Into the Unknown
Peak of the Eclipse, Felhenge Summit
Burgeoning clouds break by battle. Spears & sword tips plunge into bellies of rioters only to be summarily jerked out by their comrades to wield against their killers. Those would-be conquerors who had made their abode across distant desert wastes to claim their home here had presumed too much of their spectacle. For they underestimated the resistance this belligerent populace could counter. No organization, no footholds could be reclaimed among them as bedlam besieged the Summit and blood washed the oldest of stone totems.
As the sheer brunt fervor & size of the crowd beat down more of their abhorred foes after tithes of their fellow’s flesh, they attained enough arms to splinter the foreign encirclement of Felhenge’s main mound. From the cleft those more fearful souls among the condemned tribes fled in manic stampede down the hillside. This mass exodus in panic kicked up more dust, rocks & cinder-smoke to cloak that high peak in crimson lit smog of woollike clouds woven with foreboding threads. This heavy blanket fell upon them and bid all sanity sleep for a while this night to let full lunacy reign supreme over their dithering mortal danse macabre.
An ear-splitting shriek, a sudden freakish wolf’s howl split that ashen cloud cloaking the hill as a monstrous figure rose. A wolf in shape of man stood high on its heels, bipedal and deranged in motion. With razor sharp claws it tore away at the faces of those unfortunate tribesmen in its path. The thing screeched with demon lungs that spit the fury of the seven winds. Those who caught first sight of that beast wondered what abominations of their divine punishment had been unleashed by lunar gate.
A twisted coven summoned spout of high strangeness unto the henge. As they took flight this chosen night, the silhouettes of this sisterhood creeped in with stark pace of the icy wind. Chills shriveled the nerves of those who witnessed the fatal ascent of this cult. Some of the hooded hags joining their spindly spider-limbs together in a circle about the stones and pyre while chanting in chorus of weird hymns borne of bleakest corners of the ancient world. Witch, wolf & satyr reveled in rite of indiscriminate destruction. Slicing the unexpectant jugulars of country folk & outlandish nobles alike, exulting sadistic steps of orgiastic dance.
The hellish hound of immense & aberrant mold scatters the ranks with its sheer presence to tower before Corinna. This hybrid of man and monster locks gaze with her, its hungry leering churning her stomach with nausea and arresting her heart with the worst horror. It pounces and before one could even blink the hulking werewolf was upon her. Inches from her face with one long and wicked claw-finger pointed to her almost close enough to drag and scalp her.
With the wings of her flight shorn, an existential stasis arrests her by the mere appearance of the beast. Something human and uncannily familiar dwelt in its wild eyes and haunting quality of that stare froze her veins into a chilled coma. Just as that serrated paw nears her paralyzed eyes to fulfill its wretched feast, a ghostly arm from somewhere unseen wrenches Corinna to the side and out from its reach. This grip yanked her to a slight tumble towards the lower edge of Felhenge summit.
The hand which pulled her to safety belonged the feisty woman with the braided red mane, Verana. Her blush cheeks & bright hair were as rouge as crimson luster of that celestial body staring from above with its same bloody sheen. A combined band of Harathi & Varani compatriots rushed in as relievers to clash with the beast.
Though flustered and struggling with her fear, the young Valkyrie stood tall and pressed strained plea to Corinna’s ear. “Forget not the words of our Lord! Forget not the Light of your love, my Lady! Let that message ring with greater clarity by preserving it for us all through that resonance of mind & rule! I ask only remembrance.”
With this the knightly woman went to challenge the mythic apparitions of darkness with her siblings of spear & shield. But before Corinna could thank her rescuer or consider her passing words her terror gripped her and sent her running past the stones. Yet not far down the slant and unto the main path from the henge a horde of outriders challenged the slope. The captain of these cavaliers trampled her path before steering to a stop and reaching out.
Heron’s clasp leaned to meet her shoulder. After scraping his face with fearful reflex during her confounded daze she recognized him. The captain rushed to lift her along the winding hillside. “Take my steed for the sake of chivalry, liberty, and our morrow.”
No matter how much Corinna protested to Heron, concerned for her amid the eviscerating outbreak of hysteria atop that stony mound, loosely tied her wrists to her reins with swift precision. Then he sent the steed charging off far from Felhenge. Whistling after to summon more of his mounted comrades.
