Well he found a great eagle and is about to befriend it or at least amuse it enough to stay around. That's going to raise a few eyebrows especially if he comes into contact with the elves. Seems like thor has found his favored animals.
A God Adrift: THORHAMMER (WHF/Thor Quest, Story Only Thread)
- Thread starter TheWiseTomato
- Start date
- Crossover
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Small for a great eagle though? Maybe just fledged or maybe a Great Hawk?
It's probably a youngling who got curious over the flying man who didn't stink of chaos.
Home Improvement 2
- Location
- Australia
A routine fell upon Vinteerholm, a mundane backdrop to the business of recovery for those wronged by the Aesling raiders. Wounds physical and not were adjusted to; sometimes they healed, others they lingered. The work upon the town was a welcome distraction either way, both for the knowledge that they were making their home safer, and for the spectacle that was watching the local god doing squats and lunges with the massive tree trunks he brought to the town to be worked at.
The trunks themselves were impressive things, even if they were beginning to become accustomed to seeing them approach from the forests to the north. Trimmed, hacked, and sawed into useful forms, they would serve as formidable new walls for the town, slowly beginning to stretch around the old walls and gates that had been blitzed during the raid. Half again as tall as the old walls and five times the thickness, even the gates were an upgrade, less gateways than passages cut through the new walls. From the river they began to stretch north and around, and with each furrow dug and trunk placed, the people felt a little safer.
Though of course, that could have been the result of watching their protector set the walls in place with his bare hands, nudging and pushing the multi-ton sections to his satisfaction.
The spectacle lasted most of the day, long enough that the hunters and fishers would return in time to catch a glimpse of it themselves as they bore their takings away to be smoked or dried. Come the evenings, many found themselves gathering in the young grove after mealtime, or even just passing by, seeking just a glimpse of the golden light that sprang from it.
Routine came, and with it came recovery. Two weeks passed, the wall growing. Thor spoke with all who would gather the courage to approach, though he found that those tended to be the ones who had fought at his side. He would speak with Wolfric at work of a day, and with Kirsa in the grove come dusk, the Kislevite Grigori watching much but saying little. Distance and deeds had a way of intimidating the rest.
Then, one grey morning, he returned with his harvest to find Wolfric absent, and worried murmurs in his place.
X
The medicine woman of Vinteerholm had been strung up and butchered by the Aeslings, but the town still needed someone to see to its ails, and so Helka had been moved into her old home and workplace with little fuss. The frail woman and her two apprentices lived and worked in the tall and narrow house, pressed tightly to its neighbours, and it was that house that Thor found Wolfric pacing before in the late morning, hand clenched tight around the hilt of the blessed sword on his hip.
"Wolfric," Thor said, coming to a stop in the slush of the street. He wore a threadbare shirt and ragged trousers, both stained by sweat, but the concern in his visage lent him a regal bearing that no peasant garb could mar. "I have heard ill whispers."
"They're sick," Wolfric said, his worried steps unceasing. He still wore the armour he had donned in readiness to defend the lumber yard if needed, but now it was almost mocking, useless for the trouble he found himself set against.
There was only one 'they' that could set him to worry so, and Thor nodded, grave. "What has Helka told you?"
"Nothing," Wolfric snapped, their roles as god and faithful worth little in the face of sick sisters. "They were shivering last night, so I put them to bed and stoked the fire because they had snuck off to play with Trumpetter all day after their chores with Helka, but then this morning I could hardly wake Elsa and Astrid didn't stir and-"
"Wolfric," Thor barked, "cease. Breathe."
Wolfric stopped, back to Thor and his knuckles white around his sword. He let out a slow, ragged breath, and turned. His eye bore into his god. "I've seen fevers like this before. Will- can you help them?"
He had no skill in the healing arts, and gone were the days where he could seek his mother's aid. His were hands to kill and defend, not to mend. "They will be healed," he said simply. He was no healer - but he was Thor, and he would see it done.
Something eased in the worried young man, and he nodded. "I can't lose them," he said, quieter now. "They're all I have left. My uncle - it's not the same."
"I know," Thor said. He remembered all too well, the feeling of loved ones cut and carved away, each loss worse than the one before like a dagger to the ribs twisted around cruelly.
The creak of a door interrupted any response Wolfric might have made, his head snapping towards it. A comely young woman, one of Helka's apprentices, peered out, stuttering when she found herself the subject of their attention. "Helka is ready for you," she said, voice soft and scratchy, like it was seldom used.
Wolfric wasted no time in entering, and Thor followed. They stuck close to the young woman's heels as she led them inside, down a dark and narrow hall lit by a single candle. There were two doors on either side, and they made for the door at the rear of the house on the left, just before a rickety staircase that led up and down. She opened the door, but did not enter, stepping out of the way.
The room they entered was better lit than the hall, though not by much. Tallow candles burned in the corners of the room, casting a flickering light, and a row of wooden shutters were half open at the top of the back wall, letting in some small measure of fresh air. Shelves around the edges bore reagents of all kinds, plant and animal, living and not, and the wise woman herself was bent over a mortar and pestle as she sat at her worktable, thin grey hair bound up out of the way.
"What word?" Wolfric demanded the moment he saw her. "Where are they?"
"You were right to bring them," Helka said, clearing her throat with a wet rasp as she ground away at some powder. "Another day without aid, and they would have been beyond my help."
"Then you can heal them?" Wolfric asked. He stopped beside her, just short of looming, while Thor took up a spot against the door frame, leaning.
"I know how," Helka said. The croak of her voice seemed to have gotten worse since the last Thor had spoken with her, but she still handled the pestle with a wiry strength. "I could heal them this day…if I had the ingredient I needed."
Wolfric had straightened as she spoke, hope starting to fill his frame, only to still at the end. "What do you need?"
Helka looked up from her work, rheumy gaze flicking over to Thor as she noticed his presence. "Godly one," she said, dipping her head, before looking back to Wolfric. "I need the heartblood of a dragon."
The young warrior sagged, hope seemingly torn from his grasp. "None have slain a dragon for generations."
"That seems a mighty ingredient," Thor said, mind turning.
"It is a mighty sickness," Helka said. "The girls will have to stay with me to prevent its spread."
"You would endanger yourself?" Thor asked.
"I have the knowledge and remedies to keep a person hale," Helka said, "though it not be cheap. Not a solution for the town entire."
"Generous," Thor said.
"The twins have been good helpers, taking over the smaller chores for my girls so I can teach them more," Helka said, waving a bony arm. "I like them."
"So I just have to slay a dragon, and bring you its heart," Wolfric said. He already seemed to be rallying, tapping his thumb on the emerald in the hilt of his sword. The danger of dragonslaying seemed to come up short when measured against the lives of his sisters.
"We," Thor corrected him. "I've no doubt the beast would fall before you, but I'll not invite the wrath of the twins for your injuries."
"You would do this?" Wolfric asked, turning to him. "I thought- a test of faith, or a quest-"
Thor snorted. "I know well the quality of your faith, Wolfric," he said. "I can feel it with every beat of your heart if I but look to see."
"Then we just have to find a dragon," Wolfric said, the beginning of a smile casting aside his worry, even if it was a cautious, wary thing.
"Just a dragon," Thor said, and if a younger version of himself wasn't perking up with glee at the thought, he kept that to himself. A thought occurred to him. "Heartblood of a dragon cannot be a common ingredient."
Helka laughed, a short, mirthless thing. "It is not. I have the recipe from my great grandmother, who used it to end a plague that near ended Vinteerholm in her time."
Wolfric's brow furrowed as he thought. "But that was when-"
"Aye," Helka said. "When the wings of The Crow swept over us."
A sickly sweet odour drifted by Thor's nose, and he snorted, trying to clear it. He recognised that taint. He had also seen it cleansed once before, and his mind went to Dove's feather. "There may be a swifter option," he said. He did not always carry it on his person, but it was always with him, and he drew it forth now, cradling it like it was something precious - and it was. It almost seemed to glow in the darkness of the room, bright without casting light.
"That, that would do it," Helka rasped, swallowing. "For one of them." She shaded her eyes against its gleam, but could not seem to look away.
Wolfric was shaking his head, horror writ clear across his face, eye wide. "I can't make that choice."
"You will not have to," Thor said. "One will receive the feather, and the other I will hallow as I hallowed Gunnhilde's spear."
But Helka was shaking her head, finally looking away from the feather. "I fear for the twin chosen if you do so," Helka said. "The sickness has burrowed itself deeply, as much part of them as it is harming them. To burn it out is to burn them."
"Then how will your potion work when Thor's might will not?" Wolfric demanded.
"That is what the heartblood is for," Helka said, unbothered, "to strengthen them for the fight." She seemed to take pity on Wolfric. "You might leave the feather with me while you seek the dragon. I will make the choice for you, and when you return, I will brew the cure for the other."
The young warrior opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out, and he closed it, staring off at the wall.
Helka pushed herself up with a groan, bony hands patting at Wolfric's shoulder as she stepped by. "Think on it. I'll check on little Astrid and Elsa while you do." She left, leaning heavily into the door to see it closed properly in its uneven frame. A scroll fell from a shelf, its wooden roller tumbling to the ground with a clinkclinkclink, clinkclinkclink, clinkclinkclink, enormously loud in the quiet of the workroom, and then they were alone.
Thor stared at the scroll, expression neutral but mind awhirl. An old scar, one given to him by Loki with a taunt and a grin, was itching. Something was not right, but he knew not what. He pushed off the wall and approached it, feet thudding heavily on the wooden floor with each step. Wolfric sank into the chair that Helka had vacated as Thor took up the parchment; it was a simple thing, rolled around a wooden scroll. He unfurled it, and began to read.
"Even if we use the feather, I'm still making a choice," Wolfric said, head in his hands. "Astrid would make a wildcat look tame if she wakes to see her sister ill, and Elsa wouldn't speak to me for a year if she is chosen." His hands tightened in his hair, and if it was any longer he would be tearing at it.
"Important decisions are rarely easy," Thor said, tone absent as he continued to read. It was a list of ingredients and their properties, written over time and by different hands. He stopped when he came to a particular entry.
Blood of Beast ~ From common rat to mighty dragon, blood has value. Blood to suit the drinker, blood to bolster purpose, blood to grant power. Should blood you need, do not cry poor. Better to drink of a bear than a sheep when a wolf would do.
He read through the rest swiftly, but nothing caught his eye as the entry on blood. Everything about it seemed to support that which Helka had told them…and yet he was wary.
"Thor?"
"Hmm?" Thor asked, tearing his eyes away from the scroll. Wolfric was staring at him like he had answers.
"If it was your sisters, what would you do?"
Thor pictured a pair of small Helas, young and smiling and wearing the same horns that his sister had. He shivered. Put the boot to them while he had the chance - but no, even if he were faced with Hela herself as a child, he knew he could not. "If it were my sisters," he said slowly, "I would - what would hurt them more? To languish under the touch of Decay, or to wake and watch as their sister did?"
"To watch," Wolfric said, a grim weight falling upon him. "They slumber now, but that is all. It could worsen, but-" he cut himself off.
It seemed that Wolfric had made his decision even if he still wrestled with it, and he began to reroll the scroll, placing it back from where it came. "How long has Helka served as a wise woman?"
"Longer than I have lived. She delivered me as a babe, the twins too," Wolfric said. His elbows rested on his knees now. "They were lucky to have her go with them, uncle said, when they left Vinteerholm."
"She is skilled, then," Thor said.
"Aye. I do not know if another town would have the knowledge to brew a cure like the one she speaks of." Speaking the words seemed to lighten him, affirming the knowledge that there was a solution.
Still he was suspicious. He had little cause, and much proof otherwise, but he could not help but be wary. The thought of letting the feather leave his possession sat ill with him, but did his neck prick only at that, or at something else? He thought back to the few times their paths had crossed for more than a moment. Helka had nursed Tyra back to health after her captivity, had seen to the wounded after retaking Vinteerholm, had aided with all manner of small hurts and ailments since then. And yet he was suspicious.
"If there is a dragon to be found," Thor said at last, "then we will find it."
"Thank you," Wolfric said with feeling. For the promise, for the deed, for not leaving him behind.
He would not leave blithely, however. Kirsa had grown fond of the twins, and he was sure she would volunteer to help watch over them if asked. They would gain the heartblood of the dragon, and he would deal with what came after, after. Whatever the truth proved to be.
When Helka returned, she did so with a damp rag clutched in her bony hand and expectant eyes, shifting between Thor and Wolfric as they stood in the middle of the room. "Made a decision, have you?"
"I have," Wolfric said, mouth set in a thin line. "We will find a dragon, and take its heart."
"Don't want to use the feather, then?" Helka asked. She stepped past them, falling back into the chair at her workbench. A wooden bowl was pulled over, and she began to wring the rag into it.
"Neither would accept it if it meant the other still suffered," Wolfric said.
"They'll suffer either way," Helka said, resigned to it. "I have them across the hall, if you want to see them before you leave."
Her words did not sit well with him, and he gave an abortive nod, leaving the room without a word. Out in the hall, another door creaked open slowly, Wolfric's steps quiet by habit as he entered the room that held his sisters.
Thor glanced at the medicine woman, but she seemed content to ignore him as she focused on wringing every last drop of liquid from the cloth. She looked as she always had since he had first saved her amongst those that fled from Wolfric's village, fleeing mindlessly into the wilds. The same worn lines and thin grey hair and ragged stamina - but that meant little, and he turned for the door. He wished Loki were here.
"I can only keep the sickness at bay for so long," Helka said, stopping him in place without so much as looking up from her task. "You have weeks, godly one, not months. If you return too late…"
"I will not," Thor said. The echoes of his voice seemed to linger in the room like fading thunder, and he left the woman to her work.
Out in the hall, the door to the room across from the workshop was still open, and Thor saw Wolfric sitting at the edge of a bed, both his sisters within it. They could have been sleeping normally, if not for the fitful expressions they wore and the shortness of their breaths. Wolfric held a damp cloth, dabbing at the forehead of first one, then the other, his back to the door. He was not alone, having taken over the task from the second of Helka's apprentices. The young woman looked up from the scene, meeting Thor's eyes, and he inclined his head in silent thanks. She near flinched, swiftly looking down and hiding behind a curtain of dark hair. There was a likeness between the two apprentices, both dark haired and thin of limb, and he had never seen them out in the village unless it was on the business of their teacher. Shy or run ragged he did not know, and now was not the time to ask. He moved on.
His departure was waylaid, however, by the opening of the door on his left and the appearance of the apprentice who had first greeted them. She looked up and hesitated at the sight of him, and he stepped to the side of the hall, sucking in his stomach to let her pass, but to his surprise she did not, approaching him hesitantly.
"Lord Thor," she said, hands worrying before her.
"Young apprentice," Thor said, trying to remember if he had ever been introduced to her. "How may I aid you?"
"If your business with my master is done, our other patient has asked to speak with you," the young woman said. Unlike her probable relative, she wore her hair in a loose braid. At Thor's curious look, she expanded. "The Aesling, Bjorn."
Thor brightened. He had heard that the man had survived the wounds he had taken in Skraevold, finally waking, but between settling in the newcomers and seeing to his own tasks, he had not the time to meet with the warrior. "I should like that," he said. "Is he…?" he pointed to the open door.
"He is," she said. It seemed she was about to ask something, but she only nodded, swallowing. "Lord Thor." She squeezed past him, making for the basement stairs.
Perhaps there would always be some made uneasy by his power. He did not like it, but now was not the time to address it, and so he stepped up to peer around the doorframe. Inside was a large man on a small bed, looking out the shutters as he lay atop the covers. A recently snuffed candle still smoked on a small table beside the bed.
"Lord Thor," Bjorn said, looking away from the small glimpse of the sky he had. "It is well to see you."
Thor inclined his head. There was no place to sit, not with the big blond man almost overflowing from the bed, so he leaned against the wall across from him, looking towards the shutters. Even so, he could have stuck his leg out to rest it against the bed, so small was the room. "I was pleased to hear of your recovery."
"It goes," Bjorn said, looking down to his chest. The savage gouges given to him by the Chaos touched hounds were near swaddled in bandages, and the thick scent of some poultice filled the room. He would forever bear the scars, writing over the records of battle he had already borne from more human weapons, but he was breathing easily enough, and spoke without pain. "It will go for a time yet."
"I wager you would make the same choice again," Thor said. For all that he and Eseld seemed to have been new acquaintances, the man had been protective of the diminutive woman.
"I would," Bjorn said. He reached up carefully to stroke his moustache, unbraided and hanging free, near to his collarbones. His beard had grown out as well, no longer trimmed short. "Some think it strange, to protect one such as her."
"Some might," Thor said, shrugging. "But her strength and the youth of your friendship is no good reason to do so."
Bjorn hesitated a moment, but nodded. "Aye," he said. "She reminds me of my daughter." His tone was closed off, gaze unfocused as he stared at his feet.
Thor was quiet, watching him. The seconds ticked on.
"I wanted to give you my thanks," Bjorn said, coming back to himself. "For all that you have given us. There are no others who would do what you have done."
A raised brow answered him. "They were worthy deeds, but I am not the only one who would have done so."
"You are the only god," Bjorn said, deep voice low and even. "No other god would walk beside us as you do, and for that you have my worship."
Thor looked, but not with his eyes, and he could feel the connection between them now that he cared to see. It was a steady thing, settled and sure. He nodded slowly. "And I am pleased to have it, knowing your quality."
Bjorn bowed his head, contentment worn plainly. "Lord Thor." He looked back up. "How would you have your worship? I have asked, but Sunniva nor Selinda can answer."
"Kirsa has the answers you seek, and the growing wisdom to share it," Thor said.
"Kirsa," Bjorn said, frowning as he thought. "I have heard her name. She is your priestess?"
"No," Thor said, holding back a smile. "That is not a title she desires."
"I understand," Bjorn said. "I will ask her when I am free of this…place."
"You don't enjoy being confined to a small bed in a small room, too injured to rise?" Thor asked.
Bjorn gave a displeased rumble, deep in his chest. "I do not."
"I will have some mead brought to you," Thor said, shifting his weight on his legs. "Your deeds in Skraevold surely earned you that."
"Sunniva asked me to abstain," Bjorn said, gloomy now, "and Selinda threatened me."
"I will not be a hypocrite and tell you to obey the words of the healers, but perhaps you should consider the words of the healers," Thor said.
A small laugh came in response, though Bjorn winced afterwards. "At least there is little but lumberwork to be done. I would not fare well were my strength needed."
Thor coughed.
Bjorn perked up, for all he tried to hide it. "There is a fight to be had?"
"There may be…a quest," Thor said.
"What manner?" Bjorn asked.
"It may involve a dragon."
A curious look of excitement and dismay crossed Bjorn's face. "I could - I could keep a watch on the skies, to give warning should it come."
"It does not come for the village, unfortunately," Thor said. "We must find it instead, and take its heart."
"Ah," Bjorn said, sagging back into his too small bed. "Perhaps that is for the best. I should not be so eager for the fight."
For a moment, Thor eyed the man. He had heard tell of his actions during the raid on Skraevold, and of the affliction he bore - baresark - but he was no young warrior to be counselled. He was not that much younger than Harad.
"Do you mean to hunt the beast in its lair?" Bjorn asked, cutting through Thor's thoughts.
"If we find it, we shall," Thor said. "The lives of Wolfric's sisters depend on it."
"And so the heart," Bjorn said. "A powerful ingredient for a powerful elixir," he said. Then he frowned. "How do you mean to track it?"
"There is a village nearby, led by an old warrior," Thor said. "Well, old as humans go. If any close to hand know of a dragon, it will be Harad."
"Harad? Of the Axe?" Bjorn asked.
"He is called so, yes," Thor said, not quite cautiously. He hoped that Harad had not also killed Bjorn's father.
"I fought him once," Bjorn said. "I was young. He nearly took my head."
"I won't demand you work with him," Thor said, "though he does live nearby."
"No, there is no ill feeling," Bjorn said. "I was about to kill his skald brother. The man had near put a dagger in my spine."
"A spirited meeting," Thor said, thinking of the night he had first met Steve and Tony. How close they had come to killing each other!
"It was," Bjorn said. "There is no way to join you in your quest? I cannot run, but a brisk walk I feel I can manage." Despite his words, his tone said he had little hope of joining. "I would surely heal as we travelled."
"Next time I venture out to slay a great beast, I will bring you with me," Thor promised him. "I would do you no favours to bring you now."
Bjorn sighed. "You are right, Lord Thor. If there is any way I can serve from this bed, I pray that you tell me."
There was a pause as the expected platitude failed to eventuate, and Bjorn looked up, gaze sharpening.
"There is something you might do for me," Thor said slowly. He glanced to the open door, but there was no activity in the hall. He could hear Wolfric murmuring to his sisters, and Helka puttering around in her workroom. "While we are gone, I would have you watch over the twins. I have…concerns."
"Your concern is not the sickness," Bjorn said. For all that he was large and slow to speak, he was no more slow of thought than Thor himself was.
"No," Thor said. He spoke lowly, deep voice hardly more than a whisper. "My concern is the healer."
Bjorn was silent, thinking deeply. "I will watch her," he said at length. "What do you suspect?"
"Nothing definite, nothing sure, or this would not be needed," Thor said, crossing his arms over his belly. "I only know that her words prick at my mind." Her interest in Dove's feather was no condemnation; he suspected that it was one many healers would share. "It is enough that I mislike trusting Astrid and Elsa to her without caution."
"I understand, Lord Thor," Bjorn said. He began to shift, grimacing, pushing himself to sit upright against the wall. "The apprentices I will watch also, for all they have been kind."
"Give them no reason to suspect you," Thor told him. "All medicines are poison, given poorly." His mother had told him that.
Bjorn nodded, and the sounds from the next room fell quiet. Footsteps on creaking floorboards announced movement.
"It is good to see you recovering," Thor said, louder now. He pushed off the wall, offering his arm.
"By your will, Lord Thor," Bjorn said, raising his arm to accept it, mouth tightening at the effort. His arm trembled finely but he clasped Thor's arm tight all the same before releasing it.
Wolfric came to a stop at the door, looking in and offering Bjorn a nod before turning to Thor. His eye had a fire to it, and his dark eyepatch glinted with the light from the shutters. "I am ready," he said.
Thor gave a final nod to Bjorn, and they left the healing house behind, stepping back out to the brisk outdoors. It was a relief after the stillness of the house.
"We go to speak with Harad," Thor told his first follower in this world. "If any close to hand know of a dragon, it will be him."
"It will be a short flight," Wolfric said, his fear of the skies not even a blip in the face of swifter aid for his sisters, nor did he blink at the news they went to the one to kill their father for aid.
"We will leave soon," Thor said. "I will meet you by the longhall, once we have spread the word and readied what we need."
Wolfric's hand went to the sword at his hip. "I have all I need," he said, but still he bowed his head. "I will see Knut for supplies." He was on his way without a reply, purpose in his step. If a dragon were to fall suddenly from the sky, he would not hesitate a moment.
With one last look at the house of healing, Thor left it behind, his suspicions and worries a dark weight at the back of his mind. This was not a problem he was made to deal with, but deal with it he would, in the only way he knew how. He missed Natasha's skill for such things. He missed Clint's wary cunning.
He missed Loki.
The trunks themselves were impressive things, even if they were beginning to become accustomed to seeing them approach from the forests to the north. Trimmed, hacked, and sawed into useful forms, they would serve as formidable new walls for the town, slowly beginning to stretch around the old walls and gates that had been blitzed during the raid. Half again as tall as the old walls and five times the thickness, even the gates were an upgrade, less gateways than passages cut through the new walls. From the river they began to stretch north and around, and with each furrow dug and trunk placed, the people felt a little safer.
Though of course, that could have been the result of watching their protector set the walls in place with his bare hands, nudging and pushing the multi-ton sections to his satisfaction.
The spectacle lasted most of the day, long enough that the hunters and fishers would return in time to catch a glimpse of it themselves as they bore their takings away to be smoked or dried. Come the evenings, many found themselves gathering in the young grove after mealtime, or even just passing by, seeking just a glimpse of the golden light that sprang from it.
Routine came, and with it came recovery. Two weeks passed, the wall growing. Thor spoke with all who would gather the courage to approach, though he found that those tended to be the ones who had fought at his side. He would speak with Wolfric at work of a day, and with Kirsa in the grove come dusk, the Kislevite Grigori watching much but saying little. Distance and deeds had a way of intimidating the rest.
Then, one grey morning, he returned with his harvest to find Wolfric absent, and worried murmurs in his place.
X
The medicine woman of Vinteerholm had been strung up and butchered by the Aeslings, but the town still needed someone to see to its ails, and so Helka had been moved into her old home and workplace with little fuss. The frail woman and her two apprentices lived and worked in the tall and narrow house, pressed tightly to its neighbours, and it was that house that Thor found Wolfric pacing before in the late morning, hand clenched tight around the hilt of the blessed sword on his hip.
"Wolfric," Thor said, coming to a stop in the slush of the street. He wore a threadbare shirt and ragged trousers, both stained by sweat, but the concern in his visage lent him a regal bearing that no peasant garb could mar. "I have heard ill whispers."
"They're sick," Wolfric said, his worried steps unceasing. He still wore the armour he had donned in readiness to defend the lumber yard if needed, but now it was almost mocking, useless for the trouble he found himself set against.
There was only one 'they' that could set him to worry so, and Thor nodded, grave. "What has Helka told you?"
"Nothing," Wolfric snapped, their roles as god and faithful worth little in the face of sick sisters. "They were shivering last night, so I put them to bed and stoked the fire because they had snuck off to play with Trumpetter all day after their chores with Helka, but then this morning I could hardly wake Elsa and Astrid didn't stir and-"
"Wolfric," Thor barked, "cease. Breathe."
Wolfric stopped, back to Thor and his knuckles white around his sword. He let out a slow, ragged breath, and turned. His eye bore into his god. "I've seen fevers like this before. Will- can you help them?"
He had no skill in the healing arts, and gone were the days where he could seek his mother's aid. His were hands to kill and defend, not to mend. "They will be healed," he said simply. He was no healer - but he was Thor, and he would see it done.
Something eased in the worried young man, and he nodded. "I can't lose them," he said, quieter now. "They're all I have left. My uncle - it's not the same."
"I know," Thor said. He remembered all too well, the feeling of loved ones cut and carved away, each loss worse than the one before like a dagger to the ribs twisted around cruelly.
The creak of a door interrupted any response Wolfric might have made, his head snapping towards it. A comely young woman, one of Helka's apprentices, peered out, stuttering when she found herself the subject of their attention. "Helka is ready for you," she said, voice soft and scratchy, like it was seldom used.
Wolfric wasted no time in entering, and Thor followed. They stuck close to the young woman's heels as she led them inside, down a dark and narrow hall lit by a single candle. There were two doors on either side, and they made for the door at the rear of the house on the left, just before a rickety staircase that led up and down. She opened the door, but did not enter, stepping out of the way.
