As far as the eye could see, there was only carnage and savagery. Violence in its purest form. Bodies atop bodies were piled higher than the hills and deeper than the valleys, but the war-mongering hordes were moving slowly; as if they were tired of the constant combat and bloodshed, yet had no other choice. This was their life and long ago, they had acceded to that terrible fate.

A single thought held his eyes on the scene before him: Hunger of glory hath got hold the land.

There was no glory to be won here anymore. No hunger save that in the bellies of the children left to fend for themselves amongst the corpses, prying free what few morsels and scraps they could. They scrounged up bits of existence and life like the carrion birds who circled above, looking for the freshest kills.

There was no purpose to be served here save for that of death and murder. None that he could conceive of needing this course of action to attain.

Eidri knew this and it disturbed him, for he was in the middle of it all.

He stood atop a mound of rotting flesh, for there was no longer a spot of ground clear that was not being used by the warring mobs: to stand there was to be a casualty. The stench of rotting flesh hung limply in the air, like a wet cloak hung to drip its damp fill on the floor. Such was the carnage and destruction; that to rest from it, one needed to trod upon the dead, and even then, you could not escape the foulness of it in the air. Eidri was old, even by Elven standards, being well past one score centuries, and he could not remember when he last saw a patch of earth that was not being fought over, bled upon, or covered by the bodies of foe or friend.

Such was the terrible fate of the Avari, his people, and now he was resolved to change that fate.

Frequently, the arrows came, and when they did, he thought he might be dying just that one time, but the darkness always came only for a while. It came only long enough to heal. It came almost long enough to forget. Then he would awaken bathed in a mixture of blood and icor, the warmth and smell of the freshly dead filling his nostrils, and the taste of sickened air on his tongue. He always had to dig himself out, just before being buried alive, thinking: If I where to simply sleep... simply sleep... Yet there was something that always made him rise.

He looked around him as if there could be some goal which he had missed in all of the years he had spent fighting. Some reason to justify all of the butchery around him. There was the fighting around him, as always, but he now noticed something new.

Perhaps it was the vantage point, perhaps it was his new found disgust with the whole affair, or perhaps it was sheer luck, but he noticed a figure unlike the others.

All of those fighting around him wore the armor of their fathers and their fathers before them. They where tired, thin, gaunt, and lacking motivation. Morally destroyed, they moved out of habit rather that out of purpose. They had no desire in them, nor fire, nor spark of life. They moved like automatons directed by a greater power who held sway over their lives.

This person, however, was different. He sat erect on the back of the only horse on the field. He was healthy, full of body, and full of energy. While all of the others here where sick, old, and broken, he was full of life and vigor. His face was laced with anger and fearsome passion. His eyes wide with zeal, and unmercifully cold belied the glee and ardor with which he surveyed the carnage. His mouth fixed in a tight-lipped, almost non-existent line on the face told of anger withheld and intentions unappeased. His nostrils flared with the exertion of restraint, and he leaned forward on his mount, as if he needed to survey the bloodbath with more efficiency and ardor. He was tense and evil, and Eidri saw this, and felt it.

This man had purpose and ambition. He was the only man with purpose and ambition, however, and these things filled the angry, twisted features of his face. He had a purpose in all of this, that was certain.

He had a purpose in all of this? Inconceivable! There was no purpose in the warring! None that any living creature could remember. Indeed, no one even remembered the reason for the war having started, or even how long ago. What caused it? What pitted Avari against Teleri? Who where the protagonists? What started it? Who was going to end it, and when?

I am going to end it, and now! This was the one thought that occupied his mind as he stood staring at the man so distant from him. He stood consuming the image of the warrior, burning it into his memory. Every feature of face, every detail of motion, every facet of armour and weapon was to be committed to Eidri’s memory. Every mannerism and every minute detail he could observe from his distant perch. He would need these things if he where to succeed in the thing he was to do, even though it probably meant his own demise. He was that resolute to stop the warring and destruction of his people.

This man seemed confident, and now it became obvious that he was directing people and groups, issuing commands, stating and plotting courses of action. There was no distinction in the manner of it. It seemed as if he where guiding forces to the largest and bloodiest conflicts. The most violent and carnal encounters where evidently his preference, as if there where no purpose in this thing apart from the sheer entertainment value it produced. Also, it seemed as if he was commanding forces from both sides. This man was the root of all of the bloodshed around Eidri; that was obvious. He just hoped that this was the only man of this sort. Where there others? If so, how many? Well, he could only worry about this one for now. If he survived, he would contemplate these questions, as well as their accompanying answers.