The heir of the Ferali clan, and perhaps one of the few Corinna still had to hold to, unsheathed an iconoclastic black blade. The Fang held in Heron’s hand yearned to be purified by way of fresh combat against these vulture sects vying for supremacy over the Summit and the favor of the moon. Violet-black edge shined Selene’s fury. He charged the line towards the bulk of the strange assembly ahead.
As her horse sped on by past the bounds of the hostile perimeter of the hilltop Corinna shook loose the restrains tying her to the reins but could only look back on the scene of the struggle from a fair distance. But strange whistling, the rumbling of chariot wheels and bridling war song drew her eye ahead. The fog further dispersed, letting in frenzied moonlight and fresh sight: Below a fyrd of two hundred spears & pikes stirred to halt her exit. Yet they were no enemies, for at their head led the familiar face of her Baron.
His chariot raced to meet her. Corinna’s steed tamed its fright and halted at the sound of lute and call to its rider. “’Rinna!” Sadness & shock cohabited his relief. “Forgive-”
“Your timing is the only fair thing this foul night, Baron!” She exclaimed, untying her tethers to the road, and trying towards the bard
“Forgive more than my late arrival. I feared to try the hill until seeing the serpents flee from thunder. Yet,” a haze of futility filtered Baron’s view of her, his frailty shining back through her need, “I must be fair to those who followed me here and give chase to those who make prey of the heart of our land by way of the henge.”
Baron’s steed halted yet the momentum of the march drew his eyes from hers onward with the rest of his fyrd. “Drakkon renounced his crown, resigned his life to flame. Let them sing now that the Living Light dwells within us all!” Corinna reached for him but was denied by cold steel arm of the sentinel driving their chariot.
“Until all those wyrms and wolves renounce their wars we shall have little light to tend as our own.” Baron’s eyes flitted furious worry. “Yet my arms do not have the strength to hold you. Barely enough to lift a sword and steer to fix this course. Too many cannot separate you from the shade burning through this smog. I cannot protect you from those whose sense of justice looks upon you with ire. Fly to safety. Find an alcove to wait out the torrent, lest Drakkon burns there as sacrifice to anger & the wrath of revilement chase you.”
“Can we not away from all the chaos which encircles the reins? I wish us to sing for ourselves now. Let us fly off into ardor and forget this hill.” Corinna made to clasp him, yet her steed pushed on, drifting further from the skald and the common folk who followed him to Felhenge. “The crest they rush towards is a hollow court. If that is Azarra up there let us leave her to claim an empty seal. Now that the flame is shared in all our breasts, they shall gain no torch with which to blind us. Let her consorts & wolves keep her company atop the ruins but let us not spill more bled than need be.”
“What song would those poets who hate me paint of my forsaking of their defense? Perhaps I am owed no place in any Edda, as much a wastrel as our lord was a thrall to enmity against all that revealed him. But I wish not to be marked as a man who bloodied his hands by abandoning his people to seek the hand of a Lady - whose merits he’d only stain. I must sing with sword against sorcery & serpents.”
She protested his deflection, not yet able to dare the wide and dark course alone. “Can we not sing a song of our own to deafen those of rivals, for whose derision you would seem to spurn me?” Words, arguments to reason & its rival in passion, prepared their currents from her mouth but refused to serve her. Becoming mute as she shuddered to see her friend & lover as another ghost whose nocturne had not yet come but been ordained. Or perhaps this distance, this wispy veil tearing cyclones between their breath, was from her subsiding into a grave yet to enfold over her.
Corinna’s eye beheld Baron’s heart through his, pumping pressure of two-fold course, between following her whims into the unknown dawn and looking back to his men to lead them on a final leap to the Summit. Finally, he gave speech to his fyrd and answer to his love. “The Fates will have of us what the Hels do not take. What comes is not ours yet to find. But if Elderath is to bloom under our stewardship we must lead our way with honesty.”
“You renounce me for magnanimity of common protection instead of coming with me to assure my safety?”
“Nothing can be assured anymore, Corinna. Yet I do not recant what we share.” Baron lifted the talisman slung about his neck to offer her before parting. “If sanity can rejoin the tribes with their sovereignty, we might be allowed the luxury of each other. Yet there are those who would see you share the same pyre as the imperator.”
