Wrath, Cruelty and Kindness.

The village of Orlton was in chaos. The tavern was ablaze, the shopkeeper's wares were strewn across the bloodied street, and old man MacTavish still hadn't repaired his loose window-shutter, instead allowing it to bang against the house every time the wind picked up. Although it may not seem like a huge issue compared to a ransacking, it was still a bugbear for the other villagers. After all, the new problems had only been around for a few minutes, whereas they'd been pestering old man MacTavish for months.
                Pushing the thought of the banging shutter out of his mind, although its rhythmic crashing had haunted his nights for what felt like eternity, Gregory ran as fast as he could along the muddy road towards Mirehearth city. His chest burned with each ragged breath he drew but he dare not stop, even as his legs turned to jelly beneath him. If he stopped then the bandits would catch him. They'd be on top of him and they'd kill him. He had to get away, get to one of the guard garrisons and bring aid for the village.
                Hoofbeats sounded in the distance - were the bandits closing on him? His eyes widened and his pulse would have sped up had there been anything left in his heart to give. As it was, since he had done very little cardiovascular exercise in recent months, his heart was already beating at breaking point. Gregory knew he was scared, but anyone relying strictly on his heart for that information would have found themselves quite at a loss.
                He dived into a patch of bushes by the side of the road, growing in the wide space between the sparse patches of trees. Thin twigs scratched at his face and tugged his clothing, but he wriggled deeper into the foliage, desperate to hide himself from his hunters.
                The rustling of the bushes had covered the distant pounding of hooves whilst he’d been threading himself into the bush, and Gregory was alarmed to hear how much louder it had become when he eventually remained still. The branches, twigs and leaves around his head interfered with the sounds, bouncing them around, but if he listened hard he could convince himself the hooves weren't coming from the village - they were coming from the direction of Mirehearth.
                Gregory lay perfectly still in the bush. If this was a friendly rider then it was vital that he make himself known. The rider could rally a force to fend off the bandits from Orlton. If his ears were deceiving him, though, and they were bandits…
                The hoofbeats were getting closer at an incredible rate, so there was no time to deliberate. Gregory decided to trust his ears - they rarely let him down. He could tell which of his myriad cooking pots was boiling without so much as a glance thanks to their fine tuning, and they were never late for an appointment. With desperation anew and even less dignity than before, Gregory thrashed his limbs and attempted to extract himself from the floral shackles which locked themselves around him. The rider must have nearly been on top of him; he'd never get out in time at this rate. Gregory couldn't let the chance pass him by, it could be the only chance to save Orlton.
                "HELP, PLEASE! STOP!" He cried blindly from the bush, still writhing and wriggling his way towards the road. The branches and twigs bent underneath his weight as he tried to push himself off, leaving him equally entangled and no closer to escape.
                "PLEASE! BANDITS ARE ATTACKING! WE NEED HELP!"
                Sliding through leaves until his head emerged from the shrubs, Gregory heard hooves sliding to a halt and a deep equine snort. A quiet rattling of armour, as its wearer shifted his weight, was a ray of hope; the rider was a knight.
                "You there, why are you in a bush? You do not seem to be beset by bandits or outlaws." It was a deep voice, like giant bee inside an oak trunk in the back of a cathedral. The voice commanded respect and deference.
                "I fled to find help! I am from the village of Orlton, and we are beset by outlaws. There are too many for us to fend off; please, we need help!" Gregory implored, extracting himself at long last from the bush.
                "Orlton you say? That is very close by. I can rally some support. Tell me, where are the valuables?"
                "The valuables? That's not important. We need to fend off the bandits." Gregory finally laid eyes on his saviour. Atop a great white courser sat a tall hulk of a man in bright white armour. He filled every inch of his steel plate, sitting straight up and proud in the sunlight. The sword on his right hip was inscribed with the word 'Truth' along the handle, and the warhammer on his left was inscribed with 'Honour' along the head. The visor of his white helmet was raised, showing a pair of bright blue eyes and a straight nose in the rough distribution across the face which would be expected for a human. His horse was a solid wall of muscle, snorting and pawing at the ground, and every bit as fearsome as the knight riding it.
                "The bandits will be after the valuables and treasures. You must tell me where they are so that I may send troops to defend them."
                "They weren't stopping to loot. It's a massacre!"
                "Are you questioning how I would save your village? Do you know more of how these bandits operate than a seasoned commander?"
                "I… I, no. No, sir. Please, the only valuables we have are in the mausoleum behind the temple. The key will lie with the priest, so he will need protection."
                "I see. Come here, and tell me your name." The knight commanded. He had dropped his reins, and his horse had dropped his head, sniffing around at the ground and looking for some grass to nibble.
                "I am Gregory." Gregory said honestly, stepping nervously to the side of the great white courser on which the knight sat.
                "Thank you for your assistance, Gregory. It took courage to know when to run from a battle which is lost. You have saved much time for me." The knight drew his sword while he spoke, idly swishing it through the air as he spoke. "You would be saddened to know how many throw themselves on the sword of another in pursuit of bravery or honour. They are so scared of being labelled a craven that they would sooner die pointlessly." The blade soared close over Gregory's head, narrowly missing his scalp. Gregory flinched downwards reflexively.
                "Th-thank you, sir. But please we must hurry!"
                "Yes, to throw your life away in a burning village would be of no benefit to anyone. There is a whole life of experience inside that head of yours. Years of memories and dreams. Every conversation you have had and every battle you have seen locked away inside your mind. Imagine all of that, all of those years of experiences, wiped out in an instant. All that preparation, all building up to who you are today, suddenly snuffed out and wasted by a bandit's axe." The knight's horse sneezed to accentuate his point.
                "It's happening now! To everyone else in Orlton!"
                "Every man and every woman has their purpose; that is what I believe, Gregory. No matter how deprived or depraved they may be; the chaste and the waste all have their purpose. It may be to serve another and allow them to do great works, it may be to accumulate wealth and power, it may be to lead others into their fate; but every one of them has a reason to be. Yours, Gregory," the knight pointed his sword tip directly at Gregory's throat, in case Gregory needed a reminder of who he was "may well have been to meet me here on the road. To deliver me the messages you have imparted."
                "Er, yes. Maybe it is, my Lord." he swallowed hard, looking down at the polished blade as his adam's apple brushed against the tip of the knight's sword. "I just hope it is soon enough to save them all."
                "You have certainly saved me a lot of time and heartache by coming here." The knight said earnestly, looking along the road ahead and seeing smoke rising in the distance. “Tell me, Gregory, does anyone else know you came here? Anyone see you leaving to fetch help?” The knight asked, still watching the smoke.
                “No m’lord. I don’t think so at least. It was chaos, I-… I just ran.”
                “Good show.”
                 Casually, and without turning his head, the knight barely leaned his weight along the line of 'Truth' and slipped the blade easily into Gregory's throat.
                "Uck" Greogory managed, his voice severely inhibited by the sharpened steel lodged therein.
                "Now do be a sport and try not to get any of your blood on me. I swear that half the trouble with being a white knight is keeping your armour spotlessly clean. Doubly so with the horse." he gave Gregory a smile and a conspiratorial look. Everyone knew how difficult it was to keep a horse clean after all. Gregory, for his part, didn't seem too interested in relating to the knight on this point. In fact, he wasn't interested in much at all except for panicking about being murdered. He had always worried about it happening, but had never considered that he'd be expected to keep a conversation going at the same time.
                "I'm going to need you to bleed away from me, is the point I'm getting at. It's my own fault really; necks always spray out so terribly and I know what I’m getting in for, but what can I say? I'm a sucker for a throat! They should call me the vampire, ha!" he chuckled to himself, still holding Gregory at arm's length via 'Truth'.
                "Thank you for your advice regarding the mausoleum, Gregory. My men and I would have had to spend so much more time searching and looting and pillaging and all the rest of it if you'd not let me in on the secret. You really were a blessing." The knight told him. With a deft flick of his wrist, he tore the sword upwards through Gregory's throat and span the peasant's body around, spraying a jet of bold red across the roadway and surrounding bushes.
                Spotlessly white in the sunlight, the knight kicked his courser into a canter and sped down the road towards Orlton. His bandits and his loot awaited.

                "Do you smell that?" asked Hjoll, the hulking berserker. Nose held high to capture more of the aroma, he stood like a tower of flesh in the sunlight. The shadows of his ludicrously engorged muscles made him look even more of a hulk than usual.
                Gar-d'na sniffed at the air.
                "Smoke?" he asked "Mother Gaia is ablaze." The druid spoke with gravity at the possibility of crimes against the earth-mother.
                "Aye, smoke, but there's more. Blood and flesh. Steel. Pillaging." Pillaging had a singular and unique scent to the feral caste of berserkers. It was somewhere between basil and burning mud.
                "A bandit attack!?" Megan exclaimed with excitement. The mage was itching for an opportunity to exercise her magic in anger. "Then there could be trouble afoot and work to do. Let us slay-" Hjoll shot her a warning look "-I mean, let us resolve the conflict?"
                Hjoll nodded sagely with his eyes closed. Such closure meant that Megan was able to pull a face at him without consequence. She hated his 'no violence' rule, especially since it was coming from a berserker; the warriors famed for their uncontrollable blood rage which turned them from normal fighters into feral machines of war.
                Hjoll had been ousted from his clan for exactly that reason. The feral caste were famed for their fearsome, if bestial, warriors, men and women who could fend off scores of armoured knights whilst clad in little more than a loincloth and leather shoes. To see such a warrior fighting in a full berserk rage was to see the most primal, spiteful and wrathful aspects of humanity rushing to the fore. None were safe, none were allies, and all were in mortal peril.
                In earlier days Hjoll had been a terrifying fighter in the warchief's own battle-band. The first to draw blood and the last to lose any, he was able to summon the primal spirits to assist him with great fury at a moment's notice, giving himself over to the pulse of the battle without fear. His great two-handed sword had tasted the blood and flesh of hundreds of foes, from the armies of would-be conquerers, to rival tribes, to those who disrespected him in public. More than ten had fallen to him after questioning whether or not he knew the directions to the nearest town, and three for asking if he would mind giving his opinion on something.
                "If you want to save anyone then we must make haste." Longsight the ranger observed. "It smells like its coming from... this way!" She added, pointing directly into the banks of the river.
                "We will find a bridge." Hjoll decided pragmatically.
                "There's a river?" Asked Longsight, straining her eyes at it. She was a ranger trained by the finest woodland hunters and trackers the world knew, but her eyesight had been severely degraded by a bark fungus infection. Despite this setback, Longsight could hit the head of a needle with her bow at a range of several feet, and she could track any man or beast across any terrain, as long as she was belly-crawling along the ground to see their prints. Any farther away and her vision became too blurry, but she never let that stop her from reaching her mark.
                "We'll guide you round it."

