# Reim Lore

## ‘COLD RECEPTION’

![Cold enough for you?](https://jd3sljkvzi-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Reim_Lore2_1000px.jpg)

&#x20;A teenaged boy stood at the mouth of the cave, ice axe in his gloved hand, steel spikes buckled to his boots, furs wrapped round everything but his dark eyes. It had been more than a decade since the last daring hopeful had attempted to maneuver through the steep tunnels that wound upward inside the glacier atop which Reim, the ice mage of legend, made his home. It had been much longer since anyone had been granted an audience.

“She will kill me if you don’t come home,” said his stout Grangor companion.

“I’ve climbed scarier things than this.”\\

“It isn’t the climb that worries me. It’s what’s at the top.”

The boy patted the Grangor on his snow-dusted shoulder, then began his slow, slippery ascent.

When the boy popped his head out at the top, struggling for breath, he was eye level with a pair of furry boots. The famed ice mage himself waited, ripping apart pine cones and munching on the nuts. “Magister!” cried the boy, holding up one hand for help, “I have come to learn from you.”

“Lesson one,” grunted Reim, planting a boot in the center of the boy’s forehead. “Leave me alone.” With a little nudge, the boy slid back down the icy tunnel on his belly, his oofs and thuds echoing along with the mage’s laughter, all the way down to the Grangor’s feet.

“Um,” said the Grangor.

“I’m fine,” gasped the boy, and began again.

When he reached the top, he found Reim sitting by his tent cross-legged, eating lichen out of the first stomach of a half-frozen reindeer. “Magister,” he said, rising to his feet, “I have heard great tales of your magic.”

The mage chewed with his mouth open.

“I am Mageborn. I have reached the ninth level of Gythian mage discipline. I have passed the test of the Grangor hunter.”

Reim’s fluffy white eyebrows did not rise with interest.

The boy lost patience. “Or maybe you’re just a crazy old man. Maybe the wise ones tell the stories of you just to scare the kits.”

Reim pressed one finger to his nostril and honked a frozen booger out onto the boy’s cheek.

Insulted, the boy descended through the tunnels again. The Grangor sat by a little fire.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said the boy.

“Trying again?” replied the Grangor.

“Yes,” said the boy, and climbed again.

This time, he knelt in the snow before the ice mage. He unwrapped the furs from his head and pressed his face into the puffy new snow on the ground. “Magister,” he said, his words muffled, “I read about what happened to your son. Please help me to avoid his fate.”

Reim ignored him and went about his day. He gathered meat from his traps and snares. He ate. He napped. At sunset, he kicked the boy on his shoulder. “You want hypothermia?” he yelled in the deaf way of old men. “Come inside, you idiot!”

In a tent made of Grangor skins and tusks, Reim waited until the boy’s teeth stopped chattering.

“What’s your name!”

“Samuel,” said the boy.

“And you consort with the filthy cats?”

Samuel’s shoulders tensed. “The Grangor people are …”

“… are not people. And passing their little test won’t grow fur on your butt. So what are you?”

“I am Gythian. The Mageborn son of Archmage Lora, head of the war division of the mage guild …”

“You’re as Gythian as you are Grangor.”

“I can trace my bloodline back for ten Gythian generations.”

“Yeah? Who bakes the best crusty rolls on Via Lucia?”

Samuel’s eyes dropped. “I … I have been fostered in Trostan since I was four.”

“Then the servant who dumps your grand archmage mother’s chamberpot is more Gythian than you are.” Reim hacked out a laugh. “Mageborn. Bred like a dog. When Gythia finds something that doesn’t work, by golly they stick to it.”

“Your son was Mageborn,” whispered Samuel.

“If you don’t wanna end up like my son,” said Reim, closing his eyes, “don’t bother with the tenth level of Gythian mage discipline. Swab the deck of one of the ships hauling crystal out of Trostan. Tend one of those balmy Lillian vineyards. Heck, collect creature eyeballs with those walking furballs. Forget about magic, and forget about Gythia.”

“But my mother …”

“… didn’t want you, or she would’ve raised you.”

The snow-blanketed silence filled the tent.

