WishBone
One who walks between the physical and the digital
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Aldrig Altervander - DnD 4th edition character
- Originally he started out in a town as an outcast, the fostered kid of a meth addicted town witch who taught him the basics of undertaking the path of a sword mage. As a child he was struck by lightning giving him deep set scars along his arms, legs and back. Life and his childhood was rough and at times during the winter he'd stay at the town smith sleeping near the forge for warmth. Other times it was doing his best to sneak back to what place he could sleep. Eventually he had friends, friends later in his eyes would become his party and they would journey uncover horrors that the world was a boundary - which had sealed away preventing demons from encroaching upon it.
Yet Aldrig died the first time and was brought back, being not a follower of the gods he entered a space where he was merely an unclaimed brick in a wall of screaming souls and this regardless of being brought back planted the very seeds of his own destruction. The second time he died was when his friend slit his throat under the magic of the very enemy they were up against, him defeated and broken. His friend powerless to stop it, but once more he was brought back. Only driving the seed of bitterness deeper now with a scar to remind him and his friend, slowly as time wore on and they adventures continued. He noticed the changes in a close friend as their very alignment seemed to be against his views. Leading to the point where at the end of it all led him to where the very adventure had began. Only this time the very same enemy had reduced the home to rubble and corpses.
Eventually the fae through no accidental contact made an offer for him to become a champion, a stronger hero and obtain weapons to fight the darkness he was going to be tested. Eventually succeeding, it wasn't until much later that with the betrayal of friends. Watching as one ripped out the heart of a once possessed enemy and ate it, did his faith in the very nature of people, creatures die. All that power and yet he had been powerless to stop the descent of his friends into inevitable madness. The fact that his would be meth addicted witch would later turn out to be more than that, the fact she had lied to him and mistreated him through out his childhood only added to the growing bitterness and indifference he felt to it all.
Horrified, scarred and bitter, Aldrig left the group returning to the very place and discarding his sword, the armour he once wore upon a snow top. A grave for past memories - a grave that he would never fill.
It was there in the mountains he found a place he could return to solitude, forsake his place as a hero or what he had discovered himself to be. Regardless of him leaving his former party, he refrains from answering their letters or revealing his location. The very same indifference he has now for the world, the actions they took which led to his very predicament. The inability to move on, forgive and the complete loss of the desire to take up the sword against an evil which for all its intent has defeated him.
The fact that he has discarded the very gifts bestowed to him by the fae and forsaken his role as a champion, where he is now is a hermit.
Someone who has chosen to forsake the very world, a human who even the martial monks who meditate in their adjacent tower to his hovel know, although he is living. He is already dead.
-- Short story --
~Aftermath~
Bitterness. That was what came from the hollow victory of their final fight against what could only have been described to him as an utter betrayal of the guilds. With regards to his friends, they felt more like strangers to him, some had even become monsters.
In moments of self reflection, all those months ago had he known what he knew now, he would have never opted to pursue his gifts. He had seen the horrors of evil and the monster that a friend had become, a monster that he had hoped to never have seen. The loss of his home town had broken him, but after watching her devour a raw heart of an unconscious foe, in that moment Aldrig had died and what fleeting embers of hope had been snuffed out into apathy.
Eventually reaching the summit of the mountain, he paused briefly taking a moment to catch his breath and all the while, the wind continued to hound him as he continued to trudge up here alone up along a goats trail on one of the highest mountains.
It was here where the air was thin and he knew the cold bit deepest into exposed flesh was he going to leave the last parts of who he was, his blade that no longer felt his and the armour too. Something he felt disgusted towards than any sense of pride.
Setting the sheathed blade of frost on the peak, then the armour in a loose wrap of hessian cloth. It was here the cold suddenly gained a greater strength causing him to wrap the fraying fabric of his cloak tighter around him in the hopes it would keep the fleeting warmth from his body. Aldrig swore silently then and there he would be no champion for the fae, renouncing to ever touch a sword for the rest of his days and lastly as he had begun- he would live in solitude.
If the gods saw fit he would survive to make it to the monks retreat near the ruins, he cared little and whether he knew if some would dare return to try and find him he believed they would find nothing but dead ends. As he turned he felt the uncomfortable feeling about leaving the weapon here, he felt defenceless without his blade and exposed without his armour. For a moment he hated the feeling of being defenceless but as the reason of why, steeled his resolve to continue.
