A God Adrift: THORHAMMER (WHF/Thor Quest, Story Only Thread)
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Helka's leap was met by the blunt side of his axe, and she was sent flying back the way she came, arcing over her minions to land in the same crater that the Bifrost had dropped her in. Both impacts, weapon and landing, saw tumorous growths burst and spray their foul contents over the grassy field. More of the small disgusting creatures began to rise from the affected ground.
Lightning cracked overhead, pitch black storm clouds spilling their contents in a torrential downpour. A moment later, thunder boomed, and long heartbeats after that, the rain arrived, fat drops starting to flatten the long grass so heavy was the fall. It seemed to weigh on the little spawns of Nurgle too, turning their tumbling advance into a slog. Some tripped, face down, and found themselves unable to rise, near drowning on dry land.
It wouldn't be dry for long, as lightning flashed again, spanning the entire sky, and the storm intensified as Thor watched Helka drag herself from the crater once more. There was fury on her face, but it paled to the still rising anger in his gut. A whirling spout began to grow upwards from a neighbouring field, dark grey winds twisting and churning as it grew towards the sky.
"Bury him, Nurglings!" Helka bellowed. Her voice had become thick and twisted, a far cry from the rasp of an old woman, but still it struggled to cut through the clamour of the growing storm around them.
The Nurglings that had pushed through the thick downpour were near on him, and they shrieked and chattered with joy as they tried to obey their master's commands, leaping and reaching with thin limbs, clawed and covered in pimples and rashes.
Thor gave them the attention they deserved, and a heavy gust of wind caught them, throwing them back towards his foe. Dismayed cries were swept away by the wind, and when the wretched creatures landed they tended to pop in a shower of gore and filth, further spreading the taint of Nurgle's touch. One was carried high up into the sky, quickly becoming an almost indiscernible dot, until a single finger of lightning arced down to pop it with a small flash.
It was well that the fight was here, Thor noted grimly, in this strange reflection of Asgard rather than in the mortal realm in Vinteerholm. It did not do to dwell on what sickness could have festered had it been so. Heavy sheets of rain continued to pour down, diluting the miasma and sheddings of the Nurgle spawns, but still it lingered, and more was being shed with every passing moment.
Again Helka charged, her form still mutating and growing, but it was clear that for all her misused knowledge of healing, she was no warrior. She bowled a wave of Nurglings aside as she rushed him, heavy, bulbous arm drawn back to crush him into the earth.
Almost contemptuously, Thor stepped aside, letting the blow fall uselessly on the ground, sending clods of earth flying. He shook his axe, flicking off the viscera that clung to it, and stepped towards the next wave of Nurglings, uncaring of Helka's still figure.
There was a thud, and then two more, and finally a great wet crash. Arm, head, knees, body. The Nurglings wailed as they saw their master fall, and they rushed forward even more mindlessly, stumbling and crawling through the muddy field, some even dragging themselves forward.
Thor took them in with a single glance, and gave an absent wave of his hand. Lightning surged over the field in a wave, snapping and crackling as it killed the foul creatures, sweeping through them. They died with tortured screams, and then there was only the sound of the storm.
Water soaked his hair, dripping from his thick beard as he surveyed the field. The storm began to calm, the tornado shrinking and the rain easing now that the taint had been purged. The walls of golden Asgard, Old and New and all at once, gleamed in the distance. But that was not what drew his eye.
The corruption shed by the creatures of Decay still lingered, for all it had been diluted by the storm. It was fading in defeat, but Thor could feel it upon the land, like a patch of coarseness on an otherwise smooth surface. It had the stench of sickness to it, and he remembered another time that corpses had watered the fields of Asgard, only to hide a poison in themselves. Lady Dove had spied it then, but she was not here now.
The essence of vanquished foes was feeding the earth. He would have to move quickly.
Thor looked with sight beyond sight - but there were no currents to be seen, only sodden fields and grey skies. He frowned, knowing that to be a lie, and wove his power with greater care. He could feel a strain in the place where his right eye had once sat, like a pressure straining to be released, and he looked deeper.
Sensation bloomed in his empty socket, like dry ice rasping over metal. In his left eye, he saw the field as it ever was, but his right… He winced at the difference, forcing his left eye closed, and took in the land before him with his missing right.
Not gold or silver but a mix of both, gleaming in a way that mundane metal never could. It reminded him of raw Uru, only so much more. Stalks of grass bowed by the rain, disturbed earth, leaves carried by the wind, the very air itself - all were made by or suffused by the metallic current. Even the soft exhalations he released with each breath were tinted by it.
It was the colour of Asgard, Old and New and all at once.
It was the colour of Asgard, and there was a taint, attempting to tarnish it, to sicken and weaken it from within.
Thunder boomed anew as Thor stepped forward, crossing a dozen yards in a single movement, and then he was kneeling amidst the muck. It was not where Helka had been slain, nor where the bulk of the Nurglings had been purged, but almost to the side, a spot of putrid brown and bilious green that was trying to burrow its way into the gleam of the earth.
It had the same oily sheen as the current that he had seen oozing from under the door of the twins' room in the healer's house - that he had been permitted to see - but now he knew it well, and there was no mistaking it. A rumble sounded in Thor's chest as his bearing grew dark. It could not hide from him now, and he reached for it, just as he had reached for the sickness that Lady Dove had once set to bubble and boil from where it had infected his realm. Lightning that was not truly lightning sparked in his fists, and the sickness seemed to wail as it was purged, purified, hallowed.
When the light faded, there was no sickness, only the remnants of the power it had held, and even that was swiftly sinking into the goldsilver of the realm he stood upon, feeding it, strengthening it. The muck he knelt in joined it swiftly, absorbed in victory, and soon the field was marred only by furrows and craters and the result of inclement weather.
Thor rose, letting out a steady breath. There was a smile upon his face, and he let his sight beyond sight fade, opening his left eye again to see the green of grass and the earthy tones of dirt, the blue sky peeking through grey clouds. Power had flavour, but to be seen, it had to be understood. He was beginning to understand.
The sun overhead was revealed, brightening the land, and in the distance he could see faceless shapes frolicking in the fields once more. By the gates of the city, more concrete movement caught his eye, golden armour standing out even against the walls. He took to the air, wind whipping at his hair and wringing the rain from it.
Thor landed easily on the paved road that led to the imposing gates of the city, and took in its protector.
"My King," the man said, yellow eyes watching the horizon. "Your foundation strengthens."
"So it does," Thor said. He inspected the man who stood before him carefully, and closed his left eye. His right opened, and he saw in the man before him the same goldsilver that he saw in the walls and the sky and the very earth he stood upon.
Heimdall glanced to him, eyebrow raised in silent question.
"Who are you?" Thor asked. There was no threat here, but the mystery pulled at his mind all the same.
The being wearing the face of Heimdall only smiled, goldsilver teeth shining even against the gleam of his skin. Thor blinked, his sight beyond sight falling away, and then it was no longer Heimdall but Nick Fury, meeting his single eye with his own.
"I've got my eye on you," Fury said, clad in golden armour. He tapped his eye patch, still grinning.
Before Thor could respond, the Bifrost burst from the heavens to envelop him, and then he was departing his realm, almost ushered on his way and left feeling like he hadn't since the days where his mother would walk he and Loki to their classes.
For all he had not called the Bifrost himself, he still controlled it, guided it. Vinteerholm was his target, and two paths stood out to him. One took him directly to the point he had left, where he could feel a jagged tear in the world. The other took him nearby, but to a beacon of safety, a lighthouse of sorts providing safe passage.
Impatience and worry took root in his bones, worsened by whatever threat had caused his people to pray to him for aid. He aimed for the same point he had departed, beyond the reach of the guiding light. Whatever threat had entered the world in the wake of his departure, he would deal with.
Outside the protection of the Bifrost, a thirsting god laughed.
Thor's boots met dirt, and he strode out of the rainbow, Stormbreaker at the ready - but then he stopped, taken aback by what he saw. Two moons hung in the sky, pale Mannslieb and sickly green Morrslieb, neither full, but both casting their light down through the night sky. It had scarcely been afternoon when he had taken Helka away, bare minutes ago.
The town was quiet around him, but if it was the quiet of the grave or the quiet of sleep he did not know. Nothing was burning, though the row of houses that the healer's had belonged to was reduced to nothing but splinters and rubble.
There were no corpses strewn about, and he allowed himself to hope as he began to prowl, looking about. Keen ears picked up footsteps beating a rapid approach, and then from around the corner of the lane, a young man appeared, barely more than a youth.
"God of Thunder," he gasped, relief clear across his face. For all he was broad and strong, his voice still cracked, and pimples dotted his forehead. "You're back!"
"What has happened here?" Thor demanded. "Where is everyone?"
"Longhouse," the blond haired boy said, coming to a stop before him, heaving and out of breath. One arm was freshly bandaged, but he was otherwise unharmed. "You must come quickly, God of Thunder, I don't know how much longer-!"
Thor wasted no more time, taking to the sky in a great arc, looking to come down in the square before the longhouse. There was a faint plea to wait, quickly cut off, but he could not slow, no matter how much the boy might want to join him. He had been absent in their time of need, but he would delay no further.
X
Ragnar peeked around the corner of the house, wishing he had worn his hat like Pa always told him to. Ma had said he could go and see Astrid and Elsa, but right as he had reached the healer's street, there had been a huge crash, and then Lord Thor and a monster had burst out from a house.
For all his Ma always said he needed to think twice sometimes, Ragnar was not a foolish child, which was why he had quickly ducked behind a corner before settling in to watch the fight. Now he squinted down the road, wishing he had a hat to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun as Lord Thor faced down the big monster.
There was a lot of talking for a monster fight, but maybe that was how they went. Ragnar wasn't sure, it being his first monster fight. Astrid and Elsa said they had seen Lord Thor bring home a dead manticore, but he wasn't sure that counted, even if they kept saying they were right because they outnumbered him. He wasn't sure that counted either.
More people arrived, from the far end of the street, behind Lord Thor. He knew Wolfric and Eirik and Halvar, because people said they were the best warriors in Vinteerholm, which meant they had to be almost as strong as Pa, but he didn't know the rest. He couldn't see what happened next, but there was no missing the huge rainbow that fell from the sky, blasting into the ground. A moment later it faded, and Ragnar was left gaping, Lord Thor and the monster nowhere to be seen.
"Thor strike me," Ragnar said, awed, repeating something his Pa said sometimes. That was totally-
Whatever it was, the boy did not have time to finish the thought. Where the rainbow had landed, something was stirring, a fell warping of the air. A circle began to grow from the top down, and it looked like water flowing over clear ice as it grew. Black glass pooled where it touched the ground, and Ragnar could hear shouting from the people on the other side of it.
The circle rippled, and a monster stepped through. Where the first monster was green, this one was red, and it had black horns. It screeched something, words the boy did not know, and looked over its shoulder, back towards Ragnar. He gasped and shrank back, away from its terrible gaze, but it was not looking at him - it was looking through the circle, the portal.
The monster was joined by another, and then another, the portal rippling as they stepped through. Still more came. All had skin the colour of fire, and all had black horns, like demon goats, and some had scraps of metal armour.
"Thor will beat you," Ragnar said, conviction firm, watching as they started to work themselves up, chanting a name that made his head hurt. "Thor will kill you all!" He was too far away to be heard, and his voice hardly more than a murmur.
One of the monsters heard him all the same, turning to pin him with its dread stare through the portal.
Ragnar froze, pinned in place, terror holding his heart in its clawed hand. The monster that saw him stepped around the portal, away from the small crowd of others, and gave a chittering laugh. A long tongue tasted the air, and then suddenly it was charging towards him.
The boy couldn't move, but he knew that he had to run. Pa said the gods helped those who helped themselves, but he couldn't move, and the monster was almost on him, black metal blade pulled back to cut him in half.
At the last moment, he screamed and made a fist, just like Ma had showed him. He closed his eyes as he punched out.
"THOR!"
He punched air, and he heard a whoosh, but there was no pain, only the furious growl of a thwarted monster and a giddy feeling in his belly. He opened his eyes, and found himself still facing the portal and the fight that had started beyond it. There was lightning flashing and thunder blasting, screams and howls rising in the street, but still he heard a hoof shifting in the dirt, and he looked back. The monster was there, and it had noticed him. It spun, again trying to cut him in half with its black blade.
"Thor!" Ragnar yelped, and again he escaped death, but this time he kept his eyes open, and he saw how.
Before his disbelieving eyes, his body turned into a buzzing ball of lightning, and then he had SO MUCH ENERGY. He zipped forward, through the monster, then back and forth twice more for good measure. It seized up, locking in place and shaking violently, before it fell to the ground face first, landing on its own sword. Steaming blood began to spill beneath it.
Ragnar found himself with his normal body once again, jaw dropping, but only for a moment. He began to giggle, then to cackle. He jumped up onto the monster's back, up and down like Pa never let him do on his bed, cackling all the while.
A boom and the collapse of a house reminded him that there were more monsters, and he stopped jumping. Determination settled over his shoulders. Thor had blessed him because he was a faithful, and now he had to help him back.
"Thor!" Ragnar said, and then he was crackling with lightning again, rushing towards the fighting. He was going to zap ALL the monsters.
X
Wolfric stepped forward to join Harad and Helena, thankful that the old warriors had stopped their charge once Thor had vanished with the creature that had once been Helka. He put his thoughts on the woman who had delivered him and his sisters aside, pushing away the sick feeling that maybe there was a reason their mother had died in the birthing bed. His sisters needed him now, needed him to hold off the daemons that were stepping through the portal that had sprung up the moment their god had departed. He would not be found wanting in his absence.
"What are they?" Wolfric asked. At his side, slight Halvar shifted, tensing and loosing his grip on axe and dagger, red beard glinting in the sun.
"Minions of Bloodlust," Harad said, tightly leashed rage colouring his tone. "Bloodletters, they are called. We are lucky we are few."
"Lucky?" Eirik asked from Wolfric's other side, the big blond man a solid presence. His axe was as large as Harad's, though not borne quite so easily.
"They gain strength with every kill, it is food and drink to them," Helena said. There was a wild look in her eyes, like an ice-tiger denied its prey. "I have seen them overcome much larger forces, growing from a pebble to an avalanche."
They were less than a dozen, and already outnumbered. If Tyra and Gunnhilde were there he would feel more confident, but they were not. The Bloodletters were building themselves into a frenzy now, chanting in some foul tongue unknown to him, but he could make out the name of their god. Khorne. Khorne. Khorne. Each cry saw a pressure pulsing in his skull, but he refused to be cowed.
The sun still shone, peeking through the clouds overhead. It had become comforting to see them grow with Thor's ire, but now he was gone, fighting a greater foe, and they stood without him.
No, Wolfric reminded himself. Never without him. "Thor," he said, beating his sword on his shield. "Thor, Thor!"
"Aye," a new voice joined them. "Thor." It was Bjorn, his chest inflamed, barely healed wounds already beginning to show hints of pus.
"Where are my sisters?" Wolfric demanded.
"I gave them to one who would take them safely to the grove," Bjorn said, eyes on the Bloodletters. He bore no weapon, but by the way his hands were flexing, he did not feel he needed one. "I will not miss this fight."
There was a sheen of sweat on his brow, and it was clear that getting the twins clear of the house had cost him, but there was no time to question him, for the daemons of Bloodlust were charging, shrieking with a sick joy for battle and eagerness for blood.
"Thor give us strength," Wolfric said, stepping forward to meet them.
And Thor did.
Thunder roared with every blow of his blessed sword, and he did not so much cut through the daemons as sunder them. Crackling power shrouded his mammoth hide mantle, turning away what blows Halvar and Eirik could not stop. For all their skill, the two men were almost ignored as the daemons threw themselves at Wolfric, racing each other to get to him first.
He was not the only one targeted so. On the other side of the street, Bjorn wore lightning like a cloak, and with every swing of his fists, more surged, drawing daemons in to be battered as they shook and cooked, flesh steaming. He began to scream as reason left him, a chilling, unending thing in the language of violence, and more daemons flocked to him, almost sensing a kindred spirit.
For all they bore the blessings of Thor, though, they were not the most pressed. That was Harad and Helena, holding the middle of the street between them and fighting with something beyond mere familiarity. Harad was a mountain, greataxe moving with speed it had no right to, hewing down daemons like they were wheat before a scythe. Helena stood at his back, almost pressed directly against him, her sword questing out to pierce throats and block strikes from Bloodletters that used the deaths of their fellows as openings. She leapt, outright climbing him, supporting herself with a single hand on her husband's shoulder to catch the falling strike of a leaping Bloodletter.
Still, the daemons came. More and more slipped from the portal, and there was no telling when they would end. Some of the newly arrived had no patience to wait for their turn, and they turned for the houses, pouring into them with the crashing and splintering of old timber. Wolfric had a bare moment to be thankful that most should be out working, but if they could not keep the daemons contained, that would mean nothing.
"Thor!" a boy chirped, giggling.
Wolfric's eyes bulged as he saw him appear in the thick of the fighting, suddenly appearing from nothing. He blew another daemon apart with a swipe of his sword, already lunging to get to the boy, only for his effort to be unneeded.
"Thor!" the boy shouted, and he disappeared, replaced by a ball of crackling lightning, zooming about the battle and shocking every Bloodletter he passed, setting them to stumbling and falling, easy pickings for the warriors they sought to slay.
A house began to collapse, overcome by the rush of daemons into it, and the one beside it followed. If they were surrounded, blessings or no, they would be overcome, drowned by sheer numbers.
Then, a furious trumpeting sounded.
Trumpetter came, and he did not come alone. On his back was Kirsa, red cloak billowing about her. With them came the storm.
Thunder boomed with each step, reverberating loudly, and the mammoth seemed larger than the juvenile he was. Sparks came too with each step, resembling the storm more than the forge. Lightning roiled within the woman, seeking to escape, setting her eyes to glowing in its attempts. Brown hair whipped about in unseen winds as she opened her mouth to scream, though it was not sound that burst forth, but power.
A Bloodletter leaping over its brethren to get at her was pierced by a bolt, a smoking hole left through its torso, and then Trumpetter had joined their line at Bjorn's side. A knot of foes burst from the house near him, only to be trampled into paste. More came as the house collapsed, but Kirsa was ready, drawing her arm back as a spear of lightning formed in it. She hurled it at them, and they were hurled into the air in an explosion of blood and gore.
Still the torrent of daemons only grew. More sought to get around the scrum, the houses hardly an obstacle, and Trumpetter met them in turn, charging forward with a ringing bellow. Tusks of lightning sprouted, sweeping back and forth to vaporise all they touched, leaving bloody mist and tumbling body parts, but so too did the buildings suffer, creating more space for the Bloodletters to advance.
"Thor!" Ragnar shouted as best he could, young voice rising up as he appeared and disappeared. "Thor!"
"God of Thunder!" Wolfric bellowed, lending his voice as he smote another daemon, blasting it to bits.
"Odin's son!" Kirsa screamed, voice carried by the lightning as she spread death with it.
"Chaos, we say thee NAY!" their voices came together as one, denying their enemy as they exulted their god.
Trumpetter added his defiance, and Bjorn's unending scream rose with it as he tore a Bloodletter in half with crackling fists. The warriors stepped forward as one, ferocity and god given power driving back the daemons and drowning out their horrid chanting.
But only for a moment. The portal rippled and darkened in colour, tinted the red of old blood, and more daemons began to pour through, becoming a torrent in truth. Something immense seemed to loom beyond it, a pressure approaching that pained the world to bear. They could not hold out for much longer. They needed Thor.
It was at that point that the dragon arrived.
Lightning cracked overhead, pitch black storm clouds spilling their contents in a torrential downpour. A moment later, thunder boomed, and long heartbeats after that, the rain arrived, fat drops starting to flatten the long grass so heavy was the fall. It seemed to weigh on the little spawns of Nurgle too, turning their tumbling advance into a slog. Some tripped, face down, and found themselves unable to rise, near drowning on dry land.
It wouldn't be dry for long, as lightning flashed again, spanning the entire sky, and the storm intensified as Thor watched Helka drag herself from the crater once more. There was fury on her face, but it paled to the still rising anger in his gut. A whirling spout began to grow upwards from a neighbouring field, dark grey winds twisting and churning as it grew towards the sky.
"Bury him, Nurglings!" Helka bellowed. Her voice had become thick and twisted, a far cry from the rasp of an old woman, but still it struggled to cut through the clamour of the growing storm around them.
The Nurglings that had pushed through the thick downpour were near on him, and they shrieked and chattered with joy as they tried to obey their master's commands, leaping and reaching with thin limbs, clawed and covered in pimples and rashes.
Thor gave them the attention they deserved, and a heavy gust of wind caught them, throwing them back towards his foe. Dismayed cries were swept away by the wind, and when the wretched creatures landed they tended to pop in a shower of gore and filth, further spreading the taint of Nurgle's touch. One was carried high up into the sky, quickly becoming an almost indiscernible dot, until a single finger of lightning arced down to pop it with a small flash.
It was well that the fight was here, Thor noted grimly, in this strange reflection of Asgard rather than in the mortal realm in Vinteerholm. It did not do to dwell on what sickness could have festered had it been so. Heavy sheets of rain continued to pour down, diluting the miasma and sheddings of the Nurgle spawns, but still it lingered, and more was being shed with every passing moment.
Again Helka charged, her form still mutating and growing, but it was clear that for all her misused knowledge of healing, she was no warrior. She bowled a wave of Nurglings aside as she rushed him, heavy, bulbous arm drawn back to crush him into the earth.
Almost contemptuously, Thor stepped aside, letting the blow fall uselessly on the ground, sending clods of earth flying. He shook his axe, flicking off the viscera that clung to it, and stepped towards the next wave of Nurglings, uncaring of Helka's still figure.
There was a thud, and then two more, and finally a great wet crash. Arm, head, knees, body. The Nurglings wailed as they saw their master fall, and they rushed forward even more mindlessly, stumbling and crawling through the muddy field, some even dragging themselves forward.
Thor took them in with a single glance, and gave an absent wave of his hand. Lightning surged over the field in a wave, snapping and crackling as it killed the foul creatures, sweeping through them. They died with tortured screams, and then there was only the sound of the storm.
Water soaked his hair, dripping from his thick beard as he surveyed the field. The storm began to calm, the tornado shrinking and the rain easing now that the taint had been purged. The walls of golden Asgard, Old and New and all at once, gleamed in the distance. But that was not what drew his eye.
The corruption shed by the creatures of Decay still lingered, for all it had been diluted by the storm. It was fading in defeat, but Thor could feel it upon the land, like a patch of coarseness on an otherwise smooth surface. It had the stench of sickness to it, and he remembered another time that corpses had watered the fields of Asgard, only to hide a poison in themselves. Lady Dove had spied it then, but she was not here now.
The essence of vanquished foes was feeding the earth. He would have to move quickly.
Thor looked with sight beyond sight - but there were no currents to be seen, only sodden fields and grey skies. He frowned, knowing that to be a lie, and wove his power with greater care. He could feel a strain in the place where his right eye had once sat, like a pressure straining to be released, and he looked deeper.
Sensation bloomed in his empty socket, like dry ice rasping over metal. In his left eye, he saw the field as it ever was, but his right… He winced at the difference, forcing his left eye closed, and took in the land before him with his missing right.
Not gold or silver but a mix of both, gleaming in a way that mundane metal never could. It reminded him of raw Uru, only so much more. Stalks of grass bowed by the rain, disturbed earth, leaves carried by the wind, the very air itself - all were made by or suffused by the metallic current. Even the soft exhalations he released with each breath were tinted by it.
It was the colour of Asgard, Old and New and all at once.
It was the colour of Asgard, and there was a taint, attempting to tarnish it, to sicken and weaken it from within.
Thunder boomed anew as Thor stepped forward, crossing a dozen yards in a single movement, and then he was kneeling amidst the muck. It was not where Helka had been slain, nor where the bulk of the Nurglings had been purged, but almost to the side, a spot of putrid brown and bilious green that was trying to burrow its way into the gleam of the earth.
It had the same oily sheen as the current that he had seen oozing from under the door of the twins' room in the healer's house - that he had been permitted to see - but now he knew it well, and there was no mistaking it. A rumble sounded in Thor's chest as his bearing grew dark. It could not hide from him now, and he reached for it, just as he had reached for the sickness that Lady Dove had once set to bubble and boil from where it had infected his realm. Lightning that was not truly lightning sparked in his fists, and the sickness seemed to wail as it was purged, purified, hallowed.
When the light faded, there was no sickness, only the remnants of the power it had held, and even that was swiftly sinking into the goldsilver of the realm he stood upon, feeding it, strengthening it. The muck he knelt in joined it swiftly, absorbed in victory, and soon the field was marred only by furrows and craters and the result of inclement weather.
Thor rose, letting out a steady breath. There was a smile upon his face, and he let his sight beyond sight fade, opening his left eye again to see the green of grass and the earthy tones of dirt, the blue sky peeking through grey clouds. Power had flavour, but to be seen, it had to be understood. He was beginning to understand.
The sun overhead was revealed, brightening the land, and in the distance he could see faceless shapes frolicking in the fields once more. By the gates of the city, more concrete movement caught his eye, golden armour standing out even against the walls. He took to the air, wind whipping at his hair and wringing the rain from it.
Thor landed easily on the paved road that led to the imposing gates of the city, and took in its protector.
"My King," the man said, yellow eyes watching the horizon. "Your foundation strengthens."
"So it does," Thor said. He inspected the man who stood before him carefully, and closed his left eye. His right opened, and he saw in the man before him the same goldsilver that he saw in the walls and the sky and the very earth he stood upon.
Heimdall glanced to him, eyebrow raised in silent question.
"Who are you?" Thor asked. There was no threat here, but the mystery pulled at his mind all the same.
The being wearing the face of Heimdall only smiled, goldsilver teeth shining even against the gleam of his skin. Thor blinked, his sight beyond sight falling away, and then it was no longer Heimdall but Nick Fury, meeting his single eye with his own.
"I've got my eye on you," Fury said, clad in golden armour. He tapped his eye patch, still grinning.
Before Thor could respond, the Bifrost burst from the heavens to envelop him, and then he was departing his realm, almost ushered on his way and left feeling like he hadn't since the days where his mother would walk he and Loki to their classes.
For all he had not called the Bifrost himself, he still controlled it, guided it. Vinteerholm was his target, and two paths stood out to him. One took him directly to the point he had left, where he could feel a jagged tear in the world. The other took him nearby, but to a beacon of safety, a lighthouse of sorts providing safe passage.
Impatience and worry took root in his bones, worsened by whatever threat had caused his people to pray to him for aid. He aimed for the same point he had departed, beyond the reach of the guiding light. Whatever threat had entered the world in the wake of his departure, he would deal with.
Outside the protection of the Bifrost, a thirsting god laughed.
Thor's boots met dirt, and he strode out of the rainbow, Stormbreaker at the ready - but then he stopped, taken aback by what he saw. Two moons hung in the sky, pale Mannslieb and sickly green Morrslieb, neither full, but both casting their light down through the night sky. It had scarcely been afternoon when he had taken Helka away, bare minutes ago.
The town was quiet around him, but if it was the quiet of the grave or the quiet of sleep he did not know. Nothing was burning, though the row of houses that the healer's had belonged to was reduced to nothing but splinters and rubble.