                Led by Longsight's nose, the party trudged along the road to locate the source of the smoky aroma. The sun, also intrigued by what the smoke heralded, joined them in their journey, treading its own path through the clear blue sky.
                The road wound through meadows and woodland, over hills and through shallow valleys. In serpentine trajectories they pushed on, feeling the heat of the day on their backs whenever they emerged from the shade of the foliage.  The sun was long into its downward stretch, making a bold dash for the horizon, when the four adventurers finally reached the raided and sullied village of Orlton, a blackened smudge on the landscape. Columns of smoke fanned out from many of the buildings, still smouldering but long abandoned by true flames, blackening the sky and indicating to the party that they were, perhaps, just a little too late to help.
                The ground was bloodied and muddied by scores of boots and blades, any grass pulverised and pressed into the ground. Every street was a repeated scene of destruction, scorched walls overlooking the slaughtered citizens they had once sheltered.
                "What monsters could do this?" Megan asked out loud, slowly taking in the vista of horror.
                "Nothing of Mother Gaia's creation."
                "There are sword and axe marks all over these walls." Longsight observed, her face practically pressed against the charred wood. "Mother Gaia created humanity, if I am not much mistaken?"
                "And humanity has long since divorced itself from her." Gar-d'na said darkly.
                They pressed on through the harrowed village, occasionally stopping to check bodies for any sign of life or check for useful tracks on the ground. Even Longsight had trouble deciphering the ground-sign; so many boots had trampled through the village in the frenzy of battle and looting that all traces were blended together. The front of her waistcoat and shirt were also plastered with mud, charcoal and blood, on account of her laying on the ground to see the marks clearly.
                "I wish you'd wear your chainmail outside those clothes." Gar-d'na told her. "We forever soil Mother Gaia's rivers washing the mud out of the fabric. At least we could wipe the metal clean."
                "Chainmail would reflect the sunlight and give our position away. A ranger must be dull in colour to blend with the woods. A little mud is nothing to be afraid of, but a charging boar or a volley of arrows is another matter."
                "I think, perhaps, that Hjoll's oiled chest is far more of a problem than you wearing a clean shirt could ever be."
                "Immaterial. The tracks lead farther into the village. We're heading in the right direction."
                They resumed their tour of tragedy through the smoking embers of Orlton, heading deeper into the body of the village in search of the bandits’ trail. Longsight made a few more stops to check the tracks and trip on bodies, Hjoll lamented the lack of compassion which these villagers had been shown, Gar-d'na wished for more vegetation, and Megan drew her focus inwards, hoping that the sorrow here would help her to channel new power. She wasn't sure if any new magic was welling inside her, but she definitely knew that she'd stepped on someone's severed hand, and that had made her breakfast threaten to swell back up.
                "Whoever attacked this village must have been severely hurt in the past. It would take severe trauma and derangement to drive any man or woman to this… brutality." Hjoll thought aloud. "We must find them and heal what has ailed them, teach them to control their anger."
                "We'll teach them something alright." Longsight said, seething at the horrors she imagined the others were able to see.
                "We will exercise forgiveness, Longsight." His cobalt eyes fixed the ranger, glossy golden hair cascading across his bare shoulders as he addressed her. Longsight looked right back into his forehead, but it was a pretty good estimate at where to focus.
                "If they will accept it, that is."
                Hjoll was forced to admit that not every evildoer was quick to accept that the titanic berserker, feared throughout the land, was on a mission of peace and forgiveness. Especially when his three companions generally wore expressions promising that they too would need forgiveness in the near future.
                "They will act how they act towards us, but we must give them the chance for retribution."
                "I'm sure you'll forgive me for being prepared for the worst."
                "I will forgive you anything if you show remorse, just as I will forgive these misguided bandits for-" Hjoll walked straight into Gar-d'na, who had stopped suddenly in front of him. "Why have you stopped, Gar?" the berserker asked, looking down at Gar-d'na.
                "Monsters…" the druid breathed.
                They had emerged at the side of a wide street through the centre of the village, however there was still very little room to move around.  The whole street was blocked and choked by a pile of bodies in simple, dirty and torn clothing. They were the victims of pure butchery, open wounds left to dry in the summer sunlight and corpses cast aside.
                "Even this?" Megan jabbed at Hjoll.
                "What is it? That blurry blob thing?" Longsight asked.
                "It's the villagers." Gar-d’na replied.
                "Oh, well they must be happy to see us."
                "You'd think so, but no. Not really." Gar-d’na told her.
                "I'll butcher them in their sleep when we find them. They're sub-human filth!" Megan seethed, fists clenched by her sides, fingernails driving into her palms. Although she was indeed angry, she was also exaggerating the situation to try to feed additional sorrow into her search for new power. Any source of inner power was unlikely to be fooled by such subterfuge, but Megan was optimistic that attention to detail wasn't on magical power's list of defining characteristics.
                "We will offer them forgiveness and understanding, Megan. We will heal the pain which has driven them to this and fix whatever it is in their lives which has made them see this as the only option."
                "They've rounded these people up like sheep, murdered them and strip-searched them! I don't think losing your puppy as a child is a valid justification for that kind of behaviour."
                "Anger and wrath will grant you no peace. Perhaps you need to be reminded of how Hjoll the Berserker forsook the life of rage."
                "Please Hjoll, not again."
                "It was a cold morning…" Hjoll began regardless.
                "We've heard it enough."
                "It was a cold morning!" He said louder, drowning out the protestations. "Frost had left the grass encrusted in icy jewels which glittered and glistened like the blood of a fresh kill. I had run out of water to slake my thirst, and I had worked up a mighty one the night before. The battles had been fierce, with more invaders trying to take our lands. I made my way to the well in the centre of the village and found that the ground was sodden, turning the earth into mud and covering my feet. I was tired from combat, nursing my wounds, and thirsty. When I extended the rope down into the well I heard the creak of a thread worn through. Before my very eyes the rope snapped and my bucket of precious water was plunged back into the darkness of the bottom of the well.
                My rage could not be contained, and I went berserk there and then. By the spirits of battle there were so many of them around me, and so many left broken. I couldn't control myself, and I didn’t know what I was doing; the rage had taken me over and I was its puppet, the mighty Hjoll a plaything in the hands of unchecked wrath. My fury lasted not long, but the devastation it had wrought still haunts me to this day. In my blind rage I had broken over ten buckets. Wood lay in splinters around me, metal binding twisted and ruined. There was panic and confusion for minutes; it was chaos. I had wrought a great tragedy with my own hands, dishonoured myself and hurt my kin. I vowed from that day never to give in to the berserk rage again. Not unless it was a truly worthy cause.
                I tried to enlighten the rest of the clan and share my epiphany but they cast me out, shunned me, treated me as a lunatic or a fool. I was the buckets' enemy and thus theirs as well. I was exiled, and so left the village that night to undertake a quest of reconciliation. I will travel the lands righting wrong and acting with compassion, understanding and kindness, never allowing the furies to take hold of me. And I will have all who travel with me hold to the same oath, lest they see the side of the berserker I have tried to quell."
                "Yes, we understand Hjoll. We have been through this all SO many times."
                "Then remember well, lest you fall into the same nightmare I did so long ago at the well…"
                "Yes, fine! We'll show compassion to the living devils who did this."
                "That is all I would ask of you."
                The party fell into silence, Hjoll bowing his head in respect for the dead and the other three too scared of him to continue listing what they intended to do to the bandits. Even without the threat of physical violence, the danger of Hjoll repeating his tale to them yet again was too great. Longsight finally broke the silence.
                "I'm still not completely sure what we're looking at."
                "Does the phrase 'A pile of desecrated corpses' mean anything to you?"
                "Hm, can't say I've heard it much, but I get the picture."
                "What do the birds tell you, Gar-d'na?" Hjoll cut-across. There were tiny garden birds hopping on the druid's shoulders, whistling and tweeting frantically.
                "They tell me that there are not many berries around here, and that there is a new male in the area who is attempting to muscle in on this patch." He relayed with gravity.
                "Anything about the attack on the village?"
                "No, they were all distracted with the search for some berries. They didn't find many at all."
                "Yes, we understand about the berries. It is grave news indeed." Longsight replied.
                "So we know that the attackers didn't eat all of the berries in the area, because they were already gone during the battle." Megan proposed, trying a little too hard to take useful information from the birds' message.
                "That is accurate." Gar-d'na appraised.
                "But is it helpful?" Hjoll asked.
                "No."
                Silence fell again.
                "They deserve a burial."
                "Aye, but we haven't time to dig graves for each of these poor souls. We must track down these bandits and ki- er, reform them before they can strike again."
                "Megan, could you use your magic to part the earth underneath the pile of bodies?"
                "I... Erm, I would need to prepare my spells for that. It would take a couple of days." She bluffed, hoping that the others understood little enough about arcane magic to believe her. She would go to any length to deny it, but parting the earth was not within the realms of her magical powers. It was perfectly possible for an accomplished mage, of course, but not for her.

                Megan's time at the Magic College of the South had been filled with hard study and practice, her tutors drilling the principles and arts of magical casting into her head every waking hour of every day. Megan dedicated herself to the pursuit of magical power, poring over the arcane secrets and theories until late in the night, and practicing spells in what little free time she had. No meal time was sacred to Megan, it was all simply a distraction for one hand whilst her other attempted to set her carrots ablaze or levitate another student's drink back out of their throat.
                For their part, her peers were very tolerant of these efforts. Far from being a magnanimous show of support for another's lifestyle, however, it was simply because nothing ever happened. Try as she might, Megan had proven incapable of casting the most basic of magic spells. For all her study and all her dedication, the only mastery she had gained was over the rate of hair growth.
                After the first year of bitter disappointments, Megan's tutors postulated that a lack of trauma and conflict in her early life was the reason she could not unlock any pathways for the power to swell inside of her. Most of the students who came to the college were cast-out or vilified in some way. They came from abusive homes, had their parents cut down by bandits, or unleashed their magic on innocent peoples, resulting in an exile. Megan had none of those things; she'd come from a loving home without notable abuse or hardship and simply wished to study magic. The magic of time travel quite beyond anyone at the college, no-one could insert the necessary struggle into Megan’s past. Regretfully, the tutors told Megan that she was just too emotionally stable to be a competent mage. She was welcome to remain at the college, but would of course be mocked mercilessly by all staff and students for her inability to summon flames from the ether.
                Her love and passion for magic not eroded by her ineptitude to perform it, Megan endeavoured to stay on at the college and keep learning, keep practicing, and keep hoping for a solution, but her tutors' advice was all too true. Around every corner she heard sniggers, behind every back was a snarky remark. Not only did the staff join in but they actively encouraged it, offering extra credit for the most creative insults.
                Rapidly, it became clear that Megan was not welcome at the college. In the dead of night she snuck out of her dormitory, crept through the hallways and made a dash out of the vaulted, oak doors to the outside world. The night guards saw her, of course, but they felt no desire to keep a magically inept buffoon like Megan around. Outside of the bounds of the college and away from the mockery of her peers, Megan sought adventure; if she could see the myriad injustices that the world had to offer and experience the suffering of the common people, then maybe she could summon up the power within herself. It never occurred to her than staying somewhere to be mocked as the chronic underdog might constitute suffering of her own.

                "I could command the worms underneath us to burrow with fury and create a cavity, then the bodies would collapse into it."
                "Digging a mass grave is morally ambiguous already, but excavating the earth and allowing the bodies to carelessly fall into it is even worse." Longsight observed. "We should really just let someone else do it." No-one else knew how to react to Longsight's accurate summary of the situation. They were quite used to her seeming emotionally distant in these circumstances, on account of not being able to see the true extent of the horror, but this was a combination of pragmatic altruism and avoiding the hard work. She was toeing both sides of the line.
                "I agree with Longsight." said Megan at last. It was an excellent reason to change the subject away from a magical failure on her part.
                "We're just going to leave them here, rather than return them into Mother Gaia where they belong?"
                "We shall notify the next garrison we find, then others will return them to the earth."
                "Besides, the flies and locusts are children of the earth-mother too right? Give them a chance." Said Longsight with a smirk. Her empathy hadn't lasted long.

