Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

Dag looked at her carefully, trying to figure out what kind of person she was: she wore a light-skinned jacket with a fur coat on her shoulders and at the bottom had no pants, but a skirt, which came just above the knees, exposing two legs so muscular that they looked masculine, full of scars and scratches of all kinds.

Her apparel and posture seemed impeccable, however, the tone of her voice and the look with which Dag and his companions were scanned from top to bottom, made him understand that she must be a very strict woman, with herself and with others. 

Before continuing her speech, her eyes fell on Freydis who smiled shyly at her, remaining silent.

Ellen left the huge cloth sack on the ground and walked towards her, suddenly changing her expression. 

"Freydis! Hey, is that you? Girl, you're alive! Hahaha! They told me the battle was successful, but seeing you here, before my eyes... it seems surreal! I'm glad you managed to save yourself!" she exclaimed, unexpectedly embracing Freydis as if they were two longtime friends.

Dag and Gridd observed the scene with a questioning expression, wondering if the gruff and stern tone of that woman were just apparent.

Freydis answered her Master and the two spoke to each other for a few seconds, quietly and ignoring everyone else, until Sander hit the table with his knuckles, twice, as if he was knocking on a door.

Ellen and Freydis immediately stopped talking.

"I'm also very pleased that Freydis is safe and sound, but... coming back to us, why did you interrupt our talk? Master Dag came here to propose something interesting, what did you want to tell us?" said Sander, trying to moderate the dialogue.

"The answer is in that sack" Ellen replied, approaching it, as the slick on the floor continued to grow, dripping downstairs through the spaces between the wooden beams. 

"What's in there? It looks very heavy" Sander replied, while Dag, Kjell, and everyone else in the room watched in silence.

Ellen grabbed one end of the bag and pulled it upwards, emptying its contents on the ground, leaving everyone open-mouthed, crushed by that hideous vision: a huge severed head rolled onto the floor like a boulder, stopping with its face facing upwards.

The head belonged to a decidedly non-human being, with huge jaws that gave shape to a very pronounced chin, from whose mouth sprouted two large tusks curved upwards, similar to the ones of wild boars.

Two small black eyes were on the sides of the grayish-skinned face, separated by a large flat nose, with two huge nostrils from which the blood had flowed, clustering.

"What the fuck is that monster?!" exclaimed Karl suddenly, who until then had not said a word.

Kjell crossed his arms and turned again toward the window, thoughtfully.

Sander instead approached the head of that inhuman being, leaning down towards it to study the details, and Dag did the same.

The anatomy of that beast was unusual: even its ears were completely different from the human ones, that is, two small holes on the sides of the head, devoid of real hair, but covered by thin hairiness at the top.

"I thought that by bringing to y0u a testimony of what Master Kjell and I saw on the southern coasts, you would have believed our story more easily" Ellen said, walking up and down the room.

"Is that a Jotunn?" asked Dag, proving that he was attentive to the stories of Sander, who before the battle had already said that the two Masters were busy fighting enemy warriors to the south, that probably came from Krypstorm, the land of ice.

"A Jotunn? It's possible. Members of the Giants Of Ymir Clan can mutate their human form into this 'thing'. But as far as I know, only the strongest of them are capable of it, it's an advanced technique, it takes many years of study and practice" continued Sander, who was perhaps more informed than Ellen and Kjell, who had merely killed all the invaders without asking too many questions.

"What are they doing to Okstorm? As far as I know, Krypstorm is a much larger continent... I don't understand the objective of their attacks" continued Dag, who wanted to know more after seeing that awful being.

"Theirs is a great continent, it is true. But if they call it 'the land of ice' there is a reason: the lack of resources. Evidently, food shortages and other primary resources lack have pushed them to our shores. The situation we found was horrendous" Ellen said, pausing in front of that severed head with her hands in her pockets, looking at it with contempt.

"What does that mean? What happened to the fishing villages you were telling me about?" asked Dag again, addressing Sander and referring to the speech they had when they first met.

"Master Kjell and Master Ellen managed to find a few survivors over there. Most of them had been killed horrendously, in cold blood..." answered him, rising to his feet and walking toward the table. 

"Not only killed... we noticed that some of the wounds on their bodies were really unusual... some parts were missing as if they had been ripped off in bites. Looking for a match between those wounds and the sharp teeth of these creatures... we found that probably some bodies that were never found were devoured by them" Ellen replied, sighing and rethinking those images she couldn't get out of her head.

"Oh my goodness! Are you saying that these beasts also practice cannibalism?!" exclaimed Gridd, who could not believe her ears.

"Yes, such a thing. When we fought some of them, it seemed that there was no residue of humanity in their minds. They had become Jotunn for all intents and purposes, or so we believe. Personally, I had never met a real Jotunn, not outside of the stories my father told me to scare me when I was a child" said Ellen, whose tone seemed much more cordial when talking to women.