by Matt Larkin
The varulf finished no more before a form stepped from the shadows of the Penumbra, appearing like a cloud of dust rising from the ground. The vampire Patriarch lunged at Didrik with Otherwordly speed, Gungnir bursting through the varulf’s back and out his chest.
Bergljot shrieked in terror, in horror at seeing her friend slaughtered. Her cries of anguish were the signal Odin had told the liosalfar to wait for, hiding beneath blankets inside a tent, concealing their sunlight.
Thurkell caught Didrik’s skull with his free hand and jerked so forcefully Odin winced at the sound of crunching vertebrae. The sound he’d heard in his visions.
He rose, staring down the vampire lord.
“It’s you,” Thurkell said, chuckling. “Still alive?” He jerked Gungnir free, whipping it around and splattering Odin and the others around the fire with Didrik’s blood.
An instant later, a dozen naked liosalfar appeared in a circle around the campfire, their bodies glowing like miniature suns, arms outstretched, fingertips not quite touching. They were flaring their sunlight, not to fuel any great Manifest Art, but rather, for its own sake. So bright, they had created a tiny ring of daylight. They could not maintain such for long, but, it would be long enough.
Odin advanced on Thurkell. “Sunlight suppresses vampiric powers just as it does those of draugar, does it not?”
Thurkell’s face betrayed its sudden surge of panic. Here, a ghost that had lingered on Midgard from the early days of mist. Ancient, powerful. Doomed.
In Odin’s mind, Audr cackled in perverse joy at seeing another’s dread. A distant sound, though, for the wraith also disdained sunlight.
Thurkell lunged at Saule, Gungnir raised.
Pulling on his pneuma, Odin moved faster, charging in. He caught the spear’s haft with one hand and heaved, flinging Thurkell back around like a doll, casting the vampire straight into the campfire. Shrieking in unaccustomed pain, the vampire blundered from the flames, flailing as they spread over its arms and back.
Odin kicked it in the chest, sending it sprawling and yanking Gungnir free of its grasp. “Your kind think yourselves gods. An arrogance I am all too familiar with.” He thrust his ancestral spear straight down, right through the vampire’s heart. It punched through ribs and out Thurkell’s back, embedding in the slushy ground. Odin twist the spear, shredding muscle and bone.
His prey flailed wildly, refusing to die despite the flames and the blade through its torso.
Odin jerked Gungnir free, then swiped it across Thurkell’s neck, taking its head clean off. The snarling, fanged thing continued to hiss even as it hit the ground. Odin kicked the head into the flames.
Almost as one, the liosalfar’s lights winked out, and they sank to their knees.
Odin planted Gungnir in the snow and trod to Freyja, drawing her up, and kissing her on the lips. “You did it.”
She blew out a long breath, nodding. He held her close a moment more, then looked to Saule. “Give the signal. We pack up the camp and make for the Myrkvidr while the Miklagardians are overcome with chaos.”
Once more garbed in her gilded armor, Freyja walked at Odin’s side. “You seem far away.”
He leaned on Gungnir as he walked, missing Sleipnir. The horse would have proved a boon for the trek ahead, though Hermod had needed him more. “I … I am not coming to the Myrkvidr. Send a few liosalfar to see the Hunalanders through the wood, but the rest should return to Asgard. Your brother will have need of them in the defense of the isles.”
Odin had tried not to see the future, but he could not deny what he’d seen for Frigg. Could only pray Frey would get to his wife and save her.
“What are you talking about?”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I have a last, truly desperate hope to fix everything.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Oh, he had not needed prescient visions to know she would react thus. “For this … I must go alone. I cannot risk bringing anyone else along on my quest, nor do I dare even speak aloud of my intentions. Others would call it audacious. Arrogant.” Perhaps it was. “But I have to try. And I have to know you and the others I love are safe in the mean time. Please, go to Asgard. My wife and child are in danger. Protect them, if you can.”
Freyja grabbed him, jerking him to a rough halt. “You truly think I’m going to let you walk into danger for your audacious plan? Alone?”