There were no corpses strewn about, and he allowed himself to hope as he began to prowl, looking about. Keen ears picked up footsteps beating a rapid approach, and then from around the corner of the lane, a young man appeared, barely more than a youth.
"God of Thunder," he gasped, relief clear across his face. For all he was broad and strong, his voice still cracked, and pimples dotted his forehead. "You're back!"
"What has happened here?" Thor demanded. "Where is everyone?"
"Longhouse," the blond haired boy said, coming to a stop before him, heaving and out of breath. One arm was freshly bandaged, but he was otherwise unharmed. "You must come quickly, God of Thunder, I don't know how much longer-!"
Thor wasted no more time, taking to the sky in a great arc, looking to come down in the square before the longhouse. There was a faint plea to wait, quickly cut off, but he could not slow, no matter how much the boy might want to join him. He had been absent in their time of need, but he would delay no further.
X
Ragnar peeked around the corner of the house, wishing he had worn his hat like Pa always told him to. Ma had said he could go and see Astrid and Elsa, but right as he had reached the healer's street, there had been a huge crash, and then Lord Thor and a monster had burst out from a house.
For all his Ma always said he needed to think twice sometimes, Ragnar was not a foolish child, which was why he had quickly ducked behind a corner before settling in to watch the fight. Now he squinted down the road, wishing he had a hat to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun as Lord Thor faced down the big monster.
There was a lot of talking for a monster fight, but maybe that was how they went. Ragnar wasn't sure, it being his first monster fight. Astrid and Elsa said they had seen Lord Thor bring home a dead manticore, but he wasn't sure that counted, even if they kept saying they were right because they outnumbered him. He wasn't sure that counted either.
More people arrived, from the far end of the street, behind Lord Thor. He knew Wolfric and Eirik and Halvar, because people said they were the best warriors in Vinteerholm, which meant they had to be almost as strong as Pa, but he didn't know the rest. He couldn't see what happened next, but there was no missing the huge rainbow that fell from the sky, blasting into the ground. A moment later it faded, and Ragnar was left gaping, Lord Thor and the monster nowhere to be seen.
"Thor strike me," Ragnar said, awed, repeating something his Pa said sometimes. That was totally-
Whatever it was, the boy did not have time to finish the thought. Where the rainbow had landed, something was stirring, a fell warping of the air. A circle began to grow from the top down, and it looked like water flowing over clear ice as it grew. Black glass pooled where it touched the ground, and Ragnar could hear shouting from the people on the other side of it.
The circle rippled, and a monster stepped through. Where the first monster was green, this one was red, and it had black horns. It screeched something, words the boy did not know, and looked over its shoulder, back towards Ragnar. He gasped and shrank back, away from its terrible gaze, but it was not looking at him - it was looking through the circle, the portal.
The monster was joined by another, and then another, the portal rippling as they stepped through. Still more came. All had skin the colour of fire, and all had black horns, like demon goats, and some had scraps of metal armour.
"Thor will beat you," Ragnar said, conviction firm, watching as they started to work themselves up, chanting a name that made his head hurt. "Thor will kill you all!" He was too far away to be heard, and his voice hardly more than a murmur.
One of the monsters heard him all the same, turning to pin him with its dread stare through the portal.
Ragnar froze, pinned in place, terror holding his heart in its clawed hand. The monster that saw him stepped around the portal, away from the small crowd of others, and gave a chittering laugh. A long tongue tasted the air, and then suddenly it was charging towards him.
The boy couldn't move, but he knew that he had to run. Pa said the gods helped those who helped themselves, but he couldn't move, and the monster was almost on him, black metal blade pulled back to cut him in half.
At the last moment, he screamed and made a fist, just like Ma had showed him. He closed his eyes as he punched out.
"THOR!"
He punched air, and he heard a whoosh, but there was no pain, only the furious growl of a thwarted monster and a giddy feeling in his belly. He opened his eyes, and found himself still facing the portal and the fight that had started beyond it. There was lightning flashing and thunder blasting, screams and howls rising in the street, but still he heard a hoof shifting in the dirt, and he looked back. The monster was there, and it had noticed him. It spun, again trying to cut him in half with its black blade.
"Thor!" Ragnar yelped, and again he escaped death, but this time he kept his eyes open, and he saw how.
Before his disbelieving eyes, his body turned into a buzzing ball of lightning, and then he had SO MUCH ENERGY. He zipped forward, through the monster, then back and forth twice more for good measure. It seized up, locking in place and shaking violently, before it fell to the ground face first, landing on its own sword. Steaming blood began to spill beneath it.
Ragnar found himself with his normal body once again, jaw dropping, but only for a moment. He began to giggle, then to cackle. He jumped up onto the monster's back, up and down like Pa never let him do on his bed, cackling all the while.
A boom and the collapse of a house reminded him that there were more monsters, and he stopped jumping. Determination settled over his shoulders. Thor had blessed him because he was a faithful, and now he had to help him back.
"Thor!" Ragnar said, and then he was crackling with lightning again, rushing towards the fighting. He was going to zap ALL the monsters.
X
Wolfric stepped forward to join Harad and Helena, thankful that the old warriors had stopped their charge once Thor had vanished with the creature that had once been Helka. He put his thoughts on the woman who had delivered him and his sisters aside, pushing away the sick feeling that maybe there was a reason their mother had died in the birthing bed. His sisters needed him now, needed him to hold off the daemons that were stepping through the portal that had sprung up the moment their god had departed. He would not be found wanting in his absence.
"What are they?" Wolfric asked. At his side, slight Halvar shifted, tensing and loosing his grip on axe and dagger, red beard glinting in the sun.
"Minions of Bloodlust," Harad said, tightly leashed rage colouring his tone. "Bloodletters, they are called. We are lucky we are few."
"Lucky?" Eirik asked from Wolfric's other side, the big blond man a solid presence. His axe was as large as Harad's, though not borne quite so easily.
"They gain strength with every kill, it is food and drink to them," Helena said. There was a wild look in her eyes, like an ice-tiger denied its prey. "I have seen them overcome much larger forces, growing from a pebble to an avalanche."
They were less than a dozen, and already outnumbered. If Tyra and Gunnhilde were there he would feel more confident, but they were not. The Bloodletters were building themselves into a frenzy now, chanting in some foul tongue unknown to him, but he could make out the name of their god. Khorne. Khorne. Khorne. Each cry saw a pressure pulsing in his skull, but he refused to be cowed.
The sun still shone, peeking through the clouds overhead. It had become comforting to see them grow with Thor's ire, but now he was gone, fighting a greater foe, and they stood without him.
No, Wolfric reminded himself. Never without him. "Thor," he said, beating his sword on his shield. "Thor, Thor!"
"Aye," a new voice joined them. "Thor." It was Bjorn, his chest inflamed, barely healed wounds already beginning to show hints of pus.
"Where are my sisters?" Wolfric demanded.
"I gave them to one who would take them safely to the grove," Bjorn said, eyes on the Bloodletters. He bore no weapon, but by the way his hands were flexing, he did not feel he needed one. "I will not miss this fight."
There was a sheen of sweat on his brow, and it was clear that getting the twins clear of the house had cost him, but there was no time to question him, for the daemons of Bloodlust were charging, shrieking with a sick joy for battle and eagerness for blood.
"Thor give us strength," Wolfric said, stepping forward to meet them.
And Thor did.
Thunder roared with every blow of his blessed sword, and he did not so much cut through the daemons as sunder them. Crackling power shrouded his mammoth hide mantle, turning away what blows Halvar and Eirik could not stop. For all their skill, the two men were almost ignored as the daemons threw themselves at Wolfric, racing each other to get to him first.
He was not the only one targeted so. On the other side of the street, Bjorn wore lightning like a cloak, and with every swing of his fists, more surged, drawing daemons in to be battered as they shook and cooked, flesh steaming. He began to scream as reason left him, a chilling, unending thing in the language of violence, and more daemons flocked to him, almost sensing a kindred spirit.
For all they bore the blessings of Thor, though, they were not the most pressed. That was Harad and Helena, holding the middle of the street between them and fighting with something beyond mere familiarity. Harad was a mountain, greataxe moving with speed it had no right to, hewing down daemons like they were wheat before a scythe. Helena stood at his back, almost pressed directly against him, her sword questing out to pierce throats and block strikes from Bloodletters that used the deaths of their fellows as openings. She leapt, outright climbing him, supporting herself with a single hand on her husband's shoulder to catch the falling strike of a leaping Bloodletter.
Still, the daemons came. More and more slipped from the portal, and there was no telling when they would end. Some of the newly arrived had no patience to wait for their turn, and they turned for the houses, pouring into them with the crashing and splintering of old timber. Wolfric had a bare moment to be thankful that most should be out working, but if they could not keep the daemons contained, that would mean nothing.
"Thor!" a boy chirped, giggling.
Wolfric's eyes bulged as he saw him appear in the thick of the fighting, suddenly appearing from nothing. He blew another daemon apart with a swipe of his sword, already lunging to get to the boy, only for his effort to be unneeded.
"Thor!" the boy shouted, and he disappeared, replaced by a ball of crackling lightning, zooming about the battle and shocking every Bloodletter he passed, setting them to stumbling and falling, easy pickings for the warriors they sought to slay.
A house began to collapse, overcome by the rush of daemons into it, and the one beside it followed. If they were surrounded, blessings or no, they would be overcome, drowned by sheer numbers.
Then, a furious trumpeting sounded.
Trumpetter came, and he did not come alone. On his back was Kirsa, red cloak billowing about her. With them came the storm.
Thunder boomed with each step, reverberating loudly, and the mammoth seemed larger than the juvenile he was. Sparks came too with each step, resembling the storm more than the forge. Lightning roiled within the woman, seeking to escape, setting her eyes to glowing in its attempts. Brown hair whipped about in unseen winds as she opened her mouth to scream, though it was not sound that burst forth, but power.
A Bloodletter leaping over its brethren to get at her was pierced by a bolt, a smoking hole left through its torso, and then Trumpetter had joined their line at Bjorn's side. A knot of foes burst from the house near him, only to be trampled into paste. More came as the house collapsed, but Kirsa was ready, drawing her arm back as a spear of lightning formed in it. She hurled it at them, and they were hurled into the air in an explosion of blood and gore.
Still the torrent of daemons only grew. More sought to get around the scrum, the houses hardly an obstacle, and Trumpetter met them in turn, charging forward with a ringing bellow. Tusks of lightning sprouted, sweeping back and forth to vaporise all they touched, leaving bloody mist and tumbling body parts, but so too did the buildings suffer, creating more space for the Bloodletters to advance.
"Thor!" Ragnar shouted as best he could, young voice rising up as he appeared and disappeared. "Thor!"
"God of Thunder!" Wolfric bellowed, lending his voice as he smote another daemon, blasting it to bits.
"Odin's son!" Kirsa screamed, voice carried by the lightning as she spread death with it.
"Chaos, we say thee NAY!" their voices came together as one, denying their enemy as they exulted their god.
Trumpetter added his defiance, and Bjorn's unending scream rose with it as he tore a Bloodletter in half with crackling fists. The warriors stepped forward as one, ferocity and god given power driving back the daemons and drowning out their horrid chanting.
But only for a moment. The portal rippled and darkened in colour, tinted the red of old blood, and more daemons began to pour through, becoming a torrent in truth. Something immense seemed to loom beyond it, a pressure approaching that pained the world to bear. They could not hold out for much longer. They needed Thor.
It was at that point that the dragon arrived.
- Location
- Madness realms
Suddenly Dragon isn't usually so fortuitous.
Home Improvement 8
- Location
- Australia
The ground shook with her coming, earth and snow kicked up such was the force of her landing. Bjorn was splattered with the entrails of a Bloodletter that had been crushed under one paw, but he took no notice, too busy slamming the skull of another into the ground. The daemons close were thrown back, hurled into disarray. The rest had a moment to absorb her presence, a ripple of glee passing through their ranks as they seemed to shift their attentions as one, but a moment was all they had. A contemptuous, guttural growl echoed out, and then blinding cold erupted from between rows of razor sharp fangs.
A beam of white carved through the ranks and towards the portal, an unearthly screech coming with it. Whatever it was, it wasn't ice, as it sliced off limbs and split one unfortunate foe from groin to crown. When it hit the portal, the uncanny rippling froze, but only for a moment. The next it began to twist and churn as if boiling, and the coherence of its rim began to waver. The red tint to it wavered, paling and darkening in turn as it seemed to resist whatever sorcery was disrupting it, and by the grace of Thor, the flood of new daemons paused.
The Bloodletters already through had recovered, and they were not content to watch. They threw themselves at the dragon with abandon, bloodlust heavy in the air, each competing with the other to be the first to wet their swords with her blood. They seemed to have forgotten the mortal defenders entirely. They should have known better.
A boy appeared in their way, gap toothed grin seasoned with savagery. "Thor!" Lightning lanced out, coursing between those closest, setting them to tumbling.
Bjorn was already there to take advantage, whirling about to seize any daemon close enough, crushing skulls with his bare hands and adding to the gore already plastered up to his elbows. His scream was drowned out by the continuing screech of the white beam, but he did not seem to realise. The baresark was not content to plant himself between the foe and the dragon, however, rage driving him onwards, and he dove into a knot of approaching foes. Soon, he was not the only one screaming.
Harad and Helena were moving to the right, seeking to plant themselves before the dragon, but they found themselves bogged down, the daemons closest still driven towards them by something unseen. Wolfric, Eirik, and Halvar could not get past them, nor could they risk stepping back without leaving them vulnerable. The three men pushed forward instead, trying to take advantage of the shift in the current of the rush of enemies, but there were still too many, and for all their blessings, they were still daemons.
Wolfric blew a daemon back with a flick of his sword, turning its shoulder to paste, but then movement above caught his eye. For all the destruction, some of the row of houses still remained. At the end of them, in the half shattered remains of someone's home, a daemon was preparing to jump from the upper level.
"LEIFNIR!" he bellowed. "Above!"
A white eye turned to him, but she did not cease her assault on the portal; if anything the screech seemed to intensify, setting a thrumming in their bones. The daemon leapt, black blade held down before it, aiming for Leifnir's back, where neck met body. Its long tongue trailed out the side of its mouth, jagged teeth bared in grotesque joy.
A bolt of lightning took it through the chest, turning its falling strike into a graceless fall, and what could have been a mortal blow became an annoyance. The falling blade left a scuff mark down Leifnir's side, and her tail lashed in anger, taking out another section of the building behind her, but that was little damage compared to what came next.
Kirsa and Trumpetter had been forced back by Leifnir's arrival, but the bolt marked their return, and they were not content to remain behind the dragon's bulk. The mammoth trampled forward on Leifnir's right, lightning tusks clearing a path as he charged into the daemons, even as Kirsa readied another bolt. More daemons seemed ready to use the remainder of the structure to launch themselves at Leifnir, but then Trumpetter collided with it, powering through it without a hint of slowing. The sound of daemons being vaporised cracked through the air over the crumbling of timber, and above it all the screech of the white beam continued.
It was too much for the portal, whatever fell power that had opened swept away by the scouring light, and it collapsed upon itself. One moment it was there, the next it was gone, and a pressure that had come with it vanished. The beam of light ceased, Leifnir closing her jaw; heavy breaths misted the air. There was a sudden stutter in the flow of battle, as the Bloodletters felt the connection cut.
The last of the row of buildings fell as Trumpetter and Kirsa emerged from the end - behind the crowd of enemies. Caught between blessed warriors, blessed mammoth, and a frost dragon, the Khornate daemons only knew joy, ready to see blood spilt in the name of their God. That it would be theirs clearly did not matter, so long as the blood flowed. That they were cut off did not seem to matter, and they began to fight for the best position when the battle resumed.
"Unworthy," Kirsa said, glaring down at them from her perch. Her voice was layered with a tone not her own, crackling. "None of you are worthy."
A ball of lightning zipped around Wolfric's shoulders, as if caught in the pull of the lightning around his mantle. A breath later it turned into a young boy, glee and enthusiasm no longer there, replaced by a look of seriousness beyond his years. His head tilted, as if listening to something. "You're all cowards. You used to be fighters, but you got used to not dying." He scowled at them, lip jutting out. "You're lucky Thor isn't here."
The words took a moment to settle. A heartbeat later, the Bloodletters erupted in a clamour of shrieks and rage, charging in a frenzy. Some went for Kirsa and Trumpetter. Some went for Leifnir. Some went for Ragnar. Some for Harad and Helena. They all died, leaving behind corpses that were already starting to slough into muck, and rage that was already starting to be carried away by the wind.
In the aftermath, those that had fought stopped to catch their breath. Some had faced and killed greater foes in the past, but a swarm of Bloodletters was still nothing to be dismissed out of hand, and they found themselves grateful for Thor's blessings that day, whether they had been granted them or not. There were injuries here and there, but they were small things, easily ignored by warriors such as they, although Ragnar sulked over the toe he had hurt kicking a decapitated head away. Bjorn was slumped to his knees, slowly coming back to himself, new wounds bleeding sluggishly as old wounds pulsed an angry red.
"What now?" Wolfric asked, leaning on his sword. He could feel the shroud around his mantle fading, and aches and soreness that had been held back by borrowed strength began to set in. He jolted as rational thought returned. His sisters, he had to get to the grove to make sure they were safe, to make sure-
"They are not of Decay," Harad said, his voice rumbling over the field of battle. "They will leave no sickness behind." He let his axe fall to the side, unthinkable for most, but more important to him was taking his wife in his arms. The shieldmaiden let herself be gathered up in them, each taking solace in the other.
It would not be right to push them now. "Eirik, see to Bjorn," Wolfric told the big man at his back. The Aesling had gotten his sisters out of the house, and seeing the shattered state of it now, it had clearly saved their lives. Aesling or not, he owed the baresark.
Halvar followed his friend, and between the two of them they soon had Bjorn on his feet, slowly, very slowly, helping him away from the carnage, even as they tried to move around the dragon.
Trumpetter's feet squelched in the muck as he walked across the field. His extra size seemed to have faded away, as had the tusks of power, but he still bore Kirsa easily on his back. She was glaring at Leifnir, even as the last motes of Thor's power faded from her eyes. "You are the dragon that took Lord Thor's eye?"
Leifnir had been inspecting the scuff mark left by the daemon blade on her scales, but now she looked up, her frill splaying outwards. "I am not 'the dragon', I am Leifnir, daughter of Ymirdrak, and I was paid with his eye," she said.
Kirsa's glare only deepened, not flinching a jot as Leifnir met her glare with her own.
Wolfric found himself glad to have the reassurance of his sword in hand, even as Eirik and Halvar shared a glance and switched from helping Bjorn to walk to taking his weight upon themselves, hurrying past the confrontation.
"It's true, Kirsa," Wolfric said, stepping up to them. Neither took their eyes off the other. "My sisters, they are near, you can heal them now?" He closed his mouth before more words could tumble from his lips unbidden.
"I can. However…fighting the corrupted was not part of our deal," Leifnir said, white glare pinning him in place. Queasily, one eye remained on Kirsa, continuing their staredown. "I presume you have a way of making this up to me?"
Wolfirc set himself grimly. He knew what he had to do.
X
Thor landed heavily before the longhouse, and his stride did not slow as he reached the doors. His worry for his peo- for those under his protection saw him barge through them without care, and they swung open with enough force to crash loudly against the walls, announcing his presence as much as the sparking of Stormbreaker.
The voice of the Thunder God boomed out within the longhall. "Who dares-!?! Oh."
A full hall stared back at him, many with cutlery half raised. Someone's drink spilled onto their table as they overfilled their cup.
Thor lowered his axe, allowing his power to fade. Well, it still wasn't the most embarrassing entrance he'd made to a feast. "Carry on," he told those closest.
A snort drew his attention, and he looked to the head of the hall. The dragon lounging behind the main table drew his eye first, and it was she who had snorted at his words, sending a flurry of snow into the rafters, but there were others there that he recognised too. Kirsa and Wolfric were there of course, as were the local veterans Halvar and Eirik, but he did not spy Harad and Helena, he did not spy Bjorn, and he did not spy the twins. Hours had passed, somehow, between his departure and return, and he worried what he had missed. For all that he had given of his power to those who had faith, there were many powers in the world, and he was but one of them.
"Lord Thor," Wolfric called, rising from his seat with relief in his single eye. "You have returned."
"Helka may have been a foul foe, hiding her nature as she did, but once revealed her strength of arm was weak," Thor called back, beginning to make his way to the main table. It seemed to signal those in the hall to return to their feasting, for all that he was still the centre of their attention.
"Yet she still took you the day to vanquish?" Leifnir asked, a lazy lilt to her voice. Without even trying, her words filled the hall. Her tongue snaked out into a nearby barrel, and whatever liquid it contained seemed to flow up it into her mouth.
"Hardly," Thor said, scoffing. "She did not survive more than scant moments, once I removed her from this place." He frowned. "No, my return was…delayed. I chose haste over prudence, and in doing so made myself vulnerable to another power."
"It is to my gain," Leifnir said, not quite shrugging. "Your quaint little fiefdom has been hosting me for some hours, now."
"It is not my village," Thor corrected her, something that saw her frill ripple and Kirsa smirk at her. He had reached the head of the hall now, but there was only one seat available at the main table, but it belonged to Tyra, and he would not take it. The rest had been removed to make room for Leifnir. He sat instead at the end of the firepit, facing the main table, and used its flames to clean his hands. "Its chief has ventured out in service to its people, and I watch over it until she returns." He turned his gaze to his two followers before she could respond. "What has happened in my absence? I heard your prayers."
Wolfric had returned to his seat, and he and Kirsa shared a look. Whatever unspoken words passed saw him leaning forward to answer. "After you took Helka, a portal came, opening the way for Bloodletters. With your blessing, we slew them, and the townspeople that Grigori rallied did not need to join the fight."
There was a heavy sigh from deeper in the hall, audible only to Thor's godly perception, and he glanced back to see Stephan, the skald holding a hand to his brow in almost physical pain.
"Leifnir arrived to aid us, and she closed the portal. In return, we have hosted a feast in her honour," Wolfric continued.
"Most generous," Thor said, withdrawing his hands from the fire. Such a thing was not easily done when their supplies were as they were, but it was a cheap way to repay a dragon as such things went. "And how are Astrid and Elsa recovering?"
"They have not yet been healed," Wolfric said, glaring out the corner of his remaining eye at the dragon beside him.
Thor paused. As best he could reckon, it had been hours since they attack. Slowly, his gaze shifted to Leifnir. "Is that so?" There was a rumble to his voice, one that did not come from within the hall but from the skies above.
"The sick rest in your grove," Leifnir said, piercing a roasted haunch on the table with a single talon, raising it to her mouth to daintily pull it off with her tongue. "They will not sicken further in the time it takes me to enjoy the payment for my aid."
Her words suggested a lack of care, but Thor's eyes saw the very tip of her tail flick and lash, before she stilled it. He crossed his arms, giving her a flat stare as his foot tapped on the stone floor. "Leifnir."
Behind him, the feasters seemed to hold their breath.
The dragon met his stare for a moment, but then she blinked, making a sound of disgust. "Closing the portal was…taxing," she said, acting as if the admittance had been drawn from her with hot irons.
"That is understandable," Thor said, nodding as he uncrossed his arms. "To attempt the healing while lacking in strength would be to do poorly by the girls. I hope you have been able to eat your -" he froze as something occurred to him. "You remember that I told you the mammoth is not for eating, yes?"
Leifnir was staring down at him, slit pupils narrowed, but in bemusement, not anger.
"Trumpetter is in your grove," Kirsa hastened to reassure him. "He was tired after the battle, and wanted to stay with the twins."
"The battle?" Thor asked, alarmed. "He fought?
"You granted him your power?" Kirsa asked more than said.
"I granted my power to those of my believers whose need was true," Thor said. "I didn't know who was asking for it!"
"You give your power so freely?" Leifnir asked, bringing her head down to their level, looking at him closely. She had fallen silent after his easy acceptance of her words, but now her attention had been drawn anew.
"Why would I not?" Thor asked. "They needed my aid."
"Yet you bartered with me for my aid in healing this one's sisters like a human merchant," Leifnir said.
"You wanted my axe, the final creation of the Dwarf King Eitri," Thor argued. "My eye is a fine consolation prize."
Leifnir gave a draconic shrug. "It is a fine enough thing, true," she said, regaining some of her regal air.
Considering he took it from the loot drawer of a group of vagabonds, he felt he was getting good value out of it, but he wasn't about to admit that aloud. "Trumpetter is fine then? He's alright?"
"We slew many, even before Leifnir arrived," Kirsa said, a hint of a boast in her tone.
"Oh?" Thor asked, a smile stealing across his face. It was good to see her coming into her own. "You must tell me more. Actually - Stephan!" he called over his shoulder "Come, so that you might hear better. This is a tale that deserves a skald's retelling, I am sure!"
Kirsa seemed to already be regretting her words, but at Thor's enthusiastic look, she gave in. Stephan was only the first to approach the main table, hunger for the story clear in his eyes. Many followed, crowding around the ends of the eating tables, while a small crowd of children grew around Thor's feet, joining him in looking at her expectantly.
Wolfric gave her a look of commiseration, angling himself to face her, something mirrored even by Leifnir from her other side, but then a thought seemed to cross Kirsa's mind, followed by a smile.
"Wolfric," she said, "you were part of the fight from the beginning. Perhaps you would like to start?" Her expression was cherubic.
Expectant gazes swung to the one eyed warrior. He swallowed, and some of the tension that had eased after learning that Leifnir was unable to see his sisters just then rather than unwilling, crept back in. "Well…"
Thor listened as the tale began, keeping a level expression as he learned how close the town had come to ruin. Had he not granted those who believed his power, little Ragnar would be dead, as would dozens of townspeople that Grigori had rallied in defence of their home. But he had, and they didn't, so he would only harm himself to linger on it.
Hearing that all had survived the fight eased his soul, and he could remonstrate with himself for his impatience rather than curse his lack of learning. For all that he had come far, he still had much to learn and more to experience before he was worthy to be a King.
Such thoughts were pushed away as Thor focused on the story, beaming as he heard of how Kirsa had thrown a bolt through the Bloodletter aiming to interrupt Leifnir's disruption of the portal. If he had to pretend not to see the smug look she sent the dragon as she told the tale, well, rivalries could be good to encourage growth.
"...the corpses were already falling apart, so we did not need to gather them for burning, and Harad tells us they do not spread disease as the bodies of Rot do," Wolfric finished. "We brought Leifnir here to feast in thanks, and now we only need to wait until she can heal my sisters." Now that it was as good as settled, a calmness had returned to him, one that had been missing since he had first gotten the news of their sickness.
"That is a grand tale indeed," Thor said. He glanced at Stephan. The dark haired man was not quite muttering to himself, mouth moving silently. "I feel we will have a tale to pass down by the time Tyra returns."
"All we did, we did in your name, Lord Thor," Kirsa said.
"But you were the ones to do it," Thor said. "Do not discount your deeds. Today, you were all worthy. All of you."
Kirsa flushed with happiness, Wolfric only slightly more stoic, and even Leifnir's tail gave a small wiggle.
"But tell me," Thor said, and here his good cheer faded, "how does Bjorn fare? He was exposed to Decay's touch as he rescued the twins."
"He lives," Eirik said, nursing a mug of ale at one of the side tables. "Halvar and I took him to your grove, and his pain eased, but…" he shook his head. "No healer."
"Better no healer than what we had," someone grumbled lowly.