The room they entered was better lit than the hall, though not by much. Tallow candles burned in the corners of the room, casting a flickering light, and a row of wooden shutters were half open at the top of the back wall, letting in some small measure of fresh air. Shelves around the edges bore reagents of all kinds, plant and animal, living and not, and the wise woman herself was bent over a mortar and pestle as she sat at her worktable, thin grey hair bound up out of the way.
"What word?" Wolfric demanded the moment he saw her. "Where are they?"
"You were right to bring them," Helka said, clearing her throat with a wet rasp as she ground away at some powder. "Another day without aid, and they would have been beyond my help."
"Then you can heal them?" Wolfric asked. He stopped beside her, just short of looming, while Thor took up a spot against the door frame, leaning.
"I know how," Helka said. The croak of her voice seemed to have gotten worse since the last Thor had spoken with her, but she still handled the pestle with a wiry strength. "I could heal them this day…if I had the ingredient I needed."
Wolfric had straightened as she spoke, hope starting to fill his frame, only to still at the end. "What do you need?"
Helka looked up from her work, rheumy gaze flicking over to Thor as she noticed his presence. "Godly one," she said, dipping her head, before looking back to Wolfric. "I need the heartblood of a dragon."
The young warrior sagged, hope seemingly torn from his grasp. "None have slain a dragon for generations."
"That seems a mighty ingredient," Thor said, mind turning.
"It is a mighty sickness," Helka said. "The girls will have to stay with me to prevent its spread."
"You would endanger yourself?" Thor asked.
"I have the knowledge and remedies to keep a person hale," Helka said, "though it not be cheap. Not a solution for the town entire."
"Generous," Thor said.
"The twins have been good helpers, taking over the smaller chores for my girls so I can teach them more," Helka said, waving a bony arm. "I like them."
"So I just have to slay a dragon, and bring you its heart," Wolfric said. He already seemed to be rallying, tapping his thumb on the emerald in the hilt of his sword. The danger of dragonslaying seemed to come up short when measured against the lives of his sisters.
"We," Thor corrected him. "I've no doubt the beast would fall before you, but I'll not invite the wrath of the twins for your injuries."
"You would do this?" Wolfric asked, turning to him. "I thought- a test of faith, or a quest-"
Thor snorted. "I know well the quality of your faith, Wolfric," he said. "I can feel it with every beat of your heart if I but look to see."
"Then we just have to find a dragon," Wolfric said, the beginning of a smile casting aside his worry, even if it was a cautious, wary thing.
"Just a dragon," Thor said, and if a younger version of himself wasn't perking up with glee at the thought, he kept that to himself. A thought occurred to him. "Heartblood of a dragon cannot be a common ingredient."
Helka laughed, a short, mirthless thing. "It is not. I have the recipe from my great grandmother, who used it to end a plague that near ended Vinteerholm in her time."
Wolfric's brow furrowed as he thought. "But that was when-"
"Aye," Helka said. "When the wings of The Crow swept over us."
A sickly sweet odour drifted by Thor's nose, and he snorted, trying to clear it. He recognised that taint. He had also seen it cleansed once before, and his mind went to Dove's feather. "There may be a swifter option," he said. He did not always carry it on his person, but it was always with him, and he drew it forth now, cradling it like it was something precious - and it was. It almost seemed to glow in the darkness of the room, bright without casting light.
"That, that would do it," Helka rasped, swallowing. "For one of them." She shaded her eyes against its gleam, but could not seem to look away.
Wolfric was shaking his head, horror writ clear across his face, eye wide. "I can't make that choice."
"You will not have to," Thor said. "One will receive the feather, and the other I will hallow as I hallowed Gunnhilde's spear."
But Helka was shaking her head, finally looking away from the feather. "I fear for the twin chosen if you do so," Helka said. "The sickness has burrowed itself deeply, as much part of them as it is harming them. To burn it out is to burn them."
"Then how will your potion work when Thor's might will not?" Wolfric demanded.
"That is what the heartblood is for," Helka said, unbothered, "to strengthen them for the fight." She seemed to take pity on Wolfric. "You might leave the feather with me while you seek the dragon. I will make the choice for you, and when you return, I will brew the cure for the other."
The young warrior opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out, and he closed it, staring off at the wall.
Helka pushed herself up with a groan, bony hands patting at Wolfric's shoulder as she stepped by. "Think on it. I'll check on little Astrid and Elsa while you do." She left, leaning heavily into the door to see it closed properly in its uneven frame. A scroll fell from a shelf, its wooden roller tumbling to the ground with a clinkclinkclink, clinkclinkclink, clinkclinkclink, enormously loud in the quiet of the workroom, and then they were alone.
Thor stared at the scroll, expression neutral but mind awhirl. An old scar, one given to him by Loki with a taunt and a grin, was itching. Something was not right, but he knew not what. He pushed off the wall and approached it, feet thudding heavily on the wooden floor with each step. Wolfric sank into the chair that Helka had vacated as Thor took up the parchment; it was a simple thing, rolled around a wooden scroll. He unfurled it, and began to read.
"Even if we use the feather, I'm still making a choice," Wolfric said, head in his hands. "Astrid would make a wildcat look tame if she wakes to see her sister ill, and Elsa wouldn't speak to me for a year if she is chosen." His hands tightened in his hair, and if it was any longer he would be tearing at it.
"Important decisions are rarely easy," Thor said, tone absent as he continued to read. It was a list of ingredients and their properties, written over time and by different hands. He stopped when he came to a particular entry.
Blood of Beast ~ From common rat to mighty dragon, blood has value. Blood to suit the drinker, blood to bolster purpose, blood to grant power. Should blood you need, do not cry poor. Better to drink of a bear than a sheep when a wolf would do.
He read through the rest swiftly, but nothing caught his eye as the entry on blood. Everything about it seemed to support that which Helka had told them…and yet he was wary.
"Thor?"
"Hmm?" Thor asked, tearing his eyes away from the scroll. Wolfric was staring at him like he had answers.
"If it was your sisters, what would you do?"
Thor pictured a pair of small Helas, young and smiling and wearing the same horns that his sister had. He shivered. Put the boot to them while he had the chance - but no, even if he were faced with Hela herself as a child, he knew he could not. "If it were my sisters," he said slowly, "I would - what would hurt them more? To languish under the touch of Decay, or to wake and watch as their sister did?"
"To watch," Wolfric said, a grim weight falling upon him. "They slumber now, but that is all. It could worsen, but-" he cut himself off.
It seemed that Wolfric had made his decision even if he still wrestled with it, and he began to reroll the scroll, placing it back from where it came. "How long has Helka served as a wise woman?"
"Longer than I have lived. She delivered me as a babe, the twins too," Wolfric said. His elbows rested on his knees now. "They were lucky to have her go with them, uncle said, when they left Vinteerholm."
"She is skilled, then," Thor said.
"Aye. I do not know if another town would have the knowledge to brew a cure like the one she speaks of." Speaking the words seemed to lighten him, affirming the knowledge that there was a solution.
Still he was suspicious. He had little cause, and much proof otherwise, but he could not help but be wary. The thought of letting the feather leave his possession sat ill with him, but did his neck prick only at that, or at something else? He thought back to the few times their paths had crossed for more than a moment. Helka had nursed Tyra back to health after her captivity, had seen to the wounded after retaking Vinteerholm, had aided with all manner of small hurts and ailments since then. And yet he was suspicious.
"If there is a dragon to be found," Thor said at last, "then we will find it."
"Thank you," Wolfric said with feeling. For the promise, for the deed, for not leaving him behind.
He would not leave blithely, however. Kirsa had grown fond of the twins, and he was sure she would volunteer to help watch over them if asked. They would gain the heartblood of the dragon, and he would deal with what came after, after. Whatever the truth proved to be.
When Helka returned, she did so with a damp rag clutched in her bony hand and expectant eyes, shifting between Thor and Wolfric as they stood in the middle of the room. "Made a decision, have you?"
"I have," Wolfric said, mouth set in a thin line. "We will find a dragon, and take its heart."
"Don't want to use the feather, then?" Helka asked. She stepped past them, falling back into the chair at her workbench. A wooden bowl was pulled over, and she began to wring the rag into it.
"Neither would accept it if it meant the other still suffered," Wolfric said.
"They'll suffer either way," Helka said, resigned to it. "I have them across the hall, if you want to see them before you leave."
Her words did not sit well with him, and he gave an abortive nod, leaving the room without a word. Out in the hall, another door creaked open slowly, Wolfric's steps quiet by habit as he entered the room that held his sisters.
Thor glanced at the medicine woman, but she seemed content to ignore him as she focused on wringing every last drop of liquid from the cloth. She looked as she always had since he had first saved her amongst those that fled from Wolfric's village, fleeing mindlessly into the wilds. The same worn lines and thin grey hair and ragged stamina - but that meant little, and he turned for the door. He wished Loki were here.
"I can only keep the sickness at bay for so long," Helka said, stopping him in place without so much as looking up from her task. "You have weeks, godly one, not months. If you return too late…"
"I will not," Thor said. The echoes of his voice seemed to linger in the room like fading thunder, and he left the woman to her work.
Out in the hall, the door to the room across from the workshop was still open, and Thor saw Wolfric sitting at the edge of a bed, both his sisters within it. They could have been sleeping normally, if not for the fitful expressions they wore and the shortness of their breaths. Wolfric held a damp cloth, dabbing at the forehead of first one, then the other, his back to the door. He was not alone, having taken over the task from the second of Helka's apprentices. The young woman looked up from the scene, meeting Thor's eyes, and he inclined his head in silent thanks. She near flinched, swiftly looking down and hiding behind a curtain of dark hair. There was a likeness between the two apprentices, both dark haired and thin of limb, and he had never seen them out in the village unless it was on the business of their teacher. Shy or run ragged he did not know, and now was not the time to ask. He moved on.
His departure was waylaid, however, by the opening of the door on his left and the appearance of the apprentice who had first greeted them. She looked up and hesitated at the sight of him, and he stepped to the side of the hall, sucking in his stomach to let her pass, but to his surprise she did not, approaching him hesitantly.
"Lord Thor," she said, hands worrying before her.
"Young apprentice," Thor said, trying to remember if he had ever been introduced to her. "How may I aid you?"
"If your business with my master is done, our other patient has asked to speak with you," the young woman said. Unlike her probable relative, she wore her hair in a loose braid. At Thor's curious look, she expanded. "The Aesling, Bjorn."
Thor brightened. He had heard that the man had survived the wounds he had taken in Skraevold, finally waking, but between settling in the newcomers and seeing to his own tasks, he had not the time to meet with the warrior. "I should like that," he said. "Is he…?" he pointed to the open door.
"He is," she said. It seemed she was about to ask something, but she only nodded, swallowing. "Lord Thor." She squeezed past him, making for the basement stairs.
Perhaps there would always be some made uneasy by his power. He did not like it, but now was not the time to address it, and so he stepped up to peer around the doorframe. Inside was a large man on a small bed, looking out the shutters as he lay atop the covers. A recently snuffed candle still smoked on a small table beside the bed.
"Lord Thor," Bjorn said, looking away from the small glimpse of the sky he had. "It is well to see you."
Thor inclined his head. There was no place to sit, not with the big blond man almost overflowing from the bed, so he leaned against the wall across from him, looking towards the shutters. Even so, he could have stuck his leg out to rest it against the bed, so small was the room. "I was pleased to hear of your recovery."
"It goes," Bjorn said, looking down to his chest. The savage gouges given to him by the Chaos touched hounds were near swaddled in bandages, and the thick scent of some poultice filled the room. He would forever bear the scars, writing over the records of battle he had already borne from more human weapons, but he was breathing easily enough, and spoke without pain. "It will go for a time yet."
"I wager you would make the same choice again," Thor said. For all that he and Eseld seemed to have been new acquaintances, the man had been protective of the diminutive woman.
"I would," Bjorn said. He reached up carefully to stroke his moustache, unbraided and hanging free, near to his collarbones. His beard had grown out as well, no longer trimmed short. "Some think it strange, to protect one such as her."
"Some might," Thor said, shrugging. "But her strength and the youth of your friendship is no good reason to do so."
Bjorn hesitated a moment, but nodded. "Aye," he said. "She reminds me of my daughter." His tone was closed off, gaze unfocused as he stared at his feet.
Thor was quiet, watching him. The seconds ticked on.
"I wanted to give you my thanks," Bjorn said, coming back to himself. "For all that you have given us. There are no others who would do what you have done."
A raised brow answered him. "They were worthy deeds, but I am not the only one who would have done so."
"You are the only god," Bjorn said, deep voice low and even. "No other god would walk beside us as you do, and for that you have my worship."
Thor looked, but not with his eyes, and he could feel the connection between them now that he cared to see. It was a steady thing, settled and sure. He nodded slowly. "And I am pleased to have it, knowing your quality."
Bjorn bowed his head, contentment worn plainly. "Lord Thor." He looked back up. "How would you have your worship? I have asked, but Sunniva nor Selinda can answer."
"Kirsa has the answers you seek, and the growing wisdom to share it," Thor said.
"Kirsa," Bjorn said, frowning as he thought. "I have heard her name. She is your priestess?"
"No," Thor said, holding back a smile. "That is not a title she desires."
"I understand," Bjorn said. "I will ask her when I am free of this…place."
"You don't enjoy being confined to a small bed in a small room, too injured to rise?" Thor asked.
Bjorn gave a displeased rumble, deep in his chest. "I do not."
"I will have some mead brought to you," Thor said, shifting his weight on his legs. "Your deeds in Skraevold surely earned you that."
"Sunniva asked me to abstain," Bjorn said, gloomy now, "and Selinda threatened me."
"I will not be a hypocrite and tell you to obey the words of the healers, but perhaps you should consider the words of the healers," Thor said.
A small laugh came in response, though Bjorn winced afterwards. "At least there is little but lumberwork to be done. I would not fare well were my strength needed."
Thor coughed.
Bjorn perked up, for all he tried to hide it. "There is a fight to be had?"
"There may be…a quest," Thor said.
"What manner?" Bjorn asked.
"It may involve a dragon."
A curious look of excitement and dismay crossed Bjorn's face. "I could - I could keep a watch on the skies, to give warning should it come."
"It does not come for the village, unfortunately," Thor said. "We must find it instead, and take its heart."
"Ah," Bjorn said, sagging back into his too small bed. "Perhaps that is for the best. I should not be so eager for the fight."
For a moment, Thor eyed the man. He had heard tell of his actions during the raid on Skraevold, and of the affliction he bore - baresark - but he was no young warrior to be counselled. He was not that much younger than Harad.
"Do you mean to hunt the beast in its lair?" Bjorn asked, cutting through Thor's thoughts.
"If we find it, we shall," Thor said. "The lives of Wolfric's sisters depend on it."
"And so the heart," Bjorn said. "A powerful ingredient for a powerful elixir," he said. Then he frowned. "How do you mean to track it?"
"There is a village nearby, led by an old warrior," Thor said. "Well, old as humans go. If any close to hand know of a dragon, it will be Harad."
"Harad? Of the Axe?" Bjorn asked.
"He is called so, yes," Thor said, not quite cautiously. He hoped that Harad had not also killed Bjorn's father.
"I fought him once," Bjorn said. "I was young. He nearly took my head."
"I won't demand you work with him," Thor said, "though he does live nearby."
"No, there is no ill feeling," Bjorn said. "I was about to kill his skald brother. The man had near put a dagger in my spine."
"A spirited meeting," Thor said, thinking of the night he had first met Steve and Tony. How close they had come to killing each other!
"It was," Bjorn said. "There is no way to join you in your quest? I cannot run, but a brisk walk I feel I can manage." Despite his words, his tone said he had little hope of joining. "I would surely heal as we travelled."
"Next time I venture out to slay a great beast, I will bring you with me," Thor promised him. "I would do you no favours to bring you now."
Bjorn sighed. "You are right, Lord Thor. If there is any way I can serve from this bed, I pray that you tell me."
There was a pause as the expected platitude failed to eventuate, and Bjorn looked up, gaze sharpening.
"There is something you might do for me," Thor said slowly. He glanced to the open door, but there was no activity in the hall. He could hear Wolfric murmuring to his sisters, and Helka puttering around in her workroom. "While we are gone, I would have you watch over the twins. I have…concerns."
"Your concern is not the sickness," Bjorn said. For all that he was large and slow to speak, he was no more slow of thought than Thor himself was.
"No," Thor said. He spoke lowly, deep voice hardly more than a whisper. "My concern is the healer."
Bjorn was silent, thinking deeply. "I will watch her," he said at length. "What do you suspect?"
"Nothing definite, nothing sure, or this would not be needed," Thor said, crossing his arms over his belly. "I only know that her words prick at my mind." Her interest in Dove's feather was no condemnation; he suspected that it was one many healers would share. "It is enough that I mislike trusting Astrid and Elsa to her without caution."
"I understand, Lord Thor," Bjorn said. He began to shift, grimacing, pushing himself to sit upright against the wall. "The apprentices I will watch also, for all they have been kind."
"Give them no reason to suspect you," Thor told him. "All medicines are poison, given poorly." His mother had told him that.
Bjorn nodded, and the sounds from the next room fell quiet. Footsteps on creaking floorboards announced movement.
"It is good to see you recovering," Thor said, louder now. He pushed off the wall, offering his arm.
"By your will, Lord Thor," Bjorn said, raising his arm to accept it, mouth tightening at the effort. His arm trembled finely but he clasped Thor's arm tight all the same before releasing it.
Wolfric came to a stop at the door, looking in and offering Bjorn a nod before turning to Thor. His eye had a fire to it, and his dark eyepatch glinted with the light from the shutters. "I am ready," he said.
Thor gave a final nod to Bjorn, and they left the healing house behind, stepping back out to the brisk outdoors. It was a relief after the stillness of the house.
"We go to speak with Harad," Thor told his first follower in this world. "If any close to hand know of a dragon, it will be him."
"It will be a short flight," Wolfric said, his fear of the skies not even a blip in the face of swifter aid for his sisters, nor did he blink at the news they went to the one to kill their father for aid.
"We will leave soon," Thor said. "I will meet you by the longhall, once we have spread the word and readied what we need."
Wolfric's hand went to the sword at his hip. "I have all I need," he said, but still he bowed his head. "I will see Knut for supplies." He was on his way without a reply, purpose in his step. If a dragon were to fall suddenly from the sky, he would not hesitate a moment.
With one last look at the house of healing, Thor left it behind, his suspicions and worries a dark weight at the back of his mind. This was not a problem he was made to deal with, but deal with it he would, in the only way he knew how. He missed Natasha's skill for such things. He missed Clint's wary cunning.
He missed Loki.
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GiovanniBlasini
Transhumanist Nutcase from Niops IX
- Location
- San Diego, CA, USA, Sol III
- Pronouns
- He/Him
One thing I love in this story is all the little reminders that Thor, for all his power, is injured, and still healing, too.
So many mentions of blood, brings to mind Khorne... Except, the blood god doesn't really do schemes. Could also be Nurgle, but you'd literally smell him from a mile away. Most likely Tzeentch then. Could also be some other obscure warp-thing that feels threatened though, m'not quite as familiar with WHF as I am 40k
God Of Urging
Diety of Induced Impulses
- Location
- Turkey
I had the thought as well, but the backstory for when the dragon heartblood was last used, and the mention of the healer's age and the apprentices' absence from the public has me wondering if she's already free of the Thirst. It might be that her planned cure for the sisters is to give them the Blood Kiss and then to quell their Thirst before they have a chance to feel it. Maybe that's how she got her apprentices in the first place.
Then again, it could be a just a Nurgle plot. There's decent odds a dragon in Norsca might be tainted by Chaos, and Granddaddy has a thing for subverting healers, like how Festus the Leechlord's Nurgle cult in the Empire's disguised as a chain of charitable hospitals only the higher ups of which know the true purpose of.
Or, the healer is entirely honest, and it's just that the cure has side-effects that Thor would view as a problem but she doesn't.
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A bloody-handed god that does engage in schemes might be Khaine?
Home Improvement 3
- Location
- Australia
Harad's village was much as he remembered it, a small settlement by a river, protected by a ringed palisade wall. His arrival, descending from the sky carrying a tree trunk on his back, did not go unnoticed, but by the flying of his blond hair and the axe he bore, he was known, and heralded with joy.
The trunk was set down carefully, and Wolfric stepped stiffly from a small section that had been hewed into its side, large enough for a man to sit and be shielded from the wind. He swayed as he walked towards the opening village gates, but found his feet quickly.
The second man to stumble from the tree did so with a laugh, eyes alight with near childish glee. "That was – ! Mighty Thor! To see it all!" Grigori said, the Kislevite unable to contain his joy. "The flight to Skraevold was one thing, in the dark as it was, but to witness the world from the sky above!" He laughed, a ringing thing from such a bearlike man. "I cannot believe it!"
"I am well pleased to hear it," Thor said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed.
"I thank you," Grigori said, quick to follow after him. "You have blessed me this day."
"It is a small thing in the face of your presence with us, on this quest," Thor said.
A scoff was his answer, though the man quickly coughed after, as if to hide it. "Had you made the offer in Kislev, blood would be shed to win the honour."
"Dragonslaying is popular in your lands?" Thor asked, as they neared the gates.
"Not quite," Grigori said, frowning now, the excitement of flight starting to fade. "Tor - you - there are many devotees of the Thunder God in Kislev."
"I see," Thor said. "It is good that you have joined us. You will have the chance to question me and set your mind at ease."
Grigori made a noise of agreement, already falling back into the taciturn manner he commonly wore around Thor, brow furrowed in thought.
Thor left him to it, and they caught up to Wolfric, the man falling in behind as they stopped at the gates. A woman with a bow greeted them, one he remembered from the defence of the village and the liberation of Vinteerholm. She had been stabbed in the stomach, and he was pleased to see she had survived. There was the faintest stirring of worship from her, nothing solid or real, unlike the awe in her eyes as she took in his plain clothing and magnificent axe. A few words were exchanged, their purpose for coming revealed, and she was quick to answer.
They were not directed to the longhall, but to the far side of the village, where a smaller gate was propped open. The sound of an axe at work carried in the air, and children passed them in dribs and drabs, carrying split chunks of wood. Through the gate was the man they sought, using a simple iron headed axe to split large logs with little effort. Despite the coolness of the air his heavily muscled arms were bare, a simple jerkin apparently enough to ward off the weather. He worked by a large pile of logs, felled and trimmed, steadily reducing the stack.
"Thor," Harad said, setting another log in place on a cutting stump. It was the length of a man's arm, and near as thick as his thighs. He cleaved it in two with a single blow. "You are well." His voice was as deep and low as ever.
"Harad," Thor said, coming to a stop just out of splinter distance. "The same to you." Both of the men at his back had shifted at the simple address, but at Thor's response they settled.
One of the two halves of split wood was placed back on the stump and split again, one handed this time. "We saw your show in the skies," the greybeard said. He placed the other half and repeated the act. "Skraevold fell, then."
Three children hurried from the gate, pushing and playing, and took up the split logs. One boy, not quite a teenager, took up two, the others one apiece, on their shoulders like it was a great trunk. All couldn't help but stare at Thor as they did, nothing subtle about their awed gawking.
"It did," Thor said, grinning at the children at work as they scampered off. "We rescued many who were taken, and then some besides."
"They hit Vinnskor too then, did they?" Harad asked, taking up another log.
"I do not believe so," Thor said. "We freed those of Sarl and Nordland and Kislev, even a few Aeslings."
Harad snorted, giving him a look. "I suppose I am not surprised," he said. "Many?"
"Nine hundred," Thor said.
The next strike was less than perfect, though the strength behind it still saw it split the log in twain, if unevenly. "Many mouths," he said. "You come for aid in feeding them?"
"No, Tyra has led a group south. They mean to trade with Kislev," Thor said.
"That is good," Harad said. "Our stores are not what they were."
"The celebration did not drain your reserves so much, I thought," Thor said, frowning.
"It did not. Rats in the food stores," Harad said, splitting the last of the log, "but we know how to sort them." He stepped back to let another group of children take it away.
Grigori and Wolfric both spat to the sides, and Harad nodded, as if agreeing.
"If not for food then, what brings you back to my home?" the axeman asked.
"Dragonblood," Thor said.
Harad frowned now. "Food we could have managed, but what dragonblood I had is long used."
"No, we-" Thor found his train of thought diverted. "You had dragonblood laying about?"
"It is a powerful ingredient, useful to bolster the strength of many brews and potions," Harad said. "Even to break curses, though some are too terrible for even the heartblood of a dragon."
"I see," Thor said. At least it seemed that they had not been sent on a wild dragon chase. "Then perhaps you might know where we can find a dragon."
Harad stopped cutting, setting the head of his axe into the dirt and resting his weight on it. "And for what do you need such a thing?"
Thor glanced back at Wolfric, unwilling to speak of his troubles without his word.
"The touch of the Crow lingers on my sisters," Wolfric said, blunt and terse. "I mean to purge it."
Rather than answer, Harad's gaze lingered on Wolfric, narrowing as it flicked to the eye patch and away. "Have we met, boy? Before Vinteerholm."
Wolfric didn't blink, cool grey eye fixed on the greybeard. "You knew my uncle, and my father."
Harad looked away, sighing, and for a moment it seemed a great weight pressed down on him. He straightened and set the tip of its head into his cutting stump, where it stood once he took his hand away. "Come inside," he said. "We will speak by the hearth."
The old warrior stepped past them, heading back into the village. Thor and Wolfric shared a look, and then they followed, Grigori a beat behind.
X
The longhouse was as Thor remembered it, a long stone fire pit running its length and tables on either side of it. Harad led them not to the chieftain's table, but to the end of one of the long tables. A nearby section of the pit was active, embers and coals smouldering without smoke and casting warmth.
"Bide here a moment," Harad told them, "I must speak with my Helena." He turned and departed the longhouse as quickly as he had arrived, leaving them to sit and wait.
They were not alone, a pair of young women - girls, really - sitting further down the hall as they whittled away at thin blocks of wood with a strange flexible material, making arrow shafts. They were not as subtle in their interest as they might have thought, and Thor found himself sharing an amused look with Wolfric as the mood was lightened when one dared the other to approach them.
"Your ear," Grigori said, speaking suddenly, "it is the same as your speech?"
"My ear?" Thor asked, nonplussed.
"At first I thought it knowledge," Grigori said, "but when you speak, all hear, no matter their mother tongue. Is your ear the same?"
"It is," Thor said, with him now. "We call it All Speak, and it allows us to understand and be understood wherever our paths may lead us."
"And all gods have this ability?" Grigori asked.
"I cannot speak for all gods," Thor said, shrugging, "but for me and mine, yes."
Grigori fell silent again, pondering what he had learned. No other conversation was forthcoming, and the two girls did not quite manage to gather the courage to approach before Harad returned.
He was not alone. The axeman and his silver haired wife joined them, bringing chairs from a smaller table to sit at the end of their own.
"You are sure it is the Crow?" Helena asked, wasting no time. Her eyes were intent, laugh lines by her eyes narrowed and intent.
"Our wise woman says it is so, and Helka is rarely wrong," Wolfric said. "My sisters sleep and cannot be woken, and if we do not return swiftly with the heartblood of a dragon they never will." Under the table, his hands clenched helplessly.
