A light in the darkness

[Grimm]

The Path in front of Grimm stretched on, it would still be a half hour before he reached the gates of Darkshire. All around him dark fields rolled away into infinity broken only by stagnant pools of once running water choked by overflow from the wetlands. Throughout his brief excursion with IP he had never taken the time to properly look at his surroundings but now that he did Grimm could see that this was a world sliding into decay. Still and unmoving and seemingly unaffected by the winds the dark clouds that blotted out the sun didn't pass, even after a quarter hour they remained the same. The gates of Darkshire were close now and as Grimm drew near he could make out a lone figure standing guard by the city gates. It was then that a rather worrying prospect dawned on him, if the stories he had heard were true and this world was plagued by creatures of the night then it wouldn't be surprising if he were mistaken for one. After all the people of his own world would often enter bouts of hysteria when his skeletal face was revealed and they weren't constantly living in the fear of his likeness tearing through their town and murdering the local populace. With the intention of avoiding the rather undesirable event of the locals forming a lynch mob and chasing him back to the deathly white of the nexus Grimm resolved to open a nice and civilised discourse with the guard to make clear that he was of more class then the undead they were used to dealing with.

"Excuse me sir," Grimm called out, still a good fifty or so meters from the guard, "This wouldn't happen to be the town of Darkshire would it?". Grimm had tried his best to sound friendly but the echo caused as the air left his skull had the unwanted effect of making everything he said sound just a tiny bit ominous.

Wearily the guard turned so that he properly faced Grimm "It is but don't expect a warm welcome. We're still recovering from the last attack and no one has the time to play tour guide.". Now that he was closer Grimm could see that the guard had an aged complexion that was broken by the tell tale signs of exhaustion. Grimm had expected Darkshire to be town under siege but if the people within its walls were recovering then some of the carnage would had to have breached the walls. This would not be ideal, people pulling themselves back together rarely took kindly to skeletal strangers trying to pry into the local history. All in all this wasn't what Grimm had wanted to find. If he was going to get anything out of the people here then he was going to need to build some goodwill and in a community as isolated as this one that would probably be no small task. For now he would start with the obvious path.

"There's been a raid," Grimm did his best to emulate concern, "maybe I could be of assistance in the reparation effort."

"We have enough townsfolk to rebuild ourselves." The guard snapped almost cutting Grimm off, "If you want to try to be of use then report to Dobson in the armoury and get to ensuring it doesn't happen again." The guard was about as friendly as Grimm had expected, given both the situation and his own disposition, making it clear to him that his battle to win the, hearts, minds and information of Darkshire's people would not start with this man. Calmly Grimm thanked the man for his help, did his best to disengage from the interaction in the least offensive way possible and made his way inside thankful that his lack of a face ensured his scowl was only internal. He had hopped he would be able to build up relations through some simple rebuilding but if joining the local defensive force is what it would take then that is what he would do.

[Grimm]

Grimm stepped through the gates of Darkshire and onto what appeared to be main street. Around him people continued on with their day putting out the washing, sweeping the streets, all moving through the general mundanities of daily life. What Grimm and expected he didn't know but he sure did know that he hadn't banked on this. The demeanour of the guard had left him expecting to see smashed homes and dead bodies in the street instead of this ambivalence. People would glance his way every now and then but there was no animosity, just a look of a tiredness. In a way this was much worse. Dead bodies and smashed windows are horrible but easy to clear away. This wasn't a town that suffered the occasional raid, this was a town under siege. Grimm was taken aback, he may have a cold and calculating tendency but he still considered himself to be, in the broader sense of the term, human. Getting closer to the information he sought took priority but if helping the town with its problems was a part of that then all the better.

