The Bane of Gorsglen

Enter the young upstart named Eric. [1]

A warrior of much raw skill, he was still inexperienced and naive in the ways of combat. He was afraid of what would happen to his hometown of Bragn should Brandhard usurp the throne of the Griffon Kingdom.

Many years ago, the Thane of Bragn slew a popular Griffon captain. Surely, his city would be targeted for special horrors to be visited upon it, should Brandhard become King. He decided that it would be he who would kill the Butcher of the Mountains. Instead of challenging Brandhard right away, he instead asked his Thane to grant him the necessary training.

The Thane refused at first, since he did not see the point in wasting his resources training an inexperienced warrior who was only going to be killed anyway, when instead he should be building up his forces and defenses for the inevitable griffon invasion.

To gain his blessing, Eric asked what he might do instead. The Thane told him that he would consider it if he slew the Bane of Gorsglen. The monster was a fearsome kelpie responsible for the death of anypony who entered Gorsglen. A crew of ten soldiers had already failed to kill it, resulting in three of their deaths.

The Thane said that if Eric could kill the kelpie and bring back its fangs, then he would fund Eraich's training.

So Eric armed himself as best he could. He took a longsword, a heavy steel helmet, and clothed himself in wooden armor, with a thick cloth undershirt.

As he left the city, he came to the edge of the Gorsglen. To his surprise ran into the wild-mare, Gille Dubh. He saw she had one hoof stuck in a deep rat-hole, and, in his generousity, he assisted the wild-mare -- even though the sun was in the afternoon sky, and it meant he would have to fight the kelpie in the dark. She thanked him for his aid, and wondered where the young stallion was off to, dressed in fighting garb.

He replied that he was tasked with killing the Bane of Gorsglen. She told him that the kelpie would have no trouble killing him if he went in dressed like that. She offered to teach him how to kill the kelpie himself, in return for a small favor. He asked her what the favor would be. She requested that he fetch a particular herb from Gwyll Cave, the leaves of the bluefern that grew in the entrance.

He agreed, but he was fearful. He had heard tales of the gwyllgi, a terrible black dog with red eyes and fiery breath that lived in the cave and attacked nighttime travelers. However, he deemed this first step necessary to his overall destiny. She offhoofedly mentioned to him that to harvest the bluefern successfully, he must light no fire.

Eric left for Gwyll Cave, and when he arrived it was early in the night. He edged his way towards the cave entrance, holding aloft his torch. He saw no evidence of the gwyllgi, but he could not find the bluefern from outside the small cave. Eric took a few steps so that he stood at the entrance of the cave and he was amazed. A veritable garden of bluefern lay in the first few yards of the cave. It seemed more of a shiny black than blue in the torchlight, though. He then remembered Gille's advice, and he reluctantly extinguished his torch.

Not a moment later, he heard padded pawsteps behind him, and, in the barest starlight, he spotted a pair of red eyes and a sleek black coat jaunting toward him. He let out a shout, and for a moment the eyes stopped and searched the area.

Eric too stopped himself, for his first instinct was to charge the gwyllgi, but this puzzled him. The gwyllgi inched further towards the cave, listening and looking for the source of the sound. After a minute, it seemed to give up and continued on its way. Eraich quietly backed against the wall, and to his astonishment, the gwyllgi continued past him, jaunting into the cave without a care.

Eric knew not why the gwyllgi did not attack him, like it did in the stories he heard. In the tales told by surviving travelers, the gwyllgi was a vicious assailant, relentlessly attacking the ponies, until they had proved to the creature that they would be able to fight him or until they galloped as far away as they could, all the way to the gates of Bragn. It did not match with how the creature was acting now.

He then heard the soft breathing of snores and decided not to push his luck. He silently gathered as much fern as he could fit in his mouth, stuck it in a bag, and tip-hoofed out until he was out of earshot of the cave. He galloped hard all the way to Gille Dubh's wild-house.

Gille Dubh's wild-house was a small cottage that bordered the southern edge of the Gorsglen. She was a mare who lived on the outskirts of the civilized lands. She had no regard for the laws and trappings of the life of the towns and farms and mead halls. Her mother raised her as a wild-mare, and a wild-mare she remained.

As such, she was familiar on the ways of Ceffyl Dwr, god of mysticism; she knew the ways of Brighid, goddess of healing; but especially was she expert with the ways of Cernunnos, the god of nature. Her cottage was built of birch trees, and she kept a fantastical garden, all hidden behind a grove of ash. It was far out of the way and magically protected against beasts, faerie, undead, eterns, and demons of all sorts.

