The night found him out of the safety of his frozen wilderness. His breath puffed around his nose as testament to the cold he wore like a shawl, or perhaps proof of the beast within; he moved through its clouds roughly, haste nipping at his heels. There was a touch of worry too, evident in the crinkling of his 'brow as he glanced up at the bloodied heavens. He squinted as the Sun sank, trying to recall within his head which day he was on, but with little luck. Some of the recent storms had obscured his stars and thus his counts.

I think i can make it, he tried to reassure himself, shuffling back towards his hovel in the Basin before he was caught out in the dark. Not this dark, he would never make it in time, but it wasn't this night he was worried about, or so he thought. The night's descent was noticeable, and not half because of the darkness it brought. For Öde it tended to bring something special, something reliable; a token of his mortality that he so brusquely tried to deny.

Pain.

That is how the night met him. This night. This cold, moon-less, awful bitch of a night. "FUCK!" he swore as agony rippled through his skin and settled into sinew and flesh, ate against muscle and burrowed into bone. Blood painted the obsidian of his side where a spire of ice had once impaled him, and there his lung fell again, his breaths abruptly ragged. Skin bubbled and peeled along his back and his chest where divine blood and saliva had eaten at him like flame on logs, the fire real enough to his nerves that screamed beneath the memory. Meat flapped with every stride against his chest where the Moon's puppet had carved him a grave - the very one he descended into now.

Staggering, drunk on torment, Öde slipped into the recesses of the cave network, where he figured to suffer alone in silence as he did every night this occurred back home. You'd think he'd loathe the darkness for the hurt it caused him, but it's familiarity held a certain comfort. Even the things that hurt us, so long as we know them, aren't so terrifying as the unknown.

His weary, bedraggled momentum finally sank against the gnarled trunk of his death tree. His right shoulder, in better shape than his left, slouched against the wavy bark while his head hung in despair between his forelegs. As if physical assault wasn't enough, being here again, like this, reminded him of his mother. His heart clenched at the thought...

---

['tis a new moon as this is written so:
:: [ Magic: DarkxLight (P) | able to live forever, though all pain is still felt and a killing blow will cause unconsciousness for several days as the body recovers ]
:: [ Restrictions | can be killed by complete decapitation only; recovering from an injury the scars are left and in moonlight the wounds are revealed as new; during a full and new moon they are felt as fresh ] ]