"Their souls..." Bastain muttered under his breath, disbelief washing over him. "How can their souls be outside their bodies?"
The mutated limbs housed twisted, unnatural souls. Souls that didn't even match the bodies they inhabited. One elf's extra head wasn't an elf at all, it was a troll, its soul somehow crammed into the deformed body alongside the elf's.
And worse still, in some of the creatures, the place where their soul should have been was empty. It was just a hollow body, moving without any guiding force.
Bastain's eyes locked onto one especially grotesque figure. A wolf's head grew out of an elf's shoulders, and it gnawed at the leg of a deer that had been fused to the elf's arm. The wolf's eyes glinted with feral hunger, as it tore through the meat with vicious glee.
"What a perversion of nature," Bastian whispered, disgust and awe warring within him.
All living things had spirits. The soul and body were meant to be one, a core principle of both shamanism and druidic belief. What Bastian saw before him wasn't just wrong, it was an affront to the natural order, a violation of life itself.
"It's like someone took a bunch of bodies," he mused, his mind racing, "and forced whatever souls they could find into them. The result is... this."
Bastain's thoughts were abruptly interrupted, a jolt of realization running through him as his memory flashed back to a funeral. The image of soulless, pale, pupil-less eyes; newborn eyes, filled his mind.
At that funeral, the old shaman had let out a weary sigh as he prepared the body. The sound of it echoed in Bastian's mind now, intertwining with the horror of what lay before him.
These creatures, with their mangled bodies and misaligned souls, were something far worse than death. They were a blasphemy against life itself.
"Life and death are two sides of the same natural cycle," Bastian thought, his mind drifting to the teachings of the ancient spirits. "According to the beliefs of our ancestors, the total number of souls reflected in the waters of the Styx should remain constant, with each soul in life balanced by one in death. But if the living are dead before they are even born, can the dead truly find peace?"
The old shaman's lament echoed in his memory, the man's voice heavy with sorrow. Back then, many dismissed his concerns as the ramblings of a tired old man. How could a strange disease possibly signal a crisis for the entire world? Yet now, standing on the frozen tundra, with the horrors unfolding before him, Bastain felt the cold truth sink into his bones.
A chill ran down his spine. He recalled the strange pits he had encountered in the snow over the past few months; deep, unnatural craters, their cause unknown. And then there were the growing reports of people succumbing to Solesia, scattered across the North like a creeping plague. Pieces of a puzzle were starting to fit together, forming a picture far darker than he had ever imagined.
The sudden surge of dread made him take a step forward, his hand brushing against the rough bark of a pine tree.
"It's bad," he whispered to himself.
The fragile balance he had been maintaining was shattered. Large flakes of snow dislodged from the branches above, falling in a cascade around him.
"Crack."
The sound of snow hitting the rocks echoed unnervingly in the silence of the frozen wasteland. Bastian's heart leapt into his throat. His face drained of color as he stood frozen, knowing he had just made a fatal mistake. Time, however, did not slow down for him.
The creature's had noticed.
As if on cue, the twisted creatures shifted. Every single one of them, from the monsters ripping into the bear's carcass to the eerie, motionless figures scattered across the ice, turned their heads in unison. Their lifeless eyes; pale, unfocused; fixed on the point where Bastian stood.
The strange, sickening beings who had been roaring at one another moments ago fell silent. Their deformed heads turned toward him, and those that had once appeared to be corpses slowly began to stir. Eyes that should have held life were dull and pupil-less, their gaze void of any emotion or intelligence. It was as though they didn't truly see him, but sensed his presence all the same.
Bastian's heart thundered in his chest, and the realization hit him hard. The cover he had been using, pine trees and rocks, meant nothing to them. They saw him as clearly as day.
Without another thought, he turned and bolted, his breath escaping in frantic gasps.
"Drax! Help me!" he shouted into the biting air, his voice swallowed by the vast, snowy expanse.
Suddenly, the sky exploded with a burst of red. Fireworks; Bastian's only way to signal for help, arced upward, painting the frozen landscape with flashes of crimson. But in the harsh daylight, the signal flare was barely visible, and Bastian had no idea if anyone would even see it.