                The bandits' trail led North out of Orlton, towards a large stretch of woodland. The adventurers wound their way from the remains of the village and made their way to the edge of the treeline, Longsight periodically falling to the ground and inspecting the tracks as they walked. By the light of the setting sun, they set up their camp for the night just inside the bank of trees.
                Hjoll kindled a bonfire of fallen twigs and branches whilst Gar-d'na searched for edible fungus to serve as an addition to their dried rations. Longsight, further blinded by the dying light of the day, remained on listen duty. It was like remaining on watch, only more focused on the ears. As far as Longsight could tell, there were no threats in the vicinity except for her three companions, who were making enough noise to a) attract any roving army of bandits who had just sacked a village and b) cover the sounds of any approaching bandit armies who were alerted by point a).
                Sitting safely in her treetop vantage point, a move which seemed increasingly pointless the more she thought about it, she wondered how any of her companions had made it this far in their lives without being hunted down and killed by anyone with a passing interest in blood sports. She idly twiddled an arrow in her fingers and daydreamed about how she'd loose three arrows before any of them noticed what was going on.
                The evening passed like any other they had had on the road together. They exchanged stories by the fireside over a meal 'cooked' by Gar-d'na, discussed their plans for the next day, and tended to the maintenance of their weapons. Megan then broke away and lit her own small meditation fire. Sitting cross-legged in front of the flickering flames, she stared deep into the fire and let go of the world around her; she was seeking something, anything within herself. What she'd seen today was bone-chilling; mindless slaughter of a whole village for gold and trinkets. Mutilation of bodies and mass graves were an added bonus on a sorrowful scene of already epic proportions. It was gut-wrenching stuff but still the darkness wouldn’t give rise to power. She closed her eyes and focused hard on every detail, every defensive wound, every gash on an arm raised to protect a face in vain. Megan tried to picture the terror on their faces as the monstrous, barbaric assailants cackled and mocked them in their last moments. All it did was make her appreciate how good she'd had things, how lucky she'd been, and how good it was for the world that people so brave and so strong could exist and stand against evil men and women.
                'Damn it.' Megan thought to herself. 'I've looked on the bright side. Just once, I'd like to be able to pierce the silver-lining and be imbued with the power of the storm cloud.' She scrunched her eyes shut harder and redoubled her efforts.
                Throaty chanting and the sounds of dry leaves rustling underfoot wove themselves into an unsettling background noise, as Gar-d’na performed one of his druidic rituals to honour the woodland. He had told the others that this would ensure their safe passage through the forest, reassuring the trees, the animals and the woodland spirit that they four were all friends of Mother Gaia. He was in fact apologising for their presence and hoping that the two fires they’d set so far wouldn’t upset anyone too much.
                Once the chores and conversations of the evening had been completed, the adventurers retired to their beds, leaving Megan on the first watch. She spent far more time meditating than maintaining a vigil, reasoning that her companions dying by her inaction would cause a reasonable degree of suffering, but alas no danger found her. Disappointed by her good fortune, she roused Longsight and retired to sleep.

                Gently breathing through the open canvas tents, the cool air of the morning caressed the adventurers into wakefulness. That, and Gar-d'na's vicious bowel movements; they rang out like a church bell of the damned, echoing around the otherwise tranquil forest. His watch had clearly ended with great urgency.
                After packing their supplies and preparing for the march, Longsight picked up the trail of the bandit troupe and led the party through the woodland. As the path led deeper into the forest, the ground grew uneven, braids of thick roots diving in and out of the earth. They were great wooden tentacles, reaching out and stretching through the forest floor.
                Longsight stumbled and tripped her way after the bandits, listening out for any sign of their proximity and shushing her club-footed companions. They moved through the low foliage and undergrowth with all the grace and dexterity of a tavern. Her keen ears could compensate for her lackadaisical eyes but only if they weren't drowned by the sounds of bare handed deforestation. She'd still hear danger before her companions of course, and they'd provide an ample distraction in the event of an ambush for her to sneak away. What she did note, though, was that the low boughs and twigs were broken; a large group had passed through here before them. A large and careless group. They had stayed off the main path, howver, at least making a small effort not to be seen. It tied up relatively well with a group of bandits celebrating and fleeing with armfuls of stolen loot. Maybe she'd tell the others about it eventually. If she could see it whilst practically blind then even oafs like them should pick up on it.
                The trail continued for an hour in much the same way, but suddenly Longsight was given cause to pause, and Hjoll was therefore given cause to walk into her. She was knocked to the ground by Hjoll's hulking frame, but thankfully that's where she had intended to be regardless.
                "Oof, what is it ranger?" He asked. Hjoll only called her 'ranger' when he suspected she was doing rangerly things. She supposed it made it easier for his berserker mind to comprehend.
                "The tracks have changed. There used to be hoof prints in the trail but now they're gone." She was staring intently at the forest floor.
                "Gone? Like they've been trampled over or they’ve diverged from the path?" Gar-d’na asked.
                "Yes." Longsight replied.
                "Yes? It was an either or..."
                "And you're correct. It's one of those two. I suspect the latter."
                "And is this relevant?" Hjoll asked.
                "It could be that one of their number has broken away from the group to spend some of the gold they looted."
                "Or scope out a new target." Megan suggested.
                "Or go to visit a druid." Gar-d’na said optimistically.
                "Probably not that though." Megan said mercilessly.
                "Or it could just be the trail of a merchant or traveller mixed up with the bandit trail."
                "No. These tracks were laid at the same time as the footprints." Longsight clarified.
                “It could still be a prisoner who escaped them.”
                “When have you ever seen bandits take a prisoner, much less take one and then give it a horse while they themselves walk? They’re not usually known for their hospitality.” Megan replied.
                “Why should we chase a single man rather than the whole group, anyway? We could stop all but one of them or just one of them, and we’re choosing the latter?" asked Hjoll, desperate to do as much forgiving as possible.
                "Because we can capture a single man easily between four of us. A whole bandit army may not be so simple. And when we have him he will tell us where the others are going. An ambush will serve us well." Longsight replied.
                "That's... sensible." Megan assessed.
                "Ambush? Remember that we are to show compassion. Surprise attacks are neither kind nor gentle." Hjoll reminded them all.
                "We might have to restrain them in order to speak to them. Let us not forget how they treated the people of Orlton." Gar-d’na offered diplomatically.
                "You speak fairly."
                "What do we do then?"
                "Double back until we find the rider's tracks, and then follow."

                With Longsight crawling along the ground and checking for any trace of hoofprints the progress back along their path was slow. This wasn't helped by the additional footfalls of her party who, according to the destruction of the ground sign, were each comprised of thirty heavy-footed elk in leaden shoes. Elk who dragged their feet.
                "Finally!" Longsight cried when she found the tracks. "This way." She looked up along the new path of the rider and saw fewer broken limbs, and a wider pathway. The rider had taken a more frequented track, although it was still off the road, whilst the others stuck to the cover of the woodland.
                The party spent most of the day following the tracks of the rider. He wouldn't have been able to ride quickly through the net of roots underfoot, so Longsight hoped that they would be able to gain ground if they kept moving. As the afternoon drew on, buildings became visible in the distance through the trees, as the others pointed out to Longsight. They had found a settlement in a forest clearing, and the hoofprints had found it before them.
                "It's a town of some sort." Gar-d’na said.
                "Any sign of our rider?" asked Hjoll.
                "The tracks here point that way. They might keep going or they might not, I can't tell from this distance." Considering the distance was greater than a few feet, none of the others were surprised.
                "Let us press on. Any of us can see the hoofprints now, and he must have stabled his horse somewhere."

                The four figures emerged from the treeline and wandered along the path towards the settlement, looking around themselves awkwardly as if they'd not been surprised by town appearing.
                "Ho there!" Cried a voice from the town. A watchtower stood by the side of the road, looming over the town like a spindly guardian.
                "Well met, guardsman." Hjoll shouted up to the soldier leaning out of the watchtower. His steel helmet reflected the afternoon sunlight, as did the prominent tip of his spear.
                "We'll have no trouble in Meadowvale. You four had best stay in line."
                "You'll have no quarrel with us. We simply wish to rest, eat, and follow a trail."
                The soldier squinted down at them. He knew a berserker when he saw one, but he wasn't going to risk making it angry. Better to keep it under a watchful eye and strike with many blows at once. To see one in any company was strange enough, but the company of a druid a young woman and a ranger? It reeked of a looming disaster. Even the ranger, a relatively common sight in Meadowvale, was behaving unusually, scrabbling at the ground and looking vaguely around the watchtower, but never straight at it. And all four of them were very publicly armed, having emerged from the woodland mere yards from the road. It was all incredibly suspicious. No quarrel indeed.
                "I'll have my eyes on you." He told them threateningly.
                "Then we are grateful for your overwatch and protection." Hjoll replied, determined to see the best in him.

