Salt water sprayed in his face as the longship punched through the small waves. Leif didn’t flinch, keeping his eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching dock. There was no need to turn around to know the excitement that compelled his crew. After all, Thorvald was right by his side.

His brother was brimming with confidence with the brand new bow at the ready. The plan was a simple one and yet more complicated than the standard raid. The new weapons Leif and his siblings received were leagues better than anything any Viking had ever used before, but bows were rarely used in raids. Typically, speed and melee were relied upon to overwhelm their opponents before they could do much of anything.

This time, the goal was to remove the only real enemies in the town before they even landed. If the leader didn’t show himself, they’d just have to engage as normal and search him out. Regardless, a few extra scouting missions by various people had shown that very few combatants were stationed in this town. By their count, there were seven armed men and the robed man that was obviously their leader. They typically went out in the morning, walking through the town as some show of force. Once they were dead, the town would capitulate soon enough.

The longship passed the tree line as over a dozen oars pushed them forward at incredible speed. Two brothers drew an arrow as they faced the shore, waiting for a good target. It didn’t take long for them to find one.

Leif saw half of their intended targets in the street just moments before the longship would strike one of the docked ships at the town port. A few moments were all he needs.

He pulled up the heavy bow in a full draw, preparing to send the half metal missile straight into the chest of the nearest combatant. His other two siblings had orders to target the robed man, and he wouldn’t insult them by doubting their ability to hit an unarmored target while standing still. Two arrows fly from the ship right as two let loose from the woods to the south. The armed men on the left and right of the town’s apparent leader both get punctured in their center of mass, dropping immediately. Simultaneously, two arrows head straight for the robed man, and Leif’s eyes go wide.

Something seems to shimmer around him, causing the arrows to ever so slightly change direction. One slid past his left shoulder while the other embedded itself into and through the right.

Screams fill the town as the longship crashes into the tied off ship, dislodging it from the dock as wood groaned and slowed their longship. Their ship can take it, he knew, but the landing still bothered him. It’s against his very nature to let harm come to his longship, but this plan allowed them to get two initial shots in before their enemies could see them coming. Judging by the way the robed man was moving, Leif knew the precaution had been correct.

The man’s movements were trained and efficient even as he howled in pain. He was moving towards them and fast.

“Vikings! To arms!”

His crew screamed as they grabbed their hjǫrr and skjǫldr before jumping off the ship. Their specific roles in this raid had already been decided, but most of them were allowed to do as they will. Everyone aside from Gunnbjorn and a handful of defendants really, since they’d need to repair the ship immediately thanks to this aggressive entrance.

The dock immediately erupted into combat as sailors and fishermen ran to escape or pulled out nets and harpoons in an attempt to combat the trained Vikings. It didn’t go well for the fishermen. Those that ran would be spared so long as they stayed in town, that had been the command. Same as those that yielded without battle. Everyone else though, that he left up to his crew.

Leif moved to the very beginning of the pier, on his back and replaced by his trusty hjǫrr and skjǫldr. The robed man was immediately upon him, and it felt eerily familiar. He leveled his blade at his approaching opponent while bracing his shield, but the apparent leader of these fishermen was impossibly fast. A translucent veil shimmered with the light of the sun overhead, covering the man in his entirety and seemingly pushing him forward. Within a second, Leif found the man within his guard and aiming a palm thrust for his unshielded side. He didn’t have time to properly block, forced instead to twist and position his skjǫldr between the incoming blow and his right side. The reinforced wood gave first as splinters scattered from his shattered shield. The palm kept moving undaunted, slowed only slightly by the now broken barrier he had tried to use.

It struck scale and Leif struggled to keep his breath as the force of the blow pushed him back. The man hadn’t expected him to remain standing after the attack, and be was more than willing to capitalize on that surprise. One arm was still outstretched while the other hung uselessly by his side, crippled by the arrow still piercing the man’s shoulder. Leif aimed an upward slice for the outstretched elbow, taking almost no time at all to recover from the blow.

