The room was dim, lit only by a few lanterns and full of pipe smoke. Shro the Elder was puffing deeply on his pipe, leaned back and considering what the Circle of Equals had met to discuss. A subject that still made Lomdus' head spin with disbelief as he had only been informed of the plan a bare half an hour before.

Less than an hour ago the Circle's spy, Gulna, had been shown into Shro the Younger's study, out of breath and half mad with panic. The spy, who had previously helped steer the bandit group toward those farms, businesses and caravans that did not pay proper tithes to the Circle, had been babbling about an armored giant who had suddenly appeared in the camp and begun slaying everyone with a fearsome notched axe. The giant had destroyed even the demon summoning staff, acquired in secrecy at such expense by the Circle, during his rampage through the camp. According to Gulna, only a handful of the bandits remained, and most of those were probably still running in fear from the giant.

Shro the Elder had called the Circle of Equals to a meeting and together they had discussed their options, finally settling on a single one in less than ten minutes - a miraculous feat that led Lomdus to believe that the discussion was little more than a smokescreen and the decision had already been made before Lomdus had been brought in on the plan.

"So we agree?" Gree the Crone asked, exhaling a long plume of blue smoke and looking at her fellow council members, all of whom nodded solemnly.

"I am concerned that this august body is underestimating Fraker the Axe," Lomdus warned. "Many have tried to slay him and none have succeeded."

Shro the Elder waved away Lomdus' warning.

"When Fraker returns to gather his reward, he will die," Shro the Elder said, and everyone nodded. Only Lomdus was unsure that just because the Circle of Equals had decided something, that it would come to pass.

* * * * *

Lomdus the Lame knelt in front of the altar, clenching both hands and pressing the knuckles against his forehead as he murmured prayers to the Goddess of Fortune: to keep his own life and to ensure the safety of his family. Two white bulls, a quartet of rams, six sheep, a score of chickens and six bundles of grain lay scattered around the altar, proof of Lomdus' desire to curry the favor of the ever-fickle Goddess.

Flames leapt up from the floor; gold, silver and copper in hue. The twisting flames were accompanied by the chime of falling coins rather than the crackles and snaps of regular fire. The sacrifices melted away, pulled into the flames like water into a drain and vanishing from the sight of mortals. Lomdus felt his heart leap, his exultation wiping away the throbbing pain in his lamed knee as he knew that his prayers would be answered.

Fraker the Axe would spare his life and the lives of his family and servants. When he saw the stacks of coin still sitting before him, their metal cool and unblemished, he knew that although he and his family would escape with their lives, the Goddess had not promised to look after his wealth.

Still, Lomdus was smiling as he struggled to his feet.

The Circle of Equals was being foolish. To think that they could defeat Fraker the Axe! The man was a legendary hero. An Eternal who wandered the land in pursuit of unknowable tasks, a survivor of the brutal Lich King War that had ravaged the entire world for over a century; he was the man who had not only defied the Blossom of Death but faced the implacable undead general in combat on the field of battle and walked away. Fraker had killed demons, fought Gods, single-handedly ruined cities, survived the Valley of the Stacked Skulls, fought both for and against the Lich Kings, the Iron Legion, the Stygian Wave, and fought his way out of the afterlife at least once. Rumor said that his own Goddess, Lorshani, the Bitch Queen of Carnage, Destruction and Battle, was afraid of him and refused to take him to her bosom for his eternal reward, so great was his potential for wrath and mayhem.

Yet a dozen elderly men and women thought they could defeat him.

Lomdus shook his head at the memory of Shro the Elder telling him the plan to defeat the mighty Eternal, how servants would poison the mead that Fraker would drink and then Fraker would just foam at the mouth and fall down dead. According to Shro the Elder, the town would be famous, they would be rewarded by the remaining Lich Kings, by the Blossom of Death himself, and many others who the Circle knew wanted Fraker dead. Not because anyone had told them that they wanted Fraker dead, but because the Circle believed that they did.

