by S. T. Bende
Tyr held up a hand. “Never mind. I trust you will brief me on whatever has you so enthused later, ja? Because right now we’ve got another problem.”
Tyr pointed one finger at a purple pine. My gaze shifted away from Henrik’s shining eyes to the legion of dark shapes circling the top of the tree. The shadows were back.
And they seemed to have doubled in number.
“I don’t suppose we’re invisible under this dome?” I asked hopefully.
“Skit. I only threw up a shield. I should have thought about cloaking us.” Tyr eyed the whirling circle. The shadows circled faster, moving closer to us with each turn.
“Want me to take care of it?” Henrik asked. His magic wasn’t as strong as Tyr’s, but it was good enough to get the job done. At least, it was strong enough in Asgard and Midgard. Hopefully the irid crystals wouldn’t affect Henrik’s abilities the way they seemed to affect our walking.
“I’m on it.” Tyr held out his palm half a second too late. As if sensing his intention, the circle whirled with dizzying speed, creating a funnel. It bore down on us like an incensed tornado. My ears thrummed; the swirl gave off a deafening roar. And whether because of its force or the incapacitating effects of the irid crystals, the dome started to quiver.
“What is happening?” I watched in horror. “Tyr, things can’t break your defenses. Even dark things.”
“Yeah, well.” Tyr held up both hands and Henrik followed suit. Their magic came together, holding a steady stream of silver at the dome. The tornado pulled back and jabbed, poking golf ball-sized holes in the surface of the sphere. Tyr and Henrik separated their streams, redirecting their magic so it patched each new hole as it appeared.
“Maybe we need to move to offensive.” I nodded at the tornado, which peppered the dome like a jackhammer. It was punching holes into a large shape. “It’s going to bust right through the hole like a perforated paper once it completes that circle.”
“Skit,” Henrik swore. “She’s right. But letting it in might be the only way to defeat it.”
Tyr nodded. He aimed a stream at me, trapping me in a thick silvery bubble. “We can’t let this thing take all three of us out. Brynn, you’re shielded and cloaked. We’ll hold the specters off while you make a run for it. Crawl due south until you reach the cliffs behind the navy forest. Jump off the cliff, and aim straight for the blackest hole. The thickest part of the darkness is Hel’s gate. We’ll meet you there as soon as we neutralize the threat, but if we fail I need you to go after Freya on your own. Think you can handle that?”
He had to be kidding me. “I’m not going to Hel unless you’re coming with me. Wait. That sounds bad. I mean—”
“I know what you mean.” Tyr eyed me steadily. “And it’s not a request. It’s an order, Aksel. Our mission is to reclaim Freya. The realms are halfway to darkness, and if they descend fully, Hel claims them anyway. I won’t have that for Mia. Now, on three, Henrik, pull your stream back and add it to mine. I’ll release the dome, and hopefully our combined power will be enough to detonate those specters.”
“What if—”
“Stop stalling, Brynn.” Tyr shook his head. “Henrik, on my count.”
“Ja.” Henrik squared his shoulders from his still-seated position. He shifted his stream to meet Tyr’s.
“One. Two.” Tyr counted.
“Be careful,” I pleaded. My fingertips grazed Henrik’s shoulder and he nodded.
“Always am, sötnos.”
“Three.” Tyr dropped the dome, and he and Henrik aimed their stream at the tornado of specters. It quaked violently, then dove for the ground. It struck the ice like a cannonball, sending a quake across the impenetrable surface. I found myself splayed on my back, and scrambled quickly to my stomach so I could crawl my way toward the forest. The navy pines were a few hundred meters behind the purple pines, though from what I’d heard, a literal minefield separated the two species. No Asgardian had ever survived the crossing.
Not that it’d matter if I didn’t get out of this clearing.
