Brogmar's Evolution

Brogmar sat cross-legged in the middle of the Stubborn Arse, calm as the sea was cruel.

Around him, the battle was ending. The last merfolk still fought somewhere aft, shrieking over the clash of steel, while in front of him his summoned bear and lion fed on the fallen. Five merfolk corpses lay broken across the blood-slick deck, their pale limbs tangled in rope and pooling seawater. Lanterns swung overhead. The ship rocked gently in the still water.

Brogmar did not flinch.

His dreadlocks hung over his face, his antlered headdress casting long shadows across closed eyes. His hands rested easily on his knees. His supremely gorgeous face glistened in the sunlight around him. Inside his mind there was no turmoil. Only certainty.

“Mother,” he murmured.

He still thought of Eldath that way. She had saved him once, when he was still Harry Dennison, broken and half-dead after the wreck. She had taught him to revere life, to see peace, patience, and healing as sacred things.

She had not been wrong. But she had only taught him part of the truth. Tonight proved the rest.

A dwarf had to eat. He had dropped a line into the sea, nothing more, and the merfolk had come screaming from the deep to kill for it. They had not shown mercy. They had not offered peace. The declined the peace offered to them. They had come as the wild does: hostile, possessive, violent.

And now they were meat. Brogmar breathed slowly, listening to the sounds of tearing flesh in front of him and the final struggle behind.

“The world does not yield to kindness,” he said softly. “It yields to strength.”

He thought of Elion then. During the fight, the ranger had fallen wounded, and Brogmar had healed him without hesitation. Once, he might have questioned that choice. Elion had always carried darkness with him, a sharpness that sat uneasily beside Eldath’s gentler teachings.

Now Brogmar understood.

He had not healed Elion because Elion was gentle. He had healed him because he was useful, loyal, dangerous to the right enemies. In a world like this, violence was not a flaw. It was a tool. A necessary one.

Life was sacred, sure. But sacred things still needed teeth.

That was what Silvanus offered. Not comfort. Not peace. Power. The strength to shape the wild rather than merely endure it. Eldath had taught Brogmar to cherish life. Silvanus would teach him how to master what threatened it.

Ahead of him, the bear lifted its gore-soaked muzzle and growls to the sky. The lion tore again into a corpse. Brogmar opened his eyes and watched without guilt.

This was nature too.

Not the quiet pool, but the storm-fed river. Not shelter, but dominance. Not peace, but order imposed by strength.

The final merfolk gave one last cry, then fell silent.

The battle was over.

Brogmar rose to his feet and looked out across the black water. The Stubborn Arse prepared to move again. His companions still lived. Elion still breathed. His beasts still fed.

That was enough.

He would still call Eldath Mother. He would still honor what she had taught him.

But he had chosen his next step.

Brogmar touched the blood-wet deck and smiled into the salt wind.

“Silvanus, Teach me,” he said, “how to rule the wild.”