As the feast petered off, most of the surviving hunters retreated to rest and recover - as did Zef, dragging an unconscious Victor off to his chambers. All but Gunnar and Yvonne had some degree of injury; as Zel learned, Gunnar had in fact sustained many injuries, but they had been dealt to his bestial berserk form and thus had not gone go deep enough to hit his true body. Conversely, Yvonne’s ranged combat style and heavy leaning on crowd control had allowed her to just stay out of harm’s way. Something felt unsettlingly familiar about that pairing of toolkits, though Zel couldn’t quite tell what.

The subject of Zel’s upcoming holmgang came up.

“You’ve been in Borea for how long? Two days, three? How did you already-” Gunnar questioned, only for Yvonne to stop him.

“Come, consider the circumstances…” she said, laying out all of the contributing factors that made Zel’s allegiance to the Hulsons obvious. “...It’s all but obvious that a sharp-eyed crow like Asgeir would see the writing on the wall and decide to take action. Tell me, who challenged you and what was their stated reason?”

Zel recounted exactly the chain of events which had led to a certain massive, incredibly hairy woman challenging her, causing Gunnar to stare at his wife with an unsettled look.

“I thought you said you’d lost your spontaneous clairvoyance mere days after we left that place,” he whispered.

“I did! Come now, if anyone were to do something like this it would be Asgeir. The Eisens wouldn’t act this openly, and Adrius Buhaug wouldn’t put any of his children at risk of long-term injury ahead of the equinox, even if they could conceivably challenge our guest. Gjermund… He and the other Aase are desperate fools, but they are not so honorless as to try something like this. At worst I can see Gjermund himself requesting to battle her, but he would not demand holmgang without a good reason, let alone compel one of his relatives to do so in his stead.”

“So… Rikke the Chimera, huh,” Jorfr chimed in, groaning more than speaking; he was holding himself up with crossed arms on the table. He turned tired, half-drunk eyes in Zel’s direction: “Use the mantle… And the metal fist thing. Pound her into the fuckin’ ground…”

He proceeded to rest his forehead on his forearms, already snoring before he could be questioned. Gunnar and Yvonne delivered unfortunate clarification.

“We… Barely know anything about her besides her epithet and the fact she has only ever participated in duels and holmgangs,” Yvonne said.

Gunnar added: “Between those two facts, it would be safe to assume that she is a berserker and has issues controlling her Beast Self, or possibly even lacks control over it altogether. The chimera epithet could stem from an ability to take on the traits of more than one animal, or perhaps conjure a chimeric familiar…”

Trailing off in thought, a few seconds later his eyes lit up: “Wait, no I remember something. I remember a… A particular man who once accompanied me and Jorfr on a hunt, Mathre clan or somesuch. He saw her fight, and it was he who described her as Rikke the Chimera. He said the epithet came about from a particular duel in which she turned her left arm into a giant serpent while summoning three Razorflayer tails from her right arm, using the range advantage to prevail over her close-combat focused opponent.”

“Better to make absolutely sure I win, then, as Jorfr suggested,” Zel nodded, smiling. She was already getting excited to see what this Rikke could do. “I ought to prepare, considering what I said to her…”

Questioningly raised eyebrows prompted her to quote herself word-for-word.

“I’m not in the mood right now, but I’ll accept your holmgang if that’s what you want. Come to the Hulson longhouse tomorrow morning - my condition is no weapons or equipment. That will not be an issue, will it?” she repeated. “That’s what I said, leaning over the back of my chair and eating while I said it. The idea that someone would try to call for holmgang over a clearly friendly lifting competition just because the other guy was Kyriak Bjorn seemed so obviously opportunistic that I only agreed because I was sure the challenger was someone I would love to beat the living hell out of.”

“Sorry, Kyriak Bjorn?”

Zel recounted her interaction with the man-bear, to Yvonne’s exasperation and Gunnar’s wide-eyed, dog-like excitement.

“I told you he wouldn’t be upset, and yet you still stopped me!” he said to Yvonne, affirming his own rightness in some past dispute when she had presumably stopped him from doing exactly what Zel had done. Gunnar returned to the main topic at hand, and with it, to a more serious tone: “It seems that your incomplete understanding of our traditions has bought you a bit of additional time. Holmgangs are typically held three to seven days after the challenge is accepted, and it can be no earlier than two days unless it is a pressing issue of great honor - nothing like Rikke’s challenge. It is so that preparations can be made, a venue secured…”

“...And to stop bloodthirsty or drunk idiots from starting fights under the guise of holmgang,” Yvonne added, throwing an accusatory glance Gunnar’s way.

“That was one time!” he defended himself, looking back to Zel. “Either way, you will have some time to prepare.”

Zel laughed, realizing how her response to Rikke must have come across.

“So I told her to fuck off and stop bothering me in the middle of breakfast, that she would have to come to my home turf if she wanted me to accept her challenge… I can’t say I would’ve said something different even if I had known better. Considering that I must leave before the end of the week, I think it would be appropriate to set the battle for Friday or at the latest Saturday morning.”

“Leave? Already?” the both of them asked, Gunnar the first word and Yvonne the second.

“I intend to scale the mount atop which the Revenant King resides; to wake him early and demand an audience. I cannot share my reason, but I am certain that I will succeed, and for once my confidence has little to do with my ego."