In an alternate timeline, Earl Valiant Whitekeep catches wind that the elder God Wothyn is regaining strength thanks to the return of his son and his rival. With his wife heavily pregnant, he begs the elder God for help averting the curse. As he's made a deal with the hangman god and worded his request foolishly, this can only end well for everyone not named Valiant Whitekeep. -- Deathshead419
Whitekeep owed allegiance to Tyr by long and ancient tradition. The ancient Warlock may have begged a demon for the power to escape; but Tyr was more trustworthy about justice. Specifically the justice required to keep the Olikents off their collective asses. It was a long-standing tradition that left temples to Tyr all over the Earldom, and not a lot of other temples to anyone else.
Therefore Earl Valiant Stormwight Hallowfine Whitekeep, fourth of his name, had to go out of his way to pray to other gods. Being the Earl, he could not travel anywhere outside his castle without a bodyguard, honour guard, secretary, seneschal, three dogsbodies and at least two of the castle dogs who thought they could be useful. They weren't, but that's dogs for you.
At least his seneschal had researched and knew the way to the nearest Temple of All Gods. Valiant needed all of the gods for this. He was truly that desperate.
Earl Valiant Stormwight Hallowfine Whitekeep, fourth of his name, had a prophecy to avoid. He vividly remembered the old mad crone crushing his wrist in one gnarled hand and reciting words that burned into his soul...
Yes. Your brother is on a short path to a bad end. You shall inherit all that is his. Everything. His bride, his crown, and his curse. Blazing stone on the bridal train. A little Kormwind in her birthing bed...
His wife, now pregnant with Valiant's heir, was a Blazestone before she became a Whitekeep. She had been his older brother Purity's fiancee before he "fell drunk off the North Wall."
A short path to a bad end...
Valiant was living the prophecy, and feared what the crone said. Especially how she had greeted him.
Hail Earl Valiant the Mad, sire to the Thrice-Sworn King!
The withered crone had died in three days, just like she said. Three days in the Earl-his-father's cells, and found dead before cock-crow. The only way a Kormwind could become the Thrice-Sworn King. If he was crowned Earl, married, and somehow put his blood to the Oathstone under a third happenstance.
Everything else that old baggage had said came to be the truth.
The Thrice-Sworn King, prophesied since the earliest years of the Age of Elves, was foretold to be the herald of ill tidings. His rise foretold the ruin of everything built by those who held others in chains, and he would cause the shadow of the Demon Censurot to fall across Alfarell, where millions of woes would birth.
It had to be stopped.
Because Valiant didn't want the fate that his brother escaped in one drunken flight. Because he hated the curse on the Whitekeep line that marked the descendants of the original Warlock as devilborn. Because he didn't want his firstborn to be named Kormwind Arachis Felbourne Whitekeep, ninth of his name.
Kormwind Nine changes the line, she had said. It still sent chills down Valiant's spine. It could only mean the extinction of everything familiar in the world. If not the extinction of the world itself.
He had no choice. Eliminate the newborn Kormwind and all of Whitekeep would die, according to the family curse. Let the child live, and the whole world would fall under the shadow of doom.
Or... beg the gods for an intervention.
Valiant brought the temple a Dire Goat for a sacrifice. Well. He'd purchased it, and had a trained handler guide the gigantic beast all the way to the temple.
"Wothyn, grant me the wisdom to find a way. Loki, I beg you, trick Shai into delivering me from this curse. Make certain my wife does not deliver a devilborn as my immediate heir." He spent all day and night on his knees before the gods. Thoroughly devout through fear of consequences.
In delirium, between one breath and the next, Valiant opened his eyes to the tincture of twilight. Gods surrounding him and the slumbering form of his wife.
"Can't break the curse," said Loki. "Not without true love's first kiss. Even I have to obey the rules."
"And the rules," added Wothyn, "say a heartfelt prayer must be answered."
"You gave them a merry pickle," said Shai, forever tying knots in a rainbow of cords. "Can't unmake a babe. Can't cause a miscarriage, you know your curse as well as I. The next one will be Kormwind. Or the next, or the next..."
"Kormwinds four, five, and six," growled Valiant. He knew the story. How the old Earl Purity Patience caused his heir, then his unfortunate second son's heir -both devilborn Kormwinds- to meet with an "unfortunate, unpreventable accident". And how the curse guaranteed a Kormwind rose to the Blood Throne anyway. Even if it was because Purity Patience was too old and infirm to prevent it.
"Nevertheless, we have discussed things," said Loki. "Wothyn and I are great at figuring things out. There is a way to be certain your wife does not birth a devilborn heir to your throne." He looked so eminently pleased with himself.
"All you have to do is agree," said Wothyn.
"And I will alter your threads accordingly," said Shai.
When he came to regret it, months later when it was far too late, Valiant would always come back to the smirk on Shai's otherwise inscrutable face. That smug, almost gloating smirk.
He'd agreed to the deal without ever knowing what the deal was.
The thing about the tincture of twilight, is that it has forever been a herald of Nanogh, the Plane of Magic. Where all the Faekindred come from... and where time is simply another plaything. The gods needed time to be a toy, because it was the only way they could take the only option.
Putting Valiant's first son and heir...
...inside...
...Valiant.
His wife would not be bearing a devilborn heir to Valiant's crown and throne.
He would be.
[Photo by Róger Nobles on Unsplash]
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