Runolf,
Champion of The World Tree
The Prison Halls
The World Tree
“What’s going on in there?!” Runolf bellowed for the second time that night. “Answer me! What’s going on in there with those mosquitoes?!”
The sounds of screaming and shouting had been coming loud and clear from down the hall from the moment that Runolf had entered that area of the prison halls. When he arrived at the source of the commotion, he was unsurprised to find that the reason behind it was because of one of the Magnusson mosquitoes that they had locked up earlier that day. It was one of the young women among them that had somehow broken through the wall of her own cell to invade the one next door of the elderly grey elf in it; she had then hopped onto the back of said elf and was trying to latch her fangs into his neck as he threw spells around from his hands widely to get her off of him.
“Help! Please! Get her off of me!” screamed the old elf, in broken Jördic.
“Mox, snap out of it!” shouted Eddie Pendle. He and the rest of his siblings had come back to the prison cells with Runolf to the prison hall after he had ordered them to be released from their own rooms. “Wait, don’t hurt her!” the lad said to the guards who were trying to get into the cell to intervene. “She’s just hungry! She’s not thinking straight! Hold on, Mr. Fritz!”
“Out of my way, all of you!” bellowed Runolf.
He shoved his way past the grey elf and the guards and instantly saw why none of them could get into the cell in question: the lock of the cell’s gate had been melted so that it could no longer open. One guard stuttered on about how they’d been trying to get the gate open, and when he told Runolf how long they had been there trying to save the old elf, Runolf nearly throttled them. He was also somewhat impressed by the old elf for holding off for so long. Although it clearly wasn’t without sustaining some wounds.
Finally, Runolf just took his foot and kicked the gate until it broke open. The old elf came running out of the prison cell, screaming at the top of his lungs and waving his arms around. Before Runolf could even get in there, Eddie Pendle dove past him and stood between him and the crazed vampire that was now snarling at them all.
“It’s ok, it’s ok.” The lad spoke to the young woman as if she were a spooked animal rather than a rabid monster. Eddie rolled up his sleeve and said, “Here. Come here, take some blood…”
With unnatural speed that sent both Runolf and the guards stumbling backwards—hands quickly reaching for their weapons—the mosquito darted over to the lad, bared her fangs as she salivated over his arm, and sunk her fangs into it.
Runolf’s stomach turned and his blood ran even colder at the sight of her feeding.
“Sir? Please open the other cells? We need to help them.” It was Inga Pendle that had spoken. She and her other siblings had each gone to the cell doors of their vampire travelling companions—all of which were drooling at the sight of them like the one currently feeding, or else yanking at the cell doors trying to get out—and were waiting to be let in so they could feed them.
“…Fine. Do it.” Runolf said to his guards. “Don’t argue with me, just do it! That’s an order!”
Once the cell gates of all the cells were open, the vampires among them latched onto their friends’ arms and necks in a sickening display of what Runolf supposed counted as a vampire’s excuse for a family meal.
Horrific, he thought to himself.
Then he rounded on the guards posted at the cells and demanded, “Why was that elderly elf placed inside of a cell surrounded by several vampires?! Why wasn’t he sent to me for questioning along with these other elves?”
The guards stuttered on for a moment about how a mistake had been made, and after nearly suffocating one of them for this lapse of judgment, Runolf finally took a deep breath and looked back over to the feeding vampires and their companions.
It took a long, sicking while, but eventually each of the vampires seemed to calm down a considerable amount. Then finally, one by one, they all unlatched themselves from the grey elves—all of which seemed to be in some sort of daze as all of their eyes were glazed over.
“They’re…ok.” said the young woman that had been feeding on Eddie Pendle. Like the elder elf that she had just been trying to feed on, she too spoke in a very broken Jördic. “They’ll be alright. They’re just…mesmerized…it’s what happens when we…devour. We, um…we have these toxins—poisons? They’re in our fangs and they help us to…it makes it so that…”
Perhaps noticing the disgusted and horrified looks on all of their faces, the vampire’s voice seemed to fade away entirely—or perhaps she had just given up trying to speak their language. She sheepishly rose to her feet and Runolf—along with the guards, were quick to pull out their swords just in case.
All the vampires then pulled themselves away from their blood donors, and they all cast their wary, glossy white eyes on Runolf and the guards.
“Why are you letting us out?” said one of the young men among the vampires, as the elves started snapping out of their daze.
“We’re not.” Said Runolf, sternly. “…We’re letting you go. By orders of the World Tree, you are to leave Vinterlund and never return.”
