Dungeon Codex

Precious - A Promise

A Promise
A Promise
1. Wintry Trudge // "I Shan't Look Back, At What I Pull"
2. Toil Up The Mountain Pass // "The Frigid Winds Snatch My Breath, The Weight Of My Kin Weakens My Will"
3. Crossing The Frozen Water // "Ice Cracks Beneath Me, Water Fills My Boots"
4. Starving Wolves // "My Hands Are Raw And Stiff, But They Can Still Wield Sword"
5. A Dreary Reunion, A Promise Kept // "Forgive Me, My Love"
6. A Mother's Last Lullaby
Total Time
20:14
Released
October 31, 2018
Additional Details
"Bring him back to me. Promise to bring my son home."

"I promise."

He and his eldest son were ordered to fight in a war between lords over land and country. With the conflict meaning little to him and his family, as they were just lowly peasant farmers, he assured his wife he would bring his son home to her. They fought other peasants, who looked just like them. Afraid and distant. Hoping to survive this unavailing conflict to make it back to their families. Alas, his son was slain after but a few weeks of fighting. An arrow piecing his heart.

Overcome with grief, guilt, and anger at his sons senseless death, he deserts in the cover of night. Pulling his deceased son behind him on a makeshift sled, crudely and hastily crafted with stolen firewood and rope. The last words he exchanged with his wife before departing to war repeat in his mind as he toils through the deep snow. He intends to bring his son home, but he does not look behind him, lest he go insane at the thought of what he drags behind him.

Days turn into weeks as he endures exhaustion, hunger, and hypothermia.The freezing cold preserving his sons body.

He goes through the high mountain pass, it takes all of his strength to heave his cargo up the north side of the mountain. Leaving his hands bloody and raw with burns and blisters.

He crosses frozen lakes, having to fish his sons body out of the water after they fall through the ice. He never loses the crippling ache that the bitterly cold water leaves in his bones.

He then has only the dense highland forest to traverse before reaching his village. His weakened, pathetic state is noticed by a pack of starving wolves who stalk him. He considers leaving his sons body in order to escape, but finds the strength to fend them off by remembering his promise to his wife. The wolves only manage to make off with one his sons arms.

At last, he returns to his home. The roads are lined with villagers looking in awe at a frozen, hallow man dragging a stiff body of a boy behind him. He reaches his hovel and collapses at the feet of his wife. Only able to utter the words "forgive me" as his wife belts a guttural, aching cry at the sight of her dead, dismembered son.

They bury him that day. She sings to him a lullaby that she sang to him as a child one last time as he is lowered into the earth.
Editions
Cassette
October 31, 2018
Digital
October 31, 2018
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Added By: Opsiuscato
October 29, 2019
Edited By: Naginah
October 30, 2019
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