What she especially treasured was an inherited compendium of much herbal and mystic knowledge, which she consulted often on the state of the wilds -- and which she stubbornly refused to hand over to the Thane, much to his chagrin. That sort of knowledge would be fantastic power in his hands, no doubt, but Gille Dubh was not much for the trappings of civilization or the petty ambitions of thanes.

Eric, for his part, had heard much of Gille Dubh and of her mother before her. They were dismissed as mere wild-ponies and shunned when they did come to town to fetch more exotic ingredients, like bottled wintermist, or Dawntree sap, or salt from the Ulster mines. Few associated with Gille or her mother, except the merchants whom she gave good, if difficult, business. The Thane thought of her as a mild annoyance, but the authorities tolerated her as she prescribed remedies for occasional sicknesses which plagued the town of Bragn.

Gille Dubh cared not about what the town or the Thane thought of her. She was contented enough with the ways of Cernunnos. However, she was deeply upset when the kelpie moved into the quaggy part of Gorsglen. It upset the wildlife, ate the fish and deer, and made trouble with the town. Kelpies are unnaturally aggressive and carnivorous, as they are demons, actually Hellish in origin. It made the inner parts of Gorsglen too dangerous for her to move through, forcing her to take longer routes to reach the more northern parts of the glen. So Gille was greatly irritated with its presence, and she wished that the town guard would live up to its boasts of their protection and service for once, and to kill the demon.

So that day, when Eric came upon her with a hoof stuck in the hole, Gille was terribly embarrassed. She had no wish to owe anything to this peasant-ish stallion with a ridiculous-looking wooden suit of "armor" and a thick helm (likely worn to compliment his thick skull). However, she had no wish to be responsible for a death either. She saw that he was in no way ready to face the demonic kelpie just by looking at him.

In a moment of quick thinking, she offered to tell him how to slay the kelpie in return for some fern -- an ingredient which she could easily get herself anytime. She was half-hoping that he would scare himself into giving up the quest because of the sheer imposing nature of the fire-breathing gwyllgi. The gwyllgi was a much less daunting opponent than the kelpie would be (the gwyllgi would only fight until convinced it could not win, whereas a kelpie would fight until it killed the attacker and dragged it down into the quag to devour its flesh).

As such, when the dumb colt knocked on her cottage door with fern sticking out between his teeth, she was almost so shocked that she couldn't say anything. Gille invited the colt in, and took the bluefern from him and set it in her jar, which EEric didn't notice was half-full of such fern. He related the story of the gwyllgi and laughed that the beast must be the dumbest creature alive for not observing him.

Gille gritted her teeth at that insult to a fellow wild creature. She told him that actually, the gwyllgi was basically blind in the dark. It can only see the presence of light, and it is usually attracted to bright sources of light, like a moth to a lantern. The daytime blinds it, and total darkness is not much better. After a moment of thought, Eric realized that it was the absence of his torchlight that really saved him from a fight and thanked her for her tip (Gille cursed herself silently for letting that advice slip out inadvertently).

Gille saw that she would now have to tell the colt how to fight the kelpie and groaned inwardly. She would not enjoy it, but she was not one to go back on her word, or to let a debt go unpaid. She told Eric to sleep on the bench, and that the next day would be spent learning the best way he could hope to kill the kelpie by himself. He agreed, and he slept there.

The next morning, Gille Dubh was not in the house. Eric puzzled over her disappearance. After breakfast, he passed the time by looking through a well-used tome upon her desk, and he saw that this was a valuable text of magical herbs and ingredients. He enjoyed reading it, until by chance he noticed the jar of bluefern, filled near to the brim with more bluefern than he had brought back. It occurred to him that Gille Dubh was not interested in whether he survived, and that perhaps she planned on shorting him the advice he would need to kill the kelpie. He was furious with this, but another idea occurred to him.

The tome of herbs was clearly of great value to Gille. To insure himself, Eraich took the book and buried it stealthily in a location he marked so that he could remember it. He covered up the site well enough so that a pony could not tell that it had been dug up.

He then returned to the cottage to find Gille furious over her missing book. She demanded that he return the book or else, but he reminded her that she was not honest with him about the bluefern. He offered her this deal for her book: she would teach him well how to defeat the kelpie, and upon his safe return, he would take the book to her. Else, if she did not teach him or if she taught him poorly and he was killed by the kelpie, she would never see the tome again.

Gille Dubh was outraged by this scheming, but she conceded that Eric had pretty well checkmated her. She had been absent for the entire morning, so he could have hidden the book anywhere in a large radius. It would take her months to search the land for it, with no guarantee that she could recover it. She grudgingly accepted his deal, and she taught him how to defeat the kelpie.

