Urakena's Story

During the darker hour in the midst of the rainstorm, the wolfshirted warriors found time to relax. Many of them were motionlessly laying about in the great hall, the only sounds being the occasional snoring produced by Furdørn the Wise and others sleeping around him. The vikings didn't have individual houses like many other people had. Instead, they all slept in the great hall, a large building which accomodated all of them. Everyone was laying about on the floor on different blankets, all of them sleeping around a dimly lit central fireplace as Hethel and Engöll stood guard. Hethel himself had started to doze off, but a sudden chill awakened him. He seemed startled and slightly disoriented, as if by some unreal nightmare he was having.

Engöll was still awake as he walked over and sat down next to him near the window, offering the jarl a cup of hot tea. Hethel took the cup and nodded, taking a sip of the much needed sustenance. "It's still raining," Hethel said, peering out of the window towards the shore. "Ay, since this morning" Engöll replied. "And the clouds appear darker with each passing hour" Engöll added, looking out towards the sky. "What do you think it all means?" He asked. "Something, nothing, who knows?" Hethel replied, taking another hot sip of tea. He wasn't concerned with the strange weather at that moment. Hethel's mind was elsewhere thinking, when suddenly he spotted something in the water which looked like a surging wave.

"What's that?" he asked, setting the cup of tea on the table. Engöll would glance towards the shore as suddenly, a large monstrous head of a serpent appeared from out of the waves. It appeared to be another dragon, something these particular vikings had seen many times before. Sometimes their encounters were peaceful, but often times the vikings had been forced to defend their ships from the large winged creatures, making it difficult for them to decipher friend from foe in such trying times. But the beastie seemed to just poke its head out and snoop around without posing any real threat to the vikings. Hethel and Engöll stared at her quietly for a long time, trying to decide whether or not Urakena was a real thing, or whether she was just a ghostly apparition in the waves.

After some time of watching her, Hethel and Engöll decided that she wasn't a mirage, but an actual figure in the water. "What should we do about this?" Engöll whispered. "What can we do?" Hethel responded, turning to look around the hall at all his sleeping warriors. "It looks like it's waiting for something," Engöll whispered. "It's probably just hungry. Go out there and feed it, will ya?" Hethel said with a smile. Engöll didn't find the comment funny. Nor was it intended to be, for Hethel was being serious. Engöll just shook his head. "Why can't you have Stryder feed it?" he procrastinated. "Stryder's asleep. Why, are you scared?" Hethel nudged. Engöll just gazed at Urakena's bright blue eyes with awe and disbelief. Hethel sighed and stood up, grabbing his spear. "Fine, I'll go feed it" he said as he stepped quietly around all the sleeping vikings and towards the main doors. "If I get eaten, stay inside" he said before wrapping his wool cloak around himself and stepping out into the cold.

Within a few minutes, Hethel would fetch one of the wild horses from the stables and walk it down to the beach. To his surprise, Urakena was still there. Hethel stood on the high point at the top of the shore and gazed at the monster from a distance, her head alone being three times larger than Hethel's entire body. He held a spear and lit torch in one hand, and a rope in the other which he had tied to the horse. Hethel would stand there quietly, unmoving, waiting for the dragon to emerge from the water and approach him. All the while, Engöll watched silently from the window inside the great hall. He was nervous, moreso even than Hethel himself as he waited to see what would happen next.

Urakena raised her great head from the waves, extending her serpentine neck so that the ocean cascaded off of her scales. Hethel was a statue, raising his head to look up at the enormous creature as she extended her neck, towering over him. Even the large white horse that Hethel brought with him now seemed dwarfed by the dragon's size, and yet even now she had not fully emerged from the waters. She extended forward, but not too far, and gave Hethel and his horse a gentle sniff. As gentle as one could be with nostrils the size of the viking jarl's head. Hethel stiffened his back and remained steady, gazing into Urakena's large blue eyes.

As she rose her head and neck above the waters, Urakena exhaled a mist onto the beach, breathing deep the airs of Siv'en for the first time in a long time. The horse was shaken a bit with fear as Hethel Svensson's long flowing hair was blown back by the dragon's hot breath, but the jarl kept his composure and did not move an inch. He gazed up at her, marveling at the beastie's bioluminescent colors as the water near the shore started flickering and glowing around her; purple, blue and green scales shimmering beneath the surface. This was a different kind of sea dragon from the other ones Hethel had seen. She was very horse-like and leafy with colorful appendages, having strange fans or fins which made her difficult to identify. Her body was wavy and serpentine, almost transparent, and she had glowing bright blue ridges which gave her a sort of magical illuminating presence.

