Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

"The smell of blood was so strong as to attract Thalos, who is not used to all this cold. It is strange that there are no wolves or other animals living in these climatic conditions" Dag thought, reflecting on the possible fauna that populated those unexplored lands.

Just after thinking of his four-legged friend, from behind the second hut, in which the rest of the troops had spent the night, Thalos sprang up, walking proudly in the fresh snow, with his snout down to the ground, perhaps looking for some olfactory trail to follow.

"Hey... good morning my friend! Did you smell anything?" he asked, leaning down to the large gray wolf, who continued to approach his master.

Thalos kept undaunted to smell on the ground and turn around the huts, without paying attention to his words.

Suspicious of his pet's unusual attitude, Dag followed him, trying to figure out what he had sensed, something so particular that caught his attention so much that he didn't listen.

Behind the hut where Freydis and his other companions were still in, there were small furrows in the snow, but they did not look like footprints.

"Mmmh... buddy, I think you're wrong... even if there were traces, tonight's heavy snowfall definitely covered them" Dag said, speaking to Thalos as if he were a human being.

After those words, the wolf began to make a strange sound, like a cry, as if he had suddenly felt something he could not resist.

Dag said nothing, merely standing still and watching the scene.

Thalos continued to move frantically up and down, left and right until he reached the top of one of the village's two small hills and stopped, sticking his nose in the snow and then raising his head upwards, howling.

"Awoooo! Awooo!" the grey wolf howled, making Dag understand that he had found a lead.

Immediately, he rushed in that direction and lowered himself to the spot sniffed by his furry friend, dipping his knees in the fresh snow.

Thalos began to whine again, increasing progressively as Dag dipped his hands in the snow, beginning to dig.

"What is it? There's nothing here, what did you smell?" he asked, who couldn't see anything important, apart from pieces of frozen earth and small shards of rock. 

The wolf tried in every way to communicate something to Dag, repeatedly touching the ground at that point and then his arm, with his large, wet black nose.

"All right, I get it... I'll try it too" Dag said, closing his eyes and lowering his face to the ground, ready to sniff something like a hound.

Although he had never tried before to smell something trapped in the ground, he wanted to trust the instinct of his four-legged friend, whose sense of smell was still more developed than his own.

With his eyelids still closed, he first exhaled all the air in his lungs and soon after took a deep breath, slow and long-lasting, with his nose slightly resting on the ground in the snow, being careful not to inhale too much dust, not having a respiratory trait suitable to sniff that way.

Dag repeated the operation several times and very slowly, something began to take shape in his mind.

"Yesterday's snow is definitely under the layer of fresh snow... so if there were footprints, their smell was somehow trapped in the lower layers, even partly in the soil below" Dag thought, who as if he was a voracious predator, recognized a slight smell of blood among the small wet and sharpened stones of the almost muddy ground, under which was Krypstorm's permafrost.

Thalos, as if he understood that his master needed a moment to concentrate, became silent and sat next to him, standing motionless to look at him, waiting for something to happen.

As he continued to exhale and breathe in, Dag was able to feel more and more the smell of blood, which unquestionably belonged to neither a human nor a large boar.

It was very similar to that of the Jotunn found dead in the hut, whose corpse emitted a stench difficult to forget.

"You're right! I feel it too! It smells like blood!" Dag exclaimed, telling the wolf about his discovery.

Thalos began to bark, glad that his thesis was correct, and looking forward, he made Dag guess that in addition to identifying a starting point, he also had a direction to follow.

"Very good! You've been looking for a lead all this time, didn't you? You've been great! Did you even smell Claire?" he asked, stroking the wolf on his forehead, who as soon as he heard that name bent his head, acknowledging the sound.

"Claire... Claire! Can you smell Claire, Thalos?!" Dag asked again, slowly repeating the girl's name, allowing the wolf to understand it.

"Arf! Arf! Awoooo!" the wolf replied, responding affirmatively to Dag's request.

"Yes! Fuck yeah! Good job, buddy!"

After those words, just as Dag got up from the ground ready to follow the trail, forgetting for a moment everything else, a voice called him on the other side of the hut.

"Daaag! Hey, Dag! Where have you been? We were looking for you everywhere, the soldiers are ready to go, what are you doing?" Gridd asked, as Freydis stood by her and continued to rub her eyes to recover from sleep.

"Thalos has found a lead to follow! He smelled blood in the ground... most likely it belongs to the beast that killed the giant and kidnapped Claire! If we'll follow him, we could..." 

"Thalos? Do you mean your wolf?" Sander interrupted, asking Dag to better explain the situation.

"Yes, he did it!" 

"Do we really want to rely on the indications of a wild wolf to venture into this huge, unexplored place?" Kjell asked, continuing Sander's speech, but in a decidedly more arrogant tone.

Dag did not answer immediately and snorted, looking down.

"Sorry, before you start squabbling again... I have already seen such a speech when we suspected the words of the little girl in the village... do you remember that?" Gridd asked, walking towards her brother and addressing everyone else.