"The Mead Maker's Saga" by Dave Fox

A fearsome Viking warrior and mead maker descends into madness and bloodlust during brutal raiding campaigns, until his unquenchable thirst for violence leads him on a nightmarish journey beyond the boundaries of sanity.

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Transcript

The Mead Maker's Saga by Dave Fox

Thorgrim wiped the sweat from his brow as he surveyed the massive oak barrels lined up in the great meadery. Each one brimmed with his latest batch of honey-golden mead, which had finally completed its fermentation over the long winter months. He smiled with satisfaction, knowing his mead would be savored and celebrated when the Spring raiding season began.

As the trusted mead maker to the mighty Jarl Ragnar Lothbrok, Thorgrim's skills were invaluable. Ragnar firmly believed that having an ample supply of exquisite mead was key to maintaining the respect and loyalty of his crew of Viking warriors. After every successful raid, Ragnar would throw a great feast in his hall, and the endless rounds of mead helped fuel the rowdy celebration of victory, plunder, and glory.

While most meaderies had a quiet, monastic air, Thorgrim's workplace rang with warriors drinking deep and reciting tales of their exploits at sea and on the battlefield. He didn't mind—in fact, he relished being so close to the action instead of meekly brewing mead away from the public eye. Ragnar valued his mead-making skills and his ability to hold his own in combat.

For you see, in addition to being a master mead crafter, Thorgrim was also a fearsome Viking warrior who accompanied Ragnar's crew on every spring raid across the whale-road to the fertile lands of the East. Thorgrim believed his role as a fighter lent extra meaning and value to the mead he produced. Quaffing his mead, he knew the warriors were tasting the fruits of his brewing labors and his bloody efforts on the raid trail.

As Thorgrim made the final preparations for the upcoming season, the meadery門 was flung open, and a group of Ragnar's top warriors strode in, Tang's clanging against their mail shirts. Ragnar was at their head, his wild hair and beard giving him an almost crazed look. But his eyes were clear and assessing as he looked over the sealed casks of waiting mead.

"Meadmaker!" Ragnar bellowed in his deep, commanding voice. "Are your preparations complete? My ships are being readied as we speak to sail for the shores of England."

"Aye, my lord," Thorgrim nodded, turning from the barrels with a sly grin. "As always, my mead will be the finest you and your warriors have ever tasted. Rich and potent - the drink of champions."

Ragnar let out a booming laugh as his hand shot out and caught Thorgrim by the shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze of appreciation. "Of course it will be, my trusted friend. And while we warriors feast on your mead and celebrate our plunder, I expect to see you take your rightful place with us in the shield wall!"

Thorgrim thumped his fist over the intricate dragon design on the front of his tunic. "You need not ask, Ragnar. With a sword in hand, I will be by your side to claim my share of the glory!"

The warriors around him erupted in raucous cheers at his words, already relishing the battles and treasures ahead of them. Ragnar grinned fiercely before turning to lead his men out of the meadery, leaving Thorgrim to oversee the final loading of the precious mead onto the longships.

A few days later, as the first light of dawn crept across the sea, Ragnar's longships slipped away from the sheltered fjords with a favorable wind filling their mighty square sails. Thorgrim stood watch on the lead ship alongside Ragnar as they pointed their dragon-headed prows towards the fertile shores of Northumbria.

Normally silent during raids, as was the Viking way, Thorgrim found himself muttering a quiet prayer to the gods under his breath. He asked for a bountiful raiding season in which Ragnar's ships could sail home loaded with plundered riches from the monasteries and towns of the Christian lands. But he also beseeched the gods to watch over the crews and protect them in the inevitable bloodshed of battle to come.

After several days at sea, the unmistakable sandy white cliffs and green bluffs of England appeared on the horizon. Ragnar barked orders, and Thorgrim took his usual place among the rowers, his sword lying ready next to him. A hail of arrows began raining down from the beach as their boats neared the coastline.

With a fearsome scream, Thorgrim and his Viking brothers drove their boats forward, the rays of the morning sun glinting off their raised swords and axes. The light also flashed off the dragon-headed prows, making the entire flotilla appear like a figment of nightmare-given life. The tremendous clap of the longboats grinding against the shore was drowned out only by the bloodcurdling cries of the Vikings as they scrambled up onto the beach.