Nearby, and unbeknownst to the vikings, there was another presence in the midst. For nearby behind them in the tall grass, hiding within one of the sand dunes was a small female sea elf, watching the lone viking and the giant dragon on the beach as they looked eye to eye with one another. Aquari became increasingly curious as she made her way towards the strange settlement and closer to the dragon. The edges of Urakena's scales glowed faintly in the dimmed daylight. Beneath the surface of the water Urakena's bioluminescence rippled into effect. The waves cast an aurora of light on the beach surrounding Hethel and his horse, having magnified Urakena's blue-and-green projections.

"The sky has broken, child of man" the dragon said mysteriously, her low pitched voice being very soft yet still enough to echo over Hethel's shoulders as he gazed up at her in bewilderment. "Broken?" Hethel called out, almost shouting so that the giant monster could hear him. "What do you mean the sky has broken?" he shouted, his Nordic accent still not as loud as the dragon's whisper. The flame on his torch would flicker as the dragon exhaled, causing Hethel to sway slightly. He would raise the torch in front of him to get a better view of Urakena, the reflection of the yellow fire glinting off of her large blue eyes as she peered over him into the horizon.

Engöll was still watching the encounter from the window of the great hall. The thick wooden beams supporting the walls were enough to muffle whatever the dragon and the jarl were saying, but Engöll could see that they were saying something, just by the way that Hethel was moving. The rest of the vikings in the great hall were still sound asleep, but Engöll kept a watchful eye, mentally preparing for the worst. Still, there seemed to be no sign of any danger to the viking settlement, at least for the moment.

As the sun peaked through the dark clouds, a golden ray of light seemed to hover over the beach. The whole sighting was majestic, almost surreal in that moment as Hethel tightened his grip on the horse's reigns, stopping the wild animal from bucking at the sight of the dragon as she moved. That was the very reason Hethel never mounted the horse to begin with, foreseeing that it might get spooked easily by the dragon's very nature. At that minute, something else crossed the jarl's mind. He was standing face to face with a dragon, something few vikings had ever been privy to, and for a brief second Hethel wondered what the monster felt like to touch. He didn't dare to try, however, instead thrusting his spear into the ground and wrapping the horse's reigns around it. It was a pure white stallion, wild and without blemish. The vikings themselves rode different horses, but this particular one had been set aside for just an occassion such as this. Wild horses were used by the vikings for sacrificial and ritualistic purposes. This horse was specifically bred for the slaughter, a very ancient tradition that was still being practiced by the vikings even now.

After tying the horse off to the spear in the ground, Hethel slowly stepped back. He wasn't sure if Urakena would accept the offering or not, but the gesture of hospitality was important to Hethel, and appeasing to the gods. It was the viking way, and very often the vikings would leave offerings for the gods and land spirits. To them it was the gebo effect, an act of giving, as sacred to them as life itself. Hethel stood by quietly, watching the dragon with caution.

Urakena glanced at the small woman as she crept closer along the beach. Her eyes did not linger; the woman was not perceived to be a threat. The sea dragon returned her attention to Hethel, who did not appear to notice Aquari as she crept closer behind him. Hethel watched speechlessly as Urakena suddenly devoured the wild horse right in front of him. The unwitting stallion didn't even know what had hit him as the serpent seemed to swallow him whole with one quick snatch, breaking the horse's reigns over the mighty spear shaft. Hethel was stunned, and could only watch as she descended back into the waves, followed by a splurge of bubbles.

All of a sudden, Hethel thought he heard someone call his name from the distance. He turned to look around at the great hall, just one blink after Aquari hit the ground to hide in the tall grass just outside the outer wall which enclosed the viking jarldom. Hethel never saw her. At that point, a great white cloud formed taking the shape of a storming horse. It pranced in a circle, lightning hoof-prints and a great neigh of thunder, before taking off south towards the Exalted Mountains and towards the sky. Hethel could feel a slight chill moving in from the north as he peered up towards the white sky, deciding at that moment that he should leave the settlement and go up into the mountains.

Engöll watched with relief as the sea dragon descended back into the water. It was at that moment that he spotted something else from the window of the great hall. There hiding in the shadows crawling around the outside sheds was what appeared to Engöll to be a young girl, or at the very least, a short woman. She seemed to be snooping around, and to him she looked to be sneaking around the settlement. Engöll watched Aquari quietly, taking a sip of hot tea before setting his cup down on the table and turning to look at the bow and quiver on the wall above the hall entrance.