I.
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?”William Blake
This is my story though it be ever unsung by the skalds and bards….it was said by mortal chroniclers that histories are written by the victorious…and alas it is so….you think you know our story…think you that it can be comfortably relegated to the realm of myth? “Myth”…that diminishing word the monks used to describe the faiths and revered goddesses and gods whose followers were burned and hunted by men with cross-marked banners and shields…as if slaying something was the highest form of knowledge of what and who truly existed…before our stories were called myths, before honouring us was punishable by torture and death…we were cherished and revered…first cries were blessed in our name and last cries of warriors beckoned out to our servants and Valkyries to reward their last sacrifices in battle. High Kings were anointed in our name and burnt on pyres in our honour.
We were the gods and demigods of the Aesir, and on that dark day, the mortals below trembled at the ominous thunder above, for it proclaimed the wrath of gods, beyond their sight in the high celestial halls of Asgard, citadel of the divine.
The Northern lights lit the pale lofty walls of ice in fluorescent majesty and resplendence with kaleidoscopic flourishes….
Against the wondrous background, the grim regal figure of Oden glowering from his great throne before an assembly of all the assembled gods, clapped his hands.
“Bring forth the traitor!” he demanded.
Loki, my father, he spoke of thus…I weep tears of blood now as I did then at the memory…
How the radiant god, the ever witty eternal trickster was dragged in chains by Elvish guardsmen in the shadow of Oden like a maelstrom cloud…he was bound in Dwarven-forged chains that were beyond even his skill to break or slip free from…the vulpine radiant seductive smile that could charm a dragon to part with its gold was gone…he was broken, it seemed…his bid to claim the throne of Asgard by his trademark intrigue, trickery, and guile had been thwarted and his retreat to elude the vengeful gods who hunted him by shapeshifting and all he knew of deception ended here…
Oden glared at him from a single blue eye.
“Loki faithless, would be usurper and accursed…I hereby pronounce your fate…your brother and sister gods have suggested exile…yet that is far too lenient for your crime…I decree imprisonment and torture…”
“Hold!” an Elvish guardsman wrenched off his helmet and stepped forth…he slashed at the chains that bound his father, for he was one of Loki’s sons…my cherished brother…
“Stand down!” Loki pleaded…
“Another of your insolent brood!”
His shadow was cast gigantically on the walls as his limbs were cruelly twisted and reformed as if by a mad artist…he sprouted horns and rank fur…nails elongating to claws…his once graceful form disfigured, reduced to a nightmarish, monstrous beast…shuddering with the pain of metamorphosis and prodded by the spears of a ring of Elvish guardsmen…
There was a collective gasp from the gods and goddesses.
“You shall henceforth be called ‘Krampus’…and you will give to the gods an annual Yule sacrifice of the blood of wicked youths…” Odin decreed.
He was, alas, his father’s son, trying to free Loki by subterfuge….
Yet I was my mother’s daughter…Hel the magnificent.
Goddess of the burning realms beneath the Earth…
I invoked and envisioned her then in all her regal malevolence…basking in eternal flames, surrounded by a danse macabre of condemned souls writhing in torment…I was never a believer in subtlety…
Oden raised his palm for silence as a horn of alarm brayed long and sonorously, before being cut off sharply…
“What fell tidings then?” Oden demanded.
“Oden god, I bring thee Ragnarok!” I roared.
The cries of guardsmen beyond the giant doorway of Oden’s hall shattered explosively…the terrible wolf of the underworld Fenryr still gripping a guardsman in his fangs, stormed into the hall with me astride his back…and I did the unthinkable…I urged the beast straight for Oden and it did with bared fangs and frothing jaws.
The cry of wolf and warrior rose in duet as we charged at Oden. His lackeys made way in terror before us…vengeance seemed at hand…
Then we were struck by a terrible force I had never believe could be wielded…the god Thor had come between us and Odin…Fenryr’s mouth spouted blood and he spun from the impact of his war hammer’s blow.
