sunrise

Angor didn't know if he could lose an arm. In his centuries of battle he'd never had occasion to find out.

The swing of the axe ran through his mind again as he snuck through the woods, silent in spite of the shoulder he had to hold in place. It would heal, he knew, he always did, but this wound went so deep there was barely anything left that wasn't. He had no wish to risk it; he would just have to find somewhere to hide and heal until the next night came.

One of the wheeled metal crates hissed down the highway from a distant curve, shining light in his remaining eye. He caught the gaze of a fleshbag child, no more than forty had they been a whelp, tiny hat tipped back and eyes wide and open mouth silent. He stared back, coldly, and did not try to follow.

Then the crate--car, he remembered, Strickler had called it a car--was gone, rushing around the corner of the cliff face.

He would have stepped out if he could. If he had been willing to risk it. He had seen what cars did to deer, flesh-thing or not, and he wasn't sure what would happen if it tore him in half, much less what it would do to his arm.

But he would have if he could have. He wanted revenge, whoever he had to take his pound of soft flesh from. He wanted death.

He turned away into the night again, following the highway. The sewers were no longer safe; they would find him there, as they had done when--

When--

He shut the thought from his mind. When, when, when. When the Trollhunter had sealed his own fate and the fate of everyone in his quiet, sweet little village, taunting him with its smug safety. He would have killed for that safety long ago. He had, and it had done nothing. He had sold his soul and himself and it had done /nothing/.

Stop, thought a part of him. Stop this. But the rest of him was a scab burst loose, and the rage inside him fueled the spiral until he felt like his chest would burn away.

It was the strongest thing he had felt in centuries, he thought. The strongest rage, and the strongest bloodlust. Perhaps there was hope yet; perhaps, if he could throw enough bodies onto the whirlwind fire in his chest and gut and throat, it would fill him again for good.

He had little faith in it. He had little faith in anything anymore.

---

The night passed long. He couldn't carve to pass the time, waiting for his right shoulder to knit together as he was, so instead he drew aimlessly in the sand and dirt on the floor of the cave mouth where he'd made camp. They wouldn't look for him this deep in the woods, not yet; they weren't stupid, and going by the Trollhunter's squeals and Strickler's white-faced cries of terror they were none too brave either. By the time they gathered their nerve to come look for him here it would be far, far too late.

For now, though, sketches. Lines in the dirt. Golems at first, then new things he had seen since his arrival here, then tattoos and tribe lines.

He stared down at one. He recognized it. He knew not where. The memory dug at him like a dull knife, and some part of him said /leave it, leave it alone./

But he did not. He turned it over in his head, eye locked on the design; something from before, he thought, something--small. Too small to be a proper tattoo.

Then it hit him like a knee to the gut.

(/Angor,/ they'd said, their little face turned up to him. /What is it going to look like? You have to show me./)

Nausea.

(/I will show you when it is done, little one./ The whelp had huffed up him. /Have no worry./)

A suffocating tightness in his stomach.

(/You will decide what it looks like, after you have seen it./)

(/It is your choice./)

(/It is your flesh./)

His breathing came harsh and fast. He would make no cry, not in hundreds of years he had not, but he felt as though his chest and his head would burst from the ringing in his horns.

He should have left it alone.

Angor covered his face. He did not weep.

He waited, and did not sketch again.

---

The sun rose.

Angor had seen pink tinge the sky many times in his long life, and many times in a row; he needed less sleep than even others of his kind, and he had watched and waited through many a one. None had affected him since before the loss of his soul.

It occurred to him, this time, watching gray-orange fingers stretch across the night, that this was the first one he had seen in eight hundred years where he had been free.

Something passed across the void. He was still empty inside--the rage had gone with the waiting--but this was something as cold and strange and bright as the beginnings of sunlight. Misty, cloudlike. Not touching inside, but all around. He murmured the spell to surround himself with shadow, deep in thought, and felt whatever it was embrace him.

He couldn't feel it, not like he should. He knew he would never feel it again, and he couldn't even ache for the loss.

But it was something other than rage. Something other than violation; something other than grief. For the first time in all these eight centuries, all of these things boiling beneath the surface every waking moment, filling him where nothing else would, they were gone.

What was this, he wondered. What was this thing he felt, of which he had no living memory. What was this that was not anger?

He decided on a word. He knew not if it was the right one.

Angor Rot watched the sun rise, and felt peace.