My world broke into fragments of conflagrant flames and galling pain. The searing sensation inside my left eye and the space behind it made it unbearable. I laid like a spasming corpse on the cold library floor, gasping and moaning. Words—no, not words, but stories, secrets, whole damn sagas—flooded my head, screaming, laughing, sobbing, an entire storm of voices tearing at my sanity.
I squeezed my good eye shut, clawing at my blood-slick face. The noise stopped, sharp as a snapped thread, leaving just my pounding heart and the coppery stench of blood in my nose. I felt my heart beat rhythmically, and for some reason, it brought me peace. Perhaps, it was because of how mundane the action was—devoid of complexities and ravens clawing my face out.
After a few seconds, I felt something around me. The uncomfortable cold of the library was gone and I felt the gore and blood slipping out of my eye and running through my fingers recede back. My skin brushed against something oddly smooth, as if I was wrapped in something stretchy, tight, like being swaddled in a warm hide.
I cracked my eye—eyes open. My vision was blurry, and slightly off.
I realised the eye where the ravens had attacked was not working. However, there was no library, no shelves anymore. Just a dim, pulsing cocoon, like that of a butterfly. Its walls were pale, which looked like skin stretched over a drum.
I was curled inside, knees jammed against my chest, the air thick with earth and sap, clogging my throat, however, it wasn't suffocating.
Pressing a hand against the cocoon's inner wall, I felt it quiver. My breath hitched. Where am I? Before I could panic, a wave of heat flared across my back, and then it turned sharp, like a blade carving something into my flesh.
I hissed, arching against the cocoon's grip, my shirt sticking to the brand that burned beneath it. The rune—the one the chief had branded into me, unsponsored—was twisting, branching like roots under my skin. I couldn't see it, but I felt it shift, curling, spreading, then settling, the pain fading to a dull pulse.
And then, the cocoon shuddered, letting out a wet ripping sound as it split, and the sight of Mother Eingana's statue's head came into focus.
A thought suddenly surfaced in my mind. The words of mother—Hannah…a slight discomfort coursed through me, but I pushed it to the side.
The Sequence 6 Rune—I knew, somehow, it had to stay hidden. I yanked my shirt down, covering my back just as the cocoon tore open, its edges peeling like flayed skin. The torn pieces draped over my shoulders. It was warm and the same pale hue as my own skin.
I stumbled out of it, legs shaky, onto a stone floor slick with moss.
A faint glow caught my eye—a small rock, half-hidden behind the statue. I stared at it for barely a moment, and my mind suddenly lurched. Whispers, louder, crept in like a knife's edge brushing my thoughts.
"Broken from a bigger chunk of stone in molten veins of … quartz and basalt, shaped by natural occuring minerals…"
I saw it—its birth in a fiery womb, miles away from Drakensfjord, its grinding journey through aeons. My head throbbed as the whispers swelled, threatening to drown me. I blinked hard, forcing my gaze away, and the voices dulled to a murmur, like waves retreating from shore.
I clutched my skull and pressed the base of my palm against the eye which had been hollowed out by the raven, but was still somehow here. "What's happening to me?" I whispered, half-expecting the air to answer. The cocoon's remnants hung on my shoulders like a strange cloak, and I staggered. Taking in a long breath, I smelt the faint scent of wet stone and pine.
A low chuckle broke the silence, rough as gravel. "You're awake, Valknarr. Quicker than most."
I looked up at Jorund who had a kind look on his face.
However, when my eyes fell on Mother Eingana's statue right behind him, a sea of words and thoughts and…memories exploded behind my eyes and my brain felt like it had blown into bits while contained inside my head.
My whole body wracked as I saw something…
A man…with a wolf's hide. A hut…at the edge of a dying world.
"Ulfr-Wati… Ngurra-Mirri…" I felt someone—myself? Mumble.
"Ulfr-Wati… Ngurra-Mirri…"
"Robertson—control yourself!" Jorund's voice was distorted, like someone shouting at me while I drowned in deep waters.
