r/PrimalShow

Mist lay over the broken path like a gray hide pulled across the world. Spear stood at the front of the freed captives, his bare feet planted in the mud and the stolen sword hanging low from one hand. Behind him, Mira and the others dropped to their knees because their bodies remembered punishment faster than their minds remembered freedom. They bowed with trembling shoulders, faces pressed near the dirt, while Spear stayed upright and glared into the fog.

Heavy paws answered from ahead, slow and deep, and the first bear came through the mist with ropes across its muzzle and scars along its dark fur. More bears followed, each carrying a Viking rider with axe, spear, shield, or blade ready. At their front sat a blond warrior with a short beard and a single braid, a dead deer laid across the shoulders of his mount. His cold eyes moved from the captives to Mira, then to Spear, and finally to the sword in the caveman’s grip. Recognition hardened his face into fury. “Sverd brodir, blod hefnd!” he roared, raising his axe as the riders pulled their weapons free.

The bears crept forward in a half circle, their breath steaming through the blue-gray air. The captives pressed lower, and Mira whispered to them not to look, not to draw anger, not to move unless she gave them the sign. “La tanzuru, ibqaw khafdin,” she breathed, though the words shook in her throat.

Spear did not understand their language, but he understood the riders, their posture, and the cruel patience of trained beasts. He bent his knees, lifted the sword, and waited. Then the bears halted. Their heads rose, their noses twitching toward the forest, and the confidence of the riders cracked. A log slid down the hill beside the huts, rolling through leaves and stones before slamming into a post. Crows burst from the trees, black wings tearing upward as they screamed over the village. Spear caught the scent carried under the mist and grinned with all his teeth. He threw his head back and roared.

The lead rider studied Spear a little longer, and the hatred in his eyes became calculation. He saw the bare skin, the wild hair, the scars, and the way the sword looked wrong in such a hand. To him, the caveman was not a warrior with a place among men, but a beast wearing a dead man’s weapon. The riders behind him began to beat spear shafts against shields, and the bears answered with nervous grunts. Mira heard the rhythm and knew it was not only a threat. It was a way to make fear obey. Some of the captives trembled so badly their chains clicked against stones. Spear did not move, but his breath deepened until his chest rose like a sleeping fire. The lead rider leaned forward on the saddle and spat into the mud before pointing the axe at him again. “Villimadr med stolid sverd, thu fellr her,” he snarled. Spear did not know the words, but he knew the promise, and he gripped the sword tighter.
Fang rose onto a thatched roof, teal hide dark against the gray morning and jaws spread wide. Her roar rolled over the riders until the bears crouched and the captives froze. The hut groaned beneath her weight, then split open, dropping her into straw, dust, and broken beams. Spear’s grin vanished, and that tiny pause gave the blond warrior his opening. He drove his bear forward with the axe raised, shouting for the kill. “Nu, haggva hann!” he cried. Mira saw the axe line with Spear’s head and screamed a warning without thinking. “Ihdhar!” Fang burst from the ruined hut before the blow landed, launching herself through the wall in a storm of splinters. She crashed into the charging bear and rider, crushing the attack into mud. The deer rolled away like a discarded offering as the other riders shouted and charged.

The fight broke open at once. A spear struck Fang in the back, and her roar sharpened with pain. Spear answered with a roar of his own and slammed into the nearest rider, dragging him from his bear and rolling through the mud with him. The Viking swung a sword for Spear’s face, but the caveman ducked, bit hard into the man’s wrist, and tore the weapon free as blood blinded the warrior. Spear seized the blade and struck him down before turning toward the next attacker. Fang whipped her tail into one bear, sent it sliding through a fence, then snapped another rider from his saddle as the animal beneath him reared. Mira saw the gap that Fang and Spear had made. She forced herself to stand, pulled the nearest captive upright, and pointed toward the huts. “Qumu, qūmu al-an, ila al-buyut!” she ordered. The frightened line stumbled after her into the village lanes.

