Chapter 2: Arrival
It was another darkening evening, and the usual crowd had gathered at the Meadhouse in the quaint village of Ironstone in Riverlands. Seven wasn't much of a crowd, but it was as many as the Meadhouse ever saw these days with bandits plaguing the routes.
Col, among the seven, was telling a story, the story of what transpired with him last night. The other men at the bar sipped their drinks and listened. Last night while coming back to the village he was held at knife point by the bandits, after convincing them that they should keep him alive from ransom he was taken to their camp.
Col leaned on the bar, tankard in hand, his eyes wide as he spoke to the Meadhouse regulars. "I got nabbed by them bandits, dragged to their camp while I prayed under my breath. And then, by the gods, a red star fell from the sky right in the middle of the camp, brighter than the moon on a clear night. But it wasn't just a star, mind you. Black smoke came billowin' out, and in that darkness, orbs of glowing red started dancin' like ghost lights. First one, then two, then three and then a thousand. Yes, like a thousand eyes! Thousand red eyes in dark smoke."
He continued, "What do they call it? Tendrils - Yes! Tendrils shot out from the thousand red-eyed smoke and started grabbing onto anything and anyone. It was pure terror! I felt as if my heart had stopped beating."
"And then... And then..." he continued speaking. "One black tendril ripped one bandit apart in two. It was the most sickening sound I have ever heard in my life..."
He squeezed his eyes shut. "A bandit's head rolled out of his smoke like an egg and stopped after hitting my tied up feet. A bloody mess from where it was torn, the face and eyes were frozen in terror from what saw inside the black smoke."
His audience exchanged puzzled glances, some nodding in half-belief. Col scratched his head, his face etched with bewilderment. "The bandits were as spooked as I was. Felt a strange heat that was shocking like northern cold run through me, and then I just passed out. Woke up by the road in the morning, not a bandit in sight."
One of Col's friends, a burly fellow named Hob, chuckled breaking the tension, "Col, you've been drinkin' too quick. Thousand eyes and fairy lights? Sounds like a tale spun after a night of too much mead."
Another friend chimed in, "Mayhap he dreamt it all. Do you know how them dreams play tricks on a man's mind? Probably saw the Red Messenger from the east in the night sky before sleeping and dreamt up the rest."
Col defended himself, "I swear on the Meadhouse floor, it ain't no dream! I wouldn't be standin' here today if it was."
The Meadhouse patrons exchanged sceptical glances, caught between fascination and disbelief, unsure whether to buy into Col's tale or dismiss it as a drunken fantasy.
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- A few days later
- King's Landing
Hundreds of tents of all colours spread across the tourney's ground, there had been more such that invited warriors across the land to test their skills for glory held on that ground that very year, but none as grand as this one, none as grand as the Tourney of the Hand.
One of such tents was white in colour, designated for enlisting, and in that tent the enlister eyed the tall stranger while holding down the papyrus and the quill on the table. The stranger with sharp features towering over him was dressed in a grab of black and red, black leather fit there and red straps there, it all unfamiliar fashion to the enlister. But stranger still were the eyes of man, deep cold blue eyes with a hint of red as if someone had committed murdered in the ocean.
"Name?" The enlister asked.
The stranger looked at him and searched in his mind, there were hundreds of names there, hundreds of echoes, hundreds who failed the Hunt and he was an amalgamation of them and mainly of the one that succeeded, the one who slaughtered the Nightmare.
"Just the Hunter would be sufficient," the stranger said.
The enlister shook his head. "Listen you can claim to be a mystery knight in front of the crowd, but here you need to give a name."
The stranger said, "It's Legio then."
"Legio? Is that your real name? No last name?" the enlister asked.
"Legio Cainhurst if need be so," the stranger nodded.
The enlister wrote it down, "Sounds of Noble origin, but no house of that name exists in Westeros. From the continent of Essos, I presume."
The enlisted had already judged that the tall stranger wasn't of the common background, if not for the foreign accent and the outfit that didn't look to be cheap, he also seemed he was wearing some kind of pleasant flowery scent. Only someone of great wealth would have access to this.
Legio answered, "From the East."
The enlister took that as the continent of Essos.
The enlister sighed, "Am sure you already heard the prizes of the event but hear one more time, it's formality. The tournament consists of a joust, melee and archery contest. The prizes are forty thousand gold dragons for the winner of the joust, twenty thousand dragons for the runner-up of the joust, twenty thousand dragons for the winner of the melee, and ten thousand dragons for the winner of the archery contest. So which of the three you want to partake in?"
"All of them," Legio answered.
The enlister simply wrote it down and didn't look particularly surprised about it. It wasn't the first time he had someone who looked as if he just left boyhood and had overestimated his limits.
"I again presume you have all the necessary equipment. Bow, arrows, horse, lance, armour, shield and any weapon of choice for melee."
"I lack a lance but it can be arranged."
"Then there is just one more thing left. What title are you entering? We need that for the declarations."
Legio simply answered, "Just the Hunter would be good enough."
The enlister shrugged and simply wrote all the necessary.
"Also...." He looked up to say something then paused. The spot where Legio stood was empty, as if the hunter had disappeared from existence.