"I remember Helka," Helena said, tapping a finger against her lips as she thought. "We were young girls together."
"Do you know of any dragon nearby?" Wolfric asked, impatient. "I do not care for childhood friendships."
"Patience," Helena said, laying a hand on her husband's knee as if to settle him, though he had done little more than blink at Wolfric's words. "If she is brewing the elixir she ought to, it will be the work of a week, and the dragonblood is not added until the last."
Wolfric mastered himself, but it was not without effort.
"You say you once had dragonblood, Harad," Thor said. "How did that come to be so? Did you slay one?"
"No," Harad said, shaking his head once. "I slew a man who claimed to have done so, with the blood to prove it, but I suspect he came across the scene of a contest, and merely gathered what was shed."
"Then it may yet live," Wolfric said as he leaned forward, hopes rising. "Where was this? How far north?"
"It was not north," Harad said. "It was in these very mountains, three decades ago."
Rising hopes were dashed, and Wolfric sat back in his seat, sagging. "There has not been a dragon seen here in my lifetime."
"There has not," Harad acknowledged. "But I recall my grandfather speaking of that same dragon, and it was not seen in my father's lifetime either. Like bears, they hibernate. This one may yet live."
"Where?" Wolfric demanded. "What do you ask for in exchange?"
Harad and Helena shared a look, and she gave a slight nod.
"You are strong," Harad said to Thor, slowly, "but even so, it is a dragon. Were your need not great, I would refuse."
Wolfric near strained in his seat, but he held his tongue.
"I will tell you," the greybeard said to Wolfric now, "and in return, I ask that we have a conversation."
"A conversation?" Wolfric asked, wary.
"Aye," Harad said. "There are things I must tell you."
"I know you killed my father," Wolfric said, and Harad nodded, a grim set to his mouth, having expected the answer. "I do not care. Tell me where the dragon is, and we can speak all you wish once we have its blood."
The couple shared another, longer look.
"East," Harad said at last, "past the flow of Ursfjord, then a little further. Then south. That is the range of the dragon, if it still lives."
"My thanks," Wolfric said, already turning to his god. "Lord Thor?"
"Aye," he said, rising. "Much as I would like to stay and share your hearth, this is not a deed to do slowly," he said to the couple.
"I understand," Harad said. His solemn gaze remained on Wolfric for a beat, before he looked fully to Thor. "In my youth, I wore those same boots, though my foe was not so mighty as the Crow."
Wolfric was already turning for the door, and Grigori stood, having followed Thor's cue.
"A tale to be shared when you arrive at Vinteerholm," Thor said. "Should you leave soon, you ought to arrive shortly after we return."
"We will be there," Helena said. She was tugging lightly on the end of her silver braid, thinking. "To see Helka, if naught else. It has been…years."
"Tales for another time," Harad said, placing his hand on hers, taking it away from the braid. "Good luck, Thor."
Thor inclined his head. Now was not the time for talk, as much as he felt his interest stirring at words left unsaid. He turned and departed, following after Wolfric, Grigori in his wake. They had their heading.
Again they took to the skies, the mountains below flitting by swiftly. They did not look small, such formations never could, but they did serve to make the two mortals feel so as they soared over peaks that would have taken weeks to climb. The day was fair, with only some few clouds to dodge in avoidance of a wet chill, shadows of the mountains stretching out before them like grasping, languorous fingers. The trunk soared gracelessly through the sky as the afternoon burned on, and Thor spared a moment to be grateful that none of the others were there to see him. He really did need to obtain a more dignified method of chauffeuring his followers around.
The shadows grew longer, and they passed over what must be Ursfjord, fading light glittering on its surface. He could spy some few scattered villages along it, the smoke of bonfires and chimneys rising from them, but he ignored them for the diversion they would surely be. A shift of his grip on Stormbreaker's haft and a thought saw them begin to descend, aiming for the edge of a forest just east of the fjord as they began to shed speed. They set down on a frozen patch of dirt by the treeline, near swallowed by the gloom of its shadow.
"Why have we stopped?" Wolfric demanded, before he had fully extricated himself from his seat and the rope keeping him secure. "We are not far enough past the the Ursfjord to have reached the dragon's territory."
"We have not," Thor said, "but if we wish to build a shelter and prepare food, we have little time to spare."
His face was mulish. "But we are so close, surely-"
"Do you wish to hunt and fight a dragon in the dark?" Thor asked, giving him a look.
All at once, Wolfric sagged. "No, Lord Thor."
"Remember Helena's words," Thor said. "We have a week until the heartblood is needed." He put his hand on his shoulder. "We will return in time. You will save your sisters."
Wolfric swallowed and nodded, placated but not content. Without another word he turned and made for the forest, walking alone into the embrace of a domain that most would avoid in all but the strongest parties. Were it not for the troubled set of his shoulders, he might have seemed eager, sword already half drawn.
Grigori had freed himself now, and he made to follow the one eyed man.
"No, Grigori," Thor said. "You lack the advantages I have bestowed on Wolfric, and I would have your aid in preparing our camp."
"Aye, Mighty Thor," the Kislevite said. He seemed to have settled on a term of address, for all he seemed unwilling to commit to calling him as his worshippers did.
They had not left Vinteerholm without supplies, though they had made a point of not taking what they could get for themselves while on their quest. That meant they had a sack full of skins of water and booze, as well as some roots and vegetables, but no meat. Wolfric would see to that, and in the meantime, they would see to shelter.
Grigori began to gather kindling for a fire and Thor ascended, lopping off branches as he went. The trees were easily twenty men thick, and the branches were themselves near as thick as normal trees. He let them fall to the ground with a clatter and crash, material to build a small dwelling with. It would not be pretty, but it would serve them well enough for the night. He only stopped when he reached the top, easily three hundred feet from the ground. He looked down at what had fallen, judging. Then he dropped, taking out the branches on the other side.
By the time Wolfric returned, the creeping cold of night was starting to make its presence known, even if the last rays of a pale sun still fell upon the land. He brought with him a pair of elk haunches, slung over each shoulder by the leg, and a bloody cut along the back of his arm.
"The elk fight back, did it?" Thor asked, even as he used his axe to trim a branch into a more ideal shape, gouging a channel in it. He was working along it carefully, the other end propped up by a small pile of branches already done.
"No," Wolfric said, "but the ice-tiger that thought to steal our dinner did." His time away had settled him some, helpless urgency no longer sitting quite so heavily on his shoulders.
Thor huffed a laugh, but Grigori looked up from where he was coaxing a fire to greater life.
"Ice-tiger?" he asked, interested. "They be little, but fierce. And tasty. Uh, small angry beast, good taste?" he added, his Norscan stilted and broken.
"Aye. Yes," Wolfric said, almost exhausting what Kislevite he knew. "But I did not, uh, hmm. I did not - fuck," he finished, exhausting the rest. "I did not slay it."
"Then how did you get away with the meat?" Thor asked. He took up another log.
"I cut it, and took the meat before it could gather its courage again," Wolfric said, setting the haunches down on a stretch of material they had brought. "It took the offering rather than hunt me." He took up a sharp knife, and sat on a stump to start rendering his prizes.
"You are sure of that?" Thor asked, nodding to the forest.
Both men looked to the treeline, only a stone's throw from where they worked, and froze. From the shadows, a pair of luminous yellow orbs could be seen, almost hidden behind the roots. Then they blinked.
"...we make a strong shelter tonight, yes?" Wolfric said.
"Yes," Grigori said, with feeling. Some sentiments were beyond mere language.
Matters were not helped by the glowing eyes blinking closed once more, only to then fail to reappear.
Both men looked to the pile of logs that Thor was preparing, then to Thor himself, expectant. The god could not help but chuckle, but he did begin to work faster, manhandling timber that would have taken four strong men to carry.
By the time the sun had fallen below distant mountains, there was a roaring fire going, throwing back the shadows, and meat sizzling on a metal dish propped up by rocks at its edge. There was also a triangular cabin, complete with roof and door and mats of pine needles to place their actual bedding on. It was downright comfortable, and the presence of a solid place to hide in case of prowling ice-tiger had the two mortals at ease as they sat by the fire, chewing at hunks of roasted elk. Skins of ale and spirits added to the warmth they felt, and by the time they were licking the juices from their fingers, the moon had risen in truth.
The night was quiet, save the rustling of the wind in the trees, and the three felt themselves growing drowsy. But then Thor happened to look up.
"What in the Nine Realms is that?!" Thor exclaimed, staring at the heavens. A sickle of a moon, green and sickly, was perched high in the sky, sitting like an unwanted guest a distance from the more familiar pale moon.
"Lord Thor?" Wolfric asked, puzzlement in his voice. "That is the Black Moon, the cursed moon."
"Morrslieb, we call it in the south," Grigori said. "It has been shy of late," he added.
Thor scowled up at the thing, misliking the faint ripples of power that wafted from it, like stink from a carcass. "What cycle does it follow? In the months since my arrival, this is the first I have seen it."
"It goes where it will," Wolfric said, shrugging and drinking deep of spirit. "Save two nights. Ill nights."
"Twice each year, it shows its full face," Grigori said. "Both are nights to seek shelter, and pray." He stared into the fire for a long moment, remembering something, and took a slow swig from his skin.
Wolfric had squinted in concentration as he listened to the other man, trying to discern his meaning, but the purse of his mouth said he was unsuccessful. "When we took to Skraevold, it showed its face over Vinteerholm, though it fled the night before our - your - return," he said.
"I do not like it," Thor said, still staring up with narrowed eyes.
"You do not…" Grigori started, swallowing, "you do not know of Morrslieb?"
"I have seen many moons, and other strange things on the branches of Yggdrasil," Thor said, hand twitching for his axe, "but never one such as that."
"Should a god not know?" Grigori asked. He shifted on his stump, like a man standing on the edge of a windy cliff.
"A god should know many things," Thor said. "Not all things."
Wolfric stirred. "If anyone claims to know all, they are a fool, or lying." Then he tsked, knowing his words were not understood.
"Just so," Thor said, tearing his gaze away from the sickly moon to give his follower a small smile. "If one claims to be all seeing or all knowing, they are mad, or lying," he repeated for Grigori's benefit.
"But, Morrslieb?" Grigori said, unable to wrap his head around it. He made as if to drag his hand through his beard, only to hesitate, fingers still sticky. "All know it. Even the smallest child knows its danger."
"Perhaps you can tell me of it," Thor said. "What are the dangers of Morrslieb?"
"Mutants, necromancy, and other evil things," Grigori said. The fire crackled and popped, spitting sparks. "Even a good man caught under its full light might fall to madness."
"When the grinning face of the Black Moon is close, so is the touch of the gods," Wolfric added. "When one sought to dedicate themselves to Chaos, the desperate would walk under its face and become godtouched."
"Chaos," Thor said. Pinpricks of light glimmered in his eyes, and his expression grew wroth. His gaze returned to the skies. "Perhaps something should be done about it."
"To be spared its attention would be a boon," Wolfric said, nodding.
Thor was touched by his easy faith, but it would not be a simple matter, not if he wanted to spare the planet the likely consequences. He would have to know more about its celestial course, and what it was that made it come and go, hiding from him. It was clear there was some intrinsic property of it that made it so inimical to mortal life…his father would have-
"But how do you not know?!" Grigori said, the words almost bursting from him. "Even if you are not- even if you were a man, you would know. You claimed fifteen centuries!"
Something about his tone clued Wolfric into his meaning, and his eye began to slant down into an impressive narrowed stare.
"There is no Morrslieb in my own realm," Thor said, shrugging. Not the full truth, nor a lie. "Just as you know nothing of Yggdrasil, the World's Tree, I knew nothing of Morrslieb."
"Ygg- it is a tree?" Grigori asked, temporarily distracted.
"Of sorts," Thor said. "It has many branches, paths one might follow through the cosmos."
Grigori shook himself. "That is not - no. You are-" he cut himself off, frustrated.
"Speak what you will," Thor said. "Take your time, and know that I will not hold your words against you."
The dark haired man was quiet for a long moment. "I saw your power over Skraevold," he said at length, "but I have seen a Beastmen herd frozen by a lone Ice Witch, also."
"You feel that my might does not prove my claim," Thor said.
Wolfric glared at the Kislevite now.
"Many have there been that would claim to divinity, to our worship," Grigori said, grim, shaking his head. "Never were they pure of heart."
"Ah, Grigori," Thor said, laughter in his voice now. "I do not claim a right to your worship!"
"You claim to be my god," Grigori said, gaining confidence now that he had not been smote for his words. "If you are, I owe you my devotion gladly. If you are not, I must deny you."
"I disagree," Thor said.
Grigori near goggled at him. "What?"
"I am Thor," the thunder god said simply. "I do not claim to be your Tor. I may be. I may not. Though I do find it vanishingly unlikely that there is a god so similar to myself in this land if he is not connected to me in some way."
"But that-"
"If I wished to trick you, I could have," Thor said, cutting through his frustration. "There is little I can do to prove myself to you that the cancerous Schemer could not. I will tell you what I have told those that follow me - if ever I break their trust, I will have proven myself unworthy, and you ought to turn from me or strike me down."
Silence fell, sudden and gloomy, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the sighing of wind through the trees and over the plain.
"Gods are…gods are not like this," Grigori said at last. He sounded lost.
"Other gods, perhaps," Thor said. "But they are not Thor." He gave the man a crooked smile. "Watch me. Judge me. In time, you will come to know the truth of me, and you can decide if I am deserving of your worship in my own right."
"Lord Thor," Wolfric said. "Tell him - ask him that even if you are not his Tor, what does it matter?"
Thor considered him, and relayed his words.
"What does it matter?" Grigori asked, taken aback, looking between the two of them. "It matters because - because-"
"Thor stands against Chaos," Wolfric continued. "Thor stands for mankind. What more can we want? Tell him that."
Thor could not help but beam at his follower - he had finally dropped the 'Lord'! - before doing as he asked.
Grigori was silent in their wake, brow furrowed in deep thought, the firelight dancing across his face. Again the quietness of the wilderness crept in.
"I cannot answer this," he said at length. "This is a question for the priests."
"Then when we find one, we can ask," Thor said. "Until then, be true to yourself and your god, whoever they may be."
Wolfric nodded, firm and secure in his belief, while Grigori nodded slowly, uncertain.
The matter was not settled, but such a weighty thing would not be solved in one night by the fire. There was little more talk that night, and only of small and inconsequential things. Their bedrolls beckoned them, and they turned in, leaving the fire to burn itself out.
If Wolfric double checked that the door to their little cabin was wedged firmly closed, the others said nothing, just as they said nothing when he twitched at a distant yowl. The mortals slept with their weapons close to hand that night, old habits tough to shake, even when sharing a room with a god that snored.
The trunk was set down carefully, and Wolfric stepped stiffly from a small section that had been hewed into its side, large enough for a man to sit and be shielded from the wind. He swayed as he walked towards the opening village gates, but found his feet quickly.
The second man to stumble from the tree did so with a laugh, eyes alight with near childish glee. "That was – ! Mighty Thor! To see it all!" Grigori said, the Kislevite unable to contain his joy. "The flight to Skraevold was one thing, in the dark as it was, but to witness the world from the sky above!" He laughed, a ringing thing from such a bearlike man. "I cannot believe it!"
"I am well pleased to hear it," Thor said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed.
"I thank you," Grigori said, quick to follow after him. "You have blessed me this day."
"It is a small thing in the face of your presence with us, on this quest," Thor said.
A scoff was his answer, though the man quickly coughed after, as if to hide it. "Had you made the offer in Kislev, blood would be shed to win the honour."
"Dragonslaying is popular in your lands?" Thor asked, as they neared the gates.
"Not quite," Grigori said, frowning now, the excitement of flight starting to fade. "Tor - you - there are many devotees of the Thunder God in Kislev."
"I see," Thor said. "It is good that you have joined us. You will have the chance to question me and set your mind at ease."
Grigori made a noise of agreement, already falling back into the taciturn manner he commonly wore around Thor, brow furrowed in thought.
Thor left him to it, and they caught up to Wolfric, the man falling in behind as they stopped at the gates. A woman with a bow greeted them, one he remembered from the defence of the village and the liberation of Vinteerholm. She had been stabbed in the stomach, and he was pleased to see she had survived. There was the faintest stirring of worship from her, nothing solid or real, unlike the awe in her eyes as she took in his plain clothing and magnificent axe. A few words were exchanged, their purpose for coming revealed, and she was quick to answer.
They were not directed to the longhall, but to the far side of the village, where a smaller gate was propped open. The sound of an axe at work carried in the air, and children passed them in dribs and drabs, carrying split chunks of wood. Through the gate was the man they sought, using a simple iron headed axe to split large logs with little effort. Despite the coolness of the air his heavily muscled arms were bare, a simple jerkin apparently enough to ward off the weather. He worked by a large pile of logs, felled and trimmed, steadily reducing the stack.
"Thor," Harad said, setting another log in place on a cutting stump. It was the length of a man's arm, and near as thick as his thighs. He cleaved it in two with a single blow. "You are well." His voice was as deep and low as ever.
"Harad," Thor said, coming to a stop just out of splinter distance. "The same to you." Both of the men at his back had shifted at the simple address, but at Thor's response they settled.
One of the two halves of split wood was placed back on the stump and split again, one handed this time. "We saw your show in the skies," the greybeard said. He placed the other half and repeated the act. "Skraevold fell, then."
Three children hurried from the gate, pushing and playing, and took up the split logs. One boy, not quite a teenager, took up two, the others one apiece, on their shoulders like it was a great trunk. All couldn't help but stare at Thor as they did, nothing subtle about their awed gawking.
"It did," Thor said, grinning at the children at work as they scampered off. "We rescued many who were taken, and then some besides."
"They hit Vinnskor too then, did they?" Harad asked, taking up another log.
"I do not believe so," Thor said. "We freed those of Sarl and Nordland and Kislev, even a few Aeslings."
Harad snorted, giving him a look. "I suppose I am not surprised," he said. "Many?"
"Nine hundred," Thor said.
The next strike was less than perfect, though the strength behind it still saw it split the log in twain, if unevenly. "Many mouths," he said. "You come for aid in feeding them?"
"No, Tyra has led a group south. They mean to trade with Kislev," Thor said.
"That is good," Harad said. "Our stores are not what they were."
"The celebration did not drain your reserves so much, I thought," Thor said, frowning.
"It did not. Rats in the food stores," Harad said, splitting the last of the log, "but we know how to sort them." He stepped back to let another group of children take it away.
Grigori and Wolfric both spat to the sides, and Harad nodded, as if agreeing.
"If not for food then, what brings you back to my home?" the axeman asked.
"Dragonblood," Thor said.
Harad frowned now. "Food we could have managed, but what dragonblood I had is long used."
"No, we-" Thor found his train of thought diverted. "You had dragonblood laying about?"
"It is a powerful ingredient, useful to bolster the strength of many brews and potions," Harad said. "Even to break curses, though some are too terrible for even the heartblood of a dragon."
"I see," Thor said. At least it seemed that they had not been sent on a wild dragon chase. "Then perhaps you might know where we can find a dragon."
Harad stopped cutting, setting the head of his axe into the dirt and resting his weight on it. "And for what do you need such a thing?"
Thor glanced back at Wolfric, unwilling to speak of his troubles without his word.
"The touch of the Crow lingers on my sisters," Wolfric said, blunt and terse. "I mean to purge it."
Rather than answer, Harad's gaze lingered on Wolfric, narrowing as it flicked to the eye patch and away. "Have we met, boy? Before Vinteerholm."
Wolfric didn't blink, cool grey eye fixed on the greybeard. "You knew my uncle, and my father."
Harad looked away, sighing, and for a moment it seemed a great weight pressed down on him. He straightened and set the tip of its head into his cutting stump, where it stood once he took his hand away. "Come inside," he said. "We will speak by the hearth."
The old warrior stepped past them, heading back into the village. Thor and Wolfric shared a look, and then they followed, Grigori a beat behind.
X
The longhouse was as Thor remembered it, a long stone fire pit running its length and tables on either side of it. Harad led them not to the chieftain's table, but to the end of one of the long tables. A nearby section of the pit was active, embers and coals smouldering without smoke and casting warmth.
"Bide here a moment," Harad told them, "I must speak with my Helena." He turned and departed the longhouse as quickly as he had arrived, leaving them to sit and wait.
They were not alone, a pair of young women - girls, really - sitting further down the hall as they whittled away at thin blocks of wood with a strange flexible material, making arrow shafts. They were not as subtle in their interest as they might have thought, and Thor found himself sharing an amused look with Wolfric as the mood was lightened when one dared the other to approach them.
"Your ear," Grigori said, speaking suddenly, "it is the same as your speech?"
"My ear?" Thor asked, nonplussed.
"At first I thought it knowledge," Grigori said, "but when you speak, all hear, no matter their mother tongue. Is your ear the same?"
"It is," Thor said, with him now. "We call it All Speak, and it allows us to understand and be understood wherever our paths may lead us."
"And all gods have this ability?" Grigori asked.
"I cannot speak for all gods," Thor said, shrugging, "but for me and mine, yes."
Grigori fell silent again, pondering what he had learned. No other conversation was forthcoming, and the two girls did not quite manage to gather the courage to approach before Harad returned.
He was not alone. The axeman and his silver haired wife joined them, bringing chairs from a smaller table to sit at the end of their own.
"You are sure it is the Crow?" Helena asked, wasting no time. Her eyes were intent, laugh lines by her eyes narrowed and intent.
"Our wise woman says it is so, and Helka is rarely wrong," Wolfric said. "My sisters sleep and cannot be woken, and if we do not return swiftly with the heartblood of a dragon they never will." Under the table, his hands clenched helplessly.
"I remember Helka," Helena said, tapping a finger against her lips as she thought. "We were young girls together."
"Do you know of any dragon nearby?" Wolfric asked, impatient. "I do not care for childhood friendships."
"Patience," Helena said, laying a hand on her husband's knee as if to settle him, though he had done little more than blink at Wolfric's words. "If she is brewing the elixir she ought to, it will be the work of a week, and the dragonblood is not added until the last."
Wolfric mastered himself, but it was not without effort.
"You say you once had dragonblood, Harad," Thor said. "How did that come to be so? Did you slay one?"
"No," Harad said, shaking his head once. "I slew a man who claimed to have done so, with the blood to prove it, but I suspect he came across the scene of a contest, and merely gathered what was shed."
"Then it may yet live," Wolfric said as he leaned forward, hopes rising. "Where was this? How far north?"
"It was not north," Harad said. "It was in these very mountains, three decades ago."
Rising hopes were dashed, and Wolfric sat back in his seat, sagging. "There has not been a dragon seen here in my lifetime."
"There has not," Harad acknowledged. "But I recall my grandfather speaking of that same dragon, and it was not seen in my father's lifetime either. Like bears, they hibernate. This one may yet live."
"Where?" Wolfric demanded. "What do you ask for in exchange?"
Harad and Helena shared a look, and she gave a slight nod.
"You are strong," Harad said to Thor, slowly, "but even so, it is a dragon. Were your need not great, I would refuse."
Wolfric near strained in his seat, but he held his tongue.
"I will tell you," the greybeard said to Wolfric now, "and in return, I ask that we have a conversation."
"A conversation?" Wolfric asked, wary.
"Aye," Harad said. "There are things I must tell you."
"I know you killed my father," Wolfric said, and Harad nodded, a grim set to his mouth, having expected the answer. "I do not care. Tell me where the dragon is, and we can speak all you wish once we have its blood."
The couple shared another, longer look.
"East," Harad said at last, "past the flow of Ursfjord, then a little further. Then south. That is the range of the dragon, if it still lives."
"My thanks," Wolfric said, already turning to his god. "Lord Thor?"
"Aye," he said, rising. "Much as I would like to stay and share your hearth, this is not a deed to do slowly," he said to the couple.
"I understand," Harad said. His solemn gaze remained on Wolfric for a beat, before he looked fully to Thor. "In my youth, I wore those same boots, though my foe was not so mighty as the Crow."
Wolfric was already turning for the door, and Grigori stood, having followed Thor's cue.
"A tale to be shared when you arrive at Vinteerholm," Thor said. "Should you leave soon, you ought to arrive shortly after we return."
"We will be there," Helena said. She was tugging lightly on the end of her silver braid, thinking. "To see Helka, if naught else. It has been…years."
"Tales for another time," Harad said, placing his hand on hers, taking it away from the braid. "Good luck, Thor."
Thor inclined his head. Now was not the time for talk, as much as he felt his interest stirring at words left unsaid. He turned and departed, following after Wolfric, Grigori in his wake. They had their heading.
Again they took to the skies, the mountains below flitting by swiftly. They did not look small, such formations never could, but they did serve to make the two mortals feel so as they soared over peaks that would have taken weeks to climb. The day was fair, with only some few clouds to dodge in avoidance of a wet chill, shadows of the mountains stretching out before them like grasping, languorous fingers. The trunk soared gracelessly through the sky as the afternoon burned on, and Thor spared a moment to be grateful that none of the others were there to see him. He really did need to obtain a more dignified method of chauffeuring his followers around.
The shadows grew longer, and they passed over what must be Ursfjord, fading light glittering on its surface. He could spy some few scattered villages along it, the smoke of bonfires and chimneys rising from them, but he ignored them for the diversion they would surely be. A shift of his grip on Stormbreaker's haft and a thought saw them begin to descend, aiming for the edge of a forest just east of the fjord as they began to shed speed. They set down on a frozen patch of dirt by the treeline, near swallowed by the gloom of its shadow.
"Why have we stopped?" Wolfric demanded, before he had fully extricated himself from his seat and the rope keeping him secure. "We are not far enough past the the Ursfjord to have reached the dragon's territory."
"We have not," Thor said, "but if we wish to build a shelter and prepare food, we have little time to spare."
His face was mulish. "But we are so close, surely-"
"Do you wish to hunt and fight a dragon in the dark?" Thor asked, giving him a look.
All at once, Wolfric sagged. "No, Lord Thor."
"Remember Helena's words," Thor said. "We have a week until the heartblood is needed." He put his hand on his shoulder. "We will return in time. You will save your sisters."
Wolfric swallowed and nodded, placated but not content. Without another word he turned and made for the forest, walking alone into the embrace of a domain that most would avoid in all but the strongest parties. Were it not for the troubled set of his shoulders, he might have seemed eager, sword already half drawn.
Grigori had freed himself now, and he made to follow the one eyed man.
"No, Grigori," Thor said. "You lack the advantages I have bestowed on Wolfric, and I would have your aid in preparing our camp."
"Aye, Mighty Thor," the Kislevite said. He seemed to have settled on a term of address, for all he seemed unwilling to commit to calling him as his worshippers did.
They had not left Vinteerholm without supplies, though they had made a point of not taking what they could get for themselves while on their quest. That meant they had a sack full of skins of water and booze, as well as some roots and vegetables, but no meat. Wolfric would see to that, and in the meantime, they would see to shelter.
