Across the vast expanse of sea, now faded to the colour of ash and indifferent memory, I drag my weary feet aimlessly. Direction, will, and hope have failed me, bled slowly by the whipcord kelp and sodden bloated grasping milk-white hands in Ran's gloomy aquatic court...the weak sputter of flame within me snuffed by the hands of dark gods and the ( Read more... )

The reeds part slowly, a cold slick release like the caress of an unwanted lover. The seaweed blinding my eyes, pulled upwards in the slow current of the aqueous gloom, leaves grudgingly. Perhaps straining upwards in a vain attempt towards the sun so long denied it, it unweaves its spell of confining slumber. The milky hands that held me back have ( Read more... )

The glimmering surface of the world's cup watches sullenly above, tendrils of white light reaching down lazily to a haze of blue and green beneath the murky depths, like moonlight creeping through the forest canopy before a heartless dawn. Breath rushing out frantically, the froth of silvery bubbles enough to obscure the already blurred landscape ( Read more... )

Behind me the waves break in a grey-blue chaotic froth against a lonely shore that shows no evidence of caring, it's worn face the colour of pitted steel blending lightly into a thick comb of snow as the loom of the land rises away from the endless surf. Feet dragging in a steady, if langourous, rythm I travel without concern to the nearly ( Read more... )

The ground stretches towards the yawning deep in a defiantly eerie blue-white swathe as I inch my head, translucent crystals falling like diamond dust, from the charred rock beneath my cooling form. Svarog's breath comes crisp and sharp as toothed steel in swift procession from beyond the black veil of the west, keening and carrying it's grim ( Read more... )

Unhurriedly, like stones wearing to the relentless surge of the crashing surf or the lazily breathing growth of trees who will never feel the bite of axe or claw, the day's light creeps across Muspelheim's snow-capped rocks as though on the silent slippered feet of a skittish child. Warily, topaz fingers of light moving in cautious deliberation, ( Read more... )

The sun, golden phosphorous steps trailing faintly in it's wake, has lain it's head beneath the western seas once more. How many days have passed, stuck in this granite vise of cold malignancy? How many months? The scent of iron and honey has fled as well and with it the heavy spiderweb of blood has darkened to a thick charred ruby, cracking and ( Read more... )

The leaden sheet of sky spreads above pained eyes, heavy and oppressive like the guantleted fist of some mythical tyrant, the grey so dreary even the gut-wrenching snap of breaking ribs seems humbled beneath it's easy indifference. Hands vainly grasping towards nothing, towards some imagined glimmering hope of freedom, towards the bronze axe lying ( Read more... )

The low northern hills, cracked and jagged in the steel grey hours before the desperate bleakness of night, have turned their baleful eyes towards me. An outsider in these craggy windswept hills, blown nearly clean of the pernicious grasp of Father Winter's bone-white hand, the very earth itself stands watchfull of me. Between the dark rocks the ( Read more... )

The rocking cradle of time has worn slowly on, runners pitted and dusty for lack of attention, but no day has dawned since the scattered body of fear slunk away into the holes behind the stars. The air has thinned, Father Frost's pale breath stripping the world's heavy drudgery...leaving nothing but the brittle purity of the north. The calm slate ( Read more... )