Draugar

The dig was going well.  It was a crisp October afternoon and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, nor would there be for the foreseeable future.  Strange weather for Sweden this time of the year, but Mia would take her blessings where she could get them.

They hadn’t been at the site for more than a week and had already found a rather vast selection of Viking age relics; from well preserved swords to finely crafted coins.  She felt they were on the verge of finding something incredible.

A shout rang out from across the site and Mia ran to find one of her three companions, Nils, had fallen into a deep pit.

“Are you alright, Nils?” she called.

“Yes, yes, just a few bumps.  Toss me down a lantern, would you?” 

She threw down a rope with a lantern attached to it, and heard him grunt and stumble before lighting it and illuminating what appeared to be a burial chamber.  Mia gasped.

“Nils, do you think this is it?” she ran back to the other side of the site to grab her tools before he could answer her. 

Alf and Noak quickly joined her at the pit, roused from the reverie of their cataloging.  They quickly got to work securing the site and making it viable to excavate the next day as the sky was beginning to darken.  Noak let out a yelp as he uncovered a sharp piece of bone that cut his finger deeply, his blood gushing rivulets into the dirt. 

Alf shook his head and laughed. “Oh come on Noak, now you’re going to wake the dead.”

Noak grinned as he wrapped his finger in a piece of cloth and kept working.  “One can only hope, that would make our job a lot easier.” 

Mia barked from inside the pit where she was constructing a ladder.  “Come on you two, we don’t have much daylight left.  I want to get into this as quickly as possible tomorrow.”  They worked well into the late hours of the day, creating a secure entryway into the tomb and then headed back to camp. 

They had all fallen asleep in their tents when sheets of rain began to fall.  A very audible curse could be heard coming from Mia’s tent as she ran out to put a tarp over the dig site.  “That’s what I get for trusting the weatherman.” She yelled, frantically trying to salvage their hard work.  The others rushed out after her and they desperately tried to stake down the tarp in the ever slickening mud.

The rain did not slow or stutter and continued on through the entire night, Noak was the first to wake.  He exited his tent and for a moment thought he must still be in a dream.  Standing before him were hundreds of fully intact skeletons, standing upright and staring eyeless towards him. “Uh, guys?” he said, his breath catching in his throat.  “You’ve got to…”

The skeletons began to shudder in unison and that was when Noak’s fear response finally set in.  He began to run, which may have been his biggest mistake.  The abhorrent, bleach white bones began to shriek in unison and runes burned themselves into the ground before them, setting the ground ablaze with pale blue fire.  The others shot out of their tents at the commotion and each wished they hadn’t as soon as they set foot outside and gazed at the horror before them.  Mia glanced Noak running and then suddenly he just wasn’t.  He disintegrated into a pile of ash as one of the runes reached him. 

The shrieking abominations stopped their terrible noise for a moment only to reveal something much more terrible, a Wight, engulfed in blue fire drifting ominously forward from the center of the formation.  It glided across the ground towards the three who stood paralyzed in fear. 

“Thank you, mortals, now you all shall suffer our same fate.  Together we will rule this world once again.” The Wight hovered momentarily, and then fire engulfed the three in blue fire, melting their humanity away to mere bone. They shambled stiffly to join the ranks of the others and began their march to Stockholm.