The mound that Eidri stood atop was one of corpses; a literal pile of bodies so high as to lend a vantage point to view the struggling of his kin. This was a commonplace thing, and it thus no longer bothered him for he had been numb to such things since he was a child.

That thought bothered him. No, it angered him. He had come to this spot to rest. To escape the feuding and warfare for a short while. He no longer wanted anything to do with this thing called “War”. It had to end, and it had to end now.

The anger came quickly. More quickly than he thought possible any more, and as it did, his breathing became deeper and more labored, filling his lungs more than he remembered having the capacity to. The rush this produced was intoxicating. He was finding an energy within himself that he both hoped for, and doubted he possessed any longer. It came to him, though, and that was good. Slowly, but steadily, Eidri realized he was capable of much more than he previously thought. I will end this thing, you beast!

“I am Vengeance,” he said to the corpses littered at his feet, “which hath risen to be visited upon mine foes! I am Retribution, which hangeth heavily upon the air. Up... up I go, to lay down the very pillars of my enemies to dust and ash! Down... down, into the pit go I, like a fiend, shall I fight a fiend!” The words seethed from his lips like snakes ushering from a smoking hole.

As his anger raised in its intensity, so too, did his courage. His body became heated with the power of his rage, as he prepared himself for the onslaught of energy which was his goal. From the pit of his throat, Eidri started a low, rumbling moan. It settled in the swell of his chest, as if to tug at the very fiber of his being. Every muscle, every organ, and even the very surface of his skin responded with a tingling that he had almost forgotten existed. The sound gained in volume with the rise of his ire until it was an audible thing. He was the hunter, the predator cat, and he was about to pounce. His eyes closed to slits of pure, black fire, only allowing for a view of his singular opponent, his prey. His hearing was limited to the sound of his own rumbling hum. His body became tight and strong again with the rush of adrenaline, and his skin became hot under his armor and robes. The only scent he registered was that of the pure malevolent evil of the thing before him, of the sweat and of the pheromones of the bastard on the horse. He tasted only the blood which hung in the air, mingled with that from his own lip as he bit down to feel the pain, the life, and the energy flowing through himself.

He felt the sword in his hand, and it no longer felt as if it carried the weight of Orion, but rather the intensity from those mighty stars, from which it had been forged.

It was as he knew it would be.

A smile, wicked and evil, inched across his face. He could not deny the fact that he enjoyed this feeling; there was no hiding it, nor the desire to.

“Both armed and defended; buttressed and focused, oh yea all; I am ready! Launch thy slings! Bend thy bows, and beat thy steely swords! I come now for thy master!”

The bodies around and under him started to glow and flicker with a faint and ghostly light. A gaseous foglight lifted off the dead, and poured over the surface of now quivering corpses. The living below suddenly became aware of this thing and move back away from it. Most had not remembered the last time they had broken from the fighting for anything other than pure survival, but here was a thing unknown by most that captured the attention of all onlookers. Even the carrion birds circling above took to higher flight so as to not touch the unfamiliar fog, abandoning their ample food sources.

The mist rose up the slope to greet its beckoner with a ghostly crawl which bespoke of it’s horrific origins. Slowly, the smog-like light rose to meet Eidri, and he welcomed it like an old, familiar friend. Faces and forms would coalesce faintly and dissipate rapidly and as they did so, one could see the agony of either rebirth, or redeath in each. The moaning in Eidri’s throat became an oral gestation, no longer able to be confined within so mortal a thing as the body and voice which were its vessels. It lifted out of Eidri as it would from the very gods themselves, lifting upwards to the very heavens. It seemed for an instant, that even the very stars themselves quivered in their places, no longer fixed by the promise that they where immune to the goings-on of mortals. The moan turned into a low, open mouthed hum, which in turn gave way to a low, soft howl emanating from every once-living thing around him. This escalated to a howl of greater proportion, growing until it seemed that all of creation was to be born of that deafening release. He raised his weapon high over head and his body erupted in a soft fiery light which seemed to dance and sway with the beckoning of his now immortal voice.