Just a short way down the street he was on there was a large building. Grimm could see a notable number of guards, both armed and unarmed, heading in and out, at regular intervals. They were probably the local guards changing shift. If that was the case then Grimm decided it would be best to wait for the most recent group to leave before heading in himself so he didn't appear to be a straggler. As the last guard walked out he quickly slipped through the still open door.
The building that he had presumed to be the armoury wasn't all to impressive on the inside but then again it was there to serve a purpose. Every free surface had some kind of weapon, map or equipment on it. They hadn't quite stockpiled to the barrels of swords level, but if the number of people he had seen outside was a good metric for estimating the population of this place then they had more than enough weaponry to arm everyone in the small town. At the very back of the room Grimm could see a single guard looking over a large map laid across an equally large table. The guard was maybe six feet tall with unkempt sandy hair and a figure that, from this angle at least, appeared more scrawny than his. Again Grimm chose to open conversation at a distance, least there be a misunderstanding over his appearance.

"Excuse me sir," Grimm didn't shout but made sure his voice easily carried across the ten meters between them, " you wouldn't happen to be Dobson would you?"

The guard turned away from his map to face Grimm who could now tell from his rather youthful complexion that this guard was, well, youthful. This couldn't be the man responsible for running the town's defence effort, realising he must have made a mistake Grimm began to raise his palm to apologise and turn away when the guard cut him off.

"I am," The guard spoke wearily, "what do you need?"

The guard, who had at least claimed to be Dobson, didn't appear grand or strong just tired. Like a man who had faced more than any man should. Grimm turned back to properly face the guard, he may not look like a leader but if he claimed to be one then there was no real reason to dispute him. He had come here to gather some information not criticise the towns political decisions.

"I was informed that the local defensive forces were accepting volunteers." Now that Dodson had had enough time to notice his skeletal nature, and had not attempted to murder him, Grimm was happy to close the buffer he had left between them and into a proximity more appropriate for a conversation. Obviously Grimm was not the first peculiar stranger to head through this small town.

"You want to volunteer," The surprised tone in Dobson's voice did not fill Grimm with confidence, "good I have a post that I need manned and I can't spare anyone from the regular patrols to fill it. I presume you have some combative training."

Grimm went to assure him that he could handle himself but Dobson just gestured that he should move over to the table. Now that he had gotten going rolling it seemed he didn't want to stop, "Right it's a simple forward camp position. You'll only be a few kilometres from our walls, there's already a tent and some basic provisions. If you see any daemons making their way towards us you simply light the warning brazier and try to hold them as long as you can before falling back and letting our main force move in to deal with it.". All through his speech Dodson pointed at various places on the map. It seemed that the main force Dobson spoke of was stationed at the town Grimm could expect a wait of only an hour or two before they would be able to help him in the event he did actually need to fight anything.

Dobson pulled a folded piece of parchment out of one of his pockets and continued, "We don't have a welcoming ceremony for you so if you're willing to go, take this map, it has your post marked along with the best route to get there. You can collect a weapon from the rack nearest the door. I'll send someone to relive you in two weeks. Good luck." with that Dobson turned back to his map.

The entire ordeal had been far less official than Grimm had been expecting, making it all the more clear to him that this town was in a dire need of outside help. Politely Grimm nodded and took the map Dobson had offered. Before turning to get his weapon and leave. The rack Dobson had pointed him towards didn't have much in the way of weaponry, just a series of short swords. Grimm had never been much of a close combat fighter and there was little point in depriving the town of weaponry If he wasn't going to use it so instead he simply walked past the rack. He was halfway to the door when it occurred to him that he had never asked Dobson what exactly he would be fighting. It didn't matter much though it was unlikely to be anything he had faced before and a name would carry little to no information of its weaknesses.

Back on the streets things were still as they were before. A few heads turned to look at him as he left the building but no one looked for long. Happy that there would be no altercation Grimm made his way back to the gate and out to the dark expanse of the Pale Moors. He gave a friendly nod to the gate's guard who was still standing by, what was to Grimm's knowledge, the Towns only entrance. The guard responded with a heavy sigh and a shake of his head. Then Grimm was off. He checked the map he had been given. The path was pretty simple he just needed to follow a track that leaded around the towns walls then off into the moors proper. Confident that he knew the way to go Grimm returned the map to his pocket and set about making sure he had enough cards to last him the two weeks. He counted thirty, they would do. Normally he would have stopped to ink up some more but given that he had managed to summon the ones he had in a matter of minutes he was willing to wait at least until he got to the forward post before trying to create more. The map had his path marked as a seven kilometre journey, it would be an hour or two before he got there. There was little to do on the track so he just looked around him taking in the scenery and making sure to be aware of any positions that would be of a strategical advantage if he had to retreat some time in the coming weeks.