“Don’t fear for me. This is not how I end.”
Oh … now you lie to both yourself and her … Forgetting the entire purpose of your sojourn … to break the chains of urd … to change that which you have foreseen … Your success might very well mean your death …
Perhaps the wraith speaks a truth, at long last, Valravn said. Your only hope may lie in failure.
Odin struggled to keep their debate from warring across his face.
“We have not been through so much to lose one another now,” Freyja said.
Odin stroked her cheek. He was doing this for her. Even if it meant his own death, if he could undo the Norns’ designs, buy her life, it would be worth it. “Please trust me.”
Freyja jerked away and threw up her hands. “Because you’ve never made mistakes before, have you? Discounting banishing the Vanir, bargaining away your daughter, and risking the entire damn world to try to correct your mistake. Had you been here, things might not have grown so dire.”
Odin flinched at her tirade. It was true … even if it wasn’t urd. He had to fight now to give them the freedom to have their choices be their own choices. “Forgive me, I … Well, I have no excuses. Only a promise—I’m going to try to save us. All of us. And I ask you to protect my family while I’m gone.”
Freyja groaned before finally waving him away.
Not the parting he’d had in mind.
19
Melinöe led him through winding corridors filled with the lamentations and moans of the damned. Places where the walls squirmed with souls absorbed into the surface. They passed a door where hundreds of gray, rotting hands stretched out of a crack too small to allow their bodies. Those fingers grasped at Hermod, silently imploring him to somehow free them from their torment.
Or worse, perhaps they wanted him to join them.
So many vaettir sought to make mankind suffer, as if the whole of the dead—caught in misery—thought sharing their torment with others might slightly obviate their own. Odin had taught him that, even before the first time Hermod had stepped across the Veil. Many, if not all, of the vaettir of the Spirit Realm had lived once, as men and women in the Mortal Realm.
They had lived, and they had died, and found damnation waiting for them. And through the passing of ages, some of the ghosts transmigrated into spirits dwelling beyond even the Astral Realm.
Half truths … clouded perceptions … Conclusions drawn from observations with gaps … One of you sees much … but does not understand everything …
Perhaps not. But Hermod’s own observations lined up with Odin’s claims. Vaettir—ghosts and spirits if there were truly a difference between them—by and large hated mortals. So many of the Otherworldly creatures seemed locked in agonies and all too eager to share those pains with mankind. Perhaps they resented the living for possessing what they themselves had long since lost.
Keuthos said naught more, but Hermod could feel the wraith inside him seething, enraged by Hermod’s insights.
Though he spoke naught aloud, Melinöe slowly craned her head around toward him, as if somehow sensing his line of thought. Or … feeling the disquiet of the wraith inside him? Could one vaettr detect another?
Keuthos, though, refused to answer that, perhaps out of spite.
The Mistwraith guided him down a flight of twisting stairs with no inner wall such that to one side he could see a drop of hundreds of feet. At the bottom crackled another of those dark braziers, casting fell blue-green light but failing to provide even a bit of warmth.
In the world of Hel, even fires burned cold.
&nb
sp; Numerous hallways broke off the staircase, and Melinöe took one just before the bottom landing where the brazier sat. Bones and rotting flesh composed this corridor, its reek of decay so overpowering that Hermod couldn’t help but gag. It was like stepping inside the putrefying throat of a sea serpent big enough to devour a ship whole. Shreds of gray meat dangled from above in gory ribbons that swayed ever so slightly as Melinöe’s mist wafted through the passage.
Hand over his mouth to keep from retching, Hermod stepped around these bits of flesh. Had Melinöe brought him this way to further discomfit him, or was this truly the only way to reach the souls Hel had promised him an audience with?
Either way, the Mistwraith took an exit formed by a cross of curving bones, one Hermod had to duck his head to sneak through without touching any of the necrotic filth. Beyond, the Mistwraith continued down another hall of bone before eventually coming to rest outside an archway of overlaid, curving bones. Those bones bent backward as Melinöe raised a hand to them, lurching open with the sound of cracking joints.
