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dreganclare · 7 years

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Frostbrood

Up from a forgotten valley, and southward over snowladen mountains, cold foothills, and boreal forest, a lone wyrm winged its way toward the fjords of eastern Northrend. Mighty wings outstretched from a powerful body, its proud scales rippled over muscle and gleamed a vibrant hue in the late-morning sunlight.

Or so they had, many years ago. Now, what scales remained in patches over its skeletal frame had long since lost their sheen and faded, along with the drake’s very memory of its stately kin, to a dull, dead gray. With each stroke of its wings, icy wind whistled through pitted leather and desiccated sinew: while the chill of frozen air rushed over its bare bones, the cold fire of necromancy blazed within them.

Bound to a knight - human, recently slain, and of formidable rank - from the time they united under the will of the Scourge, so the frostbrood drake was to remain until the end of existence as loyal servant and steed. Solstafir had become her name, and she answered solely to the Master’s command.

Riderless despite the saddle mounted on her spine and the leather satchels chained to her flanks, she soared now with singular purpose, and with a command securely about her mind. The Master’s will had rung in her consciousness, and her only thought - and her bones’ only impulse - had been to obey.

Seek.

A single imperative word, taking form in the language that she and the other Scourge-wrought things had been given. A vague command, granted clarity by the distant necessity behind it. Though she knew well the viskrath that drove the Master, and though she had borne witness to the sating of it countless times, on no occasion had the task ever fallen to her. But days had passed since the Master had last called to her; now, in place of the usual summons, that command had instead filled her mind and, with promptness that gave conscious thought to neither resistance nor obedience, she had set off in search of something living with which to bring relief.

Spectral glow within her eye sockets ever watchful, she scanned the grass-frosted field as the evergreens began to thin. A hare darted from her looming shadow, then doubled back to seek shelter as a bird of prey peeled itself from the cover of a tree. Nearby, two stout hoofed beasts squared off, oblivious in their war of sweeping tusks and flared antlers to the undead drake flying above. Each of these creatures was plump and spirited and very much alive, but none would make for suitable quarry. The Master had always favored prey with a deeper understanding of its own suffering. Rabbits and boars could cower and squeal when beset with the spectre of death – but humans and their ilk could reason and plead.

As the meadow dropped off – giving way to a cliff, to a decline, to an inlet of the sea – she dove into the ice-glazed cleft, but for the moment no boats plied the waterway below. Skimming the water’s edge and scanning the precarious half-hewn footpaths that snaked up and along the cliffsides, she began to ascend once more – when she spotted him. One of those ancient folk that called themselves vrykul, the giant of a man stood staring back at her from the wide arch of a manmade walkway bridging a narrow point between the opposing cliff faces.

From afar, the Master’s gaze remained present behind Solstafir’s own. His mind lingered about hers still, and with it persisted that gnawing viskrath. But at this sight, no command needed pass between them: this one would be their prey. Sharper now, she hastened her ascent.

The vrykul, his broad shoulders and stout body draped in fur and hides and his own thick braids, stood poised with a ready harpoon in hand. Perhaps its barb had originally been meant for some fat beast on the shore or in the sea, but he hurled it down in her direction as she neared. Too swift, too sure, too close to be cleanly dodged, the harpoon scraped past her neck, only shearing the surface of the bones it met. Were she a living creature, reliant on warm blood and the wholeness of her body, the spear’s impact would have surely sent her plummeting. And yet, painless, bloodless, and with only her momentum broken, she faltered for merely a second before regaining herself. She surged forward with a retaliatory screech, talons lashing out to strike at him.

Flesh parted, and blood spilled, and from some distant place, a flicker of relief touched her mind.

Make it suffer.

The vrykul fell back as she swiped once at him – but not to recoil in injury. Without sparing a glance for the stripe of blood now painting his breast, he dropped into a crouch and, issuing a battle cry in some incomprehensible tongue, leapt for her face. Undaunted by jaws beneath him, he grappled with spike, horn, and plated skull, latching on at once.