Hugging the cloak tighter over his shoulders, here Aldrig was dead and buried. Dead like those in the city which the name now gave him nightmares. Dead like those in his home village and buried along in the hopes that the nightmares would leave him alone. But that was wishful thinking and it was that same thinking that had broken his spirit.
As the winter storm picked up, hugging the cloak against the chill he continued his walk back his shape in the waves of airborne snow as the winds continued to pummel the peaks his form vanished into the white leaving behind the armour of frost along with his blade to the elements.
Eventually returning to the monks, it was here he began to set up his life in seclusion.
The outcast - had now come full circle and turned his back upon being the hero he was destined to be. Aldrig the sword mage was now Keith, a Hermit. As the years went on, Keith took up the basics of herbology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Years later.
The sky had changed.
Maybe it had changed its hues, or the colour had changed to that of a waxy blue, here in the early hours of a cold morning he was unsure. Nearby from his small thatched hut built into a collapsed stone wall, with a stone hatchet he continued to work on breaking what timber into kindling.
Someone had been here maybe a week or months ago, but he hadn't paid much attention, preferring his own company. That and the recreational habit he had taken up with enjoying the occasional shroom he'd been growing gave him the escapism of swirling stars accompanied with periods of uncontrolled giggling and small harmless hallucinations.
Under the layers of frayed rags, he'd become gaunt due to the limited amount of food he could grow here. What little the monks provided was enough to sate him, but never truly satisfy. Nearby a pot bubbled with herbal contents. A bitter brew that burned hot all the way down, giving a brief moment of tingling down his fingers. Something he had figured out that caused his magical senses to fade to a dull numbness.
The monks barely spoke, or at best remained silent and reserved in their own habitual things.
It wasn't long for the brief moments of madness to take hold. He'd seemingly lost track of time and in doing so, for Keiths sake he barely seemed able to recall. It was then one of his hallucinations spoke for the first time, startling him. Aldrig had taken up a new name to further hide away from the world.
"Do I know you?" came a halfling's voice, Keith merely looked up to see an oddly out of place halfling sitting nearby looking at him dressed as if he were fresh out of a Tavern. "He looks familiar," piped up a female voice. Like ghosts from the past there they were, yet their names were no longer present in his memory. "He looks older, though. Thinner, but way worse for wear. Still, after all - you'd think he'd remember."
"Aldrig?" Asked the female half-ling's as he watched walk to the door of his hut, "Well we are dead, Maybe he's finally gone off his rocker." looking again, there was nothing there as he turned, what greeted him caused his heart to thunder in his chest. "All dead - because of you-" A rotten corpse in ripped clothes, sunken milky white eyes and a lip-less smile of rotten black teeth hissed snarling in his vision only for him to bolt upright in bed with sweat beading from his brow as he gasped for breath. A tightness in his chest refused to go away and as the rain pelted outside and wind whistled eerily through the gaps of his door. Trembling, he curled up under his blankets in the dark. Another thunderclap. Followed by another. Then another and covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to shut out the deafening noise.
For what Keith felt these were getting closer. As someone who had been struck by lightning before as a child, he never wished to be again. It was then something rattled his huts door.
"Fuck off." He breathed into the storm. "Keith ain ever known nothin." The door rattled again then bust open revealing a woman. Older, perhaps - someone he barely remembered and in his hazy sleepy state and his drug addled memory failed to recall who she was.
"Well look who's got their own shithole in the arse end of the world." An old female voice he knew but couldn't put a name to it. "What? Did you think the world was just going to let you fuck off and sulk it out." He didn't recall who this older woman was; maybe this was just another dream like all the others. "You're more drug fucked than I recall."
"I dun nuttin, I know nuttin." Came his hoarse response.
"Yeah clearly- worlds not going to wait to end." Still he didn't move, merely looked at her jaw agape "Aldrig." She spoke again, only with a snap he interrupted her, "I'm Keith." He blurted, "Now fek off outta me hut."
"Or what, you're going to blather me to death?" The older woman retorted. "Or better throw shrooms at me while continuing to be a hermit or bore me to death?" Keith looked at her while she rolled her eyes, "Who are you Keith, is this who you want to be?" With that she stepped out into the rain leaving his door wide open.
"I ain goin," He retorted.
