Meditations, Memories, Recollections - Aden Delaveth's Character Development Journal

[Aphel]

Dream by day, work by night. Hear the furnance's slow deep breath; melting the fine dust into a new shape. Glass was an interesting material, and he worked hard to get enough of the raw material needed.
The Desert was an interesting place, and he had enough time to study it. It was a very competitive habitat yet it held a strange, mystical air to it; and he liked to visit the oasis to speak with the natives or to meditate. When the lush forests soothed, healed, places of dreams and tales then the desert was the opposite. Heat and cold hardened the soul that sought refuge in the shade, blinked the sand fines from the eyes; aware of the silent threat of snakes, scorpions and thirst. Yet this soul behold dreams and insights of great clearness. Time was measured in the slow move of shark shadows and the fine sand that winds pushed over the dunes' tips by dusk and dawn. This work was not so bad at all, it seemed to strengthen both shell and spirit. He learned how to survive here, too. Watched the small animals, the snakes, and ask the locals. He should learn how to make his own antidotes.

He had talked with Ygraine a bit, but somehow he was a bad student when she tried to teach him something about animal behavior.
Pouring the liquid glass into a mold to cool, he thought of what he had learned so far.
And of Breanna and her smile. And how to finance the house.

He smiled serenely.

[Aphel]

He smiled and shook the sawdust from his sleeves. Oh, she was incredible, indescribable, his Breanna. Unbelievable.
Aden got on his feet and gave the shelf a questioning look. It would do, he was sure of that. One more to do. Then the bedroom. He smiled and got to work.
Placed a bowl with blackberries on the drawer next to the bed. Made everything look nice. Tucked a small piece of parchment between sheet and pillow: Love you.
Went for some running outside. Hlint was good territory for that, the Silkwood not that far away. He spent some time in the mist to hone his skills. Watched animals. Climbed trees in silence, moved unseen like a shadow. Run some miles. Scouted. Tracked.
Returned to Hlint with a smile hidden in his eyes. Their own house. Their own home, hideout and den. Sat down to write a letter to her parents, or at least try. There was just now, like a dream but so much more real.

[Aphel]

What a nice housewarming gift.
He poked the thing carefully, jammed the spring and began to disarm the thing. It was a really nice gift, very well placed in both an obvious and yet subtle manner – connected to a more obvious one near the door. Disarm that one, this one goes up. Very clever.
It took him some time to get the spring free, the gas container was already made useless. What kind of morning was this anyway? He'd just wanted to bring some aloe and garlic by for his sweet, then continue the training in the woods before heading to Llast to keep his ears open for the newest gossip.
Now this. He left a note for Breanna and swept the house room for room, tile for tile, inch for inch. Twice.
Then it was back to work and training. Dragons, Undead, whispers of a velvet cloak. All weapons sheathed, quiver full.
Well then.

[Aphel]

Dear Miss Stuart

I hope this letter reaches you and your family in good health and happy times. There seems to be a lot of new faces in your ranks, and it's good to see so many young people taking up the difficult tasks.

While I do not generally mind them or you hunting undead, monstrous insects and similar things in the woods, there are a few things I would like to express my concern about.
I can overlook the fact that they leave prints the size of a halfling's bathtub behind or don't care about scaring the natural wildlive away with the noise they make, I can live with that.
But please, spare the animals as much as you can, and take care not to kill female animals in the breeding and upbringing period. If you cannot go past them and have to kill them, do at least clean up after yourself and take of the animal what you can use.
Given how many dead treefolk I found a while ago, I also would like to point out that it's - while they do present a danger to the unweary travelers - no use to kill them. They will not change their minds and it will just reinforce their will to kill everybody that treatens the trees. Should you really need the aloe that grows in their groove, I could get that for you without the need to kill.

Respectfully,
~Aden D.

