Chapter 139: Chapter 122 – Wendigo Warning

"Antlers grand and cruel claws bared, those it met, would not be spared.

Flee and wail for all you could, not that it would do you any good.

Make your peace and be at ease, for soon your body and soul will freeze.

Should a frozen heart you meet,
Prepare for yours to cease to beat." - Old Jötunberg poem describing a wendigo.

 

"Yes, ma'am, there's been sightings, some missing sheep and cows too of the villages closer by," said the young village guardsman when Cal asked him about recent news now that they neared their destination after ten days of travel. "Fortunately no people yet, but either way I wouldn't suggest trying to go to the waterfalls till the jarl's men gets rid of it."

 

The news she received when they approached the low mountainous region where Madginfjord lay was of the dire sort. Apparently a wendigo had been sighted by villagers, and was assumed to make its home in the mountains.

 

A wendigo was the name of an endemic monster only found in Jötunberg's tundra regions, where old folk tales called the to be the soul of travellers who died in the cold and became the monsters that they were. "Of frozen heart and wicked claws, woe betide those the wendigo saw," was a common saying in the region.

 

Despite that reputation for feeocity and lethality, wendigos mostly lived in the tallest mountains, where no humans lived, and only occassionaly did they roam the lower altitudes. Those that did were usually driven away or killed by soldiers or adventurers before they could do too much harm.

 

For most travellers however, a wendigo sighting was a lethal threat to their well being, and most would have simply cancelled their plans if their path was one that would have potentially crossed a wendigo.

 

Celeysria Ambervale was not most travellers.

 

She thanked the guard for the news, but she and her nieces kept going on their planned route, which took them straight through the area where the wendigo had been sighted. Cal had warned her nieces that should they encounter it, they were to leave the fighting to her unless she permitted them to join in.

 

The goats they hired as mounts proved their worth once they reached the mountainous region, as they scaled slopes with ease. One time their route was even blocked by a steep vertical wall, but they solved that issue easily enough.

 

Cal went up first, as she easily gripped through stone with her bare fingers, empowered by magic, and scaled the wall with little difficulty. Once she was on top she lowered down a long rope and had her nieces come up one at a time as she pulled them up.

 

On the other hand, the goats simply followed them up as they calmly climbed the steep cliff with utter ease, their hooves easily found every tiny foothold, and firmly stepped upon them as they slowly but surely walked up the cliff.

 

They continued their travels quietly for another half an hour, but just as they reached the foot of a higher peak, a grotesque animalistic roar made them pause. Elaina and Sidonie had to calm their mounts down as the goats almost bolted when they heard the roar.

 

"It's here. Girls, stay behind me unless I say otherwise. Get those goats tied so they don't escape," Cal said as she had a more serious look for once and pulled out her halberd. "Hit it with a javelin if you see an opening. Don't sorry about hitting me."

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Behind her, Elaina and Sidonie followed her orders and tied the thin chains connected to the goat's collars around a tree, before they loaded a javelin each in their respective atlatls. The javelins they pulled out this time was different though. They were longer, with their conical heads at the tip of long, thin metal shafts.

 

Elven war javelins were intended as single-use weapons, and the thin shaft was intended to bend when it struck the target, which would have hobbled the target with the wound and the added weight of an unwieldy bent javelin all at once.

 

One look at the source of the roar was all it took to see why the party of three treated it so seriously.

 

A short distance away, near a cave further up the mountain's slope, stood the wendigo. It was a large beast, easily five meters in height, not counting its humongous many-pronged antlers that ended in wicked, bloodstained points.

 

Its build was generally humanoid, but it looked like a sickly, scrawny perversion of the shape. The beast was thin, with the clear outlines of its ribcage easily seen on its torso, and its long limbs were gaunt and slim.

 

The creature had digitgrade legs that easily accounted for half its height, which ended in hooves. Its whole body was covered in a thin layer of shaggy, dirty gray wool, through which one could see its pale, sickly looking skin below.

 

Its arms were of an eerie length, as they easily reached the ground when it stood straight. Those arms ended in large, four fingered hands with an opposable thumb, with thick bony fingers that ended in long wicked claws. Each claw was easily the length of a knife and looked to be frequently sharpened.

 

Instead of a fleshy face, the wendigo's face was mostly covered by an outgrowth of bone plates, which gave the impression that the creature had a skull for a head. Its four eyes burned red with hunger and malice, and when it opened its maw, its lower jaw split into two parts vertically and widened to the side, its set of sharp, long fangs on full display.

 

It sniffed the air through the holes in the natural bone armor that covered its face, then turned to face Cal and her nieces, its four malevolent eyes fixated at them. It gave yet another roar, a horrible sound that sounded eerily similar to a baby's cry, but far more gruesome in nature, and many times louder.

 

When it saw Cal and her nieces still there after it roar, it seems angered, or rather… disappointed. Many stories told about wendigos commonly had they scare a traveller into a run, after which they hunted down their prey with relish and cruel satisfaction. That Cal and her nieces refused to play along and run disappointed the creature instead.

 

Cal held her halberd on a ready position when the beast headed their way with a fast, loping gait, and her nieces tensed up behind her, as they charged their javelins with magic and prepared to throw.

 

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