Month: August 2024

Tried talking to Hatsuko-enzidh but I was wrong. She felt no ill-will for the truth of me, but she did not know the words. Not Kin. Just coincidence, or fortune. Fate, perhaps. Amahanam Iduth working by strange hands. But she honours the Viridian Angel and bears Her in battle, and that is enough. I will fight by her as long as her pack will have me.

I thought that was balm enough on my fear, but then more truths came spilling forth in the dawn light. Didel woke, panicking and expecting to rend us all. Tried to calm her by telling what had been done. That was fuel to the fire. She spoke of the Pealing in utter horror, that it cuts free the Beast bound in lycan skin and gives it unto the Hoarmother to fester and grow until it stalks the land and brings ruin. She would rather we had killed her. What have I done?

Could find no more words for her, just offerings of help and an effort to undo this sin. She told us her story – just a farmer who fell under the curse, could not control herself any more so was sealed away to be forgotten five centuries ago. She mentioned Elders whose names scratched at the tatters of my memory but stirred nothing. And that she went into the tomb with her wife and family. No, Ama, please, not that… That pain cuts too deep. That emptiness. I know its dimensions. Its jagged weeping-blood edges. Yriantha…

She left for Brolko with provisions and gold and pain enough to burden a giant. May she find peace.

I asked the pack if they still wished me among them after all that had happened. What I had done. What they had seen I could be. They did not chase me away. Did not reject me for being monstrous. Drashi-irmirska even looked at me bright-eyed and fascinated. Why? I do not understand.

I don’t trust myself. Can’t trust myself. Why do they trust me? They can put me down if they need to. There is peace in that thought. Someone can stop me when I become a monster.

Leera-ninna‘s keen eyes saw it at first. We were still a half-day away from Ugroccoz when she noticed a ship wedged between mountains several miles north of us and even more north of the sea. Strange sight, worth investigating but would as a day to our journey and time felt pressed. Charlotte-zaazi was so anxious her Miss that haste on to Ugroccoz felt wise.

But viewing with a spyglass showed signs of life on the ship and wyverns circling, agitated and territorial. People on the ship may not last without help. Lishan-azah cast a divination of the best course of action. The ship had greater urgency so we began to climb, slow and careful and stealthy up the rugged slopes and scree toward it.

Ninna‘s cunning and wise magics kept us well out of sight of the great farasmirska for most of our climb. Too well. One landed to rest atop where we were hiding from their gaze. Enzidh, bold as silver, decided to talk to it. With clever words, assistance and advice, she convinced the wyvern we meant no harm and allowed us to approach the ship.

The remaining climb was particularly hard and we will need to rest well to recover from it. Prefer running through woods to scaling mountains, but we reached the ship and met the inhabitants. Three travellers – Hellman Drake, Grishnak and Shimmer – from the Astral Sea lost here by teleportation accidents and trying to get home. Beyond our skills or magics but we decided to ask the wyverns, made somewhat friendly by Enzidh‘s cunning tongue, to help get the ship off the mountains to start the three on their way.

Enzidh and Azah, assisted by translation magic, put the request to the farasmirska. The largest of them, a beautiful dark-scaled creature, agreed but gave them a task in return. One of its eggs was unhatched though all its broodmates are born. We are to watch it, keep it safe and until it hatches and bring it back once grown enough it will not be eaten by hungry siblings.

The deal was sealed with a pact of names. Strange magic to be used by a wyvern, but also strange that they can speak. Pacts. Like that hungry Ky’trrix forged with dead Cormund? Essence flowed between the sworn. Enzidh and Azah gained a flash of dragonscale and bright sharpness while the wyvern gained something of humanity. Still a dragon, great and powerful, but blossoming with humanoid traits and a mind sharpened like claws on whetstone. She gained words we could all understand, the common tongue tinged with Enzidh and Azah’s dialects, and used them to explain.

She called herself Formika now. Said she once served a powerful dragon and learned the art of pacting. They – she and the other wyverns – were proud and brilliant creatures, unshackled by the prison of towns and civilisations. Familiar words. Ky’trrix spoke of the Manticore who sent him to Brolko to cast down civilisation. Coincidence? Or echoes of deeper patterns.

