I am Ainamuuren. My people are the saumen kar, though such was not always our name. Once, long ago, we were proud and foolish and free. We gamboled in the snow and shaped ice into our likeness, without fear of the dangers yet to come. We made tools stronger than steel from the hearts of glaciers, and folk traveled many miles to behold our wonders. But that was long ago. Let me tell you the story of my people: who we were, who we are, and what we shall leave behind when we are gone.
In a time before time, before the stars rained from the heavens and the world was torn asunder, we walked among humans and elves under a different name, though even then we were few. The deepest snows and mightiest glaciers were ours, and few protested our claim to them. Our flesh was unmarked by the brands that every one of us now bears, and those from all corners of the world would seek our guidance and protection when crossing the northern ice. This was our way, since time immemorial.
Then came the day that humans call “Earthfall.” As continents sank beneath the waves and stars fell from the sky like burning tears, the ice beneath our feet cracked and tore, rent asunder. The sky grew dark, and we lost many summers before the sun returned once again. Bubbling filth poured forth from under the ice, and when it touched the flesh of elf or human, it brought death, corruption, and then undeath. We wept for our neighbors, but the worst was yet to come. The corruption from beneath the ice could not harm us, and the pitiful humans, bereft of reason and reduced to little more than tar-covered zombies, could not defeat us in battle. Then the whispers came.
Each night, as the stars appeared and the moon rose, the whispers would begin unbidden. They would speak grim truths to us, no matter how hard we tried to ignore their susurrations. “The humans have brought this nightmare upon you! The ice rots and withers beneath their blighted footsteps.” We knew these words were true, just as we knew that they were not spoken to us out of any sense of benevolence or preservation. The humans were fleeing to the south, trying to escape this darksome scourge, and the elves had all vanished, nowhere to be found. So what purpose did these whispers possibly serve? What goal could the whisperer have to speak ill of those it had already laid low?
My mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, Aktamuuren, knew that this could not be allowed to simply continue. That we must find the whisperer, and must demand of it answers. She and the bravest and most noble of our people undertook a great quest, carving their way through undead hordes, slogging through seeping corruption, and always, always surrounded by the screaming of the ice, grown treacherous and untrustworthy due to the darkness spreading beneath it.
Finally, Aktamuuren reached the source of the fateful whispers, and found it to be the source of the corruption, as well. Who or what it was, not even I know. All I know is the words passed down through my family, from mother to child, every generation since that fateful meeting: “To see it is to know a perversion that even death cannot ever defeat. To hear its voice from between its jaws is to hear the ending of all things. It could not harm us, for it came of us, and it wanted us to join it.”
Aktamuuren did not succumb to the corruption, and the noble warriors who accompanied her would not have their hearts turned to wickedness. Their battle against it began on the first day of Everdark, when the sun sinks below the horizon and does not rise again for four cycles of the moon. That is how long Aktamuuren and the warriors of my people fought. When the sun rose again, only Aktamuuren and the three greatest warriors of the age remained, still defiant against that which sought to consume them. I have long wondered at this; did not Aktamuuren say it could not harm us for it came of us? I have had many years to ponder this, and I have come to the conclusion that the battle fought was one of will and not of ice or steel. I believe that all those who fell must have, eventually, opened their hearts to the whisperer’s call and were slain by their brothers and sisters before the corruption could take hold.
Whatever the truth of that conflict, as the sun finally rose once more, Aktamuuren and the other three survivors made a pact. They called out with one voice to the god of our people, begging for a way to stop the whisperer and its corruption before any more lives could be lost. Our god answered, and its curse has bound us ever since.
Our bodies were marked as a sign of our pact. The name of our people, and our very language, were wiped from existence, sacrificed as part of that same pact. We were given a new name, “saumen kar”. I do not know where this name came from, but my mother believed it to be the very last words ever spoken of the first language of our people, and meant “bound in ice.” She never told me how she could know such a thing, or why just those two words out of an entire language would survive its utter destruction, but it does seem fitting that a god who would answer its people’s prayers with such a curse would leave them with nothing of themselves but that final, singular reminder. No one has prayed to that ancient god ever since—how could we? The god’s name was lost along with the rest of our language, and soon all other knowledge of it followed, save for those final acts that formed the pact, etched into it forever. I wonder if the god knew the sacrifice it made in cursing us, whether it accepted its oblivion willingly.
The whisperer was buried deep beneath the ice, its corruption safely locked away within. The curse, the markings, served a crucial purpose: the countless rune fragments, etched upon our souls and flesh, formed the whisperer’s prison. All those who had been corrupted by its dark, creeping slime were drawn to it all at once and then sealed away inside that same prison, as the corruption seeped ever deeper into their beings. For the saumen kar, we were given a prison of our own, but one without any bars or walls. The curse brought us great power, gifting us with magic and instilling a cold so deep in our bones that only the deadliest flames could bring us harm. Yet, it also shortened our lives.
Aktamuuren, forger of the pact, imprisoner of the whisperer, was over 3,000 years old when she died. Her daughter did not see a third millennium. Worse, as each generation passed, the runes upon their children grew. I now know the truth: as my people have dwindled, the runes upon our bodies have gathered together. I believe that I bear most, perhaps all, of those ancient glyphs. And I am tired and worn. I have yet to reach my three-hundredth year, but I fear I will not see a four-hundredth. Even three hundred seems terribly far away. When I die, will one of my kin take on this burden and receive the runes? Or am I the last? And if I am all that remains of my people, what does that mean for this world we have protected in isolation for nearly 10,000 years? Will the final closing of the runes seal that ancient prison once and for all, or will the whisperer be freed once more, unleashed on a world without my kind to stand in its way, alongside whatever twisted remains of the corrupted yet dwell within its frozen prison?
I do not know the true nature of my people’s curse and our pact, or even the face of the ancient god who answered our most desperate prayer. I have entrusted these final secrets to you, Seshu, my one and only friend. If I die, and the whisperer awakens, it will be the Erutaki who face it first, and my heart screams for what may befall you. You are strong and wise, Seshu, but you are young, and by our people’s reckoning, you will be so even when you pass from this world. It is not in my nature to dwell among your people. I am tired and easily wearied by the chattering of humans. But I will not fail my most ancient trust, and you are far more tolerable than most of your kind. I shall entrust all that I know to you and your children, Seshu. May the knowledge prove only a blessing, and may the curse die with me.
