by Rick Riordan
Miles scratched his head in confusion. “Hunt our dragons? Dude, they sleep harder than our warriors do. I mean, it’d take something pretty substantial to wake them up. You want scales, just walk up and take them.”
Most people would have been relieved when a potentially deadly task turned out to be non-life-threatening. I am not most people. I prefer to earn things, not have them handed to me. Still, I’d come for dragon scales, so I set my disappointment aside.
“Where are the caves of these sleeping dragons, then?”
“Caves.” Miles laughed. “You’re really not from around here, are you?”
“No.” Thank the gods, I added silently.
Miles spread his arms out wide and looked up. “Our dragons slumber under the open sky, basking in the light of Freya.” He dropped his arms. “Come on, I’ll take you there.”
“No! I mean, you could just point the way.”
“It’s no trouble, man. Follow me.”
I gritted my teeth. “Super.”
Miles led me toward a distant canyon of soft red-gold sandstone. “I know! Let’s take this opportunity to get to know one another better.”
“Let’s not and say we did.”
“I’ll go first,” Miles continued. “My favorite flower is the daisy. It’s just so darned cheerful! Do you have a favorite flower, Halfborn?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on, now.” He glanced at me sideways. “You must like tulips. Everyone likes tulips. Know why?”
“No.”
“Because without tulips, you couldn’t kiss!” He whooped and shoulder-bumped me. “Get it? Tulips? Like, two lips?” He made kissy sounds.
I nearly unleashed a heavy dose of berserk on him. Instead, I said, “There is one plant I admire. The Venus flytrap.”
Miles nodded enthusiastically. “Interesting! Why that one, exactly?”
I turned on him. “Because it attacks its prey and then slowly and painfully consumes it.”
That shut him up.
We reached the canyon. The wind had carved one side into wavy ledges that hung over the floor like shade canopies. Four dragons—one gold, one red, and two orange—snored in a hollow at the bottom, their scales glowing in the Freya light. Their wings were tucked in tight to their serpentine bodies. White smoke puffed from their nostrils like balls of cotton.
In other words, the dragons were non-life-threatening. Helping myself to their scales would be a piece of cake.
“I hate cake,” I murmured as I started down the incline. Lucky me—Miles came along.
We were halfway down when a figure barreled over the canyon’s edge on the far side.
Miles blinked. “Hey, that’s Thor. And he’s— Oh!”
Thor charged straight through the dragons.
Apparently, being kicked by a thunder god constitutes something pretty substantial. The dragons awoke with loud snorts. The clan erupted in chaos. Powerful wings flapping, the foursome took to the air, screeching in fury.
I darted beneath a sandstone overhang.
“Ooh, pretty!” Miles shaded his eyes and pointed at the dragons.
“Are you crazy?” I yelled. “Take cover!”
Miles waved his hand dismissively. “No need, my friend. The dragons would never attack the honored dead of Folkvanger. Doing so would disrupt the peace of the realm. They’ll just fly around a bit and then go back to sleep.” Then a look of mild concern crossed his face. “Of course, you’re not one of Freya’s chosen slain. If they’re hungry and they smell you— Oh, look. There’s something you don’t see every day.”
“What?”
“Fire breath.”
I flung my shield up in front of me just as the orange dragons swooped past my overhang. Their flames superheated the metal but didn’t touch me. They flew on and circled back for another pass.
This is more like it, I thought.
I leaped out and went to rip off my TOUGH MUDDER tee. Then I remembered that I’d ripped it off earlier, so I went straight to going berserk.
I raced down to the canyon floor. One orange dragon landed next to me. A few well-placed swings of my ax took it out of commission permanently. I dodged a burst of fire from the second orange one, then darted in and whacked off its head.
“Doused that flame!” I cried.
“Dude!” Miles was scrambling out of the canyon. “You’ve got anger issues!”
“I know!”
The cranberry-red dragon gave a shriek of rage and dive-bombed me. It came a little too close for comfort. Its comfort, that is. I delivered a knockout blow to its nose with my shield, then cleaved its skull in two.
“Bring it on!” I bellowed.
