In the Giant's Shadow, Chapter 2

Oblation

Sep 05, 2023

Gaiur followed the Völva and the elders back to Jötungatt. She walked alongside Varro and the other young woman, the blonde who appeared simultaneously as her like and her opposite. Both were young and shapely. Each was beautiful in her way, too; though Gaiur knew the hardness in her features from the rugged solitary life she led these past years didn’t appeal like the smooth skin, fair features, and high cheekbones of the young lady beside her. Next to her slender and nubile form, Gaiur’s lean-muscled and scarred body would’ve appeared positively beastly in comparison, had it not been hidden beneath weathered clothing and a chain hauberk. It was a funny feeling.

She wasn’t used to consciousness of this sort. Worrying over her appearance was a luxury she couldn’t afford through most of her life, yet she couldn’t help the compulsion to compare herself. Just to her right walked an idyllic beauty, blessed with hair of gold, eyes blue as the sky, and lips as soft and pink as some of Spring’s earliest blossoms. With her own blueish-black hair, rusty brown eyes, and travel roughened features, it was hard not to feel a little jealous.

Did she really care so much, or was she simply focusing on this feeling to distract herself? Hers was a strange situation, to be dragged into a ritual for which she had little concept, in a town she’d never visited before. Strange might have even been too soft a word for it. She was given a position of importance in all of this, whatever this truly was. A position important enough that she was all but heading this procession into the town’s center. She was to bear witness to new birth after being guided to the shade of the boughs, that’s what the Völva had said. What that would entail, Gaiur couldn’t even begin to guess.

What were the birth and boughs the Völva spoke of? There weren’t any trees growing near the town. The closest she’d seen were a long ways off, beginning near the crest of the taller hills that rolled into the next range of mountains to the south. She doubted they’d march that far. More likely, this had something to do with the monolith in the town’s center; the gate, as everyone kept calling it.

Her confusion must’ve been plain to see as they neared the town’s edge. The other girl, who one of the elders called Agnete, drew closer and spoke.

“Are you afraid?” she asked in a hushed tone.

“Should I be?” Gaiur replied, her voice equally low.

Agnete shrugged slightly. Gaiur could just see the motion in her periphery. More than that, she could see the other woman’s fear. It painted her features with increasing intensity. Soon it was more stark than the red runes painted on her face. She wasn’t sure at first if she should be afraid, but as they drew closer to the gate at the town’s center, Gaiur started to wonder if stowing her axe may have been the wrong move.

Agnete tried hard to hide the disquiet she felt. She stood a little more upright, puting on airs of pride and grace as she walked. However, once the circular town center was in sight, those plush pink lips pressed into a thin line meant to hide how they started to tremble. She wasn’t just scared, she was terrified.

“What’s all this about?” Gaiur hissed, careful to keep her voice as low as possible as they started on those last few steps toward the gate and its rune stone ring.

“New birth,” Agnete said, the tremor in her voice impossible to mask.

“The new birth of what? What does that mean?” The procession was slowing, starting with the Völva and the Ealdorman as they entered the rune stone ring. The other three elders followed after, and finally Gaiur and Agnete.

“Quickly,” Gaiur hissed as the Völva and the Ealdorman knelt before the gate, the three remaining elders filing in behind them.

“They told me I’d be next,” Agnete muttered. She almost choked on the words as her panic rose. “An honor for me and my family, but I don’t want this honor!”

Gaiur glanced around. The elders within the ring bowed before the gate, as did the people surrounding them. She leaned in close and whispered, “Sacrifice? You’re to be offered to the Gods?”

Agnete shook her head, and Gaiur got the impression that something worse than ritual death awaited them. She was sorely regretting staying her hand earlier, a feeling amplified by her own uncertainty as to why she held back to begin with.

Suddenly, the girl grabbed her by the arms and opened her mouth to speak. Words never came. A hollow clack echoed through the silent town. The Völva’s birchwood staff, Gaiur realized. Agnete’s eyes grew dim and empty with that sharp sound. The small, soft hands which clasped at Gaiur’s arms fell away and the other woman stood, upright and proud as she faced the gate. It was alarming, but not as alarming as the fact that despite her own mind telling her otherwise, Gaiur felt herself doing the same.

