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Echos of Juena

Second Retreat

Foreword:

One of the horrors left behind by Karkaggon was a half breed of snow wraith and dragon. There were not many of them and they sired no generations beyond their own. How the dragon managed to fuse fire and ice is unknown but their memory lingers on in the mind of northmen even after their age has passed.

The snow wraiths themselves in their time were an unknown. They came with the frost and left with the thaw, they killed for no reason yet left many alive with just as little cause. It wasn't until after the tablets of Oauron were found that their birth came to light. They were created as sentinels to guard the borders of Oauron's domain. When he died their purpose died. They sired no young, they raped no women, they only killed without mercy or spared without reason; as fickle as a winter storm.

Snow Fire

A common folk story told in northern tribes of unknown origin

-

The blood wraith weren't dead yet they weren't quite alive either. Their flesh was cold as ice, yet moved as a man alive and burned with an unearthly violet flame that cast no heat yet burned all the same. Their bodies were formed of red ice, glistening with dagger like edges that bled the cold flames. They were beautiful to behold, yet deadly. Come spring they vanished with the first thaw, leaving behind the dead the dying and worse.

It was a few years after Karkaggon abandoned the world again that his dragon whelped wraith came down from the Sky Wall with the encroaching glaciers. The world had grown cold and they explored forth. They were hunters by nature, feeding upon any prey to swell their fires and expand their ice. Blood was their desire, they lusted for it always, beasts, men, women and children they felled were drained until there was nothing but dry lifeless husks. Once or twice a life time however another hunger would burn in the wraith, his bloody ice would weep, the flames would gutter and he would hunt for something new.

Shae was a hunter's goodwife. Her husband that night was out with his friends, deep in the forest seeking elk, deer, or at the very least a hare or two. She was alone, tucked in to her furs and listening to the howling wind outside. She hoped her husband was warm and safe, this night was cold, colder than any she remembered before and the snow came hard, blown like daggers on the wind.

Two weeks they had been gone and she missed him. The dusty smell of their cabin was a memory. The feel of the scratchy hay bed reminded her of better times. The soft crackle of the fire and the whiff of wood smoke told of her youth, courting him as she rode with her father at hunt. These days she felt old, almost thirty and three sons all grown to men; out hunting with their father.

She coughed a chill from her lungs and rose to place another log on the fire. This night would be colder than the last and she had no desire to wake up with her scarf frozen over her face again. She drew the ewer from the kettle and poured a mug of broth, then drank a little. It seared her throat but it was better than the cold. Once more she settled in to bed and sat, listening to the howling of the storm.

It quieted suddenly, not a breath of air, not a patter of snow against shingle or window sash. For a moment she was startled; she got up, nearly spilling her mug and ran to the door. Outside the snow was a glistening as a spear of moonlight came down between a part in the clouds, "The storm broke?" She mumbled in confusion; never before had she heard such a thing. There was no wind, the trees did no dance, the drifts sat still.

In the distance between the trees a sudden flicker of light alerted her. She didn't recognize it, it wasn't a lantern that was certain; it was purple. Another flicker followed and she saw the outline of a man, cast for a moment in flames; then darkness once more. She squinted and stared in to the moon lit night, she could make out his movement now; glistening slightly with frost in the moon light.

"Hoy there!" She yelled, "Who comes around here this time of night?"

There was no answer, but the movement seemed to hurry and change direction. Before it had been slightly past the cabin, but now it was directly toward her. Again the light flared, like a dying flame catching a last gasp of pitch, then it guttered again leaving her bewildered. For a moment she debated, to close the door or welcome the man in. She had little to steal and she was barren after a sickness six years past so had little worry of a bastard should he demand more than stew.

The shambling form came closer, the glistening of its body strange, like it was covered in sheets of melting ice. Droplets of darkness followed behind, holes in the snow. He flared again, at the edge of her clearing, and she saw the silhouette of a man but his skin seemed black in the violet light of that fire. The fire seemed to leap from him, it raced along his limbs and torso, it swirled between his thighs, under his arms, it tossed back over his head as if windblown; then it was gone again.

