IV. PRELUDE: Eirik’s Dirth
Those unsettling voices… faded by degrees, fleeing perhaps to shroud some terrible vile deed. The echo of their songs lay buried in the distant surf. Nought remained but a lingering darkness—a silence spreading as slowly as mist across the invisible line where sea meets sky.
A single moment of darkness was enough to change
everything. Dazed, I sought meaning in the shards of horror still searing my
memory, but the rest of my thoughts lay fallow. Every trace of my former life
had slipped away like sand through fingers. My soul, once serene, was now a
tempest of unrest and bewilderment.
Behind remained, like shadows in the mist, the memories of
his home: that hidden corner nestled between deep fjords and mountains that
scrape the northern sky. He longed for the glass seas he used to set sail upon
when winter breathes its last, plying waters where islets of ice float like
white heralds announcing the spring.
In his journeys, Eirik became a collector of ancient lore.
Beneath his cloak, beyond the borders of the known world, beat the art of music
and the spoken word, but, above all, a gift that defied reason: the absolute
mastery of the runes and the secret of the oghams. In his hands converged the
ancient craft of the northern sages alongside the arcane mysteries that the
sacred grove guarded in silence. Each journey was not merely a route, but a
rite of power.
Year after year, as soon as the first spring breeze
restored the pulse of the earth, he surrendered his soul to the horizon, plying
the paths of salt that trace the coastlines of the old continent. Upon the prow
of his vessel shone the Hagalaz rune, a protective ward of stone and iron
carved into the wood.
Yet, when the autumn equinox arrived, well into September, just as light and shadow duel upon the face of the world, the icy offshore wind reminded him that it was time to unfurl the sails once more and set a course for home, before the world sank into the embrace of ice.
It was on one such voyage, at a remote edge where the map
is blurred and meets the end of the known land, that destiny lay in wait. A
vast flight of gannets fled in the opposite direction towards the south,
drawing a white tide against the leaden sky.
Turning to admire the flight of that flock of birds, my eyes met a colossal island rising from the mist; for a moment it struck me as the petrified head of a giant peering out from the abyss. Bewildered by the sight, I had no time to react. I felt an invisible current snatch control of my helm, dragging the ship with supernatural force towards the shore of that stone mass. The thunder of the hull against granite was the last I heard before the dark reclaimed me.
Eirik awoke some hours later under the shelter of that sanctuary of
rock. There he met a maiden of light and mystery, a creature of the shore who
seemed to have emerged from the foam itself. Without need for spells, as if an
invisible rune had been activated in his chest, his heart was fettered to her
beauty and the unusual sweetness of her voice.
From that first encounter onwards, year after year, the
lovers turned their meeting into a rite of light. During the night of Mabon,
while the world celebrated its perfect balance, they remained entwined under
the mantle of the stars, letting the murmur of the waves merge with the chants
of the Sea-fey—the sweet fairies of the sea—in a legendary connection.
She would then seek the shelter of his neck and hair, where
the scent of the silent woods that surrounded them entwined with them. The
pitch imbued in Eirik’s clothes mingled with the subtle and wild essence that
the wind brought from the thicket: the gelid edge of the juniper and the
herbaceous sweetness of the heather, a combination that seemed to capture the
clarity of the air of that sanctuary of mist and rock. Those hours were a gift
of time that both lived with wonder.
Yet, with the arrival of dawn, the sun announced that the
cycle must continue. Although the separation brought with it a sweet
melancholy, they bid farewell with hearts full of promises, knowing their bond
was unbreakable. They said goodbye with a smile in their eyes, fully trusting
that they would once again entwine their bodies and press their lips together
as soon as the Great Wheel completed a new turn.
As a seal of that promise, she had given him a small
treasure: an earring with the silhouette of the Yeadhr rune. It was a talisman imbued
with her own essence to accompany him always in the immensity of the open sea. The earring became his companion on
his voyages, an invisible beacon that beat to the rhythm of the sea waves while
he awaited the arrival of the following equinox.
