Vörður (Verthor)
Our clan was once great. Once, they were strong, feared, and numbered into the hundreds. Before the great demon wars that is. Many of my ancestors died during the great wars, defending our lands from invasion, wiping out clans of other demons, burning and scarring the land until it was unrecognisable. The wars wiped out many clans, many species were lost, and history was made. Eventually truces were called and a tense peace came about. Years passed and slowly the great demon clans began to die out, including the blood demons, my people.
As the years passed the short-lives of our world forgot much about the great wars, writing them in their books, turning them into fables and bedtime stories for their young ones. They forgot about our clans, telling their children we were just myths. But we have not forgotten those times.
Our elders, the few who survived the wars, pass on their knowledge to hatchlings of our clan, passing their blood to our mothers, imprinting the memories of violence and betrayal that decimated our clan to the small number we have now.
Our people were slowly dying out. Our elders who used to number well above fifty were reduced to only four, our leaders, amongst which were my mother and father, reduced to merely seven. The rest of our people, numbered only twenty, of which three were hatchlings, including me.
During my first five years of life, I was taught how to handle hunting weapons, how to stalk my prey without being seen, I was taught the history of my clans, and how to remember memories that were not mine. In my fifth year I began my training in blood magic.
I was the middle child of the hatchlings. My elder Blóma was already reaching maturity, she was 20 years my senior. The younger Vindur was hatched three years after me. I was by no means talented in any of my disciplines, and Blóma always made sure I knew it too. To her I was always laughably slow, especially when it came to magic, but Vindur always looked up to me, he was good fun to study with, even if he was not yet old enough to hunt with. I always looked forward to the day I could take him with me on a scouting mission or even a hunt, and show him all I had learned, and maybe even teach him some. He was the closest I had to a brother.
Sometimes I was filled with trepidation and anxiety for when Vindur grew old enough to join us on hunts though. Since his hatching the clan of demons in the mountain peaks above our home have grown restless. We learn early to be weary of the dark ones in the mountain tops. The elders tell us that the dark ones were once blood demons, not unlike ourselves, who wandered too far from the clan and their morals, who sold away their families in favour of power, and who would not hesitate to steal away unwary children to the mountain tops where they would be forced to be servants to the dark ones until death, or worse.
I’ve seen a dark one up in the mountains before, hunting for the goats that scale the mountains so nimbly. They are a hard game to hunt, and I saw the dark ones skill as he took down his prey. Recently they have been coming further and further down the mountains, closer to our territory. Sometimes the leaders and scouts report seeing them as far as our forests. For the moment they didn’t seem to pose a threat, though our elders grew wary, and my parents and the other leaders began to press Blóma, Vindur, and I to learn protection and concealment spells. I never was very good at them, but with practice my skill became adequate.
Since the great wars our species numbers have suffered far more than that of the other clans. We may live longer than most, but we mature slower, and it is not often that two children are hatched to the same couple. Only one of the surviving elders recalled a couple that was blessed with two hatchlings surviving to maturity. It came as a shock to us all when my mother fell pregnant a second time.
I found myself excited beyond compare to have a sibling of my own, someone I could teach and protect, someone who would look up to me as Vindur sometimes did. The elders told me it would be my sworn duty as the first born, to protect my sibling with my life, and I was ready to. I felt my power shifting as my sibling egg grew. The patterns that swirled across my skin began to glow with new energy, grow new depth and power. The elders told me it was my body maturing my magic, so I would be ready to protect my new family. It thrilled me to know my sibling could cause such a change in me, and excited me to think that maybe I could strengthen them in turn.
My mother began to change too, I’d seen this once before when Vindur was growing. My mother, like his, began to crave the blood of magical beings. She became restless and would talk of nothing but strengthening her growing egg. I wondered if she had been like this with me. In the old times, before the wars, our mothers would feed on the blood of magical beings to infuse their power with the growing child, but in recent years this practice has been forbidden by the elders.
A few weeks passed before any other change happened. I came home from my lessons to find my father arguing with an elder, their tempers only increased as I came to stand by my father. The elder was yelling that our family was a disgrace, that we had put the clan’s lives in danger. My father was adamant that they had done nothing wrong, that all they were doing was what our ancestors had done to ensure the strength of our children. Thankfully the argument ended when my mother began to lay. I did not know until months after that the argument was started because mother had decided to hunt and feed from a number of magical beings. Nothing seemed to be wrong to me though, they had ensured not to kill anyone, no one came for revenge and mother and her egg had not been hurt. I was yet to understand the true consequences of my mother’s actions.
It would be a full year before my sibling hatched, their body developing to that of a child, their mind being primed through memories from our elders, my family, and the blood that my mother had taken. I couldn’t wait to meet them. Unlike the small infants I’ve seen of other species, who seemed stupid and fragile, my sibling would already know most of our language, and be ready to learn to walk, and run, and fly, and it would not be long before we could play and learn together.
We were to call them Máttar, power, I loved the name, we would together be vörður and Máttar, guard and power. I was so ready to meet them.
Things started to change then, one of our elders died, two more disappeared along with three of our leaders and eight of our other clan members, one of which was Blóma. I found her myself, her body desecrated in our forest, I did not see who had done this to her, but the elder and remaining leaders assured me it was the dark ones. Vindur and I were forbidden from entering the forest again, and our clan members began guarding my sibling egg day and night. Everything was falling apart, I spent my days practising protection spells and my nights guarding my sibling. Time seemed to pass slower than ever and I lived in dread of who would die next.
By Meagan A Dwyer (NutMegThings)