The ebonblade rested flat across Siegyrd’s bare shoulder, and his eyes, normally bright white with silver flares were cracked with interlacing webs of darkness. His step was soft upon the cave floor. As he walked past the woman sleeping on the bed of furs, an icy chill caused her to draw them more tightly to herself. Fear strode through the light of the false sun in the cavern heights adorned in a veil of rage. His silvery hair hung down low upon his back, and the scales in his skin shimmered between dark and light.
She was awake, but she dared not open her eyes. She wanted to disappear into the folds of fur as if they bore a protective ward against any evil without. His soft padding footsteps, barefoot, reached the edge of the cavern far out and then there was a whooshing of strong wind, and all was still. The air lost its pallor of fear, and she took a breath. She took this chance to more thoroughly examine the cavern in which she lay. The light in the ceiling was almost blinding, filling the whole place with radiance. She had noticed nothing the day before, but now she saw rows of shelves, furniture of a make she did not recognize with cloth of gold and cloth of silver draping.
She stood and walked toward the shelves, neatly arrayed into a patterned walkway toward the back which led to a giant curtain as tall as three houses. It hung from rods of iron driven into the rock and ice of the cavern wall. The floor was smooth stone, impossibly smooth, as if scoured flat and pristine by some immense power. There were no cracks or seams at all, and it reflected the light from the false sun but also seemed to contain it, deeply as if capturing it for some future unknown purpose. It was like walking on a sea of glowing glass.
Upon the shelves were books, some bound in leather as thick as her arms, others dainty scrolls of parchment, and artifacts and statues of various make and size. A statue of a strange four-headed creature stood prominently on one, and a model of what looked like a giant spearhead though made of prismatic glass. She walked on and saw gems the size of her head cut into magnificent faceted glory. Rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. A slim sword made entirely of amethyst floated inches above the shelf as well spinning slowly.
There was a porcelain pot shaped like the hips of a young woman, filled with sand, and another contraption which spun with bulbs filled with different liquids which moved and danced under and through the light. Throughout were strange symbols and shapes of what she assumed were writings from many languages she had never known, too different to be one language, and far from the scratches of her own tribe. They were on the pages and bindings of the books and scrolls, the edges of the artifacts, carved into portions of the hard darkwood shelves, some even hung in the air like luminescent wisps. Those symbols danced in midair naturally as if it were the plainest thing of all.
And at the end was the great veil, the massive curtain which must have weighed more than all the livestock of her village. She approached it, thinking to see what was beyond, but she could not push it aside. It was seamless and solid. She knelt down to look at the base, and there was a tiny space between the bottom of the curtain and the floor, about the size of a pinky finger. She sunk lower, onto hands and knees, her hands instantly feeling the chill from the floor, but she continued and craned her neck downward to look into the room beyond.
#
Far below and many leagues away, the man with the ebonblade stood at the entrance to a small town, its keep was made of thick timbers and roofed with solid wood and could be seen rising above the spiked wall of jagged fencing which surrounded the town. This place had prospered while all the surrounding villages had vanished. He stood before the gate, closed as it was in the early morning before the rising of the sun. He inhaled with a deep breath, and he could smell the scent of mead and cooking fires from the night before. There had been a feast in celebration of their spoils. The sweet smells and aromas of the festivities rose, and wisps of smoke still remained from the low-burning embers.
The price for your freedom is, overdue. I demand them, Skald, with interest.
“Save your threats.”
You underestimate my reach.
“Your reach is only so far as my hand allows.”
The skald inhaled deeply again, his chest rising impossibly high as if he would swallow the sky in a single gulp. His eyes flared with luminescent sapphire blue. Symbols of glacial blue formed across his skin and scales winding and grasping him in an embrace of brilliant light. He paused there, and the light grew brighter in his eyes, on his skin. A great hum rose and the quivering of the world around him, and all at once he exhaled. The burst of air which proceeded forth froze the timbers solid and washed over the entire town in a tide of permafrost. Fires snuffed, people sleeping breathed their last as their lungs froze and their flesh turned hard as rock. In moments the entire town became icy statues mimicking the final moment of their lives.
The light from his eyes and skin faded, and the skald stepped forward toward the closed gate. He tapped it once with the hilt of the ebonblade and it shattered into a fine frozen dust like the lightest breath of fresh snow.
I demand slaughter!
The blade’s voice raged in Siegyrd’s mind, and he responded with calculated silence. He walked on through the frozen streets, and when he came upon the body of a man or woman or child he touched the edge of the blade to their frozen forms and a shadow burst forth, engulfed them, and receded. Then their bodies evaporated into frozen mists.
“You drink well enough without the slaughter.”
Now the blade’s voice said nothing, as person after person was drawn into his core and their forms dusted in the frigid glow of a rising sun.
Siegyrd walked through the whole village before arriving at the large central keep which held the seat of the local chieftain. He broke the doors with shattering ease, and walked in to see a man seated on his makeshift throne of dark wood ill-carved. Upon his head was a warhelm with a single horn in the center. On a table beside him was a twisted mask and a jug of mead, frozen solid as the rocks that lay the foundations of the world. All around were vassals and concubines and many who had reveled with this tyrant. Siegyrd walked through and touched the blade to each before finally standing before the seated “king.”
Standing there he breathed deeply, the cold filling his lungs with joy, and he raised the ebonblade high above him, gripping its hilt with both of his hands, his silver scales shadowed in its perfect dark edge. He paused there, in the moment of brutal anticipation eyes flashing, then brought the blade downward slicing clean through the frozen carcass and splitting him and his throne in two. Then with a back step and a turn of his grip he used the flat of the giant blade to bash the two sections into shattered ruin with a silent satisfaction.
We may yet be friends, Skald.
Siegyrd returned the blade to his shoulder and turned to leave. As he walked out of the broken down entrance he said, “You want for destruction. It just so happens that some destruction aligns with wrath, justice delivered.”
Ah, but how you enjoy it, Skald.
Siegyrd held out his hand to his right, the blade hovering there, and released, and a small portal of shadow swallowed it leaving him standing there alone. He breathed once more, wandered to the center of the devastated town, and drew his songblades. There he sang and danced a dirge for all the souls departed and wept frozen tears for all but one.
#
Peeking beneath the curtain her eyes widened with wonder as the room beyond was filled with mountains of gold and gems and armour gleaming silver, and swords, and spears, and battleaxes, and coins of make and material she could not know. It was piled high toward the back and around, and low in the middle as if something settled within the waves of wealth. There was likely another of the false suns back there, for it was filled with light, save for one stain of darkness in a far corner which she couldn’t make out from her vantage. When it caught her eye her breath caught in her throat and she scrambled back, fear trampling wild horses through her veins.