#can you tell that i'm deep in the shoh pit

[snowthornes]

"Are you alright?" the golden-haired Norm asked, a note of concern entering his voice. "You look like you just swallowed something awful." Thorne felt his smile freeze on his face. Slowly, under the gazes of the three Shepherds — Hael, of course they'd be Shepherds — he nodded, still smiling. "Yes, I'm doing wonderfully. My apologies — I think I had something in my throat." Thorne had never planned on joining the Shepherds.

(UNDER HEAVY REWRITES)

1 ✦ Demons. Awful for Business.

“Do you believe in free will?”

The question echoed in Thorne’s ears long after the red-haired man with the wide-brimmed hat had left, flicking a coin into his empty cup before he made his exit with a dramatic finality. He stared idly at the solitary cup, sitting only a table away — turning the previous conversation over and over in his head.

It was an intriguing question, he thought, settling back into his seat. His hand absently came up to finger the gleaming silver necklaces looped around his neck. Free will. Did he believe in free will? He had played along with Croelle, (Omens, his mind whispered, warnings and legends and gods), curious to see where the other man was going with his random approach of a stranger, but — he wasn’t sure. 

All he knew was this: as a Diminished stray who had had to survive by himself since his Wreath Day, free will had never been his to contemplate. He had laughed, and charmed, and manipulated, and slaughtered — all under the looming banner of survival. 

Could the sort of life he had led be the kind that had anything to do with “free will”?

He didn’t know. 

Still, the thought that everything in his life was predetermined… to put it nicely, it set him ill at ease. To put it bluntly, it pissed him off.

Faith was a shadow that he had turned his back on long ago. Whatever ‘path’ this so-called One-God had allegedly set out for him, Thorne had no interest in walking it. Just the thought left an acrid taste in his mouth. If not believing in free will meant believing in the One-God’s will, then, fine — he believed in free will.

And with his free will, Thorne had come to Haven with one mission: to find employment.

Not very glorious, but one does what one must. And what Thorne must do was find some sort of employment that involved more than wandering around the continent and picking up whatever jobs the day saw fit to throw his way — jobs of which were always a toss-up between the mundane and bizarre.

(He couldn’t count the amount of lost pets he’d had to find over the years. Once, he’d had to track down a family’s beloved pet pig after it fled deep into a forest. Needless to say, while he'd managed to rescue it, the massive wild cat that had also been tracking said pig hadn’t been very happy.)

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Hello! Thank you very much for opening my fic :D This won't be a chapter by chapter retelling of SHOH, but more of a fic about Thorne's own experiences in Blest as himself , not as an OC limited by the (very understandable!!) narrative constraints of the game. There will be scenes that weren't directly addressed in the game like Thorne's initiation to the Shepherds, so there will be quite a lot of headcanon-ing going on! This is very much a passion project and something I'm writing for fun — Thorne Briers and the world of SHOH are both very dear to me, and I couldn't resist the urge any longer. I hope you have as much fun following the story as I do writing it!

This is an unpolished work; I'm still very new to writing. Hopefully I'll be able to improve my craft while writing this fic, and have fun doing it!

DISCLAIMER: The world and characters of "Shepherds of Haven" do not belong to me, but to Lena Nguyen. You can find her on Tumblr under the @ shepherds-of-haven. Thorne Briers is a character of my own creation, and the MC of this fic. Due to narrative reasons, there will be several lines lifted directly from the game (ex. when a canon character speaks). Please let me know if this is a concern!