The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage

Interlude WM [102.5] A Soul Worth Taking Part 1

The wind howled through the Diredain Forest, carrying with it the scent of blood and fire. Snow, once pristine, was stained crimson, trampled by the dead and dying. Beyond the twisted, ice-laden trees, the war raged. Gladsheim, the sacred city of the wendigo that had fallen to druid occupation, loomed in the distance, its once-glistening spires now cracked and scorched by siege. The walls, still standing, bore the scars of war where druidic bombardments had struck. Ancient wards flickered in defiance of the constant barrage.

Snow and blood mixed in a grotesque slurry beneath Ingrid’s boots as she stood at the edge of the secured ridge. Below, the battlefield raged as storm of magic and steel, as a harbinger destruction and desperate survival. The wendigo and druids clashed in a war that shattered mountains and set the sky alight with fury. The only thing preventing either side from being utterly annihilated was their sheer, relentless power. Spell met counterspell in a brutal, unending struggle, the battlefield a tempest of arcane devastation.

In the aurora of the mana storm scarred skies, familiars tore into each other, monstrous forms colliding with shrieks and roars. Soldiers, wizards, and mages alike perished in droves, their bodies swallowed by the snow and mud. The air smelled of ozone and burning flesh.

Ingrid stood tall, even as blood dripped from a gash across her face, streaking over her lips. Her once-pristine armor was battered and scorched, the sigils carved into it cracked and blackened. One of her antlers had been shattered at the base, jagged like a broken blade, but she carried herself as if it had never been there at all. The wind howled through the trees, but it could not drown out her presence.

She was made to sit by an increasingly upset Yrsa, a veteran healer, who worked swiftly over her injuries. The woman’s hands, steady and practiced, pulsed with soft blue light, mending deep wounds that would have killed a normal wendigo but were a mere inconvenience to a mage body like hers.

“You shouldn't fight again today,” Yrsa muttered as she wrapped a fresh bandage around Ingrid’s arm. “Your body needs rest. If you push too hard—”

“I'm going,” Ingrid interrupted, her voice ironclad. 

Yrsa stiffened but wisely held her tongue. The healer had been on enough battlefields to recognize the futility of arguing with the Sword of Salstar. Ingrid respected Yrsa, she had worked tirelessly, especially now that their healing potions had long since run dry, but she had no right, no authority to tell Ingrid what a warrior should do. What she should do. The woman seemed to realize her folly when she met Ingrid’s gaze, dark as storm clouds and twice as unyielding.

A portal swirled into existence nearby, the fabric of reality bending into a gaping void of black shadows. The air in the camp turned electric, soldiers snapping to attention, weapons drawn as they surrounded the breach. Their anti-teleportation wards should have prevented such an intrusion, which meant whoever had forced their way through was either powerful or expected.

Ingrid raised a hand. “Stand down.”

A man stepped through wearing the flowing robes over the armor of a Noble Hand ready for war. Loki, her right hand and closest confidant had finally arrived. The darkness mage’s presence was like a shadow stretching over the camp. Darkness magic was the most common magical affinity of the wendigo people but there were a sparse few that matched his raw power. He had been missing from the battlefield, and Ingrid had not pressed him on it, until now.

“Where in the Infernal Planes have you been, Loki?” she demanded.

He bowed his head. “Milady, I was working on reinforcements.”

As if on cue, heavy footsteps came through the portal. Fárbauti, leader of the infamous Giant’s Fire mercenary group, stepped through the portal into the camp. He was the Patriarch of the lesser house of Dalus and Loki’s father. He was a towering man, scarred and grizzled from decades of war, his presence radiated danger. Flames coiled lazily around his fingers and battle axe, barely restrained. Last Ingrid heard he was in the south on another campaign against the Striga Harpies. His presence here meant that campaign was likely over. 

“Loki told me you needed an axe to crush the druids,” Fárbauti rumbled. “So I brought a few.”

Behind him, mercenaries filed into the camp, armors still covered in the blood of their last battlefield. They were hardened killers, veterans of countless conflicts, their armor scorched and their weapons eager. The scent of smoke clung to them like a second skin.

Ingrid eyed them, then turned back to Fárbauti. “You’re late,” she said, brushing off Yrsa’s hands as she rose to her full height. “But I’ll forgive it if you burn those bastards out of my forest.”

Heimdall, standing beside her with his lance resting against his shoulder, let out a measured breath. The most decorated wyvern knight of past campaigns, he had an instinct for strategy that Ingrid had come to rely on. Nearby, his wyvern, Skarn, rumbled deep in its chest, nostrils flaring in anticipation.

“Fárbauti’s arrival is great Lady Ingrid,” Heimdall said, ever the strategist. “But this battle will still cost us.”

Ingrid had come to rely on the young knight. He was a promising starlight mage with a specialty in divining and farseeing magic.

“What do you see?” Ingrid asked.

“A druid Thane and a force of two thousand to reinforce the city,” Heimdall murmured, his expression darkening. “Part of the Old Oaks Consort. He has a thunderbird familiar.”