I snuck a glance over my shoulder as I shimmied across the crystallized ground. My stomach lurched as the tornado barreled down on Henrik and Tyr. They redirected their stream, silver light blasting the bottom of the funnel before it could strike. The blast flung the tornado due east, and it sucked up five of the pines in its path. It collected itself, and bore down again. This time it came so close to my friends that my eyes squeezed shut. When I managed to pry them open, the tornado quaked, and Tyr looked madder than a hot jotun. Henrik appeared calm as always, though I could sense his tension bubbling. Gods, I hoped we made it out of here. Even if I had to spend eternity in the friend zone, I couldn’t imagine my life without Henrik in it.
The tornado dove again, and Tyr’s voice rumbled across the tundra. “You sure as Helheim better be doing what I told you, Aksel!”
With a shaky breath, I turned my head and focused on the purple pines. I inched my way across the tundra without looking back. When I reached the dirt-strewn ground of the forest, I made my way to my feet with caution. When I was certain the dirt was void of irid crystals, I put one foot in front of the other and broke into a run. I didn’t stop until I reached the border of the forests—the one that separated purple from navy. A field carpeted in thick, black grass served as the delineation between the two spaces. I knew it sheathed horrors beyond anything my mind could conceive.
I plopped myself onto the dirt and waited. What in Helheim was I supposed to do now?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“BRYNN!”
OH THANK ODIN. I’d know that panicked voice anywhere.
“Henrik!” I shouted. “I’m in here! At the southern edge of the, uh, purple forest.”
We seriously should have worked out the proper names for these places before we took this little pleasure cruise.
“We can’t find you!” Henrik’s panic increased.
“Maybe Tyr needs to drop the invisibility shield,” I offered helpfully.
There was a pause before Henrik yelled again. “Okay, it’s dropped. We still don’t see you!”
“Follow the pinecone trail through the darker part of the purple trees,” I called out. “I figured I might need to find my way back to you guys at some point, so I Hansel and Gretel-ed my way through the—”
My words were cut off with the crush of thick arms around my shoulders. Henrik scooped me into a desperate hug, burying his face in my unruly curls.
“We thought you were dead.” Henrik inhaled deeply.
“Nope. Not dead.” My lips brushed against Henrik’s neck as I spoke. It wasn’t intentional or anything; he was holding me so close my lips didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It was so not my fault I now knew what he tasted like. If sunshine counted as a taste.
“Gods, Brynn. When we couldn’t find you, I thought, well.” Henrik released his hold and let his arms slide around my waist. I reluctantly pulled my lips away from his neck, and studied his face. He looked harrowed, like he’d just seen a ghost… or a specter. But I got the feeling it wasn’t the dark masses that caused the circles under his eyes, or the beads of sweat lining his forehead.
“Hey.” I reached up to place my palm on his cheek. He leaned into my hand. “Are you okay?”
Henrik exhaled slowly, his cool breath brushing my face and sending an irritatingly familiar shiver down my spine. “Let’s just stick together from now on, ja?”
“That’s what I wanted in the first place, thank you very much.”
“Great. Now that that’s settled, do you two think we could carry on?” Tyr stood behind Henrik with his arms crossed.
“What happened to the specters?” I asked.
“We took care of the problem. Let’s just say the dragon king is going to need a new regime to protect him from now on.” Tyr tilted his head toward the field. “By my calculations, Freya should be that way.”
“Yeah.” I hastened out of Henrik’s arms and walked to the edge of the blac
k grass. “And by my calculations, we’ll be dead before we get halfway across.”
“Why do you say that?” Tyr asked.
“I sent out a scout net.”
“A scout net?” Tyr looked confused.
“Mia and I developed it last week,” I explained. “Fortuitous, right? It’s got two tiers; the first activates any airborne traps, the second tackles the ground. I fired a net off and the first tier got sucked out of the sky by something that was either really fast or really invisible—I never saw it. The second set off a series of mines hidden in the grass. Or maybe the blades themselves are the mines—I’ve never seen grass that color before; it could be weaponized, or infused with dark magic, or just plain possessed.” I dropped to the ground and stared at the mystical field from a seated position.
“So I’m taking it I can’t just fly us across. Whatever captured the net will capture us. Förbaskat.” Tyr rolled his head in a slow circle. His neck cracked in protest.