“The Vessel and the Witness have been gathered,” the Völva said. Once again, much like she seemed to do when she spoke to Gaiur at the altar, the shriveled old woman stood upright with arms held wide. Then she held her hands out to them, like a mother beckoning her children in for a loving hug, or the boughs of a tree inviting rest and respite beneath their shade. "It’s time. The sun reaches its peak. Come now, and join us.”

Despite the fears she showed mere moments before, Agnete approached without hesitation or a single word of protest. Gaiur felt her body trying to do the same. The muscles in her thighs flexed and tensed as they tried to move against her will, but she wouldn’t let them. With a great thrust of will she stilled herself, though her body tried fiercely to resist her. Swiftly, the tension in her muscles moved down through her legs and up into her torso. They ached. They burned. All over her body, she felt as if she stood too close to a roaring bonfire, its heat pricking at her skin. Then that heat gave way to piercing cold. It lanced down to the bone, made her want to clasp her arms around herself to fight the chill off, but she somehow knew that if she moved at all, her will would be broken.

“Come along,” the Völva said, beckoning to Gaiur with a little wave of her fingers. “There’s no reason to be afraid, we simply need you to bear witness.”

Gaiur clenched her teeth. Fury boiled in her blood! She hadn’t felt a rage like this since the days before she left Valdun, when she encountered that half-seen monster in the Glimmerfrost and the Wolfwood. Right now she wished for nothing more than the chance to draw her axe and charge into slaughter with Varro at her side, to punish this seer for trying to compel her, to steal her will away. Varro seemed to be of the same mind. She saw him move along the edges of her vision. Lean muscles rippled beneath his gray fur as he stepped forward, ready to pounce and sink his teeth into the five elders and anyone else who dared come at them.

Yet he did not pounce. He didn’t even lower his head. The hackles on his back hadn’t raised, his ears weren’t bent back, and he bared no teeth. He didn’t even so much as growl, just whimpered as he looked back at Gaiur with a curious tilt of the head as if to ask, “Why are you standing there like that?”

That’s when Gaiur’s will faltered. That’s when her body walked alongside her greatwolf, then sank to both knees in front of the gate with Agnete to her left, and Varro laying down at her right.

The Völva and the other elders formed a half circle behind them. Again the old woman clacked her staff against the ground. She started to speak, to tell of lofty things like service, honor, and how Jötungatt would always remember and be grateful for their deeds this day. It made Gaiur sick to her stomach, especially as the people began to sing praises to them. Did they know she and Agnete had been compelled? Did they understand what was being done wasn’t by their choice? Agnete had been terrified of this. It made Gaiur wonder how many times were people like her sacrificed in this way? These people, did they truly believe the Gods so bloodthirsty as to demand they sacrifice their kith and kin?

Were they right?

Gaiur didn’t believe that. There were monsters enough in this world without the Gods demanding such horrid tribute. The blood and bones of beasts were always enough to sate them save for times of war, of which these weren’t.

The jubilant praises from the people of Jötungatt soon shifted into sibilant chanting. It matched their chants from the altar and as they spoke their indiscernible words, Gaiur felt a strange crawling sensation upon her skin, as though thousands of insects crept across her bare flesh. The feeling shifted soon after, turned to tingly pinpricks which poked at her all over her body. Then the elders started chanting, too, and the Völva along with them. The old woman crossed in front of her, stepping gently over Varro’s snout. The wolf didn’t so much as stir even as the sole of one shoe brushed against his paw.

She stopped in front of Agnete. Holding both hands out, she urged the girl to her feet and led her by the hand to stand before the gate. Then the runes upon her face moved. First they undulated, then squirmed and writhed like earthworms trying to escape drowning as they burst out of waterlogged soil.

The red markings slithered across her skin, then started to grow outward. They grew from her face, curled and branched down her neck and collar, and eventually sprouted from underneath the sleeves of her robe to mark the backs of her hands and probably every other part of her, too. Then she sank back to her knees and with both hands raised high into the air, threw her head back to stare with mouth agape at the pointed crest of that rough hewn monolith.

