Dark Age Of Camelot: The Birth of Nothing

Chapter 1: the Birth of Nothing, Part 1

I gaze out steadily over the blighted landscape of Muspelheim, taking in the shifts of dismal light as the heated reds combat with the wasted grays. I have grown to love this place, even as it seems to be a very portal into the world of Hel. Unlike many of my brethren here, I do not fear Hel. I respect her. Perhaps she did not intend to be evil ... perhaps the world made her so.

I think back on my own life to this point, and I know that the world did the same to me.

My mother died when I was very young. I can only remember her when I sit for long periods of time, stabbing after gossamer hints of memories, or sometimes I may awake to still be holding onto the last bit of a recollection, like the subtle hint of smoke drifting away from a cooling field of battle.

My father is a poor man. Poor not only in matters of the purse but also as a parent and mentor. I suppose he was and still is a farmer, trying to cultivate fields in the less dangerous regions of the Vale of Mularn in much the same fruitless way as I try to harvest memories of my mother from within my uncooperative brain. I suppose he is still alive, but I do not know if I shall ever find out. I am not sure if I ever want to see him again.

My father was very upset with my birth. You see, he wanted a son. He wanted a proud, strapping Norse lad that he could bring with him into the fields in order to allow great muscles to grow. And soon, he would gather what silver and gold he had saved over the years, and he would send that son off to Mularn Village and thence to the great city of Jordheim in order to become a Warrior, or perhaps even to pay homage to the god Thor and become a Thane. My father had never been profficient enough with anything other than a hoe or scythe, and even with those, he was rather ineffective, and so he had never lived up to that ideal he held of a great fighting man standing in gleaming armor overlooking the snowy fields littered with the bodies of slain enemies.

My father is a man of great regret, and like a contagious shadow, he lets it bleed onto others about him.

My birth was not pleasant. I was a rather large baby, which gave my father ignorant reason and unfounded hope to expect me as a male child. All I did was come out bearing of loins that terribly upset the man, and because of my size and my father's lack of funding for a real midwife or healer, my mother lost all capacity to bear children after she gave birth to me.

She never fully recovered, and as my father liked to tell me over and over, she soon grew ill and died because of having given birth to me.

And so within this empty life of a young girl trying to love the only family she had and being constantly looked down upon and reprimanded, I met Gorj.

Gorj was the son of a nearby farmer, one of a bit more prosperity than my father. Gorj and I knew of the other children born to the families living in the civilized places such as Mularn Village that would go on to educate either their minds, bodies, or spirits and so find their place in the upper echelons of Midgard. These children never ended their days with bloody hands from tending fields all day with no tools whatsoever or woke up with thick, soiled locks of hair from bathing only once or twice a month.

It seemed my friendship with Gorj was the only thing about me my father did like, for Gorj's young body held some promise, and so the boy might find himself packing off to Mularn or Vasudheim to undertake the practices of war. And so I found myself wanting to spend more and more time with him, to experience more and more things, because as such a young child, I knew that it made my father like me in some perverted way.

We took long hikes together, huddling down in bushes as we watched the distant activities of hill people, those elvish tribes that somehow made a home here. I did not know then that they intended us no harm, but Gorj and I liked hiding in secret and watching as they picked berries or painted bowls.

And I will never forget the time that Gorj showed up at the farm looking for me, as he so often did, and he bore a crude spear. He said his father had helped him make it, and oh, you should have seen the beam of pride upon my own father's face. He allowed me to skip out on my daily chores so that I could run off into infantile exploration with Gorj.

We were walking and talking quietly, when we heard the strange noise not soo far off. We became instantly quiet, and only in the ways of which children seem capable, we moved toward the noise with a stealthiness seeming borne of years of practice. We almost ended up right atop the beast. Strange looking it was, with an ugly face and somewhat gray-greenish skin. It was several inches taller than Gorj, and it scuffled about, searching through the tall grass and brush.

It seemed that it would move away from us, and I am not sure if we intended to follow, but it suddenly shifted its course and came right to us. Its attention was so focused on the ground that it must have first seen two pairs of feet, two pairs of dirty feet stuffed into worn leather bound with fraying straps. It stopped cold, and I think it felt a moment of fear. Its large, hideous eyes came up, and when it realized it was taller and larger than we, its gaze instantly shifted to hostility.

I know now that it had no intention of attacking us, but Gorj was either too scared or too brave or perhaps even too lusty, and he snarled and yelled and lunged at the thing. I stood there, frozen in cold terror, and Gorj got lucky, because his spear found purchase. Blood erupted from the thing, splashing onto me, seeming to act as a sticky web and keep me even more immobilized in fear.

This seemed also to shock both Gorj and the creature, for neither made another move. Gorj then pulled, his strength added to by his own fright, and he retrieved his spear from within the chest of the thing. He turn and fled, leaving me there.

He did stop not too far away, and he turned and called demandingly to me. I was still frozen, though, but now from a different feeling, for I stared into those bulbous eyes of the humanoid thing, and I saw mortal terror there. Blood still flowed from the wound in its chest, thick, dark fluid, and it looked up at me, and though we were not of the same species, it held intelligence in its gaze, and it knew I was female. I knew it was somehow pleading with me, somehow hoping that an as yet untapped maternal instinct would come forth and save this creature from death.

Gorj called my name again, having come back to grab my arm, and I then turned, and we escaped the horror upon which we had so innocently stumbled.

The story became something a bit different when Gorj and I spoke of it to our fathers. The creature, it seems, was a hobgoblin snakefinder, and that is what it was doing - looking for snakes. The way Gorj exaggerated, it became some huge, fully grown thing, but I know it was probably a child not much older than we. And the way Gorj told it, the thing stalked and attacked us, but I know differently.

