Winter's Justice (original fic? really?)
Title: Winter’s Justice
Rating: T (general creepiness, brief violence and gore)
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: A young boy has a religious experience in the worst way possible.
A/N: This is actually based very loosely on a rather badass dream I once had. It sort of mutated into a longish creepypasta during the writing process.
It was a warm night. The fireplace was behind him, roasting his back and causing sweat to well up and roll down his neck. The window was open before him to let in the night breeze off of the ocean. It wasn’t precisely cool, but if chilled his face and hands, leaving him uncomfortable and almost feverish.
That’s why he noticed the cold first.
He was standing closest to the door, at the end of the table farthest from the high priest. (The clerk wasn’t exactly a high ranked official, and his second apprentice was only there to keep his master’s wine cup full. Neither of them had any business being closer to the head of the table.) The door, of course, had been opening and closing throughout the evening as servants fetched plates and cups back and forth. Even Esben had eaten more delicious things than he could possibly need or want. The novelty of it quickly wore off. His master and most of the other brothers grew steadily drunker as the night wore on. Esben was tired and full and sleepy. He wanted nothing more than to return to his little cell near the wine cellars with the other acolytes. The stone room was cramped and damp, but he would have relished the cool.
He thought he was imagining it at first. A draft gusted through the door every time it opened, cooling his feet and side in the same way as the night breeze from the window. He was used to it. But as he shifted his bare feet he realized that the door was closed and the coolness he felt was from still air growing steadily colder. Already, the flagstones were uncomfortably cold and his fingertips were turning pink. His skin erupted in gooseflesh as he turned to tug at his master’s sleeve, hands shaking even as he lifted them.
“What is it, boy?” the clerk said roughly. He wasn’t a cruel man, even when the wine made his face red and his tongue slow and heavy, though he had no patience for foolishness. Esben wished he could say the same of the other brothers.
“Master,” Esben said, feeling rather stupid even as he shuffled his feet against the frigid stones. “Aren’t you cold, sir?”
“Cold? Of course I’m not cold, lad! It’s the height of summer!” Several of his neighbors turned to laugh, be the clerk only watched him with narrowed, beady eyes before adding, “If its wine that’s muddled your head, let that be a lesson to you. I did warn you not to sneak any. And ask one of the girls where the privy is; that’ll stop your fidgets.”
That wasn’t why he was fidgeting (his feet were nearly numb by this point) but he welcomed the excuse to escape for a little while. He turned back towards the door and was startled to see his breath forming a white cloud in front of his face.
“Is a bit nippy in here, now that I think on it,” the clerk muttered behind him. “Fetch some logs on your way back, then. There’s a good lad.”
Esben took one step towards the door and reached for the latch (his fingers had turned a rather alarming shade of purple) when the cold slammed into his chest like a physical blow. He snatched his hand back and gasped, blinking back tears as the frigid air burned down his throat. Dimly, he noticed the conversation behind him trailing off into oaths and gasps as well.
“Bide a spell, little brother,” an unfamiliar voice said.
He didn’t notice he was falling until pain exploded in his tailbone and lanced up his spine. He sat and blinked stupidly at the tendrils of frost racing towards his outstretched feet. Brittle, jagged lines of ice spread across the stone floor like wildfire leaping through dry underbrush. They even made the same hissing, snapping noise as tiny tongues of flame.
There was a shuffle and a click. Esben looked at the broad paw so close to his own foot, followed the sharp line of the foreleg to the narrow chest, up to the ruff of fur bristling with ice, and stared into the face of the Wolf. Her eyes were mismatched - one milky white like the full moon, the other black as pitch with a spark burning in its depths like a blue star. Esben clutched at his chest, fingers crooked like claws, as he felt the bitter cold seeping into his heart. An eternity passed and the Wolf lifted her head.
“Here there is wisdom,” she said, her voice ringing through the silence as clear and cold as the north wind. “The best of you looks upon my face and is afraid.”