The captives ran in broken bursts, stopping whenever a bear crashed too close and then moving again when Mira waved them onward. A woman almost turned back when a shout rose behind her, but Mira seized her arm and forced her toward the huts. “La tarji’i, al-hayat amamak,” she said, telling her life was ahead, not behind. The words were small beneath the roar of Fang and the clatter of iron, yet they carried enough strength for the woman to keep running. A child clung to Mira’s torn clothing, stumbling whenever the ground shook. Spear saw them pass from the edge of his eye and threw himself toward a rider who tried to turn after them. He struck the bear’s muzzle with the flat of the sword, then dragged the rider halfway from the saddle before another spear forced him to release. The fight kept pulling him away from the people he was trying to save. Fang seemed to understand, placing her body between the riders and the fleeing line whenever she could. Each choice cost her another cut, another arrow, and another breath of pain.

Outside, Spear was swallowed by bears, shields, and iron. One bear crashed into him from the side and pinned him beneath its chest, jaws snapping inches from his face. The rider above laughed and raised an axe while ordering the beast to crush him. “Halt hann, bjorn, brjota bein!” Spear’s sword arm was trapped beneath the bear’s weight, but he twisted one knee under its belly and dragged the blade upward through mud and fur. With a furious cry, he stabbed straight into the bear’s head from underneath. The beast stiffened and sagged over him, and the rider spilled from the saddle into the mud. Spear shoved with both arms until the heavy body rolled just enough for him to crawl free. The rider scrambled for the fallen axe, but Spear reached him first. One brutal strike ended the struggle, and the caveman rose covered in mud and blood.

Fang nearly fell beneath the crush of two bears. One clamped at her wounded side while another clawed at her leg, forcing her weight down. A rider rushed toward her front with a long spear aimed for her chest. “Stinga hjarta, falla edla!” he shouted. Fang snapped the spear shaft before it pierced deep, twisted with a scream of pain, and heaved the bear off her leg. Her tail smashed another mount from beneath its rider, and her jaws closed on the warrior before he could crawl away. She shook broken wood from her shoulders and lunged through a rack of baskets, scattering grain, tools, and shields across the lane. Spears and arrows struck her hide, most shallow, some biting enough to make her snarl. Every wound made her slower, but every sting made her angrier. She was a wall of teeth and wounded muscle, holding the riders back while Mira ran.

The village woke unevenly. A scruffy-haired Viking stumbled from a hut, beard flattened on one side, eyes wide at the bodies and broken fences. A rider spotted the captives moving between huts and shouted toward the center of the settlement. “Thraer hlaupa, vakna allir!” The scruffy man scrambled onto an elevated wooden platform and seized a hammer from a hook. Fang hurled a large bear into a nearby hut, and the crash made the platform sway beneath his feet. He struck a hanging sheet of metal once, twice, then again, each blow screaming over roofs and smoke. “Vakna, vakna, ovinr i gardi!” he yelled. A final sweep of Fang’s tail snapped one of the supports, and the platform collapsed behind him as the alarm continued to ring faintly through the chaos.

Inside one hut, a stern woman knelt before her young son, painting dark marks across his cheeks. The boy tried to stand still, but the alarm made his eyes flick toward the doorway. She held his chin and forced him to meet her gaze. “Sterkr hjarta, litli ulfr,” she whispered, tracing one final mark across his brow. They stepped out with other villagers as warriors, youths, mothers, and elders poured from different huts. The woman saw Fang being chased by bears, Spear gripping a mount’s neck while stabbing down into its hide, and the broken platform sinking into the mud. She took a small bow from a rack and pressed it into the boy’s hands with a bundle of arrows. “A thaki, hatt, sja allt. Ekki skjálfa, son minn, vera sterkr,” she told him. She kissed his painted forehead and pushed him toward the roof ladder, then turned to arm herself.

The woman watched her son climb, and for one heartbeat the war around her seemed to fall silent inside her mind. She remembered his smaller hands grabbing at her braid, remembered him chasing chickens between the huts, remembered the first time he tried to lift a bow too large for him. That child was still there beneath the paint, but the morning had stolen the space where childhood belonged. She set her jaw and refused to let him see the fear in her eyes. A younger woman ran past carrying a baby beneath a cloak, and the stern woman pulled her out of the path of a charging bear without looking away from the roof. “Inn, loka dyr, vernda bornin,” she commanded, ordering her inside to protect the children. Then she stepped into the lane where Fang’s shadow moved through smoke. Her fingers tightened around the axe. What she saw was not rescue, not slavery, not justice, but home being torn apart. That was enough to make her run toward death.

