“You curs! How dare you! You scum, apostate filth!” Rorik roared, tears plain in his eyes as the boy in front of him, barely visible through the slats of the gate, had suddenly lost his head at the hands of a mage. “Unhand me, man!”

Samson stood firm, his massive bulk anchoring the older knight with little effort. He didn't reply, only standing in place to ensure that the headman didn't rush to a similar death. One that he would surely not rise from. Something was wrong with the prince. Samson had no concept of a primus, for there were none in his lands that he knew of. Jartor had been the first he'd ever seen – and then there was Tyr. A man who seemed no stronger than any other, but his spirit was alien to the concept of death. So similar to the night stories his kinsmen would tell him when he was a child.

“Ogbunabali has plans for him yet, elder. See with your eyes.”

“I said unhand me!” Rorik continued in his struggle until Samson's free hand forcibly turned his head to look where he should. Before the now open gate stood Tyr. Or rather, his body, arms fumbling about the ground for the princes head.

“...” Rorik's reddened complexion went paper white in an instant. “U-undead!”

There were a lot of myths regarding the undead. Old legends, and they were followed to the letter by every man and woman of the north. Burn your dead, lest they rise to throttle you in your sleep. Rorik hadn't seen an undead in over two decades. Not out here, in the core of the empire. Most didn't, it was a rare thing with the traveling paladins and benedictions of the churches that kept the rivers sacred barriers against their ilk. But he knew they existed, he'd seen them. Somewhere out there. They didn't call the wide stretch of forests framing the mountains from east to west the 'black' for nothing. Much lurked in the deeper woods, but this...

The bandits panicked, sending more arrows at the boy, half of them missing and slapping impotently against the palisade. “The one eyed prince!”

“Thanatos!” All manner of curses and phrases of loathing left their lips.

As for Tyr, he continued in his ungainly attempt to find his head until eventually, blissfully, he located it.

“Ah, shit. Here we go. Ah...” Tyr sighed in relief as his head was returned to his hands. He tried to reattach it to his neck, but it would only rock before sliding off. Covered in blood as he was, it seemed like it's take some time to reattach itself.

Wait, how am I even talking without lungs...?

He figured he had more important things to worry about that. “That spell was incredible, what was that?”

Curtis stared at the prince in an equal mix of awe, fear, and disgust. Unable or perhaps unwilling to accept what had just happened. They'd heard the stories, considering them lies at first, until they found themselves facing this... This thing. “Er... It's windlash... A level two spell.”

“Level two?” The prince sounded disappointed, realizing that he'd changed very little after all and had a long way to go. It wasn't something as simple as a cantrip, but a level two spell was nothing impressive either. After all that effort, his body was still no more durable than the average man. “I'd hoped for more, honestly...”

Rorik remained parked in place, staring at the prince with wide eyes, unable to come to terms with what he'd just seen. “We've heard, you know? The stories... But... The prince really is cursed.”

“Cursed?” Mikhail asked. “Well, maybe. How many many can say they understand the inner workings of a primus' power? Looks like this is his, I'd call it less spooky than Jartor literally creating the 'broken isles' with his hammer.”

“Not cursed.” Samson said sternly. “Blessed. The night hunter watches over you.”

“Aye.” Tor added, connecting his thumbs to make some sort of approximate of a pair of wings. Whatever custom the northmen ascribed to that they found necessary to ward off bad spirits. The horns, the wings, the star, you'd think they'd stick to one or another. “The primus of... Of death? Maybe he can't die?”

“Shut up.” Tyr turned toward them. Or rather, he held his still detached head by the braid, pointing it at them like a lantern. “I'm having a conversation here.”

The mage, seemingly recovered from his fugue state after witnessing the bizarre turn of events settled back into his arrogant bearing. “I figured, at best, we'd roust some villages and make south with horses and provisions. We'll have those, but the gods must truly be smiling on us to offer me a chance like this. You who have taken everything from us. Killing the baron was one thing, but his children and wife?”

“Eh?” Tyr replied, body whipping his head back around, ribbons of blood painting the ground red. “His sons are alive. At least one of them still should be... As for his wife, I have never met her nor did I kill her. She was not with the baron, and I'm pretty sure she's still alive in any case lest I would've heard about it.”

“Liar!” Curtis growled, stepping forward with hands extended to send yet more air spells toward the prince. Unlike the first spell, there was no finesse or ambush in the blunt movements. Blunt movements to send blunt balls of condensed air into Tyr. Though he might have been able to follow the movements, he was barely able to sidestep two before three more pulverized his rib-cage and mulched the organs present in his torso.

He could feel it. If he'd grown in anything, it was his ability to look inwards, even if only in the physical. Thomas had taught him a great deal in the arts of introspection and meditation. Lung collapsed, kidney jellied, and more beyond that. The pain was something else, something hot and sharp and unbearable. Yet he lived, feeling none of the mind killer that would send wounded men to the ground gasping for breath.

I really can't die... Tyr laughed, still upright, startling the poor excuses for bandits back into inaction.

As Tor had said... 'The primus of death'. There was an ugly sound to that, Tyr hoped it wasn't true. What use was an immortal primus that could walk around headless. There was no utility to it, it'd terrify these bandits and lesser men, but in actuality... It would have to have been one of the weaker aspects in the history of their kind.

