Thread: second stop. black forrest germany. (attn Dee)

"By the... Good Lord is that you?" Matthias rises from behind his desk where he was picking something up off the floor. "What in the name of all things are you doing here?"

He shakes his head smiling, extending his hand in friendship as he approaches.

" it has been awhile matthias your starting to look your age." he smiles grasping the old mans hand. he had met matthias months after his awakening, a stalwart friend who was one of the few humans who knew him as he was fully " ive come to go to where i was once but a man who had family and beg for thier forgiveness." he reached up sliding the sun glasses down to reveal the wolfen eyes staring at the man infront of him. "i've done some things i have to answer for but i needed to see you and see how the wife and grandchildren of yours are."

"Still alive and kicking and as for the grandchildren, one just graduated and starts university in the fall. Paul is shooting up like a weed and has me fishing every other sunday with him." He laughs. "If I had known grandchildren were this much fun, I would have had them first."

"So," he sighs. "... a long trip into the past. Is there anything I can do to help you along? You know if it's in my power, all you have to do is ask."

he hands him an envelope bulky with items inside "there are letters in there and a few other items should i not come back.you should already know everything here goes to your family should i not come back. i really wish i had more time to talk about things like this more. if im not back in a week send those off and make sure those grand kids of yours get to college. "

he clasped a hand over matthias shoulder squeezing lightly before turning and heading away off to the dark lands of the black forrest.

*** Later ***

The dark forrest seemed darker than her recalled, even with the gift of protean at his command. The way it swallowed light, the eerie and unnatural silence that he just didn't ever find in the New World, that spoke of secrets that might never be shared or understood. It was surely a place of things that were never meant for the minds of men to contemplate and or their lips to speak.

Yet, it also held the undeniable ghosts of a home returned to, haunted in a way... not just by horrors unimginable but by people he once loved... people long dead - and maybe some not.

Moving through the trees at a quickened pace, the animal inside hounding him to move faster to not pause for something that tugged on an old memory... or the laughter of a friend on the wind. The scent of blood, the salt of the sea, the rot of wood and flesh... preditor and prey warring inside Kendov so fiercely that it became hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Coming through the trees into a snow covered glen where the moon's face shone down bright, he could see it then... a place he'd know even if he were blind. His breath caught, though he'd scarsely realized he'd reverted to a habit he'd fallen out of lifetimes ago.

The light on the untouched snow sparkled like a sea of diamonds and the pulstace weighed heavily in his pocket... a passage out of reality and into something more. A hand absently reaching for it, sacred words slipping from his tongue to his lips, breathed into the air like a prayer. The bitter tang of the gritty substance flooding his senses as he makes the marks upon his skin calling out archaic names that hadn't been uttered in these lands since the sunset of his people's age.

Dizzy with it, Kendov felt himself falling to his knees. It stung more than he though it should, his vision doubled and righted itself only to repeat the process again and again. Holding up his finger to look at the pulstace there he watched the moonlight shimmer on what seemed to be blood. Confusion set in as he struggled to come to his feet but fell into the snowbank instead. How had the blood gotten there? It was only herbs... he never included his vitae or even the blood of an animal...

He tried to cry out, not that there was anyone for miles and miles. He was alone... the voices of the ghosts growing louder in his ears, the laughing of children becoming malicious, mad... murderous.

Crawling forward in the snow the emptiness gave way to echoes of a different place and time where no one could see or hear him no matter how hard he tried to intervene. Helpless he watched the ghosts of the past play out every horrible memory he had, again, and again.

Limbs heavy, he slipped down into the snow, to rest only a moment he told himself... and as he lay there he could hear a voice from his past, that sweet musical voice, "By the Gods!"

He hadn't seen her in so long but somehow there she was, as beautiful as ever before, dressed in what appeared to be gossomer moonlight despite the bitter cold on this wintery mountainside.

She knealt down near his head, her soft hand resting on his cheek... her eyes, pools of deep peace, "You're safe now." she whispers to him before calling out with all the authority of a Valkeryrie on the feild of Ragnorak, "SOMEONE - ANYONE!"

"Don't worry, I won't leave you..." she whispers to him, taking her hand and putting it upon the painful frostbitten and sucking wound in his chest from which blood seems to ooze endlessly.

his vision swimming in and out he reached up to touch her face, confirm if she is real or part of the illusion of the herbs.

" am i dying ? lilith is it you ?" the blood wells at his eyes. even now it was not the time to let his guard down and he slowly tried to rise something had happened with his mixing of the herbs and the pultace but there she was the woman that he had given his heart to. he wraps his arms around her as if to not let the woman go ever again. "ive been wounded.. but im not sure what happened"

"Shhhh... it's me. What are you doing back here. Kendov, darling, you should never have returned. What would possess you to make such a trip and risk you life this way to visit a place of such old pain?" She brushes a stray hair from his face, your flesh has goosebumps where her fingers make contact.

" i need to settle these old pains lilith. you are the woman i always loved, all this time. i need to ask for forgiveness. from you, from our people... from that innocent man. they where all senseless death. i wasnt able to keep my word and it is a sliver of pain in hate in my heart."

"What can I say to help you that you do not already know? It wasn't your fault? Words. My being here should show you that you are ever in my heart and if you had done wrong by me I would have left long ago." She shakes her head.

"Foolish man even still, after all these long years. You would not die now, not here in this way, and dishonor me would you? The husband I gave myself to is a fearsome thing to behold... he would not be laid low by his own hand but instead die in battle as is right and good. And when you have... I will be waiting to welcome you." She chuckles, "With brew in my hand."