The Wolf brushed past him (unlike her eyes, the rest of her body was like a shadow cast upon the snow - all impossible angles and vague outlines; if he looked steadily at one part of her, the details were sharp - here a clump of fur bristling with ice, there a claw dark and crooked as a bare tree limb - while the rest of her faded to the dim suggestion of form) and leapt upon the table. Shadow or not, it creaked and groaned beneath her weight. Looking up at the underside, Esben could see starbursts of frost spreading outward as she set down her feet. In utter silence, she walked the length of the table. The fire dwindled and died as she passed.
Esben hugged his knees to his chest and leaned against his master’s leg. He would have given anything to have felt that callused hand upon his shoulder, but it didn’t come.
“Do you know me?” the Wolf said from the head of the table.
“Ye-es,” said the high priest, his normally jovial voice thin and cracked with fear.
“Do you know why I’ve come?” she said, softer but no kinder. Esben was reminded of the wind moaning in the chimney of his mother’s home, far away and seemingly long ago. The moaning had been low and steady, somehow worse than the occasional high, wild howl.
“N-no, great one,” stammered the high priest. “This - this is the f-feast of the Bear.”
“Hm, so you have forgotten the wisdom of the Bear as well.” Esben thought that the Wolf was showing her teeth and he was glad that he couldn’t see it.
“I - I - I don’t - forgive me - th-the Bear . . .” The high priest was reduced to meaningless babbling.
“The Bear,” said the Wolf. “Protector of the young, dutiful and vigilant, preparing for hard times in times of plenty. Yes, I see how you honor her.”
The Wolf’s scathing voice brought on a fresh wave of tremors. Esben bit down on his lip to keep from sobbing aloud. The bitter blood was almost painfully hot in his mouth.
“The days ago, a girl came to you, seeking asylum. Do you remember?” said the Wolf.
The high priest babbled, but Esben remembered. He had noticed her standing in the long line of petitioners (Esben had always thought it strange that most petitioners were merchants and politicians seeking favor; there were much fewer widows and poor folk than he would have imagined), waiting to be granted an audience with the council. She’d looked to be only a few years older than he and had first caught his attention because of the tall spear she held. From her clothing, he had guessed her to be from the wild highlands like himself and had hoped to speak with her. But Esben had been called away to his duties and the next time he saw the girl she was being carried out by a pair of guards, screaming and spitting like a wildcat even though they had taken her spear. She had been unceremoniously dumped on the steps outside the temple and that was the last Esben saw of her.
“You refused her petition and turned her out on the streets,” said the Wolf.
The high priest mumbled something about not being able to help every beggar and orphan in the city.
“She was seeking her brother!” the Wolf roared and Esben wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “She traveled for weeks to find her only remaining relative. You knew her as soon as you saw her, yet you turned her away for fear of losing your favorite pet!”
The high priest squeaked but the Wolf ignored him.
“She begged my protection on the road and I granted it,” she said, her voice low and dangerous once more. “I saw her to your very doorstep. I trusted that she would be safe inside the temple, then travel home with her brother. Imagine my surprise when I heard her prayers and returned to find her broken and bleeding in the gutter.”
Esben sucked in an icy gasp of shock. He knew almost all of the other highland boys and many of them had sisters. He wondered if one of his friends knew that his sister was injured, or that she had even come to the city to find him.
“Little brother,” the Wolf’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Stand up and remind these fools here just who I am.”
Esben wasn’t sure if his shaking legs would hold him, but he slowly forced himself upright. All along the table, brothers were sitting stiff and silent. A few of them were weeping. The Wolf had not upset so much as a single spoon on her trek, but all the warm and delicious food had turned cold and slimy and dark. Esben’s stomach roiled at the sight of it. He steeled himself and looked at the head of the table.
The Wolf stood among the dishes. She was looking over her shoulder at him. Esben could see the knobs along the arch of her spine. Her tail was hanging limp and matted behind her.
“Go on, then,” she said.
