Chapter 10: The Shadow's Puppeteer

Under the cover of night, Leif and his most skilled warriors stealthily approach the rocky cliffs overlooking Thorlak's coastal fortress. The moonlit waves crash far below as Leif surveys the perimeter using a looking glass.

Two guards stand watch at the main gate, but Leif spies a small sally port on the northern wall, left unguarded. He signals to Garrick and two others, and they silently scramble down the treacherous cliff path. Within moments, they had subdued the guards and bound their mouths to prevent any cries for help.

Leif's party slips inside the walls. They had memorized the fortress layout from Magnus's maps. However, nothing could have prepared them for the horrors within. In a dank cell in the basement, Eirik's family is chained and barely clinging to life. His young children weep upon seeing their father, and Leif hurries to break their manacles.

Just then, a distant commotion erupts—they have been discovered. Leif knows the only way out is through the main gate, now sealing their fate in a battle. He grits his teeth, unsheathing his bloody blade. "For our people," he declares, and charges into the fray. Swords sing as Leif's warriors fight their way through the chaos, protecting the prisoners. Against impossible odds, they emerge victorious from the fortress through a river of enemy blood.

But Leif's heart sinks as Eirik embraces his family on the beach. One small boy lies lifeless in his father's arms. Thorlak will pay dearly for his crimes, Leif vows, as they carry the fallen hero home under the lightening sky. Justice will be served. Under the dense forest canopy, Leif scans the treeline for Thorlak's coastal fortress. Through a looking glass, he spies the crumbling eastern battlements, obscured by clinging ivy. According to clan lore, smugglers' passages burrow beneath those ruins like a badger's den.

That night, Leif and his picked warriors stealthily approached through the whispering pines. Under starlight, they search amongst the rubble and find a moss-shrouded entrance, so well-hidden it seems magic. They listen for sentries within before venturing into musty tunnels.

Down twisting earthen paths lit by flickering lamps, the warriors creep with drawn blades. Around one bend, Leif emerges into a natural cavern and glimpses two guards dicing by torchlight. With ruthless efficiency, he and Garrick slit their throats before they noticed. Deeper into the dark, more patrols roam blindly.

Through cunning ambushes and precise knifework in the night, Leif's team eliminates all opposition with nary a sound. At last, they exit the tunnels within the stony confines of Thorlak's armory. With the guards none the wiser, the infiltrators have gained a foothold. Now begins the hunt for answers and for blood. With the armory secured, Leif splits his forces to engage the fortress guards from within. As the thunder of battle grows nearer, he races ahead with Garrick towards the feast hall.

They burst through dragon-carven doors to find Thorlak atop his long table, surrounded by a ring of fallen warriors. His greatsword drips gore as wounded men stagger outside to fight on. Seeing defeat is near, the warchief grins through stained teeth.

"You are too late, Rune Dog. I will not yield this to faithless scum," Thorlak rasps. Before Leif can react, the chieftain slashes open his wrists in a geyser of blood. As life fades, he wheezes curses in the tongues of demons.

"Darkness comes on the wings of night. It will consume all light and life as you watch helpless, Oathbreaker! Your faith is feeble; you will know only blood and loss henceforth. Mark these words!"

With his final choking breath, Thorlak sags dead against the table. Leif can only watch, feeling the weight of the curse like a foreboding storm on the horizon. What shadows were summoned that evening? He hasn't long to wonder—the battle still rages for the fortress. Leif inspects Thorlak's corpse with growing horror. Something isn't right—the warchief's eyes are white as curdled milk, and the veins in his arms bulge black under gray flesh.

A dreadful presence lingers like a shroud over the feasting hall. Leif's skin crawls as memories resurface—the strange lights in the misty wood, demonic apparitions twisting men's souls. Could the same evil now haunt these shores?

Garrick discovers mysterious runes scrawled on the table in blood. "Dark sorcery," he spits, but Leif recognizes a more terrible truth. These are no mortal symbols; each sigil crawls like an insect at the edge of vision.

Leif has Friar Tomas examine the grisly evidence once the battle is won. The holy man turns ashen, confirming Leif's fears: Thorlak had been a pawn, an empty vessel for malevolent spirits to inhabit and spread their corruption.

