by Matt Larkin
Lances of ice shot through her arm as if the cold darkness from the Mistwraith was struggling to take her too. Growling, Sif snared Melinöe’s chin and craned it up, exposing its neck. And then Sif leaned in and bit, her draug fangs rending spectral flesh. Gnashing, gnawing deeper. Wanting to care what Thor and Father thought of her, but not quite able to make herself stop and ponder it.
She ripped a chunk of the wraith’s neck out, slurping down bits of its soul in the process. Icy blood dribbled down her chin, freezing and painful and glorious. Melinöe gurgled, stunned. Weak.
Weak enough … Sif leaned in toward the wound and sucked. Not with her mouth, but rather, with her will. The energies of Melinöe’s wretched soul writhed inside the wraith’s spectral form. Writhed and twisted and … flowed out, into Sif. Slowly, at first, a trickle of delicious sustenance more powerful than consuming mere pneuma, though some of it certainly converted to that, reinforcing Sif’s own form.
But something deeper, too, flowed into her. Something ancient, thick with experience, and fortified by having consumed so very many souls herself.
In her mind, Melinöe screamed. The soul denied this was possible, tried to protest that no mere draug shade could overcome its power and consume its soul. This abomination that had existed for more ages than Sif could fathom … Slowly Melinöe went down, then more quickly, until its essence became a torrent that flooded into Sif. It crashed down deeper and deeper inside her, seeping into every limb, every finger, every toe. A soul, knitting and folding itself inside Sif, becoming a part of her and making her stronger. More than she ever was before.
Melinöe crumbled, armor rusting away into flakes, form dissolving into mist.
The wraith had traded her soul for power long ago. And now, some small portion of that power had passed into Sif. Some fragment of Melinöe’s memories—hateful, dark, twisted things, missing the moments of joy a soul ought to have had—they burrowed into Sif’s mind, becoming a part of herself.
An echo of Melinöe bubbled deep inside Sif, a shadow that, were she not careful, might try to assert itself before finally fading away into darkness.
Gasping, Sif craned her head back and chuckled. Wiped her mouth.
And finally, turned to see Thor and Father staring at her. The looks of horror on their faces were further blows on her wretched body. Sif, though, had endured innumerable torments at the hands of Hel’s minions. What was one more torture?
Thor lunged at her and she caught his shoulder, even as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Forgive me!”
On the verge of flinging him off of her, Sif hesitated. Forgive?
“Forgive me!” Thor panted. “F-forgive … I’m so sorry for what happened to you … I never, never meant …”
Forgive? It was not a word Sif had heard in Niflheim. It sounded alien, as foreign as the fathomless entities that dwelt in the darkness between the worlds. Incomprehensible to the dead.
But …
Father, too, wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
Forgive …?
“We’re here now,” Father said. “We’re here, my precious child.”
And then Mother was too, her beautiful, scarred face staring down a mere moment, lip trembling, before she joined in the pile of their embrace.
So much warmth.
She could not speak.
“Hel has gone,” Sif said, when the others had gathered round her. The Queen of Mist had left the better portion of her forces here, and Odin and his army had broken them. Destroyed or scattered the defenders and claimed at least the outside of the fortress.
No doubt, within, chaos reigned, as the remnants of those loyal to Hel struggled for control, both against each other, and against the prisoners that had begun to break loose. The countless multitudes of the damned—many of which already flowed from the fortress, fleeing, while Odin had ordered all to let them pass.
Odin had lost more than half his army, Sif judged, and the rest were worn ragged.
Poor, legless Tyr, who had crawled his way over to her just to see her, and now sat by her side.
“She left not so very long ago,” Sif said, “and I didn’t know to where until now.” Until she had gleaned it from pieces of Melinöe’s twisted memory.
Thor squeezed her shoulder. The man had not taken his hand off her in an hour, as if afraid she might fade away and vanish like so many of the dissipated souls of these einherjar.