[Aphel]

They left deep imprints, these Toranites. He never understood that part of their behavior: how could they think they ever would be doing net good if they behaved in such a wasteful manner? Most likely these tracks come from their new recruits, Aden guessed, and these treants had to die because of some overzealous youngster looking for aloe in this grove. The treefolk here surely were not exactly benign, but they did nobody any harm as long as they stayed out of the grove.
The elf frowned and studied the fallen treants. It had taken a lot of force to cut them down, and he was sure whoever killed them had put herself or himself at quite some risk, had been injured even. What a pointless waste of resources. If they needed aloe, why would they not simply ask those that could gather it without interfering with the balance or putting themselves at risk? Once he was home, he would write Jillian a letter.
He had thought of them better than they proved to be.
And we let them fight the wars, the most wasteful of all stupid things ever invented.
He shook his head and melted into the shadows of the forest again to finish his patrol. There would be a new generation of treants soon, just as brutal and stupid as their parent generation.
This was not exactly the way that lead to good, but all parties involved fight against any kind of symbiosis with everything they could come up with.

[Aphel]

Dear Misses and Mister Shadowraven

My name is Aden Delaveth and I believe we have never met before. You surely want to know why a complete stranger is writing you letters, and why now. I will try to explain to the best of my ability but I have to admit that writing letters is not one of my strengths.

I first met your daughter a not so long time ago.

He woke early, long before dawn's first light. There were days were it was especially hard to leave the warm cozy sheets, and Aden closed his eyes once more, cuddling up to Breanna. Just a moment more to hear her breathe.
Then he slipped out of the bed without any noise or letting the cold crawl under the sheets to her. It was time to make her breakfast.


We were both traveling, and our paths met near a small trading outpost called Center. Back then, I did not know what the future would bring; I still remember the day and it brings a smile on my face.

With a soft smile around his lips as he watched Hlint, asleep but for Alicia and some others, still standing guard over the city. Frogs in the small lake, birds in the trees (he could distinguish a few of them by song, yet he was not sure if it were the same birds every morning); he cut slices of bread, made some tea, searched for the jam and tip-toed back to her, carefully pushing the bedroom door open with a boyish grin. He like to do this from time to time, even if it was silly.


Meeting your daughter was the change of seasons for me; before meeting her I had been a drifter. After we met, events unfolded that quickly dragged me into the life of an adventurer. I met Breanna again, we traveled the lands together trying to make them a little bit safer. I wish I could explain to you how we fell in love, how we hid from the world just to be together for a few hours. The Longstrider watched over us, and when Breanna and I were not together I felt his call stronger than before. I found my destiny, and even when I traveled alone in cold and misery I knew that soon we would be together again - were and are each others strength.

He left the house together with her, they kissed and then their way parted: she went to work for the Shop, he went towards the Silkwood, stalking along the roads unnoticed, looking for tracks and hints of brewing trouble.

I still strife hard to follow the Longstrider's trail, to learn what is necessary to protect and feed my pack.

Then hours of trying to keep up with Brisbane, her riddles and lessons. He had soon understood that trying to learn consciously would not work, he just had to flow, feel, grasp. It was a lot like running without letting any obstacle slow one's flow down. And while Ygraine just had harassed him a little, Brisbane had him flee for each failure once they started to move from deer to carnivores. He figured out a few things that helped him to vanish into thin air – and how to climb trees very, very fast.
But it was slowly coming along. Very slowly. It was a hard melody to understand, but Aden felt that once he was past a certain threshold, it would be much easier.

There are many things I still have to learn but not that I love your daughter dearly and wish to spend the rest of my life at her side. I am very interested to meet the parents of my true heart and if you have the time, I would like to visit you together with Breanna some time soon.

When he finally came home in the evening – scratched and beaten but still smiling – he looked around in their small garden, harvesting some lettuce for dinner, walking around barefoot in the dark, fertile soil. Their own garden! He had to laugh, weighing the plant in his hand. He had begun to settle down indeed.
And yet, the danger wasn't gone, the enemy not beaten, the roads not safe. But then again, he would try to write a rough draft of the letter to her parents first today.

Save paths and may the balance be kind to you,
~Aden Delaveth

[Aphel]

What has it to do with music anyway?

Everything.
A man wakes up in the morning, kisses his still sleeping pregnant wife and gets up to face a new day dull and harsh as every day before that day. He is a simple worker, a lumberjack, a farm hand – trying to make enough trues to make long-due repairs on his little cottage at the edge of town, trying to put something aside for the future and saving up for a nice amulet for his love. And the army pays handsomely, compared to the miser he is working for...