None of the men and women of the Circle had seen or smelled Fraker when he had wandered into town. To them, he was still just a man. Since Fraker only appeared to be late into his second decade or early into his third, the Circle naturally looked down upon Fraker from the height of their seven or more decades. Were they being naive or conveniently forgetting that Fraker had been born back when IV, the Eternal Queen of All, had ruled over Shtar with an iron fist? Forgetting he had been born to a tribe of nomads that had been extinct for more than eight eons before even the eldest of the Circle of Equals had been born. Before even their lines had been chronicled and their family names had existed, Fraker the Axe had stalked the Six Worlds with his axe in his hand, blood in his eyes and a heart full of mayhem.

The nomads that Fraker sprang from had resisted the rule of IV so fiercely that the undead queen had used the famed Stygian Wave itself against them. She had ordered its vast legions to crush the nomadic people in a pogrom that lasted almost six decades before the final nomad was brought before her in chains to live out her life at IV's feet. A life that lasted exactly as long as it had taken to birth Fraker.

Lomdus limped from the chapel, his beard wagging as he nodded to the priests on his way out, leaning heavily on his cane, his thoughts on the plan of the Circle. Lomdus' peers seemed to think that a small vial of poison - an odorless, tasteless, colorless liquid bought in secrecy - would be enough to stop Fraker the Axe's heart.

Lomdus snorted to himself as he rested briefly at the top of the steps. Stop the heart of the man that had been born at the feet of the undead ruler of the entire Six Worlds and without assistance had climbed up his own mother's body to feast at her breast. A man, who after his first meal, had been showered by the blood of his mother when the Blossom of Death had slit her throat with a rune carved dagger. A man who had been given to the Blossom of Death to raise as his own son. Lomdus shook his head at the thought that mere venom was supposed to kill that man.

The elderly statesman was the youngest member of the council as he was only in his sixth decade. He sincerely doubted that just because the Circle had decided that something would happen that it would be so. The sight of a dying rosebush next to an ornate fountain reminded Lomdus of just how eye-wateringly bad Fraker had smelled when he had staggered into town. His fellow statesmen had only seen Fraker after he had been bathed, scrubbed, rinsed off, scrubbed again and dressed in clean clothing. They had not seen the reality of the man and Lomdus knew that the rest of the Circle, in the secret parts of their minds, saw Fraker only as a young mortal man, not as something more. He was something different and dangerous, something unknowably old that was looking at the world through eyes that had watched empires born, rise, die and then disappear into history.

The crowds moved around the statesman, who stopped for a moment and looked at the town he had been born in. He couldn't suppress a shiver at the thought of what was coming, what was going to happen when the Circle tried to kill Fraker the Axe. How deep would the blood be on the cobbles when the Circle's plot was burning around them? So many of the people the Circle was supposed to protect and nurture were in the streets going about their lives, but how many of them would be lying dead in rubble? How many buildings would be burning? Would even the pets and vermin survive? How much of the statuary would be shattered, the fountains ruptured and spilling bloody water, the shrubbery, fragrant bushes and artfully pruned trees ravaged? All of it weighed heavily on Lomdus' conscious as he gratefully accepted the assistance of a footman to climb into his carriage.

For the first time in his six decades of life, he doubted the power of the Council.

* * * * *

"So I spent awhile looking for that little flame-headed stragurt I'd seen, but when I couldn't find her, I figured one of the ghouls or other flesh-eaters running about trying to hide from me might have eaten her," Fraker said, shrugging his shoulders. The two little girls riding on his shoulders lifted up and then settled back down, giggling at being able to ride on the massive man's shoulder plates. They had their hands between their legs, leaning forward to wrap their fingers around the edge of the plate, keeping them steady as the giant weaved back and forth on the road. "It was getting pretty boring, so I waded through the streams of blood that kept running from the smoldering bodies of angels and demons that the Stygian Wave had stacked into piles, climbed the big cliff at the edge of the valley and headed out to take a look at the ruins of Novak-Zukk."

Fraker paused to take a long pull off of the clay jug of whiskey he was drinking out of as he told his story to the gathered children and adults following him. Only a few hours before they had been prisoners of a vile group of bandits who routinely sacrificed and abused them; now they were free again, the bandits were horribly dead and Fraker the Axe himself was leading them back to the town. The reversal of fortunes, which had taken place amid screaming and blood-spray, was still a shock to the former prisoners, most of whom had resigned themselves to a long and horrible death. Fraker took another drink from the jug, lifted it up, looked into the spout, shook it over his mouth and then heaved it into the bushes. He held out his hand and a small boy of only six winters handed the hero the jug he had been carrying.

