The birds have fallen silent.
There is no low crooning of sleek-backed shades, no bright-blue trilling, and lulling, mourning drones. That’s been the one constant since Odhrán has come upon this land: colliding into sleet and ivory powder, into a penetrating, peremptory gaze and a dark figure he could only vaguely recall amidst the ache of straining limbs and the foggy hue of fatigue obscuring his vision.
He’s no stranger to exhaustion: weeks spent scouring infinite hinterlands, trawling upon monolithic structures, crumbling beneath his wearied feet, and trudging atop dry, crackling wastelands with no chance for respite.
Not when monsters roam, not while his heart beats.
(However slow, however worn, however longing).
And this world has its fair share of land to trek through. The cold peaks and chill air giving way to life: meadows bursting with blush-pink stalks, squat, wind-swept hedges abloom with fragrant flora, arches forming an array of deep indigos to citrus-bright yellows, and crawling, hungering vines greedily staking its claiming upon debilitating stone and root alike.
Yet this sickly green mist, furling throughout the aged hollow, seeping with despair, oozing a wrenching lament, soiled—this is not life. No, this is a disease.
This is an infection.
It floods his throat, his eyes, his being with agony, searing through the soft tissue, infusing its torment, its suffering, its pain.
No, that pain, that miserable wailing ringing in his ears, is not his own.
Everything in Odhrán’s body—new, strange, but it's his, and it holds his craft still and blaring loud in warning—snaps taut: wound in an invisible string, and as the keen pitches, drops, evens into a compelling murmur, he stumbles forth.
This is no end, not the dissent that brought him into this realm's clutches; this is a beginning.
He does not hope that this one will be kinder.
There is no low crooning of sleek-backed shades, no bright-blue trilling, and lulling, mourning drones. That’s been the one constant since Odhrán has come upon this land: colliding into sleet and ivory powder, into a penetrating, peremptory gaze and a dark figure he could only vaguely recall amidst the ache of straining limbs and the foggy hue of fatigue obscuring his vision.
He’s no stranger to exhaustion: weeks spent scouring infinite hinterlands, trawling upon monolithic structures, crumbling beneath his wearied feet, and trudging atop dry, crackling wastelands with no chance for respite.
Not when monsters roam, not while his heart beats.
(However slow, however worn, however longing).
And this world has its fair share of land to trek through. The cold peaks and chill air giving way to life: meadows bursting with blush-pink stalks, squat, wind-swept hedges abloom with fragrant flora, arches forming an array of deep indigos to citrus-bright yellows, and crawling, hungering vines greedily staking its claiming upon debilitating stone and root alike.
Yet this sickly green mist, furling throughout the aged hollow, seeping with despair, oozing a wrenching lament, soiled—this is not life. No, this is a disease.
This is an infection.
It floods his throat, his eyes, his being with agony, searing through the soft tissue, infusing its torment, its suffering, its pain.
No, that pain, that miserable wailing ringing in his ears, is not his own.
Everything in Odhrán’s body—new, strange, but it's his, and it holds his craft still and blaring loud in warning—snaps taut: wound in an invisible string, and as the keen pitches, drops, evens into a compelling murmur, he stumbles forth.
This is no end, not the dissent that brought him into this realm's clutches; this is a beginning.
He does not hope that this one will be kinder.
Odhrán is a work in progress and will be susceptible to character inconsistencies as he continues to develop. Please be patient with me; thank you!