The twisted mass of dead flesh, bone and yes blood, exploded. Red steam shot outwards and upwards, chunks of boiling flesh spattered and spun and amid all of the horror and heat the warg screamed, yipped and howled, like the death throes of Fenris wolf himself.

Erika, not having been born yesterday, drew her thunderarm again and fire its second barrel into the creature’s chest then, after it slumped apparently dead on the floor, also went over, and drove her knife into its eye then twirled the blade around in the creature’s brain.

A moment later Erika stood up and groaned, her well ached in her chest despite her specifically avoiding flooding it again, her legs burned even through her enhancement galdr, the stench of blood made her want to throw up and the sensation of driving her knife into the wargs head nearly pushed her over the edge. But she managed to keep her lunch down and looked back the others expecting to see them cheering the conquering heroine.

They weren’t, they were dying instead.

The wargs hadn't stopped, they barely even seemed to notice their Gothi dying, instead they kept marching, crude blades driven with monstrous strength hacking and piercing through every delver in their path.

Everything Erika knew said that wasn't how they worked, wargs were pack animals even more than humans, take out the chieftain and the rest run away. Why weren’t they doing that?

“Erika!” Bjorn was suddenly beside her, she hadn't even seen him arrive, his axe was covered in jelly like blood that clung and coagulated and flanking him was a bodyguard of his rangers, still raining arrows into the crowd. “We need to leave, I’ve got Ranald leading the survivors out and Solvor’s getting all of Silvermane’s lot ready to move, I’m going back for the rest of the food so you need to lead them out of the door and into that guard post thing we found!”

Erika just starred at him, after a moment Bjorn cursed and slapped her with his stump, Erika screamed and jolted then settled and glared.

“Ah good your back,” said Bjorn entirely unapologetically. “Battle still new, isn't it? Look… just get all people and lead them away ok! Can you do that?!”

“What… why?” Erika snapped looking back at the flames and the dying. “Why are we loosing?”

Bjorn looked at her, utterly boggled, for a moment then shook his head. “I thought vitki were smart? Except for the one you killed these aren’t wargs...” With a gesture of his axe, he drew Erika’s attention to one of the fallen, a warg pieced through by a dozen arrows and then split further by a battle axe, and somehow it stilled glared and gnashed its teeth towards her. “They’re draugr!”

Erika went still for a moment as the realization sunk in. She’d noticed the wargs odd uniformity and discipline and how slow they were but in the fog of war she hadn't bothered to link those thoughts together, a Gothi of Loki could easily make draugr… specially with all the corpses they’d left down in the warg nest! Hundreds of fresh and ready corpses isolated from retaliation, just waiting for the Gothi to engrave the runes of rising on their skulls and deny the… warg equivalent of a Sal, whatever it was, its passage to Helheim or into Nidhogg jaws.

The death of the Gothi seemed to have unleashed them, the draugr began to visible use the powers of death they were known for, some grew to the height of giants, some shrank to the size of rats, many turned wild and feral howling like beasts as their skins deformed and their fangs grew so large they split their flesh apart, Erika saw one struck in the torso with a thunderarm round only for the striker to collapse in a burst of arterial blood as the wound was mirrored upon their own chest.

This many Draugr… they couldn’t win…