Sitting outside of a now abandoned cabin in the Phoenix Mountains, Solmar sat there contemplating on all that had happened in the past week, which to him had felt like no more than a day. Due to his temporary comatose state, which was apparently what his body needed to recuperate from both the mental and the physical strain of having every bone in his bone broken and his organs torn up in one of the most excruciating ways imaginable. Due to the intervention of an extremely unwanted guest, his body had been restored to normal and he had been given the tools he needed to destroy both a monstrous Yeti and a conniving Wraith which had been through quite the scheme together. Even now as he thought back on it, it seemed impossible to believe had he not been there to see it through and experience it firsthand. As it had turned out, many decades ago, a woman by the name of Gindendith had been living in the Mountain Village, a place where she used her beauty and her magic to enthrall men unto doing her bidding and make life easy for her, or at least as easy as it could be in a place where it was snowing most of the time.
When her looks started to fade through the years, she learned of a ritualistic practice that used the blood of children in order to reinvigorate her skin and her looks, thus keeping her younger and in shape for long beyond her years. By the time the jealous women of the village started looking around, snooping through her things and trying to find ways by which they could blackmail her into staying away from their men, they eventually came to figure out that some of the missing kids had never gone missing at all. Reporting this to the locals, they decided against going to the authorities, instead taking matters into their own hands and stoning the woman to death. Or so they thought. As it turned out, she survived the stoning just long enough for her to die of both hypothermia and blood loss, but not before she cursed the entire village with every fiber of her being. In so doing, after she died, her soul was denied from going to the afterlife and became warped into a Wraith with incredibly homicidal tendencies and misguided ideas as to how she might be brought back to life.
In the years that followed, she had tricked a Yeti that had been exiled by its own kind into building a large shrine for her, a place within the mountain where she could make sacrifices to the same dark god she believed had actually spared her soul from going to the afterlife and retain her powerful magic even in death. Believing that sacrificing the souls of children to this god would appease it and eventually allow her to return to her physical body, she started a string of murders that would continue for decades on end, becoming more and more elaborate as the years went by and she learned more about her undead powers. In time, she no longer needed the Yeti to go out on its own and snatch kids from their beds or from the outskirts of town as she could turn the souls of the kids into wisps who mindlessly did her bidding. Whispering to kids and casting a ghastly light, they lured the kids to a place where the Yeti could grab them without being seen, dragging them back to the cavern shrine where Gindendith would end up sacrificing them to feed into her own manic belief, only to end up angry at her own failure as she would not ascend from her spiritual body.
It made him wonder about the way things had gone, and how he had been quite lucky about the order in which these events had transpired. Had he not gone up the mountain with the intention of figuring out whether an aging lone hunter had gone missing or not, the young man would never have stumbled upon the kind of information he needed upon finding the cabin in which the hunter spent most of his days. Thanks to his journal, as well as the traces of a struggle having taken place inside of the cabin, Solmar had been able to piece things together and figure out that he was facing more than just a Yeti, but some kind of spiritual entity too. Using this information the man named Keldur had worked on for years to get, aiding him in making preparations to fight against the Yeti and the Wraith himself, that was primarily the reason why Solmar had won. Not just that, but also because Vetis had popped itself back up from the depths of his soul, nearly resulting in an outcome that might have been just as bad or maybe even worse than things would have been if Gindendith had ended up winning the fight. Regardless, had he not gone here, chances were that he might have lost.
Perhaps it was because of how the cabin had helped him out that he had chosen to return to it now, sitting on the same chair by the same table, though this time around, the place had been completely emptied out. Because of how he had ended the terror of the Wraith Gindendith, there had no longer been any purpose for the old hunter to live up here as there would no longer be missing children from the village. In a way, Solmar felt like maybe he had intruded upon the work of the hunter as he ended up being the one to save both the kids and the hunter from Gindendith's cold dead fingers, or rather talons if he were to be accurate. Keldur had put so much of his life into finding these kids, gathering information on the adversaries he was facing and making preparations towards killing them and getting as many of the kids he could save back home, but he ended up getting caught after a failed attempt at killing the Yeti. Not having taken into account the fact that the lesser wisps would actively protect it, his poisoned arrow had been taken out of commission and the wisps had chased him back to this very cabin, which was where the Yeti snagged him.
