In the foggy evening, Ren sat alone in the wood behind his childhood home, only his own shadow accompanying him. As the sun moved closer to the horizon, he sat alone still. The fog wrapped him in its cold and desolate arms. The stump of an old oak felt damp and weak under his hands. Lifting one hand, it was the first movement he had made in two hours.

  Sighing, he noticed the deep wrinkles in his skin. The dampness of the log had soaked his fingers. Standing slowly, he felt the same dampness on the bottom of his shirt and jeans. The sensation was uncomfortable, yet it was far from his mind.

  Stepping forward he looked down to the earth between him. Brushing a slab of stone with his fingers, he traced letters. Soon his fingers moved to play with the pedals of a flower. One, a true purple vibrant and lively even in the deathly fog. The second, a royal blue that stood true and brave even amongst the thick miasma of the world around it. A smile tried to touch his face, but only a tear could break through.

  It was then that he stood, a deep breath coming through his teeth. He exhaled heavily through his nose, trying to calm the raging storm in his heart. Pain fought against the knowledge that this was far from the fate they would have wanted for him. Regardless, sorrow triumphed over all other thoughts. Turning his back, he headed deeper into the woods surrounding the graves.

  The swirling mist only thickened as the sun dropped closer to the horizon. Within the dark, the echoes of the past only rang out harsher within his mind. Walking further into the deep shadows slowly growing, he was surrounded by eyes all around him.

  Whether they watched him with hunger of accusation he did not know. This mind swayed as hurtful memories came and went. It was not long before the eyes began to move around him. Lost in the thick mists, and growing shadows, the eyes began to come closer to him.

  From all sides, sets of orange glowing eyes closed in on him. They reminded him of the hounds within the forest, though that was all a dream, wasn’t it? Or was this the wondering dream of a madman instead?

  The eyes circled him from the other side of the thick walls of mist. The shadows darkened as the sun fell rapidly into the horizon.

  Quickly, the set of orange-glowing eyes before him broke through the mist. It ran for him, a great black dog whose form was barely tangible. Opening a great black maw it moved to clamp down its great teeth around his head.

  Ren stood paralyzed as blackness swallowed his head. The great maw of the hound bit down on his head, his face consumed by the unending darkness within its mouth. A horrible pain thundered through his head as only blackness was left to him.

  Within the great darkness before him, his mind ached, and a pinprick of light shone in the distance.

  Ren begged for the pain in his skull to end, though it only grew as the tin pinprick of light came closer. As the light came closer, it became bright and ever-expanding. Soon it became the size of a lightbulb, then a headlight. Soon, his head was unbearable and he could only beg for death.

  The great light before him only grew fatter and far more swollen. It expanded ever onward and it came closer to him. As the light grew in luminosity and size, his head only ached onward. The mind-numbing thrumming within his head pounded with his heartbeat as the light collided into him.

  Opening his eyes, Ren stared into a fluorescent tube of light. A dull ache thrummed through the back of his head. Reaching up, his arm trail wires, feeling his aching skull bandages surrounding his head all around. He tried digging his fingers underneath the bandages in the haze of half-consciousness.

  A quick hand grasped his and spoke soft and quiet words to settle him. He did not know what they had said, but it almost sounded as though it came from a sing-song voice. It settled him, though a strange curiosity still had his mind.

  An odd numbness and euphoria had been clouding his mind. His vision was not entirely clear, and he struggled to see his surroundings. Only the fluorescent tubes were very obvious to him, the bed he was in, and the various wires hooked up to him.

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  His eyes were again attracted to the light above him, as a memory of a dark dream clouded his mind. A memory of light clashed with the dark dream, Ren felt an odd dysphoria playing in his mind.

  I remembered, and this is just a memory. He started undaunted into the light, willing himself free of a dead memory, and his forgotten dream.

  -

  His eyes peeled open, the floor of a dwarven shower below him. Old memories tried to flood his mind, overwhelming him. With the willpower of an ascendant being, he crushed the memories into a small vault at the back of his mind. There would be time to unpack his memories when the time came, for now, this was the life he was living.

