The Lady of Snow and Sorrow - illustrations

Here are some beautiful illustrations that my talented friends made for this story. The last two not-so-striking drawings are made by my hand, you've even seen one of them last month. Warning: the pictures are large.

Summary: This is a modern dark fantasy version of "Snow Queen" fairy-tale featuring my beloved metal band Wintersun. As we know, the Snow Queen is Hel, the Scandinavian goddess of winter and death. She plans to take Wintersun's lead guitarist Jari to serve her forever at her palace of ice, but things go wrong, and Kai the drummer disappears instead. His friends got nothing else to do but start a long and dangerous quest to save him, guided by two ravens - the messengers of Odin.

Full text here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8530267/

Author page: http://libottiche.deviantart.com/

...Gods, what's this? A thought was pulsating intensely in Jari's brain - nobody can be there, as he lives on the third floor, and there are no trees so close to the house... But still, he saw a humanlike shape approach his window from the dark of the night. Trembling, the guitarist stretched his arm towards it, and the magnificent icy flowers crumbled into dust. A translucent female face surrounded by flowing snow-white hair looked at Jari through the glass, devouring Wintersun's front man with its luminous silver eyes. A ghost. Or some other unhuman creature...

...Jari knew the younger guitarist too well, for they had worked together for more than ten years, sharing a ton of joy and ten tons of pain. Teemu could not betray his band: the night before he had killed a living being to defend his friends. And he would fight for them if even they had changed into the blood-lusty sons of the night. And there was bitterness in his large black eyes that no man was able to fake.

...the creature they spotted bore no resemblance to a dragon. It was a monstrous wolf or dog species, a living embodiment of physical power and violence. It was nearly the same size as Jari's wolf, but it's fur was long and black, its paws were shorter and its chest was broader, and he had six eyes instead of two, burning in the dark like melted steel. It exhaled a heavy stench of death and disease, as if it was decomposing from inside.
Both men instinctively stepped backwards, remembering Lasswen's warning of Garm. No one knew how to evade the creature's attacks, let alone destroying it. To make the things worse, the Guardian of Helheim was not alone: he carried an armed rider on his back. It was nothing either Anne or Lasswen had told them about.

...The one who chased the phantoms away with a red flare was Skadi, accompanied by no less than twenty male and female skiers: each of them was holding a burning torch. The malicious creatures burst away from them, like a stock of minnows scatter away from a shark...

...There she was – much taller now than any mortal man or woman, her face and hair white as if made of marble. The left side of her face and body was skeletal, the eye-socket empty. The dress that she was wearing seemed woven of moonlight...