Ulf and the Valravn

Trigger warning: disturbing war imagery, child deaths, gore, and corpse mutilation.

Studying is never easy, especially when stretched thin between final projects and tests before the college year is over. Having finals for computer science, statistics, and abnormal psychology is hard enough. However, with doing a big project on one of the religions covered in world religion class, Blake Jensen decided to go to the undergraduate library. He thought that would help him get the hardest part taken care of before cramming for the tests on loads of coffee before test week could begin. It didn't help when a lot of people looked just as stressed as he was about the final project and what it entailed.

World religion class involved all sorts of people coming in to discuss every religion to understand the different perspectives. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Taoism, and Confucianism was what Mrs. Penelope covered for this particular class. The tests were really hard, especially when it came to studying stuff involving different versions of the Bible, but it was generally a survey of the world's religions. Thus, for a final project, in addition to a test, the class had to do a slide show on a religion that wasn't covered in class. This included the belief systems for Egyptian, Hellenism, Mesopotamian, Wiccan, Aztec, and many others that were very ancient and required a lot of digging. Time was something that Blake didn't have.

Blake decided to settle on covering something interesting from the Norse that wasn't either done to death in film or wasn't lost to the annals of the time when the Nordic regions underwent Christianization. A lot of the books for Norse, Hellenism, Shinto, and Mesopotamian were taken by students who couldn’t decide on which religion to cover and were going back and forth between many different books. One of the kids who took books for Mesopotamian, looked so burned out when Blake got to the library. They were overloaded by the information they needed to absorb. It wasn't exactly filling Blake with confidence on how he would do on this project.

As Blake searched through the Norse books that weren't picked over, he stumbled across a black feather on a shelf where those books should have been. It was worn and was soaked in blood that had long dried.

He muttered, "Hello? How did this get here?"

Perplexed, he grabbed the feather, but got pricked by the end of the feather while looking it over, dropping it. It gently floated down to the ground. He kissed his bleeding thumb, but then, some of the blood got on his tongue, before his eyes went wide.

He was soon transported to another world in a time long forgotten. A hellish sight was occurring before his eyes involving two different clans of Vikings with the chiefs dead. However, one of the corpses wasn't recovered before night fell and ravens came and ate the body, including the heart. Quickly after consuming the heart, they became humanoid ravens known as the Valravns with two of them being capable of human thought. They had wrought all sorts of bloody vengeance onto the ones who had left the chief to be forgotten by his own clan. They helped to create more of their own kind, some becoming more intelligent from drinking the blood of young slain children. Overt time, they had gained the ability to shapeshift and become knights or wolves from this morbid act.

One such Valravn went into a town under the guise of a beggar who found a human boy named Ulf that was all alone in a village that was recently pillaged and was screaming that he wanted the power of revenge.

The figure asked, "Hear ye, boy, why do you cry so? Are you crying for your father or brother or both?"

Ulf told him, "My mourning is for my whole family."

The figure then smirked and said, "The first smaller boy you find from the ones who wreaked this upon you, will you give to me, back to this land of your family? Revenge will be yours if you do this."

The boy had bit his thumb to create his blood pact with the figure.

This set Ulf on a bloody path to seek revenge on the Bjornssung, the clan responsible for his family's murder and the destruction of his village. He had grown, battled with many warriors, and formed the Wulfing clan, becoming a very feared figure along the lands. All the while, the Valravn watched him become more and more wolf than man, and fed on the hearts of those he had slain.

It wasn't long before he carved his way to the homeland of the Bjornssung. His clan engaged in an intense battle where warriors and innocent women and children were caught up in the bloodshed. Ulf entered the battlefield last so he could find a son of one of the men who partook in the pillaging and killing on his family's homeland. He laid his eyes on his target and ran at him like the ravenous wolf that he was, going in for the kill. However, he drank the heart blood of the boy as he did so in a berserker rage, to the demise of the Valravn at losing the prize for helping gift the power of rage to Ulf.

He began to lose his power and faded away, but not before cursing, "You will regret your treachery! Your land and family name shall be forgotten; your death will be by a great and terrible warrior! Let my visage be what becomes of you!"

His form passing over Ulf as the Valravn faded away. The man then became a monstrous combination of wolf and raven with the heart blood he consumed and the berserk power and curse of the Valravn within him. He was a new Valravnwulf that carved a new path of bloodshed into the comrades he had made, wanting nothing more than the heart blood of all that got in his way. He had escaped into the wilderness to prey on those who obstructed his plan before he met an untimely end by the hand of a great warrior, one known as Beowulf.

Blake was stunned all he saw from touching the raven's feather and looked into the books and articles about the ravens to include in his research into the Norse religion for his project, and how their human-like intelligence was touched on with icons like Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn. He was sure to ace this project with the knowledge he received from this magical feather that had disappeared as quickly as he had found it. A cycle of demonic ravens that caused so much bloodshed in an era that was full of such, this served as a grim reminder of the price to acquiring such forbidden power.