In that lasting look towards Baron her yearning turned to apprehension. She conversed with only an imprint of the past born of longing’s larvae which could not be realized in the present of his passing. Crying to the wind and arguing with agitated air, she found only a wispy trail from his chariot. Though his aspect vanished as gush of mist the presence of the riled fyrd he’d summoned rushed into pandemonium to crash into the pulpy, toothy vessels of faceless crowd.
This body of buboes with mass so fused of flesh of the many as to be granted an orbit. Ringed by indiscriminate enmity so full & frothing that boils of the embittered mob burst to roll over the slope. Their frightful shade so steep as to block Baron’s chariot and catch all those who sought assent to the Summit in a net of fugitives and fanatics. Would-be champions were tossed from their steeds by avalanche of bodies running from the mound of gods’ immolation and sects of claw & curse.
Pustules of eyes enflamed by burning effigy stared down the advance of aspiring rescuers, rushing as dueling rivers flowing forth to the hill and fighting to flee to far plains. Flailing every direction, with equal & irate measure for competing course, till no tendons remained by which to walk either path. All trampled by the hooves of frightened mass, bereft of sense & soul of their own. And the ignoble empress was deprived of filaments to bind to proper path, blind as they and accursed by all.
Corinna rode past the ruins of the outer wood, evading shambling pockets of people gnashing armaments against the red smirk from Selene. All worldly eyes also glared admonishment. The cavernous gaze of dueling spheres snared her in the orbit of omens above. Her skin soaked in waters drenched with blood sheen. Coveted by the same tides which would wash her away for her ties to the toppled tyrant. No grove awaited her even once the trees rejoined. No reprieve but burial beneath far shade, lest she be interred (or denied even that rite) as queen of dead Aeon.
She wept. Not that she would soon assuredly forcibly part this plane but that the earth should pivot onward in its turning seasons of strife & vengeful pursuits. What seeds could bloom but those watered by wrothful rains & the spittle of ceaseless curses. If her words could not sway one so loyal of heart as Baron to retain place for her, what could she say to the angered hosts gathering from every hedge? What hands would seek to touch her but those which intended to strangle?
Patience burned through in her. She could but drive her startled companion, the last which would have her, away from the terrible illumination of the night.
Upon that ruinous knoll where the first ancestors of the druids etched their stories in dead runic script about the base of their towering stone constructs only the cacophonous sounds of grief endured. That hyena-like pack of wilder witches shrieked with their lupine servant’s lead. The clatter of swords and shattered shields rang loud to accompany the unending screams. Corinna could not allow her mind’s Sight to remain there atop that hill as she fled into the forest, fearing to lose her wits being anchored to the wreckage of Drakkon’s balefire. She could no longer look upon ash pile circled by clashing faithful, howling avengers and strange sects vying to grasp the last threads of the old lords.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
What blood was dined upon by hilltop coven in congress with dark divinity! Glimpsing offering of new life running in sanguine streams as flesh & horn melted together. Lupine abomination fused with its inner sight to beget true transformation. There, the ruler of the Hels taunted the fleeing woman to return and find death. Without Baron’s hand to grasp her, without her own pulse to the present, any ill force on the wind could claim her. Malderath, Azarra and the Many whom she’d fumbled to enrich with the splendor of her scepter wailed woe unto her flight. When the screams and nightmarish chorale up the way subsided that brief silence only cut deeper chills.
To flee from the watch of wretched heaven Corinna sought the pervasive canopy of the trees, returning ahead. Yet the half-shorn forest which remained to welcome her cast gloom so thick as to drown any dawn. Another congress of angered arms blocked the main path with lumbering bulk. From the red glint of toothsome axes & arrow-tips, they flashed recognition at the former empress. Between their number they’d enough to challenge the cult which conquered the crest but stood to block her escape, abruptly replacing the branches of the woods with their pikes.
With her steed starting to pace in neighing circles, wincing from the reach of the peasants, Corinna channeled what charisma she could still command to a final plea. “People, heed how the moon blesses our earned prosperity. Though dipped in bloodied curtains Selene asks us to paint peace with it! Pray, know that the Light is in every one of you! Honor the gods, thy families and thyself by tending to holy wax within us all! Ye need but claim that hill and repel the crows!”
