She couldn’t imagine any of those things. He was gone, and nothing she could do would change that. If she thought about him, she would only weep because there was nothing to think about except his ashes spread across the ocean of Asgard.
What she couldn’t figure out is why his parents hadn’t come in an attempt to save him or at least seek revenge for their son’s murder. Her only conclusion was they assumed the Ragnarok was upon them and they could not interfere. His and Garmr’s prophecy was well known. Many in the void, Asgard, and all other realms would be hiding, fleeing, or preparing to play the role they themselves inhabit for the end of days.
For a moment Scarlet entertained the notion. The seal was out in the open, and Tyr dead. Maybe it was time for them and not even leaving the void could alter their destinies once they’d been decided.
The palace loomed before them, and Scarlet realized Cloris had been clutching her arm, guiding her along, as she lost herself in her thoughts. She shook herself to the present and gently pulled her arm from Cloris’ grasp. Her friend gave her a small smile as they stepped up into the palace.
“I thought you’d be back,” Hel said from the throne room.
They entered as a group, the tension almost palpable.
“You have some things that belong to us,” Scarlet said, stepping forward to meet the intense gazes of the hellhounds as they circled their mistress.
Hel patted her arms and her upper thighs as if searching for something. “Oh? I don’t believe so.”
Scarlet curled her hands into fists ready to strike that way if need be. “You have my sword.”
Hel pulled the pen from beside her on the throne. “This ol’ thing? I thought it was nothing more than an ink pen. My hound must have been confused.”
Scarlet glared at her. “You already know how I feel about games.”
“Oh yes,” she mocked. “Apparently you lose at them too often and now you dislike them. But my dear, when you enter the realms of the gods you better learn to enjoy games because gods live for them. They live for anything that will make the day more exciting. Usually those stupid little humans work nicely, but I have found myself upping the ante lately with you dear ones.”
“What do you want me to say?” Scarlet asked opening her hands and turning around. “I don’t have any weapons. I’m not here to play your game. I ask for my property and the remains of my husband, nothing more.”
“What husband might that be?”
“My husband, Tyr. The man you viciously attacked with you mutts.”
The closest hellhound growled, and Scarlet lost control bending down to growl in his face. “You know what your punishment will be, dog? War.”
She grabbed his muzzle with her hands and looked into his black eyes before releasing him. Instantly he turned to his companion and bit its neck, and there it spread like a virus through the ranks of hounds. All save the one at Hel’s right hand. She held his collar and refused to allow him to enter the fray.
“You seem to be playing games too, my dear,” Hel said as she stood and dragged her hound along beside her. “Be still!” she shouted, and the animals stopped moving. Even in the throes of a fight, they all froze in place.
“That will need sorting later.” Hel waved it away as if it meant nothing. “Now, what were you saying about this husband?”
Scarlet crossed her arms under her breasts and stood her ground against the approaching woman. She towered over her easily, but Scarlet didn’t fear her because she had nothing else to lose.
That one touch of power surged under her skin begging to be used again, drawing her into its web of temptation. “I wouldn’t come closer, bitch, because if you get within touching distance of me, I’ll ruin your entire world. Hades may not have defeated you on his own before, but trust me, I can do it alone.”
“But only if you touch me? Hmm, that is a limited power,” Hel said stopping inches out of her reach.
Bianca stepped up. “She may need to touch you, but I don’t.”
Hel eyed her with a mix of apprehension and amusement. “I see you brought a child to fight beside you, how original.”
“I’m no child.” Bianca reached out to Hel and closed her fist. “I’m Conquest, and everything bows to my will.”
Hel dropped to her knees and clutched at her throat. After a moment Bianca released her. The goddess fell forward on her hands taking deep racking breaths.
“I forgot how good that felt.” Bianca shook out her hand. “Do I need to do it again?”
Hel rocked back and stood. Her faithful dog still by her side. “You come into my home and attack me?” She moved toward Bianca, but the girl put up her hand again. This time Hel stood battering an invisible wall.
“You thought because we don’t flaunt our powers, don’t abuse humans, or live in the void that somehow we are weak and useless. You forget that we are the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We bring on the end of days, even the end of your days,” Bianca said holding Hel back.
Scarlet sauntered forward. “With only two of us, we have ended your little game. Imagine the might of all of us united. Why, we might even be able to take back the Underworld and restore it to its rightful owner.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Hel struggled against the invisible prison Bianca created.
“Give us what we came for, and we will leave you in peace. But only if you leave us in peace. That being said, I don’t know what the All Father is going to do to you once he finds out you murdered Tyr.”
Bianca stepped up beside Scarlet, still blocking Hel from reaching her. “Hand over the pen,” she said very clearly, and Hel’s arm extended to drop it into Scarlet’s hand.
“Thank you for your cooperation.” Scarlet sneered. “We also need my husband’s remains.”
“What would you do if I fed them to my dogs?”
Scarlet felt her control slip at Hel’s proclamation before she shook herself back into the present. “You wouldn’t dare. If you deny a deity the chance at an afterlife, you doom yourself to the worst fates. You live here; you know what they are.”
