“Very well, Vance. My name is Friya. Now, enter the Purification Pool, please.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. After facing the vicious cold and heavy snow, the bright-blue, steaming water looked as inviting as a soft canopy bed filled with willing women. I stepped into the water and sighed as its warmth imbued me. I quickly slipped the rest of my body in, sitting down in the pool so that only my head remained above the hot water. Ah, this was pretty great, actually. All I needed now was a mug of good ale and—
My thoughts stopped dead in their tracks the moment Friya, standing on the other side of the pool, turned around and slipped her cloak off her shoulders. She was suddenly naked before me like a divine apparition. She was no hag, no crone—nothing of the sort. Instead, standing on the opposite side of the pool was a tall, slim woman in her early 20s. White-blond hair cascaded around her slim shoulders. The features of her gorgeous face were angular but not harsh, and there was an element of danger to her beauty. Her big eyes were the palest shade of blue I’d ever seen, and her luscious lips curved into a beguiling smile. Her body was lean, her legs impressively long. Her breasts—oh, her breasts. They were voluminous, almost disproportionately large for the rest of her figure, but they defied gravity and bounced enticingly in what seemed like slow motion with her every movement. Large pink nipples pointed upward and were visibly stiffening. I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or because she liked the look of me. Perhaps a bit of both.
Her crotch featured a narrow strip of a white-blond hair, neatly trimmed, pointing like a pale sign to the opening of her slit, which was just visible in the small gap between her thighs. The most striking thing about her naked body was not her physical attributes, which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a sculpture of a beauty goddess, but her pale skin—or rather, what was on that pale skin. Tattoos marked her entire body: runes, mystical symbols, and images of northern creatures, like white bears, direwolves, and shaggy brown beasts with tusks and long trunks. I’d never seen a woman with this many tattoos before. I had to admit, I liked it. It added to that pinch of danger I’d detected in her expression.
Fixing me with a piercing gaze from her ice-blue eyes, Friya slid into the water, a yard or two across from me on the other side of the pool. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and in the warmth of the water, my cock was starting to generate even more heat than whatever geological forces were warming this pool.
“Now that we have submerged our bodies in the waters,” Friya said, “let me begin the ceremony that will purify us of any evil or pollutants that may be clinging to our skin.”
She closed her eyes and began chanting in her own language. I was happy to let her get on with it since it gave me more of a chance to ogle her stunning, tattoo-covered figure through the water.
After a few minutes, she stopped and opened her eyes.
“We are done,” she said, “and purified. Now, we are ready to talk. Come, we must return to my hut. We will talk, and then, I will perform the sacred ceremony.”
If the sacred ceremony was anything like this, I was now looking forward to it. I suddenly felt lucky I could spend time with this woman rather than feast with the fighters and smelly barbarians.
Friya stepped out of the pool, giving me an excellent view of her round ass before she slipped her cloak over her shoulders and covered up. I stepped out of the pool, my cock swollen from the sight of her but not yet fully hard. She looked at it hanging heavily between my legs, and the unmistakable gleam of lust entered her eyes as her lips parted slightly.
“The ceremony will be most pleasant for both of us, I think.” Like a vicious cycle, the hungry look in her eyes sent more blood rushing to my groin, which had her involuntarily gasping and widening her eyes even more. “Come, follow me,” she finally said.
Well, this ceremony certainly seemed like it would be something I’d like to perform. With a grin, I followed Friya through the cold and back into the cabin. In the center of the room lay the skin and fur of a huge white bear, serving as a rug. Friya indicated that I should sit on it. She kept her cloak on when she took a seat on the bearskin across from me.
“I have dreamed for a long time of this moment,” she said. “And I have been preparing for your coming. Look, over there, proof that I have come to know your face well in my dreams.”
She pointed at one of the shelves, and I was startled to see a carved wooden effigy of myself. It was surprisingly lifelike, and there was no way she could have gotten those details right without having seen me before. She must have actually seen me in her dreams, despite never having met me.
“What’s that for?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. I mean, it was kind of strange going into a stranger’s house and seeing they had a lifelike wooden effigy of you. The memory of finding Isu out in the forest in the moonlight with her wooden effigy of me flashed through my mind.
“I carve many effigies of powerful figures I see in my dreams,” she answered. “They give me a reminder of my purpose.”
“Which is?”
“To fight and defeat the great evil that is rising. An evil that only the God of Death can combat. Long ago, this very same evil stalked the land, and all of Prand was in danger