Esben folded his hands behind his back and closed his eyes. He had recited the properties of the wild gods often enough. “The Wolf of Winter,” he said, his voice weak and faltering but unnaturally loud in the silent hall, “is the ruler of coldness and darkness and violence. She is fickle, sometimes lazy and other times harsh. She is the guardian of crossroads and forests.”
His voice grew stronger as he spoke, remembering his mother’s stories and lessons. She had told him about how the Wolf hunted the Stag of Autumn each year and then fought the Ram who carried Spring on his back, and how on one day long ago the Wolf ate the sun and had to seek out her sister the Bear to rid herself of the bellyache (“and she vomited back up all that warmth and light, but it had already broken up in her belly, and that’s why we have the moon and stars today, my child”).
But Esben also knew that the Wolf was a warrior, a protector of orphans and wild creatures. Suddenly afraid that he had offended her, he recalled something one of his teachers once told him, and he opened his eyes and said slowly, “The savagery of the Wolf is a double-edged sword, equal parts cruelty and justice.”
“Cruelty and justice, yes,” said the Wolf. “Well spoken, little brother.”
The high priest began babbling again, offering excuses and pleas for mercy and promises to do better so quickly that Esben could barely understand him. The Wolf watched him and Esben breathed easier when he was no longer under her gaze. Finally, it seemed, she had enough.
“Be silent,” she said, snapping her jaws together with a sound like ice shattering. “Turn aside, little brother. Justice is not pretty.”
Esben dove under the table and pressed himself against the clerk’s knee again. He put his forehead to his knees and his hands to his ears. It didn’t do him much good.
He heard the high priest shriek like a horse with a broken leg, though no horse had ever stammered prayers in the midst of its scream. It was almost a relief when the sound became a gurgling whistle. There was a crash as the heavy, ornate chair at the head of the table tipped over. Esben resolutely did not look up, even when he heard the high priest’s limbs drumming on the floor. Eventually, the drumming and the gurgling went silent.
Though he’d hoped it was over, Esben heard the murmur of voices through the rush of his own blood in his ears. There was no mistaking the Wolf’s cold tones. She came down the table, speaking with each brother in turn. Some conversations ended in silence. Most ended with the same thrashing and wet gurgling. The smell of blood and filth grew thick in the cold air. Esben choked and gagged even though he breathed through his shirt to try and muffle the cold and the stink.
He nearly started out of his skin when his master’s hand gripped his shoulder. The table creaked tiredly above him. Esben glanced up and saw fresh ice spreading out along the table from four points just above him. The Wolf was standing in front of his master.
“Well, then, Levi,” she said, sounding almost genial. “Are you prepared to atone for your sins?”
Esben scrambled to his feet without pausing for thought.
“Don’t! Please, don’t!”
The Wolf looked down at him, incredulous. He had expected her icy fur to be glistening wet and red, but she remained eerily pristine. Her mismatched eyes bored into him, more painful than the panicked clutch of his master’s hand.
“Please, he’s good. He doesn’t - he wouldn’t -” Esben was as clumsy and inarticulate as the high priest had been. He miserably shut his eyes and braced himself for the worst.
The Wolf laughed. Both the boy and the clerk shuddered. Esben could feel his bones frosting over, turning brittle, ready to snap. The air in his lungs and the blood in his veins felt thick and sluggish. His heart was slowing. Then she fell silent and Esben thawed - not much, just a little. Just a hair’s breadth this side of the edge of death. It was enough. He opened his eyes.
The Wolf was smiling at him. Her smile was as sharp and brittle as her laugh. There was a suggestion of too many teeth, each perfect and white and deadly. He tried not to look too closely.
“I had thought to rename you after me, Esben,” said the Wolf. “But you are a true Bear’s cub. Never lay aside her strength and mercy. And never forget what happens to those who do.”
Then she was gone, and the clerk hauled the trembling boy up into his lap while the warm, clean breeze blew gently around them.
