#burning shield

The sand was still, more so than normal. It was cold and lightly shifting under his bare feet. Darkened by the night sky the desert stretch seemed bare and without life, but couldn't be further from the truth.

What seemed like an army of forms stood behind him. Taller, and with an imposing figure, was Tahnk- leader of these brutish tol'vir. He had but one present and working ear, and scar tissue surrounding his mouth. His clothes of choice were sheets of fabric draping on his frame, held by jeweled bands. With a single throw of a hand, the tol'vir behind him stopped.

“Your clothes,” grumbled Tahnk. “Are not suited for this environment in the evening.”

Facing him, alone, was a single man. He had a red goatee, which showed from the opening in his hood, but everything else was covered in thin robes. A chuckle left his mouth, then a sigh. “I'm not planning on this meeting being long.”

The chuckle was not reciprocated, nor well received. Tahnk grunted back and shifted to firmly root his place in the sand. “It will go until you can prove to me your word will be kept.”

The cloaked figure began rooting through the various pouches in his pocket. After a few moments, he produced a small nut and grinned. “I've got it, Tahnk.” With wide eyes the tol'vir reached his hand out, but was responded to by the figure pulling back. “Ah ah ah- you'll get it when the job is done.”

The unease and confusion in Tahnk's troops made up for the lack of wind blowing through. None were sure of what the strange seed meant, or why it was the terms- but none would ask.

Tahnk sneered at him and stepped back. “I don't think you understand who you are enlisting with this deal.”

“The troops or their leader?”

“Both.”

Another chuckle from the hooded one. “Tell me, then.”

Unease was apparently to be the theme. The tol'vir troops knew the story of their leader, and that story alone was why they fell behind him.

Finally, a smirk on Tahnk's face. “If it's my story you want, it's my story you'll get.

I have walked these sands for centuries. I once served as a protector of ancient relics, like many of my people. But the life of a guardian does not suit us all.

All my life I have been attuned with the battlefield. Where kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall. Where heroes are made and broken all within the course of a fight. The Titans, however, did not create my ancestors to perpetuate violence. The lust of combat is not unique, or rare. It reaches even the most righteous eventually- it is whether or not that lust is sated that separates them. I was to be sure my thirst for the fight was quenched.

There were others like me. Many of them, in fact, who felt they had no place among those that wanted to live placidly. Tranquility did nothing to soothe our souls. Still lakes did not bring us peace; but bloodied ground did. We grouped together and originally sought to do work still for the people we had no place with by hunting down criminals. We were successful, until we messed with the wrong one:

The leader of our village.

Once defenders were sent to find us and kill us all. Guardians became mercenaries for the supposed protector of the people we knew; and with politics in his control, we became the villains in the eyes of our people.

I succeeded one night. I was able to sneak into his home, where I killed him at his window. From that moment I knew any honor built in me was gone. When I saw the satisfaction on my followers' faces, it was clear the same was for them.

We turned to crime and for centuries we were a force to be reckoned with. We toppled villages and even destroyed criminal efforts; only for us to take whatever stolen goods they had for our own supply. Fortunes were amassed, and our name was one that struck fear into anyplace we walked by.

I left for a woman, and the group was disbanded.

She birthed four cubs within the decades we shared. Life was peaceful and I, too, enjoyed it that way.

The night I returned home to find my wife and all but one child dead and nailed to my wall, with a message for me in blood, I lost control.

The leader of the village in which we lived was the son of the leader I had killed before, and he was out for revenge. He sent guardians to take and break me in his basement. They forced stakes through my forearms and sides into the wall and ripped my tail from my back. Hot coals were the resting place of my feet, and to ensure I could never hear them coming from the stairs my ear was slit, then slowly pulled off my head. Since they wanted no mess, they used a coal to burn it inside and out. When they grew tired of my screams, they used a metal rod, hot and glowing nearly yellow, to melt the flesh around my mouth and force it shut. More torture ensued, but I do not care to relive it.

This continued for one year. I was broken, and awaited death. My spirit was crushed and left nothing behind but a beaten, bloodied husk of my former fighting spirit. I had no reason to continue, or lift my head, until my infant daughter was brought to me.

A poisoned fruit was in the hands of the man who held her; the man who imprisoned me. When I saw my child drink from the fruit, my thirst for blood returned.

I ripped my arms from the wall and gripped the man beside the one with my child. My time in there had let my claws grow to uncomfortable lengths; I used the man's skull to hold and rip the claws from my hands. I freed my torso and took the other guard and forced him onto the coals to become my walkway. It was then I realized my feet no longer had feeling.

The fear in the village leader's eyes is to this day still the most energizing thing I had ever felt. He handed me my daughter in fear, who I sat on the table. He tried running for the ladder but I tackled and brought him to the ground.

His pleading and begging only fed my rage. When I grew sick of it, I forced the flesh binding my jaws to tear, and gave his mouth the same destruction he had given me.

When he was unable to move any longer, I left him for dead and took my sick child from that village, never to return.”

The desert was more silent now than when they had arrived. Not a single centimeter of movement came from either his troops, or the man he now faced.

After a few minutes, the man started. “When-”

“That was only one year ago.” Tahnk scowled. “We either make this deal here, or you don't leave this desert alive.”

Finally, a wide grin on the man's face. He nodded and extended a hand. “You'll get your reward when the job is done.”

Tahnk nodded. “I get my reward, or I get your head.”

“Let's get to work then, shall we?”