Everyone loves a tree to decorate in the festive season, but in the Mortal Realms if you cut down a tree and take it home you may find you’ve accidentally bitten off a little bit more than you can chew. Especially if you live in Ghyran.
Da Red Gobbo has supplied us with another festive fable from Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and this one is a frosty fable from the Everqueen herself.
WINTER’S WRATH
‘Winter knows no mercy,’ says the Everqueen, her audience enraptured by her every word. ‘For all its glittering majesty, it is the bleakest and cruellest season.’
They lean close, the forest spirits, their voices joined in hushed harmony. They whisper of the legends they wish to hear: the Reign of the Frozen Court; the Lay of Taláthien, who knew near as much sorrow in her long life as any Sylvaneth; perhaps the stirring tale of Kinnór Crystal-Root, who tricked the daemon Skarbrand into butchering his own infernal horde.
But on this cold and gloomy night, she has a darker tale in mind…
‘Mark not the trees of Futilia, lest ye be marked in turn.’
The Hunter had heard those words ever since he was a stripling, whispered by his grandma in her dotage and uttered by his father with dark foreboding weight. For two score years and seven, he had heeded them – and heeded, too, his kin’s fear of the wintry wood that bordered their quiet abode. He had never dared so much as snap a twig within sight of the dark and skeletal trees, which stood hunched like bent-back crones at the edge of the hearth’s light.
This was an ancient dread, long preceding the break of Azyr’s Storm. It came from a time when mankind knew no gods but the spirits of the wild places, when the very survival of the youngling race depended solely on the whims of the shifting seasons.
Now the Hunter had no choice but to face this primal fear. For two days now, his beloved daughter had been missing, and deep in his bones he knew where she had gone. She had strayed too deep into Futilia Wood in search of winter roses for her garlands, which she had hoped to trade at the markets on Hallowswatch.
‘I will find her,’ vowed the Hunter, ‘if’n it be the last thing ever I do.’
And so he took up his felling axe, his musket and his cloak of thick wolfhair and strode into the deepening dark. Futilia Wood opened its maw and devoured him.
Through ice and mud he struggled. Each step sapped his strength, and the bitter wind lashed at his face, turning ruddy flesh to a sickly green-white. Soon, even the old woodsman knew not how far he had journeyed; he shouted his daughter’s name, but his cries were swallowed up by the vastness of his surroundings, rendered tinny and meagre. And as he glanced behind, he saw naught but a carpet of undisturbed snow, marked by no footprints – not even his own.
‘Daughter!’ he cried. ‘Daughter, where are ye?’
There came no answer but the wind.
Each time he came to rest, the old Hunter made sure to leave the forest spirits their tribute, as the old ways dictated. He gathered leaves and twigs, carefully fashioning these into a triangular pattern and hanging them from the boughs of skeletal trees. Then he made a shallow cut upon his palm and stained the triquetral weavings red with fresh blood. Beneath these dangling charms, he left gifts of meat and berries in hope that they would appease the things that he knew stalked his every step, unseen yet ever present.
How long the Hunter walked, only the trees of Futilia can say, and they hold their secrets close. But at last the dark and cold began to take its toll. The man’s hands turned blue-black and began to mortify. His legs trembled, and each breath froze in his throat. Luminous lights surrounded him, dancing at the edge of his vision, mocking his slow decay. He had always been a strong man, but soon his limbs were leaden, and his chest burned as if branded by hot irons. He sank to his knees, and in the gloom, he wept.
Bitter laughter met his ears. The creatures of winter are cruel, and there are none they hate so much as trespassers. What did they care for the life of the Hunter or his daughter? They were of the old world, not the new. The deaths of city-dwellers and softskins were mere amusements for the revenants of the icy wood.
Rage gave strength to the stricken Hunter. He rose to his feet, cursing the deep-dwellers.
‘I have done your bidding!’ he roared. ‘I have offered gifts of thorn and blood and vine. Still ye keep my daughter from me? Still ye mock me? A curse upon you, then. A curse upon this forest!’
With that, he drew his axe and hacked it deep into the nearest sapling. Strips of bark flew free, and dark sap sprayed like blood. Again and again the Hunter struck. When his arm was too tired to do more, he fetched from his pack a skin of oil. He sought the eldest oak near to him: a long-limbed, proud old thing, its gnarled roots as thick as the Hunter was broad. He doused that oak in fuel and set it to flame with powder from his musket. And as that ancient spirit – which had endured, untouched, for centuries – erupted into flames, the Hunter knelt before it and wept.
‘Pa?’
Though his daughter’s voice was feeble, the Hunter recognised it and cried out in joy. He ran to her, and in the light of the burning tree, they embraced, both weeping with relief.
‘I saw the flames,’ she said. ‘Father, I have been so lost! But the forest gave me life: winterberries from the evergreens, a scraping of greenroot from the stones. I sheltered in the bole of this very tree, which guarded me against winter’s bite. I knew that you would come.’
Through a blur of tears, the Hunter saw the shadows move. Emerging from the darkness, silhouetted by the flames of the dying tree, came the denizens of Futilia: darksome, stooping figures, with eyes like chips of blue ice and talons stained with blood. There was depthless malice in their gaze.
And the words his father had uttered so many years ago came rushing back to him. Words that – in the end – he had not heeded.
‘Mark not the trees of Futilia, lest ye be marked in turn.’
Clutching his beloved daughter close, he closed his eyes and waited for the end.
Did the Grotmas tree in the corner of our office just move? We’re going to be keeping an eye on it for the next few days. Maybe even buy a Treelord or two for decoration next year… they’re big enough to wrap some tinsel around, right?
Next up on the Grotmas Calendar, we’re getting the unlock codes and heading down to the bunker for some new tactical missions.
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