Yet one of those
cold autumns when the winter winds urge their arrival with more haste than
usual, Eirik failed to attend his appointment. His beloved remained alone,
waiting before a sea she no longer recognised. The air froze the falling leaves
of poplars—still warm from September's breath—and frosted the foam on the
shore. Plunged into deep sorrow, she still heard that song beneath the waves,
but now the melody had turned sinister. These were strange, dark voices,
fraught with an infernal vibration, foretelling a misfortune that devoured the
echo of the sweet lullabies of their nights of love.
In the distance,
through mist and brine, Eirik’s ship emerged. It advanced in a calm that held
no life, gliding shorewards with spectral slowness. It resembled a great
coffin, pierced at its heart by a long spear crowned with a tattered shroud,
drifting until it ran aground in absolute silence. Not a soul remained aboard.
And in the centre of its prow there
was only a clean gash, as if an invisible claw of mist had torn the talisman
from the timber and, with it, his very soul.
The waves closed
their jaws, leaving the sea's surface as placid as a black lake, sheltered from
the North wind's lash. Nought persisted but a faint whistle, intoning the notes
of a half-composed requiem. The young mariner’s spirit was being dragged, perhaps
forever, toward another world; his soul hung now upon the threshold of other
realms, lost in the absolute and terrible darkness of the night.
The ship remained there, stranded and mute, an empty shell
in the small bay. The beloved contemplated the shipwreck of her own hope,
receiving no answer other than the whistling of that incomplete requiem. She
knew nothing; there was no trace, only the searing absence of the one who
should have come to meet her.
However, beyond the veil of reality, at that threshold
where Eirik’s spirit hung by a thread, a faint light resisted death. Submerged
in a new and confused dimension, where the light of his memory had been almost
entirely extinguished, he still managed to rescue the wreckage of his
existence. They were not clear images, but sensory echoes that emerged from
oblivion without rhyme or reason, yet converging upon an unyielding yearning:
‘I hold only the scent of white
poplar resin in her hair, the sweet taste of ripe apple pulp upon her lips, and
that desperate, bitter weeping calling my name, "Eirik!" And I have
but a single desire: to reach wherever she may be, swimming across the
firmament and turning the wheel of time to my will. My prayer rises to the
skies amidst musical notes and traces itself with the strokes of magic runes.
As on the first day, my love, you will always be my star, my winged vessel, and
the autumnal wind that accompanies me in my journey.’
(Eirik’s Annotations. September, Mabon.)
All I could recall of the place where my beloved dwelt was
the sense of an irresistible enchantment. Upon docking in the small inlet,
everything always appeared shrouded in thick fog. Through that veil, I
sometimes perceived flickering glints dancing in the distance and the ceaseless
murmur of flowing water, perhaps from some hidden stream that I never chanced
to discover.
I felt that meeting point, in the heart of autumn, was
endowed with supernatural power. The air vibrated with the echo of celestial
chords, as if an ancient, invisible lyre struck notes that were, at once,
strange and familiar. And above all, that constant thrum of distant drums, like
the heartbeat of a giant swelling with joy... It was then, from between the
white curtains of mist, that she appeared before me as if from nowhere, to find
me once again.
Beyond these memories, within Eirik’s head there floated
only an immense, grey cloud preventing
him from discerning the real world from that of dreams. He sensed that he would
not only have to fight against the forces of the outer universe, but also learn
to traverse the microcosm within him.
Thus, Eirik set out on an incessant search along paths
traced by invisible designs, totally unknown to him. He would travel through
different realms of legend, hidden in diverse places and times, escorted solely
by the experience and knowledge acquired along his own path…
- I. OVERTURE: My Name is Eirik
- II. EXORDIUM: "MYTHOS", Symphony of a Wandering Soul
- III. RESONANCE: My Story and the Secret of the Shadows
- IV. PRELUDE: Eirik's Dirth
- CHAPTER 1: Eirik and the Secret of Avalon
- CHAPTER 2: Discovery in Atlantis
- CHAPTER 3: In the Shadows of Hades
- CHAPTER 4: The Pull of Niflheim
- CHAPTER 5: The Icy Breath of Yule
- CHAPTER 6: Return to Mabon
- CHAPTER 7: Eirik and the Mystery of the Sirens
- CHAPTER 8: The Mirror of the Lake of Shadows
- CHAPTER 9: Finale
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