SWW 03

Scáthach: World Walker 03

Winter’s Wrath

 

I stepped out of the White Gate and into a frozen hellscape.

 

A vast, white plain stretched into to the horizon. Here and there, structures poked out of the surface disrupting the otherwise blank canvas. A glance with enhanced vision saw they were the tips of skyscrapers, now almost buried beneath a sea of ivory.

 

“You know, you could have waited for the full debriefing before jumping headfirst through the gate,” Sam voice echoed in my ear with an odd resonance through the feather tucked behind my ear. He’d tried to disguise it as an electronic of some sort, but I’d dispelled the illusion immediately. His glare and ensuing huff had been quite amusing.

“I prefer to experience at my own pace,” I informed him.

 

“I noticed,” he huffed.

 

I smiled. Sam was proving fun to poke.

 

I took in my surroundings. Besides the obvious blank expanse, the world was cold, frigid enough to match the worst winters of my youth and to give the Land of Shadows a rival. It lacked the Land of Shadows’ sheer malevolent cold that sought to remove all mortal warmth, but this world was more than cold enough to kill a mortal in minutes.

 

I hummed, enjoying the feeling of the cloying air before I rejected it. Mere cold had no bearing on where I walked.

 

Absently, I held out a hand, catching a pale flake.

 

“Remarkable,” I uttered. I shifted the flake around with my index finger, observing the way it refracted the pale light. It didn’t melt.

 

“Noticed, did you?” Sam asked.

 

“Difficult not to,” I said, stabbing my spear into the ground to get a good look up.

 

The sky was broken. Great, black cracks of purest ebony streaked across the gray overcast sky as if some cataclysmic force had clashed against the sky and left it broken and bleeding.

 

It was mildly disconcerting.

 

“Sorry sight, isn’t it?” Sam said. His voice had an odd aspect to it in this state. Not so much he sounded different as he lacked the presence did in person. Expected, given it was but a fragment of him.

 

“Oddly beautiful, like an expression of finality,” I countered. I’d known my world died, but I hadn’t actually seen its death as I’d only witnessed it through the distorted memories of the dead. This? This was with my own eyes. It deserved to be remembered.

 

Sam snorted. “One way to put it.”

 

“Is there anything here left to save?” I asked, looking back to the flake in my hand.

 

It wasn’t snow. It was a piece of the sky.

 

I enhanced my eyes and truly looked at the shattered sky. The edges around the cracks dissolved ever so slowly, like sandcastles left in the tide. Millions of flakes like the one in my hand gradually fell to bury the world below.

 

“Not really. World’s too far gone, likely to be swallowed up by the cosmic forces of creation soon enough if the deterioration proceeds at this rate. But it has something we can use to save others, down the line,” Sam explained.

 

“Are we to be vultures picking at this world’s carcass, then?” I asked.

 

Sam snorted. “Vultures have their place in Creation too, you know.”

 

“True, but you didn’t answer my question,” I retorted.

 

“We’re more salvaging what we can before it’s lost entirely, if you insist,” Sam said. I wondered how many of his eyes rolled? I bet it was 17.

 

“So close to death, the world’s heart should be crystalized. Something similar to a fragment or page of the Akashic Records from your world, and—” Sam explained only to be cut off.

 

“I understand,” I said, tracing a rune of guidance. A bit of luck, a bit of fate, and proximity to what I desired. Unfortunately, I doubted there were any shirtless warriors of worth left, so I would settle for a nifty artifact of creation.

 

“… You are an infuriating woman, you know that?” Sam said after a long moment.

 

“Strange. You’re not the first to say that,” I laughed.

 

There was a huff from Sam. Finally, he asked, “Do you want to know more, then? Or would you rather handle the rest of this yourself? I was able to get a good look at the world with how weak its walls are.”

 

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I want to find out for myself.” Was it perhaps a touch foolish? Maybe, but it was also exciting to be on my own adventure once more. Not teaching another, not sending others on far off adventures while I remained in the cold land of the dead. Just me, myself, on a new world unraveling my own path.

 

It was simultaneously nostalgic and new.

 

Sam snorted. “Figures. Have fun, then.”

 

Sam’s presence retracted. I pulled the feather from my ear and found it inert. Shrugging, I put it back in my ear and focused on my runes.

 

I smiled as my rune stabilized. A ghostly raven took off in a specific direction and I followed into the wastes.

