#I felt some of the other Greymouth characters needed a spotlight

[stragglewort]

Greymouth -- “A Brother In Need”

        Picture by - New York Public Library, “Berthalda in the Black Valley” by Rackham Arthur, 1912. Public Domain - edited ______________________________________________________________         Roald had found himself in plenty of strange places while looking for his brother. It was where he ultimately ended up that really surprised him, though. It'd been too long since they’d spoken. The eldest son of clan Greymouth had become an absolute black sheep. Years without communication or not, that was nothing like him. It never was. Not the one who almost abandoned success to ease their mother's worries. Not his brother who he'd seen time-and-time again practically pasted to the bedside of the sick even their own father, the village’s one proper doctor, had even given up on. No, his brother wasn't the kind of man to cause worry (or better yet isolation) without good reason. It took Roald long enough to piece together where he’d gone in the first place – between his scattered hints and vague landmarks the whole effort felt impossible:

           "The mountains here are beautiful." said one, "But the nights get terribly cold." it might counter. "I'm days out from the capital!" He might've hinted, "But I don't believe I'll visit -". With every new letter it looked like his brother moved a country’s distance. He’d pass through cities and comb over roads but would never tell exactly where he'd stopped to rest his feet.

        Roald was clever, though, and more determined than Ardolf was vague.

        After too long had passed, he took up the breadcrumbs his brother dropped and followed them to a forest - Very specifically, to the Oxlant woods.

        A shadowy grove of thickly leafed, ancient trees with ground carpeted in a fine pad of moss. Roald could only think of the times when Ardolf would drag him to the peaks of Sol-Øluden, their village holed up the cracks of old mountains, and lay on the stone to sleep under the sun. He never understood what was so attractive about sitting on dirt to watch the sky, but when he stepped foot over the icy boarder of the forest, he found himself wishing for nothing less.

        It seemed to pull the life out of the air, to stagnate it – every breath tasted bitter. The people of the village warned against him trekking into the woods, they whispered stories of beasts that skulked under the trees at night. Tales of how one wrong step equaled to miles of misdirection! But Roald was never one for superstition. Their claims of an averagely tall doctor who moved through the town and disappeared himself into the woods was enough for him to excuse the warnings as friendly advice.

        It was the last place he'd think to look for his brother. Ardolf never liked forests, he always said they were too crowed. Pretty, but crowded. But everything Roald had led him to Oxlant.

        Every while or so when Ardolf would pen home, no matter how wide or far out he’d gone, some of them would always lead back to that specific forest. If that wasn't it, he had no idea where else to look, and Roald wasn’t one to admit defeat.

        The hike was worse than he could've prepared for. He was a doctor and a surgeon, not a ranger – but in that case, neither was his brother. That was the whole reason he decided to go after him in the first place. if he was having issues there’d be no doubt Ardolf wouldn’t sympathize.

        Though the moss on the ground was soft, the soil felt frozen. It made it feel like he’d been walking on acres of stone. His feet went sore after the first few hours and his vision failed him past that – between the lateness of the night and the shroud of trees, it came to be unbearably dark. Even in the spots where the full moon peeked through the leaves. He'd decided to camp for the night like he had plenty times before. He built up a linen tent, put stones around a pit he dug with his hands for a fire, and prepared a lined border around the camp of twigs and other crunchy, noisy, but unnoticeable things. He wanted to make sure if the villagers were right with their stories of 'monsters and beasts', be they mice or giants, he'd hear them coming.

        And as the night went on, after he'd settled to sleep, he certainly heard something.

        First was the howling that echoed off the closely grown trees. He was a light sleeper anyway, and stirred him near instantly. It sounded like a wolf, loud enough to be many, but singly voiced. Secondly the howl was accompanied by a heavy thudding sound. He listened as paws or feet beat against the ground, something bulky that sunk into wood and soil. The descriptions the town's men gave him raced through his mind. They’d warned of elemental beasts, of faeries and animals, but none of them mentioned anything about wolves!

        Bears, yes. Deer, elk, and spiders the size of elk, sure. But not a single mention of wolves. Could it be a dire-beast? Were there even dire-beasts in the Oxlant woods? He debated over if it’d be smarter to stay put or move, but the decision was made for him –

        The pouncing grew louder as he heard whatever had overtaken the forest charge into his territory. He could hear the thing's claws scrape at the icy earth before the racket of leaves, twigs, and other noisy but unnoticeable things breaking reached him. Roald held his breath, bit his tongue, and kept motionless in the center of the small tent. He could see the silhouette of the beast projected against the fabric from the light of a few flickering embers still alive in the fire pit.