Reim opened the flap of the tent. “Go home,” he grumped.

Resolute, Samuel crawled outside and wrapped the furs back around his face. The soupy gray sky flashed with green and red streaks of light.

“And be back at dawn!” bellowed the ice mage.

Samuel grinned back at the tent as the flap fell closed.

## ‘EVERYTHING IS GONE’

![Watch out! Slippery slope.](https://jd3sljkvzi-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/ice_mage_v1_f1-e1481328687169.png)

&#x20;The Grangor people stood watch on a high icy shelf to watch the flames swallow the winding spires of Trostan. Smoke glittered around their faces and clogged their lungs as the city that had been the heart of the Gythian crystal trade turned into the mouth of hell. They threw Gythian gold down into the crevasse for safe passage for the dead. The coins had become, in one day, useless anywhere within a hundred miles.

The wise ones gathered in a snow-dusted cluster and thumped their staves on the ground in the ancient story rhythm. With a judgmental lick of his one tusk, the eldest began the first Telling of the story that would be told and retold for generations:

“It was Trostan once, but soon it will be forgotten.”

“The wise ones knew,” they sang in chorus.

“Humans came to tear holes in the glaciers. They came to rip the crystal from the earth. They came to drink of the well,” continued the next-eldest in her shrill tone.

“The wise ones knew.”

“Our trophy-hunters traded with humans for steel,” called the next.

“The wise ones knew.”

“The city collapsed under its own greed,” crooned another.

“The wise ones knew.”

“Their ancestors lie too far to carry home their souls,” wailed the eldest.

“The wise ones kn…”

An icy blast from the peak above trembled the ground and broke their song. “Sisuuk!” screamed a Mother, gathering her kits close. All eyes turned away from the flames to look upward. Instead of an avalanche, though, what came forth along with the freezing wind was a man, his spine bent with age, spotted skin fragile as onion layers. His claw-like hand gripped a staff. Around his shoulders he wore the pelt of a Grangor. Though none of the Grangor had seen him before, they all knew of the elusive recluse. Reim, they called him, master of ice, devourer of Grangor, terror of the Kall Peaks. Though they outnumbered him by many dozens, the Grangor backed away, weapons at the ready, while the ice mage exhaled enraged breaths that crystallized into frost. &#x20;

“Where is the boy?” he growled.

“His mother knows,” replied the eldest, but it was only an expression among the Grangor. It meant that a thing could not be known.

With a sneer, Reim turned away from the Grangor and walked the path down the mountainside, grumbling to himself all the way. The river that bordered the burning city flowed black with ash. Reim struck his staff on the ground and the flowing water froze in place. He shuffled over it, coughing and hacking, into the city, waving his staff in irritation at the fires as he passed them. They sizzled and hissed into frozen, charred kindling.

“Kid!” he called. “Hey kid!”

The city had bustled with trade and travelers that morning; now, only the livestock raced away from their burned enclosures to the rivers at either side of the basin.

The mage choked the fires under his conjured frost one by one, leaving destroyed homes and businesses under thick sheets of ice, by turns calling out and mumbling to himself. He stopped to roll his eyes at the mage tower, resplendent in its ancient Gythian spires, the center of Trostan’s government. The top third had collapsed; the rest was a scorched husk of its former magnificence. This, too, he left frozen behind him. Round the town he traveled, tension rising in his voice. “Hey kid, you’re late! Where’d you get off to?” he continued until he reached the halcyon well at the center, the only thing unaffected by the flames. Noxious fumes rose from the burnt detritus of Trostan, drowned under ice. There, at the well’s edge, was a small woman with her face buried in the furry shoulder of a much larger Grangor. In one hand, she held a lantern that cast eerie shadows in the swirling ash.

“Ay!” shouted Reim with an annoyed clearing of his throat.  “Who’s in charge here!”

The woman turned her soot-stained face, mapped with tears, toward the stranger, revealing the singed remains of the robes of a High Mage of Gythia. Her shoulders rolled back, her chin tilted up, and though she was much smaller than the other two, the answer to Reim’s question had been answered.

