Wiglek chanted and sang, his voice cracked and high, a galder, crowing like a cockerel. Grim horse-shapes of ice gathered around him in the wind, neighing bloodthirstily.
“I CALL UPON THE VOICE OF THE WIND-WALKERS, SPITEBRINGERS! BY THE FEUDS I BROUGHT IN YOUR NAME, TURN FRIENDS TO FOES!” he finally shouted.
Meanwhile, Twilight had shut her eyes and was silently concentrating on her own magic. A violet shape formed in the air in front of her, like a flat, faceted gem with a thousand glittering facets.
“I knew he would try this,” she mumbled. “Here goes everything…”
As the high neighs struck the crystal, they shattered into a thousand and more fragments of magic, spread out over the landscape and dissolved.
“HA!” the lich gloated. “MORTAL MAGIC CANNOT MATCH THE POWER OF THE ANCIENT ONES! YOUR PUNY SHIELD SHATTERED BLOCKING ME! THIS IS TOO PRECIOUS!”
Twilight blinked and fearfully looked around her. Both reindeer and Skoll had winced, but nothing had happened. Then, suddenly, the hooves of the dead stopped. The holdraugr stopped and looked at each other. Then, they suddenly fell upon each other, first chopping and stabbing, then gouging, bucking, biting…
Wiglek was seemingly speechless.
“I DIDN’T TRY BLOCKING YOUR MAGIC, WIGLEK!” Twilight shouted. “I DIVERTED IT! AND YOU’RE NOT THE FIRST AND NOT THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF DISHARMONIC MAGIC I’VE DEALT WITH. STOP THIS! YOU’LL JUST RUN OUT OF POWER!”
Spike shuddered as he saw the undead warriors tear off pieces of each other and swallow them.
“They’re frozen meat, how can they eat?!”he said, his teeth chattering.
“Nodeer knows!” said one of the reindeer. “Everything eaten by a holdraugr turns to spirit, somehow, and disappears!”
“So if he summons more spirits, there will be no corpses to animate,” said Twilight Sparkle.
“I wish you’d be more smug saying that,” said Spike.
“This cannot be over…” said Twilight.
“HA! THAT’S NOT ALL THE POWER OF THE WINDIGO GAVE ME! I CALL UPON… THE WAR ACKJA OF THE SPITE-SPIRITS! ICE STORM, FROST TORNADO!”
The storm around Wiglek intensified.
“Down into the ice tunnels!” Twilight called. “Hurry! I’ll turn up a forcefield to protect the retreat!” Actions followed words, and a blue hemisphere formed over her and her friends.
“FOOLS! I’M NOT STRIKING AT YOU! HEAR ME, HATEMONGERS, WRATHDRINKERS! BRING YOUR SCREAMS TO IMMORTAL EARS! STORM OF DISHARMONY…
...AWAKE KARHU-AKKA! HEAR ME HEAR ME!”
“Oh no!” whispered Twilight. “Oh no!”
Somewhere, somehow, an eye the size of a valley opened like a crack in the ice and drowsily gazed out into the outer darkness.
“YOU DON’T WANT TO DO THAT!” someone shouted.
Someone also smacked the back of Wiglek’s ice-golem as they shouted, and while Svipp didn’t feel pain, he did transfer such sensations to his rider.
“WHAT - WHO - oh you!” he said.
Behind him stood Vigg, Saga and Tuva. The latter had used a spear on Svipp to bring his attention.
“You don’t want to do that, Wiglek!” shouted Saga.
“I’VE TOLD YOU, I CARE NOT WHAT HAPPENS TO POATSULA - OR THE WORLD - OR MYSELF!”
“You do care about your son!” shouted Vigg.
“You said you cared about Sampo!” shouted Saga.
Tuva whacked the mokkurkalfe again.
“MY SON IS LONG DEAD!” shouted Wiglek
“His memory ISN’T!” shouted Saga.
Wiglek suddenly halted. The storm actually slowed a bit.
“What?!” he said.
“The only thing left of Sampo is his memory,” said Saga. “He’s the greatest hero Poatsula has known. Everyone has heard of him! No one has greater honor!”
