Horror of Volfjor

A Funeral

It seemed the whole village had turned out for Vander’s funeral. Hdvan knew his fellow dragon rider was popular, but he didn’t expect such a crowd. He could imagine his comrade cringing at such attention. Hdvan’s eyes were drawn to the face of his friend, lying in the open coffin in his resplendent scalemail and chestplate. The undertakers had done a fine job restoring him. The serpentine jaw of a draivan sloped down towards his body with the rest of his face. Flattened nose with fleshy nostrils remained still. Sparse quills at the top of his head and at the back of his neck were wispy and frayed but had at least been combed back and stuck together to make them seem fuller. His bumpy, scaled skin clung to its purple draivan colour, faded with age like Hdvan’s own. His neck skin had many folds. A line of dark scales encircled his bright, yellow eyes, now closed. He had never looked so at peace. It was so different to the contorted, red face Hdvan had seen so often on the campaign down South. He shivered. He could still barely register his friend’s death. They had spoken just the evening before it happened. Blue colouring rippling across Hdvan’s face in sadness, he took his wife’s hand, who loosely held it back.

“This day,” the priest began, “we gather to remember a great asset to the village, and to draivankind. Though he had lived a full and exciting life, he was taken too soon. A simple slip on the ice. It reminds us all that even the greatest heroes of our kind eventually fall. Let us remember Fate has no sympathy for the exploits of us mortals.” Hdvan winced. The thought of just fading away so quietly after doing so much with his life… It made him feel sick.

The procession began, a snow drake dragging the temporary wooden coffin up the cold, mountain path. Flecks of frost still covered the textured skin of the rocks upon either side. The crowd followed, listening to the chants of prayer from the priests, spoken in an ancient form of the draivan language. Hdvan scoffed as he regarded the many youths of the crowd. He doubted they knew what the words meant. There in the crowd stood Vander’s child. Older than his own, Deleth was approaching the age of maturity, with the Elder of Volfjor looking after him until then. After sharing a moment of appreciation, he looked away. In his face he could only see the features of his friend. As the priests now began to read out Vander’s achievements, Hdvan was taken back to the war. On many of these achievements, they had been together, winning decisive victories against those bestial, shapeshifting tribes, the Garu.

They had once taken up camp before the assault on a Garu occupied village. In separate tents they rested, with the dragons outside the camp keeping watch like guard dogs. A thin Garu of the Weasel tribe had snuck past them and slipped inside Hdvan’s tent. He had awoken with a sickly feeling just in time to see the gangly, hairy beast standing above him with a knife. Letting out a cry, he jumped into action and they wrestled, the Weasel getting a few lucky cuts in before Vander arrived with an already bloody blade and slew the Garu with his scimitar. From that day on, he owed him his life.

The other draiven didn’t see what he saw. The average villager thought acts of bravery won wars, that heroes flew in, torched the enemy and won the war in an afternoon. These shiny, heroic tales are all that come out the other end. They think war is something to be glorified, something that creates heroes. Hdvan knew he was no hero. He had seen the other side, looked into the face of the enemy. He knew what had to be sacrificed.

“And those rats were thus removed from our lands once again,” said the priest. Faceless, nameless, the war was seen as nothing more than a pest extermination. Many times during the recanting of these achievements, Hdvan could feel eyes in him, even bowing of their heads in respect. His eyes darted away, but when they were caught by another’s, he feigned thanks with a small bow of his own.

Bitter winds howled as they neared the mountain top, making the priests have to call louder to be heard. Fur-lined cloaks were pulled closer and tighter, hoods thrown up around heads. Past the hot springs they walked, welcome heat emanating from them. Some priests filled a few buckets of this water. Hdvan couldn’t remember when he last visited the ice crypts. The thought of seeing face-to-face those who were long dead made the wispy quills on the back of his neck and all down his spine stand on end. Every other one of his comrades from his village had died during the war, on campaign. He and Vander returned alone.

It was just as Hdvan remembered. Upon many tiers, the aisles of the dead slithered round the mountainside. Protected from the elements by an overhanging roof held up by ornate pillars, these avenues of the dead were the pride of any draivan village. Here they displayed their greatest heroes and their achievements. The dead were not left to rest, but were revered and even paraded on the Festival of the Ancestors.

At last the procession reached its destination. An ice case stood hollow on its plinth. With ropes attached to the body, priests on the plinth raised Vander and lowered him in. Having cooled enough now, the buckets of water were then poured inside and his new coffin was filled, making his clothes float in an ethereal manner. Here it would sit and Vander would be on display for the rest of time, as far as the common draivan was concerned. But first, Hdvan begrudgingly made his way in front of the plinth.

“Good day, all fair and noble draiven,” Hdvan began as he addressed the crowd. “Today I talk about a friend. A comrade. An inspiration to many of us, myself included. But I warn you, it will be brief, for there are few words that may define him better than the memories we all have of him. I remember when we were children. We used to talk of the heroes of old while we looked up at the sky all night, just for a glimpse of a dragon. On occasion, we were rewarded. It was on those nights that we promised, swore, to become dragon riders. We never would have known that it would have happened. Or how it would be… But we dreamed. We dreamed, and many, many years later we were flying south with the militia to fight off the Garu incursion on our very own dragons.

