locals fed.
One man remained. I turned to face him amidst the torn and wrecked bodies of the dead in that space of darkness, I realized my own father had led this mob into my home with the intention of destroying me.
"You're not my son," he says, "You're unnatural! An Abomination! You're one of the Alp. What Have You Done With My Son!"
In his ranting and raving and carrying on, it occurred to me, I wasn't looking him in the eye but slightly down upon him.
"Let my son's soul go, Alp," he demanded. Some of you are not familiar with that term but it was then that I realized that, between the terrified ramblings of Nerthuz, her stories that she would tell me as a child and Adalrik before me and Adalrik's maddened description of me, I was the embodiment of all that was meant to scare me.
Alp is a word that has an entirely new meaning today than it did then. When someone mentions Alps, you may think of what you would call Switzerland or Sweden. In those days, an Alp was our word for Elf.
You may think of elves as being fair of hair with pointed ears, slender builds, magical, mystical and even beautiful.
The Elf to which my father referred is almost nothing like the referent for the term you have in mind. Pointed ears, intense and fierce silver eyes, pointed, angular features to a severe extent, pale, vampiric, bearing razor-sharp fangs, that is the referent that my father used and he directed it at me, his own son.
"You are right," I said, "I am not your son. I didn't run from the battle at the forest. I was taken and carried away. You will return home. You found the remains of your son. You provided him a funeral pyre after the men saved you from an ambush in the cavern. I will see to the bodies of these men. No one will be shamed here or ever. That is what you tell anyone who asks. You can say that the stories Nerthuz talked about were mere stories. Your son's murderers are dead. Your son is at peace. ...Go...I would not want you to be the next to be consumed and you still have my mother to look after..."
I allowed him and only him out of that cave. I picked through the bodies to gather supplies that I may need. I managed to find money purses on the men. Though little flowed through the town save for some copper and perhaps bronze coins, I managed to find six hundred and forty-four gold pieces among the men, then, another nine hundred and thirteen pieces of silver and one hundred and thirty-one copper pieces.
My father could not afford these wages. Who paid these men to accompany my father?
Night was coming and I needed to make haste if I were to leave successfully. I staged the bodies over the drop into the cavern. I kept many of the torches lit, dropping them on top of the bodies down below. A mass pyre. Fitting for the mob sent to kill me. I combined the valuables and waited for nightfall. As I walked along the river, setting about in my travel, I knew I needed to clean myself up. Blood caked my face, beard and hands, possibly even the tunic I wore. I stopped by the river and suspended my pack and gear up into a tree. I took my clothing off and waded into the river to clean myself.
Nerthuz used to tell me stories of how Nachzehrer and Alps could not cross running water. This water was still on this moonlit night. I submerged myself into the water, taking my shirt with me. I spend a minute or two under the surface, cleaning the blood off of me and my tunic. I emerge slowly from the water, careful not to disturb the surface so much. I look down into the surface of the near-still water only to see my own silhouette lit by a moon behind me. I emerge from the water only to realize that, despite the autumn chill in the air, I'm not cold. I reach up and touch my ears but they're the same round ears I have always enjoyed. I lick my teeth behind my lips and they are still my normal teeth. I couldn't see anything else. I dress and take my things down from the tree limb, putting it all back on and making my way toward wherever my next home would be.
Traveling at night, though safe, poses a problem I don't think I have discussed at length. Where to go during the day?
Caves aren't quite as accessible. I'd been very lucky thus far. I must also remain hidden. My resting places can't be obvious to those passing by for the curious. Some days, I bury myself in three feet of river bank muck. Other days, I am able to make a sort of cocoon that wouldn't look out of place if it's just laying around. This was the farthest I'll have ever been from home and family. The farm, my father's legacy are now, only distant memories. I would have to make my home elsewhere.
Eventually, I find a region and settle in an inn. I use the coin I'd found to pay for two nights so that I am not disturbed during the day.
I also had to leave my name behind. I am no longer Thrasamund, son of Adalrik. I simply sign the register as Roderic.
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