Helruna

Her elder sister, Elswyth, had tried to talk her out of performing the ritual, but she could not resist the draw of the spell. Everything she needed was ready. The skull taken from the burial grounds, her runes, a piece of wood with the short incantation carved into it. Now she just had to get her courage up to start the incantation. As she rehearsed the words of the spell in her mind, she could not shut out her sister Elswyth's voice. “You're not ready for this yet! You won't be able to control the spirit of Ceolfrith, even if you do manage to summon him from hell. He could possess you, or even worse, kill you. You don't know what you're getting into!” Dreda tried to focus on her incantation, but her mind kept drifting, shaking her resolve to go through with summoning the spirit of Ceolfrith. As young girls, both she and Elswyth would often play with Wilda from the neighboring farm, right here in the clearing. Her mother, Kendra, was a seeress, and she took both Dreda and Elswyth under her wing. Dreda's own mother was a very pious woman, and never failed to perform the ritual sacrifices to Woden and Thunor for protection and a plentiful crop. But she was also a practical woman, as was her father, Eboric. They were too busy with the cattle and the crops to bother with divination, necromancy, and invocation. It was not that they did not believe, but her mother just did not have the time for such pursuits, and her father thought the practice of soothsaying was unmanly. They had nothing against their daughters' learning these arts from a seeress, though, and they seemed to respect Kendra. Sometimes Dreda thought they feared Kendra's powers, and what she might do to the whole family if they told their daughters to stay away from her. Either way, she and her sister were often excused from their chores in the afternoon to go see Kendra and learn her arts before nightfall. The road going home was much too dangerous for her and her sister to travel after dark. Yet here she was, in the clearing, on her own, in the middle of the night, preparing to summon a spirit from hell. She had always been an intrepid pupil, and Kendra would have to hold her back from doing something rash, without the necessary tools and preparation. This time she was sure, though, despite what Elswyth said. There had always been a little competition between her and her sister. Elswyth was more cautious, hanging on Kendra’s every word, never performing a ritual until she had seen Kendra do it at least a hundred times. Dreda was more intuitive, relying on her feelings and impulses to guide her. Both Kendra and Elswyth knew she had talent, and could produce some very powerful incantations at a very young age. Her rash behavior made her dangerous, though, and more than once Kendra had to tell her not come back for a fortnight as punishment for a reckless ritual. “If you’re not careful when summoning a spirit, you can get more than you’ve bargained for when he comes through,” Kendra would always remind her. But nothing had ever happened, and Dreda took this as more of a warning than anything else. Why was she mulling over the past now? She had to pull herself together and get started. Ceolfrith held the key to the eotenas. By evoking his spirit and using the skull to make him speak, he could reveal exactly what he knew about the eotenas, their powers, how to evoke them, and how to harness them for her own purposes. Ceolfrith had been a very powerful seer, but something went awry on the legendary path that night, and she needed to get to the bottom of it. The tales told by scops as they played their harp would sing of a dispute between Ceolfrith and the eotenas, of a violent death, and of a curse placed on Ceolfrith’s descendents. Nobody knew where Ceolfrith’s children might have gone after his death, or if he even had grandchildren or any other descendents. Nobody knew exactly when the violent struggle had occurred. Everything had been blurred by time and tales sung by the scops. But Kendra claimed to have a way to evoke the spirit of Ceolfrith and make him speak. Dreda begged the seeress to teach her the spell for several months, but only as her 18th birthday approached and she was promised in marriage to Lufian did Kendra agree to teach her the conjuration. She had reached an age of maturity and had become less impetuous, Kendra reasoned, but she still made Dreda promise not to use the spell to summon Ceolfrith just yet, and certainly not alone. But Dreda could not wait. The time had come. Dreda began to utter the incantation carved on the piece of wood, slowly at first, but picking up a more intense, furious rhythm as the fire before her grew, and the wind became increasingly violent. She could feel droplets of sweat dripping from her brow as she rocked herself back and forth, her whole body quaking, moved by the force of her spell. Dreda sank deeper and deeper into her incantation, losing all sense of her surroundings, except for the warmth of the fire, and the strength of the wind. She could feel the flames inching towards her as they grew, and knew the time was near. She uttered the final words of her spell, and cast her runes into the flames as she clutched the skull. Suddenly, the flames died out, and the wind grew still. Exhausted from her incantation, Dreda sat motionless before the extinguished fire, and felt a sudden void. A chilling coolness seemed to invade her and she sensed that something had gone dreadfully wrong. Fatally wrong. Then she felt it, and screamed.