Formika’s throngmates, the sleek red who Enzidh had spoken to before and a powerfully-jawed white, descended while she spoke. They approved of her pact and offered the same. Hands and words are useful things, I suppose, even to mighty dragons. Two of us accepted that offer. I do not know Leera-ninna’s reasons but I was curious. Civilisation is a cage. What place does a monster like me have in it?

There are shining white scales across the knuckles of my hands now and the roots of my claws are faded silver-pale. They glint like ice, pale scale against pale skin against pale tattoo-markings. My fangs feel sharper and the air is warmer against my skin. Or I am cooler. A core of cold moonsilver ice has settled deep where my soul should be and my Rage burns cold there.

The farasmirska, Formika and her mates, used their new strengths to lift the ship away to safe water to help the lost three find their way home. And one among them – the wizard Hellman Drake – offered a reward of magic and knowledge. Scrolls and lore. I asked for what he knew of the Hoarmother, that we may know the scale of my sins and how they may be undone.

Death, Birth & Change

By BlackmouthChronicler

On 2024-08-19

In Other Stories, Uncategorized, Zelucellia

The Journal of Morwyn mac Tíre

<- Children of the Blood | Sins Past & Present ->

Standing in the ruins of luxury beneath jagged moon-burning shardlight. Ready for battle and afraid of what comes after. Didel rushes forth from below, huge and bloody. Lost deep in the bloody depths of her killing mir and not what I expected. Her war form was not wolf or bear or rat or cat but Namus-lulul, a possum. A possum hybrid large as an ogre with dagger-fangs and shortsword-claws, screaming her rage and hunger and stinking of blood and violence.

My soul writhed as we met her at the head of the stairs. These were my pack, strong and bright and fighting together. Hatsuko-enzidh and Vivian-bhakiir and Drashi-irmirska were a line of steel and claw. Enzidh‘s blade cut and parried and danced around claws that left ragged wounds in their wake. Bhakiir was a shadow and a storm, worrying and severing and hamstringing Didel to hold her back. Irmirska…

Drashi-irmirska was a goddess of war. Heedless and powerful. As confident now with a greatsword as before with words and lore. She shrugged off blows that would have staggered Enzidh or killed lesser souls. Struck with reckless, glorious strength and power. Shining arcs of steel and blood and scale and sinew. Inspiring…

Didel’s shrieking roars kept the others back but did not slow their courage. Leera-ninna‘s arrows struck like rain and thunderbolts, spreading frostrime like blood with each strike. Lishan-azah‘s magic turned aside blows and saved lives by grace of magpie wings, though could little hurt Didel directly through the shield of her Rage. Charlotte-zaazi‘s spells were precise and lethal as a knife-dancer’s daggers.

The Rage rose like fire, burning me to meet Didel claw to claw. The pack was fighting so fiercely. I needed to fight. I hungered to stand with them. To feel meat and bone splitting beneath my claws. Kept it back, teeth grinding and spitting words of power and fierce magic at Didel as long as I could. But it was not enough. The Rage rose too high and I felt myself fall not just into the Wasu-Im but into the true dark depths.

I met Didel eye to eye clad in my killing form. Tore into her with claws sharpened with moonshadow magic, rent her flesh and exulted in that feeling. And overstepped. Overreached in my exultation. Didel had been cautious, wounded and playing possum. Faking injuries and false death to lure us in. And I was lured. For all the fury of the gauru, Rage is not skill at arms and she saw the chance to strike. Tore me from my feet and splintered me like firewood. Sent tumbling, half-broken and alive only because of the last gasps of Rage she tore out of me.

Didel found renewal in my wounds. A resurgence of strength that she turned on the rest of my pack. She coughed forth oily darkness and stole all our eyes, stalking and striking in the new night as arrows and blades tried to bring her down. Used the last of my magic to wrench consciousness from her, to force Didel and her Beast into slumber before she could kill anyone else, then let the last of my Rage fade and pain take me into darkness. Stupid old wolf…

Next I knew was Zaazi was lifting me up to pour a healing draught down my throat. It was sad. Why was it sad? It called me friend and did not want me gone. But my misstep let Didel almost kill us all. Almost break free and devour the herds of Brolko. Did not have the strength to say anything, let the sharp warmth of the draught heal my wounds and chase away death before She could claim me. And I saw a knife in my hands and Knew.

A flash of memory. I remembered being laid upon a stone altar. A masked woman holding that knife. The one in my hand. Carving into me, working a Rite on my flesh. And I knew that Rite. The Pealing. A dark and terrible thing but a way to help Didel. Part her from the endless hunger of her Beast and give her life and freedom. I did not think. I simply acted, working through the memory.

