The Gorging

(As told by young Krotihr of the Vale on the Eve of the Night of Teeth)

They are horrible. Horrible. Like men, but not men. Animals. I was taken at the greening edge of the ice. I had gone with Shandir and her father's people to see what could be seen at the edge. We saw smoke and mounded tents like humps of earth all across the plains. We went closer and found them and they... they invited us into their camp.

They gave us meat and we sat around a fire. They are an ugly people: pitted and scarred by disease and battle. Their hair is wild and unkempt, matted with animal fats. Their bodies are decorated with the bones and painted skins. They reek of sweat and smoke and blood. And their teeth. Their teeth are the only thing clean about them, gleaming white and dagger sharp, from gnawing on the bones of their prey. Shandir's father recognized them as Ghibbolim from the time before and he said we had nothing to fear, that the had been a friend to our people long before.

And so we sat, and talked and ate their food. They told us of their travels and of the lands they had seen. Of the plains and forests of their home, of the grass filled savanah and sandy wastes beyond the southern mountains and the riches of the seas. They told of of the wonderous beasts and monsters that they had hunted on earth, on land and in the sea. They shared stories of the forlorn Kythians and of the dark demons of the West that steal their hunter's souls.

They told all this with a sadness and a glee in their eyes and when they fell silent Shandir's father began to talk. He told them of our retreat to contemplation and of our growing curiosity of the world beyond the ice. He told them of our people and philosophies and the of the great questions we have pondered since The Silence. And oh... he described our beautiful home. He told them about our beautiful home, and all the while our hosts' eyes grew rounder and more glistening. Oh why... why did he have to tell them?

And so they told us about how the years had been good to them, how their appetite had made them strong and numerous. How they had grown to be so many that they had consumed all the animals in their homeland. They told us how after the flesh was gone, they turned to the trees and rivers and waters of the oceans until they had consumed all of them. They told us how they had traveled over the mountains to consume and how they had come to the edge of the ice to consume. They told us that they had thought the cold wastes were impassible, and thanked us, and said it was long past time for them to eat.

They fell upon us. They fell upon us right there with teeth and knives. They ate Shandir's father as he howled in pain. Shandir they... kept... salted. Shandir's whole family... eaten... prepared... gone. Just gone. Meat, for the animals.

They kept me for three days. They would carve little pieces off of me to eat raw and glistening in front of me. They savored my pain and relished my terror. And then they let me go. They told me tell you all this. That they are hungry, that they are many and that they are coming.

They are coming!