The Fen Beast

The frigid night sky was alight with a living sheen of deep blues, sanguine crimsons, and greens as deep as the densest jungles of Lon Dar. In the silver moonlight, the snow pouring down in great torrents seemed to be of the finest powder, but not a speck of it fell upon the cowl of the sorcerer Yonar Helthris. In better days, Yonar Helthris had been a court magician to the emperor of Herud Hiti, but the coming of Mal Char-Nal had wrought an evil doom for the wizards of that city. Not with all their strength combined could they have put up even a meager resistance to the mighty necromancer, and Yonar Helthris had been the only one of them to escape with his life.

Among the slain was Kotruna Krimell, lover of Yonar Helthris, and a sorceress mighty enough to match any mage of Herud Hiti. Until the coming of Mal Char-Nal.

“Ssstop here, oh my massster,” hissed the serpent who clung to Yonar Helthris’ shoulder, “Thisss iss the place.”

Yonar Helthris had not the mastery over unclean spirits which Mal Char-Nal boasted of, but he did have knowledge of ancient lore. He knew of a long-vanished Polarian civilization of which only two traces now remained. The first of these was the people of the frozen wastes, a scattering of roving bands of red-bearded barbarians with no memory of the illustrious ancestors whose legacy they trampled with their backward ways. The second was a network of leylines, metaphysical conduits where energies from beyond the stars could be gathered and directed through the old Polarian empire.

With his own strength, Yonar Helthris could not hope to achieve his task. But here, where the ancient leyline ran directly beneath the aurora borealis, the exiled necromancer would have the power he needed.

The serpent crawled down Yonar Helthris’ arm and landed softly on the snow, where it peered into the frozen night with its keen yellow eyes. The wizard cast down his knapsack and began to rummage through it for the tools and ingredients he would need this night. First he retrieved his lamp, and filled it with an oil made from the fat of a long-extinct species of walking whale. He lit this and set it down by the serpent. Next he drew out a vial of nectar from the blackthorn lotus of far-flung Caho, whose aroma was death to inhale. In this weather, Yonar Helthris knew the nectar would give off no fumes, but he treated the vial with great caution as he dipped a fingerbone pen nib into the liquid and traced arcane symbols into the snow with it. Third, he grasped a rib bone from a woman who had been strangled by her mother. This had been most difficult to obtain. He laid it down in the center of one of the symbols. Finally, the key ingredient: a lock of hair from Kotruna Krimell. He tied the hair around one end of the rib bone, grabbed the lamp, and stood up.

A single footstep crunched in the snow behind Yonar Helthris. He looked down to where the serpent was, and his skin crawled. The sorcerer’s patron demon was nowhere to be seen. He turned around.

The beast’s arms were scabrous as leprosy and as grey as frozen ash. Its eyes shone a weird pale blue like the arctic saber cat’s, and its fangs dripped a matte black venom which reflected no light as it pooled in the snow.

A ga-ho’ul. An ogre of the frozen fens.

Yonar Helthris was confused. No mere fen beast could send a demon, however petty, fleeing back to the violet hells. Then the stench of antediluvian necromancies hit him. The ga-ho’ul reeked of magics which were ancient and forgotten when the long-vanished Polarian empire was young. The beast was ensorcelled. The necromancer realized he had walked into the trap of Mal Char-Nal. The greater sorcerer had guessed that the lesser would come to this conjunction of energies to revive his lover. The serpent had fled for fear of being enthralled by the tyrant of Herud Hiti.

Of course. Mal Char-Nal had made the obvious prediction. This was the only place where a wizard of Yonar Helthris’ strength could fully revive Kotruna Krimell.

“Do you watch me through the eyes of your beast, Mal Char-Nal?” asked Yonar Helthris, “Or does one of your thralls?”

The ga-ho’ul made no reply. It mattered little. As long as the magic lamp in the hand of Yonar Helthris continued to burn, no ensorcelled beast could approach him. If he could complete his incantation before the oil of the walking whale ran out, then Kotruna Krimell would stand once more by his side, and together they could vanquish any enthralled ogre, no matter who had sent it.

Yonar Helthris began to chant.

As the sorcerer uttered his terrible incantation, he saw from the corner of his eye that the ga-ho’ul had begun to glow like orange coals. A useless display for intimidating predators, one of the natural characteristics of the species. Yonar Helthris paid it no mind.

The flame of the lamp turned dark purple, the arcane symbols shone with the impossible glow of truly black light, and a stench like charred meat rolled in on a sickly green mist. Translucent and silvery as a tropic mist, the form of Kotruna Krimell gradually took form before the necromancer. The flame grew bigger and brighter, the mist carried the sound of drum beats, and the chanting of the sorcerer took on an aspect like convulsive laughter. Kotruna Krimell cried out in a thin voice and pointed to something behind him. Without breaking his chant, he turned around to see what it was.

Yonar Helthris died instantly, without ever seeing the crude, iron arrowhead that pierced his eye and brain. The apparition of Kotruna Krimell vanished like so much smoke.

A few minutes later, a pair of mail-clad tribesmen stood over his body.

“Well, Thodazemir, here’s your troll. It’s only a man.”

“I saw the thing glowing from a mile away, and so did you!”

“If it was here, it didn’t leave any tracks.”

Thodazemir scoffed, “Well, maybe there was no troll. But look here, see the symbols and the bones in the snow. This man was clearly a wizard. Whatever he was up to, it was no good for us.”

“I’ll agree to that. Come, let’s not take his things. Let the snow cover this place up.”

Thodazemir grunted his assent, and the pair of warriors trudged off across the snow.

Yonar Helthris never joined Kotruna Krimell in the violet hells. He had long ago destroyed his soul for fear it might be enthralled by Mal Char-Nal after his death. So he lay still on the snow, and hours later he lay under it. With the passing of aeons and the upheaval of continents, he was eventually pushed down into the cold permafrost in the dark places under the earth. There he lies to this day, never to decay, and never to awaken.