Armed with a few keywords and ideas, I did the obvious thing. The writers at Pantheon Entertainment had obviously taken a lot of inspiration from various Greek and Norse Myths, so looking at those to gain a few ideas in regards to the inmate of the Soul Prison was an obvious idea.

If my memory served me right, the Grandmother had told me that ‘Sunna’ had created the Soul Prison to hold ‘one of the Great Beasts’. A quick check on ‘Sunna’ told me that it was either a founding document of Islamic law or an ancient name of the Norse deification of the Sun. Given that there was nothing Abrahamic about the lore of Road to Purgatory, my assumption was that the Grandmother had talked about the Norse deity.

As such, a ‘Great Beast’ caught by that deity was likely to stem from the same source, at least that was my first assumption. So, I had the keywords of Serpent, Darkness, Norse and Death to work with.

The first result my search got me was the Midgard Serpent, also known as Jörmungandr. However, a massive part of that one’s lore was related to water and the sea, it being the giant sea-serpent that circled the entire realm of Midgard, the world of Man. In the dark space, I had felt a lot of things, but there had been nothing that made me think of the sea, something I would expect when meeting the Midgard Serpent. In addition, while the serpent had been massive, it was far from the titanic size the ‘Girdle of the Realm’ would be, though that might simply be a feature of the Soul Prison.

In addition, it was a sibling of Fenris, son of Loki, and as such could be called a distant cousin to my Avatar’s entire race. However, when looking at the Serpent I had seen in the dark space, there had been no feeling of connection like I had felt when meeting Sigmir and Yvla. Awe, certainly, but no recognition or kinship.

Another result of my search was Fafnir, a dwarf-turned-dragon guarding a hoard of gold until slain by the hero Sigurd, who then used the Dragon’s Blood to turn himself mostly invincible. Curious about the details, as it might be the entity I was facing, I looked into the saga and soon discarded it, when I read a passage describing how the dragon was stabbed into the shoulder. While the serpent I had faced could easily be called a dragon, I was certain that there had been no shoulders to speak off. I might have simply been unable to see, but given the complete lack of hints that it actually might be a transformed dwarf guarding a hoard of gold, I put it at the bottom of the list of potential entities.

Next, and even less likely, was the nameless serpent bound above Loki during his imprisonment. Given my Avatar’s connection with said deity and their bloodline, I didn’t think that an entity whose primary role was to torment that god would view a member of that bloodline with anything but hostility. Working with one would be impossible, in addition, the brief mention the serpent got wasn’t enough to make me consider it a great beast.

Finally, the candidate I felt most likely, bestowed with the wonderful name, or maybe the title, Níðhöggr, or Nidhogg. Malice Striker. It was described as the serpent that gnaws on the roots of the world tree, which made me realise that I had overlooked a keyword, namely the trees. The Soul Prison had regained some vitality, or power, or whatever, after we had destroyed the Ancient Sapling and even back then, I had wondered how a tree of that size can be a sapling. But if it was a sapling of the world tree, or maybe a sapling of the species that eventually became the world tree, then it would make sense. And it would make sense that Nidhogg would be empowered by doing what its foundational myth spoke of: Gnawing on the roots of the world tree.

The introduction didn’t go into too much detail, but there were mentions of shadows and poison. That part certainly fit with what I had seen and felt, making me reasonably confident that I had found the right serpent. I continued reading a bit, before looking into the possibility that it wasn’t a serpent of Norse mythology. Looking into the Greek myths, there were a couple of dragons or serpents that might be possible options, but none of those looked actually likely. Most were either multi-headed or partially humanoid, with either a serpentine body at the bottom like they had given Naga, a serpentine head, or even serpentine hair. But nothing that screamed giant snake lurking in the dark.

With that in mind, I began to ponder what Pantheon Entertainment might have lifted and put into the game and what that might mean for me and the entity in the Soul Prison. What did it mean if the entity was Nidhogg, the Malice Striker? What could I do with that knowledge?

Either way, I now had a bit of insight and could look deeper into things in the future and with that new knowledge, I could return to Road to Purgatory.

After the brief moment of vertigo faded, I was back in my Hallow, quickly exchanging information with Lenore. She told me what had happened on Mundus, which wasn’t a whole lot, even though I had been gone for the entire day, while I informed her of my speculation regarding the inmate. She accepted it quite calmly, though I could feel her apprehension at a being with power similar to the Raven that was the ancestor of her entire bloodline or the wolf that had spawned Ylva’s. And yet, even with that apprehension, she couldn’t hide just how excited she was, to have such a being in our hand - literally.

Once the exchange of information was done, we exchanged positions, with me starting to run with Sigmir and the others, making sure that Rai had managed to maintain the concealment spells I had set up before logging out.

“The forest is more lively than it has been yesterday,” Adra warned me, looking a little concerned. “They are looking for us and what you did yesterday was noticed.”

“As expected, there was little I could do to stop that from happening. And yet, it had to be done. Even worse, I’ll have to repeat it in the future, giving our foes even more information. I’ll have to think of a way to distract them, or something like that,” I admitted, the elven reaction pretty much along the lines I had it expected to be. Sure, their search was focused further north, but my actions had changed their search from completely aimless to one concentrated in one direction.

The expression on Adra’s face told me what she thought about that better than any words could. Sadly, her distaste didn’t mean much, especially now that I had an idea of what might be in store for me if I kept feeding the beast. Sure, I would still need to use the Nexus to actually break the prison, but if I fed the monster, I might get some additional benefits.

We continued running and I began to think. If the forest itself was the enemy, with Dryads acting as bridges between the Elves using the forest and the forest itself, would I be able to burn those bridges? I didn’t plan to cross them, so there might be some potential.

Those thoughts, along with silent meditation regarding the darkness I had witnessed in the odd space the Serpent had pulled me in, carried me through the rest of the day, until it was time to make camp. As always, our first steps were the creation of magical wardings, concealing us from any unwanted attention and visitors.

That last bit was most important, as the Forest of Dusk was one of the most dangerous areas we had been in thus far. We didn’t encounter too many enemies, thanks to our travel speed and constant concealment but that didn’t mean that we didn’t notice them. The average level of beasts in the area was in the seventies, with some even reaching level hundred, something utterly unprecedented for normal, ‘open’ areas. Getting pounced on by a level hundred Jaguar would be serious trouble, trouble we didn’t want or need.

Luckily, beasts that reached such a level had quite well-developed survival instincts and understood that attacking a group of well-armed and dangerous travellers, all at higher levels than themselves, was a bad idea and should only be done in desperation, so even if our wardings failed, an attack wasn’t likely.

But prudence was necessary when playing a lethal game of hide-and-seek with an entire civilisation. And that was who was after us, to the point that I had noticed a few threads on the forum, asking why the elves suddenly had a bee in their bonnet. So far, nobody had made any connections with us, but I had a feeling that it was only a question of time before the brown matter would hit the rotary impellor and at that point, things would get… interesting.