Like the icy wail of the witches of Kislev, the strong wind whizzed around the iceberg and struck mercilessly. In the world of ice and snow, the sky is pale and cold, the mountains are covered with ice and snow, and the silence is as if time has frozen. Every breath he took was like inhaling biting cold wind. The cold left a layer of frost on his skin, which was irresistible. The ice on the ground made every step difficult, as if we were stepping on a cold and unforgiving world.
Like a big enemy, Darkus went to the cinema to watch some damn 4D movie. Fortunately, this immersive feeling was a hundred times more real than a 4D movie, but this was not what he wanted to experience. He just wanted to have a good time. sleep instead of having weird dreams.
Then the perspective kept changing, showing a town entrenched in the icy fjord like a beached beast. The town spread along the cold coastline, all the way to the cliffs and tundra in the distance. The deep waters of the fjord make the town a perfect harbor for longships, and a small flotilla of fishing boats carefully maneuvers among the longships returning from their raids, heading out into the fjord.
"The fjords, the longships... aren't these Viking barbarians from Scandinavia? No, it's Norsca!"
The town presented a chaotic scene, consisting of earthen longhouses and wooden taverns. Slaves' fenced-in huts were scattered haphazardly around the lord's stone castles and longhouses, pig pens lined the muddy streets, and residents tromped through the settlement at random in the mud.
Perhaps the owners of these animals believed that the mark on the animals would protect their property from intrusion. The tents of merchants and craftsmen could be seen everywhere. Where there was enough space, tents were erected in towns and cities, with eye-catching banners advertising their goods and services. characteristics. On a huge wooden platform near the coast, whalers were busy cutting into the flesh of a huge black whale, while others extracted valuable whale oil from the carcass.
High up on the hillside overlooking the fjord, a huge wooden palisade wall separates the entire mountain. Behind it stood a second wall, built of cut stone that almost obscured the surrounding marble tower.
"Why does this stone look familiar?" Darkus followed his wandering vision and looked down at everything. He suddenly felt familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before, but he couldn't remember it for a while.
In the early morning, the weak sunlight on Obion Island began to peek out from under the thick fur at the tent window.
Drusala woke up slowly, stretched and sighed contentedly. She smiled as the warmth of the bed tried to lull her back to sleep. She rolled onto her side, her arms falling into the warm emptiness beside her as she moved. She woke up immediately, knowing that her lover must be dreaming again.
"My dear, do you have any plans for today? You got up very early." After Drusala finished speaking, she pretended to yawn.
"There are a lot of things to do, and I don't like the damn weather in this place." Darkus sat on the edge of the bed and put his elbows on his knees, hunched over and said.
"I seemed to see a town. Somewhere in Norsca, I also saw a particularly familiar black marble." Darkus was trying to remember, but he couldn't remember what he saw before waking up. , it seems that in a cave, there is a fork in the most conspicuous place?
Drusala, who was already sitting on the edge of the bed, put her head in Dacus's arms, holding Dacus's long hair, and quietly listened to Dacus telling what happened in the dream. Her mood was very dull. She had been in contact with Darkus for a long time and knew that Darkus in the dream was not like reality.
All Drusala could do was listen, and while it was easier to discuss these things as if they were just dreams, she knew very well that sometimes Darkus' dreams weren't of his own making, but more like... the public A vision from God, or a sign that something is about to happen. Just like the last time the dragon tamer appeared in Darkus' dream, then such a big thing happened on Obion Island. All she can do is listen, instead of trying to influence or control anything. She knows what Darkus's boundaries are.
"If..., if I remember correctly, there were two black arks that sank in the Claw Sea." Drusala reminded them indifferently, talking about topics that would not have any impact.
"Yeah, when you said that, I remembered it. Isn't that black marble from Black Ark..." Darkus, who was gradually waking up, also reacted.
Darkus, who was already awake, smiled evilly and stroked Drusala's cheek with his thumb, trying to make Drusala smile. After several attempts, they started to quarrel again.