Mira and the captives plunged deeper into the village until a low growl rose from beneath them. A reinforced pit opened beside the lane, covered with thick beams, heavy ropes, and sharpened braces. Red stared up through the wooden bars, mud streaking his hide and rage burning in his eyes. The captives recoiled, thinking they had run from one death into another. Mira lifted a trembling hand. Red growled until his gaze found her face, and the sound changed. It did not become tame, but some edge of savage hunger softened. “Hadi, hadi, anta laysa wahdak,” she whispered. She pulled at the ropes, struck a beam with a stone, and searched for a knot, but the cage was too strong. Before she could try again, a twin-braided bear rider forced his mount into the lane behind them and shouted that the slaves were fleeing.

The rider grinned down at Mira as the captives scattered between the pit and the hut walls. “Kona, nidur, eda deyja,” he growled, lowering his weapon. Red slammed against the pit so hard that the beams jumped and the bear recoiled. Mira used that heartbeat to shove the captives past the pit, then ran after them as the rider gave chase. Behind her, Red remained trapped, pressing upward while the wood groaned above him. Outside, Spear cut through a warrior’s chest, blocked a spear meant for his ribs, and drove his sword into another man before the axe in that man’s hands could fall. More Vikings came, not only riders now, but villagers with shields and blades pulled from their homes. Spear struck them down when they attacked, yet their faces came in flashes he could not ignore. The battle was becoming more than rescue. It was becoming a village swallowed by fear.

Red’s roar followed Mira as she fled the pit, not loud enough to break the beams yet, but deep enough to shake loose dust from the roof posts. She looked back only once and saw his eye still fixed on her through the crossed wood. The look held no understanding of chains, villages, or the hatred between humans. It held pain, heat, and the strange pull of a creature that knew she had tried to help. Mira wanted to return with a blade, with fire, with anything strong enough to cut the ropes, but the twin-braided rider crashed closer and ended the thought. The captives were her duty now. Red slammed upward again behind her, and the pit answered with a crack that was too small to save him. “Yalla, yalla, la tanqasimū,” Mira called, ordering the captives not to split apart. They followed because her voice was the only rope left tying them to hope. Behind them, the trapped red beast kept fighting wood and earth.

The Vikings formed a shield circle around Spear, spears sliding between the gaps like teeth of a wooden beast. Spear glared around, seeking the weakest point, but his eyes caught on a young girl holding a sword with both hands. Near her stood a woman with a baby tucked close inside a pouch against her chest, a short spear gripped in her free hand. The baby cried beneath cloth while the woman stared at Spear with terror and duty mixed together. Spear’s sword lowered by a finger’s width. These were not only the men who chained Mira. They were families, children, frightened hands forced into the same red morning. The pause almost killed him. From above, the painted boy fired an arrow that cut Spear’s shoulder. Another arrow struck near his foot, and the moment of pity shattered beneath pain.

Spear roared and smashed into the shield wall. Bodies stumbled back as he shoved through the circle, striking with the sword when hands and spears closed in again. He cut a man’s throat, stabbed another in the chest, and kicked a broken shield into a bear’s face. A warrior wearing a sabertooth pelt over his head charged with a broad axe, and Spear ripped a spear from a fallen hand and hurled it across the lane. The spear struck the pelted man in the chest, dropping him beside the trophy teeth. The fighting no longer felt clean, if it ever had. Every person who fell left another crying name behind them. Spear still fought because stopping meant death for Fang, Mira, and the captives. But the sight of the girl, the baby, and the boy on the roof stayed with him like a wound.

Spear’s world narrowed to weapon, breath, and the next body rushing in. His arms ached from each impact, and his fingers had begun to numb around the sword grip. He had fought predators larger than these people and monsters with jaws wide enough to swallow him, yet this battle felt different because the enemy had eyes that cried, hands that shook, and voices that called to one another. A young man tripped over a fallen shield, and Spear nearly stepped around him before the man stabbed upward. The blade cut Spear’s calf, and mercy disappeared into reflex. Spear struck him down and hated the way there was no time to feel anything. More spears came. More shields pressed forward. The red morning turned every shape into either danger or shadow. Above, the boy’s arrows kept falling, thin reminders that even children had become part of the wall trying to kill him.