Grigori began to gather kindling for a fire and Thor ascended, lopping off branches as he went. The trees were easily twenty men thick, and the branches were themselves near as thick as normal trees. He let them fall to the ground with a clatter and crash, material to build a small dwelling with. It would not be pretty, but it would serve them well enough for the night. He only stopped when he reached the top, easily three hundred feet from the ground. He looked down at what had fallen, judging. Then he dropped, taking out the branches on the other side.
By the time Wolfric returned, the creeping cold of night was starting to make its presence known, even if the last rays of a pale sun still fell upon the land. He brought with him a pair of elk haunches, slung over each shoulder by the leg, and a bloody cut along the back of his arm.
"The elk fight back, did it?" Thor asked, even as he used his axe to trim a branch into a more ideal shape, gouging a channel in it. He was working along it carefully, the other end propped up by a small pile of branches already done.
"No," Wolfric said, "but the ice-tiger that thought to steal our dinner did." His time away had settled him some, helpless urgency no longer sitting quite so heavily on his shoulders.
Thor huffed a laugh, but Grigori looked up from where he was coaxing a fire to greater life.
"Ice-tiger?" he asked, interested. "They be little, but fierce. And tasty. Uh, small angry beast, good taste?" he added, his Norscan stilted and broken.
"Aye. Yes," Wolfric said, almost exhausting what Kislevite he knew. "But I did not, uh, hmm. I did not - fuck," he finished, exhausting the rest. "I did not slay it."
"Then how did you get away with the meat?" Thor asked. He took up another log.
"I cut it, and took the meat before it could gather its courage again," Wolfric said, setting the haunches down on a stretch of material they had brought. "It took the offering rather than hunt me." He took up a sharp knife, and sat on a stump to start rendering his prizes.
"You are sure of that?" Thor asked, nodding to the forest.
Both men looked to the treeline, only a stone's throw from where they worked, and froze. From the shadows, a pair of luminous yellow orbs could be seen, almost hidden behind the roots. Then they blinked.
"...we make a strong shelter tonight, yes?" Wolfric said.
"Yes," Grigori said, with feeling. Some sentiments were beyond mere language.
Matters were not helped by the glowing eyes blinking closed once more, only to then fail to reappear.
Both men looked to the pile of logs that Thor was preparing, then to Thor himself, expectant. The god could not help but chuckle, but he did begin to work faster, manhandling timber that would have taken four strong men to carry.
By the time the sun had fallen below distant mountains, there was a roaring fire going, throwing back the shadows, and meat sizzling on a metal dish propped up by rocks at its edge. There was also a triangular cabin, complete with roof and door and mats of pine needles to place their actual bedding on. It was downright comfortable, and the presence of a solid place to hide in case of prowling ice-tiger had the two mortals at ease as they sat by the fire, chewing at hunks of roasted elk. Skins of ale and spirits added to the warmth they felt, and by the time they were licking the juices from their fingers, the moon had risen in truth.
The night was quiet, save the rustling of the wind in the trees, and the three felt themselves growing drowsy. But then Thor happened to look up.
"What in the Nine Realms is that?!" Thor exclaimed, staring at the heavens. A sickle of a moon, green and sickly, was perched high in the sky, sitting like an unwanted guest a distance from the more familiar pale moon.
"Lord Thor?" Wolfric asked, puzzlement in his voice. "That is the Black Moon, the cursed moon."
"Morrslieb, we call it in the south," Grigori said. "It has been shy of late," he added.
Thor scowled up at the thing, misliking the faint ripples of power that wafted from it, like stink from a carcass. "What cycle does it follow? In the months since my arrival, this is the first I have seen it."
"It goes where it will," Wolfric said, shrugging and drinking deep of spirit. "Save two nights. Ill nights."
"Twice each year, it shows its full face," Grigori said. "Both are nights to seek shelter, and pray." He stared into the fire for a long moment, remembering something, and took a slow swig from his skin.
Wolfric had squinted in concentration as he listened to the other man, trying to discern his meaning, but the purse of his mouth said he was unsuccessful. "When we took to Skraevold, it showed its face over Vinteerholm, though it fled the night before our - your - return," he said.
"I do not like it," Thor said, still staring up with narrowed eyes.
"You do not…" Grigori started, swallowing, "you do not know of Morrslieb?"
"I have seen many moons, and other strange things on the branches of Yggdrasil," Thor said, hand twitching for his axe, "but never one such as that."
"Should a god not know?" Grigori asked. He shifted on his stump, like a man standing on the edge of a windy cliff.
"A god should know many things," Thor said. "Not all things."
Wolfric stirred. "If anyone claims to know all, they are a fool, or lying." Then he tsked, knowing his words were not understood.
"Just so," Thor said, tearing his gaze away from the sickly moon to give his follower a small smile. "If one claims to be all seeing or all knowing, they are mad, or lying," he repeated for Grigori's benefit.
"But, Morrslieb?" Grigori said, unable to wrap his head around it. He made as if to drag his hand through his beard, only to hesitate, fingers still sticky. "All know it. Even the smallest child knows its danger."
"Perhaps you can tell me of it," Thor said. "What are the dangers of Morrslieb?"
"Mutants, necromancy, and other evil things," Grigori said. The fire crackled and popped, spitting sparks. "Even a good man caught under its full light might fall to madness."
"When the grinning face of the Black Moon is close, so is the touch of the gods," Wolfric added. "When one sought to dedicate themselves to Chaos, the desperate would walk under its face and become godtouched."
"Chaos," Thor said. Pinpricks of light glimmered in his eyes, and his expression grew wroth. His gaze returned to the skies. "Perhaps something should be done about it."
"To be spared its attention would be a boon," Wolfric said, nodding.
Thor was touched by his easy faith, but it would not be a simple matter, not if he wanted to spare the planet the likely consequences. He would have to know more about its celestial course, and what it was that made it come and go, hiding from him. It was clear there was some intrinsic property of it that made it so inimical to mortal life…his father would have-
"But how do you not know?!" Grigori said, the words almost bursting from him. "Even if you are not- even if you were a man, you would know. You claimed fifteen centuries!"
Something about his tone clued Wolfric into his meaning, and his eye began to slant down into an impressive narrowed stare.
"There is no Morrslieb in my own realm," Thor said, shrugging. Not the full truth, nor a lie. "Just as you know nothing of Yggdrasil, the World's Tree, I knew nothing of Morrslieb."
"Ygg- it is a tree?" Grigori asked, temporarily distracted.
"Of sorts," Thor said. "It has many branches, paths one might follow through the cosmos."
Grigori shook himself. "That is not - no. You are-" he cut himself off, frustrated.
"Speak what you will," Thor said. "Take your time, and know that I will not hold your words against you."
The dark haired man was quiet for a long moment. "I saw your power over Skraevold," he said at length, "but I have seen a Beastmen herd frozen by a lone Ice Witch, also."
"You feel that my might does not prove my claim," Thor said.
Wolfric glared at the Kislevite now.
"Many have there been that would claim to divinity, to our worship," Grigori said, grim, shaking his head. "Never were they pure of heart."
"Ah, Grigori," Thor said, laughter in his voice now. "I do not claim a right to your worship!"
"You claim to be my god," Grigori said, gaining confidence now that he had not been smote for his words. "If you are, I owe you my devotion gladly. If you are not, I must deny you."
"I disagree," Thor said.
Grigori near goggled at him. "What?"
"I am Thor," the thunder god said simply. "I do not claim to be your Tor. I may be. I may not. Though I do find it vanishingly unlikely that there is a god so similar to myself in this land if he is not connected to me in some way."
"But that-"
"If I wished to trick you, I could have," Thor said, cutting through his frustration. "There is little I can do to prove myself to you that the cancerous Schemer could not. I will tell you what I have told those that follow me - if ever I break their trust, I will have proven myself unworthy, and you ought to turn from me or strike me down."
Silence fell, sudden and gloomy, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the sighing of wind through the trees and over the plain.
"Gods are…gods are not like this," Grigori said at last. He sounded lost.
"Other gods, perhaps," Thor said. "But they are not Thor." He gave the man a crooked smile. "Watch me. Judge me. In time, you will come to know the truth of me, and you can decide if I am deserving of your worship in my own right."
"Lord Thor," Wolfric said. "Tell him - ask him that even if you are not his Tor, what does it matter?"
Thor considered him, and relayed his words.
"What does it matter?" Grigori asked, taken aback, looking between the two of them. "It matters because - because-"
"Thor stands against Chaos," Wolfric continued. "Thor stands for mankind. What more can we want? Tell him that."
Thor could not help but beam at his follower - he had finally dropped the 'Lord'! - before doing as he asked.
Grigori was silent in their wake, brow furrowed in deep thought, the firelight dancing across his face. Again the quietness of the wilderness crept in.
"I cannot answer this," he said at length. "This is a question for the priests."
"Then when we find one, we can ask," Thor said. "Until then, be true to yourself and your god, whoever they may be."
Wolfric nodded, firm and secure in his belief, while Grigori nodded slowly, uncertain.
The matter was not settled, but such a weighty thing would not be solved in one night by the fire. There was little more talk that night, and only of small and inconsequential things. Their bedrolls beckoned them, and they turned in, leaving the fire to burn itself out.
If Wolfric double checked that the door to their little cabin was wedged firmly closed, the others said nothing, just as they said nothing when he twitched at a distant yowl. The mortals slept with their weapons close to hand that night, old habits tough to shake, even when sharing a room with a god that snored.
Great chapter man
Home Improvement 4
- Location
- Australia
The next day, they reached their destination. Thor could not say how he knew, for Harad's directions had only been vague, but as he looked down on the land below him, he knew it was the place. A river stretched from the coast, through a plain until it reached the feet of the mountains, and then a little further through their valleys. The river was not so large as the Ursfjord they had passed, but it was large enough to host all manner of fish should a hungry beast grow tired of the herds of elk he could spy evidence of.
Thor set down near the river's headwaters, giving the others the chance to disembark from the tree and stamp their feet, warming themselves up. For all the sky was clear and blue, the sun seemed to provide little warmth, and the morning's travel had not helped matters.
"This is the place?" Wolfric asked, looking around. The land around them was flat, a thin layer of ice and snow as far as they could see.
"I feel it is," Thor said. He drummed his fingers on Stormbreaker's head. "I see no clear signs of the creature, but Harad did say it has slumbered for many years."
"How does one track a dragon?" Grigori asked. If theological dilemmas still weighed on him, he hid it well. "Even the greatest hunter cannot track a raven on the wing."
"We could bait it with meat," Wolfric said. "Surely it would be hungry after hibernating so long."
"If the smell could reach it, perhaps," Grigori said. "There must be some evidence of its passage, a mountain lair that animals do not venture near."
Thor remembered the manticore he had fought, how he had drawn it out with taunts. Infuriating dangerous beasts was a talent of his…but then another thought occurred to him. A dragon was sure to be a beast of power, and perhaps that power would serve to lead him to it. If he could figure out how to see it, of course.
"I have an idea," Thor said, loosening his shoulders.
"Will you taunt it, as you did the Aeslings at Vinteerholm?" Wolfric asked, the corner of his mouth curling slightly.
"I," Thor said with great gravity, "will look for it."
Wolfric and Grigori shared a look.
"How?" Grigori asked.
"With my eyes," Thor said, unable to help himself. "And perhaps something a little deeper."
Since coming to this new world, Thor had been shown just how far he had to go to truly grasp the truth of his power. Perhaps it was the fundamental reality of this world, or perhaps he had always had this potential, such that the lightning he had wielded against his sister was the bare fumblings of it. That fumbling growth had been spurred by the rage sown on the Statesman, only to be abandoned to rot in the wake of the battle at Wakanda.
Now though, he had begun to grow once more, learning and rising with each deed. Spears hallowed, swords blessed, groves sanctified, daemons slain, Gods defied, worshippers gained - all of it served to stoke his might, but such things were reactions, of mostly blunt power. It was time for something more subtle.
Long had he known the worth of visions, for all that he had not seen clearly enough, swiftly enough, to divine the truth of Thanos' coming. What he sought to do now was nothing so complex, but it would take focus and skill all the same. He closed his eyes, calling on his power, and it answered, coming eagerly to hand.
There was a tingle in the air, like that in a thunderstorm the moment before a lightning strike, and he eased off. He did not wish to saturate himself with power, he wanted to see, to glimpse the hidden things and that which went unnoticed by those without the eyes to look.
"Ty Tor," Grigori breathed.
Thor opened his eyes, and saw. Light shone forth, and he saw the currents of the world. He saw hazy arcs of something like his own power but not in the sky above, green threads of some great root system beneath his feet, even a faint aura of heat and passion around the three of them. There was more, but he had not the discernment to see, not yet, for all that what he could see was enthralling. But not all was pleasant.
Here and there were patches of greasy sickness, of darkness, carried and buffeted by the currents he could see. Sometimes they were cast onwards and away, but others they would infect the currents they touched. Some few times they popped like an overripe cyst. He noticed that they all trended southwest, but why he could not say.
"What do you see?" Wolfric asked, aura pulsing a darker red with his words.
Thor had to blink. The currents were beginning to overcome the mundane world. He opened his mouth to respond, only to pause. There was another current.
This one did not so much flow as suffuse, laying lightly upon the land, the other currents drifting through and around it, though perhaps that was a trick of the eye due to its brightness. As he watched, a cloud of sickness touched upon a thick section of it in a fold of the land, only to burst, fading away. His gaze sharpened.
"A curiosity," he answered.
That thick section of bright lightness was not the only one, and he turned, following it. His mechanical eye began to throb with phantom pain, but he ignored it, searching, seeing, finding. It did not sprout from nowhere, but flowed slowly down the mountainside until it pooled, and his gaze followed its path. The higher he looked, the fewer patches of sickness he saw, until he found himself looking at a peak that gleamed brightly even under the light of the sun.
"The dragon?" Wolfric asked.
Thor glanced to him, but found himself looking not at a man, but a blurred form of one, colours and currents forced into shape and barely restrained. His eye throbbed again, and he closed them in pain, loosing the hold he held on his power, letting it drift away.
"Aye," Thor said, as the mortal world returned. For a second there was an overlay of both, but then he blinked and it was gone. He pointed up at the peak he had observed, the source of the bright current. "If that is not the beast's lair, whatever is there will know where it is."
Wolfric was already moving, as if he meant to climb the mountain by himself.
"Ah, my friend," Thor said. Wolfric turned, and Thor glanced meaningfully at their tree trunk transport.
"Right," Wolfric said, turning and approaching the trunk like that had been his intent all along. His hand rested eagerly on his sword. They were close.
Though the peak was their goal, Thor chose to set down just short of it, eagerness tempered by caution. His days of rushing into the lair of some dangerous beast with only the barest of preparations were over. He was a more canny and wise warrior than he had been in his youth, more even than he had been a scant decade past.
"What is the plan?" Grigori asked, slipping from the trunk. He kept his voice low and hoarse in the quietness of the mountaintop.
"We shall go in there, and I will slay the beast," Thor explained, likewise speaking quietly. Well, as quietly as a god of thunder could. "I will rely on the two of you to ensure we are not ambushed by any small drakes." It was an ill thing to strip the agency from those who would follow him, and he was no longer so arrogant as to dismiss the idea that he was beyond their help.
"We will keep them off you while you slay the dragon, Lord Thor," Wolfric said, checking his sword belt and adjusting his mammoth hide mantle.
Grigori shifted his grip on his axe, looking between them. "Right," he said, nodding, waiting for Thor to lead the way.
There were times he feared he would not live up to the devotion of his followers, but that would not stop him from giving it his all. They were a short scramble from the peak, and there was a definite nip in the air as they climbed. The mortals shivered, but neither complained, cold nothing new to them.
They reached the peak with minimal fanfare, certainly less than an entrance atop a flying tree trunk would have caused. But what they saw was not what they had expected.
"There's nothing here," Wolfric said, frowning as he looked around.
Thor had been expecting a lonely cave entrance, but what they found was a bleak plateau, hard grey stone swept by cold winds and the occasional tendril of snow. The only break in the flat visage was a rounded boulder, seemingly half buried in the ground near to the centre.
"What made - what drew your eye here, Mighty Thor?" Grigori asked, drawing his furs tighter as a particularly bitter wind swept across the empty space.
"There is a power flowing from this peak," Thor said, "and I would not wager on a dragon and such a power existing here unrelated." He found his gaze fixed on the boulder. A flat peak, and a single boulder sitting upon it? He had seen strange and unlikely natural formations in his time, but this was perhaps not one of them. He stepped forward.
Snow piles had grown around the edges of the boulder, but the wind still tugged and pulled at it, preventing it from building up past a certain point. With a hide boot, he swept a portion away, revealing the point where the boulder was set into the peak, peering at the seam. Nothing jumped out at him, no evidence of tool use or sign that it was more than an oddly placed rock.
A sound of surprise and the slip of a boot came from behind. "Fuck me," Wolfric said, more startled and annoyed than anything.
Thor turned to see his follower on one knee, up to his calves in snow. What had seemed another path of ice and snow resisting the pull of the winds was more than that, instead a small crater. He narrowed his eyes at it. An entire peak cut flat as if by some great sword, except for a small boulder and a crater of suspiciously similar size?
"Step aside," Thor said, turning back to the boulder, considering.
Wolfric was quick to do so despite his lack of understanding, sharing a look with the Kislevite, but Grigori was no more sure than he was. They turned to watch as Thor seemed to size up the boulder.
It was no perfect orb, for all that it was quite round, and Thor made several false starts before apparently finding what he sought. He stepped forward, arms outstretched as he knelt, and attempted to take the boulder in a bearhug. His full reach just managed to round the thing, and he took a deep breath, holding it tight.
Thor grunted as he rose, bringing the boulder with him. Stone scraped on stone as it rose, loud and discordant against the harsh serenity of the mountaintop, and he almost stumbled as he took a step back, unbalanced. Rock splintered and cracked at his hands, his grip sinking into the boulder as he turned with the ungainly thing, stepping carefully over to where Wolfric had stumbled. Slowly, carefully, he began to sink into a crouch, back straight and knees bent. He flexed his belly, pushing the boulder forward and out of his arms into the crater, where it fell with a dull whump, a cloud of snow kicked up by its fall. It did not roll or shift, only settling into place as if the crater had been made for it.
With a noise of satisfaction, Thor turned back to where the boulder had come from, joining his followers in staring at the dark hole that had been revealed. The bare beginnings of a twisting tunnel could be seen, the sides worn unnaturally smooth, before disappearing into darkness.
"I've heard this tale before," Grigori said, staring down, keeping his feet as far back from the edge as he could.
"A tale of adventure?" Thor asked.
"Child's fable," Grigori said. "'Don't go exploring down strange holes in the ground or you'll never be seen again'." His mouth was set in a resigned grimace.
"We'll need rope," Wolfric said, more to himself than anything. "Maybe some metal stakes…"
"Ah, my friends," Thor said, replying to them both. "You forget with whom you quest!" And then he took them both by the shoulders and stepped off the edge and into the tunnel, allowing gravity to do its work. They fell.
They did not scream, but only because Thor was quick to clap his hands over their mouths, trapping the no doubt manly yelps of fright within their throats. Stormbreaker was quick to slip from his back to catch him, and he perched on it well enough, one foot on the blunt side of its head, the other halfway up its haft. Their fall was arrested just in time to avoid crashing into the wall as the tunnel turned, beginning to spiral.
'Do a trick,' he could hear the shadow of Tony say, and his lips quirked in a smile.
The etching on Stormbreaker's head began to glow, casting light about the tunnel as they descended, and his companions settled, no longer so frantic now that they could see. He eased his grip on them, focusing on the task at hand. His beard fluttered up around his face as they followed the turning path, and slowly it began to widen. Where before it was scarce wide enough to accommodate Trumpetter, now it could fit a grown mammoth, should one find itself capable of flight or of climbing a dark, twisting tunnel in the upper reaches of a great mountain. The smoothness of the walls began to lessen as well, more and more natural cragginess showing through. Here and there he saw stalactites, and at one point he had to swerve alarmingly to avoid sitting on a stalagmite that suddenly appeared around the bend.
As they went, Thor looked with more than his eyes once more. The brightness he had seen was all about them, almost drowning out the faint wisps of red that came from his companions with every excited breath. Outside, he had seen the - the tides, the currents, the winds - whatever they were, flowing through the world, but within the mountain, it was different. It was like stepping from the shallows to the depths, not crushing, but omnipresent. If his instinct was correct, and the dragon was at the source of the bright wind that purged the sickness it touched, then they were surely on the right track. He wondered if it had taken some mighty artefact for its hoard.
The descent was not over quickly, but it did come to an end. Wider and wider the tunnel became, until at its end Thor could have wrestled Hulk within it and not brushed the sides if they did not want to. It opened into a large chamber, devoid of anything but more stone. He let his companions go as he stepped off his axe, taking in their surroundings.
Wolfric and Grigori both stumbled, shaky, as they found their feet again. Their eyes were wide, their breathing heavy, but they said nothing as they shared a look, jaws clenched with what Thor was sure was the effort of containing their excitement.
There were two passages from the chamber they were in, rounded and tall, each at opposite ends. Stormbreaker floated back up to rest at his spine, its glow fading, but there was still light enough for even the mortals to see by, if barely. The passage to the left had a soft yellow gleam coming from around its bend, while the one to the right disappeared into darkness. The bright current had only gotten stronger, though it was impossible to tell from whence it came, here near the source of it.
"Let us search out the light," Thor murmured. The sound of his footsteps were soft on the smooth stone floor as he made for the left passage, Wolfric and Grigori slightly louder as they followed.
The passage, for it could not be called something so base as a tunnel, was not a natural formation. It had the same unnatural smoothness he had noticed in the tunnel from the peak, though this seemed more deliberate, the walls almost glossy, uniform rather than smooth in patches. The soft light rose as they walked, leaving the dark chamber behind, arcing right.
In time, the passage ended, and they stopped, stupefied. Before them was a set of stairs that led down into an enormous cavern, the size of Asgard's throne room and positively glowing. Some manner of stones were set into the walls and ceiling, putting off a soft white light, intricate carvings covering every inch. But it was not the light or the carvings or the scale that drew their eyes.
It was the gold.
The white light put out from the walls fell upon the gold and was reflected in turn, a yellow glow rising from what could only be the dragon's hoard. Treasures of every kind could be seen, from stacks of neatly ordered coins to rows of statues to piles of precious gems, even a section of portraits made not from paint but from mosaics of precious metals, all separated by lanes wide enough for five pegasi to ride abreast. It was a staggering amount of wealth.
"This is the wealth of empires," Grigori said, scarcely breathing.
"There is more gold here than in all of Norsca, surely," Wolfric said.
"Ehh," Thor said.
Wolfric stepped forward, only to find Thor's hand grasping his shoulder.
"Hold," Thor said, gaze sweeping around the room once more, looking with more than his eyes. The brightness of the pure current he could see, but it flowed around much of the treasure, as if flowing against something else he could not quite see. It was no corruption, for he had seen how that fared against the brightness, but there was something. His eyes lingered on the neatly stacked coins.
"Do you see it?" Wolfric asked. His sword rasped slowly as he began to draw it from its sheath.
"No," Thor said, still looking around the hall - for it was nothing so simple as a cavern - and finding only more treasure, no hint of somewhere a dragon might hide. On the far side he spied another small passage, but this one was a rough tunnel as best he could tell. "There is something off."
"The gold is a trick, a fake?" Grigori asked, still unable to take his eyes off its gleam, and Thor remembered that he had been taken by raiders while part of a merchant voyage.
"No, it is real," Thor said, fighting the urge to summon his armour. He could not tell what was pricking at his instincts, only that something was out of place. He had not his brother's eye for traps, so it was likely not that, and yet… "We will check the other passage."
Carefully, they crept back from the top of the stairs they stood upon, leaving the hoard behind, and ventured back into the growing darkness. After the gleaming of untold riches, the shadows seemed deeper, and Thor stoked the glow of his axe to throw them back. His companions kept close, ears pricked for the faintest sound, but there was only the scrape of their shoes on stone and the shallowness of their breathing. The light of the treasure faded, and then they were surrounded by the dark.
The passage seemed more sinister now, even though they had only just come this way, but they pressed on, emerging into the chamber they had first found after leaving the peak tunnel. A lesser man may have faltered, knowing that a dragon lurked somewhere out in the darkness, but he was Thor, and he had ventured into places steeped in greater evil than the lair of some scaly beast.
Down the dark passage they went, and like the other it was smooth and glossy, reflecting the light of his axe. It too arced to the right, though ultimately in the opposite direction to the other passage. When they reached its end, what scant light was put off by Stormbreaker was not nearly enough to illuminate whatever immense cavern awaited them, and for a moment they stood at the threshold. He could feel the attentions of his companions on him, waiting for his guidance, but he waited, reaching out with his mundane senses. So great was the room beyond that it even had its own air flow, slow and regular, almost like a great bellows was keeping the mountain ventilated. Had the dragon moved into an old manmade structure?
Thor's nose twitched, picking up a scent, and he frowned. Realisation dawned. The airflow was too slow, too regular. It was no breeze. He looked deeper, and the darkness was thrown back by sudden brightness, though again he could see it flowing against and around something invisible to him, like there was another current he could not discern.
That was secondary, however, to the dragon in the room.
Larger by half again than the manticore he had slain months past, it was bathed in the bright current he could see, and with each breath it would set the current to billowing. Its scales were a blue so pale they were almost white, while sky blue wings were tucked into its sides, sharp spikes at the wrists of its wings. More spikes came from its frill, and they were akin to jagged icicles, though they were not as fearsome as the curling horns of black that grew from the back of its skull. Its eyes, though, its eyes were the most terrible of it all, the colour of glaciers.
Thor knew this, because the dragon was staring right at him.
"Wolfric, Grigori," Thor said evenly, looking around the chamber as if he were a darkness blind mortal, "I want you both to turn around and leave, carefully. When you reach the next chamber, bunker down and wait. If you hear anything before you reach it, run."
The dragon blinked, unmoving from where its head rested on its foreclaws. Its nostrils flared.
For a moment, the two men hesitated, but something in his tone and the way he did not turn away from the darkness that was all they could see before them convinced them. They began to retreat as quietly as they had arrived.
White eyes followed them, and the dragon raised its head, languorous. Its chest swelled as it inhaled, and it loosed a great sigh. It was laying on a bed of skins and furs of all manner of great beasts.
Something again pricked at Thor's instincts. He was missing something, some implication, but he had not the time to think on it deeper for the dragon was opening its mouth, revealing rows of fangs sharper than any mortal blade. Then the dragon did something that stopped Thor cold.
"What is this?" the dragon asked, low and slow, like it had been woken from a deep sleep. "More food, come to my door?"
Thor blinked.
"The others were too skinny, too hairy - but you look like a tasty little morsel," the dragon said, head rising even higher as it did more than look up, neck extending to its full length to settle at twice Thor's height. It sniffed again. "No metal to pick from my gums, and you may even be free of taint. What a treat." Its tongue snaked out, testing the air. The air grew colder.