Just like Darkus said, he doesn't like the weather on Obion Island. He plans to leave Obion Island after finishing the matter. Today's plan is to study a strange helmet, if nothing unexpected happens. This helmet should be his second extraordinary item.
——
"When will the gods stop sending me these visions? When will they relent? How much pain do they want a person to endure to appease them?"
The prophet lives in a strange little shack. , located between the blacksmith shop and the warehouse where salted fish is stored. Unlike its neighbors, the shack was built not of wood and stone but of whale bones, fragments of a dozen whale ribs tied together with thick rope to create a strange, ramshackle shelter. .
Each bone is richly carved with scenes from the legend, and it is said that if one studies the carvings for too long, the carvings will change, and some carvings depict things not yet recorded in the legend.
Visitors are not sure whether they believe the stories, there are always some strange stories about the prophets. He always felt uneasy inside the house the Prophet was in. No matter what the season, the air was always colder than outside. There was also a rough ceiling overhead to keep out the rain, but even in all his travels and sightings he could not name the scaly beast that once wore such craggy skin.
Fragments of various shapes hung from hooks on the scaled hides, so moving anywhere within the cabin required effort, like an explorer forcing his way through the jungle. The dried shells of bats, mammoths, spiders that smell of blood, stagnant weeds that look like severed fingers, the shells of mummified crocodiles, perhaps these are the mysterious trinkets of the prophet.
Visitors push past a string of bone shells and a rope fashioned from manticore intestines into the center of the hut. A ring of eerie blue flames smoldered around the skull, and it unnerved him that the flames burned so brightly but did nothing to relieve the coldness of the place. He glanced at the floor around the fire, then sat down on a pile of wolf skins some distance from the flames. As he sat down, a burst of mad gibbering reached his ears, the utter idiotic gibbering of a deformed monster locked in a silver cage.
The monster looked at him with evil, faceted eyes and licked its long claws with its tongue.
The visitor threw a stone at the monster and smiled unconcernedly when he heard the monster growl in displeasure. He hoped the prophet wouldn't keep him waiting too long, he knew from past experience that the monster's gibbering would start to make him dizzy after a while. If he had to have a headache, he'd rather induce it himself with barrels of mead.
As soon as this thought entered the visitor's mind, his mood became worse. Mead was the source of all his troubles. After the Battle of Thousand Skulls, he celebrated his victory, and he and his warriors enjoyed a victory feast worthy of legend.
That celebration now seemed so empty, for it brought doom to the visitor and tarnished his glory. In the battle of the Thousand Skulls, no one could defeat him. He used the skull of the enemy tribe king as a cup to drink mead. It took four barrels of mead to put him under the table. This feat even made food The human and demon mercenaries were all amazed.
However, before the mead could completely overwhelm the visitor, he was already drunk and boasting of his exploits. Before he fell, he had killed all the monsters in the Chaos Wasteland twice, and slapped the Southern Emperor with his own hands, but these did not matter, it was his last proud boast that doomed him. Doom, who claims to be stronger than any warrior in the mortal world or the Realm of Chaos!
The Dark Gods love to punish arrogance, even unintentional drunken talk.
That night, the visitor saw his first vision. A dark shadow sneaked up on him in his dream, a shadow darker than night, like endless darkness. The shadow told him that he was a messenger from the gods, and the gods were unhappy with his arrogant remarks!
However, to give the visitor a chance to prove his arrogance, much to the amusement of the gods. In his dreams he saw wonderful worlds, places he could only recognize from the vaguest legends. He saw cities built of bones and the towering towers of the elves. He saw the vast subterranean lairs of rodents, the jungle temples of lizardfolk, the crumbling fortresses of greenskin orcs, and the gilded halls of dwarf lords, drowning in vast tides of blood wherever he passed.