Fang was driven toward a narrow lane by riders who had learned not to charge her head-on. Bears pressed her from the left, spearmen harried from the right, and hidden hands pulled a thick rope tight across the ground. “Leida hana, leida til reipi!” a Viking called. Fang lunged after the nearest throat, struck the rope with her legs, and crashed down hard enough to shake the village. Warriors rushed in, hacking at her flanks and shoulders while bears pinned at her sides. Arrows rained from the roofs. Fang roared, clawed the mud, and shoved herself up through pain, throwing one bear away and snapping a spear in her jaws. Then the stern woman appeared before her with a large axe in both hands. Fang lowered her head and roared a warning, but the woman answered with her own war cry and hurled the weapon. The axe spun once and bit deep into Fang’s leg.

Fang’s cry tore across the village and dropped into Red’s pit like a thunderbolt. The red tyrannosaur’s head snapped upward, eyes wide. He drove his body against the braces, and dirt rained from the walls. Another wounded roar from Fang hit the air, and Red surged again with all his strength. Ropes stretched, beams bent, and the wooden bars exploded apart. Red leapt from the pit in a storm of splinters, mud, and broken rope. He landed in the lane with a roar that froze bears and men alike. “Annar edla!” a Viking screamed. Red did not understand the words, only the fear and the smell of Fang’s blood. He rampaged through the nearest warriors, smashing shields, scattering bears, and tearing open the formation that had trapped the village around Spear and Fang.

Mira ran until the twin-braided rider forced his bear close enough that she could feel its breath on her back. She saw a weapon rack beside a hut and grabbed the nearest spear, nearly dropping it from the weight. The bear lunged, jaws open. Mira planted her feet and thrust the spear straight into its mouth. The shaft jammed between teeth and tongue, and the beast’s own momentum flipped it sideways into the mud. The rider flew from the saddle and rolled hard, reaching for the axe at his belt. Mira saw the weapon and scrambled faster than thought. She seized it first. He rose with a snarl and lunged, promising death. “Kona, thu deyrd!” Mira swung. The blow ended him, and she froze, staring at what her hands had done.

The axe slipped from Mira’s grasp as horror rose inside her. She wanted freedom, not the weight of a life taken by her own strength. A roar shattered the numbness. Red moved through the lane ahead, no longer trapped but still wild, striking at every Viking who approached and scattering captives who had nowhere to run. Mira saw that he was not hunting with purpose. He was panic, pain, and power given teeth. She ran toward him despite the screams behind her. “Ibqaw huna!” she ordered the captives, then stepped into Red’s path with empty hands. Red faced her, jaws wet, breath shaking the loose strands of her hair. She raised one palm slowly. “Hadi, hadi, ana la urid adha,” she whispered. Red crept close, sniffed her hand and face, and when she placed her palm on his snout, the rage in his eyes slowed.
Mira’s hand stayed against Red’s snout while the village shook around them. Every instinct told her that touching him was madness, but his breathing changed beneath her palm. It slowed from a boiling roar to a deep, uneven rumble. He smelled of mud, rope fibers, old blood, and the wild forest beyond the village. Mira thought of Fang standing between her and danger, and she wondered if all beasts carried a kind of truth that people often buried beneath words. Red’s eye rolled toward the captives, and several of them flinched, expecting him to turn on them. Mira shifted with him, keeping herself between his gaze and the frightened people. “La, la, hum laysa a’da,” she whispered, telling him they were not enemies. He did not know the meaning, but he knew the sound of her calm. For the briefest moment, the red monster breathed like something that could choose.

Fang faced the stern woman again through smoke and pain. The woman had taken a spear and charged, grief burning across her painted face. She leapt from a broken beam, spear aimed for Fang’s snout, and scraped the point across the dinosaur’s face. Fang snapped upward by instinct. Her jaws closed around the woman’s legs before the spear could drive deeper. She swung the body down once, then again, until the war cry was gone and the woman lay limp in the mud. There was no triumph in Fang, only injured breath and survival. Nearby Vikings stared in shock, and even Fang seemed to pause over the stillness she had made. Then arrows struck her shoulder and ribs, pulling her back into the living storm. She snarled and limped forward.

