Two characters from another of my unfinished stories. Hern the bear is an itinerant mercenary, his weapon of choice a huge two-handed broadsword. Sharra the vixen is an un-tutored mage in search of teacher; she has natural magical talent, but her powers are both untrustworthy and uncontrollable.
As the story opens Hern is travelling between jobs. In the wilderness he comes across evidence of a struggle and hears faint cries for help. Investigating, Hern finds a quartet of brigands…, a stoat, a hyena and two rats…, who have waylaid Sharra, stripped her naked and are about to rape her. Hern intervenes and kills the four ruffians. During the fight Sharra kicks one of the rats in the crotch and grabs his shortsword. Though nude she manages to defend herself against the other rat…, even wounding him by sheer accident before Hern beheads the brigand, showering Sharra with his blood. The young vixen is left badly shaken by the incident; never before has she even seen violent death, much less harmed another creature. Although his own first battle is long behind him, Hern can sympathise with her distress.
The artwork is set a while after the fight, when Hern has set up camp away from the scene of carnage. Sharra has been kneeling in an icy-cold stream of snow-melt water to scrub the blood out of her fur. Having wrung out her hair and tail, she’s shaken herself hard and waded to the streambank, where Hern kindly waits to wrap her in a blanket.
Hern & Sharra belong to me.