A cold wind blew down from the north. It swept through the trees and rattled the branches menacingly, as though trying its best to shake down the yellowing leaves that had yet to fall. It was a shivery sort of day, dull and gray with no shadows and a faded, dispirited light that just barely managed to separate the previous and the upcoming nights from one another... and it was raining. Everything was wet, damp, muggy and foul, and so was the mood of the tall, black horse that meandered through the forest.

Morir was not happy. Actually, even labeling him to be displeased would be an understatement; it oozed off him in unpleasant fumes of bad temper, expressed not so much in the way the cloven hooves stomped the ground for each high-legged step or in his menacing countenance - Morir always looked menacing, it came with being tall and looming and wearing the skull of a dead animal over your face - as in the way he pushed his way forth through the underbrush with uncharacteristic force. Normally an even-tempered and quiet person, recent events had sent him into a spiral of increasingly bad moods - and he couldn't see that it was about to end anytime soon.

Mostly it was the lack of activity that had him in such a temper. When he first arrived in this place he had been scouted by a mare that promised hell and high tides for everyone that stood in her way, and intrigued by this notion of power and purpose he had allowed himself to be recruited to her cause. At first things had looked good - they had gathered members at a promising pace, there had been plans in the making and quite a few initial steps taken to secure information. They had been successful in kidnapping several people of importance, and as spring drew closer the dead-masked youngster had been content. But... as the summer drew nearer and the days turned hotter, everything just drained away into nothing. After loosing out on her duel with some mare or other, Confutatis had simply stopped coming around, Tyradon had disappeared without a word and one by one the members of the Regime had stopped showing up for meetings. Morir had done his best to keep things going but what could they really expect of a blind and inexperienced youngster with nothing to go for him but a sly tongue and a skill for abductions? Slowly the group had dispersed, leaving him as the sole horse left with a desire for more.

It was infuriating. If he had known that things would end up like this he would never have followed that lying cunt in the first place; he could have joined a herd, he could have worked his way up from the bottom like he had planned. He could have created his own band, declared himself king and contestant for any land deemed fit for habitation - he could have been the ruler of his very own kingdom by now. Instead he now found himself an outcast, a known criminal wandering aimlessly through the well-traveled borderlands, unable to decide whether his fortunes lay within this realm or beyond it. The only thing that really kept him here was a sign received once a winters night, the single large feather dropped by a raven tied into his mane. Ravens were messengers from the gods of his homeland; they were heralds, carrying tides of fortune and death alike to the mortals. Whether this token was a portent of ill fortune or a sign of good faith he didn't know; unlike the shaman that raised him after his parents demise Morir had never had a talent for soothsaying or interpreting signs. He just knew that the feather was dear to him, and felt reluctant to part from the place where it had been bequeathed to him.

A deep, rumbling sigh erupted from flaring nostrils, and after brusquely lashing out at an offensive shrub that tickled his belly as he walked over it the towering stallion stopped to rest, recognizing the pointlessness of his rovings. Leaning himself heavily against a tree he listened out into the forest for signs of life, empty sockets staring emptily from beneath the pallid mask of bone. Maybe he would just wait here, see if the gods would be kind enough to offer a second sign. Should he stay or should he go? The undertaker was undecided, prepared to leave his fate up to... well, fate.

"I embrace the thorny rose to my chest and
fall into the crimson sea
I continue dancing upon the
piled bodies until I die"