The painted boy saw his mother fall. The bow shook in his hands, then slipped as Spear hurled a warrior into the hut frame below him. The impact made the roof lurch, and the boy tumbled down onto a lower beam before dropping into the mud. He found a fallen sword too large for his arms and dragged it free. “Modir,” he whispered, the word breaking in his throat. Then he charged at Spear. Spear blocked the clumsy swing and shoved him back, but the boy rose again, crying and growling through the paint on his face. “Deyja, villimadr!” he screamed. More warriors closed around Spear, and the caveman fought them off one after another. The boy leapt onto Spear’s back, clawing at his face, scratching near his eye, and refusing to let go.

Pain and panic tore through Spear when the boy’s fingers raked across his eye. He grabbed the child by the tunic and flung him away without seeing the hidden rock near the broken hut. The boy struck it with a dull impact and lay still. The village noise pulled away from Spear for one terrible heartbeat. He stared at the child, chest heaving, sword hanging from his hand. Horror opened across his face. The girl with the sword, the woman with the baby, the warriors, the bears, the fallen mother, and now the still child all struck him at once. This fight had gone far beyond rescue. A spear scraped across his back and forced him into motion, but the wild hunger in his eyes had changed. He fought only to survive and to leave.

Spear saw Fang limping near Red and Mira, with captives huddled in the smoke behind them. Red stood close to Mira, wounded and tense, but not striking while her hand remained near his snout. Fang snapped at a rider who tried to stab her injured leg, then stumbled under another arrow. The village was closing around them from every side. Spear roared, cut through a shield, shoved a warrior aside, and ran toward Fang. He grabbed the scales along her neck and pulled himself onto her back. Fang growled at first, then recognized him beneath the blood and mud. Spear slapped her neck and pointed away from the village center. “Hrrh!! Hrrh!” he barked, then swung his arm toward Mira and Red. His grunts carried no words, but their meaning was clear. Leave, now, before the battle swallowed what was left of them.

Mira pushed the captives toward a narrow lane while Red
rumbled uncertainly beside her. “Imshu, yalla, ukhruju min huna!” she called, never using a name she did not know. Red looked from Spear to Fang, nostrils flaring, then back to Mira’s hand. She touched his snout once more and urged him forward. “Ta’al, ma’i,” she whispered. The Vikings closest to them hesitated, shocked by the sight of the wild man mounted on the wounded green beast and the freed woman guiding the red monster through smoke. One warrior lifted a spear and could not throw. “Hvat eru þau, menn eda skrimsli?” he whispered. Fang roared with Spear low on her back, and Red answered with a deeper roar. For one breath, the village held still.

The retreat was not clean. A warrior rushed after the captives, and Red swung his head toward him with violence already returning to his eyes. Mira slapped both hands against his snout before he lunged. “La, ma’i, ma’i,” she urged, pulling him back into the path beside her. Spear watched from Fang’s back and understood the danger of Red almost as much as the danger of the Vikings. If the red beast lost himself again, he would crush the very people they were trying to save. Fang limped ahead, then paused when Spear pointed for the others to pass first. The captives stumbled through the opening, eyes wide as they moved between the green dinosaur, the red tyrannosaur, and the burning hatred of the village behind them. For a heartbeat, enemies on both sides saw how strange the sight truly was. The freed woman led a monster by trust alone, while the wild man rode another through a storm of arrows.

Dawn rose pale above the cliffs as a strange red mist thickened around the huts. It moved low over the mud, curling around broken shields, fallen bodies, and bear tracks like blood-colored breath. Spear and Fang backed into it, vanishing piece by piece while the Vikings spread out to find them. “Finna þau, drepa dyrid, drepa manninn!” a warrior shouted. The mist swallowed confidence as quickly as it swallowed bodies. Spears pierced the haze from unseen hands, arrows hissed from roofs, and Fang limped forward with Spear pressed close against her neck. They tried to run through a gap beyond the last huts, but the ground ended suddenly at a cliff. Below stretched a vast body of water, cold and endless under the growing light. Stones fell from the edge into the waves, and Fang backed away with a wounded growl as voices closed behind them.