“Why?” Eddie asked, getting back on his feet with the help of the young woman who was just feeding on him.
“Because we now know why you lot are out here. We know how you mosquitoes are all able to survive in the sunlight. And we know that if we let you all go, there’s a chance that the Blood Knight will continue chasing you, and leave Vinterlund without trying to cause trouble for our own elves.”
Runolf felt a small tinge of pride in seeing the expressions of the vampires suddenly turn grim upon hearing his statement translated by the elves. However, he also felt some shame in the same moment when he saw the horrified look that it had in the grey elves when they too took in what he said.
“Don’t look that shocked.” Said one of the guards. “You’re lucky we’re treating you buggers this well at all. If any Jörd outside of Vinterlund had been the ones to catch you, you’d all have been killed off by now. Vampires and elves.”
“Wait,” said one of the vampire lads, as he opened up the small cage that had the two pixie sisters inside of it. “…Do you smell that?”
For a second, Runolf thought he was joking. Then he watched as all of the vampires looked up at the ceiling and started sniffing the air like a hound might.
One guard then jumped with a small shout, looking up at the ceiling along with the vampires.
When Runolf did the same, he saw the cause for alarm; hanging from the walls, creeping out from the shadows came several figures dressed in black, tattered clothing. And before anyone had a chance to say anything, the enemy pounced.
*
Mox Magnusson
The Prison Halls
The World Tree
Orn was the first person who the thralls tried to strike at. They dropped from the walls, weapons drawn and snarling like Mox herself was only minutes ago. As the human thralls continued to drop, the battle unfolded as thrall daggers met Lundi spears and the Magnussons’ own claws.
“Don’t let them go to waste!” yelled Mox’s oldest brother, Halldor, addressing all of their siblings. “If one of these thralls gives you an opening, drain them! We’re all starving and their blood is now ours by forfeit!”
“Heather! Glimmer!” Mox called out to her pixie servants—both of which were frittering around the air of the battle scene, trying their best not to get snatched out of the air by the thralls. “Both of you stay close to me! Your magic is useless here! Come here now!”
“Yes, Miss!” Both of the pixies zipped through the air in her direction and buried themselves inside of Mox’s lantern-cages hooked to either side of her belt. How safe either of them would actually be in there, though, Mox could only guess.
The leader of the human guards—Eddie said he was called Runolf—gave some sort of quick speech to his men in their own tongue. What exactly that was, though, Mox would never know, but whatever it was, it clearly helped the guards steel themselves and straighten their backs.
But before anyone could move to act, the last opponent of the battle finally dropped from the shadows, blocking their path. The Blood Knight landed with a ground-shaking THOOM and when he rose to his full height, Mox steeled herself for the coming calamity that may unfold. To say that she had little hope in the Imagebearers—the Humans—of the grove being able to fend him off was an understatement.
And so, Mox started pulling her Halldor back towards where the guards were leading. “Don’t let them draw you in! We only barely survived the last time we went up against them!” she then turned to her other siblings and said, “We’ll find another time to eat later! We have to run!”
Grudgingly, her siblings turned to follow her and the Pendles as they followed the guards through the halls. All along the way, the thralls were hot on their tails, causing the Magnussons to cover the rear, smashing the heads of them into the walls—each dead thrall splattering into a gory mess. Even so, the sheer numbers of the rabid men and women on their tails were constantly threatening to overwhelm them with their numbers alone.
“How did this many thralls even get up here undetected?” Orn shouted above the fray. “Shouldn’t the dryad be able to tell when this many people invade her own tree?!”
“There must be something wrong.” Mox called back over. “Maybe the Blood Knight got to her first before coming after us.”
“At least none of them can use magic while we’re here.” Said Brynhild. “Ingrid! Vor! Ask the guards how much further to their stables!”
“It’s just up ahead now!” said Ingrid. “Just a little bit further. Just through those doors and—MOX, BEHIND YOU!”
Mox’s feet left the ground and her body when flying. She collided with the others at what felt like breakneck speed. With no time to recover, someone had grabbed Mox by the hair and lifted her up into the air. Eye to eye with the Blood Knight, Mox’s vision was dimmed as her mind wanted to slip into a deep sleep—thus was the impact of the massive mace that he had struck her with and sent her into the air.
“Did you really think that those pathetic blood sacks would be able to stop me?” spat the Blood Knight into her face. “Nothing will stop me from retrieving you for my mistress—for your mistress, Lady Mox.”
