A Recurrent Theme...(a please join me, tale)

[Scarfair]

Evil has ended, you say? Broke about upon the four winds, shattered and spread to the corners of the earth, you say? Wounded and attended upon none, cut off from it's own life and hope? Would that the Wise could gain such an end to that evil, that you who dream about this tale would believe so easily...

Evil has ended, you say? Read on, O child of fantasy, and if you have never truly looked into the heart of shadow; quail not, fail not, and look hard upon that which is wrought of the shadows now...

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Arnor slept the peace of a forgotten kingdom. For though the King had come again to Gondor, his reach could only structure the lands below the northern fastness of the Ered Mithrin. What goes beyond that dark curtain of grey could only be guessed at by those Elessar sent to guard his realm. Thus the foot of the Grey Mountains became home to the hardest and toughest of the Dunedain, a people sprung from the roots of legend and hardship, a folk that only the King, himself, could call his own. And what better guardsmen could there be that shared such magnifiecent blood? Such blood will always tell, and in this time of times, in this place, of all places, such blood must pass muster, for if it fails, who knows of what else might fail?

Estren Arahael gazed from the bones of the mountains, up, to the hoar and snow covered peaks that ranged his entire horizon, squinting against the bitter wind that coldly nipped at his nose, and positively ravaged his hands.

His hands were locked about the hilts of a broadsword, his fists so long exposed to the fury of the northwind that he could not now release his hold, even if he so wished.

Were you to stand in that icy blizzard and in the dell among the foothills of the Ered Mithrin, facing Estren, a Ranger of Arnor, as he studied the white, frozen wastes of these mountains; you would see his mouth working, though at first only the howling wind would come to your ears. But soon words would be made out, as the hollow shadows of his face moved, words of anger and vengence, words that should best be thrown to the Northwind anyway...

"Sligroth! Sligraaawwwth! I COME FOR YOU!"

You would see him fall to his knees, trying to shelter a body at his feet, a body that is long past the need of shelter. Estren's brother Agron lay in the snow, cold and stiff in a pose of agony. He may have died from the cold, for the corpse was nearly unclothed, or he may have died from the ugly, gaping wound in his chest, the blood and gore frozen to black rivlets and crags on icy, alabaster skin. Either way, the name of the tool that begat this death remained on Estren's lips, a curse, a snarl, a black issue of hate, vocalized and sounded by the call for vengence for his brother's murder...

"SLIGROTH!"