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endbook rogue 3 2 3
Santalla knew this day could come.
But she always thought Eikthyrnir was weak, too weak to look his own love in the eye, so weak that he must continue to reproach and punish himself with his wife's death. He was not someone unmoved by personal ties. He only chose to turn away, because he could not forgive himself for wavering.
He learned to endure because of his weakness. He carried more and more on his shoulders, so that the souls of Man could rest in Sami's embrace rather than nourish the disaster. So that the young need not be born in darkness, nor abandoned in snow.
He could not become a pure fighting machine, so he let the bonds he fought for bind him. Let them become his fuel, his strength, his ward, his curse.
Curse.
How could he have fought the increasingly frequent and dangerous disasters, if he did not carry such a great curse?
But even the powerful Eikthyrnir fell. If there were any survivors left to tell of the battle, he would have said it was no different from any other. The warriors of the north had long fought foes such as these, but this time, there were too many, and too little margin for error.
Santalla was not confident about such a heavy responsibility. The curse she bore was nothing compared to his. No Sami could claim to carry with them such love as to be equal to a curse.
But Santalla is lucky. She bore witness to the unwavering will of Eikthyrnir and the others who fought to the death. She bore witness to the devotion to peering into the future, the determination of the eternal hunt, the thirst to see the unknown. She inherits all that was built and accumulated in the past, and she will carve out what needs to be faced and broken through.
The outcast returns to her roots, resuming the ritual she had turned her back on many years ago under the watchful eye of Samivilinn. A new Snowpriest takes the vacant seat, a responsibility too heavy for anyone to bear.
The powers that she must balance and make use of are more dangerous than any curse, but the daughter of the Santalla Tree has never known submission.