“The boy,” he demanded.

The woman shook her head and held the Grangor’s forearm for support. “He’s gone,” she answered, then looked up at the Grangor’s chubby face. “Everything is gone.”

## 'THE CONSEQUENCE AND THE INCEPTION’

![](https://jd3sljkvzi-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Lyra_Lore1.jpg)

On the muddy shore of Trostan, Lyra watched a Grangor search expedition wind their way through the ghost town, past the glowing blue well of power and up the glacier trail. For days they had sorted through the smoking rubble, rubbing ash away from the faces of the dead, hearts in their throats, but Samuel had not been found.

The old ice mage shuffled up beside her, leaning his weight on a staff, one bushy eyebrow raised. “No one’ll blame you if you don’t go back.”

Lyra didn’t hesitate. “I am Gythian.”

“Uh huh.” Reim made the blah-blah motion with one gnarled hand.

“It’s time,” she said.

Reim stretched out one arm; from his palm, a spinning ice ball formed. Lyra’s breath froze in her throat. Goosebumps rose on her arms. Frost leapt from Reim’s fingers; icicles formed on his beard; ice coated his staff and he slammed it into the mud. The ground shook as an ice spire shot up at the center of Trostan, spearing the sky, sealing the well.

“Your turn,” said Reim. “Shut it down.”

The spellbook blinked and fluttered open between her hands; the ancient words dropped from her mouth. The city’s magic borders scrolled away from the sky, fluttered in the air and returned to the book. Held back for decades, roiling clouds fled down from the peaks, flooding the destroyed city, releasing snow in fat flakes that blanketed the seared wreckage in blinding white.

The mages boarded the last of the ships. From the stern, Lyra hugged her spellbook to her chest and watched the expanse of her life’s work shrink away into the distance. It had begun as a frozen camp for miners, thieves and get-rich-quick schemes, but within Lyra’s protective barriers, it had become a pocket of color in desolate white. Gythian settlers had filled it with spires, sculpture, vegetation, legitimate trade and proper jurisprudence. The mage tower of Trostan, though a shadow of the one at home, had been all her own, its rounded walls lined with books and art, now ash.

\~

Twenty years and some earlier, the view from the prow of the icebreaker ship, with its strengthened hull crunched up against what would soon be the port of Trostan, was of white and more white, sandwiched between a cruel gray sky and a choppy gray sea.

The fateswoman’s dour mouth twisted under her white hood as she dumped the divine doves out of their gilded cage without ceremony. When they flew into the masts, she proclaimed it a positive augur as she’d been paid to do. The reading of the fates mattered not at all to Lyra, but the surrounding ship decks were packed with lower-born citizens who would not have disembarked without a good augur. These explorers and miners had settled this forsaken and frozen area of the Kall Peaks, where only Grangor had roamed before crystal had been found. High above, on the ledges of the mountains, the cat-beasts themselves watched. If Lyra succeeded, more ships would follow from Gythia with future Trostanians: architects, merchants, artists, agriculturalists with their seedlings and livestock, more miners and equipment and shipbuilders, teachers and physicians for their children.

Lyra huddled under a red fur cape that would have commanded respect were it not soaking wet. Spring in the Kalls meant sleet, a sleet that slammed into the sea at such a volume that her speech about the glory of the empire and hope for a future of affluence was abandoned.

Never before had so many eyes laid upon her. Never before had so much responsibility rested on her shoulders. Never before had she wished for failure.

“If there is a day for it, let it be today,” she muttered.

“What?” bellowed her Grangor guide. Though covered in fur, he seemed no worse for wear; the wetness slid away from him and his toothy grin triumphed over the storm.

“I had a speech prepared,” she yelled back. “I don’t think they’ll hear it!”

“May as well just do your thing!” The Grangor’s claws clasped together over his generous belly.