Rating: T (general creepiness, brief violence and gore)
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: A young boy has a religious experience in the worst way possible.
A/N: This is actually based very loosely on a rather badass dream I once had. It sort of mutated into a longish creepypasta during the writing process.
It was a warm night. The fireplace was behind him, roasting his back and causing sweat to well up and roll down his neck. The window was open before him to let in the night breeze off of the ocean. It wasn’t precisely cool, but if chilled his face and hands, leaving him uncomfortable and almost feverish.
That’s why he noticed the cold first.
He was standing closest to the door, at the end of the table farthest from the high priest. (The clerk wasn’t exactly a high ranked official, and his second apprentice was only there to keep his master’s wine cup full. Neither of them had any business being closer to the head of the table.) The door, of course, had been opening and closing throughout the evening as servants fetched plates and cups back and forth. Even Esben had eaten more delicious things than he could possibly need or want. The novelty of it quickly wore off. His master and most of the other brothers grew steadily drunker as the night wore on. Esben was tired and full and sleepy. He wanted nothing more than to return to his little cell near the wine cellars with the other acolytes. The stone room was cramped and damp, but he would have relished the cool.
He thought he was imagining it at first. A draft gusted through the door every time it opened, cooling his feet and side in the same way as the night breeze from the window. He was used to it. But as he shifted his bare feet he realized that the door was closed and the coolness he felt was from still air growing steadily colder. Already, the flagstones were uncomfortably cold and his fingertips were turning pink. His skin erupted in gooseflesh as he turned to tug at his master’s sleeve, hands shaking even as he lifted them.
“What is it, boy?” the clerk said roughly. He wasn’t a cruel man, even when the wine made his face red and his tongue slow and heavy, though he had no patience for foolishness. Esben wished he could say the same of the other brothers.
“Master,” Esben said, feeling rather stupid even as he shuffled his feet against the frigid stones. “Aren’t you cold, sir?”
“Cold? Of course I’m not cold, lad! It’s the height of summer!” Several of his neighbors turned to laugh, be the clerk only watched him with narrowed, beady eyes before adding, “If its wine that’s muddled your head, let that be a lesson to you. I did warn you not to sneak any. And ask one of the girls where the privy is; that’ll stop your fidgets.”
That wasn’t why he was fidgeting (his feet were nearly numb by this point) but he welcomed the excuse to escape for a little while. He turned back towards the door and was startled to see his breath forming a white cloud in front of his face.
“Is a bit nippy in here, now that I think on it,” the clerk muttered behind him. “Fetch some logs on your way back, then. There’s a good lad.”
Esben took one step towards the door and reached for the latch (his fingers had turned a rather alarming shade of purple) when the cold slammed into his chest like a physical blow. He snatched his hand back and gasped, blinking back tears as the frigid air burned down his throat. Dimly, he noticed the conversation behind him trailing off into oaths and gasps as well.
“Bide a spell, little brother,” an unfamiliar voice said.
He didn’t notice he was falling until pain exploded in his tailbone and lanced up his spine. He sat and blinked stupidly at the tendrils of frost racing towards his outstretched feet. Brittle, jagged lines of ice spread across the stone floor like wildfire leaping through dry underbrush. They even made the same hissing, snapping noise as tiny tongues of flame.
There was a shuffle and a click. Esben looked at the broad paw so close to his own foot, followed the sharp line of the foreleg to the narrow chest, up to the ruff of fur bristling with ice, and stared into the face of the Wolf. Her eyes were mismatched - one milky white like the full moon, the other black as pitch with a spark burning in its depths like a blue star. Esben clutched at his chest, fingers crooked like claws, as he felt the bitter cold seeping into his heart. An eternity passed and the Wolf lifted her head.
“Here there is wisdom,” she said, her voice ringing through the silence as clear and cold as the north wind. “The best of you looks upon my face and is afraid.”
