NorskHone

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Fire and blood.

Most demons are wrought from it, made from pacts made in desperation, the last words of someone on the brink of death, a final prayer to whatever god might happen to be listening.

The creature now known as Norsk was far more than that. When he was alive, he’d made his decision. Most demons are born of fear and pain, and Norsk was the same.

But the suffering wasn’t his.

His story has been since lost to time, perhaps he was a knight, or a king. Perhaps he was a warlord or a murderer, but what is known is that he tore his way through an army to feed the hunger in his mind for death.

When the army was defeated, he turned on his own people. His sword sang, and the rivers ran crimson with blood, and the earth was stained with it, so dark that the plants that grow there to this day are still red.

With that, he turned the blade on himself.

Death was not kind to a man who had brought so much of it to the Overworld, but Norsk paid no toll and crossed the river alone, ignoring the warnings of the ferryman who called out to him as he leapt into the water.

The river was colder than ice, and as he swam, his limbs grew heavy and chilled, and the river so wide that by the time he had made it to the middle, Norsk could no longer see either side.

For once in his brutal life, he may have been afraid, and as his legs gave out and he slipped into the darkness, he wondered if this was the end of the story he had written in blood.

When he came to, he was in a blizzard, but the frost didn’t chill him as it once had, and despite the ice that clung to his skin, he felt as though he’d just woken up from a long nap.

Avoice wormed its way into his skull, sudden and colder than the storm that raged about him. Don’t fail me again, it whispered, voice thick and sweet as honey, ringing and crystal clear though it dripped with malice. ''I will let you drown next time. Find my champions and don’t disappoint.''

Norsk stood up from the snow and realised then that he’d become something new, his hands clawed and black as shadows, as though he’d been carved from obsidian and given life.

It took days before he’d found a town, and as he entered, people shied away, afraid of the beast he’d become, or perhaps now he simply looked like the monster he had always been. When he asked, nobody knew who he was, or had heard of the battle he’d once fought.

It didn’t matter anymore— Norsk now had a mission, however loose it was. He remained in the town for a few days, plotting a journey to begin to look for what he’d been brought back to find.

Here, he acquired a sword and a suit of armour that bristled with frost when he donned it, and set out into the world to carve himself a name again.

This new creature, made of ice and darkness and death, wandered the lands for a time before he began to make himself known as a hunter of men.

A sword in the night, a boogeyman to keep children behaved