Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

5 Blackblood Cleaver

"The second afternoon of the fourth month of the thirteenth year of Lord Shehëk Magt's Rule, Record Seven One Five

A farmer was brought in to the Lord of Skavia's judgement room for failure to fulfil his contractual duty to supply the house of Grundä with a year's worth of wheat. In the judgement room his argument was that Ala had howled storms down on his farm, destroying anything of worth. Soldiers were sent to inspect the lands he claimed to own, but found a ruinous, desolate, and abandoned plot upon inspection. All the soldiers agreed that a man could not have lived on this land for at least a hundred years. For his deception of the house of Grundä were given three lashes, for his failure to supply the house of Grundä with the agreed amount of wheat, was given Twelve lashes, one for each month, and the monetary value of twenty gold coins indebted to the Grundä family along with his imprisonment until the debt is repaid."

~ Court records, present day

Erdil

    It was so cold, that even the ice giants had to be hiding in their secret caves from the ever falling snow and darned wind, but Emeline braved it without complaint. This wasn't as bad as she'd expected. Oft times she told herself not to cry over leaving her beloved parents, or weep about traveling through the icy weather with the warrior. A thousand times she swore she would not cry out in fear of the darkness and the night, but she cried every day. Only a little. After all, father was not there to see the tears he would have ridiculed roll down her cheeks.

    The dawn was her hope when the darkness seemed too close at hand. The sun's rays would touch her back, melting the ice in her bones and making her feel normal again. In the dark of the night, the cool weather and pitch black air would play tricks on her mind. Behind her, her tracks would not show up in the snow, but when she looked back as the sun rose, there would be tracks.

    She knew it was silly, but she felt as though the shadows in the night were alive, hunting her, eating her footsteps and her frosty breath. It was ridiculous. Emeline shook her head. Impossible. Her stoic father had always been quick to quench her superstitions.

    Still, she had the gnawing sensation that something was awry. 'Why are we traveling at night, Avétk? It's... It's ominous. The shadows are eating my steps!' The last sentence sounded childish even to her ears, but she didn't care.

    'There are worse things than shadows waiting for you in Träumenil, I'm told. Remember that bog you were sinking in to?'

    Avétk's steady march through the dark night and the icy snow continued without even a pause, his breaths puffing in the air before him. Hers were not puffing. She felt even more afraid as soon as she noticed. Something was very wrong!

    'You're gonna have to face these fears of yours, Em. Erdil's a tough plane. There's no place for a lost little girl. No safety either, if you're going alone. Lucky you got me. Some o' your kind got nobody to help them.' Avétk kept walking as he spoke.

    'What do you mean, my kind?' Emeline asked. 'Aren't we all human, besides for the Immortals and the Fathers?' She threw her fur and cape off of her auburn hair, shaking it loose. It might have been cold, but sometimes her coat and furs felt as though they trapped her. Suffocated her. She dragged her cold fingers through her hair with her left hand. Ah, yes. That felt better.

    'Now that there's a loaded question.' He sniggered. 'For a start, there's all kinds 'a humans. Maybe your kind is the little lost girl kind.'

    She rolled her eyes at his obvious, mischievous peering, knowing he was attempting to provoke her.

    'But I meant you young, naïve folk, you important people with prophecies and all that.' Gosh, she didn't think of herself as important, but the idea was warm like a little flame on a winter night.