Private Tales Endirinn

[Skad]

The respite was welcome, giving them time to process everything that had happened.

Skad wasn't, by any means, at peace with Saman's revelations. How could she be? Her entire life up until this point had been moulded in the shape of fealty to Haraudur. She had eschewed so much in her pursuit of devotion, becoming a reviled, solitary figure, monstrous even by Nordwiir standards.

It could not dare compare to the hundreds of innocents sacrificed for nothing by her blade, but what Kin-Slayer had lost still lingered in her mind. What would it have been like to have the company of her people or to have parents who looked upon you with affection instead of revulsion? What of the bond of a sister? Who would have Hella been if she were alive today? It could have all been so different.

She looked down upon Brenna in grim contemplation as her pragmatism won out.

The past could not be changed, and had she lived that lost life, then the truth would have evaded her instead. It did not feel it, that guilt still clawing at her insides, but it was better this way.

"How did you imagine?" Skad inquired, returning to the now and to her friend, "That I was always doing a shouting?" It would have been a fair assumption, the connotations of primal savagery being very loud quite often ringing true.

"Sometimes you sounding like you have rag in mouth when mad or excite. Is that not way Fiir tongue speaking common?"

 

[Brenna]

"With a rag---?" the sudden raising of her voice caused her to abruptly cut off with a wince. Had her voice always been so high pitched? To her own ears she sounded like a little mouse, no wonder Skad had struggled to take her so seriously before. Why everyone had struggled to take her seriously as a warrior. Let alone the odd muffled quality to her speech.

"I do not think so," Brenna put effort into every word, trying to remember the sounds of those simple words from when she was a youth. "But... it has been a long time since I have heard one of my own," in fact... the only two times she had regained her hearing before this had been in the presence of Nordenwiir. She tried to call to mind the memory of her fathers voice when he had told her stories before bed and she couldn't recall that odd note in her own voice.

"Maybe because I do not speak... often?" with a sigh she shook her head. There was no point in worrying about it, she would just have to work on it. "Are you ready to go home?"

 

[Skad]

What a strange sensation it must have been to be confronted by the tone of your own voice. Skad stared at Brenna like a two-headed kaldabatur as she caught the sound of her own elevated voice, cutting herself off before further mortification.

When the question came if she was ready to return home, she decidedly ignored it and instead focused on Brenna's preparation to come to The Lost Isles.

"You will need to learning Wiir," she informed her friend, never afraid to be blunt about the truth, "they are not speaking Common on Eyjarnar. I will teach."

It was no word of a lie. The rough tongue that she knew had been imparted by Kol in preparation for her Hæfurkappi's failed raid of the Southlands. Most Nordwiir only knew their own tongue and wouldn't take kindly to the notion of accommodating a foreigner, never mind a Nordenfiir.

But that was not the only preparation that needed to be made.

"How much food are you needing to eat to survival?"

 

[Brenna]

Learn Wiir? It was going to take weeks for her to learn sounds again, but Skad was right to push. They had a mission to do sent by a Goddess no less, they would be a fool to delay it. Still, the prospect of trying to learn a whole new language when apparently she could barely speak her own aloud was... daunting. A small frown drew her brows together and set her lips into a tight, worried line.

"Food?" Brenna cocked her head to the side. "Well... it depends if you want me to be able to shift. It takes energy, a lot of energy," that after the fighting pit was already at an all time low. As if merely talking about it awakened the beast, her stomach growled and her cheeks heated. When had they last eaten? "We can hunt, can't we?"

 

[Skad]

Brenna's answer was not ideal, and the unease it brought forth in Skad was not hidden upon her face. Rubbing the drooping eyelid that covered her empty socket with the heel of her hand, she was already trying to outline a solid plan for their journey to Eyjarnar, a plan that now faced another setback.

"Home is barren," she explained bluntly, "and what you can hunting is not good for eating, will kill you."

The Lost Isles were as hostile as their people, a resource-starved land that had changed the very Nordwiir physiology over the millennia. So great was the scarcity of food that it even forced honour out of their savagery. You could do whatever harm you wished to the people of another tribe but not their resources; it was a crime punishable by Hátíð Sársauka.

