It was amazing, if he was being honest. He had been alive for so long yet he had seen so little of the world. And so little of the world had been touched by the shadowed forced that had decimated his homeland that he had to wonder what it was all for in the first place. It wasn’t like Vladic to be so retrospective, but when you had been travelling for several seasons and found yourself alone, it was hard not to lapse into bouts of solipsism. Especially when entering new realms. He had seen plenty of them, some of them he lost friends and comrades in – though perhaps ‘lost’ was too strong a word. They had found new lives, away from the tumult and chaos of an endless, unwinnable war. He couldn’t blame them, but those places were not for him. They were too young, green lands settled by green rulers that didn’t know what they were doing. Recipes for disaster and not something he wished to be part of. It did not stop him from wondering how they had all got off so lightly, when his own home had been destroyed – a long war, years long, stopped because both sides were threatened and nearly wiped out completely by a mutual and undefeatable enemy. Looking back, there was nothing left. Centuries of years of life gone in little under three years. And yet the outside world was untouched. So far from home, he was left only with questions that would remain unanswered.

It was strange. He was now so far from where he started he wouldn’t ever be able to find his way back, yet he didn’t care. Never had he felt so apathetic to the place where he spent the best part of seventeen years. Strange indeed. He had enjoyed his time exploring, if he was honest. So many years in one place – his whole life in fact – it was an interesting experience, getting lost. New places, strangers and foreign customs. Places where they didn’t speak the same language he did; places where they took one look at his tank-like build and fled; places where that same build had mares flirting with him before they even knew his name. None were appealing, but each was fascinating.

His opinion on where he now stood had yet to be formed. It was a heavily wooded area, not unlike parts of his origin and places he had been. The day was warm, but nothing he had not experienced before, and there was the smells of…many strange things. And magic. There was a feeling in the air that prickled his skin and alerted the more primitive part of his brain. Be on alert, it said. He was not a spellcaster, he was a man of brute strength, but he had fought it before. As it stood, there were no threats to him here, but he would not be caught off guard. If this truly was the end of the line for his wanderings, then he was going to give it his full attention.

[[ooc: i've not done horse in well over a year. still shaking off the rust]]