A bear cub is born hidden deep in the forest and yelps to get its mother's attention. Its instincts make it long form the warmth of its mother's fur. And she would keep her three cubs save with fur and teeth and claw, teaching them how to hunt and eating less after a stalk, so her cubs would grow fast.  One day, her instincts failed and she lost one of her cubs. She grieved but for a short time but her instincts told her that she would be more likely to ensure the survival of only two cubs.

A young boy, running away from the strict discipline and training of his youth, trying to escape the shackles of the small secluded community he was born into. Trying to understand what the old, dusty tomes meant he was supposed to read and copy on parchment over and over again – because on one day in the long forgotten past, somebody must have picked up at quill to conserve his insights for generations to come. Or maybe just to not forget. And roaming the streets, he learned more in six days than in six months in the tutelage of alleged known heroes and scholars. He learned how to fight dirty and how to be invisible, became a disgrace to his community by disobeying his parents and they had to suffer for it – all those mean, cautiously placed instructions.


What has it to do with music anyway?
Everything.
It was a metaphor that he thought fitted best the countless number of tragedy, pain, suffering, love, happiness, success and failure, understanding and ignorance that were cast as fragments in front of each living thing moment after moment: the beauty of fallen trees mourned by those that stood around them, their leaves changing color in autumn – the struggle that would occur once new plants would quickly make use of the amount of light that now reached the forest's thin soil, that insects would find shelter in the fallen tree's trunk and a lone hunter would use its branches to make arrows.  All is interconnected with all, a monumental orchestra, a symphony of life, death, sound, silence, darkness, light.
A boy, hearing a orchestra in a rich merchant's estate once while making use of the harmonies and sounds to mask his footsteps in a quiet alley nearby – a strange dance, and yet if you become one with the music of all things, the harmonies and disharmony, you will not be noticed at all because you will be part of what is around them all the time. Of course, it was a metaphor, but at least one that didn't boggle one's mind.

He stretched carefully and stared out into a gray day in the Wolfwood. They called it training, but it was simply drill to harden the body and practice all the moves, and he found it rather dull.  He could put up with it, but it was dull, still. He had to make his own shelter and such things, that he found interesting. Swinging swords that were to large for what he normally did, getting teased about this and that made him reconsider more than once to simply vanish into the shades of the forest again.
But he didn't. Not just yet.

[Aphel]

~A Letter to Breanna~

My love

If you are reading this, I won't be sitting in my small shelter anymore and listening to the rain, but I will still miss you as dearly as now and worry that you are safe and in good health. I am in the Wolfwood right now, with the Rangers, training along with them. It's an odd story how I ended up here, starting with that I met a Ranger in Mariner's Hold by chance and got invited to visit their camp and even speak with their commander. It was interesting to meet Enzo again, and he even let me do some sort of test, a sort of patrol. I don't know if I should take his offer to join the pack. Right now, I am just training with them and I fear that if I join them, I will be called away at times or maybe even vanish from one day to another only to return later. But I want to be with you, care for you – a calm life with you in Hlint, in our own house with out own family, keep the city and the lands around it safe: why should I gamble this for becoming a member of the pack? I want to talk about this with you before I make a hasty decision. I love you, and all my hopes are that we are reunited again soon so I can hear your voice again and behold your beautiful face.

Forever yours
~Aden



~Unexpected visitors~

Like bad ingredients in a large pack of good, he should have expected it: the one inevitably incident of bad luck that makes everything so much more difficult; the branch breaking under your boot rendering a whole day of stalking useless.
It had been bound to happen eventually.

The first thing out of the regular state of affairs was the arrival of a group of elves from Voltrex. And as quickly as they appeared they had left again to search for a place to rest as far away from human settlements as possible. They had a lot to learn and ignorance to lose in his eyes, maybe they would, maybe they would not. They had hunted some goblins together and he offered his help to them. Nothing all to irregular. Listening to rumors indicated nothing that SHE would show up. And then there she was, without a prior warning.
Just like the exiles from Voltrex, he now too might lose his home in some sort of cruel, elaborate game that he neither was willing to play nor able to escape. He had to admit that she was good at what she was doing. Really good.
Aden finished cleaning his kit and decided to meditate for a while before answering any letters. Something had been cracked open.
Listening to the symphony, witness its eternal flow and swim in it with the grace of a dolphin. Dance, dive, your play unseen.