The Wolf brushed past him (unlike her eyes, the rest of her body was like a shadow cast upon the snow - all impossible angles and vague outlines; if he looked steadily at one part of her, the details were sharp - here a clump of fur bristling with ice, there a claw dark and crooked as a bare tree limb - while the rest of her faded to the dim suggestion of form) and leapt upon the table. Shadow or not, it creaked and groaned beneath her weight. Looking up at the underside, Esben could see starbursts of frost spreading outward as she set down her feet. In utter silence, she walked the length of the table. The fire dwindled and died as she passed.
Esben hugged his knees to his chest and leaned against his master’s leg. He would have given anything to have felt that callused hand upon his shoulder, but it didn’t come.
“Do you know me?” the Wolf said from the head of the table.
“Ye-es,” said the high priest, his normally jovial voice thin and cracked with fear.
“Do you know why I’ve come?” she said, softer but no kinder. Esben was reminded of the wind moaning in the chimney of his mother’s home, far away and seemingly long ago. The moaning had been low and steady, somehow worse than the occasional high, wild howl.
“N-no, great one,” stammered the high priest. “This - this is the f-feast of the Bear.”
“Hm, so you have forgotten the wisdom of the Bear as well.” Esben thought that the Wolf was showing her teeth and he was glad that he couldn’t see it.
“I - I - I don’t - forgive me - th-the Bear . . .” The high priest was reduced to meaningless babbling.
“The Bear,” said the Wolf. “Protector of the young, dutiful and vigilant, preparing for hard times in times of plenty. Yes, I see how you honor her.”
The Wolf’s scathing voice brought on a fresh wave of tremors. Esben bit down on his lip to keep from sobbing aloud. The bitter blood was almost painfully hot in his mouth.
“The days ago, a girl came to you, seeking asylum. Do you remember?” said the Wolf.
The high priest babbled, but Esben remembered. He had noticed her standing in the long line of petitioners (Esben had always thought it strange that most petitioners were merchants and politicians seeking favor; there were much fewer widows and poor folk than he would have imagined), waiting to be granted an audience with the council. She’d looked to be only a few years older than he and had first caught his attention because of the tall spear she held. From her clothing, he had guessed her to be from the wild highlands like himself and had hoped to speak with her. But Esben had been called away to his duties and the next time he saw the girl she was being carried out by a pair of guards, screaming and spitting like a wildcat even though they had taken her spear. She had been unceremoniously dumped on the steps outside the temple and that was the last Esben saw of her.
“You refused her petition and turned her out on the streets,” said the Wolf.
The high priest mumbled something about not being able to help every beggar and orphan in the city.
“She was seeking her brother!” the Wolf roared and Esben wanted to stuff his fingers in his ears even though he knew it wouldn’t do any good. “She traveled for weeks to find her only remaining relative. You knew her as soon as you saw her, yet you turned her away for fear of losing your favorite pet!”
The high priest squeaked but the Wolf ignored him.
“She begged my protection on the road and I granted it,” she said, her voice low and dangerous once more. “I saw her to your very doorstep. I trusted that she would be safe inside the temple, then travel home with her brother. Imagine my surprise when I heard her prayers and returned to find her broken and bleeding in the gutter.”
Esben sucked in an icy gasp of shock. He knew almost all of the other highland boys and many of them had sisters. He wondered if one of his friends knew that his sister was injured, or that she had even come to the city to find him.
“Little brother,” the Wolf’s voice shook him out of his thoughts. “Stand up and remind these fools here just who I am.”
Esben wasn’t sure if his shaking legs would hold him, but he slowly forced himself upright. All along the table, brothers were sitting stiff and silent. A few of them were weeping. The Wolf had not upset so much as a single spoon on her trek, but all the warm and delicious food had turned cold and slimy and dark. Esben’s stomach roiled at the sight of it. He steeled himself and looked at the head of the table.
The Wolf stood among the dishes. She was looking over her shoulder at him. Esben could see the knobs along the arch of her spine. Her tail was hanging limp and matted behind her.