The last dragon was by far the biggest. Its glinting gold scales nearly blinded me as it rushed in for the kill. I sidestepped, leaped onto its back, and rode it into the annoyingly beautiful Freya-light–drenched sky. The dragon bucked, writhed, and barrel-rolled, trying to unseat me. I put my ax handle across its throat and pulled back hard. It gasped and clawed at the handle, but I hung on tight. Then it stopped thrashing and spun in a slow death spiral to the canyon floor.
Boom! Its body kicked up a cloud of sand.
“Aaahhhrrrr!” Roaring in triumphant glory, I leaped off and pounded my shield with my ax.
“Dude. Whoa.”
I looked up to find Miles staring at me openmouthed in astonishment. Around him was a crowd of Vanaheim warriors. A few shifted and murmured uneasily.
The dark-haired girl in the bikini top moved forward. “They’re . . . dead.” A tear traced down her cheek.
It occurred to me then that while she, Miles, and the rest of Freya’s chosen were technically warriors, they might never have seen an actual battle, let alone been in one.
“Well, yes, they’re dead,” I said carefully. “But if they’d succeeded in charbroiling and eating me, then I’d be dead. For good.”
The girl looked at me blankly.
“Because I’m an einherji.”
The girl still looked puzzled.
“If I die outside Valhalla, I stay dead. Unlike the dragons who, being mythical creatures, will vanish into Ginnungagap and eventually be reborn.”
The girl’s face cleared. “The dragons will be reborn?” She grabbed her friend’s hands and started jumping up and down and squealing. “We’ll have baby dragons here soon. Soooo cute!” She beamed at me. “Thank you so much for killing them!”
“Yeah. Don’t mention it.”
Miles came forward then. He looked from the dragons’ hacked-up and pulverized bodies to my ax and sweaty, blood-streaked torso. Then he looked down at his own rangy frame and back to the bodies. He nodded with understanding.
“So . . . your secret is the caveman paleo diet, not veganism, huh?”
I thumped my chest. “Caveman paleo all the way, my man. Now if you’ll excuse me.” I hefted my ax and raked some scales from each dragon onto my shield. “I have a mosaic to finish.”
“AWWW, YOU two are so cute together it makes me sick. So I’m going back to my own room.”
I’m not sure Mallory and Halfborn even heard me when I left, they were lip-locking so hard. Seeing them like that almost made me miss Magnus. Almost.
He was away visiting his cousin, Annabeth Chase. She’d advised him to leave his magic sword, Jack—aka Sumarbrander, the Sword of Summer—with me. So, while Mallory and Halfborn were smooching, I returned to my room to hang out with a talking blade.
Jack was slumbering on the decorative sword stand Blitzen had recently handcrafted for him. At least, I think he was slumbering. Hard to tell with a sword. No eyes.
I’d been working on a new pot when Halfborn had called looking for some shards. Now I returned to my wheel. As I worked the slick spinning clay under my fingers, I felt myself undergo a subtle shift.
I’d been identifying as male when I was with Mallory and Halfborn, and earlier, when I was with Samirah and her fiancé, Amir. Now I was female. And yes, the change really is that simple
sometimes. Hence the term gender fluid.
I was deep into my new pot when Jack suddenly leaped up from his stand. The runes running down his blade pulsed an alarming red.
“Señor! Señor!” he cried. Then he paused as if looking at me. Again, hard to tell because of the whole no-eyes thing. Regardless, he picked up on my gender change. “Sorry. Señorita! Señorita!”
“Jack, chill. Take a breath. Wait. . . . Do you breathe?”
“No time for that now! I just heard a rumor via the underground weapon network that Surt, the fire lord of Muspellheim, is hatching a new nefarious plot!”
“Oh my gods!” I cried. “There’s an underground weapon network?”
“Of course there is!” Jack retorted. “Think about it. What’s the one thing all Nine Worlds have in common?”
“Thor’s footprints and lingering fart stench?”
“Well . . . yes. But the answer I was looking for is weapons. And we talk. Gossip, really, if you want to know the truth. So, I heard the rumor about Surt from your garrote, who heard it from an arrow in Alfheim, who heard it from a mace in Jotunheim, who heard it from a vegetable peeler in Vanaheim, who—”
“A vegetable peeler?”