[Grimm]

Only an hour had passed before Grimm found himself at the base of a rather steep hill, just past the crest he could make out the very top of the warning brazier Dobson had told him about. The mud track leading up the hill cut a straight line through the pale grass that lined it. Slowly but surely Grimm started the upward trek. As he climbed the hill he looked up at the sky. The ever dark clouds were still swirling above completely destroying Grimm's ability to determine the time from the suns position. Instead he could only deduce that the steady decline in what little light could make it through the blanket of cloud meant that night was approaching.

Finally Grimm crested the hill. It had taken him longer then it arguably should have but spending the last five years in a six-foot square cell, and the limited mobility the arrangement caused, had not done wonders for his joints. If he were being honest Grimm really just wanted to curl up into a ball and recuperate for the next few hours, but he had been given, and more importantly accepted, a job. Reluctantly Grimm surveyed the camp. There wasn't much to be seen. In the middle was the brazier. It had been placed at the highest point of the hill, most likely to ensure that it could easily be seen by the guards on the walls back at Darkshire, only a few feet away was a small one person tent and next to it was a metre cubed box simply marked as provisions. Going through the contents of the box and taking inventory of what he had would probably be a good idea, but first Grimm wanted to make sure he had a way of actually lighting the brazier.

On closer inspection the brazier was shown to be a rather simple set up. It rested on a small stone plinth and the brazier itself appeared to be made out of either wrought or cast iron and consisted of a large basin held above the ground by four curved feet. It was filed almost to the Brim with what appeared to be lamp oil and the intended ignition method was most likely the two small shards of flint next to one of the braziers feet. While this was all passable Grimm had never been a survivalist and didn't trust his ability to reliably strike up a fire using two small rocks, even if the fuel he was trying to ignite was a large pool of highly flammable oil. Instead he retrieved his notebook from his pocket and made a few amendments to the spell he had planed to use when gathering water for IP. It had originally been intended to create a small pillar of prolonged warmth but with only a few changes to the inscribed runes Grimm could instead make it release a sudden burst of extreme heat, enough to ignite the oil. He also added one last touch, two small runes. So long as the two runes were within a hundred meters of each other breaking one would trigger the spell. Happy that everything was as it should be Grimm removed the paper on which he had inscribed the spell from his notebook and, being careful not to break it, tore off the triggering rune. Then he gently placed the newly crafted spell onto the surface of the oil and tucked the paper with the trigger into his jacket pocket. Now if any creatures of the night did see fit to attack his post he would be able to focus on not being killed, as opposed to lighting a fire.

With the brazier prepared Grimm cracked open the box of provisions that Darkshire had provided him. Although the box was rather large it didn't contain much, all it had was: two weeks supply of salted meat, and water; sixty foot of hempen rope; a spare flint for lighting the warning signal and a small hand knife. Though they were rather bare bones the provisions did surpass Grimm's minimal expectations of a small box with some unpreserved food. After counting everything he had been provided with Grimm carefully packaged everything back up leaving the meat on top and replaced the boxes lid. Grimm didn't bother looking in the tent, being a creature sustained by magic did have some advantages and the biggest one was that he didn't need sleep. He could overexert himself causing some of the runes that powered him to shut down and recover but he never needed to power down his entire body. It was this property that would probably be the most helpful in the coming weeks. Having looked at everything in the camp Grimm knelt in it's centre with his back to darkshire. If demons did attack him tonight they would most likely be heading past him in an attempt to reach the town so it would make little sense for him to watch any other angle.

Time passed and Grimm continued to remain vigilant. There was little movement in his surroundings bar the slight rustle of nearby trees. Looking down to the base of the hill he could see the edge of a woodland that had yet to spread up to his camp. The trees were pale and almost skeletal in their lack of leaves. Boredom wasn't an issue as his high perch gave him a lot to look at. The hill wasn't giant by any stretch but from it he was able to see for a good few hundred meters in any direction, the caveat being that anything in that range was also able to see him.