Sif offered him a nod. She could not mimic gentleness or grace any longer, but … she did not wish him to remove the hand, either. And it had pleased her to learn Thrúd was not among the einherjar army. That meant—though she would have liked to have seen their daughter again—that she must still live. A comfort.
“Hel left Melinöe in charge here and took with her a small contingent of those most loyal and made for Naströnd. Melinöe was ordered to hold back any assault on the gates of Hel while she was away. I do not know to what end she would seek the corpse shore.”
Odin folded his hands over his chest and shut his eye, then shuddered. “The roots of Yggdrasil imprison Nidhogg there, in Naströnd, at the same time serving as a capstone to a greater abyss of darkness. If Hel were to somehow aid in the dark dragon’s escape, Nidhogg might bring down the entire World Tree.”
Father—he stood beside Mother, both had not left Sif’s side, either—he cleared his throat. “You’re saying … Hel would rather destroy the cosmos than allow you to defeat her? Would not such a victory be rendered meaningless to her?”
Odin blew out a breath and fixed Father with a hard gaze. “After eons trapped in Niflheim, sustained and empowered by its poison vapors, I think we can safely assume Hel has become the epitome of mist-madness. I … I pushed her to utter desperation by showing her I would not allow her another chance to claim the Mortal Realm. She knew I would come here and try to destroy her forever, and this is her answer.”
Father groaned and scrubbed a hand over his beard. “I can take us to Naströnd, but she already has a head start.”
Odin glanced toward Tyr, seeming about to say something. “Unfortunately, we cannot afford to delay. Make ready to move. It is no longer the fate of our world we fight for, but rather, the fate of all worlds.” With that, the king moved to Tyr’s side, whispering something in his ear.
Sif looked to her father, then to her mother. How strange. After lifetimes of torment and utter loneliness, she was reunited with those she … The word froze in her mind. Like she could almost think it, but some force—her own nature, this hateful world, or what had been done to her—denied even the realization of the thought.
It left with her but a single option. If she could not say nor even think the word, still she might express it. “I’ll go with you. To the end. To whatever end.”
33
The einherjar procession was hardly what it had been coming into Niflheim. Now, Hermod led them through some secret way, back to Naströnd, which he said he had come through in his escape from Niflheim the first time.
Freyja did not much relish the thought of seeing the corpse shore. Not that she’d particularly wished to see Niflheim, but, from all Odin had said, Naströnd was the darkest, most horrific place in creation. It was a pit of decay, rotting away at Yggdrasil, seeming to rest beneath the World Tree, and if aught lay beneath Naströnd, Freyja did not wish to know of it.
Odin and Hermod had both passed through the corpse shore, and both survived, albeit by fleeing the dark dragon Od now thought Hel might release. Long ago, Mundilfari had raved about predators out in the darkness, terrified and driven mad by them.
Freyja, though, had asked why, if Thor had killed even mighty Jörmungandr, their army could not slay Nidhogg. Indeed, Thor himself had seized upon the question, until both Odin and Hermod had talked him down. They lacked the power of Mjölnir now, Od had pointed out. And Hermod had warned that while Jörmungandr was perhaps larger, Nidhogg’s power seemed to run deeper.
“Imagine what a monstrosity it must be, that it took a c
age of the World Tree’s roots to bind it. That the channeled power of Yggdrasil barely contains the dragon, and even now, that fell serpent gnaws upon the roots of creation, causing the Tree to shudder.”
Odin’s words had given Freyja a chill, though not half so badly as what her lover had said next.
“The web of urd has created a cycle of eschatons, the Wheel of History, if you will, which serves up chaos and souls as offerings to this abomination. Even the Wheel of Life, reincarnating our souls, effectively perpetuates this feast. If all of history is, in effect, supplication to this creature and the primordial darkness it represents, is it not then the very antithesis of life? While Jörmungandr grew vast beyond measure and was thick with poisonous eitr, have you considered where the serpent first came from? Might it not have been of the brood of Nidhogg, which itself seems spawned from Ginnungagap?”
