**Writer's Note: This isn't an official entry to the Animosity Campaign, it was more something I did for fun while the juices were flowing. Turns out I enjoy writing about Moonhide's crazed antics.**

**Writer's Side Note: Sadly I missed the first turn of the Animosity Campaign due to RL things, so my chapter one here is actually "Turn Two", but for ease of reading I've left it as chapter one. Does that make sense? Anyway, there should be three more turns and however many interludes I do.**

The fires crackled and burnt at the base of the Misthorned's herdstone, its flickering shadows dancing menacingly across the assembled herds as they indulged in their bacchanalia in the fading light of the evening. As the chill of the Shyishian night drew in, the beasts of chaos found comfort around the roaring fires in the deepest parts of the forest where few civilised folk could reach without being dragged here.

As more children of chaos arrived to join the press of celebrating figures, fighting began to break out. The creatures' hunger for violence was undimmed no matter where they were, but here in the darker places of the realms their desires could take manifest forms. Creatures of chaos who didn't assert themselves as predators rather than prey quickly fell to those who did. Wild shouts and shrieks ebbed and flowed with the vast and fluid crowd. Staggering quantities of fermented blood, stolen alcohols, and barely cooked meats were consumed by the horde in the moments between their wild brawls and their other more dreadful activities.

Each creature who could reach an unfortunate captive carved dark and terrible symbols into their very flesh, some with great flair and ritual by aspiring shaman and others with simple and brutal cuts. These screaming, sobbing masses of huddled captives who had the unfortunate privilege to have been captured by the children of chaos were led, once the plethora of symbols had been hewn into their very flesh, to have their pitiful mewling permanently silenced by being gleefully thrown onto the flickering flames at the base of the herdstone.

A shifting mass of beastmen moved to and from the base of the bone herdstone either to sacrifice victims to their unspeakable gods, or to attempt to jump through the fires to prove their bravery and power by attaching their personal gruesome totem to the myriad of jutting bones on the herdstone. Those that were predators emerged unscathed to return to the night's raucous events, those who were prey fell to the flames no matter whether they were previously captives or not.

It was amongst this riot of activity that a lone figure stood before the twisted bone herdstone. Despite his tattered robes floating and jumping to the rhythm of some unheard tune in the air, the figure themselves was an island of swaying calm amongst the shifting mass of matted fur and dried blood. The very air crackled with the ever-transforming power that hung around a bray-shaman and merged with the ever-present violence of the horned-herds restful activities fuelled the dread magicks of the glassy eyed figure.

He remembered when this had been nothing more than a circle of large bones driven point down into the ground. He saw the pile grow larger in his mind's twisted eye as the remains of more and more sacrifices had been thrown into the pile by the adoring beasts. He had personally twisted some of the bones by warping them with his magicks until the dark and terrible shape ahead of him had coiled and fused into a single piece of bone in the unholy shape of a herdstone that it was this night. It was a singular honour for those who had placed their offerings at the herdstone to receive the bray-shaman's terrible attentions.

As yesterday becomes today, so too must today become tomorrow in the glassy eyes of the bray-shaman and his mind followed the strands of fate that had wound themselves tightly around the carefully crafted bone herdstone. Tomorrow night, the herds would gather here once more and pile further bones here until the herdstone had swallowed the very sun of Hysh. The bones of the unwilling would have to be found for such a task and the normally nomadic herds would have to return here time and time again to complete this great work. The fire would have to grow larger as well, larger enough stretch forth and split the very skies with their licking flames.

An itch came across the bray-shamans mind, an insistent idea that spoke of how if the fire became large enough it would melt the snows and perhaps melt the very fabric of reality. The idea-itch changed and shifted as the bray-shaman looked deeper into the idea-itch. It spoke of how such a fire would be terrifying to behold and it would bring ruin to many civilisations, or perhaps it would break the ice on the lake itself.

The shaman looked deeper into the future at the idea-itch. It leapt deeper into the thought that if the fire broke the lake something would emerge. He watched in his mind's twisted eye as the flames broke across the surface of the frozen lake and scattered the "civilised" folk from their petty struggles. He felt the cool trickle of the surface water evaporating into the air, he tasted the burning seas and the unholy fire, and saw a shadow deep under the surface lurking just out of reach.

He watched the looming shadow as the fire began to melt the very surface itself, though the ice wouldn't burn it would only weaken. He intellectually knew that it wouldn't break unless the shadow broke the surface itself. The idea-itch forced him to watch as the shadow grew larger and more massive than he'd ever seen before. It was racing towards the surface, towards him and the unholy fires until...

A deafening crack like a thousand thunder strikes boomed across the idea-itch in the bray-shaman's mind. Or was it in his mind? He'd broken from the visions idea-itch.

He gazed across what should have been the ever-vigorous bacchanalia of his greatfray only to see each and every one of them had stopped. Each wailing captive was silent, every horned gor stood in still and silent reverence. Only the crackle of the herdstones fires broke the reverant silence as each and every figure gazed at the altered herdstone in awe.

The very tip of some colossal twisted bone horn had erupted from where the herdstone had once been. Scattered bones rained down on the awe-struck herds as they gazed in wonder at the very tip of what surely could only be the horn of a truly epic god-beast. Was it a sign, or was it a quest?