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The Spoor of Battle on a Northern Wind

from Fare Thee Well Battle Winds by Fen Walker

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    Venture into the frozen territory of Ur! Fen Walker's silvery Pro Cassette brings this epic fantasy to life with exceptional O-card packaging. A 4oz. Totem Woods candle to whisk you through the snow covered forests and the windy battlegrounds. Includes a transparent Fen Walker sticker and album art poster painted by fantasy lord Brendan Elliot!

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lyrics

The smell of blood was strong, unbearably so. It was drawn by the blood, yet repulsed by the presence of The Tusk, the thing it both feared and desired. How much easier it had been when it had been buried under bones, where it could look at its beautiful glow at its leisure, and then leave to hunt in the bogs. Now it was a weapon, a weapon that could kill, that could cut its strange flesh.
It surged through the woods. Unknown ounds came to its senses and it neared the place of blood. In the small human part of its mind, it remembered the sounds of war from long ago. The scent of battle was so familiar now that it could recollect its components: blood, sweat and steel. Soon the trees thinned and it stopped at a cliff edge. Bellow a seething, confused mass churned. White puffs of smoke appeared here and there. A large explosion brought a tall pillar of stone down, crushing those in its path. Men fell, and after a time, got back up again, different somehow than before. The thing smelled sorcery then, and it became truly intrigued.

“Bastard!” Woja screamed, slashing at the Khan who stepped clear of the stroke with surprising speed. The morose, self defacing Khan was no more. The NecroKhan had returned, and with a simple phrase had conjured an army all of his own. The battle between the Urish and Hegemony had been vicious and well matched at first, but the Hegemony’s superior training and numbers were slowly winning the day. Now with the dead returning to life from both the funeral aeries and the battleground, The Urish were truly doomed.
“Maybe so, but your fate was known to me from the start. Though the dead avoid me, I hear much, I surmised the power of the north. But they are no equal to the power of the dead. They shall defeat your army, and that of the Hegemony. Ur shall be preserved.”
“And what of the rest of the living!”
“Only the dead shall dwell in these lands,” the Khan said and moved in to strike.

Soja dragged herself from the rubble of the fallen funeral aerie. A well aimed cannon shot had brought the crumbling stone pillar down. Soja had been in fighting in its shadow and had barely dived out from under the mass of falling stone and human remains, only to be showed by the debris as it crashed into the frozen ground. A man’s shadow fell upon her, she lifted her broad sword just in time to block a stroke from a halberd, she turned the weapon aside and ran the warrior through the groin, the man fell gibbering to the ground.
Soja stood and surveyed her surroundings. All around her was the turmoil of battle, the men and woman of Ur fighting and doing much of the dying, while the Hegemonic warriors fought with skill and the love for battle. She wandered dazed through the carnage, running a man through, turning aside a blade, severing a hand. She was so tired. Suddenly she was knocked down by an immense explosion from behind her. She rolled over in time to watch a flaming airship slowly drift down and burn anyone beneath it alive.
It was beyond the flames that Soja saw her sister fall from a blow delivered by the Khan, their supposed ally. Following this she saw the first of his new army: A man without a head stumbling by, swinging his sword blindly back and forth, hoping to find living flesh. There was a wild shriek to her left and she looked to see a warrior of the Hegemony held down by several skeletons while another drew forth the living mans entrails. Soja leapt to her feet and charged to her sister’s aid.

“So you live?” Kyllar said. Pjorlar only nodded. He was exhausted, wounded. Kyllar looked as if he had only now joined the battle. “I thought of you like a son you know. When I thought you had died here all those years ago, I mourned you.”
“I offer no apology. If I die here today, I bear no regrets. I lived a good life on these shores,” Pjorlar said and then was forced to the ground as something massive barreled into the back of him. Kyllar was suddenly above, sword in a downward arc. Pjorlar block the stroke and turned it aside while bringing his knee up, driving it into Kyllar’s groin. Kyllar staggered back vomiting. It stank of ale. Pjorlar had no doubt his former mentor was drunk.
Pjorlar gained his feet and knelt by the now gasping Warmaster of the Hegemony.
“You’re a fat, pathetic old man Kyllar. Stop this and go home,” he said, and walked away knowing that he would do no such thing.
Shortly after Pjorlar left him, the recovering Kyllar suddenly found himself within a mouth lined with teeth. Teeth and stars.

It had joined the fray. It enjoyed chasing these warriors about the battle field, playing with them. Some it simply knocked aside, watching them tumble. Others it snatched, biting their limbs off so only a head and torso remained. Some it stalked through the fog, letting them escape for a while only to be caught up and devoured. And how it howled with laughter as they tried to wound its flesh with their exploding weapons, and sharpened blades. But soon the entertainment wore, and the hunger for blood and flesh was sated. It was time to collect what was taken from it.

The Khan had Woja by the throat when Soja took up The Tusk and felt its power surge through her. She knew at that moment her true purpose, and that she had been denying it all her life. The Tusk had not wounded the Khan when brandished by her sister, but in the hands of Soja, the first strike severed both of the Khans arms from his body. The Khan staggered and screamed!
“Pain? Pain?” He bellowed in disbelief. Woja detached the Khans severed arms from her neck and staggered to her sister’s side.
“Yes, pain, and there is more to come,” Soja screamed, and drove the point of The Tusk, now emanating a blinding radiance into the Khans armored chest with no resistance. The Khans howls of pain ceased, and he crumbled to the stones. There was a silence then, an unearthly quietude where there had once been the din of war. Then it was broken by a familiar roar, a demoniac bellow from a nightmare. A dark shaped formed in the haze of smoke and snow before them, and then it broke through, all teeth, eyes, twisted flesh and sinew. It made a new sound, a vile and unthinkably strange chuckling that came from the depths of its raw, tooth lined gullet that faded into a void of stars.
“Mine,” it said in a voice all too human. It reached for the spear with an appendage that seemed to shift and flow like a swift river stream of stars and flesh. Soja struck, The Tusk severed the spindly talons of that grotesque arm. The creature reared back screaming, its cosmic blood splashing upon the snow, revealing puddles of stars before those cosmic windows collapsed in on themselves. The creature struck back, the blow missed Soja but caught her sister, flinger her aside. Soja leaped forth but another smaller limb wrapped around her leg and threw her to the ground. From the creatures fleshy body emerged a long bone blade on a twitching, shuddering stalk. This poised to strike, but was suddenly cut down, as was the limb holding Soja who rolled to her feet while the creature thrashed in rage and pain. Her mother stood there, spear in hand.
“Mother!”
“I’m here, where is your sister?”
“Here,” Woja said stumbling to them, clutching her chest which dripped with blood.
“We must act quickly,” Their mother said, “we must do what has not been done in an age, take up your spears, quickly!”

The little humans had hurt it. They had caused it pain! There would be no more pain; they would feed the immensity of what was within it. It stopped thrashing and advanced, it’s great mouth open, ready for flesh, blood and screams. There were three of them now, each holding a spear. The human part of it seemed to remember this somehow, something from long ago. Then it heard the great roar of a horn, and it knew its doom had come.

The great mouth advanced closer, the stars and nebulae within it nearing, the light blinding. But the mother and her daughters paid no mind. They each held a spear, The Tooth, The Fang and the Tusk, the tips forming a pyramid. Then there was an immense din, so loud that it brought all on the battlefield to their knees. The creature reeled back with a scream and folded in on itself, ceasing to be.

credits

from Fare Thee Well Battle Winds, released November 5, 2021
Wayfarer-orchestration

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Fen Walker Portland, Oregon

The music of the barbaric and sorcery scarred lands of Ur.

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