A storm rolled in two days before the horns blew.
Not a storm of rain or wind, but of tension. The kind that makes even the stone wince.
News had arrived that the campaign was being moved forward.
After two weeks Siege shuttered in a unpleasant mix of fear and exhiliration.
Then, the horns. Deep, war-born, old. They hadn't sounded since the Fall of Varn, and when they did, the fortress awoke like a grave stirred by thunder.
They lined the worn walls to see him arrive.
He did not ride a horse.
He walked.
King Beowulf the Boundless, Slayer of Grendel, Heir to the Iron Crown of Geatland, came on foot through the ashen pass. His cloak, stitched from the hides of monsters that once gnawed through plate and bone, dragged behind him like a black river.
His blade—a sword that looked more like a mountain hammered into killing shape—rested across his shoulder. Its name, the men whispered whispered, was Naegling, though it had broken more than once it was a legendary sword.
Even from a far distance his raw ambition could be felt.
Piercing green eyes, graying blond hair and beard... his royal robes did little to hide his mighty physique as he towered over his procession of men.
He smiled as he entered, a charismatic one, and though the fortress guards saluted with spears, swords, and scraped armor, none dared meet his gaze too long. It was not that he was cruel. It was not that he was mad.
It was that he enjoyed it -- the insanity of his actions.
The crowd parted around him like smoke. Siege stood among the others, armor still scratched from training. Beowulf's eyes swept over the soldiers and locked on him.
"You...I heard of you.," the king said, his voice like clashing shields. "You've seen the Wyrm, haven't you?"
Siege didn't answer. Beowulf grinned wider.
"Good. You'll come with me."
---
That night, the fire pit blazed in the courtyard, wine poured like water, and meat burned black on skewers. Beowulf stood at the center, shouting tales that echoed off the stone, his voice louder than drums.
"Fafnir was once a man," he bellowed, pulling half a stag apart with his bare hands.
"Son of Hreidmar. Brother to Regin. He guarded treasure too long. Slept atop it. Drank its gold. It twisted his blood and scaled his skin. Turned him into a worm of greed and fire."
The warriors laughed, half-drunk, half-mad. Siege sat among them, silent. Across from him, Tomas whispered, "They say the hoard Fafnir guards holds the heart of the Norns. That if you eat it, you speak the fate of gods."
Siege blinked. "And Beowulf wants it?"
Tomas smirked. "He wants everything. And what he doesn't want, he kills."
---
In the morning, Ithaca emptied.
A hundred warriors rode with Beowulf. Siege among them. Tomas and Edwin too.
Notable warriors surrounded the king.
Dren of the Southern Mire, and Oltan the Ash-Touched. Each one chosen not for their skill alone, but for their silence. Beowulf did not tolerate those who questioned him.
The journey wound north through dead lands where the snow never melted and the trees bent away from the path. At night, they made no fire. At dawn, they passed old bones and rusted helms—remnants of the last foolish king who dared hunt dragons.
The closer they drew to the hoard, the worse the air tasted.
---
On the fifth night, they found a mound wrapped in iron rings, etched with runes so faded they looked like scars.
"Know this," Beowulf said, laying a gauntleted hand on the stone. "Here Regin fell, brother to the worm. He forged blades, told tales, and thought he could command fate. But when the wyrm came for him, his heart turned to soot before it burned."
He turned to his warriors, eyes gleaming.
"Let your hearts remain flesh. And if they burn, let them burn hot."
Siege stared into the dark, hearing something in the distance—a deep, distant grinding. Like scales shifting on stone. Or breath through ruined lungs.
---
The world changed the closer they came.
The soil was black. The trees were petrified, clawing toward a sky that no longer felt like sky. The wind grew sluggish, as if afraid to move.
Fafnir's domain was not guarded.
It didn't need to be.
---
They found the lair in silence.
A chasm opened before them—massive and jagged. Not carved. Not collapsed.
Gnawed.
The air that rose from it shown with gold and rot.
Beowulf stood on the edge and roared into the depths. "I AM THE BEAST THAT SLAYS BEASTS! COME AND FACE ME, YOU COWARDLY WORM!"
The wind died completely.
And from below, the earth answered—not in words, but in breath. A single exhale that coated the rocks in bubbling magma and set the runes on their blades screaming.
Fafnir was awake.
---
That night, no one slept.
Beowulf paced like a lion in a cage, muttering verses of old tongues, sharpening Naegling on a stone that bled rust.
Siege sat beside Edwin who was helping him wrap his hand in cloth.
"You know he doesn't want to kill it," Edwin whispered.
Siege nodded. "He wants to tame it."
Edwin's eyes were skeptical. "He thinks he can ride it. Like the kings of the old fire."
"He can't."
"No," he said. "But we'll die before he believes that."
Siege looked into the dark. The chasm pulsed like a heartbeat.
And far below, Fafnir stirred—dreaming of fire, of betrayal, of gold that dripped not from coffers, but from men's skulls.
---
Beowulf stood at the edge by dawn, his sword raised to the horizon, the sky toiling above them in bruised clouds.
"Today," he roared, "we earn a place in myth. Today we carve a saga into the bones of the earth!"
The warriors behind him shouted. Some from pride. Some from fear.
Siege tightened the straps on his armor.
He whispered a prayer—not to the gods in this trial or the living ones in his world, but to the dead ones below.
They would listen better.
And then, they descended into the lair of the dragon.