Jack shuddered. “Hope that you never hear a carrot screaming as it is being flayed by that dread instrument of torture, chica. Anyway, the communiqué traces all the way back to Muspellheim.”
From the way he was slicing back and forth through the air, I could see that Jack was truly agitated. I was afraid he might pop a rune or something if I didn’t start taking him seriously. Plus, Magnus trusted Jack with his life—literally—so that meant I trusted Jack, too.
I went to the bathroom sink to wash my hands. “Okay, what is Surt’s plot?”
Jack sank his pommel down onto my couch and leaned his blade back against the cushions. “I don’t have the details. But if it’s Surt, it can’t be good.”
“So what are we waiting for?” I dried my hands on a towel embroidered with the hotel’s initials, HV, then tossed it in the general direction of the hamper. “Sheath up and let’s hit the tree.”
“No! I can’t go! I—I won’t be able to resist the Black One.”
Jack sounded miserable, and I remembered something Magnus had told me, about how, come Ragnarok, the Black One was destined to wield Jack and free Fenris Wolf. When they last encountered Surt, Jack had felt the pull of destiny and practically leaped out of Magnus’s grasp to join the fire lord. If Jack came near Surt again without Magnus there to hold him back . . .
“Hey, no, of course you can’t,” I said hurriedly. “You stay here, safe and sound and Surt-free. Sam’s back from her special assignment, so I’ll grab her, and we’ll get Hearth and Blitz and—”
Jack flew to a few inches in front of my face, his runes flashing in a jarring disco-light display. “No! Surt can detect einherjar and elves, dwarves and Valkyries. You must do this alone.”
I waved my hands in the air. “Um, hello? Aren’t you forgetting one little detail? I’m an einherji. What’s to prevent Surt from sniffing me out?”
Jack went quiet again. “Use your shape-shifting powers. You’ll be okay if you keep changing form,” he finally said. “Plus, your gender fluidity will throw him off. He won’t be able to get a lock on you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but you don’t sound too sure about that.”
“I am sure! Well, pretty sure, anyway. Sort of.”
Not exactly confidence-inducing. But I couldn’t just sit around while the Black One hatched a sinister plan of some sort. I’d had enough of that kind of thing in my afterlife already, thank you very much. If there was a chance I could stop him before he started, I had to take it.
So I looped my special golden garrote—the one the goddess Sif had given to me—around my waist. I moved to my atrium, intending to climb through the World Tree until I hit an entrance to Muspellheim, but Jack stopped me.
“Take the service elevator,” he advised. “I hear the captain of the Valkyries once got blowtorched when the doors opened, so it must lead right to Muspellheim.”
That tidbit of info gave me pause. “Quick question, disco sword: What’s to keep me from being turned into einherji flambé when I use that elevator? Or while I’m roaming through Muspellheim, for that matter?”
“Um . . . any chance your sweater vest is fire-resistant?”
“No. It’s cashmere.”
“Oh. Well, I’m out of ideas.”
I was too, until my gaze landed on my kiln. Gas fueled, it looked like a steel trash can with squat legs and a pop-up lid. The interior could reach temperatures northward of two thousand degrees—perfect for turning squishy clay pots into hard-baked earthenware. A thick layer of ceramic insulation protected me and my room from the extreme heat.
With a bit of magic, I thought, I bet I could transform some of those fibers into something that will shield me from Muspellheim’s fire.
I was no rune master like Hearthstone, but I was no stranger to magic, either. When I was alive, my mom, Loki (don’t ask), had taught me an enchantment that turned my clay-cutter into a deadly garrote. More recently, I’d brought a ceramic warrior named Pottery Barn to life with just a touch of my fingers.
To create my shape-shifting fire shield, I combined a handful of fibers with my signature Urnes symbol—intertwined snakes that represented flexibility—and an algiz stone I hastily borrowed without asking from Hearthstone’s rune bag. (If he didn’t want me to take it, then why did he leave his room unlocked?) I focused on turning the three things into an invisible membrane that surrounded me like a second skin.
