by Eva Chase
“Well, well, well,” Loki said, swiveling. “What have we here?”
The dark ragged walls of an immense cavern rose around us. Only a faint pulsing light gleamed over us from glowing patches of red in the ceiling high above. It all appeared to be a natural solid structure except for the wall to my right, where boulders jumbled against each other as if a landslide had covered the entrance.
Ari scrambled for her clothes. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes shone with determination rather than desire now. “We did it,” she said. “We broke through.”
I yanked up my pants and fastened my belt with a jerk. Mjolnir lay near my feet as if I’d set it down here and not in the room that had appeared as Odin’s tower. I snatched it up with a preparatory swing.
“What is this place?”
“I smell ash,” Hod said, his head cocked. “And sulfur.”
“From that and the looks of the place, I’d say we’ve found ourselves in Muspelheim.” Loki nodded to Ari. “The realm of fire. Not much lives here, at least not much we’d like to meet.”
“This is the place I saw when I got into fragments of some of Muninn’s memories,” the valkyrie said. She extended her wings from her back with a burst of wind. The silver-white feathers glinted starkly in the ruddy light. Her jaw tightened. “Odin was here then, and he’s still here now. I can feel him. That way.” She pointed to the rockslide wall.
Freya brandished her sword. “Let’s go before Muninn and whoever else she has on her side realize we’ve escaped.”
The thought of my father brought back the conversation Loki had shown us in Odin’s tower. The way the Allfather had spoken to the trickster… Could he really have wanted Loki to do all the things he had? To bring down all of Asgard? And not just wanted that, but forced Loki to keep up the role despite his protests.
The scene had felt true, and its veracity left a queasy sensation in my gut. But we weren’t going to find any answers until we had the real Odin with us again. No matter what he’d done in the past, Muninn and the dark elves needed to fall right now for their many crimes.
I gripped the handle of my hammer hard. “I can clear the way.”
I charged at the wall, the ground shuddering beneath my feet, and flung Mjolnir with all my strength. The hammer slammed into the mass of rock and blasted straight through it. Chunks of stone rained down on the cavern floor, and more of that reddish light flowed in through the hole, beckoning us.
Mjolnir flew back to my hand. I whipped it out again, smashing more of the rubble into pebbles. The higher boulders tumbled down and cracked open on the ground. With one last hurl, I shattered a clear path through the avalanche.
We rushed forward, Ari and Freya with their blades at the ready, Hod’s shadows snaking around him. The six of us burst out onto a rocky plain overlooking a thick river of magma. A mountain rose on the other side of it, blocking off most of our view. Heat wafted up, drawing a layer of fresh sweat across my skin, for much less pleasurable reasons. My muscles tensed as I scanned the landscape.
“Can you still sense Odin?” Baldur asked Ari.
She turned slowly, her wings fluttering as if testing the air. Her forehead furrowed.
“Somewhere that way,” she said, motioning toward the mountain with a frown. “I saw… He was in a cave, behind a waterfall of magma. If we can find that…”
Loki was already springing into the air. He strode up toward the sky with swift steps that covered a vast stretch in an instant. I was ashamed to find that even now, after everything he’d shown us, suspicion jabbed my gut—that he might be running off on his own, abandoning us.
If that scene had been true, then he’d never really been against us at all. He’d let us hate him to spare us pain. And I’d never even seen it. I’d have to be a better friend now.
High above us, the trickster’s eyes narrowed with a flash. He glided back down at full speed.
“I see the place,” he called. “Just beyond that ridge. Are we ready to fight?”
Freya brandished her sword. “Never more.”
Hod was already collecting his shadows into a plane beneath his feet. Beside him, Baldur gleamed with his bright magic. Ari stretched her wings in anticipation.
“Whatever they’ve got waiting for us, it can’t be worse than what we’ve already beaten,” she said. “We’ll get to him this time.”
All the battling I’d done in Muninn’s prison had left me sore, but a surge of exhilaration ran through me. My fingers tightened around Mjolnir’s handle. I had real enemies to fight here. Real enemies to destroy on our way to the Allfather. We would see him properly home this time.
