The Vision

His name was Skiorh. It was a name he chose for himself. He wanted nothing that the persons who others would call his parents had given him, which had been little enough but beatings and abuse, anyway. But few others knew that name, almost everyone knew him as Deathcloak, including the enemies he stalked from other Realms. He had a peculiar habit of sewing onto his cloak some memento or keepsake from his kills, when he could get at them. Usually he could, for he mostly operated alone as a Scout-sniper for Albion, a loner, liking the silence, not wanting to hear others talk or laugh or ask questions about him.

Once, a fellow Scout asked why he had all those items sewn into the back of his cloak- mostly coins, but also the occasional small pouch, or ladies' handkercheif that some romantic lad he had slain with an arrow had wore upon his breast- and he had looked at the man hard and said, 'It will be a reward for the man what kills me; and asides, keeps me close ta death, where I belong.' The Scout had turned away and had never spoken a word to him again; he liked it that way.

He was used to spending days out in the field, nestled in a series of carefully camouflaged shelters. He would move slowly, silently, from one to the other, looking for any Hibernians or Midgardians to happen along. Stragglers, messengers, even fools who thought themselves brave enough to go it alone. They all fell to his worn, black longbow, and specially crafted black clothyard shafts. He would always leave the area immediately, and go to another place altogether. They would eventually be found by their comrades, dead upon the road or in the woods or upon the fields, with something missing from them. And it would be said that Deathcloak had killed again.

His cloak was heavy with the mementoes of many kills. He would return to town eventually, sometimes even to Camelot, to get his new prizes sewn into his cloak, to drink ale, and to visit the whorehouses.

As he awaited his turn in the parlor room of one house he was fond of, he heard a girl wailing and screaming upstairs, and then saw a pale little creature run down the stairs, barefoot, her ripped gauzy dress clutched to her body as she sobbed with terror. The madame of the house took her head in her hands and talked seriously to her, in businesslike terms. He was speechless, his body frozen. She reminded him Neesie...

...and the girl in the gauzy dress, hair very much like his Neesie, was overcome by the terror of what was happening to her. His mind was flooded with horrid memories, black despair; he loathed it when he thought of his past, the pain was always too much to bear, as he stalked out of the whorehouse and into the filthy streets and wretched into the gutter again and again, hand propped against a wall, body trembling. He left the city immediately for the Frontier.

He built several blinds along a road, far away from the usual areas of conflict. He sought to calm his mind, sought the familiarity of gripping his longbow, the sounds and smells of the woods around him, the escape that blanking his mind would bring him.

The next day, in the late afternoon, from one of his blinds, he heard a horse coming down the road. He peered between two branches of his shelter, and saw the Celt, a man of early middle age, dressed in scale armor and fancy cloak, riding at a slow canter down the road towards him., an easy kill for certain, possibly a messenger or traveler.

As he placed a clothyard shaft against his bowstring, he looked at the man's face, saw that he had a care-worn expression, and was deep in thought...

...and, suddenly, Skiorh saw a perfectly reproduced image in his mind, as if he was seeing it happening in front of himself. He saw the man, leaning over a bed, kissing his wife lovingly upon the forehead, his wife who had a wasting disease, could not arise from her bed, had been that way for years, but the careworn man loved her, stayed with her, cared for her, remembering the carefree happy days when she was vital, alive, would dance around him laughing, just for the amusement of it all, and Skiorh's mind reeled, he was sighting down his arrow in his drawn bow, but slowly released the tension as he lowered his weapon, watching the man ride past him and recede into the distance, stunned at the vision he had seen when he looked upon the man's face.

He sat and thought for hours about what had happened, going over it in his mind, how the vision had seemed so vital, so real.

He thought: what did it all mean? What was the purpose?

Why had he reacted in such a way?

The darkness grew around him, and he composed himself for sleep.

He dreamt of Neesie; he hadn't done that in years. In his dream, Neesie cried out to him, pleading for him to save her, and he tried, he tried his best, but it wasn't good enough, again. He desperately tried to awake, to get away from the memory. He tossed and turned in his sleep, crying out. He awoke with a start, and lay there, unable to return to sleep.

The following days, he hunted in the Frontier, avoiding places where he typically found others.

One day, while hunting, he suddenly came upon a Firbolg sitting on the ground, his back to a tree. By reflex, he fitted a clothyard shaft into the bowstring, drew it back...

...he was the only son of aging parents, from a poor hamlet. and he sent most of his army pay back to them, and his folks shared the coin with their poor friends, the whole hamlet looked up to him, when he visited, they all welcomed him, held a poor banquet in his honor, which embarrased him, but gladdened him to know that he mattered to others, since he had no woman to share his life with...