Her first lesson was that what he wore would be useless against the kelpie. His heavy suit of armor and absorbent clothes would in fact be detriments, as the kelpie's favored method of killing was to surprise its foes near water and to drag them down to drowning deaths. Only failing that would it resort to combat, first pounding hooves, then biting by teeth. In that case, Gille said, its target will be your neck, to spill your blood the fastest and leave you gasping for breath.

What he must do instead, she told him, would be to wear no armor, but take his shield and keep the demon's tactics in mind.

Her second lesson was that his longsword would be a hindrance in his fight. Kelpies are fast and fearsome. The best weapons against them would either be a long pike, which would keep the pony at a distance from the demon, or a short sword, which would be maneuverable and do the most damage. A longsword combined the worst aspects of both weapons and was thus totally useless.

Instead of the clunky longsword, she instead produced a short sword, oiled with a mixture of marjoram and dry powdered wolfblood. She said that the weapon would be the best he could do in his fight against the kelpie, short of a battalion of pike-wielding stallions.

Her third lesson was that Eric would not last in a straight one-on-one fight with the demon kelpie. It was an intelligent and powerful creature, and even if the tide turned against it, it would simply disappear into the mire, and later hunt its adversary down on its way out of the glen to kill it then. He must instead play to the creature's nature and plan his battle wisely.

To this effect, she handed him a hastily made map of the natural home of the kelpie, a part of Gorsglen that was much wetter and danker than the surrounding glen. He asked if kelpies had any particular weaknesses. She snapped at him that the book he had hidden would be much more knowledgeable than she. This caused Eric to feel somewhat guilty, but Gille regained her composure and told him that she remembered that kelpies wounds healed quite quickly, unless the wounds were burned by open flame.

Eric thanked her for all her help, and Gille taciturnly wished him good luck with his battle. As he entered the woods and began his trek deep into Gorsglen, she made a prayer to Cernunnos for the wilds to protect him, as they would be protected by his actions -- though her proud spirit rebelled against every word of it.

Eric made his way into the heart of Gorsglen, where the devious kelpie made its lair. The soil became soggier, and the tree cover less dense. The ash and oak gave way to willow and cypress, and reeds and grasses replace the bushes and ferns. The air, once hearty, now became fetid. There was unnaturally little sound, besides the squish of his hooves against the moss and marsh. He realized that this was because the kelpie had eaten or scared off the wildlife, and he shivered.

Finally he came to a knoll overlooking a large, dark slough, surrounded by overhanging willows across the peaty waters. Upon consulting the map, he observed that this must be where the Bane of Gorsglen called home. He lit his torch, held it aloft, and drew his sword. He tasted its leather and steel, and he felt the drumming beat of his heart. He was ready to do battle with the dreaded Bane of Gorsglen. He walked midway down the slope, as close as he dared to the water's edge, and shouted a challenge to the demon:

"Foul creature of the water, plague upon the wilds, and demon of Destructae, come forth! Your days are numbered, and the number the fates have given you totals a paltry sum. You have, cowardly, killed too many of my brothers and sisters. You have poisoned the wells of the wilds with your unnatural bile. I say come forth, and receive your final death! I shall not leave until one of us has passed on, and let me assure you, it will not be me who meets with Sleipnir, the decider of fates. You are but a slime, a mold which, while dangerous in its moist corner, is nothing of consequence in the open air, under sunlight, against the fire of righteousness. Come forth, nasty demon and meet your end!"

At the end of his challenge, a sudden movement caught his eye, and he spun to his right to see that a white beast was preparing an assault from the cover of the marsh reeds. Its plans of a sneak kill preempted, the creature hissed and galloped straight out of the brush right towards Eric. He could see what the Bane of Gorsglen was in its full form: a white horse twice his height, with dead, glaring eyes and bleached fangs. Its mane was a dripping slime of frogspit, and its coat was pale, except for where it was stained with blood. It charged at Eric and for the moment, it frightened him so that he felt he could not move for the sheer terror that filled his heart.

He thought of Gille, and at the moment right before the creature lunged at his throat with its fangs bared, its neck twisted incredibly too far, he rolled deftly out of the creature's way and cut its hind leg as he did so. The creature stumbled, not expecting this tiny creature to change his position so late, and turned to face the pony once again. It snarled at the warrior, clutching its sword in its mouth and holding aloft a torch. It would not attempt another charge like that.

Eraich thought of how he would take on the demon. He cursed himself for not planning his attack better, not following Gille's lesson two. His mind worked furiously on how he could possibly escape this situation, as he dodged the next couple of blows the kelpie rained down on him. It first bit at him, then reared up and clobbered him with its massive hooves. It would then attempt a tackle or a bite. It began trying these tactics in multiple combinations, and Eraich was having difficulty dodging them as the fight went on.