Thorgrim vaulted over the side of his boat, swinging his weighty sword in a wide arc to scatter the outnumbered Englishmen's feeble attempts to impede their invasion. He let out a feral roar and surged forward with his shield mates, cleaving a path toward the gates of a nearby stone monastery.

The well-practiced maneuvers of the fearsome Viking shield wall soon smashed through the pathetic stakes and fences erected by the defenders. The warriors flooded into the compound, the thunder of their boots shaking the earth as they advanced. Smoke soon spiraled up from the monastery buildings as they were set ablaze, adding to the terrifying chaos.

Pivoting amid the melee surrounding him, Thorgrim parried away the clumsy spear thrust of a wild-eyed monk and drove his blade through the man's exposed belly. He whirled again at a desperate cry from behind. He saw one of Ragnar's men go down under the assault of several Englishmen armed with rusty swords and tools. With a bloodcurdling scream, Thorgrim launched himself forward and brought his razor-sharp sword crashing down, shearing through the flimsy weapons and skulls of the foolish men.

By the time the monastery was thoroughly sacked, the grounds were littered with the unmoving bodies of the hapless monks and villagers who had dared to try and fend off the deadly Vikings. Thorgrim stood among the other blood-spattered warriors, his tunic torn and his arms slick with gore up to the elbows as he surveyed the carnage around them.

The rage of victory burned fiercely in his eyes, and he let out a wild whoop of excitement that quickly spread to the others. The familiar chant "Raven! Raven! Raven!" soon echoed from the shattered monastery walls. He had fought with the glorious frenzy of the berserker, and everything else had ceased to matter besides the overwhelming thirst for violence and domination.

As the longboats were piled high with every scrap of plunder they could carry, Thorgrim gazed back at the smoking ruin of the monastery. A satisfied grin creased his sweat and blood-streaked face, knowing his mighty mead would taste all the sweeter when flavored by the spoils of such a resounding conquest.

Over the next few moons, Ragnar's ships raided up and down the coastline of England. With each new battle, the reputation of the ferocious Viking mead maker only grew as Thorgrim rampaged through villages and churches alike. His thirst for fighting was boundless, only equaled by his formidable skills at brewing Ragnar's prized mead.

Upon crashing ashore at each new target, Thorgrim would bellow out a challenge to any who would dare oppose them, daring the feeble Englishmen and Christians to taste his sword's bitter edge. Though burly and muscular, he was also amazingly swift and agile, able to gracefully evade legions of clumsy spearmen with almost dancelike movements while whirling his massive sword about him in a whirlwind of death.

Several times, Thorgrim and Ragnar stood back to back in the thick of battle, their respective swords clearing entire arcs around them with every brutal stroke. They fought as harmoniously as two perfectly tuned lyres, seeming to anticipate each other's movements and covering one another as needed. The men around them swore in hushed voices that berserker fury shone in each of their crazed eyes and that neither felt any fear or pain, no matter how frenzied the fighting or how deep their wounds were.

On one particularly ferocious day, a sixteen-year-old English novice entered the field of battle against Thorgrim, his terrified eyes seeming to plead for mercy despite his raised sword. Perhaps it was the gentle features and overall aura of innocence surrounding the youth. Still, Thorgrim felt his berserker madness clear for just the briefest of moments. With a casual flick of his sword, he sent the novice's weapon spiraling away and pinned the young man's neck to a crumbling wall with his sword tip.

"Go on, young one," Thorgrim growled, his brow fiercely furrowed and his eyes smoking. "Run far away from this field of death, and pray that we never cross paths again. Today, I give you a gift, though you'll despise me for it as you grow older and understand what I do."

As if broken from a trance, the novice suddenly seemed to register the horror around him - the ringing clash of steel against steel and the shrieks and grunts of dying men. His wide eyes shot back to Thorgrim's, and he let out a shuddering sob before turning and sprinting madly away from the madness. Thorgrim watched him disappear into the distance before rejoining the bloody fray.

