Casimer Demetrius-Kahn - Helgen
His exhaustion hung in the air, forming anew with each coughed up breath.
Perspiration clung to his skin despite the bitter chill; the stench permeated the air. But his swollen muscles still strained themselves to retrace the same arc, commencing each revision with a huff and ending with the distinct clatter of metal on metal. Too proud to have asked for help, his entire frame heaved with exertion at completion; tired hands dropped the hammer he’d guided with expert precision. He took a careful step back across the length of wood he stood on and examined his handiwork: it was a start. Having spent the largest part of the week since the attack re-establishing the wooden beams that had, at one stage, supported the non-existent roofing, he moved to reinforcing the construction with steel:
Whilst not an intended part of the initial design, Casimer had decided the times demanded it nonetheless. His house - no, his home - for the last quarter of a century had been decimated in the attack: the roof had collapsed beneath the intense weight of the beast, and with that the first floor had been wrecked; the interior, otherwise, had been gutted with fire. The walls, thank the gods, had been saved the devastation he had witnessed enacted on other buildings.
With slow, purposeful, painful movements, he descendant the ladder he had established to the ground floor. Beneath his feet was the entrance to his former basement-cum-storeroom, now basement-cum-storeroom-cum-entire living area; entrance covered with a reinforced steel trapdoor, as to deter thieves during a time when he had an actual business, it had been left unaffected by the attack. It was his home now - it had to be, or he would be left to sleep in the open air. But he stepped across that space, and to the door; drained beyond the capabilities to think, mind disorientated and lacking focus, he huffed down the fresh, Northern air, with the same sort of enthusiasm he might have afforded to a breath that was his last.