His opponent was strong, of that there was no doubt. Stronger than anyone he had ever met before coming to this strange land. But Leif was stronger and he knew it. The real gap between them was speed, but that would change as he continued to wear the man down. The man’s wounded state would ensure that.

Leif knew his thoughts were overly cautious the second he felt his blade impact his opponent’s arm. The veil around the robed man seemed to encourage piercing movements to slide off to the side but did little to deflect the incoming blade. And while his enemy’s movements remained far from slow, rotating his arm enough that the blade made a glancing impact against bone instead of fully hitting the joint, the force behind the blade was too much to allow his opponent to escape unharmed.

Blood spurted from the torn robe, the fluttering cloth hiding the full extent of the damage dealt. Leif didn’t wait to figure out just how injured the man was, taking a large step forward and bringing down the middle of his raised blade towards his enemy’s neck.

Cloth was cut once more but there was no blood to go with it as the man took a step back. The robe ripped open to reveal a well-muscled form that was heavily bloody from both wounds before his opponent quickly retreated through the town. Had Leif been the same eyes and sight that he left Brattahlíð with, he never could have followed the man even with his eyes, such was his speed. But as he was, he could see clearly which building was used to escape into. Looking around himself and towards the road leading to that building, Leif could see his Vikings already clearing a path for him. The few guards that were here were long dead, and while over a dozen more had shown up, they were no more impressive than the first set. Thorvald was taking the point, leading the skirmish while Leif had battled their primary combatant.

By all rights, the best tactical decision for him to make would be to back up his men. He had seen that one of the man’s arms was completely useless before the fight began while the other had been severely injured by him. By all rights, there was no way that the man could come back to the fight as a threat. That much Leif was confident in. But if the man made to escape, even Freydis might not get another shot in. The combination of speed and that strange veil would make it nearly impossible to pick him off from a distance now that he was in the defensive.

“Thorvald! Secure the dock and remove these guards! Sten and Kare, move north and ensure no one escapes into those woods!”

With his orders given, Leif charged past most of the guards in his way, blocking as he went. But one had quickly placed himself firmly in Leif’s path, realizing where he was headed. With no bizarre veils to defend him or otherworldly speed to call upon, the poor swordsmanship on display was unable to hold Leif for long. One blocking shove from his skjǫldr was enough to knock the man off balance. One slice enough to end the guard’s life.

It only took a handful of moments in all for Leif to reach his destination. Once there, he dropped the broken reinforced wood that was once a shield and kicked in the door, looking for his opponent. He found him but couldn’t comprehend what exactly he was seeing.

There was little to be seen in the room aside from the opponent he’d been looking for. The robed man himself was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and eyes closed while a battle was taking place outside. He’d removed the arrow from his shoulder and patched it quickly, and yet the amount of blood was surprisingly low. Leif had seen the man’s torso before he retreated and knew he was more harmed than this. It simply defied logic.

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But strangest of all was the faint glow coming from the stone in the man’s lap and the way it seeped into him. The sight was too bizarre for Leif to understand, but there was no denying that the man was somehow healing himself with this rock. Not only that, but color was once again finding his face as the copious amounts of lost blood seemed to be replaced at astounding speeds.

Leif was stunned into inaction for several seconds as he took it all in, something that would be a fatal mistake in combat. But he wasn’t in combat. His opponent just sat there and continued to focus on the glowing stone before him as if his life and those of all his people weren’t at stake right now. Leif had given up a few seconds out of surprise, but he was too experienced to let it get to him for long.

He sheathed his hjǫrr and retrieved his bow from his back, pulling it into a full draw aimed straight for the man’s heart. He suspected that the veil would spring to life the second the arrow got too close, just like it had before, and so Leif put every ounce of strength he had into the draw. He could feel his muscles threatening to give out on him as he held a breath to keep his aim steady. And then he loosed.

