Tattered bloodstained armband marked with an ancient imperial insignia
This item was a prize from the Hunt for History.
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a tattered bloodstained armband marked with an ancient imperial insignia
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This item dates to the Witch Winter at Barrett's Gorge.
Loresong
Part I:
Focusing your melodic magic tightly into the armband, the skin on your arms suddenly pebbles and it feels as though the hairs are freezing. The sensation of a gust of cold wind against your eyes forces them closed, and a vision begins to form.
You find yourself immediately shuddering with arctic cold, as the bitterest winter in history enfolds your sight and senses. From an ethereal vantage you float amongst a group of soldiers trudging uphill through a wide path packed down in the slush, beaten from the thousands of feet of the army moving ahead. Bearing the armbands of the Imperial Empath Brigade, the men and women are laden with heavy packs, and are laboring toward the top of a high ridge ahead that is barely visible through the violent sideways sleet.
Reaching the windswept crest, a massive gorge yawns into view below you, teeming with an entire army milling about trying to take cover from the storm. Camps are being raised on every level surface in the basin below, including larger structures that seem to imply that this will be a long pause indeed.
As if the cloth of the armband has suddenly turned to glacial ice, your fingernails flare with horrible lancing pain and frostbite creeps up your fingers. Unable to release the ancient fabric, the sting of your nerves dying overwhelms you and your vision twists and goes white.
Searing cold numbs you to the bones as shifting white light resolves into a snowstorm, and you again peer down into the fabled gorge. Your vantage is slightly different than before, and it appears that the brigade of healers have found a shallow cave high up on the ridge that they have set up camp in. The movement of the soldiers is weary and hungered, and some of the structures being built before have been torn back down and burned for warmth. Empaths with hard, disturbed expressions shiver within the cave mouth, or stand outside hoping for stray moments of sun to pierce the roiling grey cloudsea overhead.
In a nearby camp below, loud words develop into a full-fledged brawl, and suddenly weapons flash into hands. Within moments three warriors lie crumpled on the ground, their pooling blood sending plumes of steam into the frosty air. A few of the healers stand to tromp down the hill to lend aid, but stop with horrified looks crossing their faces. Below, the soldiers have begun ripping apart the fallen and dragging pieces off to dwindling cookfires.
Slowly you feel pulses of blood invade the cold-savaged fingers of your hands, and the return of agony tells you that you have lost no permanent sensation. Your vision clears and you take a deep breath.
Part II:
Preparing yourself against the expected cold, just as your song elicits the first ripple of awakening from the armband you take an unexpected sharp breath. Ice seems to flash-freeze your vocal cords, and before you can shout for help you are voiceless, and your vision fades.
Pallid faces matching the white of the surrounding snow are again presented to you, and noticeably they are far leaner and severe of feature. All eyes are turned toward the valley, where hundreds of tiny fires built of burning bones flicker in the perpetual twilight. A cloying thick smell of sizzling meat meanders through the air in smoky puffs, causing more than a few of those seated in the cave's features to twist with nausea and revulsion. Comforting a doubled-over comrade who is retching dryly, one of the men is quietly speaking to another about the members of their group who had ventured below to heed the aid flags, and had not returned.
Pulling back from the ledge, the group exchange looks that can only be described as pained and for a moment nobody moves. Then into the circle one of the larger men takes a hesitant step, turning to look each healer in the eye, and then seating himself on the icy stone. He extends his right leg and rolls his pants up tightly to the thigh, and two others kneel beside him and begin to intonate spells. The heaving woman from before steps forward, her face bleeding where her tears had frozen and ripped away the skin, now bearing a shining curved axe in her hand and a stony expression of resolve. Without pause she strokes the blade down upon the man's leg, evincing a grunt of pain and then, a moment later in the silence, the crackling of the blood droplets freezing. She carefully lifts the heavy leg, turning toward their small fire built of backpacks, and the kneeling healers begin to regrow the lost appendage and restore blood.
Gasping, you finally can pull air into your lungs after what seems like an eternity. Your throat still sore from the burn of ice, the vision fades and true sight returns.
A moment between your song's end and the sudden wash of vision is filled with dread, as you anticipate the cold, but you are ill-prepared for the blast that strikes you. As if thrust into the polar seas, your entire body is gripped with ice, and movement and thought become unattainable.
Darker than in the previous vision, the interior of the crowded cave is now sealed off from the view of the gorge by a packed wall of snow. The collective of haggard field empaths shiver inside, huddling like clutched fists around their fragments of internal heat, and bowing their heads silently to the sounds of mad screaming and weak weapon clashes echoing from the army outside.
Erupting in a sudden convulsive sob, one of the men lurches to his feet and roars invective and despair, starting toward the sealed exit, but is quickly bound with threads of weak magic and set back down jarringly. While not displaying the deep signs of malnutrition evident before, the group evinces a sickness far deeper than their flesh. Many have their britches rolled up, and are rubbing at the newly-formed muscles of their pale legs below thin scar lines.
In the back of the cave a pile of gnawed bones grows larger, and the scar-faced woman caressing the axe blade with her thumb now roves her eyes hungrily over the others.
Clacking sounds rouse you from the depths of your frozen visions, and resolve painfully into your own teeth, racketing against each other inside your head. As if an ice titan were slowly releasing you from an unloving bear hug, your breath and sight return in painful goosepimply waves.
With a slight feeling of dread you sense your magic spark the connection to the armband in your fingers, but for a moment no apparent infliction assails you. Your eyes flutter closed, and as the vision sweeps you into its power you feel your heart slow, then stop, as it turns to solid ice.
A solid wall of white fills your sight as the biting cold returns, yet is seems not as freezing as before. In the center of the barricade a dark spot breaks through, and then hands become visible pulling the snow away and widening the hole. Once open enough for passage, the group of empaths begin to crawl out one at a time, shielding their eyes from the shards of sunlight slashing through the scattering clouds. They soon are all standing in the open air, stretching and turning their faces upward to the warmth of the day. A sober stillness parts the moment as they all turn to look down into the gorge, as less than one in five of the original soldiers below prepare to finally leave the frigid land behind.
The bowl is cluttered with mounds of armor and bones, and skulls half-blackened by flames are heaped as sickening monuments to the recent acts of human depravity. Shouldering their few remaining belongings, the line of healers begins a slow trek back over the ridge toward the western nations. As the final person in the line is framed against the sky at the top of the crest, you can see it is the scar-faced empath, absently thumbing the axe at her belt and chewing viciously on the tip of her finger.
Reluctantly and with great flares of pain that arc through your veins, your heart once again pulses to life. The cold slowly recedes from your body, but an aching tenderness in your chest lingers for long moments after.