Konall Bearsmasher surveyed the scene. The landscape in every direction was pink. This was not in anyway due to his niece, Cutie Bearhugger. It was the color that came when white snow mixed with red seal blood.

Konall wiped off his haxxor in a relatively clean patch and put it away. Spaz had already begun taking a hunting knife to the bodies. Spaz’s tiny hands allowed him to recover better quality hides and shave more meat from the bones.

Konall bagged body parts and put them on the sleigh. They would freeze in shape soon, and there were two dozen bodies that needed to be packaged up for later use. The cold made him move quickly, and the sleigh was soon loaded.

Konall’s turtle tamer mother had taught him to deal with animals a bit. She specialized in getting massive beasts with tons of muscle but little brains to do what she wanted. She claimed it was how she got along so well with Konall’s father. Konall had managed to work out an understanding with an abominable yak. It pulled his sleigh and he didn’t have Spaz light it on fire again.

As the sled plodded through the snow, laden with the spoils of hunting, Konall considered his actions.

Vikings didn’t have psychologists. They had no word for therapy, and if they did, it would probably be a swear word. When someone like Konall needed to fix his mind, he went on The Hunt. In this, the man removed himself from society, took only that which was strictly necessary for hunting. He traveled to the Isle of Blood, which was a frozen wasteland if you traveled more than a mile from the shore. This was a treacherous land that even the Vikings refused to settle. Seals used it as a refuge for their seal-clubbing enemies rarely came there.

Konall’s people believed that rage, hatred, fear, doubt, and all other negative emotions needed an outlet. When the proper channels weren’t available, or when they were insufficient, these thoughts piled up. This created what they called “faulty thinking,” a name that was fairly clever for a people who titled their justice system “the thing.” The Hunt took someone whose mind was suffering from faulty thinking out into the wilderness, where he could not affect anyone else. He found a landscape that was already so hostile that when he dumped his stress into it the change would scarcely be noted.

Each man continued The Hunt until he felt he was cured. This usually took two or three weeks. Ragnor the Butcher went on the longest hunt Konall knew of. Ragnor had sunk into madness and gone berserk in the middle of the afternoon, killing 13 people, mostly women and children. His hunt had lasted 2 months, 1 month to cure the madness and a second to deal with the realization of what he had done after his sanity returned.

He had explained it to Spaz, and the demon replied, “So basically, you beat up a bunch of animals until you feel better.” Spaz was good at summarizing.

Konall looked at the grave barrow he had dug. No person was buried there, just a black blade that glittered with a sickly, oily sheen, a blade that reached into a person’s mind and twisted it, corrupted it, destroyed everything good and amplified anything that had potential for evil.

Konall had tried to dismantle the sword with every fiber of his being, but nothing he knew of could so much as scratch it. An unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere guarded by cunning snow wolves and insidious wendigos would have to suffice for now.

He directed the sleigh to the shore, where his longboat was docked. It was time to go home. He had removed himself from the world long enough. He had finally shoved every last speck of corruption from his mind. He was now a righteous man. Okay, he tried not to kill people who didn’t have it coming when he was sober. That counted for something.

It didn't take long to pack his meager belongings, and he took off for home. Seaside town hadn't seen him for a while. A lot of skulls had gone uncracked while he was gone. Time to make up for lost time.