They turned back into the village because the sea below was too far and the warriors behind were too near. Arrows and spears came faster than Spear could count. One struck Fang’s side, another grazed Spear’s arm, and a spear shattered against a hut wall inches from his head. Fang crashed through a narrow lane, striking fences, posts, and half-broken walls as she ran. Spear pulled shafts from her hide when he could and threw them back into the red fog. A bear burst from the mist, and Spear leapt onto its neck, stabbing down until it reeled away, giving Fang room to move. The village seemed endless, every path opening into more weapons. Then Fang saw a cliffside staircase cut into the rock, wide enough for her wounded body. Spear pointed hard, and she lunged down the first steps as warriors shouted from above.

The descent was brutal. Fang’s injured leg struck stone wrong, and she nearly fell, but Spear threw his weight back and gripped her scales to keep them both from tumbling. Spears clattered around them, one snapping against her tail, another splintering the wooden rail. Vikings crowded the top of the stairs, firing arrows into the red mist as it followed them down like a curtain. The water grew louder with each turn. At the dock below, Mira waved from a large ship where Red lay half across the deck, exhausted and streaked with broken ropes. Captives crouched inside the vessel, hands on oars and ropes, too frightened to rest and too desperate to stop. “Huna! Yalla, al-safina!” Mira cried. Fang reached the dock with a heavy leap that cracked the boards. Spear slid down, snapped a spear near Mira’s feet, and drove Fang toward the ship.

The vessel groaned when Fang stepped aboard. Red lifted his head and rumbled, tired but alert, while captives scrambled to balance the shifting deck. Mira hacked at the first rope with a stolen blade. “Qatta’u al-hibal, idfa’u!” she ordered. Spear cut the last rope with his sword as arrows struck the dock, the sail, and the water around them. Red rose enough to roar at the warriors descending the stairs, and the nearest Vikings recoiled. Oars pushed, the current caught the hull, and the ship drifted away from the dock. Fang sank low, her wounded leg stretched awkwardly beneath her. Spear stood at the rear with the sword in his hand, daring anyone to leap after them. The red mist clung to the village as the ship moved into open water, carrying Mira, the captives, Spear, Fang, and Red away from the shore.

The ship moved slowly at first, and that slow distance felt like torture. A wounded Viking reached the end of the dock and tried to leap, but Red’s roar struck him back before his feet left the wood. Another threw a spear that landed short and bobbed uselessly in the waves. Mira helped a captive pull an oar into place, then pressed her shoulder beside theirs and pushed with what strength she had left. Fang’s breath came in hard, painful bursts on the deck, and Spear knelt long enough to break an arrow from her shoulder without driving it deeper. Red watched the shore with a rumble building low in his chest, but Mira touched his jaw again and the sound faded. “Khallas, khallas, imshi al-bahr,” she whispered, telling him it was done and the sea was carrying them. The village shrank behind the mist, but its screams seemed to follow over the water. No one on the ship felt victory. They felt only escape.

Far across the water, another ship passed through the morning haze with a scorpion symbol on its sail. At its center sat Harald, bulky, long-haired, long-bearded, with a scar over his right eye and the stillness of a man used to command. Beside him stood Eldar, his young adult son, long hair moving in the wind and a cold glare fixed on the cliffs ahead. Four enslaved strangers sat bound on board, taken from farther lands, wearing different clothes and different scars. Eldar lifted a horn and blew toward the village, announcing their return. The expected answer did not come. After a pause, a horn replied from the shore, strained and broken with distress. Harald rose from his seat, and the whole ship seemed to tighten around him. The rowers drove harder for the dock.

Clan members waited below the cliff, but no one cheered. They stood wounded, gray-faced, and marked by dried blood. Harald stepped onto the dock first, then Eldar, while the enslaved strangers remained watched on board. An older clan member bowed his head. “Harald, jarl minn, myrkr kom heim,” he said. Another looked at Eldar with grief in his eyes. “Eldar, thu matt vera sterkr,” he whispered. Harald asked who had done it, and the survivors spoke of a wild man, a woman, and two great beasts that attacked the village and nearly wiped out half their people. “Villimadr kom, kona med honum, tvau stor dyr,” one wounded warrior said. Harald touched the blood on the dock, saw the missing ship path in the water, and understood that those responsible had escaped.