And like that the storm vanished. Keith woke up to the smell of rain and his door was open, it could have blown open in the storm. Looking out Keith noticed things were missing, where the monk's home was now gone but signs were that it had collapsed down the cliff face.The tower without stairs had collapsed into unrecognisable rubble leaving him alone here to a faded bleak yellow coloured sky.
A woman much older than him stood there, different from before, maybe even better dressed, "Try again Aldrig, know I'm out of fucks to give for your shallow bitch attitude. Stay here and die, it doesn't change anything really." In her hand was a smoking pipe along with a bored disappointed expression.
Then without warning - as she turned to walk she vanished like smoke and with another rush of cold air of the morning, blinking back stars in his vision as his stomach ached with a gnawing hunger. The tower was back. The house that the monks mediated in was there as well, untouched and still intact. Keith reasoned with himself that maybe it was the herbs, but Keith was slowly feeling that in his absence - his mind was slowly coming apart.
"Fuck it." Muttered Keith with bared yellow stained teeth. With cracked nails he pulled the old cloak around his shoulders turning his attention to a ruin of his garden. Then with a world lurching dance of lights he felt his stomach contract as the contents of his stomach ejected splattering across the ground at his feet. After dry retching, blinking back the dots in his vision and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. An older man stood before him before tossing a wooden stick at his feet.
"Time for you to go back,"
Keith scoffed. "I ain't goin nowhere."
"Then you along with the rest of this world will fall. So, oh you are going somewhere" Keith merely smirked in response, "Gods owe me nuttin, I owe nuttin and I have all here." The man shook his head and Keith spat, "I am done fighting battles and done with it."
"You may be done." Answered the older man, as he walked forwards surprising Keith.
"But the fight isn't done with you and for once in your shitty life realise it's not just you against the world."
A flash of pain brought his world back from a glare of white light. Stumbling Keith was no longer in his sanctuary of solitude but back in the walled city of a place he barely remembered. Only this time it was no dream and dressed in his rags Keith was back where he didn't wish to be, only that this time a higher power had forced its hand to shove him back in a direction he didn't think possible. Taking up the wooden stick - he went to find his bearings of where he was.
Like a fish out of water he was here, lost hoping it was just a dream. When a passing seagull shat near his feet, along with the smells of the city assaulting his senses, it was clear he just appeared here.
"Fuck." came his rather flat response to the situation he was now in. "Me."
- Originally he started out in a town as an outcast, the fostered kid of a meth addicted town witch who taught him the basics of undertaking the path of a sword mage. As a child he was struck by lightning giving him deep set scars along his arms, legs and back. Life and his childhood was rough and at times during the winter he'd stay at the town smith sleeping near the forge for warmth. Other times it was doing his best to sneak back to what place he could sleep. Eventually he had friends, friends later in his eyes would become his party and they would journey uncover horrors that the world was a boundary - which had sealed away preventing demons from encroaching upon it.
Yet Aldrig died the first time and was brought back, being not a follower of the gods he entered a space where he was merely an unclaimed brick in a wall of screaming souls and this regardless of being brought back planted the very seeds of his own destruction. The second time he died was when his friend slit his throat under the magic of the very enemy they were up against, him defeated and broken. His friend powerless to stop it, but once more he was brought back. Only driving the seed of bitterness deeper now with a scar to remind him and his friend, slowly as time wore on and they adventures continued. He noticed the changes in a close friend as their very alignment seemed to be against his views. Leading to the point where at the end of it all led him to where the very adventure had began. Only this time the very same enemy had reduced the home to rubble and corpses.
Eventually the fae through no accidental contact made an offer for him to become a champion, a stronger hero and obtain weapons to fight the darkness he was going to be tested. Eventually succeeding, it wasn't until much later that with the betrayal of friends. Watching as one ripped out the heart of a once possessed enemy and ate it, did his faith in the very nature of people, creatures die. All that power and yet he had been powerless to stop the descent of his friends into inevitable madness. The fact that his would be meth addicted witch would later turn out to be more than that, the fact she had lied to him and mistreated him through out his childhood only added to the growing bitterness and indifference he felt to it all.
Horrified, scarred and bitter, Aldrig left the group returning to the very place and discarding his sword, the armour he once wore upon a snow top. A grave for past memories - a grave that he would never fill.
It was there in the mountains he found a place he could return to solitude, forsake his place as a hero or what he had discovered himself to be. Regardless of him leaving his former party, he refrains from answering their letters or revealing his location. The very same indifference he has now for the world, the actions they took which led to his very predicament. The inability to move on, forgive and the complete loss of the desire to take up the sword against an evil which for all its intent has defeated him.
