#int.w/prospero.hrimthur

[alrikhart]

@prcspero location: Hrimthur's Wasteland notes: After the events of The Last Night

Asylum. Plague. Death. The wheel did not care if a person was young, or afraid. It certainly did not care what they wanted. The wheel had called them to this, whether they could bear it or not. Alrik had cracked the night his life had gone up in flames, broken down in the mines - what could be left now but shards? Pointed, sharp, and prepared to cut down anything that stood between himself and his sister.

The sun burned at the edge of the horizon and cast shadows over the cold wasteland through the sparse, dead trees that protruded through the ice. In the far distance, Alrik had caught sight of a few hints of game; cunning arctic foxes that might as well have been tricks of the light. Overhead Valr returned with nothing but rodents snatched from their shallow burrows, or in the brief stretch of time they spent skittering up a tree. Perhaps his bird would die from the blight next, it seemed capable of claiming enough.

Alessia did not die. Alrik would have known. He'd have felt it if his sister had passed. Since dawn had broken over the last night at Nornwatch Keep, he'd held onto this. Stubborn as the bedrock below the snow they treaded across; the Iskaran would not accept anything until he saw it with his own eyes.

Taken, they had said, but for why, none of the Legion would say. They marched towards an outpost and prepared to make camp where they could. In makeshift tents before the midnight sun could dip below the horizon and bathe the cold world in an even colder dark.

Alrik, dotted with the ashes of those that had been burned, marched beside Prospero alongside the Iskaran survivors. More lived than had been killed, but there were fewer now; which meant fewer mouths to feed.

"Do you know the story of the dvergar?" Alrik looked off towards nothing but the horizon and the fading light as he spoke. Face marred black in places by the ashes of his kinmen, he didn't wait for Prospero's response before he spoke.

"Before our world was broken, it is said that dwarves once ran the mines beneath Iskaldrik, that our nation was their home, and our great city the jewel of their creation. King Hrimthur's people toiled and worked alongside the jotunn, crafting armaments and machinery that would put any Lysaran vessel to shame." Distinct, Iskaran notation curved around the syllables with curt, sharp remarks as he remembered the way his father once cast shadows on the wall from the forge as he retold the tale. "My father told me that the dvergar dug too deep and found evil in the place of gold. I laughed," Alrik looked to the druid next to him, "then I asked him ' but then why we keep digging?"

"Because, Alrik, he said." Blue eyes looked back towards the horizon as he tried to remember where his sister had been during the story. Had she been there? It was so long ago now. "men never know when to quit. So I asked him, 'what happened to the dvergr, faðir?' Then he told me, why little drengr, we're standing on them." Alrik laughed because he remembered how his father had spooked him, tickled him, and laughed. The story was not funny though, hardly then, and not now. Unlike then, his laughter was flightless now, bitter as nightshade.