[Aphel]

He carefully sealed the letters and handed them over to the runner. A second set of letters would leave shortly via falcons, and he could only hope that they would reach their destinations fast. The letter was always the same, only with slightly different wording at times they pointed out the issue with all the dead animals, pointing out what the druid told him and he had been able to confirm many times himself.
Then he curled up in the inn room and tried to sleep. Tried.
...and black shadows crossing the sky above rain-gray faces with mud-soaked boots...
[INDENT]Half-awake, nightmares like childhood memories, nightmare childhood memories, cold sweat and black shadows crossing the sky...[/INDENT]

[Aphel]

He had practiced intuitive shooting in the morning. Climbed up a tree in the morning mist, balanced on a branch and looked outward over the land, one hand resting against the rough bark of the tree. He as well was now somehow rooted within soil and stretching towards the infinite sky above. Tranquility and a meditation about recent years, about Briardusk and the recent change in the land, about the Wolfswood and the Forest of Fog, about the Lake of Glass and about his heart. About Prantz and that dwarf and about The Graymaned Hunter and becoming invisible. And he had smiled, had returned home with a few more flower seeds he carefully planted in the earth next to the house -

That had been then, and this was now: a small but at least dry place, writing letters and notes and inquiries. Bad sleep at night, always on his toes – he always had the feeling that he was balancing on a roof in this kind of situation. Shifting his training back to strength and endurance again. Cleaned and fixed his gear.
Worried.
Listened.
Examined the soil.
Bought some parchment and a quill. Fell asleep over an empty page.

[Aphel]

Young Aden understood: there are rules to disappearing, just as there are rules on fighting and poetics. You can hide out in the open, if you want to. It is not a problem nor a miracle to be performed. If people do not want to see you, they do not see nor notice you. Move along with the colors and the sounds of the world, the great symphony of the things hidden to the normal eye – but young Aden swims in the tide of their ignorance, sees things that nobody else does. People fear the shadows because they feel vulnerable against the unknown, they fear the unknown – they like things to be out in the open at all times, yet they chose to seek bliss in ignorance.

I found that simple-minded and felt sorry for them. Their fear and hate bothered me, and I watched them from places, unseen, small. As long as I stayed hidden, I was protected from their ignorance, their expectations of how things should be. I could learn things that others overlooked and reduced the amount of pain and suffering created by the others day after day. I dreamed that I would one day be a guardian, unseen, unnoticed and unappreciated but caring about the space that I live in and the people that I live with in ways that others would never see or understand.

Young Aden trained with staffs – strengthen body and spirit, creating a harmony within himself. It was easier to get through life that way. Father said that he lacked vigor in combat and that he would never made a good and proud elvish warrior and that warriors never used dirty tactics, those were a sure sign of inferior brutes. Young Aden rejected this idea. Combat is a dispute of dominance, the worst and weakest of all ways to resolve conflict. A good warrior tries to make himself superfluous by working for peace – and father was wrong. Warriors are not scholars for peace that are able to write a better world into the land with their tools. Young Aden swam and hid in plain sight because they simply did not want to see him.

I shed too much blood and saw too much blood being shed. I nearly fell for their trap: I might be a Wolfswood Ranger now, I might feel like I need to be a mighty hunter – I am something very different alright. I do not hunt: I do not hunt because the weak and sick need to be removed from the herd, nor because I find pleasure in it or I need to provide food or protection. Isn't all of this ignorance?

Young Aden understood that if he used ignorance as a tool to work against ignorance, he would slip and fall. One cannot be entirely invisible and unnoticeable yet be a guardian at the same time. And young Aden learned that one can hide in the open by not hiding at all. Lose the attention and leave their minds by moving with the flow of all things in the right manner. To swim and navigate in these waters of perception, mental states and ignorance was comparable to dance to an unknown and ever-changing symphony like the one he heard outside one of the noble estates. Just a lot more complicated.