The fact that he has discarded the very gifts bestowed to him by the fae and forsaken his role as a champion, where he is now is a hermit.
Someone who has chosen to forsake the very world, a human who even the martial monks who meditate in their adjacent tower to his hovel know, although he is living. He is already dead.
-- Short story --
~Aftermath~
Bitterness. That was what came from the hollow victory of their final fight against what could only have been described to him as an utter betrayal of the guilds. With regards to his friends, they felt more like strangers to him, some had even become monsters.
In moments of self reflection, all those months ago had he known what he knew now, he would have never opted to pursue his gifts. He had seen the horrors of evil and the monster that a friend had become, a monster that he had hoped to never have seen. The loss of his home town had broken him, but after watching her devour a raw heart of an unconscious foe, in that moment Aldrig had died and what fleeting embers of hope had been snuffed out into apathy.
Eventually reaching the summit of the mountain, he paused briefly taking a moment to catch his breath and all the while, the wind continued to hound him as he continued to trudge up here alone up along a goats trail on one of the highest mountains.
It was here where the air was thin and he knew the cold bit deepest into exposed flesh was he going to leave the last parts of who he was, his blade that no longer felt his and the armour too. Something he felt disgusted towards than any sense of pride.
Setting the sheathed blade of frost on the peak, then the armour in a loose wrap of hessian cloth. It was here the cold suddenly gained a greater strength causing him to wrap the fraying fabric of his cloak tighter around him in the hopes it would keep the fleeting warmth from his body. Aldrig swore silently then and there he would be no champion for the fae, renouncing to ever touch a sword for the rest of his days and lastly as he had begun- he would live in solitude.
If the gods saw fit he would survive to make it to the monks retreat near the ruins, he cared little and whether he knew if some would dare return to try and find him he believed they would find nothing but dead ends. As he turned he felt the uncomfortable feeling about leaving the weapon here, he felt defenceless without his blade and exposed without his armour. For a moment he hated the feeling of being defenceless but as the reason of why, steeled his resolve to continue.
Hugging the cloak tighter over his shoulders, here Aldrig was dead and buried. Dead like those in the city which the name now gave him nightmares. Dead like those in his home village and buried along in the hopes that the nightmares would leave him alone. But that was wishful thinking and it was that same thinking that had broken his spirit.
As the winter storm picked up, hugging the cloak against the chill he continued his walk back his shape in the waves of airborne snow as the winds continued to pummel the peaks his form vanished into the white leaving behind the armour of frost along with his blade to the elements.
Eventually returning to the monks, it was here he began to set up his life in seclusion.
The outcast - had now come full circle and turned his back upon being the hero he was destined to be. Aldrig the sword mage was now Keith, a Hermit. As the years went on, Keith took up the basics of herbology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Years later.
The sky had changed.
Maybe it had changed its hues, or the colour had changed to that of a waxy blue, here in the early hours of a cold morning he was unsure. Nearby from his small thatched hut built into a collapsed stone wall, with a stone hatchet he continued to work on breaking what timber into kindling.
Someone had been here maybe a week or months ago, but he hadn't paid much attention, preferring his own company. That and the recreational habit he had taken up with enjoying the occasional shroom he'd been growing gave him the escapism of swirling stars accompanied with periods of uncontrolled giggling and small harmless hallucinations.
Under the layers of frayed rags, he'd become gaunt due to the limited amount of food he could grow here. What little the monks provided was enough to sate him, but never truly satisfy. Nearby a pot bubbled with herbal contents. A bitter brew that burned hot all the way down, giving a brief moment of tingling down his fingers. Something he had figured out that caused his magical senses to fade to a dull numbness.
The monks barely spoke, or at best remained silent and reserved in their own habitual things.
It wasn't long for the brief moments of madness to take hold. He'd seemingly lost track of time and in doing so, for Keiths sake he barely seemed able to recall. It was then one of his hallucinations spoke for the first time, startling him. Aldrig had taken up a new name to further hide away from the world.
"Do I know you?" came a halfling's voice, Keith merely looked up to see an oddly out of place halfling sitting nearby looking at him dressed as if he were fresh out of a Tavern. "He looks familiar," piped up a female voice. Like ghosts from the past there they were, yet their names were no longer present in his memory. "He looks older, though. Thinner, but way worse for wear. Still, after all - you'd think he'd remember."