To my delight—okay, amazement—it worked. Even better, the membrane changed shape when I did. In the ultimate test, I fired up the kiln, turned into a housefly, and, with Jack hovering anxiously nearby, plunged inside. I emerged completely unsinged.
It was time to get going. “Stay safe, disco sword.”
Jack bobbed over to my potted snake plant and hid in the broad, sword-shaped leaves. “You too.”
I turned into an ant on the short elevator ride down to Muspellheim. A blast of fire engulfed me when the doors opened. If not for my membrane, I would have exploded like a kernel of unpopped corn.
“Nice welcome,” I muttered.
Judging by the opulent surroundings—gold- and ebony-paneled walls, vaulted ceilings that glowed like embers, and several red, orange, and black silk tapestries depicting the same handsome but cruel man lording over dancing fire demons—I hadn’t landed in some obscure Nowheresville but right in the heart of Surt’s palace itself.
I squared my thorax with determination. Okay. Time to get crawling!
After going about five feet in ten minutes, I came to my senses and changed into a housefly. I made much better time after that.
I found the Black One in a large meeting room. Elegant, long-fingered hands clasped behind his back, not a single black hair out of place, he stood staring out a huge picture window at the fiery landscape below. Seated at the table were several gods and goddesses I didn’t recognize. So how did I know they were deities? They weren’t covered in flames, so they weren’t fire giants or demons. They weren’t bothered by the heat, either—no screaming or sizzling or burning to a crispy crunch. Logical conclusion? They were immortals.
Surt turned, and I had to choke back a laugh. With his black-on-black-on-black attire, equally black features, and fierce black expression, he should have been intimidating. But his nose was so tiny—he was growing a new one, Magnus having sliced off his old snout in an earlier encounter—that he came off as more ridiculous than fearsome.
The lord of fire moved with the grace of a ballroom dancer to stand at the head of the table. He pressed his fingertips to the surface. The room quieted. Then Surt spoke—and suddenly, he didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore. His deep voice thrummed in my mind, pushing at my thoughts as if trying to replace them with his own. Swaying me to his way of thinking.
No wonder Jack was so desperate t
o go to him, I thought. If the deities fall under his spell . . .
Luckily, my willpower has withstood an even greater manipulator: my mother, Loki. (Again, don’t ask.) Carefully, so as not to draw attention to myself, I pushed back against Surt’s voice. Its power slowly ebbed away until my mind was once again my own, and I could listen to his words.
“Odin, Thor, Frey, Loki,” Surt said. “They’re all so focused on the coming of Ragnarok that they’ve forgotten what comes afterward. A new world!” He raised his arms and stood silhouetted against the picture window. “A new world will emerge when the floodwaters recede, the fires die, the ice storms melt, and the earthquakes cease!”
He dropped his arms and his voice, and leaned forward on the table again. “That world will need gods, my friends. You could be those gods. You, who Odin and his lot have forgotten, could take their places . . . if I deem you worthy of fighting on the right side of the war come Ragnarok. My side.”
While Surt was orating, I studied the deities. They were a mixed bag, some ancient-looking and in traditional Viking garb, others more youthful and wearing clothes from more recent centuries. Their appearances gave no indication of their identity, making me long for the name tags worn by the Hotel Valhalla staff. Whoever they were, they were hanging on Surt’s every word.
Then Surt abruptly stopped talking. Frowning, he lifted his chin. His nostrils flared. Then he swung his head around and zeroed in on my hiding spot.
I swore silently. I’d forgotten to keep changing shape, and the fire lord had sniffed me out. I couldn’t shape-shift now, not with Surt staring directly at me.
A chair scraped the floor. “What the blue blazes is that?” a goddess cried in astonishment. I assumed she had spotted me, but then she and the others rushed to the window. One jostled Surt. When he turned to glare at the offender, I shape-shifted into a flea and leaped to another location.
From my new vantage point, I had a perfect view of the disturbance outside. Thor was running past, sweating bullets and yelling “Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow” with every footfall. And no wonder—the ground in Muspellheim was covered in lava (and not the pretend kind like in the leap-on-the-furniture-don’t-touch-the-lava game).