Interlude - The Thrice Cursed Family
The first thing Reinvar became aware of was the smell.
The sweet smell of humus and the leaf litter of the oak grove lingered in his nose as he blinked away tears that came unbidden. His blooding was supposed to be a joyous day with a short jaunt to the rift and an evening of mead and song. A celebration of his manhood and a shedding of his childhood.
“This family is thrice cursed, ptch! Brothers!... You were so misled…” His mossy bearded uncle cried as he raged, thumping the bodies of his family where they had lay themselves down to join the rift. He raged until he noticed Reinvars sobbing.
“You… You were born a curse… You are no longer Umfridas, I denounce you! Ptch-”
The glob of spit trickled down Reinvars face as the last surviving member of the Umfridas family stormed away. Leaving him on the ground with the corpses of his father and uncles.
He spent a time considering staying on the ground for good. But as the afternoon light stopped trickling through the boughs of the ancient oaks above him, he was left in darkness and a well of pain built inside him until the emotions he refused to feel became too much.
A spark of anger flared within him as he pushed aside the grief. Firming his resolve he began the Silvan rites to return his family to the forest. They had not forsaken him, they had tried to believe again.
As he worked the knife through his father’s now cold flesh he sang the story of his family. As he worked at the corpses he reveranty placing their remains amongst the roots of the sentinel oak. As he did he sang a story.
The story of three curses: a seed, a babe and a madman.
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> The Umfridas family was an old and storied line. They were an old Silvanian tribe from the ancient forests under the Dolerite ranges. For several generations they sought refuge in the Montleglen Kingdom while they waited for their fate to turn.
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> The brothers Umfridas were born from several mothers. They were bound by blood and oaths from birth to reclaim their home. Raoulet, the eldest, sought a blessing from the King’s Forester and was granted a seed, and an axe. He led his brothers home to where the forest fought back against the Eruleans.
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> “We will take the fight back to the demons and send them back to their plains.” He declared.
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> They found themselves in a forest of gnarled oak with soft soil and gentle mountain streams. It had seemed a paradise and the brothers were thankful, planting their sacred seed in a meadow of mountain flowers.
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> As they made their home the brothers readied themselves to delve and make the seed strong. Led by Raoulet with his blessed axe they entered many rifts that appeared in the forest.
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> But the Erulean avatars were too strong for the brothers and the demons from the south blasted them with fire and overwhelmed them with swords. They lost two brothers to Raoulets hubris in the first summer, and another to the winter.
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> The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
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> So they took what scrapings they could and made a life for themselves. The brothers accepted their fate and the family drifted, letting the promises of glory lay fallow.
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> As the years passed the seed grew into a tree that sang to them of violence, but the brothers no longer listened to it or to Raoulet. They enjoyed what little essentia they could take from the rifts, and with minor power and a bountiful place in the overworld they lived in comfort.
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> One summer while his brothers traded with the Eruleans down in the plains Raoulet had enough of waiting for his moment and he walked through the passes to the land of the Stonemen seeking the power to claim his glory.
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> When he returned to the forest he came back not with a powerful weapon, or a calculii to counter the Erulean flame. He came back with a baby.
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> The brothers laughed at Raoulet’s folly and dove deeper into their mundane lives. One brother became a shepherd in truth, giving up the ways of the land. Another married an Erulean woman who he brought to live in the forest.
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> The second eldest brother, Reeve, grew to love Erulean wine. Each summer he would spend longer and longer down in the Erulean town until one year he didn’t come back.
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> The tree still sang to them sweet lies of glory, and the brothers grew to hate it. They argued if it was evil from the moment it came to them, or if it was tainted by the blood spilled in the forest. No-one but the beast itself could know the answer.
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> So a decade passed.
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> Until one day Reeve came back. He came back with news about Erulean Empire and an idea. He came back with hope for their promised glory, but he also came back changed.
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> He came back angry.
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> The brothers joined the rifts and Reeve fought with a savagery that took the Eruleans off guard. He broke the shepherds rules which they had followed for so long to keep themselves safe and he killed many Eruleans. But he was never satisfied.
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> His thirst for violence grew day by day and he was never content. Something within grew as the man he was died and in his final moments his madness made him barely more than a beast.
Reinvar couldn’t finish the song, a Silvanian eulogy never finished with a death. He could only finish it with vengence.
As he finished with Reeve’s body. He washed the blood off his hands with mead and he poured the last skin of sweet alcohol over the scattered bodies.
His father and uncles were gone, their flesh belonged to the forest.
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Without a family and with nowhere else to go Reinvar walked north and east.
The walk through the passes high in the Dolerite ranges was hazardous even in high summer. Melting snowcaps caused flash floods, the wandering creeps and the threat of Erulean huntsmen or Stoneman raiders could all kill Reinvar in a moment of inattention.
He carried only his boar spear and his water skin, relying on what he could hunt and forage on his journey. He hadn’t wanted to face what remained at the homesteads amongst the oaks to gather supplies or his belongings.
So with great danger and hardship he made it through the pass. Ragged from his journey he stood on a mountain goat trail above a Stoneman Village, a lush valley of forest and stone tucked amongst tall snow capped mountains.
“It is not a good place for you.” A strongly accented woman’s voice said from behind him.
Startled by the sudden voice after weeks of isolation and heartache, Reinvar whirled to find a striking figure of a tall blonde woman with icy blue eyes. She carried a staff of stone carved with vivid blue runes and wore a robe of skins under a wolf fur mantle.
“It is good to meet you, child.” She said, struggling with the Silvan language. “You call me ipa.”
“Yipa?” He tried out the word as she laughed.
“Aiþei.”
It took him an embarrassing length of time to figure out that it meant mother.