"Aldrig?" Asked the female half-ling's as he watched walk to the door of his hut, "Well we are dead, Maybe he's finally gone off his rocker." looking again, there was nothing there as he turned, what greeted him caused his heart to thunder in his chest. "All dead - because of you-" A rotten corpse in ripped clothes, sunken milky white eyes and a lip-less smile of rotten black teeth hissed snarling in his vision only for him to bolt upright in bed with sweat beading from his brow as he gasped for breath. A tightness in his chest refused to go away and as the rain pelted outside and wind whistled eerily through the gaps of his door. Trembling, he curled up under his blankets in the dark. Another thunderclap. Followed by another. Then another and covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to shut out the deafening noise.
For what Keith felt these were getting closer. As someone who had been struck by lightning before as a child, he never wished to be again. It was then something rattled his huts door.
"Fuck off." He breathed into the storm. "Keith ain ever known nothin." The door rattled again then bust open revealing a woman. Older, perhaps - someone he barely remembered and in his hazy sleepy state and his drug addled memory failed to recall who she was.
"Well look who's got their own shithole in the arse end of the world." An old female voice he knew but couldn't put a name to it. "What? Did you think the world was just going to let you fuck off and sulk it out." He didn't recall who this older woman was; maybe this was just another dream like all the others. "You're more drug fucked than I recall."
"I dun nuttin, I know nuttin." Came his hoarse response.
"Yeah clearly- worlds not going to wait to end." Still he didn't move, merely looked at her jaw agape "Aldrig." She spoke again, only with a snap he interrupted her, "I'm Keith." He blurted, "Now fek off outta me hut."
"Or what, you're going to blather me to death?" The older woman retorted. "Or better throw shrooms at me while continuing to be a hermit or bore me to death?" Keith looked at her while she rolled her eyes, "Who are you Keith, is this who you want to be?" With that she stepped out into the rain leaving his door wide open.
"I ain goin," He retorted.
And like that the storm vanished. Keith woke up to the smell of rain and his door was open, it could have blown open in the storm. Looking out Keith noticed things were missing, where the monk's home was now gone but signs were that it had collapsed down the cliff face.The tower without stairs had collapsed into unrecognisable rubble leaving him alone here to a faded bleak yellow coloured sky.
A woman much older than him stood there, different from before, maybe even better dressed, "Try again Aldrig, know I'm out of fucks to give for your shallow bitch attitude. Stay here and die, it doesn't change anything really." In her hand was a smoking pipe along with a bored disappointed expression.
Then without warning - as she turned to walk she vanished like smoke and with another rush of cold air of the morning, blinking back stars in his vision as his stomach ached with a gnawing hunger. The tower was back. The house that the monks mediated in was there as well, untouched and still intact. Keith reasoned with himself that maybe it was the herbs, but Keith was slowly feeling that in his absence - his mind was slowly coming apart.
"Fuck it." Muttered Keith with bared yellow stained teeth. With cracked nails he pulled the old cloak around his shoulders turning his attention to a ruin of his garden. Then with a world lurching dance of lights he felt his stomach contract as the contents of his stomach ejected splattering across the ground at his feet. After dry retching, blinking back the dots in his vision and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. An older man stood before him before tossing a wooden stick at his feet.
"Time for you to go back,"
Keith scoffed. "I ain't goin nowhere."
"Then you along with the rest of this world will fall. So, oh you are going somewhere" Keith merely smirked in response, "Gods owe me nuttin, I owe nuttin and I have all here." The man shook his head and Keith spat, "I am done fighting battles and done with it."
"You may be done." Answered the older man, as he walked forwards surprising Keith.
"But the fight isn't done with you and for once in your shitty life realise it's not just you against the world."
A flash of pain brought his world back from a glare of white light. Stumbling Keith was no longer in his sanctuary of solitude but back in the walled city of a place he barely remembered. Only this time it was no dream and dressed in his rags Keith was back where he didn't wish to be, only that this time a higher power had forced its hand to shove him back in a direction he didn't think possible. Taking up the wooden stick - he went to find his bearings of where he was.
Like a fish out of water he was here, lost hoping it was just a dream. When a passing seagull shat near his feet, along with the smells of the city assaulting his senses, it was clear he just appeared here.
"Fuck." came his rather flat response to the situation he was now in. "Me."
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