And that is what leads me here, then: to sit unnoticed, to see without being seen and to understand and study without studying. I am a Wolfswood Ranger, yet I am not solely that. I try to protect more and am in a conflict with ignorance, with those that believe themselves as superior to others and able to judge what is best for them or what those inferior can or can't do. Dominance is as much a weakness as being dominated. I might not be able to use the Al'Noth or the blessings of a deity for what I do, nor is my body able to fight what others think and expect I should be able to fight. My mind is not perfect and unshakable. I am a mortal, I am weak and irrelevant to most people in these lands. The task of my life is different from that of a hero, a dancer, a bard, a fighter, a scholar, a teacher. Some may call me ranger, sneak, hunter.
Am I a swimmer in their inattention, a guardian in the fringes of twilight? Yes, maybe metaphorically. Am I a Shadowdancer? No. Do I want to be one? No. Do I care about labels and words?
No.

When he was younger, he had always believed that fate and Folian had plans for him. It wasn't an obvious fate, but it was not what his parents wanted of him. It was something he did not know, nor could anybody else tell him. He moved with the flow, smiling a hidden smile. A rascal sometimes. Sometimes a good boy. And mostly he was himself, wondering about the odd and repulsive people around him that were yet so lovable still. Wrong guided, maybe. Ignorant. Lacking some understanding. Did not appreciate music – which didn't make them brutes, no, it was their greed for something as worthless as trues that made them brutes. Workers in a bee-hive, short-lived, obeying their masters for small worthless trinkets to keep them in line. Not that there was that much wrong with that, but the young mostly unseen boy wasn't very fond of tyrannies, oppression and similar wastes of time, lives and splendid good ideas. But there was so much that he could do simply by being mostly ignored. Loud voices of leaders would always lose against the low whisper on the edge of your mind, the small experiences and small good deeds.

All questions and little answers, tragedies all around.
Yet here we are.

[Aphel]

He rolled off the couch and noticed that the floorboards lacked the colors and cracks he knew but were just as hard, despite the carpet. It had a foreign smell, clean and neat and somehow lacking something. It sounded differently when carefully drummed on with fingertips.
 Aden stretched lazily, then pulled his legs to his body and jumped on his feet.
 The floorboard creaked.
 Meh. He needed to try that again.


    Strange shadows early in the morning. Rural scenes outside, lacking the mist he was used to. It appeared warmer, somehow yellowish and unreal.
 Port Hempstead. Right. He stretched again and reached for his boots. Angel's Guild. Shop. That much for being aware of his surroundings for the most part. It was a morning that lacked the aftertaste of a blackberry dream, and Aden was somehow happy about tasting the lack of stale professionalism and such.
 New keys.
 Right.
 Now. Where did he put that...oh, apple! - ah, there was the hairbrush. Why did he carry an apple in his satchel? Getting some cold clean water was remarkably easy, but he noticed the lack of half-asleep guards pacing up and down at snail speed. It was one of the mornings he would wake Brea with breakfast in bed – and a piece of cloth soaked with cold water, if need be. How she could not notice her familiar scratching at the door way earlier in the morning was a mystery to Aden.
 Right. The Angel's had a dog...Spot? Yes, that was his name.
 Aden geared up and drew his blades, dancing slowly first. Jump. Dance. Move with the flow here, the gray-yellow silk morning. Dance with instinct and passion. Tiptoe, swirl, flip to the symphony of life and death and time. Did make little sound, enjoying the flow of things and the flow of his own movement. He felt the world.
 
Breanna.

[Aphel]

He couldn't fall asleep, not even now. To many things raced in his head, in his veins, in the beat of his heart. Ridiculous if he thought about it, he never felt so sentimental and serious at the same time. Maybe it was because she was so close. The cadence of her breath, the sound of her sleeping and dreaming. Opening his eyes a bit, he looked at her silhouette in the dim twilight. There were things beyond shape and sound, and he felt that their love was one of the most amazing gifts he had been given and was able to give.  
 Symphony, a mayor movement in there somewhere for sure. he thought. So many things happened, but now, nothing of that mattered. For a short while, nothing would. Or very little. Not that she was seeking harmony with everybody again, not that she... for a moment, the thought send hot irons into his back. Aden shifted uncomfortably.  
 When sleep finally settled in, he realized how much weight had fallen of his shoulders in the last few hours. He had pushed himself through the webs. Now, things felt remarkable peaceful and good.
 Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would get up, make breakfast and then wake her softly.

