A stranger found his way into camp, melding into the background of the downtrodden and the wounded. The roughspun cloak wrapped tight around him the hood shadowing his features, he could have been anyone, huddling with the others after such a devastating defeat: a messenger desperately waiting for good news, a ditch digger crafting graves for the newly deceased, or just a invalid. But on closer inspection there was there was something queer about the anonymous figure, his frame hunched to look small; he stood on the lightest of feet, the opposite of the way a soldier would stake claim to the very ground beneath him. he merely borrowed it; a prince with no claim; a king with no country, a wanderer; just a temporal entity that could be gone in an instant to be replaced by dust.<br/><br/>They were laid out around him, the dying and those that had thought they had already accepted death. These were religious men; the way that zealots died. They died gloriously for whatever reasons they seemed to deem fit; a even trade for how much they valued their own life. And what could be more beautiful than to fulfill your own self anointed destiny with your last breath. The closest thing a man could be to a god. He held fast to his pity as he carefully skirted around a soldier struck with a crossbow bolt to the neck, laying on the cool grass, those wet gasps through new orifices in his body; waiting for the chirurgeon. For in the theatre of war, there were far worse fates then death.<br/><br/>He arched his head and gazed up at the ramparts of the tower, and knew full well to where and to whom the cries of the dying were directed. His slate gray eyes even and unmoved to the suffering around him. The last leg of his journey had brought him here, and he flared his nostrils as he took in the smell of the dirt wet with blood. It stoked the fire within him, the murderous ambition that had driven him from the Capitol of the North all the way out here. A trail of vengeance that had taken a short lifetime and had left so many dead in his wake. He imagined that she looked down upon the field of battle from the tallest windows of the tower, that she would sense his presence and the ghosts of her past would rise slowly up her spine and demand the penance that was due to them.<br/><br/>He relinquished the thought with a cold grin. He kept his vengeance like a pet, nursed and nurtured while he grieved and then trained to become a horrific monster that he could unleash when he willed, that he set upon to perform the tasks that were unsavory but necessary in his line of work. It purred restlessly, now; beckoning him to loose the chains, but now wasn't the time. Now was time to seek the allegiances that would help him reach his goal. While their enemy was the same, this wasn't his war; but he would fight it. Casualty on both sides were irrelevant, there was only a singular measure whether or not he would be victorious here. And there was very little he would wouldn't do to achieve his own destiny.<br/><br/>And in a quiet moment when the others wallowed upon their misfortunes and their pains, the cloaked figure slipped behind the most prominent tent in the camp and deftly rolled beneath the canvas...