This is the visitor's hunting ground, as he travels the world seeking combat to prove himself against any warrior, mortal or otherworldly, living or immortal. He would offer sacrifices to the gods whom he had offended, but the sacrifices were of the gods' choice. The Shadow explains that if he fails, his soul will be forever cursed by the gods and deemed unworthy of entering their halls. Shadow then spoke with relish that when he failed, the gods would take great pleasure in tormenting his soul for eternity.
Were it not for the physical changes that occurred in the visitor, he might have believed the vision to be nothing more than a drunken nightmare. His tongue became something inhuman, as sharp and grooved as a bird's tongue, and he discovered that he could speak any language, no matter how foreign and unpronounceable it was to him.
One Kurgan shaman called this strange power "the gift of speech."
Afterwards, the gods gave the visitor his first task, which was to go to Nehekhara to kill a Tomb King named Chaliops and sacrifice his withered entrails to Nurgle. The gods even told him in a dream the exact location of Chaliopus.
Without his best friend Sigvart, the visitor might have despaired, for Nehekhara lay so far to the south that only the bravest Norscans could attempt such a voyage, which would take even a single swift ship several days to complete. A voyage that would take months to complete, and the voyage was only the first step, Chaliopus was located in the great desert...
Sigvart, the gray-haired Norse warrior, had heard of the Skelein witch Bagayar making A "sky ship" that can sail anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. This is a legend that the visitor has never believed, but it is his only hope to overcome the curse.
The visitors used all the treasures and spoils from previous battles to recruit a large number of warriors to attack Baghayar's castle. Finally his sword cut off the witch's limbs and threw her into the cauldron. He named the longship "Teeth of the Sea" and soon discovered how absurd the legend was. It was not flight and wind that allowed the Sea-Fang to sail quickly across the seas. Instead, the Sea-Fang disappeared from the world, entering a realm known only to the gods and the Daemons of Chaos, sailing on the phantom tides of the realm.
"One may create one's own misfortune."
The sound was like a crow's cry, hoarse and rough.
The visitor's recollections were interrupted as he turned to find the Prophet limping through the debris.
The prophet was old, so old that the elders in the town could not remember what he was like in his youth. His hair was as hairless as a turtle's egg, and his face was wrinkled like dried parchment. A pair of cold, blind eyes stared blankly into his bloodless face. He leaned on a staff carved from troll bone, dragging his twisted left foot behind him. The left foot is more like a shapeless mass of flesh, although it bears some resemblance to an albatross' webbed feet.
"I've tried it!" the visitor replied rudely to the prophet.
There is no need to introduce yourself. A blind prophet does not need sight to understand things. Whenever a visitor visited the Prophet, he had the impression that the Prophet knew everything he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
"Maybe you have succeeded, Ulfric." After the prophet finished speaking, he pointed his stick at the monster. After the monster calmed down, he accurately found a moldy pillow and sat down.
"But! This is not the life I want!" Ulfric roared.
"This is the life you have created for yourself. Few are resourceful enough to outsmart the gods. Few are strong enough to survive the challenges. Your name has spread across all the lands of Norsca, and so has your fame. It will be recorded in the legends," the prophet said, staring at Ulfric with his blind eyes.
"To hell with fame and glory! I want my old life back!" Ulfric roared hysterically, slamming his fists on the floor.
"Why? The gods are looking down on you! Your body bears the mark of their favor! You have the talent to serve them, which is beyond the reach of many mortals." The prophet's voice was full of confusion.
Ulfric's eyes were filled with sadness, not hatred. Before the War of Thousand Skulls, the king had betrothed his daughter to him, but everything changed. As long as the curse of the gods was upon him, he would not dare take anything from the town. Impossible hope tortured him cruelly, and a love that could never be realized consumed him like pain. No matter how desperate he was, the hopes he held dear had no chance of coming true.