Dark mutterings spread around the hall, as townsfolk thought back to this or that malady she had had a hand in healing, and what the truth of her actions might have been.
"What of her apprentices?" Thor asked, cutting through the building discussion. "Selinda and Sunniva."
There was a pause, and none could answer.
"I saw them when I spoke to Bjorn, earlier," Kirsa said. One hand went to chestnut hair, worrying at a strand. "But since the battle…"
"I spoke briefly with Selinda, before I confronted Helka," Thor said. "Has no one seen her since?"
None had.
"We found no bodies when we dug through the rubble," someone called from further down the hall.
"What if they learned from their hag grandmother? They could be brewing something as we feast," a woman worried.
"Maybe they fled?"
"What if-"
"We should-"
"Let us not be over quick to judge them," Thor said, raising a hand. He remembered the poorly hidden wariness they had for the false wise woman, but he did not speak on it. "We will deal with what is, not what might be. Do not let fear colour your actions."
The crowd settled, but the worry had revealed to Thor the true state of the town in the wake of the day's events. It was not an easy thing to be without a healer, as the raiders had well known when they had butchered the woman who had held the role before Helka returned.
"We will find another who can help Vinteerholm, in time," Thor reassured them. He rose to his feet, turning to face the room at large. "For now, let us eat and be merry, for a boil has been lanced from your home!"
Ignoring grim realities was something that all Norscans were practised at, and at Thor's direction they were more than happy to do so. While only a small portion of the town's population could be hosted in the longhall at a time, there were still more than enough to enjoy the moment. Those who had the bravery to come in spite of the presence of a dragon were well rewarded. For all that the day's struggle was one that only few had stood in, they still knew what a danger had been lifted from them, the nature of the threat that had been purged, and they were glad.
Thor moved from group to group, sharing words and reassurances, moving on before his presence became too much. It made it easy to slip from the hall as the evening wore on, leaving with but a nod to the three at the main table.
Outside, the night was cool, and the stars bright. Morrslieb had shied away, but Mannslieb still shone, and a fresh dusting of snow had fallen upon the ground. Spring approached, but for now Thor would enjoy the crunch of it beneath his boots, and he took his time as he walked back towards what remained of the street the house of healing had once stood upon.
As he had seen before, one row of houses were reduced to naught but splinters and rubble. It was fortunate that all who lived within had been out working in the wake of his decision to confront Helka. All except her apprentices.
Thor regarded the destruction, glancing over to where the leavings of the Bifrost and the Chaos portal intermingled. Chunks of what looked like obsidian marred woven lines, but that was not what Thor had come to see. Using it as a point of reference, Thor came to the spot where the healer's house had once stood. It looked much like the remains of the rest of the row of houses, but he remembered the interior, and he remembered where the basement stairs had been. With a thought, his armour was dismissed, leaving him in roughspun cloth that did not flatter his figure nearly as well. He knelt down and began to dig, his bare hands more than enough for the task.
As he dug, he allowed his mind to roam, contemplating his actions and what he could have done better. He could not think of a better way to deal with Helka, nor even a better way to confront her, not with the lack of surety he had had. When he considered his actions after leaving Asgard, Old and New and all at once, however, he found himself wanting. Haste could be a virtue, was necessary at times, but he had known that there was a danger lurking unseen, known that something about using the Bifrost in this new realm that worried at his instinct, but still he had allowed himself to dismiss that worry in favour of haste. He still lacked the wisdom required of a King. He could even guess where the beacon of safety would have led him, so close he could have-
A muffled sound pulled him from his thoughts, breaking the spiral, and he stopped digging. His ears strained; had he heard someone moving in a nearby house, or had he - ? It came again, and this time he was sure. He began digging again, shovelling dirt and debris to the side, building a pile half as tall as himself already. The hole grew with it, and he did not meet plain dirt or clay; he was on the right track. More muffled sounds came to his ear, and this time it was clear that they were voices.
Rubble was no barrier to a god, and soon he was scraping against a stone wall, and finding the broken remains of a wooden staircase. The collapse of the building had seen debris spill into the basement, leaving him with more to dig out. Had he not heard the voices, he would have worried that those he sought had been crushed in the very place they had sought sanctuary.
When he broke through, it was sudden, and the debris he was standing on began to slide out from under him. He waited for it to settle, peering into the darkness that had been revealed.
"Hello?" he called softly. There was no answer, and he grew concerned. It was pitch black within the basement; if his excavations had come as a surprise to those within he may very well have buried them.
A spark rose from his hand, slowly tracing a meandering path into the black. It gave off a faint light, only enough to softly illuminate a few feet, but that was enough. In the corner of the basement, dirtied by sweat and rubble, Helka's two apprentices huddled together, eyes wide with fear as they looked up at him.
"The daemons are gone," Thor told them, making no move to enter the basement proper. For all that they were among some of the first people he had ever met in this world, that they had cared for Tyra after he had taken her from the longship he found her on, he had shared scant few words with them.
They did not budge at his words, save to hold each other tighter.
"Helka is dead," Thor said. He watched their reactions closely, but he could not tell if the short breaths they let out were due to relief or fear. Looking back on their bearing with the knowledge of what Helka truly was painted their behaviours in a new light, but was that the truth, or just another layer of deception by foulness masquerading as healing? He could not say for sure. "You need not fear her."
The sisters - and they had to be, next to each other the resemblance was clear - shared a glance, but only for a moment, as if they feared what he would do if they looked away.
"You killed grandmother?" the one with the braid, Sunniva, asked. Her voice was as hoarse as ever.
"I did," Thor said plainly. "She brought pain and suffering where she should have brought relief, and for that I cut her down."
This time, the relief that crept into them was clear, and they eased their apparent attempts to become one with the corner. But was it truth, or more deception? He wanted to do right, to make the just choice, but the memory of Helena's expression when she arrived to hear Helka's words made him slow to trust.
"But, the twins?" Selinda said, barely more than a whisper. "Did she heal them?"
"She was the one who sickened them in the first place," Thor said, and he could not help but let a sliver of his feelings into his voice.
Selinda froze, and Sunniva pulled her into her side.
Thor sighed. "I am sorry. Astrid and Elsa are dear to me, and my fury is for those who meant them ill."
Selinda shook her head in short, shallow jerks, almost trembling, but it was Sunniva who spoke. "We didn't, we wouldn't, we just brewed what grandmother told us to."
He wanted to believe them. They were barely more than girls, younger than Kirsa even. "Even if you did do something, something that led to harm, you can choose another path," Thor said. "If you worshipped Decay-"
"We will never worship the Grandfather!" Selinda burst out, going from cowering to snarling in an instant.
Thor was taken aback, almost unbalanced on his precarious footing by the sudden shift, but a moment later it was gone, and the fear was back threefold as she realised what she had done. He saw that fear, and hated that he was the cause of it. To dither in his decision was unworthy of him, and he opened his missing right eye to look with sight beyond sight.
The oily sheen that was Decay's touch dripped from them, and his spirits fell as he saw it - but then he saw that for all it clung to them, shared between them with every reassuring touch, it did not come from them. They were infected with it, but they did not generate it. Not as Helka had with every breath. Thor closed his missing eye, and he let out a breath.
Carefully, he sat where he stood, wary of shifting debris. He still looked down on the girls, but now it was not so much, and he couldn't suddenly lunge towards them as they seemed to fear. He sent the spark that gave them light off to the far end of the basement, fixing it against the wall. The shadows were longer, but no more was there a reminder of his power between them, a silent threat. He should have thought of how they would see it sooner. Again, he sighed.
"Tell me about Helka." It was no demand, but an invitation.
Sunniva swallowed, and after a moment, she began to speak.
A beam of white carved through the ranks and towards the portal, an unearthly screech coming with it. Whatever it was, it wasn't ice, as it sliced off limbs and split one unfortunate foe from groin to crown. When it hit the portal, the uncanny rippling froze, but only for a moment. The next it began to twist and churn as if boiling, and the coherence of its rim began to waver. The red tint to it wavered, paling and darkening in turn as it seemed to resist whatever sorcery was disrupting it, and by the grace of Thor, the flood of new daemons paused.
The Bloodletters already through had recovered, and they were not content to watch. They threw themselves at the dragon with abandon, bloodlust heavy in the air, each competing with the other to be the first to wet their swords with her blood. They seemed to have forgotten the mortal defenders entirely. They should have known better.
A boy appeared in their way, gap toothed grin seasoned with savagery. "Thor!" Lightning lanced out, coursing between those closest, setting them to tumbling.
Bjorn was already there to take advantage, whirling about to seize any daemon close enough, crushing skulls with his bare hands and adding to the gore already plastered up to his elbows. His scream was drowned out by the continuing screech of the white beam, but he did not seem to realise. The baresark was not content to plant himself between the foe and the dragon, however, rage driving him onwards, and he dove into a knot of approaching foes. Soon, he was not the only one screaming.
Harad and Helena were moving to the right, seeking to plant themselves before the dragon, but they found themselves bogged down, the daemons closest still driven towards them by something unseen. Wolfric, Eirik, and Halvar could not get past them, nor could they risk stepping back without leaving them vulnerable. The three men pushed forward instead, trying to take advantage of the shift in the current of the rush of enemies, but there were still too many, and for all their blessings, they were still daemons.
Wolfric blew a daemon back with a flick of his sword, turning its shoulder to paste, but then movement above caught his eye. For all the destruction, some of the row of houses still remained. At the end of them, in the half shattered remains of someone's home, a daemon was preparing to jump from the upper level.
"LEIFNIR!" he bellowed. "Above!"
A white eye turned to him, but she did not cease her assault on the portal; if anything the screech seemed to intensify, setting a thrumming in their bones. The daemon leapt, black blade held down before it, aiming for Leifnir's back, where neck met body. Its long tongue trailed out the side of its mouth, jagged teeth bared in grotesque joy.
A bolt of lightning took it through the chest, turning its falling strike into a graceless fall, and what could have been a mortal blow became an annoyance. The falling blade left a scuff mark down Leifnir's side, and her tail lashed in anger, taking out another section of the building behind her, but that was little damage compared to what came next.
Kirsa and Trumpetter had been forced back by Leifnir's arrival, but the bolt marked their return, and they were not content to remain behind the dragon's bulk. The mammoth trampled forward on Leifnir's right, lightning tusks clearing a path as he charged into the daemons, even as Kirsa readied another bolt. More daemons seemed ready to use the remainder of the structure to launch themselves at Leifnir, but then Trumpetter collided with it, powering through it without a hint of slowing. The sound of daemons being vaporised cracked through the air over the crumbling of timber, and above it all the screech of the white beam continued.
It was too much for the portal, whatever fell power that had opened swept away by the scouring light, and it collapsed upon itself. One moment it was there, the next it was gone, and a pressure that had come with it vanished. The beam of light ceased, Leifnir closing her jaw; heavy breaths misted the air. There was a sudden stutter in the flow of battle, as the Bloodletters felt the connection cut.
The last of the row of buildings fell as Trumpetter and Kirsa emerged from the end - behind the crowd of enemies. Caught between blessed warriors, blessed mammoth, and a frost dragon, the Khornate daemons only knew joy, ready to see blood spilt in the name of their God. That it would be theirs clearly did not matter, so long as the blood flowed. That they were cut off did not seem to matter, and they began to fight for the best position when the battle resumed.
"Unworthy," Kirsa said, glaring down at them from her perch. Her voice was layered with a tone not her own, crackling. "None of you are worthy."
A ball of lightning zipped around Wolfric's shoulders, as if caught in the pull of the lightning around his mantle. A breath later it turned into a young boy, glee and enthusiasm no longer there, replaced by a look of seriousness beyond his years. His head tilted, as if listening to something. "You're all cowards. You used to be fighters, but you got used to not dying." He scowled at them, lip jutting out. "You're lucky Thor isn't here."
The words took a moment to settle. A heartbeat later, the Bloodletters erupted in a clamour of shrieks and rage, charging in a frenzy. Some went for Kirsa and Trumpetter. Some went for Leifnir. Some went for Ragnar. Some for Harad and Helena. They all died, leaving behind corpses that were already starting to slough into muck, and rage that was already starting to be carried away by the wind.
In the aftermath, those that had fought stopped to catch their breath. Some had faced and killed greater foes in the past, but a swarm of Bloodletters was still nothing to be dismissed out of hand, and they found themselves grateful for Thor's blessings that day, whether they had been granted them or not. There were injuries here and there, but they were small things, easily ignored by warriors such as they, although Ragnar sulked over the toe he had hurt kicking a decapitated head away. Bjorn was slumped to his knees, slowly coming back to himself, new wounds bleeding sluggishly as old wounds pulsed an angry red.
"What now?" Wolfric asked, leaning on his sword. He could feel the shroud around his mantle fading, and aches and soreness that had been held back by borrowed strength began to set in. He jolted as rational thought returned. His sisters, he had to get to the grove to make sure they were safe, to make sure-
"They are not of Decay," Harad said, his voice rumbling over the field of battle. "They will leave no sickness behind." He let his axe fall to the side, unthinkable for most, but more important to him was taking his wife in his arms. The shieldmaiden let herself be gathered up in them, each taking solace in the other.
It would not be right to push them now. "Eirik, see to Bjorn," Wolfric told the big man at his back. The Aesling had gotten his sisters out of the house, and seeing the shattered state of it now, it had clearly saved their lives. Aesling or not, he owed the baresark.
Halvar followed his friend, and between the two of them they soon had Bjorn on his feet, slowly, very slowly, helping him away from the carnage, even as they tried to move around the dragon.
Trumpetter's feet squelched in the muck as he walked across the field. His extra size seemed to have faded away, as had the tusks of power, but he still bore Kirsa easily on his back. She was glaring at Leifnir, even as the last motes of Thor's power faded from her eyes. "You are the dragon that took Lord Thor's eye?"
Leifnir had been inspecting the scuff mark left by the daemon blade on her scales, but now she looked up, her frill splaying outwards. "I am not 'the dragon', I am Leifnir, daughter of Ymirdrak, and I was paid with his eye," she said.
Kirsa's glare only deepened, not flinching a jot as Leifnir met her glare with her own.
Wolfric found himself glad to have the reassurance of his sword in hand, even as Eirik and Halvar shared a glance and switched from helping Bjorn to walk to taking his weight upon themselves, hurrying past the confrontation.
"It's true, Kirsa," Wolfric said, stepping up to them. Neither took their eyes off the other. "My sisters, they are near, you can heal them now?" He closed his mouth before more words could tumble from his lips unbidden.
"I can. However…fighting the corrupted was not part of our deal," Leifnir said, white glare pinning him in place. Queasily, one eye remained on Kirsa, continuing their staredown. "I presume you have a way of making this up to me?"
Wolfirc set himself grimly. He knew what he had to do.
X
Thor landed heavily before the longhouse, and his stride did not slow as he reached the doors. His worry for his peo- for those under his protection saw him barge through them without care, and they swung open with enough force to crash loudly against the walls, announcing his presence as much as the sparking of Stormbreaker.
The voice of the Thunder God boomed out within the longhall. "Who dares-!?! Oh."
A full hall stared back at him, many with cutlery half raised. Someone's drink spilled onto their table as they overfilled their cup.
Thor lowered his axe, allowing his power to fade. Well, it still wasn't the most embarrassing entrance he'd made to a feast. "Carry on," he told those closest.
A snort drew his attention, and he looked to the head of the hall. The dragon lounging behind the main table drew his eye first, and it was she who had snorted at his words, sending a flurry of snow into the rafters, but there were others there that he recognised too. Kirsa and Wolfric were there of course, as were the local veterans Halvar and Eirik, but he did not spy Harad and Helena, he did not spy Bjorn, and he did not spy the twins. Hours had passed, somehow, between his departure and return, and he worried what he had missed. For all that he had given of his power to those who had faith, there were many powers in the world, and he was but one of them.
"Lord Thor," Wolfric called, rising from his seat with relief in his single eye. "You have returned."
"Helka may have been a foul foe, hiding her nature as she did, but once revealed her strength of arm was weak," Thor called back, beginning to make his way to the main table. It seemed to signal those in the hall to return to their feasting, for all that he was still the centre of their attention.
"Yet she still took you the day to vanquish?" Leifnir asked, a lazy lilt to her voice. Without even trying, her words filled the hall. Her tongue snaked out into a nearby barrel, and whatever liquid it contained seemed to flow up it into her mouth.
"Hardly," Thor said, scoffing. "She did not survive more than scant moments, once I removed her from this place." He frowned. "No, my return was…delayed. I chose haste over prudence, and in doing so made myself vulnerable to another power."
"It is to my gain," Leifnir said, not quite shrugging. "Your quaint little fiefdom has been hosting me for some hours, now."
"It is not my village," Thor corrected her, something that saw her frill ripple and Kirsa smirk at her. He had reached the head of the hall now, but there was only one seat available at the main table, but it belonged to Tyra, and he would not take it. The rest had been removed to make room for Leifnir. He sat instead at the end of the firepit, facing the main table, and used its flames to clean his hands. "Its chief has ventured out in service to its people, and I watch over it until she returns." He turned his gaze to his two followers before she could respond. "What has happened in my absence? I heard your prayers."
Wolfric had returned to his seat, and he and Kirsa shared a look. Whatever unspoken words passed saw him leaning forward to answer. "After you took Helka, a portal came, opening the way for Bloodletters. With your blessing, we slew them, and the townspeople that Grigori rallied did not need to join the fight."
There was a heavy sigh from deeper in the hall, audible only to Thor's godly perception, and he glanced back to see Stephan, the skald holding a hand to his brow in almost physical pain.
"Leifnir arrived to aid us, and she closed the portal. In return, we have hosted a feast in her honour," Wolfric continued.
"Most generous," Thor said, withdrawing his hands from the fire. Such a thing was not easily done when their supplies were as they were, but it was a cheap way to repay a dragon as such things went. "And how are Astrid and Elsa recovering?"
"They have not yet been healed," Wolfric said, glaring out the corner of his remaining eye at the dragon beside him.
Thor paused. As best he could reckon, it had been hours since they attack. Slowly, his gaze shifted to Leifnir. "Is that so?" There was a rumble to his voice, one that did not come from within the hall but from the skies above.
"The sick rest in your grove," Leifnir said, piercing a roasted haunch on the table with a single talon, raising it to her mouth to daintily pull it off with her tongue. "They will not sicken further in the time it takes me to enjoy the payment for my aid."
Her words suggested a lack of care, but Thor's eyes saw the very tip of her tail flick and lash, before she stilled it. He crossed his arms, giving her a flat stare as his foot tapped on the stone floor. "Leifnir."
Behind him, the feasters seemed to hold their breath.
The dragon met his stare for a moment, but then she blinked, making a sound of disgust. "Closing the portal was…taxing," she said, acting as if the admittance had been drawn from her with hot irons.
"That is understandable," Thor said, nodding as he uncrossed his arms. "To attempt the healing while lacking in strength would be to do poorly by the girls. I hope you have been able to eat your -" he froze as something occurred to him. "You remember that I told you the mammoth is not for eating, yes?"
Leifnir was staring down at him, slit pupils narrowed, but in bemusement, not anger.
"Trumpetter is in your grove," Kirsa hastened to reassure him. "He was tired after the battle, and wanted to stay with the twins."
"The battle?" Thor asked, alarmed. "He fought?
"You granted him your power?" Kirsa asked more than said.
"I granted my power to those of my believers whose need was true," Thor said. "I didn't know who was asking for it!"
"You give your power so freely?" Leifnir asked, bringing her head down to their level, looking at him closely. She had fallen silent after his easy acceptance of her words, but now her attention had been drawn anew.
"Why would I not?" Thor asked. "They needed my aid."
"Yet you bartered with me for my aid in healing this one's sisters like a human merchant," Leifnir said.
"You wanted my axe, the final creation of the Dwarf King Eitri," Thor argued. "My eye is a fine consolation prize."
Leifnir gave a draconic shrug. "It is a fine enough thing, true," she said, regaining some of her regal air.
Considering he took it from the loot drawer of a group of vagabonds, he felt he was getting good value out of it, but he wasn't about to admit that aloud. "Trumpetter is fine then? He's alright?"
"We slew many, even before Leifnir arrived," Kirsa said, a hint of a boast in her tone.
"Oh?" Thor asked, a smile stealing across his face. It was good to see her coming into her own. "You must tell me more. Actually - Stephan!" he called over his shoulder "Come, so that you might hear better. This is a tale that deserves a skald's retelling, I am sure!"
Kirsa seemed to already be regretting her words, but at Thor's enthusiastic look, she gave in. Stephan was only the first to approach the main table, hunger for the story clear in his eyes. Many followed, crowding around the ends of the eating tables, while a small crowd of children grew around Thor's feet, joining him in looking at her expectantly.
Wolfric gave her a look of commiseration, angling himself to face her, something mirrored even by Leifnir from her other side, but then a thought seemed to cross Kirsa's mind, followed by a smile.
"Wolfric," she said, "you were part of the fight from the beginning. Perhaps you would like to start?" Her expression was cherubic.
Expectant gazes swung to the one eyed warrior. He swallowed, and some of the tension that had eased after learning that Leifnir was unable to see his sisters just then rather than unwilling, crept back in. "Well…"
Thor listened as the tale began, keeping a level expression as he learned how close the town had come to ruin. Had he not granted those who believed his power, little Ragnar would be dead, as would dozens of townspeople that Grigori had rallied in defence of their home. But he had, and they didn't, so he would only harm himself to linger on it.
Hearing that all had survived the fight eased his soul, and he could remonstrate with himself for his impatience rather than curse his lack of learning. For all that he had come far, he still had much to learn and more to experience before he was worthy to be a King.
Such thoughts were pushed away as Thor focused on the story, beaming as he heard of how Kirsa had thrown a bolt through the Bloodletter aiming to interrupt Leifnir's disruption of the portal. If he had to pretend not to see the smug look she sent the dragon as she told the tale, well, rivalries could be good to encourage growth.
"...the corpses were already falling apart, so we did not need to gather them for burning, and Harad tells us they do not spread disease as the bodies of Rot do," Wolfric finished. "We brought Leifnir here to feast in thanks, and now we only need to wait until she can heal my sisters." Now that it was as good as settled, a calmness had returned to him, one that had been missing since he had first gotten the news of their sickness.
"That is a grand tale indeed," Thor said. He glanced at Stephan. The dark haired man was not quite muttering to himself, mouth moving silently. "I feel we will have a tale to pass down by the time Tyra returns."
"All we did, we did in your name, Lord Thor," Kirsa said.
"But you were the ones to do it," Thor said. "Do not discount your deeds. Today, you were all worthy. All of you."
Kirsa flushed with happiness, Wolfric only slightly more stoic, and even Leifnir's tail gave a small wiggle.
"But tell me," Thor said, and here his good cheer faded, "how does Bjorn fare? He was exposed to Decay's touch as he rescued the twins."
"He lives," Eirik said, nursing a mug of ale at one of the side tables. "Halvar and I took him to your grove, and his pain eased, but…" he shook his head. "No healer."
"Better no healer than what we had," someone grumbled lowly.
Dark mutterings spread around the hall, as townsfolk thought back to this or that malady she had had a hand in healing, and what the truth of her actions might have been.
"What of her apprentices?" Thor asked, cutting through the building discussion. "Selinda and Sunniva."
There was a pause, and none could answer.
"I saw them when I spoke to Bjorn, earlier," Kirsa said. One hand went to chestnut hair, worrying at a strand. "But since the battle…"
"I spoke briefly with Selinda, before I confronted Helka," Thor said. "Has no one seen her since?"
None had.
"We found no bodies when we dug through the rubble," someone called from further down the hall.
"What if they learned from their hag grandmother? They could be brewing something as we feast," a woman worried.
"Maybe they fled?"
"What if-"
"We should-"
"Let us not be over quick to judge them," Thor said, raising a hand. He remembered the poorly hidden wariness they had for the false wise woman, but he did not speak on it. "We will deal with what is, not what might be. Do not let fear colour your actions."
The crowd settled, but the worry had revealed to Thor the true state of the town in the wake of the day's events. It was not an easy thing to be without a healer, as the raiders had well known when they had butchered the woman who had held the role before Helka returned.
"We will find another who can help Vinteerholm, in time," Thor reassured them. He rose to his feet, turning to face the room at large. "For now, let us eat and be merry, for a boil has been lanced from your home!"
Ignoring grim realities was something that all Norscans were practised at, and at Thor's direction they were more than happy to do so. While only a small portion of the town's population could be hosted in the longhall at a time, there were still more than enough to enjoy the moment. Those who had the bravery to come in spite of the presence of a dragon were well rewarded. For all that the day's struggle was one that only few had stood in, they still knew what a danger had been lifted from them, the nature of the threat that had been purged, and they were glad.
Thor moved from group to group, sharing words and reassurances, moving on before his presence became too much. It made it easy to slip from the hall as the evening wore on, leaving with but a nod to the three at the main table.
Outside, the night was cool, and the stars bright. Morrslieb had shied away, but Mannslieb still shone, and a fresh dusting of snow had fallen upon the ground. Spring approached, but for now Thor would enjoy the crunch of it beneath his boots, and he took his time as he walked back towards what remained of the street the house of healing had once stood upon.
As he had seen before, one row of houses were reduced to naught but splinters and rubble. It was fortunate that all who lived within had been out working in the wake of his decision to confront Helka. All except her apprentices.
Thor regarded the destruction, glancing over to where the leavings of the Bifrost and the Chaos portal intermingled. Chunks of what looked like obsidian marred woven lines, but that was not what Thor had come to see. Using it as a point of reference, Thor came to the spot where the healer's house had once stood. It looked much like the remains of the rest of the row of houses, but he remembered the interior, and he remembered where the basement stairs had been. With a thought, his armour was dismissed, leaving him in roughspun cloth that did not flatter his figure nearly as well. He knelt down and began to dig, his bare hands more than enough for the task.
As he dug, he allowed his mind to roam, contemplating his actions and what he could have done better. He could not think of a better way to deal with Helka, nor even a better way to confront her, not with the lack of surety he had had. When he considered his actions after leaving Asgard, Old and New and all at once, however, he found himself wanting. Haste could be a virtue, was necessary at times, but he had known that there was a danger lurking unseen, known that something about using the Bifrost in this new realm that worried at his instinct, but still he had allowed himself to dismiss that worry in favour of haste. He still lacked the wisdom required of a King. He could even guess where the beacon of safety would have led him, so close he could have-
A muffled sound pulled him from his thoughts, breaking the spiral, and he stopped digging. His ears strained; had he heard someone moving in a nearby house, or had he - ? It came again, and this time he was sure. He began digging again, shovelling dirt and debris to the side, building a pile half as tall as himself already. The hole grew with it, and he did not meet plain dirt or clay; he was on the right track. More muffled sounds came to his ear, and this time it was clear that they were voices.
Rubble was no barrier to a god, and soon he was scraping against a stone wall, and finding the broken remains of a wooden staircase. The collapse of the building had seen debris spill into the basement, leaving him with more to dig out. Had he not heard the voices, he would have worried that those he sought had been crushed in the very place they had sought sanctuary.
When he broke through, it was sudden, and the debris he was standing on began to slide out from under him. He waited for it to settle, peering into the darkness that had been revealed.
"Hello?" he called softly. There was no answer, and he grew concerned. It was pitch black within the basement; if his excavations had come as a surprise to those within he may very well have buried them.