        It was massive. Absolutely massive.

        He hoped it was a trick of dim light and poor shadows – but it almost looked humanoid. The figure of the creature, which had come to a complete stop outside of his tent, was bipedal. Large and muscular with the outline of an animalistic snout at its head – but it stood on two legs as upright as any man. Though, its back was hunched. He heard it sniff at the air as a low, throaty grumble escaped its mouth –

        “--man.” The beast snarled, the words barely recognizable, filtered through fangs and a muzzle. Of all the monsters the townsfolk warned him over, how did every one of them fail to mention this one? But his thoughts were cut – the creature bellowed a blood freezing and pained, grating howl before it fell to all fours and crept towards the tent. He heard stone crack as it stepped over his fire pit and smothered the embers under its foot.

        His vision died with the cinders.

        All he had left was the sound as it circled his tent and sniffed at the air. He could hear a second noise clatter between the animal’s footsteps and his own frantic heartbeat. The sound of metal. Something tough that clinked against the beast's hide. Roald knew the dangers and he hadn't neglected to prepare; he had a bow and a small blade. It was nothing he thought would be terribly effective against whatever demon was in his camp, but it was all better than being unarmed. He moved slowly and tried to muffle his hands while he reached for the bag. His fingers barely scraped the latch before he was startled by a beastly growl – it could smell him, but he wasn’t sure how well it could see.

        The bag was cleanly organized, like everything Roald owned. Even in the dark it didn’t take much to find the crossbow. He tried, in vain, to steady his hands while he fumbled to get a bolt set in the flight groove. The creature didn’t seem to recognize the sound, thank the gods – he took a hold and sat for a second, listening to the animal. He wanted the monster to make the first move. He wasn’t willing to cause a fight he couldn’t win if it was going to leave on its own volition.

        But he realized it only got closer.

        It crept, almost hesitantly. He had to close his eyes to focus on the noise; there wasn’t much space in the tent for him to move. The upside being there wasn’t much space for the creature to skulk. He fixated on the position of the bow, on where his hands landed on the wooden body, and traced where he could hear the beast’s steps with the point of the bolt. His focus did nothing to slow his heart. He’d almost come to think it was going to leave him alone, but his optimism was never so spot on. With all hesitation gone, the monster tore through the threshold of the fabric. Roald pulled at the levered trigger, letting a steel bolt fly from the end and with a weighty thud as it landed in flesh.

        The creature, with undeniable anger, cried out in pain.

        Roald still couldn’t see, but it didn’t take eyes to feel its frenzy and anger surge. Its cries turned livid and the beast clawed in random directions. Again, the realization of how small his tent was came to mind. The creature’s talons were sharp and thick, it trapped Roald in the middle of a swing, and he was thrown to the side. The only thing that broke his fall was the linen of the tent as it collapsed around him. A familiar warm spread of blood overtook his senses, it had torn through his shirt and cut into his side. He was too panicked to feel it at first blush – but he couldn’t help but think over how sore it’d be in the next hour. If he could even make it to the next hour. Still on the ground he could only roll out of the way in the darkness. The forest was pitch black; nothing to tell him where he needed to go or how far. He never liked to admit defeat, but he’d dropped the bow somewhere between the animal’s claws and the ground. It was obvious, he couldn’t deny, when he was outmatched.

        Roald struggled free from the linen and threw silence to the wind as he scrambled to his feet and ran. The creature gave chase. Without light he found himself bouncing between trees as his shoulders scraped and feet caught on thorns – he struggled to hold his balance, even worse he could hear just perfectly how close the animal was behind him. He'd obviously taken it by surprise with the bolt, but it collected itself all too quickly.

        Hope, though, was just in sight –

        Between narrow passages of wood and vine he saw the slightest peak of light shimmer through leaves. Moonlight. He ran for it and almost fell headfirst into a small clearing while the creature careened through tree and bush alike. 

        The clearing, it seemed, used to have guests. It too held a camp – this one ransacked and destroyed. He had a good idea over what might've caused the chaos, but he didn't have time to worry over strangers. He came to his balance the moment the creature popped into sight. It was dim, but he could see clearly the whole of the monster under its patron's light. It was this hunchbacked hybrid of wolf and man, polished chains rattled from its neck and arms, and its eyes glowed a crystalline grey in the light that – as odd as it felt to think – raised a strange sense of recognition. Now in the whole of the moonlight he saw why it sounded so hurt. Not only was his bolt firmly planted in its shoulder, but its fur was matted with blood and scars of its own. Whatever it was doing before finding Roald, it wasn’t successful. It growled between aggravated breaths and stood up again to eye the young man – almost contemplating. It acted frenzied back in the camp, but at that moment, if he really thought about it, the creature almost looked confused.