Lyra focused her gaze on the glowing glacier, all else falling away. She sank a deep, cold breath into her lungs and held it there, warming it, before releasing it out in a fog. “Come, Ambrosius,” she whispered, and her spellbook fled away from her cloak to float by her upturned palm. His eye rolled up as she whispered the words that appeared in runes on his pages. Another deep cold breath and the sleet sizzled when it struck her, and then her crimson fur cloak warmed and dried, then her hair, and she gathered the warmth between her hands and wished, as always, that she could hold it forever. Her arms spread wide and light flooded from her fingertips. Warm curved barriers formed at the borders of what would soon be Trostan, and the sleet fell around these wards like water around a glass globe. The clouds dissolved within her warm bulwark, the people turned joyful faces toward the sun, and the great glowing Halcyon-infused glacier began to crack and drip and flow into what would be known, for the next generation, as the twin rivers of Trostan.

## 'THE TRIAL’ <a href="#thetrial" id="thetrial"></a>

![Give up! There's no shame in losing.](https://jd3sljkvzi-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/1000x500_Samuel_Lore2.jpg)

&#x20;Bright-plumed Titanbeaks pulled the mages’ litters through the Gythian streets: the Archmage in her own, Lyra and Magister Reim in the next. Lance insisted on riding in the third with Samuel; he craned his head out of the curtained window to gape at the complex of short military towers and training yards sprawled against the great obsidian wall, then the closed-up and somber Ministers’ Tower, the Cartographers’ Tower with its landings and patios housing all sizes of telescopes and finally the Mage Tower, taller by a hundred feet than any other and wide as a city block. It was adorned around each level with golden sculptures of past Archmages, each holding the ancient wand named Verdict.

Samuel entered the tower under the hard golden gaze of his sculpted mother and followed his escort into the grand center theater. The acrid taste of unfamiliar magic stung his tongue. Lyra and Reim stopped Lance from following; the three stood by the door.

![](https://jd3sljkvzi-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Mage-Hall1.jpg)

A walkway edged with sculpted obsidian pillars led to two stone platforms, one higher than the other. Samuel stood on the shorter; atop the high platform stood the guild’s top-ranking mages, the Archmage at the fore, her robes removed to reveal the somber black lace vestments of judgment. “Samuel the Mage Born,” she said, her sugared tone echoing in the immense room, “your tenth trial begins now. If you pass, you shall receive your rank in our guild.” She stretched Verdict forth. “I hope you are prepared.”

Samuel pulled from his belt the wand named Malice. “So I am not to answer for disobeying you, Mother? For burning down Gythia’s hopes? Does it trouble you overmuch to acknowledge the failure of your bloodline?” He spun the wand between his fingers before clenching it in his fist.

A shadow fled from Verdict and landed in Samuel’s periphery a split moment before pain flooded his belly. He whirled to face his aggressor and stared into his own face, at Malice pointed at his own torso. There was no time to register this ultimate betrayal before his shadow double flanked and shot again.

\~

Lance lunged forward only to slam full-force into a shimmering green wall.

“For every action, there is a consequence,” said Lyra.

Reim watched the fight, expressionless, white-knuckling his staff.

\~

A rushing water sound filled Samuel’s ears. He circled to the right and his shadow self mirrored him; there was a flash, and a sting bloomed on Samuel’s leg, a pain that sank to his bones. He curled his tongue around the words of power and a burst of magic fled from his wand, missing the shadow by a breath. He dove and spat out another word: *“Uruz!”* Another shot just missed the shadow’s neck. The shadow returned the blasts and Samuel dodged. They traded dark magic fire until the platform was a blinding shower of light. He could not outwit himself.

But the shadow could not learn.

He feinted right and leaped away from his double, springing to the nearest pillar, cracking his ribs, two fingers curled around the canine teeth of a carved lion’s head. With the half-second he’d bought, he pulled himself up to crouch atop it.

*“Kenaz,”* he cried, and the air wavered, and around him were the souls of ancient mages, thousands of them with hollow eyes watching, and the darkness of the Netherworld enveloped him as he leaped. Light flashed from Malice and the shadow crouched, spun wrong and caught the full force of the spell in its back.

When the dark had dissipated, Samuel stood alone on the platform. The Netherworld, having been opened, lurked close, the phantasms murmuring hate and promising justice. Above, the Archmage extended Verdict again.