Fárbauti scoffed. “A Thane? They must be desperate.”

“No.” Loki said. “He is here for her.”

“Likely Thane Geir, then,” Ingrid said.

Heimdall’s glowing eyes narrowed. “With a force like that, we should regroup with—”

“We don’t have the luxury of caution,” Ingrid cut him off. “There is no change of plans. We take Gladsheim today. The druids have defiled the sacred city long enough. The Forest Father screams for retribution and they will pay with blood. Is that understood?”

Fárbauti let out a booming laugh. “Yes! Sword of Salstar, I do believe you’ve only grown sharper since last we met. I feared my boy’s philosophical nature would dull you.”

“You would be pleased to know that Loki has only honed me further, Patriarch Dalus.” Ingrid met his gaze without hesitation. “He does not fight with blue steel like us but he fights just as fiercely. Do not disrespect the chosen Noble Hand of the Sword of Salstar. Even if he is your son I will not accept any disrespect. I hope you did not expect to rest. Now tell me the composition of your troops. We begin the assault immediately.”

Fárbauti only smiled wider as battle plans were quickly relayed. Ingrid's forces totaled seven hundred with the Giant’s Fire mercenaries and the Heimdall’s Wyvern Knights they had a combined force of 1450. A small number as compared to the tens of thousands already on the battlefield. With the storm raging above and war howling below, Ingrid of Salstar strode toward the battlefield once more, undaunted and unbreakable. Diredain would be hers no matter the cost.

***

The world was fire and blood, so thick that one could drown in either. Gladsheim burned beneath a sky split apart, a churning mass of raw mana twisting above like a cosmic wound. Chaos lightning speared the city, warping the stone into jagged spires and birthing horrors from the ether. Things that should not exist shrieked as they clawed their way into reality.

There was so much mana in the air that the city had become a battlefield between realms, the war of wendigo and druids now swallowed in a deeper, apocalyptic struggle. Monsters birthed during battles was rare but not here, not during the crusade for the holy land.

Ingrid body burned as wounds dug deep gashes through her body and yet she fought. Her mana nearly depleted and spells hit her battle hardened form, and yet she fought. She had long been separated from her men, forced deeper into the ruins of Gladsheim by the unrelenting press of battle. Her blade dripped with the lifeblood of druids and monsters alike, her breath came ragged, and her body screamed for respite. There would be none, there was only victory or death.

There was only the war, and the man who stood before her now, Thane Geir. The wretched druid lord, his emerald robes stained crimson, his once-golden laden antlers splintered and cracked. He bled from a dozen wounds, yet still, he stood tall. His thunderbird lay dying beside him, its massive form twitching as arcs of blue lightning sputtered from its torn wings.

Their battle had rocked the city but now it was coming to an end. Ingrid lunged. Geir met her charge with a howl, his gnarled staff breaking against her enchanted blade. Her magic had long failed her and she could not stop his magic with her own anti-magic. A bolt of green energy flared from his palm, but she twisted, letting it sear the air beside her as she drove forward. Her sword found home in his chest, punching through ribs, through lung, through heart.

The Thane choked, his breath leaving him in a shattered exhale. Ingrid twisted the blade carving the blade upward from his chest to his neck. The man fell nearly in half but even in death, he was not alone. The thunderbird familiar shrieked in outrage and pain it felt the death of it’s master and lashed out in its final death throes.

A spear of lightning, raw and vengeful, split air. Ingrid saw the attack coming for her back but she could not move out of the way. Her body failed. Her legs were too heavy the arcane lightning too fast and struck Ingrid’s back. Agony unlike anything she had ever known coursed through her body. It was as if her very bones had caught fire, her blood boiling beneath her skin. Her grip slackened, her legs faltering as the strength drained from them.

She fell to her knees, Geir collapsed beside her, his lifeless eyes staring skyward. The battle roared on around them, a tide of chaos swallowing all. Wendigo and druids screamed. Monsters surged from the storm, dragging the dying into the abyss. The great towers of Gladsheim cracked and fell, stone turned to glass, streets melted into rivers of molten ruin.

Ingrid tried to rise. Her fingers dug into the ash-covered ground, nails splitting as she forced her body to move. She had fought too long, bled too much her body did not obey.

Darkness crept at the edges of her vision. Her breath came short. The world around her blurred, slowed, as if time itself mourned her passing. She had known this moment would come. She was too proud to die of eventual old age. Not in quiet. Not in the comfort of a bed, but here, in war. In battle. She owed the First Princess at least one debt and that was to let her die in honor.

A figure rushed toward her through the storm and it took too long to recognize Loki. His robes were scorched, his face wild with desperation as he fought through the crumbling city. His veil had torn from his face at some point. She would have to reprimand him a Hand must not show his face. He was screaming her name, but she could not hear him. The world had grown distant, muffled, like sound through deep water.

Above, the sky split open, a final bolt of chaos striking the city like the hammer of an angry god. The ground beneath her fractured, reality itself breaking apart.

She let go.