A shape of leather and sun burnt bark spoke from behind the bulwark of steel-tipped wood. “We were told of Drakkon’s fiery end. Bid to join this ‘final fyrd’ to ‘nurture creation’s spark and be unbound from all who would chain up our hope’. We wield pokers now only to stoke the flames of our belief and tend the fyre of our hearths. We need not gambit any charge to smite the ghouls of carrion-greed. Nor heed the harping of a harlot who would have us be helots to her.”
“I am true to my heart as thee. As should be. I speak no demand, only ask small charity. If ye will not fight the vultures do not act as them against me.” Corinna called over this chastisement but aroused no sympathy in this crowd who saw her as another entitled head now bereft of a crown. “Forget not the message of Drakkon’s sacrifice, good kindred! We are all of us Heirs of that Divine Flame! Indeed, we need not die for any lord, no matter how bright a flame. Ye need not die for me, I do not ask this. We need not be swept by tides of lunacy. Allow me to pass from here and drift far from the reins of thy accord. With good and mortal deeds rise to thy dream & that of thy progeny! If ye will not fight, then let me pass. Preserve thy sunlight with my shade never to mark the hearths of thy hearts!”
“Should she not have tossed herself upon the flames, in the name of the lord she abandoned? How can we trust this harpy who bewitches the best & worst of us alike when she could not remain true to the burned lord before he was more than memory?” Another voice croaked derision. Soon joined by another.
A rope dangling from high branch winked insinuation at her, threatening to hold her neck in the anchor it weighted to her fate. “Her husband’s imperatorship becomes as scattered dust! Yet she would still think to act as though a crown befits her brow!”
The eyes of those liberated by the emperor’s departure from the world glowed with vengeful embers. They revoked all right to be ruled by declared deities and imperial diadems. Though she no longer wore the opulent gowns of a consort to a lord and swore herself diverged from Drakkon’s dominion she could not reshape their sight of her, as a relic of blighted reign.
“You shared the bed of his lie. Take the bedlam of the throne you sat through his virtue with you to the yawning river. That virtue is unfurled by fire and the smoke you cast upon us lifts from our sight! We will toil only for ourselves and suffer no traitors nor thieves!”
Corinna made to bolt away on the back of her horse. But the knotted sign they hung for her throat chased her all the way. The rope of their intent pursued her. The wounded forest bent to fence her in as the shades, enraged at her past & being seated above them for an Aeon, hunted for her head.
Epilogue
A week later, border of the Ruun
Her bed on the barge rocked Corinna from a thin rest, awakening from the exhaustion that claimed her after dawn. For the night provided no pillow onto which to lay her head. No rest allowed when nocturne’s canopy caved to the blush of angered Selene. The moon she’d so long impersonated, elevated to empress, glowered ire even as it’s eye winked with patience. In a preying slumber, feigning sleep as crescent while the sun grasped the reins of light, casting dreaming furies to forbid such respite to the one their mother cursed.
Her innards were ever tainted by trail of poison. The edifice of living function only sustained by ghoulish elixir. Yet tethering soul, denying its wings, to this half-kept cadaver bound it to rot with the rest of her. To awaken into this body of pain, lain on bed of confusion which craned by river turbulence and the knocking of doubtful spirits. Drakkon’s golden draught and the ‘gift’ from Azarra mixed into a slothful broth, wherein noxious spell blended with purgatorial preservation.
Thus, Corinna’s only blessing then was to sink back to true slumber of soul and hope to join kinder company. Or, wondered rue, perhaps no company waited past the final ridge save the void which sunders self. What else was deserved? What justice was there that she should live? Yet going on in this fugue of fever to endure another day was worse penance. That her thoughts would scratch through the coffin, melt the coating layer of unearthly potion, to tear her cells as the mob tore at itself.
Hooded eyes struggled to peel their seals, to then be greeted by a sight on the cabin stool to thrust her from nauseous pose to steep dread. Baron loomed there watching her wake. His dead stare sat still yet accusing. Fixating on her from the gulf of limbo to cut guilt greater than fright. His gut, gored by a wolf so wicked as to have feasted upon the soul’s marrow, poured sulfurous entrails. Marked by marred body, with his heart resting in the belly of a lupine lord, ectoplasm heralded his visit. A spirit, spirited through thinned veil, ever stalking her stubborn persistence to live.