Too accomplished a wolf rider to be crushed by my fall, I rolled free of the flailing limbs and claws…I shape-shifted to a gyr falcon and swooped at Oden with a shrill cry and talons extended….Thor struck again and I fell in mid-flight resuming my form.Defiant to the last, I rose and confronted him…
“Step aside, Thor,” I snarled.
I brandished my sword with a flourish that ignited at an incantation…I was scourged then by the elemental powers wielded by all the gods, yet I advanced on him through it all…tears of blood like crimson warpaint and tears sizzling on my cheeks and my rage was a force of nature…more terrible than theirs.
“This is now an execution!”
Wielding his great hammer Mjöllnir that shattered frost giants and slew great dragons, he raised it in a vengeful two-handed grip to smite me down forever….before the hammer stroke fell, my father rallied the last of his dwindling power…the hammer struck with grim finality and it seemed I was naught more than a burning chainmail gown…formless…voiceless… what body I had exploded into shimmering particles…
And for centuries as mortal measure time, I remained so…my disembodied existence tortured by pangs of hunger and unredressed vengeance. I was condemned in that exile to watch my acolytes hunted and condemned as “witches” as a new faith did what my father had failed to…usurped the throne of the divine…the high gods became myths and stories rather than the faith the warrior people of the north honoured, lived, and died by…I watched as my brother became a skulking thing of the winter shadows, reviled and cursed as he claimed his annual bounty for the gods…and I waited…so long that gods became legends…the young became old…gods are vain, I must confess….and I would like to say that I endured my hardships with grace…yet it was a terrible rage that burnt with lightless fire and found only ventriloquism in the howl of the north wind….yet at last, the norns were moved to pity at my fate and Oden’s vengeance began to unravel…
II: The Time of the Northern and Children’s Crusades
Under cover of snow and night, a midwife condemned for witchcraft fled the inquisition, pursued by lance, horse, and hound…dhe ran blindly into the snow, the harsh blasts of war horns driving her step. Hopelessly disoriented, she collided with a monolith in a remote glade…she found herself in the midst of dark looming standing stones inscribed with dark runes and petroglyphs her hands groped through the snow and she felt something strange and jagged to her touch. She rose with the mysterious object and looked in awe at an ornate antlered crown forged in pale gold and jeweled in ebony…
Transfixed and seemingly oblivious to the horns of those who relentlessly pursued her…she closed her eyes and they reopened in smoldering red, as if wild heraldry hailing a coronation; wolves in the dark forest raised an eerie ghostly choir…it caressed her soul as ravens rose from the leafless branches like a dark prayer uplifted from skeletal hands, darkening the sky like a maelstrom cloud. I had found a mortal host. The runes on the standing stone shimmered eerily as their dark prophecies were fulfilled. I would seek the long-deferred vengeance, yet first, I was madly ravenous…the horsemen that hunted her drew reign, encircling me, lances and crossbows poised…they were perplexed why I showed no fear…I turned with deceptive languidity and clapped a crossbow bolt between my palms, snapping it. Even the ravens were denied scavenging as I gorged greedily on man flesh. They cried shrilly, begging for carrion. The enemy’s ranks were swelled by youths of the children’s crusade…they stood in a wavering line at the grisly spectacle, gripping their swords in trembling hands. Their consecrated blades smoldered eerily in reply to my presence. I inhaled their brandished torch flames and exhaled them in an incinerating torrent. One warded off the flames with his shield and donned a helm from the ground and drew a sword, unexpectedly advancing on me…I allowed him to believe he could slay me and I was intimidated…I recoiled melodramatically, drawing him closer…I smiled…and there was enticing celestial radiance in it…I was radiant to behold to his transfixed eyes, my voice like venomed honey. I must have been syrenic to behold, illuminated in the spectral spotlight of moonbeams hailed by intricate snowflakes that fell shimmeringly with spectral iridescence.