Bianca locked eyes with Hel and shook her head. “No, she won’t reveal it, and I can’t steal truth from a person’s lips. It’s beyond me.”
Cloris approached and whispered in Scarlet’s ear. “Let’s get the sword home safely, and we will return for Tyr’s remains. I’ll go myself to the All Father and ask him to weigh in.”
Scarlet pursed her lips so a string of profanities didn’t escape. “Fine.”
Bianca lowered her arm but spoke clearly to Hel. “You will not follow us, you will not send your dogs, or what is left of them, to follow us. Is that clear? Nod if you understand.”
Hel nodded but not without spitting toward Bianca. “You will regret this, little pony. I’ll see to it personally.”
“Yeah...right,” Bianca said before turning and leading the group from the palace.
Once they cleared the gate however, Scarlet knew something wasn’t right. “This is not my sword.”
Bianca reached out and took it. “Nope, nothing.”
“Maybe I didn’t feel it while we were in the midst of all that. Or Hel somehow replicated our magic,” Scarlet said waving at the palace in general.
“Bianca, you lead the others home. Scarlet and I will return for her sword,” Cloris said, already walking back up the black stone steps.
Scarlet followed and found Hel in the middle of her throne room laughing.
“Didn’t get very far?” she asked sitting up and then standing.
Scarlet tossed the pen at her which Hel caught in mid-air and crunched in her hands before dropping the broken pieces to the ground. “Not losing your touch are you?”
“Give me my sword.” Scarlet tried to remain calm. This woman had mocked them, murdered her husband, and basically threatened everything she stood for. She wouldn’t be allowed to live long, and it would only be seconds if she kept toying with them.
“You want your sword, but I think there might be
something you would be more interested in.” Hel walked back to sit on her throne. She snapped her fingers and a figure in a hooded cloak came out from behind a curtain. Scarlet and Cloris turned to face it, unsure if this was another of the woman’s tricks or not.
“Remove your hood, darling,” Hel said. The figure stripped the cloak off letting it flutter to the floor.
Before her stood the broken and battered body of her husband Tyr. “How...?” Her mind skipped like a scratched record against a needle. “What is this? Another trick?”
“No trick, you left him here, half-dead. I just kept your garbage.”
Scarlet rushed over and lifted his chin to meet her eyes. “Baby, talk to me.”
He met her eyes, but they were not Tyr’s. They were empty, his body only a shell. She swung back to Cloris. “Where is he?”
Cloris closed her eyes and turned up her palms as if she were awaiting a summer rain. After a few moments she twitched and opened her eyes. “He is in Elysium, and yet his body remains here.”
Scarlet stalked up the dais toward Hel. “You’re one manipulative bitch. Give me my sword,” she said through clenched teeth. “If you don’t, I’ll set you on every deity within the realm until the All Father or Zeus or who-the-fuck-ever has to stretch forth his hand to stop you.”
Hel placed the sword in her hand but smiled. “You might be surprised in your journey, however, because Helheim has finally descended.”
“I should kill you now and save you the trouble of redecorating.”
Hel only smiled at her, and Scarlet found that the most unnerving about the whole situation.
“I’ll help you find him.” Cloris led the way out of the palace.
A faint sheen of ice coated the stone of the palace and a strange wall formed off in the distance. Scarlet hadn’t noticed it before because she hadn’t been looking for it. Finally the sound of the River Styxx grew louder whereas before it flowed softly along. They walked toward it and found it roiling with heavy white rapids as ice clung to it is shores.
“It is a new world order. Hades is officially gone from this place. He must have denounced something in himself when he was here so the realm finally recognized it had a new ruler. Maybe that is what Hel sought all along.”
“I can’t say. That woman is trickier than a certain snake we’ve heard about.” Scarlet looked around. “Which way to Elysium?”
Cloris pointed East, and they headed that way. The path before them stretched further than they could see, but the tread ground, the path clear from the tamped down Earth, led the way. They passed no errant souls wandering the plains or other areas.
“Aren’t there usually things out here?” Scarlet asked.
“Souls you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Occasionally there are, but not always.”
None of it felt right. She was on a quest to find and restore her husband’s soul. How much more old world could this situation get? They walked for what felt like hours before Scarlet spoke up. “Why have we been walking so long? Can’t you fly or something?”
Cloris laughed. “No, I can’t fly, but I can disappear and appear at will.”
“So, teleport.”
“We used too much power in the play with Bianca. I have a little left, but I want to save it in case it’s needed.”
“Never mind. So tell me, while we walk slowly along this path, what is up with you and Hades? I saw you guys kiss, but I have never seen you two be even remotely affectionate toward one another.”
Cloris didn’t immediately answer, and Scarlet worried she’d stepped over some sort of boundary she was meant to steer clear of.
“Well, it is sort of a long story.”
Scarlet gestured to the vast empty landscape before them. “We might have some time.”
“Well, Hades immediately hated me. As I could understand, he assumed I would be like Hel, yet another woman he was chained to and forced to obey. When I showed complete disinterest in him however, he took it as a personal affront to his looks.”
“Men, right?”
