Year: 1734
The crackling of torches snap at the chilled air. A silence surrounding the glade filled with villagers was palpable and solid, like a wall in reality. Their faces, filled with grim malice, are turned toward a raised wooden dais of collected logs, hewn from the near by trees. A thick-set pole stands tall in the center, an old woman tied to it like a slaughtered pig trussed up for bleeding, but right side up. Her forehead, cheeks, chin, and neck are carved in shallow, angry lines with runes: Selfishness, Greed, Cannibal, Immorality, Depravity, Corruption. The symbols together to describe one of such evil as to cut into the imagination a demon, flying on high to steal one's soul to torture or devour.
The old woman raises her head, eyes half closed due to the bruises swelling on her face from the fists of the villagers. Though her vision was blurry, she looked at each face in front of her. The craftsman, Alvan, so good with his hands he could put together a longboat in a fortnight, faster than any other, eyes once filled with stoicism looked on in unmasked hatred. His wife beside him holding their infant, their oldest son looking on nervously yet silently. The old woman remembered when Alvan was a young man, intense but dedicated to learning his craft. His master took the boy in to pass on his vast experience in metalworking and woodcrafting. And the boy was a fast learner indeed. He would often come to the woman on behest of his master, among the ancient trees of the forest, to ask for the livingwood to make the most important of their projects. She remembered he would always bring runes of thankfulness to her on those trips.
She continues to look among the crowd, noting others whom she had known for their entire lifespan, one who was young when she was yet in her early years. They looked on with a sadness that befit one with powerlessness. The corners of her mouth raised just slightly in a gentle smile as she met the eyes of Petre, one of those old men, just yet out of diapers in her memories. He was the baker's son, and had nearly drowned one early spring. The boys of his youth would run for miles, often playing games of courage. That particular spring, he had made boast that he could sprint across the entire length of a lake without slipping on the icy surface. The ice had cracked halfway across and he had slipped right through, disappearing as quick as if he were a ghost. The other boys had left him to his fate to fetch the adults, but the woman had noticed and asked the spirits to help him from the lake. When the party of adults had come back, they found her kneeling in front of his sleeping form, her deerskull mask obscuring her face. Ah, what a boy he was, so full of curiosity and kindness.
There, ah, yes, the youngest shieldmaiden of the village, Korran, one set on the path of being a warrior in the eyes of war gods. Her face was flat and showed no emotion, but the twisted form of disgust were shot straight to the eyes of the old woman, knowing that look was for her alone. Not two springs ago, the woman had stayed by the bedside of Korran, tending the disease that would have eaten away her body and mind and leaving nothing but a husk. For months, she had kept the girl from stepping through the door of Death. When she had finally opened her eyes, all she had seen was the look of the old woman in her mask, back to the window, light shining around her. The young woman whispered to her, so only she could hear, that she would be her matron for the rest of her days. Those once shining eyes filled with awe, changed so much, were gone.
The crowd gathered before her was never-ending, faces she remembered and knew better than most, others she had known for their entire lives, some she had saved, and the many who she had helped. These villagers were, in her wizened eyes, her children. She thinks to herself, should she not be angry? Should she not be filled with hatred at the betrayal? Yet she smiled gently at each and every gathered person, filling in her eyes with their faces and histories. The few that were saddened were drowned, however, by the malice coming to her in waves. She sighs shortly, to herself. If her death was to be at the hands of her children, she could not feel badly toward them. They were only children after all.
She felt two more sets of eyes, not a part of the crowd. She knew it to be the eyes of He and her protege. Her eyes raise to the treeline just past the crowd, the empathy of her successor's young eyes shining from behind her antlered deerskull mask, thin robes made of leaves and branches, skin showing like the sun shining through a tree's branches during the midday. The One next to and behind her, His face obscured by the darkness of His cowl, cloak surrounding Him completely, antlers atop His head massive and filled with points. He was the one who had been the old woman's patron and the protector of this vast land for millenia. Though she could not see their expressions, she knew that her protege's expression was one of love and sadness, His expression likely to be gratitude to her loyalty and service to Him, though he would not say as much, even to her.
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At this thought, the crowd parts, and her attention leaves the two, and her gentle smile turns to an expression of intensity. There, a man in the robe of a foreign god, his mask shining gold in the torchlight, shaped like a sundisk and carved with an alien face. His walk was assured with the stance of the divine grace bestowed to him, though he himself with no aura of the divine. A stranger in a land that did not welcome him, welcomed instead by the villagers with eyes of gratitude and gentleness. The low murmurs could be heard, sounds of 'Your Grace', 'He's here', 'We're saved'. Book in hand, he walked toward the center of the glade where the old woman was tied. The old woman looks down at the creature disguised as a human in front of her, his insignificance obvious to her.
The man raises his hand to stifle the murmurs as all eyes save for two sets, her Patron and successor, looks toward him. He beckons silently toward the nearest woman with a torch, Ivina, who comes forth to stand before him. He turns back to the old woman, asking 'You, who have served evil each turn of the season, we who are the creations of Borstunad charge you with laying with daemons. But, fear not, your soul shall be cleaned of all sin through His fire, and though your transgressions be many, Borstunad will have mercy upon your soul, so long as you cry to Him your love and forgiveness. If be you fully corrupt beyond saving, then your soul shall reach the kingdom of the damned, to be awash with the waters of hatred for all time. Your time has come, creature, to answer for your sins. What be your last words, one of sin?'
The older woman listens in silence, no expression save for the intensity behind her eyes. At the end of the man's speech, she looks toward the young woman next to him, then to the crowd and smiles gently yet again. She opens her mouth and she begins to sing a hymn of her Patron, one she had sung since the beginning of her youth dedicated to Him and known to all in the forest, regardless of race or intelligence.
"In the valley, amongst the mountains,
Layeth a single monument, to the Forest.
Her grace, Her love, blooming, expanding,
Like the tree of the World itself.
'Lo, behold, Her beauty we observe.
She is the Storm, She is the Calm,
She is my Parent, She is my Love."
As she sings, the man in the foreign garb quickly takes the torch from the young woman and thrusts it among the kindling inside the housing of logs and sticks. The dry leaves and bark quickly catch fire, taking moments to become a crackling, monstrous roar, the flames rising from the feet of the old woman and quickly licking her knees. Without so much as a pause or change in tone, she sings her hymn, deeper, voice filled with the magic of His domain of all things wild and free. She weaves her spell among the villagers, one of protection and love rather than defiance and corruption. The villagers, without realizing it, began to feel their spirits lift like the wind taking a fog. They began to cheer as she burned, thinking that the evil among them was finally dispelling, but only one among the crowd did not cheer. She looked deep into the eye sockets of his mask and smiled, watching his anger and alarm build. He knew she had lifted his curse among them, and would have to work his entire life to break her protection.
Though the villagers may not notice the protections she had weaved for them, they would feel the warm sun among their backs as they worked, the coolness of the rivers as they bathed, and the wind kissing their skin as they danced. Her voice carried itself among the trees, the forest itself, the valleys, and among the highest peaks. Though no words reached the creatures or people among these lands, the protections she weaved were felt. As her body turned to ash, her voice continued long, long after.