“So you present a test no one can survive to save yourself the embarrassment of convicting me.” Samuel’s bitter laugh seized as he held his broken ribs. “That is how Magister Reim’s son died, isn’t it? He asked too many questions.”

“If it is so,” said the Archmage, “then you should concentrate on succeeding.”

A second shadow fled from Verdict, forming beside Samuel. He slid back, Malice held in his fist like a blade, his eyes narrowed at his new opponent –

– and his arm dropped as he flinched away from the little boy who looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes: Samuel, as he’d been fourteen years past when he entered Trostan for the first time, Malice far too big for his little hands.

“Such poetry,” mocked Samuel. “I suppose I shall face my wise old future self next?”

“You shall have no such future if you fail,” called the Archmage.

Samuel sidestepped the shadow boy’s fumbling shots with ease. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.

“I would rather fail,” said Samuel, and released the phantasm that twisted and curled into the skull-shape of nightmares, sailing around the shadow child and then the mages high above, lulling them all to sleep. The shadow disappeared and the Archmage fell.

\~

The shimmering wall dropped. A spinning, churning hole appeared in the walkway by Lance’s feet.

“Go,” choked Lyra behind him. “Go!”

\~

The Archmage landed in Samuel’s outstretched arms, slamming him to the floor. His shoulder dislocated from its socket, sending shocks of pain through his arm and spine. He snatched Verdict away from her, rolled away, yanked his shoulder back into place with an agonized gasp, then stumbled to his feet. “Where is she?” he screamed.

“Who?” gasped the Archmage, blinking, disoriented.

“Gythia’s little *creature*.” He bent over her, spitting the words into her face. “Trostan wasn’t the only iron you had in the fire. *Where is the Storm Queen’s niece?*”

The Archmage flinched away. “Gathering allies,” she whimpered. “The Halcyon -”

Samuel sneered and aimed both wands at the Archmage’s face. “Well done, Mother.”

Armor clattered as the knight rolled into position between them, weapon at the ready, shield high. Samuel stepped back, wands crossed in front of him.

“Reconsider, my friend,” growled Lance.

Samuel’s grim mouth cracked into a smile. “You are better than Gythia ever was,” he said, and fell back into the churning portal.

Reim stood at the portal’s source, palm out as Lyra’s face turned blue. Icicles hung from her ears and hair. Her book, encased in ice, laid useless on the floor. Samuel tumbled from the portal’s source at his feet, struggling for breath as he looked up at his teacher’s distressed eyes.

“Magister,” he whispered.

“Run, you fool.”

## ALTERNATE FATES

### 'ICE WIND' REIM

#### 'THE DRAUGHT OF FORGETTING'

![Rotten weather today.](https://3460868158-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-L9jiwk9ds21Hoy5QAcA%2F-LACqtEKRRE7csJSy-Rg%2F-LACtwe_IP83YqkLifZd%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=ca737448-cf9d-4390-833d-2fb52cb6c0d8)

After he buried his son, Reim was given the draught of forgetting so he would not die. He spent years after wandering. He walked at the edge of senselessness and had no mind for day or night. He paced the mage tower, then the city, and then his feet took him to a ship full of traders and explorers and swollen-gummed pirates. He paced that ship and would have paced into the jaws of the sea, but a voice in the water forbade him.

When they docked at the mouth of the freezing Kalls, he paced off of the ship and wandered into the glaciers, following old Grangor hunting paths. Without seasons or mirrors, a generation passed outside his awareness. He wandered so long that his heart and mind and magic froze along with the terrain. He stopped only to sleep. When beasts attacked, ice fled from his fingertips and speared them, and he ate. Forward he strode, over glaciers and through mountain passes and inside caves of ice. He climbed, refusing to slide backward, knowing that behind him was a terror worse than death, though he could not remember what it was.

At the top of one such cave his path was blocked by a fort of stacked Grangor shields. Reim wrinkled his nose at the tangy scent of magic. With blank eyes he knocked the shields aside. Beyond the shields, a warrior in full leather armor laid on the ice. From inside the helmet he heard a muffled cry: “Help! I am trapped within this cursed armor. Release me and I shall reward you.”