Suddenly, his back hoof touched water, and he realized that the kelpie was trying to drive him into the slough where it could drown him with ease. He struggled to rotate the alignment of the battle, but the kelpie adamantly refused to be flanked. Eric panicked. He would be soon overwhelmed and murdered by the Bane of Gorsglen, and he would not be able to even cry for help.

As a stroke of good fortune, Eric noticed that the creature was not healing from the blows he had managed to deliver. He figured that perhaps if he could do enough damage to the kelpie, perhaps it would lose its concentration and make a fatal mistake itself. He had both back hooves in the water, and in a moment of desperation, he moved to open himself up. Eraich feinted to move left, and as the kelpie strafed to keep him away, Eric sped to the right, cut the kelpie along the side, and kept moving before doing a quick turn at the base of the knoll. The kelpie, distracted by this troublesome prey, forgot about its carefully planned tactics and charged towards him, dead eyes wide open, threatening to swallow the colt all by themselves.

The kelpie charged at EEric and missed him when he rolled again to the side. The kelpie turned to face him, taking a moment to size up the situation. Eric, seizing his opportunity, bellowed at the creature, "You are but the spawn of a bullfrog, demon. Prepare to be vanquished like vermin!" at which point he threw the torch, striking the creature square in the face.

This time Eric charged at the creature, while it was still shrieking in anger. In panic, the kelpie reared up to crush the pony once and for all. Eric slid below it and dodged the hooves as they came down, plunging with all his might the sword into the creature's underside.

He took it and slit the belly from chest to stomach, spilling out its blackened intestines. The creature screamed, and Eric slid out from underneath the kelpie just in time before it collapsed on the ground, entrails hanging out of it.

Eric swiftly retrieved his torch and saw the kelpie trying to crawl pathetically slow back to the sloughwater to heal. He took the torch and jammed it into the creature's insides. The wounds were quickly cauterized, and the kelpie was unable to heal them back. He drew the sword from its belly. He took it in his teeth, and muttered through his clenched jaw, "Vermin like you deserve no mercy."

With that curse, he plunged the sword through the beast's head, and the kelpie crawled no longer.

Eric cleaned the sword of the kelpie's black blood, and he also pulled the teeth from the kelpie's mouth, the proof of his niomhas laoigh. He remembered reading in that tome that kelpie blood and kelpie mane had some special properties. To show his gratitude (and deep regret over his underhanded actions) to Gille, he cut the mane off of the kelpie and collected as much blood as he could in his waterskin.

It was evening when Eric returned at last to the home of Gille Dubh. She was in the middle of chopping very fine leeks, which were of the best season for magic when they had just turned their deepest green, when he knocked on her birchwood door. She was surprised that he had returned. Even accounting for her prayers and lessons, she did not expect him to survive.

She welcomed Eric, who had returned her the book -- dirt-covered and a little smelly -- and apologized for his distinctly ignoble actions. He thanked her profusely for her aid and credited her ultimately with his survival. She took the compliments in stride, but when he produced for her the mane and blood of the demon kelpie, she felt so terribly sheepish that she merely nodded and wished him well on his quest.

For her part, meeting Eric was an experience which changed Gille in a small way. She felt much kinder dispositions towards the townponies, and her heart was lightened by the news that Gorsglen would be free of the demonic predator. As for Eric, she felt a grudging warmth for the colt. He was perhaps not so thick-skulled as her first impression gave her, and he was at least courteous in afterthought.

This would not be the last time their paths crossed, but that is not the tale now.

Upon his return, Eric immediately sought the audience of the Thane, who received him with much skepticism. Truth be told, the Thane told him, he was doubtful that Eric had so killed the Bane of Gorsglen. What proof was there that he had slain the beast? Eric produced then the enormous, daggerly fangs of the creature, and asked if the Thane thought that these monstrous teeth came from a mere wolf.

The Thane was astounded, and his court, which was present, greatly impressed. Eric, they proclaimed, had done what ten town guards could not. He slew a great demon, and he prevailed against it enough to rob it of its teeth.

The Thane agreed, and he told Eric that he would have all the training that he could muster. He knighted Eraich as a sire in honor of his victory, and he gave him the epithet Neckbane for his slaying of what was in fact a kelpie.

Sire Eric rejoiced with the town of Bragn. In his heart, he knew though that his legend was only beginning, and that his greatest tribulations still were undiscovered. For the day, though, he celebrated with fillies, and dance, and food, and wine, and whisky, and beer, and Bragn had an early holiday.

Author's Note

[1] Though the proper capallian spelling of the name is Eiric O Bran, I have decided to go with the ordinary spelling of his and all other capallian names for the sake of ease of reading.