The blade cut through the sleeping werepossum, carving off its pelt and leaving a sleeping halfling woman within. Every fibre of me was fire as I cut. My soul was screaming with all of her pain and mine and the bloody flesh-cutting memory of being atop the stone altar. I collapsed again, lost in bloody memory and fires of pain. I heard Erissin-irelum arrive overwrought at the bloody ruin I had made, and a pair of eyes lurking in the darkness that met mine before I passed out. The Hoarmother thanked me for the gift. What had I done…

I woke again outside to many many questions. I had few answers. Told them what I knew, that the rite had parted Didel from her rage and hunger but she will remain as empty within as any who have borne a Beast. Some changes cannot be undone. Didel remained asleep through all this and Irmirska let her slumber on her coils. Kind hearted snake.

Some of us braved the tomb again to find any answers that remained there and recover the skeletal remains Didel had cradled in her bloody madness. Perhaps it would bring her peace. Found the tomb was succumbing to age and time. Blood that had flowed endlessly fresh was spoiling and clotting. Vermin were creeping in to feast and despoil. Without Didel’s Beast it had no more purpose. It was simply a place to be consumed by time. We found the remains, a few other oddments and the pelt that I had cut from Didel which sung of magic and dark trickery. Nothing else remained. The ragged body of the Beast was gone, without trail or scent or sign of its passing.

Wounded, half-broken and exhausted, we set to rest and heal before travelling on. Irmirska wished to travel with us. Saw her noticing me, writing and drawing things in her journal. Will not blame her or any of them for wanting me gone after seeing all that happened in that tomb. Yet they do not. Strange kindness.

Irmirska had theories about how old the tomb was, either a few centuries or much older. Centuries or millennia, but built with no great cultural signifiers that she recognised. I have theories as well but did not say anything. My memories are fractious and broken things. What have I forgotten? What did I know?

I must talk to Enzidh. Her blade is talking to her now, stirred to wakefulness by the violence in the tomb. It must be one of the Angels come down, but what does that mean? Is Enzidh Kin or simply happenstance or coincidence? Threads are moving behind the world and I do not yet know the shape that is forming. But I must speak to her, to know and to know if the pack will still have me after all they have seen…

Children of the Blood

By BlackmouthChronicler

On 2024-08-05

In Other Stories, Zelucellia

The Journal of Morwyn mac Tíre

<- Blood and Gifts | Death, Birth & Change ->

Almost sad to leave Brolko. Too many herds of people but some were pleasant or kind. The pack goes on with their mission. Six more towns needing help and I will go with until dreams say otherwise. Or they wish me gone. One or other will happen soon enough. Until then, they are good company.

A few last threads before we left. Visited Gryffa still recovering, she did not know us but thankful for bringing her to help. Little dog was still friendly, guarding her from too many questions. Gave it some treats for being kind to her.

Hatsuko-enzidh and Lishan-azah had epistolary business with the sheriff, letters to be sent and schemes to be fluttered through. Charlotte-zaazi practiced shooting with the formerly foolish children turned deputies. The doll is quick and clever as ever. I kept away, waited to leave. Did not want to be around people. Was sure they could smell the blood on my claws, the ninnisu still strong in my bones. The hunger already crawling into the back of my thoughts. Rgg… No. I will keep it under control.

We left late in the morning toward Ugroccoz, following reports of witchery problems. Zaazi fears those might be its Miss and worries, though tried to not let feelings show too much. From there we will probably go to Zrag through mountain passes but that is thought for later times. Ugroccoz is two days away, perhaps longer if the trails are poor and people are slow.

Lishan-ninna lead the pack, keen-eyed and silent as a falcon on the wing. Took us by paths across prarie and beside fast-flowing streams that lead back toward Brolko. The shade was welcome, still don’t like travelling under the hot sun, and the streams had fish. Some caught for Enzidh to cook later. Some taken by Vivian-bhakiir for sport. Some I took myself. Tasty with well-crunching bones but cold and too watery.

Erissin-irelum spoke to me on the road. Friendly. Warm. Kind, but stirred up old thoughts. Yriantha’s rings felt heavy and cold. The etchings are all gone. I barely remember what they looked like when we carved them. What she looked like before…. no. I cannot think of that pain now, not with the hunger still coiled in my heart. Time does not heal wounds, it grinds away the bright moments and leaves dust and old memories and the weight of lost years. But I will try to hope. This is not the same. Irelum has her magpie and her own wolf to protect her. I will try for hope’s sake.