At raucous feasts held in the great halls of each Jarl's home, Thorgrim would take his place at Ragnar's side and lead the celebration after successful raids. Bright streams of his expertly brewed mead would be poured ceaselessly into the upraised drinking horns of Ragnar's men. Between brimming horn after horn, they would raptly listen as Thorgrim regaled them with hypnotic tales of his unstoppable rampages through enemy ranks.

"And so I stood before their pathetic walled city, the fallen bodies of their feeble defenders littering the ground around me," Thorgrim's voice resonated through the hall. "I summoned the trembling warrior who dared call himself their champion with a scornful laugh..."

Ragnar and his men sat utterly captivated, their eyes glinting with approval as each line of the tale grew more exaggerated and gratuitously violent. They cared not if Thorgrim's boastful accounts sometimes strayed beyond believability - they loved him for it. They worshipped his exploits as passionately as they quaffed his legendary mead.

Whenever Thorgrim raised his drinking horn to drain it of the last drops of sweetly honeyed mead, the battle brothers around him erupted into roars of appreciation and encouragement, pounding their mugs against the long tables. He played the role of mead maker and Viking warrior to perfection, proving to be one of the most renowned and indispensable figures across Ragnar's kingdoms.

As the final celebrations of the year's raiding season wound down and the first winter snows began to fall, Thorgrim would dutifully return to his great meadery to begin preparation for the following year's batches. But beneath his contented smile and apparent contentment, the mead maker felt a restless itch beginning to creep into his soul.

While crafting his ambrosial mead brought him immense satisfaction, nothing sparked the unbridled fires of his being like the boundless fury and violence of each blood-drenched raid across the whale roads. The jarls and warriors of the mead halls reveled in his glorious tales of butchery. Still, none truly understood the insatiable, primal drive that plagued him.

And so, each year, it grew a little more challenging for Thorgrim to suppress his overwhelming need for conquest and slaughter as the dreary winter months dragged on. If only the seas could remain navigable year-round, he would abandon his role as mead maker indefinitely and sail off to find his destiny among endless battlefields and hoards of victims ripe for harvesting.

As the interminable winter months dragged on, Ragnar's favor and protection remained paramount to Thorgrim. He channeled his pent-up rage and aggression into brewing the following year's batches of potent mead, each sip to be savored by the crew as if it contained the very essence of the mead maker's feral spirit distilled into liquid form. Thorgrim conducted the ceremonial blessings and brewings with a fevered intensity, chanting violent incantations under his breath as he implored the gods for protection and imbued every drop of mead with his ferocious will to conquer and subjugate.

As the winter snows slowly melted, Thorgrim vowed the land and its people would once again tremble at the mere whisper of his coming. He spent the long, frigid nights sharpening his arsenal of blades and crafting terrifying new arms and armor etched with runic wards. A growing, macabre collection of trophies from past campaigns - shrunken heads, bones, and other grim totems - was arranged around his chambers like a blasphemous shrine. Thorgrim munitioned his body and soul to reach new untold depths of savagery in the year's raiding season."The ships are nearly ready to sail once more, my friend," Ragnar growled in his deep, commanding tone. "I trust your mead is as well? My men will need the strength and courage it provides to sustain them through the battles ahead."

"Of course, my lord," Thorgrim responded with an even more manic glint in his own eyes. "But even more than that, they will need the berserk rage and fury that courses through my very being to utterly crush and destroy all who dare oppose us!"

The assembled warriors erupted into a raucous roar of approval at his words. Ragnar threw his head back and added his own thunderous laughter to the din before silencing the men with an upraised hand.

"So be it then! Let the rivers of blood swell the waters once more so that our ships may safely sail through the crimson tide. And when at last we return to these lands, our hulls shall be weighed down with the treasures of a hundred subjugated realms!"

Another deafening cheer rose up, echoing from the stone walls of the meadery. Thorgrim stood with his sword raised high, the dancing flamelight gleaming demonically across the intricately etched steel. A chant of the old gods' names rumbled from his chest, rapidly swelling into a throaty roar of unbridled bloodlust. His piercing battle cries soon blended with the rest of the warriors as they fed off his furious energy, whipping themselves into an unstoppable berserker frenzy.

