#ZattyWriMo 2023

Violanatheruna gestured at the amulet hanging around Katla's neck.

"What you carry there is a unique work of magical art. Only two were made and they both hold the power to open the barrier protecting this dryad village. But the magic only works as long as you carry it on your body. I have keyed it to your essence, so giving it away will not help you. If you lose it, it will slowly loose its power and light, and it will need to return here to be recharged."

The dryad studied Katla's face and held the silence for a bit, before she continued.

"With the help of that amulet, you can find its twin, the amulet granted to my beloved all those years ago. If you find it, you might be able to find out what happened to him. Keep it safe, Katla. Keep yourself safe. And good luck on your journey, wherever it may take you."

Katla stared at the dryad, touched to tears.

"Thank you, Violanatheruna. I will. Keep it safe, and myself. And I will find him. I promise you that."

Early next morning the trading caravan was packed, all the stalls had been disassembled and loaded onto animal-drawn carts. Katla sat next to her best friend Solvi, as they slowly rolled out of the glade in the center of the dryad village. They sat in silence, enjoying the fresh morning air.

"Solvi," Katla said, breaking the slow silence, "where are we heading next? My head was full of all the things Violanatheruna told us yesterday, I completely forgot to pay attention to the caravan leader."

"We're going north," Solvi replied.

Katla made a face at her and said "I know that much, it's not like there's other directions to go from here. East is steep cliffsides, to the west lies the sea and all it's monsters, and not that far south the land ends and the mountains and the sea meet. Which I know you know, because there's a tiny little village there where you picked me up."

Katla dialed down the sarcasm a bit before she again asked.

"Where are we going Solvi. Who are we visiting next?"

Solvi turned her face slowly towards her.

"We're visiting notherners."

"Ugh!" Katla threw her arms in the air and slumped back in her wooden seat at the front of the cart, crossing her arms and moping.

Solvi chuckled to herself.

"The truth is, I didn't pay attention either. You have a magical amulet and a grand quest and what not! How am I supposed to pay attention to an old man talking? My best guess is we'd be visiting the dwarves in their city in the mountains northeast from here. But I've also overheard rumours that there's something going on, and they aren't letting in travellers right now. I guess we'll find out. It's not like we need to prepare for anything. Or you can go ask someone else for details, if you want."

"Yeah sure, and tell everyone I didn't pay attention."

Katla didn't ease up in her grump posture, and didn't dig further into the matter.

They spent the next few days of travelling in ignorance, passing the time mostly by talking and playing word games while watching the trees and hills slowly glide past. On the fourth day, shortly after noon, a bend in the road revealed a hint to their destination.

The river.

In the distance a large stone bridge was visible, spanning the river in considerable height above the water. It was an old but solid construction and it was rumored to be older than Katla's village. She knew about it of course, but not everyone had travelled this far north, and it was certainly Katla's first time seeing the bridge and the river.

The river was wide and deep, full of churning water and jagged rocks. Not a welcoming place for any land dweller. Anyone who went in would not come out, for the river led to the sea, and everyone knew that the sea was where monsters dwell.

But a bridge had been built, and the bridge would carry them safely across the water. Who had built the bridge was a mystery. The dryads called it the human bridge, and the villagers claimed it was built by ancient dwarves. The few travelling dwarves who wandered out of the mountains spoke of jotuns from the peaks. Jotuns who lived on the highest glaciers and had come down to build that one bridge hundreds of years ago.

Katla didn't believe the stories about jotuns, or that they even existed at all. Who would live on a glacier on a mountaintop? How would you grow fields for food and how would you keep warm? Winter was cold enough on the heath and in the woods, there was no need to chance it among tall mountain peaks.

Luckily, winter was still months away, and it was easy for the caravan to keep warm as they halted a short walk from the bridge for a midday meal. Katla and Solvi went to the riverbank

to see it up close. Once they crossed the bridge, the river would quickly be left behind with no time to gaze at the fascinating but dangerous landscape. The riverbank was rocky and hard to navigate. They didn't risk going close to the actual water's edge, but they did dare climbing down from the flat, solid, grass covered ground onto the piled up rocks.

