Survivor's Guilt

Despite the bitter cold, Liga Burr finds it easy to follow the irregular bloody crimson smudges against the stark whiteness of the icy ground. The path forms an almost perfectly straight line, like joining red dot-to-dots. Additionally the trail seems to be pointing toward a strange looking structure at the bottom of the distant mountain range.

Although Sir Brefadel's wound seems to be slowly healing, there's enough blood still seeping to make tracking easy. 

Far too easy. 

With his companions fallen a little behind, the rough Halfling's mind wanders back to their recent meeting with the Goddess of the Pool.

'A Halfling abandoned as a child', she'd reminded him.

'Last of the Darkstars' She'd called him.   

How had she known these things? Had none of his tribe managed to escape the accursed Red-eyes? Was Madh Boss truly dead?

The battle-scarred Halfling's eyes momentarily burn with hot tears before the frigid atmosphere freezes them in place on his eyelashes.

He'd hoped, despite his adoptive father's last words, that they'd somehow found a way to escape. Had he really lost another family?

Was he cursed to survive the slaughter of every group that accepted him? Like a Harbringer of destruction, had he doomed his new friends just by joining their little group?

A sense of responsibility gnaws at his tattered soul and he unconsciously reaches across to his heavyset hound; Mir Hundur and grasps a fistful of comforting warm fur.