"I would taste most awful," Thor assured the dragon, before his mind caught up. "Oh, you talk. This will perhaps be awkward." This was what had been niggling at him - not a trap or a curse, but the signs pointing towards the dragon being more than a simple beast. It was sapient.
"Why would I not?" the dragon asked. He? She? was a ways into the cavern, not nearly close enough to take a swipe, and they made no move to stand or lunge closer.
"You are a dragon," Thor said.
"You are a human," the dragon said, before yawning, showing off just how many fangs it had in its maw. "I am impressed you can speak at all. Well done."
"I am an Asgardian, I will have you know," Thor said, pointing at the beas- at the being.
"Oh?" the dragon asked. "I believe I met one of your kind, once."
Impossible hope leapt in Thor's breast.
"They said they had come to slay me in the name of their lady," the dragon mused, eyes half lidded in thought. "Their lance caught in my teeth for weeks, but their horse was a fine delicacy." They tapped a claw on the stone floor by their nest, as if remembering. "Bretonnian, that was it, not Asgardian."
Thor strangled the wave of feeling that followed, keeping his mind in the moment. "You will find my axe does more than inconvenience you, should you attempt to eat me," he warned.
"Perhaps," the dragon said. Its scales seemed to ripple as it shifted, and so did the brightness of the winds, like it was manipulating them.
No, not like, Thor realised. It was manipulating them. The dragon itself was the source of the power.
"Perhaps," the dragon repeated. "For what cause have you intruded upon my lair, stolen upon me as I slept with your weapon bared?" It began to stand, head rising higher again, and even at their distance Thor had to look up to meet its eyes. "Do you come a thief, thinking to take from my peerless hoard? A would be dragon slayer, seeking renown?" Its voice began to thrum, on the verge of shaking the mountain walls, outrage and amusement blending together. Already cold, the temperature began to plummet, enough that Thor could feel its unpleasantness.
"First of all, in Asgard we gilded our rooftops with more gold than your hoard contains," Thor said, his breath beginning to mist. "Second - well, yes. I really must apologise, but I came here to take your heartblood."
"I see," the dragon said, near hissing. "Then you will die." Then it opened its jaws wide, and a torrent of ice roared forth.
Lightning answered, shattering the relative quiet of the chamber. The ice was shattered, the pillar thick as two men turned to shards and splinters. They were sprayed around the room and down the passage, and Thor spared a moment to be grateful that his companions had left.
"Not a simple knight, are you?" the dragon asked, taking a step forward, out of its bedding. Dark claws carved grooves into the floor as it flexed.
"I am Thor, the God of Thunder, son of Odin," Thor proclaimed. "You challenge me at your own peril."
"Gods," the dragon said, disgusted. "My kind were here before your coming. We will be here after your fall." Its tail flicked, and its eyes began to shine white.
Thor felt his own eyes glow as he called on his power. His form rippled with eldritch light, his armour called by seidr, and silver glinted in his beard. Lightning sparked along his arms, and he hurled a bolt like a spear.
A band of light formed above the dragon's head, intercepting the bolt. The glow of the band intensified, almost painful in its brightness, and a moment later three spears of light lanced out.
Stormbreaker was already in his hand, knowing it was needed, and Thor caught them all on its head. The first shattered, but the second ricocheted off into a wall, cracking it, while the last slipped past and glanced off his arm. He grunted. That was going to leave a bruise.
The brightness of the chamber grew once more, harsh all around, driving out whatever else had been present. Thor's grip tightened on his axe. He would not slay a thinking being to harvest them for parts, but he found himself in a fight all the same.
Thor set down near the river's headwaters, giving the others the chance to disembark from the tree and stamp their feet, warming themselves up. For all the sky was clear and blue, the sun seemed to provide little warmth, and the morning's travel had not helped matters.
"This is the place?" Wolfric asked, looking around. The land around them was flat, a thin layer of ice and snow as far as they could see.
"I feel it is," Thor said. He drummed his fingers on Stormbreaker's head. "I see no clear signs of the creature, but Harad did say it has slumbered for many years."
"How does one track a dragon?" Grigori asked. If theological dilemmas still weighed on him, he hid it well. "Even the greatest hunter cannot track a raven on the wing."
"We could bait it with meat," Wolfric said. "Surely it would be hungry after hibernating so long."
"If the smell could reach it, perhaps," Grigori said. "There must be some evidence of its passage, a mountain lair that animals do not venture near."
Thor remembered the manticore he had fought, how he had drawn it out with taunts. Infuriating dangerous beasts was a talent of his…but then another thought occurred to him. A dragon was sure to be a beast of power, and perhaps that power would serve to lead him to it. If he could figure out how to see it, of course.
"I have an idea," Thor said, loosening his shoulders.
"Will you taunt it, as you did the Aeslings at Vinteerholm?" Wolfric asked, the corner of his mouth curling slightly.
"I," Thor said with great gravity, "will look for it."
Wolfric and Grigori shared a look.
"How?" Grigori asked.
"With my eyes," Thor said, unable to help himself. "And perhaps something a little deeper."
Since coming to this new world, Thor had been shown just how far he had to go to truly grasp the truth of his power. Perhaps it was the fundamental reality of this world, or perhaps he had always had this potential, such that the lightning he had wielded against his sister was the bare fumblings of it. That fumbling growth had been spurred by the rage sown on the Statesman, only to be abandoned to rot in the wake of the battle at Wakanda.
Now though, he had begun to grow once more, learning and rising with each deed. Spears hallowed, swords blessed, groves sanctified, daemons slain, Gods defied, worshippers gained - all of it served to stoke his might, but such things were reactions, of mostly blunt power. It was time for something more subtle.
Long had he known the worth of visions, for all that he had not seen clearly enough, swiftly enough, to divine the truth of Thanos' coming. What he sought to do now was nothing so complex, but it would take focus and skill all the same. He closed his eyes, calling on his power, and it answered, coming eagerly to hand.
There was a tingle in the air, like that in a thunderstorm the moment before a lightning strike, and he eased off. He did not wish to saturate himself with power, he wanted to see, to glimpse the hidden things and that which went unnoticed by those without the eyes to look.
"Ty Tor," Grigori breathed.
Thor opened his eyes, and saw. Light shone forth, and he saw the currents of the world. He saw hazy arcs of something like his own power but not in the sky above, green threads of some great root system beneath his feet, even a faint aura of heat and passion around the three of them. There was more, but he had not the discernment to see, not yet, for all that what he could see was enthralling. But not all was pleasant.
Here and there were patches of greasy sickness, of darkness, carried and buffeted by the currents he could see. Sometimes they were cast onwards and away, but others they would infect the currents they touched. Some few times they popped like an overripe cyst. He noticed that they all trended southwest, but why he could not say.
"What do you see?" Wolfric asked, aura pulsing a darker red with his words.
Thor had to blink. The currents were beginning to overcome the mundane world. He opened his mouth to respond, only to pause. There was another current.
This one did not so much flow as suffuse, laying lightly upon the land, the other currents drifting through and around it, though perhaps that was a trick of the eye due to its brightness. As he watched, a cloud of sickness touched upon a thick section of it in a fold of the land, only to burst, fading away. His gaze sharpened.
"A curiosity," he answered.
That thick section of bright lightness was not the only one, and he turned, following it. His mechanical eye began to throb with phantom pain, but he ignored it, searching, seeing, finding. It did not sprout from nowhere, but flowed slowly down the mountainside until it pooled, and his gaze followed its path. The higher he looked, the fewer patches of sickness he saw, until he found himself looking at a peak that gleamed brightly even under the light of the sun.
"The dragon?" Wolfric asked.
Thor glanced to him, but found himself looking not at a man, but a blurred form of one, colours and currents forced into shape and barely restrained. His eye throbbed again, and he closed them in pain, loosing the hold he held on his power, letting it drift away.
"Aye," Thor said, as the mortal world returned. For a second there was an overlay of both, but then he blinked and it was gone. He pointed up at the peak he had observed, the source of the bright current. "If that is not the beast's lair, whatever is there will know where it is."
Wolfric was already moving, as if he meant to climb the mountain by himself.
"Ah, my friend," Thor said. Wolfric turned, and Thor glanced meaningfully at their tree trunk transport.
"Right," Wolfric said, turning and approaching the trunk like that had been his intent all along. His hand rested eagerly on his sword. They were close.
Though the peak was their goal, Thor chose to set down just short of it, eagerness tempered by caution. His days of rushing into the lair of some dangerous beast with only the barest of preparations were over. He was a more canny and wise warrior than he had been in his youth, more even than he had been a scant decade past.
"What is the plan?" Grigori asked, slipping from the trunk. He kept his voice low and hoarse in the quietness of the mountaintop.
"We shall go in there, and I will slay the beast," Thor explained, likewise speaking quietly. Well, as quietly as a god of thunder could. "I will rely on the two of you to ensure we are not ambushed by any small drakes." It was an ill thing to strip the agency from those who would follow him, and he was no longer so arrogant as to dismiss the idea that he was beyond their help.
"We will keep them off you while you slay the dragon, Lord Thor," Wolfric said, checking his sword belt and adjusting his mammoth hide mantle.
Grigori shifted his grip on his axe, looking between them. "Right," he said, nodding, waiting for Thor to lead the way.
There were times he feared he would not live up to the devotion of his followers, but that would not stop him from giving it his all. They were a short scramble from the peak, and there was a definite nip in the air as they climbed. The mortals shivered, but neither complained, cold nothing new to them.
They reached the peak with minimal fanfare, certainly less than an entrance atop a flying tree trunk would have caused. But what they saw was not what they had expected.
"There's nothing here," Wolfric said, frowning as he looked around.
Thor had been expecting a lonely cave entrance, but what they found was a bleak plateau, hard grey stone swept by cold winds and the occasional tendril of snow. The only break in the flat visage was a rounded boulder, seemingly half buried in the ground near to the centre.
"What made - what drew your eye here, Mighty Thor?" Grigori asked, drawing his furs tighter as a particularly bitter wind swept across the empty space.
"There is a power flowing from this peak," Thor said, "and I would not wager on a dragon and such a power existing here unrelated." He found his gaze fixed on the boulder. A flat peak, and a single boulder sitting upon it? He had seen strange and unlikely natural formations in his time, but this was perhaps not one of them. He stepped forward.
Snow piles had grown around the edges of the boulder, but the wind still tugged and pulled at it, preventing it from building up past a certain point. With a hide boot, he swept a portion away, revealing the point where the boulder was set into the peak, peering at the seam. Nothing jumped out at him, no evidence of tool use or sign that it was more than an oddly placed rock.
A sound of surprise and the slip of a boot came from behind. "Fuck me," Wolfric said, more startled and annoyed than anything.
Thor turned to see his follower on one knee, up to his calves in snow. What had seemed another path of ice and snow resisting the pull of the winds was more than that, instead a small crater. He narrowed his eyes at it. An entire peak cut flat as if by some great sword, except for a small boulder and a crater of suspiciously similar size?
"Step aside," Thor said, turning back to the boulder, considering.
Wolfric was quick to do so despite his lack of understanding, sharing a look with the Kislevite, but Grigori was no more sure than he was. They turned to watch as Thor seemed to size up the boulder.
It was no perfect orb, for all that it was quite round, and Thor made several false starts before apparently finding what he sought. He stepped forward, arms outstretched as he knelt, and attempted to take the boulder in a bearhug. His full reach just managed to round the thing, and he took a deep breath, holding it tight.
Thor grunted as he rose, bringing the boulder with him. Stone scraped on stone as it rose, loud and discordant against the harsh serenity of the mountaintop, and he almost stumbled as he took a step back, unbalanced. Rock splintered and cracked at his hands, his grip sinking into the boulder as he turned with the ungainly thing, stepping carefully over to where Wolfric had stumbled. Slowly, carefully, he began to sink into a crouch, back straight and knees bent. He flexed his belly, pushing the boulder forward and out of his arms into the crater, where it fell with a dull whump, a cloud of snow kicked up by its fall. It did not roll or shift, only settling into place as if the crater had been made for it.
With a noise of satisfaction, Thor turned back to where the boulder had come from, joining his followers in staring at the dark hole that had been revealed. The bare beginnings of a twisting tunnel could be seen, the sides worn unnaturally smooth, before disappearing into darkness.
"I've heard this tale before," Grigori said, staring down, keeping his feet as far back from the edge as he could.
"A tale of adventure?" Thor asked.
"Child's fable," Grigori said. "'Don't go exploring down strange holes in the ground or you'll never be seen again'." His mouth was set in a resigned grimace.
"We'll need rope," Wolfric said, more to himself than anything. "Maybe some metal stakes…"
"Ah, my friends," Thor said, replying to them both. "You forget with whom you quest!" And then he took them both by the shoulders and stepped off the edge and into the tunnel, allowing gravity to do its work. They fell.
They did not scream, but only because Thor was quick to clap his hands over their mouths, trapping the no doubt manly yelps of fright within their throats. Stormbreaker was quick to slip from his back to catch him, and he perched on it well enough, one foot on the blunt side of its head, the other halfway up its haft. Their fall was arrested just in time to avoid crashing into the wall as the tunnel turned, beginning to spiral.
'Do a trick,' he could hear the shadow of Tony say, and his lips quirked in a smile.
The etching on Stormbreaker's head began to glow, casting light about the tunnel as they descended, and his companions settled, no longer so frantic now that they could see. He eased his grip on them, focusing on the task at hand. His beard fluttered up around his face as they followed the turning path, and slowly it began to widen. Where before it was scarce wide enough to accommodate Trumpetter, now it could fit a grown mammoth, should one find itself capable of flight or of climbing a dark, twisting tunnel in the upper reaches of a great mountain. The smoothness of the walls began to lessen as well, more and more natural cragginess showing through. Here and there he saw stalactites, and at one point he had to swerve alarmingly to avoid sitting on a stalagmite that suddenly appeared around the bend.
As they went, Thor looked with more than his eyes once more. The brightness he had seen was all about them, almost drowning out the faint wisps of red that came from his companions with every excited breath. Outside, he had seen the - the tides, the currents, the winds - whatever they were, flowing through the world, but within the mountain, it was different. It was like stepping from the shallows to the depths, not crushing, but omnipresent. If his instinct was correct, and the dragon was at the source of the bright wind that purged the sickness it touched, then they were surely on the right track. He wondered if it had taken some mighty artefact for its hoard.
The descent was not over quickly, but it did come to an end. Wider and wider the tunnel became, until at its end Thor could have wrestled Hulk within it and not brushed the sides if they did not want to. It opened into a large chamber, devoid of anything but more stone. He let his companions go as he stepped off his axe, taking in their surroundings.
Wolfric and Grigori both stumbled, shaky, as they found their feet again. Their eyes were wide, their breathing heavy, but they said nothing as they shared a look, jaws clenched with what Thor was sure was the effort of containing their excitement.
There were two passages from the chamber they were in, rounded and tall, each at opposite ends. Stormbreaker floated back up to rest at his spine, its glow fading, but there was still light enough for even the mortals to see by, if barely. The passage to the left had a soft yellow gleam coming from around its bend, while the one to the right disappeared into darkness. The bright current had only gotten stronger, though it was impossible to tell from whence it came, here near the source of it.
"Let us search out the light," Thor murmured. The sound of his footsteps were soft on the smooth stone floor as he made for the left passage, Wolfric and Grigori slightly louder as they followed.
The passage, for it could not be called something so base as a tunnel, was not a natural formation. It had the same unnatural smoothness he had noticed in the tunnel from the peak, though this seemed more deliberate, the walls almost glossy, uniform rather than smooth in patches. The soft light rose as they walked, leaving the dark chamber behind, arcing right.
In time, the passage ended, and they stopped, stupefied. Before them was a set of stairs that led down into an enormous cavern, the size of Asgard's throne room and positively glowing. Some manner of stones were set into the walls and ceiling, putting off a soft white light, intricate carvings covering every inch. But it was not the light or the carvings or the scale that drew their eyes.
It was the gold.
The white light put out from the walls fell upon the gold and was reflected in turn, a yellow glow rising from what could only be the dragon's hoard. Treasures of every kind could be seen, from stacks of neatly ordered coins to rows of statues to piles of precious gems, even a section of portraits made not from paint but from mosaics of precious metals, all separated by lanes wide enough for five pegasi to ride abreast. It was a staggering amount of wealth.
"This is the wealth of empires," Grigori said, scarcely breathing.
"There is more gold here than in all of Norsca, surely," Wolfric said.
"Ehh," Thor said.
Wolfric stepped forward, only to find Thor's hand grasping his shoulder.
"Hold," Thor said, gaze sweeping around the room once more, looking with more than his eyes. The brightness of the pure current he could see, but it flowed around much of the treasure, as if flowing against something else he could not quite see. It was no corruption, for he had seen how that fared against the brightness, but there was something. His eyes lingered on the neatly stacked coins.
"Do you see it?" Wolfric asked. His sword rasped slowly as he began to draw it from its sheath.
"No," Thor said, still looking around the hall - for it was nothing so simple as a cavern - and finding only more treasure, no hint of somewhere a dragon might hide. On the far side he spied another small passage, but this one was a rough tunnel as best he could tell. "There is something off."
"The gold is a trick, a fake?" Grigori asked, still unable to take his eyes off its gleam, and Thor remembered that he had been taken by raiders while part of a merchant voyage.
"No, it is real," Thor said, fighting the urge to summon his armour. He could not tell what was pricking at his instincts, only that something was out of place. He had not his brother's eye for traps, so it was likely not that, and yet… "We will check the other passage."
Carefully, they crept back from the top of the stairs they stood upon, leaving the hoard behind, and ventured back into the growing darkness. After the gleaming of untold riches, the shadows seemed deeper, and Thor stoked the glow of his axe to throw them back. His companions kept close, ears pricked for the faintest sound, but there was only the scrape of their shoes on stone and the shallowness of their breathing. The light of the treasure faded, and then they were surrounded by the dark.
The passage seemed more sinister now, even though they had only just come this way, but they pressed on, emerging into the chamber they had first found after leaving the peak tunnel. A lesser man may have faltered, knowing that a dragon lurked somewhere out in the darkness, but he was Thor, and he had ventured into places steeped in greater evil than the lair of some scaly beast.
Down the dark passage they went, and like the other it was smooth and glossy, reflecting the light of his axe. It too arced to the right, though ultimately in the opposite direction to the other passage. When they reached its end, what scant light was put off by Stormbreaker was not nearly enough to illuminate whatever immense cavern awaited them, and for a moment they stood at the threshold. He could feel the attentions of his companions on him, waiting for his guidance, but he waited, reaching out with his mundane senses. So great was the room beyond that it even had its own air flow, slow and regular, almost like a great bellows was keeping the mountain ventilated. Had the dragon moved into an old manmade structure?
Thor's nose twitched, picking up a scent, and he frowned. Realisation dawned. The airflow was too slow, too regular. It was no breeze. He looked deeper, and the darkness was thrown back by sudden brightness, though again he could see it flowing against and around something invisible to him, like there was another current he could not discern.
That was secondary, however, to the dragon in the room.
Larger by half again than the manticore he had slain months past, it was bathed in the bright current he could see, and with each breath it would set the current to billowing. Its scales were a blue so pale they were almost white, while sky blue wings were tucked into its sides, sharp spikes at the wrists of its wings. More spikes came from its frill, and they were akin to jagged icicles, though they were not as fearsome as the curling horns of black that grew from the back of its skull. Its eyes, though, its eyes were the most terrible of it all, the colour of glaciers.
Thor knew this, because the dragon was staring right at him.
"Wolfric, Grigori," Thor said evenly, looking around the chamber as if he were a darkness blind mortal, "I want you both to turn around and leave, carefully. When you reach the next chamber, bunker down and wait. If you hear anything before you reach it, run."
The dragon blinked, unmoving from where its head rested on its foreclaws. Its nostrils flared.
For a moment, the two men hesitated, but something in his tone and the way he did not turn away from the darkness that was all they could see before them convinced them. They began to retreat as quietly as they had arrived.
White eyes followed them, and the dragon raised its head, languorous. Its chest swelled as it inhaled, and it loosed a great sigh. It was laying on a bed of skins and furs of all manner of great beasts.
Something again pricked at Thor's instincts. He was missing something, some implication, but he had not the time to think on it deeper for the dragon was opening its mouth, revealing rows of fangs sharper than any mortal blade. Then the dragon did something that stopped Thor cold.
"What is this?" the dragon asked, low and slow, like it had been woken from a deep sleep. "More food, come to my door?"
Thor blinked.
"The others were too skinny, too hairy - but you look like a tasty little morsel," the dragon said, head rising even higher as it did more than look up, neck extending to its full length to settle at twice Thor's height. It sniffed again. "No metal to pick from my gums, and you may even be free of taint. What a treat." Its tongue snaked out, testing the air. The air grew colder.
"I would taste most awful," Thor assured the dragon, before his mind caught up. "Oh, you talk. This will perhaps be awkward." This was what had been niggling at him - not a trap or a curse, but the signs pointing towards the dragon being more than a simple beast. It was sapient.
"Why would I not?" the dragon asked. He? She? was a ways into the cavern, not nearly close enough to take a swipe, and they made no move to stand or lunge closer.
"You are a dragon," Thor said.
"You are a human," the dragon said, before yawning, showing off just how many fangs it had in its maw. "I am impressed you can speak at all. Well done."
"I am an Asgardian, I will have you know," Thor said, pointing at the beas- at the being.
"Oh?" the dragon asked. "I believe I met one of your kind, once."
Impossible hope leapt in Thor's breast.
"They said they had come to slay me in the name of their lady," the dragon mused, eyes half lidded in thought. "Their lance caught in my teeth for weeks, but their horse was a fine delicacy." They tapped a claw on the stone floor by their nest, as if remembering. "Bretonnian, that was it, not Asgardian."
Thor strangled the wave of feeling that followed, keeping his mind in the moment. "You will find my axe does more than inconvenience you, should you attempt to eat me," he warned.
"Perhaps," the dragon said. Its scales seemed to ripple as it shifted, and so did the brightness of the winds, like it was manipulating them.
No, not like, Thor realised. It was manipulating them. The dragon itself was the source of the power.
"Perhaps," the dragon repeated. "For what cause have you intruded upon my lair, stolen upon me as I slept with your weapon bared?" It began to stand, head rising higher again, and even at their distance Thor had to look up to meet its eyes. "Do you come a thief, thinking to take from my peerless hoard? A would be dragon slayer, seeking renown?" Its voice began to thrum, on the verge of shaking the mountain walls, outrage and amusement blending together. Already cold, the temperature began to plummet, enough that Thor could feel its unpleasantness.
"First of all, in Asgard we gilded our rooftops with more gold than your hoard contains," Thor said, his breath beginning to mist. "Second - well, yes. I really must apologise, but I came here to take your heartblood."
"I see," the dragon said, near hissing. "Then you will die." Then it opened its jaws wide, and a torrent of ice roared forth.
Lightning answered, shattering the relative quiet of the chamber. The ice was shattered, the pillar thick as two men turned to shards and splinters. They were sprayed around the room and down the passage, and Thor spared a moment to be grateful that his companions had left.
"Not a simple knight, are you?" the dragon asked, taking a step forward, out of its bedding. Dark claws carved grooves into the floor as it flexed.
"I am Thor, the God of Thunder, son of Odin," Thor proclaimed. "You challenge me at your own peril."
"Gods," the dragon said, disgusted. "My kind were here before your coming. We will be here after your fall." Its tail flicked, and its eyes began to shine white.
Thor felt his own eyes glow as he called on his power. His form rippled with eldritch light, his armour called by seidr, and silver glinted in his beard. Lightning sparked along his arms, and he hurled a bolt like a spear.
A band of light formed above the dragon's head, intercepting the bolt. The glow of the band intensified, almost painful in its brightness, and a moment later three spears of light lanced out.
Stormbreaker was already in his hand, knowing it was needed, and Thor caught them all on its head. The first shattered, but the second ricocheted off into a wall, cracking it, while the last slipped past and glanced off his arm. He grunted. That was going to leave a bruise.
The brightness of the chamber grew once more, harsh all around, driving out whatever else had been present. Thor's grip tightened on his axe. He would not slay a thinking being to harvest them for parts, but he found himself in a fight all the same.
Arimai
Curmudgeon
Huh. You found an ancient Star Dragon untouched by Chaos. Now I'm really suspicious of the old woman. While mostly neutral Dragons this old are most definitely anti-Chaos. And are a vital part of the magical ecosystem's life cycle. They were strong allies of the Great Old Ones, the First Generation Slann who shaped and terraformed the planet from the chaotic chemical processes of the Primordial Ooze. Millions of years later the Chaos Gods and the Tear appear and were sealed away by the Slann. This act drained the Slann and everyone from Fifth Generation and older fell into a torpor and their outer skin fossilized into magically reinforced stone.
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- Pronouns
- sapper
Good character progression in Thor thinking for himself and upholding a moral position.
He could however still do with some lessons in diplomacy & effective communication. If he had opened with 'second: bla bla bla, child is sick really weird sickness, bla bla, I was told dragons are unthinking beings bla bla strange wise woman told me heartblood of a dragon is the only cure but that is no longer possible' then the fight might have been avoided. Because a dragon in Warhammer is always going to assume that humans are here to kill them riches, for glory, or for processing them into magical ingrediënts and they logically oppose that.
This does however give us another enjoyable battle chapter to look forward too, so I guess that it works in our advantage
Home Improvement 5
- Location
- Australia
Ice again lanced out, and a ring of lightning crackled and whirred, blasting it apart.
"Hold!" Thor called. "This is a mis-"
"Yes, it was," the dragon said, all hints of lethargy gone from its voice, though its tone was still low, almost reserved, as it sought to slay him. "A mistake to enter my lair, a mistake to lust for my blood, and a mistake to think to denigrate my hoard!" A web of light spat from its mouth, growing as it flew, grasping.
Thor shot into the air to avoid it. "I would never!" he protested. He had had good cause to seek its blood, certainly nothing so base as greed.
"Yet you claim to gild the rooftops of your hovels with more gold than is found in my hoard!" the dragon said. Its eyes, already shining, began to spill forth light, painfully bright. The beams threw back the darkness even further, revealing smooth walls and vaulted ceilings.
"Perhaps I exaggerated," Thor said, voice strained, as he ducked and dove out of the way of the beams of light. One tagged his leg, and he felt himself slowed. "To exceed your treasure, it would take the gold on our roads as well."
Wings the colour of the winter sky flared in outrage, and ice was again spat towards him. This time it was no lance, but a flurry of jagged balls. Slowed by whatever spell the dragon had cast from its eyes, Thor was hard pressed to weave between them, knocking one to the side with his axe, and that was before they hit the cavern ceiling and burst into uncountable shards, razor sharp.
Thor let go of his axe, momentum carrying him through the air, and brought his hands together. Thunder roared, and the falling shards were swept away. Stormbreaker returned to his hand even as he rued his words. This was why he always let Loki do the talking.
"You flit about my home like a buzzard, little godling," the dragon said, its voice filling the cavern. "If this is all you can conjure, you will never take my head." It spat another ball of ice, almost as an afterthought.