Thor, Freyja strongly suspected, had not the first clue about what Odin was saying and had answered only with a grunt.
No, it seemed, they could not afford to attempt to fight Nidhogg itself. Not when the stakes of losing were the dissolution of the cosmos and when they, in truth, had no way of judging the source or extent of the dragon’s power.
Instead, they now went there to fight Hel who, in effect, had already killed most of them once. Or more than once, perhaps, given that so many had fallen outside Hel’s gates. Her own brother had sustained an injury to his left arm, rendering it a dangling mess he’d never use again, though he had waved off Freyja’s ministrations.
They had lost Róta, and without the valkyrie, Sigurd struggled to hold together his already dwindling band of einherjar. He had bemoaned the loss of a brother, Hamund, and Od had taken that hard. Not half so hard as the loss of Tyr, though.
Freyja walked by her lover’s side now, while they passed through an ice cave. His neck bore the hideous signs of his end at Fenrir’s hands—a gaping red wound in his neck, flesh torn to shreds, exposing the back of his spine. Even that revealed broken, crushed bones, marks of the varulf’s ferocity.
And Freyja had no idea what to say to Odin about the pain. For he must relive that injury every moment, even as Freyja continually felt her own death at Od’s hands.
Einherjar marched ahead of them, and other bands behind, but for the moment, they were alone. Not that she truly believed them out of earshot from the nearest warriors, but rather, this place seemed to enhance the sense of isolation. She would have to choose to take that as a boon and accept that, in the last walk—perhaps the last moments any of them had remaining—she was alone with him, in a world of their own.
How fervently he had begged her forgiveness for striking her down. But the truth was, he had released her from the torment and depredations Hel visited upon her. While the darkness of death hardly appealed, even the shadows of the Penumbra were better than being a prisoner in her own flesh. And Freyja would gladly visit pain upon Hel for what she’d done to her.
To them.
No, Freyja had not held it against poor Od, and, in time, he’d come to see that.
Now, his fingers tickled hers, brushing against them, while they kept a swift pace. Maybe they all dreaded what lay ahead as much as she did, but Odin had forced them to move with haste, warning that Hel now imperiled all creation. The madness of it all was almost too much to handle, and so Freyja preferred not to dwell on either their destination, or what might happen if they failed.
Instead, she cast frequent sidelong glances at Odin.
The Art had viciously aged his body, and he’d spent so long like that, even his self-image here resembled an old man. Worse still, Freyja could see the darkness eating away at his insides. She’d felt it, trying to transform her, and she’d had the benefit of having been altered by the Sun of Alfheim. Else, perhaps she too would have undergone a transmutation, becoming a wraith, as Odin himself clearly was, though he fought it off with wild fervor.
“Can you hold yourself together?” she asked.
Odin nodded, clearly not needing to ask what she meant. It tormented him, but then, maybe they each had their own torments to bear. Freyja had to admire his courage and tenacity, refusing to give in, even as the corruption devoured his soul and remade him.
“There are so very many things I wish …” she said. “I wish urd had granted us more time in life, in the world. It seems like every moment we should have shared was torn away from us by … war … and fathomless separation. By the gulf between worlds and later, even between ages. You’ve been through things I cannot well imagine. What I did imagine, though … I imagined us, sitting, quiet, watching the sun set as we did on Vanaheim, so long ago. Why could we not have had more days like that?”
“Urd is …” Odin sighed. Shook his head. “Urd is merciless. Cruel, even, but I have begun to believe it necessary. There are so many things I would have changed, given the chance, but now, at the end, I fear we never could have had that chance.”
“So we were meant to be forever torn apart from one another?”
“Torn apart. Reunited. Drawn, forever to one another, by forces more powerful than even fate or death. The Norns have their web, yes, and maybe we cannot escape it. But even that web could not hold us apart forever. This will not be the last time I hold your hand. I swear it, Freyja. Whatever happens, I’ll see you again.”
