STH
Chapter 1: Omens
The howling was closer.
"They're here! Hurry! Get inside!"
Honor Guards shouted at the villagers to get to safety, ushering women, elderly and children into their homesteads, ordering them to barricade the doors and windows.
The village men took up arms, grabbing their battle axes, swords and shields and hasily buckled down steel and leather armor.
Terrified screams and wails echoed throughout Skaal, the Nordic settlement in northeastern Solstheim.
The monsters' howls were now outside the settlement's boundaries. The beasts would break through the perimeter and be inside the heart of the town in less than a minute.
"Get ready!" shouted the Honor Guard Captain.
Massive shadows appeared from the tree line, running full speed towards Skaal. The shadows snarled with foam and saliva spilling from their mouths, eager to feast on human flesh.
Skaal's men, all Nord warriors, surrounded the village, gripping onto their weapons in anticipation. They would die to protect their village.
The shadows lunged into the fire light, stretching their claws out towards the warriors. Several men screamed as they were tackled to the ground, the shadows overpowering them. Others slashed and hacked away in a desperate attempt to ward off the large beasts.
The howls continued.
The werewolves had come.
The Nord shaman, Korst Wind-Eye, tightened his cloak around his frail body to fend off the cold as he trekked to his small hut near the lakeshore with his fresh killed game in tow. He was looking forward to eating fresh meat for days.
Korst spotted the red glow from the distance.
No, it can't be, he thought as he battled through the deep snow, pushing towards Lake Fjelding.
The glow became brighter as he neared the lake, his heart pounded violently with each closer step. He was afraid of the omen associated with the glow.
No, no, no, no! he screamed in his head and dropped to his knees in the snow.
He was now at the shoreline of the frozen body of water. In the center of the lake through several feet of permanent ice rose a gigantic pillar of fire spiraling up into the night sky.
"I saw the boar go this way!" shouted a hunter, hurdling over a small group of boulders jetting out of the snow.
"Woot!" howled another hunter, leaping over the same group of rocks. "That beast won't get away from us!"
The two hunters were scouring the Felsaad Coast in the northern region of Solstheim in search of tusked bristlebacks for their meat and tusks. They trailed the blood spilling from the boar to the coastline. They knew they had the wounded creature trapped.
One hunter stopped dead in his tracks, and the second hunter followed suit.
"Do you hear that?" he asked his companion.
"Aye, I do. What is that?"
Howls, barks and grunts could be heard along the coast. Whatever was making those terrible noises, there were many of them, perhaps hundreds.
The two pushed their way trough the trees and shrubbery before finally reaching a point overlooking the shore. Their mouths dropped open in pure horror at the sight.
Down below were hundreds of hoarkers throwing themselves onto the jagged rocks protruding through the break. The rocks stabbed and impaled the tough hoarkers' skin. The creatures howled in pain and agony as they faced their deaths in a mass suicide.
The two hunters never witnessed such a tragic sight. The frothy ocean water was stained red from the hoarkers' blood and carnage. The numerous corpses floated in the surf, the waves continuously slamming the beasts' bodies into the sharp rocks and shoreline.
"What's happening here?" gasped one hunter. "They're all dying."
"It's the 'Tide of Woe,'" the other hunter answered, his voice shaking from shock.
-STH-