For just a second, as the battle fury trickled through my thoughts, some part of me hesitated. A flicker of that more distant shame touched me. My gaze slid to Ari.
She smiled at me, her eyes as fierce and bright as the resolve inside me. Not a shred of fear or judgment in them.
“I think it’s time to let that rage out,” she said.
A different sort of pleasure rang through my nerves. Yes. I could be gentle, but I was a warrior too. And I’d never been more glad of that fact. Muninn and the rest would regret every bit of pain they’d dealt to me and mine.
With a battle cry, I leapt forward, letting the power of my fury carry me into the air after Loki.
25
Aria
The hot wind buffeted my wings as I propelled myself through the air. Who knew how much time we had, what other tricks Muninn and her allies might have planned? The sulfur stink filled my nose, but I kept my flaps strong and even. Rocky ground slipped by beneath me, but the dark craggy mountain ahead of us still seemed too far away.
“Is there anything I need to know about Muspelheim?” I called to the gods around me. For all my valkyrie powers, I was going to be the weakest link in this fight, and I was coming to it way too unprepared. I didn’t want to make a mistake that screwed us over.
“There isn’t much to the place beyond what you can see for yourself,” Loki said, slowing his pace to fall in beside me. The wind rippled through his hair. He could have raced all the way to Odin’s cage in a few minutes on his supernaturally enhanced shoes, I suspected, but trying to take on the rescue all by himself probably wasn’t the wisest. “Harsh terrain, not much for sustenance. Home to rock dragons and stone spiders and not much else. Not anywhere we’d have thought to come looking.”
“Why would the dark elves have brought Odin here?”
“So we wouldn’t find him,” Freya suggested. “You’d already tracked him to their realm. They knew we’d come there looking again.”
“All the realms are connected by gates here and there,” Hod said behind me. He’d be navigating from the sounds of the rest of our bodies in flight. “If they had a convenient gate, it wouldn’t have taken much effort to send a force through it with him.”
“I hate to think what they must have done to him that he couldn’t escape, even when they had to move him to a new prison,” Baldur said.
My memories of Odin, via Muninn’s memories, trickled up through my mind. “I think they’ve had him a long time,” I said. “You said he’s been gone twice as long as ever before, right? That’s, like, decades? When I saw him, from Muninn’s eyes… he looked pretty beaten down.”
“The Allfather can withstand more than any elf could deal out,” Thor said gruffly, but his expression had darkened with worry.
Had Muninn known about the way the Allfather had used Loki, the destruction he’d encouraged behind the other gods’ backs? She must have, with all the time she’d used to spend at Odin’s side. One more reason for her to resent him. I wasn’t sure how much I was looking forward to meeting the guy properly, after everything I’d seen.
But we needed Odin to get us out of here and to the real Asgard. That was all that mattered for now.
“This way,” Loki called, swerving to the right. We veered after him, seconds before a spurt of fire speared up from the ground, close enough that my skin pric
kled with its heat.
I squeezed my fingers around the handle of my switchblade. It wasn’t much of a weapon compared to swords or enchanted hammers or blasts of magic, but it was mine. It held all the love Francis had put into that gift. Even if I wasn’t sure I could take on a rock dragon, whatever the hell that was, with it, it did sometimes come in handy for directing my sporadic bolts of lightning as well.
Another river of magma flowed around the side of the mountain through the same passage I guessed we’d fly through. The prickling of heat sank down to my bones. Was that the same spot where I’d seen Odin ambushed?
It had definitely been somewhere here, in the red glow of Muspelheim, not in Nidavellir’s more cramped and shadowy caves. Muninn had led him here for his enemies to fall on him. So, transporting him here hadn’t just been a last-ditch attempt to hide him. They had some kind of tie to this place too.
“We should fly high above that chasm,” I hollered into the wind, pointing. “I don’t think we want to find ourselves closed in.”