 

I walked a long while. I passed beneath the shadows of eroded buildings, once mankind’s grand achievements scraping the very heavens and now bare skeletal remnants. Mountain peaks poked through the sea of white. Occasionally, other odd bits showed up, like a crashed vehicle here, a bit of wreckage there. I even found a satellite. It went ‘ting’ when I poked it with my spear.

 

Shame. Marvelous inventions enough to make even Druids of my time weep. I suspected but wasn’t sure they were probably more advanced than even the ‘spacecraft’ I’d learned of from the odd soul entering the Landow of Shadows. Unfortunately,  in a world breaking down at the conceptual seams, I guessed even orbit wouldn’t save it.

 

Mostly, however? I walked in the great white wastes. Some of it was genuine snow, falling endlessly. Others were eroded bits of reality, disintegrating before my very eyes. They flew up in great flurries of ice and the dregs of reality that buffeted my hair, but that was all it could do.

 

Unless…

 

Something was off.

 

The flurries kept happening, and always seemed to try and veer on me, but could do little more than ruffle my hair and fade out shortly afterward. Yet, on closer inspection, it felt as if something was trying to leech from me every time, but the effect was so weak. With my innate resistance to such things, I hadn’t even noticed at first as I just shrugged it off like an errant drop of rain.

 

I waited atop a small hill for another flurry, leaning on my spear. Sure enough, within the hour, another one veered right into me.

 

This time, I watched closely. The currents of wind were traced with the tiniest, near microsocopic amounts of magical energy, forming the most miniscule of patterns. Mystic winds were nothing new. They often accompanied casting, hence the often ‘chill’ wind even the most mundane of people would grasp in the presence of spells. But these were different.

 

They were trying to grasp at me, to sap something from me to fuel an inner, obscured process. But my resistance was too hardy for them, so they invariably died and drifted off.

 

On a whim, I inscribed an old rune: Berkano. Charged with a not insignificant amount life energy, it was swept away immediately. The reaction was immediate.

 

The flurry, once weak, devoured the rune, attacking it from every angle. It grew, and grew, and grew, forming a tornado that tried its best to rip away my life energies, to smash me against the ground, to flay my skin in the endless storm of ice and particle.

 

I held an arm up, blocking a jagged piece of ice aimed to decapitate me, which shattered on impact. Otherwise, remained unmoved even as ethereal and real winds strained and ripped at me, near ravenous for my life force.

 

“Ah… they weren’t flurries. They were constructs, leeching life from anything they could,” I said with realization.

 

The tornado was the final product of an elegant malevolence:

 

A light spell construct, disguised in a pervasive wind, that leeched life force from surroundings, growing in strength until it reached the stature of a tornado. I imagine it would start with the smallest of life, plants, even insects, moving up the chain of life until its power would have grown unstoppable, perhaps even apocalyptic with enough working together.

 

The single construct I fed? Any normal human or animal caught in its grasp would have been leeched of all life, their energies drained and added to its might. And if anything could resist that, then they would have to deal with an entire world raining down upon them to smash them to pieces.

 

I tilted my head, dodging another chunk of ice. This one was thrown with far more force than the last.

 

I admired the ingenuity. Minimum initial energy expenditure, but maximum results. Release and say goodbye to everything in a general direction you didn’t like. The energy I’d given it was enough for a tornado, but its height was far higher. Easily calamatious without precautions.

 

I was mildly curious to see how great a tornado it could form. Even this one would be strong enough to fling boulders, and it was in its infancy. Would it perhaps reach into the heavens? Would it accelerate the breakdown of the sky? Did one bring down humanity’s great constructs in orbit? All fascinating questions. Unfortunately,  I did have a task here.

 

“Impressive, but…” I said, holding my hand up in the heart of the tornado and took my energy back.

 

The world froze, briefly. The tornado tried to resist, but my energy, my life, knew me, and wanted to return home. Plus, my will was far stronger than its. The outcome was decided before it even began.

 

An ethereal scream rang through the air, and with it, the tornado collapsed. The only thing left in its wake were the falling of flakes.

 

My ethereal raven cawed at me, and I followed it once more into the white expanse.