He wrenched off his helm and I beckoned with an entrancingly fair smile…there was a growth of mistletoe hanging from an ancient tree behind me…he dropped his sword and approached like a somnambulist…I spread my arms and we embraced…he closed his eyes in euphoria as he tasted my lips…my kiss was passionate…then hungry…then ravenous…the mistletoe vines began to extend like a carnivorous plant, ensnaring and constricting him in serpentine coils…my lips opened like a reopened wound as I kissed him…he knew euphoria, then agony. My rows of serrated teeth locked on his mouth…serrated fangs stabbing into his flesh…he writhed in ecstasy, then horrible agony as I drank his soul like nectar…I sighed with satisfaction as he writhed weakly in the snow…sated for now, I trod over his body.
A straggler arrived in aftermath calling out to his cohorts, an awkward gangly youth…he smiled, reassured as he saw his brothers standing motionless in the snow, facing away from him…he called out to them and approached. They were strangely unresponsive…their pale cloaks stirred by the wind…he tugged at their cloaks…and suddenly they turned slowly in unison…their soulless red eyes and ashen faces met his expressionlessly…he backed away instinctively awkwardly though the snow…as they lurched forward half-ambulantly…he brandished a crucifix and they halted. He pivoted to run and found himself confronted by an eldritch figure, eerie to behold against the spectral iridescence of snow….suddenly, he felt himself grasped from behind by many cold hands…she gripped a long icicle like a sacrificial dagger as I seemed to glide rather than stride forward…
“Have you slain many on your quest, bold knight?” she probed patronisingly…
“I have slain scores of the enemies of the cross,” he boasted.
“Tell me of them, knight of the red cross…”
“They were only infidels…”
“Only infidels,” she echoed…
She placed her palm on his forehead and closed her eyes, whispering a charm of necromancy…she saw visions of the innocents he had robbed, tortured and murdered on his “crusade.”
“Bring him forth,” I bade the draugur…
He looked on, aghast…knights were hung from the branches of a great ancient oak like ornaments, their armour jangling as they swayed…blood icicles formed from their mouths and wounds…he struggled as a rune was painted in crimson on his forehead…a wreath of holly was placed on his head…I dedicated the offering to my captive brother…
“Hail the Yule Prince…” I intoned.
Hail the Yule Prince…they choired, groaning, their cowled figures encircled him, holding him down….I raised the shard of ice…and gratifying as he fled like a red ghost into the night. “Hail the Yule Prince…”
His last scream steamed in the chill air.
Only the portly inquisitor remained, cowering and sobbing behind a gilded horse-drawn sleigh sans horses. They had tore themselves free of the reigns and bolted in terror, leaving him stranded. He raised intersecting twigs to ward me off…and it appeared to…I recoiled and backed away…emboldened, he ventured out from behind the capsized sleigh.
“So, insolent she-devil…you would rather be hunted down in the soul than accept the flattery of my attentions and my leniency…”
He held up the stick, chanting in Latin…
He strayed yet closer to me…
“Repent, she-devil! Or you will know Hell and its wrath.”
His words choked as I grasped his throat and lifted him effortlessly, legs flailing…my eyes smoldered crimson.
”You would dare speak to me of Hell, insolent mortal, as if you knew aught of her power to avenge…” My rage was like a dormant earth fire rising from the depths.
As I held him, his robes ignited in flame…I dropped him and he tried in vain to extinguish that fire from his robes…his screams of agony and terror were terrible…
I looked yearningly to the dark wood…a demigoddess does not travel afoot…I raised my arms in an act of conjuring and great skeletal stags that had been sacrificed here by ancient huntsmen arose from the cold Earth…
“Harness them to the erstwhile inquisitor’s sleigh,” I bade my servants.
Suddenly, two misshapen diminutive figures lurched towards her…they tugged at her hems like grovelling and fawning courtiers…Dark Elves.
“You have summoned us, my lady.”
“You have vowed to serve my bloodline…in Prince Loki’s absence, you will serve me…”
One doffed his dark plumed hat in a courtly bow.
“That we will, your grace. Your enemies are ours,” he rasped…
“The hunt begins…”
***
For all installments of “Daughter of Hel: The Lost Saga of Krampus,” click here.
A dual citizen of Ireland and the U.S., Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveler poet and the son of a Navy man. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Krakow, and sometimes the States. He now writes and travels.