She slammed the door, thrust the bar down and stepped away, trembling, "I know not what ye are but be gone!" She yelled with her voice wavering. The slow shuffling of snow she heard first coming closer, then the soft rasp of ice against shutters. Shae trembled and coiled herself up in blankets, her back to the fireplace.

The handle jiggled on the door but the bar stayed firm. Another flare outlined the door and cast stark shadows in the room. There was a banging, loud and firm, three times. He was knocking she realized and for a moment she wondered if she misunderstood, if he was a wounded traveler unable to speak. Then the door rattled in its hinges and again the light flared. No traveler would be cast in witch fire.

He circled the house twice; he banged at the heavy logs that made up her home; he banged at the shutters of her two windows; he banged again at the door. Quietly she cried to herself, trembling in terror of what begged entry, "Go away." She screamed hoarsely, then coughed.

The banging grew louder and another flare lit up behind the door. This time it did not go away, this time the door itself began to smolder. She screamed as she watched the fire lick around the hinges and wick up the jam, it felt like it was reaching for her. Then it went dark and she could hear wood crackling and popping. Then there was a sharp snap as one hinge shattered. A piece landed on her blanket, steaming; she touched it and it burned her fingers with cold.

A moment later the second hinge popped and the door was wrenched from the frame. The creature stood there, cast in light from the moon and her fireplace; it was blood red, dripping from head to toe. It was made of ice, she was sure, blood ice, and it seemed to have no features. Then it flared again, in her door way, and the ice turned from liquid to solid, forming back up in to the crude shape of a man. With those flames Shae felt a sudden chill enter the room; her candle went out first then shortly after the fireplace guttered and went cold. A moment later the creature went out.

He pushed the bar up and aside with one melting arm and stepped in to the room with a slosh. It sounded not unlike stepping in water under snow, and he moved closer. She was trapped, helpless, and the room was beginning to freeze. Her blankets had frost forming on threads, her hair was stiffening and a skim of ice formed over her mug of once hot broth.

He closed on her and she tried to scurry away; but a wet claw of ice grasped the back of her neck and seemed to stick to her skin. It was like licking frozen metal, she couldn't pull away without ripping her neck open. She cried out and tried to pull anyway, but the blood wraith thrust her in to her own bed and began to tear her clothes off. Where he touched the fabric froze and shattered like spent ashes; yet left her skin unmarred.

He grasped a wrist and pinned it to the bed frame, then let go. Her wrist was frozen down in a clump of bloody ice. The same was done to the other, above her head. She could smell him now, so close, the coppery tang of blood, the scent of snow and winter. Her legs were forced open and frozen there, her naked thighs wide and her center vulnerable. She couldn't believe this, inhuman as it was, it intended to rape her. The ice on her wrists burned fiercely and her knees frozen to the bed ached, but the cold did not spread from those points.

Between the bloody frozen thighs rose a tube of molten blood. It was a mimicry of a penis, just like he was a mimicry of a man; but the shape was all wrong, it looked completely inhuman. An arrow for a head, a tapered thickening shaft, and the puddle it spilled from looked like a girl's sex. She struggled again as he claimed her. Cold as death that spire pierced her labia and stretched her well worn vagina. She suddenly shivered as the cold of him began to spread in her body.

He never thrust, he never moved, he just laid on top of her as something poured in to her. The blood itself moved up, in to her warm body and pooled in her womb. The blood itself inflated her until she looked three months pregnant. All the while her body was shivering, he was so cold, his release was even colder and her temperature was plummeting fast.

Then he was done, so simple, so quick; no more than five minutes between her thighs. She had seen cats go at it longer than he. She spat at him, then suddenly screamed as his body burst in to cold fire. Her stomach glowed suddenly, radiance from within that spread ice through her veins. She felt she would freeze solid in seconds; but it didn't happen. The monster shambled from her cabin and left, leaving only a smear of blood on the floor and the frozen bindings about her wrists and knees.