He unstrapped the armor and found within it a Valkyrie. “Well isn’t that a thing,” he croaked, his voice long unused.

“My thanks, Mage,” said the Valkyrie. “In return, I shall take you to the hammer named Troll Bane and make it yours.”

### 'VALKYRIE' REIM

#### 'THE PATH OF THE VALKYRIE'

![Not so fast! I'm not 81 anymore!](https://3460868158-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-L9jiwk9ds21Hoy5QAcA%2F-LACqtEKRRE7csJSy-Rg%2F-LACu5xQmHLdYdoXnLHl%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=c8ce26f9-0c87-4b70-900c-6448dedfa88e)

Through the icy peaks melting into forested valleys the pair traveled, the wandering mage and his companion the Valkyrie. Neither gave nor asked for a name from the other; theirs was a friendship with no past or future. The Valkyrie taught Reim how to spot and avoid the troll caves and when they were accosted by a Grangor hunting group, the duo fought together, Reim with his magic and the Valkyrie descending from the sky to attack with a terrifying battle shriek. The fearsome Grangor were reduced to a pile of cat pelts and frozen meat.

The last trek had no path. Reim was no longer young; some days they made little progress on the icy incline and on others they made none, taking what shelter they could from the snowstorms that burst down with little warning. The thinner the air, the thinner the wall between worlds became. At the top of the mountain, voices from the nether were indistinguishable from Reim’s own thoughts. A thin green haze of magic hovered near their feet. At the center of a ring of rune-inscribed standing-stones, a black sprout rose from the ground, spread its dark branches and grew, forming a black, leafless tree. Reim could not have said in which world the tree existed: in the real world, the nether or in his mind. It made no difference to him.

“Troll Bane lies within this tree,” said the Valkyrie. “To obtain it, you must drink the draught of memory.” She offered it to him in a goat’s horn and he drank.

### 'NORTH HAMMER' REIM

#### 'TROLL BANE'

![Ahh! Now this is my kind of weather.](https://3460868158-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-L9jiwk9ds21Hoy5QAcA%2F-LACqtEKRRE7csJSy-Rg%2F-LACtrX3ahrbufyKNO1y%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=ca63499e-8489-4775-ae65-20fdf9c03ce3)

The Valkyrie watched Reim with care as he drank the Draught of Memory. He coughed, bent double and retched. “What is this foul concoction?” he gasped.

“For some, the memories are bitter,” she responded. She laid a hand on the old mage’s arm but he flinched away.

“He laughed… laughed so much,” said Reim with his throat closing. “I always thought, if I’ve done nothing else right, at least I brought that laugh into the world. And it’s gone.”

“Whose laughter is gone?” asked the Valkyrie.

“My son! My son is dead!” cried the mage, his eyes wild and unseeing. “He died … He was killed and I sent him to that fate; I did not believe him and now I will never … My fault, mine …”

Horror froze her in place as The Valkyrie, having little experience with family, watched the mage’s memories return. In all the months they had traveled together she had never seen him complain, or smile, or wince in pain; the draught had poured Reim’s soul back into the shell of his body. She whispered, “Troll Bane is within the tree.”

“Why should I care about some hammer?” His voice had gone deeper, raspier; it boomed through her leg bones and shook the ground.

“The Kalls are full of danger, Magister,” she said. “You will need Troll Bane to defend yourself against the trolls and the Grangor when I leave you.”

Reim glared through his helm at the dark, strange tree that had grown from nowhere, then threw down his staff. A spire erupted from the ground, spearing up through the center of the tree. Where the tree had been, a great hammer laid on a bed of icy splinters.

The mage plucked up the hammer, then turned his gaze to the Nether-woman. “I’m on this peak because of *you*. I drank the poison because of *you*.” He stretched out his gnarled fingers toward her and she shrank back, stumbling. “*You* aren’t going anywhere.”

“No, my friend! Do not imprison me again,” whimpered the Valkyrie, but a chill wind had already fled from the mage’s fingers, and she found she could not run. She cried out but the sound drowned in thunder, and the Valkyrie wavered, ghost-like, reached out in a futile attempt at defense as her spirit spun and poured into the hammer named Troll Bane.

