Completed The Pale King

[Pele]

Komodi are very rare in the north. There are reasons for that and anyone that had been around the race long enough would know why they stick to the warm dunes and sun bleached rocks of the far south. They are cold blooded and long ago their race was stripped of magic. Yet it was that even now a Komodi walked the muddy streets of a Nordenfiir settlement called Withereach.

She was a bundle of warm hides and thick furs from head to scaly foot. Her legs were wrapped in special coverings made specifically for her race. Even her tail was well insulated and swayed back and forth behind her as she trudged. A partisan with a leather cover wrapped around the point and blade now doubled as a walking stick and a heavy pack filled to the brim clung to the female's back. Black spiral horns swept back and behind her head and abundant braids of red hair poked out between the layers of thick padding.

She glanced from side to side as she passed men and women much larger than herself. Eventually her wandering would lead her to a tavern near the center of the township. She would enter and eventually she would question the person tending the bar. "Have you heard of the Pale King?" she asked a clear feminate voice.

Sigrith​

 

[Sigrith]

The Tavern wasn't her normal place - that was by the communal fire in the town square, open air and open flame. A horizon of ruddy white calling to her on a breeze tainted by salty sea air. No beckoning came to her from those far reaches today, not like they usually did. It was the Tavern that beckoned several hours ago.

Witches did not question the nature of these things, they merely twisted and bent, following the trails.

Her trail lead her to a quiet table to the side where she took up residence and nursed a flagon of ale for some time. Faces came and went, none of which baring the bone covering of Vand or the glyphs of Signe. By the time the curious stranger arrived and pronounced their question, few faces remained that were of any familiarity to Sigrith at all.

The barkeep eyed the woman and her horns - she being the first of her kind he'd ever laid eyes on. Not that the tales of dragon people from the summer lands didn't reach this far. Sailors of various nations whet their whistle here plenty over the years, and the wetter their whistle, the greater their stories.

"We don' bother ourselves with tales from the wastes," grumbled the man, but his eyes drifted to Sigrith and the feathered pauldrons prickling in the gust of air let in through the open door, "but the witches do." The barkeep flicked his head towards the lone woman and her table, a single chair sitting empty. Waiting.

As if she'd been expecting the visitor all along.

Someone or something had.

The witch raised a brow and set down her flagon, "I might be familiar."

 

[Pele]

'A witch?', thought the dragon. Pele raised a crimson brow in reply before she stepped around a stool, walking on what would have been the balls of one's feet for Sigrith. She started to speak once she arrived at the table. "The great tundra ox, large as a götunn, king of the herds, and regent of the northern wastes? Are you familiar?"

The Komodi would sit across from Sigrith. "I seek an audience with the Pale King," she said and then leaned her partisan against the nearby wall. Pele ran thick dark nails up and across her brow and temple, flicking dangling red locks from before her golden irises. If it had not been for the cook fire and a hearth nearby anyone could have clearly detected the scent of smoke at Pele's approach.

Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

The witch openly and unapologetically took in the features of the stranger, dual-hued eyes following the coils of red hair to the blotches of scales; slit pupils sitting within golden eyes; spiral horns crowning her head. A sense of the arcane had rolled in with her, and if anyone could pick up on that it would be a witch.

Sigrith entertained her words with wry intrigue pulling at the corners of her eyes. Who was this dragonkin to seek the audience of the Pale King? Beyond their borders of ice these were naught but Nordic folk tales brought back by the sailors who came here for trade and left with glaciers in their pockets.

But it wasn't for witches to ask the direct questions. Those answers had a way of revealing themselves in time.

"The Pale King appears under the light of the waning crescent, moving his herds to the Sanctuary where no hunter may harm them."

With a slow motion the woman raised her flagon and drained the remaining ale with an unhurried gulp.

"To get there in time at a normal pace we would have need to leave ... two days ago."

Pele

 

[Pele]

Pele blinked and then turned her head to the right so that her right eye could glance to the door over her right shoulder. When she started speaking she turned her head back to face Sigrith. She hadn't any need to ask how long it was until the waning crescent would fly across the sky. Only one question mattered. "Is there no way that I could reach the Pale King before he drives his herd to safety?"