Over the next few days, Thorgrim led the exhaustive efforts of transporting his mead barrels down to the waters' edge and loading the huge casks aboard Ragnar's awaiting longboats. Even as they worked, the mead maker kept a constant chant of prayers and rites, channeling his wanton savagery and killing prowess into imbuing the sweet honey brew with his virulent spiritual essence.

At long last, the ships slipped their moorings and sailed towards the open sea, a brisk tailwind swelling their mighty square sails. Thorgrim stood fixed in the prow of the lead longboat, broadsword in hand as if daring any obstacles to impede their ominous passage. A strange calm settled over him, yet his eyes glinted with a terrifying intensity—like the eerie stillness before a cataclysmic maelstrom.

For several days, the Viking longboats sailed on across the whale roads until, at last, the churning grey coastlines of Northumbria began to take shape through the sea's mists. In his gutwrenching excitement, Thorgrim had barely slept a wink during the entire voyage. Instead, he had passed the long, moonlit midwatches fiercely sharpening and tending to his dented blades and spears while chanting violent sagas in an endless loop under his breath.

Now, the time had come once more for blood, glory, and plunder—and Thorgrim felt deliriously unbound as if he'd been unchained from an agonizing corporal prison after ages of torment. Every muscle in his body was taut and coiled like a serpent preparing to strike, and his fingers unconsciously caressed the hilt of his sword in a desirous embrace.

Awaiting the coming massacres with Thorgrim on the ship's prow, Ragnar eyed his fearsome champion with an inscrutable look. Though the mighty Jarl himself practically oozed an unpredictable, spartan brutality from every pore, even he understood that Thorgrim was a force of nature altogether. A cyclonic juggernaut of berserk rage and hate, his existence seemed balanced on a razorwire filament between the vagaries of human sanity and complete madness.

When the signal longhorn blasts rang out, Thorgrim needed no further prompting. With an earsplitting roar that sent seabirds scattering into the air in terror, he launched himself over the side of the ship. He hit the churning surf in a shoulder roll. Seawater explosions sprayed around him as he tore through the shallows with his sword, already a whirling dervish of shimmering steel death.

Coming up the beaches behind Thorgrim, Ragnar and his warriors barely had time to loose their first volley of arrows before the mead maker had already reached the first line of hapless fence posts and piked defenders. The Jarl watched in awe and disquiet as the berserker's sword seemed to shift to all points of the compass simultaneously, cleaving men asunder before they could turn and face their doom.

Fueled by the intoxicating brews of his own mead, Thorgrim was an unrelenting dynamo of violence. He carved a rolling swath of destruction through the panicked English forces, his unstoppable momentum clashing against their terror-shattered shield walls like a scythe through wheat. Before the other Vikings could even join the assault, the mead maker had already cut down over a dozen men and had his sights set on the next knot of resistance.

"Raaaaven! Death to the Raven!" the men screamed in desperation as Thorgrim's whirlwind of destruction advanced on their staunchly defended gate. To those witnesses, the Viking mead maker seemed to have transcended any semblance of his former human form.

Instead, a towering, amorphous nightmare now stalked through the rolling smoke and butchered English corpses - a frenzied tempest of whirling blades and splashing blood mist that painted the very air in streaks of scarlet. Grown men and battle-hardened warriors alike dropped their weapons and fled in panic at the sheer terror of the berserker's onslaught.

Within what seemed like mere heartbeats, Thorgrim had already battered through the stout gates and disappeared within the monastery's inner sanctums in search of new lambs for slaughter. Ragnar and his remaining warriors charged in behind him, grimly securing the outer courtyards and cutting down any surviving pockets of resistance.

The sounds of Thorgrim's one-man rampage echoed from the hallowed church halls in a continuous cacophony of shrieks, crunching metal and masonry smashing asunder. Ragnar followed the trail of devastation at a measured pace, his band of Vikings moving like grim reapers through the freshly-reaped rows of corn that were the monastery's once-proud defenders.