A spark rose from his hand, slowly tracing a meandering path into the black. It gave off a faint light, only enough to softly illuminate a few feet, but that was enough. In the corner of the basement, dirtied by sweat and rubble, Helka's two apprentices huddled together, eyes wide with fear as they looked up at him.
"The daemons are gone," Thor told them, making no move to enter the basement proper. For all that they were among some of the first people he had ever met in this world, that they had cared for Tyra after he had taken her from the longship he found her on, he had shared scant few words with them.
They did not budge at his words, save to hold each other tighter.
"Helka is dead," Thor said. He watched their reactions closely, but he could not tell if the short breaths they let out were due to relief or fear. Looking back on their bearing with the knowledge of what Helka truly was painted their behaviours in a new light, but was that the truth, or just another layer of deception by foulness masquerading as healing? He could not say for sure. "You need not fear her."
The sisters - and they had to be, next to each other the resemblance was clear - shared a glance, but only for a moment, as if they feared what he would do if they looked away.
"You killed grandmother?" the one with the braid, Sunniva, asked. Her voice was as hoarse as ever.
"I did," Thor said plainly. "She brought pain and suffering where she should have brought relief, and for that I cut her down."
This time, the relief that crept into them was clear, and they eased their apparent attempts to become one with the corner. But was it truth, or more deception? He wanted to do right, to make the just choice, but the memory of Helena's expression when she arrived to hear Helka's words made him slow to trust.
"But, the twins?" Selinda said, barely more than a whisper. "Did she heal them?"
"She was the one who sickened them in the first place," Thor said, and he could not help but let a sliver of his feelings into his voice.
Selinda froze, and Sunniva pulled her into her side.
Thor sighed. "I am sorry. Astrid and Elsa are dear to me, and my fury is for those who meant them ill."
Selinda shook her head in short, shallow jerks, almost trembling, but it was Sunniva who spoke. "We didn't, we wouldn't, we just brewed what grandmother told us to."
He wanted to believe them. They were barely more than girls, younger than Kirsa even. "Even if you did do something, something that led to harm, you can choose another path," Thor said. "If you worshipped Decay-"
"We will never worship the Grandfather!" Selinda burst out, going from cowering to snarling in an instant.
Thor was taken aback, almost unbalanced on his precarious footing by the sudden shift, but a moment later it was gone, and the fear was back threefold as she realised what she had done. He saw that fear, and hated that he was the cause of it. To dither in his decision was unworthy of him, and he opened his missing right eye to look with sight beyond sight.
The oily sheen that was Decay's touch dripped from them, and his spirits fell as he saw it - but then he saw that for all it clung to them, shared between them with every reassuring touch, it did not come from them. They were infected with it, but they did not generate it. Not as Helka had with every breath. Thor closed his missing eye, and he let out a breath.
Carefully, he sat where he stood, wary of shifting debris. He still looked down on the girls, but now it was not so much, and he couldn't suddenly lunge towards them as they seemed to fear. He sent the spark that gave them light off to the far end of the basement, fixing it against the wall. The shadows were longer, but no more was there a reminder of his power between them, a silent threat. He should have thought of how they would see it sooner. Again, he sighed.
"Tell me about Helka." It was no demand, but an invitation.
Sunniva swallowed, and after a moment, she began to speak.
Home Improvement 9
- Location
- Australia
"Grandmother was…stern," Sunniva said. Selinda shifted against her, mouth a thin line, but she kept whatever correction she wanted to make to herself. "She took us in after we lost our parents, fed us and clothed us even in the bad years."
As a grandmother should, Thor thought, though he held his tongue.
"When we were old enough, she started to teach us her craft," Sunniva continued, her voice seeming to catch on itself. One hand twitched towards her braid, as if to worry at it, but she didn't relinquish her hold on Selinda. "Small things at first, like which herbs to gather and how to prepare them."
Again Selinda shifted, but again she kept her thoughts to herself.
"When did you discover her devotion to Decay?" Thor asked.
"We didn't think she worshipped, not like that," Sunniva said, swallowing.
"We knew," Selinda said, gaze fixed on her feet.
"Sel!"
"We were fifteen, and one of the village boys tried to force Sun," Selinda said, still not looking up. "Gra- Helka said she would fix him, and she did."
"That doesn't mean she worshipped the Grandfather," Sunniva insisted. "A healer has to know what not to do, too!"
"He rotted from inside out," Selinda said, unforgiving in her reminder.
"He was Hound favoured, and we had no warrior to stand for us," Sunniva said, gaze roving from her sister to Thor and back. "Giving him a bad brew was the only way."
"That wasn't a botched brew," Selinda said, hunching in on herself even further. Despite their words, neither gave any indication of easing their grip on the other. "A bad brew wouldn't do that. Even back then we knew that much."
"We thought she had chosen the Raven, not the Crow," Sunniva argued.
"We thought that because when we asked how she avoided the Grandfather, we got the shivers," Selinda said, almost spitting, like years worth of venom was frothing to the surface all at once. "And when you didn't listen to me when I said not to ask how she had made a potion for coughs rot that boy alive, you got Red Throat!"
"Because I was helping Erik when he had it!"
"For weeks, but you only caught it when you angered Helka!" Selinda said, low and fast. "Every time! Every time we asked a question she didn't like, we got sick. You just learned to ignore it." She subsided, burying her face in her sister's neck.
The basement was quiet in the wake of Selinda's outburst, and if not for the glance Sunniva shot at him as she held her sister close, Thor might have thought they had forgotten his presence.
"Betrayal is only so vile because it comes from one close to us," Thor said. His voice was heavy with old memories.
"We didn't know she worshipped the Crow," Sunniva insisted, but there was no fire to her words. "But we didn't think she avoided him, either."
"I do not imagine a healer that consorts with Decay would be trusted," Thor said.
"Everyone knows that the Crow loves healers the most," Sunniva said, and it was a bitter thing, a truth that had long weighed on her.
"And so she let your people think she worshipped Manipulation," Thor said, clasping his hands together.
The siblings nodded as one.
"Who did you choose?"
The words were spoken calmly, but they still set a stillness into the hearts of the two before him.
"Tchar," they said as one.
Thor could not help but scowl, for all that no presence came with the name of his foe.
"We needed his cunning to avoid the Grandfather," Selinda said, peeking back up at him.
"Not everyone can be like Wolfric," Sunniva said, the soft glow of his spark reflected in her eyes. "You have to pick one of them."
"And now, that you have a choice?" Thor asked. "Would you choose Manipulation again?"
Sunniva licked dry lips. "Do you…ask for our worship?"
"We will," Selinda was quick to say. "We can worship you-" she cut herself off.
"I will never demand your worship," Thor told them. "You need not fear my might for lack of devotion, and I offer my protection to the innocent no matter their origin. However…" and here he spoke bluntly, unable to moderate his words even to ease their worries, "...nor will I abide the worship of a cancer that would have you plot harm against those that should be your neighbours." As he spoke, his words revealed a truth to him that he had not consciously considered. He had been content to lure the people of this land away from the Chaos Gods, to show them a better path by his own example, but no more. The cost was not one he would choose to pay.
The sisters shared a look, communicating without words. Selinda gave an encouraging nod, and Sunniva let out a breath.
"We could follow a god like that," Sunniva said. "We…I have heard the words of your priestess."
"Wolfric follows," Selinda said, like this was an important consideration. "He spoke of you as we cared for his sisters."
Thor smiled. It was not a grand, beaming thing full of cheer, but something quieter, more reserved. Perhaps they were lying, perhaps they would hold fast to the Schemer and use their position to rise in its esteem - but he did not think so. He would have faith in them, and perhaps in time they would come to have true faith in him.
Hesitantly, the smile was returned, the sharp edge of wariness fading from the girls for all that the bulk of it remained.
"Come," he said. "It is time you leave this place behind." He rose from his shaky seat, and carefully picked his way up and back out into the night air.
Sunniva and Selinda followed, leaning into each other on unsteady feet after hours of sheltering in the basement. Thor reached down to lend them a helping hand, guiding them upwards and onwards, and then they were standing in the shattered remains of what had once been the entry to their house.
Mannslieb was bright after their time in the darkness, but they did not shy away, breathing deeply of the fresh air.
Sunniva turned to him, swaying with slight dizziness. "Thank you, godl- God of Thunder."
"She's really gone," Selinda said, still looking out at the remains of the battle, eyes fixed on the point where the Bifrost and the chaos portal had touched the world. Like her sister, she too swayed in place. "We ow-"
Thor laughed. "Do not speak of debts, for I know it was you who cared for Astrid and Elsa as they lay sick." He called to Stormbreaker, and swept up the two of them with one arm. "Tomorrow we see to their healing, but tonight there is a feast in the hall, and everyone will be pleased to know that you do not share her taint."
Stormbreaker arrived from the darkness, and then they were flying, twin yelps pulled from them as they made for the longhall. They would be be better served by a hearty meal and a bath than by hobbling through the town, and on the morrow, Leifnir would heal the twins, easing the worries of all.
Subtly, Thor looked with his missing eye, piercing the divine, and though it was slight he saw that the oily touch upon them had eased, even if only a touch. The rot upon both pairs of sisters would soon be cleansed.
X
The day dawned brightly, and the leaves of the grove rustled lightly around them as they stood in the centre of the grove. It was to be a fine day, as Thor oversaw a gathering of those with cause to be there…but the promise of the day was threatening to sour.
"Excuse me?" Thor said, voice near rumbling in his chest. He had heard the words well, but he wished to hear them again all the same.
Leifnir's lip pulled back in a snarl. "This is the touch of the Unclean himself," she said. "I cannot heal this."
The grove was not so large nor its paths so wide as to accommodate her form, but that was before she had shrunk herself to barely more than the height of a man. She was perched by the mat that Astrid and Elsa lay upon, still comatose, under the shade of the ash tree. The tree had undergone another growth spurt seemingly overnight, but that was a distant thing to those present.
"Did we not make a deal?" Thor asked, the furrow of his brow deepening.
He was not the only one to take the news less than sanguinely. Wolfric was next to him, standing on the other side of the twins from the dragon, and he stared at her unblinking.
An expression of draconic discontent spread across Leifnir's face. "A deal was made, but there is a world between a sickness and the working that lays upon-"
"Was I not clear when I said the touch of Decay lay upon them? Did you think I was exaggerating?" Thor asked.
Leifnir shuffled in place, resettling herself. "...perhaps."
Those present held their tongues as they watched, none eager to insert themselves into a disagreement between a god and a dragon. Kirsa stood at Thor's other side, while Harad and Helana watched from their right, facing the tree. They had not left each other's side for a moment since the battle. Bjorn was nearby as well, though he sat in a chair, unwilling to be confined to a bed but unable to stand on his own, and he was watched over by Sunniva and Selinda.
"Do I seem a man prone to exaggerations?" Thor asked. "In matters such as this?" he added on.
"Many a pox have I seen that was named the touch of Decay," Leifnir said, tip of her tail lashing angrily. "None have been born of the breath of the Plague Lord himself."
"But it is, and we made a deal," Thor said, putting a hand on Wolfric's shoulder. "Should Astrid and Elsa worsen beyond all reach-"
"They will not," Leifnir was quick to snap. "The aura of your grove has arrested its progression; they slumber but do not fall deeper."
Thor glanced at his ash tree, and he was not the only one.
"She is right," Bjorn spoke up, steady voice imparting a measure of calm. "I can feel the burn of my wounds, but the filth in them stilled when I was brought here." His bare chest was a swollen mass of barely healed gouges and scars split open, inflamed and angry. He bore it stoically, though it was clear the words still tired him.
"Hmmm." Thor let out a noise as he considered. This was not how he had hoped the day would begin, but he did still have the Feather, and surely somehow…
"It is my failing," Leifnir admitted, grudgingly, and as if in great pain. "To make good, I would be willing to give of my blood. It may not be heartblood, but dragon blood willingly given is powerful all the same."
"I know the elixir," Helena said. The kindness that Thor had come to expect in her was missing, dampened by the revelation of the day prior, but still she fought to keep moving. "I would not trust myself to brew it, not quickly, but I know it."
"We know it," Selinda said, though she seemed surprised at herself for speaking up. She let her hair fall across her face as looks were sent her way.
"We began it before Grandmother took over," Sunniva said, shifting forward slightly to take the attention upon herself. "We could brew it."
"'Grandmother'?" Helena asked, turning to the girls.
The girls flinched under her gaze. At Thor's explanation the night prior, only few had still regarded them with suspicion, but still they had been fearful of mistrust and what might come of it. "Helka."
Harad let out a noise that was at first mistaken for a rumble from Leifnir's chest.
"She was not your grandmother, she had no-" she cut herself off, unwilling to speak more on such a topic. "It does not matter. If you trust them, we could brew it."
"I know it, also," Bjorn said. "Though to replace heartblood…"
"Mighty blood," Thor murmured to himself.
"If it is the power of the blood," Kirsa said, almost in the same instant. She looked to Thor, hesitant, but it was clear they had had the same thought.
"With lives in the balance, are you sure you wish to make that offer?" Harad asked. His voice was the same rumble it always was, but his eyes were almost accusing as he looked at Thor.
Kirsa bristled at the implication, and even Wolfric stirred from his glaring at Leifnir.
"You are a good man, Harad," Thor said, and he was, to all but suggest that he was only playing at godhood. "There would be no such problem."
"Then you should know that there will be consequences all the same," Harad said, meeting his eyes without hesitation. "When mortals take something of the divine within themselves, they are changed."
Thor inclined his head to the old warrior, taking his point. It was not an easy choice to make, but at least he had choices before himself.
"To be sure," he said, looking around, "there is no potion or elixir to be brewed that could heal them on its own?"
"Not for a sickness brewed in his own cauldron," Sunniva said.
"No," Helena said, shaking her head, "they can be defeated."
Sunniva blinked. "What? But-" she cut herself off, perhaps realising that the one to tell her so was not unbiased.
"If the Crow's own plagues could not be overcome, he would not have to create more," Helena said, "but the girls do not have the time for us to find a cure." She gave Leifnir a considering look. "Willingly given…a dragon's blood might be enough to contest the taint enough for a hallowing." Her gaze went to Thor, and it was clear she harboured the same doubts as her husband.
Leifnir almost preened.
"Leifnir has strength aplenty, to be sure," Thor acknowledged, "but I will not trust their lives to an uncertainty. I offer my own blood." Harad and Helena may hold doubts, while Kirsa and Wolfric held not enough, but he knew his strength, and he knew the strength of his foe. He could not yet contest Decay outright, but to hallow his taint? That he could do. The only trick was to ensure the girls would survive the scouring.
"Is my blood not enough?" Leifnir asked, frill rising. "Kings have lost great treasures in pursuit of such a thing!"
The ire of a dragon was not easily discounted, though Thor and Harad were left unaffected.
"Fear not, Leifnir," Thor told her, "we will find a way for you to earn my eye."
"Good," Leifnir said, satisfied.
"What do you need for the elixir?" Wolfric asked of Helena, speaking for the first time.
"We will have to gather the ingredients anew; I would not trust any even if we recovered them from the ruins," Helena said.
"Well that Grigori is cleansing them with fire," Kirsa said.
"Tell me what they are, and I will retrieve them," Wolfric demanded.
"You are no herbalist, Harad and I will find them," Helena said.
This was not an answer that appealed to Wolfric, and he scowled.
"I could show you," Selinda offered, almost too quietly to be heard.
Wolfric still heard, and didn't waste more than a moment looking the sisters over. "If Lord Thor trusts you, I will trust you. Show me, and I will protect you."
There was a short, quiet disagreement between Sunniva and Selinda over who would stay to watch over Bjorn and who would go with Wolfric, but it was solved when the baresark told them both to go, for five eyes were better than three, but there was a glint to his own that suggested that was not his only reason.
As that was happening, Helena approached Thor, Harad staying close. "You are sure of this?" she asked him.
"I am," Thor answered.
"You may doubt him, but you saw the might of his blessings," Kirsa said in his defence. "You do not have to believe in Lord Thor's divinity, but you cannot doubt his strength."
Thor gave her an approving glance, reaching over to ruffle her hair. She coloured, but made no move to escape his touch. "This is why people keep thinking you my priestess," he told her, and at that she squirmed.
The couple were not convinced, not fully, but they had indeed witnessed feats to judge him favourably against a dragon, and they questioned him no more.
No more time was wasted, and a quick discussion was held between those who would do the searching as they divvied up the ingredients between them. The five of them set out from the grove without delay, the gathering coming to an end. The elixir would take a week to brew, but Helka had underestimated him from the start in setting her trap, and they had time, especially with the effect of the grove on the workings of the enemy.
It was a difficult thing, to be forced to wait after thinking the solution to their recent troubles so imminent, but all kept themselves busy. The ingredients were found within the day, and then the brewing began under the leaves of the ash tree. The slumber of Astrid and Elsa continued beside them, ample motivation, and Wolfric held a vigil as they worked, feeding his sisters goat milk and honey.
A strange mood settled over Vinteerholm. Work continued on the new walls, and the effects of Helka's deeds were felt. Crow-touched healers had been long feared for the ultimate end of those they ministered, and all knew their fortune in avoiding such a fate. All took time to thank the Thunder God, but there was a wariness to their prayers for some. They had heard the challenge, the insult he had given to Chaos over Skraevold, and they could not help but feel that the time he spent waiting for Wolfric One-Eye's sisters to be healed was more akin to the calm before the storm than anything else.
Perhaps though, their wariness could be laid at the feet of the dragon that had taken up temporary residence in their home. There was some adjustment to be made when one found oneself fishing from the same river that a great pale dragon was bathing in. There was some gossip of a great healing work that it would lay upon the town, one that the Thunder God had paid for with his own eye, but surely that was only gossip.
With three hands on the brewing process, there was time for them to see to Bjorn as well, and it became clear that without the aura of the grove, he would be in dire straits. The infection he had caught getting the twins clear of danger was a potent one, but under the aegis of the grove, he began to recover, if slowly. It would be a path of months ahead of him, but the baresark did not regret the deeds that had set him upon it. Between that, and the Kislevite Grigori rallying the townspeople to fight, those who were new to Vinteerholm found themselves met with fewer sneers and cold shoulders as they went about their business. It was a strange thing to find themselves adjusting to life in a Norscan town, but they found themselves doing so all the same.
Eventually, the limbo of waiting came to an end, a watched pot finally boiling after seven days and nights. The elixir was ready for the final ingredient, and all gathered in the grove once more. This time, however, they had an audience. Townspeople of all kinds had come, from fighters to fishermen, elders to youths, united only by the strength of their faith…to one god, or another.
"It is time," Helena told him, as they stood by the ash tree. It was twice the height of Thor now, and it had sheltered the elixir from the elements as it was brewed over an open fire.
There was a solemnity to the occasion, those most involved gathered around Astrid and Elsa's still forms, while those who had come to observe remained a respectful distance back. The sky was a clear blue, but there was the sense that a storm lurked just over the horizon.
Thor took up a twig of ash, and used it to prick his thumb. A drop of blood welled up, a rich red, and he let it fall into the small cauldron, plopping into the amber liquid.
Immediately the elixir began to churn and froth, not like a pot brought to the boil, but like the sea in a storm. Amber began to brighten, almost shining, though it cast no light. Wolfric scarcely breathed, but none were absent of worry as they watched the product of their work react to godsblood, freely given. After what was only a minute, but felt like much longer, the storm in the cauldron settled. It was the same shade of blue-white that was familiar to those who had witnessed Thor's might, the colour of his power.
"Kirsa," Thor said. "Two cups."
Kirsa stepped forward, wrapped in her red cloak. An unseen breeze stirred it as she began to fill the rough wooden cups she held, and it was the same breeze that stirred the boughs of the ash tree. When the cups were full, there was a scant mouthful left in the small cauldron, but it was ignored for the moment.
"Sunniva, Selinda," Thor said, and no further direction was needed. The sisters accepted a cup each from Kirsa, and then they knelt by the comatose twins.
Gently, carefully, the young women who had been bound to a healer corrupted by Decay poured the precious elixir into the mouths of her last victims. It was swallowed with an ease and willingness that had been absent when trying to keep them fed over their sickness, the cups drained swiftly. All present held their breath.
Thor had thought he might have felt something, but there was nothing, and he called upon a god's discerning eye. With his left there was nothing, just the expected eddies and flows of the currents of the world, so he looked deeper, searching with an eye that was not, and he saw.
The ash tree gleamed with goldsilver, the same colour he had witnessed in Asgard, Old and New and all at once. It was suffused by it, and it seemed to build with each heartbeat, but that was not what drew his eye. It was the way that same goldsilver was building within Astrid and Elsa, seeming to shine from their stomachs as it slowly spread through their bodies.
A foul stench befouled his nostrils, and Thor's gaze grew thunderous. Storm clouds, dark as pitch, boiled into existence in the once blue sky, but the grove did not grow dark. Not with the lazy sparks that had begun to coil and drip from Thor's shoulders, not with the blue-white that spilled from his eyes.
Goldsilver filled the twins, colouring them full - save for a patch of oily green behind their eyes. They twitched and shifted, discomfort on their faces. Elsa whimpered and Astrid shook, Selinda and Sunniva placing soothing hands on their brows, but to no avail.
Thor knelt at their feet, facing the ash tree, and rubbed his hands together, holding them as if cradling something precious. Sparks formed and pooled in them, and carefully, he blew. They drifted over to the girls, gentle…until they were not.
The moment they touched the girls, lazy sparks grew jagged and harsh, growing into a storm and all contained within their small forms. Sunniva and Selinda snatched their hands away, and the twins began to writhe. He could feel it surging through them, just as he could feel how they were guided and shepherded by the power already in them, bringing it to the poison that had been sown by one who had broken their trust. A beat later, the storm latched onto it.
'Nurgle,' Thor hissed, but not with words. It was a malediction that was felt in the souls of those around him. Their faith did not matter, not in this place, not in this moment. Thunder boomed, though there was no lightning, not in the sky.
The poison fought back, but it was built for subtlety, and isolated from the one who had sent it. It began to burn, and such a thing could have been calamitous for those that bore it, but the goldsilver that suffused them saw that they were left unmarred.
'You will not have them.' So Thor proclaimed, and so it would be. He fed more of his power to the fight, feeling it work with and grow from the goldsilver that was the battlefield. 'Your false gifts are unwanted, the harm you have caused undone. You will not have them.' The Feather that was with him unseen was warm against his breast, quietly supportive.
Still the poison fought back, even as it shrivelled and boiled, cooked by the hallowing power that struck at it. A sick desire to spread harm and bring despair radiated from it, but it could not outshine the power that surrounded it. A scream rose, audible only to the ears of a god.
Lightning flashed overhead, and for an instant there was a giant writ in the black sky. "You will not have them!" Thor's voice boomed, though his lips did not move, and the words echoed from above. "Nurgle, I say thee NAY!"
Like an overripe cyst, the poison within the twins popped, seeking to spread its rot even in its defeat, but it found no fertile ground in which to take root. Goldsilver gleamed, finally filling the girls in full. Their pained tossing stilled, and he allowed the storm within them to fade.
All were quiet as silence fell, fear and awe scattered in those that watched. The storm clouds overhead began to fade, and blue sky peeked through once more, but Astrid and Elsa did not stir.
Thor let his sight beyond sight fade, but not before he caught a glimpse of the touch of Decay on the other pair of sisters, the rot slipping from them to dissolve under the light of the ash tree. He smiled, even as a weariness set in.
Most others found their eyes fixed on the subjects of the Thunder God's power. For a long moment, there was no sign, no clue as to the result, hardly a hint even of breathing. Kirsa knew, her gaze fixed on her god, and Wolfric had faith, but most waited with bated breath, waiting for a sign that did not seem to be coming.
Then, the twins stirred.
It took long moments for the torpor of weeks to be shed, but shed it was. Astrid was the first to shift and move in truth, but Elsa was not far behind.
"Where's Trumpetter?" Astrid asked, eyes still closed and still drowsy. "It's my turn to ride him into battle today." Then she rolled over, throwing her arm over her sister.
Elsa made an inelegant sound, freeing an arm to pat at her twin, but did little more. She began to snore.
Wolfric rose, laughing, a wild and free thing. "Thor!" he bellowed. "Praise Thor!"
Like a floodgate had been opened, more cries followed, and Thor felt a wave of devotion crash into him. It was a heady thing, intoxicating far and beyond the faith he had felt when the grove had first been planted, months ago now, but he was better prepared to deal with it, and the gleeful storm he felt coursing through his veins would not overcome him. He was the master of his soul, and he would not be mastered.
Some of those who had come to watch the hallowing had surged forward in their celebration, and one of them pointed at the girls, exclaiming. "Look!"
It was obvious what had drawn their eye. Their hair, once brown and plain, was starting to glint with an inner light, turning not just blonde, but gold.
"You were right, Harad," Thor remarked quietly. He was an island in the crowd, none daring to invade his space even as they praised his name.
Harad did not answer immediately, staring at the slow transformation of the girls' hair. "So it would seem," he said. His tone was indecipherable, and Helena caught his hand with her own.
Around them, the fervour only threatened to grow. It seemed that beyond those who had watched from the grove, more had lurked nearby, waiting for some hint at the outcome. That hint had come with Wolfric's shout, and now they were streaming in, filling the grove as they joined the celebration. But not all were so joyous, some lurking at the edges, unsure or unhappy.
Thor noted them, looked for those who were more than simply unhappy and marked their faces - and did nothing. Not openly. His stance on Chaos was known, and there was no need for any grand ultimatum, not after Skraevold. No, he would lay upon them an unspoken and ever building pressure, making clear his disapproval in a hundred different ways, always with the spectre of what harm Helka could have done weighing down on them. Soon, they would rethink the false choice they had been given, and they would quietly abandon Chaos on their own. Those that did not would leave.
One way or another.
Dark thoughts were swept away when Kirsa leapt into his arms, and he spun her around, meeting joy with joy. All around him people were happy, and he saw people outright dancing, perhaps for the first time in their life seeing proof that evil could be overcome unconditionally. He laughed to see little Ragnar scamper up Leifnir's scales with the unthinking bravery of a child, bewilderment in the dragon's pale gaze. Wolfric had seized Sunniva and Selinda both, the weight of his sisters' suffering suddenly removed leaving him almost drunk. Both were flushed, and neither made any attempt to escape his hold.
Helena leaned around her husband, and he set Kirsa down to hear what words she had for him. "There is elixir yet left," she said, hardly heard over the building crowd. "What would you do with it?"
A ringing trumpet sounded the arrival of Thor's favourite mammoth, drowning out his words. "I would offer it to Bjorn," he said, trying again, "or perhaps Trumpetter, but I know not how it might affect them, and Bjorn is on the mend without it."
Harad gave an approving nod, some of his concern fading.
"I think it will water the tree, rather than let it be stored away where it might be vulnerable to any mischief," Thor said.
Before action could be put to words, they were interrupted. "Thor!" came the shout from an excited little boy, Ragnar almost crashing into them, hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it away.
"Ragnar!" Thor replied in kind, and the boy giggled. "I have a task for you," he said more seriously.
Ragnar snapped to attention, almost vibrating with the effort of waiting.
"I need you to take the cauldron, and pour what is left of the elixir onto the roots of the ash tree," Thor told him. "Can you do this for me?"
"Yes Thor!" Ragnar shouted, already zipping off with an enviable enthusiasm.