Fleeing from the skald’s spectral glare Corinna dared breach the chamber for the deck where daylight’s reach stretched specters of each shadow, illumed by angle of rays. She greeted the tide with dark hood drawn above her head and black berry streaks painted under her lids to mark her as a lady in mourning. Hiding from sunlight under cowl and the unwanted stares from fellow fugitives packing the boat. Behind her tread a pair of shades. She trusted few among the living save these two would still serve her. Should Baron’s call have been heard before parting from crumbled courts the freedom the people won for themselves was as scattered, isolated, and tortured as Corinna.
Confusion chafed with the breaking of Drakoni chains. Gusts of paranoia blew from each horizon, finding purchase in every house. With the old dominion barren, scavengers carved out scraps from the ruins of imperium or fled to defend what hearths were once theirs from any successor to the shadow. The pockets of people gathered on this barge, bound for the Ruun and western shore, closed their circles off from all others. Untrusting of their fellows who might turn to banditry for sake of family or callous fun, conspiracies grew of their fungus. As did fear, irked by tales of terrible fiends walking in shape of men. There were rumors of a wolf lord and dusky covenants coveting the hearts of those who left their hearths unguarded; apostles of the Helwinds who awoke season of greater magick with an appetite for mortal woes to charge their currents.
Leaving each to their fears, troubles & trite games to pad the journey, Corinna traced her steps to the top terrace of the boat overlooking the bow and the wide waters it split. Here she spent her focus giving form to bare palette. To forget the somber discussions below of how each passenger might pay the debt incurred of the venture and doubts as to what prospects they could find afar, as well as the shades stalking her, she painted. Dipping her brush into medley of dried roots, beast fat and mineral pigments to pour her subconscious onto the blank canvas.
In the past couple cycles (when night & sunlight melded to restless dimension) the idle acts of painting, poetry & prose posed for her a means of temporary escape. Though her hand faltered, waxing little skill, these images allowed her an hour to hide from the wraiths of the world. Even if only in the fleeting space of her own invention. Allowed, or constrained by, the remaining hours of light, her strokes spent her unconscious to draw up the vista it conceived for her destination. For now, she sought only to put as much distance between her frail form and the wounds incurred at Felhenge. Though no bank yet appeared to break the listless expanse of waters Corinna hoped what muse might yet reside in the cavern within her could pursue course through unknowing rapids.
Glancing above for flickering inspiration the faint glint of aurora still lingered in the sky. The lightning stream of Azarra’s intent retained dull blue hue of the river below. A barely visible charnel river ahead, carrying the dead spirits which her eyes tireless trailed. The subtle channel churned of welkin voyage mirrored the surf, where its glare shined skeletal hands of the drowned reaching for the one who evaded their fate. The stream itself, a basin by which the stew of Hels spewed spirits and envoy apparitions to beckon this wayfarer to their convoy.
Behind her, piercing distraction through her artful trance, Corinna heard whispers of annoyance. Two blokes tossed thoughts of revelation & sacrifice blocked by the small pair of her faithful. Stepping before the stair, passing between them propositions of Astraean - or rather, Azarine - justice. That way of indiscriminate vengeance which was now the reigning law of this moonstruck land, where love straddled the lap of impunity's wrath performed in its name. “It must be her!”
“Nay, it cannot be. Why should a defamed sovereign seek such humbled company as our barge?” That the second spoke with shared charcoal tone and river drawl showed them as brothers. "& wherefore should we stride from our labours to bring her harm - to act as inquisitors?"
“We must get the measure of her! Hark how she rides with no family but a couple of servile frocks. Tis the ruse of a fearful witch!” Barked the first, bristling over into the ink of her brush. “With no kin to speak for her there shall be no trouble for hanging a witch. Just wait for a night the next stop over. Or drown her with a simple push. Yet what sin & shame should follow us to let an accursed angel of the blight escape our grasp when her neck is there for-”
“If you think to turn brigand and start interrogating every lone lass under threat of the noose, I would sooner toss you off the bow than allow my brother to play the blackguard. Better to be down one kinsman than see that day.” The elder man’s bitter denial sent the leering one lurching to the side. “Be brave enough to sail uncertainty without caving to robbery of any whose blood you suspect to be blue. No honor is earnt there.”
