Episode 3

Bloodthirsty demons of an old world. My father would regale me with tales of wraiths cutting down weary travellers and seasoned knights alike. He himself had never seen one, nor had anyone I knew, but we all knew what they were. The stories were as old as time. The miner’s work got me asking even more questions about my father’s rules, though. Why were they allowed into the mountains if they were so dangerous? Apparently, a combination of military convoys and fire-wielding sorceresses kept them safe from both the elements and the wraiths. I was a bit disgruntled with the notion that I was so incapable when they were not. Those feelings had long since passed.

I wandered through the frost-touched valley for what seemed like an eternity. The land was beautiful, but baron. There was no food, no warmth, and no life, save the snow-laden pine trees that reached on for miles. I was feeling weaker and weaker by the minute. I had lost our supplies in the rush the previous night. The pack of food was now buried under inches of snow. I knew I’d never find it. I didn’t bother to search. Between dazzling brightness and dreary gloom, depending on how covered by clouds the sun was, I started to feel my resolve wain. I wanted to quit, to give up and leave this glorious, deadly place behind. But I couldn’t. I thought of the mangled bodies of my family. The guilt was overwhelming. Had I been there, not out in the city chasing women, I might have been able to fend off the beast.

The village wasn’t home to many able young men, only three, and none had been around when it came. Then I thought of my companion in the cave, the frost surely still biting at his quickly freezing corpse. The guilt was worse still. As they wept over their families, my heart filled with rage. I felt the anger wash over me, masking the pain — I knew that now, as the cold bit at my own heart and began to thaw the fiery anger that burned inside. I had to almost drag our navigator into the mountains, and now he lay dead within them. My companion was only slightly more willing. The wraith took both his wife and daughter, but even he wouldn’t have set foot on these treacherous slopes if I hadn’t driven him to it. I goaded him, playing off his torment. I had to kill the beast, it was the only way to unburden my guilty conscience.

Was the wraith that attacked us last night the same that cut down the villagers? It was impossible to say. They all looked identical, apparently. We didn’t know exactly how many were living in the mountains, but we did know was they were mindless killers and even if I slew the wrong one, I’d redeem myself by culling a true vision of evil. Wraiths were ancient creatures, powered only by a lust for death. I was always told that they didn’t consume the flesh of their prey, they took the very life from them and fed off that instead. I didn’t believe it, and I was still not sure. Except for the massive slashes across his torso where the wraith had cleaved him as he worked in the fields, my Father looked as he ever did when I found him. I expected the draining of life to look more dramatic, but maybe it wasn’t something you could see.

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