“The son of the Destroyer has been afforded a place of honor …” The Mistwraith waved her hand for Hermod to step inside the chamber beyond.
A cell, in truth, he realized as he ducked his head to enter.
Baldr waited within, stripped naked, pressed up against the walls of his bone cage and whimpering, arm covering his eyes. His flesh had swollen and turned sickly yellow, and hundreds of small cuts and bruises covered him. They had tortured him?
“Baldr …”
The man moaned, but didn’t look up.
From the shadows, another entity sashayed out, a female, her movements sensuous even as her visage repulsed. She was lithe, naked. Bat-like wings flapped lazily behind her, and a serpentine tail twitched in time with her movements. Small, spiraling black horns jutted from her head. Her leering mouth revealed irregular fangs and a bulbous purple tongue at least a foot long.
“Come to join the fun?” Her voice conveyed such lasciviousness that Hermod felt himself begin to harden despite her horrific appearance.
“What the fuck is this, Baldr?”
Panting, breath so fast he seemed like to faint, Baldr turned to him, peeking at the creature, before cringing. “Y-y-you can see her? S-s-she’s real?”
Hermod’s hand closed around Dainsleif’s hilt. “What are you?”
Alp … Mara … Nightmare manifested … lust …
A nightmare spirit. Did these creatures come from Niflheim?
Well, it hardly mattered. “Leave him be.” Hermod eased the runeblade free of its sheath.
Melinöe hissed outside the cell, but made no move to enter. And if the Mistwraith wasn’t going to stop him …
The mara cocked her head to the side, slathering that tongue over her chin and down, to the skin between her breasts. She purred, the sound somehow causing a vibration in Hermod’s cock that had it up and ready in an instant. Every instinct in his body—to his horror—demanded he pound into the mara’s trench over and over.
And lose your essence … one carnal gratification after another …
Teeth grit, Hermod pointed Dainsleif at the mara. “Whoever or whatever you are, leave Prince Baldr. Now.”
That serpentine tail twirled around before her face, coated with dried blood, Hermod now realized. “He likes it,” she purred. “He likes it when I slither up his arse and use him like a woman. Would you like that?”
Baldr whimpered, actually weeping.
Fucking abomination.
Hermod lunged in. A swipe of Dainsleif severed that tail, and the detached piece landed on the ground with a wet thwack, then flopped wildly around of its own accord. The mara gaped—exposing those mismatched fangs—at her injury as if unable to believe any mortal would dare strike her.
Snarling, Hermod thrust in, intent to ram Dainsleif through her hideous heart.
The mara moved so fast he barely saw it. She twisted away from the blow, caught his sword arm by the wrist with one clawed hand, and caught his chin with the other. Like a savage wind she hefted him off his feet and slammed him against the wall with such force his vision dimmed a moment.
Her distended tongue slapped against his neck. It crawled over his face like a slithering worm. It brushed over his lips then pried them apart, slipping into his mouth. Then it kept going, forcing its way down his throat until it cut off his airways. Hermod gagged, flailing, desperate for a breath.
He bit down hard, but the mara only tightened her grip on his wrist and neck.
Everything started to go hazy.
His free hand, ravaged by those hounds, beat ineffectively against her arm.
Like this …?
You thought to fight her …?
Baldr slammed shoulder first into her midsection, jerking the mara off Hermod and sending himself and the creature sprawling to floor. Hermod dropped to his knees, gasping. His throat felt scoured as if by sand.
The mara shoved Baldr off her, then hefted him up by his hair, screaming.
Hermod’s hand closed around Dainsleif’s hilt once more, desperate for its strength to beat down the pain. While the mara focused on Baldr, he lunged in, not bothering to gain his feet, but swiping at her leg.
The runeblade slashed through her flesh and embedded in her shin, drawing a feral shriek from the vaettr. She pitched over, wailing. How had Dainsleif failed to sever the leg? No time to think on that now.
Hermod struggled to his feet, rose, and planted a boot on the mara’s leg. Then he jerked the runeblade free with a shower of black blood. The mara snarled at him, wells of swirling blackness in her eyes. Hermod dropped down atop her, driving the runeblade clear through one of those eyes.