                The adventurers wandered into the town, following the hoofprints as best they could. The frequented roadway of the town has a tangle of tracks, much like Orlton had been, but Longsight was confident she could keep true to their trail.
                After a few minutes, the sound of horses greeted them from around a corner. Rushing round to see what they had found, the party was presented with a tavern.
                Outside the tavern, tied to a rail, were half a dozen horses. They snorted and sneezed, taking drinks from the long steel trough in front of them and shifting their weight idly. Most of them looked bored, as tied horses so often do. It must have been something to do with the lack of stimulation. Not a great mystery, really.
                A grey pawed at the ground, digging for buried treasure or perhaps just articulating his distaste. A glossy black mare sneezed and drooped her long neck down as far as her tether would allow. She stood with her legs askew so that her saddlebags drooped to one side, looking extremely uncomfortable but also too bored to do anything about it. The bay next to her was making a bold attempt at eating the wooden rail, and not without a degree of success. Several scraping and scratching sounds reverberated around it, as well as a lot of wooden splinters being dribbled onto the floor. But next to them all, towering above them and shining bright, was not the not-at-all inconspicuous white courser of a knight.
                The courser was huge and well bred, standing taller than even Hjoll and bulging with taut, honed muscles. It was every inch the war-horse, just as much of a weapon as its rider and more beautifully crafted than any ornate armour. It was also stretching its neck as high into the air as it could, shaking its head up and down to make its lower lip flap with a soft clapping sound. It was clearly having a wonderful time.
                "This is our horse." Longsight said, her face an arrow's width away from the horse's hooves. "They match the prints."
                In a cacophony of soothing sounds, many of which were unnecessary, Gar-d'na approached the courser. Laying hands on its neck, the horse continued its lip flapping, but turned on ear back to monitor the rapidly evolving 'druid' situation.
                "It's alright, boy. Tell me where you came from. Tell me where your master is." the druid's eyes were closed, deep in concentration, listening out for the sounds of the mighty animal. The horse sneezed. Gar-d’na didn’t seem too satisfied with that answer and so he stayed in contact. The courser swung its head around to take stock of the situation, looked Hjoll dead in the eye, and then whinnied at the top of its lungs, its whole body vibrating with the effort. The druid laid his hands down calmly and returned to his companions.
                "My ears hurt now." he told them solemnly.
                "Did you learn anything useful?"
                "The horse wasn't sure why I was touching him, and wondered if you had any food for him. He did confirm that he came out of the woods though."
                "And his master?"
                "Apparently, he's 'somewhere or other'."
                "Right. Well, at least we're a step closer. We need to find someone who could contain that magnificent creature."
                The tavern itself was a vast wooden structure with a brightly painted sign swinging from a bracket above the door. A stag stood on his hind legs doing battle with a child on the sign, his antlers sweeping downwards and forelegs kicking out. Underneath, it read 'The Buck's Duty'.
                “I might be stating the obvious, but we should probably try the tavern that the horse is tethered outside. Just a thought.” Megan suggested, overly sarcastically.
                “I agree.” Hjoll said obliviously, before pushing the door open roughly.
                Bright yellow torchlight illuminated the tavern comfortably, casting dancing shadows around the walls from the conversing, merry patrons. A burst of bright sunlight flooded in as the door was opened, shortly thereafter blocked out by Hjoll's hulking frame. A few people turned reflexively at the flash of light, but many ignored it. The opening and closing of a door was nothing unusual for a building accessed almost exclusively by that very door.
                Hjoll, Megan and Gar-d'na scanned the inhabitants of the tavern, searching for someone who looked like they belonged with the bright white courser outside. Longsight scanned the area directly around her feet, making sure she wouldn't step on anything. All else was a blur, so it was really the best she could do in the circumstances.
                Relaxed laughter and the clatter of dishes filled the air, whilst the thick aroma of meaty broth and ale pervaded the atmosphere. Hjoll's stomach growled, but his face smiled. So often taverns were places of suspicion, depression and conflict; here was a scene of good will and harmony, a community living together happily. It was welcome reassurance that his quest was not all in vain.
                Standing out obviously in his mirror-sheened armour was a knight clad in white, sitting on a high stool by the bar and drinking from a wooden tankard. A white helmet on the bar stared at the door with its empty blackness behind the visor, and on the ground by the leg of the stool were a sword in its scabbard and a single-handed warhammer with 'Honour' engraved along the head.
                "That has to be our man." Megan said, nodding towards the knight.
                "Aye." Gar-d'na agreed. Before he could suggest that they formulate a plan of how to approach him, Hjoll had marched away with his hand extended.
                "What's happening?" Longsight asked.
                "Hjoll's being subtle."
                "Just walked straight up to the knight."
                "What knight?"
                "Oh, there's a knight at the bar. In white."
                Longsight squinted in the knight's approximate direction. There was a white smudge next to a fleshy smudge which she recognised as Hjoll.
                "Ah, that's what that is."
                Hjoll leaned on the bar and faced the white knight. The knight's shaggy brown hair hung loosely around his face, which was looking at nothing in particular at the back of the bar. If he had noticed Hjoll standing there he made no move to acknowledge it.
                "Well met, knight." Hjoll said by way of greeting. "I am Hjoll, exile from the feral clans."
                The knight turned his face towards the wall of brawn which was busy with politely introducing itself. The torchlight reflected off solid muscles in a way which made him suspect that they'd been oiled for this purpose, and this purpose alone.
                "Greetings, Hjoll the exile."
                "Is the white courser outside your mount?" the berserker asked directly.
                "Why do you ask?"
                "It is a fine animal, a majestic steed fit for a knight."
                "That it is. But I didn't ask for a description of it, I asked why you asked me."
                Hjoll felt a brief flash of annoyance at the knight's tone, but quashed it with his conviction. He would not give in to anger.
                "My companions and I are on a mission of compassion. We came across a sacked and burned village on our journey and seek those responsible."
                "Ah, heroes then? You seek to mete out swift justice to evildoers and restore the balance of light against dark?" The knight has perked up upon hearing Hjoll's mission. He wore the ghost of a smirk across his face.
                "Heroes? Nay. We seek to set the world to right with compassion and kindness. Giving in to rage can lead only to disaster. I seek to forgive and redeem those who committed such heinous acts."
                ”Forgiveness and redemption?" The knight snorted in an attempt to stifle a laugh. "What heinous acts would you forgive and which would you redeem?"
                "Any for which there is repentance. The people of Orlton were massacred, cut down to a man whilst defenceless. Their homes were burned, their stores raided and their valuables looted. But darkness and anger drive men to these things. They cannot be cured with further darkness."
                "How very poetic for a berserker." The knight observed.
                "I wish to be berserk no longer."
                "So it would seem. So you are on a mission of compassion, but why does that require you to know whether the white courser is mine?"
                "Because we have found its tracks among those of the bandits."
                Hjoll spoke so openly and bluntly that it took the knight off guard. Why was the titanic warrior saying this? Had he realised that the knight was working with the bandits?
                "Aye, my tracks are there. I found the village burned and pillaged just as you did, and I gave chase as you did."
                "There is blood on your armour, knight, did you find your quarry?"
                "I cut down a straggler, but was unable to catch the full force. So I came here to notify the garrison of another attack."
                "Another? The bandits have been preying on many villages then?"
                "Preying? Yes that's a good word for it. They have struck with the ferocity of a rabid wolf on a rabbit. This is just the latest in a string of attacks. But we will stop them, of course."
                "Of course..."
                "I intend to rally the support of the local garrison and lead a force in pursuit of the bastards."
                "I am glad that you have notified the garrison. We too hope that the guard will send a contingent to dig graves for the murdered. But please, compassion is the only way to change the way of the world. More bloodshed will solve nothing."
                "This is why you should leave the matter to us. Men of honour know how to set the world to rights, and we don't expect you peasant folk to be able to grasp the complexity of the matter. You may live in your quaint notion that a kind word can heal any wound, but the rest of the world needs a stronger hand."
                "You speak out of turn, knight."
                "Pah, I speak freely and truly. If you pursue this path then you will be dead within the week. You’re free to act with as much compassion as you choose, but it will not make anyone else show it back to you. Now, I must locate the bandits' trail. Good luck in your quest, brave hero."
                The knight stood up, his full height a challenge even to Hjoll. He swept his helmet up onto his head, snatched his weapons from the ground and marched out of the door without another word.
                Hjoll returned to his companions by the door, feeling a little sheepish and ignoring the little voice of anger in the back of his mind.
                "How did you know the rider was with the bandit troupe, Longsight?" he asked quietly.
                "The hoofprints. They were on top of the boots in places and under them in others. He was mixing with the ranks."
                "Interesting. We must pursue this knight. I fear he may not be as honourable as he claims. He may need our help to find redemption."
                “Aye, but first we should stock up and get something to eat.” Gar-d’na suggested sensibly. “How long has it been since we were in a real town?”
                “Point taken. We will recuperate, resupply and then hunt down the knight.”

                The adventurers set-off from Meadowvale a short while later, and marched along the road running east from the town in the evening sunlight. They still had a couple of hours before darkness fell, and hoped that the knight had not made it too far away whilst they had been shopping.
                Longsight was able to easily pick up the tracks left by the huge courser, now perfectly familiar with the size and shape of its hooves. Gar-d’na said that he also recognised the carefree air of merriment that the horse had been giving off, but the others didn’t really believe him.
                The party finally caught up with the white knight a few miles down the path. He had dismounted his horse and turned to face the four pursuers, apparently expecting them.
                "A knight being followed by four vagrants could become suspicious. Why are you here?"
                "I know you were riding with the bandits who attacked Orlton and I know that you lied to me in the tavern."
                "You have a terribly irritating manner of not answering the questions I ask of you, berserker."
                "You're a murderer and we came to stop you murdering anyone else. Better?" asked Megan, fists balled.
                "Your directness is almost as adorable as the delusions under which you labour. Tell me, why is it that you think I'll be defeated by a man who swears to bring me in with gentleness, a handmaiden, a bush-sleeper and a blind ranger?"
                "Handmaiden?!"
                "We are four and you are one. You will not be able to stand against us. I do not wish to see blood spilled."
                "Then I suggest you close your eyes." Came a phlegmy voice from behind them. An unclean man in mismatched chain mail stepped from behind a large oak with a sword in hand, followed by another from a wide elm. Two more emerged from each side of the path, and three from behind the White Knight. They were surrounded.
                "I believe you may have miscounted. You are four and we are ten. You won't stand against us, but I wish to see gallons of your prying blood soaking into the earth."
                The phlegmy voiced man and his partner leapt into action first, one swinging a blade at Megan's head and the other bringing an axe down towards Gar-d'na. Being quite accustomed to attempted murder, they both dodged and rolled out of the way, Megan with a smile on her face. Battle meant sorrow and a chance to try to find some power.
                Gar-d'na sprang to his feet and slid a thick brown twig from his belt, brandishing it in front of himself at the axe-weilding bandit. The outlaw reflexively raised his guard, and then dropped it in a fit of laughter at the threat posed by a small piece of kindling. The druid raised his stick high above his head in both hands and a flash of green erupted from his arms, sweeping up the stick and causing it to erupt into blossoming life. In an instant, among the creaking of fresh timber, the stick had grown into a gargantuan mace comprised of tightly wound brambles, thorns murderously sharp and covering the outer surface. By the time the assailant had realised this however, it was already on its way down on his bare head. Thorns tore at his skin and caught in his tanged hair, slamming him to the ground under the heavy blow.

                "You need not resort to this wrathful behaviour. Kindness is the only weapon which will win your battles in the end." Hjoll preached, contradicting his words a little by drawing his sword. The zweihander was as long as many of the bandits were tall, and it gave them significant pause.
                "At him, cowards." The knight barked. "He has taken a vow of peace." He added with a mocking, sweet tone. "You forget the sweet melody of battle and bloodlust, berserker. The joy of your first dance with a foe and the relief at the last steps." The knight's hammer was in hand, and he twirled in surprisingly elegant pirouettes as he spoke. A rhythm of steel on steel was ringing out in the clearing ahead of him.

                Longsight was surrounded. She was within her effective bow range of several feet but not even she could fire that many arrows that quickly. Bravely, four of the burly outlaws had chosen to gang up on the practically blind young woman whilst her companions were occupied with conflicts of their own. She managed to fire a single arrow before they were on top of her.
                Deprived of the capacity to use her bow, she drew a long dagger from her belt and began her death defying, weaving dance around the murderous blades. Operating within her modest visual range she was a formidable opponent, but against three men with longer, heavier weapons there was little to be done.

                Megan stood open-handed in front of her opponent, who was preparing to bear down upon an unarmed woman. Keeping half an eye on events unfolding behind her, she watched the bandit's movements and prepared to dodge around his blows. She carried no weapon of her own since that would reduce her appearance as a target and a victim, and those were what she needed to be to attain sufficient suffering. Losing a limb would be folly though; very few of her peers had been physically maimed, and even those who were had only superficial facial burns and birthmarks. Clearly, amputation was not a requirement for magical prowess.
                The druid's bramble thrasher was bloodied from its first strike and thirsty for more. He heaved it up from the ground and swung it sideways with all the strength his body could muster, narrowly avoiding Megan and shooing her attacker away. With the luxury of some room, Megan breathed deep and summoned the powers up inside herself, preparing to cast what magic she could. The bandit was more focused on Gar-d’na, and trying to close the gap before the druid’s bramble thrasher could make a second swing. Light bent and the air shimmered around Megan’s hands, flowing between her fingers like an inquisitive weasel. Once the weasel had exhausted its curiosity, however, it lashed out at the bandit’s throat in a jet of shimmering light, wrapping around and then soaking in.
                The outlaw wasn’t a fan of this development. Childishly, he showed it by choking and retching as the tiny hairs in his throat took on a whole new life. They grew rapidly to several times their original length, clogging his airway and leaving him unable to breathe.
                Gar-d’na turned immediately away when he saw that the man was incapacitated, but Megan kept her focus, the stream of power flowing from her hands into his throat. She wanted to feel his pain, not spitefully but empathically, so that she may drive it into herself and unlock true magical power. Granting all of herself to the sensations of the magic, Megan willed her mind to concentrate on every agonising sensation the bandit would be feeling as he struggled for air against the scratching hairs in his throat. She ignored the bandits around her, ignored the plight of her companions, and drove herself towards vicarious suffering; every awful, spluttering sound was music to her ears.

                Hjoll backed away slowly from the advancing outlaws and the white knight, trying to keep them out of striking range; theirs or his own. He could feel the old ways, the berserk fury, bubbling underneath the surface and itching to be unleashed. He could cut them all down in a second, he knew it, but it would solve nothing. The memories of all those buckets by the well haunted him and choked him. He swallowed hard to force the anger away.
                "Stand down and give up this foolishness" Hjoll pleaded. Not eager to take his advice, the first of the bandits lunged forwards with a sword, which Hjoll easily turned aside. It left the man open for a counter blow, a single strike which could cleave his ribcage in two, but Hjoll stayed his hand. The fraction of a second was gone and another blade was upon him. Another simple parry, but a warhammer was closing in too; these bandits just weren’t taking to the philosophy of kindness. Nimbly for a man of his stature Hjoll jerked his head away from the blow and stepped back again.

                Longsight's eyes darted like forest flies between her three foes, tracking all of their movements and trying to stay alive. No sooner had she ducked a high blow than she needed to tumble away from a low jab. Middle-height attacks were distinctly under-represented.
                Leaping up from a roll, Longsight barged her shoulder into the axe-wielder’s gut and knocked him to the ground. There was no time for a finishing blow, having to throw herself off and away from the sword strike carving towards her from one side. A boot caught her in the stomach as she span through the air, driving the air from her lungs and leaving her breathless on the ground.
                “We’ve got you now, little snake.” One of the bandits informed her, shortly before a botanically improbable quantity of brambles soared into the side of his head and knocked him unconscious.
                “Hjoll! Help us!” Gar-d’na cried, allowing his thrasher to fall to the ground as he heaved Longsight back to her feet. “Are you able to stand, Longsight?”
                The ranger nodded in reply, steadying herself and shifting her grip on the dagger. She stood side-by-side with the druid and prepared to resume her dance with the outlaws.