At last, Thorgrim emerged from the shattered remnants of the main chapel, dragging the bodies of the long-dead Abbot and his highest monks behind him. Each one had suffered unimaginable violence, with their skulls and torsos laid open in ruinous paths carved by Thorgrim's broadsword.

"I have cleared the inner sanctums," the mead maker growled in a low rasp, flinging the desanctified remains down before Ragnar's feet. His shredded tunic and skin were utterly drenched in scarlet as if he had bathed in a tub of blood.

Ragnar stared back at his champion with an inscrutable look before allowing a thin smile to crease his weathered features. "Well done, great warrior. None can stand before your might when the berserker frenzy takes you."

Thorgrim swayed dizzily as the fury, at last, began to drain from his body, leaving him lightheaded and hollow. The snapping tension cables of rage and adrenaline went suddenly lax as he realized the scope of his latest massacre. He glanced around at the sheer swaths of death and ruination caused by his own hands, the only movement of his decimated victims coming from the twitching of severed limbs and leaking entrails.

Yet despite the horrific scene surrounding him, the mead maker felt no remorse—only a dull, sinking ache of disappointment and purposelessness. Like the passing of a ravenous locust horde that had scoured the land for every last scrap of sustenance, nothing remained here to sate his violence.

Ragnar, sensing Thorgrim's manic transition, moved to clap a mailed hand on his friend's shoulder. "Come, let us unload and enjoy the fruits of our labor this night. For tomorrow, we sail onwards to spread our legend further still!"

At this, Thorgrim turned to his Jarl with a glassy half-smile...the embers of his hunting fever already being stoked once more at the prospect of fresh blood and plunder. As he eagerly set to work stripping every last remnant of valuables from the decimated monastery, his drained spirit began to recharge and smolder like a newborn flame just waiting to be coaxed by the winds of war into a towering inferno.

Over the ensuing weeks, Ragnar's longships continued their inexorable raiding campaigns up and down the coast of England. With each new church or town they assaulted, Thorgrim felt his berserker fervor growing in intensity until it raged like an inferno within his very bones.

The mead maker became a twisted savior figure to the other warriors. Thorgrim would lead the way as they charged into battle—a whirling dervish of flashing steel and spraying blood bacchanalia. He seemed to feed off the sheer spectacle of overwhelming carnage, growing more robust and unstoppable with each fallen defender.

In the aftermath, when the Viking warriors stood amid the ashes of their latest conquest, Thorgrim alone kept the spirit of celebration going. While the others satisfied themselves with hefty shares of plundered riches, the depraved mead maker found his most remarkable treasures in the vacant stares of the newly dead. He would pry out their teeth and bones to fashion into grim totems and talismans, believing they imbued him with the deceased's residual battlefield vigor.

At night, when the exhausted Vikings licked their wounds and rested, Thorgrim stayed awake in a waking frenzy. He paced the boundaries of their camps, muttering violent sermons to himself, or else retreated to solitary groves to indulge in his growing obsession with the old pagan rituals. By the sickly moonlight, he danced alone amid eerie rings of upturned crude headstones, chanting in guttural tones as he smeared himself in the ashes of sacrificial pyres.

Ragnar recognized the detachment of his mead maker's spirit from any semblance of reality or control. Yet he could not rein in Thorgrim's madness, for he had become far too invaluable on the battlefield. As long as the mead maker rendered entire villages into smoldering abattoirs with his frothing rampages, the Jarl willingly turned a blind eye to his increasingly unnerving behavior.

With each successful orgy of destruction, Thorgrim's mind splintered a little further. His tenuous grasp on sanity became a frayed lifeline as he descended into a vortex of psychosis from which there seemed no returning. Death, violence, and an unslakable thirst for more consumed his every waking moment until he became not much more than a breathing incarnation of those very concepts.

The other warriors gradually kept their distance from Thorgrim unless battle was imminent. Even then, they held their breaths as the mead maker passed among their ranks with wild eyes and his weapons already streaked in fresh gore. To be too near him, they whispered to each other, was to court having one's soul leached away by the swirling miasma of the madness surrounding him.

