Fable - Ask Frostfling Barrow

There was something in Dzievaya's tone and the sacrificial shape of the bowl before the statue that threw Rovan into a dreadful unease. She kept dragging and lagging with her answers, as if reluctant to reach them.

Her hand extended above the ice near the bowl. A part of the ice where a single rune seemed grafted onto it with thin lines of stone.

The ice crackled and spat splinters of shards, unnaturally breaking and reshaping below her palm. Gradually, an angular shape rose up, sliding out like the ice was a sheath from which it was drawn by invisible hands. A staff -- no, a shaft, rendered from some strange wood that looked so dark and smooth it could be mistaken for an exotic metal. At its top hung old cords that seemed as weathered as time itself, preserved with the rest of this organic weapon. A slit at its top seemed to hint at something that once crested it: perhaps a crystal orb, a totem or . . . a spearhead.

Dzievaya hefted the staff and physically pulled it free with one last, decisive crack. She cradled it fondly, like one might run their hands over an old keepsake. Her memories knit together again by its mere touch.

"Gungril, the spear with which Inupa defeated Strivogg, and rid the world of an insatiable monster."

A faint pause emerged, which Rovan broke with his observation:

"A spear without a point. And a defeated dragon that looks very much alive, to me."

Dzievaya gave him a heavy look; ladened with centuries of misery that he could hardly fathom. She went on, now holding it in two hands, more akin to how one might carry a spear.

"She found the shard that would be its point buried deep within the earth, in a ruin of demons and shadowkin. Nothing had been able to pierce the dragon's hide. This was our last hope. In her final battle against Strivogg, it snapped off in his flesh, but its old magic weakened the beast and brought it to heel."

Bitterness laced her cold features, as her fingers reached the top, groping as if searching in vain there for some long lost hope.

"But Strivogg had one last revenge. Dark knowledge. The dragon told us the shard would slowly corrupt anything it touched -- all that lives and that which is dead. Even the elements, light and shadow itself twisted before it. Nothing could contain it, and since Inupa had released it from its prison, it would now slowly corrupt the world with its presence. Slowly, but surely, it would destroy all. It had already begun to corrupt us, so we knew the truth of his words."

Dzievaya looked down her own underarm, where some of her veins protruded with black lines.

"The only thing that could contain it was a living will. A will, and somewhere far from everyone else, so deeply buried within stone, earth and ice that it would take millenia for it to find release."

A pregnant pause punctuated her finished thought. They all looked around them in the grand, icy hall, reflecting upon the depths they had plunged into this mountain to get here.

"Inupa made a bargain with Strivogg. Instead of killing him, she would let him live. But he would live a life of imprisonment, of servitude and of guardianship. The shard; it would remain where it was planted. Encased within a layer of Eldifryst and the dragon's own magical scales. Eldifryst had contained its evil influence for far longer than most materials could, hence why our leader could wield its awesome power." Here, the nornfaedd's features darkened like a gathering thundercloud, and her voice sunk dangerously lower, dark orbs for eyes searching the reflective ice for answers. "But it had already corrupted her too. Her, and the tribe. To truly contain it, we would all have to be stowed away. We would all have to linger, in eternal guardianship, with our sworn foe . . . and ensure that neither he or us could ever leave."

Dzievaya turned for the bowl, looking at it with knitted brows of lament.

"Our blood was used to keep the dragon's life intact against Eldiskaar's influence. But even our blood mingling with Strivogg's could not keep it from bending shadows and darkness to its will. So we had to imprison all with Eldifryst -- and make this our tomb."

Silence fell over the remains of the expedition after this revelation.

"So," Rovan began, again breaking the silence, but this time with a more muted, careful approach. He clapped his gloved hands together. "Those shadow creatures we have met so far . . . they are spawned from this shard, then, yes?"

Dzievaya simply nodded, gravely. Rovan rubbed his cold hands briskly.

"Well, it appears there has been a terrible case of misunderstanding here. We simply came here for, ah, knowledge. And now that we have said knowledge, I suppose we'd best leave and leave you to your -- custodian duties. You and that dragon both, that is. Worry not, we shan't tell a soul! Your secret is safe with us."

She stared at him while he quickly attempted to defuse any notion that they had come here as tomb raiders to plunder Frostling Barrow of its ancient riches and lore. All he wished at this point was to return home in one piece.