The water was louder than Katla expected, once they got close. After climbing a few rocks she stopped and stared into the water. In a few spots stones was visible in the river and there were even plants growing under the water. The plants swayed back and forth pulled by the water, but there was something else too. Something that moved differently from the flow of water. Fast, darting motions, visible in one moment and in the next. Katla stared and stared into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was.

"We should get back," Solvi said suddenly.

"In a moment. I want to... there's something in there. I want to see if I can see it."

Solvi grabbed Katla's arm, "we're going back. I don't like this. We're too close to the water as it is."

Katla let herself be pulled up from the rocks at the edge of the river. Something about it fascinated her, and she felt like she could spend hours staring at the almost hypnotic motions of the water.

As they returned to the grass, they noticed that everyone else had finished the midday break and started packing all the bits and pieces back on the carts. Solvi hurried back to help pack their own cart, which they were currently sharing with one of the guards, a broad, muscled woman a few years their senior. Solvi's embarrassment at being late and her haste made her flustered and fumbling. Lagging behind her came Katla, thoughts captured by the river, and she eventually stopped completely, just standing there and staring into the distance.

Without the assistance of Solvi and Katla, the guard was slow to pack, and their cart was the last one finished. That landed them a spot at the rear end of the caravan. Everyone was lining up the carts for an efficient crossing, since local tales spoke of a need for quick crossing. If the river sensed your crossing, having speed on your side was your best bet of getting safely away. Rumour would have it that closer to the ocean barely standing near the brink would wake the things from the depths.

Katla was pretty sure those tales we're just for scaring kids to keep away from the water, lest they drown. But as the front of the caravan started crossing the bridge, with the hooves of the animals loud on the stones, she could feel her hands become clammy from sweat. She kept a wakeful eye at the river, as they slowly rolled close enough to glimpse the roiling water.

"There's something down there!" Katla exclaimed, but her next glance had lost it from sight as if there was nothing at all. The sudden exclamation was enough to startle Solvi, who pulled on the reins in shock.

"Stop it! Don't scare me like that. I almost thought you actually saw something," Solvi chided, and her body language revealed she wasn't entirely immune to the frights of the old tales. Before she got the animal movin again, a large gap had opened to the next cart in line. It was almost halfway across the bridge when their own animal put its first hoof to the stone.

In that moment something broke through the surface of the water from below. A gigantic, unnatural snake rose up from the water. The animal pulling their cart reared up in fear and ran as best it could away from the bridge. The carts ahead heard the noise and as the people turned and saw the monstrous sea snake rising behind them, they forced their animals to full speed to get across the bridge and away from the water.

The monster rose far up next to the bridge and swayed back and forth in the air. Katla was transfixed by it. Its skin was an unnatural blue, shimmering and almost glowing. A faint afterimage lingered behind it when it moved, and it didn't seem to have a head at all. It was one long limb tapering down to a point at the end, more like a tail than a snake's head. Or a limb without fingers or joints of any kind.

Katla's study of the creature was interrupted by chaos in the water on the other side of the bridge, as another long, shimmering, undulating limb appeared. As it rose to the same height as the first tentacle, more and more shot up from the water. Within moments the large stone bridge was surrounded by countless tentacles swaying in unison. Solvi and the guard was still struggling to control and calm the fleeing animal pulling their cart, and Katla sat backwards in her seat, unable to peel her eyes from the mass of tentacles. And then, as if on an unheard signal, all the tentacles simultaneously lunged inwards toward the bridge, wrapped around the stonework and pulled. The bridge collapsed in the blink of an eye and stones and boulders crashed into the river and was washed away by the force of the water. The tentacles had disappeared as soon as they went below water as if they had never been. Only the sparse wreckage of a completely impassable bridge remained.

