The Deserter

It was only after he had run six miles through the woods, half-blind and lungs burning, that Wolfe thought to consider what exactly had transpired to bring him to his current situation.

He had been a soldier of Mah’irah, a cultish religion that advertised divine protection from evil. He had served under the master swordswoman Augustiné, the brawn of the cult’s leaders. She was supposedly semi-divine and always dressed in blue, and he remembered her stern features fondly. But that had been before he had left, and before he had uncovered the cult’s largest conspiracy.

He couldn’t go back. The Mah’irah, perhaps Augustiné herself, would kill him. His desertion from his former position was damning enough, not to mention his discovery about the cult’s true demonic nature - information that was so strictly confidential that he suspected the cult leaders would protect it with their lives if they didn’t sacrifice their followers first. For Wolfe now knew all too well that the gods of Mah’irah were literal demons; demons that not only controlled Mah'irah, but had completely possessed all the cult’s leaders themselves. And so, he was on the run from them; the Mah'irah, the demons, Augustiné, everyone.

Where could he go? He had no family left; they were all dead, killed by war and starvation in Wolfe’s devastated northern home. The eastern deserts were dangerous; they were teeming with bandits, and even if he wasn’t killed by them, he’d die in the heat. And there was nothing to the south for a hundred miles - just more and more of these ghostly woods, a haunting place of dead trees and empty shadows where he’d only find madness and mushrooms. 

The west, then. There were cities to the west, cities where he could disappear and forget, and the ocean. The ocean was good, Wolfe decided. The ocean had ships and fish and opportunity to be anything but a connoisseur of malevolent spirits. He would wait until morning, and run from the sunrise to a place of hope and safety. It would be like his childhood home had been so many years ago, before that civil war that had driven him to Mah’irah in the first place, and it would be perfect. 

Wolfe was so busy smiling to himself, pleased with his revelation, that he didn’t hear the blue-clad figure drop from the trees, or see her raise a sword to strike.