Helena and Harad watched him go, matching looks of wist and yearning on their faces, and Thor was reminded that for all Astrid and Elsa had been saved, Helka had done great harm before her end.
"Tell me," Thor said, dragging their attention away. "Have you ever witnessed an Asgardian celebration before?"
The two old fighters were wise to his doings, but they let themselves be drawn in all the same. "I have not," Harad said, "but I have seen feasts and festivals from the Wastes to Araby."
"Would that I had spirits of my father's cellars, and I would turn this day into an event to put them all to shame," Thor confided in them. "Without, we shall just have to make our best effort."
Perhaps it would not shame a sultan's marriage or an Elector-Count's birthday, but on that day Vinteerholm had cause for joy, and they meant to let it be known by all who cared to hear. A threat was slain, two young girls would live, and in a land like Norsca, that was more than enough to eat and be merry. Tomorrow's troubles belonged to tomorrow, but they would deal with them when they came.
As a grandmother should, Thor thought, though he held his tongue.
"When we were old enough, she started to teach us her craft," Sunniva continued, her voice seeming to catch on itself. One hand twitched towards her braid, as if to worry at it, but she didn't relinquish her hold on Selinda. "Small things at first, like which herbs to gather and how to prepare them."
Again Selinda shifted, but again she kept her thoughts to herself.
"When did you discover her devotion to Decay?" Thor asked.
"We didn't think she worshipped, not like that," Sunniva said, swallowing.
"We knew," Selinda said, gaze fixed on her feet.
"Sel!"
"We were fifteen, and one of the village boys tried to force Sun," Selinda said, still not looking up. "Gra- Helka said she would fix him, and she did."
"That doesn't mean she worshipped the Grandfather," Sunniva insisted. "A healer has to know what not to do, too!"
"He rotted from inside out," Selinda said, unforgiving in her reminder.
"He was Hound favoured, and we had no warrior to stand for us," Sunniva said, gaze roving from her sister to Thor and back. "Giving him a bad brew was the only way."
"That wasn't a botched brew," Selinda said, hunching in on herself even further. Despite their words, neither gave any indication of easing their grip on the other. "A bad brew wouldn't do that. Even back then we knew that much."
"We thought she had chosen the Raven, not the Crow," Sunniva argued.
"We thought that because when we asked how she avoided the Grandfather, we got the shivers," Selinda said, almost spitting, like years worth of venom was frothing to the surface all at once. "And when you didn't listen to me when I said not to ask how she had made a potion for coughs rot that boy alive, you got Red Throat!"
"Because I was helping Erik when he had it!"
"For weeks, but you only caught it when you angered Helka!" Selinda said, low and fast. "Every time! Every time we asked a question she didn't like, we got sick. You just learned to ignore it." She subsided, burying her face in her sister's neck.
The basement was quiet in the wake of Selinda's outburst, and if not for the glance Sunniva shot at him as she held her sister close, Thor might have thought they had forgotten his presence.
"Betrayal is only so vile because it comes from one close to us," Thor said. His voice was heavy with old memories.
"We didn't know she worshipped the Crow," Sunniva insisted, but there was no fire to her words. "But we didn't think she avoided him, either."
"I do not imagine a healer that consorts with Decay would be trusted," Thor said.
"Everyone knows that the Crow loves healers the most," Sunniva said, and it was a bitter thing, a truth that had long weighed on her.
"And so she let your people think she worshipped Manipulation," Thor said, clasping his hands together.
The siblings nodded as one.
"Who did you choose?"
The words were spoken calmly, but they still set a stillness into the hearts of the two before him.
"Tchar," they said as one.
Thor could not help but scowl, for all that no presence came with the name of his foe.
"We needed his cunning to avoid the Grandfather," Selinda said, peeking back up at him.
"Not everyone can be like Wolfric," Sunniva said, the soft glow of his spark reflected in her eyes. "You have to pick one of them."
"And now, that you have a choice?" Thor asked. "Would you choose Manipulation again?"
Sunniva licked dry lips. "Do you…ask for our worship?"
"We will," Selinda was quick to say. "We can worship you-" she cut herself off.
"I will never demand your worship," Thor told them. "You need not fear my might for lack of devotion, and I offer my protection to the innocent no matter their origin. However…" and here he spoke bluntly, unable to moderate his words even to ease their worries, "...nor will I abide the worship of a cancer that would have you plot harm against those that should be your neighbours." As he spoke, his words revealed a truth to him that he had not consciously considered. He had been content to lure the people of this land away from the Chaos Gods, to show them a better path by his own example, but no more. The cost was not one he would choose to pay.
The sisters shared a look, communicating without words. Selinda gave an encouraging nod, and Sunniva let out a breath.
"We could follow a god like that," Sunniva said. "We…I have heard the words of your priestess."
"Wolfric follows," Selinda said, like this was an important consideration. "He spoke of you as we cared for his sisters."
Thor smiled. It was not a grand, beaming thing full of cheer, but something quieter, more reserved. Perhaps they were lying, perhaps they would hold fast to the Schemer and use their position to rise in its esteem - but he did not think so. He would have faith in them, and perhaps in time they would come to have true faith in him.
Hesitantly, the smile was returned, the sharp edge of wariness fading from the girls for all that the bulk of it remained.
"Come," he said. "It is time you leave this place behind." He rose from his shaky seat, and carefully picked his way up and back out into the night air.
Sunniva and Selinda followed, leaning into each other on unsteady feet after hours of sheltering in the basement. Thor reached down to lend them a helping hand, guiding them upwards and onwards, and then they were standing in the shattered remains of what had once been the entry to their house.
Mannslieb was bright after their time in the darkness, but they did not shy away, breathing deeply of the fresh air.
Sunniva turned to him, swaying with slight dizziness. "Thank you, godl- God of Thunder."
"She's really gone," Selinda said, still looking out at the remains of the battle, eyes fixed on the point where the Bifrost and the chaos portal had touched the world. Like her sister, she too swayed in place. "We ow-"
Thor laughed. "Do not speak of debts, for I know it was you who cared for Astrid and Elsa as they lay sick." He called to Stormbreaker, and swept up the two of them with one arm. "Tomorrow we see to their healing, but tonight there is a feast in the hall, and everyone will be pleased to know that you do not share her taint."
Stormbreaker arrived from the darkness, and then they were flying, twin yelps pulled from them as they made for the longhall. They would be be better served by a hearty meal and a bath than by hobbling through the town, and on the morrow, Leifnir would heal the twins, easing the worries of all.
Subtly, Thor looked with his missing eye, piercing the divine, and though it was slight he saw that the oily touch upon them had eased, even if only a touch. The rot upon both pairs of sisters would soon be cleansed.
X
The day dawned brightly, and the leaves of the grove rustled lightly around them as they stood in the centre of the grove. It was to be a fine day, as Thor oversaw a gathering of those with cause to be there…but the promise of the day was threatening to sour.
"Excuse me?" Thor said, voice near rumbling in his chest. He had heard the words well, but he wished to hear them again all the same.
Leifnir's lip pulled back in a snarl. "This is the touch of the Unclean himself," she said. "I cannot heal this."
The grove was not so large nor its paths so wide as to accommodate her form, but that was before she had shrunk herself to barely more than the height of a man. She was perched by the mat that Astrid and Elsa lay upon, still comatose, under the shade of the ash tree. The tree had undergone another growth spurt seemingly overnight, but that was a distant thing to those present.
"Did we not make a deal?" Thor asked, the furrow of his brow deepening.
He was not the only one to take the news less than sanguinely. Wolfric was next to him, standing on the other side of the twins from the dragon, and he stared at her unblinking.
An expression of draconic discontent spread across Leifnir's face. "A deal was made, but there is a world between a sickness and the working that lays upon-"
"Was I not clear when I said the touch of Decay lay upon them? Did you think I was exaggerating?" Thor asked.
Leifnir shuffled in place, resettling herself. "...perhaps."
Those present held their tongues as they watched, none eager to insert themselves into a disagreement between a god and a dragon. Kirsa stood at Thor's other side, while Harad and Helana watched from their right, facing the tree. They had not left each other's side for a moment since the battle. Bjorn was nearby as well, though he sat in a chair, unwilling to be confined to a bed but unable to stand on his own, and he was watched over by Sunniva and Selinda.
"Do I seem a man prone to exaggerations?" Thor asked. "In matters such as this?" he added on.
"Many a pox have I seen that was named the touch of Decay," Leifnir said, tip of her tail lashing angrily. "None have been born of the breath of the Plague Lord himself."
"But it is, and we made a deal," Thor said, putting a hand on Wolfric's shoulder. "Should Astrid and Elsa worsen beyond all reach-"
"They will not," Leifnir was quick to snap. "The aura of your grove has arrested its progression; they slumber but do not fall deeper."
Thor glanced at his ash tree, and he was not the only one.
"She is right," Bjorn spoke up, steady voice imparting a measure of calm. "I can feel the burn of my wounds, but the filth in them stilled when I was brought here." His bare chest was a swollen mass of barely healed gouges and scars split open, inflamed and angry. He bore it stoically, though it was clear the words still tired him.
"Hmmm." Thor let out a noise as he considered. This was not how he had hoped the day would begin, but he did still have the Feather, and surely somehow…
"It is my failing," Leifnir admitted, grudgingly, and as if in great pain. "To make good, I would be willing to give of my blood. It may not be heartblood, but dragon blood willingly given is powerful all the same."
"I know the elixir," Helena said. The kindness that Thor had come to expect in her was missing, dampened by the revelation of the day prior, but still she fought to keep moving. "I would not trust myself to brew it, not quickly, but I know it."
"We know it," Selinda said, though she seemed surprised at herself for speaking up. She let her hair fall across her face as looks were sent her way.
"We began it before Grandmother took over," Sunniva said, shifting forward slightly to take the attention upon herself. "We could brew it."
"'Grandmother'?" Helena asked, turning to the girls.
The girls flinched under her gaze. At Thor's explanation the night prior, only few had still regarded them with suspicion, but still they had been fearful of mistrust and what might come of it. "Helka."
Harad let out a noise that was at first mistaken for a rumble from Leifnir's chest.
"She was not your grandmother, she had no-" she cut herself off, unwilling to speak more on such a topic. "It does not matter. If you trust them, we could brew it."
"I know it, also," Bjorn said. "Though to replace heartblood…"
"Mighty blood," Thor murmured to himself.
"If it is the power of the blood," Kirsa said, almost in the same instant. She looked to Thor, hesitant, but it was clear they had had the same thought.
"With lives in the balance, are you sure you wish to make that offer?" Harad asked. His voice was the same rumble it always was, but his eyes were almost accusing as he looked at Thor.
Kirsa bristled at the implication, and even Wolfric stirred from his glaring at Leifnir.
"You are a good man, Harad," Thor said, and he was, to all but suggest that he was only playing at godhood. "There would be no such problem."
"Then you should know that there will be consequences all the same," Harad said, meeting his eyes without hesitation. "When mortals take something of the divine within themselves, they are changed."
Thor inclined his head to the old warrior, taking his point. It was not an easy choice to make, but at least he had choices before himself.
"To be sure," he said, looking around, "there is no potion or elixir to be brewed that could heal them on its own?"
"Not for a sickness brewed in his own cauldron," Sunniva said.
"No," Helena said, shaking her head, "they can be defeated."
Sunniva blinked. "What? But-" she cut herself off, perhaps realising that the one to tell her so was not unbiased.
"If the Crow's own plagues could not be overcome, he would not have to create more," Helena said, "but the girls do not have the time for us to find a cure." She gave Leifnir a considering look. "Willingly given…a dragon's blood might be enough to contest the taint enough for a hallowing." Her gaze went to Thor, and it was clear she harboured the same doubts as her husband.
Leifnir almost preened.
"Leifnir has strength aplenty, to be sure," Thor acknowledged, "but I will not trust their lives to an uncertainty. I offer my own blood." Harad and Helena may hold doubts, while Kirsa and Wolfric held not enough, but he knew his strength, and he knew the strength of his foe. He could not yet contest Decay outright, but to hallow his taint? That he could do. The only trick was to ensure the girls would survive the scouring.
"Is my blood not enough?" Leifnir asked, frill rising. "Kings have lost great treasures in pursuit of such a thing!"
The ire of a dragon was not easily discounted, though Thor and Harad were left unaffected.
"Fear not, Leifnir," Thor told her, "we will find a way for you to earn my eye."
"Good," Leifnir said, satisfied.
"What do you need for the elixir?" Wolfric asked of Helena, speaking for the first time.
"We will have to gather the ingredients anew; I would not trust any even if we recovered them from the ruins," Helena said.
"Well that Grigori is cleansing them with fire," Kirsa said.
"Tell me what they are, and I will retrieve them," Wolfric demanded.
"You are no herbalist, Harad and I will find them," Helena said.
This was not an answer that appealed to Wolfric, and he scowled.
"I could show you," Selinda offered, almost too quietly to be heard.
Wolfric still heard, and didn't waste more than a moment looking the sisters over. "If Lord Thor trusts you, I will trust you. Show me, and I will protect you."
There was a short, quiet disagreement between Sunniva and Selinda over who would stay to watch over Bjorn and who would go with Wolfric, but it was solved when the baresark told them both to go, for five eyes were better than three, but there was a glint to his own that suggested that was not his only reason.
As that was happening, Helena approached Thor, Harad staying close. "You are sure of this?" she asked him.
"I am," Thor answered.
"You may doubt him, but you saw the might of his blessings," Kirsa said in his defence. "You do not have to believe in Lord Thor's divinity, but you cannot doubt his strength."
Thor gave her an approving glance, reaching over to ruffle her hair. She coloured, but made no move to escape his touch. "This is why people keep thinking you my priestess," he told her, and at that she squirmed.
The couple were not convinced, not fully, but they had indeed witnessed feats to judge him favourably against a dragon, and they questioned him no more.
No more time was wasted, and a quick discussion was held between those who would do the searching as they divvied up the ingredients between them. The five of them set out from the grove without delay, the gathering coming to an end. The elixir would take a week to brew, but Helka had underestimated him from the start in setting her trap, and they had time, especially with the effect of the grove on the workings of the enemy.
It was a difficult thing, to be forced to wait after thinking the solution to their recent troubles so imminent, but all kept themselves busy. The ingredients were found within the day, and then the brewing began under the leaves of the ash tree. The slumber of Astrid and Elsa continued beside them, ample motivation, and Wolfric held a vigil as they worked, feeding his sisters goat milk and honey.
A strange mood settled over Vinteerholm. Work continued on the new walls, and the effects of Helka's deeds were felt. Crow-touched healers had been long feared for the ultimate end of those they ministered, and all knew their fortune in avoiding such a fate. All took time to thank the Thunder God, but there was a wariness to their prayers for some. They had heard the challenge, the insult he had given to Chaos over Skraevold, and they could not help but feel that the time he spent waiting for Wolfric One-Eye's sisters to be healed was more akin to the calm before the storm than anything else.
Perhaps though, their wariness could be laid at the feet of the dragon that had taken up temporary residence in their home. There was some adjustment to be made when one found oneself fishing from the same river that a great pale dragon was bathing in. There was some gossip of a great healing work that it would lay upon the town, one that the Thunder God had paid for with his own eye, but surely that was only gossip.
With three hands on the brewing process, there was time for them to see to Bjorn as well, and it became clear that without the aura of the grove, he would be in dire straits. The infection he had caught getting the twins clear of danger was a potent one, but under the aegis of the grove, he began to recover, if slowly. It would be a path of months ahead of him, but the baresark did not regret the deeds that had set him upon it. Between that, and the Kislevite Grigori rallying the townspeople to fight, those who were new to Vinteerholm found themselves met with fewer sneers and cold shoulders as they went about their business. It was a strange thing to find themselves adjusting to life in a Norscan town, but they found themselves doing so all the same.
Eventually, the limbo of waiting came to an end, a watched pot finally boiling after seven days and nights. The elixir was ready for the final ingredient, and all gathered in the grove once more. This time, however, they had an audience. Townspeople of all kinds had come, from fighters to fishermen, elders to youths, united only by the strength of their faith…to one god, or another.
"It is time," Helena told him, as they stood by the ash tree. It was twice the height of Thor now, and it had sheltered the elixir from the elements as it was brewed over an open fire.
There was a solemnity to the occasion, those most involved gathered around Astrid and Elsa's still forms, while those who had come to observe remained a respectful distance back. The sky was a clear blue, but there was the sense that a storm lurked just over the horizon.
Thor took up a twig of ash, and used it to prick his thumb. A drop of blood welled up, a rich red, and he let it fall into the small cauldron, plopping into the amber liquid.
Immediately the elixir began to churn and froth, not like a pot brought to the boil, but like the sea in a storm. Amber began to brighten, almost shining, though it cast no light. Wolfric scarcely breathed, but none were absent of worry as they watched the product of their work react to godsblood, freely given. After what was only a minute, but felt like much longer, the storm in the cauldron settled. It was the same shade of blue-white that was familiar to those who had witnessed Thor's might, the colour of his power.
"Kirsa," Thor said. "Two cups."
Kirsa stepped forward, wrapped in her red cloak. An unseen breeze stirred it as she began to fill the rough wooden cups she held, and it was the same breeze that stirred the boughs of the ash tree. When the cups were full, there was a scant mouthful left in the small cauldron, but it was ignored for the moment.
"Sunniva, Selinda," Thor said, and no further direction was needed. The sisters accepted a cup each from Kirsa, and then they knelt by the comatose twins.
Gently, carefully, the young women who had been bound to a healer corrupted by Decay poured the precious elixir into the mouths of her last victims. It was swallowed with an ease and willingness that had been absent when trying to keep them fed over their sickness, the cups drained swiftly. All present held their breath.
Thor had thought he might have felt something, but there was nothing, and he called upon a god's discerning eye. With his left there was nothing, just the expected eddies and flows of the currents of the world, so he looked deeper, searching with an eye that was not, and he saw.
The ash tree gleamed with goldsilver, the same colour he had witnessed in Asgard, Old and New and all at once. It was suffused by it, and it seemed to build with each heartbeat, but that was not what drew his eye. It was the way that same goldsilver was building within Astrid and Elsa, seeming to shine from their stomachs as it slowly spread through their bodies.
A foul stench befouled his nostrils, and Thor's gaze grew thunderous. Storm clouds, dark as pitch, boiled into existence in the once blue sky, but the grove did not grow dark. Not with the lazy sparks that had begun to coil and drip from Thor's shoulders, not with the blue-white that spilled from his eyes.
Goldsilver filled the twins, colouring them full - save for a patch of oily green behind their eyes. They twitched and shifted, discomfort on their faces. Elsa whimpered and Astrid shook, Selinda and Sunniva placing soothing hands on their brows, but to no avail.
Thor knelt at their feet, facing the ash tree, and rubbed his hands together, holding them as if cradling something precious. Sparks formed and pooled in them, and carefully, he blew. They drifted over to the girls, gentle…until they were not.
The moment they touched the girls, lazy sparks grew jagged and harsh, growing into a storm and all contained within their small forms. Sunniva and Selinda snatched their hands away, and the twins began to writhe. He could feel it surging through them, just as he could feel how they were guided and shepherded by the power already in them, bringing it to the poison that had been sown by one who had broken their trust. A beat later, the storm latched onto it.
'Nurgle,' Thor hissed, but not with words. It was a malediction that was felt in the souls of those around him. Their faith did not matter, not in this place, not in this moment. Thunder boomed, though there was no lightning, not in the sky.
The poison fought back, but it was built for subtlety, and isolated from the one who had sent it. It began to burn, and such a thing could have been calamitous for those that bore it, but the goldsilver that suffused them saw that they were left unmarred.
'You will not have them.' So Thor proclaimed, and so it would be. He fed more of his power to the fight, feeling it work with and grow from the goldsilver that was the battlefield. 'Your false gifts are unwanted, the harm you have caused undone. You will not have them.' The Feather that was with him unseen was warm against his breast, quietly supportive.
Still the poison fought back, even as it shrivelled and boiled, cooked by the hallowing power that struck at it. A sick desire to spread harm and bring despair radiated from it, but it could not outshine the power that surrounded it. A scream rose, audible only to the ears of a god.
Lightning flashed overhead, and for an instant there was a giant writ in the black sky. "You will not have them!" Thor's voice boomed, though his lips did not move, and the words echoed from above. "Nurgle, I say thee NAY!"
Like an overripe cyst, the poison within the twins popped, seeking to spread its rot even in its defeat, but it found no fertile ground in which to take root. Goldsilver gleamed, finally filling the girls in full. Their pained tossing stilled, and he allowed the storm within them to fade.
All were quiet as silence fell, fear and awe scattered in those that watched. The storm clouds overhead began to fade, and blue sky peeked through once more, but Astrid and Elsa did not stir.
Thor let his sight beyond sight fade, but not before he caught a glimpse of the touch of Decay on the other pair of sisters, the rot slipping from them to dissolve under the light of the ash tree. He smiled, even as a weariness set in.
Most others found their eyes fixed on the subjects of the Thunder God's power. For a long moment, there was no sign, no clue as to the result, hardly a hint even of breathing. Kirsa knew, her gaze fixed on her god, and Wolfric had faith, but most waited with bated breath, waiting for a sign that did not seem to be coming.
Then, the twins stirred.
It took long moments for the torpor of weeks to be shed, but shed it was. Astrid was the first to shift and move in truth, but Elsa was not far behind.
"Where's Trumpetter?" Astrid asked, eyes still closed and still drowsy. "It's my turn to ride him into battle today." Then she rolled over, throwing her arm over her sister.
Elsa made an inelegant sound, freeing an arm to pat at her twin, but did little more. She began to snore.
Wolfric rose, laughing, a wild and free thing. "Thor!" he bellowed. "Praise Thor!"
Like a floodgate had been opened, more cries followed, and Thor felt a wave of devotion crash into him. It was a heady thing, intoxicating far and beyond the faith he had felt when the grove had first been planted, months ago now, but he was better prepared to deal with it, and the gleeful storm he felt coursing through his veins would not overcome him. He was the master of his soul, and he would not be mastered.
Some of those who had come to watch the hallowing had surged forward in their celebration, and one of them pointed at the girls, exclaiming. "Look!"
It was obvious what had drawn their eye. Their hair, once brown and plain, was starting to glint with an inner light, turning not just blonde, but gold.
"You were right, Harad," Thor remarked quietly. He was an island in the crowd, none daring to invade his space even as they praised his name.
Harad did not answer immediately, staring at the slow transformation of the girls' hair. "So it would seem," he said. His tone was indecipherable, and Helena caught his hand with her own.
Around them, the fervour only threatened to grow. It seemed that beyond those who had watched from the grove, more had lurked nearby, waiting for some hint at the outcome. That hint had come with Wolfric's shout, and now they were streaming in, filling the grove as they joined the celebration. But not all were so joyous, some lurking at the edges, unsure or unhappy.
Thor noted them, looked for those who were more than simply unhappy and marked their faces - and did nothing. Not openly. His stance on Chaos was known, and there was no need for any grand ultimatum, not after Skraevold. No, he would lay upon them an unspoken and ever building pressure, making clear his disapproval in a hundred different ways, always with the spectre of what harm Helka could have done weighing down on them. Soon, they would rethink the false choice they had been given, and they would quietly abandon Chaos on their own. Those that did not would leave.
One way or another.
Dark thoughts were swept away when Kirsa leapt into his arms, and he spun her around, meeting joy with joy. All around him people were happy, and he saw people outright dancing, perhaps for the first time in their life seeing proof that evil could be overcome unconditionally. He laughed to see little Ragnar scamper up Leifnir's scales with the unthinking bravery of a child, bewilderment in the dragon's pale gaze. Wolfric had seized Sunniva and Selinda both, the weight of his sisters' suffering suddenly removed leaving him almost drunk. Both were flushed, and neither made any attempt to escape his hold.
Helena leaned around her husband, and he set Kirsa down to hear what words she had for him. "There is elixir yet left," she said, hardly heard over the building crowd. "What would you do with it?"
A ringing trumpet sounded the arrival of Thor's favourite mammoth, drowning out his words. "I would offer it to Bjorn," he said, trying again, "or perhaps Trumpetter, but I know not how it might affect them, and Bjorn is on the mend without it."
Harad gave an approving nod, some of his concern fading.
"I think it will water the tree, rather than let it be stored away where it might be vulnerable to any mischief," Thor said.
Before action could be put to words, they were interrupted. "Thor!" came the shout from an excited little boy, Ragnar almost crashing into them, hair falling into his eyes. He brushed it away.
"Ragnar!" Thor replied in kind, and the boy giggled. "I have a task for you," he said more seriously.
Ragnar snapped to attention, almost vibrating with the effort of waiting.
"I need you to take the cauldron, and pour what is left of the elixir onto the roots of the ash tree," Thor told him. "Can you do this for me?"
"Yes Thor!" Ragnar shouted, already zipping off with an enviable enthusiasm.
Helena and Harad watched him go, matching looks of wist and yearning on their faces, and Thor was reminded that for all Astrid and Elsa had been saved, Helka had done great harm before her end.
"Tell me," Thor said, dragging their attention away. "Have you ever witnessed an Asgardian celebration before?"
The two old fighters were wise to his doings, but they let themselves be drawn in all the same. "I have not," Harad said, "but I have seen feasts and festivals from the Wastes to Araby."
"Would that I had spirits of my father's cellars, and I would turn this day into an event to put them all to shame," Thor confided in them. "Without, we shall just have to make our best effort."
Perhaps it would not shame a sultan's marriage or an Elector-Count's birthday, but on that day Vinteerholm had cause for joy, and they meant to let it be known by all who cared to hear. A threat was slain, two young girls would live, and in a land like Norsca, that was more than enough to eat and be merry. Tomorrow's troubles belonged to tomorrow, but they would deal with them when they came.
He's growing a new Yggdrasil in the mortal realm...
So, as he's given one eye to the Dragon for healing, surely he'll give the second one for knowledge, in emulation of the OG Mythological Odin.
And wouldn't you know it, there IS technically an equivalent to Mimir's Well, called The Well of Eternity, which could be considered both Mímisbrunnr and Ginnungagap and the same time. In Warhammer, what better source for the new World Tree to draw nourishment from, at least in spirit?
And unlike Tzeentch, who would sacrifice it's servants, pieces of itself in an attempt to gain Omniscience for itself alone, Thor who believes no ONE god should know all, is definitely the type to make a sacrifice of himself for the sake of ALL, mortalkind and non-Chaos related Aethyric entities alike.
Hell, I could see him hanging himself for nine days on New Yggdrasil for good measure....
And wouldn't you know it, there IS technically an equivalent to Mimir's Well, called The Well of Eternity, which could be considered both Mímisbrunnr and Ginnungagap and the same time. In Warhammer, what better source for the new World Tree to draw nourishment from, at least in spirit?
And unlike Tzeentch, who would sacrifice it's servants, pieces of itself in an attempt to gain Omniscience for itself alone, Thor who believes no ONE god should know all, is definitely the type to make a sacrifice of himself for the sake of ALL, mortalkind and non-Chaos related Aethyric entities alike.
Hell, I could see him hanging himself for nine days on New Yggdrasil for good measure....
Pest Control 1
- Location
- Australia
Thor dreamed.