Once the cart-pulling animal was under control and they had made certain nothing has fallen off the cart is the wild dash, Solvi and Jorunn, the guard, turned to look at the wreckage of the bridge. On the other side of the wide river, they could see the rest of the caravan had stopped to see if there was anything they could do. But the bridge was completely destroyed. Only a few stone pillars jutted out of the water far from the brink. Not a single one of the cobblestones that had recently formed the surface of the bridge was left. The people in the rest of the caravan on the other side had quickly realized that there was nothing they could do, and was now trying to get the attention of the three of them. Jorunn, the guard, noticed their waving first and waved back across the river.

The waving quickly turned into gesturing between the guards on either side. After a while, Jorunn turned to the two others and said, "With the bridge gone, we have to find a different way to cross the river. The others said that our best chance of rejoining them for the travel north is to go to the dwarves in the mountain, and hope they'll let us pass."

"You can tell all that by waving your arms?" Katla asked.

"More or less, it's not exactly what they said, but it doesn't change the facts. The only way north now, is by the dwarven roads through the mountains. Legend has it that the roads of the dwarves were there before the bridge was built many lifetimes ago. Some even say that those roads are older than the dwarven city itself."

Solvi clapped her hands and exclaimed, "there's our answer then, the next people we're visiting are the dwarves!"

An unspecified time later, around halfway between sunrise and noon, the three travellers stood at the gate of a small dwarven fortification that blocked their further travels.

"What do you mean you're not letting anyone in? Why would you close a whole road for travellers, with coin, willing to pay?" Solvi exclaimed at the bearded guard half her height.

"What was said is as it is. The road is closed. You're not going further this direction."

The dwarf slammed a wooden board over the slit it had been speaking through, effectively closing the travellers off from further arguments.

Solvi raised her hands to her forehead in frustration.

"Why? Can you at least tell me why?" She yelled at the stone wall and iron reinforced gate.

No answer came from the closed gate.

After a short while Katla broke the silence.

"What do we do now?"

"Don't look at me," Solvi quickly replied, "it could take months before dwarves change their mind. Should we just find the nearest village and settle down already?"

Jorunn sighed, "no, there must be some other way of getting north of that river. Maybe there's someone who can help up get through that gate? Or maybe there's a different route. A secret road, somewhere. Maybe if we follow the road back and look for footprints into the bushes."

Katla groaned loudly and plumped down on her butt in the middle of the road.

"This is impossible. I should never have joined this caravan, I should never have accepted that quest from the dryad, I should never have left my moms house."

"Don't give up hope yet. I saw a good spot for a campsite next to the road earlier today. Let's go back there and set up camp and see what we can come up with," Jorunn said, waving for Katla and Solvi to follow.

That afternoon at their camp, they sat around the campfire telling stories from their childhoods. As evening drew close they heard the rumble of a small hand drawn cart travelling toward their campsite from the west. A few moments later a cheery dwarf appeared and stopped to greet them.

"Good evening, fellow travelers! What a lovely camp you have here."

"Good evening, kind dwarf," replied Solvi swiftly, "are you by any chance travelling to the dwarven city up in the mountains?"

"That I am, and I was hoping to find a good campsite at a spot I know in the valley other side of the first gatehouse. The gate is quite close, but I fear I can't make it to my intended campsite before dark."

"We know the gate, we were there earlier today, and for some reason they didn't tell us, they wouldn't let us through. We were originally traveling as part of a caravan over the old bridge, but that got smashed by some kind of monstrous river beast."

"That sounds like quite the tale! Would you mind sharing your campfire and telling me more?"

"You're certainly welcome to join our campfire. My name is Solvi, and my travelling companions are Katla and Jorunn."

The bearded stranger bowed and introduced themself as Eitri, and unpacked a small bag from their cart, before settling down at the campfire.

Solvi swiftly jumped into the story of the river and the fearsome monstrosity that appeared out of nowhere, with Katla adding in a few painterly descriptions here and there.

