Bloodlines of the Ancient Pantheons

Chapter 403: CDIII. The Sad Scene

After this answer, Sander looked at Dag with a puzzled expression, not satisfied with his answer.

"Master Sander, imagine if you saw someone skin a man in front of your eyes, depriving him of his skin to make a warm suit from it. How would you feel? Well, I think the Captain is referring to that when he says he wouldn't want to hurt the wolf's sensibility. I don't know him very well, but I've noticed that Thalos is a really incredible beast, sometimes he manages to be more perceptive than a human being. And like us humans, he has feelings" Reidar interrupted, meddling in the speech and helping Dag explain to Sander why he made his decision.

"As you will, Dag. That was just a wolf to me. I would have skinned him without thinking. No matter the feelings and bullshit, I'm more interested in not freeze to death" Sander said, who for a moment forgot that Dag had saved his life and spoke disrespectfully of Thalos, who somehow sensed that they were talking about him, but kept walking without stopping.

The tunnel guarded by the large black wolf was much longer than the others, and the Clans warriors were forced to walk through it all in a row, moving two at a time, keeping a slow pace, so as not to hinder the advance of the companions behind them and to leave the necessary space for the torches to burn the little oxygen in the air.

"I can't see the exit yet, Dag. Amazingly, we've been down here all this time and we haven't reached the exit yet... we don't even know what time it is, we're losing track of time" Gridd said, walking next to her brother, in front of Freydis and Reidar, in the second row.

"I think it's almost evening, sister. I've been trying to figure out the time that's been in here since we got in this cave, and it should have been about 6 or 7 hours. Anyway, we have to grit our teeth, soon we will stop to rest and eat the food that we have been able to find among the huts of the wolf warriors" Dag replied, speaking in pragmatic and resolute terms and raising the morale of his sister and his companions, who continued to be satisfied with his leadership.

The walk continued for several hundred meters, when the tunnel finally widened to another gigantic oval room, with the walls much higher than the previous ones.

As soon as Dag and all the troop soldiers entered the room, the spectacle before their eyes was not at all reassuring and many of them shuddered.

The story told by the Giants Of Ymir's warrior found injured in the first tunnel was true: the soldiers he had talked about were all there, on the ground, dead among blood and rocks.

Together with their corpses, which were about fifteen, as in the story of man, there was an equal number of wolves, killed by the fury of those daring warriors in search of vengeance.

"Fuck... it was all true... they really came down here to kill the soldiers of the Claws Of Fenrir... this macabre show proves that..." Reidar said, positioning himself next to Dag and expressing his thoughts, as the Warchief carefully observed the details of the dead men, walking slowly next to them and illuminating them with the torch to see if their uniforms were similar to those of the wounded man.

In fact, most of them were bare-chested and with the same long skirt that wore their commander.

Even their tattoos had similar colors, although the shapes depicted were different.

The scenario was certainly that of a battle that, almost certainly, had taken place at the same time as their clash with the wolves, or just before.

Dag turned to the tunnel from which they had just arrived and paused for a moment to think, trying to imagine the man running in that direction, to roughly calculate the time it would take and figure out if it was a plausible thing.

"You're trying to reconstruct the scene, aren't you?" Master Egill asked, approaching him slowly and trying not to interfere, while even the warriors just out of the tunnel began to spread out into the room, trying to find something useful among those corpses, such as special weapons, food, or other valuables.

"Yes, I'm trying... he said they were fighting when they heard the sound of the village bell in which we were. It seems strange to me to be able to hear it from this point so far away and especially more than a hundred meters deep, with the sound of weapons and screams, but... let's admit for a moment that they did it... well, at this point, after the sound, many of the wolves started running that way, towards the village. How did they take so little time? I understand they're very fast, but not so fast!" Dag said, trying to explain his reasoning to his colleague.

"Perhaps the first to reach the surface were not the ones who were in this room... perhaps even in the rooms we crossed earlier there were other wolves, such as in the one with the huts, in which we ransacked the food and water. In that case, it would be more plausible to reconstruct what happened and match the times, don't you think?"

"Mmmh... I hadn't thought of this detail. Yes, that's how it may have been... Anyway, this was just my curiosity, now it doesn't change anything to reconstruct or not the story told by that dying man. What matters is that if the exit he told us about really exists, at this point it doesn't have to be very far, because I don't think his men have come a long way once they get into this tunnel fully guarded by the Claws Of Fenrir." 

"Yes, I agree with you... only we promised our men a break once we got out of that tunnel... and to continue towards the exit we will have to cross another one, so..."