by Matt Larkin
“I don’t torture animals before I eat them.”
Melinöe looked to him, perhaps curious at his sudden outburst. Hermod found himself disinclined to explain himself to the Mistwraith.
Without comment, his guide led him onward, up a slope and out of the ice warrens, into a chamber of stone. A tower, perhaps, for stairs led dramatically upward, disappearing into the darkness far above him.
It felt liked he’d walked for hours since leaving Hel’s throne room.
A speck on the vast tapestry that is the fortress …
A billowing cloud of mist, Melinöe drifted up the stairs with ease, and Hermod chased after her. His shoulder throbbed with pain, though he could feel the apple at work, using his pneuma to knit together the wound. Too, his throat hurt where the mara had half-crushed it. He’d have recovered more quickly with a good night’s sleep and a proper meal, though Odin had advised him to eat naught offered in the Otherworlds.
After twelve flights of stairs they came to a landing, a doorway that popped open for the Mistwraith. It led to an enclosed bridge from one tower to another, with great arching windows that let in the howling wind. The moment the door opened, a blast of cold surged over Hermod and chilled him to the bone. Inside the fortress, he could have frozen to death in his sleep, he imagined. Outside, and up at least a hundred feet in the air with naught to cut down on the bitter winds, it felt as though he might freeze solid mid-stride.
He hurried across, or tried, but Melinöe continued to drift along at a calm pace, and Hermod could not bypass her without wading through her own chilling mist. The Mistwraith tormented him, he suspected, but didn’t see how he could do aught about it save endure it silently.
So, shivering and in pain, he waddled across the sky bridge.
At the far end, the Mistwraith urged open another door, leading into a second tower. Actually, was the Mistwraith taking him on a circuitous route in a deliberate attempt to exhaust him? To confuse his sense of direction? Or was Hel’s fortress simply so sprawling it had become a maze incomprehensible to the living?
They went down one flight of stairs, then paused before yet another door. When Melinöe didn’t open it herself, Hermod grabbed the handle and eased it ajar so he could peer through. The room beyond was dark, lit only by a small, iced-over window, and even then, the eternal night of this world didn’t offer much illumination to begin with.
Hermod slipped inside.
Something in the back corner snarled, and he spun, hand going to Dainsleif’s hilt. A pair of gleaming red eyes rose from a crouch and took a faltering step in his direction. Her beautiful, golden hair had become threadbare, clumps of it sticking to her decaying scalp. The skin around one of her glowing eyes had rotted away, and the gleam came not from the orb itself, which was missing, but from a hollow within.
A raw, bloodless gash separated her throat, the edges peeling apart.
Hermod’s heart clenched in his chest. His breath caught, and he couldn’t form a word.
The draug—his daughter—lurched toward him, hand raised as if she intended to go for his throat. She paused a hairsbreadth from throttling him and cocked her head to the side. Perhaps shocked he had not retreated.
“What has she done to you?” His voice was a whimper, barely audible even to his own keen ears.
Kept her soul from fraying into pieces …
No. No, Hermod refused to look upon Hel transforming his daughter into a draug as a mercy.
Willful ignorance …? But truth, nonetheless, for naught of mercy survives the mist …
Hermod reached a trembling hand up to stroke Sif’s cheek. Her flesh was cold as ice, and clammy. “I’m so sorry …”
Sif touched a hand to the wound at her throat. Then she drew up the edge of her tattered shirt to reveal another decaying injury in her side. Where the Serk had first stabbed her, Hermod judged, though so much had rotted away, he could read little detail.
“It still hurts you?”
Her low growl seemed to fill the air with rage, and she nodded slowly.
The wounds would never heal. So they pained her, and would for as long as her soul held together. Most draugar—at least those that came to Midgard—possessed their own corpses. He didn’t know what happened to them when those bodies finally fell. But Sif … she had no body. She was just … a soul. Trapped in torment.