A thin veil sprung to life around the robbed man as he sat, wind pushing the arrow off of its trajectory. It wasn’t enough.

The missile punched through the man’s lung as a gasp escaped him and his eyes snapped open. Fear and shock covered his face for a few moments as he looked up at Leif. They were soon replaced by fury as the veil condensed around an outstretched arm that shouldn’t have been able to move at all with the damage it had taken earlier in the fight. Leif dropped his bow into a guard as the robed man punched, launching a stream of compressed air straight for his chest.

The attack slid around his attempt to block, moving like the wind itself had called for his death. It slammed into his chest as the sound of cracking scales filled his ears. Leif tried to move to the side but barely moved, causing the wind to ever so slightly disperse across more scales and even more slightly slide off of him. It helped, cracking more scales before the first were fully pierced. And still, he could feel the wind attempting to puncture his skin and destroy him from the inside. He was strong, stronger than he’d thought possible. His defenses had never been tested like this during their spars and it astounded him that they could hold for so long against such force.

And then they broke.

Wind moved through his skin and began tearing at the muscles guarding his ribs. When those tore, it moved to the bones themselves. That, at least, proved too much of a challenge for the wind given purpose, shifting to tear into his other muscles and organs before finally stopping the onslaught.

Leif had no idea how long the attack had taken to resolve, but the results were all too obvious to his improved senses. Much of his chest and abdominal muscles were torn beyond repair, his skin was barely damaged, and he was bleeding internally. His organs were mostly intact, but that counted for little.

If he did nothing, he would die.

He took a step and felt his body loosen as it became a struggle to keep his torso upright. An unwinnable battle, he soon found, as the second step left his upper body hanging loosely from his waist. His blood slowly found its way out of him now rather than deeper into him. Gravity was doing him no favors today.

His opponent no longer had that ever present veil. Combined with his rasped breaths and bloody mouth, Leif was quite sure he wasn’t the only person in this room that was dying. Then the man grabbed the pouch he’d seen before, pulling out yet another of those stones before closing his eyes. He didn’t remove the arrow this time, likely because doing so would kill him before whatever strange technique this was could save him. Leif didn’t care. What mattered was that the veil was gone and his opponent had assumed that the fight was over. Probably because it was the man’s only hope to survive this encounter rather than any expectation that Leif would just drop dead, but that didn’t matter either.

A third and fourth step brought Leif ever closer to the robed man clutching his glowing stones. He drew his hjǫrr once more, working hard not to drop it with his odd positioning. Four steps became five. Five became six. Each one felt like a momentous achievement that should have been impossible, and yet Leif pushed himself through it.

Soon enough, he reached his opponent. He used one arm to prop himself up against the wall, giving a small reprieve to the bloodied pulp that were his torso muscles. And then, as he stood over his opponent, barely upright, Leif watched. He paid close attention to exactly what this man was doing.

The glow was faint even from this close, but as time slowly passed, he could get a feel for how it was pulled from the stone before settling into a spot below the man’s navel. What happened afterward was something that even his enhanced senses couldn’t detect, but the stone’s glow decreased minutely every time the man drew from it. This was the most information he would get from simply watching.

It was time to act.

Leif pulled up his sword and drove it straight towards the man’s exposed neck. A veil shimmered into existence as he did, but it was a shadow of the previous one. The wind fluttered away uselessly as steel pushed through flesh.

The resistance was strong, the man’s body more powerful than any he’d killed before. But flesh was flesh. Steel was steel.

Leif didn’t bother retrieving the blade, collapsing to the ground shortly after the man did. Some stones rolled away from the corpse as the pouch spilled them onto the floor. He gathered up all the ones he could before the pooling blood caused him to slip. He had managed to grab five of them before they could get away. He hoped it would be enough.

Leif began trying to mimic everything about the robed man he could. Sitting wasn’t an option with his muscles torn and ruined as they were, so he’d have to hope that lying on his side would work.