The creature flailed, her mind-splitting cries worse than ever. She flung him off her with her gyrations and somehow managed her feet, despite having a blade run clean through her skull and poking out the back.
How the fuck did such an abomination die?
Baldr leapt up, grabbed the runeblade, and yanked it loose with a sickening squelch that splattered brain and bone and blood in a gory mess. With a battle cry, Baldr swiped the runeblade across her neck. Again, it failed to sever the bone, instead embedding itself in her spine.
And she caught Baldr’s wrist and twisted until he released the hilt.
“Fuck me,” Hermod rasped.
“Don’t say that!” Baldr screamed, clutching his bruised wrist.
The mara grabbed the edge of the runeblade with both hands and began to slide it free of her neck. Black blood dribbled down her fingers but it hardly seemed to disturb her.
How did he kill this thing?
Cut off the head …
Baldr had just tried that.
Hermod kicked the mara in the gut, grabbed the hilt as she fell backward, and jerked it free, managing to sever one of her fingers in the process. The mara hissed.
Roaring, pulling as much strength from his pneuma as he could, Hermod swung at the same angle Baldr had. The blade sliced through already shredded flesh and into the bone once more. This time, it punched through, scraping down against her collarbone. The creature pitched over backward and landed on her arse, flailing wildly.
He’d severed her fucking spinal column and she was still fighting?
Growling, Hermod dropped atop her and began to saw with Dainsleif, working the blade up, away from her collar. Three great heaves, and her head popped free of her shoulders. Now her ichor bubbled forth from the stump of her neck like a hot spring. It gurgled, dribbling down over her body. Her corpse slowly began to dissolve as if sprayed with acid, turning to ash.
Well done …
Huh. Hermod wasn’t half sure whether to thank Keuthos for its advice or admonish the wraith for failing to do more than it had.
Save your recriminations for mortals … Your ire is a feast to those bound to the Otherworlds …
Coughing, Hermod finally managed his feet. Utter madness. After cleaning Dainsleif with a cloth—one he tossed aside given it had turned black an
d putrid—he sheathed the runeblade, then offered a hand to Baldr.
The prince took it and rose.
“Let’s go,” Hermod said.
“He cannot,” Melinöe said from the threshold. “While freed of the mara, he remains, in fact, dead, and thus under the thrall of Queen Hel.”
Hermod was damn tempted to draw the runeblade again.
Considering how well that went against the mara …
Yes. Diplomacy then. “I did not come through all I endured to leave Baldr behind.”
“You have yet to strike a bargain with the queen.”
Hermod glanced at Baldr, who nodded in grim acceptance of his urd.
Damn it. Damn this whole abominable place.
Yes …
He shook his head in disgust. “Then take me to my daughter.”
Melinöe led him back to the staircase, and down to the landing. The exit from there led into what looked to him like an ice cave, perhaps cut beneath the fortress itself. The Mistwraith guided him through a maze, a warren of passages that housed chamber after chamber of tormented shades.
Some were actively tortured by the snow maidens in service to Hel or even by other shades that had become overseers of this torment. He saw men and women flayed. Saw them eviscerated so slowly it might take hours. The screams ravaged his mind as souls were cast into freezing waters and thrown into ice-blue flames. They were pierced by spike-like icicles, stretched upon hooks, and had their insides scooped out.
No matter what depraved violations were visited upon them, the shades seemed unable to die.
They are already dead …
Could ghosts not be despatched?
Souls can be drained of their essence … sometimes to the point they cannot hold together self image …
What did that even mean? Bah. Such esoteric musings suited Odin better than Hermod. What mattered here was that the victims suffered these sporadic torments merely at the whims of those around them. Out of a desire to share their own suffering. The thought of it turned his stomach.
Behold the fate of all who live … Locked in torment … reliving the wounds that felled them … awaiting the cessation of torment found only when something stronger devours their souls … We eat … or we perish … not so unlike you …