Jorunn surreptitiously studied the dwarf while they was captivated by the tale. Slowly, as the evening progressed and their conversation turned to other subjects, she began to trust the stranger at their fire. Not enough to let her guard down completely, but enough to eventually go to sleep, after making sure their most valuable belongings were tucked deep and fastened securely in their cart.

The next morning Jorunn was the first one up, so she got the campfire going again in order to cook breakfast. The dwarf, Eitri, was the next one up and joined her at the campfire while she made porridge. When the porridge was finished and the smell of food spread over the camp, Katla and Solvi finally woke up as well. Solvi sat down next to Eitri, whom she had taking a liking to quickly the night before, and noticed the dwarf was carving something into three small pieces of wood.

"What are you working on, if it's okay to ask?"

Eitri sat in concentration and didn't answer right away, but once they finished a marking they said, "I'm making runestaves. Or rather, I'm finishing these staves for an idea I had. You told me yesterday that the gateguards aren't letting you pass, and if I remember the law correctly, such a ruling can only apply to non-dwarves. Dwarves have a right to enter city in peace."

"But that won't help us, we're not dwarves," Solvi interrupted.

"You're right," Eitri calmly replied, "but that right extends to a dwarfs household or working company. So what I'm doing with these staves is I'm carving runes symbolising your names into them on this upper part. The bottom half of the staff was carved a while back, and the runes there would tell any dwarf that the named person is working for Eitri."

"And you just have staves ready for that? How often do you need to hire people?" Solvi asked incredulously.

"You never know what you're going to need on short notice. I also have runestaves prepared for other purposes; signifying debt, promising favours, good luck charms, making bloodoaths, and so on."

"Blood oaths? That doesn't sound like something that should be made quickly."

"They shouldn't be made without ample thought, but that is not the same as haste. In any case, these staves are not that."

Eitri held out a small flat staff to Solvi.

"This one has your name on it. Translated from an old dwarven dialect it says 'Solvi acts in service to Eitri'. See, these five runes at the end there is my name."

Solvi took the staff and studied it for a while. Then she turned it around and looked at the blank surface on the back of it.

"And you can just carve the runes into any piece of wood? That's amazing. I thought you needed huge stones and chisels and hammers and years of training. And the you just go and carve out of wood before breakfast. Can I learn that too? Can you teach me?"

She beamed at Eitri with genuine enthusiasm glowing in her face.

"It'll take more than one night at a campfire to learn this, young one. But I can at least teach you to draw the runes in your own name. The first rune you need is this one, the Sól rune. Ha, Sól as in Solvi, how fitting."

Eitri then proceeded to draw runes in the ground next to the campfire while they all ate their breakfast, and Solvi did her best to copy them.

Later that day, the four travellers reached the gate at the edge of the dwarven lands. The three women kept behind the dwarf, and hoped the gate guard wouldn't give them trouble for trying again after being turned away the day before. But no such trouble came as Eitri sauntered up to the gate and introduced themself.

"I'm Eitri of the Northern Mountains, and these three are assisting me in my travels and and my trade. I wish to travel to the city and mourn at the tomb of the Drótt of the Southern Mountains."

"Well and good," the guard replied, "your company must show adequate proof before I can let them pass."

At this point Eitri waved at the three women trying to hide behind them, despite all three being significantly than them. Katla, Solvi, and Jorunn each fished out a wooden staff carved with runes. Upon seeing the rune staves, the guard in the gate window turned around and yelled, "Oi! Fetch the rune master."

Then the guard turned back to them and said, "It'll be a moment, I have to get those verified by the rune master. They'll be here shortly."

Shortly turned out to be an understatement. When the rune master finally appeared in the window, Katla had been pacing nervously for a while and Solvi's hands where clammy from sweat. Shared glances between the two girls had confirmed to each of them that they both feared the rune master would figure out it was a trick, somehow. Maybe they would notice the runes of their names had been carved this same morning. Maybe there was some error in Eitri's staves. Or maybe simply waving stick with scratches on them wouldn't prove anything to anyone, and they'd be just as stuck as they were yesterday.