Even now, with everything behind him, he felt like this cabin still had a story to tell. With Keldur having moved back into the Mountain Village, the cabin was left to rot away as time passed, and maybe that was for the best. To Keldur, the place would always remind him of his failure after spending years on trying to save children, and Solmar could only imagine how awful that must have been. Releasing a deep sigh, he thought about the things that were closer to his own heart, the things that were bothering him personally, such as Vetis suddenly popping back up and actually saving Solmar's life. While he knew full well that the demon had only done so because it did not want to lose his host and anchor in the material world, it still did not sit well with him that he was now more or less indebted to it. On the other hand, it was perhaps more like it had made amends in a small way for murdering his parents, neighbors and other relatives eleven years ago. Staring out through the broken window, he thought about the things Sahlunin had told him before the burial halls had caved in shortly after Solmar awakened the Sunvaar Kriid sword.
The spirit of the old chieftain had seemingly also been born with a demon inside of him, though he claimed to have beaten it and turned it into a source of power, a power that allowed him to face down the very dragon that had destroyed the island of his people and forced them to move to Fiore. While he had never seen one, he imagined that the power needed to take on a dragon had to have been immense, otherwise everyone could call themselves a dragon slayer. While it gave him plenty to think about, at least the demon had gone back into whatever dark spot it crawled out of now that Solmar was both awake and back to his old self again. Because Sahlunin had only been able to give him some pointers as to how he could try and subdue the demon and make it into something he could draw power from, it had at the very least given him something to work towards at a later date. Right now, there was one thing that he simply needed to deal with before it would end up leading a life of its own. And that thing was the festival going down in the Mountain village, a festival to celebrate the hero that had taken care of the monster that stole their children in the night.
Having gone from a wandering hermit who lived in the forest of Sakuramori to suddenly becoming a small-time hero in a struggling village had been quite the change of pace for the young mage, and it took everything he had not to lose his cool over it. He had originally come to the cabin to think about what to do about it, but had ended up lost in thought about all of the things surrounding it, things he had already dealt with and things that still needed dealing with in the not too distant future. Now, he was forced to deal with something he had never experienced before, and that was scaring him a whole lot more than fighting a Wraith or a massive Yeti. Even the prospects of having to one day fight against Vetis scared him less than going down the mountain, making his way into the village and joining in on all of the festivities that were being hosted for his sake. More than anything, he just wanted to stay up here, in the cabin on the mountain and not have to deal with the praise and the expectations of having to be a hero, though he could not just stay away and leave the people who had put their money and time into trying to repay him for all that he had done for them.
As the deepest sigh of sighs escaped his lips, he slammed his fist down on the table, nearly causing the legs to crack away from under it as he made his decision known. He was going to go down there and be the person they wanted him to be, at least for a little while. Realizing how scary it would be for him, he also had to take into account all of the parents and siblings that came to the festivities that did so while knowing that their own kid, that their brother or sister had died in those caverns before Solmar could save them. While the vast majority of them had died before Solmar had even been born, he knew that he would still have to face certain expectations from the people that would be considered survivors of Gindendith's insanity. Maybe what these people needed was something like this, a celebration to take place so that it could take away the sadness they felt and at the very least take comfort in the knowledge that the other kids had returned home safely and that the killer had been utterly destroyed for good. Though it sounded a little bit too sweet for his tastes as the mere thought made his teeth ache, he knew what people were like.
