The Undead man laughed aloud and turned quite around in its jubilation.

“ALIVE! One is grateful for having been snatched from eternal exile in that other dimension that would have been like mortal death, from the life-sucking sword. Yet… to have lain here, waiting, handless and voiceless in the body of a son of the Great Serpent… for eighteen thousand years! Ah!”

Again he turned about, he who had been Cutha Atheldane, Druid of Norway and was now… someone else, some Thing else. His movements were quick and more sure now, animated by one of the strongest life-forces that had ever existed, one that had lived and trod the earth before Atlantis rose from the deeps, let alone sank.

“Cutha Atheldane am I, then!” And he laughed. Exultant, was the new Cutha Atheldane. He moved, he cried out his joy.

But he did not breathe.

“One hundred eighty centuries! Ah, Chaos that existed before all and will reign again, a hundred and eighty times a hundred years! But, a moment in eternity, aye-but what an eternity to have been held here by both stone and spell… and in a body with neither voice nor hands! And liberated…”

Cutha Atheldane, who was not Cutha Atheldane, broke off in a short laugh that would have raised the hackles of a dog and sent birds aflying.

“Ah I knew him, I recognized him at once, ere even he came floundering like a barbarian puppet down into my prison… to release me by slaying the serpent’s body that incarcerated me! I know ye for who ye were, not who ye are now! In any incarnation would I know thee, ancient enemy, barbarian king on a throne of fiery gems-a throne you usurped after slaying the noble lord who sat it!”

The voice trailed off like whispering leaves when the wind dies. When it commenced anew it was much lower, quiet now, and full of menace and deadly purpose.