Her wounds … manifestations of a tormented mind …
Not real? But how to explain that? “I … I killed so many Serks hoping to offer you vengeance, hoping it would ease your suffering.” Her dark growl set the hairs on his neck on end, but he forced himself not to step back. “I’d have done aught imaginable to save you. Would have killed them all, even after Odin bid me stop, if I thought it might have spared you this. If I’d known … my precious daughter.”
“It wasn’t a Serk.” Her voice had gone hollow, and it wheezed through her rent throat, raspy and grating. Still, he dared to hope he heard some semblance of her true self beneath the pain.
“N-not a Serk? Who else would strike you down?”
Sif leaned in close to his face. So close he could smell the putrefaction of her skin and the rot on her breath. “Aunt. Sigyn.”
A rage had taken him and, despite all Keuthos’s imploring that he control himself, he had barely managed to bring it down to a simmer in the long walk back to Hel’s throne room. It boiled in his gut, fresh, as if Sif had died this very day rather than hundreds of years ago.
No, not died. Had been murdered.
For centuries, he’d believed his daughter taken from him in war. Murdered, yes, but murdered by enemies intent to eliminate a military threat. Not by … by Hermod’s own sister.
Foster sister.
Fuck. His parents had taken her in, made her part of their family. Raised her, sheltered her, loved her.
And this … this atrocity was the repayment for their kindness?
Sigyn had betrayed him in the worst possible way. And then she’d continued to converse with him, as if naught had happened, as if she was still his closest kin.
His feet threatened to give out beneath him on the threshold to Hel’s audience chamber. He slumped against the bone arch, forcing down a sudden clenching of his heart.
Sif.
She had endured torment the living could not imagine. Felt the pain of death in every moment for three centuries and more … much more, perhaps, depending on the flow of time so far from the Mortal Realm. Hel’s minions had tormented his daughter further, transformed her into that mockery of existence.
Melinöe paused in front of him, looking back in his direction, unspeaking, though Hermod could have sworn he felt mirth wafting off her, filling the cloud of mist she emanated with her joy at his despair.
Yes … Gaze unto infinity … and know you are a speck of dust … caught on the wind and swirled for the fleeting merriment of fathomless horrors …
No. No, Hermod might have seemed insignificant compared to the timeless entities that lurked beyond the Veil. He might have seemed thus, but he was a man. A husband. A father. And, unlike an animal, a man might be driven to motives beyond base instincts.
He pushed off the bone arch and strode toward Hel’s throne, forcing down his pain and his momentary despondency.
Few vaettir seemed to enjoy any reminder that they too had once been mere men and women. And yet, from all Hermod and Odin had learned, most were. Hel was. Loki’s daughter. She clawed her way from the abyss of death up, unto a throne from which she might terrorize all the worlds for eons.
But, in the end, her wretched soul had come from much the same stuff as his own.
“I want them back,” he said, when he at last came to rest before the steps leading to Hel’s perverse throne. “I want them both back.”
Hel drummed the rotting fingers of her left hand upon the exposed bone of her knee. “And yet, the trinkets you brought me would not buy release for even one soul.” She snickered, a hateful, wheezing sound, like the raspy voice of a draug. Li
ke Sif’s voice. “What is it you think I would do with bags of silver or gems? What value do such things hold in a world where trade comes in but two forms—pneuma or souls. Which would you give to me?”
“I will you give my pneuma, then.”
Now she leaned forward. “Surely, you know there are but two ways I could claim that. I could draw it out through enduring nights you would spend in my bed, as you poured life out with each loss of your seed. Or … I could devour your flesh, piece by piece, bringing you inside me another way.” Yes, as she leaned forward, he could almost have sworn that telltale flicker of red lurked behind her eyes. A kind of draug herself? She was, after all, half rotten.
Your mind treads dangerous paths … toward answers you might not welcome …
Hel chortled softly. “Either way, you’d be dead and welcomed into my embrace for eternity, while I would have gained hardly enough power to even notice it.”
“I am an Ás immortal.”