Harald and Eldar climbed the cliff stairs through broken arrows, spear shafts, claw marks, and streaks of blood. At the top, the red mist thinned and revealed the village as a wound. A dismembered warrior lay in the lane, shield split beside him. Eldar stopped, turned away, and vomited into the mud, his cold mask broken by the sight. More bodies appeared as the mist rolled out, warriors and bears tangled among broken fences and crushed huts. Crows hopped along roofs. Flies gathered where the morning air sat still. Families knelt beside the dead, rocking, whispering names, and staring at wounds that words could not soften. Harald stood among it all, then one thought struck him. He ran to his hut, pulled the cloth aside, and found it empty.

Harald came out slowly at first, then moved faster through the lanes. He found the broken handle of his wife’s axe in the mud and dropped to one knee. His thumb passed over the worn grip where her hand had shaped the wood over years. “Rikka,” he called, his voice breaking before he could make it strong. No answer came. He stood and shouted for her again, then for his young son. “Bjørn! Son minn, hvar ertu?” The clan lowered their heads as he searched among broken beams, bodies, and shields. Then he saw Rikka lying in the churned mud. Harald stopped as if the ground had vanished, crossed the distance, and knelt beside her. His fingers touched her cold cheek. “Rikka min,” he whispered, and the chieftain folded over his wife.
Harald held Rikka tightly, as if warmth might return if his arms remembered enough of her. Her painted face was pale, but even in death she was precious to him. He pressed his face into her hair and shook without sound.

Then Eldar’s voice called from behind him. “Fadir,” he said. Harald lifted his head and saw his surviving son carrying Bjørn. The boy lay limp in Eldar’s arms, paint streaked across his small face. Eldar’s tears fell freely now, cutting through ash on his cheeks. “Eg fann hann, fadir,” he whispered, saying he had found him. Harald lowered Rikka gently and reached for his younger son’s brow. “Litli Bjørn minn,” he said. Eldar collapsed against him, and Harald held both sons, one living and one gone, while the remaining clan gathered around them in mourning.
For the survivors, Harald’s grief became permission to break. Men who had stood straight before him sank to their knees. Women who had held wounds closed with steady hands now covered their faces and sobbed. Elders began naming the dead in low voices, one after another, as if saying the names would keep the village from vanishing completely. Eldar held Bjørn tighter until Harald touched his arm and eased the grip. The younger man looked down, ashamed that even love could hurt the dead if held too hard. Harald rested his forehead against Eldar’s for a moment, father and son breathing the same bitter air. “Við erum enn her,” Harald whispered, telling him they were still here. The words were not comfort, only fact. Around them, the clan gathered broken pieces of its life from the mud and tried to make meaning from what remained.

The living buried the fallen in grass and stone huts that blended with the earth beyond the village. Bodies were wrapped in pale bandages and carried across wet grass by family, friends, and wounded hands. Inside the burial huts, carved shelves lined the walls, each one waiting to hold someone the red mist had taken. Warriors were placed with broken knives, charms, bear teeth, or pieces of armor. Children were given beads and small carved figures. Rikka and Bjørn were placed with special care, close together, her broken axe and his little bow laid beside them. Harald and Eldar touched the stone shelf one last time before stepping back. “Fridr yfir ykkur,” Harald murmured, wishing peace over them. Large stones were pushed across the entrances, sealing the huts so the dead could rest beneath grass, stone, and silence.

When the burial work ended, Harald and Eldar carried Rikka and Bjørn back down to the dock for the final farewell. A smaller funeral ship waited with dry wood, woven furs, carved charms, and oil-soaked kindling across its deck. Harald laid Rikka in the center, and Eldar placed Bjørn beside her. Their hands lingered, unwilling to let go. Before the ship was pushed away, Eldar turned to the scorpion vessel where the four enslaved strangers still sat bound. He took a key and unlocked their chains one by one. His glare remained cold, but there was no cruelty left for them that morning. “Farid,” he said. The freed people stared in fear, then stepped from the ship and vanished toward the rocks and grass. To the clan, slavery no longer mattered beside the dead.

The funeral ship drifted from the dock. Harald stood with a bow in his hand and a flaming arrow drawn against the string. Fire snapped around the arrowhead, eager for the dry wood carrying his wife and child. His arm was strong, but his hands began to tremble. He tried to force the shot through rage, yet tears blurred the ship until Rikka and Bjørn became pale shapes behind flame and water. The arrow dipped. “Ek get ekki,” he whispered. Eldar placed a hand on his shoulder and took the bow from him. “Fyrir modur. Fyrir Bjørn,” Eldar said, then released the arrow. It struck the ship and fire spread quickly over the wood. Smoke rose into the pale sky as the water carried their family away.

