The blood which they’d bled took on a life of its own as they spoke the words in turn, forming an interlinking knotwork pattern joining their hands. It began boiling for a moment, only to burn away in a flash and leave its pattern on their skin, which faded seconds later. The crone let go, pulling a hollowed-out fang from some hidden pocket. From within the fang she scooped some sharp-smelling poultice and smeared it on her cut. It closed nearly instantly, smoking as it did.

“I nearly forgot - the other elders should return in two to three days. Now, before I set our shamans loose upon the four of you - Zelsys Newman, your living blade if you would,” the Crone said, holding out her hand.

Zel just looked at her for a few seconds, furrowing her brow in a wordless question.

With a sigh, the crone explained: “Jorfr here made me aware of its state the last time he came to visit, and as such I have had a Dead Man’s Bed readied for it. It is a glacierglass sarcophagus that imposes deathlike stillness upon whoever is placed within it. A year passes as if it were an hour. We use them to safeguard the wounded if appropriate healing is not available at the moment, including living weapons. Your predicament is not as unique as you may think, you see… Though I will admit that the circumstances surrounding it are unprecedented even in my old eyes. Truly, seven Thundergods?”

“I’ve no excuse, I couldn’t fit an eighth,” Zel smugged back, pulling the Broken Butcher out, but not handing it over.

She voiced a demand: “If you’re going to seal it until time comes to carry out the reforging, I would see the process carried out with my own eyes. Furthermore, I want to know exactly where the sealing site is and how to get to it. If you truly know of my predicament, then this request should be perfectly reasonable.”

With a nod, the crone conceded: “...Fair enough. I forget how attached you daemon cultivators get to your weapons. Alright, follow me - all of you. I’ll have our shamans look the three of you over while I put the tuning-fork knife to sleep.”

Vic piped up, despite his condition: “Of course, but… Which of the Hulson Clan’s elders are you, exactly? I know the names, but I’ve no faces to attach them to.”

“I am Fryg.”

The redhead froze in place at that. He only snapped out of it when Zel bent over before him, snapping her fingers in his face. For a moment, his eyes wandered to her chest before he shook his head and finally followed along with the group.

Fryg led them into a section of the longhouse basement filled with the sound of water rushing over stone. Two doors had posters nailed to them signifying that they were reserved for guests, and the crone gestured to those doors, remarking: “I know that Ikesians are not as communal in their bathing habits as we, so I selected two bathing chambers. Use them as you will. They’re fed by a quaternary spring, but even such lesser waters aid greatly in healing. Our shamans will be with you shortly.”

Without waiting, the crone continued on through the basement, leading Zel to a place even deeper than the top of the lift from Agartha. There, in a chamber carved into the glacier itself, whose walls glistened like glass, was a row of sarcophagi. Six in a line, three of them filled, turned to solid blocks of glacierglass holding two men and a woman. One of the men had a vast array of injuries - claw-gouges and bites, his left leg missing from the knee down. The others looked unharmed, if old. Zel couldn’t tell where exactly the light illuminating the chamber came from - it seemed as if it came from all directions at once.

Three altars stood in front of the sarcophagi, aligned with the gaps. Upon one of these was a much smaller glacierglass sarcophagus, of sufficient size to hold the Butcher in its unbroken state. A stone basin of strangely unfrozen water sat next to it.

“The blade,” Fryg demanded, holding out a hand. Zel handed the Butcher over.

The crone placed the blade within its new resting place, breaking into a rapid incantation in some strange Borean dialect that Zelsys was sure she couldn’t understand even if it had been sounded out for her syllable by syllable. She caught a few individual words that sounded like names, but that was about it. Everything other than Fryg’s chanting seemed to go quiet. Zel could no longer hear herself breathe. A wave of numbness washed over her; the chamber’s biting cold was replaced by an utter absence of external sensation. Slowly, Fryg lifted the basin and began to pour; steam erupted from the sarcophagus as it filled. Fryg set the basin aside and clapped her hands together, then formed her interlocked fingers into a hoop while drawing in a deep breath. Her exhalation came out all at once like the blasting winds of a great blizzard. When the vapor cleared, the Broken Butcher’s sarcophagus had become a monolithic chunk of glacierglass.

“There, all done,” the crone sighed, turning to face Zelsys. The sensation of cold slowly returned. “I suggest that you subject yourself to our shamans’ expert care before you pass out on your feet.”

Zel had a number of questions for the crone, but she reserved them for now. What Fryg said was, after all, true - she had been fighting exhaustion the whole way from the Ankhezian cathedral. She found which of the two baths Zefaris had picked after shamelessly checking the first door and glimpsing the nude forms of Victor and Jorfr. A wave of heat and steam smashed into her the moment she opened the door. The chamber was rectangular, thrice as long as it was wide and lined with bricks of solid stone. A pool of greenish water occupied the far half, while the near half had ledges carved into the stone alongside a Fog Storage glyph on the wall.