#ch: andre

[dailymlgifs]

[soulsfromfire-blog]

Andre mutters a guttural curse –– ah, y’little buggers –– and tugs free a heavyset leather boot from the snares of weeds. The Royal Wood’s overrun with the blighters, suffocating sprig and bud, and he’s swift to decide against venturing further into its lush madness. There’s dreaded forces beyond this undercroft, bizarre and arcane wards of any who cherish their sanity. Best not pry into this plane, grand pity though it is. There’s a smith out in that forsaken wilderness, but his whereabouts have been privy to few, excluding Andre. He’s hoped to study his divine embers, maybe ascend a few stray weapons himself, but self-betterment isn’t worth the pretty price of trespassing these fiendish woods. All this is beyond his humble ken.

Peering through the ominous vegetation, Andre spies distant, spindly-limbed silhouettes and lumbering monoliths of creatures he’s grateful not to have irked. Shudders down to the bone, they cause, imagining what accursed manner what moulded them from life’s clay. Shudders.

Hammer in hand, and doing his utmost not to reveal just how despondent he is at his tentative retreat, Andre maunders back into the crypt. It’s not defeat, he assures himself, it’s just wasted opportunity. My, if he wielded the strength of the Lords, or one of those Knights of Gwyn, why, he’ll wager he should cleave a long and coursing artery away into the earth with his intrigues. It’s just there’s something lingering out in that Wood, a dormant peril unspeakable among the Undead, and he’ll have no part in it. He slings the hammer over his shoulder, brewing up a fine whistle between chapped lips to waft away the overcast mood. 

There’s business to be done, and his hammer-face is getting cooler by the minute.

@abysstaken