He gripped the stones tightly in his hands, pulling them close to his stomach. They had no glow to them, not when they weren’t being drawn from. A good indication of whether he was doing this correctly. He laid four of them gently on the blood-soaked floor, deciding to focus on one at a time.

Leif spent the first minute trying and failing to establish a connection of any kind. Then, a gentle glow from the stone and a feeling of warmth in his hands let him know he was doing something right. He tried and failed continuously to transport that warmth to the region below his stomach just like he’d seen the robed man do. After a while, he eventually closed his eyes fully, relying on his senses alone to guide him. He felt the stone grow cold, throwing it towards the entrance to the room before grabbing the next one.

His body was beginning to go cold by the time he felt the warmth stay in his gut. It wasn’t the stomach precisely that stored the heat, but it was the closest thing he knew to call it. He continued to fill that second stomach with warmth, discarding the stones that he drained along the way, and when he felt that only one was left, the feeling of an incredible fullness pervaded his being. Try as he might to take that warmth and move it to his muscles, to his wounds, he couldn’t motivate it whatsoever.

And so, he continued to pull.

The Viking drew warmth into that second stomach to the point where it was full to bursting. When the last of his stones were empty and cold, he crawled along the floor to grab the other stones only to do it again. It felt like something inside of him was straining to the point of snapping, as if he had gained an entirely new muscle and then immediately overtaxed it.

Still, he didn’t relent. There was no way of knowing whether what he was doing was correct, but the warmth he pulled from the stones did nothing unless guided to that second stomach. And once in his second stomach, it wouldn’t follow his wishes anymore, simply sitting there and doing nothing but growing ever fuller, straining. Aching.

If he gave up then he would die. The cold he felt assured him of that.

And so, Leif drained yet more spirit stones, pushed them into his second stomach. He felt it burst.

Warmth spread out from that stomach and along veins he never noticed where there, moving through the rest of his body. Focusing on the sensation, Leif willed the warmth inside of him towards where he knew his injuries to be. It twitched, that was the best he could describe it. Like an attempt at wiggling an untrained muscle, he could ever so slightly motivate the warmth to prioritize a direction.

He worked at it as he lost track of time until, to his joy, it moved. He threw that newfound energy at his wounds repeatedly, the first results being incredible pain and spurts of blood, but soon he found a way to stop the blood flow. After that he managed to slowly push warmth through those new veins until his blood loss stopped being debilitating. With that out of the way, he could focus the warmth to his wounds. It still took several tries before he managed to repair any of the damage that had been done. By that point, the well of warmth in his second stomach had nearly gone dry.

At that point, he started to notice what few stones in this room retained their energy. From there, he could even sense that some of it could even be found in the air he breathed. Latching onto that, he drew in warmth from around him to replenish his supply. It was many times slower than the stones, but it seemed to be without end. He took his time to draw in power from the world around him, repairing his body slowly but surely.

By the time any member of his crew found him, Leif was sitting cross legged on the floor next to a corpse and dozens of scattered stones. The once barren room was now coated in the heavy stench of blood. His body remained damaged, he continued to lose blood, but he had repaired the most life-threatening injuries. Every moment he drew in a little bit more energy from the world around him. Every moment he healed a little bit more of the damage his body had sustained.

His crew didn’t understand what they were seeing, just like how Leif hadn’t when he barged in on the robed man just minutes earlier. They rushed to his side, gently shaking him to see if he was alright, they did so out of ignorance. When Leif awoke from his meditation, it was his brother’s concerned face that greeted him. Concern quickly morphed into indignation.

“What are you thinking, Leif! We were in the middle of battle, and you nap?!”

Thorvald barely restrained himself enough for those outside the building to miss his words. An insult to his ability in front of any of his crew would normally warrant a heavy punishment, even for family. And yet, Leif couldn’t help but smile as he looked up at his outraged brother.

“None of you are going to believe what I found.”