Away from the camp, Legio walked towards the better parts of city streets, one of which led to an old inn and the little room rented for some copper after some price negotiations. In that tiny room looking to be from the middle ages, there was nothing but a bed for him to lay whilst he traveled to his Hunter's Dream.
Moments after laying down on it and closing his eyes, Legio found himself looking at the workshop situated on a hill. Here and there, gravestones surrounded the workshop. Down the path and beyond the gate was a hill surrounded by white flowers. He remembered that hill, it was where he buried his mentor after fighting him for one last time. The was one major change in this dreamscape was the large pale Moon that hung in the starless sky no longer seemed ominous after it's Great One's death.
He made his way up the path leading to the workshop to find his dearest friend who was kneeling in front of a gravestone. As he got closer, he heard her voice again. She was praying for him, like always. It brought a smile to his face.
"O Flora of the moon, of the dream...O little ones, o fleeting will of the ancients...let the Hunter be safe, let him find comfort. And let this dream, foretell a pleasant awakening and be one day a fond, distant memory."
Legio stopped and let her finish to the dead god. She then stood up from the grave she tended to and turned around. The Doll had been created in the image of a Lady Maria, a fellow apprentice of the first hunter Germhan, whom also had died at Legio's hands.
She smiled up at him as he approached. He now stood taller than the Doll, when beforehand, he once was of a shorter stature. Perhaps this was the method of his body coping with the sudden surge in strength. She still wore a black and red dress, a bonnet, and a small hair ornament was placed delicately in her silver hair.
"Welcome home, Good Hunter." She greeted him with a bow that he returned. Her voice was medicine to his madness, a smile appeared on her face. "What is it you desire?"
"Just visiting now," Legio replied. "The influence of entities is bare here...But I'm afraid the location is still very dangerous for other reasons. I won't be able to bring the workshop out of the Dream."
"Oh?" The Doll tilted her head curiously. "Were you hurt whilst travelling to this world?"
"Nothing as near as fatal as before," Legio answered. He offered his arm and the Doll took it. They went around the area on a stroll. The Messengers, inhabitants of the Dream, were everywhere. They were small, grotesque and adorable things. Ghastly in appearance but they only wished to serve those Hunters who visited the Dream.
Legio was at first distrustful of them but gradually, much like his interactions with the Doll, he had grown fond of them. Even now, they greeted their master with ghostly groans and waving various items that they would exchange for blood echoes. They mostly helped the Doll around the garden, or they visited the Hunter when he went on his excursions to the walking world and often delivered his weapons and items when needed.
After their stroll, he and the Doll stayed in the workshop where Legio regaled her with his exploits. The Doll gave no complaints but she did listen. There only reason Legio returned to his old prison despite no longer needing to sleep is that he did not want her to be lonely in there.
She knew about the kingdom he had ended up in and hoped he stayed safe whenever he returned to the Waking World as she did before.
Legio said, "My arrival might have triggered something in this world and Arcane is exponentially rising in this world in response. Like an immune system to intrusive threats."
"Will you expose yourself to them then? To show them you aren't a threat unless provoked." The Doll asked the Hunter as he set down his cup of tea.
"And expose them to the Eldritch Truth I hold?" Legio said almost bursting into a mad laugh. "I am not the Great Ones of Yahrnam to doom these people to uncalled madness and depravity. I will...."
He sighed and stopped himself, he was raising his voice a bit too much. "Forgive me. I should have not snapped at you like that."
The Doll held his hand in a gentle grip. The Hunter squeezed back.
Soon It was sunrise again and the hunter left the dream for a walk.
Kings Landing, the three centuries old city where once the Targaryen kings landed their dragons. The population must've been in the hundreds of thousands. It was highly likely there were more people in this capital city than in many of Legio's homeworld. So many people packed together, it was little wonder the stench was foul and wide-spreading.
He began his walk around the city on a crowded narrow cobblestone street surrounded by small shops on both sides and many just started him for reasons that didn't exclude his giant size.
Legio sighed, it felt strange after talking to the Doll for a while, more like trying to talk to her for a while, she always loved him as was she created to do for all hunters, but she never truly understood him and she never could. His only companion left from the hunt, with its strange flow of time which made that one night, seem as long as decades, she could love him and yet never understand him. When he thought about it: 'Why did he even wish for her to understand him?'
He looked around at people on the street going about their daily businesses, they would stop and glance at him before the busier ones pushed them back to action. When he looked at these people he would see a hue around them, each a different shade of red, the strength of their blood perceived by his Insight which kept growing deeper by the day. And when he closed his eyes he heard the reverberation of a thousand voices that can't be heard by the mundane, as it was the collective prayers of the city reaching to him. Great Ones were sympathetic in nature, although their expression of it had its twisted ways unique to each, and such Legio was developing his own.
'Go away, I am not your god.'
The reverberations ceased.
'Last vestiges of humanity left in me with all its shortcomings. Trying to fill a bottomless hole that lies in one's heart.' Legio thought to himself. 'Doesn't matter. Soon enough I would be a man no longer, it would be gone and I'd stop caring about companionship.'
A horn resounded in the distance and only the creatures with the keenest could pick up on it, such as a hunter of beasts.
'The tourney is about to begin.'
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