the Ice King's periphery
The rocking cradle of time has worn slowly on, runners pitted and dusty for lack of attention, but no day has dawned since the scattered body of fear slunk away into the holes behind the stars. The air has thinned, Father Frost's pale breath stripping the world's heavy drudgery...leaving nothing but the brittle purity of the north. The calm slate of the sea giving way almost imperceptibly to the blue grey translucency of ice, and the unflinching uniformity of snow. No longer in miniature on the horizons edge the island's shores that appeared so mysterious in their foreign unknown beauty before now have spread their winged arms to reveal stark hills and jagged blades of cracked rock.
Stribog's keening whistle rides in low across the barren landscape, the gale trying to find it's way through cloth, hide, bone. The black god's tight smile jumps from one long shadow to the next beneath the silvered evening light. Even here, in winter's left hand, Chernobog still keeps his presence known only to those with eyes to see it. For in these low, craggy hills hid deep beneath their chilly arctic veils the giants walk. Far beyond the shore that sees the shadow of my worn boot, almost past seeing, a dark smear against a lonely mountain curves it's way towards heaven...and beneath this third root of Yggdrasil lies Nifleheim...spread out in icy splendour. Home to the ancient worm Nidhogg who splinters the wood of the one tree and the broken corpses of the dead with equal fervor, and of the roaring cauldron Hvergelmir. Here even the ancient gods of the great Rus walk softly in the night for an enquenched evil is at work here.
The path has led me here, past the Grigorii's stone towers bridging this world to the next, across fields of wheat glowing a dull gold in the waning light of sunset, through fearie forests teeming with blood cherries, over the great northern sea, here to the gates of the northern Hells...to the desolate frozen tundra of the Ice Giants. What awaits me here? Is my path to end broken and strewn haphazardly among the icy wastes of Nifleheim, a sacrifice to Ymir's fading memory whose shade is kept alive among these, his children's, lands? Will my path lead me onwards through the leering trails and chill crystal seas to Hvergelmir's sinuous banks? Are my towers here, abandonned shimmering fortress cities of the frost giants?
With uneven breath dissolving slowly into the far reaches of night, grey white against the hollow black of the void, I push onward.
Stribog's keening whistle rides in low across the barren landscape, the gale trying to find it's way through cloth, hide, bone. The black god's tight smile jumps from one long shadow to the next beneath the silvered evening light. Even here, in winter's left hand, Chernobog still keeps his presence known only to those with eyes to see it. For in these low, craggy hills hid deep beneath their chilly arctic veils the giants walk. Far beyond the shore that sees the shadow of my worn boot, almost past seeing, a dark smear against a lonely mountain curves it's way towards heaven...and beneath this third root of Yggdrasil lies Nifleheim...spread out in icy splendour. Home to the ancient worm Nidhogg who splinters the wood of the one tree and the broken corpses of the dead with equal fervor, and of the roaring cauldron Hvergelmir. Here even the ancient gods of the great Rus walk softly in the night for an enquenched evil is at work here.
The path has led me here, past the Grigorii's stone towers bridging this world to the next, across fields of wheat glowing a dull gold in the waning light of sunset, through fearie forests teeming with blood cherries, over the great northern sea, here to the gates of the northern Hells...to the desolate frozen tundra of the Ice Giants. What awaits me here? Is my path to end broken and strewn haphazardly among the icy wastes of Nifleheim, a sacrifice to Ymir's fading memory whose shade is kept alive among these, his children's, lands? Will my path lead me onwards through the leering trails and chill crystal seas to Hvergelmir's sinuous banks? Are my towers here, abandonned shimmering fortress cities of the frost giants?
With uneven breath dissolving slowly into the far reaches of night, grey white against the hollow black of the void, I push onward.