“It is not our boastful tongue that has brought you the curse of the gods, how can we marry our daughter to a man like you? Marked by the gods, cursed by the gods, killing people all over the world in the name of the gods? What kind of life would this be for a princess? Will she stay here forever waiting for you, waiting for a man despised by the gods? She will surely be too proud of you to free her from an impossible situation. Aged, withered, husbandless, childless by your promise? If you really love my daughter, you must free her, why do you force her to share your curse?" The gods have seen this, even The king also understood this fact.
"How long will it take you to die? How long will you fight against the will of the gods, and to what end? Marry a girl and have a family of descendants." The prophet smiled darkly as he spoke, and then continued, "Maybe steal Her father's throne? Bah! What is woman, offspring, and throne? Dust, worse than dust!" "
The gift of the gods, a reward that one retains forever. The rewards of love, greed, and ambition, these all follow one Men rot in their graves," said the Seer, wagging a withered finger at Ulfric.
"But I still want them, I didn't seek this curse..." Ulfric growled.
"Sometimes the feet take paths that the mind does not know."
"I did not come here to be told to accept my doom." Ulfric stood up from the pile of wolf skins excitedly.
"You have come so that I can explain your vision," the Seer said, waving to Ulfric to sit down.
"They found me just after I sailed back. This is... this is... will they... be like this now?" When Ulfric said, he did not try to hide his anxiety, although this idea was very important to him. It was terrifying for him that he would spend the rest of his life sailing the world, moving from one hunt to another without stopping or resting.
"I can't say, I can only try to discern the will of the gods from your vision." The prophet said uncertainly.
"I see myself among the dead!" Ulfric's voice trembled. What frightened him was not death, but the terrible fate waiting for him in the other world.
"Sometimes the gods conspire to destroy one of the selves without killing the body. When this happens, a new self emerges to command the body. Sometimes a person has the power to destroy himself on his own." Prophet As he spoke, he knocked on his bony chest.
"I have nothing to say about the rest of your vision. The signs are clear enough. The sacrifice chosen by the gods will be offered to the great Crow God." "
But who? Where? My first time Seeing such vague and uncertain visions, with the location constantly changing, let alone prey." Ulfric asked.
"I don't know, there's something wrong with that. Before this, your visions were as clear to me as I've ever had myself. But this time it's different, it's like trying to see through a thick fog. The shapes and The shadows are all there, but I can't see more. But once a place has been seen, why does it have to have a name to find it?" Tears of blood flowed from the prophet's blind eyes. He raised his hands to cover his eyes and rubbed the corners of his eye sockets. said.
"I came here to find answers, but I left with more questions than when I came!" Ulfric frowned, and the prophet could not tell him more information. He grumbled after tearing a gold band from his arm in annoyance and throwing it to the floor at the Prophet's feet.
"That's because you don't like the answer you're given. The gods answer every prayer, but few are wise enough to understand the answer!" scolded the prophet.
"I'd rather find a barrel of mead and a plate of roast meat!"
"Then I wish you good appetite, remember your dream, and listen to it, otherwise I'm afraid we won't speak again." reminded the prophet.
"What did you say, what did you mean?" On the way out of the prophet's shack, Ulfric froze, and a chill climbed up his spine. He turned around and tried to fight his way through the maze of debris, questioning as he walked.
"When you get the answers, there are more questions. Change! is inevitable." The prophet's laughter was so sharp that it seemed to be spoken in a hundred different voices at once. Some were not even the sounds of words, but more like exploding flames, howling winds and broken trees. Some are murderous roars, pleas for mercy, and crazy laughter.
Ulfric struggled toward the voice, rage swelling within him. He savagely tore strings of shells from the ceiling, yet the hairs on his arms stood up as his hands touched the curve of the shed wall. He was sure he had retraced his steps exactly, but he reached the far end of the shack without passing through the central opening, and when he turned he could still see the eerie blue fire.
Ulfric forced his way through the shack again and found himself blinking in the sunlight, the sounds of the smithy and the salty smell of the warehouse welcoming him back to the mortal world.