[ti:man of iron]
[ar:bathory ]
[al:]

[offset:500]
[00:20]I have paced these forests for so long I don't know if I am man or I am beast.
[00:35]I, though, hold deep within me a quest for revenge.
[00:43]Then I must be a man as much as I can be.
[01:08]I have learned to speak the tongue of the animal
[01:14]I have learned to read the signs in bark and snow.
[01:24]I have taken within myself the spirits of my fathers,
[01:34]long time gone.
[01:40]In this short time, far from home, a man of Iron I've grown.
[01:58]A man of Iron I have grown.
[02:14]A part of the Eternal Woods...
[02:15]Late evening...
[02:16]"Just after sunset on his way back to his camp after watching the sun unite
[02:17]with the mountains in the west, he sees the flickering of light between the
[02:18]tree trunks. Approaching, he sees an old man sitting calmly by a fire, as
[02:19]if waiting for him. His left eye missing. His beard as if gold. The signs
[02:20]on his cloak and hood familiar. The one eyed old man matches the
[02:21]description of the soothsayer, as told by the elders of his village by the
[02:22]fires at night when he only a child. The boy, now a young man, eager to
[02:23]know, asks the one eyed old man about his dreams. Dreams he cannot
[02:24]understand. Dreams about strange things he is seeing himself doing. Then
[02:25]the winds that seem to talk to him. Voices that whisper to him behind his
[02:26]back. The one eyed old man tells him of the cycles of the stars, of the
[02:27]trail of fate and of the valley where time and space had ceased to exist...
[02:28]where his world ends and the shadows begin. The one eyed old man tells the
[02:29]young man that fate has chosen him to interfere with the other world. The
[02:30]disturbance is already made. The daughters of the four winds have sold
[02:31]themselves to the shadows, distorting the balance of the universe. And the
[02:32]one eyed old man says he has seen him come for a thousand years, and that
[02:33]the aging gods have told him to teach him all that he has ever known and to
[02:34]prepare him to ride beyond his world and into the shadows as their champion
[02:35]to restore the balance. To his aid he shall be given a sword forged when
[02:36]this world was young. He shall be guarded and guided by two ravens, and he
[02:37]shall ride the eight-legged stallion of his fathers' god. He will encounter
[02:38]the Woodwoman, and he will make a visit to the Lake. One hundred days and
[02:39]one hundred nights his training shall be hard. And this very night it will
[02:40]already have begun.
[02:41]And thus he had met the One Eyed old Man..."