The vision siezed his mind once more, he saw with utter clarity inside the mind of his enemy; he slowly backed off, disappeared into the woods.

He traveled swiftly to Camelot, trying to keep his mind blank.He went to one of the many Inns there, and drank, a subject he knew a lot about. He tried to forget the visions. He could not.

He went to one of the whorehouses he frequented, asked for Mirella. She came to him smiling, embraced him, and walked up the stairs to her room with him.

He sat upon the bed, staring at the wall. She was puzzled, sat down next to him, placed an arm around him.

It all came out of him, he told her about the visions, told her he couldn't kill the enemy, how worried he was.Mirella held his hands.

"Have you considered that perhaps it is all in your mind?"

"No. It is real, more real than you. I am certain."

"You should rest, spend more time in the city. You can come see me more often."

Skiorh looked at her, the one person who he let inside, even a little.

"I don't know what i happening to me. Killing is what I am. It is all that I am. If I stop...who am I?"

Mirella held him to her closely; she held him for the better part of an hour, then he stood, laid silver upon her dresser.

"Come back to me."

He nodded at her, averting his eyes, and left her room, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

He soon tired of the city, grew weary of other people, of the crowds, the activity. He went back to the Frontier.

Back in the woods and fields, he felt almost at ease again. He set up his blinds, hunted some, spent nights looking into the night sky, counting the stars.

He dreamed again; it was inevitable.

Neesie was crying hysterically as the two men dragged her out of their hovel, his drunken parents cursing at her to shut up and begone. She was being dragged off by the landlord's men, his sister, given by their parents into indentured servitude because they had no money for the rent, they drank all the time, and never had money for anything else. He ran at the men, swinging wildly at them with his balled fists, enraged. A guardsman, dressed in studded leather armor with a mace in his belt, seized him and took him, struggling, into the nearby copse of trees. He sat him down and shook him roughly until he stopped struggling.

"Boy, your parents are scum. I see the likes of them all the time. I am right sorry about your sister, but things cannot get worse for her, no matter what befalls her. You understand me?"

The guard cuffed him to get his attention. He stared sullenly at the man.

"I grew up much like you, boy. You need to get away from them, before it becomes too late for you." The man's eyes softened. He looked around, and then reached in the pouch at his belt and took out a few silver coins, suddenly pressed them into his hand.

"I might be nothin' to anyone, but damn me if you don't have a chance now. Take this, go to Prydwen Keep, my brother is Bailiff there," he said, a twinkle of pride in his eye. "Tell him Skiorh says hallo, and mayhaps you'll find a place to work there for Lord Prydwen, away from the filth here." The man squeezed his shoulder, stood up, and walked away, without looking back.

It was the only kindness anyone had ever shown him. He left the next day, having not been able to save his sister, but starting a new life of his own.

When he had reached Prydwen Keep, they had asked him his name. He told them he was called Skiorh, standing straight and proud, the dirty barefoot little boy from nowhere.

He sat up in the dark, awaking from the dream.

He thought a long time.

The next day, he set out, making his round of the blinds.

He heard the sound of distant battle, the clanking of steel upon steel, and prepared himself for the inevitable stragglers and refugees from the battle.

After a while, a Celt clad in scale armor, limping along with a leg wound, came out of the trees towards his blind. He drew back his arrow, looking at the man...

...and saw nothing but a fightened Celt, in pain.

He was puzzled. No vision. Perhaps...this man was not a good man. He drew back his bow further, sighting down the arrow, aimed at the man's chest.

Perhaps he did not need the vision anymore.

He thought, if I looked in a pool and saw my reflection, what would I see?

He slowly lowered the bow. The Celt collapsed in the grass, groaning, holding his leg. He strode out of his blind, over to him.

The Celt looked up in panic.

"Deathcloak!"

"Quiet, and don't pull that sword," he said, tearing off a strip of the man's cloak. He then sat about tying off the bleeding wound as the man looked at him in wonder. When he had stopped the bleeding, he picked up his bow and raised the man off the ground, placing his arm around his shoulders, stumbling with him to his blind. He lay him down there, where a water bucket and half of a roasted rabbit was in easy reach. He turned to walk away.

"I thank you," the man said. He paused, nodded curtly, and walked away.

"Why?" the Celt called after him. He kept walking.

He slept well that eve, and when he awoke in the morning, he hung his famed cloak upon a tree branch, leaving it for good.

He would make blinds, see men from all Realms as they passed unaware of him, but he never saw a vision again. He did not need to.

He watched others, and he learned how to be human.