                The sounds of choking grew louder and more terrible, Megan’s smile growing alongside them. She could feel his agony and tried to internalise it, tried to force it into the darkest parts of her mind that it might awaken something more powerful in her. She’d stopped paying any attention to the continuing battle around her; an impractical attitude for any combatant to adopt.

                The bandits were forming a ring around the adventurers and closing it fast. Hjoll, Gar-d’na and Longsight tried to back away, but they were on top of one another. None could let their guard down for even an instant. Megan was still lost in her own magic, watching the bandit choke on his own hair.
                “Megan!” Longsight shouted at her vainly, trying to secure her attention and assistance. There was no stirring from the mage.
                “This doesn’t have to be a slaughter.” Hjoll persisted with the knight. His optimism and dedication were as grossly inflated as his muscular body.
                “We can make it a massacre if you’d prefer, but I scarcely think a change in terminology is of great importance here. When I relay the tale of the poor wanderers I found dead in the woods I shall use all manner of terms; it will seem so tragic. But I suppose they must have been chasing their betters and biting off more than they can chew, under some ill-conceived notion that everyone can get along.” The knight goaded. He had already made his disrespect for the adventurers quite clear with the attempted murder, and so they felt that hammering the point home like that was crass behaviour at best. His literal attempts to hammer them were no better.
                The other bandits were still circling around, trying to enclose the adventurers, but one of them had noticed the choking man and Megan staring intently towards him. His eyes flitted between Hjoll and Megan, weighing up his chances, before he lunged for the mage.
                Hjoll’s sword shot outwards in a flash of steel and intercepted the axe-blow, leaving the bandit to tumble forwards into the mage. She was knocked from her feet by the sudden collision, but spared from evisceration.
                The rest of the outlaws were spurred into action, seeing Hjoll’s distraction as their best opportunity to finish the party off. Longsight dived forwards in response, determined not to be on the back foot again and slammed her dagger home through a leather jerkin, blood oozing over hands from a punctured abdomen. She slashed it free and pirouetted towards another of the assailants as Gar-d’na snatched up his thrasher from the ground.
                "Mother Gaia!" the druid cried whilst sweeping his thrasher in front of himself. "Heed your servant and aid us against these defilers!"

                Megan was pinned to the ground underneath her assailant, clawing at his face with her hands and trying to wiggle her way free. Her mind was still recovering and returning to the real worlds from her focus on the magic, but she was aware that the heavy, greasy lump who had knocked her down could easily overpower her if she stayed where she was. His weight was pressing onto her chest, distracting her from the connection she’d felt to the magic, but she could still hear the comforting choking of her first target in the background. With a grunt of pain the bandit rolled to one side to free his face from Megan’s clawing, allowing her to extract her legs and kick him in the groin. She could hear the sounds of combat and remembered where she was, what was happening around her. Megan pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, but an angry grip clamped itself around her wrist and pulled her back down again.

                Blows rang out as they bounced off Hjoll's zweihander, wielded as if it were a shield to protect his companions of compassion. He was irked by Longsight's decidedly uncompassionate behaviour in cutting a man's stomach open, but elected to forgive her, lest the rage overtake him. Besides, he was sure she meant well.
                Steel clashed, blades crunched into a nest of brambles, and Longsight rolled around on the floor a lot in her efforts to avoid injury, but the outlaws had greater numbers and the upper hand. For every blow that the adventurers blocked there was another sweeping in. Without Hjoll counterattacking the enemy it was only a matter of time before they were overcome.
                "Fight back damn it, Hjoll!" Longsight shrieked at the berserker. “We can’t keep this up!”
                "That wouldn't be very nice!" He bellowed back, parrying an axe blow. “Kindness is rarely-” he swung his head away from a sword tip “-expressed with a weapon.”
                “I don’t really care.” Longsight said. Rising from the corpse of another victim, however, she stumbled on a limp arm, throwing her off balance. The White Knight saw his moment and wound Honour back, ready to strike while she had no way to react. Gar-d’na grabbed a fistful of Longsight’s tunic and yanked her back as hard as he could, but wasn’t able to clear her of the hammer’s path completely. A glancing blow though it was, the ranger yelped in pain as Honour’s head caught her ribs, rattling her mail and spinning her to one side. Gar-d’na, unbalanced by his attempt to save Longsight, staggered and swayed. He was unable to avoid the blade from the side, which swung upwards and sliced across his shoulder.
                Seeing a weakened foe the White Knight smirked and licked his lips underneath his helmet. He opened his arms wide, ‘Truth’ in one hand and ‘Honour’ in the other, and stepped towards the injured and outnumbered opponents.
                “The sweet symphony ends too soon, my darlings.”
                Hjoll moved in a frenzy to shield his friends from the onslaught, adrenaline surging through his body, breath rasping from his lungs, and anger barely held in check. It boiled and bubbled under the surface; he could taste it in his mouth and clenched his teeth hard to contain the fury.
                “Your rhythms grow uneven, Hjoll the exile. Your timing is off. Anyone would think you’re getting tired.” He stabbed forwards with Truth, forcing Hjoll to hop backwards, and then brought Honour down hard, slamming onto Hjoll’s zweihander and knocking it out of his hands. The berserker was jerked downwards with his weapon, and the knight’s plated knee met his chin.
                “You are experiencing the only kindness this world has to offer; a release from the anguish of your blinkered existence.”

                Tugging and jerking her arm in desperation to stand up, Megan found herself unable to break the outlaw’s grip, his fingers closed around her wrist with a grim determination. Seeing that her friends needed help, Megan grasped at the ground for the bandit’s fallen axe and swung it blindly towards her clingy captor. The heavy axe-head was introduced warmly to his back. Filled with emotion at the reunion, the man’s hand went limp and allow Megan to rise.
                Kneeling up at last, Megan desperately pulled both arms back with her hands outspread, the tingle and glimmer of magical energies building up around her.
                “Run!” she screamed as she threw her arms forwards. A shockwave of distortion in the air billowed out from her, sweeping soundlessly through the clearing. As if they were all one entity the outlaws raised their hands to their faces, clutching and grasping as thick hair grew uncontrollably all over. In fractions of a second they were blinded by a cascading waterfall of eyebrow hair, tangling with eyelashes and beards as they flowed enthusiastically from the skin.
                Amid the chaos and the wails of confusion, the adventurers found their feet, Hjoll grabbed his fallen weapon, and they made to flee through the woodland. Barely taken three steps in, Hjoll slid to a halt in the leafy detritus on the forest floor, next to a wounded, bleeding man with an arrow protruding from his chest.
                "We can't leave him here." Hjoll said, recognising the arrow as one of Longsight’s. "There's no way those ruffians will tend to him, and we can't just let him die."
                "Hjoll, come on!" Megan shouted back. The others hadn't stopped running.
                Ignoring his companions’ heartlessness, Hjoll lifted the man easily onto his shoulders and continued his run after them, fleeing to the unnatural but comforting sounds of sudden unwanted hirsuteness.
                “HELP! THE BERSERKER’S GONNA KILL ME!” the man shouted in a panic, remarkably clearly for a man with a puncture wound to his torso.
                “No I’m not.” Hjoll scolded him, thinking that his display in the recent fracas would have been enough to make that clear.
                “HE’S GOING TO TORTURE ME!”              
                “Not true either. I’m not going to harm you.”
                The bandit pondered for a few seconds over this information. He wasn’t inclined to believe it, but also couldn’t think of another terrifying alternative that the berserker might have in store. Therefore, there was only one reasonable explanation.
                “HE’S GOING TO LIE TO ME AND THEN TORTURE ME AND THEN KILL ME!” he cried, as Hjoll continued to carry him away. The berserker was severely irked by the attitude of the man he was saving; he wasn’t being very nice at all.

                Eventually, the exertion of forcing the wounded ranger and druid to run became too much for Megan, and they all slowed to a halt. Forcing her companions to maintain a silent stillness, Longsight listened out to the sounds of the forest, searching for any sign that they were being followed. No crunching footsteps or pounding hoofbeats echoed through the trees; they were away.
                Wounded and weary, the adventurers set up a camp among the trees. Hjoll dropped the bandit, who had been protesting in no uncertain terms about the arrow embedded in his body all the way, onto a patch of mossy ground. Megan, seeing that Hjoll had abandoned their captive, promptly tied him to a tree for safe keeping.
                Around the campfire, conversation was muted and scarce. Megan tended to Gar-d’na’s sword-wound whilst Hjoll cooked them up something to eat, sparing a few glances for the bound bandit by the tree. He felt like it would be only forgiving of them to let him eat with the rest of the party, but every time he mentioned it the others seemed to get very upset. Seeing that they must be tired, and that kindness can take some effort, he elected to let them have their peace this time.
                Longsight’s injuries were causing her more pain than she was willing to admit to Megan, but there was little to be done by way of treatment. Gar-d’na prepared a soothing salve from some nearby fungus, lichen and moss, and then instructed the ranger to rest herself as best she could. Taking this advice in her own way, Longsight immediately climbed a nearby fir tree among yelps of pain and settled into a watch position among the boughs.
                “They may try to follow us still.” She rightly pointed out “and our fire will not make it hard for them. Someone needs to stay on watch.”
                “Listen.” Gar-d’na corrected her. She gave some secret ranger hand signals by way of a reply.
                “They’ll get you whether you hear ‘em or not.” The bandit shouted out to them. The arrow was still jammed in his chest, and it seemed that he was irritable. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that those two factors were related.
                “If they’re coming, that is.” Longsight replied. “I’d have left you for dead and written you off.”
                “You did do that, in fact.” Megan added helpfully.
                “But while we have you here, we can learn about what those bandits are up to.”
                “A wise point, Longsight. We could learn much of why they feel the need to be cruel; of what darkness lies in their past.”
                “And of where they plan to attack next, right? So that we can stop it?” Megan prompted.
                “Well of course!” Hjoll said. The hulking berserker stepped towards the bandit. “It is of the utmost importance that we protect the next innocent village from such senseless violence.” His shadow grew long in the light of the fire, engulfing the bound outlaw.
                Hjoll was dizzyingly huge compared to normal men at the best of times, but to the bandit, sitting on the ground and looking directly up at his bulging, muscular form, he was a giant. Horror stories were told of berserkers in their full rage, tearing men apart even without a weapon, relishing in bloodshed, taking delight in mutilation. And this one wanted something from him.  
                "Are you trying to intimidate me?” the bandit asked. “Because it's working. I'm terrified. I’ll tell you anything."
                “You can start by telling us how many there are in your brigade.”
                “Two dozen. One less now that I’m here I suppose.”
                “And where will the next strike be?”
                “Thistlewell, maybe. Boss said Meadowvale was too big, too many guards."
                "When?"
                "I... I don't know.  Whenever the boys get there and the boss says so. He scopes it first."
                "For what?"
                "For a garrison, for loot, whatever really. For escape routes too so we can block ‘em."
                "Blockading the exits sounds more like war than banditry."
                "We leave one open and let a runner out every time. That's where the boss waits and questions 'em about the valuables."
                "Why on earth would they tell him that? Or talk to him at all?"
                "You saw him, right? Looks the part for it. Everyone trusts a knight in shining armour, heh. The guards always believes what ‘e tells ‘em, and the runners always tell ‘im where the loot is. Course, word’d get round pretty quick that a white knight was involved near all these raids if they talked to anyone else. The runners, that is. But they don't spread nothin’. Hard to, when you're missing your throat."
                The berserker was shaking. Holding in his anger for the last two days had been particularly difficult, and his throbbing ribs were making it even harder. Hearing the outlaw laugh at such deception was almost too much.
                "That's not very kind, is it Hjoll?" Megan said, goading him. She wanted to see the injured man suffer.
                “It’s kinder than the others get.”
                “Why do you do this? Acting with such cruelty. What made you this way?”
                “Why do we do it? It’s obvious isn’t it? For the coin! They spend their lives working for a few pennies, and we relieve ‘em of it. Ain’t gonna find me farming for pittance when I can take a fortune instead.”
                “That is an evil pursuit of itself, but why the slaughter thereafter? You could steal without killing.”
                “That? That’s just for fun.”
                “Enough.” Hjoll spat, distaste darkening his pallor. “If you cannot speak with kindness then you will be gagged.”
                “Gladly.” Megan said with a spiteful smie, tearing off a bloodied scrap of the man’s shirt and jamming it into his mouth.