“And you think my actions would tarnish his memory?! Like they haven’t before?! I know what everydeer thought about me!” Wiglek spat.
“No, but you are about to kill everyone who remembers,” said Saga. “If you call upon Karhu-Akka, Poatsula will die. Even if a few reindeer survive, I dunno, among the caribou of Equestria or as mercenaries in Saddle Arabia or something, our culture will die. And nodeer else cares! Vigg - Vigg told me, tell him, what they think in Equestria of Sampo!”
“They think he is fictional!” Vigg shouted. “They think he’s made up, tell stories which never happened!”
“Yeah!” said Saga. “And something made up, per definition…”
“Never… never existed…” Wiglek murmured.
Saga couldn’t hear him over the wind but saw his pose.
“Vigg told me what you told him! That you took Sampo from his father! That your first wish using the Sampo was to have a son like the one your sister-in-law was expecting, because you were so lonely and jealous… so you found a little baby fawn in the forest… but she miscarried!”
Wiglek shook his head and sobbed.
“I threw it away! That cursed thing! I never wanted to hurt my brother again, so I abandoned all that power… and I vowed to make my son… to a least give him the kingdom he deserved…”
“So when there was a disaster, you lead your son to the Sampo so that he could use it and save the country! But the Sampo was still cursed, so that easy solution didn’t work… and that lead to your son’s death!”
“I could have saved him but I didn’t… I thought I’d join him in the summer lands but I couldn’t die--- waiting in the ice, the same scene again and again in my head… my only child dying…”
“If you do this now, you’ll have taken his birth, his death, and then his memory! It will be as if he had never existed! Do you really want that? Is your revenge worth it? Is it?!”
Vigg had clambered up on Svipp. He put a hoof to the ancient walking corpse.
“Is it, Wiglek?” said he and looked Wiglek straight in his ghost-fire filled eye.
“No…” Wiglek whispered. “No. It isn’t.”
He gave up a high-pitched wail, and the spirits flew up and away, and the storm was replaced with the gray winds of winter-haunted Jökulväkt. And the one eye against cosmos Karhu-Akka had opened shut and she sighed like an earthquake. And Wiglek lay insensate as a perfectly normal corpse, and he didn’t move when Vigg shook him, or Saga and Tuva pulled him down from his mount, or when Twilight poked him with his magic.
“Where’s Vigg?” said Twilight, looking up from the old spearshaft she had been half-heartedly studying.
“He’s still sitting by Wiglek’s… body,” said Spike. “I gave him some coffee, but I don’t know if he’ll drink it.”
“He should rest,” said Twilight. They had all went down into the tunnels. Most of the other reindeer were asleep, and so were most of the few skoll who had stayed. The others had gone back to their camp to spread word that Jökulgast was no more, either finally dead or at least defeated. Everyone who needed it had been patched up, but no one had been really hungry. Saga slept next to Twilight. Tuva had went back to her wounded sister. A few were standing guard, in case some monster or spirit was still about.
“You should rest,” said Spike. “You look like - sorry for the bad word - like manure.”
“I feel like manure,” said Twilight. “But that drink seems to be still working, and I just can’t relax until it’s out of my system. At least - well maybe - I can get something out of this…” She gestured to the old junk in front of her - weapons, skis, blankets.
“Get what?” said Spike. “Are we going to put on a fair about their history and culture to save the reindeer, or what?”
“No, no… I’m just looking for clues who lies where. Buried, I mean. I guess somewhere within these tunnels, or the ice around them, lies Sampo’s tomb, and the other Sampo is buried with him. It would be the most logical thing to do.”
“So you’re now counting on the undead mad sorcerer who is on the run from some Neighponese comic book to be logical?” said Spike. “Are we looking under the streetlamp for our keys again?”
“Now - I mean, yes, I guess so…” Twilight laughed wearily. “Wait, Neighponese comic book?”
“You know, he rides a giant robot and shout out the names of his attacks?” said Spike. “No? Nevermind.”
“We can try ask Wiglek later, but he doesn’t seem to respond to much of anything, and we don’t know how long he will be out,” said Twilight.
“If he even remembers,” said Spike. “The guys said he seemed to think Vigg was Sampo, on and off. What’s up with that?”
