"Your life sounds very much like a Detlef Sierck Melodrama if I am being completely honest, only...far more violent than he would usually write. Even your noble beauty seems to kill droves of beastmen and chaos worshippers." Hermman the Wizard said, smoking his pipe under a gnarled tree as the fire crackled before him, lengthening the shadows of his studied face. 

Cyrdic grunted, not blaming the man for finding his past adventures hard to believe. He sounded ridiculous to himself when he spoke it aloud. But he also could not help but grin at Hermman's comment on Camilla. "Just because she is a beautiful woman does not mean she isn't dangerous." he said to him, biting into the venison sausage.

The deer they'd hunted had by Brettonian law belonged to Baron D'Elbiq. But he was apparently too busy fueding with Baron Du Maisne and fighting the occasional Derelich that inhabited the rare ruin around the abandoned holdfasts of ancient Aquitaine. Cyrdic had always liked Venison more than most meats. He knew how to follow as much as lead, but he couldn't understand a land where even the animals belonged to the gentry. 

"In my experience my boy, most beautiful women are." Hermman replied, giving a ghost of a smile as if remembering a painful but fond memory. 

Cyrdic was too focused on his meal, even taking the bits of it that had bone in it. The cracking of the bone with his teeth was satisfying, even pleasurable. He suddenly found bone marrow almost as appetizing as the meat itself, and his ravenous hunger was untenable. Hermman was lost in thought for a few moments too long, and he would curse himself a moment later when a sword glinted in the firelight, the point of it reaching the Wizard's slim neck. 

"You are under arrest for trespassing on the Baron's road," a man said in broken Reikspiel. It seemed whoeever spoke it could already tell they were foreigners. "and poaching upon his land." 

A powerful man with an even more impressive mustache stepped out of the woods, hood over his head. More Yeomen stepped out of the woods, and Cyrdic was more appalled at himself being too hungry to even smell their obvious scent than surprised they were there, or in fear of his life. Hermman lowered his pipe, smiling guiltily. "Well, Captain, what is to be our punishment. I know the Constable of Bordeleaux, you know. If you hang me or my ward, he will see to it y-" 

"Silence, knave. Or are you a warlock? The Baron D'Elbiq will decide your fate at the Castle." 

Hermman sighed, and looked at Cyrdic apologetically. "Well my boy, at least we'll be sleeping indoors tonight."
[hr]

Aldaerion's gaze pierced leaf and bark, traveling over the low hills of Aquitaine with sight beyond what any human could experience. The armored apes of the land, in their primitive and brutish ways did safeguard it better than most denizens of Athel Loren would admit. Beastman and Orc would ravage the land, but would be thrown back time and again over the course of many human lifetimes, and even the span of a few Elven ones. But this was different. 

The power rising in the forest of Chalons was an old one. One that the Asrai had not seen for a long time. They would weather out the storm within Athel Loren, but as for the humans of Brettonia? Perhaps they would prevail again. But the Waywatcher doubted it. Aldaerion had seen the power of lone necromancers before, when they soiled the ancient cairns of the Wood Elves. 

What could one of such ancient power wield, in a land rife with feuds and ancient dead?  
[@Penny]