In the silence that followed, Reim stepped beyond the standing-stones and stood with his toes over the summit’s edge. “Are you here?” he asked, but nothing from the Netherworld replied.

### 'DEATHLESS' REIM

#### '**WHERE THE SOUL HIDES'**

![I was mostly dead anyways.](https://3460868158-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-L9jiwk9ds21Hoy5QAcA%2F-LACqtEKRRE7csJSy-Rg%2F-LACuQYnb5k0fH4kupWn%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=f738fc1c-388d-4171-aa69-1d6f5e3e013e)

As the end drew close, Reim climbed the highest peak in the Kalls, casting his last insults upon the Grangor, patting snow beasts and cave trolls on their heads in farewell. He settled on the summit and let the thin air lull him to sleep, ready to die in the oblivion of dreams.

The Valkyrie, his longtime companion, joined him. Reim bid her goodbye and released her from his service.

“Do not die,” she said.

“Leave me alone, wench,” he muttered, and closed his eyes.

The Valkyrie protested, then nudged, then shook him, but his breaths came farther and farther apart, and he spoke no more. So she knelt down and kissed him, inhaling his soul.

She flew out of the Kalls, over the icy ocean, into the warm air, holding her breath day and night. On the Isle of the Selkies, she sketched out her plan on smoothed sand and the selkies agreed, for the price of one hundred Valkyrie tears. The Valkyrie thought of her old friend dying and wept her golden tears into the cupped palms of the amphibious creatures.

One of the selkies laid an egg and handed it to her, warm and new. A tiny hole was poked into the shell, and into it the Valkryie exhaled the soul of Reim. The egg was plugged shut, and then the selkies snatched down a swooping seabird and stuffed the egg whole down its throat. The bird, despite its wild protest, was stuffed whole down the throat of a crocodile, and while the reptile coughed up feathers, the selkies locked it inside a magic box encrusted with corals and shells. The selkies dragged the locked box into the sea, buried it under a wrecked ship and stood guard.

The Valkyrie returned and rejoiced to find Reim still breathing. She told him what she had done and he cursed her, for he had enjoyed the idea of death, but she was accustomed to his curses and paid him no mind.

It is said that Reim still wanders the world with an ice-forged dragon staff, and though his body goes through the death changes, he can never be killed except by one who can defeat the selkie guards, dig under the wrecked ship, unlock the magic box, swim fast enough to catch the escaped crocodile, fly high enough to catch the flying seabird, then remove the egg from inside it.

### 'MALL SANTA' REIM

#### '**WHADDYA WANT?'**

![Let's play a game where you stop talking to me.](https://3460868158-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-L9jiwk9ds21Hoy5QAcA%2F-LACqtEKRRE7csJSy-Rg%2F-LACujn-RUQjqIyc1sUB%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=f2a771af-e33c-4e47-beda-8436dd57d0ff)

Alright kid, whaddya want? Keep it snappy. Got a long line of drippy-nosed kids behind you and the store is closing. Catnip, a ball of yarn and a laser pointer? Can’t say I’ve heard that one before, but who’m I to judge? Off you go. Yeah yeah yeah, Happy Joy Festival.

We got robot kids coming through now? Fine; whaddya want? To be a real girl again? These kids today expecting miracles. You’re getting a dolly, alright? Move along, kid. Happy Joy Festival.

Ho, ho, ho… oof. Careful how you jump on the lap, kid, Santa’s got a bum knee. You want what now? A turntable, a mixer, headphones and high-end speakers? You think Santa’s made of money, I see. I’ll talk to the minions at the North Pole and see what I can do.

A BB gun? No way, kid, you’ll shoot your eye out. Not for nothing, but if I were you, I’d ask Santa for an arm. No, you can’t have that either. How about a nice football? Okay, get outta here. Happy Joy Festival.

That’s it, children, Santa’s off the clock. Don’t forget to leave cookies out for me tonight, and not those oatmeal raisin ones either. No chocolate chips, no presents, got it? Happy Joy Festival.
