“Reidar, Katarine, Sinne, and Morten… They’ve been badly injured. We had to inter Reidar and Sinne in ice. Merete and Torhild are tending to the other two.”

There was something under those words; a dark implication, Zelsys could tell. She just couldn’t discern what it was. A grave countenance came over Jorfr as the implication sunk in.

“...What of uncle Agnar?”

Gunnar sighed.

“He fell in battle against a Sapdragon. A glorious death, at the least… Despite its circumstances.”

He grabbed for a nearby tankard, kicking back its contents and slamming it on the table so forcefully that its metal-shod base became embedded in the wood. Utter seething hatred mixed with grief suddenly filled Gunnar’s voice as his face twisted into a grimace of these same emotions; it was clear he’d been holding it in, but Zel stood stunned at just how absolute his self-control was. It almost looked like a geas coming undone.

“We were ambushed. Honorless, masked nidingrs, they somehow lured beasts into us before attacking. Razorflayers, Giant Jarfrs, Springspitters. In the chaos we lost Halvor. Herman. Lief. Even Inga, not to mention our entire support contingent, over a hundred good men and women…” he listed as if each name was a red-hot blade shoved into a open wound. “I… I think I saw them trying to drag an Artificial Leshy towards us as well, but the creature turned at least four or five of their number into root-puppets before they gave up. I’d bet my left leg that they were Ramdalls or Eisens, perhaps both.”

Reaching for a second tankard, a nearby man nudged his own into Gunnar’s hand. This time he only took a sip worth half its contents and only slammed it hard enough that the sound echoed through the hall.

“We may not have come back at all had it not been for a stranger, a magician of some sort, who summoned pillars of blackstone and rained uncountable arrows of northlight upon our assailants. Crimson-clad, and masked just like those curs, though their mask was different altogether and bore three horns. The battle either attracted or awakened one of the Sapdragons, and the stranger did battle with it but… It chased after us seemingly hellbent on our deaths, so Agnar demanded that we keep going and leapt from the sled. The dragon’s breath would have swallowed us all, had it not been for his sacrifice…”

Zel could feel Zef and Vic shift in place at the mention of what was obviously Red, but Jorfr’s attention appeared entirely focused on the other aspects of the incident. She had to stop herself from blurting out questions about Red’s appearance as well as the Sapdragon, the beast’s name dragging up a memory of seeing its name when she had flipped through the pages of the same bestiary that had detailed Deep Dwellers and Ankylodragons. There was no time in which she could’ve even asked a question; Gunnar immediately continued..

“I… From what I saw of it, I am certain it was Eisengeist,” he said, looking to Jorfr; the tension of an unasked question evaporated from him with those words. “Its form matched exactly with its description in the Saga of Wide-wuth, as did its wounds; a wolfblade sword embedded in its left eye and the Serpentkiller spear in its chest. I hesitate to give those honorless curs so much credit as to assume that they found and purposely woke the great beast, but I would not put such an act past them.”

It was Victor who finally piped up: “May I ask for elaboration? I presume this Eisengeist must have some specific relation to your family, considering that you mentioned Wide-wuth of the Unbroken Shield.”

A melancholy smile replaced Gunnar’s expression of all-consuming grief and anger.

“Yes, of course. Come, all of you - let us sit and drink in celebration of the fallen… And let me once more tell the Saga of Wide-wuth.”

And so, the feast resume. Zel allowed herself to become mildly inebriated, finding the Hulsons’ version of blood mead to be a lighter and eminently more drinkable brew compared to what had been served to her at the Wolfblade. It helped that they diluted it one to one with some sort of non-alcoholic cider. Zef became utterly hopelessly drunk after just one tankard, and with inebriation came the usual increase in the blonde’s touchy-feeliness. Victor passed out before even finishing half a tankard, despite Zel having thinned the mead at a one to two ratio for him. Jorfr didn’t drink at all. Of course, having eaten recently, none of the four partook of much of the feast beyond what was polite.

The Saga of Wide-wuth of the Unbroken Shield spanned the aforementioned man’s entire life, and lasted several hours, yet never dragged in the telling. It was in no small part helped by, of all people, Fryg, who conjured stunning illusions of mist and frost. Her, Gunnar, and Yvonne effectively put on a multi-hour play using the space atop the great hall’s table as the stage, with Gunnar taking the place of the narrator and standing in for various male side characters while Wide-wuth was represented by Fryg’s illusions.

Through the saga, Zel learned that the Sapdragon named Eisengeist was one of several three-eyed Dragon Descendants which arose from cultivator-beasts consuming the core-sap of the jungle’s Dragon Trees when they were still young enough to be damaged and made to shed sap. According to the saga, the Dragon Trees had been the jungle’s beating hearts while it was still growing, and now maintained its equilibrium. The Sapdragons’ collective name referred to the circumstances of their creation, but apparently had nothing to do with the beasts’ forms, which were just their original forms blended with Dragon Descendant traits like wings, armored scales, and extra eyes.

The saga posited that the birth of Sapdragons had been an unintended and unforeseen interaction between the aspects of the Great Oasis created by the Smoke Witch and those created by Borean shamans, laying the fault with the witch. Fryg’s portrayal of her was surprisingly completely accurate, without a hint of caricature; if anything she made the Smoke Witch look sad.

As for Eisengeist specifically, it was described as a Razorflayer that had grown to a height of fifteen meters, gaining prehensile forelimbs that allowed it to walk upright in brief spurts. Much of its skin was said to be covered in impenetrable scales and even its fur was supposedly so tough one could be impaled by it, with its favored breath weapon being sticky, hotly-burning sap that would stick to anything and cause burns that went down to the bone. Its tails were said to have blades made of the purest starmetal.

The saga laid out the death of a hunting party including Wide-wuth’s son at the Sapdragon’s claws, and the entire last hour of the saga was focused solely on Wide-wuth’s ultimate battle with the great beast. Wide-wuth was said to have died not from his wounds, but because he had impaled the dragon through the heart; its fur had impaled him and its boiling, poisonous blood had paralyzed him long enough for the dragon to desperately whip at him with its tails, cutting him to pieces and fleeing with his spear still stuck in its chest. So clean were the cuts said to have been that Wide-wuth did not realize he was dead until he tried to move and fell to pieces where he stood.

The final line well and truly stuck with her: “Even in death, his shield remained unbroken.”

“What became of Eisengeist after the battle?” Zel questioned once she was absolutely sure the Saga was finally done.

“It went dormant and was not seen until a year before the last Seven Suns Equinox,” Fryg said in a dark tone, clearly upset by the implications of Eisengeist’s waking. “I do not think the dragon’s awakening to be the work of the conspirator-clans - rather, I believe it to be an omen of great change.”