High in the midday sky, the sun hung above the gate. Its golden brilliance was nestled at it’s zenith, resting in the gap where the pillars leaned against each other. Gaiur found herself looking up at it, watching it slowly darken. It was a sliver at first, just a tiny little curve of shadow creeping up along the sun’s edge. Seconds passed. Tt further darkened, and as it did that feeling of crawling pinpricks returned to her skin.

The Völva stood before her now. She leaned forward, took both of Gaiur’s hands in her own. They were cold to the touch. The wrinkled skin was parchment fragile and she could feel every knob of the slender bones beneath it. But it was her own hands which stole her attention. As the Völva raised them up, and herself up with them, Gaiur could see the very same markings which had branched across Agnete’s skin did the same on her own.

“The way opens!” the old woman said, her once weak and reedy voice now powerful and full of vigor. She turned to look up at the eclipsing sun, her hands raised up to match Gaiur and Agnete. “Day gives way so that the womb of night may once more receive!”

The darkness from the eclipse deepened as she spoke. What light from the sun could be seen formed a ring of white fire around the shrouded moon, and all around it the blue sky dimmed to starless black. In the span of just a few short minutes, midday had turned to an eerie simulacrum of midnight.

Gaiur willed herself to move again. Inside her mind she screamed for her body to answer, to follow her will. Draw your axe! Swing! Strike! Drive the spike into the fell seer’s heart! Stir Varro from his lethargy and with blade and tooth bring bloody death to these lunatics!

Her body refused. She stood where the Völva had left her, looked where she was urged to look, watched through eyes she knew were hers, but which felt like those of another.

The white fire ringing the eclipse started to move. Swaying and swirling, it flowed to the bottom of the ring, where it then trickled down onto the monolithic gate. Drops of golden white light rolled along the stone’s surface. They slipped into cracks, flowed along and around its many rough edges. One drop fit its way perfectly into the space between where the pillars touched. When it did its light vanished, and the pitch black of the ring-lit night undulated and billowed in the tall triangular space between the leaning stones.

The chanting grew frenetic. One by one the runes carved into the eight standing stones that surrounded the gate glowed with matching white light. Meanwhile, the smoky darkness churned with growing ferocity.

“Let her bear witness!” sang the Völva’s voice from behind.

Gaiur wasn’t sure when the old woman moved to her back. Gods, she didn’t even notice when she came near! Once more she screamed in her mind, demanding herself to move! Her muscles nearly answered, spurred into tension by the cold, withered hand that reached over her shoulder to grip her below her jaw.

Something moved in front of her eyes. In the midst of the darkness pouring from the gate it was impossible to tell what it was from sight alone. The sudden, horrible agony that pierced into her left eye told her enough. Knife or needle, it didn’t matter. Gaiur screamed in pain, in rage, and her body finally responded!

She threw an elbow back. It caught the Völva in her ribs. The old woman wheezed and stumbled, but when Gaiur clasped the haft of her axe and tried to draw it from its sling the weight of the four remaining elders fell on her. Old men or not, with her eye freshly gouged and her body still recovering from the alien compulsion that had overtaken it, it was impossible to throw them off quickly.

“Varro!” she shouted.

The wolf looked up at her lazily, his eyes sleepy squints barely visible in the billowing dark. The Völva’s cold hands were upon her again, faster , more forceful. She threw her body back and forth, tried with all she had to extricate herself from the grip of the five elders. It was too late. With burning agony, the blade plunged into her right eye, too

Blind and screaming, Gaiur flailed as she was let go. She stumbled into dirt and darkness, yet despite both eyes having been stabbed out, she could just barely see through the blood red haze. She saw Agnete, still kneeling on the ground with her head thrown back and hands held high. She saw Varro, spurred to action at the sounds of Gaiur’s screaming. His teeth locked around the throat of an elder as the townsfolk swarmed in to stop him.

Finally, she saw the pulsing, undulating darkness in the gate take on vaguely recognizable forms. Long and spindly arms ending in masses of skeletal fingers reached out from a tall and barrel-like torso, all formed of that black cloud. It leaned out from the triangular threshold, bending forward to pick up Agnete. Gaiur fell as its fingers closed around the girl, and the bloody red haze that filled her vision finally faded to black.