[Aphel]

He needed new blades. A new bow. Arrows. And more, much more training. And on the other hand, he'd be the first to stop adventuring altogether and become a craftsmen and a hunter. But on the other hand, Duchess and Nym and  their masters were still out there, being annoying discords. Not the major ones, but still discords.
 He closed his eyes, focused on his breathing and the sounds and movements of his surroundings. The thing was: they weren't even discords. Just silence. A silence that should not be, like the absence of life in a forest. With all their puppeteering games for dominance and revenge and other silly things – really? It was all that drove them, like so many others. Purposeless, in the end, since everybody had to die eventually, and all which had been gained in life was nothing but mere piles of rubble. No matter what kind of monument they reached for – the teeth of time, the endless circle of birth, life, destruction and rebirth would take their toll.
 So all he really could do for now was to train, to get better. And then take care of packs and hunting grounds that were much more larger than the forest, the lush meadows and the orchards, the couples and families and towns. He had dreamed of his parents again a while ago. Of being a parent. Life for now. Stand. Fight. Defend others and yourself.


    He found the blades without opening his eyes and got up slowly. Move with the flow of your surroundings, but do not drift. The Flow, the symphony of his environment – by day after day passing to never return, both precious and painful moments, his understanding grew. It was just another thing: he ate, he drank, he slept, he dreamed, he loved and he was part of the flow.


    The blades cut the air with slow movement, but he could hear the air hissing around it louder and louder as he increased the speed of his movements.
 A floorboard creaked.
 Breanna wouldn't come home so early, and he opened his eyes just a bit -
 the floorboard next to the window, the one already bleached by the sun.

[Aphel]

So they made that decision at last. Why now? He wondered if he was afraid, afraid of death and their future. But wasn't that life? Finite, short, full of miracles, beauty and pain. Oh, if only!
 He balanced with one feet on the dead tree and smiled. What could he want more than a healthy, happy wife and a healthy, happy and screaming, grinning, cute and tyrannical child?
 But was it possible at all?  


    No.


    But worth a try.


    Pit Moths, Vil'Larie-thingies with attitude issues and pointy horns, Dark Elves – an ongoing shadow war. And his sweet was so entangled with them, bound to trying for friendship. A slippery slope – they would merciless exploit the weakness. That was how it was. And they, if he and Brea had a child, if it survived – they would take it, or at least try to. Play the pain and suffer game. And he and his heart would need to play along, one way or another.  


    He would make a pilgrimage to the Den. And ask Folian for guidance and blessings in two things:
 To be a good father.
 And to be a warrior to protect his pack.  


    He would leave a simple arrow behind – the shaft was rough, nearly a branch still with a stone head that had taken ages to made properly and a rugged raven feather. It was the seventh arrow that should have gone into his quiver. The Fang, if one counted the wolf's teeth.

[Aphel]

It  was getting increasingly difficult to get the training he needed. Sure, he continued the physical exercise and the combat drill that he had been shown with the Wolfswood Rangers, but that was not enough. Long travels with others were educational as well, but of little use for training and practicing certain skills. Like hiding, sneaking, tumbling – Moving with the flow – to  the thing he heard when listening closely in silence.
 He noticed  that he had accustomed to be quiet and silent and keep out of sight and mostly trouble, too – despite his pointy ears and small build, despite the signs that he was a man of the wilds, he was seldom if ever noticed in cities. And blending in was easy, the Angels Guild gave him enough opportunity to slip into various roles and clothes to veil who he truly was. On the other hand, there was little to no security in obscurity.  
 The crafting was soothing, seeing the world, taking in the beauty, the intrinsic complexity of things. But still, he worried and payed close and very close attention to perfect his training. Breanna troubled him with her beautiful and sweet heart, but it was scary for him that she befriended her torturers. Duchess was a puppeteer, a masterful on top of it. She knew he could do nothing against her, and that he as well was another of the buttons that she could push if she wanted to force Breanna to do something that would benefit her dark kin's endeavors. She was a influential person, no single gang member or cutthroat he could observe and neutralize.
 Much time had passed since he first noticed the woman in green at the side of the road, since he first talked to her because of that priest of Pyrtechon. Threats, too. He survived some and succumbed to others, but such was life. He always managed to somehow get out in time, and he thanked Folian for it.  
 But it was not enough to just survive. And the surge of Dark Elven activity troubled him, made him realize by now that he had not the training he needed for countering such surge with efficient and careful cuts. There was power in information and power in blades, and there was power in the shade. He would walk all three paths to perfection if Folian would allow it. What would somebody say that knew about his plans, about the task the had set for himself?
 But you are unsuited and untrained, and you have obligations to attend to, you can't do this -
 