Chapter 2: the Birth of Nothing, Part 2

Gorj and I still played together after that, for my father liked him even more. And I do not think it was because of some false idea that the lad may have saved his daughter but simply because Gorj had killed something.

And before we had entered the full realization of our teen years, Gorj and I had begun to share more tender explorations. It came quite easily, as we had bathed in the hot pools together, and we had known each other for so many years. We had experienced many things together, and so as nature had its way with our bodies, we began to feel a curiosity and longing for one another. I suppose it was natural, as I had no mother and no real father, and Gorj was male and wanted to conquer things.

These intimate times became more and more frequent, though we both were eager to share. We would make our way out toward the hills, and then as the night would begin to have its way, we would have our way with each other.

I was still a child filled with hope, though I had lived a mostly loveless life. And I suppose I can thank my father and Gorj in a way, for the hard toiling in the fields also gave me a body of lithe strength,and Gorj even imparted a bit of the knowledge his father had taught him. Gorj now bore a sword of only slightly better craftsmanship than the spear, and he let me carry the spear. I cannot say that we ever killed anything after the encounter with the hobgoblin, but we often practiced with the weapons, duelling one another, working up a heavy sweat, and then discarding our weapons for an equally primitive dance.

I suppose I should have seen it coming, though, but as I mentioned, I still had hope and an innocence about me.

I was out near the stream, washing some of my father's and my clothes. I could tell they were getting more and more worn, and my father was going to have to choke down his miserly ways and spend a bit of his prized copper to get us more garments. He continued to chastise me for outgrowing my clothes, and he would often make me wear items that were obviously much too small for me. It chills me to think of it, but I look back now, and I wonder at how he would sometimes stare at me as my blossoming body tried to free itself from the tight confines of the too small garments.

While doing the wash, I heard a rustling of the nearby foliage. I knew it was Gorj, and I looked over with a large smile. I then saw that he came with others, and I was confused. There were two other boys with him, and they seemed slightly older than Gorj and significantly better off, judging from their hair and clothing. I would not have called them rich, but they were not the sons of poor farmers, that is for sure.

I reacted inquiringly to Gorj, and he explained that these were friends of his. Sons of merchants, it seems, families that were grasping thier way into the society of Mularn, with hopes of making it into some corner of prosperity in Jordheim. I had heard this kind of talk before, but somehow it seemed more plausible as I regarded these two.

It did not take long though before I noticed how they hardly talked and how hungrily they looked upon me, how they gazed at my legs through the tatters of my skirt and how their eyes lingered on the promise of my bosom packed tightly in my bodice.

And then one of the them asked me a question. A terrible, horrible question, and his voice seemed laced with venom. And I knew Gorj had told them of our shared intimacies, and now, somehow, these boys expected the same from me. I could not believe it. I was thrown into more shock than when I watched the mortal pleas of the hobgoblin youngling. The three boys came closer, and I could see a leer even on Gorj's face, and I knew then that he was trying to buy his way into the good graces of these more prosperous youths using me and my body as currency.

I would have nothing of it, though, for I felt as though the intimacies Gorj and I had shared were for us alone, and to do this made it all seem so cheap and useless. I learned a hard lesson, then, for it seems that even in the company of those you most trust, those with whom you most feel secure, you can be betrayed. And in fact, it is in those times when you let your guard down, that you can be most thoroughly pierced.

I may have had no intention of giving these boys what they wanted, but they had no intentions of letting me get away. I realized too late that they would forcefully plunder what they could not freely have, and when I decided to turn to flee, they had me.

I struggled at first, but I soon realized how empty an effort that was, and so in much the same way as I would react to my father's harangues, I went cold and indifferent. It did not seem to matter to the boys, and I could not look Gorj in the eyes. I turned my head away, and what I saw in the distance chilled me more than what had already happened.

I saw him ... there near a tree. He was hidden well enough that it was by sheer luck that I noticed him and probably due to the detached mental state into which I had retreated. I saw him, watching, impassive, immobile, a look on his face almost as if he were observing the stock of a lacking crop. My father.

He did not come to help, and now I have grown thankful at least that he did not come to join, but there he was, watching.

The boys finished with me. They left me with some cuts and bruises. I lay there for a long time, flat on my back, the earth somewhat yielding from the moisture of the nearby stream. I felt alone ... so alone, and the only thing trying to comfort me was the earth, and it was doing a sore job of it. I felt that perhaps, in a way, I was experiencing the same thing as that hobgoblin snakefinder. It had been going about its normal chores, when horror had assaulted it suddenly and with no justification. But it had died, and I would not. At that moment, I wished I would die. But I eventually moved, getting up, adjusting my garments as I could to cover myself, gathering the wash, and I returned to the house, uttering not a word of what had happened.

I had made a decision, though, and in the night, I snuck into my father's room. I knew where he kept his money, and for it, I had come. I had come to steal my escape.

I stood there for a long time, watching him breathe. I thought of many ways I could have ended that breath, but I thought to let him live. I realize now that letting him live was more a punishment, but I did not realize it at the time. Fear stayed my hand ... fear and love.

I finally moved to where he kept his money hid. A place of which he thought I did not know. I took it all. A small amount it was, but more than enough for me to get where I wanted to go. I would go to Vasudheim ... not very far away but far enough that my father would never find me. And there, I would buy myself into the tutelage of an art of which I had only heard whispered .. an art which seemed suitable for one so betrayed and loveless as I. I would become an adventurer, a fighter, a practitioner of the use of weapons, but I would not do it as my father expected, no, for I would become an assassin ... a follower of Loki ... a Shadowblade.