Loki nodded without hesitation. As we all pulled higher from the ground, Baldur drew up beside me. He looked as if he were soaring along on a beam of light. Which possibly he was. He reached his hand out to me, and I caught it, twining my fingers with his for the few moments before I had to let go to keep my flight steady.
“I realized I should say thank you,” he said, only loud enough for me, not the others, to hear. “Before we face whatever’s waiting for us over there.”
I glanced over at him, startled. “Thank me for what?”
He beamed back at me—the bright soft smile I was used to, not the slightly wicked one I’d learned I could tempt out with the right inspiration. It didn’t look as dreamy as it used to, I noticed with a little relief. Muninn might have tortured him with his memories of his death, but he seemed to have come out of it stronger. Better able to face the reality in front of him without shying away from the shadows.
“You helped me find pieces of myself I didn’t know were there,” he said. “Maybe I’ve got a bit of darkness in me too. That’s useful to know.”
“More useful to me than you so far,” I couldn’t help responding. The memory of our encounter in Odin’s tower flooded me with heat. I’d given myself over to pleasure like I’d never dared to before… and now I felt even more like myself. There were pieces of me that deserved more time in the open too, pieces I’d shied away from too long.
A hint of that wickedness crept into Baldur’s expression. “I am hoping we’ll have plenty of time to explore that side more,” he said with a wider grin.
So was I. Oh, so was I.
“Ari, what else did you see in the scraps of memory you got from Muninn?” Thor called over. “What’s waiting for us?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “There were different bits that I think must have been from different times.” I couldn’t even say they were all from the week or two since the dark elves and whoever else must have moved Odin here from the elvish caves, if he’d been held here when they’d first captured him too. “He was trapped in a heavy-looking cage in that cave behind the magma flow. When I saw him there, he was alone or it was just Muninn there with him. It’s possible they think he’s hidden away well enough that they’re not bothering to guard him.”
At that moment, Loki pulled a little higher from where he was gliding along in the lead. His inhumanly sharp eyes narrowed. “Not anymore,” he said. “There’s your magma flow—and there’s an army waiting for us around it.”
I pushed myself faster to catch up with him, to see what he did. Beyond the tighter passage beside the mountain, the landscape opened up into a sprawl of plains and blood-red streams. A cliff stood farther back to our right, magma spilling in a churning torrent down its face. It flowed on into the river we’d been following at the cliff’s base.
At first, the ground around that river looked as if a thick shadow was spread across it. Then the shadow twitched. I focused my own enhanced vision as intently as I could and caught the stirring of human-like forms.
“We can fly right over them,” Thor said.
“But not over that dragon.” Freya pointed with her sword.
A huge beast was unfurling its body by the edge of the cliff. Until it had moved, I’d have thought it was just part of the rock. Its stone-like scales shifted over its sinewy body, a reddish gleam showing along the seams. Another flew into view, heading toward us with wing-strokes so powerful they made the air warble. Two more joined it as the one on the cliff lifted into the air as well. The closest one opened its maw with a blech of flame I could feel even at a distance.
A shudder ran down my back. I couldn’t fight those things, no.
Thor was already charging to meet them. He swung his brawny arm, sending his hammer flying. It struck the closest dragon across the skull. The creature flinched but pushed forward, faster, with a roar—right into a clot of shadow Hod had summoned. The streaks of darkness twisted around it, pinning its wings to its body, clamping around its jaws. It plummeted from the sky into the molten river below.
The other three dove at us. Freya sliced her sword through the air with a muttered magical line. Baldur hurled a streak of light in unison. Her conjured force and his brilliant magic struck the second dragon at the same time, cracking its belly open. Thor finished the job with a slam of his hammer right between its eyes.
Loki gave a shout, darting beneath a swipe of another dragon’s claws. “Fire doesn’t hurt these menaces,” he said. “If someone could lend a hand…”
Hod threw a ball of shadow his way. Thor wheeled with his hammer. And the fourth dragon streaked up from below, straight for Freya.