 This is my path through life.
 

 That night, he first dreamed since long about creatures made of shadow, half wolf half men, and they were hunting, striking with utter fury yet leaving nothing but silence and more shadow behind. They filled the heart of their enemies with dread, yet those they protected knew nothing of them. Like ghosts they moved, and his grandfather was with them. They were the Graymane's fangs, and with their hunts they revered him.

[Aphel]

Myths of a curse of the destroyer that brunt people from the inside out and strange deaths. Whispers of Dark Elves walking on the surface: at first, Silkwood, but that was then, back then. He should write Master Enzo.
 And he should make arrows, some silver tipped.
 And he should ask for them to be blessed by those of the pack.

[Aphel]

He needed training and a shroud of shadows if things continued like this. The Deep, it was always the Deep. Duchess, that spider. It was only later that he realized how much he hated them – when they fell to the blades, arrows and the magic, when the blood was rushing trough his veins and throbbing in his temples, making him feel alive, very alive. And once it was over the wolfish thirst for blood and vengeance vanished as well into the hidden recesses of his spirit to not be seen again.  
 Sure, they were trespassing on their hunting grounds, yet, could he let them live with goodness in his heart? Breanna would never forgive him, but that was beside the point – just as much as the surface bred corrupted and twisted souls along those fine and good people – he knew they thought he was nothing more than an object, trash, low creature simply by his birth. And all because of a feud that was fueled by dark deities and even darker mantras. "Ohhh, we need to be evil". Or, in some cases, they tried to infiltrate with "Ohh, we need shelter, we are so hunted and hated by our own kin!" - nothing against the A'zattans tho, that was a different lot of people.  
 Why did they even bother with their feud? Why did they bother with all that stupid stuff? Because it was ingrained into them, enforced by the way their society was set up. Nonsensical waste of time. As if there weren't any better things to do. And he had to understand and evade and dodge and harass and fight them, so they would not ruin everything like too many rabbits could ruin a landscape.  
 He decided that it had been an utterly confuse idea to go to the Deep in the first place. The long travels, sure, the new places and the people he traveled with. But now he understood that he couldn't fight against the Deep, or that he should go there. Seal up all entries and be done with it. And yet, where to get certain resources from? By their greed alone, the surface needed the Deep. And the Deep needed the surface for slaves and as a place to bring terror to.
 To put it mildly, it was a situation he didn't like at all. Period. Maybe he should go search for a place far away: something with a sea and trees, a reclusive valley. Enough land for a pack to hunt and life from. Be happy or at least content. No matter how hard they struggled, exactly that was the carrot in front of them. Run, donkey, run.
 

 Aden reached for his pack. There were things to build and craft, places to observe, people to find. There was brutal training to be done and feet dangled into calm lakes. Every time he went out he was becoming something different, just as he was different around Elohanna and Breanna and others. But it was fine, he guessed. The walk of life. Whatever.  
 The trees sung of bees and insects dancing in the hot air, radiant gold-red fuzzy dots around the pale and crumpling blossoms. A day had passed, losing its heat and preparing for the night. His tunic was soaked after a few miles or so, his feet sore.  
 Beyond the horizon, the boy believed, there were flying cities and giant talking trees, humming softly to those that were willing to listen. No mean people, no need to hide, no hunger and no beatings. The boy knew that all the wisdom of the world was out there, not in the books they kept tidily in their shelves to hide their scars behind dried ink on parchment. There were salmons glittering in the rivers, and great many mysteries of life to uncover and understand – and all was singing and playing a song to him, back then. He remembered. The music of the rich was poor in comparison, simple-minded and thin.