“They must look similar…” said Twilight.
“That similar?” said Spike incredulously.
“Maybe reindeer reincarnate?” said Twilight. “Or maybe - y’now, there are a lot of ponies who look very similar, maybe it’s the same here. I mean, I think I’ve seen our mailmare in places where she couldn’t be, and it turns out it was somepony else…”
“Yeah, but you’re not her father!” said Spike. “Mother. Whatever…”
“I’ve mentioned it in my letter to Luna,” said Twilight. “We’ll see what she says.”
“He did kick off a blanket Vigg put on him,” said Spike. “Then he was back to not moving anywhere or saying anything.”
“He did?” said Twilight. “That’s strange…”
“Yeah, a bit silly, I guess he cannot really feel cold…” said Spike.
“No, I meant the kick… of course!” Twilight shook her head.
“What?” said Spike.
“If you had been stuck under a mountain for a thousand years, you’d be a bit claustrophobic as well,” said Twilight. “Enough that you didn’t want to be under anything.”
Vigg sat next to the walking corpse that currently was still. He could still see the churning black within it, the dark force helping it to move around, binding the spirit to the bones.
He could also see three dots of light moving within.
“Your son, your brother and your dog,” muttered Vigg.
When the liche stopped moving his whole body had become seemingly solid, and when they carried him, flesh had been torn by its own weight.
“Listen,” Vigg tried again, talking close to Wiglek’s ear, “remember that story you told me about Svipp? The dog, I mean? I… uh… I kinda wanted to tell you a story in return, about our first dog. Or, well, the first one we got after I was born. Because she was kinda similar. She also, she also liked to eat blankets.”
He swallowed.
“I, I supposed I feel a little because… because my father died, and we’re still here, so I understand a little because I know how it is to lose someone who matters so much to you, so much in the whole world…”
He looked at the cooling cup of coffee Spike had brought.
“Oh! I wrote a paper… I guess you might not know what that is, but it’s like a test of, well, lore and wisdom. It was all about Sampo. I wish you could read it, to see that what I say is true, that he is such a great hero, still…”
He stretched for the cup and stopped, then pulled back his hoof.
“It even had a bibliography,” he said. “I don’t know if they had invented the bibliography when you were still… around, but it is the sign of a true scholar...now…”
He leaned closer to the lich.
“Look, we really need your help, the help to find Sampo, to use it with the least, least risk. So we really need you to rise again, because you’re the only one who can do it, everydeer is counting on you. And… if nothing else, I promise that if you do, I can return a favor. I can.. I can come visit you, while you wait for whatever you need to do, and we could just talk. I could listen to you and you could listen to me, right?”
He sat up.
“Right? Hello? Anything?”
A flame lit in the empty eyesocket.
“I… I would very much like to do that, Prince Vigg,” said Wiglek, and tenderly rose on undead feet.
They walked down icy corridors, and through dark frosty tunnels. Starstones lit the way. Besides Twilight, Spike, Vigg and Saga were Vidar, Tuva, two of their fellow Grazers, Jarnsaxa and a smaller, older Skoll that she said was her great-aunt, and Kvalhissir.
“Can’t leave the moose out of this,” he said when Tuva protested that he was still hurt.
Wiglek lead the way, his spike-tipped leg clattered against the floor, echoing in the otherwise silent underworld.
Several times he stopped, and with a deft kick opened doors in the walls, or deactivated trapdoors or giant blocks of ice falling from the roof.
“How had you time to do this?” said Twilight. “You haven’t been free that long?!”
“I don’t need to sleep, I had good help, and when you’ve been inactive for centuries you want to move,” said Wiglek. “Besides, the Skoll had already built some of it, years ago.”
“Why didn’t you dig yourself out from the glacier?” said Twilight
“You cannot summon ice elementals underground and it is difficult to do any invocations when you cannot speak or move more than half an inch,” said Wiglek. “We’re almost there!”
They entered a chamber dug from the compacted snow turned into ice. It was circular and lit by eerie lights. On the rune-covered walls hung swords and banners, shields and axes. Against the walls lay a heap of more arms, armor, frozen heads and bones, banners and saddle blankets, a grotesque wall of trophies.