                Night fell as the hours passed, and still there was no indication of a hunting party from the bandits. Megan sat by her small fire in a trance-like state, humming to herself and allowing her head to loll backwards. She'd been that way for a while, allowing the other powers to pervade her mind and fill her. The horrors of Orlton, the injuries of her friends, and the suffering of the man choking on his own throat hair had lingered in her mind. The sound of their captive bandit’s laughter at the deception and slaughter of innocent townsfolk rang indelibly in her ears, his sneering laughter and cold cowardice interleaving themselves in to a single entity of pathetic cruelty.
                Every time her thoughts played through the sequence of events that must have occurred at Orlton, and that would soon occur in Meadowvale, she could feel the taste of magical power burning in the back of her throat. She was a vessel for its might, ready to channel the flowing energy and gain greater control over the arcane arts. It had to be enough this time.
                At long last, Megan's eyes opened in a start. Her irises glowed with a faint blue fluorescence, and sparkling, glittering air seemed to be running from her nose and mouth. Like a distant image being brought into focus with a spyglass, Megan's lucidity returned to her and she could sense something new within herself.
                "I have felt the powers flowing through me once more.” She declared to her companions. “The runes and visions are blurry still, but I can feel something inside me. A mastery of the arcane has finally come to me." She lifted a fist-sized rock from the circular fire-pit and gripped it in her palm, looking deep into it and channelling her inner powers. "I am the mistress of the dead earth, the architect of the stone and mineral wealth!” She strode through the camp with her gaze burning into the bandit. “Quake, the untouched among you! Behold my new technique - ROCK!"
                She held her rock in the air above her head, and then slammed it down hard into the shoulder of the bandit prisoner, waking him from his pained slumber with an almighty cracking of bone.
                "OWGH!" he screamed through his gag. "WGGHH?!"
                Megan’s hands shook as she looked down at what she’d done.
                "I didn’t expect that… there was just such power that…"
                The party stared at her in silence, the camp quiet aside from the caterwauling of the prisoner.
                "Your new powers are terrible indeed, Megan. They stand in defiance of the true order of Gaia." Gar-d'na said with grave solemnity.
                "They do not embody the gentleness to which we have pledged ourselves." Hjoll added.
                "What happened?" asked Longsight, and the rest of the party burst into merry laughter. She always knew what to say. Once they’d settled down, Hjoll spoke once more.
                “Promise me, Megan, that you will never use your new magic in anger against another human. It is too great and too terrible.”
                “Never use it?! I have studied, laboured, practiced and suffered for this power, Hjoll! You cannot deny me its use.”
                “There are uses for everything, but those uses must not be anger or violence. You are better than that.”
                “But the strength this grants me! It could deliver justice throughout the land. It could be but a mere taste of my powers.”
                “Having great strength without great control means nothing! It makes you a feral beast, not a man or woman. These bandits exercised their strength without control and you saw what it led to. Need I remind you of the buckets at the well?”
                Megan shook her head.
                “Your powers must not be allowed to do the same.”
                “I wouldn’t be slaughtering and looting with them!”
                “It makes no matter. Killing is killing, and using your advantage of strength against one who cannot withstand it is not the path of honour. Vengeance is not justice, and even you may see the lines blur in time if you give into it.”
                “I agree with Hjoll.” Spoke Gar-d’na. “What you have wrought here is of grave concern.”
                Megan stamped her feet and balled her fists. “I have not worked this hard to be banned from the second magic I have gained in a decade!”
                “And I have not worked this hard to see you fall into the pit of corruption and wrath. Look what you’ve done to this wretch’s shoulder. Promise me, Megan, that you will not give into this rage again!”
                “I can control it! I… I know it got a little out of hand this time but with practice I could-”
                “Promise me!”
                The pair of them stared one another down, with Gar-d’na looking on awkwardly and Longsight paying little mind to them in her tree. The bandit was preoccupied with not only the arrow in his chest but the broken bones in his shoulder.
                “Fine!” Megan relented finally. “I promise.” She stomped her way back to her campfire and sat down, slamming a rock down to the ground with suspiciously magical force.

                A new dawn broke over the camp. The aftermath of Megan’s magical outburst still played on everyone’s minds, especially the bandit’s because he was in an awful lot of pain. They’d left the arrow in him because Longsight wanted him to stay in pain, and no-one else was brave enough to touch her things without permission.
                “We head North towards Thistlewell. With luck we will be able to intercept the bandits before they reach it.”
                “We can’t fight two dozen bandits with just the four of us, Hjoll. We were bested by ten yesterday, and we’re injured this time.”
                “Nay, but the Meadowvale garrison can.”
                “I sincerely doubt that the garrison will abandon their posts to chase down a knight on the word of four travellers.”
                “We won’t need all of them, only enough to match the numbers of the bandits. They’ll be forced to lay down their arms and listen to reason.”
                “Or the garrison will kill them.” Longsight shouted from her tree. As far as the others knew, she must have slept up there.
                “The garrison will do what they will do.” Hjoll said tersely. He didn’t enjoy the idea of the law enforcers taking lives, but he wasn’t going to get on the wrong side of them either.
                “Whether we try to recruit all of them or just some of them, I still don’t think they’ll just follow us. They have no reason to trust us or want to help us.”
                “We’ll give him to them.” Hjoll said, nodding towards the still-gagged bandit. “He’ll confirm our story and then serve his time in the jail. They’ll get the prestige of putting an end to the bandit attacks.”
                “Is jailing him particularly kind?”
                “Kinder than letting him die here or dragging him to a battle.”
                “Fair. It’s the best shot we have at saving Thistlewell. Let us be gone”

                The adventurers marched quickly through the woods, and arrived outside Meadowvale with Hjoll carrying their captive over one shoulder. The sight of the previous day’s four vagrants was unnerving enough for the guard in his watch tower, but the fact that they were now carrying what appeared to be a sad sack of potatoes with legs was too much.
                “Halt! Halt right there!” He shouted, urgently drawing an arrow back in his bow. “Lay down your arms and put your victim down!”
                “Why do you assume that we did this to him?!” Megan asked, hurt at the accusation.
                “He’s perfectly correct in his assumption.” Longsight pointed out.
                “That’s not the point.” Megan shot back.
                “I’m waiting!” the guard shouted down again.
                “We seek care for this man. He is bleeding and has a broken shoulder. But he is one of the nefarious bandits who sacked Orlton two days past.”
                “You want us to harbour and heal an outlaw?”
                “Not the best tactic there, Hjoll.” Gar-d’na observed.B
                “He can tell us how the brigands are likely to attack, their flaws and their weaknesses. But he can only do that if he’s alive. But beyond that, we seek support to take the bandit mob down! We require two dozen able-bodied fighters before they strike again. Thistlewell is in danger!”
                “Thistlewell?” the guard gasped. “We are sworn rivals of Thistlewell. They are liars and cheaters.”
                “And they deserve to be murdered for it?”
                “The sacred trust of our tug-o’-war tourney was shattered. They cheated in the contest and then stole the prized stone plaque. We will not lift a hand to save them.”
                Gar-d’na rubbed his face with one hand, eyes scrunched shut tightly in frustration. “These people…”
                “What better way to show your superiority than to fend off the bandits, then?” Megan shouted up. “They are being slaughtered, but you march in and battle valiantly, defending them when they were not capable of defending themselves. It will be humiliating for them.”
                “They have already been humiliated by having to cheat and steal! We need not show it again.”
                “And while you’re there, you can take back your plaque. They’re powerless to stop you.”
                “You ask us to prevent the sacking and looting of Thistlewell by bandits, by looting it ourselves first?”
                “It certainly sounds like I am suggesting that, yes.” Megan said, registering out loud the implications of her own words.
                The guard considered this for a few moments, leaving the party looking up awkwardly in anticipation. Then, he relaxed his draw on the bow and lit a signal fire for the commander to attend his station.

                In the hour that followed, the party was welcomed into the town by the commander of the Meadowvale guard and the bandit was led away by the garrison medics. It seemed that the prospect of stealing back the stone tourney plaque was of the utmost importance to the Meadowvale guard, since there were well over forty volunteers to take on the mission. This was whittled down to the twenty-four burliest guards, those would be most able to win an impromptu tug-o’-war rematch, and they were briefed with the information extracted from the captive. The commander was relatively tight-lipped regarding how this information had been extracted, but compared to shooting the man with a bow and then crushing his shoulder it was probably fairly gentle.
                Together, the four adventurers and the volunteers from the Meadowvale guard marched along the road to Thistlewell. It was only half a day’s journey between the two towns, so the brigade had marched fully prepared for a bloody battle against the forces of dishonour. As they grew close to the town, however, a familiar scent of smoke began to greet their noses.
                “Smoke; we must hurry. The attack has started.” Longsight said urgently.
                “We’ve got a plaque to retrieve for all of Meadowvale.” The commander told his force of guards.
                “And some bandits to stop.” Hjoll prompted.
                “We have our priorities.” The commander said drily.
                “And ours must be to find the white knight whilst he is alone.” Megan added. They had all been briefed on the plan back in Meadowvale, so it was somewhat spurious for her to mention anything.
                “Good luck commander.” Hjoll said earnestly. He received no reply as the guards jogged away down the road.
                The adventurers left the road and began to walk north-west through the woodland. The most likely avenue to leave open, according to the captive, would be the north-west route to the nearby Queen’s Hill fort. Any runner would see that as the best chance of finding rescue, so that was where the knight would position himself.
                Longsight took the lead, picking the best path through the woods for her companions to follow. Her ribs ached with every step, but she was determined to pay every instant of pain back to the White Knight.
                “Please, Hjoll. You must be prepared for a battle if you try to talk the knight down again. He won’t listen to you.” Gar-d’na said to his companion.
                “He was buoyed by the confidence of his bandits last time. We would be no better than him if we were to attack an outnumbered opponent on sight.” Hjoll replied stubbornly.
                “We’d still have the advantage of not having murdered hundreds of innocent villagers, so we wouldn’t be quite as bad.”
                “Aside from that then. I will give him the chance to mend his ways, friend.”
                Gar-d’na shook his head and stopped trying to convince the berserker to change his ways.
                Megan pondered her new magical power. Far from feeling like a great mage, she felt scared and unsure of herself. For years she had pursued great power, but her first act with it was to mutilate an already injured and totally defenceless prisoner. That just wasn’t right, it wasn’t how things should be done. She’d sought out such suffering and seen awful things, things which made her stomach turn. Then, as soon as she could, she had created another one herself. Choking a man to death when he was attacking her was one thing, but her display the previous night was quite another.
                Longsight pushed between the soft, fluffy foliage of a pair of low pine trees and found herself facing a dark grey blur. It loomed ahead of her as she crossed the pine-needle covered ground, strangely peaked like a tiny house. It was gradually coming into focus as she approached, a grey blur on top, with two brown blurs running down on either side to a wide grey blur on the ground. She recognised the basic shape; it was something she’d seen many times before, she knew it. Unfortunately, her focus on the blurry shape had drawn her attention away from her feet, causing her to trip on something shin-high and hollow sounding. The short-sighted ranger crashed to the floor, catching herself on her hands and sending a jarring pain through her bruised ribs. She was doing a terrible job of post-blunt-trauma recuperation.
                Longsight sucked air in through her teeth, suffocating the scream which tried to escape from her pain. In as much of a scrabble as she could muster with her weakened side, she got back to her feet and looked for whatever it was that had tripped her. Laying guiltily on the ground by her feet was an upturned water-bucket.
                The blurry shape finally made sense to her; it was a well, disused and left to decay in the woods. A well was the last thing they needed here, if Hjoll saw it and the memories of his rage came back…
                She rushed back through the foliage before the others could follow her in.
                “Not this way. We have to go around to the West.”
                “Why? Something in the way?”Hjoll asked.
                “Yeah.” She answered. “Something we can’t get over.”