She whipped around, but I could tell it wouldn’t be fast enough. Not letting myself think, I threw myself forward, lashing out with my switchblade.
It glanced off the monster’s side, and the dragon’s barbed paw smacked into me, sending me spinning in the air. Pain jabbed down my side, but I’d distracted it enough for Freya to dodge. Thor rammed his hammer into the dragon’s chest, and Baldur hurled another bolt of light at the other.
The two beasts whipped between us, one’s tail slashing across Loki’s chest, the other’s jaws scraping across Hod’s shoulder as he wrenched himself out of the way. No. I whirled around, and the gods lunged into fighting stances.
For an instant, all of us moving at the same time toward the same goal, a weird sense of power hummed through me, as if I could taste Hod’s shadows, Baldur’s light, Loki’s fire, and Thor’s brutal strength, lancing through my body and back to them.
I swept my arm in the hopes that the fickle lightning might streak from my hand. It didn’t, but as the gods attacked too, magic exploded in the air all around us. Light streaked with fire whipped across one dragon’s face. Mjolnir careened into the other dragon’s belly with a stream of shadow that wrenched through the creature’s scales. A bolt of flaming darkness seared down its maw, choking it as it started to fall. A ball of light slammed into the first dragon’s jaw with the force of a hammer, splitting its head down the middle.
We all paused, a little stunned, as the dragons plummeted to their deaths. “What in Hel’s name just happened there?” Thor demanded.
Loki regained his composure with a breathless chuckle. “I have no idea, but I’m thinking the time for sorting it out is after we’ve fought the rest of the battle, not before.”
The army around the cliff looked as if it were swarming right into the rock. I shook off the hum still tingling through my limbs with renewed urgency. “There must be caves there leading up to the one Odin is trapped in,” I said. “They’re going to grab him.” And do who knew what to him. Kill him, if they could, before we got to him? Drag him off someplace else so we’d have to go through this all over again trying to track him down?
Thor hurled himself forward with a roar that could have rivaled the dragons’. It reverberated through the air as we charged after him. We swooped down over the landscape toward the gap betw
een the falling magma and the crevice I could now make out behind it. The twang of my connection to Odin rippled through me. He was still there—for now.
Spindly black shapes wriggled across the cliff-face. Creatures like enormous spiders, I saw as we flew near. They sprang off the rock at us as we raced toward the cave.
A yelp escaped me as one caught me, its wiry jointed legs clamping around my wings like a vise. I slammed my elbow into it, my knife into the huge faceted eye that stared blankly at me. Black liquid hissed up out of the wound, but its legs didn’t budge. I was dropping out of the sky, falling way too fast toward that cracked stone ground—
A streak of flame blasted the creature right off me. Loki caught my hand, yanking me upright as I found my wings. “No ducking out of this one, pixie,” he said in his teasing lilt. “Come on.”
We hurtled after the others through the opening, into the cave. The battle was already raging. Mjolnir glinted in the hazy red light, and beams of Baldur’s summoned light glanced off the jagged walls. I caught a gleam off the tarnished bars of a cage—Odin’s cage—back in the depths of the cave. A horde of dark elves and other figures in sooty armor clogged the space between us and the Allfather.
But it was him—the real him. His presence echoed through me, yanking me onward with even more might.
I hit the ground with both feet and slashed out with my knife. The shadows inside me, the ones that could claim lives with the power Hod had given me, stirred eagerly surrounded by so many living, breathing foes with actual glimmers of life, not the hollow constructs I’d had to tackle in Muninn’s prison.
I wrenched my hand across one warrior’s head and slammed it into another’s chest, snatching away the energy that sustained them like the valkyrie I was. In another age, it’d have been my duty to decide who lived and who fell, and which of the fallen ascended to the great hall of Valhalla.
All of these jerks could just forget about that.
As I rammed and wrenched my way through the crowd, that weird hum resonated through me again. The ripples of magic around me wavered and collided. Light and shadow and fire ricocheted off each other with twice their original force, blasting through the horde.