Location: Somewhere in the middle of the N’or Easter, Orkney
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52nd year, Winter
Brega had done the impossible – somehow he’d located his lost brother in the middle of a raging blizzard. He’d found him barely alive, and tried to keep the candle of Barkla’s life from being snuffed out completely but forcing his near frozen body into the innards of his dead pack pony to keep him warm. Yet Brega was losing his own fight again the cold – with no where to escape to and the storm showing no signs of slowing down, all seemed lost.
Brega’s vision was narrowing to a single, flickering point of light in the center of a vast, howling darkness. The heat he had borrowed from the pony’s carcass was spent, and the death was pulling at his limbs like a leaden weight. The future king slumped against the frozen hide of the animal, his head falling back. He was fading.
And yet, he knew the legends—the scribes had told many a time about his ancestor Hacktor Derkillez, the great Ghastwielder of the Drokka, who had once stood at the brink of oblivion in the desolation of the lost kingdom of Oz. Then it was that untold thousands of Derk goblins and Myz warriors were threatening to overwhelm Hacktor and his men as they fought at the broken gates of the fallen city. All seemed lost – until the legends say that the great Kon-Herr and his Forsaken men called upon the mother of the world.
Brega vowed to do the same – with a final, desperate effort of will, he moved his cracked lips. “Kalypzo…” he wheezed, his voice no louder than the rustle of snow. “Mother of the Deep Veins… Heart of the Mountain… do not let the Derkillez line end in a ditch of ice. Not like this.”
Nothing happened.
And Brega succumbed – yet another mortal disappointed by the gods.
The Return of the Silver Ghost
Some time later – who can say how long, as the white roar of the N’or’Easter still showed no signs of slowing, Brega awoke – yet whether it was into a dream world, the afterlife, or something else, he wasn’t sure.
That’s when he saw it – the vision of a Drokkina of impossible stature, her skin the color of rich, dark loam and her hair a cascading waterfall of molten gold and silver. She stood in an underground garden where the flowers were made of gemstones, and she looked at Brega with eyes that held the warmth of a thousand suns. She reached out a hand towards him, “Patience, little Prince,” the vision whispered, a sound like the melodic grinding of tectonic plates. “Mother Earth does not forget her own.”
“Kalypzo!” Brega reached his hand towards the goddess, yearning for the sight to be true, yet his efforts only served to shattered the vision as a wet, cold pressure slammed into Brega’s cheek. He gasped, his eyes snapping open to a world of grey and white. “I am lost.” Closing his eyes, the last thing he saw was the strange sight of a shadow looming towards him – surely it a demon of the storm come to claim his soul.
Then came the bark—a deep, resonant bell-tone that cut through the wind.
It all happened so far – suddenly the silver wolfhound stood over Brega, Garf’s fur with caked in ice but his eyes burned with an ancient, wild intelligence. He was larger than Brega remembered, his muscles corded like iron. And Garf was not alone. From the swirling curtain of the blizzard emerged five massive shapes – female wolves – the Grey Queens of the Pennal highlands.
The wolves didn’t growl. They didn’t bared their teeth. Instead, under the silent command of the hound who had run with them for weeks, the pack moved with a singular purpose. One by one, the female wolves pressed their heavy, fur-laden bodies against Brega, flanking him on all sides. Their heat was a physical shock, a primal radiation that seeped into his frozen bones.
It was a sanctuary of fur and muscle in the heart of the white void. Brega felt his blood begin to move again, the agonizing sting of returning warmth signaling that the Mother had answered. He reached out, burying his hands in the thick ruff of the wolf to his left, weeping silent, frozen tears of gratitude.
By the time the wind abated to a low moan, the grey light of a new dawn was struggling to pierce the clouds. Garf nudged Brega’s shoulder, his tail a slow, rhythmic thud against the snow. The hound turned toward the mound where the pony lay, where Barkla was entombed.
“Help me, Garf,” Brega whispered, his voice returning.
With the wolves standing sentinel like grey ghosts, Brega used the last of his strength to pull the frozen hide away, then he pulled Barkla out into the snow – his brother a blue-skinned, unconscious shell. Against all odds, the brawny Drokka was still breathing!
Garf stepped forward, lowering his massive shoulders. He was a beast of legend in that moment, his size nearly matching that of the ponies they had lost. With a grunt of exertion, Brega heaved his younger brother’s limp body upward, draping the Barkla across Garf’s broad back. “Save us, lad,” Brega grunted, clutching Garf’s collar to keep himself upright.