*
Runolf,
Champion of The World Tree
The Prison Halls
The World Tree
Meanwhile…
With great difficulty—thanks to a very broken arm—Runolf struggled to pick himself up off of the floor. They were steamrolled. Most of the guards were dead—trammelled by the sheer overwhelming swarm of thralls that had somehow gotten past their defences without notice.
It’s because of Aslauga, he thought to himself. Because she’s injured. This was what she meant when she said she couldn’t protect them. It’s up to us now…to me.
The best that he could do was get himself onto his knees—his breathing wheezy as the Blood Knight had used his mace to deal a mighty blow to his chest. That being said, it was only thanks to his armour—and perhaps the grace of his idols—that he was alive at all.
That’s when his body convulsed and he heaved up a fresh puddle of blood as his innards shifted around in unnatural, broken ways he cared little to think about.
“Great.” Runolf muttered to himself. “More blood for these monsters…some champion you are.”
That was when he remembered the weapons he was given—the gauntlets. He pulled them off of his belt and looked down at them.
No avoiding it now…you need her help.
He was about to place one of his hands into one gauntlet, when one guard who was propping himself on his feet with his spear said, “My Lord? What should we do?”
“…Fall back.” Said Runolf. “Fall back and sound the alarm. I want all of you to rally the guards—rally all the soldiers and tell them I’ve given the order to have all the citizens in the branches to be sent to the shelter. Put priority for that on the elves! That’s goes for the women, children, and the men! Even the warriors—I don’t want to give the vampires a chance to kidnap a single one of the elves! We can’t afford it!”
When the surviving guards ran off to have his orders carried out, Runolf looked back down at the massive, wooden gauntlets he had been given, took a deep breath in and out, and then he put them on.
Instantly, a green moss crawled from the inside of the gauntlets and creep up his forearms, stopping just below his elbows. With each inch they had crept, Runolf shuddered as a shockingly frigid and electric power was pumped through his skin and into his veins via the moss.
It wasn’t magic—it felt nothing like that kind of power.
On one hand, there was this raw, blood-boiling, body-shaking rage. It coursed through every vein in his body. Yet there was a soothing sensation that came with that same burning. And as the burning sensation made its way through him, the broken bones in his arm started to mend and snap back together. Even the pain in his knee—the pain that had haunted him for years—slowly faded away.
Suddenly a rush of energy shocked his system, and Runolf felt like he would never need to sleep again—like he could run at top speed for miles if need be.
I don’t need to run for miles. I only need to catch up to them…
With the strange moss resuming its trek across his body, Runolf launched himself forward, and he bolted through the halls and passageways leading to the stables where he had sent the Elves and the Magnussons. He traversed the halls with a supernatural swiftness, as if he were a spectre in flight.
Panicked handmaidens, guards, and citizens of the World Tree’s settlements all had to duck and dodge out of his way as best as they could whenever he crossed paths with them.
Then he saw them—the Blood Knight was holding one of the Magnussons up in the air by her hair as his thralls were viciously beating the rest of the elves and vampires. All of them completely were unaware of Runolf closing in on them. Shifting himself so that he was now running on all-fours, Runolf surprised himself by letting loose a hardy laugh as he launched himself at the monster and let loose a roar that would have put a grizzly to shame.
By the time the Blood Knight realized what was happening, Runolf had already collided with him, and the two of them went crashing onward through the doors of the stables, startling every mount in the giant room, and leaving the vampire in the Knight’s clutches to fall to the ground.
“No! That’s not possible!” The Blood Knight roared. “How could you have—what are you?!”
Runolf raised his hands and then brought them crashing down upon the Knight, allowing the power of the gauntlets to fully take over as their impossibly sharp claws worked to cut gashes into the vampire’s crimson armour.
As the two fought, the surrounding space erupted into pandemonium: the fluff-moos in their stables were mooing and thrashing about in their panic as the pair kicked and tossed up things like buckets, weapons, pitchforks, and other stray items in the wake of their fight. Torches fell to the ground and while the World Tree herself wasn’t set ablaze, the mixture of straw and hay on the ground did and soon the shadows of Runolf and the Blood Knight danced in the background as the two fought in their burning wreckage. Amongst it all, blaring in the fight’s background, was the sound of the alarm horns blaring all around the World Tree signalling danger to all of her citizens.
The Magnussons and the Elves were—thankfully—smart enough to use this chaos as a distraction, and were trying their best to sneak their way onto several of the fluff-moos that were desperately trying to leave the stables themselves.
“Do you really think that you can distract me from them?” bellowed the Blood Knight. “Did you really think I had just forgotten, Imagebearer? I don’t care how you came about this new strength of yours—I will crush you here and now, then take the quarry that is rightfully mine!”