  Picking himself up, Ren moved back to the hot faucet of the shower. Covered in his bile, he cleaned himself of the past. It was time to move on, to settle old things. Becoming more than you once were, it was the only way to progress.

  Again clean, he moved to turn off the faucet mechanism within the dwarfs’ barracks. It was a neat place, something that seemed common thus far with dwarves.

  Leaving the showers, Ren found himself walking naked out in front of three dwarven men and a woman. Not realizing what he was doing, he spoke. “I need something to wear.” The realization struck him, he forgot the towel.

  The three dwarven men practically jumped before the tailor who had come to fashion his new clothes. Borrin called out to Ren with a hint of frustration. “I don’t know how you humans go about things, but we dwarves do not go around without clothes in front of our ladies!”

  Ren looked down at himself, redness entering his face. “I apologize.” He turned to go get his towel and dry off, wrapping it around his waist.

  Quickly returning, Ren allowed the tailor to take his measurements. It only took a few minutes before she could begin creating a proper set of clothes, some without massive holes in them. Ren sat resting in the barracks in a separate room while the seamstress did her work.

  Allowing himself to relax, he refused to sleep. Fearing the same nightmares might plague his mind again, he fought off the urge to let himself drift off.

  While he relaxed the tailor readied a shirt made of tough material harvested from one of their subterranean plants. It was durable, and for those ascendant, the material would bend easily. It was akin to leather of sorts, though less tough, and slightly easier to move with. The material was woven and of a dark gray. Though a deal stiff, it was easy enough for a dexterous fighter to move within.

  Of an odd mixture of materials, she crafted long pants for him. They were of dyed black material, easier to move within though less durable than the shirt she had made.

  It was a relatively swift process, and Ren soon found himself properly clothed again. The seamstress promptly left, not wanting to talk with the human who showed up naked for her measurement taking.

  The white-bearded dwarf Noc spoke to Ren shortly after he finished dressing. The two other dwarves follow him.

  “Now Ren, I do have a few questions for you. My hospitality is important to me, but there’s something a lot more important here to that.”

  Ren’s fear spiked as he looked into the eyes of the dwarf before him. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Noc cut him off.

  “Now, lad, I need to know firstly how you learned to speak as a dwarf speaks. Not once have you spoken a human tongue. You speak with neither an accent nor a wisp of difficulty.”

  “I use magic. I can understand and speak other languages through magic.”

  Noc raised a single eyebrow while the other two dwarves behind him glanced at one another.

  “Well, that might not be impossible. So then, what about the eyes?

  Ren felt awkward now staring back at the dwarf. “Again, it is magic. Magic has transformed my eyes to see better in bad conditions. Also, I can use these eyes to better understand the nature of what I look at.” The black lightless eyes of Ren looked back into Noc’s ordinary brown eyes.

  Noc smiled, “So you mean to say you can do a lot of special things with magic no one else ever achieves at your level of ascension? Things that would ordinarily be impossible until you reach the pinnacle of moral strength?”

  “Yes. It is the truth.” Ren may have left out quite a lot of what had happened, but in essence he was not lying. It was through his own magic that he turned his eyes into the black voids they were now. Even if it was through an ability given to him by his patron.

  “And the hand cannon you carry? It’s fine craftsmanship, and yet there are details to it that made it quite odd.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fact that everything you carried, and even you stink of a God of the Void. An Eldritch God has aided you in your journey. It’s quite obvious lad. Dwarves are master craftsmen, and not to mention our magic is nearly unparalleled in enchanting our craftsmanship. I could see easily with the enchantments on your weapons you’ve been directly in touch with a Void God.”

  “So, what does that mean then?” Ren stood, ready to run. He knew he stood no chance of escaping the dwarves, but he refused to be caged again.

  “It means you have a lot of explaining to do. And I don’t mean half-truths and fancy explanations. I mean cold hard truths and good reasons on why you would be void-touched.”