The wolfhound didn’t buckle. He braced his legs, his eyes fixed on the southern horizon where Rasburg lay buried.
The Burden Only Grows
The stone walls of the Grey Eagle felt different upon their return—no longer a cage, but instead a heaven of mercy.
The rescue had been a thing of local legend. A lone sentinel atop the Rasburg gate, squinting through the dying flurries of the N’or’Easter, had sounded the alarm at a sight that defied reason: a pack of massive highland wolves, led by a silver hound of monstrous proportions, trotting toward the gates. Slumped across the hound’s back was the blue-skinned body of the younger Drokka, while the elder prince stumbled behind, his hand buried in the hound’s thick ruff. As the village bells began to toll and the gates creaked open, the wolves—and the silver ghost who led them—simply turned and vanished back into the white haze, leaving only a trail of steaming paw-prints and two half-dead princes in their wake at the town’s entrance.
For days, Brega moved through a haze of exhaustion. He sat by the hearth in their room, his own hands wrapped in thick bandages soaked in healing salves provided by inn keep. Every few candlemarks, he would stand and check the second bed.
Barkla was alive, but the frost had taken a toll. His breathing was ragged, and his dreams were clearly haunted by his near death experience. But as Brega tended to his brother’s fever, the silence of the room was punctuated by the one absence he could not ignore. The corner where the Meisterstaf usually stood was empty. The silver light of Ajax was gone, buried under leagues of shifting snow. That the quest was cursed, was now obvious. The thought was soul-crushing to Brega and he began to sink into depression.
On the fifth evening, Barkla’s eyes finally fluttered open. The orange glow of the peat fire illuminated a face that looked older, his arrogance stripped away by the cold wind. He saw Brega sitting by the fire, his bandaged hands resting on his knees.
Barkla’s gaze immediately darted to the empty corner. Then, it drifted to his brother.
“Brega,” he rasped, his voice a dry echo. “The staff… the blessing of Hanbull…”
“Lost,” Brega said quietly, not looking up. “I searched the ravine before the wolves found me. It is in the Mother’s keeping now.”
Barkla closed his eyes, a shuddering breath racking his frame. The shame was a physical weight, heavier than the snow that had nearly claimed him. He, the future General, the Kon-Herr’d Shield, had stolen the birthright of the king and then lost it in the dirt.
“I am a failure, brother,” Barkla whispered, a single tear cutting through the soot on his cheek. “I failed the clan, I failed the quest, and I failed you. I am no protector. I am a thief who almost killed his Kon-Herr.”
But then Barkla sat up straighter, his voice growing frantic. “It was when the second pony went down—the wind, Brega, it was like a physical hand ripping the staff away from me. I think it fell near the jagged ridge, just before the ravine. When the thaw comes, I’ll scour every inch of that tundra. I’ll dig through the mud until my fingernails bleed to find—”
“It is gone, Barkla,” Brega cut him off, his voice flat and final as he stared into the dying embers of the hearth. “The snow has claimed it, and the earth has swallowed the blessing. It’s no use. We must face the truth: we are stripped of our pride and our protection.”
Aghast, Barkla looked at his brother. These were words of doom he’d never heard the future king utter before. That’s when he saw a hollowness in his Brega’s eyes. The “Prince’s fire” was nearly out.
Brega continued his lamentations. “Without the staff, Barkla… what are we? We are just two exiles in a human tavern. Perhaps that lore master Dallegheri was right. Are we just chasing ghosts?” His spirit, usually the anchor of their journey, was drifting toward a dark sea of despair. He looked at his bandaged fingers, wondering if he would ever lead again.
Barkla pushed himself up, ignoring the agonizing protest of his frostbitten limbs. He crawled to the edge of his bed, reaching out to grip Brega’s arm with a strength that was purely born of will.
“No,” Barkla growled, his warrior’s heart finding its rhythm in the face of his brother’s doubt. “I lost the silver, but I am still the iron. You saved me, Brega. You did what no General could—you walked into the mouth of the monster and pulled me out. If the staff is gone, then we will retake Akka with our bare hands. We will find another way.”
“And if it’s too late?” Brega sighed. “If the plague has finished what the Evil One started? If father is already gone?”
Barkla looked toward the north, where the Akka mountains were hidden behind a wall of winter. “Then we will be the last of the Drokka. But we will make sure the world remembers how we died.”
The Apocrypha of Azazel 