Wednesday, August 06, 2014

The Mueren Trees


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. Harvesting the mist he wove it into a cloak that he wore ever after. 

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 Harlking Hall in a Cloak of Red. And ever after he wore that cloak and it bore both the sorcery of Mordius and his own hate within it, and it proved to be the greatest of his armaments. The red cloak blinded Corthain to the world, so that the god saw nothing from the Fortress of Iul except a haze, his mind, blinded, turned away from the world, until Frafnog the dragon wrestled with the Red God, 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 Aihrde, excepting only those earliest Sentients, for these trees bore the wealth of Mordius within them. To men they were held as holy things and worshiped. It is from this line of trees that the Mueren Trees sprung. These trees were healing trees and holy trees to men. 


~The Codex of Aihrde

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