                Longsight led the party on a wide loop around the well, nursing the aggravated tissue on her ribcage. She was going to make the knight suffer.
                The road came into view through the trees in a few short minutes; the whole party had agreed that taking a few long minutes would have been inappropriate. Staying behind the treeline, Gar-d’na crept forwards and glanced along the road for any sign of the knight.
                “Nothing.” He whispered back to the party. “Longsight, can you see any tracks?”
                The ranger jogged past the druid and into the road. With her face pressed against the dirt she examined the ground for any sign of the knight’s courser.
                “Here.” She announced. “He’s ridden through here very recently, heading west.”
                “Get back behind the trees Longsight. We’ll follow the road up and find him.” Hjoll ordered.
                The adventurers followed the treeline, staying parallel to the road and listening intently for the sound of hooves. What they heard instead was the sound of feet slapping along the dusty road behind them.
                “There’s someone else coming.” Longsight told the others. “A runner from the town?”
                The other three moved to the edge of the trees and stared silently down the road. Running pas them desperately was a middle-aged woman, wearing a look of deathly fear. It wasn’t a flattering look for her.
                “Stop! Please!” Hjoll shouted, leaping from the tree-line as she came past. “You’re in danger!”
                The woman saw the gargantuan form of Hjoll, wearing only a loincloth and apparently ambushing her from the woods, and shrieked, running even faster away from him.
                “Help!” She cried desperately. “Help! Bandits!” Her face was covered in splotches of red, and her voice trembled; she had been crying for some time.
                “We’re not bandits, we want to help you!” Hjoll tried, but she was determined to flee from him, under the quite reasonable assumption that heavily armed and lightly dressed men who step out of the trees during a bandit attack weren’t the most trustworthy.
                Hjoll took off after her, but his companions remained in the trees and chased from their concealed position. Almost immediately, the unmistakable clopping sound of a heavy horse echoed towards them along the tree-lined avenue.
                “He’s here.” Longsight correctly observed.
                Around a bend in the road, a brilliant white courser came cantering hell-for-leather, with a glimmering white knight astride it.
                “Help me!” Screamed the woman as she saw him.
                The knight spurred his horse on past her, setting his sights on Hjoll and drawing Truth from its scabbard.
                “Stop!” The berserker commanded, but the knight wasn’t one to take orders. This became obvious even to Hjoll, who rolled to one side out of the way of the knight’s slashing blade, and came back to his feet with sword in hand.
                “We need to help him.” Megan said, making gratuitous use of the royal ‘we’. Longsight shimmed up the nearest tree, wincing with every motion of her arms, and sat across a thick branch. “I’ll be able to hit him, but I don’t know where.” She informed the others. Or more accurately, the other; Gar-d’na had already run into the road to stand next to Hjoll.
                “How’s negotiation?” he asked, suspecting that he may already know the answer.
                “There’s still time.” Hjoll replied, not one to quit that easily.
                The knight wheeled his horse around and saw that he’d gained a second target. He licked his lips and drew them into a thin smile under his helmet. There’d be no running this time.
                His horse snorted and pawed at the ground, anticipating some more of that great running he’d just been doing. Everyone else seemed so stressed whenever the best running happened, but he himself loved every second.
                Jabbing the horse’s sides with both heels, the White Knight took off again in a barrelling canter, sword poised to strike. Hjoll raised his own weapon in a guard across himself and Gar-d’na. The druid faced the charging foe and drew a deep breath.
                “I am no enemy of yours, noble beast! Let not your master harm us!” he shouted in his best equine accent.
                The horse was having a wonderful time, running as fast as he could with such a heavy load on his back. Hearing the druid’s words he slowed slightly, but still couldn’t bring himself to stop; this was all just too enjoyable.
                Hjoll and Gar-d’na both darted out of the way as the knight’s second blow carved through the air.
                “He seeks to kill us and do harm to others. Heed my words brave horse and do not do his bidding.”
                Again the Knight had turned his horse around, but this time he didn’t wait before charging at Hjoll again.
                “Be free of these evil commands! Help us make the world right and be free!” Gar-d’na implored.
                The words were comforting, far kinder than any spoken to him by his master. The horse could feel the knight moving around on his back, in precisely the way he always did before the red water spilled. The smell of it set off the horse’s fearful instincts, almost ruining the fun of running. This new voice was making a lot of sense, and getting very close very quickly. The horse didn’t want to let red water fall to the ground this day, but the running was just too great.
                Hjoll pirouetted away from Truth again.
                “You can’t avoid me forever, exile.” The knight shouted, initiating another charge.
                Gar-d’na looked into the horse’s eyes, reading every detail and trying to discern exactly what was going through its head. The druid knew the beast not to be a pawn of evil, he just had to find the right words.
                “Just think of how much more fun running and eating you could do without that weight on your back.”
                The horse couldn’t fault that logic. There’d be no red water, no screaming, and all the running he could ever wish for. A scraping, skidding sound of steel horseshoes ploughing across gravel filled the roadway as the courser stuck his legs rigidly out in front of himself. No sooner had he come to a halt, than he jumped into the air and unleashed the mightiest buck he could with his back end. He wished to be free.
                To the knight’s credit, he was not thrown from the horse. Not until an arrow crashed into the side of his helmet, that is. The dull, metallic sound of impact shocked both the druid and the berserker, but had no appreciable effect on the horse. Having enjoyed both some running and a really tremendous buck, his primary ambition with his newfound freedom was to mooch around having something to eat. Slowly, he ambled to one side of the road and began picking at the weeds.
                “Sounds like I got him.” Longsight said proudly, stating the obvious.
                The White Knight landed on his back amid the clattering of steel armour. Stunningly quickly, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up to his feet, snatching up his fallen sword and drawing ‘Honour’ into his other hand.
                “Do you so yearn for death by my hand that you want to make me angry? Are you such cowards that you must hide from me in the trees and shoot from afar?” He asked irritably.
                “We wish for no fight this day. Lay down your arms and give up this life of hatred.” Hjoll ordered, the tip of his sword resting on the ground.
                “You fared poorly last time, and now you are injured. You won’t leave here alive.” The knight replied. Gar-d’na silently grew out his bramble thrasher once more in response. He saw no sense in wasting breath on the monster, nor had he prepared a pithy one-liner for the occasion.
                The three of them faced off against one another, none making the first move or breaking eye-contact. Injured though they were, Hjoll and Gar-d’na still outnumbered the knight. With Longsight in the treeline they had cover, and Megan’s magic was ready to support them.
                “Come quietly. No-one else needs to come to harm here.” Hjoll asked again.

                Movement caught the corner of Megan’s eye; the woman had picked up a rock from the ground.
                ‘Is she also a powerful mage? No, not likely. She must be a pretender, completely incapable of brandishing the terrifying rock technique.’ Megan thought to herself. However, the woman surprised her. She threw the rock with surprising skill towards the combatants.
                “Look out Hjoll!” Megan screamed.
                “Why, what’s going on?” Longsight asked.
                The rock soared through the air and crunched into Hjoll’s arm. He recoiled in pain, his concentration broken, and the knight used the moment to strike out with Truth. Gar-d’na swung his thrasher upwards to intercept the blow, but his injured shoulder robbed him of strength. The stab was pushed off-target, but the knight was not knocked out of his rhythm. He wheeled around into a pirouette and swung out with Honour.

                Longsight had drawn another arrow back, and awaited her moment to release. With the three of them so close and so out of focus it was impossible to tell where one stopped and another began. She kept her string taut, her arm shaking with exertion and the tree joining in sympathetically. Too sympathetically, in fact; the whole trunk was rocking backwards and forwards, shaking the branch on which the injured ranger was sitting. With both hands on the bow she couldn’t grab onto anything for support, and looked around frantically for the source of the motion. On the floor beneath her, the huge white courser was merrily scratching his rear end on the tree trunk. Unable to balance herself on anything, Longsight loosed her arrow into the canopy and then fell. The ranger hit the leafy floor on her bad rib and yowled in pain, startling the horse into cantering away up the road.

                Hjoll swung his torso backwards to avoid the warhammer, but the knight continued his spin and crunched a plated elbow into Hjoll’s ribs. Gar-d’na ignored his roaring shoulder and heaved his thrasher in an upward arc, catching the knight between his legs and sweeping one thigh backwards. The knight’s other foot slipped back and sent him face first onto the floor.
                “Give up or we will kill you!” the druid barked at his fallen foe, hoping that he wouldn’t need to use his bleeding shoulder again.
                “We will do no such thing.” Hjoll contradicted. “It is not the way of kindness.”
                As if to show sympathy for Gar-d’na’s frustration at that remark, the knight sprung up into a shoulder barge and tackled Hjoll to the ground, pushing himself up and away before Hjoll could grapple him.
                “I would be careful of who you threaten, druid.” The knight spat, unleashing a flurry of furious blows with both weapons. Gar-d’na dodged and hopped backwards, trying to keep a guard up with the thrasher but unable to withstand the force of so many blows. His wounded shoulder was rapidly losing any effectiveness, and the weapon was dropping. The thin blade of Truth slipped through Gar-d’na’s tired guard and slashed a shallow line across the druid’s chest.

                “Why does Hjoll never fight back!” Megan said angrily. She knew that if she tried to join the melee she would only be in the way, after all an unarmed opponent could not do much against an armoured knight, so she was forced to watch in frustration. The berserker was getting back to his feet, but she knew that he wouldn’t deliver a killing blow.
                “Because if Hjoll fights back it’ll unleash the rage, and he won’t risk it. Nothing seems to make him angry enough anymore.” Wheezed Longsight from the ground.
                “He’ll kill the knight if he gets the rage.” Megan said uneasily. “I don’t think he’d cope if he broke his vow.”
                “They’ll die if he doesn’t! I’ll trade a miserable Hjoll for a dead Hjoll any day. We need to make him angry. We need a catalyst or something.” Longsight rolled herself over and stood up uneasily, in pain all over. “I have an idea. Be right back.” She said with a sudden clarity, before dashing off into the trees.