Asgard, Old and New and all at once, rose before him gleaming and proud. There was a realness to it now, a solidity that had been missing, noted only by its prior absence. Its golden walls had a strength and certainty to them, the kind that only came when a thing had been proven. Butterflies and bees fluttered through the sun-kissed green fields, and faceless young figures - not living beings, but somehow part of the realm itself - played amongst them, mute testament to the protection offered by the great walls.
But Thor's attention was not upon the fields, or the walls. It was levelled at the gold-clad figure standing before the mighty gates, hands resting on the hilt of his formidable sword. The god came to a stop before the being that wore the face of old friends, gaze not wary, but probing still.
"My king," said the being that was not Heimdall. Yellow eyes watched, calm and at ease.
"Watcher," Thor said. "What do you see?"
"I see dangers on the horizon. I see rival kingdoms," he said, smile sharp and white. "And I see a strong foundation, but strength ever calls to strength."
"Strength to strength…you say there will be challengers," Thor said. A breeze swept by them, carrying with it the scent of petrichor.
"There are already challengers," the watcher corrected him. "But as your kingdom grows, so does its place in the Aethyr. The sound of a cat's footfall is a difficult thing to grasp; the cat, less so."
The urge to turn and glance at the horizon was too strong to deny, but of course there were only clear skies and endless fields. When he turned back, a new face awaited him. "And you?" Thor asked. "Where do you stand, he that wears the faces of my brothers and sisters in battle?"
"I stand at your side, as I ever have," the being said, Hogun's grim face watching him.
"You will never use the face of my brother," Thor ordered, his voice quiet.
"As you say, my king," the watcher said, bowing his head. "I am not your enemy."
"Then who are you?" Thor asked. "You are not my foe, it is true - but I do not know you."
"Yes you do," the watcher said, and in the time it took Thor to blink it was fair Sif standing before him. "You have looked upon me with the eye given twice in duty."
"Asgard was destroyed."
"Was it?" the watcher asked, the corner of her mouth quirking slightly.
Thor huffed a short laugh. He inspected the watcher for a moment, looking with his missing eye, and it was so much easier than in the mortal world. Goldsilver shone before and all around him, the watcher blending in with the background and the very air. There was no telling where one ended and the other began because there was no ending, nor beginning.
"Asgard," the god said. "You are Asgard."
"Old and New and all at once," Asgard confirmed. "I was born by your coming, and I will stand until Ragnarok comes."
Giving voice to his suspicions and having them confirmed put a stillness in Thor's tongue, but not for long. He had questions burning at him still.
One burned above all. "There is a Valhalla in this realm - is it connected to the Valhalla of my home? Might I bring those within - ?"
But Asgard was shaking her head. "You are mighty here in this new realm, but it is a new realm, not an extension of the Old, and even if it were not…" she shrugged. "Such a thing is not done lightly, even for the old gods of this place."
Thor sagged, even knowing the likely answer before he asked, but he rallied. "And what of these old gods? Would they be friend, or foe? I have met perhaps one that I would not wish to introduce to my axe."
"Some may," Asgard said. "Others would oppose the Four, but that does not mean they would be friend. Lady Dove is unique, from what my eyes have seen."
"So few would value kindness as she did?" Thor asked, troubled.
"None would make themselves so vulnerable," Asgard corrected him. "To pass into your realm is to pass through the eye of a needle, as it stands."
"Then she is trusting."
"Some would say foolish," Asgard said.
"Are we amongst them?"
"No."
Thor gave Asgard a smile at that. "But as we grow, so does the path," he said, sobering. "They have sought harm by guile, but they will strike by force, will they not?"
"They will," Asgard said. "But we will be ready. Your followers will be our greatest defence." Brown eyes flicked to the horizon, watching something unseen.
"The city is yet empty," Thor said, "and the figures in the fields were never mortals."
"They were not," Asgard said, "though mortals will join them in time. They will need guides when they do, to reach the city."
"Guides?" Thor asked. "Through the fields?" They were open and rolling things, he thought, and criss crossed with simple dirt paths, all leading to the city.
"The path seems simple for you and I, but it is less so for others," Asgard said.
"I have but one Valkyrie, and I will not hurry her on her way to act as shepard," Thor said, suddenly worried that there were souls wandering lost through his realm, thinking he had abandoned them.
"She will take up her duties here when her time comes, not before," Asgard said, unworried. "There are no souls in need of guidance, not yet. Those who fell with fond thoughts of you had gods with a greater hold on their souls."
"Such a thing is truly necessary?" Thor asked. The thought of such a never ending task, for himself or another, seemed…onerous.
"Defence of the city begins in the borderlands," Asgard said, and with a shrug they bore the form of powerful Volstagg, thickset and immovable. "When a foe can finally march on us in strength, they will pay dearly."
Bloodthirsty smiles were shared, god and realm in full accord.
"Then if I wish to make allies, I would need to - what, venture into the realms they claim?" Thor asked.
"I would not advise it, my king," Asgard said, "not unless you were very sure of the nature of your welcome."
"Perhaps I will visit their temples, when I have the chance," Thor said, frowning. His father had warned him of the dangers of dealing with other gods from a place of weakness, though he had taken the warning lightly when given.
He was no longer such a foolish youth. Mostly.
An odd feeling came over him, like a faint misting of water, but it was strange, distant.
"You are waking," Asgard observed. "Is there anything else you would know?"
The sensation came again, stronger this time. "The Bifrost, I lost much time on my return -"
"Keep its use to your places of power, and our foes will not be able to delay or make use of it," Asgard said. The look of calm respect on his face was strange, given whose appearance he wore. "Until next time, my king."
"Asgard," Thor returned, and then the feel of misting came again, but this time it was more like a spray, and he felt the world around him begin to fade.
He supposed he would have a new lunchable waiting for him, after this. He looked forward to it.
X
When Thor woke, he could not see. He could not see because there was a trunk covering his face, questing wetly across it. "Good morning, Trumpetter," he said, voice muffled.
Trumpetter rumbled a greeting in reply, pulling his trunk away with a final pat. In doing so, he revealed to Thor that he was not the only one waiting for him to wake.
"Good morning, Leifnir," he said, sitting up. He was still in the grove, under the ash tree; despite the celebration that had kicked off in the wake of the healing, the town's supplies were not so bountiful that they could afford to have another feast. That only meant that those who had been drawn by the sounds brough alcohol alone with them, as evidenced by the snoring and still figures littered about the grove. Wolfric was absent as were his sisters, but he could see Kirsa's nose poking out from where she was bundled in her red cloak, while Sunniva and Selinda were a tangle of limbs beside her.
"Good morning, Thor Odinson," Leifnir said. She had adjusted her size again, and her shoulder was of a level with Trumpetter's. "I was beginning to think you would sleep for days."
"It is hardly midmorning," Thor protested. He pushed himself to his feet, stretching his arms wide with a yawn. Trumpetter took the chance to boop him on his stomach, and he booped him in turn before he could pull his trunk free. "Do dragons not hibernate for decades?"
Leifnir sniffed, still looking down on him. Her size had grown subtly as he stood, keeping her head above his. "Not in the dirt under open skies, we do not."
"How is your home?" Thor asked. "The repairs were not too burdensome, I hope."
"They were easy, even with your storm still lingering silently across my ceiling," Leifnir boasted.
"Oh, that was not my intent," Thor said, frowning now. "I will remove it for you as soon as I can leave this place without worry."
"No, it is fine," Leifnir said, perhaps slightly too quickly. "I am not one to be bothered by a small lightshow, no matter how pretty."
"Of course," Thor said, face grave, even as he held back a smile. He glanced to the sky, it was overcast, but did not seem to threaten rain, and the air was cool. "What brings you to me, in any case?"
"I wish to return to my hoard," Leifnir said, ignoring Trumpetter leaning into her side, trunk investigating her paw. "But I cannot do so until I discharge the debt I owe you."
Thor had had time to think during the celebrations; it would take all the alcohol in Vinteerholm and more to impair him beyond that. At first he had toyed with the idea of a working to improve the land's ability to grow crops, but such a thing seemed to be outside of the type of magic that Leifnir wielded. In the end, he had settled on a charm that he thought would help the town in another aspect it was lacking in. "A sickness formed by Decay is beyond you," he began, "but mortal sicknesses are not. Could you perhaps lay a charm over the town itself, to ward off simple ills?"
Leifnir's frill fluttered as she thought. "Normally, such a thing would require my repeated presence, or a medium which could be lost by misfortune or enemy action," she mused, but then she glanced at the ash tree they stood by. "Given what I saw of your altar on the death of dusk, however, I think I might use it." Pale eyes flicked back to Thor. "Given your acceptance, of course."
Thor opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated, considering. "How would you make use of it?" Leifnir seemed a good sort, but in truth they were hardly more than strangers.
"There is a spell," Leifnir said, "to ward off disease, so long as one is illuminated by the fire that anchors it. I think that I might use the light that your blessing gives off instead."
"Such a thing sounds difficult," Thor said. He could remember Loki complaining about a task mother had set him to change a charm.
"For a lesser dragon, perhaps," Leifnir said, chest puffing up.
"And you are no lesser dragon," Thor agreed. "How would it work? Would the ill need to gather in the grove come nightfall?"
"If they come to this place in dire need, yes," Leifnir said. "But I have felt your blessing building and flowing with each day, higher each time. The motes of gold may not flow through this place, but my spell will be carried by them all the same."
"Even with the expansion of the walls?" Thor asked.
"Given time, your font will grow to suffuse the land, much as my presence spills down my mountain," Leifnir said. "So long as your tree survives, that is. Humans are ever so eager to use their axes."
Thor snorted. "Let them try." He thought on it for a moment, but if he were willing to trust the health of the townsfolk to her spell, it would be wrong of him to baulk at trusting her with the tree as well. "What do you require?"
"A day, perhaps two," Leifnir said. Trumpetter had finished investigating her paw, and had moved on to her furled wing, but still he was ignored. "Then I will hold our bargain fulfilled, and return to my home."
"I would not have you leave without saying goodbye," Thor told her. "Your aid against the minions of Bloodlust was most appreciated."
Leifnir raised her chin in a show of pride, but it was somewhat offset by the mammoth trying to burrow under her wing. "Of course it was. You may be a god, but I am a dragon."
"Of course," Thor agreed. He took in the grove; its current state was…less than suited for delicate workings. "Do you mean to begin now?"
The dragon gave a distasteful look at the drunk and hungover sleepers scattered about, snout wrinkling. "I will prepare the spell somewhere less fragrant."
One of the nearby sleepers farted noisily, and Thor felt his own nose wrinkling in turn. God, dragon, and mammoth turned and began to make their way from the grove in silent agreement. Once clear, Leifnir took to the skies with only a nod, swiftly returning to her natural size and leaving the town behind, heading upstream. Her scales glittered as she passed through a lonely sunbeam, but she was soon invisible against the clouds.
Left to their own devices, Thor and Trumpetter began to make their way through the town, quiet as it was the morning after the revelry. They were not left on their own for long, however.
A woman in light furs approached. "God of Thunder," she asked, nearing at a swift walk, spear in hand. She bowed, blue eyes fixed on the ground. "Your aid is needed."
Thor took a moment to place her familiar broken nose, before remembering her as the woman who took a sword to the stomach, back when they stormed the gates to liberate the town. "You have it," he said. "Where?"
"The south gate," she said. "Strangers have come. One asked for you."
The god's interest was piqued, and he followed as the woman led the way towards the south gate. Now and then she leaned more heavily on her spear, but she did not let up on the pace.
"How fares your wound?" Thor asked her.
She glanced at him as if startled he had asked. "It is healing," she said, before shuddering. "Helka saw to it."
Thor let out a displeased rumble. "Well that she felt the need to keep our trust and heal some sincerely," he said. "Your name is Ingrid, yes?"
"Aye, God of Thunder," Ingrid said, discomfort washed away with recognition, her spine straightening. A moment later she was forced to lean on her spear again, the movement having strained her core.
He had known the town was short when it came to quantity of trained fighters, but he had not thought it to be that bad. "Are you able to stand guard?" he asked, concerned. "If you require bedrest, I can-"
"No!" Ingrid blurted out, expression near panicked. "I am capable. Even if I cannot fight, I can keep watch."
"As you say," Thor said. "It is good to keep busy - but you know that even if you could not, you would not be left behind, yes?"
"Oh - aye, God of Thunder," Ingrid said, head bobbing. "We know that." Her hand went to a wooden pendant at her throat. It looked like an axe, carved with more care than skill.
A beat of a connection told him exactly what that axe was supposed to resemble, and he found himself caught between affection and embarrassment. It was one thing to see Midgardian children dressing up as him on their festival days, and another thing entirely to see devotion from those he had only passingly spoken with. "Then I will not be the one to tell you that you cannot help," he said. "What can you tell me of these strangers?"
Ingrid seemed thankful for the topic change. "There are three," she said, "two Ungols and a southerner. Not a Kislevite or Nordlander."
Thor gave a hum in response, considering, though he could not think of what might have drawn them here. "Which one asked for me?"
"The southerner," Ingrid said, "though not by name."
"By title?"
Ingrid coughed, not looking at him. "By description."
"I see," he said. He could not think of how someone from the south would come to know of his appearance but not his name. He suspected he would soon find out, as they began to near the gate by the south west corner of the town.
The gates were still standing when they arrived, always a positive sign, and one of the men standing guard atop the wall walk was quick to notice the return of his fellow, Thor in tow. Ingrid made to give him the right of way up the ladder to the platform, only for the thunder god to ignore it and make directly for the gates, pulling them open with ease and ambling through. She was quick to hurry after him.
Two men and a woman awaited him, all ahorse. Their staredown with the two guards on the wall had been broken at the gate's opening, and the men put themselves forward without any indication or an order to their mounts. Both men wore furred hats and well made jerkins, arms bare in the cold, and each peered warily at him over dark droopy moustaches. The woman that they seemed to be protecting, however, was different. She wore no furs, only a hooded cloak that had once been white but was now long since turned to dirty grey. Her face was masked by cloth to protect from cold winds, and hazel eyes inspected Thor from tip to toe.
"Is this him?" one of her escorts asked, speaking a language Thor had not heard before. His hand rested cautiously on the axe at his hip, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.
"He might be," the woman said in the same language. Her voice was a no-nonsense thing, spoken with the tone of someone used to the world piling up work on her before the prior task was finished.
"You know our chief is happy to keep you," the other escort told her. It had the air of a reminder. "Baersonlings aren't to be trusted. They know little of hospitality, and less of the right gods." He spat to the side.
Ingrid bristled at his side. For all that she couldn't understand the language, the tone was clear.
"They know enough of hospitality not to insult strangers when they come to their home, hiding behind another language," Thor said idly. "And they are learning of other gods."
The two men started at his words, before their minds caught up to what he had said. Outrage began to swell, but before they could do more than begin to respond, the woman nudged her horse forward.
"My name is Aderyn," she said. A gloved hand reached up, three fingers shortened by their last knuckle, and freed her face of its covering. It was marked by pox scars, old and faded, and the lines on her face suggested middle age and a life hard lived.
"Pleased to meet you, Aderyn," Thor said with a polite nod. "I am Thor."
Aderyn observed him critically. "Gut isn't quite what it was, but you're the one."
"It is a work in progress," Thor said, slapping his still impressive gut with a smile some would call thoughtless, though his mind was on his axe, calling on it to float clear of the grove. "But which one am I?"
"The one I'm here to help," Aderyn said. "If you'll have me."
"Priestess, are you sure?" the second escort asked again, near pleading. "The tribe would treat you with the respect you deserve."
"I do not go where I am honoured, but where I am needed," Aderyn said, though there was no censure in her tone. "You needed me when we met, but no longer."
"A priestess?" Thor asked. "Of what god?"
"I serve Shallya, Goddess of Healing, Mercy, and Compassion," she said, simply and without pride. "My goddess tells me I am needed here."
"A healer lived here. She was a servant of Decay. We no longer have a healer."
Distaste flashed across Aderyn's face. "That is likely why I have been sent. I will undo the damage that has been done and restore your trust in healers, if you will have me." Her lips pursed. "I understand it may be hard."
But Thor's mind was not on any lingering mistrust that Helka's deeds had engendered. "I slew the follower of Decay scarcely a week past. How is it that you came to be here so swiftly?" He had seen no maps, only told of the shape of the land by local knowledge, but he had thought Vinteerholm to be a remote place, isolated from the more civilised world.
"I began my journey over a moon's turn ago," Aderyn said. "I was given a vision, and so I came. The Sleeping Bear tribe of the Ungols guided me," she added, reverting to the first language she had spoken, giving her escorts a nod of respect.
"We would escort you back to Altdorf, for what you have done for us," one Ungol said earnestly.
Over a month ago, Thor mused…that would put her departure suspiciously close to his meeting with the Lady Dove. Lady Dove he had a regard for, and the two men seemed sincere in their respect. "This Shallya," he said, "what are her symbols?"
"You might know my goddess by the name of Salyak, as the people of Kislev call her," Aderyn offered, again in Norscan. "She comes as a woman in white, or as a white dove."
Thor's mistrust began to slip away, and he let his axe slip down to earth, back in the grove. Perhaps this was indeed some good fortune unlooked for, and no trick.
"Salyak?" Ingrid asked, frowning. "That soft southern god?"
"Salyak not weak," one of the men said in Norscan, glowering at her.
"If you won't defend yourself, you're weak," Ingrid said with a shrug. "Won't survive here."
"I have ministered to the sick in Mousillon, tended to the weak in Sylvania, and healed the wounded in the Forest of Shadows," Aderyn said. "Norsca won't kill me either. I have too much work to do."
Thor knew none of those names, but their mention seemed to stay Ingrid's tongue, leaving her watching the southerner in a new light. If she had followed her calling to such places, dark enough to impress a Baersonling in far off Norsca, then perhaps she was true…but he would be sure.
His eyes, flesh and empty socket alike, shone blue-white. The Ungols cursed, their horses mirroring their mood, but Aderyn hardly blinked, holding steady. Thor looked beyond flesh and bone, taking in her soul, and beheld what she was.
There was no hint of oil and sickness, not even a lingering touch of a putrid essence as Sunniva and Selinda had laboured under - but nor could he see what did fill her. He held back a grimace. His understanding was still limited, and as it had taken much to come to know the sight and touch of Nurgle, so too would it take much to know the sight and touch of other gods. Hopefully this understanding would come in a way other than through his axe.
He let his sight beyond sight fade, even as he tucked one hand into what had just been an empty pocket. His fingers curled around a white feather, and it warmed comfortably, reassuring. A whim had him pull it from his pocket, cradling it for the newcomers to see, and he watched as they saw it.
The Ungols stared at the sight of it, unsure what they were seeing beyond something extraordinary. It was Aderyn's reaction that was most telling. Her breath hitched, and the glimmer of tears appeared in her eyes. She blinked them away, smiling.
"Thank you," she said simply, even as Thor tucked the feather back into his pocket and away from reality.
"You are welcome here," Thor said, returning her smile. "Helka, the corrupted healer, left behind two apprentices. They will be glad to have your guidance, I would think."
"I would be glad to give it," Aderyn said, before turning to each of her escorts in turn. "Stanislav, Adrijan. I thank you for your protection."
"We were pleased to give it," Stanislav said.
"If you are not safe and well when our tribe next passes here, the Sleeping Bears will wake to war," Adrijan said, glowering at Thor.
Thor beamed at the threat, reminded of a poodle he had witnessed barking at a Chitauri in defence of its human during the Battle of New York. "You are very brave," he reassured the man. "But surely you do not mean to leave so soon? Stay a while, and rest before you return to your people."
The men exchanged a glance, surprise overcoming any offence his words might have caused.
"You are offering hospitality?" Stanislav asked.
"I am," Thor said.
"Then…we will accept," Stanislav said, cautiously pleased.
Thor clapped his hands together, tugging at clothes and setting hair to flying in his enthusiasm. "Excellent! Chief Tyra is absent - she has taken a band south on a trading venture - but I will introduce you around in her stead. This is Ingrid, she was stabbed through the belly in the fight to evict the Aesling raiders who had taken the town, but that was not enough to stop her…"
The three newcomers found themselves swept up in Thor's wake as he shuffled them through the gates, unsure of how to respond beyond simply letting themselves be pulled along. The Ungols at least were sure to stay out of grabbing distance, unwilling to risk having their own shoulders wrapped in a strong arm as Ingrid had suffered as she was showed off.
Above the gate, the two guards shared a look of amusement at their plight. They could remember their own first exposure to the Thunder God, coming across the man telling a story to their freshly rescued children. The outsiders would learn, just as they had, but until they did their bewilderment would be amusing to watch.
Asgard, Old and New and all at once, rose before him gleaming and proud. There was a realness to it now, a solidity that had been missing, noted only by its prior absence. Its golden walls had a strength and certainty to them, the kind that only came when a thing had been proven. Butterflies and bees fluttered through the sun-kissed green fields, and faceless young figures - not living beings, but somehow part of the realm itself - played amongst them, mute testament to the protection offered by the great walls.
But Thor's attention was not upon the fields, or the walls. It was levelled at the gold-clad figure standing before the mighty gates, hands resting on the hilt of his formidable sword. The god came to a stop before the being that wore the face of old friends, gaze not wary, but probing still.
"My king," said the being that was not Heimdall. Yellow eyes watched, calm and at ease.
"Watcher," Thor said. "What do you see?"
"I see dangers on the horizon. I see rival kingdoms," he said, smile sharp and white. "And I see a strong foundation, but strength ever calls to strength."
"Strength to strength…you say there will be challengers," Thor said. A breeze swept by them, carrying with it the scent of petrichor.
"There are already challengers," the watcher corrected him. "But as your kingdom grows, so does its place in the Aethyr. The sound of a cat's footfall is a difficult thing to grasp; the cat, less so."
The urge to turn and glance at the horizon was too strong to deny, but of course there were only clear skies and endless fields. When he turned back, a new face awaited him. "And you?" Thor asked. "Where do you stand, he that wears the faces of my brothers and sisters in battle?"
"I stand at your side, as I ever have," the being said, Hogun's grim face watching him.
"You will never use the face of my brother," Thor ordered, his voice quiet.
"As you say, my king," the watcher said, bowing his head. "I am not your enemy."
"Then who are you?" Thor asked. "You are not my foe, it is true - but I do not know you."
"Yes you do," the watcher said, and in the time it took Thor to blink it was fair Sif standing before him. "You have looked upon me with the eye given twice in duty."
"Asgard was destroyed."
"Was it?" the watcher asked, the corner of her mouth quirking slightly.
Thor huffed a short laugh. He inspected the watcher for a moment, looking with his missing eye, and it was so much easier than in the mortal world. Goldsilver shone before and all around him, the watcher blending in with the background and the very air. There was no telling where one ended and the other began because there was no ending, nor beginning.
"Asgard," the god said. "You are Asgard."
"Old and New and all at once," Asgard confirmed. "I was born by your coming, and I will stand until Ragnarok comes."
Giving voice to his suspicions and having them confirmed put a stillness in Thor's tongue, but not for long. He had questions burning at him still.
One burned above all. "There is a Valhalla in this realm - is it connected to the Valhalla of my home? Might I bring those within - ?"
But Asgard was shaking her head. "You are mighty here in this new realm, but it is a new realm, not an extension of the Old, and even if it were not…" she shrugged. "Such a thing is not done lightly, even for the old gods of this place."
Thor sagged, even knowing the likely answer before he asked, but he rallied. "And what of these old gods? Would they be friend, or foe? I have met perhaps one that I would not wish to introduce to my axe."
"Some may," Asgard said. "Others would oppose the Four, but that does not mean they would be friend. Lady Dove is unique, from what my eyes have seen."
"So few would value kindness as she did?" Thor asked, troubled.
"None would make themselves so vulnerable," Asgard corrected him. "To pass into your realm is to pass through the eye of a needle, as it stands."
"Then she is trusting."
"Some would say foolish," Asgard said.
"Are we amongst them?"
"No."
Thor gave Asgard a smile at that. "But as we grow, so does the path," he said, sobering. "They have sought harm by guile, but they will strike by force, will they not?"
"They will," Asgard said. "But we will be ready. Your followers will be our greatest defence." Brown eyes flicked to the horizon, watching something unseen.
"The city is yet empty," Thor said, "and the figures in the fields were never mortals."
"They were not," Asgard said, "though mortals will join them in time. They will need guides when they do, to reach the city."
"Guides?" Thor asked. "Through the fields?" They were open and rolling things, he thought, and criss crossed with simple dirt paths, all leading to the city.
"The path seems simple for you and I, but it is less so for others," Asgard said.
"I have but one Valkyrie, and I will not hurry her on her way to act as shepard," Thor said, suddenly worried that there were souls wandering lost through his realm, thinking he had abandoned them.
"She will take up her duties here when her time comes, not before," Asgard said, unworried. "There are no souls in need of guidance, not yet. Those who fell with fond thoughts of you had gods with a greater hold on their souls."
"Such a thing is truly necessary?" Thor asked. The thought of such a never ending task, for himself or another, seemed…onerous.
"Defence of the city begins in the borderlands," Asgard said, and with a shrug they bore the form of powerful Volstagg, thickset and immovable. "When a foe can finally march on us in strength, they will pay dearly."
Bloodthirsty smiles were shared, god and realm in full accord.
"Then if I wish to make allies, I would need to - what, venture into the realms they claim?" Thor asked.
"I would not advise it, my king," Asgard said, "not unless you were very sure of the nature of your welcome."
"Perhaps I will visit their temples, when I have the chance," Thor said, frowning. His father had warned him of the dangers of dealing with other gods from a place of weakness, though he had taken the warning lightly when given.
He was no longer such a foolish youth. Mostly.
An odd feeling came over him, like a faint misting of water, but it was strange, distant.
"You are waking," Asgard observed. "Is there anything else you would know?"
The sensation came again, stronger this time. "The Bifrost, I lost much time on my return -"
"Keep its use to your places of power, and our foes will not be able to delay or make use of it," Asgard said. The look of calm respect on his face was strange, given whose appearance he wore. "Until next time, my king."
"Asgard," Thor returned, and then the feel of misting came again, but this time it was more like a spray, and he felt the world around him begin to fade.
He supposed he would have a new lunchable waiting for him, after this. He looked forward to it.
X
When Thor woke, he could not see. He could not see because there was a trunk covering his face, questing wetly across it. "Good morning, Trumpetter," he said, voice muffled.
Trumpetter rumbled a greeting in reply, pulling his trunk away with a final pat. In doing so, he revealed to Thor that he was not the only one waiting for him to wake.
"Good morning, Leifnir," he said, sitting up. He was still in the grove, under the ash tree; despite the celebration that had kicked off in the wake of the healing, the town's supplies were not so bountiful that they could afford to have another feast. That only meant that those who had been drawn by the sounds brough alcohol alone with them, as evidenced by the snoring and still figures littered about the grove. Wolfric was absent as were his sisters, but he could see Kirsa's nose poking out from where she was bundled in her red cloak, while Sunniva and Selinda were a tangle of limbs beside her.
"Good morning, Thor Odinson," Leifnir said. She had adjusted her size again, and her shoulder was of a level with Trumpetter's. "I was beginning to think you would sleep for days."
"It is hardly midmorning," Thor protested. He pushed himself to his feet, stretching his arms wide with a yawn. Trumpetter took the chance to boop him on his stomach, and he booped him in turn before he could pull his trunk free. "Do dragons not hibernate for decades?"
Leifnir sniffed, still looking down on him. Her size had grown subtly as he stood, keeping her head above his. "Not in the dirt under open skies, we do not."
