bathory
man of iron
I have paced these forests for so long I don't know if I am man or I am beast. I, though, hold deep within me a quest for revenge. Then I must be a man as much as I can be. I have learned to speak the tongue of the animal I have learned to read the signs in bark and snow. I have taken within myself the spirits of my fathers, long time gone. In this short time, far from home, a man of Iron I've grown. A man of Iron I have grown. A part of the eternal woods Late evening "Just after sunset on his way back to his camp after watching the sun unite with the mountains in the west, he sees the flickering of light between the tree trunks. Approaching, he sees an old man sitting calmly by a fire, as if waiting for him. His left eye missing. His beard as if gold. The signs on his cloak and hood familiar. The one eyed old man matches the description of the soothsayer, as told by the elders of his village by the fires at night when he only a child. The boy, now a young man, eager to know, asks the one eyed old man about his dreams. Dreams he cannot understand. Dreams about strange things he is seeing himself doing. Then the winds that seem to talk to him. Voices that whisper to him behind his back. The one eyed old man tells him of the cycles of the stars, of the trail of fate and of the valley where time and space had ceased to exist... where his world ends and the shadows begin. The one eyed old man tells the young man that fate has chosen him to interfere with the other world. The disturbance is already made. The daughters of the four winds have sold themselves to the shadows, distorting the balance of the universe. And the one eyed old man says he has seen him come for a thousand years, and that the aging gods have told him to teach him all that he has ever known and to prepare him to ride beyond his world and into the shadows as their champion to restore the balance. To his aid he shall be given a sword forged when this world was young. He shall be guarded and guided by two ravens, and he shall ride the eight-legged stallion of his fathers' god. He will encounter the Woodwoman, and he will make a visit to the Lake. One hundred days and one hundred nights his training shall be hard. And this very night it will already have begun. And thus he had met the One Eyed old Man..."