The forest of the Unclaimed North did not give up its treasures easily, but Eric Bloodstone was a man who spoke the language of the axe. The rhythmic thwack of his blade echoed across the ridgeline as he felled the ancient pines, harvesting the dense Timber needed for his next project. Beside him lay a pile of Fieldstones, heavy and cold, gathered from the frost-shattered slopes.
As he hauled a massive log toward his haven, a shadow burst from the undergrowth—a Great Boar, its tusks yellowed and sharp as daggers. Eric did not frot. He dropped the timber, his Shepherd's Club humming with the faint light of its runes. With a scholar's timing and a berserker's strength, he met the charge. A single, crushing blow to the skull ended the beast's fury.
Back within the safety of his stone halls, Eric set to work. He carefully flayed the boar, stretching the thick Boar Hide across his workbench. With a needle of bone and thread of sinew, he stitched a rugged pouch, but the true craft lay in the ink. He traced a complex Transmutation Circle upon the leather, followed by the folding geometry of a Spatial Rune. The air around the bag rippled like heat over a summer road; the pouch didn't grow larger, but the space within it deepened into an infinite pocket. He slid the fresh Pork and his heavy tools inside, the bag remaining as light as a feather.
Next came the heart of his intellectual pursuit: the Alchemy Workshop. Using the stones and copper he had refined, he constructed a Distillation Boiler. It was a complex web of coils and bubbling chambers, designed to break down the world into its base essences. Here, the Ghost-Cap Mushrooms and the Turquoise Crystals would finally reveal their secrets.
However, Eric was no longer alone in the silence of the mountains.
In the hidden Elven settlements that dotted the northern valleys, whispers were traveling like wildfire. The Aen Seidhe scouts spoke of a "Muscular Ghost" haunting the Dragon Mountains. They described a man clad in strange, orange-tinted armor that caught the sun like fire. They spoke of a "house" that was little more than a wooden shell—a decoy that defied their logic.
"He hunts the boar and the wolf," one scout reported to the Elders, "but he also spends hours snaring the rabbit. Why would a giant waste his strength on such small prey?"
To the Elves, who lived in harmony with the woods, this stranger was a riddle. He was a warrior who moved like a predator, yet he built machines of logic and science. Curiosity, tinged with the fear of the unknown, finally tipped the scales. A circle of elven rangers was dispatched to the limestone shelf. They did not come for war—not yet—but to investigate the man who was building a kingdom in the dirt.
******
The sun dipped below the jagged peaks, bleeding crimson into the snow before the true North claimed its indigo crown. For Eric, the night was not a time for rest; it was the scholar's hour. He stepped out of his timber-shell gate, his Mind's Eye wide and pulsing.
He moved through the undergrowth with a silent, heavy grace, gathering the mundane ingredients first: the sweet-scented Honeysuckle, clusters of Hop, fallen Acorns, and the hardy Clovers and Dandelions that clung to the frozen earth. But these were merely the base. He needed the catalysts of Niffelheim.
Under the silver moonlight, he found them. To the naked eye, the patches of moss were empty. But to Eric's spirit-sight, the ground erupted in spectral light. He knelt to harvest the Boletus, its cap shimmering like polished obsidian, and then the rarest of all—the Lava Mushroom, which pulsed with a subterranean heat that melted the frost around its stem.
"Two of each," he rumbled, his voice a low vibration. "The essence is pure."
Behind him, hidden in the ancient pines, three Aen Seidhe scouts froze. Their cloaks were woven with elven magic to blend with the bark and shadow, and their breathing was as shallow as the wind. They watched in silent confusion as the giant man "picked" at thin air, his fingers closing around invisible treasures.
Eric began his trek back to the limestone shelf. He didn't look back, but his ears—honed by a lifetime of Berserker instincts—tracked the soft crunch of snow fifty paces behind him. He reached the heavy timber doors of his surface-castle and paused, his hand on the copper-reinforced latch.
"You can come out now," Eric said, his voice echoing off the rock face. "Your cloaks are fine craft, but your heartbeats are as loud as war drums in this silence."
The shadows stirred. The Elves stepped into the moonlight, their bows unstrung but their hands close to their blades. Their leader, an elf with eyes the color of winter ice, looked at the muscular man in his strange copper armor with a mixture of awe and suspicion.
Eric didn't reach for his club. Instead, he pushed the heavy door open, revealing the warm, flickering orange light of the stairs leading down. He stepped inside but left the way clear.
"Come," Eric commanded, not as a tyrant, but as a host. "Close the door behind you. The wind is biting, and the tea is better shared than drank alone."
One by one, the elves descended into the earth, their boots clicking on the stone stairs. As the heavy door thudded shut, sealing them away from the world above, they gasped. They had expected a cave; they found a sanctuary.