"I am not your enemy!" Thor boomed as he dove below it. "I mean you no harm!"
"Well, in that case," the dragon said, the beams of light from its eyes fading.
"Really?" Thor asked, brightening, slowing to hover in place.
"No." Radiance gleamed anew from the band of light above its head, spiking the eyes, and wings beat heavily, launching the dragon up into the air.
Thor cursed his unthinking words as he let gravity have him, barely avoiding the lunge as he landed on one knee. It was deceptively swift, and as he looked up powerful legs were already pushing itself off the wall to take another run at him, claws extended. He moved, and a crater bloomed where he had fallen, missing him by a heartbeat as he shot deeper into the cavern.
"I misspoke!" Thor shouted, juking and weaving. There came the sound of tearing fabric as dark claws caught his cape. "I came for your heartblood, yes, but that was before I knew you to be a thinking being!"
"The insult!" the dragon raged, snapping at the heels of the impudent godling. "Because we do not share your form, you think us beasts?!?"
"I'd never met a dragon before!" Thor shouted in protest. He jerked to a stop, rolling, allowing the dragon to shoot past him. He barely avoided the spikes along its spine as he near tumbled over its back.
He did not avoid the tail, the fifth limb flicking up to nail him right in the chest. The wind was driven from him, and then he collided with the ceiling, shattering one of the arches carved into it. He fell to the floor, dazed, but he still had his axe in hand, and he willed it to carry him away before the inevitable follow up could find him.
A wicked claw found him first, enveloping his chest and pinning him to the ground, cracking the stone beneath him. A toothy maw widened in a hungry grin as the dragon looked down on him, tongue flicking out as if to taste the morsel it was about to eat. "A pity you will never meet another."
Its claw might be large enough to pin a man, but that just meant it was large enough for his arm to slip between its talons. Thor caught the descending maw, his hand catching it by the snout. "I am trying to use my words," he gritted out. "Do not force me to raise my axe against you."
"How easy it is to be polite when you are at my mercy," the dragon said, snarling as it pushed down, neck muscles taut and straining. Its ice breath would have been enormously inconvenient in such a position of weakness, but it seemed to have taken his strength as a challenge.
Thor's arm trembled in a way it hadn't since he had challenged Hulk to an arm wrestling challenge, but he managed to free his other arm, hand seizing one sharp canine at the cost of dropping his axe. "At least tell me you prey upon innocent villages, or terrorise virgin princesses," he managed, straining to breathe evenly.
"Again insults," the dragon said, shifting its bulk to better bring its weight to bear. "Next you will ask if I am slave to the corruption from beyond the Gates!"
"Well," Thor said before he could think better of it, "are you?"
The dragon's eyes were not monochrome as he had first thought. There was a slit pupil in them, ever so slightly more blue than the glacier white of the orbs. He knew this, because as he spoke, they widened in outrage, before narrowing to absolute slits. Frost puffed from its nostrils, scorching the hand on its snout with the cold, and then it was opening its jaws to set loose a torrent of ice once more.
Cold. Cold, omnipresent and all encompassing. Until now, he had not been able to truly sympathise with Steve's distaste for it. He could not see, not encased in ice as he was, but he could still sense, and he felt the dragon stepping back from its new Thorcicle. He could sense Wolfric and Grigori peering around the corner of the passage he had sent them down, and the dragon noticing them. He could sense the way it turned to them, drawing in a breath to deal with the last of the intruders. He could sense Wolfric's certainty in him.
He could sense Stormbreaker.
Under the weight of a mountain, a storm erupted, appearing between one breath and the next. Lightning roiled across the vaulted ceiling, throwing the entire cavern into stark relief, and the scent of ozone filled the air. A single bolt fell to the block of ice that was Thor, and it shattered with the sound of a breaking glacier.
Mortal men were forced to avert their eyes, even the dragon narrowing its own to bare cracks, so bright was the afterimage of the bolt. When it faded, the God of Thunder was revealed, standing in a crater of stone and ice. His eyes glowed, and silver glinted in his beard as he glowered up at the dragon.
"Dragon," Thor said, voice echoing through the cavern despite the storm overhead, "what is your name?"
The dragon stilled, taking its foe seriously for the first time. "Leifnir," it said at length. "I am Leifnir."
"Know this, Leifnir," Thor said, grave and utterly unafraid. "I mean you no harm." Lazy sparks fell from the head of his axe.
Cold eyes regarded him, head still and teeth bared, even as its tail flicked with agitation. The band of light it wore as a crown melted and flowed onto its skull, and between its black horns, an eye of light formed. "Swear it," Leifnir said, reserve returning to its tone, though still it was frigid as the ice it breathed.
"I have no foes, save for those that would harm the innocent," Thor said, setting the base of his axe on the ground, his hands resting on its head. "So long as we are not opposed in this, I mean you no harm."
Leifnir lowered their head, eyeing him. The moment stretched out, a looming silence spreading through the cavern. At length, the dragon spoke.
"I believe you," it said. "For all that you came here speaking of taking my lifeblood." It sat on its haunches, upper body rising higher as it looked down on him, imperious.
Thor winced. "Aye, well…clearly, I could have been clearer about how that was my original intent, one that changed. You have nothing to fear from me."
Leifnir snorted, derisive, letting loose a cloud of mist, but before they could give voice to their thoughts another cut in.
"If we do not take its heart, my sisters will die."
Wolfric emerged from the passageway, drawing the attention of god and dragon. His eye was fixed on the enormous being, and he bore naked steel in hand, reflecting the light of the lightning above. Grigori lingered in the darkness behind him, closer to the dubious safety of the bend in the hall.
"Humans," Leifnir said, lip curling back in a sneer. "Superstitious wretches, all of you."
"You said they would be healed," Wolfric said, ignoring the dragon to speak to his god. His faith was clear in his eye, but still he questioned. "Is there a way to cure them without the heartblood?"
"They will be healed," Thor said, resolute, "but I will not turn a thinking being into an unwilling sacrifice." There had been a time when he would not have blinked, but that time was in the past.
Leifnir was frowning now, scaled face expressive. "You will tell me, Asgardian, why you sought my life. Did your village witch claim a curse from my mountain? Are they pained by the winds of my power?" The eye on its brow still shone softly.
"A sickness has fallen upon the sisters of my companion," Thor said, turning back to the dragon. "One of such strength that they require an elixir brewed with the heartblood of a dragon to survive it."
"Are you not a god?" Leifnir asked. "Your power does not stink of the usual corruption that comes with such claims."
"I am god of storms, not healing," Thor said. "And I am mighty, but the hallowing of evil is not a gentle process."
"Does it know of another dragon, then?" Wolfric asked. "A foul dragon, one we can slay without guilt."
Thor had his own suspicions as to the suitability of heartblood from a corrupted dragon, but he had not time to voice them.
"'It'?" Leifnir said with a scoff, tossing its head back. "I am the last daughter of glacial Ymirdrak, and my beauty is peerless, even if you lack the eyes to see it."
"Of course you're a gi- a lady dragon," Thor said swiftly. "The shimmer of your scales and the sharpness of your frill make it clear."
Leifnir settled, frill fluttering for a moment, catching the light that still lingered above. "Just so." Her claws clacked on stone as she crossed them.
"Thor," Wolfric said. There was a raggedness to his voice. "My sisters?"
"For sufficient recompense, above what you already owe, I could cleanse whatever rot has brewed in your squalor," Leifnir said. She spoke as if long suffering, but the gleam of interest in her white eyes could not be hidden.
Thor had seen the ways the idle eddies of her power had reacted to the background corruption of the land. Guided directly, perhaps it could have a positive effect on the sickness that Decay had sent to take hold in Astrid and Elsa. "I will make right my intrusion into your home. What would you have in return for healing those that suffer the touch of Decay?"
"I want your axe."
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Your axe," Leifnir said, gesturing to it carelessly. "Though the haft is plain, I can sense its power, and the head is a clear masterwork. It will have pride of place with the arms of the other would-be warlords to enter my lair."
"You know not for what you ask," Thor warned her. "This is the final weapon of King Eitri of Nidavellir, forged from the heart of a dying star and my own lifeblood. Its value is beyond reckoning."
"Then it seems I have chosen my price well," Leifnir said. Never had a dragon's smile been so warranted.
"...ask for something else."
Leifnir abandoned her regal seating, rearing up and crashing down, the impact echoing through the great hall. "You invite yourself into my home! Belittle my hoard! Creep into my bedchamber as I sleep, and you feel your prized weapon is too much to give up to make right your transgressions?!"
"Yes?" Thor said.
A snort was his answer, setting his hair and beard to flying and threading them with ice. "You would do well to be thankful that I am slower to anger than my hot blooded cousins." She began to pace, claws carving gouges in the stone floor.
"I do not deny that I have offered you insult," Thor said, "but you do not possess the only method of healing those in my care, and my axe means much to me, far beyond the power it possesses."
A rumble came from the dragon's great chest, and she ceased her pacing, flicking away a chunk of sundered ice. "What could you offer me that would suffice?"
Her words had brought the origin of Stormbreaker's haft to the forefront of his thoughts, and with it, something unique enough to be considered valuable. "I would offer you a potential companion to raise, one as long lived as you." He fixed her with a gimlet eye. "Though I would expect you to treat them with utmost care," he finished sternly.
"A companion? Pass," Leifnir said, uninterested. "Mortal creatures require such care and upkeep, and then you wake up and realise they've either perished or bred and multiplied one hundred fold."
"It would not- hmm, very well," Thor said. He frowned in thought.
Perhaps a solitary creature like Leifnir was not one to whom the idea of a companion would appeal, even if the thought of a familiar face was one that would lighten his own spirit. Thor glanced back at Wolfric; the man had lowered his sword, though it was still bared as he waited, and Grigori had joined him. The Kislevite was watching the proceedings wide eyed. The storm overhead still roiled in silence, and its light glinted off Wolfric's dark eye patch.
A thought strolled into his mind, one he could not readily dispel. It would be a sacrifice, but was it not one he had made before? He turned his gaze back to Leifnir. Something about his bearing made her tail lash with interest. "Then I would offer you," he said slowly, "mine right eye."
"You claimed you would taste awful, but now you offer a sample up to me?" Leifnir bantered. "Why would you think a slop of flesh, quick to rot, to be a fitting offer?"
"It is not an offer of flesh, but of craft," Thor said. "Of glass and metal, something unique in this realm."
Leifnir's interest was piqued, and she took a step forward, hunkering down and extending her neck to inspect Thor closely. "Your pupils, I see the difference," she said, and as she spoke a blast of chill air washed across him. "An interesting artifact."
"It is an artifact that could be yours," Thor tempted her.
Indecision warred in her white eyes for a moment, but only for a moment. "Very well," she said, raising her claws. "Be still."
"No, no, that's quite alright," Thor said, stepping back in a hurry. "I can remove it quite easily."
"Then be about it," Leifnir said.
She watched with interest as he reached up, using one hand to hold his eye open, and the other to twist and pop the eye free. A sunken pit remained, though she glimpsed it only briefly before it was covered by a scarred eyelid. He reached out, and she accepted it carefully, holding it between the very tips of two razor sharp claws. Somehow, it was undamaged by the experience.
"Does that satisfy you?" Thor asked. "My eye, for the intrusion and the service?"
"It does," she said, entranced by the device. The eye on her brow faded, but her own eyes began to glow softly in turn as she looked it over. "What offer would you have made had it not?" she asked, not looking away.
"My aid in the destruction of an evil foe," Thor said. His empty socket itched, and the lid over it felt queer.
Leifnir snorted, still not looking away from her prize. "Well that you offered this first."
"On the day you find yourself outmatched, would you not be grateful for the assistance of a god?" Thor asked.
"I am a dragon."
A shadow crossed Thor's face. "There is always a greater foe."
Leifnir did not answer, but her gaze did shift to him.
"Are you ready to leave?" Thor asked.
"No."
"Then we will wait until you are," Thor said.
"No," Leifnir said again. "Where is your collection of huts?"
Thor frowned, and Stormbreaker floated closer.
"I have given you my word," Leifnir said, baring her teeth at him, "but I will not leave my home in such - disarray. I will repair it, and join you at your home within a turn of the sun." She paused, eyeing him. "You do not intend to walk back, do you?"
"It is the town of Vinteerholm, near straight west from here," Thor told her. "Walled, in the process of raising a higher one, and by a broadening of a river, nestled between two fingers of the mountains." He eyed her, suspicious. "The mammoth is not for eating," he warned her.
Leifnir gave a hmph, a strange thing to see from a dragon. "Then you may leave," she said. "I will not have you hovering while I see to important matters."
Thor did not move, another warning on his tongue. He would brook no delay, not when Astrid and Elsa's lives hung in the balance, but he could feel her sincerity. "Very well. Within a turn of the sun."
Her attention had already returned to the eye, and she gave no indication that she noticed their leaving, Wolfric and Grigori falling in behind him as he led the way back down the passage.
The moment they were out of her direct view, Grigori let out a shaky breath. "That - I did not expect that," he said.
"Nor did I," Thor said, thoughts elsewhere. Half his vision was gone, and when he sought to look with more than flesh, he was able, but only in his remaining eye. There was a block, something stopping him from seeing the currents of power about him with the eye that he now lacked. A reasonable result, but for some reason he had expected it to be otherwise…
"Lord Thor," Wolfric said, breaking him from his thoughts. He was holding out his own dark eye patch in offer.
Thor smiled at his follower. "Your heart is in the right place," he said, clapping him on the shoulder, "but I would rather you not deprive yourself. I will manage until we return."
"I should have spoken," Wolfric said. "To lose your eye, even for my sisters-"
"It is worth it a dozen times over," Thor said.
"You could have offered my sword-"
Again, he was cut off. "Your sword is not mine to give," Thor told him. "And what would she have said when she found herself unable to lift it?" he added, inviting him to share the joke.
Wolfric managed a thin smile. "Even so," he said.
"Even so nothing," Thor said as they reached the end of the hall and the other passageway entries. "Let us be off. If we are swift, we can reach our camp of last night."
"Your ice-tiger friend might be there," Grigori laughed, before attempting it again in Norscan. "Small angry beast, say hello?"
Wolfric managed a laugh, some spirit returning to him now that they were leaving, their goal apparently achieved. They may not have the heartblood, but they had the aid of a dragon, and that was no small thing.
Carefully, Thor stood astride his axe and took up his companions, and soon they were flying up the passage to the peak of the mountain once more, home beckoning.
"Hold!" Thor called. "This is a mis-"
"Yes, it was," the dragon said, all hints of lethargy gone from its voice, though its tone was still low, almost reserved, as it sought to slay him. "A mistake to enter my lair, a mistake to lust for my blood, and a mistake to think to denigrate my hoard!" A web of light spat from its mouth, growing as it flew, grasping.
Thor shot into the air to avoid it. "I would never!" he protested. He had had good cause to seek its blood, certainly nothing so base as greed.
"Yet you claim to gild the rooftops of your hovels with more gold than is found in my hoard!" the dragon said. Its eyes, already shining, began to spill forth light, painfully bright. The beams threw back the darkness even further, revealing smooth walls and vaulted ceilings.
"Perhaps I exaggerated," Thor said, voice strained, as he ducked and dove out of the way of the beams of light. One tagged his leg, and he felt himself slowed. "To exceed your treasure, it would take the gold on our roads as well."
Wings the colour of the winter sky flared in outrage, and ice was again spat towards him. This time it was no lance, but a flurry of jagged balls. Slowed by whatever spell the dragon had cast from its eyes, Thor was hard pressed to weave between them, knocking one to the side with his axe, and that was before they hit the cavern ceiling and burst into uncountable shards, razor sharp.
Thor let go of his axe, momentum carrying him through the air, and brought his hands together. Thunder roared, and the falling shards were swept away. Stormbreaker returned to his hand even as he rued his words. This was why he always let Loki do the talking.
"You flit about my home like a buzzard, little godling," the dragon said, its voice filling the cavern. "If this is all you can conjure, you will never take my head." It spat another ball of ice, almost as an afterthought.
"I am not your enemy!" Thor boomed as he dove below it. "I mean you no harm!"
"Well, in that case," the dragon said, the beams of light from its eyes fading.
"Really?" Thor asked, brightening, slowing to hover in place.
"No." Radiance gleamed anew from the band of light above its head, spiking the eyes, and wings beat heavily, launching the dragon up into the air.
Thor cursed his unthinking words as he let gravity have him, barely avoiding the lunge as he landed on one knee. It was deceptively swift, and as he looked up powerful legs were already pushing itself off the wall to take another run at him, claws extended. He moved, and a crater bloomed where he had fallen, missing him by a heartbeat as he shot deeper into the cavern.
"I misspoke!" Thor shouted, juking and weaving. There came the sound of tearing fabric as dark claws caught his cape. "I came for your heartblood, yes, but that was before I knew you to be a thinking being!"
"The insult!" the dragon raged, snapping at the heels of the impudent godling. "Because we do not share your form, you think us beasts?!?"
"I'd never met a dragon before!" Thor shouted in protest. He jerked to a stop, rolling, allowing the dragon to shoot past him. He barely avoided the spikes along its spine as he near tumbled over its back.
He did not avoid the tail, the fifth limb flicking up to nail him right in the chest. The wind was driven from him, and then he collided with the ceiling, shattering one of the arches carved into it. He fell to the floor, dazed, but he still had his axe in hand, and he willed it to carry him away before the inevitable follow up could find him.
A wicked claw found him first, enveloping his chest and pinning him to the ground, cracking the stone beneath him. A toothy maw widened in a hungry grin as the dragon looked down on him, tongue flicking out as if to taste the morsel it was about to eat. "A pity you will never meet another."
Its claw might be large enough to pin a man, but that just meant it was large enough for his arm to slip between its talons. Thor caught the descending maw, his hand catching it by the snout. "I am trying to use my words," he gritted out. "Do not force me to raise my axe against you."
"How easy it is to be polite when you are at my mercy," the dragon said, snarling as it pushed down, neck muscles taut and straining. Its ice breath would have been enormously inconvenient in such a position of weakness, but it seemed to have taken his strength as a challenge.
Thor's arm trembled in a way it hadn't since he had challenged Hulk to an arm wrestling challenge, but he managed to free his other arm, hand seizing one sharp canine at the cost of dropping his axe. "At least tell me you prey upon innocent villages, or terrorise virgin princesses," he managed, straining to breathe evenly.
"Again insults," the dragon said, shifting its bulk to better bring its weight to bear. "Next you will ask if I am slave to the corruption from beyond the Gates!"
"Well," Thor said before he could think better of it, "are you?"
The dragon's eyes were not monochrome as he had first thought. There was a slit pupil in them, ever so slightly more blue than the glacier white of the orbs. He knew this, because as he spoke, they widened in outrage, before narrowing to absolute slits. Frost puffed from its nostrils, scorching the hand on its snout with the cold, and then it was opening its jaws to set loose a torrent of ice once more.
Cold. Cold, omnipresent and all encompassing. Until now, he had not been able to truly sympathise with Steve's distaste for it. He could not see, not encased in ice as he was, but he could still sense, and he felt the dragon stepping back from its new Thorcicle. He could sense Wolfric and Grigori peering around the corner of the passage he had sent them down, and the dragon noticing them. He could sense the way it turned to them, drawing in a breath to deal with the last of the intruders. He could sense Wolfric's certainty in him.
He could sense Stormbreaker.
Under the weight of a mountain, a storm erupted, appearing between one breath and the next. Lightning roiled across the vaulted ceiling, throwing the entire cavern into stark relief, and the scent of ozone filled the air. A single bolt fell to the block of ice that was Thor, and it shattered with the sound of a breaking glacier.
Mortal men were forced to avert their eyes, even the dragon narrowing its own to bare cracks, so bright was the afterimage of the bolt. When it faded, the God of Thunder was revealed, standing in a crater of stone and ice. His eyes glowed, and silver glinted in his beard as he glowered up at the dragon.
"Dragon," Thor said, voice echoing through the cavern despite the storm overhead, "what is your name?"
The dragon stilled, taking its foe seriously for the first time. "Leifnir," it said at length. "I am Leifnir."
"Know this, Leifnir," Thor said, grave and utterly unafraid. "I mean you no harm." Lazy sparks fell from the head of his axe.
Cold eyes regarded him, head still and teeth bared, even as its tail flicked with agitation. The band of light it wore as a crown melted and flowed onto its skull, and between its black horns, an eye of light formed. "Swear it," Leifnir said, reserve returning to its tone, though still it was frigid as the ice it breathed.
"I have no foes, save for those that would harm the innocent," Thor said, setting the base of his axe on the ground, his hands resting on its head. "So long as we are not opposed in this, I mean you no harm."
Leifnir lowered their head, eyeing him. The moment stretched out, a looming silence spreading through the cavern. At length, the dragon spoke.
"I believe you," it said. "For all that you came here speaking of taking my lifeblood." It sat on its haunches, upper body rising higher as it looked down on him, imperious.
Thor winced. "Aye, well…clearly, I could have been clearer about how that was my original intent, one that changed. You have nothing to fear from me."
Leifnir snorted, derisive, letting loose a cloud of mist, but before they could give voice to their thoughts another cut in.
"If we do not take its heart, my sisters will die."
Wolfric emerged from the passageway, drawing the attention of god and dragon. His eye was fixed on the enormous being, and he bore naked steel in hand, reflecting the light of the lightning above. Grigori lingered in the darkness behind him, closer to the dubious safety of the bend in the hall.
"Humans," Leifnir said, lip curling back in a sneer. "Superstitious wretches, all of you."
"You said they would be healed," Wolfric said, ignoring the dragon to speak to his god. His faith was clear in his eye, but still he questioned. "Is there a way to cure them without the heartblood?"
"They will be healed," Thor said, resolute, "but I will not turn a thinking being into an unwilling sacrifice." There had been a time when he would not have blinked, but that time was in the past.
Leifnir was frowning now, scaled face expressive. "You will tell me, Asgardian, why you sought my life. Did your village witch claim a curse from my mountain? Are they pained by the winds of my power?" The eye on its brow still shone softly.
"A sickness has fallen upon the sisters of my companion," Thor said, turning back to the dragon. "One of such strength that they require an elixir brewed with the heartblood of a dragon to survive it."
"Are you not a god?" Leifnir asked. "Your power does not stink of the usual corruption that comes with such claims."
"I am god of storms, not healing," Thor said. "And I am mighty, but the hallowing of evil is not a gentle process."
"Does it know of another dragon, then?" Wolfric asked. "A foul dragon, one we can slay without guilt."
Thor had his own suspicions as to the suitability of heartblood from a corrupted dragon, but he had not time to voice them.
"'It'?" Leifnir said with a scoff, tossing its head back. "I am the last daughter of glacial Ymirdrak, and my beauty is peerless, even if you lack the eyes to see it."
"Of course you're a gi- a lady dragon," Thor said swiftly. "The shimmer of your scales and the sharpness of your frill make it clear."
Leifnir settled, frill fluttering for a moment, catching the light that still lingered above. "Just so." Her claws clacked on stone as she crossed them.
"Thor," Wolfric said. There was a raggedness to his voice. "My sisters?"
"For sufficient recompense, above what you already owe, I could cleanse whatever rot has brewed in your squalor," Leifnir said. She spoke as if long suffering, but the gleam of interest in her white eyes could not be hidden.
Thor had seen the ways the idle eddies of her power had reacted to the background corruption of the land. Guided directly, perhaps it could have a positive effect on the sickness that Decay had sent to take hold in Astrid and Elsa. "I will make right my intrusion into your home. What would you have in return for healing those that suffer the touch of Decay?"
"I want your axe."
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Your axe," Leifnir said, gesturing to it carelessly. "Though the haft is plain, I can sense its power, and the head is a clear masterwork. It will have pride of place with the arms of the other would-be warlords to enter my lair."
"You know not for what you ask," Thor warned her. "This is the final weapon of King Eitri of Nidavellir, forged from the heart of a dying star and my own lifeblood. Its value is beyond reckoning."
"Then it seems I have chosen my price well," Leifnir said. Never had a dragon's smile been so warranted.
"...ask for something else."
Leifnir abandoned her regal seating, rearing up and crashing down, the impact echoing through the great hall. "You invite yourself into my home! Belittle my hoard! Creep into my bedchamber as I sleep, and you feel your prized weapon is too much to give up to make right your transgressions?!"
"Yes?" Thor said.
A snort was his answer, setting his hair and beard to flying and threading them with ice. "You would do well to be thankful that I am slower to anger than my hot blooded cousins." She began to pace, claws carving gouges in the stone floor.
"I do not deny that I have offered you insult," Thor said, "but you do not possess the only method of healing those in my care, and my axe means much to me, far beyond the power it possesses."
A rumble came from the dragon's great chest, and she ceased her pacing, flicking away a chunk of sundered ice. "What could you offer me that would suffice?"
Her words had brought the origin of Stormbreaker's haft to the forefront of his thoughts, and with it, something unique enough to be considered valuable. "I would offer you a potential companion to raise, one as long lived as you." He fixed her with a gimlet eye. "Though I would expect you to treat them with utmost care," he finished sternly.
"A companion? Pass," Leifnir said, uninterested. "Mortal creatures require such care and upkeep, and then you wake up and realise they've either perished or bred and multiplied one hundred fold."
"It would not- hmm, very well," Thor said. He frowned in thought.
Perhaps a solitary creature like Leifnir was not one to whom the idea of a companion would appeal, even if the thought of a familiar face was one that would lighten his own spirit. Thor glanced back at Wolfric; the man had lowered his sword, though it was still bared as he waited, and Grigori had joined him. The Kislevite was watching the proceedings wide eyed. The storm overhead still roiled in silence, and its light glinted off Wolfric's dark eye patch.
A thought strolled into his mind, one he could not readily dispel. It would be a sacrifice, but was it not one he had made before? He turned his gaze back to Leifnir. Something about his bearing made her tail lash with interest. "Then I would offer you," he said slowly, "mine right eye."
"You claimed you would taste awful, but now you offer a sample up to me?" Leifnir bantered. "Why would you think a slop of flesh, quick to rot, to be a fitting offer?"
"It is not an offer of flesh, but of craft," Thor said. "Of glass and metal, something unique in this realm."
Leifnir's interest was piqued, and she took a step forward, hunkering down and extending her neck to inspect Thor closely. "Your pupils, I see the difference," she said, and as she spoke a blast of chill air washed across him. "An interesting artifact."
"It is an artifact that could be yours," Thor tempted her.
Indecision warred in her white eyes for a moment, but only for a moment. "Very well," she said, raising her claws. "Be still."
"No, no, that's quite alright," Thor said, stepping back in a hurry. "I can remove it quite easily."
"Then be about it," Leifnir said.
She watched with interest as he reached up, using one hand to hold his eye open, and the other to twist and pop the eye free. A sunken pit remained, though she glimpsed it only briefly before it was covered by a scarred eyelid. He reached out, and she accepted it carefully, holding it between the very tips of two razor sharp claws. Somehow, it was undamaged by the experience.
"Does that satisfy you?" Thor asked. "My eye, for the intrusion and the service?"