While she may have been a magical entity with some latent preternatural ability she had no skill in her arsenal to determine Sigrith's magical prowess or her worth as a witch by simple sight. She was a warrior and the ability for dragons to smell magic was grossly over-exaggerated. She stretched her legs out under the table and the tip of her tail curled around one leg of the chair upon which she sat.

No one had ever hunted the Pale King. To hunt a regent in their territory was a suicide mission. Also the death of a regent was seldom welcome. Most were benign and many were worshiped as nature deities or the sacred creations thereof. Most sought these tremendous beasts to gain some insight or wisdom. No one would dare claim that they hunted regents.

Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

Whether or not this stranger meant the Pale King any harm was not a concern of Sigrith's. She was content to guide the path where the way was unknown, but there was only so far she was willing to go. It remained to be seen if that distance would get the red-haired dragonkin to her destination.

"Aye, there's a way," said the witch, gaze calm, demeanor transparent, "but it will cost you."

Pele

 

[Pele]

Pele shifted slightly in her seat as if she were uncomfortable here. "What way and what is the cost then?" she said after some hesitation. After speaking she crossed her arms across her chest, left arm over right. The tavern was relatively deserted by this time though two children were staring at her from the still open door, that is until their mother scooped them up.

Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

"The way of the Winds," Sigrith responded in kind, as if this answer were quite obvious, "as for the cost-" broad shoulders leaned forward as the woman rose from her chair and took up her sword to sheathe it at her back. The children at the door were ignored, as was the emptiness of the tavern. The comings and goings of the town were but a cycle, just as everything else was, and with it came predictability.

With the sun on the descending side of the sky it would soon be time for the peoples of Withereach to congregate and feast. Sigrith lamented missing the fire tonight for she heard a fresh caribou had been taken in the near slopes of the north valley. The winds ... they were perpetually shifting.

"For the last one," said the witch to the barkeep, setting a small leather pouch down on the counter and sliding it to him. There came no sound of jingling coins - the Nordenfiir didn't have much use for coin unless it could be melted down to create something of actual use.

She made to exit the tavern, pausing at the doorway where the cold wind crept in, "the cost is the end of your tail."

Without a further word the witch stepped out into the winter air and began heading west.

Pele

 

[Pele]

"The end of my tail?" Pele's golden eyes narrow as she tries to fathom how giving that up could benefit a witch or help her get to the great ox. "Why do you want my tail?" Dragons in humanoid shape or otherwise were not exactly trolls. They didn't regrow body parts. "Do you realize that you're asking me to disfigure myself permanently just for an audience with the tundra's regent?" She leaned back in her seat, tail still wrapped around her chair leg. "Perhaps your fingers or your hands grow back if removed?" She looks at the witch carefully now, appraising her with molten gold irises.

'I could fly across this blasted frozen country for months and not find the Pale King. The cold. Oh how I hate the cold,' she thinks as her eyes glance down and to the left, perhaps even in brief consideration of the witch's offer. It was a dragon's pride that forced her to dismiss it. She would not, could not be a piece of meat on the butcher block or rare ingredient for this sorceress's magics. She was a dragon, Pele of the Eternal Flame. "If there is no other choice in payment then I must decline. I will return in the spring." She stood from her seat, her tail sliding from the chair-leg as she did.

Sigrith

 

[Sigrith]

"No, they don't grow back," the witch replied dispassionately, pausing in her steps to look back, "neither do eyes," and with that, a pointed glance. The woman had two eyes, of course, but one of them contained an iris of most unusual hue and nature. Without looking too close or too long, one might not spare a second thought on it.

"Anyone seeking the audience of those-beyond-this-realm sacrifice some part of themselves eventually, willingly or not. Come back in the spring if you must - the snows north of here don't melt, the people who protect the Pale King never leave, and the journey will be no shorter or easier. I will be here in Withereach should you change your mind."

 

[Pele]

Pele heard what the witch said even as she exited the ramshackle tavern. She didn't respond but instead returned to the dock. The ship she had chartered to make the journey was still there and would return her to Epressa. Would the two meet again? Perhaps, but it would not be that winter.

-End-​