In the middle of the room was a dais of ice, carved with runes and images. On it lay the frozen body of a sarv. His fur was white, and he wore a helmet and a backplate made from nidhogg bones and black iron.
“He really looks like you, Vigg!” Spike gasped.
“He does,” said Twilight. “Amazing!”
Wiglek nodded. He had went up to the dais, and tenderly patted the corpse.
“Hello, my boy,” he whispered. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but again, people need your help…”
“What would you have done, Jökulgast, had a digging Skoll found this place?” said Jarnsaxa. She sniffed the haphazard heap of trophies, especially a helmet-clad Skoll head.
“There are more curses in this room than in the rest of Poatsula, greylegs,” said Wiglek smugly. “I have merely temporarily dispelled them. He tapped his good foreleg to the ground and the head growled and snapped at her. Jarnsaxa yelped.
“Excuse me, mister Wiglek,” said Kvalhissir, “but where is the thing we came for? I see no… mill, or whatever. Is the Sampo really buried in this heap of… trash?”
“Sampo is no mill, foolish troll,” said Wiglek. “I see my kinsmen understand better.”
The six reindeer were standing in the doorway, huddled. They all stared, like hypnotized, at Sampo’s corpse.
“It’s… it’s so big!” Tuva finally got out. “How can it… fit? All the arms?”
“Sampo is the Sampo?” said Spike. “That’s why he’s called that?”
“He got his name for a reason… but that’s not it,” said Wiglek. “No, you can say he is named after his... mother. But the Sampo is no mill or cauldron or chalice, no mere... magical thingamajig. It is a fundamental part of reality which exists as a spirit construct. To use it, manifest it, you must meld with it. Once you have, if you ever let it go, you can never do so again… and it will take a piece of you with it. My son did not give it up as he died, and it is left within his mortal remains.”
Twilight activated the spell that mimicked the Sight and took a long look at the dead hero.
“Oh my… I understand now…”
“No you don’t, sorceress,” said Wiglek matter-of-factly. “I certainly don’t understand the Sampo. I doubt even your mistress does. Äitsi might do, but he never used it, he just put the curse on it.”
“The curse - what is it?” said Twilight. “I’ve heard of it, but…”
“It will twist your words, even your thoughts, as long as they are wants and wishes,” said Wiglek.
“Like stealing what you wish for, right,” said Twilight.
Wiglek nodded and looked at his son.
“And since Äitsi has a… wicked sense of humor, the only way to get what you want is usually to give it a laugh instead. Like how my son… at the cost of his life, won the greatest battle this land has seen, without anyone fighting.”
“What did he wish for then?” said Spike.
“Isn’t that obvious?” said Saga, having recovered from the sight of Sampo. “All the snow in Poatsula!”
Update!
5408215
THOUSANDTH COMMENT!
5408227
Oh My Gosh, it is Ha!
Ohhhh. Now that's a clever wish.
Yikes, that was close! Yeah, we were wondering about the similarities too. So, Wiglek is claustrophobic? Makes sense. Sampo is the Sampo? So how did Sampo do it again?
Worth waiting for, as usual.
Thanks for updating!
Yay! More story~!~
Wait... how did Sampo die again??
"undead feet" needs a period after...
5409427
As far as everyone knows (and it was not commonly known, Vigg and Saga found out) Sampo, and the army he was traveling with, and half a score of other armies which wanted to search him out, was in a valley that suddenly was so filled with snow it turned into a mountain.
And thanks - corrected.
5409556 Wait... so snow suffocation? ... That's a terrible way to go... Or did it appear under them and the win was due to snow walking + mountain climbing difficulties?
5409590
From what has been said... not even Wiglek, who was there, has said anything outright... they were buried under a mountain of snow... hundreds of people.
It is possible they were crushed before they suffocated.
Sampo made himself the holder of winter.All the snow in Poatsula froze him solid of course and killed him. But he saved his land.
WELP.
My interest is renewed!
HUZZAH!
Update!
Welcome as always, nevermind the time between!
This is getting very interesting...