Then the Blood Knight let loose an attack Runolf couldn’t dodge even with his newfound abilities—he attacked Runolf’s mind. A barrage of laughter, howling, and screaming bombarded Runolf’s mind all at once. He felt like his head was about to pop and the only thing that he could do was—
NO, came a grim woman’s voice that pushed out everything else. There will be no surrender, my champion. Give yourself over to the power of your queen. Embrace my power. Let go of your hesitation and become unleashed!
*
Mox Magnusson
The Prison Stables
The World Tree
To say that getting the Jörds’ mounts ready to be flown was difficult—given the surrounding chaos—would be a complete understatement.
The bizarrely fluffy, colourful, flying cows were rearing and bucking at every attempt that Mox and the others made to calm them down, and one of them even came very close to knocking out poor Mr. Fritz.
“Just hop on to them!” yelled one of Mox’s sisters, Freya. “We don’t have time for this! Just hop on and fly!”
“RAAAWRG!” The tree beast that was once been the imagebearer ordering the other guards around was doing everything in his power to batter and tear the Blood Knight to shreds.
The man’s transformation was truly bizarre: no longer a Man made of flesh and blood, most of the Jörd’s skin had been transmuted into some strange combination of a crawling, green moss, and the same black bark with glowing light blue veins that the World Tree had. The only solidly human part of him left was the man’s face, which was stuck in a constant state of absolute rage.
“Mox!” Eddie shouted at her. “Snap out of it and hop on! WE NEED TO MOVE!”
Mox turned to see Eddie seated on a purple, fluffy, winged bull with his arm reaching out to her. She took his hand, and before she had even settled properly on its back, Eddie had kicked the beast into flight, and it was more than happy to oblige by that point.
As their party flew their mounts out the large twin doors of the stables and into the blizzard raging outside, Mox looked back over her shoulder at the World Tree and saw fires erupted all over it. Screams were coming from the dark as the chaos of its invaders struck at the lives of its inhabitants. And amidst it all, the roars of the one human still fighting the Blood Knight still reached them, which only made Mox’s stomach to tighten upon hearing it.
“Are you just going to leave him, then?” Came a woman’s voice from behind Mox.
Mox whirled back around, and found that it was no longer Eddie sitting on the creature’s back in front of her, but it was Muddles, who was now looking back at her, clearly waiting for an answer.
“What am I supposed to do?” Mox yelled over the noise. “I don’t have the strength to—”
“Either you fight him now while you have the human there helping you,” said Muddles. “Or you can all fight him all on your own once he swallows the man whole!”
Mox’s entire body shuddered as the chill of the cold winter winds mixed with the dread of doing what the muse was now suggesting. “Please help me…I can’t…I can’t…”
The muse silently looked back at her for a few moments with the same whimsical smile carved into the muse’s face.
“Ugh! Fine! Don’t grant my wishes then! I’ll do it myself.”
After closing her eyes and taking a deep, pained breath, she opened her eyes and just as she suspected, Muddles was gone and Eddie was back in her place. She tapped Eddie on the shoulder and said, “Keep going ahead! I’m going back!”
“You’re going—what?!” Eddie shouted back over the winds. “Mox, don’t! Let them handle it! We have to keep—Mox!”
She would not argue the matter with him, she needed to help clean up the mess that she made. Just as she heard the shouts of her siblings trying to figure out from Eddie was was happening, After taking off he lantern-cages containing her pixies and placing them into the hands of one of the Pendles, Mox simply leaped off of the colourful, flying bull they were riding, and exploded into a swarm of murderous bats.
Upon taking flight, Mox’s bats watched as the fight continued within the stables and saw that the battle was still leaning heavily on the side of the Blood Knight, even with the Human’s transformation.
This would be a great time to have my axe…
Just as she was closing in on the stable doors, her siblings appeared beside her in their own bat swarms—all eight of the swarms chattering and squeaking at her own swarm furiously.
“Mox, what are you doing?!” Brynhild thought at her.
“We’re responsible for this!” Mox responded. “I can’t just leave them!”
“Are you nuts?” Came Orn’s thoughts. “Of course you can! Didn’t you pay attention to anything they said or did to us since we got here? If it weren’t for the Pendles they would have staked us or doused us in holy water or something!”
“And they didn’t even treat the Pendles that well either!” said Stella.
“Go back to the Pendles then!” Mox blurted out. “I can do this on my own!” After a moment of waiting, none of the other swarms thought anything to her, or left her side. “Alright then. If you’re all done arguing with me, let’s clean up our mess.”
