Tom doesn’t remember much of his early life. It’s all been burnt away in a flash of light and the smell of ozone. He knows he was a slave once. Remembers sailing the seas of Yggard with the Valkyr: One summer evening in particular, burnt right into the back of his eyes. He is in the crow’s nest, where his small stature often puts him, and the clouds have come in fast. A Dilgar flotilla is tight at their heels, ballista snapping into the stern. It has all gone wrong. There is nowhere to run.
The water comes up like walls, the sky down to meet it, and a death-keen starts in the lower decks. The Valkyr ken that their time has run short, and the ship turns slowly to fight. Tom knows he should watch the Dilgar, but there is something huge and dark moving among the clouds. His ship is laced with bolts and fire and the storm hits full fury. The vessels all become mired in waves, tangled in wood and rope. There is blood and bellowed voices below him, but… he finds his focus returning again and again to that titanic moving shadow. A flat crack shudders up the mast, and as it starts to list he is suddenly and utterly aware that the ship is breaking up beneath him. That he is going to die. Unbidden, a handful of poorly shaped Valkyr words slip out between his slack lips. A prayer of some kind, overheard in some other fight, some other moment of horror. Ved-run-gr, ved-rungr. Vedrungr.
A bolt of lightning hits the mast. A split-second later, it explodes. … Months later, Tom comes to. Face down on the shore of the Shattered Lands. His hair is bright white, and odd scars spider his shoulders, chest, and back. But he knows now what that shadow was, and knows too that Vedrungr is a name.
The water comes up like walls, the sky down to meet it, and a death-keen starts in the lower decks. The Valkyr ken that their time has run short, and the ship turns slowly to fight. Tom knows he should watch the Dilgar, but there is something huge and dark moving among the clouds. His ship is laced with bolts and fire and the storm hits full fury. The vessels all become mired in waves, tangled in wood and rope. There is blood and bellowed voices below him, but… he finds his focus returning again and again to that titanic moving shadow. A flat crack shudders up the mast, and as it starts to list he is suddenly and utterly aware that the ship is breaking up beneath him. That he is going to die. Unbidden, a handful of poorly shaped Valkyr words slip out between his slack lips. A prayer of some kind, overheard in some other fight, some other moment of horror. Ved-run-gr, ved-rungr. Vedrungr.
A bolt of lightning hits the mast. A split-second later, it explodes. … Months later, Tom comes to. Face down on the shore of the Shattered Lands. His hair is bright white, and odd scars spider his shoulders, chest, and back. But he knows now what that shadow was, and knows too that Vedrungr is a name.