He ran, his legs burning with the effort, while behind him, the creatures with their twisted, grotesque forms gave chase. What should have been a nightmare of the darkest night was now playing out in the harsh light of day.
"Flame, obey my command!" Bastian growled, his voice thick with desperation.
With a sharp turn, he whirled around, extending a hand as a small ball of fire flared to life on his gloved palm.
"Fireball!"
The tiny, fist-sized orb of flame shot forward, striking the nearest elf-like creature. The resulting explosion of fire momentarily blinded him, and he winced as the flames leapt high, engulfing the misshapen figure.
"Boom!"
To his astonishment, the creature was consumed by the fire far more quickly than he had anticipated. Bastian blinked, staring in disbelief as the figure writhed in agony before collapsing into a charred heap.
He knew the limits of his fireball, his was no grand wizardry, merely a trick fueled by enchanted gloves. The flame was weak, often more smoke than fire, barely enough to startle a winter wolf, much less a giant or a northern snow bear. Yet here, in this moment, it had utterly destroyed the twisted creature.
"These monsters... maybe they aren't as terrifying as they seem," Bastian thought, daring to hope.
But Drax was nowhere in sight. Bastian had no idea how far his companion had wandered, or if the careless frost giant could even spot the faint flare he had sent into the sky. Time was running out. Gritting his teeth, Bastian decided to stand his ground.
Reaching into his waist pouch, he pulled out a small bottle of light yellow fuel and poured it over the blade of his sword. The cold metal gleamed in the winter sun as he raised his cooling-gloved hand and wiped the length of the blade, preparing it for the fight that was to come.
The twisted souls were still closing in. The chase was far from over.
"Come on, then," Bastian whispered to the advancing creatures, his heart racing. "Let's finish this."
"Flame, attach yourself to my sword." Bastian commanded, his voice firm with resolve.
The flames obeyed instantly, surging up the length of his blade. In an instant, the cold, hard steel of his sword transformed into a weapon of blazing fire, casting an eerie glow in the winter landscape. Bastian gripped the hilt tightly and, without hesitation, charged forward.
The deformed monsters lumbering after him were slow, their twisted bodies struggling to keep pace. Each creature was uniquely warped, and their differing shapes made them clumsy, moving at varying speeds. As Bastian retreated, they unintentionally spread out, forming a snaking line of grotesque figures.
The nearest one, already charred from his earlier attack, was little more than a stumbling husk. Gritting his teeth, Bastian leaped through the air and brought his flaming sword down hard upon a dragon-like mutant.
For creatures born of cold, fire was their natural weakness, and Bastian's enchantments worked like a charm. With a sickening crack and a burst of flames, the humanoid monster was engulfed, turning into a living torch under the force of his strike.
"Why are they so weak?" Bastian thought, frowning as the creature crumbled. "How could these things wreak such havoc? Why did they push the elves to the brink and even invade our lands?"
But he had no time for answers. More of the deformed beings were closing in, their gnarled limbs dragging them toward him. Fueled by the success of his recent blows, Bastian swung his sword again, the fire still burning bright.
In the tribe, Bastian had been trained by the old hunters, taught how to fight to defend himself. But now, it was different. He was not just surviving, he was fighting with all his might, his adrenaline pumping as though he were a warrior from legend.
Each flaming strike cut through the flesh of the monsters, burning through their twisted bodies and sending them tumbling into the snow. Bastian didn't even need to use his more advanced fighting techniques; the pseudo-giant forms of combat taught to him were unnecessary here. These creatures fell with relative ease, crumbling under the combined force of his strikes and the scorching heat of the fire.
"Boom!"
Suddenly, a tremendous force slammed into his side, sending him crashing into a nearby tree. Pain exploded across his body as the impact left him breathless, the sharp cold of the snow biting into his skin.
"Pain..." he muttered, wincing as he tried to regain his bearings. Reality hit him hard. He was still young, not yet a full warrior, and his body wasn't strong enough to take such punishment. But what truly shocked him was the identity of his attacker.
"A Frost Giant?" Bastian gasped.