[Aphel]

He studied the threads, the spools and the looms for a day or so. The music, the subtle changes in the symphony. Gone. It wasn't particularly frustrating – it was! - but at least he knew something about his enemy and his fellow adventurers and people. It seemed that security was a lable, that was it. Maybe his skills needed improvement. So who should he turn to?  
 Folian, what are you asking of me, this is turning into something ridiculous.
 And so he returned with the bad news. You never catch a spy in such cases, he told himself, they'd kill themselves rather.
 And yet he still felt obliged to prevent such things, to hunt these things. Paranoia, maybe. Maybe another case of sloppy security, sloppy guards and sloppy thinking. Sloppy observing on his part, too. Maybe he was too polite and should be more rude. Whatever. The damage was overseeable. He found it scary that such things was so easy possible. What if it had been a follower of...unleashing madness in a city like this? Spellgard, all, would be gone. All it needed were a couple of determined people with a plan.  
 Well.
 To defend it, it was the same. Just reversed. No torture, no cruelty. Just calm observation and thinking. Dancing. Listening. And howling when the last minute of their prey's life slowly ticked away.  
 That night, he dreamed of wolves made from shadows of old oaks' leaves in summer.

[Aphel]

He carefully poured the boiling glass into the special mold, watching how the colors shifted while it cooled down slowly. Alright, off with the gloves then. While it was cooling, he could remove the already cooled enchantment rods from their molds, a delicate task that required a lot of feeling in one's fingertips.
  Working was a fine way to ease racing thoughts from their circular tracks and direct them into new avenues previously unseen. Some were short cuts, other prolonged the path. No matter. He had time for now, and the work was helping the thinking quite a bit.
  I can go past Tier One now, probably.
  His skills in tailoring had improved, and with his own clothes that he could make it was now possible for him to design roles he could switch to. Clothes make people. It was the most basic deception, part of the body language. He needed to practice various roles. Learn to speak different accents, study them, study local lore and trivialities. And still, it was just Tier One. People who knew the area and the dialect could still notice him easily. Past that was Tier Two. Tier Three was going past magical means of detection undetected, becoming a ghost.
 

  During the last years his abilities to remain unseen had improved. He had tinkered a bit with his gear: remove things that clank or clink, things that reflect. That had been basic ranger training. Known to him already, and he remembered episodes back then.
  There was more to hiding and sneaking than to wear the appropriate gear, the right way to move and the right way to smear dirt in one's face. The key was to understand surroundings and perception, to understand the symphony, the complexity of things. Patterns that flowed, emerged out of nothing if one tried to understand instead of just seeing and thinking – like a melody in a symphony, a single tone that made one understand the whole.
  There were things hidden in his backpack now: roughspun nets made of sturdy threads, pieces of torn cloth of various color. He tried it out, not to long ago, on a stalk. The pieces of torn cloth wrapped around his bow to destroy the elegant, smooth silhouette of it, the net fixed to his armor and used to fix leaves, grass, twigs and other things into place. It even had somewhat of a hood. And he'd looked like a hulking part of the landscape. One had to move slowly, but it'd be good for scouting.  
  And ambushes.
 

  He just had to find a way to escape the other, non-visual senses of other creatures. Some spiders had a sense for tiny hints of vibrations that heralded the presence of prey or enemy. Some creatures were able to detect by smell, and some, so their instructor had said, could detect the heat of bodies. And then there were those with otherworldly senses. He should talk with a more seasoned ranger or druid about that, maybe. At least with magical means it should be possibly to move undetected around them, or at least somewhat. There was a difference between not being seen and not being noticed. And, of course, between being stupid and being smart. Maybe he should put his in- and exfiltration skills to a test on a couple of missions with Jil. See what he could learn from her. And then do a survival month, just him, some simple clothes, a knife.
 

The forge hissed and asked for more sand.