“When I found that I had a gift for mana manipulation, it was his idea that I travel to study with the Strom Magi to learn water magic. That was the type of person Vander was. He knew what was best for everybody, in any situation. When it came to telling you what to do, he had no issue being the one to do it. On occasion he was quick to anger, a furious temperament with more fire and anger than his dragon, which is saying something.” Many draiven in the crowd nodded in agreement. “But to his friends, and at home, he was surely a gentle giant. He knew what had to be done and he made sure it got done.” More nods. “Yet, he was humble.” Hdvan observed the crowd, the plinths, Vander’s body on display. Though the undertakers had done a good job in dressing him up, here he would be immortalised at his worst, unable to rest. “He would have hated, more than anything, to receive all this attention. These draiven we dress up as heroes, we must remember. They are not the Gods. They once had a simple life, with dreams and desires, loves and hates, flaws and insecurities. While we remember their achievements, let us not forget who they really were. Thank you.”

With that, Hdvan made his way back into the somewhat befuddled crowd, to his family. His son hugged him, coming up to his waist. Grota held his hand with that same limp grip. The priest said some final words of goodbye and the throng dissipated. Deleth approached him.

“Your words carried wisdom,” he said. “He would have swallowed his pride and been very thankful.” They bowed to each other. Bearing no longer to stare at his dead friend, Hdvan and his family left Deleth and made their way through the avenues of the dead, stopping for some time at the plinth of a young man. Younger than Hdvan. Grota’s father had died young. When she had made her peace and carved a small message on the ice, they moved on, past undertakers maintaining the ice coffins of many other draivan, famed or otherwise.

“Look, Dad,” Grodosh tugged at Hdvan’s tunic.

“Hm?”

“Yolshül, the draivan who mapped out Uljarn!” Grodosh said in awe.

“Yes, she was very clever,” Hdvan said.

“Clever?” Grodosh scoffed. “She braved the depths of the forest of wolves! She fought off a whole pack with just a stick!” Grodosh made befitting noises of combat and acted out how the mind of a boy thought someone may accomplish this feat.

“Come along, Grodi,” his mother cooed. They passed his commander during the war, comrades from the militia, his own parents. All gone. And yet, all were here on display in their own ice coffins, accomplishments big and small detailed on the plinth below. Where the body hadn’t been found, an ice sculpture in their likeness stood instead. The legacy of the war would die with him, Hdvan knew. Blue flooded his face as he regarded these sad sights. Yet in his heart was a bursting admiration, a tinge of jealousy. Each one of his comrades had given their lives for a cause, and gone out with a bang. This is how they would be remembered, immortalised in memory and in body in their prime. Then there was Vander. Hdvan couldn’t die some tragically simple death after achieving such great things, being immortalised as an old and faded draivan. This would be the memory his family would be left with. He couldn’t just fade away like a dying ember. He refused.

That night, he sat leaning against a rocky outcrop some way up the mountain. He eyed the crescent moon rise like a silver eye, half-closed. Hdvan imagined himself upon his dragon, Narvon, flying through the dark air. Memories that he thought he had forgotten came spinning back into his mind. There he was, on the back of Narvon, with Garu of the Batwing tribe swarming around him mid-air, trying to pierce Narvon’s wing and yank Hdvan out of his saddle. He remembered the feeling of those foreign hands, clawing at him, pulling at him. The straps on his legs and waist stung as they pulled. He began to rock back and forth, rubbing his legs. His lance had pierced the heart of one. In his hand he felt again the resistance of that flesh. It shook. Hdvan found himself shaking and stood up. Narvon’s immensely powerful wings had batted many more of them away. In his quills he felt again the rushing air, and in his stomach the sickly fear of falling through the vast depths of the sky. Pacing around the mountain path, more and more memories from the war came flooding back. He shook his head, looked away from the sky and tried to focus on his fast heartbeat, trying to slow it down. The more he focused on it, the faster and heavier it pounded, feeling every inch of it, like a hand was closed around it. Cold rushes. Hdvan began to run, trying to escape the discomfort within his own body. Down the mountain he ran and into the village, finding comfort in the fact his heart now had a reason to beat so fast. Blinded by his memories, eyes on the ground, he didn’t see Ledthan, the tanner, making his way home. Their bodies crashed together, both of them shouldering the ground.

“Fool!” cried Ledthan, rising from the ground. “Did the Lord of Fate not gift you with a pair of eyes?”

“S-sorry,” Hdvan puffed, secretly finding comfort in the company.

“You okay?” Ledthan said, taking Hdvan’s hand and pulling him to his feet.

“Never felt better,” Hdvan said, feeling the fear melt away through the warmth of Ledthan’s hand. Brushing off what had just happened as a quirk of tiredness and grief, he made his way to his family and his home, a pocket cut into the mountain rock like most draivan homes. Once more in the company of his family, he put doubts to rest and went to sleep.