Pola's Revenge

Time, seasons, and holidays » Pola's Revenge
The followers of Kriesha aim to emulate the winter, slow to anger and subtle in effect but deadly none the same, just as snow will gently drift over a sleeping warrior and slowly leech the cold from his bones so the followers of Kriesha praise most highly an execution that is unnoticed by the victim unless the last moment before breath leaves their body.
Pola was a priestess of Kriesha in Velenoye some four centuries ago. She was slighted by Dimas, a great warrior of her tribe who favored more compliant women. Pola outwardly ignored the slight, and supported Dimas in his leadership, building the warrior into a real challenger to the tsarevo (war chief) who seemed to have everything a Vos might want and who roared the praise of Belinik daily.
And then Pola took it all away. Dimas saw his favored wife, Tanya, die in child-birth with his second child. He saw the caribou he owned weaken and die leaving him dependent on the tribe?s herd. He saw his son and heir Rodel die under the jaws of a maddened wolf. But so subtle was Pola that it was only when Dimas?s spell tattoos failed in his challenge against the tsarevo that Dimas realized that Pola had been behind his fall, building him up purely so that he might suffer more in the loss of all that he valued. In the last moments of his life before the tsarevo hewed the head from his shoulders, Dimas truly understood the chill of Pola?s vengeance and from that day forth the priestesses of Kriesha have striven to take from enemies not only their lives, but also their every hope and dream and so slay them in spirit as well as in body.