The sky above is cloudy, strokes of lightning occasionally illuminate them, creating a light show that is both dazzling, driving your anxiousness for what is coming, and yet comforting. You know the rain will follow, and somehow you think of the soothing feeling you will be embraced by, looking forward for that feeling against your form. As intimidating as the storm seems, forever prepared to encroach, it never reaches you, wild and natural, and also denying you the comfort you hope for for now ... in time, in all due time. The breeze, however still heralds its coming, brushing past you gently enough as it drifts over the area you're in, treating you much like a rock in the river, not forcefully pushing you along, but gliding around you in a steady breeze.
The surrounding area seems to have the mountains of Ilsalbard standing in vigilance around you, but no formation seems to match anywhere familiar, but the snow topped reaches seem to linger at the edge of the clouds, as its rocky face crawls out to below into the valley below, where this place is nestled. As much as trapping this place in a persistent lock of time, it also feels to protect it from the outside, lights barely visible at the edges of the mountains suggest you are not alone here, yet the mountains bar too much advancement, your jailer and your guardian.
A path you follow to this point seems to go on forever, even if it is not yours, it feels familiar. Scattered along it are items, objects that incur faint memories, some as insignificant as a fly to your ear, others more profound, but all have been moved on from. The hatchet in the soil, it was your first, you went to training with it. The broken sword, the first blade to serve you, and your first weapon to take a life, shattered and discarded. The memories go on, most long left to history. But along this path, you come to a circular structure, walls as high as the shoulder, strewn with defenses, it's an encampment for battle, but it looks abandoned. Yet you can hear them, voices in the air, dim yet still audible, singing a chant or song, gutteral as much as it has rhythm, a song you swear you know eager to add your voice among them one more time, but like the faded voices, your tongue fails to bring words to this tune. Among the battle prep, the tents and equipment, there are banners and flags, piled up at one end like discarded, broken gear, each one burned and torn. You feel you could recall each one, but so many have stood here as the testament of your current loyalties, but all have ended up like this, some so faded, you can barely recall why it stood there to begin with, yet as you stare at them, there's a profound sense of loss, a listlessness that makes every step forward harder than the last, yet ... you cannot feel despair hold you for long. Yet despite the stark reminders of these losses, the encampment feels as much as a comforting home as any other, it -is- your home, ever ready to pack up and leave, as you can see the path on the other side stretching out and beckoning to continue your march.
Among it all, you spot a few pieces, carefully set about, things you just remember of those you connected with. A battle axe here, a harness, a smell, or even a voice: Friends, mentors, brothers in arms, intimates, yet among them all there is one, nestled aside and covered in torn, battle worn tent cloth. Just staring at it gives you sense of longing and pain as the cloth drifts in the breeze, but never raises fully, giving just subtle hints of what lies beneath. Dried crimson still lingers beneath it, and as your hand reaches out to pull the cloth aside, there is a shuddering sense of dread, that if pulling it aside would shatter the camp. Your hand curls back slowly in hesitation as you keenly become aware that the voices, the sounds, even the very wind has gone still around you as you dare to desecrate the rest of what lies beneath. Stepping back, leaving the morbid display be, lost among the other items, life seems to come back to this encampment. But feeling that you have discovered as much as you should, the opening at the other end of the encampment beckons ... beyond it, the sounds of hearty battle cries, the thrum of the drum, and the unified roar of the charging host. Despite your comfort in the encampment, there's a magnetic draw to this, your feet almost move on their own ... yet you linger, like there's always business unfinished.