“Go on, then,” she said.
Esben folded his hands behind his back and closed his eyes. He had recited the properties of the wild gods often enough. “The Wolf of Winter,” he said, his voice weak and faltering but unnaturally loud in the silent hall, “is the ruler of coldness and darkness and violence. She is fickle, sometimes lazy and other times harsh. She is the guardian of crossroads and forests.”
His voice grew stronger as he spoke, remembering his mother’s stories and lessons. She had told him about how the Wolf hunted the Stag of Autumn each year and then fought the Ram who carried Spring on his back, and how on one day long ago the Wolf ate the sun and had to seek out her sister the Bear to rid herself of the bellyache (“and she vomited back up all that warmth and light, but it had already broken up in her belly, and that’s why we have the moon and stars today, my child”).
But Esben also knew that the Wolf was a warrior, a protector of orphans and wild creatures. Suddenly afraid that he had offended her, he recalled something one of his teachers once told him, and he opened his eyes and said slowly, “The savagery of the Wolf is a double-edged sword, equal parts cruelty and justice.”
“Cruelty and justice, yes,” said the Wolf. “Well spoken, little brother.”
The high priest began babbling again, offering excuses and pleas for mercy and promises to do better so quickly that Esben could barely understand him. The Wolf watched him and Esben breathed easier when he was no longer under her gaze. Finally, it seemed, she had enough.
“Be silent,” she said, snapping her jaws together with a sound like ice shattering. “Turn aside, little brother. Justice is not pretty.”
Esben dove under the table and pressed himself against the clerk’s knee again. He put his forehead to his knees and his hands to his ears. It didn’t do him much good.
He heard the high priest shriek like a horse with a broken leg, though no horse had ever stammered prayers in the midst of its scream. It was almost a relief when the sound became a gurgling whistle. There was a crash as the heavy, ornate chair at the head of the table tipped over. Esben resolutely did not look up, even when he heard the high priest’s limbs drumming on the floor. Eventually, the drumming and the gurgling went silent.
Though he’d hoped it was over, Esben heard the murmur of voices through the rush of his own blood in his ears. There was no mistaking the Wolf’s cold tones. She came down the table, speaking with each brother in turn. Some conversations ended in silence. Most ended with the same thrashing and wet gurgling. The smell of blood and filth grew thick in the cold air. Esben choked and gagged even though he breathed through his shirt to try and muffle the cold and the stink.
He nearly started out of his skin when his master’s hand gripped his shoulder. The table creaked tiredly above him. Esben glanced up and saw fresh ice spreading out along the table from four points just above him. The Wolf was standing in front of his master.
“Well, then, Levi,” she said, sounding almost genial. “Are you prepared to atone for your sins?”
Esben scrambled to his feet without pausing for thought.
“Don’t! Please, don’t!”
The Wolf looked down at him, incredulous. He had expected her icy fur to be glistening wet and red, but she remained eerily pristine. Her mismatched eyes bored into him, more painful than the panicked clutch of his master’s hand.
“Please, he’s good. He doesn’t - he wouldn’t -” Esben was as clumsy and inarticulate as the high priest had been. He miserably shut his eyes and braced himself for the worst.
The Wolf laughed. Both the boy and the clerk shuddered. Esben could feel his bones frosting over, turning brittle, ready to snap. The air in his lungs and the blood in his veins felt thick and sluggish. His heart was slowing. Then she fell silent and Esben thawed - not much, just a little. Just a hair’s breadth this side of the edge of death. It was enough. He opened his eyes.
The Wolf was smiling at him. Her smile was as sharp and brittle as her laugh. There was a suggestion of too many teeth, each perfect and white and deadly. He tried not to look too closely.
“I had thought to rename you after me, Esben,” said the Wolf. “But you are a true Bear’s cub. Never lay aside her strength and mercy. And never forget what happens to those who do.”
Then she was gone, and the clerk hauled the trembling boy up into his lap while the warm, clean breeze blew gently around them.