"In Magurvetur, the cold dark times, we go days between food. Not enough for every day eatings," Skad continued, the brutality of the Nordwiir winter a necessary detail, "We will trying to arrive at start of Feittsumar, when food is plenty so is less problem."

It was common for the Nordwiir to overindulge during the summer months, bulking up for the inevitable famine that was promised every cycle. They were hardier when it came to starvation, losing weight slowly and gaining it swiftly, but they were not immune.

"Poison and Fae have been issues. We will need more weight before we go; you will very need."

This was Kin-Slayer in action, a woman of practicality and planning, not prepared to spare feelings when such sentimentality could end in death. She couldn't dwell on Saman and her soul, she had to focus on survival.

"Do you having any questions?"

 

[Brenna]

Brenna opened her mouth to protest she wasn't that thin when her stomachs gurgling drowned out the hushed noises of the forest. Her cheeked turned from a soft pink to outright red and she shut her mouth and a soft, audible snap of her teeth.

"No, Ma'am," she gave a mocking version of a salute with raised brows. Skad had been bossy as a patient but it seemed cured she was an even greater force to be reckoned with. Bre couldn't help but wonder if it would only grow worse when they returned to the northern isles. She had never thought she would cross the vast waste that separated their homes, but now not only would she cross them but continue on. She supposed she would need to stock up on as much food as possible.

"We can buy some too before we sail. I know towns where I have credit and we can purchase dried meats that travel well," they would be enough in a pinch. "Besides, it is probably a good idea I do not become bear so often among Nordenwiir, no?" Motioning with her head Brenna led them back through the forest to the cave she had first brought them to.

 

[Skad]

Skad raised an eyebrow at the strange gesture, unsure what ma'am meant but unable to shake that it wasn't said in severe terms. After all that had happened and all that was no doubt to come, Brenna deserved a morsel of brevity, even if the Nordwiir didn't fully understand it.

"They will wanting you dead no matter what shape," Skad answered honestly, following her friend through the wilderness that she had only experienced without sight, "but best to keep energy. Shift only when needing."

As they walked, she took a moment to appreciate the forest. Trees were sparse on The Lost Isles and could only be found in small clusters that were usually a sign of a tribe nearby. Wood was yet another precious resource, and many Nordwiir had fought and died over who got to control it. She couldn't help but witness the density of the trees and, with it, see a perfect place to set up an ambush.

"The more food the better, but we will also be needing boat. Are you having enough of this credit for boat or must we do stealing?"

 

[Brenna]

How odd that she didn't have to walk in view of a persons lips any longer. Brenna naturally did so still - it would be a habit that took months to break no doubt - but the idea that she could have her back to someone or glance away to do something... it was liberating and it certainly put a spring in her step as the cave came into view. Inside nothing of their camp had been disturbed betraying just how little these parts of the Tundra were travelled through by people. The medicine she had been so dutifully preparing was cold and stale, flooding the cavern with a slight acidic scent that made her nose wrinkle in disgust. That pot was going to need a proper scrub.

"I have my own boat," Brenna said with no small amount of pride. Most people from Faarin did what with them being a renown fishing village. "But... I left her in that village where we met," she grimaced. Perhaps returning there was not the best plan. "And it might not be suited to the deeper waters, it is just a small boat," she picked up the pot and threw the contents outside before scooping up snow to dunk inside it to wash it out.

"We can go back and try, or I can see if I can pull in one of my favours."

 

[Skad]

Brenna had her own boat? Through a Nordwiir lens she was impressed; to be in sole possession of such a vessel would have placed her as someone of importance. She gave a curt nod of approval before the boat's location dashed her preliminary planning.

"That is problem," she conceded, "I do not thinking we should show faces."

Or, more specifically, her face. Her brow furrowed, acknowledging the problem created by her own bloodied hands. The killing over the goat would have already been unforgivable. Never mind the carnage that followed in the attempt to gain her vision back through blood.

"Keep favours for supplies," Skad finally decided, refusing to squander their resources, "we will getting your boat."

The one-eyed Nordwiir looked down at her own hands. Or rather, one hand and a two-fingered remainder. Could they do it without violence?

