I'll write my way out

Cináed left the north, started walking, and just didn't stop. He didn't know what exactly he was looking for, but he knew it wasn't there. The north held nothing but bad memories, resentment and unappealing cold. The fact that he had stayed as long as he had really should have said something to his family, but alas, here he was on his own. As he passed through Boreas he drifted by Valhalla and considered it briefly. He knew he had family of some kind there from conversations with his uncle, but in the end he just passed it by. Dedicating himself to family only brought him grief and he wasn't going to subject himself to repeating the same mistakes twice.

He wound up in Auster and as he followed a river through a cedar wood forest already he could tell this was more his speed. Even though it was the dead of winter Auster was warm and summery—which was admittedly a bit uncomfortable with his coat that had grown out in order to deal with the harsh cold of northern Boreas. He'd put up with that until his coat shed out if it meant never having to see a flake of damned snow again. Cináed split off from the river a bit, peering through the trees at the hint of the ocean he could see from the distance. He couldn't really remember ever seeing an ocean not accompanied by snow. The closest he had gotten was the Obsidian Beach and even that had a dusting of snow on it when he was making his trip through Boreas.

With his sights set on the beach he started to change his course—but not before the snuffling, shuffling sounds of a bear stopped him. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw a large grizzly lumbering through the cedar trees toward him. Apparently he had stayed a bit too close to the river the bear was hunting from for just a little bit too long and now the large predator was angry. Ciná shifted how he was standing to face the bear with a bit of a smirk. Sure, he could probably outrun the bear and get out of its territory to avoid the fight, but he hadn't had a good fight in a while so what would be the fun in that. "Just don't fuck up my armor, alright?" he told the bear as it started to rear up on its hind legs with a roar. He chuckled and charged in toward the towering predator, ducking around the side of it to get behind it before it could reach him and biting deep into the back of its thigh.

Cináed Praetor