As the plunder-laden ships at last turned westwards to make the long voyage back to Ragnar's kingdom, Thorgrim seemed to register little change. He stood unblinking in the prow like a statue as the miles of coastline disappeared, making no move even as the first storms of autumn lashed the ships with banished rain and biting winds.

When, at last, the Norse shores came into view, Ragnar ordered huge bonfires lit to celebrate their return and legendary exploits. Though weary from months of nonstop raiding and combat, his warriors eagerly came ashore to revel in the fruits of their conquests—all except Thorgrim, who stood silently apart with a disturbingly vacant look.

Passing a hand before the mead maker's face, Ragnar frowned at the lack of response. "Are you not going to enjoy the spoils of victory with your brothers, Thorgrim? This is a hard-earned night for celebration!"

Slowly, almost robotically, Thorgrim turned to regard his Jarl with those burning, fathomless eyes. "Celebration?" he rasped as if tasting the strange word for the first time.

"Your warriors seek celebration and merriment on a night such as this through drink and the attentions of willing maidens," he continued in that unnerving monotone. "I, however, feel nothing but the call of my true purpose - an insatiable drive for death and absolute domination which burns just as fiercely on this night as during our warmest campaigns."

Ragnar's eyes narrowed as he studied the mead maker's disturbingly hollow face. For a fleeting instant, he wondered whether he still addressed Thorgrim at all—or if this husk of residual violence was all that remained of the once valorous man.

"Then allow yourself to find peace and solace on this night as the warriors do," Ragnar rejoined carefully. "Let the glories and treasures we've won be yours to sample. For even a great champion such as yourself cannot maintain his furor unceasingly like a descent into Helheim itself."

A strange emotion finally creased the mead maker's features at those words. A thin, unsettling smile slowly inched across his lips as he eyed Ragnar with a look of profound pity.

"You still cling to the naive belief that any treasures or saccharine diversions could stem the raging currents that churn through my spirit?" He shook his head slowly, his laugh escalating into a near-hysterical cackle. "Oh Ragnar, after so many countless nights of immersion in the most glorious bloodbaths of conquest, how could you still be so blind as to think anything else could quench my thirst?"

The Jarl took an involuntary step back as the disturbing intensity of Thorgrim's gaze seemed to bore into his very essence.

"No, when the last rattle of life fades from my final victim's sundered shell, only then shall mine own spark of finally knowing peace. Until that sole reprieve, however, all that remains is for me to immolate entire realms in searing holocaust after holocaust until even the gods themselves take pause!"

With an abruptness that shocked Ragnar into stillness, the mead maker whirled and started down the beach in a mad scramble. His discordant, unrestrained laughter echoed over the churning surf in a tormented chorus until he reached a stray longboat partially drawn up on the sand.

Without hesitation or glancing back, Thorgrim slashed the grounding lines with his sword and shoved off from the shore with a savage grunt. Ragnar and his warriors watched in bewildered trance as their once-champion pulled fitfully at the oars, wheeling the longboat about as he increasingly resembled nothing more than one of the deranged berserkers spoken of in the most ancient sagas.

Soon nothing remained in view through the silky black folds of dusk but a lone, erratic pinprick of fading candlelight - and that final, heart-rending strain of damned laughter echoing achingly over the winds before drifting out towards the infinite nothingness of the unforgiving sea.

The churning black waves eventually swallowed up the last faint echoes of Thorgrim's damned laughter, leaving the assembled warriors staring out in uneasy silence at the infinite darkness where the mead maker's longboat had disappeared.

Ragnar stood motionless for several long moments, the celebratory bonfire bathing his weathered features in a peculiar danse macabre of leaping shadows. At long last, he shook his head slowly as if rousing himself from some ill-fated reverie.

"Let the madman be on his way then," the Jarl rumbled in a low tone. "For if even the sweet triumphs of a warrior's homecoming can no longer reach what remains of his spirit, then nothing in these realms may still anchor him."

Turning to regard the silent warriors behind him, Ragnar inhaled deeply and squared his mighty shoulders. "But we shall not allow one cursed man's troubles to befoul our well-earned respite from the harrows of war and the whale roads! Tonight we celebrate our victories and honor our fallen shields with reverence deserved of their sacrifices!"