        Something, there had to be something more he could use. Surely whoever was there before him had to have something prepared for themselves? Who else even decided to camp so far out into the forest?         He scanned the mess: a ripped bedroll and a rattled firepit – a bag that'd been torn open – papers lined the ground in shreds as plentiful as moss, and –

        A mace. An iron mace tossed haphazardly to the side.

        He wished he could appreciate it more, but the situation wouldn't allow. No, this was a very specific mace – one he truly recognized, one he'd seen a million times before.

        The mace he saw was the same brandished-iron tool his brother used to carry at his hip. The papers, now that he was paying attention seemed to piece themselves together in his mind. Notes and anatomical documentation destroyed by brutal claws and ground water. He knew whose camp this was, it’s what he'd been looking for – but that was not the state he wanted to find it in! Something overwhelmed him – anger, grief, he felt sick and the pit of his stomach churned. For just a second he was afraid he’d vomit. He bolted, instead, for the weapon and gripped it tightly. It was heavy and made him wonder how his brother was able to stand keeping it on his belt. But it was his brother’s. The heirloom mace that couldn’t have belonged to any other single person in all the blessed land. Looking back, Roald would readily admit how silly and dangerous is was of him to do what he had done – but it truly seemed like the worst had come. For all he knew his brother was dead and he was staring at the murderer, at the monster who did it. Roald charged the creature and swung the weapon haphazardly.

        If his anger hadn’t destroyed any-and-all ability he might’ve had, his uselessness with heavy armory did the job. There was barely any strength to the swing.

        The metal hit the monster nearly where he had shot it just a minute before and it whined out scathingly to the forest. It swung back at him in chaotic but suddenly restrained bursts. One overshot, and instead of hitting, got its arm caught against the handle of the mace. Roald, at that moment standing so close to the creature noticed another thing. The chains weren't just idle decoration – no, the skin under the shackles was blistered, almost burnt.

        Silver, he assumed.

        He pushed back the animal’s arm and caught a glimpse into its eyes. Instead of the frenzy he'd come to hate – he saw a kind of reluctance.

        “Roald –“ A yelping, wolfish cry etched from its snout and took him by surprise. That was his name, no doubt about it. Even through growls and barks, that was most certainly his name. The monster staggered back, but refused to retaliate. Instead he watched as it shook its head and reeled away. One clawed hand grabbed at its shoulder where the mace had broken skin and it lost its balance, falling onto a hardened oak tree.

        It was fighting itself, writhing and howling at the sky.

        Roald didn't think he hit it that hard. He knew he hadn’t. Bellowing from the creature he heard the ever so specific, so exact sound of breaking bone. The beast cried out as its form started to meld and boil, its shape faltered as its whole image began to shift, remolding itself. The fur shed and its claws shrunk back into place, the howls morphed in tone to something almost human-like.

        "No – no more." An exhausted voice cried out. As the evidence of the creature disappeared, all that was left in its place was the limply downed form of an averagely tall man in tattered clothes. A crossbow bolt jutted firmly into his shoulder. Roald stood stunned for some seconds; he wasn’t sure if he could even believe his own eyes. Maybe a trick of the light or some sort of hallucination brought on by blood loss?

        But the man he saw never wavered. The hallucination he assumed he was having never faded.

        The mace fell from his hands as he watched the beast he was so sure killed his brother shift and change into a shape he undeniably knew –            "...Artie?" Roald's voice cracked under some incomprehensible weight. "Artie is – by the gods – is that you?" He didn’t notice the tears well up in his eyes until they obscured his vision. He’d come to the forest with the expectations of the worst. That he’d find his brother mauled by monsters, captured by bandits, find him murdered, or not even find him at all!

        But that.

        There was no way he could’ve ever imagined enough to prepare himself for that. He gave no time for an answer before he charged and fell to his knees, meeting eye-level with the man.            "Roald, I – I’m sorry –" Ardolf tried to speak but his voice failed out on him, the words caught dryly in his throat. Roald grabbed him by his shoulders before he loosened his grip when his brother winced. They sat silently, neither knew what to say or how to say it. Instead their confusion came out as soft, shaky laughter.

        "Artie." Roald choked between teary hiccups and loose, confused laughter - "You never mentioned this in your letters.". ________________________________________________________________