Swallowbane had a hard time sleeping at night. There was a lot of time spent simply staring at the stars from his point at the highest peak, staring up, shaking within himself. He couldn’t help it. There were so many things that had gone wrong, so many things that he couldn’t control. Things that ate him alive. That was the hardest part, not feeling like a whole man anymore. A shadow, a shell, a creature that was searching without anything specific to be searching for. Having quarry left him with a purpose, a purpose that wasn’t empty, but he hadn’t had the luck. Everyone in the realm wanted Purge, what was there to say he would have the creature’s dying breath be at his hand?

He could still hear his grandmother’s voice as those brilliantly flecked eyes sat upon the sky itself. It was a clear night, the clearest there had been in ages, and everything felt so god be damned empty. An ache, a bitter ache, somewhere deep inside his soul was ever present, gnawing at his insides, making the beast nearly sick. Sick at best, at worst… something else. Fighting off his inner demons was getting harder and harder… maybe one day he’d let them take hold. Not today. Today, he’d watch the stars and try to remember the look his grandmother had in her eyes. He’d think of how similar it was to mom’s, and he’d… well, he’d miss them.

That was what nights like this were good for, after all.