“You, who have never been told no. You, who have been born into riches. You, who have been given freely the means by which to extricate yourself from the limits of nature. If you would have the gall to look down upon me and mine, I would meet you in holmgang. Refuse if you will, but if you do so and still think to act as if you were above me… I’ll be more than happy to incur the penalty for smearing you across that wall over there right now.”

“My mother-”

“Your mother cheated her way to her position, Ramdall cur. Why should I fear the retribution of a clan whose members are so pathetic on the field of battle that they resort to subverting the Revenant King’s sacred honor system?”

His mind running at a hundred kilometers an hour, Svend played a daring gambit: “This is all a big misunderstanding.”

A nod towards Jorfr Hulson.

“My remark was directed not at you, but at him. The likes of him do not belong here - I meant what I said in the sense that you-”

He pointed at Jorfr, even as he felt the woman’s murderous aura flaring, unable to stop himself.

“-are a dishonor to your clan. How much effort, how many resources, how much money was wasted on you in the hopes that you might become as capable as I?! I would be glad to face you in holmgang, for I will make no pretense that I did not mean to insult you, Jorfr Hulson, failure of your clan.”

“Very well, mongrel. If I win, you will prostrate yourself before me, and vice versa. Speak with your cousin Rikke if you wish to know the time and venue,” Jorfr spat. Unlike that brown foreigner, Svend was not scared of Jorfr in the slightest, despite the fact he could feel that the Hulson Clan’s black sheep had become orders of magnitude stronger since they had last met.

“What does Rikke have to do with this?” Svend raised an eyebrow, obviously blindsided by the remark.

Every fibre of Zel’s body wanted to turn the little cunt and his obvious bodyguard into ground meat right then and there, but she could feel that Jorfr didn’t want her to. Somehow, by some truly bewildering confluence of heavenly influences, he made Halxian seem personable by comparison.

This… This was a technicality play. At least Halxian fought her each and every time to his fullest ability, but this spoiled little brat was too much of a coward to pay the cheque his mouth had written.

She put on a beaming smile, glancing to Jorfr, then back to that obnoxious scumbag. It was a sweet smile, an endlessly smug one, showing just a glimpse of her beartrap-like teeth.

“It so happens that your dear cousin has already challenged me to holmgang; she took great offense to a friendly lifting competition I partook in with a certain Kyriak Bjorn, so now both of you get the opportunity to show the… The strength…”

Zel stopped, gripped by mocking laughter at her own words. She exerted just enough of her absolute self-control to finish the sentence: “...the strength of your great clan.”

Not feeling the need to continue the overtly hostile exchange, Zel and Jorfr both walked past the Ramdall duo. Her own malice towards the heir was finally matched, she felt it - her provocation had stoked Svend’s anger. No… Her gut told her it was the fact she had placed him on the same level as Rikke that insulted him.

It was obvious why Jorfr had stated the victory conditions he had stated - for him, it would just be a boulder atop a mountain of past wrongs suffered, but for Svend, it could very well shatter his self-image altogether.

The sun fell below the horizon and rose again.

With the return of his son from his reconnaissance assignment at the Bjorns’ frivolous wargames, Asgeir had become convinced that Zelsys Newman was a mastermind dead-set on destroying the Ramdall clan. She had doubtlessly chosen to throw in her lot with the Hulsons in the hopes of installing them as a Primary Clan and reaping the benefits.

The exact moment Svend walked out of his chambers and closed the door behind himself, Asgeir had a rather unquiet nervous breakdown. He wasn’t entirely wrong; his understanding was merely incomplete, and from this incomplete understanding stemmed the belief that her plans ended with causing him to lose what his mother had rightly stolen seventy-five years prior.

Nowhere in Asgeir Ramdall’s mind did the idea occur that his clan’s downfall from their unearned position was a secondary aspect of the homunculus’ many steps to fulfilling her ambitions.

Zel had taken to sleeping even less than usual, treating her time at the baths as if it were sleep. After some convincing, Zef agreed to do the same and found that it did work for her as well. Neither of them actually slept in the water, however Zelsys spontaneously shifted into a focused trance wherein most of her resources were dedicated to her right arm’s metamorphosis. She experienced strange visions, finding herself a faceless figure amidst an army of ten billion, hammering bronze nails into a colossal hand for all eternity. With each hammer stroke, the itch in her right hand pulsed and faded.

“What was that vision?” the Thinking Self questioned.

“Diagnostic bleedover. A waking dream,” the Primordial Self answered. After a short while, it added: “The solution to the itching problem is nearly complete.”

Meanwhile, above the water, Zefaris had made a minor breakthrough, managing to coalesce free-floating water vapor into a solid, obsidian-black icicle; one which didn’t melt, but sublimated into wisps of blackest black that shimmered with unearthly iridescence. Noticing that it was nearly time for them to return to the longhouse, she looked to her lover, only to find her motionless at the bottom of the pool, dead at first glance. Her right arm was crusted over with layers and layers of green oxide up to the shoulder.