Chapter 13-375: Calling on One’s Elders (1/2)

This Caern of the Borean White Wolves was a place of power, a holy site, and also had a practical purpose. It bound the Great White Worm, an ancient Bane of ice and cold, beneath it, preventing it from rampaging about the tundra and drowning the world in winter, or somesuch thing.

Generations of Boreans had been raised and died in defense of this place, sacrificing their lives against spirits and Fey and dark things born from the Maze that wanted to free the Bane.

One of the most effective ways to quiet the beast was blood sacrifice, so the occasional humans were kidnapped and their blood offered up to the thing to placate it.

This Sealing and monument to the White Worm was also their greatest triumph, and the one that had cemented their place among the Great Clans of the Werewolf Clans. As such it was considered the center of their power, and it was from there that the Five-tailed Werewitch of the Borea ruled her Great Pack.

Now something was out there in the tundra, in the cold and storms, and it was killing the Borea.

It was merciless and fast, and it only struck during the day. Greater werewolves, mighty warriors of the Pack, blooded in battle against terrible spirits and twisted beasts, were cut down without exception, none of them managing to escape. In rare cases, the scattered remnants were located, burning away with the vivic fire that had spread wildly among the Human Powered that were finally killing the undead their own sins had brought back from the dead, condemning the whole world for their unclean actions and mass slaughter of one another.

Obviously, the humans were turning on them, as treacherous as always!

Being hunted by mere humans was an insult the Borea simply could not tolerate. Numbers of them converged on the Caern of the Worm, determined to find and deal with these arrogant humans challenging them in the proper way, and then sacrifice them to placate the White Worm.

But there was no sign of them among any of the few human settlements within a thousand miles of the Caern. The Great Shroudzone had led to a massive evacuation of the lands of Russia, and the closest human settlements were far, far to the east in Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula. There was no way they’d miss any force of humans coming from the east or the west...

Magic told them nothing; it was hazed, grey, or simply dispersed uselessly. The spirits of the land noticed nothing in passing, save the bloody death of their kin. There were no lingering scents... and where the dead burned in unwhite flames, the Land reached up and took them eagerly, blossoming with green at their passing, as if it preferred them dead to alive...

They set traps. Sometimes their own burning bodies were found in them. They set bait and ready ambushers. The ambushers died, and if they stuck around, so did the bait.

They set watchers up high in the sky, or transformed into animals, or watching from a distance by magic. Some fell to their deaths, some were chopped out of their animal forms, and some were blinded when their Scrying magic was sliced through.

Packs of werewolves roved the landscape, seeking to blanket it in a carpet of bodies that could respond quickly to any incursion.

Still they died: the weakest, the stragglers, the lone hunters, the unwary, the overconfident.

Still, the bodies were fresher, although they still found nobody in the morning hours as the days rolled by cold and alone, and the kill totals on the Borea mounted.

The best trackers and hunters of the Borea gathered to track this incredibly dangerous prey, and now it was the turn of the Borea to stumble into tricks and traps and die in improbable ways and places.

Still the land and the spirits remained silent, as if those who killed them were invisible... or they had made a choice on who to back?

Or... perhaps the spirits that saw anything had died as well?...

Proud and bold elders and great fighters began to die. Grigmar the Thunder Caller. Krost, called the Render of the Wastes. Gorv the Iron Clawed. Krishka the Ice Fanged. Nimisha of the Eagle Eyes. Priotr, Might of the Borea...

They all died, as did many of their aides, students, companions, packmates, and blood kin. Cut or crushed, slashed and sliced, their bodies burning in unwhite fire, and their spirits could not be brought back to tell anything of their attackers.

Then the Mazed arrived, following tales of weakness borne on the wailing winds, and even the Borea had to call for help as they found themselves swarmed by the insane werewolves who had fallen fully into the demonic madness that ate at the world. Red claw and fang warred over the white snows of the tundra.

The killing continued, and even intensified, and every werewolf that hunted the tundra was potential prey. It was not the night, cold and dark and windy, that the Packs began to dread, and the potential undead that would rise if the corpses were not disposed of properly, but that first light of dawn, because in the light of day their unseen and unknown killers were still coming for them.

Mazed, Borea, and the Elder Fangs who showed up all died with distressing regularity. Still the land and the spirits could give them no help, even as werewolves and wolfweres tore at one another under the occluded moon and uncaring Haze.

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The Central Spire, Hyperborea...

“Ughril, the Mother of Ice, the Wisdom of Winter! Traveler, Firelord and Snowslayer, would have words with you!”

My words rumbled across the mountainside, and specifically inside the gaping, howling cave here, out of which a subzero wind of nearly hurricane force was howling forth.