"You will lie, you will telling them that you are taking me home for the death. It will giving them peace of head and we will get boat."

 

[Brenna]

Brenna slowly craned her neck to look up at Skad. The pot she had been cleaning was now completely forgotten, the menial task swept away by the absurdity of what her friend was telling her.

"They're never going to believe that!" she had fought by her side when the villagers had attacked and whilst she had done everything in her power not to cause anyone harm there was no way they were going to accept her back into their midst. "They might try and kill me just for daring to go back there, let alone with you," even if she was trussed up. Brenna had a feeling even bound Skad would make them all feel unsettled.

All this over a bloody goat.

The young cadet sighed and ran a hand down her face. It did make sense to go back for her boat she supposed, trying to get one off another merchant would be hard, but she didn't like the risk she was putting Skad into.

 

[Skad]

"They are not smart," Skad returned with a shrug, folding her arms across her chest to indicate that she had no intention of budging from her planned deception, "and they will having second thoughts about attacking after last time."

If Brenna had a boat, she would be familiar with it. Another larger or different boat might have its own issues or passengers.

"We will making them believe," she stated while approaching the resistant Brenna before placing a hand and a half on either side of the woman's shoulders as if she were about to give a rousing morale-boosting pep-talk.

"Hit me with pot."

 

[Brenna]

She had only had her hearing back for a short time. Maybe she was having trouble aligning what Skad's lips said to the noises she was hearing because there was no other explanation for Skad asking her to hit her over the head with a pot. Brenna's mouth opened and shut as she debated what to say. How to tell someone nicely that they were a complete and utter psycho?

"I'm not hitting you with the pot," she said with all the calm she could muster and went back to scrubbing the last of the dried medicine from the pots bottom. "If you're determined to go ahead with this, I'll tie you up but I'm not hitting you, Skad. We just got out of those hell pits you need as much rest as I do."

 

[Skad]

"If you are worrying that they will not believe," she reasoned, eye roving the cave for an errant rock, "then we can get rid of the worry."

Brenna's predisposition towards more peaceful solutions was admirable, mainly in a strange manner that one would admire a vegetarian shark for surviving. In fact, Skad owed her life to it, were anybody else in the Nordenfiir's shoes, then this story would have ended a long time ago.

But the one-eyed woman knew where they were going, knew that pacifism wasn't always going to be an option, even despite the most well-meaning heart in all the realms.

"They thinking we are savages," Skad continued, walking towards a particularly pointy rock that offered the ill-intent she was seeking and picked it up, "Good. Let them thinking the Nords could not getting along. That they turning on each other. That they are fighting."

Rather unceremoniously, the Nordwiir took the rock and smashed it into the bridge of her own nose.

 

[Brenna]

"SKAD!" Brenna recoiled at the loudness of her own voice and grasped at her ears in an attempt to lessen the sudden pulsing pain. Gentle noises, gentle noises, she cursed herself even as she hurried to Skad. It was hard to decide whether loud noises or Skad was the bigger of her current pains. Before the Nordenwiir could bludgeon herself again she snatched the jagged rock away from her stumpy hand and tossed it into the snow.

"Are you crazy?! Look at you!" her nose looked as though it had been pounded back into her skull. Blood coated her upper lip and chin and the bruises... Red misted her vision. "You... You fucking idiot! What were you thinking?!"

 

[Skad]

It wasn't a pleasurable sensation by any means; in fact, it was quite the opposite as the crunch of cartilage gave way to watering of Skad's remaining eye. Superficial wounds of the face were always so dramatic.

Brenna, naturally, had acted like the Nordwiir had just stabbed herself in the gut.

"It is... surface hurt," Skad replied, allowing the blood to flow freely down her face and paint the story she wished to tell, "you are too much worrying. Do Fiir not fighting each other for fun?"

No sooner had the question left the woman's lips did Skad's skull suddenly rocket towards Brenna's face, more specifically, the Nordenfiir's right cheekbone. A good dramatic bruise or two would do quite nicely.