“Finally, he asked me why I was so unattached to him or how I couldn’t want to make him do things like Hel did.” Cloris shuddered and crossed her arms to warm herself before continuing. “I told him that I wasn’t unaffected, I just didn’t think surface beauty was everything. Of course then he assumed I thought him shallow. This went on for about a thousand years until he walked in on me in bed with a lover. After that he acted like I didn’t exist. When we finally came to Earth and he could sort of have a free will again, everything changed. We went from a strained, odd relationship to business partners and then to lovers. I don’t really know how it happened. It’s kind of recent but electrifying.”
Scarlet smiled at her friend’s happiness. “Maybe we will have another wedding soon; one you all can actually witness.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Scarlet grew hopeful. If her husband’s body remained alive, maybe they could restore his soul and take him home.
They stepped up onto a field of men fighting. They battled intently slamming armor against armor. The residents of the field were all men, and they all wore armor and battle dress from Roman attire all the way to modern ACU’s. Scarlet blinked trying to find Tyr. She did, after a while. He circled the edge of the field as if he monitored the group. She broke into a run at the sight of him.
“Tyr!” she yelled as she ran, but he didn’t look up. “Tyr!” She got within a few feet of him, and his eyes opened wide.
“Scarlet, is that you? I never hoped to find you here. How did you get here? Why do you look so ashy?” A look seized him, and he dropped to his knees in the dust, swirling it around. “You died, and I wasn’t there to help you.”
“Tyr, can you hear me? I’m not dead.”
He stared at her as if she were a ghost.
“Cloris, do something before I start having some sort of heart attack.”
Cloris approached and looked at him. “It is part of the Underworld. He sees you as a ghost or a figment of his imagination perhaps. He can’t hear you or touch you. He doesn’t realize that he’s dead.”
“How is that fair?”
“You know the saying, ‘Life isn’t fair.’ Well, neither is death.”
“Can’t you do something? I mean, you’re physically Death.”
“Yes, I’m Death, not life. He is already dead, what can I do?”
“How about ideas to fix him, got any of those?”
Cloris tapped her bottom lip in though. “Maybe one, but it’s not a good idea. It might actually be worse than him being dead?”
“And, what is that?”
“You see that wall over there. I think it’s Hel’s wall. It restores the dead to life, but they have no memories of how they came to be there. Everything will be wiped away from before he even found you again. To him, he will probably still be searching for you, or maybe you won’t exist to him at all.”
“So he would live, but we’d have to live without each other?”
Cloris nodded solemnly.
“Then he will live. Where is Jesus when you need him? He did this shit once, can’t he show us how it works?”
“I don’t think he frequents the Underworld.”
Scarlet stared at Tyr, still kneeling in the dust.
“How do we get him to the wall?”
“Try to lead him there. He might follow you thinking he’s following your soul.”
Scarlet crouched down and waved for him to follow her. Thankfully it worked, and he rose up, wiped his face with a grimy arm, and followed her toward the wall. Cloris trailed behind. When they got to the wall they found it made of stone and completely impenetrable.
“They really don’t want us to get through this thing?” She grasped the crevices between the stones.
“I can help, but only if you think it is what you want.” Cloris gave her a pointed look.
“Yes, please, help me.” Scarlet stared at Tyr who
kept glancing between her and the wall.
“Then say goodbye. This may be the last time you see him. He could get all his memory of you wiped or only a little. There is no way to know.”
Scarlet reached out to touch his face. A flash of memory. The first time she touched him in genuine love took her unawares. They’d been lying in his bed in Asgard, and he’d rolled over, naked as always, and whispered sweet things in Old Norse into her ear. Well, as far as she knew they were sweet, they sounded romantic, not bawdy. He’d pulled her close by her waist until he spooned her, and he’d kissed her neck, her cheeks, and even her eyelids as he spoke. It had seemed as if he almost spent that time worshipping her. She’d loved every second of it, and she’d pulled him to her lips, not to start sex but to show him exactly how she felt about him. To make him feel her love through that kiss. It was something she would never forget.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she blinked them away before Cloris could see. “I love you. You’re my heart and my world and there will never be another for me. I wish you happiness, even if it is not in my arms.”
He couldn’t hear her, but he could see her outstretched hand and knew she said something. “I love you,” he whispered.
“Goodbye.”
He disappeared with Cloris in a flash of light.
Chapter Twenty
TYR WOKE WITH THE worst headache of his life. He sat up in his bed in Asgard and stretched his arms over his head and then his fingers. It took a moment before it hit him. He had two arms, two hands, and ten fingers. He pulled them back down and stared at his hands. How in the hell had that happened? He tried to remember, to recall, what had taken place the previous night but there was nothing but an empty space and a scorching headache that promised to grow worse if he pressed it further.
He threw off the covers with his right hand, something he hadn’t done in so long he laughed out loud at the novelty of it. He swung his legs over the side and stood, but something caught under his foot. Tyr reached down and picked it up. It was brown elastic forged in a circle. He flipped it around and back and forth trying to figure out where it aome from. He had no reason to tie his hair at home. Even when he worked out, he used a thin rod to keep it away from his face.
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