She sighed. “Easy for you to say when you believe so completely in this Wheel of Life, thinking that we might be born again. But since I won’t know you, or know myself even, know the things I’ve been through, how does it matter to me? The person I am now will be gone.”
“Never. You’ll be in there, my love.”
She groaned. Oh, how she wished she could just believe him. Certainly, his convictions seemed beyond religious belief, transitioning even unto knowledge. Something he claimed he had himself seen. Much as Freyja found it hard to credit, she had no doubt he believed his words.
“Well,” she finally said. “Either way, whatever happens, at least we have this time together.”
“Walking through the frozen wastes of Niflheim, about to face a force of entropy beyond comprehension.”
“Ugh. Sure. But at least you’re not hungry.”
“I’ve had my throat torn out.”
Freyja allowed herself a slight smile. “Which is why it’s good you’re not hungry.”
Now, Od cast her a sidelong glance, as if to ask what she had been drinking. She remembered days long gone, in Vanaheim, experimenting with smoking various herbs and extracts, trying to enhance her perception of the Otherworlds. And now … now here she was treading among one such world, well beyond the shadows of the Penumbra she’d hoped to look through. No, never in all her studies of arcana had Freyja desired to see Niflheim.
“We always think of the dead as being without warmth.”
Odin grunted in answer.
“So, if I’m cold by nature now, why should I suffer from the cold, Od? Why does the chill of this place still torment me? I keep trying to imagine the warm beaches on the shores of Vanaheim, and I can’t quite picture them, much less feel the heat of the sand between my toes. I spent ten thousand summer nights walking barefoot on those shores, and I cannot remember what it felt like now.” Was that the Lethe, stripping away her memories, stealing her joys?
Odin’s sad glance told her that it was.
“No matter what we do at Naströnd, win or lose, there’s no future for us. At best we fade away, losing our memories …” And naught could seem more horrifying to her. Despite Odin’s protestations of an eternal soul, Freyja could not see defining the self as aught other than an uninterrupted chain of memories. Take them all away, and the person who remained would be a new person, forming new memories.
“Given the choice,” Odin said, “I would not spend our last moments in this life embroiled in such musings, my love.”
“When shall we talk of them, then?”
Odin wheezed, a laugh, perhaps, though his mauled throat made it sound dire. “We’ll talk of them when next we
walk on warm beaches and revel in the setting sun. We’ll think of who and what we are, debating long into the night when no mist obscures the stars.”
Despite the ever-present cold, Freyja almost felt warmth now, at his words. For one perfect instant, she could feel those sweet sands upon her feet again. A memory to hold on to, until the very end.
34
Andalus, what remained of it, was worse than Idunn had ever feared. A land of ash and volcanic waste. The sky was darkened now, not by eclipse or mist, but by smoke and clouds of dust. The once green hills were now mountains of cinder, stripped clean of even the faintest sign of life.
The sight had broken something in Idunn’s mother, and now she walked as if in a daze. Mother had laid her hopes on the idea that Surtr would ally himself with the Serks. Perhaps, had it been a lesser jinni, that might have held true.
But Surtr, they had come to learn, held himself as the firstborn son of Muspel, the first flame to grace the Mortal Realm. The Fire prince thought it his due to burn down the world that it might be rebuilt clean from the ashes, and ruled over by the eldjotunnar who he thought his own children.
Whole villages were blown away in clouds of flame, caught in conflagrations, or inundated with lava. Streams of molten rock ran down the mountains and cut like incandescent serpents through the valleys.
And the only cities Idunn had seen spared were those where the residents had offered up sacrifices by the thousands to the flames. They hung the smoldering bodies of criminals from the city walls in brutal executions. They burned their slaves in screaming effigies upon those same walls, and the screams had gone on and on, as more and more were led to the slaughter. When they ran out of slaves, they burned lower classes, any they found huddled in poverty, starving, or poor. Next came the menial workers and craftsmen they had so long relied upon, any who lacked a caliph as a patron, and even some who had such prestigious friends. When they ran of out those, they ignited their beloved horses.