When Eldar freed the slaves, none of the four knew where to go. The shore behind the clan was strange, the cliffs were steep, and every face around them belonged to people who had been enemies only moments before. One older prisoner touched the opened shackle on his wrist as if it might close again by itself. Eldar did not soften, but he stepped aside and left a clear path. “Engin fjotur i dag,” he said, telling them there would be no chains today. The freed people moved together at first, then one by one they stepped onto the stones beyond the dock. A woman among them looked back at the funeral ship and bowed her head, understanding grief even if she hated the hands that once held her. Harald never looked at them. He had no room left for captives, pride, or plunder. The world had narrowed to flame, family, and the need to answer blood with blood.
Harald watched until grief hardened into something darker. It did not heal, and it did not leave him. It changed shape, closing around vengeance like iron cooling in the sea wind. He turned from the burning ship and looked at Eldar. With his own hands, he covered his son in the best armor the clan had left, fastening leather, iron, fur, and bone until the young man stood taller beneath the weight. Harald placed the helmet on Eldar’s head and stepped back. Around them, twenty of the clan’s strongest warriors came forward, each different in size, shape, age, scars, and weapons. Some carried spears, others axes, shields, bows, and hammers. Each had lost someone. “Vid forum yfir sae,” Harald declared, telling them they would cross the sea. Eldar nodded, cold again, with Bjørn’s small arrow tied to his belt.

They boarded the scorpion-marked ship as the rest of the clan gathered along the dock and shoreline. No one cheered. This was not a hunt for glory, but a wound sending its blood into the water. The twenty warriors took their places while Harald stood behind Eldar near the bow. The remaining people watched with hope and fear, holding children, bandages, charms, and pieces of the fallen. Someone called softly from the shore. “Hefnid þeirra,” avenge them. The words moved through the crowd like wind over dead grass. Harald did not turn back. The scorpion sail caught the morning wind, the oars struck the water, and the ship pulled away from the dock. Behind them, burial stones rested beneath grass and the funeral smoke faded into the sky. Ahead, across the vast water, waited the wild man, the freed woman, the wounded green beast, and the red monster who had broken their world.
The ship cut through the water while the village grew smaller behind it, yet Harald did not watch the distance close. He watched the horizon ahead, imagining the missing vessel, the woman guiding slaves, the wild man with the stolen sword, and the two great beasts his people had named as monsters. Eldar stood beside him in the armor of the dead and the living, his young face hidden beneath the helmet rim. The warriors around them sharpened blades, tightened straps, checked bowstrings, and sat in silence with their grief. No one spoke of fear. Fear had become useless once the funeral fire had taken Rikka and Bjørn from sight. The sea wind pulled at the scorpion sail and filled it like a dark lung. Behind them, the remaining clan stayed at the shore until the ship became a small mark on the water. Ahead, vengeance waited beyond the mist.

The dawn behind them did not feel clean. It showed the path of smoke over the water and the dark sail cutting forward. What waited beyond the horizon would not restore the dead or wash blood from the stones. Still, Harald’s ship moved on carrying armor, sorrow, and a promise that the red mist had not ended the story, only changed where it would bleed next.

Some things never change

Spear and Mira clips + Faye and Kratos’ convo in “God of War: Ragnarok” + “Parfum d’etoiles” by Ichiko Aoba = this edit

Welcome to Drucari: The Primal world

Aged Kamau & Amal

Spear & Fang vs The Distortus Rex by ArtzCass

This was truly what made me smile at the end of season 3.

I come here for one reason and one reason only.

Look what came in the mail today!

GOT IT TODAY....

Primal: The Red Mist Expanded Rewrite

[futuristicghost] Night of the living Spear

Following the animation trend 🦅

Spear and Fang

Season 3 episodes 8 thru 10 discourse felt like this:

What is bro looking at 🤨

Primal If Written By Gooseworx

New to the show!

Name your favorite Primal episode as a Dharr Man episode title and I'll try to guess it

Just finished s1 and yeah

Genndy Tartakovsky to Mount 'Conan the Barbarian' Animated Series for Cartoon Network Studios and Prime Video | Exclusive