“I fired a second scout net and the same thing happened. I thought I might have detonated all the bombs with the first net, but maybe they regenerate or something.” I fished the net gun out of my backpack and offered it to Tyr. “If you want to have another go, be my guest. But I’ve only got two more nets in there. And we might want to hold on to them—I’m not sure what else is up ahead.”
Henrik sat beside me and folded his hands together. I chewed on a nail while I stared at the black blades.
“What about the nano-molecular particle accelerator?” Henrik asked.
“I thought about that. Imploding the mines would activate the detonation, but if the bombs are regenerating we wouldn’t have time to get across. If we tried to cross during the implosion, we’d get sucked in with it.” I sighed. “I am flat out of ideas.”
“Well, I’m not.” Henrik gave me a devilish wink. “We can use the transporter to beam across the field.”
I gasped. “You brought the transporter? Brilliant!”
“Won’t we get blown up going over the field?” Tyr asked.
Henrik tapped his head. “We thought of that during beta phase. We figured we might need to use it to get from A to C without actually crossing the plane of B. The wormhole takes us outside the realm and spits us back out at our destination. So long as there isn’t a trap in Helheim’s atmosphere, we should be good.”
Tyr narrowed his eyes. “And if there is a trap in the atmosphere?”
“Well, in that case we’ll be dead, kille.” Henrik grinned. “But we’ll die warriors, so it’s Valhalla, here we come.”
My fist connected with Henrik’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Tyr. If there was a trap in the atmosphere, it would have already been triggered by the Bifrost.”
“Oh. Right.” Tyr nodded. “Then let’s do it.”
Henrik stood and I followed suit. He unzipped his backpack and removed a small sphere with a red button. He offered it to me. “Care to do the honors?”
“Gladly.” I pressed the red button, and a small black oval appeared at the edge of the grass. “Seriously? It couldn’t show up, I don’t know, not right over the danger zone?”
Henrik shook his head. We watched as the oval grew to the size of a doublewide door, purple energy swirling erratically in concentric circles along its border. “It only stays open for sixty seconds so we’d better move. Should we go separately or together?”
“Together,” I answered. “Just in case we configured it wrong and it sends us to different places,” I drew a breath before muttering, “or sends our body parts to different places.”
“It could do that?” Tyr sounded alarmed.
“It could do anything,” I admitted. “We didn’t actually have time to test it out.”
“You said beta phase,” Tyr reminded me.
“It was a really rough beta,” Henrik admitted.
“Skit,” Tyr swore. But he took my free hand and stepped to the edge of the grass, so he and Henrik had me bookended. “All right. Let’s give this a go.”
Henrik nodded. “For ære,” he said, as he gripped my hand. Then he leaned down and whispered, “I told you you’d have to touch me eventually.”
I stuck out my tongue.
“For Asgard,” Tyr chimed in from my left.
“For Freya,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and counted down. “One. Two.”
“Three,” Henrik finished.
We jumped together, launching ourselves at the portal. It took Henrik first, then me, and finally Tyr. As I sent up a prayer, I felt a familiar suction. The portal used forces much stronger than the Bifrost, making this journey every bit as nauseating as the rainbow bridge I’d learned to loathe. We shot through the wormhole in a jerky pattern, and each turn sent a new surge of force from head to toe. We traveled too fast for sight to be effective—I couldn’t even open my eyes. I tried to call out for Henrik, but the rush of wind was too loud to allow verbal communication. My fear diminished slightly at the steadying pressure of Henrik’s hand on mine, and I clung tight to Tyr as I pulled him along behind me.
I’d thought the journey would last a few seconds, maybe half a minute, but as the forces pushed down and the wind whipped us in a violent trajectory, I realized we’d grossly underestimated the duration of this kind of travel. My muscles began to fatigue from the constant battering, and my hand slipped from Henrik’s. He clamped down tighter, locking his fingers around my palm, but the forces were too strong for even his warrior grip. As I clung to his grasp, our hands slipped again, then again. With each twist of the sightless tunnel, our connection was loosened, until finally I lost him completely.
