Brand
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First, there was darkness.
Darkness so deep, so close--No. He just needs to open his eyes.
C’mon. Open. OPEN!
He takes a deep breath--forgetting to do so for a while, no wonder opening his eyes felt so heavy--peeks from beneath his eyelids, and was greeted by another kind of darkness. One glittered by many small lights, and one giant, round big one--what are they called again? Oh yeah, the stars and the moon--above him.
Then, there was familiarity. He’d been through this; somehow, he knows he’d been through this already.
That’s about the only thing that he knows, though.
He takes several more deep breaths--ragged breaths, coughing blood wildly--and focuses his mind. Reaching for something, anything that he could remember. He tried to remember himself.
Nothing.
His name. Nothing.
Where he is. Nothing.
Where he was. Nothing.
This is bad. This feels bad. Right? But worse is that he is not panicking much, because somehow, he knows this is how it should be.
He looks at himself, trying to see if there’s anything on him that can give him somethi--oh wow, he’s naked. Ok, that’s a bit more troublesome. No equipment? No sword in hand, at least? Not that he remembers, but he feels like knowing that coming to the middle of a woods--dark forest, tall grass, glistening eyes of night predators watching, looking, judging if he is prey or not--buck naked to be stupid means at least he isn’t stupid enough to do it. To not even say of how he has nothing as a cl--
Wait.
What’s this on his right arm? A tattoo? No, a scar. Both? The tattoo covers the scar, it seems. A brand?
Intricate design. Runic--how does he know that word, though?--symbols, three of them, make up the main focus of this...brand. The longer he looks at it, the more if feels like the symbols turn and twirl, sucking him in--
Whoa there. Okay.
His thoughts seemingly become more and more coherent as time goes by. Enough to register of how bad of an idea it would be to keep on staying here. It’s cold, it’s noisy--the woods is silent, no, it’s filled to the brim with activity, no, it’s silent because how was he supposed to hear the night denizens moving about anyway?--and he needs to get moving. Right. Get up now.
As he runs to, well, not particularly anywhere--there’s a track. A game trail. Good, that means sooner or later he will either meet something or the hunter of something--his arm keeps swinging next to him, the brand a whirl in the air.
The brand.
Brand.
Background
It’s been about a year since he found himself waking up in this unknown land. No knowledge of how, not remembering his own name, and nothing even to pursue.
Well. Besides just staying alive.
Then again, he’s not exactly equipped with completely nothing. To be exact, he has 2 things going on for him. One, he found out--or knew--that he’s a damn good fighter. Whatever this land is, it’s not without peril, which is good for him. There’s at least some means to gather some coins and scrap by until tomorrow, every day.
The other is this brand on his right arm. Too intricate to dismiss, even if he doesn’t know--or remember--what it means. Still, it feels important.
So might as well begin his new life with it.
Such is how Brand, the human fighter, began his trek across the land of Nuria-Natal as sword-for-hire, encountering its turbulence and beauty as he brings his foot towards wherever luck would bring him to.
One day, rumour of treasures to be found in an underground complex beneath the Mountain of Rebirth reaches his ears….
Flameskull
In an attempt to contain the resurrection of a flameskull, Brand ingested the ashen remains, yet it resulted only with him being possessed by it. The helmet given to him by the swamp sorceress Ethel now serves as a tight leash, and Brand swore to never let the evil spirit roam free ever again, but one could never know what happens in the future.