"How is your home?" Thor asked. "The repairs were not too burdensome, I hope."
"They were easy, even with your storm still lingering silently across my ceiling," Leifnir boasted.
"Oh, that was not my intent," Thor said, frowning now. "I will remove it for you as soon as I can leave this place without worry."
"No, it is fine," Leifnir said, perhaps slightly too quickly. "I am not one to be bothered by a small lightshow, no matter how pretty."
"Of course," Thor said, face grave, even as he held back a smile. He glanced to the sky, it was overcast, but did not seem to threaten rain, and the air was cool. "What brings you to me, in any case?"
"I wish to return to my hoard," Leifnir said, ignoring Trumpetter leaning into her side, trunk investigating her paw. "But I cannot do so until I discharge the debt I owe you."
Thor had had time to think during the celebrations; it would take all the alcohol in Vinteerholm and more to impair him beyond that. At first he had toyed with the idea of a working to improve the land's ability to grow crops, but such a thing seemed to be outside of the type of magic that Leifnir wielded. In the end, he had settled on a charm that he thought would help the town in another aspect it was lacking in. "A sickness formed by Decay is beyond you," he began, "but mortal sicknesses are not. Could you perhaps lay a charm over the town itself, to ward off simple ills?"
Leifnir's frill fluttered as she thought. "Normally, such a thing would require my repeated presence, or a medium which could be lost by misfortune or enemy action," she mused, but then she glanced at the ash tree they stood by. "Given what I saw of your altar on the death of dusk, however, I think I might use it." Pale eyes flicked back to Thor. "Given your acceptance, of course."
Thor opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated, considering. "How would you make use of it?" Leifnir seemed a good sort, but in truth they were hardly more than strangers.
"There is a spell," Leifnir said, "to ward off disease, so long as one is illuminated by the fire that anchors it. I think that I might use the light that your blessing gives off instead."
"Such a thing sounds difficult," Thor said. He could remember Loki complaining about a task mother had set him to change a charm.
"For a lesser dragon, perhaps," Leifnir said, chest puffing up.
"And you are no lesser dragon," Thor agreed. "How would it work? Would the ill need to gather in the grove come nightfall?"
"If they come to this place in dire need, yes," Leifnir said. "But I have felt your blessing building and flowing with each day, higher each time. The motes of gold may not flow through this place, but my spell will be carried by them all the same."
"Even with the expansion of the walls?" Thor asked.
"Given time, your font will grow to suffuse the land, much as my presence spills down my mountain," Leifnir said. "So long as your tree survives, that is. Humans are ever so eager to use their axes."
Thor snorted. "Let them try." He thought on it for a moment, but if he were willing to trust the health of the townsfolk to her spell, it would be wrong of him to baulk at trusting her with the tree as well. "What do you require?"
"A day, perhaps two," Leifnir said. Trumpetter had finished investigating her paw, and had moved on to her furled wing, but still he was ignored. "Then I will hold our bargain fulfilled, and return to my home."
"I would not have you leave without saying goodbye," Thor told her. "Your aid against the minions of Bloodlust was most appreciated."
Leifnir raised her chin in a show of pride, but it was somewhat offset by the mammoth trying to burrow under her wing. "Of course it was. You may be a god, but I am a dragon."
"Of course," Thor agreed. He took in the grove; its current state was…less than suited for delicate workings. "Do you mean to begin now?"
The dragon gave a distasteful look at the drunk and hungover sleepers scattered about, snout wrinkling. "I will prepare the spell somewhere less fragrant."
One of the nearby sleepers farted noisily, and Thor felt his own nose wrinkling in turn. God, dragon, and mammoth turned and began to make their way from the grove in silent agreement. Once clear, Leifnir took to the skies with only a nod, swiftly returning to her natural size and leaving the town behind, heading upstream. Her scales glittered as she passed through a lonely sunbeam, but she was soon invisible against the clouds.
Left to their own devices, Thor and Trumpetter began to make their way through the town, quiet as it was the morning after the revelry. They were not left on their own for long, however.
A woman in light furs approached. "God of Thunder," she asked, nearing at a swift walk, spear in hand. She bowed, blue eyes fixed on the ground. "Your aid is needed."
Thor took a moment to place her familiar broken nose, before remembering her as the woman who took a sword to the stomach, back when they stormed the gates to liberate the town. "You have it," he said. "Where?"
"The south gate," she said. "Strangers have come. One asked for you."
The god's interest was piqued, and he followed as the woman led the way towards the south gate. Now and then she leaned more heavily on her spear, but she did not let up on the pace.
"How fares your wound?" Thor asked her.
She glanced at him as if startled he had asked. "It is healing," she said, before shuddering. "Helka saw to it."
Thor let out a displeased rumble. "Well that she felt the need to keep our trust and heal some sincerely," he said. "Your name is Ingrid, yes?"
"Aye, God of Thunder," Ingrid said, discomfort washed away with recognition, her spine straightening. A moment later she was forced to lean on her spear again, the movement having strained her core.
He had known the town was short when it came to quantity of trained fighters, but he had not thought it to be that bad. "Are you able to stand guard?" he asked, concerned. "If you require bedrest, I can-"
"No!" Ingrid blurted out, expression near panicked. "I am capable. Even if I cannot fight, I can keep watch."
"As you say," Thor said. "It is good to keep busy - but you know that even if you could not, you would not be left behind, yes?"
"Oh - aye, God of Thunder," Ingrid said, head bobbing. "We know that." Her hand went to a wooden pendant at her throat. It looked like an axe, carved with more care than skill.
A beat of a connection told him exactly what that axe was supposed to resemble, and he found himself caught between affection and embarrassment. It was one thing to see Midgardian children dressing up as him on their festival days, and another thing entirely to see devotion from those he had only passingly spoken with. "Then I will not be the one to tell you that you cannot help," he said. "What can you tell me of these strangers?"
Ingrid seemed thankful for the topic change. "There are three," she said, "two Ungols and a southerner. Not a Kislevite or Nordlander."
Thor gave a hum in response, considering, though he could not think of what might have drawn them here. "Which one asked for me?"
"The southerner," Ingrid said, "though not by name."
"By title?"
Ingrid coughed, not looking at him. "By description."
"I see," he said. He could not think of how someone from the south would come to know of his appearance but not his name. He suspected he would soon find out, as they began to near the gate by the south west corner of the town.
The gates were still standing when they arrived, always a positive sign, and one of the men standing guard atop the wall walk was quick to notice the return of his fellow, Thor in tow. Ingrid made to give him the right of way up the ladder to the platform, only for the thunder god to ignore it and make directly for the gates, pulling them open with ease and ambling through. She was quick to hurry after him.
Two men and a woman awaited him, all ahorse. Their staredown with the two guards on the wall had been broken at the gate's opening, and the men put themselves forward without any indication or an order to their mounts. Both men wore furred hats and well made jerkins, arms bare in the cold, and each peered warily at him over dark droopy moustaches. The woman that they seemed to be protecting, however, was different. She wore no furs, only a hooded cloak that had once been white but was now long since turned to dirty grey. Her face was masked by cloth to protect from cold winds, and hazel eyes inspected Thor from tip to toe.
"Is this him?" one of her escorts asked, speaking a language Thor had not heard before. His hand rested cautiously on the axe at his hip, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.
"He might be," the woman said in the same language. Her voice was a no-nonsense thing, spoken with the tone of someone used to the world piling up work on her before the prior task was finished.
"You know our chief is happy to keep you," the other escort told her. It had the air of a reminder. "Baersonlings aren't to be trusted. They know little of hospitality, and less of the right gods." He spat to the side.
Ingrid bristled at his side. For all that she couldn't understand the language, the tone was clear.
"They know enough of hospitality not to insult strangers when they come to their home, hiding behind another language," Thor said idly. "And they are learning of other gods."
The two men started at his words, before their minds caught up to what he had said. Outrage began to swell, but before they could do more than begin to respond, the woman nudged her horse forward.
"My name is Aderyn," she said. A gloved hand reached up, three fingers shortened by their last knuckle, and freed her face of its covering. It was marked by pox scars, old and faded, and the lines on her face suggested middle age and a life hard lived.
"Pleased to meet you, Aderyn," Thor said with a polite nod. "I am Thor."
Aderyn observed him critically. "Gut isn't quite what it was, but you're the one."
"It is a work in progress," Thor said, slapping his still impressive gut with a smile some would call thoughtless, though his mind was on his axe, calling on it to float clear of the grove. "But which one am I?"
"The one I'm here to help," Aderyn said. "If you'll have me."
"Priestess, are you sure?" the second escort asked again, near pleading. "The tribe would treat you with the respect you deserve."
"I do not go where I am honoured, but where I am needed," Aderyn said, though there was no censure in her tone. "You needed me when we met, but no longer."
"A priestess?" Thor asked. "Of what god?"
"I serve Shallya, Goddess of Healing, Mercy, and Compassion," she said, simply and without pride. "My goddess tells me I am needed here."
"A healer lived here. She was a servant of Decay. We no longer have a healer."
Distaste flashed across Aderyn's face. "That is likely why I have been sent. I will undo the damage that has been done and restore your trust in healers, if you will have me." Her lips pursed. "I understand it may be hard."
But Thor's mind was not on any lingering mistrust that Helka's deeds had engendered. "I slew the follower of Decay scarcely a week past. How is it that you came to be here so swiftly?" He had seen no maps, only told of the shape of the land by local knowledge, but he had thought Vinteerholm to be a remote place, isolated from the more civilised world.
"I began my journey over a moon's turn ago," Aderyn said. "I was given a vision, and so I came. The Sleeping Bear tribe of the Ungols guided me," she added, reverting to the first language she had spoken, giving her escorts a nod of respect.
"We would escort you back to Altdorf, for what you have done for us," one Ungol said earnestly.
Over a month ago, Thor mused…that would put her departure suspiciously close to his meeting with the Lady Dove. Lady Dove he had a regard for, and the two men seemed sincere in their respect. "This Shallya," he said, "what are her symbols?"
"You might know my goddess by the name of Salyak, as the people of Kislev call her," Aderyn offered, again in Norscan. "She comes as a woman in white, or as a white dove."
Thor's mistrust began to slip away, and he let his axe slip down to earth, back in the grove. Perhaps this was indeed some good fortune unlooked for, and no trick.
"Salyak?" Ingrid asked, frowning. "That soft southern god?"
"Salyak not weak," one of the men said in Norscan, glowering at her.
"If you won't defend yourself, you're weak," Ingrid said with a shrug. "Won't survive here."
"I have ministered to the sick in Mousillon, tended to the weak in Sylvania, and healed the wounded in the Forest of Shadows," Aderyn said. "Norsca won't kill me either. I have too much work to do."
Thor knew none of those names, but their mention seemed to stay Ingrid's tongue, leaving her watching the southerner in a new light. If she had followed her calling to such places, dark enough to impress a Baersonling in far off Norsca, then perhaps she was true…but he would be sure.
His eyes, flesh and empty socket alike, shone blue-white. The Ungols cursed, their horses mirroring their mood, but Aderyn hardly blinked, holding steady. Thor looked beyond flesh and bone, taking in her soul, and beheld what she was.
There was no hint of oil and sickness, not even a lingering touch of a putrid essence as Sunniva and Selinda had laboured under - but nor could he see what did fill her. He held back a grimace. His understanding was still limited, and as it had taken much to come to know the sight and touch of Nurgle, so too would it take much to know the sight and touch of other gods. Hopefully this understanding would come in a way other than through his axe.
He let his sight beyond sight fade, even as he tucked one hand into what had just been an empty pocket. His fingers curled around a white feather, and it warmed comfortably, reassuring. A whim had him pull it from his pocket, cradling it for the newcomers to see, and he watched as they saw it.
The Ungols stared at the sight of it, unsure what they were seeing beyond something extraordinary. It was Aderyn's reaction that was most telling. Her breath hitched, and the glimmer of tears appeared in her eyes. She blinked them away, smiling.
"Thank you," she said simply, even as Thor tucked the feather back into his pocket and away from reality.
"You are welcome here," Thor said, returning her smile. "Helka, the corrupted healer, left behind two apprentices. They will be glad to have your guidance, I would think."
"I would be glad to give it," Aderyn said, before turning to each of her escorts in turn. "Stanislav, Adrijan. I thank you for your protection."
"We were pleased to give it," Stanislav said.
"If you are not safe and well when our tribe next passes here, the Sleeping Bears will wake to war," Adrijan said, glowering at Thor.
Thor beamed at the threat, reminded of a poodle he had witnessed barking at a Chitauri in defence of its human during the Battle of New York. "You are very brave," he reassured the man. "But surely you do not mean to leave so soon? Stay a while, and rest before you return to your people."
The men exchanged a glance, surprise overcoming any offence his words might have caused.
"You are offering hospitality?" Stanislav asked.
"I am," Thor said.
"Then…we will accept," Stanislav said, cautiously pleased.
Thor clapped his hands together, tugging at clothes and setting hair to flying in his enthusiasm. "Excellent! Chief Tyra is absent - she has taken a band south on a trading venture - but I will introduce you around in her stead. This is Ingrid, she was stabbed through the belly in the fight to evict the Aesling raiders who had taken the town, but that was not enough to stop her…"
The three newcomers found themselves swept up in Thor's wake as he shuffled them through the gates, unsure of how to respond beyond simply letting themselves be pulled along. The Ungols at least were sure to stay out of grabbing distance, unwilling to risk having their own shoulders wrapped in a strong arm as Ingrid had suffered as she was showed off.
Above the gate, the two guards shared a look of amusement at their plight. They could remember their own first exposure to the Thunder God, coming across the man telling a story to their freshly rescued children. The outsiders would learn, just as they had, but until they did their bewilderment would be amusing to watch.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
I do love your story, almost enough to read the captain American one
- Location
- Omega
You should read the Captain America.
It's an excellent return to form for the Captain. Find the barbarism and idiocy of feudalistic Westeros exhausting? Weary of the grimdarkness and betrayal?
Read A Soldier Adrift to find liberty, equality, and justice being punched into existence one corrupt noble at a time.
In all seriousness, it's so fun seeing Steve Roger's stubbornness and refusal to compromise with any sort of evil slowly evoke and inspire people to be better in the nihilism of Westeros.
LordofTentacles
Surprisingly Sturdy
- Location
- Louisiana
I'd read if too if I could work up the effort to ignore how much of the quest parts pull me out.
- Location
- Australia
Pretty sure I've removed them in the FFNet and AO3 versions.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
Nope, almost was used deliberately. I don't overly care for game of thrones or captain America and mixing them seems bad.
Love Thor, and this depiction of him is good, same with iron man and hulk. And I do admit that I'm kinda waiting for the iron man one of it ever becomes a thing.
I am firmly team iron man. If only because captain America is a hypocrite throughout the movies
I love this story! I have reread it multiple times and it is a joy every time. Thank you for writing this!
It looks like Ranald is snooping around! I think Thor would get along with him and it most likely will remind him of his brother. I am looking forward to the interactions between the two.
It looks like Ranald is snooping around! I think Thor would get along with him and it most likely will remind him of his brother. I am looking forward to the interactions between the two.
- Location
- Australia
For once, this isn't a reference to Ranald by way of cat.
I just had a wild thought.
So Thor assumes that the legend of Tor was created by him during time travel but what if, now hear me out, it Loki's fault.
What if Loki somehow ended up on Mallus at much earlier time than Thor and disguised himself as someone based on his Brother. Loki just rolling with it ended up creating Tor and never bothered to correct the people on the pronunciation. of course he would never mention that "Tor" has a brother because he is hiding himself.
Its all Loki's fault
I am sure that there is a ton of flaws with theory but i want to believe.
Unfortunate but i am still looking forward to if those two ever interact.
So Thor assumes that the legend of Tor was created by him during time travel but what if, now hear me out, it Loki's fault.
What if Loki somehow ended up on Mallus at much earlier time than Thor and disguised himself as someone based on his Brother. Loki just rolling with it ended up creating Tor and never bothered to correct the people on the pronunciation. of course he would never mention that "Tor" has a brother because he is hiding himself.
Its all Loki's fault
I am sure that there is a ton of flaws with theory but i want to believe.
Unfortunate but i am still looking forward to if those two ever interact.
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Pest Control 2
- Location
- Australia
It did not take long to reach the grove, though the newcomers felt that they had been introduced to half the town along the way. The grove itself was still littered with casualties from the celebration, though some had begun to stir. Sunniva and Selinda were amongst them, the sisters checking on Bjorn. Trumpetter had wandered off earlier, and Kirsa still slept over by the ash tree, swaddled in her red cloak.
"We had cause for joy, last night, with the last of Decay's touch purged," Thor whispered to his guests. "But there are those who cannot handle their drink so well as I."
"Is that him?" Aderyn asked, nodding towards Bjorn. The baresark was sitting on a sleeping mat under a tree, not the ash, but a young oak that had grown enough to provide shelter.
"Well, yes, but also no," Thor said. "He was touched by Decay as he rescued Helka's victims, and it was they who were cleansed. Sunniva and Selinda - the two changings his bandages - were her apprentices."
"You have not driven them out?" Adrijan asked, perplexed.
"Why would I?" Thor asked, tone mild. "It was not they who betrayed their neighbours."
Adrijan opened his mouth to respond, but Stanislav elbowed him, and he closed it, nodding.
In the moment the interaction had taken, Aderyn was already moving forward, approaching the apprentice healers and their patient. Several sets of bleary eyes watched her, but they also saw Thor, and that was enough for them to consider the matter handled, and they rolled back over in search of more sleep. Thor, Ingrid, and the two Ungols watched as she knelt without a word. The twins paused at her arrival, but when she said nothing they continued in their task, unwrapping the bandages around Bjorn's chest. The man himself was focused on keeping himself upright where he sat, opening one eye only briefly to take in the newcomer.
The wounds first left by the chaos hounds and then infected by Rot were no easy thing to look at, still seared red by infection and lined with blisters of pus here and there, but they had still seen an improvement. No longer did they threaten to burst open at the slightest touch and let loose a flood of all sorts of foulness, and no longer did Bjorn struggle to breathe, though weakness remained. He had a recovery of months ahead of him.
Aderyn took up a small pot of white poultice that the sisters meant to apply, first sniffing at it, then touching her finger to it to dab it at her tongue. She made no comment, but set the pot back where she had found it. Sunniva had a handful of river moss, wrapped tightly with sinew, and she dabbed at Bjorn's chest, carefully removing the black gunk that was the last of the previous application. The warrior bore it stoically, and when it was clear, Selinda began to paste the poultice over the blisters anew.
"You do not cover the entire wound?" Aderyn asked, voice quiet to fit the grove.
Selinda grimaced, but left it to her sister to answer. "We are trying to stretch the batch," Sunniva said. "The next still needs three nights to settle."
"Ah," Aderyn said. She pulled back the hood of her cloak, revealing ruddy brown hair kept short. "I will show you a way to speed the process."
The twins paused in their ministrations, both glancing to Thor. He gave them two supportive thumbs up, and they looked back to the newcomer.
"We would like that," Sunniva said, hesitant but hopeful.
Thor beamed to see Aderyn making a good impression on the two young women. He had high hopes for her future as a teacher to them. "Ingrid," he said to the woman still standing at his shoulder, pretending he hadn't seen her exchanging mean looks with Adrijan for the past minutes. "Could you show our guests to the longhouse? They deser-" he broke off, eyes fixed on a new arrival in the grove.
Unsure, the three with him followed his gaze, but their confusion only grew when they saw what had caught his eye. To be sure, the eagle, golden and fierce, that had just perched on the bough of the ash tree was unusually large, but that was all, even if it was matching Thor's stare for intensity.
His hand brushed against his pocket, considering the lunchable that had appeared within that morning. But no, he had promised the eagle a fish caught with his own hands, and that was what he would deliver.
"I will leave you to it," Thor said, still not taking his eye off the bird. "I have business to conduct."
The eagle flared its wings, beating its way into the air, and with a thought Stormbreaker was in hand and he was following. The morning was on the verge of being left behind, the townspeople well and truly going about their business for the day, save for those who had celebrated most vigorously the night before. From the sky, Thor could see the ongoing work of readying the century old tree trunks to be placed around the town as walls, and even a hunting party departing to the nearby forest, but only for a moment, for their destination was not far. Man and eagle set down a short way upriver, both observing the currents.
"You may have disdained the last fish I offered," Thor said, "but I will find one to satisfy you!"
The eagle gave a doubtful cry, settling itself down on a log of driftwood that had somehow come to rest on the riverbank.
Challenged, Thor shed his tunic and strode into the cold water, not stopping until he was waist deep. He caught flashes of silver scales and dark shapes as they were disturbed by his entry, and he settled in to wait.
His first catch did not take long. A long, slender fish, almost eel-like, came to investigate his toes, and when it thought to take a bite, he let it, pinning its jaw to the riverbed. In a flash he had it up and out of the water, forced to stretch out his arms as he held it by gill and tail.
"Well?" he asked the eagle. "What say you?"
The eagle gave a dismissive clack of her beak and looked away.
Thor narrowed his eyes. He would not be found wanting. The long fish was whipped around and thrown at the bank where Stormbreaker hovered, the axe parting head from body. The fish fell to the stones with a thump, where it lay twitching. Even if the eagle did not care for it, it could still feed another. He returned his focus to the river.
Twice more Thor seized a hungry fish, each bigger than the last, but twice more the eagle turned up her nose at the offering. He was beginning to suspect that it would take more than a simple river denizen to satisfy her. Even the three fish together on the bank were of little interest, though it at least confirmed in Thor's mind that she was something beyond a typical eagle. Even a familiar would have at least sampled the bounty on offer, but here was a bird that had finally tired of his offerings and was beating its way back into the sky with a final dissatisfied shriek.
Standing in the river, Thor narrowed his gaze as she disappeared from sight, hands on his hips. Even if no simple fish would satisfy her, he would not be deterred, nor would he accept defeat. It was hardly even about making recompense any longer, the original insult nearly forgotten.
A fist clenched in determination. He would find a fish that the bird found acceptable, on his name as an Odinson. He swore it.
X
When Thor left the river behind to return to town, he did so with an armful of fish, their heads left to feed the pack of dogs that had been drawn by the scent of their blood. The heads could have been used for stews, but the hounds had waited so patiently and left his catch alone so obediently that he had not the heart to deny them. He had meant to deliver them to the longhouse, but he had been intercepted by another pack, this one made of youngsters on the cusp of adulthood and the odd younger sibling. They would see to the scaling and the gutting, they said, if only they might lay a hand on his axe, and it was with a solemn clasping of hands with the boy who led them that the deal was struck. The mob raced away, hooting and hollering the instant they were out of sight, and Thor turned back to the river with a smile. He had blood and scales to clean himself of.
Even on the tail end of winter, to bathe in the river was a folly even for strong men, but Thor was no mere man. He shed his clothing and leapt from one of the newly built docks, the longship it was built to service gone downstream to fish, scrubbing himself with ice water and river sand. He found it refreshing, and he lingered a while, watching the elders and fighters on the far bank mark out where the new walls would be placed, once the trees that Thor had felled were trimmed to readiness and trenches dug for them. He was watched in turn, however, by a group of young ladies whose business of gathering water for washing seemed to be delayed by knocked over buckets and a break for gossip.
Fair Aslaug was amongst them, and when he rose from the river to retrieve his clothes with water streaming from his form, she caught his eye, amusement glimmering as she looked between one of her companions and his bare form. The young woman was staring at him with a gaze that reminded him of the dogs that had so recently coveted his catch, and he could not help but huff a laugh in turn. When he had dressed, the group found their work quickly concluded, and they went on their way.
The midday sun was almost warm as he sat down at the end of the dock, taking the moment for himself. There was more lumber to be felled, and work to be done, but for the moment no one was imperilled and no dark foe bore down upon them. He could take a moment, to sit, to think.
A moment he had, but before the sun could do more than shift slightly across the sky, there came the tread of boots on the dockwood. A glance back showed him Wolfric approaching, brow furrowed in thought.
Thor shifted to one side, a silent invitation to sit, and his follower did so. For a time, they were silent, simply watching the current drift slowly by. Then-
"I spoke with Harad," Wolfric said. "He spoke of my father."
Thor nodded, but did not speak. He remembered Harad's condition for telling them of Leifnir's lair.
"Did I ever tell how I lost my eye?" Wolfric said, apparently changing the subject.
"You have not."
"An Aesling woman put an arrow through my shield, and my arm," he said. "Had they not slowed it, I would have been slain."
"This was not in the attack on your home," Thor said. He remembered Wolfric as he had first met him, cold and wounded and fleeing from raiders with only Elsa at his side, though the wounds had not been fresh.
"No," Wolfric said. "We were the raiders. My uncle led us, and we had sailed west. We meant to take what was theirs for our own, to ease the winter."
"Do you feel ill, that you would visit upon others what was visited upon you?" Thor asked. There was no judgement in his voice.
Wolfric seemed to hear it all the same. "No! No." He shook his head. "There is raiding, and there is raiding. In one, you take their grain, their animals, maybe a thrall to help with work, but in the other you take…everything. Even before you, it was not for me." He fell silent, staring past his feet at the water.
Thor gave him time.
"I think it was for my uncle, and I know it was for my father," he said, finding the words. "I never knew my mother, and I do not know what tribe she was from. The twins, their mother was Baerson and acted as a mother to me. I heard tell she was a willing bride, which means mine was not."
"Not an easy truth to hear."
Wolfric gave a bitter snort. "No."
"What happened to him?" Thor asked.
"Harad."
It was not difficult to imagine the old warrior happening to someone.
Wolfric sighed, running a hand over his scalp. It would need shaving again soon if he meant to keep it bare, though the stubble on his cheeks was thicker. "He came to our village one day while I was helping our hunters. He challenged my father, killed him, then left. It was not until I was older that I started to understand why."
"You still grew up under that shadow," Thor noted.
"Aye," Wolfric said, "and Uncle never gave up on revenge. That's what the raid he took me on was supposed to be the start of, gathering strength and becoming for him what he was for my father."
"But you were wounded, and sent home."
Wolfric nodded. "He hoped that Helka might save arm, if not my eye, and that I could rejoin him. She did, but then the Aeslings fell upon us."
"And I fell upon them."
A smile crossed his face, but then he shuddered. "I would have lost them both."
"You did not," Thor said.
"But I nearly did. Had I not lost my eye, had I not been there only to return months later to find the town razed…" he said, expression darkening.
"You did not," Thor repeated, more firmly this time. "And you need not torment yourself with thoughts on how you might have reacted. You are the Wolfric that is, not the Wolfric that may have been."
He swallowed. "Aye, Lord Thor."
A thought occurred. "Where is your uncle now?" Thor asked.
"I do not know," Wolfric said, a frown crossing his face. "The plan should have seen him return by now, but unless the plan changed…" he trailed off.
Thor would not spend worry on a man like this seemed to be, even if he was Wolfric's uncle. "An easy thing to happen," he said. "You are settled with Harad, then?"
"I am," Wolfric said, and it was clear that the last lingering remnants of a childhood fear had been lifted from him that day. "We spoke. He told me- Helka- well. I understand him better, now."
"Then that is well," Thor said. "The girls?"
Wolfric rolled his eyes. "Running around and acting out Kirsa's deeds with Trumpetter like they didn't just worry me into the grave and back," he said. "If their hair was not turning to gold, I would think the ordeal had changed them none at all." A hand went to his neck, tugging on something that Thor had yet to notice.
