The Weeping Beast 2

“I am Mar.” He said, in a way that seemed to encompass everything there is to know about him.
She observed his long hair and broad shoulders, his sharp features, and the long naked sword held as if it were an extension of his strong arm.
“I have not seen blue eyes like yours.”
Mar had no reply.
Her eyes shot up to his lips.
“How are you able to breathe without a mask?” She asked.
“I do not know. I do not know the name of this place nor the inhabitants, or how I breathe your cursed air and understand your words. Your cries led me here.”
The woman took a careful step back and pressed herself closely to the towering pillar she wept at earlier.
“Than something else may have heard my tears as well.”
Mar turned his head slowly to look around him. The growing mist, bloody from the strange moonlight, made visibility limited.
“I see nothing.” Mar said.
“You are a fool stranger that may be dead before sunrise, as I hope to be.”
Mar grinned.
“Death came for me once. It was cold.”
In the distance there was a low roar.
The woman gazed out across the mist.
“It is the reason for my tears.” She said, “These pillars mark the dead and the cursed. Beneath this one lays my beloved. This night I plan to join him in the afterlife.”
Mar looked up and down her shimmering body.
“You hold no weapon.” He said.
“You will not stop me.”
Her eyes erupted defiance.
The roar returned, much closer this time.
“The beast will kill me and my spirit will join my beloved’s.”
“What is this beast?” Mar asked.
“The beast that guards the dead. It keeps the souls here under a curse that as long as the beast lives none will be free to travel to Rhakamon, the Eternals.”
Mar took a few careful steps into the mist that surrounded them.
“By the Allfather’s beard this mist is thick enough to hide a long ship.” He said.
The woman scurried closer to the pillar that marked her beloved’s grave and wrapped her arms around it. Her slender hands worked hard at some task hidden from view. There was a sharp clanging sound.
When Mar flashed his eyes back to her he saw the bracelet and a chain. The woman had chained herself to the pillar as some kind of sacrifice to the beast.
The woman was stubborn. She was also strange and beautiful, something worth fighting for.