“Hli sisi,” he mutters under his breath, squinting up at the wide, blue, springtime sky. Not a cloud in sight; its calm, vaulted infiniteness it overwhelming; feeling crushed by the weight of the world’s open mouth, he turns his eyes to the horizon-eating stretch of long, seeding grass. But why? Why would he be here again? It makes no sense, except that he knew it, this land and where it was, and just as his cunicular heart yearns to run from things that get tough and eldritch—(and snow in a hot desert qualifies as such, thank you)—so does it yearn for a hide it knows the tunnels and nooks of. And while things had gotten weird here, weird enough for Max to have taken off under cover of night, as if anyone would be any the wiser to his disappearance in Solterra, it had been much, much worse in Sovereign.
Much worse.
He shivers, reliving the slow creep of the darkness and… well—he hadn’t stayed there long either. Max is a wild, wanderling, cunicular soul. An endless wellspring of fear and curiosity, duelling on battlefields of strange lands and homes away from ho—no, no he hasn’t had a home in a very long time. A fresh bed of straw in yet another inn doesn’t count, no matter the maids he manages to share it with. No matter the days he spends soiling it, running undignified hustles on the street to pay for just one more sleep on something civilized and familiar. Just one more. No, home is a concept long since relegated to fitful, shiftless sleep, phantoms and shrouded memories. Home is gone now. He is here.
He presses on, in an aimless sort of way.
At first, he had, himself oriented towards the south, wondering with every step why he would ever choose to go back there, of all places. Perhaps, because he knew it best, by the cobbled sandstone and flickering, sun-sigil banners. Somehow, he had felt an initial migratory call to it, like he owed it something primal. An animal pact to serve a duty—which is crazy, really, because he’d never be in this mess if he embraced duty to begin with, and not misfit, creature trickery…
Very soon it had dawned on him that those ill-placed feelings—debts; he owes but one to a haggardly old sorcerer, and he’s probably dead, rodents tend not to love too long; duty—were just that, and with a small turn of his body, he was wandering again, across an ocean of belly-tickling grass, still lying prostrate, here and there, from the heavy weight of snow for so long. Small clutches of blooming flowers give bright colour to the drab brown-green of a world just awakening.
He is free again.
Much worse.
He shivers, reliving the slow creep of the darkness and… well—he hadn’t stayed there long either. Max is a wild, wanderling, cunicular soul. An endless wellspring of fear and curiosity, duelling on battlefields of strange lands and homes away from ho—no, no he hasn’t had a home in a very long time. A fresh bed of straw in yet another inn doesn’t count, no matter the maids he manages to share it with. No matter the days he spends soiling it, running undignified hustles on the street to pay for just one more sleep on something civilized and familiar. Just one more. No, home is a concept long since relegated to fitful, shiftless sleep, phantoms and shrouded memories. Home is gone now. He is here.
He presses on, in an aimless sort of way.
At first, he had, himself oriented towards the south, wondering with every step why he would ever choose to go back there, of all places. Perhaps, because he knew it best, by the cobbled sandstone and flickering, sun-sigil banners. Somehow, he had felt an initial migratory call to it, like he owed it something primal. An animal pact to serve a duty—which is crazy, really, because he’d never be in this mess if he embraced duty to begin with, and not misfit, creature trickery…
Very soon it had dawned on him that those ill-placed feelings—debts; he owes but one to a haggardly old sorcerer, and he’s probably dead, rodents tend not to love too long; duty—were just that, and with a small turn of his body, he was wandering again, across an ocean of belly-tickling grass, still lying prostrate, here and there, from the heavy weight of snow for so long. Small clutches of blooming flowers give bright colour to the drab brown-green of a world just awakening.
He is free again.
Hover for translation
Open to any and all!
Open to any and all!