                “You’ll die a pointless death by my hand, and so will your pet brute here.” The knight taunted the injured druid, jabbing into the bramble thrasher with Truth.
                “No-one will be dying!” Hjoll bellowed, grabbing the knight from behind by the waist and throwing him away from Gar-d’na. “Are you OK?” he asked the druid urgently, seeing blood soaking his brown robes.
                “It’s not serious.” Gar-d’na replied, not really believing his own words. “We need to keep on him!”
                The pair of them turned to face the knight, who was on his hands and knees. He pulled the visor of his helmet up and spat blood onto the floor.
                “That’s it boys, eyes on me.” He said, lifting his head to face them. “I want you to remember every detail of my face so that it can haunt you in the afterlife.” He said poetically. Behind the pair of misguided heroes, the knight could see the middle-aged woman charging forwards, rock in hand. If he kept their attention, she might even make it over to them. ‘The stupid old hag is going to try to kill her own saviours!’ He thought with a smirk. ‘I’m going to love this.’
                “Give it up. We have you.” Hjoll pleaded. There had been too much violence already, and he was growing weary of it. Without the rage he could feel his wounds and his tired muscles, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever. He’d have to break through the knight’s armour to subdue him, whereas the knight was already presented with bare flesh to injure. Hjoll would inevitably slow down first unless he could win with the power of reason.
                “I rather think that she has you.” The knight said with a sneer. Hjoll turned to see the woman preparing to strike with the rock in her hand.
                “Bandit scum!” she screamed.
                The air sparkled around the woman, glimmering and glittering like frost in the wind. Scarcely a few paces away, her legs seemed to grow larger and darker. A look of perplexed horror spread across her face, and she looked down to see her leg hair flowing outwards like a mighty river, flapping underneath her own feet and tripping her over. She slammed to the ground and cracked her forehead on the floor, remaining horribly still thereafter.
                Megan stood at the treeline, hands outstretched and strands of glimmering light retracting into them from the fallen woman.
                “Look out, for goodness sake!” the mage shouted, pointing back towards the knight.
                Hjoll span around with his guard up and caught the first blow that the white knight had thrown back out. The whirlwind of blade and hammer blows was no less intense than before, alternating strikes between Gar-d’na and Hjoll so that neither one had the chance to counterattack. He knew the druid couldn’t keep it up with his weakened shoulder. Soon enough one of the strieks would make it through. Maintaining a furious offensive, the knight circled around the druid and the berserker, until he was between them and the mage. She was preparing to strike again, to unleash her unholy hair magic which had choked one of the boys and caused no end of trauma to the rest.
                Megan was focused on summoning her powers back up, and didn’t notice when the knight hopped backwards from the melee. In one smooth motion he turned a half circle and threw Honour directly at her.
                “Megan!” Hjoll shouted, as the hammer crashed into her stomach and carried her to the floor.
                “Whoops!” the knight laughed. “Looks like your handmaiden got ideas above her station, and now she’s the first to go.” He mocked as he lunged forwards with Truth again. Hjoll stepped forwards to meet the blade, resuming the use of his zweihander as a shield. Gar-d’na was panting and bleeding, unable to properly defend himself, forcing Hjoll to cover both of them once again.
                The knight feinted to one side, drawing Hjoll’s titanic blade away before swiping Truth back towards the weary druid. Steel finally met flesh and sailed through Gar-d’na’s side in a spray of blood. The druid crumpled to the floor.
                “And there go two!  Look where your kindness has got you, Hjoll the exile; two of your friends dead and you soon to follow.”
                Wide-eyed, Hjoll tightened his grip on his sword and focused on the knight. He couldn’t give in now that they’d come this far, it would be an insult to the memory of Megan and Gar-d’na to give into the rage. It could have saved them but he had resisted because anger wasn’t the way, and they had believed in him. For Longsight’s sake, the last of his companions, he would keep true to his vows.

                Light footsteps rang out from the treeline, bursting out and dashing towards the combatants; the bloodied white knight and the kindly berserker. Longsight was light-headed and swayed from side-to-side as she ran. She could see a few blurs on the ground, roughly human in size, but ignored them. She could deal with those situations later. Her ragged breath was increasingly difficult to pull into her body, between her crushed ribs and bruised back. She was dizzy, exhausted and in agony, having sprinted into the woodland and back, but she was nearly there. All she had to do make it over to the white smudge and the fleshy blur. Then she could let her body give up, and everything would turn red, she hoped.
                Both the knight and the berserker turned to face the flash of green which had just emerged, clutching something brown to her stomach.
                “FIGHT BACK HJOLL!” She screamed with her remaining breath, throwing her burden forwards as hard as she could before passing out.
                The knight was unable to duck in time, and took the full impact on his head, the sounds of splintering wood ringing against the metal of his helmet. He staggered backwards, and Hjoll saw the ghosts of his past appear, all too real, in front of him. Fragments of wooden bucket littered the roadway, just as they had littered the well from his town so long ago.
                He could see the past like it was happening in front of him; the bucket falling away into the depths of the well, like Gar-d’na had fallen to the ground fighting for him. He could feel his thirst like Megan had thirsted to be a true mage, but stifled herself for his sake. He could feel the rage like he had felt it so often before. So many buckets had lain ruined with his rage, and so many friends now lay ruined without it. And it was all due to the White Knight, standing there in the fragments of Hjoll’s failure.
                The red mist descended, the adrenaline surged, and the berserker rage erupted in a mighty roar from Hjoll’s throat.
                For the first time, the White Knight felt Hjoll’s zweihander reply to the blows of Truth. There was no blocking the swings of the man-sized weapon from the giant-sized man, as they crashed through any attempted defence and landed hard on white armour plates. Each time Truth was raised up to block, Hjoll’s blade slammed it down again and carved another gash through the armour. It was the cacophony of a thousand blacksmiths forging weapons for a thousand armies; the berserker hacked at the White Knight in blind fury, the sword moving impossibly quickly for something so large and heavy and cleaving scraps of metal from the knight’s plate.
                Before long, Truth had been knocked from the knight’s hand and all he could do was raise his arms in front of his face under the weight of the frenzied blows. Feeling the anger surge through his body, Hjoll kicked the knight hard in the stomach and doubled him over, crushing the armour inwards until it stabbed sharp edges into his flesh. The pommel of Hjoll’s zweihander slammed down onto the knight’s back, sending him downwards into a gigantic rising knee.
                “YOU WANTED DEATH AND BLOODSHED!” Hjoll roared, stamping on the knight’s chest. “YOU WANTED TO SEE MURDER!” Hjoll threw his sword down and grabbed the knight by the throat. Effortlessly he lifted the steel-clad knight from the floor with one hand, and tore the helmet from his head with the other. Bloodied and bruised, the knight’s expression was terrified. He was also completely bald, shaved down to a mere stain in his efforts to counteract Megan’s magic.
                “IT IS ONLY KIND TO GIVE IT TO YOU!” a huge fist slammed into the knight’s face, splitting the skin and spilling blood.
                “Hjoll, stop!”
                The red mist lifted almost instantly on hearing Megan’s voice, and Hjoll’s attention snapped over to the source of the sound. Both arms hugged to her stomach and hunched over, Megan limped forwards towards the berserker.
                “I can’t let you betray yourself like this. I can’t let you kill him.”
                “He got Gar-d’na… I thought he got you… I… I’m sorry. The bucket…”
                Megan looked towards Gar-d’na, bloodied robes bunched up around his gut.
                “This isn’t the right w-” she started, but stopped when the knight launched a kick into Hjoll’s belly. Hjoll fell to his knees, dropping the knight into an untidy pile as he did so.
                “No more second chances!” Hjoll bellowed, grabbing the knight’s shoulders and pulling him in hard into a bear hug. His forearms held the knight’s arms out of the way, and his legs were wrapped around the knight’s waist. Facing away from the berserker, the knight struggled and pulled, but was unable to escape.
                “Forgive me!” the knight cried, sucking air trying to scrabble away. “I’m sorry! For all of it!”
                “I can hold him, but I can’t do anything more without the rage, Megan. I’m too tired.” Hjoll said, ignoring the knight. “You need to end it.”
                “What do you mean?” Megan asked, scared.
                “You break your vows, coward!” the knight shouted.
                "You have to use your rock magic! He’s too dangerous. I can’t forgive him for Gar-d’na."
                "But… we promised that…"
                "NOW IS THE TIME, MEGAN!" Hjoll roared.
                The mage picked up the rock from the middle-aged and now rather hairy woman’s hands, then walked over to the grappled knight.
                “What are you doing?” he wailed, fear written plainly across his eyes.
                Megan stood in front of him, then closed her eyes and breathed deep. She clasped the rock in one hand and allowed the powers to flow through her like she had the previous night. Glittering air surrounded her, flowing out of her mouth when she breathed and pouring down her cheeks like tears. She looked at Gar-d’na’s bloody form, she looked at Longsight lying still on the ground, and she looked at Hjoll, forced to break his vow of peace. All around her, her friends had suffered. She hadn’t been able to help them fight the knight, but now she was going to make use of their pain.
                The mage opened her eyes and looked directly into the knight’s. Drawing her arm back she focused on her hatred and her anger, focused on everything Hjoll had warned her against, and channelled it all alongside her pain into a single ball of furious magical suffering in her rock. And then she unleashed it.
                Like a geyser erupting in a jet of boiling water, Megan felt a channel of power open up inside of her. The air turned to a million tiny, sparkling shards of glass around the rock in her hand, glittering and coruscating. Her blood tingled; she felt it in every vein and every tissue of her body, infusing her flesh and filling her, turning her into a gateway to the arcane powers. Bolts of lightning shot away from her arm. An arcing trail of flame was left in its wake. Icicles formed around her feet and floated up into the air. All around the mage the world turned to blackness, until she was the only source of light in an abyss of infinite night, the vessel of powers which dwarfed and humiliated anything which stood against her. The only objects left in the world were Megan, her rock, and the white knight in Hjoll’s unbreakable hold, eyes wide in fear.
                "ROCK!" Megan screamed, as her magic finally made impact.
                The world exploded back into visibility; the bloodied ground, the broken bones and the desperate struggle. Hjoll turned his face away as the rock seared and melted the knight's flesh, crashing into his skull. The force of the blow tore Hjoll’s grip away and threw the knight clean off the ground, turning him through several full revolutions in the air, spraying blood all the while. With a crunching of dented armour and cracking of bones he slapped the road chest-first and skidded to a graceless halt, his head caved in and smirking no more.

                Hjoll and Megan knelt by Gar-dn’a. The druid’s eyes were barely opened and barely a whisper of a breath emanated from him.
                “Stay with me, Gar. Megan’s getting the salves and the needles out of your pack. You’re going to be OK.”
                “Did you get him?” The druid croaked.
                “I lost control to the rage, and we had to use Megan’s rock magic, but yes, we got him. I’m sorry it took that, Gar. I let you down.”
                “Good. He deserved it.”
                “Found it!” Megan cried.
                “Get it in there, quickly. We must sew him up.” Hjoll ordered.
                “I think you’re wasting your time.” Gar-d’na assessed pessimistically. “Where’s Longsight?”
                “She passed out, but I think she’s alright. You first.”
                “This might sting.” Megan told him. Megan roughly slathered the salve into Gar-d’na’s wounds, trying not to look at how deep they ran.
                “Might’s optimistic.” The druid winced.
                “Get him sewn up.” Hjoll told Megan once she was done.

                With Gar-d’na’s wounds sewn up and Longsight roused with smelling salts, Hjoll and Megan lashed together a stretcher for the druid from broken branches and Megan’s cloak.
                “I don’t think Gar would like us defiling Mother Gaia to build him a stretcher.”
                “As long as he is able to reprimand me, I don’t care.”
                As Hjoll and Megan prepared to lift Gar-d’na onto the stretcher, the berserker spared a glance for the devastated corpse of the knight. His armour was a mess of sharp angles, crushed plating and blood. His head was half missing and burned from the rock, which was still lodged in his skull.
                “That wasn’t gentle of us.”
                “Yes, we did. But he wouldn’t listen. You said so yourself.”
                “I spoke in anger and fear. We fight for what’s right, and we must do so with compassion. Being scared doesn’t mean we should kill people.”    
                “We tried to resolve it with peace and we failed, Hjoll. We’ll do better next time. Come on, we need to get Gar to Queen’s Hill, there’ll be a medic there.”
                “What about the Meadowvale guard?” Hjoll asked.
                “They’ll be fine.” Longsight told them dismissively. “Or they won’t. Doesn’t make any difference to us.”
                “Can you walk, Longsight?”
                “Probably.” She said pragmatically. Not liking that answer enough, Hjoll lifted her with one hand and deposited her onto his shoulders.
                “You can be lookout.” He told her.
                “Yeah. If anything gets within a foot of us, you shout.” Megan said with a grin.
                With Longsight offering several more secret ranger hand signals in response, they set off to Queen’s Hill, hoping to find kindness enough to heal their friend, and leaving the product of their anger mutilated on the ground behind them.