Her flight reduced to an encumbered wobble, the drake tossed her head as her body fought to restore balance, but her unwanted passenger held fast. Brazen fool. With a thought to dislodge him with a plunge into the frigid water below, she dipped earthward once more.

A knife appeared in the vrykul’s hand, and with it he stabbed repeatedly at one of her eye sockets.

Bash! Bash! Frenzied chips at her impervious skull. Empty passes through an eye of bodiless lichfire. The vrykul’s assault was nothing to the drake, and she would see the nuisance cast off!

She seethed with an indignant hiss, cold rage welling within her rib cage. A new plan.

A flap of her wings momentarily stabilized her position, and then with all the fury of a living dragon belching blazes from its gullet, she released a mighty blast of freezing air directly ahead. She paused with another toss of her head – ineffectual, though the vrykul had sheathed his knife and begun to climb and kick his way over her horns and toward her neck – and then dove at speed into the ice-laden fog.

The vrykul roared again, his back bearing the sting of a thousand tiny crystalline shards slicing like glass into leather and flesh.

Somewhere, the Master was pleased.

He would find further relief, Solstafir decided.

She might have made another pass through the freezing cloud, but the pest clinging to her bones was losing its tenacity. She banked, setting her sights on a cliffside ledge. It would suffice.

The packed dirt of a worn path welcomed her inelegant landing, as purposefully rough as it was. Claw and bone gouged the earth and the vrykul tumbled, his back and arms dripping with blood. He wasted no time clambering to his feet, though now his posture bespoke retreat, rather than confrontation. Even as he staggered, a shadow of the conqueror he had thought himself before, he stood a man’s head taller than the Master. It mattered not. The vrykul was good prey, and he would break.

She watched for a moment as he began to backpedal, his eyes pained and wary and not daring to break from her own. How long until he thought himself at a safe distance to turn and flee? Neither she nor the vrykul would find out. She lunged forward, to seize an arm in her maw, and took wing again. He let out a mad shriek at the snap of a bone – that devastating sensation that she knew the Master to be particularly fond of – and she shook him once before resuming a flight through the fjord, to ponder his fate.

She could dash his body against a cliff until he dangled, broken and spent as an inert ghoul – but would there be alleviation to be had in simply dropping him from this height? She could drag his mangled and shard-pelted body through the waterway—

An unbidden image invaded her thoughts, from a mind detached from her contemplation. A familiar figure, the Master’s one-eyed slave-girl. Robed in the colors of sea and sky, she was seated on polished wood with a quilt pooled about her lap.

Why? This was irrelevant. Her concern departing from the vrykul flagging in her clutches, Solstafir’s mind met the Master’s with a wordless question, a mere sense of inquiry probing for instruction or explanation.

No command came, and no clarity. His viskrath had faded, but now the Master’s mind was turning uncharacteristically unfocused – again, as it had on their last outing.

The vision persisted, and a human’s smile eased faintly onto the girl’s face.

She had liked that one. Few were the warm ones who spoke a comprehensible language, and there had been intelligence hiding deep in that one’s oft-addled mind. She had made for a better companion than the Master’s other subordinates. The mad-minded charger Strife possessed the capacity to think of nothing besides running down bodies and trampling skulls, and it was just as well that the Master kept that one tightly tethered, scarcely allowing it free movement, much less any control of its own chaotic will. Constructs endowed with mashed-together brains might have been more capable of intelligent conversation than that beast, but the Master had little interest in the lesser undead. And the last time that a ghoul had been raised…

At least the little one that called herself Miranda had offered a coherent word on occasion – and had brought uncommon comfort to the Master. He had often been at ease when placing that one on the saddle.. when it wasn’t with frustration that she was put there. How unusual.

The vision dissipated with a fleeting glimpse of the frozen northern sea, and a flicker of another recognizable form. The new one the Master had brought from the depths of that old Scourge site, the timid one that had awoken its decrepit denizens with her frightened fleeing.

She prodded once more for elucidation, but the Master’s mind had gone silent, and save for the vrykul hanging like a doll from her jaws, she was alone. In silence within and without, she continued her flight, journeying back to the valley where the Master had taken a dwelling place.

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