Path took us near caves when we heard it. Sound. Anger. Violence. Something being beaten and struck with rage. Crept closer. It was a woman. Serpentine and pretty, strong with sun-dappled scales. Beating on a very old door in frustration but calmed and comported as we approached. She called herself Drashi, said she was a scholar seeking knowledge of old things and the deep forgotten past, could not work out how to open the crypt door before her, covered in age-blackened silver and inscribed in script she could not understood.

I knew the words and when I read them I knew what was within. A tomb of one of the Old Kin, the Children of the Roar. Hopefully dead and merely angry in spirit.

Oh Child.
Rise with nature’s name.
Body of dirt, mind of water.
Soul of air, heart of flame.
Be now Ryxai’s daughter.

Oh Youngling.
Part the rivers with mammal’s paw.
Let the winds carry with avian’s wing.
Bear the boulder with reptile’s claw.
Have the torch lead your insect’s sting.

Oh Wanderer.
You walk with pride, no purpose.
You fight with joy, no respect.
You speak with spite, no circus.
You walk invincible, incorrect.

Oh Warrior.
A predator hunts to feast.
Yet it balks not nature’s garter.
Your rage her’s in the least.
Choose now honour or martyr.

Oh Hero.
Your tales we burn in stars.
Your songs among our get.
Rest your rage in binding tars.
Let the world forget.
The Poem on the Tomb

I did not tell them the whole poem. It does not translate into their words easily, but I told of the danger and the age of it. Did not want to open it, but knowing that the door could be opened Drashi-irmirska would keep trying and would go in alone. Should not have let anyone see that I could read the words. But it is done and cannot be undone. So better to go together and ready than let her die alone in ancient darkness. On her promise that she would disturb nothing, I spoke the poem’s final words to open the door – the name Didel.

Beyond the door lay carnage. Stairs descending into darkness slick with remnants of blood and rent by immense claws. Utter rage had ruined this place, kept back from the door itself by keen silver spikes blackened by old blood and time. No-one else knew what this meant. Could not let they would walk into a hungry maw like lambs, so I told them. This was not a tomb. It was the resting place of one of my kin, and they would be lost in hunger and rage. Kind Enzidh offered to provide them with food, not understanding the nature of the hunger. Had to tell them that as well and felt I had laid my throat bare on the floor for them to carve open. No-one did, but I saw the look of fear and something else in Irmirska‘s eyes. But she did not retreat, instead seemed to be sketching me. Why? Nothing worth remembering of this old wolf.

They decided to explore anyway. Better to find the kin within and calm them or rend them than allow them to run free and cause more harm. Among the ruined rooms and stairways were traps of bloody simplicity. Deadfalls and tension-triggered impact traps made of old bloody bones and remnants of the dead. All intended to keep something inside than keep intruders out. In one great chamber were shardlight lanterns, set to burn the Children… Was this made by Iduth Isihar?

Exploration ended abruptly as Vivian-bhakiir found a trap unawares and was sent tumbling down stairs. I sped after her. Bhakiir had been kind and would help if I could. I was not careful. Struck by another trap and hurled down as well. Bruised but not broken, we found the heart of the tomb as the rest of the pack gave chase down to find us.

Waist-deep in a chamber filled with pooling blood was a weeping woman, maddened and fighting the silver fire of the ninnisu with every ounce of her will. Lost in its depth and desperately hungry for the hunt and the kill. Didel. Subject of the poem in memoriam and prisoner in this place.

Enzidh tried to talk to her but the claws of rage and hunger were too deep in her soul. She reacted when I spoke to her in Haremehir. Heard me when she did not hear Enzidh. Shook off an offer to sate her hunger together by hunting the wild things outside. She called me a fool pup, barely Changed. Told me that mere animals were not enough for her. Asked where my Elders are. Why do I not remember?

Is this my fate? Cannibalism and madness and endless rage? I do not know…

Her control slipped. Cracked like glass. She held together in hope we would flee and not be devoured. Could not let her escape into the world, devour Brolko and all its mewling little people. Had to face her.

We fell back to the room of jagged, moon-burning light and readied to face her Beast…