It had started to rain late in the day, a bursting downpour that soon settled into a gentle drizzle. The hunters had poor sport, but the craftsmen did alright. That morning, Logern, Bravar, Taran, and Arn’s brother Joroth marched through the village like some small band of their own. The band of merry reluctants reported that the third raft was done, that the project was done.
Arn beat the tree sapling a wooden rod, his muscles quivering as violently as the scattering leaves. Sweat dripped made his eyebrows feel cold. The little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and the leather tunic he wore chafed his nipples, a distant paint, incomparable to the force of each blow reverberating the bones in his arms. He couldn’t see the source of this rage, but the skill would soon be necessary so he gave himself over to it.
The damned tribespeople would fight him as fiercely as the Deep. He could not kill them in retaliation anymore, not unless no other option presented itself. The bleeding tree he trained upon was Logern, was Keeya, was Shar—its sap was their blood and its bark, flecking off and hanging down in tatters from some of the places he struck, was their flaking words.
“No,” he gasped, and stepped back to jab the tree with a stabbing potion. His pointless spear struck it in the middle of its width, stone-still. No, he thought. These were not the sources of his rage.
The final raft was done. All the complaints and coy lies were just another obstacle to bringing Razaad aboard. Arn twirled his spear as his sharp eyes looked over the bumpy ridge of his scarred face at his target. The tree wasn’t them. Was it him?
He smashed a branch smoothly, severing it from the bark as his feet shifted position and a second blow smashed the sapling from the other side. Did the rage come at his own mistakes? He should have been able to achieve this without losing his nose. He cried out as he skimmed his feet over the mossy soil and slashed his target again. He should have been able to do this without thrashing Thalla. His next blow on the young mathhar was weaker, less spirited. He could feel the quiver of her flesh when he kissed her and when he had struck her…
But as he faced his opponent, pausing once more, he sucked in his breath deeply and let go of that. He would have done it all again—this was the fight! He would claw his way forward even if it meant becoming something unrecognizable. He hoped he could go back to hunting one day, but he would let go of all that to teach the tribe to hunt beyond the swampy shores of Razaad.
“It will be time soon,” he thought. He had time for one more bout though.
Arn began with a quick flurry, holding his staff at the base of its length, slamming quick impacts off the stripped tree. Dirt flecks joined the muck in his dark hair only to turn the rivulets of sweat black. It was his old fight mask, he imagined, as he sparred with the tree. Dark paint to hide his expression and his sweat and his blood. Wearing the black barrier, Arn could become Razaad. He could blend into the dark grass and dank marsh. He could see what the water scales saw. He could see what Razaad saw.
And, as his rage began to fade, he finally named it. Limits. He peered through Razaad like a rotted trunk with a black mask and he saw the boundaries. There were places where the water scales could not go, where the Deep claimed all. He struck the tree again, ready to fight anyone who stood in the way of his progress, but he knew intimately that infuriating truth: every time he broke a limitation, he lost something dear for it.
He had to stop thinking so much, he decided, and gave the next strike all his strength.