She turned over her decaying hand as if inspecting the spots where her skeleton poked through. “A man who has tasted the fruit of Yggdrasil would provide a feast of power to spirits of lesser magnitude. But I am an Elder Goddess. My power is already limitless.”
Lies. She was neither the Elder Goddess nor did her power exist without bounds. She’d fallen, defeated in the last era, even if the cost had been great. Odin held back so many things, but he had explained enough for Hermod to know Hel could be bested.
The delicious failing of supreme arrogance … Built up like a simmering feast … before your fall …
Keuthos could think as it wished. Hermod knew the truth, or enough of it.
“That leaves us,” Hel said, when it became clear Hermod wouldn’t answer, “but the option of devouring your soul, complete and entire. I could leave you a withered husk, unfit for the Wheel to spin up again, save perhaps as a worm. Condemned to lifetime after lifetime of meaningless, animal existence in an eternal quest to fortify your soul enough that it might take human form once more in some distant era. Is that what you would offer me?”
Yes. If that was what it took to restore Baldr and Sif. In so doing, he might save Midgard. If his very soul was the price of so many lives, then he would pay it. He had grown weary, either way.
He opened his mouth to admit it, to accept her offer, if offer it was, but she continued, almost as if talking to herself.
“Oh, hmm. But you have asked me to release two souls from their prisons here. And you, dear, little Hermod, have but one soul to offer, and one already tattered at that.”
No. She intended to make him choose between Baldr—whose restoration might save the world—and Sif. His beloved, precious daughter? Hermod worked his mouth, unable to form words. The impossible choice was a weight upon his chest, denying him breath. Crushing him to a pulp.
Yes … As it does us all … Choice … or the illusion thereof …
“I …”
“Suppose,” Hel said, “that I offer you an alternative bargain.”
“What?” His voice was a whisper now. Lightheadedness seized him and he swayed a little, unable to maintain his facade of strength a moment longer.
“Offer me sacrifices. Many, strong souls to feed upon. When you have granted me nine souls, I will free the two souls you so desperately seek after.”
Hermod’s throat hurt. He couldn’t swallow. “H-how do I know you speak the truth?”
“Pacts bind the living and the dead alike. Lying is one thing, little Hermod. But I would not break a bargain nor an oath. Surely, you know this.”
Melinöe seemed to melt up beside him, a bronze-bladed dagger held toward him in her outstretched hand.
“Nine sacrifices to feed me, and you’ll have the souls you wish. Or let all the world weep and still you shall not have any who have ever passed beyond my gates.”
Hermod set his jaw. And he closed his hand around the dagger’s hilt.
Part III
Year 399, Age of the Aesir
Winter
20
Thrudvangar had never seemed so confining. Oh, Thor hadn’t wanted to spend much time here since Sif died. The bright light and noise made the headaches worse, and he couldn’t stand to linger in the hall he’d once shared with his wife. But now, this place had become a fortress, a last bastion where more and more of the Aesir had begun to gather.
Now, he paced in his great hall, the motion sending tiny lances of pain through his ribs. Thor didn’t care. Pain meant he lived. Meant he’d be able to share more of the same with the jotunnar.
Thrúd had sent refugees here from all over.
She even reported on the continuing battle over the bridge to Yggdrasil.
That trollfucker Narfi knew he needed to claim the Tree. Maybe he knew about the Bilröst, maybe he just wanted the damn apples. Thor couldn’t let him get ahold of either.
Besides.
Besides … he owed that bastard pain. An ocean of torment to come crashing down on his head. Even that wouldn’t make up for what he’d done to Mother. Thor would kill him nine times if he could. Rip the fucker out of the gates of Hel just so he could throw him down there once more.
“I’m going to eradicate every last jotunn in Midgard and Utgard,” he grumbled.
A few of those gathered looked at him, but no one commented.
Well, except for Tyr, who rose from his seat and stalked over to where Thor paced. In the damn way.
“Move!” Thor bellowed.