Been offline for almost 7 months
Return to see what's been going on
Check old, unread stories
See this
See last update
Smile
Merry Christmas you magnificent bastard.
There are fics which updated far slower than this. Your three months are almost nothing compared to one fic's eight whole months of hiatus.
Also, yay! Wiglek has finally calmed down!
5420660
Thanks! It's mostly that I want to be DONE with this blasted fic, but I can only gather the enthusiasm to write this slow.
Glad to see the update. Something I've been wondering about, with all the time spend on Twilight's reputation, is how the deer of this realm view the rest of the mane six. As evil as their leader? Noble souls working with the villainess for the greater good? Some of column A and some of column B? Vigg and Saga were surprised to learn that the members of Twilight's team have mundane day jobs when they aren't slapping down mad gods.
There was a bit about Rainbow Dash being, "the girl who flies faster than light and rides a grand air elemental," but that just tells us what they think she can do, not what she's like. Then again, how their abilities are portrayed is also an interesting topic.
As an example: They didn't know who Pinkie Pie was, but they knew a little about Rainbow dash even if they got details wrong. So they probably have heard about a figure who corresponds to Pinkie, but is she portrayed as a fun-time party pony, a Cupcakes-level psycho, the long forgotten eldritch spawn of Discord, or something else?
The curse of writers is the demands of their readers, is it not?
Indeed, Sieurin, I rather pity you for your greatness. You've created a glorious epic work that has brought you many readers.
You gave them villains to hate, and heroes to celebrate.
The end is in your hands/hooves. What shall it be?
5424421
Actually, I don't have much of a clue! It's connected to how much they even know of the Mane Six from the media, who probably gets their news from Equestrian media - and in earlier seasons there is very much this conceit that they are still very much small town nobodies, no matter what they do, so it seems... so it is conceivable people dont know much of anything about Pinkie Pie, and just make things up. Mind you, I think spending all their time singing, smiling and eating sweets is something else foreigners associate with ponies...
(If you haven't read them, there were some ramblings in the blog two years ago or so: here and here.
Very true to the spirit and tone of the show, that the victory over Wiglek is not achieved by force of arms, or magical power, but by calling on his love of his son and his memory.
Late reading this update, but Awesome. Can't wait for the next
5555207 I almost never comment at stories this old, but I could not stand the tragedy of no one pointing out the Monty Python reference.
5425938
Sorry to be so late to the party, but while Pinkie Pie is a special case, I think Rarity it comparatively easy.
For one, Rarity is extremely attractive. Now that goes for at least some of her fellow Element of Harmony as well: Fluttershy has a natural, quiet beauty, like a woodland nymph, which isn't all that helping considering how the Fae tend to act in most mythologies. Twilight has the whole 'darkness is hot' and 'evil is hot' thing going for her; plus the reindeer think she's a creature prone to carnal vices.
Rarity, for her part, has a coat like pristine snow, eyes of icy blue, curls of mane and tail like a aurora borealis, and a Cutie Mark of what could be seen as three ice crystals. She's the Ice Queen.
Unlike Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle, who are both ruled by passion, she's cold and merciless. She cuts off ponies' tails and sacrifices them to river dragons! She subdues entire tribes of Equestrian skolls by herself! She seduces captains of industry and culture (Fancy Pants), dresses down princes in public after withstanding hours of humiliation just to expose their foolishness (Blueblood), is sophisticated and cultured to such a degree that she can charm herself into any situation and beat you bloody the next using only her bare hooves (that one is actually true. Rarity is a scarily efficient hoof-to-hoof combatant). She's had dozens of suitors, but her cold heart remains untouched by any notion of love.
The rich, the famous, and the powerful are in love with her dresses; each of which is so beautiful it must've had magic involved in its creation. Rarity herself is a Unicorn, allied to Hestaland's greatest and most evil sorceress. Who can be sure that there aren't any spells to spy on the wearer woven into the gems, or the fabric, or the threads..?
5574539
That's a nice analysis. :)
5619018
Correct! :)
Bah, somehow I miss an update and it's the chapter that resolves half of the overall problem. Anyway, great job Vigg and Saga, sometimes the best way to defeat an enemy is to just convince him to not be an enemy anymore.