"I fear you do not understand." Dzievaya's words were as heavy and gloomy as a death knell. "You, too, have been touched by the Eldiskaar -- by its minions. You have been in the vicinity of it, and thus, you too carry its corruption."

The staff hammered down on the ice with a crack of finality. The remainder of dwarves near leapt in alarm, and some reached for their weapons. Rovan's face paled with his dawning realisation, even as Dzievaya made her intentions clear, dark eyes pinned on them like a pair of nocked arrows.

"I cannot let you leave. This will be your final resting place. I am truly sorry."

With this, she turned for Frazil, features drawn into regret.

"Perhaps I can offer you more grace, kin of mine. You may be able to sustain the langsevn, the long sleep which will awaken us, should other intruders find their way here. And then, you may tell them what I have told you."

Frazil Valrulf

As Frazil engaged Dzievaya in a furious melee, the dwarves and Rovan stayed behind, flabbergasted. Some hefted their weapons, but hesitated to engage with this guardian; or the ice that seemed to morph and crack into spontaneous walls about her.

Rovan, in turn, took a different tact. He knelt back down on the ice; and there, sure enough, Strivogg's molten glare awaited him.

"You seek to negotiate?"

Rovan spoke as loudly as he could, replying in Elvish. He wasn't certain if it could hear him through the ice. But its response came nonetheless.

"YOU WILL DIE; THE SHADOWBORN WILL SEE TO IT. THE ELDIFRYST IS FAILING. AND WHEN IT DOES, YOU WILL FALL."

He glanced over his shoulder at the ice wall behind them. Indeed, cracks already webbed through it, and through its semi-transparent ice, dark things wriggled about, as if attempting to tunnel through it.

"And what do you propose?!" Rovan yelled over the growing din of raging battle before him.

"WRITE THE RUNES I GIFTED YOU. SPEAK THEIR NAMES; RELEASE MY BONDS. UNLEASH MY POWER. AND I SHALL SPARE YOU FROM YOUR DEMISE." The eye squinted. He could have sworn he saw guile there, if emotion could be read in a reptile's stare. "YOU KNEW THEIR IMPORTANCE THE MOMENT I UNVEILED THEM."

"How can I trust a word you--"

Teeth flashed below the ice, and the titanic body below wriggled, pounding the floor that separated them. It shook the chamber, causing Rovan and the dwarves to stagger for balance. But for whatever reason, the dragon failed to power through this ice, where it had managed to break through before in another part of the tomb.

"THERE IS NO TIME TO QUIBBLE, MORTAL. YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT. WRITE THE RUNES AND SPEAK AS I DO. ACCEPT MY GIFT; OR PERISH."

There was no time. No time to question its motives. No time to weigh his options carefully. Dzievaya was manipulating the very room against them, and all she had to do was to keep them occupied, until the shadow creatures could burst inside. Whether the ice that kept them at bay was from her hand or that of the dragon, in either case, it might lower soon with either one's intent.

It was unlikely that this dragon could be trusted. But if Dzievaya could be believed, it was as much a prisoner as they were. Perhaps there goals did align on this single point. Perhaps his sole hope lay with a creature of boundless evil and icy destruction.

He had to throw the die of fate. And hope for the best.

Rovan smacked Tafna's book on the ice, flipping through its pages. Soon, he found the runes that he had had the prescience to transcribe before.

"GOOD. CARVE THEM INTO THE ICE; INTO THE SKIN OF ELDIFRYST. LET THEM ENJOY THE SIZE I SHOWED YOU. THEN SPEAK: UR'VES AR’AETH OG FOBAIN AR'MAGER TYL VYLJES OG HIIDKAL ELDISKAAR . . ."

"Wait, wait, wait! I'm not ready!" Rovan cried desperately, but the dragon seemed unheeding of his plight, simply booming its words below the ice in a different tongue to Elvish. Rovan whirled to find Rimer behind him, yelling at him and the other dwarves: "Quick! Carve out these runes into the ice, here! Use whatever picks and tools you have available!" He spotted a nearby ice pick held by a dwarf and rose to snatch it out of his hands. "Give me that! Hurry!"

His rapid, feverish motions and high-pitched tenor might lead one to think him struck with insanity. But his plans had saved them before; so the dwarves were likely to trust him a second time.

Soon enough, they went to work, assaulting the ice and cutting new and strange letters into its skin.

Frazil Valrulf

Yes. Yes, the runes were coming together. The words of power were forming.

