Demoni Vankil - Letter Ten

A young human courier of the Kings has just arrived with dreadful news.

Demoni Vankil is the historical and award-winning work of Höbin Luckyfeller, and the precursor to Chronicles of a Hero.

An ancient puzzle box.
Fourteen letters.
A Council of Whispers.
…and a clerk.
Discover the 700 year old secret millions died to protect.

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LETTER TEN

My Beloved Ethany,

King Kimmeldell returned two days back to look upon our progress and impress upon us the necessity of bringing these trials to fulfillment in haste. He brought disturbing news about the war. The darkness has spread across the coast and will soon reach Vänkiläsä. We are no longer safe. He has orders to move us and as quietly as possible. Should the Vallen slaves escape, they would be our undoing.

The talent of the Gypsies has proven to be the salvation of our research. Shiro worked through the night to capture the remaining life force of the beasts. The screams were almost unbearable, but he was unerring on this. Vallen are strong in body and spirit, and the runes don’t know the difference between good and evil. Unfortunately, we don’t possess enough crystals to store all the life force, and many had to be put down by the blade. What a waste.

Much of what I write will not make sense to you, I’m sure. I find it difficult to separate myself from this work. I fear it possesses me.

A young human courier of the Kings has just arrived with dreadful news. Alas, Vänkiläsä is no more. She reminds me of you. It’s her green eyes, the same as yours, and when she smiled in greeting, my heart stopped. It is hard not to let the wind here freeze your very hopes. I spend my nights sketching pictures of you and the girls and talking with them as if you were here.

But, you are not…and in the end, I miss you more.

Do you remember I do this for you? For Saffron and my darling Melody? Have they grown much? Are they as lovely as their mother?

We move in great haste now. They say the only haven left is deep within the very caves of Holääfeldi itself. I am grateful that we will no longer isolate ourselves.

Beloved, I would give another decade of my life to a rune for a moment to hold you in my arms again. To feel the warmth of your sweet breath upon my face and taste the tender sweetness of your kiss.

All my love,

Eamon

VANKILÄSÄ!!?

I tore through my crates, searching through the dates until I found a small metal container with rounded corners. Pushing the lock sequence, the lid popped open to reveal a small cloth scroll, and I had to smile.

Miracle number three. Sitting in front of me was another missing puzzle piece I’d possessed for over six years.

Field Entry, CT-709:2-11

I had developed strong friendships with the Kutollum Historians of the North. They share their history with those seeking to shine a favorable light upon the Dwarves. They are a great and noble people and when there is a shred of history which crosses their path, chances are, they’ll have a record of it in some form.

So I had ventured north. My hopes were for discovering a certain genealogy line of a famous Nethinim. Someone with an obscure past, claiming to have been raised by the Kutollum.

With the permission of Lord Coldham, the primary historian of the Kutollum, I searched the dwarves’s records for months. I could not find any trace of this human visiting, staying or learning from this stout race of warriors. After a month in the north country, frustration set in—the trail had gone cold.

What was I doing, chasing ghosts of the past that didn’t want to be found?

The very beat of my heart told me this was more than a historical puzzle. It was a cry from the grave. A plea to be remembered for all the sacrifices made in blood.

I retraced my steps and go back to Humär to retrieve my primary records.

My travels took me down through the frozen wastelands of Ambasere, the kingdom of the noble King Borislav. It had been years since I traveled through his lands, when the people of the local villages sent word that a Gnome was in their lands. They soon invited me to the palace in Glaserte to dine with the Winter Wolf himself.

When questioned about my journey, I relayed the previous season of research. King Borislav seemed very interested in my quest and listened. Mentioning my thoughts about the lives of warriors needing to be told, the king smiled. He then dismissed his guards from the hall, poured two glasses of his famous crystal wine, and leaned forward.

“I have much to show you,” he whispered, even though we were alone. “I must believe your plans have now changed.”

…and he was right. The next day King Borislav met me at the castle gates with a dozen hunters, a cook, supplies and sleds roped to giant wolves. He insisted I accompany him on an expedition: a two-day ride west.

If you’ve never ridden in a sled pulled by wolves the size of bears…I don’t recommend it. The trees and scenery whipped by as we leaped across the frozen landscape, whistles steering the wolf trains as whips cracked from the hunter’s hand. They had to strap my body to the sled for fear of me falling by the wayside or bouncing off and breaking my body against a tree.

