Prince Ehreth and the Kingdom of Dreams #3

December 24, 2010 1:10 am Sir Haxington PEatKoD, Stories

The snow was deep. The freezing air chilled every living being to the bone.

Through the icy, whipping winds, a battle cry was barely audible.

“ki…kikik…ikik…ikik…iii…ii…i!”

The magoran plodded through the snow, injured. A spear jutted from its rear right leg which slowed the creature’s pace, but with seven other functioning limbs, the beast still had a chance to survive. Or so it thought.

The large mammal stopped its gait and breathed heavily. Using its infrared vision, the beast saw through the extreme cold and spotted a nearby temperature fluxuation- a cave that ran underground. The magoran shifted its weight galloped towards it.

As the eight legged creature was about to escape into the underground, the battle cry could now be hear loud and clear.

“KIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

Another spear whizzed through the freezing air and sunk into the creatures back. Then another into the thigh of one of the magoran’s left legs. Then another into its neck.

The prey slumped into the fresh powder. Blood painted the snowy terrain crimson as the wounded animal attempted to drag itself closer and closer to the cave entrance, its last and only hope for survival.

The creature craned its bleeding neck upward. The last thing it witnessed with its four orange eyes was a snow panther bounding over the mouth of the cave and into the air.

“KIIIIIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

Then nothing.

The snow panther had its mouth around the throat of  the magoran, squeezing with only a fraction of its jaw strength. Holding its prey for its master.

Queen Wolfkill leapt from the back of the panther, drew her ancient Threeforian knife from her belt while in the air, and landed beside the clinically deceased magoran.

She put her ear near the nose of the creature, listening for its life force. The beast was breathing in short, shallow gasps.

The Queen, dressed in her hunting skins, placed her left hand over the eyes of the creature and mumbled the Rite of Death of the Northlands. She quickly ended the creatures life with a flick of her wrist. The razor sharp bone knife cut through the creature’s neck as if it wasn’t there at all.

Six other, all female panther riders emerged from the dense fog and surrounded the now dead magoran. They dismounted and began to methodically disassemble the creature for portability. To anyone who might have been observing them at work, it would have been clear that the women had done this numerous times before. They worked like a well oiled machine, slitting open the belly, removing unhealthy or damaged oragans, skinning the creature on the spot, cutting and wrapping the meat in the creature’s own skin, and organzing the bones.

The Queen directed and oversaw the operation, making decisions about which parts to keep and which to leave behind for the other ice beings to scavenge. She berated one warrior for being careless with her spear and ruining the liver, a delicacy in the Northlands. She praised another huntress for a direct hit into the thick neck of the beast, which turned out to be the skilled shot that eventually brought the magoran to its knees.

Midway through the procedure, The Seven froze in place as their panther mounts simultaneously began to growl and press their ears back against their skulls.

The wind slowed down. Then stopped. The sky began to clear. The sky was blue for the first time, ever, in the Northlands.

The Queen’s gaze was fixed skyward as the other warriors began to whipser to one another.

Queen Wolfkill, ruler of the amazon warrior clan of the Northlands could now see the sun.

“Gather The Clan, including the men. We are abandoning the Northlands and leaving for Infinity,” the Queen said with a voice colder than the air surrounding the highest peak in all of the land.

The Queen muttered the Prayer of Forgiveness as The Seven left the magoran carcass on the frozen wasteland.