"Ulfr-Wati… Ngurra-Mirri…" I mumbled again, the sensation of drowning getting prominent as I felt water gush in my throat and my body float.
I felt a pair of lips right next to mine, the eyes of Mother Eingana's statue that subtly followed everyone, suddenly completely turned to me and I felt my body lurch as Jorund caught me and hugged me in a tight embrace, holding me—grounding me in place.
Prying my eyes away from the statue, I hugged Jorund back, as if hugging his brittle, clattering bones could save me from the sheer paranoia that hit me like a tidal wave. As I felt my eyes settle on Jorund's cloak, once again, I felt words pour into my head.
The cloak tore open in my mind, the dark folds bleeding into a flood of images which were as sharp as broken glass. A massive wolf roared, laying almost lifelessly, alone on a peak's edge, afraid, its hide ripped under a crimson sky, fur matted with frost and blood, ochre dye smeared by hands that shook with the reverence of a mad man.
Threads of starlight burned through the weave, stinging like frostbite. A longhouse, firelit, where a woman with obsidian eyes draped the cloak over a younger Jorund, her voice chanting low, "For the stars."
Smoke choked my lungs— a village burned to ashes.
Suddenly, a sudden jolt pulled me out of the crumbling ashes and I was back in the cave.
The eye…the eye! I quickly placed a hand on the eye that was ravaged by the ravens, however, it was still here. I closed it as hard as I could, until the eyelid started to spasm. Keeping it shut, I tried to focus around me.
The voices, the visions—they dissipated almost instantly.
"—narr! Robertson!" Jorund's blade-like shout sliced through the subtle dark. His one hand tightened around my shoulder and the other slapped across my face. "Fight it, boy! Don't let it drag you under!"
I gasped. Whatever remnants of witchcraft I was under was gone with that slap. My throat was raw, the taste of saltwater from the sensation of drowning fading from the back of my throat. The skin coloured cloak's weight was still pressing my shoulders, though it was Jorund's hands that held me.
"I'm… here," I croaked, clutching him like a drowning man.
He eased me back, his stormy green-grey eyes searching, worry carved deep. "What did you see, Valknarr?"
My head throbbed, words lodged in my chest like stones. Ulfr-Wati. Ngurra-Mirri. The wolf-man. The star-place. I couldn't spit them out, not yet.
"Too much," I managed.
A flicker of what seemed like recognition flashed across his face and I suddenly felt like I had done something wrong. Not saying another word, he took me by the shoulder and helped me to my feet. I kept my one eye closed, but felt like it would give it away so I reopened it.
Not focusing on anything in particular, I nodded my head towards Jorund as he guided me towards the door. Before going out, I looked back. Much to my surprise, there was no one inside the altar. No one, save for one person—Sofia. I could tell immediately it was her…for some odd reason.
She was seated in a lotus position, the outline of her body visible through the pale cocoon that had enveloped her and a faint glow where the rune had etched itself on to her. As I stopped and turned to look at her properly, Jorund placed his hand on my shoulder.
Not looking directly at him, and not looking completely downwards, I shook my head and stood. "Can I stay here for a while?"
Jorund looked suspiciously at me. Realising what he would have mistaken my words as, I apologised and moved through the door.
A certain chill ran down my spine. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the ground beneath Sofia's cocoon turning to ice, flakes of snow falling from above and integrating with the cocoon before turning it into a tomb of snow while bright red flowers started to sprout from the ground, forming a permitre around her. The roses—that's what I assumed they were—were encased in solid ice.
It happened so fast, that I barely blinked once or twice.
Jorund gave me a little nudge and expelled me from the altar. I tried to look back, but he slammed the door on my face. A thought emerged in my head—why does Jorund get to stay inside? Won't the whole unsaid confidentiality 'clause' will be breached if he is inside? However, due to constantly flicking my gaze in every direction, I couldn't put my thoughts under control.