"YES. YES, THE RUNES ARE COMING TOGETHER. THE WORDS OF POWER."

Rovan could scarce tell the difference between his own thoughts and the elven words of the dragon any longer; stripped of any elven grace, of course, rumbling through the ice like a dangerous omen.

"Look out!"

The cry from Rimer ripped his head up.

The nornfædd was approaching. Limping. Wounded. Rovan's eyes searched. Where was Frazil? He couldn't even see her dire mutt--

"Cease that. Or I shall end your existence."

Dzievaya's voice harried them like a boreal wind. At first, fright seized them, but then when her blood splattered on the ice, they gripped their weapons and tools with renewed fervour. The dwarves underestimated her injured presentation; charging her in unison, happy to end one of their tormentors.

It was the last mistake they would ever make.

The staff slammed ice. Dzievaya's voice took an a deeper incantation; words of power, indeed, mantling her voice with impossible resonance.

A flash of blue light and then a breath of spraying ice and unnatural cold spewed over the dwarves; a cone of intense cold, veiling their squat forms in ice. When the channeled blizzard lifted, icy statues stood in their place; spikes of excess ice all pointing in Rovan's direction.

He stared in abject horror, as their expedition had now been cut severly. Down to two, best he could tell. Him and Frazil. He hefted an ice pick and hurriedly cut out the last, remaining rune, scrabbling to finish their work. Dzievaya closed the distance between them, lifting her staff with finality.

"You know not what you are doing," she said, her voice tired; stripped of any fighting spirit. Rovan leaned back, still on his knees, lifting the pathetic weapon of his ice-pick.

But there was a third they had both forgotten about.

A blur of white fur and snarling teeth seized upon Dzievaya. She cried out in pain, her voice brittle as the ice about her, slammed aside by the giant wolf and tumbling onto the floor with it, wrestling against its claws and fangs.

Rovan had to remind himself to feed Sastriga a hefty rump of meat, first chance he got. The feral mutt had more than earned its pay.

Now he listened to the dragon's words, still chanted below the ice. Now he mimicked them, striking the same pronunciation and tone of delivery. Years of practice of honing his voice according to foreign accents and words aided him in this; allowing him to gradually key in upon their delivery, catching their throaty weight, their chesty resonance.

The world bled away before repeated words and humming power. The struggles of wolf against nornfædd faded before him. And instead, he felt his consciousness reach down, down . . . down below the ice, in the writhing darkness of frigid water and scales.

The ice crackled. Much like it had before, when Dzievaya had summoned her staff. But instead of the shaft, there came now the point of the mighty spear Gungril; a shard that burrowed its way out from the ice with less grace, like a wriggling, ecstatic worm, before it fired up into the air; and in a long, drawn-out second, hung suspended, turning slightly in the cold light.



Rendered from some dark material distinguishable from the ice. Bits of dragon-scale still covered and encrusted its form, causing it to flicker prismatically with purple, pink and garnet glows from its broken, snapped-off edges. Occasionally, from a given angle, it looked as reflective as a mirror, and at other times, it drank colour around it like night itself. It barely held together and retained only about half the size of an actual spear-point. The length of a long needle, and the width of a thimble. But its tip remained glintingly sharp.

In the next blur of a moment, that tip soared through the air. Aimed with pinpoint precision. Flying straight for the scribe who had written and spoken its words of summoning and binding.

The Eldiskaar pierced through fur, cloth and skin. Loosed like an arrow with no shaft, and vanishing straight into his solar plexus like a surgeon's needle, with a swift, relentless squelch.

Rovan's breath hitched. A cold even worse than the barrow's air seeped through his chest, spreading with each pump and beat of his heart. He held a hand to his chest, looking down at the tiny, new hole in his clothes; unable to grasp what had just happened. His mittened fingers fumbled there, as if trying to carve back out what had invaded his body.

At about this time, the cold spread to his head. His mind started drifting upwards, well out of the confines of his skull, a bird released from its cage.

Rovan crumpled in a dark heap on the white ice, hair and hood spilling over his head; and the last thing he saw was the warped ice of Dzievaya ahead of him, at a curious angle -- where something seemed to burst free, like some arctic chick out of an egg . . .

In the next moment, the ice exploded upward in showers of shards. And great, spined wings cascading with freezing water unfurled, as the dragon clawed out from its Eldifryst prison, its roar all consuming.

Frazil Valrulf