Heavy leaden steps crush the crust of the everwinter all about him, slowly walking alone the the dark footpaths of his youth, night of the moonwood extending forever in all directions. Closer each step brought him, closer to the far away. The I Stone lay ahead. The I Stone and his dark homecoming.
The merciless ring of steel sundered the silence of the most holy of Uthgardt places. "Who is dead man who tresspass on Uthgardt lands? Speak tin-man, or draw weapons!" Spoken in his savage native tongue. The warrior before him stood tall and proud, unyeilding to the harsh winds and snows that cut straight through to the bone and chilled the soul.
Seva paused for a good long moment as he sized up the young guardian before him. "I am Seva, son of Takeo of the Six-Blades follow our laws as you must, but I will pass through here yah." Seva's voice calm, smoothe as a river stone and twice as serious as a knife.
The pregnant silence was beckoning violence, Seva was eager to oblidge it but the young warrior yeilded. "We knew you would come. You will be allowed to mourn." The warrior turned and allowed Seva to pass without another word said.
It stretched before him, ancient and savage, an angry spike that attacked the sky above, The I Stone, full of forboding and woe. Seva bowed his head and slowly walked forward on legs of lead.
Spans and spans of burial mounds, the long dead of families past and present stretched before him in the cold inky night. He walked forever days backwards to a place seen in nightmares, to a place not meant for the eyes of anyone. Forever walking onward in the bleak gloom of the moonwoods, in the despair of the burial mounds.
Breathing was slower now, his heart beat a low rumble in his ribs. His head raised, he was where he needed to be. He saw them. The graves of his children twice taken. The snow fell slowly to the earth glistening in the melancholy of the night, and Seva stood motionless stopped in time.
The truth of the sight before him cracked open his mind like a diamond striking an eggshell. He saw their tiny shoes, their wooden swords and axes, the memories of his brief time when they were his children and not propety of his brother. Seva collapsed to the ground before his dead sons.
His voice a low rasp, he struggled to say anything. "Forgive me my sons," Seva paused, " Forgive me my precious treasures for what I have brought upon you. Forgive me..... I failed you." Tears slowly ran like spring melt from Seva's large eyes as he wept in silence at the foot of his son's tiny graves. "Where have you gone? Where have you gone? I want to see you again. Come back my blue eyed sons."
The snow fell softly there bearing silent witness to Seva's anguish. He rose slowly, donned his helm, and slid his numb hands into his guantlets. "It will never end...." The voice hammering hard in his mind. Seva drew his hands to his ears. "You killed them and you know it....guilty....guilty...guilty...go do what you were born to do....Cannot save them but you can save yourself....Go on killer.....kill for me killer....kill them all killer...." Seva shook his head violently, he drew his steel.
"There is no wrong. There is no right. No good no bad. There only is. If its violence they want.......I will give them something special...with this ounce of pain I will wield a ton of rage" He thought to himslef. "Something new is coming over me...."