 

[Brenna]

"Not like thi--"

Brenna had been in the process of finding a tissue amongst her blood dried clothes. One of the fae jailers had thrown it at her to step some of her less severe bleeds rather than take her to see a healer and she'd held onto it thinking she might need it down the line. She'd never considered she'd need it because Skad had decided to attack her own face. Brenna's face, sure. Even if she used the word friend, the Nordenfiir was convinced it meant something different in Nordenwiir tongues.

A conviction that was apparently right.

A stream of curses left Brenna's lips and she staggered back clutching at her now throbbing face. Anger was a foreign concept to the Fiir. She often got upset or perhaps even a little irritated but it was rare, very rare, for her to feel a spike of genuine anger like she did in that singular moment. Everything they had suffered and endured, the weight of their new mission, the emotions of her kills. All of it suddenly snapped and before she could think of what a dumb idea it was, her fist was flying for the Nordenwiir's eye.

 

[Skad]

Brenna's anger was a relief, as Skad held fear that the woman might have reacted with the tragic betrayal of a puppy with a trodden-upon paw. As crucial as the Nordenfiir was as a proverbial beacon of virtue, survival upon The Lost Isles would require some more immoral instincts.

When she returned with a fist, the one-eyed woman naturally stood there and took it like a door welcoming a battering ram.

And battering ram was right. Skad stumbled backwards, delighting in Brenna's power in her comparatively smaller frame as her eye socket pulsed with the pain of fracture. The Nordwiir seemed to need every assurance possible that she would not be taking her only friend to a terrible death. Not that she communicated such a sentiment.

Instead, Skad returned, swinging a looping left fist towards Brenna's ear that stopped short of connecting. A fake-out. The Fiir just got her hearing back; making her ears ring would have been cruel. Just as her left hand stopped, however, the palm of her mangled right hand shot forward to catch Brenna's bottom lip instead.

 

[Brenna]

Whatever guilt Brenna might have felt for lashing out without thought at her friend quickly fled when Skad tried to hit her again. This time she was somewhat prepared for it though anger and fatigue from the last few days of pit fighting made her reactions clumsy. She flinch as Skad's fist drove for the side of her face and in the blind panic to save her precious returned hearing, she all but threw herself onto Skad's mangle hand meaning she took the hit square on the chin rather than her lip. The blow made her teeth rattle and she quickly took two steps back to give herself some space. Blood filled her mouth where she had bitten her own tongue. Turning her head briefly to the side she spat out a mouthful before speaking.

"I don't want to fight you, this is ridiculous, you said we need to conserve strength!"

 

[Skad]

There was a certain pang of guilt that hit her when Brenna's retort came in the form of words instead of fists.

The Nordenfiir wasn't wrong.

It was ridiculous. Battering each other's faces as a ruse to fool idiot yokels so they could retrieve her boat was really quite mad. Skad understood that fine, but...

The Nordwiir's brow creased in frustration, her eye already swelling in what would likely be a spectacular future bruise. Beyond needing the assurance that Brenna would be able to handle the savagery of home, she found herself hitting her own wall.

"I am...sorry for hurting your face," Skad conceded, the strained apology a rarity in itself, "it is the only way I can thinking of getting your boat back without killing."

 

[Brenna]

Brenna's breath rushed out of her when Skad finally conceded and she lowered her hands from where they had been ready to protect her face again. There was never any telling when words would stop the Nordenwiir - even if they were friends. She rubbed at her both throbbing cheek and now bleeding tongue and bottom lip. The Goddess might as well have not healed her for how she felt now.

"Well... I appreciate the no killing thing," she admitted begrudgingly. She would have been lying if she hadn't harboured a small amount of fear Skad would just rip a hole through the villagers to get her boat back. "I think your plan might work even without battering each other half to death though," she grimaced. "I just need to... act," like her father. Brenna had always admired the man but no matter how much she had wanted his life, she had her mothers soft heart. She didn't like the idea of deceiving her own people.

"Now, are you going to punch me again or can I finish packing our things?"

 

[Skad]

"Half to death?" Skad questioned, gingerly touching her own nose, which was no longer in the same place she had left it, "You are doing a joke with me."

