There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - N. Mandela
It was a bloody homecoming.
Her blade withdrew from the cloven skull of the worg with a wet, pulpy squelch; the darkened metal trailing black ichor upon the stones like some obscene caligraphy as Daka shifted, gazing down the tunnel to the gloom beyond.
No matter - they t'were not of her clan and not of her dwell; this crag-hold was but another banner beneath the Rim, another war-chief's fiefdom warring for flesh and get beneath the cold stars. There would be little lost this night. And even if they had been clan-named they were not kin, her blood knew no such kindness upon the Gloomrim and even yet then it would not matter. The law was simple, unyielding iron as the blade within her hands: life was for the strong. Only and ever the strong.
That she was fighting for the weak amused her as she stalked the darkened chamber, the assembled party licking their wounds for a moment's breath before pushing on. Had not the sow of her birth been weak? Had not her father embraced it? And that weakness had got strength; strength of iron, strength of steel - the strength to walk without Clan or kin, and to flaunt her fallen banner. This tribe, this petty band hid in the rock like goblins and raided those that could not defend themselves. There was no strength in that: and now their weakness was to be proven to them as the fell one by bloodied one within their own crag. It was thw wisdom of Gessar, to be pounded bloodied and raw into their waiting flesh.
The half-orc's grin split the dark. She had fled this land alone and in darkness - and now she returned with a warband of her own, blade in hand. Come death or glory they would remember the day of her returning, and Gessar willing the crimson strength would flow …