I looked at the hallway where all of the parents had gathered. There was no one right now, and it was eerily empty. I felt my eyes settle on the hallway that extended into the darkness, I felt words and voices creep into my head once again. The half-revealed images of people walking in and out, dead bodies being dragged out, people…Harald, mom's teammate limping out of the altar…and Robert…
I saw them all…
All but…
"Gaah…" A pained gasp left my lips as I fully closed one of my eyes.
Well, this is problematic.
Reaching out for the shirt inside the coat—the coat that was passed as a family heirloom—I tried to tear it. Much to my own surprise, the cloth gave away. I looked at my hand with my one good eye and felt myself smile, despite the splitting migraine that wracked my skull.
Looks like the strength is the additional perk. I wonder if I can join the 100 kilo bench club now…Nevermind.
Walking out of the hallway with my hand still covering my eye, I got out. The storm had subsided and the sun was shining oddly bright for Drakensfjord winters. Removing my hand from my eye and closing it tightly, I clasped my hands together and stretched them over my head, arching my back as I did.
As I raised my arms, I picked on a very familiar scent. No—not scent, rather stench. The stench of sweat after a 5 hour session of football, coming from not just my underarms but my entire body.
Good lord, I really need a bath…though how the fuck did I sweat so much in fucking winters?
Shaking my head, I started to make my way towards home. It was quite some distance away from here as our home was situated at the edge, overlooking the Fjord—which looked very beautiful in summers—at the end of the village. However, after a few steps forward with my eye covered, I saw a familiar nest of hair bobbing and waving in the air.
Perhaps it was because of me trying to focus on them, once again, I accidentally opened my left eye. For a moment it was calm, serene—the kind of calm that came before a storm. And then my eyes focused on her, Hannah.
'Hannah Valknarr. Thirty winters old. Born in a land of… flowers? Mist-wrought power. Stronger than me, far stronger. An incomprehensible gap of strength.'
The world shivered, and the All-Seer's sight spilled into my soul like icy water over Starlake's cliffs.
Hannah was standing somewhere, framed by the hearth's glow, her shadow dancing on the longhouse wall. My vision cracked open in a jagged and wild manner, pulling me past her weathered hands, her amber eyes and her snow white hair.
A scent drifted from behind her—sweet, not of pine or frost, but something softer, like blooms caught in warm zephyr. It tugged at me and I took a slight step forward.
Strange, I noted.
It was quite out of place in Drakensfjord's cold. Her hands that were steady as iron, holding a glowing sword shimmered faintly, mist around the sword's incorporeal blade, and then, it was gone.
'Mist-Crafter.'
Someone whispered. It was like a humming in my skull.
Her strength dwarfed mine—a towering presence like a storm-cloaked mountain, yet it wasn't brute force—it was fluid, ever-shifting, like the mists that veiled Drakensfjord's fjords.
I saw flashes: a sword morphing to a shield, a spear piercing a shadowed fiend.
Five times my power?
Suddenly, the vision of Hannah looked back and slashed and then the surroundings changed. A flicker of a land with endless blooms, skies too blue and a giant puncturing wound—a void tugging at her soul.
Suddenly, everything around me stretched and broke into a hundred different pieces and I was back in the present, Hannah a few inches away as the basket full of fresh fruits fell from her hands and she lunged at me. Wrapping her arms around me, she got down to her knees and hugged me tightly, her breath warm over my neck.
I could feel her thin fingers gently combing my hair.
Still lingering from the aftereffects of All-Seer's sight, I still breathed out a calm breath, closing my left eye—pushing the dubious and extremely worrying visions aside—and hugged her back.
"You smell of skít (1), dearest son of mine."
Despite it being an insult, I let out a tired laugh as I felt my eyes well with tears, for some damned reason. "You're overreacting, mom."
Breaking the hug, she ruffled my hair which felt much longer than before. "Come, my son, I am sure not taking a single bath and simmering in your own sweat for 6 months has taken away your sense of hygiene."
I froze. "What…six months?!"
*************
(1) skít - Ancient norse for faeces.