“Need to calm your mind. Moment you could stand you were out here. Wearing out the floor.”
“I don’t give a troll’s rocky cock about the floor!”
“Not about the floor. About you, letting rage cloud your judgment.”
Thor grabbed the man’s tunic and shoved him aside so he could trudge past. “All I have is rage. All-consuming, crushing wrath. Enough to destroy their whole race.”
“Mist-madness.” And there Tyr was again, tromping along beside Thor like he’d asked for company. “All you’ll do is get yourself killed. You, and anyone who follows you. They are too many, just on Asgard. We have no idea what unfolds on Midgard. Have to focus on survival first.”
Thor spun on the other man, caught his shoulders, and flung him sideways, into a column. “I am your prince! I say what we focus on, you sniveling wretch! We focus on vengeance! They murdered our queen!”
Damn, but those spots were everywhere, flitting around the hall. A splitting headache started at his temples and built and built, expanding outward, like a fucking nail driven sideways into his brow.
“Already avenged her,” Tyr said. His voice was grating. “Need to think on what she’d want from you.”
Oh. Oh, he presumed to speak of what Mother would have wanted? Fuck him. Thor slammed his fist into Tyr’s face.
The thegn’s head snapped into the column with enough force to crack the wood. Roaring, Thor grabbed the man, hefted him over his head.
Drawing on the apple’s power blunted the growing pain in his ribs. Thor heaved Tyr, sending the man flying into a table. The thegn hit hard, rolled over, and groaned.
Wouldn’t daze him long. Thor needed to kill some fucking jotunnar. Oh. That was it. Tyr was half-jotunn, wasn’t he? Son of that trollfucker, Hymir.
Thor climbed onto the bench, straddled Tyr, and slammed his fist down into the man’s face. Again. And again. And again. Until the table split beneath them and they both crashed down to the floor.
The impact jarred him, sending another painful lance through his sides. But at least the spots had vanished. Pure rage helped with that. Snarling, Thor grabbed a goblet and bashed it against Tyr’s brow when the man tried to rise.
“You dare to fucking question me? My mother is dead! My mother is fucking dead!”
He reared back to bring the goblet down again, but someone caught his arm and hurled him aside. Thor spun through the air before crashing into a different table.
Mani. Vanr arse-lord had stones like a mammoth if he thought he could—
>
Several other men seized Thor’s arms and hauled him up. Aesir men, not even immortals.
Fools.
With a roar, Thor flung three men free from his right arm, then hurled loose those holding his left.
He stormed over to where Tyr was moaning, looking half-conscious, if that. Thor pointed a finger at the man. “If I say I’m going to wipe out the jotunnar, only thing you ask is how you can fucking help!” With a growl, he kicked a spilled bowl of broth over at the thegn, sloshing what remained of its contents onto the man’s trousers.
Then he spun and stormed from the hall.
He didn’t need these weak fuckers. All he needed was Mjölnir. That, and a bunch of skulls to crack.
Thor swept the mighty hammer at a tree. No lightning surged out from it, though the wood did splinter with a satisfying crunch. Hammer really had used up its power.
Well, it had fried Thrivaldi, so Thor would call that fair enough.
Even if he’d have preferred to shock Narfi with it.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he mumbled.
Oh, he’d have to satisfy himself with beating the bastard into gooey … uh … goo. Before Thor was done, he’d see every last bone in Narfi’s body broken. Only when the man knew unrivaled agony would Thor crush his skull and let his suffering end.
Then he’d go and kill all the other trollfucking jotunnar who dared to defile Asgard with their filthy hides.
With a grunt, he spit on the ground.
He stood on the lower slope of a mountain. Below him, where farmers had once raised crops in the valley, now lay a lagoon filled with sea jotunnar. Across, on the next peak, raged a fucking blizzard. And smoke still rose from dozens of raging fires across the island. Probably the other isle looked much the same.
The jotunnar had ravaged Asgard, maybe worse than this land had ever seen.