The Man with the Bloodshot Eyes

It's an old Skandian legend, whispered by sailors when the moon is new and clouds cover the stars.

It tells the story of a young man and his crew. Nobody can agree on the young man's name, but everyone agrees that he was the best Skandian of his time. They say he could take down a dozen men in the time it took to blink, that he could plan the invasion of a country in a night, that he could sail one-handed and half-blind through the worst storms and come out without a scratch. He lived a thousand years ago, and he was man who founded Skandia itself.

Some versions of the legend say the man grew so arrogant the gods struck him down. Some claim the evils from Before Time grew jealous, and crawled up from the Abyss to try and claim him for their own. But the most widespread versions says the man was betrayed by the one he trusted above all other, left to rot on foreign soil without a weapon in his hand.

No two versions of the tale are exactly alike, but all agree that the man fell at the height of his glory, left a shadow of his former self, nearly unrecognizable - save the eyes.

Most Skandian eyes were blue, or sometimes brown, but the eyes of this man had always been a brilliant green. They remained that way, but now they were ringed with bloody red, the whites turned bloodshot with tears unshed. The legend said that this man would appear at the bedsides of people who turned their backs on their friends, and would drag them away into the night - screaming - never to be heard from again.

When Thorn first heard the story, he was a boy of eight, big for his age and already showing the strength and fighting skill that would make him so famous later in life. He hadn't thought much of it, save pity for the man with the bloodshot eyes, as he ran off to find his friends.

When Mikkel died, Thorn had made a promise. But then he'd lost his hand.

Every night, he dreamed of a man with bloodshot eyes looming over him, wearing Mikkel's face, dragging him down into the darkness. He turned to drink in an attempt to drive the nightmares away, but instead it made them worse. When he crawled into the shelter of a lean-to that winter night, vaguely hoping to die, he'd been searching for an end to the nightmares.

But instead, Karina dragged him (complaining loudly) back to respectability, offered him honest work and honest pay. She'd made him put away the drink, the self-pity, and the self-loathing he'd been carrying around for all those years. She forced him to stand tall again. Most importantly, she'd given him a chance to finally fulfill his promise.

He has not seen the man with the bloodshot eyes since.