The Cloak of Red

In those days Mordius kept her Hall in a grove of birch upon a broad hill. These trees lifted to the heavens and dug deep in the ground. Her board she kept in the middle of a great hall of these trees and it was always laden with food and the celebrated. A stature with a likeness of her, carved in wood was set overlooking the table and men made sacrifice of wild meats, grains, and fermented drinks. And each night Mordius presided over it all and feasted with the lords of the tribes of men.This house men called the Harkling Hall, which means "plentiful" in their speech. 

Upon a dark eve, when the moon lay in the arms of Ealor and the sun passing beneath the Wall of Worlds Thorax visited Modius in the Harlking Hall. She greeted him and moved to make him welcome, but leapt at her and cut her down, laying her low with his great sword. She fell, stricken, to the floor, her life's blood running into the earth and drowning the roots of the hall. She looked up, catching her brother's eye and saw the madness of evil in it and she made to stop her life's force ebbing from her. Men all about the hall rose against the Red God and made to slay him but none in that hall held the power and he lay waste to them.

He saw then Mordius upon the ground before him, laying in the ruin of her hall. Falling to his knees he called to her, "Sister. All this was foretold upon the Arc of Time. And what is now, must have been."

She looked upon him and said, "With envy and treachery you have come to my halls and slain me upon my step. For there is no crime greater and for it none shall suffer you ever more my brother."  This outraged Thorax in shame. From that day hence, he became evil incarnate, the enemy of all that was good.

Slipping beyond speech Mordius used her ebbing strength to lift a shroud of her blood and this enveloped him in a thick mist. He rose, choking upon the ruin of her. It lifted him on high, filling his nostrils and throat with the foul taste of death. The mist choked out the air making to kill him, but in the end he mastered it and kept is for his own.

He turned, cloaked in her blood, so that he might pass out beneath the halls for all to see, man, beast, or god. And all men spoke afterwards that they saw Thorax leave the Harkling Hall in a Cloak of Red. And ever after he wore that cloak and it bore the sorcery of Mordius within it and his own hate and it proved the greatest of his armaments, until Frafnog the dragon wrestled with the him, shredding the cloak and scattering it across the wide world.

The men of the north, overpowered with grief by Mordius' death, knew not what to do. Some staggered hopelessly through the wilderness, caught within the grips of a terrible fear. But others were not unmade so easily, and they found hope in the blood stained ground of the grove where Mordius fell. When spring came a small host of brightly colored silver trees, mostly birch and oak, came to life, growing in the ground where her blood had been spilt. They grew larger than any other tree of Erde, excepting only those earliest Sentients, for these trees bore the wealth of Mordius within. To men they were held as holy things and worshiped. It is from this line of trees that the Mueren Trees have sprung. These trees were healing trees and holy trees to men.

~The Codex of Aihrde