Blood dripped from an axe back into the gaping wound it left in a body. Returning some of the stolen life to the poor soul who wasn’t long for this world.

The axe bearer’s beard was stained with the blood of trunks cut, of men and wood alike, crimson and clotting the hair together without rhyme.

“Today,” He said, his baritone rumbling the stones beneath his feet, “Today we eat. Today we’ve found salvation, in the sacrifice of our prey.”

A crowd of men and women stand behind him, as battle scarred or worse, tearing a once formidable set of defenses and the encased village apart. They froze in the darkness. Soon, villagers in the same yellow tartan that tattered across the chest of the warrior. They quickly built a Town Center, and then began building barracks for the soldiers, and a monastery for their healers to work out of.

The next morning He stood in front of the troops, looking out over the silent and attentive eyes with a body draped over his massive shoulders.

“The dogs of NewLondon have felt our steel, and proven weak,” He threw the body down, and the slack-jawed face of the NewLondon King drooled before the crowd. There was rapturous thundering as they pounded their shields with their weapons. As He raised a hand, the crowd was instantly silent.

“We did not seek their destruction, but only wrought unto them from their own fouled seeds planted.”

There were low growls throughout the masses.

“And THEY attacked US”

Some people started jumping and barking, yelling in sporadic bursts.

“THEY betrayed US”

People started beating their own heads, yelling constantly and thrashing their arms.

His eye yellow and skewed, “And we will eradicate anyone who’s sprung from those seeds!”

The crowd now uncontrollable leapt and shrieked into thunderous battle, attacking each other and at times their own bodies, cutting punching and biting, blood enriching the black soil underfoot.