 

~~~~

 

The trip took a while. The sky remained broken, the occasional bit of skyscraper or monumental machinery littered the way. The doubled over, bipedal machine fit to fight a dragon of immense size was particularly interesting to me, as was the battle damage to it. Whoever the people of this world were, they’d certainly gone the distance, not that it helped them.

 

Yet, as intrigued as I was about them, I was here for the heart.

 

I was curious as to what form it would take. Hearts formed the basis for many beings, great and small, and a world was no different. Would it be a great crystal? Perhaps an ancient energy? Maybe it would be literal?

 

All were fascinating possibilities, and novel, at that. I’d made plenty of magical items from the bones and yes, hearts included, of great beasts. Gáe Bulg, of course, but there were others. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder; what could I make from the heart of a world?

 

I came to a stop before a white wall of snowflakes.

 

It stretched, impossibly up, to the sky, and from horizon to horizon. Snowflakes of titanic sizes interlocked, forming layers upon layers of barriers. My raven, rather than cross it, landed back upon my shoulders. I gave it a light pet before dismissing the ethereal construct, its mission complete.

 

I had certainly found something someone didn’t want me getting into.

 

The sight was lovely, something I wanted to imprint in my memories. It was beautiful, a work of art and defense simultaneously, forged by a skill that must have been sublime.

 

It was a shame I would have to break it.

 

Gáe Bolg would be the simplest to break it. I knew my trusted spears could and would pierce this wall, but where was the fun in that?

 

I inscribed runes in the air.

 

Algiz normally created a barrier, and a mighty one based on intent. Useless, in in this case, but if I was to combine it with decay and ruin…

 

The rune pulsed in my hands, simultaneously strengthening, and yet a disquiet followed in its wake.

 

I pushed the rune free, and it fell into the barrier of snowflakes.

 

There was no response at first. If anything, I felt the wall reinforce itself as Algiz took root, giving strength to its foundations.

 

Yet, gradually, and ever so slowly, the walls shifted, the pattern of snowflakes adjusting, changing into new and mesmerizing shapes

 

I placed one finger upon the wall, right at the heart of a newly made snowflake.

 

The wall shattered.

 

Even in destruction, it glittered like millions of diamonds as it fell.

 

“Your work was commendable. Shame you are likely dead,” I commented to the mysterious craftsman who had made this work of art. I would have liked to speak to them.

 

Yet, as the wall’s collapse finally cleared, I saw a great, icy castle beyond.

 

Stepping over the precipice, I froze, one familiar word coming to my lips, “The Unseelie.”

 

This had just gotten more interesting.

 

~~~~

 

The Fae were long familiar to me.

 

Sometimes allies, sometimes enemies, intermittent lovers and everything in-between, they always followed a tune of their own. The fools thought the Seelie were friendly denizens of summer while the Unseelie the monsters of winter. Both can and would kill you, and both offered different things.

 

To find them again after all this time was nostalgic. The feeling was truly unmistakable, as if stepping into a mirror world whose proportions were ever just so slightly off. Even the land they claimed, no matter how they chose to disguise it, had an air of otherworldliness, as if it didn’t quite obey the normal rules.

 

Stepping into the Unseelie domain beyond the wall of snowflakes was like stepping into a storm front. The land knew I did not belong here yet did not bar my path. The air, too, frigid as it was, felt oppressive, charged, as if it only allowed me the privilege of breathing it as a favor.

 

The castle was a grand structure of angles and impossible scale stretching to scrape the remnants of the fractured sky. Composed of varying shades of ice in place of stone, it looked carved rather than built, towers stretching into the sky and walls built to endure apocalypses themselves.

 

I thought it was a bit gaudy, honestly. It definitely wasn’t made by the same craftsman as the one who made the wall. A shame, really.

 

The gates, conveniently enough, were wide open. If they weren’t, I suspect I would have needed to get creative again to get in, but I took the invitation for what it was.

 

Inside, I found a massive entryway built to house hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people coming to see the ruler. Marble flooring, polished so perfectly as to be mirror like, stretched far and wide, while great ivory staircases led upwards and beyond. A great gateway of white gold lay opposite, likely leading to a throne room that faintly resonated to my mystic senses.

 

Yet, none of that concerned me, or the numerable entrances, side doors, and more leading further into the castle.

 

Rather, it was the bodies.

 

Hundreds of corpses in concentric rings sat in the room, as if they had taken their final breaths sitting down. Some were hounds, a few massive and rivalling even a wyvern in size, while others were fae of many stripes. Some wild and barely human, others close enough to be perfect matches with only the slightest tells like oddly vibrant hair for corpses, or lifelike eyes in a mummified corpse. Clothing, also, varied from the mundane to fantastical. Yet there were two commonalities to all of them: all were emaciated, and all looked worn by time.

 

I walked among the corpses, idly checking them, but I found no life amongst them. They truly looked to have died sitting in the cold, calmly and without complaint.

