As Kolo walked the simple dirt road, he stared at the muddy path ahead of him with disdain, thinking about whether or not he should've stayed at the little hut he made a mile back, or gone on to the old castle he saw from the hill. It was too late now, he thought - the herbs he'd gathered wouldn't keep very long, and he was halfway there. Besides, a proper if leaky roof was better than none at all, he supposed.
The old sage's thoughts wandered as he walked. The past few villages spoke in hushed tones of the great 'civil war' going about. Preposterous, he thought. What war is civil? Are there great battles consisting of men glaring at one another over tea and painfully polite conversation? Nay, he thought, no war can be civil! It would make too much sense.
Kolo was pulled out of his thoughts when his head bumped into something he couldn't see. He'd arrived at the castle for sure, he thought - why, the gate to the courtyard was right in front of him, wide open - but upon closer inspection by way of careful prodding with his cane, he found there to be quite a rigid barrier in front of him. He looked back at the wet ground and noticed something peculiar - footprints, a great many of them, and parts of the dirt and mud where it looked like something heavy was dragged, and... blood?
Kolo bent and inspected it. Dirty blood. Fresh, but dirty, and mixed, too. Something was terribly amiss with this castle. Haunted by spirits of war? No, spirits didn't bleed real blood. Kolo mindlessly tapped at the invisible barrier with his cane while he thought, making quite a bit of racket without particularly realizing it.
Eventually Kolo's cane missed the invisible barrier - had it moved? - and he nearly fell, but caught himself with a frantic flap of his wings. Paranoid now of these invisible walls, he poked around where the door would be if it were closed and took tiny steps forward. As he crossed the threshold, he found himself suddenly face-to-face with a rather frustrated-looking young woman with her hands on her hips, his cane poking her in the foot.
"Erhwa? I... er... Pardon me, miss, but where am I, and how did you appear before me so suddenly?" he asked politely, carefully lowering his black wood cane to the ground and resting his hands on it. He smiled up at her, hoping he hadn't incurred her wrath.
It was then he noticed the smell. And the pile of burning corpses. And the wounded men and women, the weapons and armor, and the fresh, dirty blood mingling in the dirty courtyard.
"Excuse me, madam. If that man there doesn't remove that arrow, it'll get the green-rot and he'll lose his foot." Kolo pushed his way past the entirely flabbergasted woman and knelt in front a young man with an arrow sticking out of his shin who sat by a wall.
"Don't be alarmed, lad. This is going to hurt for a moment, but you'll get to keep that foot of yours." Kolo reached into his pack and took some of the herbs he'd gathered that morning from his pack as well as a pestle and mortar. He quickly crushed them and mixed them with water to create a paste. He tasted it, grimacing at its bitter flavor, deciding it was good enough. He took a roll of cloth bandages from his pack as well and grasped the arrow-shaft. "Don't worry, son. You're in Kolo's hands. Good hands. I'll take it out on the count of three, alright?"
The young man nodded, confused by the weird-looking man but wishing desperately to have the arrow out of his shin. "Good. One. Two." Kolo pulled the arrow out smoothly. "Three. See, that wasn't so bad, eh?" He applied the herbal salve to the bandage and dressed the young man's wound. "You'll be fine, my boy. Just keep off that foot for a week or two, and change those bandages three times a day. Wash it, too, if you want to keep your foot."
Kolo clapped the youth on the shoulder and stood. He turned to face the crowd of Free Folk that had watched him do this. "Ehm... Hello there." He itched his head. "Is anyone else wounded?" he asked, smiling up at the crowd.