As Leif and Garrick burn the tainted hall, banning all from its ashen remains, a chill wind carries the roar of distant surf. But beneath lies a greater menace echoing in the surf—the howl of thirsting demons poised to claim all souls in darkness. Their true enemy has emerged from the shadows at last. The chieftains gather at Magnus's highstead under a waning moon. As Leif recounts the fell magic unraveling their lands, dread hangs thicker than the woodsmoke.

"These demons mean to divide us through suspicion and fear," Leif warns. "We've seen their puppets sowing chaos under the cover of night. Now their master shows his face and his thirst for dominance."

Muttering breaks out among the clanlords until Magnus's roar restores silence. Leif pleads for redoubled faith and vigilance as darkness closes in. "We've faced wolves and storms as one tribe. Now a more insidious peril comes, twisting men's minds before their bodies. But as long as we stand together, there is no force that can break us!"

Some chieftains exchange uncertain glances, remembering the curse of Thorlak's dying breath. But Friar Tomas steps forward, his steady voice carrying through the gloom. "The powers of Hell itself cannot prevail against brotherhood in Christ. Have faith in God and in his divine light to guide your steps through the shadow."

Seeing reason return to his wary eyes, Leif's heart lifts. United under watchfires that scour the night, the Tribes of Runa may weather any storm, and though greater trials surely come, their spirits remain unbroken. As the council ends, Fritha watches Leif with narrowed eyes. She whispers to chieftains, swayed by fear of change, fueling cracks in unity.

That night, as patrols prowled the surf, chanting his name on the dunes, Leif follows its siren song to find witches dancing under the full moon, weaving enchantments. Seeing him, their eyes ignite red before they scatter into the wood.

The next morning, a herdsman is found flayed on the cliff, left as an offering. Superstitious murmurs spread like wildfire through the halls. Didn't the old gods used to accept such tributes?

At the shore, Leif finds footprints joined by eerie paw prints, leading to a cleft where waves erode the stone. There is a hint of a portal to the netherworld, now unsealed. Darkness has burrowed deep under their feet.

That evening, Leif and Friar Tomas walk the dunes, praying the tribes' faith proves stronger than fear or shadowy whispers. But as drums begin within the forest's heart, both sense the demons circling nearer, awaiting the moment to strike. ,, That night, as clashes and portents plague his mind, Leif sits alone by a fire on the beach. Its embers mirror the turmoil within as he ponders all the lessons taught about sacrifice and destiny's demands.

Perhaps this was too great a task—to undo generations of division and turn wary souls from the comfort of old ways toward new mysteries. The tribes had faced a hundred bitter winters but never invaders from the spirit realm before. How could he ask them to defy beings more potent than any storm or blade?

Doubt's talons scrape within Leif's heart once more as Thorlak's curse echoes in fog horns along the shore. What right had he to tear his people from safe harbors into tempest seas against threats beyond mortal ken? If the price of unity was too high, would protecting tribes in their separateness not satisfy the demons gnawing at the land?

Leif watches the fire dwindle, wondering if, in aspiring for so much, he has doomed them all. His fingers trace his father's bone talisman as waves bleed starlight, seeking lost answers in its silhouettes before dawn breaks his heavy thoughts at last. Leif wanders the shore at dawn, lost in troubled thoughts, when a cry pierces the mist. He races toward the sound and emerges upon a gruesome scene: Eirik lies slain upon the rocks, run through with sacrificial blades.

Garrick and others kneel weeping amid a circle of carnage, surrounded by witches feverishly chanting as the tide rolls in. Dark magics stir in their incantations carried on the foam and swell.

At that moment, the waves recede to reveal not a seabed but a fissure into the netherworld below. A shadow ascends the rocks, clad in shrouds like a vengeful dragon. Fritha's eyes shine red as she grasps a bone-carven dagger to sever Garrick's throat in the summoning's final act.

A great rumbling shakes the shore as the cliffs crack apart. From the abyss emerges a towering daemon wreathed in fog, gloating at surprised witches cowering before their unleashed false god. It lumbers toward the village, bringing ruin on black-veined wings.

Seeing his failure and all souls now hanging in the balance against an enemy too potent for mortal steel, Leif bellows a wrathful warcry that splits the sky. His counterattack to stem the darkness must commence here and now, whatever the cost.