"Anyway, so I get to Novak-Zukk, thinking there might be some Lich King voshes around to entertain me." The entire group winced at the vulgar term vosh, used for unmanly and feeble fighters who were cowards at heart and were below even lepers abandoned by the Gods. "Instead, what do I find? General Eck, that short stumpy guy I told you about with the talking war-hammer that always sniveled, had taken everyone but me out of the Valley of the Stacked Skulls and retreated to the ruined city. The bastard had left me in the valley to clean up after everyone and they'd spent the last six years rebuilding the city like there wasn't a war on or something."

Fraker actually sounded offended and nobody really felt like pointing out that Fraker had told them himself during his tale that he had ignored the recall signals to keep hewing at the Stygian Wave and Lich King Army forces, the rogue angels and demons, the servants of the Gods who had been drawn on to that battlefield, and in some cases, the Gods themselves. Some hesitated because they felt it would be impolite, others because they figured it might make the massive warrior angry, and yet others because they understood that in Fraker's mind, he had been left behind while everyone else ran off.

"Since there wasn't anybody around the city to fight, I headed east to Von Lon and asked where the nearest army was that was fighting the Lich Kings. Can you believe it, they tried to throw me out of their voshy little empire? Like anyone cared about what I did to a noble who called a woman a therim in public." One man opened his mouth to tell Fraker that therim was a polite term for a woman of virtue, a virgin and not a vile term like the giant man made it seem, but another waved him to silence with almost a look of panic on his face.

Fraker continued telling the story, which seemed to consist of him hacking his way through the entire Von Lon Imperial Army, storming the palace of the Emperor himself and bodily shaking an apology to the hapless woman, whom he had dragged along by her hair the entire time, out of the ruler of Von Lon. The children listened rapturously, their eyes shining with hero worship, and Fraker kept talking until the sun was nearly down and the city walls of Gretlen were in sight. The steady cadence of the story and the way it had gradually built in excitement had kept the children quiet during the five mile walk. Even the adults who were injured had not noticed the passage of time and footsteps after a while.

"Halt. Who goes there?" the gate guard on the left asked, stepping forward and raising his spear and shield as Fraker came within a few paces of the entrance to the town.

"Fraker the Axe, that's who," Fraker told the man. "I'm carrying tired children." When the guard tried to step in front of the giant, Fraker stopped and turned bloodshot eyes on the guard as he stopped in front of the lowered portcullis.

"Well?" Fraker growled, dropping one hand down to rest on the butt of his twin bladed axe. "Are you going to let me put these small children to the loving arms of their stragurt and their beds or are you going to need some persuasion?"

"Go right ahead, milord," the guard gulped, staring at the fact that the man's shoulders were wide enough for children to sit on and still have room to wiggle. The edge of the shoulder guards that the children were holding looked to be at least an inch thick, and the guard's mind staggered with the thought of how heavy the armor must be, much less two children, a shield and that massive axe.

"Mighty kind of you," Fraker rumbled, moving up to the lowered portcullis. "Hold on, young stragurt to be, you'll be in your mother's arms in a few moments and you'll be back to learning the ways of honest stragurt and how to beguile men to do your bidding and offer themselves, their souls and all their mortal wealth to you by the score in no time." The guard jerked at the giant using the horrid slur on two little girls, then stared in shock as the armored figure grabbed the bottom of the iron portcullis and lifted it up, holding it over his head without any apparent effort. The people following the man, who were holding cloth bundles or sticks with a bundle tied to each end, hurried through, giving the guard a pitying look.

The giant stepped through and let the portcullis crash to the ground, bringing a shout of alarm from inside the towers that bracketed the entrance. The wooden door opened and one of the off duty guards by the name of Jalt looked out, saw the huge armored figure and slammed the door shut. The door to the other tower opened outward and the Captain of the Guard looked out.

"Where is all that be-damned racket coming...?" the captain yelled out. The guard saw the giant wince slightly at the noise, then reach out with one of those massive hands, grab the edge of the door and slam it shut hard enough that one of the two inch thick oak planks cracked down the middle. The guard heard the clatter as the impact of the door threw the chain-mail clad captain back into the tower.

"Me," was all that the giant said as he kept leading the group into the town.