Exaggeration was the word that she wanted to say, but the translation failed to find its mark. The Nordwiir might have thought less of their bear-shaped cousins for their more bestial nature, but she couldn't imagine that they would find a minor scuffle to be anything more than that. Perhaps it had less to do with the Fiir and more to do with Brenna herself.

"No, wait," the woman spoke, approaching her friend with her brow still furrowed. Slowly, she lifted her intact left hand to where her head had struck Brenna's cheek and let her thumb gently linger upon the contusion.

"Did I really hurting you, Brenna?"

 

[Brenna]

Brenna found herself tensing as Skad stepped towards her and as she lifted her hand, she was ashamed to say her hands curled into fists ready to defend herself. But the Nordenwiir surprised her by being gentle and, even more unnerving, concerned. Bre eyed her with a hint of lingering suspicion even as Skad ran her thumb along her bruised cheekbone.

"Of course it hurt, but... it is not the worst thing to happen to me," she rubbed at her bottom lip and gave Skad another odd look. Compassion and softness were not things she was used to dealing with from her. "I'll be fine. And... I'll be fine in the North too, Skad. I'm not... weak," her lips pressed into a thin line. She could only assume the concern was born from a fear she would be dead weight. It was a common assumption that she had dealt with her whole life - that she had tried to prove was wrong her whole life. If she had to prove it to the Nordenwiir she would do that too.

 

[Skad]

"You are not weak."

She had witnessed Brenna obliterate that shaman's head into a fine pulp with her fists, had helped her trap a rampaging kelpie with an iron net and then bring forth her axe upon its head. The swelling contusion that was now threatening her renewed sight was a testament to the Nordenfiir's physical strength.

"But you are kind," Skad continued, her hand slowly trailing down the side of the other woman's face before being withdrawn completely, "and you are my only friend."

Once she would have considered having a friend to be a burden, caring about another created a weakness that could be exploited. It stripped minds of their rationality and birthed actions of the heart in its place, like smashing your own face with a rock to retrieve a boat without needing to kill. It created emotions like doubt and guilt. How many in this realm had made reckless ends in the name of pain-fuelled vengeance?

The thought that such a fate could befall her too now, that these feelings were already affecting her thoughts and actions, was writ large upon Skad's troubled expression.

"I am worrying that I am hurting your feelings, Brenna. It is giving me the trouble."

 

[Brenna]

It took a while for Brenna's face to soften after the unknowing nerve Skad had touched. When she finally did her shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh; anger was not an emotion she found natural. In fact, she found it tiring. She had wondered these last few days spent with Skad how the Nordenwiir found the energy to harbour so much rage against... well, the world it had seemed.

"I have spent my life being told I am too... fragile, too nice, too," she waved her hands unable to think of the right word in the common tongue to convey the depth of meaning that it did in the Nordenfiir language. In the end she gave up. "It... just upset me to think you might think of me that way too," for some reason Skad's opinion seemed to matter to her more than her own mothers. Perhaps because Skad was an actual warrior and she wanted that recognition. She shook her head to clear the feelings flooding her mind then gave Skad a sideways glance.

"Do you... really not have friends? What about Kol?"

 

[Skad]

Before she could make a ham-fisted attempt to assuage Brenna's fears of being seen as inadequate for her compassion, the woman was hit by Brenna's questions. It changed the shape of her face, the worry that hung there fading into oblivion and leaving behind that empty mask that Kin-Slayer so often wore.

"No."

The stream of blood from her nose still flowed, a sensation she would have once embraced with unyielding fervour.

"I giving everything up to serving Haraudur."

Skad had yet to honestly confront the weight of what that meant. Not only had she taken the lives of so many of her kin, but she had taken her own. Her family had despised her after the slaying of Hella, and every potential friend served as a feast for crimson tribute until nothing was left but resentment and fear.

And for what? A God that would wield her as a blade to keep the Nordwiir as they were, abject and unquestioning in vicious faith. The cycle continued with her. She had done harm to her own people beyond that of mere death.

Contemplation of the matter was unwise as the woman knew that the weight of such guilt would break her. All she could do was move forward and focus on the present.

"You are too nice," she spoke, attempting a forced smile made disconcerting by chipped teeth and her blood-stained mouth, "so nice you are waking up Gods. Nothing weak about that."