Born to a mother who didn’t want him, Lundgren was given up as a foster child the minute she finished giving birth. His childhood was spent moving from family to family, fighting and generally causing problems wherever he went. In this time, he developed a love of boxing, a vent for his aggression. He was a big kid, and it would’ve caused problems otherwise. Eventually, during his time with a small family of good people, his adopted little brother became involved in gang activity, dragging Fremont along with him. The problem was that Fremont took to it like a fish back in water, and the leader of the group, guy named DJ, got jealous.

Lundgren and his little bro were sent to a drug deal, but little did they know DJ had already called in a tip to the cops. Fremont’s brother got away, but the buyer got nervous and pulled a gun, firing at the police. Lundgren fled, but was captured after a short pursuit, biting two fingers off an officer in the process.

With aggravated assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, the uninterested, state-appointed attorney, and his refusal to speak for the sake of his brother and friends back in the group, the court threw the book at Fremont. He was off to the nearest federal penitentiary while DJ sneered from his seat on the street, back to business as usual.

The first and most important lesson that Fremont ever got in prison was that no one was on his side. The moment he set foot in the yard, a local thug noticed his size and tried to recruit him to his own corner. Fremont told him to stick it where the sun didn’t shine. The guy took it personally.

A riot erupted that week, and in the chaos, it turned out that the thug from earlier had more than a few friends. A group of skinheads pinned the kid down, a knife carving half a Glasgow smile into his face for being mouthy before the guards managed to reinstate order. He spent the next two months in the medical ward, then got sent back to gen-pop. This time, he kept an eye out.

For the next two years, betrayed by those he thought closest to him, Fremont got the everloving shit kicked out of him. He continued to grow, eating and exercising like an absolute madman, fighting like a trapped wolf. He tried to discourage conflict. He tried to be more trouble than it was worth, take chunks out of the others in the yard, but... An unaffiliated inmate, no gang ties to retaliate? He might as well have had a target painted on his back. More than one group used him as a proving ground for new members.

If it was one-on-one, he could handle himself. The problem was that new inmates arrived in bus-loads, and they always smelled the blood in the water. He was terrified, trapped, and pinned in like an animal. His life was a fight to survive from dawn till dusk, eyes peeled for the next shank, the next boot in his head. Over time, Lundgren became intimately familiar with the medical ward, spending his time bouncing between iso and gen-pop, the yard and a stretcher. It was only a matter of time before he was killed or worse.

The stress got to him. He started doubting his own sanity, hearing the same, gravelly voice in his head, promising strength and threatening dismemberment. In his search for clarity, answers, weapons, he found himself in the library often. He combed through records, fiction, fact, anything he could find that was remotely similar to his situation. It didn’t do much to help with his mental health, and if the library was more closely monitored, it would later be noticed that a certain musty tome on Norse myth had gone missing around this time. It soon became apparent why.

Lundgren’s cellmate took note that the man would just stare out of the cell’s window at the moon for hours at night, growling at himself and mumbling under his breath when he wasn’t exercising. His wounds would ooze, his hair seemed to grow faster than it used to. He became more and more detached, cackling to himself when he thought no one was looking, throwing back raw meat from the kitchens when he had a shift. One night, the blonde woke up the cell block with a colossal, hair-raising howl out the window of his room. The guards arrived, telling him to shut up and sit down. The inmate smiled, sharpened teeth peeking out from behind the jagged scar on his jaw, an awful clarity in his eyes. With a voice like the grating of two massive stones, Fremont responded that it was a joke, and returned to bed. After all, a growing man needs his rest.

To put it simply, Lundgren had snapped. The pressure had been too much, but his situation was a familiar one to a monster from his family’s old country, and he could become a useful tool in an active location. Fenrir’s voice seeped into the inmate’s broken mind, filling the gaps with instinct and anger. He was pulled back together, but he wasn’t the same as he had been. The fear was gone, rage in its place. The sadness had left, but the betrayal remained. He was changed.

He hit a growth spurt. He grew a full head taller, all of his hard work finally coming to light as his muscles swelled and his chest flared. Lundgren’s shoulders fell back, a predator confidence lending power to his steps. All at once, the fights started swinging back in his favor. He took three men. Five. Ten. Over the course of his next eight years in the Pen, he hospitalized 32 other inmates. He would’ve been convicted for it, but the fact of the matter was that every time it was ruled self-defense. He never started the fights, just finished them. The worst part was that to an observer, he was playing with them. It was a game, with the flicker of sharpened teeth shining in the sunlight as he tossed his opponents like ragdolls. It swiftly became apparent that Fremont “Mad Dog” Lundgren was no man’s bitch, not anymore.

His life changed overnight. The library became his den and the yard his hunting grounds, daring someone to challenge him. He read voraciously, like a starving man. Anything he could unearth on the occult, anything that would explain his patron. The Wolf had told him so little but shown him much, and now he sought to learn. Though there was little that was of use, he found a sort of solidarity in the old myths. Heroes and monsters, figures larger than life. It all echoed his own life, and through the sliding of pages he found poetry, fiction. In the process, he became surprisingly well-read, picking up a small pack that he kept safe from the petty squabbles between gangs of the more hardened thugs.

Ten years after his imprisonment, a man came to visit him. The man claimed he worked for a group of similarly associated individuals, “Contractors” who had powers granted by divine beings. He said that there was a world beyond what the Mad Dog had seen, secrets in the night and monsters in the dark. The man wanted Lundgren to help his group, Soulflame, to combat the threats that faced humanity from the warring of petty Contractors. He could give the inmate his freedom, new territory, fresh air. Best of all, Lundgren would finally get answers on his patron, pantheons, and what the hell was actually going on in the world. The veil was going to be pulled back.

With a splitting grin, a spark flickered in the Mad Dog’s eye. “Where do I sign up?”