 

At the center, I found a fae, larger than the others. It towered above even the monstrous hounds, but was no less emaciated. In fact, it was downright skeletal, little left but skin that clung to bone, its skull bare. Yet, it carried a majesty undeniable, a remnant from the past in the form of a gorgeous black and gray furred cape wrapped around its shoulders and an ivory crown weathered but unbroken by time, stretching up like antlers from its skull.

 

A great sword of tremendous size stabbed into the flooring beside him, curved dagger still clenched in its hand.

 

I came to a stop before it. “The Hunt,” I said, at last.

 

I’d known it ever since I was a girl. Sometimes it chose a great beast, sometimes a warrior or hunter, even a great and wild king. Somehow, over my long life, I’d never been its target. I’d interfered a great many times, clashing with its hunters and beast, but never the target. Which was a shame. I imagine it would have been exhilarating.

 

 Seeing the Hunt here and now? It was just saddening.

 

“Are you going to wake up, or do I need to turn my back and give you an invitation, King Edric?” I asked the corpse of their king, the first huntsman.

 

Raspy laughter echoed through the room. The dead king’s eyes sockets ignited in blue flame. Skeletal fingers stretched, cracking ice and long bound joins as they gripped the greatsword. It rose, towering above its kin. Here, I could see its outfit, its armor of bone and skin, was in tatters. Bits flaked away as it moved. “You’re far from home and time, Witch,” Edric said, skull etched in a grin and eye sockets fixed on me.

 

“Not wrong,” I admitted as I began to circle him, both spears of Gáe Bulg in my hands, practically thrumming with a thirst to fight.

 

He, likewise, did the same, greatsword oddly coming down to his side while his dagger remained forward. Intriguing.

 

“What happened here?” I asked. I’d known it was from the moment I stepped here, but I had yet to know why. The how seemed evident enough, but why? The Unseelie were always a force of Winter, yes, but they were a part of the world. They wouldn’t destroy it. Not the ones I knew, at least.

 

Edric laughed. “Does it really matter at this point? Only bones left.” He never stopped circling me.

 

I shrugged. “Curiosity and nothing more,” I admitted.

 

Edric impossibly snorted, despite his state. “The Winter Queen’s heart melted. She’d finally found love. The Summer Queen took it away. You can piece together what happened next,” he said, spinning his dagger as we circled. “Humanity had one chance to tilt the tide and squandered it in the last fires. His tone was not pained, filled with an emotion I could identify, yet not put a name to.

 

He stopped circling me, prompting me to as well. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his greatsword, dagger crossed over his arm in a stance that would let him leap forward. Like a beast.

 

“If we fight, you are going to die,” I said.

 

At his height, Edric the First Huntsman would be a rival, a worthy foe. In this state? The fight was already decided.

 

The king laughed, the sound rattling in a haunting manner through the enormous, castle entryway. "The world's been dead a long time, Witch. I just lasted longer than most. Grant me this, my last hunt. There's no one left."

 

A moment later, he added, almost in a whisper. "Please." His blade trembled.

 

I started at the plea. Then I smiled. “Very well.”

 

I slammed my spear butt down, sending a harmless shockwave through the room but adding the gravitas I desired. She leveled her spear back at the king. “Edric, King of the Hunt,” I addressed, grandly. “I, Scáthach, challenge you. Do you dare face me?” I finished with a smirk.

 

Edric reared back and laughed.

 

"Gladly. One. Last. Hunt. Then..."

 

I smirked. “I’ll let you have the first strike. Make it count.”

 

Edric’s eyes ignited in pale flame. He swept forward faster than the eye could see, yet I too moved beyond sight.

 

The fight was on.

 

~~~~

AN:

 

HiddenMaster: And here we have chapter 3. God I love writing Scáthach. So cocky and yet it’s an earned cockiness. The dynamic with Sam is fun too.

 

World here is one she’d be familiar with. I imagine you can piece together what happened here, but will see that resolved next chapter.

 

Fungame, any comments?

 

Fungame2: Immortals Having a temper tantrum- the most dangerous thing you'll ever see. Also Scáthach giving mercy to someone in the position she was in.

 

HiddenMaster: Indeed. I imagine she was a bit melancholy here, if a bit. Way I have her written, she never did get a proper fight with the King of the Hunt, so seeing it now in a diminished state is a little bittersweet.

 

If you would like to support me,  or throw a commission my way, check out my carrd below:

https://hiddenmasterarchive.carrd.co/

 

(P.S.: It’s where I have my discord link!)