"It does," she said, entranced by the device. The eye on her brow faded, but her own eyes began to glow softly in turn as she looked it over. "What offer would you have made had it not?" she asked, not looking away.
"My aid in the destruction of an evil foe," Thor said. His empty socket itched, and the lid over it felt queer.
Leifnir snorted, still not looking away from her prize. "Well that you offered this first."
"On the day you find yourself outmatched, would you not be grateful for the assistance of a god?" Thor asked.
"I am a dragon."
A shadow crossed Thor's face. "There is always a greater foe."
Leifnir did not answer, but her gaze did shift to him.
"Are you ready to leave?" Thor asked.
"No."
"Then we will wait until you are," Thor said.
"No," Leifnir said again. "Where is your collection of huts?"
Thor frowned, and Stormbreaker floated closer.
"I have given you my word," Leifnir said, baring her teeth at him, "but I will not leave my home in such - disarray. I will repair it, and join you at your home within a turn of the sun." She paused, eyeing him. "You do not intend to walk back, do you?"
"It is the town of Vinteerholm, near straight west from here," Thor told her. "Walled, in the process of raising a higher one, and by a broadening of a river, nestled between two fingers of the mountains." He eyed her, suspicious. "The mammoth is not for eating," he warned her.
Leifnir gave a hmph, a strange thing to see from a dragon. "Then you may leave," she said. "I will not have you hovering while I see to important matters."
Thor did not move, another warning on his tongue. He would brook no delay, not when Astrid and Elsa's lives hung in the balance, but he could feel her sincerity. "Very well. Within a turn of the sun."
Her attention had already returned to the eye, and she gave no indication that she noticed their leaving, Wolfric and Grigori falling in behind him as he led the way back down the passage.
The moment they were out of her direct view, Grigori let out a shaky breath. "That - I did not expect that," he said.
"Nor did I," Thor said, thoughts elsewhere. Half his vision was gone, and when he sought to look with more than flesh, he was able, but only in his remaining eye. There was a block, something stopping him from seeing the currents of power about him with the eye that he now lacked. A reasonable result, but for some reason he had expected it to be otherwise…
"Lord Thor," Wolfric said, breaking him from his thoughts. He was holding out his own dark eye patch in offer.
Thor smiled at his follower. "Your heart is in the right place," he said, clapping him on the shoulder, "but I would rather you not deprive yourself. I will manage until we return."
"I should have spoken," Wolfric said. "To lose your eye, even for my sisters-"
"It is worth it a dozen times over," Thor said.
"You could have offered my sword-"
Again, he was cut off. "Your sword is not mine to give," Thor told him. "And what would she have said when she found herself unable to lift it?" he added, inviting him to share the joke.
Wolfric managed a thin smile. "Even so," he said.
"Even so nothing," Thor said as they reached the end of the hall and the other passageway entries. "Let us be off. If we are swift, we can reach our camp of last night."
"Your ice-tiger friend might be there," Grigori laughed, before attempting it again in Norscan. "Small angry beast, say hello?"
Wolfric managed a laugh, some spirit returning to him now that they were leaving, their goal apparently achieved. They may not have the heartblood, but they had the aid of a dragon, and that was no small thing.
Carefully, Thor stood astride his axe and took up his companions, and soon they were flying up the passage to the peak of the mountain once more, home beckoning.
GiovanniBlasini
Transhumanist Nutcase from Niops IX
- Location
- San Diego, CA, USA, Sol III
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I know that's not where this was going, but still, I'm kind of shipping Thor and Leifnir now.
Home Improvement 6
- Location
- Australia
Their return seemed to go by more swiftly, and they again found shelter in the cabin they had built. Spirits were high, spurred by their survival and their apparent success, Wolfric especially, the man finding it in himself to venture out for their dinner once again, ice-tiger be damned. His good mood was dampened somewhat upon his return, speaking of a sense of being watched no matter how he doubled back or lurked in waiting for a pursuer. Thor elected not to speak of the faint yellow orbs he spied, perched in a branch halfway up a tree and looking down at their campfire.
The land sped past below them the next day, as the distance between their flying tree and Vinteerholm shrank. As they drew nearer though, Thor began to think ill thoughts. He hoped that his suspicions were without merit, but he could not forget the black feeling that had led him to task Bjorn with watching her. Worry churned in his gut with every passing league. Was Helka worthy of trust? Could Leifnir work her magic to heal a sickness conjured by Decay? Would the twins yet live when they returned?
Stormbreaker sensed his mood, and it seemed to grant him greater speed, until finally he caught sight of the mountains near Vinteerholm just after noon. They were close, and he needed to make a decision.
Rather than descend into the town square, Thor brought their crude vessel down amidst the trees upriver, slinking through them to shorten the remaining distance. From the treeline the three men observed Vinteerholm, standing on frozen ground. Smoke rose from chimneys, and distant townsfolk worked at the huge tree trunks that Thor had brought for them, readying them to be added to the new walls. Nothing seemed amiss.
"Lord Thor?" Wolfric asked, sensing his god's mood. "Does ill wait us?"
Thor almost glared at the town with his remaining eye. "Perhaps. Would that I am wrong, but I fear I am not."
A cold hand seemed to grasp Wolfric's heart. "My sisters!?"
"They live," Thor said, and he knew it to be so, for he could still feel their belief in him. "My worry lies with Helka."
"The woods witch?" Grigori asked, doing his best to follow the conversation.
"Did the sickness spread?" Wolfric asked. "If she cannot brew the elixir…"
Thor's mouth twisted as he pondered how to give voice to his thoughts. "I worry that she is false," he said at length.
"Helka, false," Wolfric said, like the idea was incompatible with reason. A complicated gamut of expressions ran across his face. "How so?"
"In the days before they fell ill, the twins worked with her, aiding her work," Thor said. "There would be chance for evil to be worked."
Wolfric considered it for only a moment. "You - you put a geas on her then, to prevent her from doing harm."
"No," Thor said. He knew academically how such a thing would work, but he had not even an inkling of his father's skill with such things. "I set Bjorn to watch her, and the apprentices also."
"Then- you knew that they would not be harmed?" Wolfric asked.
"I do not even know if my suspicions are true," Thor told his first believer. "If they are, then the girls are part of some scheme that requires them to linger sickened to compel my action, and Bjorn watches for treachery. If they are not, then there is no more danger than the sickness, and Bjorn watches regardless."
"But you are Thor," Wolfric burst out.
Thor turned away from the town to look at his companion. He had noticed moments where his devotion had taken a turn for the blind, but he had hoped it to be a passing matter. "What god is all knowing and all seeing?" he asked.
Wolfric grimaced. "But even so-"
"What god, Wolfric."
The man sighed. "A fool god, or a liar god."
"Aye," Thor said. "And while I have been a fool and a liar at times, I do not pretend to know all. True or false, an accusation could not be levied without harm, and so I set Bjorn to watching."
Wolfric was not a stupid man, for all he had never seen the inside of a classroom. "If you were wr- if Helka doesn't need them al-" he stopped himself. "I would have liked to know."
"You are their brother," Thor said. "I should have told you, but I looked at your worry and fear and made the decision for you. That was wrong of me."
Grigori was watching, almost agog, as a man he thought might be a god apologised to his worshipper.
"...I think you were right to do it," Wolfric said at length, like it pained him. "I would not have acted with thought if you shared your suspicion."
"I may be wrong," Thor said, tugging at his beard as his gaze returned to the town. "I hope I am. But it is better to prepare for the worst than to be taken by unawares."
"Will we wait for Leifnir to come, so she might ward off any sick devilry?" Wolfric asked. His fingers beat a tattoo on the hilt of his sword.
"If Helka is false, I do not care to wager how she might react to the arrival of a dragon with such…scouring energy," Thor said. "I must speak to Kirsa, find out if aught has been discovered before our return becomes known."
"And if it has, we deal with it," Wolfric said, his tone final.
"Aye," Thor said. "We deal with it."
X
A hefty tree trunk soaring through the air was somewhat noticeable, but a lone man doing so was easily missed. Thor descended from on high, coming down directly above his grove, masked by the shine of the early afternoon sun. He looked over the town as he did, casting his eye about for ill omens, but nothing stood out. People went about their days, walls were worked on, nineteen longships were tied off along the shore. All seemed well.
As he landed, he found his hope and expectation fulfilled. Kirsa was present, bent over as she emptied a sack of something onto the ground around the ash tree that was the heart of the grove. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her skirt around her knees, beads of sweat running along her forehead to drip into the earth as she worked.
"Kirsa," Thor said, making his presence known as he landed behind her.
The young woman jerked upright, spun, and jumped, all in one motion, giving a small yelp of surprise. The sack of fertiliser she was spreading was dropped, spilling some of its contents. "Lord Thor," she said, hand pressed to her chest. "I did not hear your approach."
"No footsteps to hear in the sky," Thor said, lips quirking despite himself.
Her face was flushed with the effort of work, but now embarrassment joined it as she worked to calm herself. The red cloak he had given her was absent, hardly a suitable garment for gardening, and her dress was simple but hardy. "You h- your eye," Kirsa said, gaze fixed on his empty socket. "What happened to your eye?!"
"A dragon did," Thor said. "Wh-"
"A dragon took your eye?" Kirsa demanded.
"No, I gave it to her," Thor said.
"You - what?"
"I gave my eye to the dragon as payment for my intrusion into her lair and for the healing of the twins," Thor said patiently. It was not the most expected thing, he knew.
Kirsa blinked rapidly, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and leaving a small streak of dirt above her brow. "You paid the dragon."
"They are thinking beings, not beasts as I had assumed," Thor explained. "Taking her heartblood for the elixir would not be right, but thankfully she is a skilled user of seidr, and agreed to come and work a healing."
"Will your eye grow back?" she asked.
Thor gave her a strange look. "Why would it?"
It was Kirsa's turn to give him a look. "Then, will you fashion one anew?"
"I have not the knowledge," Thor said, shrugging. "Nor would it be much of a sacrifice if I simply replaced the loss."
A slow, controlled sigh was his only response for several long heartbeats. "I am glad you are well, despite that," Kirsa said. "You were missed."
"It has been but two days," Thor said.
"Yet you were missed," Kirsa said. She bent down to set the sack rightwise, dress front falling forward to hint at the slope of her breasts, framed by braids of chestnut brown hair.
Thor coughed, looking to the ash tree. It had continued to grow strong, taller than himself by over a head now.
"The grove was full both nights, spilling beyond even," Kirsa said as she straightened. "Many sought the light of the tree, knowing you were absent."
"I am glad it brought them comfort," Thor said, looking back. "But I have come to you by stealth for a reason."
Kirsa's gaze sharpened, and she straightened with the manner of someone who had just remembered something important. "That is good - I spoke with Bjorn this morning."
"What did he share?" Thor asked, stepping closer.
"He recognises the elixir that Helka brews," Kirsa said. "Her apprentice Sunniva shared the knowledge with him."
"Will it heal them?" Thor pressed. He had to know.
"It is not a potion of healing," Kirsa said slowly. "It will fortify them, bolster their strength so they might survive your power? Bjorn said - was that not what she told you?"
Thor frowned, deeply. He struggled to recall Helka's words - had she not said she could heal the girls if she had heartsblood? Or only that her elixir could strengthen them so they might survive his hallowing of the touch of Decay? He cursed his lack of certainty, details blurred by concern for Astrid and Elsa.
"Bjorn said that the elixir would do that, give them the strength needed," Kirsa said, "but that it was not all it could do. That it could grant great power to a witch."
It was not damning. Not certain. But it was enough to stoke Thor's suspicion further, enough to churn the worry in his gut. Many potions and brews could have more than a single purpose, poison and medicine two sides of the same coin. "How certain was Bjorn?" he asked abruptly.
"Certain," Kirsa said. "His mother taught him everything she knew of a healer's arts when his nature revealed itself."
He could imagine well the drive of a mother to ensure a baresark son could survive the aftermath of his battles. "Then it may be as Helka has claimed, or it may not," he said. He scowled heavily. He was not made for this skulduggery, no subtle instrument was he.
"The twins have not worsened," Kirsa said, folding her arms about herself as a cold breeze swept through the grove. "They woke long enough to drink some broth."
Thor heard the reluctance in her words. "But?"
"I do not like her," Kirsa said. "I do not think she believes in the truth of you."
A lack of belief was not a reason for suspicion. He had been clear that he did not require worship from the townspeople - but Kirsa knew that, and still she voiced her thoughts. "Then there is no way to know for sure," Thor said, "no bloody dagger to point to her guilt."
"Without the heartsblood, she cannot use her elixir if she means it for woe," Kirsa said.
"Yet we are left with a healer we have cause to doubt," Thor said. "It cannot stand." He looked to the ash tree, as if its swaying branches might hide the answer.
"What will you do?" Kirsa asked.
"I will go to her," Thor said, "and I will find the truth, one way or another."
"What would you have me do, Lord Thor?" Kirsa asked.
"Wolfric and Grigori approach the east gate," Thor told her. "I would have you meet them, and come to the healer's house. If the worst should happen, you are to take the twins and get them clear."
"They will be protected," Kirsa vowed, dirt stained hands clenching into fists.
"I have no doubt in you," Thor said, finding it in himself to smile. "Now, go. I will see you there."
Kirsa was quick to obey, leaving the grove and the half finished job behind. Thor watched her go. She had come far from that day in the town square, a reaver's blade to her throat. He did not linger, taking to the sky once more, making for the healer's home and answers.
X
The house of healing had not changed, still a tall and narrow thing of rickety wood, as much supporting its neighbours as it was supported by them. Old wood sun bleached grey threatened to splinter as he knocked, the three heavy raps echoing through the dwelling.
Hurried footsteps approached on the other side, and the door creaked open, but only a crack. One of Helka's apprentices peeked through, only one eye visible, and the sun seemed almost to reflect off what was visible of her pale skin.
"Lord Thor," she said, almost whispering.
"Ssss-" he hesitated, but only briefly, "-elinda?"
"Yes," the woman said, still quiet. The door opened a touch more, and she stepped back. "Please."
Thor entered, and the door swung shut of its own accord, leaving the hall in darkness too deep to see if one was not accustomed to it, or a god. The faint light of a candle slipped out from under two doors, one the room the girls were in, the other Helka's workroom. There was a heady scent in the air, lingering just under the surface. Selinda watched him, skittish, half her face hidden by a curtain of dark hair.
"A moment," Thor murmured, and then light shone from his remaining eye.
It was not as bright as his first attempt, more uses granting him greater control over the skill, but as he looked with more than his eye of flesh, white-blue light spilled from his eye all the same. Selinda almost skittered back, startled by its sudden appearance, but he spared only a glance for her. She was not why he had exercised his power so blatantly, and he turned away from the muted haze of red that clung to her.
The hall was mostly empty, no current lazily drifting through it to shine light on the hidden happenings of the building. A faint green, the green of plants and life, wafted from under Helka's door, and it was matched by another pooling out from under the room that was the twins'. This one was different however, an oily sheen and a less pleasing core to it.
He looked, but there was nothing else to see. No flows of sickened currents, no greasy patches of corruption. The two greens he could see did not go far, and it was almost like they were being pressed down upon by something, a presence that stifled their flow, but there was nothing he could see. It sat heavier upon the more pleasant green, but he could tell little more, and he grew frustrated.
His sacrificed eye still showed him nothing, despite looking with something beyond flesh. He could feel something on the verge, a curtain waiting to be pulled back, and-
"Godly one," a voice came, tremulous and surprised.
Thor blinked, and his sight beyond sight slipped away. In the time he had taken to glance over the hall, Helka had emerged from her workroom, and she watched him now, gaze flicking between the fading light from his good eye and what remained of his other. She looked to her apprentice, the woman standing stock still in the hall.
"You should have told me we had a guest, girl," Helka told her, scolding as only a grandmother could.
Selinda didn't hunch over, though a quiver in her bony shoulders said it was a near thing.
"Come," Helka said to Thor, not giving her time to respond. She turned back into her workroom and slipped inside.
Thor followed, misliking how Selinda had reacted to such innocuous words. Was he over reacting, or was there something to be discerned from it? He did not know.
The workroom had gained a small cauldron in its centre since his last visit, and it held a pasty green broth, bubbling away despite the lack of any heat source. Helka had returned to her workbench, and as he closed the door behind himself, she turned in her chair to drop a handful of some diced tuber to the cauldron. The broth, in danger of falling to a simmer, began to pop and bubble once more.
"You are swift to return," Helka said, turning back to the workbench. Gnarled hands took up a knife, sharpened almost to nothingness, and began to dice a dark mushroom, smooth and quick.
"You were expecting a long quest?" Thor asked her back, buying time. He could not say if his eyes were playing tricks on him in the darkness of the room, lit only by some few candles in the corners, but she seemed more frail than even two days ago, dark veins in her arms more distinct.
"A dragon is no easy prey," she said. She coughed, a hacking thing from deep in her chest.
"Are you well?" Thor asked.
"The warding against the sickness in the girls is not kind to old bones," Helka said, taking up a nearby cloth and spitting into it. "But better that than to catch it."
"How are they?"
"They linger, as they will for weeks yet," Helka said. She turned again, this time with a ladle, and scooped up a portion of her brew. She drank it down in a single gulp despite the apparent heat. "Hmmm." Back to the workbench she turned. "Do you have what we need?"
"In a way," Thor said, watching the woman with a keen eye. "The dragon we found is one skilled in healing magics. She has agreed to heal the girls, so there is no need for the heartsblood."
The swift motions of the knife skipped a beat, almost almost too brief to be noticed. Thor noticed.
"I cannot say what skill a dragon might have in an art as delicate as healing," Helka said. She coughed again, wet and phlegmy. "The touch of the Crow often demands a high price to remove."
"She is a powerful being," Thor offered. "Power has its own virtues."
Helka was shaking her head. "The Crow crafts his blessings with a hatred for healers. They are as a puzzle, not a gate to be knocked down. Few are his works that can be purged cheaply."
"You think she will fail," Thor said. He leaned against the door frame, arms folded.
"I do," Helka said. "If it does, you will at least have the heartblood close to hand."
Thor's disgust for the idea made no showing on his face, for all that Helka was still turned away. "You know much of the Crow's workings," he observed. "You have worked against him for a long time, then."
"A long time," Helka said, scoffing. "Too long. Much too long. Always a price. Always a price," she muttered.
"Skill, then, more than luck that you were able to diagnose the twins," Thor said.
"Aye," Helka said, dragging a stone mortar and pestle towards herself and sprinkling in some ingredients. "You see its touch enough, you come to recognise it. No mistaking it."
Thor stilled. A memory rushed to the front of his mind's eye.
"Wise woman says the well wasn't sullied long enough for the rot to take."
A sullied well, a hidden sickness, purged by his spark.
Another nail slid into place. Helka had claimed the well at the village to be unsullied, all those months ago - but was she lying, or simply wrong?
No. He would not doubt. He would not waver. Again and again he had found deeds and words to prick at his mind, and each time he had wondered if there was an innocent explanation - no more. The well. The desire for the Feather. The need for a mighty ingredient. An elixir of uncertain purpose. The doubt cast on any other options. A well, wrongly cleared. Alone, suspicious. Together?
Damning.
"Why did you do it?"
The wise woman paused in her grinding of mortar and pestle, though she did not raise her head. "Godly one?" she asked.
"Two sweet young girls," Thor said, his voice growing to fill the room, for all his volume did not change. "And you put a sickness in them."
Now she turned in her seat, staring at him with rheumy eyes. "They may not be my blood," she croaked out, "but I care for them. I delivered them, for all I could not save their mother. I would never give them suffering."
Knowledge came to him then, on fluttering wings, scarcely heard. Nurgle did not see his creations, his poxes and plagues, as a curse or a cause for suffering. To the Plague Lord they were a blessing, and his followers viewed them the same. Disgust inspired rage, and he leashed it tightly, visible only as the faintest of sparks in his eye.
"No suffering, only a blessing from your patron," Thor said. "A joy to be shared, and in turn, I would do your bidding and fetch you a mighty ingredient."
Helka's gaze darted to her cauldron, then to her shelves of ingredients, then the door, almost too fast to see. "No, I- I do not-" she could not seem to find the words, but the knife in her hand didn't so much as tremble.
"Did you think you could hide it from me, from a god?" Thor asked, smiling thinly. He tapped just below his left eye. "I still have one good eye."
It was too much. Helka snarled then, a wet rumble in her throat as her lips drew back, yellowed and rotting teeth revealed. "Pretender," she rasped. Her body began to swell, thin skin stretched impossibly far, and then she lunged - not for him, but for the cauldron.
She was fast despite the grotesque bulging of her form, but not fast enough. Thor pointed, and a single finger of lightning arced to the cauldron, striking the lip. Whatever devilry she meant-
The cauldron exploded in a geyser, pasty green contents spraying violently against the ceiling and then splattering all about the room. Where it touched wood, it rotted. Where it touched ingredients, they putrefied. Where it touched metal, it bubbled and spat, scorching what it touched. A rat in a cage squealed piteously as it swelled and bulged, popping in a small shower of black blood and entrails.
Thor was not spared, even as he shielded his face with Stormbreaker's head. Droplets of the foul substance sizzled and spat as they landed on exposed skin, and his power pulsed to reject the sickness it tried to set within him. He snorted, the scent of burnt hair acrid in his nose. With a glimmer of light and seidr his armour was on him, and he lowered his axe to take in the foe.
Helka had been right next to the cauldron, with no hope of avoiding the spray. When it erupted, her front had been doused by the boiling substance, but there was no scream of pain, no writhing in agony. Once frail and wiry, her body was now swelling with bulbous growths, stretching her form. Where the brew had splattered her, pale skin marked by age had turned a sick green, and it was spreading, the stain rippling across her flesh.
"You are not the only godly one, now," the thing that was Helka said, gloating. Once rheumy eyes were now weeping freely, tears almost as thick as paste falling from her ducts like wriggling maggots.
"You will die for what you have done," Thor told her plainly. A small fire caught in the corner, dry ingredients sparked on by scorching metal, but he was more concerned with the spores that were starting to drift from the ceiling, and from every other bit of wood where the brew had sprayed. Astrid and Elsa - he had to get them out.
Fury bloomed on her face, and teeth rotted away to sharp points were bared. This time she did lunge for him, bulging arm reaching for his throat.
Thor moved to take the arm off at the elbow, but again she moved with deceptive swiftness, and he only found a fat tumour as she jerked away. Pus and filth spilled forth, splattering to the floor with a squelch and filling the room with a putrid scent. The air became hazy, even to his mundane sight.
Wood splintered and crashed from beyond the room, and Thor felt a trickle of devotion as a worthy deed was done in his name. Bjorn.
Helka clutched at the wound, not in pain, but so it would close, the tumour rapidly healing shut. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she hissed at him. "You will know the Grandfather's blessing, godl-"
He had no patience to listen to her. The rot and decay spilling from her swollen body was no barrier to him, and now it was his turn to lunge forward, bodying her into the wall and then through it, turning to take her through two more. They exploded into the slush covered street with a hail of splinters, crashing into the ground. Something hit him in the gut with unnatural strength, forcing him off her and launching him away.
"You meddler," Helka spat as she got to her feet. Her form was unrecognisable now, taller than he, even stooped over as she was, a hunch growing from her back like an overripe cyst. "All you had to do was slay the dragon, and we would have prospered."
Thor was already standing, eye aglow as he eyed his foe. Something was building within her, some current he could not quite see no matter how he strained his sight. Stormclouds gathered overhead, rumbling ominously, but he had learned his lesson, and he refrained from calling upon their fury, as much as he wished to smite her from on high. "You would have the town sicken and waste, victim to the plagues of your patron," he told her.
"They would come to know the truth of the blessings," Helka said, black teeth showed in a black smile. "As you will now." Her nose rotted and fell from her face, leaving the slit of her nasal cavity exposed.
"Oh?" Thor said, looking himself over. Decay clung to him, spores and filth picked up from the cauldron and as he wrestled her from the building. He smiled faintly as he called upon his power, not the shallow outer realms, but the truth of it. It expressed itself in the likeness of his very nature, gentle arcs of lightning dancing over him, purging and hallowing the touch of Nurgle. "Will I?" he asked, taunting.
"You deny his gifts," Helka said, coldly outraged.
"No gift but a curse," Thor returned. "Just as the sickness you gave to Astrid and Elsa was a curse."
"It was a blessing!" Helka shrieked. Her form bulged and grew once more, clothes ripping and bursting at the seams to fall to the oily ground she stood upon. She could not be called naked, not with the swollen growths and oozing carbuncles across her form, but Thor recoiled all the same.
"You were to heal them, not watch them wither," Thor said. "But you were the one to infect them to begin with, Helka!"
"Payment for all things," Helka spat. "Every cured ill was paid for in sickness elsewhere. Every wound survived cost a spring fever; a womb made barren the price for healthy babes and living mothers."
"What."
Cold and toneless, it was a woman who had spoken. God and Nurglite found their building confrontation arrested, both turning to see who had approached.
Helena stood there, and Harad was at her side. They were dressed for travel, and with them were Wolfric and Grigori, as well as some few other warriors of the town. The clamour had drawn them, but their bared weapons were second to the terrible look on Helena's aged face.
"What did you do, Helka." The words were quiet, but the pain in them was unmissable.
"Did you think your misdeeds had gone unpunished?" Helka asked. "Your husband's? After the insult you gave the Gods?"
"We came to you for help," Harad rumbled, deep and dark. His fingers were flexing, nostrils flaring as wrath built and built. "And you stole our future from us."
A crow landed on what had been the house of healing. It cawed, and it sounded like laughter, but then the door below burst open with a crash. Bjorn stumbled through, the twins limp in his arms. The once healing wounds on his chest were inflamed, but he stood strong, taking in the scene with a glance and quickly retreating beyond Thor. Wolfric made a sound of pain as he rushed to meet them.
Helka gave no notice to them. "You wanted children," she said to Helena, voice dripping with cruelty even as her wretched form dripped with unmentionable filth. "Grandfather Nurgle will give you children, countless children, even if not in the way you had hoped."
The taunt sundered whatever caution was holding them back. Harad and Helena charged as one, fury and rage and despair worn clearly, and Thor could feel three slivers of attention join the one that had been present ever since he had blown up the cauldron. He had no time to take issue with them, not with the way Helka's cheeks were bulging obscenely, filling with something unknown as she sucked in a breath though the hole where her nose once was.
Though they would surely cut Helka down, he would not see them suffer the ills that would come with it. Nor would he see the very earth poisoned by her death. Stormbreaker reached skywards.
"Heimdall!" Thor boomed, sounding the name of his friend as a battlecry.
A torrent of light and colour ripped through the storm clouds above - or perhaps out of them - to slam into the street. It engulfed Thor and Helka, and then there was the sensation of movement. When it subsided, they were elsewhere.
In a green field they stood, storm clouds roiling overhead, far darker than any to be found in the mortal world. Wind scythed through the tall grass, and the first hints of rain came with it, fast and harsh enough to sting. Off in the distance, Thor spied the gleaming golden walls of Asgard, Old and New and all at once.