Still, it's all I've got to work with.

Using his free hand pointed upward, he signed to the men behind him in the gateway. He'd ordered them long ago that if any fight happened in the village, he be allowed to handle it until further notice. Now, given the state of things, he was quite impotent what with his headless self. He'd have to rely on the others.

They acted instantly, that which remained of the blackguard. Eighteen men against sixty, with only Rorik to join them and Thomas mysteriously absent from the scuffle. Fennic was a crafty one, gone silent since the day he lost his tongue and learned how to use it to his advantage. Curtis tore Tyr apart, assuming himself to be beyond the reach of these men, removing a leg from the prince and his arms after that. A pile of limbs twitching on the ground. The pain was too much for Tyr, struggling to retain consciousness through the assault.

It was a wonder in and of itself that he'd remained standing long enough with his pulverized abdominal cavity to give the order.

Flanking the group of bandits, arrows hissed through the undergrowth and took them by surprise courtesy of those with bows and the Riverwood hunters. Not a single arrow missed, a feat one might find impressive but less so considering the press of bodies. Fish in a barrel, they said. Men fell, scrabbling at the holes through them with shrieks and moans.

Curtis clucked his tongue, stepping back to use a man as a shield before summoning a swirling barrier of air around him. As an apostate already marked, fled from the colleges in his youth, he'd never been able to complete his instruction. Minor spells of the earth and air elements were at his disposal. If not for his natural talent for the arcane, he'd never have made it this far. Plucked from ignominy by the baron at a young age and 'certified'. Illegally, of course, but he'd led a successful career and nobody had been the wiser.

Two of the black cloaked men in service to the prince died in as many motions, the mages mouth rattling off words of power like an auctioneer as he reset his wards and prepare further spells. Double casting they called it, a natural talent that few mages of his rank would possess. It made easy work of any mundane man seeking to approach him.

“Kill them all!” Curtis shouted, a voice of authority well used to command. The house men might be worthless, but sixty vs. a third their number? How could they lose? “Take their food, their clothes, and their horses! I want this village-- AH!”

Standing before him was a ghost faced image of the same prince he had cut to pieces just moments before with a glistening knife in his hand. How!? Curtis felt a panic within him, how was it possible to rise from such an assault with only uneven scars slowly fading from the flesh as a testament to it. It was a cursed thing, a dark thing. A necromancers work. This prince was as cursed and vile as the baron had always claimed, able to rise like that and move about, spraying blood all over.

A dry rasp came from the princes throat, a doorway to herald nightmares that lay just beyond the rift. Tyr. A noise like the crumbling of parchment, sending chills down the spines of friend and foe alike. “You ever read that children's story...? 'Should've gone for the head'. Wait... I guess you did.”

The knife whistled through the air in a smooth arc, Curtis prepared himself to intercept it only to realize that it was far too high. Instead, it took one of the men beyond his shoulder, leaving the mage confused. But he was no stranger to combat, already whirling about to dice the prince into even finer pieces this time.

“Oh, by the way, you'll want to be looking up now.” Tyr added, finger extended skyward in tandem to his words.

Curtis did. In the air, falling from a sturdy branch above was Fennic with a dark glint in his eyes and vengeance on his brow. A cold iron hatchet in his hands. Curtis hadn't the time to scream. The tongueless man, for what it was worth, never failed to go for the head. His neat descent through the air, hatchet in each hand, ended with him slamming into Curtis' shoulders and cracking his skull open like an egg. Not much more than a delayed squeak and the man was leaking gray matter into the forest floor, dead as a doornail. Fennic hit him a few more times to make sure he was dead, a superstitious man who didn't trust a mage to stay down one bit.

Not much was left after that. These men hadn't the least bit of steel in them, the self stylized bandits. All it took was the killing of their mage captain and they broke. Sprinting off down the forest path before being corralled between the village and a newly felled tree. Crashing down in their path to catch two of the men in the lead, crushing them flat. A wide bodied trunk, force ridden downward by several burly men hefting their axes and screaming spittle from bearded mouths at the horrified bandits.

Tyr watched as Doug caught a fleeing man by the scruff of his neck, effortlessly lifting a scrawny body and slamming it against the ground until the man ceased in his struggles. Followed by the drawing of a flanged mace that swept down to gore what was left of the face.

Micah stood atop the fallen tree, roaring like a bear and burying his lumbering axe in the face of the first man that attempted to clamber over the obstacle. Not a thing to it, what with the strength of his limbs. A man fell, head struck clean through and another crushed half flat with a lazy backhand blow. Not trained for a duel, that Micah, but putting an axe to flesh was significantly less difficult than the steely bark of the trees he tended to daily.

“Stop.” Tyr called out. It took a moment, but eventually it did. Some seemed to feel some disbelief at his claim of prince, but they trusted Rorik. Notably, they avoided Tyr as if he was carrying the blood plague. “Any man that drops their arms and puts knee to the dirt lives.”

All but two tossed their weapons into the dirt. Those two didn't last long, hastening the others into a falling at the knee and groveling in the blood soaked dirt. Perhaps thirty were left, those hunters of Riverwood taking up the reapers work with impressive gusto. Only a few moments had passed and yet the warband had been near cut in half.

“Ah, and find me the husband of a woman called Ella. I'd have words with him.” The prince added.