Cackling to himself, his teeth clanging against themselves, Ismar kicked his father’s now-lifeless body to the ground, remarking: “What a shame that those who would’ve given the wrong account fell in the initial assault.”

“All this for… What, Rikke? Is that it?!” Gunnar barked, knowing full well this had nothing to do with Rikke’s changing of clans beyond the event’s use as an excuse. He was truly trying to get information out of Ismar, and Ismar, overly ambitious idiot that he was, freely provided, cackling like a hyena. The way his teeth rang when he snapped them got irritating before he even finished a sentence.

“Rikke? Ha… Hahah- ahahahahaha! Of course it’s her, why else would four clans come together to squash the dishonored, good-for-nothing, filthy cheater Hulsons?! Rikke will tragically die alongside you lot, of course. Eisengeist will just so happen to tear off the roof of your longhouse and puke sap down the hole ‘til there aren’t any corpses left to identify or somesuch. Who knows, I’m not the one controlling-”

He stopped himself, letting out a dark chuckle.

“No. You’ve gotten enough out of me. Die like the dog you are, old man.”

Ten-dozen men flooded in, all in the attempt to slay Gunnar where he stood, while Ismar stomped on Gjermund’s head. Then, again, and again, and again, until it cracked open and bloody slurry spilled out, the elder’s Azoth Stone clattering across the cobbles. Gunnar managed to carve, rip, bite, and tear his way out of the dogpile, gaining several wounds to his real body in the process before fleeing to the longhouse.

He hurled one of his axes Ismar’s way out of sheer fury over that nidingr’s treachery, only for him to snatch it between his teeth and bite the handle in half.

“What a waste of good starmetal,” he thought, recalling the enchanted weapon into his hand, grabbing what was left of the grip’s mammoth-tusk.

Gunnar reached the longhouse only moments before its front doors were at last shattered and the enemy flooded in properly. It wasn’t an axe or battering ram that did it, but Ikesian CP-T, an utterly asinine quantity of it, smeared along the frame in thick drooping lines. It was no wonder. That door was more than tough enough to withstand a frontal assault, so targeting its weak points was the most logical solution. With the CP-T’s ignition, three men met their ends; like torches, they blazed up in the night. Several more got caught by flying globs of the hateful flame, but got away with gaping holes through their bodies. He wagered that the black-dressed, blonde-haired death goddess on the roof was the only reason they hadn’t tried the windows.

Unlike those poor fools, Gunnar just went ‘round the back, into the basement through an outside entrance, and back up. He found several would-be invaders dead and frozen, caught by the traps Fryg had set. One of them was still crawling along. He put the fool out of her misery before moving on, retrieving a small jar of wound-sealant from within his transformed body’s mass while remaining transformed. Such manipulation of construct-flesh was considered fairly advanced, but it came naturally to him. As he went he smeared it on is shallower injuries.

The long house was still aflame, but the cursed fire had begun to subside. Whatever had been fuelling it was clearly depleted. It was a hollow mercy given the very real fire that would soon spill through the front door.

Rushing through the longhouse and killing eight more infiltrators trapped by Fryg’s ice mirrors, Gunnar finally returned to his kin, finding that Rikke not only wasn’t bound in any way, but was the most visibly incensed by the situation of them all. She was using an atlatl to huck spear after spear down one of the corridors that connected to the great hall, her arm bending in ways that a human arm shouldn’t bend in, with the whiplike motion imparting great force to her throws despite her emaciated state.

“Gunnar, you’ve returned!” said Yvonne, rushing over to him, freezing his deeper wounds shut while she procured proper elixirs. It was the superior formulation Jorfr had brought. While Yvonne repaired his transformed body and expertly tended to his real wounds, he recounted what had transpired, warning the others of Gjermund’s death at his own son’s hand. The question of just how Ismar got his hands on one of Rikke’s quills came up.

“The second time the Brambleback took hold of me, I came-to covered in shallow wounds. They had torn out most of the quills and carved triggering-runes into them. It was likely one of those,” she explained. The apprehension behind every word and how she squirmed as she spoke told more than enough of how she saw the experience.

“It cannot be helped. Take up arms, soon they will be upon us in full!”

Indeed, moments later, the ireful flame of CP-T burned through the longhouse doors’ hinges and did much the same to the door leading directly to the great hall. Ismar was nowhere to be seen, but his direct relatives of similarly muscular build leapt through the entryway with a dozen mighty warriors in tow, some of them transformed into beasts, others blazing with magic of all sorts.

They faced down the Hulsons who awaited them there, a wordless tension rising while both sides prepared and tried to feel out the other in order to get the best first strike.

That fateful clash wouldn’t be permitted to take place just yet.

A fey sensation washed over all of Borea.

Defaced statues and monuments previously attributed to the Nameless Clan were warped - or rather, un-warped - to depict a figure that all who lived to see them suddenly remembered.

As flames licked at the indestructible carving in the Hulsons’ great hall, its bare spot, too, twisted and returned to its true form, and Fryg found herself utterly paralyzed at the realization as long-lost memory rushed back into her head. The Ice Witch wept, her tears clattering to the ground as pearls of glacierglass.

Hul.

The Mammoth Rider.