"You - where have you brought me?" Helka demanded, ponderous bulk shifting as she returned to her feet. Spores and pus continued to drift and drip from her, one of her tumours popped messily. The Bifrost had been less than kind, and her arrival was marked by a crater in the earth.
"You stand in the realm of Asgard," Thor told her. "Be grateful, for your death will water its fields."
For a heartbeat, fear flickered across her inhuman visage, but it was quickly gone. She cackled. "You have brought his plagues to your place of power!"
Thor smiled, though it was thin and utterly without humour. "Your words betray your lack of understanding. You think yourself strong. You will die unknowing."
The words seemed to pain her, striking at something deep inside. "Grandfather has blessed me with strength and purpose, and you will suffer for your transgressions!"
The grass around her began to wither and die, and from the dirt around her small creatures began to rise, growing from nothing but the leavings of her passage. They were horrid little things, round and disgusting, almost as much mouth as body, ranging all the colours of filth and sickness. They bounced and shrieked with delight as they began to advance across the field, rolling and pulling themselves with misshapen limbs. More began to spawn around Helka.
Lightning sparked about Thor's armour, thunder rumbling overhead like the growl of a god. His power surged in response to the foul things, and he prepared to answer in kind - but then he heard a call. It was a request for aid, for support in the face of evil.
A prayer.
He could do naught but answer, and a hint of his power slipped into those that asked for it whose hearts were true, and whose cause was worthy. He could not help but laugh, bright and booming, as he felt it be put to use.
The laughter seemed to be the last straw for the abomination that had been Helka, and she leapt forward, storming across the field to get at him. Stormbreaker was waiting to meet her, and Thor met her charge gladly.
The land sped past below them the next day, as the distance between their flying tree and Vinteerholm shrank. As they drew nearer though, Thor began to think ill thoughts. He hoped that his suspicions were without merit, but he could not forget the black feeling that had led him to task Bjorn with watching her. Worry churned in his gut with every passing league. Was Helka worthy of trust? Could Leifnir work her magic to heal a sickness conjured by Decay? Would the twins yet live when they returned?
Stormbreaker sensed his mood, and it seemed to grant him greater speed, until finally he caught sight of the mountains near Vinteerholm just after noon. They were close, and he needed to make a decision.
Rather than descend into the town square, Thor brought their crude vessel down amidst the trees upriver, slinking through them to shorten the remaining distance. From the treeline the three men observed Vinteerholm, standing on frozen ground. Smoke rose from chimneys, and distant townsfolk worked at the huge tree trunks that Thor had brought for them, readying them to be added to the new walls. Nothing seemed amiss.
"Lord Thor?" Wolfric asked, sensing his god's mood. "Does ill wait us?"
Thor almost glared at the town with his remaining eye. "Perhaps. Would that I am wrong, but I fear I am not."
A cold hand seemed to grasp Wolfric's heart. "My sisters!?"
"They live," Thor said, and he knew it to be so, for he could still feel their belief in him. "My worry lies with Helka."
"The woods witch?" Grigori asked, doing his best to follow the conversation.
"Did the sickness spread?" Wolfric asked. "If she cannot brew the elixir…"
Thor's mouth twisted as he pondered how to give voice to his thoughts. "I worry that she is false," he said at length.
"Helka, false," Wolfric said, like the idea was incompatible with reason. A complicated gamut of expressions ran across his face. "How so?"
"In the days before they fell ill, the twins worked with her, aiding her work," Thor said. "There would be chance for evil to be worked."
Wolfric considered it for only a moment. "You - you put a geas on her then, to prevent her from doing harm."
"No," Thor said. He knew academically how such a thing would work, but he had not even an inkling of his father's skill with such things. "I set Bjorn to watch her, and the apprentices also."
"Then- you knew that they would not be harmed?" Wolfric asked.
"I do not even know if my suspicions are true," Thor told his first believer. "If they are, then the girls are part of some scheme that requires them to linger sickened to compel my action, and Bjorn watches for treachery. If they are not, then there is no more danger than the sickness, and Bjorn watches regardless."
"But you are Thor," Wolfric burst out.
Thor turned away from the town to look at his companion. He had noticed moments where his devotion had taken a turn for the blind, but he had hoped it to be a passing matter. "What god is all knowing and all seeing?" he asked.
Wolfric grimaced. "But even so-"
"What god, Wolfric."
The man sighed. "A fool god, or a liar god."
"Aye," Thor said. "And while I have been a fool and a liar at times, I do not pretend to know all. True or false, an accusation could not be levied without harm, and so I set Bjorn to watching."
Wolfric was not a stupid man, for all he had never seen the inside of a classroom. "If you were wr- if Helka doesn't need them al-" he stopped himself. "I would have liked to know."
"You are their brother," Thor said. "I should have told you, but I looked at your worry and fear and made the decision for you. That was wrong of me."
Grigori was watching, almost agog, as a man he thought might be a god apologised to his worshipper.
"...I think you were right to do it," Wolfric said at length, like it pained him. "I would not have acted with thought if you shared your suspicion."
"I may be wrong," Thor said, tugging at his beard as his gaze returned to the town. "I hope I am. But it is better to prepare for the worst than to be taken by unawares."
"Will we wait for Leifnir to come, so she might ward off any sick devilry?" Wolfric asked. His fingers beat a tattoo on the hilt of his sword.
"If Helka is false, I do not care to wager how she might react to the arrival of a dragon with such…scouring energy," Thor said. "I must speak to Kirsa, find out if aught has been discovered before our return becomes known."
"And if it has, we deal with it," Wolfric said, his tone final.
"Aye," Thor said. "We deal with it."
X
A hefty tree trunk soaring through the air was somewhat noticeable, but a lone man doing so was easily missed. Thor descended from on high, coming down directly above his grove, masked by the shine of the early afternoon sun. He looked over the town as he did, casting his eye about for ill omens, but nothing stood out. People went about their days, walls were worked on, nineteen longships were tied off along the shore. All seemed well.
As he landed, he found his hope and expectation fulfilled. Kirsa was present, bent over as she emptied a sack of something onto the ground around the ash tree that was the heart of the grove. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her skirt around her knees, beads of sweat running along her forehead to drip into the earth as she worked.
"Kirsa," Thor said, making his presence known as he landed behind her.
The young woman jerked upright, spun, and jumped, all in one motion, giving a small yelp of surprise. The sack of fertiliser she was spreading was dropped, spilling some of its contents. "Lord Thor," she said, hand pressed to her chest. "I did not hear your approach."
"No footsteps to hear in the sky," Thor said, lips quirking despite himself.
Her face was flushed with the effort of work, but now embarrassment joined it as she worked to calm herself. The red cloak he had given her was absent, hardly a suitable garment for gardening, and her dress was simple but hardy. "You h- your eye," Kirsa said, gaze fixed on his empty socket. "What happened to your eye?!"
"A dragon did," Thor said. "Wh-"
"A dragon took your eye?" Kirsa demanded.
"No, I gave it to her," Thor said.
"You - what?"
"I gave my eye to the dragon as payment for my intrusion into her lair and for the healing of the twins," Thor said patiently. It was not the most expected thing, he knew.
Kirsa blinked rapidly, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and leaving a small streak of dirt above her brow. "You paid the dragon."
"They are thinking beings, not beasts as I had assumed," Thor explained. "Taking her heartblood for the elixir would not be right, but thankfully she is a skilled user of seidr, and agreed to come and work a healing."
"Will your eye grow back?" she asked.
Thor gave her a strange look. "Why would it?"
It was Kirsa's turn to give him a look. "Then, will you fashion one anew?"
"I have not the knowledge," Thor said, shrugging. "Nor would it be much of a sacrifice if I simply replaced the loss."
A slow, controlled sigh was his only response for several long heartbeats. "I am glad you are well, despite that," Kirsa said. "You were missed."
"It has been but two days," Thor said.
"Yet you were missed," Kirsa said. She bent down to set the sack rightwise, dress front falling forward to hint at the slope of her breasts, framed by braids of chestnut brown hair.
Thor coughed, looking to the ash tree. It had continued to grow strong, taller than himself by over a head now.
"The grove was full both nights, spilling beyond even," Kirsa said as she straightened. "Many sought the light of the tree, knowing you were absent."
"I am glad it brought them comfort," Thor said, looking back. "But I have come to you by stealth for a reason."
Kirsa's gaze sharpened, and she straightened with the manner of someone who had just remembered something important. "That is good - I spoke with Bjorn this morning."
"What did he share?" Thor asked, stepping closer.
"He recognises the elixir that Helka brews," Kirsa said. "Her apprentice Sunniva shared the knowledge with him."
"Will it heal them?" Thor pressed. He had to know.
"It is not a potion of healing," Kirsa said slowly. "It will fortify them, bolster their strength so they might survive your power? Bjorn said - was that not what she told you?"
Thor frowned, deeply. He struggled to recall Helka's words - had she not said she could heal the girls if she had heartsblood? Or only that her elixir could strengthen them so they might survive his hallowing of the touch of Decay? He cursed his lack of certainty, details blurred by concern for Astrid and Elsa.
"Bjorn said that the elixir would do that, give them the strength needed," Kirsa said, "but that it was not all it could do. That it could grant great power to a witch."
It was not damning. Not certain. But it was enough to stoke Thor's suspicion further, enough to churn the worry in his gut. Many potions and brews could have more than a single purpose, poison and medicine two sides of the same coin. "How certain was Bjorn?" he asked abruptly.
"Certain," Kirsa said. "His mother taught him everything she knew of a healer's arts when his nature revealed itself."
He could imagine well the drive of a mother to ensure a baresark son could survive the aftermath of his battles. "Then it may be as Helka has claimed, or it may not," he said. He scowled heavily. He was not made for this skulduggery, no subtle instrument was he.
"The twins have not worsened," Kirsa said, folding her arms about herself as a cold breeze swept through the grove. "They woke long enough to drink some broth."
Thor heard the reluctance in her words. "But?"
"I do not like her," Kirsa said. "I do not think she believes in the truth of you."
A lack of belief was not a reason for suspicion. He had been clear that he did not require worship from the townspeople - but Kirsa knew that, and still she voiced her thoughts. "Then there is no way to know for sure," Thor said, "no bloody dagger to point to her guilt."
"Without the heartsblood, she cannot use her elixir if she means it for woe," Kirsa said.
"Yet we are left with a healer we have cause to doubt," Thor said. "It cannot stand." He looked to the ash tree, as if its swaying branches might hide the answer.
"What will you do?" Kirsa asked.
"I will go to her," Thor said, "and I will find the truth, one way or another."
"What would you have me do, Lord Thor?" Kirsa asked.
"Wolfric and Grigori approach the east gate," Thor told her. "I would have you meet them, and come to the healer's house. If the worst should happen, you are to take the twins and get them clear."
"They will be protected," Kirsa vowed, dirt stained hands clenching into fists.
"I have no doubt in you," Thor said, finding it in himself to smile. "Now, go. I will see you there."
Kirsa was quick to obey, leaving the grove and the half finished job behind. Thor watched her go. She had come far from that day in the town square, a reaver's blade to her throat. He did not linger, taking to the sky once more, making for the healer's home and answers.
X
The house of healing had not changed, still a tall and narrow thing of rickety wood, as much supporting its neighbours as it was supported by them. Old wood sun bleached grey threatened to splinter as he knocked, the three heavy raps echoing through the dwelling.
Hurried footsteps approached on the other side, and the door creaked open, but only a crack. One of Helka's apprentices peeked through, only one eye visible, and the sun seemed almost to reflect off what was visible of her pale skin.
"Lord Thor," she said, almost whispering.
"Ssss-" he hesitated, but only briefly, "-elinda?"
"Yes," the woman said, still quiet. The door opened a touch more, and she stepped back. "Please."
Thor entered, and the door swung shut of its own accord, leaving the hall in darkness too deep to see if one was not accustomed to it, or a god. The faint light of a candle slipped out from under two doors, one the room the girls were in, the other Helka's workroom. There was a heady scent in the air, lingering just under the surface. Selinda watched him, skittish, half her face hidden by a curtain of dark hair.
"A moment," Thor murmured, and then light shone from his remaining eye.
It was not as bright as his first attempt, more uses granting him greater control over the skill, but as he looked with more than his eye of flesh, white-blue light spilled from his eye all the same. Selinda almost skittered back, startled by its sudden appearance, but he spared only a glance for her. She was not why he had exercised his power so blatantly, and he turned away from the muted haze of red that clung to her.
The hall was mostly empty, no current lazily drifting through it to shine light on the hidden happenings of the building. A faint green, the green of plants and life, wafted from under Helka's door, and it was matched by another pooling out from under the room that was the twins'. This one was different however, an oily sheen and a less pleasing core to it.
He looked, but there was nothing else to see. No flows of sickened currents, no greasy patches of corruption. The two greens he could see did not go far, and it was almost like they were being pressed down upon by something, a presence that stifled their flow, but there was nothing he could see. It sat heavier upon the more pleasant green, but he could tell little more, and he grew frustrated.
His sacrificed eye still showed him nothing, despite looking with something beyond flesh. He could feel something on the verge, a curtain waiting to be pulled back, and-
"Godly one," a voice came, tremulous and surprised.
Thor blinked, and his sight beyond sight slipped away. In the time he had taken to glance over the hall, Helka had emerged from her workroom, and she watched him now, gaze flicking between the fading light from his good eye and what remained of his other. She looked to her apprentice, the woman standing stock still in the hall.
"You should have told me we had a guest, girl," Helka told her, scolding as only a grandmother could.
Selinda didn't hunch over, though a quiver in her bony shoulders said it was a near thing.
"Come," Helka said to Thor, not giving her time to respond. She turned back into her workroom and slipped inside.
Thor followed, misliking how Selinda had reacted to such innocuous words. Was he over reacting, or was there something to be discerned from it? He did not know.
The workroom had gained a small cauldron in its centre since his last visit, and it held a pasty green broth, bubbling away despite the lack of any heat source. Helka had returned to her workbench, and as he closed the door behind himself, she turned in her chair to drop a handful of some diced tuber to the cauldron. The broth, in danger of falling to a simmer, began to pop and bubble once more.
"You are swift to return," Helka said, turning back to the workbench. Gnarled hands took up a knife, sharpened almost to nothingness, and began to dice a dark mushroom, smooth and quick.
"You were expecting a long quest?" Thor asked her back, buying time. He could not say if his eyes were playing tricks on him in the darkness of the room, lit only by some few candles in the corners, but she seemed more frail than even two days ago, dark veins in her arms more distinct.
"A dragon is no easy prey," she said. She coughed, a hacking thing from deep in her chest.
"Are you well?" Thor asked.
"The warding against the sickness in the girls is not kind to old bones," Helka said, taking up a nearby cloth and spitting into it. "But better that than to catch it."
"How are they?"
"They linger, as they will for weeks yet," Helka said. She turned again, this time with a ladle, and scooped up a portion of her brew. She drank it down in a single gulp despite the apparent heat. "Hmmm." Back to the workbench she turned. "Do you have what we need?"
"In a way," Thor said, watching the woman with a keen eye. "The dragon we found is one skilled in healing magics. She has agreed to heal the girls, so there is no need for the heartsblood."
The swift motions of the knife skipped a beat, almost almost too brief to be noticed. Thor noticed.
"I cannot say what skill a dragon might have in an art as delicate as healing," Helka said. She coughed again, wet and phlegmy. "The touch of the Crow often demands a high price to remove."
"She is a powerful being," Thor offered. "Power has its own virtues."
Helka was shaking her head. "The Crow crafts his blessings with a hatred for healers. They are as a puzzle, not a gate to be knocked down. Few are his works that can be purged cheaply."
"You think she will fail," Thor said. He leaned against the door frame, arms folded.
"I do," Helka said. "If it does, you will at least have the heartblood close to hand."
Thor's disgust for the idea made no showing on his face, for all that Helka was still turned away. "You know much of the Crow's workings," he observed. "You have worked against him for a long time, then."
"A long time," Helka said, scoffing. "Too long. Much too long. Always a price. Always a price," she muttered.
"Skill, then, more than luck that you were able to diagnose the twins," Thor said.
"Aye," Helka said, dragging a stone mortar and pestle towards herself and sprinkling in some ingredients. "You see its touch enough, you come to recognise it. No mistaking it."
Thor stilled. A memory rushed to the front of his mind's eye.
"Wise woman says the well wasn't sullied long enough for the rot to take."
A sullied well, a hidden sickness, purged by his spark.
Another nail slid into place. Helka had claimed the well at the village to be unsullied, all those months ago - but was she lying, or simply wrong?
No. He would not doubt. He would not waver. Again and again he had found deeds and words to prick at his mind, and each time he had wondered if there was an innocent explanation - no more. The well. The desire for the Feather. The need for a mighty ingredient. An elixir of uncertain purpose. The doubt cast on any other options. A well, wrongly cleared. Alone, suspicious. Together?
Damning.
"Why did you do it?"
The wise woman paused in her grinding of mortar and pestle, though she did not raise her head. "Godly one?" she asked.
"Two sweet young girls," Thor said, his voice growing to fill the room, for all his volume did not change. "And you put a sickness in them."
Now she turned in her seat, staring at him with rheumy eyes. "They may not be my blood," she croaked out, "but I care for them. I delivered them, for all I could not save their mother. I would never give them suffering."
Knowledge came to him then, on fluttering wings, scarcely heard. Nurgle did not see his creations, his poxes and plagues, as a curse or a cause for suffering. To the Plague Lord they were a blessing, and his followers viewed them the same. Disgust inspired rage, and he leashed it tightly, visible only as the faintest of sparks in his eye.
"No suffering, only a blessing from your patron," Thor said. "A joy to be shared, and in turn, I would do your bidding and fetch you a mighty ingredient."
Helka's gaze darted to her cauldron, then to her shelves of ingredients, then the door, almost too fast to see. "No, I- I do not-" she could not seem to find the words, but the knife in her hand didn't so much as tremble.
"Did you think you could hide it from me, from a god?" Thor asked, smiling thinly. He tapped just below his left eye. "I still have one good eye."
It was too much. Helka snarled then, a wet rumble in her throat as her lips drew back, yellowed and rotting teeth revealed. "Pretender," she rasped. Her body began to swell, thin skin stretched impossibly far, and then she lunged - not for him, but for the cauldron.
She was fast despite the grotesque bulging of her form, but not fast enough. Thor pointed, and a single finger of lightning arced to the cauldron, striking the lip. Whatever devilry she meant-
The cauldron exploded in a geyser, pasty green contents spraying violently against the ceiling and then splattering all about the room. Where it touched wood, it rotted. Where it touched ingredients, they putrefied. Where it touched metal, it bubbled and spat, scorching what it touched. A rat in a cage squealed piteously as it swelled and bulged, popping in a small shower of black blood and entrails.
Thor was not spared, even as he shielded his face with Stormbreaker's head. Droplets of the foul substance sizzled and spat as they landed on exposed skin, and his power pulsed to reject the sickness it tried to set within him. He snorted, the scent of burnt hair acrid in his nose. With a glimmer of light and seidr his armour was on him, and he lowered his axe to take in the foe.
Helka had been right next to the cauldron, with no hope of avoiding the spray. When it erupted, her front had been doused by the boiling substance, but there was no scream of pain, no writhing in agony. Once frail and wiry, her body was now swelling with bulbous growths, stretching her form. Where the brew had splattered her, pale skin marked by age had turned a sick green, and it was spreading, the stain rippling across her flesh.
"You are not the only godly one, now," the thing that was Helka said, gloating. Once rheumy eyes were now weeping freely, tears almost as thick as paste falling from her ducts like wriggling maggots.
"You will die for what you have done," Thor told her plainly. A small fire caught in the corner, dry ingredients sparked on by scorching metal, but he was more concerned with the spores that were starting to drift from the ceiling, and from every other bit of wood where the brew had sprayed. Astrid and Elsa - he had to get them out.
Fury bloomed on her face, and teeth rotted away to sharp points were bared. This time she did lunge for him, bulging arm reaching for his throat.
Thor moved to take the arm off at the elbow, but again she moved with deceptive swiftness, and he only found a fat tumour as she jerked away. Pus and filth spilled forth, splattering to the floor with a squelch and filling the room with a putrid scent. The air became hazy, even to his mundane sight.
Wood splintered and crashed from beyond the room, and Thor felt a trickle of devotion as a worthy deed was done in his name. Bjorn.
Helka clutched at the wound, not in pain, but so it would close, the tumour rapidly healing shut. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she hissed at him. "You will know the Grandfather's blessing, godl-"
He had no patience to listen to her. The rot and decay spilling from her swollen body was no barrier to him, and now it was his turn to lunge forward, bodying her into the wall and then through it, turning to take her through two more. They exploded into the slush covered street with a hail of splinters, crashing into the ground. Something hit him in the gut with unnatural strength, forcing him off her and launching him away.
"You meddler," Helka spat as she got to her feet. Her form was unrecognisable now, taller than he, even stooped over as she was, a hunch growing from her back like an overripe cyst. "All you had to do was slay the dragon, and we would have prospered."
Thor was already standing, eye aglow as he eyed his foe. Something was building within her, some current he could not quite see no matter how he strained his sight. Stormclouds gathered overhead, rumbling ominously, but he had learned his lesson, and he refrained from calling upon their fury, as much as he wished to smite her from on high. "You would have the town sicken and waste, victim to the plagues of your patron," he told her.
"They would come to know the truth of the blessings," Helka said, black teeth showed in a black smile. "As you will now." Her nose rotted and fell from her face, leaving the slit of her nasal cavity exposed.
"Oh?" Thor said, looking himself over. Decay clung to him, spores and filth picked up from the cauldron and as he wrestled her from the building. He smiled faintly as he called upon his power, not the shallow outer realms, but the truth of it. It expressed itself in the likeness of his very nature, gentle arcs of lightning dancing over him, purging and hallowing the touch of Nurgle. "Will I?" he asked, taunting.
"You deny his gifts," Helka said, coldly outraged.
"No gift but a curse," Thor returned. "Just as the sickness you gave to Astrid and Elsa was a curse."
"It was a blessing!" Helka shrieked. Her form bulged and grew once more, clothes ripping and bursting at the seams to fall to the oily ground she stood upon. She could not be called naked, not with the swollen growths and oozing carbuncles across her form, but Thor recoiled all the same.
"You were to heal them, not watch them wither," Thor said. "But you were the one to infect them to begin with, Helka!"
"Payment for all things," Helka spat. "Every cured ill was paid for in sickness elsewhere. Every wound survived cost a spring fever; a womb made barren the price for healthy babes and living mothers."
"What."
Cold and toneless, it was a woman who had spoken. God and Nurglite found their building confrontation arrested, both turning to see who had approached.
Helena stood there, and Harad was at her side. They were dressed for travel, and with them were Wolfric and Grigori, as well as some few other warriors of the town. The clamour had drawn them, but their bared weapons were second to the terrible look on Helena's aged face.
"What did you do, Helka." The words were quiet, but the pain in them was unmissable.
"Did you think your misdeeds had gone unpunished?" Helka asked. "Your husband's? After the insult you gave the Gods?"
"We came to you for help," Harad rumbled, deep and dark. His fingers were flexing, nostrils flaring as wrath built and built. "And you stole our future from us."
A crow landed on what had been the house of healing. It cawed, and it sounded like laughter, but then the door below burst open with a crash. Bjorn stumbled through, the twins limp in his arms. The once healing wounds on his chest were inflamed, but he stood strong, taking in the scene with a glance and quickly retreating beyond Thor. Wolfric made a sound of pain as he rushed to meet them.
Helka gave no notice to them. "You wanted children," she said to Helena, voice dripping with cruelty even as her wretched form dripped with unmentionable filth. "Grandfather Nurgle will give you children, countless children, even if not in the way you had hoped."
The taunt sundered whatever caution was holding them back. Harad and Helena charged as one, fury and rage and despair worn clearly, and Thor could feel three slivers of attention join the one that had been present ever since he had blown up the cauldron. He had no time to take issue with them, not with the way Helka's cheeks were bulging obscenely, filling with something unknown as she sucked in a breath though the hole where her nose once was.
Though they would surely cut Helka down, he would not see them suffer the ills that would come with it. Nor would he see the very earth poisoned by her death. Stormbreaker reached skywards.
"Heimdall!" Thor boomed, sounding the name of his friend as a battlecry.
A torrent of light and colour ripped through the storm clouds above - or perhaps out of them - to slam into the street. It engulfed Thor and Helka, and then there was the sensation of movement. When it subsided, they were elsewhere.
In a green field they stood, storm clouds roiling overhead, far darker than any to be found in the mortal world. Wind scythed through the tall grass, and the first hints of rain came with it, fast and harsh enough to sting. Off in the distance, Thor spied the gleaming golden walls of Asgard, Old and New and all at once.
"You - where have you brought me?" Helka demanded, ponderous bulk shifting as she returned to her feet. Spores and pus continued to drift and drip from her, one of her tumours popped messily. The Bifrost had been less than kind, and her arrival was marked by a crater in the earth.
"You stand in the realm of Asgard," Thor told her. "Be grateful, for your death will water its fields."
For a heartbeat, fear flickered across her inhuman visage, but it was quickly gone. She cackled. "You have brought his plagues to your place of power!"
Thor smiled, though it was thin and utterly without humour. "Your words betray your lack of understanding. You think yourself strong. You will die unknowing."
The words seemed to pain her, striking at something deep inside. "Grandfather has blessed me with strength and purpose, and you will suffer for your transgressions!"
The grass around her began to wither and die, and from the dirt around her small creatures began to rise, growing from nothing but the leavings of her passage. They were horrid little things, round and disgusting, almost as much mouth as body, ranging all the colours of filth and sickness. They bounced and shrieked with delight as they began to advance across the field, rolling and pulling themselves with misshapen limbs. More began to spawn around Helka.
Lightning sparked about Thor's armour, thunder rumbling overhead like the growl of a god. His power surged in response to the foul things, and he prepared to answer in kind - but then he heard a call. It was a request for aid, for support in the face of evil.
A prayer.
He could do naught but answer, and a hint of his power slipped into those that asked for it whose hearts were true, and whose cause was worthy. He could not help but laugh, bright and booming, as he felt it be put to use.
The laughter seemed to be the last straw for the abomination that had been Helka, and she leapt forward, storming across the field to get at him. Stormbreaker was waiting to meet her, and Thor met her charge gladly.
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- Pronouns
- He/him
Hoo boy, something about that line seemed ice cold. I'm into it.
GiovanniBlasini
Transhumanist Nutcase from Niops IX
- Location
- San Diego, CA, USA, Sol III
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, he brought her to Asgard, not New Asgard, right? The original during Ragnarok, I think?
Not quite:
With some emphasis added; he's brought her into, I think, the conceptualization of Asgard. The place that isn't a place, but where his will is manifest and most easily utilized in bringing his power to bear.
... Helka gonna die, Nurgle gonna be pissed he doesn't get a foothold, and everyone back at Vinterholm be raising glass in salute and prayer to Thor.