Ice Witch / Blood Witch

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Underage Sexual Assault & Rape, Dubious Consent, Suicide Attempt, Parental Neglect, Bullying, Brutal Murder, Depression.

On the first day of the three hundred and fourty-fourth year of the everlasting mist, a girl was born to the seamstress Alfhild and the first hunter Gunnar. The baby came early, which was considered a bad omen. Since the accursed rune mages had confined the Isjätte to the island, tradition was all that was left to them, and a babe on the first day of a new year heralded change. 

The girl's childhood was not at all sheltered; the Isjätte believed in strength in all aspects of life. A prematurely born child, a girl no less, rarely made it through its first year. On good days, when the village boys were too preoccupied learning their fathers' crafts or bashing each others' faces in, they barely paid attention to her. On bad days, they took their frustrations out on her. 

When she turned twelve, on the night before her Naming, one of the older boys, emboldened by stolen mead, snuck into her hut. She screamed, but the blizzard outside roared far too loud for anyone to hear. She kicked, but he was sixteen and she was twelve and he was strong and she was weak and he was a boy and she was not. When the storm died down and the boy was gone again, the girl went outside, bare of clothes except for the torn shirt he'd left on her. She didn't bother to remove the blood. 

With freezing feet, she only made it a few feet into the woods before her legs collapsed from under her. Her back against a tree, she waited for the cold to take her. The skies had cleared up and the stars shone bright. In the gentle light of the Gorgon, the girl closed her eyes for what she hoped would be the last time. 

Later, when she awoke in the witcher's hut, there was screaming outside. While the witcher, a grizzled greybeard called Agnarr, tended to her frost burns, he explained that they had found a boy strung up in one of the trees, hung with his own guts. Peculiar, that. 

It was Agnarr, not her parents, who requested the honour of naming her the next day. Highly unusual as it was, the girl's parents knew better than to deny a witcher. Srota he named her, after the torrential rivers of the homeland. A powerful name for the weakest girl in the tribe. To further their surprise, he claimed her as his apprentice the same day. 

Under Agnarr's guidance, Srota learned many a mystery and grew to be a powerful witch - less powerful than Agnarr, but more than strong enough to take on five warriors of the tribe at the same time. Every year on her name day, she spent the night alone under the firmament and sacrificed a direwolf to the Gorgon. 

On the tenth summer of her apprenticeship, her master began looking at her differently. With desire, perhaps, or fear, or both. She had become a remarkable woman. One powerful enough to one day surpass him, and beautiful, too. When he came to her, she gave herself willingly. He repulsed her, his coarse hair and tainted breath, but she danced the dance like all the women before her. She had nothing else to pay him back for what he'd done for her. 

What had once been intended as a singular gift, he started taking from her repeatedly. And the following winter when she had no more left to give, in the light of the Gorgon, apprentice slew master. She buried his body in the Forbud Platå, the forbidden highlands in the east that the rune mages had told the tribe never to go. He would never be found. 

The Jarl would never trust her. He suspected what she'd done, but the tribe needed a shaman and Agnarr hadn't taught the mystic arts to anyone else, and so he anointed her the new shaman under the spring moon. The Gorgon smiled down upon them. 

Srota spent the better part of the next century learning from the witches and witchers before her, and the studies kept the nightmares away. But when she had learned all there was to learn and practiced every ritual to perfection and her body had grown old, the nightmares returned. Every night when she laid herself to rest, phantoms of Agnarr's cruelties haunted her dreams. But the worst terrors were not of Agnarr - they were of that fateful night before her Naming. Only during the first moon of the year she could sleep. The Gorgon protected her dreams. 

When her despair reached its zenith, Srota broke the first oath she had given Agnarr all these years ago. She hated him, yes, but he had been nothing if not wise and so she had always heeded the old witcher's advice. In the cellar of the witcher's hut, an ancient chest hid a vicious tome. It was a compendium of the most vile arcane art there was: The teachings of blood magic. From these illicit pages, Srota finally learned how to rid herself of the terrors. 

Starting that year, the tribe began suffering inexplicable disappearances. The frost winds had always been merciless, but normally, at least the bodies of fallen tribesmen unfortunate enough to fall victim to the elements could be recovered. This... changed. 

And not only did the nightmares wane - the newly born blood witches' body regained some of her long gone vigor. She glamoured herself to evade the questions, but gone were the ailments of time. Now, each year came with not one, but two sacrifices. In the winters, she sacrificed to the Gorgon. And the summers.. the summers demanded one of her fellow tribesmen. 

Rejuvenated in such a way, the witch began preparations. For the inevitable Mosaic Sea's return to the rest of the world. For however long it would take, Srota, daughter of the Gorgon, would endure.