Her womb, long after he was gone, continued to burn with cold and light. A seam of illumination cast from between her frozen labia, creating a line of violet light upon the far wall. Her stomach glowed violet around the bulge that had been left in her. Ice began to form on the surface of her belly, yet she still felt the flesh; it never went numb. She sobbed and wrenched at her own hands, trying to free herself but it was futile.

Night became day and the ice spread farther, from navel to rib, from sex to thigh. It burned constantly, the same burn as touching something too cold yet the nerves never went numb, the flesh never truly died. Even in the light of day, shining in through the open ruined door, the violet witch fire cast shadows from her gaping cunt. She was truly frozen, the flesh was as hard as ice, but she felt every breath of wind from the open door caress her pubic hair.

By night her breasts had begun to frost over and a storm was brewing outside. It turned in to a blizzard worse than the prior night and the cabin slowly filled with snow drifts. She should have frozen to death last night, but the icy wind felt warm against he freezing body and the fire in her womb seemed to grow brighter. She noticed her stomach also swelling, as if the pregnancy was truly progressing.

Her husband and sons should be home by evening, if she could make it till then she thought... what? What could they possibly do to stop this. She cried frozen tears, and felt them tumble down her cheeks like tiny marbles. Her heart had stopped beating some time before morning but she wasn't quite sure when. Even without her heart she felt no worse; nor no better.

The day progressed and the storm didn't let up. By evening the door was fully covered and the room was filled with two to three feet of snow. Even her bed where she lay was covered in a shallow drift yet still the violet light cast from her body, ever spreading outwards. She could no longer move her head, but it was propped up enough to watch herself change. By the next morning her eyes had frozen, yet they still saw; she just couldn't move them or blink.

Nothing had felt so uncomfortable, every inch of her frozen solid and burning with ice fire at the same time. She should have died, she should be dead, yet she lived on as the light grew brighter and spread wider. Day to night, night to day time passed slowly and she never found sleep. The storm eventually let up but her beloved family never came home.

The winter progressed well in to spring and even by summer her door had not been uncovered. At last, shortly before fall she could see a seam of light above the drift that hid her room; beautiful sunlight she hadn't seen in what felt like centuries. Then a few days later another storm came and with it the sun for as long as she would remember. By mid winter her body blazed with light, every inch of her flesh flickered and glowed with violet.

One day well after she had gone completely mad, her skin burst and crystals of blood pierced through. She would have giggled and laughed at the change as fire raced across that blood and flared in to shivering spires. Then she did, she laughed, she giggled, she danced. The house around he froze, logs split, stone cracked. Her flames ran over everything, not consuming but freezing until they crumbled. She danced upon two legs of frozen blood and felt the burning hunger gnawing at her gut.

The snow shivered and ablated before her as she climbed free of her birthing chamber and out in to the frozen night. Some where to the south east she felt life, warm and throbbing. Though miles away she could feel the heat radiating against her skin, calling to her. She ran on, driven by hunger, then leaped up, catching the wind upon wings of frozen fire and ice.

Far below her she found the cook fire, a half dozen men and women, huddled about for warmth. The first hing of anything being wrong was as the fire guttered out and a violet light cast the entire countryside in ice. She drank of them, all of their heat gone, all of their blood flowing in to her. It was pleasure, almost sexual in nature as she drained them of life, a shuddering release, frozen forever.

Afterword:

This story is likely a pure fabrication, there is no evidence that any blood wraith could have ever passed on such knowledge. For all we know they are mindless creations of magic and dragon fire. Since all of wraith kind has gone extinct (which is for the best I might add) we may never know the truth. This likely was a tale told around hunting fires during the cold nights in the north.

Blood Wraith reproduction however is documented; the duration and process by which one becomes a wraith is eerily accurate. The story was likely written by some one who witnessed the horror. Some still fear the blood wraiths live above the Sky Wall, trapped there until the world freezes again.

This story should also hold as a lesson to any who think to create such creatures again. The wraiths were bad enough, the blood wraiths left so many northmen dead during the second retreat that even thousands of years later their memory lives on in song and fable.