#ealwar

It's quiet now.

Your ears have finally stopped ringing from that horrible scream let out by the... well, what was once a Ranger. You're not sure exactly what the Northerner's made of him, but you hesitate to call him human anymore.

The muscles in you legs ache terribly from crouching in that dark corner, but you haven't dared to move an inch. It's been hours, maybe, since that elf came through and released the mad Ranger and- and... Edd and Walt tried to protect you from her.

You tried to tell them to hide with you, but they were too scared or too stupid or too brave to risk letting you be found, so they tried to fight off the elf.

But you remained hidden, even after you heard them both cut down by the elf like it was nothing. Even after you heard the elf fight her way back through the front entrance and silence once again fell over the hideout.

You didn't help them of course, useless girl that you are, and they're dead like all the others. You think your father was right about you.

Edd and Walt didn't want to die for this cause. They joined the Blackwolds for freedom, to live as their own masters, not to be drafted into the Northerner's war. They were planning to desert either tomorrow or the next day, and to take you with them. You were going to find some new path for yourselves, maybe even give honest work another shot seeing as this whole brigandry thing wasn't working out, but those hopes are all gone now.

It's just you now. Lone, cowardly, survivor.

More hours pass. You're too terrified to move. You think nothing of danger lingers here, but that's not what you're afraid of.

You know that just beyond this stack of crates you've wedged yourself behind, the corpses of your only two friends in the world lay waiting for you, skin greyed and eyes clouded and faces frozen in terror. You cannot bring yourself to look, you cannot bring yourself to move. You cry a little. Alright, you cry a lot. You quietly sob until your eyes burn and your head is pounding.

You don’t think they wanted you to die down here, even though you suppose you deserve it. You’re going to have to leave eventually, and face the grisly sight of your failure. You take a sharp breath, a vain attempt to steel yourself, before crawling out from your hiding place an struggling to shaky feet.

There they are, just as you expected to find them. Edd is face down in the pool of their mingled blood, his rusty blade still gripped tightly in his hand. You think it’s some small mercy that you cannot see his face too, for just the sight of Walt’s is almost enough to break you. As his clouded eyes stare vacancy past you, you try to remember how they looked earlier today, filled with light as he sung tales of near-forgotten heroes and grand adventurers to you and Edd by the fire, taking your minds off the darkness of the last few weeks. But you can’t remember it so well now. You think this sight will never leave your mind.

Their wounds are clean but deep. It looks like the elf killed them with ruthless efficiency, and they did not suffer long at least. You try to take some comfort in that, but you just feel sick instead.

You don’t want to leave them down here, to let their bodies be food for rats and whatever other manner of creatures find their way down from the marsh, but you are not strong enough to carry their bodies anywhere else.

Somehow you manage to find more tears to cry. Your eyes still burn. They don’t deserve this. They at least deserve a proper burial but you can’t even give them that. You take some blankets from the nearby cots and cover their lifeless bodies, the most dignity you have the means to give them in death.

Your eyes fall to Walt’s lute and Edd's drum laying there near them. The lute was damaged beyond repair in the fighting, but the drum seems to be in tact. Part of you thinks it should be left with Edd, but another part of you doesn’t want to leave it for whatever scavengers come down here to loot the bodies, so with trembling hands you pick it up and stow it in your pack.

You tell them both you are sorry. They cannot hear you, and they cannot forgive you.

You silently make your way up to the main cavernous room you used as a common area, stepping over more bodies. At least these did not belong to your friends. You think every single person in the hideout besides you is dead. It's what you thought, but seeing it first hand is... You want to get out of here. Now.

You heard the 'Ranger' screech again from the front entrance shortly after the elf left that way. You're not going back out that way. Instead you turn to your left, making for the secret exit in the back of Skunkwood's makeshift throne-room.

Speaking of Skunkwood, you find his body in the threshold, killed in the same clean way everyone else was. You can't say you feel sorry for him, you never liked the way he looked at you, but you do feel sorry for his two hounds lying dead next to him. He raised them to be vicious killers, and they were very mean dogs, but none of them deserved the treatment he put those poor beasts through.

You pick through Skunkwood's pockets and find a small bag of coins. If he had more riches from Angmar, he didn't carry it with him and you're not sticking around to look for it. This should at least be enough to put you up in a tavern for a few nights, and maybe buy some supplies.

You slip out past Skunkwood's 'throne', as usual trying to ignore the alarmingly large piles of skulls surrounding it, and climb your way up above ground. It's still technically night, but the sky is beginning to get a little lighter.

Near the entrance you find Skunkwood's mare tethered to a stump. She seems a little spooked, you guess she heard all the screeching even up here, but she's had a few hours to calm down now so she lets you approach.

She's a well-tempered horse, and lets you mount her without much convincing. You don't think she belonged to Skunkwood for very long, all his animals ended up mean or skiddish.