Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

As the wolfman thought of Dag's words, reworking his request, the other werewolf next to him, tired of standing still and waiting, snapped to him, trying to hit him with a claw. 

Dag, who had not lowered his guard for even a second, promptly dodged the blow, passing under the arm of the enemy and cut it off with an axe.

The wolf despaired and immediately tried to counterattack, turning to Dag, who with a quick swing hit him with the hammer on one knee, forcing him to kneel.

Within seconds, after standing up, he severed the other arm of the werewolf, whose shoulders began to spray blood from all sides, deprived of both upper limbs.

Slowly, one of the two dark arms began to move sinuously towards the enemy and its black blade stopped a few millimeters from his neck, leaving him immobilized by terror, without his arms and with a broken knee, which prevented him from getting up.

At that moment, Dag turned to the other wolf, the more diplomatic of the two, who stood motionless to watch the scene, as if surprised by Dag's fighting style and his strange dark powers.

"Let us go in peace. Prevent your companions from dying for no reason" Dag said, looking into his interlocutor's eyes, with an incredibly serious and determined expression.

The wolf chuckled, grimacing.

After that disrespectful behavior, Dag stuck his enemy's neck without arms kneeling in front of him, pierced his trachea and killed him instantly, while he emitted terrifying guttural verses.

He turned to the other wolf, who looked at his back and then turned back to Dag, keeping the same mocking smile on his face, made even more lugubrious by his long sharp canines sticking out of his closed mouth.

Dag made a confused expression, not realizing how that beast-man could be so quiet in seeing all his allies die before his eyes.

Suddenly, other howls came from afar, in the direction of the great crack in the rock, on which a thick fog had risen, also caused by the large amount of snow moved.

Gridd, Freydis, and the other Masters, who had killed dozens of werewolves, stopped to watch, all blood-soaked and fatigued, also because of the bitter cold, which froze their hands and feet.

After a few seconds of waiting, hundreds of werewolves emerged from the fog, running at great speed towards the village, as if they had picked up the difficulty of their herd and came to their rescue.

The faces of all the Masters present turned snow-white, terrified of that scene, fearing that their end was near.

Thalos curled up behind Dag's legs, who no longer knew what to do. 

Despite his powers and those of his Masters colleagues, defeating all those enemies so strong and fast was impossible.

Dag, gripped by momentum and fear, began to run towards Freydis and his sister Gridd, ignoring the wolf in front of him, who let him go away freely, sure of the victory of his fierce companions.

"Freydiiis! Griiidd! Go away! Run! Run to safety!" he cried with his breath caused by the rush, as tears fell from his eyes uncontrollably, rethinking the journey and mission and the fact that all this had only led him and his men to death, including his greatest affections, his girlfriend and his sister.

The earth began to tremble more and more as the many enemy beastly warriors advanced towards the stone palaces carved into the rock, just after the tower in the center of the village.

Without adding anything, after Sander and Kjell got rid of the last wolf in front of them, Egill walked forward, positioning himself in front of all his remaining allies.

In front of him, dozens of corpses of allies and enemies soiled the snow of the great plain, while in the background the figures of the ravenous wolves became sharper and sharper as the rain ceased, which progressively diminished its intensity.

Dag, when he arrived in front of Freydis, stopped, noticing the gaze lost in the emptiness of his woman, who was about to prepare for death.

The two lovers kissed for a few seconds, continuing to cry with fear, convinced that this would be their last greeting before meeting again in Valhalla.

After Freydis, Dag looked at Gridd, who crossed her gaze with his: at that very moment, all the memories of their childhood came to his mind, the moments during which his adopted sister had helped him overcome difficulties, teaching him how to be strong and how to survive, without ever being commanded by anyone.

"I can't. I can't just let all this end" he whispered, thinking aloud and pausing, with his weapons clenched in his hands and his two dark arms still floating behind him.

He closed his eyes and turned to his wise Master Egill, who was ready to sacrifice his life in the last desperate attempt to save all those young warriors, who firmly believed in the cause.

The wolves kept approaching and a few hundred meters separated them from their goal, when Dag felt a very strong pain in the back, in the lower part.

His verse of pain immediately caught the attention of his companions, including Karl, who without saying a word, began to move his hands in a circular way and generate a slight green aura on his palms.

With his eyes closed and maintaining a sacred concentration, the greenish aura spread through the air and reached Dag's body, wrapping it for a few seconds until it dissolved into thin air.

The pain behind his back ceased and the wound on his thigh began to heal slowly, helped also by the dark liquid, which had been trying for some time to repair the damaged tissues.

Looking down, Dag noticed that in addition to the green trail left by Karl's spell, another ethereal-like substance fluttered around his legs, almost imperceptible to sight.

He looked up and around, taking a long breath, intent on focusing that substance and discovering with amazement that it was around everything: allied soldiers, Thalos's fur, weapons, even corpses. Everything emanated that substance in varying amounts.