“Henrik!” I shrieked as I felt his fingertips slip from mine. But the word was hollow. It was like yelling into a void. “Henrik!” I shrieked again, clawing at the darkness in the vain hope that he’d reappear. But my hand closed on nothing, and as the wormhole whipped me back and forth along the trajectory back to Helheim, I lost Tyr too.
“No!” I stretched my hands out to both sides, desperately reaching for the gods who were my security; my world; my family. But there was nothing but air on either side of me. I was alone, completely alone in a black vacuum that we’d programmed to lead us straight to Hel.
And for the first time in a long time, I was afraid.
* * * *
“Henrik! Tyr!” My volume alone would have earned me a lead role among the Berserkers. The transporter had dropped me in one piece right at the edge of the forest, but it closed without ejecting either of my friends.
This was Helheim. Both literally and figuratively.
I blurred through the trees, shrieking with a tenacity that would have awed any lurking Helbeast. I hit every corner of the forest, climbing to the navy-colored treetops when my ground search proved fruitless. It wasn’t until I came to the edge of the ravine and stared into the black abyss of Hel’s gate that I gave in to my tears.
“No.” I cried softly at first, the drops falling from my eyes into the void below. As the seconds ticked by, my tears fell harder, coursing down my cheeks and disappearing into the darkness. “No!”
I threw my head back and wailed. Henrik and Tyr had been my world for, well, forever. They were the stinky boys who’d dug for worms and made mud pies with me when all the girls thought it was too gross. The only guys who fought me as hard as they could in combat class, because they knew what it meant to me to be treated like one of them. The boys next door who snuck me out of my house on summer nights to watch the aurora borealis. My childhood crush, who saved me from humiliation by stepping in as my Fall Ball date when I got stood up. The young warriors who’d refused to join the rest of the Elite Team on a recon mission the last time we lost Freya, choosing instead to stay by my side… and hold my hands through the entire ugly aftermath. The titled god who let me on his team even though I didn’t have near enough seniority, simply to honor our friendship. The adorable guy who was trying so very hard to ignore the awkwardness between us so we wouldn’t lose a near-millennia-long friendship.
<
br /> Tyr and Henrik were everything to me. And now they were gone. The wormhole ate them.
And I had no idea where it had spit them out.
“I hate you, you stupid, friend-eating wormhole!” I shrieked. Then I sobbed. I didn’t care how ridiculous I sounded. Nobody was around to hear me anyway.
“Now, now, Brynnie. Why would you hate the wormhole? It got us over the grass safely. And it didn’t even separate any of our parts.” The voice was so jovial, so welcome, I was sure I’d imagined it.
“Henrik?” I turned around, not caring that snot dripped off my upper lip. “And Tyr? How are you… how did…” I took in the sight of my friends emerging from the trees with all of their limbs intact. “But I saw the portal close. You were trapped inside… weren’t you?”
“No idea.” Tyr shrugged. “We got separated, then the portal spit me out on the east edge of the forest. I hunted around for a good five minutes before I found this guy.”
“And I was dropped on the west edge. I heard you shouting, but the portal broke my leg on exit. I called out but you were screaming too loud to hear me. By the time my leg healed itself, Tyr showed up, and we followed the sound of you cursing the wormhole.”
My ponytail whipped back and forth as I took in the overly welcome sight of the family I’d thought I’d lost forever. Then I launched myself at my boys, catching them both in a tackle hug.
“Do not ever leave me in a wormhole again. Ever,” I admonished. “You guys freaked me out!”
“Clearly,” Tyr said drily. But he wrapped an arm around me and pressed his face to mine. Thick stubble prickled my cheek. “You’re stuck with us, Brynn. You know that.”
“I better be,” I growled. I pulled back and appraised them both. “Are you okay to travel, Henrik? Or does your leg need more time to mend?”
“I’m healthy as a pegasus,” he vowed. “And I just want to recover Freya and Bifrost out of here. I’ve had enough of this realm.”
“Agreed.” I took their hands and walked them to the edge of the ravine. “So this is Hel’s gate. It looks to be about a hundred-meter drop, though it’s so dark it could easily be twice that. And I’ll be totally honest—I have no idea what’s on the other side.”