A murmured assent rose up from the men at his words. With noticeable relief, they turned and began retreating up the beachhead towards the smoky aromas and flickering revels of the capital's great wooden halls. Ragnar moved to follow, pausing briefly to sweep one last inscrutable look across the gently undulating sea.

"Fair winds and safe journeying, Thorgrim Meaderrsson," he intoned in a voice barely carrying over the ambient night sounds. "Though of your ultimate destination, not even the nornir themselves could foretell..."

While the warriors turned their backs on the haunting seashore in search of long-overdue merriment, the erratic wake plied by Thorgrim's longboat expanded steadily across the starlit waters. Slumped near the stern with his shredded clothes in disarray, the mead maker's gaunt silhouette seemed to shudder spasmodically as he pulled at the oars with rapidly weakening strokes.

Astride the gunwales lay a motley array of sacrificial blades, idols, and fetishes hastily gathered from the Norse camps he had absconded from. Their half-forgotten runes and sigils seemed to almost writhe with pulsing life in the lunar glow as Thorgrim muttered ceaselessly between rasping lungfuls of sea air.

" . . .Hundun, Hundofeor, swá bið gescrífen..." The deranged words issued forth in a gravelly whisper, almost indistinguishable from the ambient creaks and groans of the longboat.

"...tó regol and blódgield se mæsteres..." Thorgrim strained as his nearly dislocated shoulders remained slumped over the oars, his cadaverous frame propelled by sheer inertia alone at this point. Each scream of the longboat's hull over the swells resounded like a death knell to the rapidly dissolving remnants of the mead maker's sanity.

At last, Thorgrim's upper body pitched forward, and he sprawled limply across the sloshing bilges, the oars trailing uselessly in the ship's frothing wake. Yet even as he lolled there in an apparent death spasm, that damned litany persisted from somewhere deep within his very core.

"Ni...gealga...bænan...galdor sonden!"

Whether either man or god could have hoped to make sense of the perverted stream of ritualistic incantations remained to be seen. But like an insidious poison consuming the evening's pervading peace, the disturbing murmurs exuded across the gently capped swells in an obsidian miasma for...who knew how far out into the eternal emptiness.

As the dying rays of that waning day's sunset finally winked across the seamless horizon, a sudden chorus of unnatural howling winds and cresting waves erupted around Thorgrim's floundering longboat. The cacophony only intensified with each measureless span of darkness that bled over the sky like a billowing mantle of damnation.

Within that encroaching null, even the primitive waxen renditions of the gods' visages adorning the longboat's prow took on a disturbingly macabre aspect. Their impassive stares and half-disintegrated features appeared to have twisted into silent screams of terror directed back towards the source of that ungodly ceremony inexorably unfolding just out of reality's reach.

No one could rightly say how many leagues out across that harrowing abyssal expanse the wayward longboat ultimately languished. Yet long after the crimson hearths of Ragnar's feasting halls had cooled into sullen drifts of ash, that ubiquitous, unshakable drone of blasphemous chanting still shivered with unnatural persistence through the velvet-draped night.

When the pale amber orb of dawn finally breached those eldritch shores once more, nothing remained of Thorgrim or his craft save their absence - a smooth, glassy disc of silence amid the surrounding sea's placid undulations.

Where the once-mighty mead maker had strayed to, or indeed whether any hint of the lands of his former conquests yet remained of consequence within that shattered psyche, was a question that would torment the minds of those who remembered his dwindling existence until their own faltering days reached their ends amid the ash.

For though the hale and hearty may delight in spinning gory tales of foreign shores and spoils of warfare, few souls remain stalwart enough to withstand the true horrors that fester in the boundless, uncharted expanses that await past each seemingly comforting horizon line.

Whatever profane uncertainties may have ultimately claimed Thorgrim's essence out there amid the endless Sea of Corpses, no man could rightly ponder. But this much is known – in that absolute plane of oblivion where actual death and life strive endlessly as deranged twins, the eternal echoes of which cradled even the most tormented spirit's final journey...that hateful, raving corpse chant would endure on, unanswered and absolute until even the cold void itself finally recoiled.