But the parting of the troublesome pair did little to avert the constant scrutiny digging into Corinna and etching her colors. Reviewing the vista scribed by obscured want she peered into a portrait of a towering mountain, enfolded by green forests. An image of Moribond, with distant Ty-Drasil housed in its range, locked with her stare. Yet the fear and manifold visage of Malderath and her chosen shades bled into the brush.
Then the spell shifted to the corner & to hue of an island off far coast: an emerald within azure sea. What should seem happy skies to give roof to shelter her from this wandering found shape of haunting effigy. Every stroke splattered crimson that yearned to be drawn from her vein. What was to be bountiful green below with blooming Andrasil contorted to an entangling bramble where the toppled trunk of the tree entombed the blur which embodied her aspect. Immured among roots which grew as horns protruding of mist & thorn.
This echo of her essence dotted the floor of the canvas. The divination painted as her destination lay in the gnarled ruins beneath the hollowed tree. Her foggy spirit spiraled through the wet covering of oils into spots her hand ordained for it. Envisioning her encasement in the roots of a dying Andrasil. Her wings, clipped by rot, could not spread to lift her from this earthen cell. Nor could her soul shed this skin to press upon the final threshold. For that door had been sealed, having passed it once only to return to ailing form.
The spirits closed her off from their hearth, that she denied them by draught to live again by ephemeral flesh. The nails of toppled bark would curl into her, impaling her to this ground. To wrap around the mold which became her, rooted to the form she could not abscond from, as consort to malaise.
Reeling her eye back from this prescient blotch she engraved of her fate, Corinna took in the canvas from greater distance. She saw then, with revelation so sweeping it stole the brush from her fingers to splatter the boards, how the mountain above this tree, her tomb to be, formed human face. The likeness of Drakkon carved of the body of this grim mound, forming hateful base. Shadowed features swirled there from her imprints, with sockets of ash as cavernous pits by which his phantom stare spouted the gloom of his longing. Moribond, his body. The smoky pillars from the temple she drew, his horns.
As in the larger treads of the merciless world, this impression of her little one was maimed by the presence of that constant spectator. The unliving face of the burnt lord, looming with look that swam into her spirit, turning all tides around her to follow its course into the dusky rivers which blanket the planets & the sky.
No matter where this vessel drifted, which dock it chose as harbor of the hour, that befouled likeness would always find means to take form. The very visage of betrayal and hurt so profound it would profane this plane past mortal means. Forever would its shape spawn of the growth in her gut. The malformed miasma of promises half-swallowed and poisons deigned to lock her into slow rot between all worlds, those unborn and those so terribly present. The servitor of causality, ever patient to pull her in to the tide she was bound for.
Tilting from this panel, tinted by the sorrow sewn into brush of her thought, Corinna dared the peripheral of the channel to scry dry land. Their ship crossed from the opaque fork of the Felstream to rejoin with the wider Ruun. Careening to cater view of the eastern bank, she spied the first fauna in days. On the boulder ridge of the cliffside they sailed past stood a proud pack of wolves. The murmur of the crew & indentured travelers died as the surf subsided to dull creak, deafened by the chaunting laughter of bestial emissaries. There on the rock they chortled as manticores more than mere hounds and mocked the flight of ship & sun.
Corinna strained her sight upon their mad, cackling circle of fur & fang, finding a lone silhouette among them. A towering man stood in the center, clad in opaque furs to match his howling friends. Though the hulking shade was shrouded in reef of the wilderness and far from boarding her transport the eyes shined with embers that forever burned. Malice coated his raven locks and the long look which hunted her, tracing patient chase. The malefic shape winced with stolen eyes, wherein the dulled brown of Baron’s was fed on fatal kindling. Then the glow turned foul, green gold. A stare sending shivers across the river to arrest her spine and uproot the stem to stitch hungering nightmare. The scent wafting from its distant coat caught up to her, arousing recognition of Azarra’s brood and constant pursuit. This feral avatar of lingering lordship waxed the crown of wild imperium that bared canines & claws against all that roamed freely.