Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

"However, he has never been interested in the issues that affect us. When there were wars between Clans, he was not present, as well as when there was the siege on your part. Only we warriors have come to the aid of the innocent people that your soldiers have slaughtered, ripping down their bodies and depriving them of their entrails. Remember, Kranus... as you will never forget what happened to your son, the images of those dead bodies on the beach will forever haunt my soul" Dag said, stressing that he was not willing to forget the past.

"My warriors have only executed my own order. I wanted at all costs to take possession of the Crystal of Fire, which paradoxically, right now is here, next to me, in the hands of someone else. Maybe it's how you say... perhaps my son had to die that day so that we could meet and make this speech."

"Yes, I am convinced that it's the truth. He was a great warrior, he fought to the last moment, putting me in the grip of his powerful magic, which I imagine he inherited from his father..." 

Kranus, after that statement, smiled a little, remembering his son's face fondly and looking again at Dag, who was more or less his peer.

"Captain, we're arrived" Reidar interrupted from behind, advising Dag to keep his eyes open, being about 200 meters from Tungvek's main entrance.

Once in front of the huge stone gates, the six guards, different from the day before, saw their Clan leader arrive along with three totally unknown guys and made a confused expression, not knowing how to behave.

"Open the gates now, I and these men must talk about business" Kranus said, who was not obliged to give them any kind of explanation, being the leader who commanded the civilians and soldiers of the Clan as he pleased.

"Of course, sir! Open the door, Commander Kranus urgently needs to enter the city!" one of the guards yelled, looking back, toward the big doors.

The confusion of Tungvek's soldiers increased further when they noticed that both the two Jotunns who had left in the morning with Kranus and their rhinos had not returned to the city, but without asking any kind of question, knowing the irascible character of the ice wizard, they let everyone pass, overcoming the doors undisturbed before they closed.

By the morning, the whole city was in the street and hundreds of civilians stopped to watch the unknown warriors walking next to Kranus, immediately realizing they were not enemies.

Dag, riding his run-down horse, rode next to Kranus, while the Egill and Reidar closed the line.

They passed through the main road of the city, which from the entrance, climbed slightly upwards, leading up to a huge palace, of which only the tips more than 30 meters high were visible, which also sprouted outside the walls, in contrast to the grayish sky.

Along that busy road, dozens and dozens of people looked at Dag, who felt their eyes on him.

A woman, as the four warriors passed by her, moved her child from the road, fearing that they might hit him with the horses, and looked at Dag in terror, acknowledging that his armor did not belong to their Clan, as did Reidar's and Egill's robe. 

Amid the rumors of the people who wondered who they were and the noises of everyday life, such as the hammers of blacksmiths and the croaking of geese, hens, and other animals for sale at the market, Dag and the others, after a curve that increased the slope of the road, could see the palace of Kranus in its entirety.

It was a tall and majestic building, so large that it had been built purposefully on a small hill of land, to be able to rise to the few houses that surrounded it, as well as a stable and a large armory, including a forge from which came black smoke that spread upwards.

The whole palace was built with a dark grey stone, almost black, certainly of volcanic origin: around the towers and all the base of the structure, irregular beams of sapphire blue ice enveloped the stone surface, giving the palace an incredible elegance, as if they were flaps of fabric.

Reidar and Egill were very surprised to see such an engineering masterpiece, while Dag didn't pay much attention to it, staying focused on what was going on around him and his team.

As they made their way to the stairs leading to the entrance, made of two stone slabs like the city door, they got off the horses and tied them to a fence near the barn, from which came the verses not only of the horses but also of the rhinos, locked in hundreds inside sturdy iron cages, rusted due to adverse weather conditions.

"This way" Kranus said, showing the way to his guests, as dozens of people, warriors and non-warriors, watched scrupulously the three strangers from head to toe, in disbelief that their commander would allow them to enter the palace in their company. 

Other guards, deployed vertically along the stairs leading to the entrance, stretched their eyes and moved, making room for their commander and peering at Dag, trying to figure out where he came from.

He did not reciprocate any of those glances and continued to look straight ahead, with a single thought in mind: to know more about the Crystal of Fire.

Dag wanted nothing more, and while his two companions were astonished and afraid to walk through a city made up entirely of enemy warriors and with a culture profoundly different from theirs, he seemed to care not: what Kranus had said about his powers was mind-blowing, no one in Okstorm had ever been able to tell him more about them, not even Weland himself, who even being a God, did not have the same knowledge as the ice mage.

"The same matter of which the universe itself is made... is it of that matter that my powers are formed? Where does it come from? I feel it flowing through my body, how can I generate it?"