We passed the Prime Gate in the Ochra-Ruce mountains before the sun set on the first day. I’d never traveled that far west, and not in such a short time. The forests become dense and unforgiving unless you have considerable wilderness skills or wood lore, to which I had neither. We were rarely disturbed by the predators of the forest because Borislav and his men communicated with them.

Food was abundant, as was strong drink, so I can’t complain. The night was loud with songs of victorious battles as fires blazed until dawn.

Just before nightfall the next day, our journey ended at the base of a sheer mountain range—a wall of ice and stone impassable. Fingers of ice was the name given to them by the trappers and natives, or the 'Sormi-jaa' as they called them. The ridge was persistently pounded by the wind, resulting in thick layers of ice that would not fully melt in warmer months.

The men started unloading the sleds as the cook started on dinner. King Borislav then did something I never would have suspected. He transformed in front of me. It privileged me to meet Borislav when I wrote a small piece on ‘The Tracking Masters of the North’ a few years back. It shocked me to discover he was a shapeshifter. I was just unprepared this time for the change when the Great Winter Wolf — a legend among humans — towered over me in his majesty. Brilliant grey and white fur with steel-blue eyes. His red stained lips curled and gave a short growl, lifting a front leg in my direction. The command was unmistakable, ‘Get on’.

What do you do when a giant wolf commands you to get on its back? You obey.

He leapt through the narrow paths as I clung tightly to his back, locking my cybernetic arm so I wouldn’t fall off. I made a mental note to return to Ambasere soon and start a book on the White Wolf.

He brought me to the mouth of a cave…a single path etched in stone, surrounded by what resembled kutollum stonework. Borislav transformed back into his human form, taking the lead while I popped my mechanical hand back to use my excavation light down the hole. The path led us deep into the earth, where I mistook the catacombs for constructing Kutollum stonework.

As we descended, King Borislav rumbled, ‘I think you won’t soon forget Vankiläsä.’ He then shared the story of the cave’s discovery.

In the early days of his father’s kingdom, villages had to deal with attacks from wolves and bears. Slaughtering livestock, they’d even carry off the unattended young of the village. A hunting party had been tracking a beast for days and mistook the entrance for a bear’s cave. The party of warriors entered with spears and torches, only to discover the bones of hundreds of humans. Rows of contorted human bones awaited them, with a few already decayed to the bone, but most frozen and preserved after death.

His timing was perfect. For just as he finished speaking, I could look around and see for myself what they saw. It was just as King Borislav had said. But there was more. Most had a round symbol carved into the stone above their heads. These had similar symbols burned into their bodies. In the deepest reaches of the cave, the skeletons became much larger; the teeth were sharp and jagged. Vallen. …all in the same contorted shapes and lying under symbols etched in the walls.

I had examined the carvings and brands, but didn’t recognize any of the symbols. I couldn't recognize any of the symbols in these carvings and brands, which was puzzling because I can identify various forms of magic. These symbols didn't fit any established patterns I knew of.

Borislav then pulled from his tunic a scroll of cloth and handed it to me. The scroll of cloth that Borislav handed to me had writing stitched on it, which is his people's way of preserving older records. He said they had rewritten it from scrolls found at this site. The language was Baiūmen and revealed that these were not tombs at all…but cells. The prisoners, who were the foulest of evil-doers, were sentenced to death. To be used in an experiment sanctioned by High King Gaston when Andilain was a nation of itself.

The bodies were abandoned, and the Ambasere hunters reported their findings back to Borislav’s father. The cave remained a well-guarded secret, kept from any records. They feared King Alik and his people being accused of some unspeakable crime against their own race.

As a fishis of the Gnome Nation, I documented and time stamped the ruins and ancient shackles. I can estimate that the construction took place between 6011s and 6014s. This happened long before Andilain divided and Borislav’s father ruled his own people.

The cloth holds record of a human mägo and Kutollum miners using prisoners sentenced to death to work the mines. Vankiläsä means ‘prison of the damned’.

Setting the cloth scroll down on the table, I can’t stop staring at the letters in front of me.

Ah-hah. I found you.

I have walked the path of Eamon, the mägo clerk.

I have seen the works of his hands, or at least the effects of his experiments.

And now you are going to Holääfeldi.

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Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other stories and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial OR earn a paid membership by joining the referral program!