In the morning, the sun shone brightly in the sky, no clouds to be seen.

The man was gone when Sif woke, the only trace of him a rusty blood stain across the rock.

If there had been anyone there to see him, Sif wouldn't have bothered to look around, and would've sauntered off as though the interaction had not mattered to him.

But there was no one, and he was not self-conscious about his actions, so he searched for him, anxious that he would find him dead.

Something about the encounter had shaken him- for the first time since he had lost Helna's body, he had slept dreamlessly, would go so far as to say peacefully. The malaise he had been quagmired in slipped from him, and now he recalled that there was goodness in the world; that most of the people he met were good, and only very few of them had ever done him harm.

Had the man not asked him to speak with an evil tongue?

There was still something he could do- he was not dead, and now that he had been slaying evil spirits, he had grown more powerful than before.

No matter how many men were strung up by Calsar and Dubhán, burned or tortured, they could not possibly hope to kill all of them. Even Caedwghe, who had been a sorcerer-king with legions of magicians and spirits to command, had not been able to wipe out the Vóda. Even if only one of Helna's worshippers remained, he decided, he would guard that person with his life.

But first there was the matter of returning to human form- and with this goal in mind, Sif went through the faybane, killing.

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