Vengence

It was the day before hell descended.

Tynan stood in the weak sunlight of morning, bundled up to his ears in fur despite the fact that spring was spreading it's gentle wings over the mountains. All the camp seemed to have gathered out at the end of a long main street that wound along the valley. That is, all the camp who had stayed behind; namely the women, the children and the untrustworthy.

That would be me, he mused laconically as he stamped his feet to keep warm. No one trusts a druid - so they say up untill the moment they break a leg. He wrapped himself deeper in his furs and looked at the faces of the people around him. He hadn't seen the miners like this before. A grim pall seemed to hang over this otherwise friendly and rowdy community, and he didn't like the possibilities that brought.

Ever since those people had been found dead in the snow, the townspeople had been avoiding him, casting suspicious looks his way and never saying a word to him. It was probably not a good time to be a druid here, he suspected. There were Snake People about, the miners had whispered - the murdering monsters. Tynan had been to the nearby village of the Araawan for the herbs of the poultice, and they hadn't seemed monsterous, merely trying to get by through the winter as they protected their slumbering cold-blooded kin.

He looked up at the sound of feet in the snow, and horror flowed in an icy rivulet down his spine. Dripping crimson blood, the head of an Araawan was held high on a pike, its face contorted in a ghastly rictus of death. The townsmen were returning, a lot more battered, alot more bloody, and certainly fewer in number than when they had left. They carried heads of the Araawan as trophies of war in silent pride.

It wasn't the look of the dead that haunted Tynan, but the faces of the living - so proud, so full of self-righteousness at the signs of the masaccre of a whole village that they were nearly floating from the ground with glee. Tynan shouldered his way through the crowd towards the small log cottage he lived in, feeling a dull rage building inside him. It wasn't a good idea to be around here anymore, now that the town had drunk of the sweet cup of vengence and blood. Araawan were killed, and soon all people associated with the Snake God would be targetted. He had to get Adam away. Now. Before the town found out what the boy really was.

As the sun set, hell descended in the form of a woman.

From the treeline of the valley, Tynan watched through the eyes of a wolf as the camp was systematically and brutally killed down to the last child. It was hard to watch the slaughter, but he knew this was necessary - though for the life of him he couldn't explain how he knew, it was just one of those instincts built into his very bones. Still, it was terribly hard, and the sights of death tore at his heart despite the fact that this was clearly vengence for the deaths of the Araawans. Vengence is such a pointless thing, he thought with a heavy heart. And now the last of the miners was dead.

Tynan's wolf padded slowly up to the lone figure that stood standing, hair streaming in the wind. It came within sight of her and sat down expectantly. A full grown mountain wolf was hard not to notice, particularly one with golden eyes that seemed to glow from within with the presence of another mind.