They were not all like he was, complacent with the knowledge that he could just live in a forest and not be bothered by anyone, not needing any money as nature provided everything he needed, as well as not needing people as he had gone most of his life without them. So far, all of the people he had met seemed to be the exact opposite of that. They needed luxurious lives, they needed to know that someone was looking out for them and that the world was a safe place, even though the world was far from it. If him appearing at the festival as the hero they so craved would restore their belief in a safe world, even if only for the sake of the children, he just had to go. Shrugging his throat as he rose from his seat, he told Fellis to open the door and hop on his shoulder as they were going to be heading back. As scary as it was for him to stand in the spotlights, if it was for the benefit of others, he'd just have to suck it up and stop being a bitch about it.
(End of Thread)
(2149)
When her looks started to fade through the years, she learned of a ritualistic practice that used the blood of children in order to reinvigorate her skin and her looks, thus keeping her younger and in shape for long beyond her years. By the time the jealous women of the village started looking around, snooping through her things and trying to find ways by which they could blackmail her into staying away from their men, they eventually came to figure out that some of the missing kids had never gone missing at all. Reporting this to the locals, they decided against going to the authorities, instead taking matters into their own hands and stoning the woman to death. Or so they thought. As it turned out, she survived the stoning just long enough for her to die of both hypothermia and blood loss, but not before she cursed the entire village with every fiber of her being. In so doing, after she died, her soul was denied from going to the afterlife and became warped into a Wraith with incredibly homicidal tendencies and misguided ideas as to how she might be brought back to life.
In the years that followed, she had tricked a Yeti that had been exiled by its own kind into building a large shrine for her, a place within the mountain where she could make sacrifices to the same dark god she believed had actually spared her soul from going to the afterlife and retain her powerful magic even in death. Believing that sacrificing the souls of children to this god would appease it and eventually allow her to return to her physical body, she started a string of murders that would continue for decades on end, becoming more and more elaborate as the years went by and she learned more about her undead powers. In time, she no longer needed the Yeti to go out on its own and snatch kids from their beds or from the outskirts of town as she could turn the souls of the kids into wisps who mindlessly did her bidding. Whispering to kids and casting a ghastly light, they lured the kids to a place where the Yeti could grab them without being seen, dragging them back to the cavern shrine where Gindendith would end up sacrificing them to feed into her own manic belief, only to end up angry at her own failure as she would not ascend from her spiritual body.
It made him wonder about the way things had gone, and how he had been quite lucky about the order in which these events had transpired. Had he not gone up the mountain with the intention of figuring out whether an aging lone hunter had gone missing or not, the young man would never have stumbled upon the kind of information he needed upon finding the cabin in which the hunter spent most of his days. Thanks to his journal, as well as the traces of a struggle having taken place inside of the cabin, Solmar had been able to piece things together and figure out that he was facing more than just a Yeti, but some kind of spiritual entity too. Using this information the man named Keldur had worked on for years to get, aiding him in making preparations to fight against the Yeti and the Wraith himself, that was primarily the reason why Solmar had won. Not just that, but also because Vetis had popped itself back up from the depths of his soul, nearly resulting in an outcome that might have been just as bad or maybe even worse than things would have been if Gindendith had ended up winning the fight. Regardless, had he not gone here, chances were that he might have lost.
Perhaps it was because of how the cabin had helped him out that he had chosen to return to it now, sitting on the same chair by the same table, though this time around, the place had been completely emptied out. Because of how he had ended the terror of the Wraith Gindendith, there had no longer been any purpose for the old hunter to live up here as there would no longer be missing children from the village. In a way, Solmar felt like maybe he had intruded upon the work of the hunter as he ended up being the one to save both the kids and the hunter from Gindendith's cold dead fingers, or rather talons if he were to be accurate. Keldur had put so much of his life into finding these kids, gathering information on the adversaries he was facing and making preparations towards killing them and getting as many of the kids he could save back home, but he ended up getting caught after a failed attempt at killing the Yeti. Not having taken into account the fact that the lesser wisps would actively protect it, his poisoned arrow had been taken out of commission and the wisps had chased him back to this very cabin, which was where the Yeti snagged him.
Even now, with everything behind him, he felt like this cabin still had a story to tell. With Keldur having moved back into the Mountain Village, the cabin was left to rot away as time passed, and maybe that was for the best. To Keldur, the place would always remind him of his failure after spending years on trying to save children, and Solmar could only imagine how awful that must have been. Releasing a deep sigh, he thought about the things that were closer to his own heart, the things that were bothering him personally, such as Vetis suddenly popping back up and actually saving Solmar's life. While he knew full well that the demon had only done so because it did not want to lose his host and anchor in the material world, it still did not sit well with him that he was now more or less indebted to it. On the other hand, it was perhaps more like it had made amends in a small way for murdering his parents, neighbors and other relatives eleven years ago. Staring out through the broken window, he thought about the things Sahlunin had told him before the burial halls had caved in shortly after Solmar awakened the Sunvaar Kriid sword.
The spirit of the old chieftain had seemingly also been born with a demon inside of him, though he claimed to have beaten it and turned it into a source of power, a power that allowed him to face down the very dragon that had destroyed the island of his people and forced them to move to Fiore. While he had never seen one, he imagined that the power needed to take on a dragon had to have been immense, otherwise everyone could call themselves a dragon slayer. While it gave him plenty to think about, at least the demon had gone back into whatever dark spot it crawled out of now that Solmar was both awake and back to his old self again. Because Sahlunin had only been able to give him some pointers as to how he could try and subdue the demon and make it into something he could draw power from, it had at the very least given him something to work towards at a later date. Right now, there was one thing that he simply needed to deal with before it would end up leading a life of its own. And that thing was the festival going down in the Mountain village, a festival to celebrate the hero that had taken care of the monster that stole their children in the night.
Having gone from a wandering hermit who lived in the forest of Sakuramori to suddenly becoming a small-time hero in a struggling village had been quite the change of pace for the young mage, and it took everything he had not to lose his cool over it. He had originally come to the cabin to think about what to do about it, but had ended up lost in thought about all of the things surrounding it, things he had already dealt with and things that still needed dealing with in the not too distant future. Now, he was forced to deal with something he had never experienced before, and that was scaring him a whole lot more than fighting a Wraith or a massive Yeti. Even the prospects of having to one day fight against Vetis scared him less than going down the mountain, making his way into the village and joining in on all of the festivities that were being hosted for his sake. More than anything, he just wanted to stay up here, in the cabin on the mountain and not have to deal with the praise and the expectations of having to be a hero, though he could not just stay away and leave the people who had put their money and time into trying to repay him for all that he had done for them.
As the deepest sigh of sighs escaped his lips, he slammed his fist down on the table, nearly causing the legs to crack away from under it as he made his decision known. He was going to go down there and be the person they wanted him to be, at least for a little while. Realizing how scary it would be for him, he also had to take into account all of the parents and siblings that came to the festivities that did so while knowing that their own kid, that their brother or sister had died in those caverns before Solmar could save them. While the vast majority of them had died before Solmar had even been born, he knew that he would still have to face certain expectations from the people that would be considered survivors of Gindendith's insanity. Maybe what these people needed was something like this, a celebration to take place so that it could take away the sadness they felt and at the very least take comfort in the knowledge that the other kids had returned home safely and that the killer had been utterly destroyed for good. Though it sounded a little bit too sweet for his tastes as the mere thought made his teeth ache, he knew what people were like.
They were not all like he was, complacent with the knowledge that he could just live in a forest and not be bothered by anyone, not needing any money as nature provided everything he needed, as well as not needing people as he had gone most of his life without them. So far, all of the people he had met seemed to be the exact opposite of that. They needed luxurious lives, they needed to know that someone was looking out for them and that the world was a safe place, even though the world was far from it. If him appearing at the festival as the hero they so craved would restore their belief in a safe world, even if only for the sake of the children, he just had to go. Shrugging his throat as he rose from his seat, he told Fellis to open the door and hop on his shoulder as they were going to be heading back. As scary as it was for him to stand in the spotlights, if it was for the benefit of others, he'd just have to suck it up and stop being a bitch about it.
(End of Thread)
(2149)