It was familiar. "Is that -?" he asked, gaze making it clear what he meant.
"Ah," Wolfric said, rubbing the back of his head. "My carving hand is not so steady; I rarely had the patience for Uncle's lessons. It was meant to be your axe."
Stormbreaker's head was easy enough to make out, but the haft was much too short, as if it had been carved too thinly and broken off part way. Sinew string connected it to the leather thong around his neck, worn much the same as the one Ingrid had.
Thor could not help but laugh. "That is fitting. Let me tell you about my hammer, the weapon I bore before Stormbreaker. Let me tell you of Mjolnir."
Weightier topics were left behind for the moment as Thor told his first follower in this land of the weapon that he had first made his name with, of the highs and lows he had been through with it. When the tales were told, each went on their way, and both were the lighter for it.
X
Later, Thor found himself sitting in his grove. It had mostly emptied, those who had spent the night long departed, but he was not quite alone. He rested against Trumpetter, the mammoth resting after a full day of playing with the children, and he had a bucket of warped and damaged nails before him. In the shade of his ash tree, he was straightening and checking each nail by hand, saving some poor apprentice the trouble. Trumpetter was not his only company; a short way away two old warriors were having a quiet conversation, and though they might have thought he was out of earshot, he could not help but overhear.
"-your skald brother, with the pretty black locks and that dagger he nearly cut my spine with." Bjorn was leaning against the tree his sleeping mat sat under, sipping slowly at a waterskin.
"Neuner," Harad said, nostalgic smile on his face. "The trouble he got us into. He was a true brother." The big man was sat in the dirt, legs stretched out before himself as he reached for his toes.
"Was?" Bjorn asked.
"He died, in the south. The wanderlust never left him, even after I finally settled down."
Bjorn considered him. "Even after you gave it up, the Axeman was never told to be one to forgive."
"He did not fall to treachery, or in battle," Harad said. He paused, reconsidering, and gave a rumbling hum, releasing his toes. "Well, he would have said it was a battle. His heart gave out as he found, ah, victory."
Bjorn could not help but snort. "A fitting end, for the tales I have heard of his."
"Half of those were exaggerated," Harad said, grumbling.
"Only half?"
Harad grumbled some more.
"I wonder if I might guess which are which," Bjorn said, amusement in his voice even as he was forced to speak slower to keep his breath. "Mournful Pass. Exaggerated?"
"Aye," Harad said. "There were three hundred of us, and only two thousand Kul under three lords. Two of them hated each other more than us."
"Erengrad," Bjorn said next.
"Ugh," Harad said, disgusted.
"Not exaggerated?" Bjorn said, as gleeful as a man in his position could be.
Harad muttered darkly to himself. "I do not wish to talk about it."
"Even the Ice Witch?"
"I do not wish to talk about it," Harad said again, louder.
Bjorn hid a smile by fiddling with his long moustache. "Bordeleaux."
"Ugh," Harad said, again disgusted.
This time, Bjorn's brows shot up. "Don't tell me-"
"No, no," Harad said. "It was exaggerated. It is just -" he pulled a face. "Fucking Bretonnians."
Bjorn matched him. "Fucking Bretonnians."
"We only dallied there because Neuner was smitten with one of their holy women," Harad said, complaining in a way that Thor had never heard of him before. "It should have been a single stop on the way to Estalia, but that teat-blinded fool had to pursue her, hoping she would lift her skirts."
"Did she?"
Harad grumbled extensively, giving voice to a long nursed grudge that had lasted past death and seemingly answering the question. "From Bordeleaux to Massif Orcal we followed her and her knight, and then on to Parravon. All those leagues he spent penning foolish poems, and she spent sighing after her knight."
Bjorn, who had been holding back a smile at the grumbling, frowned in confusion. "Then -?"
"We gave over the Warboss skull, the city lord paid us, and then the woman offers that bucket head a reward in turn, anything of hers that she had to give."
Bjorn chuckled. "He didn't."
"He could have mounted her then and there in full view of their court, but he asks for a corner of her scarf, as a favour to remember her by," Harad said, shaking his head.
Bjorn put a hand on his chest against the pain, even as he chuckled further.
"He rode off from the city before the day was out, and she rode Neuner through the bed that night."
Bjorn's shoulders were shaking. "There were times I would regret not killing him before he stabbed me," he said, "but now I am glad I did not, if only for that story."
Harad smiled. "You are the reason he spent the rest of his life killing the berserkers first, you know."
"A high compliment," Bjorn said. "He is still the only one to land a blow on my back."
Thor continued to listen as he worked, enjoying the talk of the two old warriors as they compared adventures and scars, boasting especially of the marks given to them by the other. To hear each tell it, the one they had received was the more impressive blow, and Thor was gladdened to see that their paths had carried them forward in such a way that they could sit and talk in peace. When he finished his bucket of nails, they were still talking quietly, and he left them to it, the afternoon sun filtering through the trees that were growing ever closer to forming a canopy in truth. Trumpetter snorted and rolled over, still dozing, and Thor found himself humming an old tune as he left the grove behind.
X
The day wore on, men and women racing the daylight to finish this or that task. Thor was not one of them; he had fallen afoul of old Wioleta, of the Aeslings who had taken his hand and fled Skraevold. When she had seen him doing 'petty labours unfit for a warrior, let alone a god', she had harried him from the storehouse, haranguing him and her layabout grandchildren in the same breath. Surrendering under such fierce assaults, he had wandered off to the longhouse in search of mead, and found not just that, but entertainment as well.
"...dressed and drawn in sky-fire, the reward for their trust. No brittle battle-slave could touch them, for no cause did they have, none to match the defence of hearth-warmth. The priestess spoke with the voice of her god, and all who had not the ears to hear suffered its fury…"
At the end of the hall, standing atop the table's end, Stephan held sway over a group of spellbound youths, apparently done with their chores for the day. Their reward was to be used as a test audience for the tale that the skald had called 'The False Healer', and by the gleam in their eyes and the stillness of their frames they found it to be more than worth it.
They were not the only ones present. Not halfway up the tables, two elders sat, close enough to hear but far enough not to intrude. The older of the two cocked his head at a particular turn of phrase.
"Did Kirsa truly shout a daemon to death?" he asked.
"I think it was the lightning that went along with it," Helena answered. Most of her attention was on the tale, or rather the teller, grey brows furrowed in thought as she stared at his back.
"It would do that," Thor said. He could not help but be proud - Kirsa had come a long way since she had been a fearful captive of raiders.
Helena gave a hmm, but it was distracted.
"Something on your mind?" Thor asked, draining his tankard.
She took a moment to respond. "The skald," she said. "What do you know of him?"
Now it was Thor's turn to level a considering eye, but this time at Helena. "He is of Nordland, a bard." He gestured at the show, proof of his words. "We rescued him from Skraevold, though he was not taken from Nordland like the others, but in Norsca."
"What cause did he have to venture north?" Helena asked.
"To see the land of his father," Thor said. "A courageous undertaking, if one that has not gone as he might have hoped."
The old shieldmaiden's eyes grew sharp at this, and they returned to the young man. "Did he say anything of this father?"
Thor thought back to his few conversations with the man. "He implied that he was a skald, and a man of…daring conquests."
This seemed to settle something for her, and she nodded, a faint smile crossing her face.
"You know him," Thor observed.
"We might," Helena said. She tapped a finger on a silver band she wore around one wrist.
"Neuner," Thor said, a reasoned stab in the dark.
"How - did you divine it?" Helena asked.
"I needed no vision for this," Thor said, not quite laughing, "merely the luck to overhear a conversation between your husband and Bjorn, and the wits to put the pieces together."
"The Blue Wind is known to grant them," Helena remarked, glancing at him. Her tone suggested nothing.
"I would not know," Thor said. "The magical traditions of this realm are new to me." Stephan's words caught his attention once more, and he pretended not to see the doubt that still lingered in Helena's eyes.
"- and drank of strength born of his ichor. The false-healer shared false-gifts from false-kindness, but even his Rot could not stand up to the hallowing sky-fire. Purged were the wolf-sisters, and purged was Vinteerholm, as bold Thunderer proved mightier than feeble Decay!" Stephan declaimed, raising a fist as if he held an axe to strike.
Helena gave a huff, approving and derisive all at once. "He has the same foolishness."
"Oh?"
"Few skalds dare to speak so of the gods," Helena said. "Those that do tend to suffer ironic fates."
"Tyrants will always have thin skin," Thor said, before smirking as a memory flitted past his mind's eye. "Do you know, my brother used to write mocking verses for petty warlords? Mother had taught him a sending spell, and we would make a game of scrying for their reaction to the insults." His amusement turned bittersweet as he remembered the nights they would all drink and offer up suggestions for Loki to craft into something true to be sent off, and of how only he now remained.
"A mischief maker, was he?" Helena asked.
"He was. Aye, he was…" he trailed off, getting lost in his memories.
The tale was soon concluded, and the audience properly appreciative. Stephan gave a bow as they beat hands against thighs or drummed on the stone floor, and the sound stirred Thor from his trance to rap his own tankard against the table. The youths did not linger long after Stephan stepped down from his stage, fleeing out the hall doors to find their next bit of fun, and Thor watched as the bard let out a breath, before knocking back a drink of his own. Beside him, Helena rose from her seat, setting her shoulders. He watched as she approached the bard, and saw as his face started at polite, then became guarded, before it was taken over by surprise, finally setting at hopeful. The two left the hall behind, and unless Thor missed his guess, they made for Harad. He silently wished them luck; to find anew a connection to a dead companion was not something to be taken for granted. He took up his empty tankard, and went looking for another keg of mead.
X
With the healing of the twins and the purging of the pall that had hung over the town, Vinteerholm seemed to let out a breath. Harad and Helena departed early one morning, and they took Stephan with them, if only just to visit the closest thing that could be called to a home of his father. There were those that were sad to see him go and surprised for it, unused to thinking well of outsiders, but whether one called him a bard or a skald, a skilled teller or tales was not someone to be thrown away, and his tales had been popular indeed. There was at least the consolation that he would return, in time.
They were not the only departures. Leifnir had demanded Thor's presence in the grove one evening to reveal that she had cast her working on the blessed ash tree, and that petty illnesses would thenceforth be a thing of the past. That she had done so in the presence of Aderyn was perhaps an error, and the mighty dragon was subjected to such a questioning that when she finally took to the skies it seemed less the sudden and grand departure she had intended and more a hasty escape from the healer's attention. Thor liked to think that her tail had whipped out in acknowledgement to his shouted invitations to return as she willed, but only time would tell.
Things began to settle down. The amazing became mundane. Few could forget that they hosted a god, but he was appreciated for the way his efforts saw the new walls race around the town, not for his ability to summon storms that could cast down mountains. The holy ash tree's healing light became something to look forward to each day, not a bewildering miracle. The juvenile mammoth was not a prize they struggled to feed, but something to be stepped around when he snoozed in the grove. The children disagreed - he was instead a mountain to climb, and the most exciting thing in the town. Weeks passed, then a month. Routine set in. Lingering sicknesses were banished, wounds that had never healed right finally did. Spring was just around the corner.
Then, on a morning that some would almost call warm for the season, three half dead Baersonlings staggered up to the north gate, half blind and delirious, bloodied and bruised.
"We had cause for joy, last night, with the last of Decay's touch purged," Thor whispered to his guests. "But there are those who cannot handle their drink so well as I."
"Is that him?" Aderyn asked, nodding towards Bjorn. The baresark was sitting on a sleeping mat under a tree, not the ash, but a young oak that had grown enough to provide shelter.
"Well, yes, but also no," Thor said. "He was touched by Decay as he rescued Helka's victims, and it was they who were cleansed. Sunniva and Selinda - the two changings his bandages - were her apprentices."
"You have not driven them out?" Adrijan asked, perplexed.
"Why would I?" Thor asked, tone mild. "It was not they who betrayed their neighbours."
Adrijan opened his mouth to respond, but Stanislav elbowed him, and he closed it, nodding.
In the moment the interaction had taken, Aderyn was already moving forward, approaching the apprentice healers and their patient. Several sets of bleary eyes watched her, but they also saw Thor, and that was enough for them to consider the matter handled, and they rolled back over in search of more sleep. Thor, Ingrid, and the two Ungols watched as she knelt without a word. The twins paused at her arrival, but when she said nothing they continued in their task, unwrapping the bandages around Bjorn's chest. The man himself was focused on keeping himself upright where he sat, opening one eye only briefly to take in the newcomer.
The wounds first left by the chaos hounds and then infected by Rot were no easy thing to look at, still seared red by infection and lined with blisters of pus here and there, but they had still seen an improvement. No longer did they threaten to burst open at the slightest touch and let loose a flood of all sorts of foulness, and no longer did Bjorn struggle to breathe, though weakness remained. He had a recovery of months ahead of him.
Aderyn took up a small pot of white poultice that the sisters meant to apply, first sniffing at it, then touching her finger to it to dab it at her tongue. She made no comment, but set the pot back where she had found it. Sunniva had a handful of river moss, wrapped tightly with sinew, and she dabbed at Bjorn's chest, carefully removing the black gunk that was the last of the previous application. The warrior bore it stoically, and when it was clear, Selinda began to paste the poultice over the blisters anew.
"You do not cover the entire wound?" Aderyn asked, voice quiet to fit the grove.
Selinda grimaced, but left it to her sister to answer. "We are trying to stretch the batch," Sunniva said. "The next still needs three nights to settle."
"Ah," Aderyn said. She pulled back the hood of her cloak, revealing ruddy brown hair kept short. "I will show you a way to speed the process."
The twins paused in their ministrations, both glancing to Thor. He gave them two supportive thumbs up, and they looked back to the newcomer.
"We would like that," Sunniva said, hesitant but hopeful.
Thor beamed to see Aderyn making a good impression on the two young women. He had high hopes for her future as a teacher to them. "Ingrid," he said to the woman still standing at his shoulder, pretending he hadn't seen her exchanging mean looks with Adrijan for the past minutes. "Could you show our guests to the longhouse? They deser-" he broke off, eyes fixed on a new arrival in the grove.
Unsure, the three with him followed his gaze, but their confusion only grew when they saw what had caught his eye. To be sure, the eagle, golden and fierce, that had just perched on the bough of the ash tree was unusually large, but that was all, even if it was matching Thor's stare for intensity.
His hand brushed against his pocket, considering the lunchable that had appeared within that morning. But no, he had promised the eagle a fish caught with his own hands, and that was what he would deliver.
"I will leave you to it," Thor said, still not taking his eye off the bird. "I have business to conduct."
The eagle flared its wings, beating its way into the air, and with a thought Stormbreaker was in hand and he was following. The morning was on the verge of being left behind, the townspeople well and truly going about their business for the day, save for those who had celebrated most vigorously the night before. From the sky, Thor could see the ongoing work of readying the century old tree trunks to be placed around the town as walls, and even a hunting party departing to the nearby forest, but only for a moment, for their destination was not far. Man and eagle set down a short way upriver, both observing the currents.
"You may have disdained the last fish I offered," Thor said, "but I will find one to satisfy you!"
The eagle gave a doubtful cry, settling itself down on a log of driftwood that had somehow come to rest on the riverbank.
Challenged, Thor shed his tunic and strode into the cold water, not stopping until he was waist deep. He caught flashes of silver scales and dark shapes as they were disturbed by his entry, and he settled in to wait.
His first catch did not take long. A long, slender fish, almost eel-like, came to investigate his toes, and when it thought to take a bite, he let it, pinning its jaw to the riverbed. In a flash he had it up and out of the water, forced to stretch out his arms as he held it by gill and tail.
"Well?" he asked the eagle. "What say you?"
The eagle gave a dismissive clack of her beak and looked away.
Thor narrowed his eyes. He would not be found wanting. The long fish was whipped around and thrown at the bank where Stormbreaker hovered, the axe parting head from body. The fish fell to the stones with a thump, where it lay twitching. Even if the eagle did not care for it, it could still feed another. He returned his focus to the river.
Twice more Thor seized a hungry fish, each bigger than the last, but twice more the eagle turned up her nose at the offering. He was beginning to suspect that it would take more than a simple river denizen to satisfy her. Even the three fish together on the bank were of little interest, though it at least confirmed in Thor's mind that she was something beyond a typical eagle. Even a familiar would have at least sampled the bounty on offer, but here was a bird that had finally tired of his offerings and was beating its way back into the sky with a final dissatisfied shriek.
Standing in the river, Thor narrowed his gaze as she disappeared from sight, hands on his hips. Even if no simple fish would satisfy her, he would not be deterred, nor would he accept defeat. It was hardly even about making recompense any longer, the original insult nearly forgotten.
A fist clenched in determination. He would find a fish that the bird found acceptable, on his name as an Odinson. He swore it.
X
When Thor left the river behind to return to town, he did so with an armful of fish, their heads left to feed the pack of dogs that had been drawn by the scent of their blood. The heads could have been used for stews, but the hounds had waited so patiently and left his catch alone so obediently that he had not the heart to deny them. He had meant to deliver them to the longhouse, but he had been intercepted by another pack, this one made of youngsters on the cusp of adulthood and the odd younger sibling. They would see to the scaling and the gutting, they said, if only they might lay a hand on his axe, and it was with a solemn clasping of hands with the boy who led them that the deal was struck. The mob raced away, hooting and hollering the instant they were out of sight, and Thor turned back to the river with a smile. He had blood and scales to clean himself of.
Even on the tail end of winter, to bathe in the river was a folly even for strong men, but Thor was no mere man. He shed his clothing and leapt from one of the newly built docks, the longship it was built to service gone downstream to fish, scrubbing himself with ice water and river sand. He found it refreshing, and he lingered a while, watching the elders and fighters on the far bank mark out where the new walls would be placed, once the trees that Thor had felled were trimmed to readiness and trenches dug for them. He was watched in turn, however, by a group of young ladies whose business of gathering water for washing seemed to be delayed by knocked over buckets and a break for gossip.
Fair Aslaug was amongst them, and when he rose from the river to retrieve his clothes with water streaming from his form, she caught his eye, amusement glimmering as she looked between one of her companions and his bare form. The young woman was staring at him with a gaze that reminded him of the dogs that had so recently coveted his catch, and he could not help but huff a laugh in turn. When he had dressed, the group found their work quickly concluded, and they went on their way.
The midday sun was almost warm as he sat down at the end of the dock, taking the moment for himself. There was more lumber to be felled, and work to be done, but for the moment no one was imperilled and no dark foe bore down upon them. He could take a moment, to sit, to think.
A moment he had, but before the sun could do more than shift slightly across the sky, there came the tread of boots on the dockwood. A glance back showed him Wolfric approaching, brow furrowed in thought.
Thor shifted to one side, a silent invitation to sit, and his follower did so. For a time, they were silent, simply watching the current drift slowly by. Then-
"I spoke with Harad," Wolfric said. "He spoke of my father."
Thor nodded, but did not speak. He remembered Harad's condition for telling them of Leifnir's lair.
"Did I ever tell how I lost my eye?" Wolfric said, apparently changing the subject.
"You have not."
"An Aesling woman put an arrow through my shield, and my arm," he said. "Had they not slowed it, I would have been slain."
"This was not in the attack on your home," Thor said. He remembered Wolfric as he had first met him, cold and wounded and fleeing from raiders with only Elsa at his side, though the wounds had not been fresh.
"No," Wolfric said. "We were the raiders. My uncle led us, and we had sailed west. We meant to take what was theirs for our own, to ease the winter."
"Do you feel ill, that you would visit upon others what was visited upon you?" Thor asked. There was no judgement in his voice.
Wolfric seemed to hear it all the same. "No! No." He shook his head. "There is raiding, and there is raiding. In one, you take their grain, their animals, maybe a thrall to help with work, but in the other you take…everything. Even before you, it was not for me." He fell silent, staring past his feet at the water.
Thor gave him time.
"I think it was for my uncle, and I know it was for my father," he said, finding the words. "I never knew my mother, and I do not know what tribe she was from. The twins, their mother was Baerson and acted as a mother to me. I heard tell she was a willing bride, which means mine was not."
"Not an easy truth to hear."
Wolfric gave a bitter snort. "No."
"What happened to him?" Thor asked.
"Harad."
It was not difficult to imagine the old warrior happening to someone.
Wolfric sighed, running a hand over his scalp. It would need shaving again soon if he meant to keep it bare, though the stubble on his cheeks was thicker. "He came to our village one day while I was helping our hunters. He challenged my father, killed him, then left. It was not until I was older that I started to understand why."
"You still grew up under that shadow," Thor noted.
"Aye," Wolfric said, "and Uncle never gave up on revenge. That's what the raid he took me on was supposed to be the start of, gathering strength and becoming for him what he was for my father."
"But you were wounded, and sent home."
Wolfric nodded. "He hoped that Helka might save arm, if not my eye, and that I could rejoin him. She did, but then the Aeslings fell upon us."
"And I fell upon them."
A smile crossed his face, but then he shuddered. "I would have lost them both."
"You did not," Thor said.
"But I nearly did. Had I not lost my eye, had I not been there only to return months later to find the town razed…" he said, expression darkening.
"You did not," Thor repeated, more firmly this time. "And you need not torment yourself with thoughts on how you might have reacted. You are the Wolfric that is, not the Wolfric that may have been."
He swallowed. "Aye, Lord Thor."
A thought occurred. "Where is your uncle now?" Thor asked.
"I do not know," Wolfric said, a frown crossing his face. "The plan should have seen him return by now, but unless the plan changed…" he trailed off.
Thor would not spend worry on a man like this seemed to be, even if he was Wolfric's uncle. "An easy thing to happen," he said. "You are settled with Harad, then?"
"I am," Wolfric said, and it was clear that the last lingering remnants of a childhood fear had been lifted from him that day. "We spoke. He told me- Helka- well. I understand him better, now."
"Then that is well," Thor said. "The girls?"
Wolfric rolled his eyes. "Running around and acting out Kirsa's deeds with Trumpetter like they didn't just worry me into the grave and back," he said. "If their hair was not turning to gold, I would think the ordeal had changed them none at all." A hand went to his neck, tugging on something that Thor had yet to notice.
It was familiar. "Is that -?" he asked, gaze making it clear what he meant.
"Ah," Wolfric said, rubbing the back of his head. "My carving hand is not so steady; I rarely had the patience for Uncle's lessons. It was meant to be your axe."
Stormbreaker's head was easy enough to make out, but the haft was much too short, as if it had been carved too thinly and broken off part way. Sinew string connected it to the leather thong around his neck, worn much the same as the one Ingrid had.
Thor could not help but laugh. "That is fitting. Let me tell you about my hammer, the weapon I bore before Stormbreaker. Let me tell you of Mjolnir."
Weightier topics were left behind for the moment as Thor told his first follower in this land of the weapon that he had first made his name with, of the highs and lows he had been through with it. When the tales were told, each went on their way, and both were the lighter for it.
X
Later, Thor found himself sitting in his grove. It had mostly emptied, those who had spent the night long departed, but he was not quite alone. He rested against Trumpetter, the mammoth resting after a full day of playing with the children, and he had a bucket of warped and damaged nails before him. In the shade of his ash tree, he was straightening and checking each nail by hand, saving some poor apprentice the trouble. Trumpetter was not his only company; a short way away two old warriors were having a quiet conversation, and though they might have thought he was out of earshot, he could not help but overhear.
"-your skald brother, with the pretty black locks and that dagger he nearly cut my spine with." Bjorn was leaning against the tree his sleeping mat sat under, sipping slowly at a waterskin.
"Neuner," Harad said, nostalgic smile on his face. "The trouble he got us into. He was a true brother." The big man was sat in the dirt, legs stretched out before himself as he reached for his toes.
"Was?" Bjorn asked.
"He died, in the south. The wanderlust never left him, even after I finally settled down."
Bjorn considered him. "Even after you gave it up, the Axeman was never told to be one to forgive."
"He did not fall to treachery, or in battle," Harad said. He paused, reconsidering, and gave a rumbling hum, releasing his toes. "Well, he would have said it was a battle. His heart gave out as he found, ah, victory."
Bjorn could not help but snort. "A fitting end, for the tales I have heard of his."
"Half of those were exaggerated," Harad said, grumbling.
"Only half?"
Harad grumbled some more.
"I wonder if I might guess which are which," Bjorn said, amusement in his voice even as he was forced to speak slower to keep his breath. "Mournful Pass. Exaggerated?"
"Aye," Harad said. "There were three hundred of us, and only two thousand Kul under three lords. Two of them hated each other more than us."
"Erengrad," Bjorn said next.
"Ugh," Harad said, disgusted.
"Not exaggerated?" Bjorn said, as gleeful as a man in his position could be.
Harad muttered darkly to himself. "I do not wish to talk about it."
"Even the Ice Witch?"
"I do not wish to talk about it," Harad said again, louder.
Bjorn hid a smile by fiddling with his long moustache. "Bordeleaux."
"Ugh," Harad said, again disgusted.
This time, Bjorn's brows shot up. "Don't tell me-"
"No, no," Harad said. "It was exaggerated. It is just -" he pulled a face. "Fucking Bretonnians."
Bjorn matched him. "Fucking Bretonnians."
"We only dallied there because Neuner was smitten with one of their holy women," Harad said, complaining in a way that Thor had never heard of him before. "It should have been a single stop on the way to Estalia, but that teat-blinded fool had to pursue her, hoping she would lift her skirts."
"Did she?"
Harad grumbled extensively, giving voice to a long nursed grudge that had lasted past death and seemingly answering the question. "From Bordeleaux to Massif Orcal we followed her and her knight, and then on to Parravon. All those leagues he spent penning foolish poems, and she spent sighing after her knight."
Bjorn, who had been holding back a smile at the grumbling, frowned in confusion. "Then -?"
"We gave over the Warboss skull, the city lord paid us, and then the woman offers that bucket head a reward in turn, anything of hers that she had to give."
Bjorn chuckled. "He didn't."
"He could have mounted her then and there in full view of their court, but he asks for a corner of her scarf, as a favour to remember her by," Harad said, shaking his head.
Bjorn put a hand on his chest against the pain, even as he chuckled further.
"He rode off from the city before the day was out, and she rode Neuner through the bed that night."
Bjorn's shoulders were shaking. "There were times I would regret not killing him before he stabbed me," he said, "but now I am glad I did not, if only for that story."
Harad smiled. "You are the reason he spent the rest of his life killing the berserkers first, you know."
"A high compliment," Bjorn said. "He is still the only one to land a blow on my back."
Thor continued to listen as he worked, enjoying the talk of the two old warriors as they compared adventures and scars, boasting especially of the marks given to them by the other. To hear each tell it, the one they had received was the more impressive blow, and Thor was gladdened to see that their paths had carried them forward in such a way that they could sit and talk in peace. When he finished his bucket of nails, they were still talking quietly, and he left them to it, the afternoon sun filtering through the trees that were growing ever closer to forming a canopy in truth. Trumpetter snorted and rolled over, still dozing, and Thor found himself humming an old tune as he left the grove behind.
X
The day wore on, men and women racing the daylight to finish this or that task. Thor was not one of them; he had fallen afoul of old Wioleta, of the Aeslings who had taken his hand and fled Skraevold. When she had seen him doing 'petty labours unfit for a warrior, let alone a god', she had harried him from the storehouse, haranguing him and her layabout grandchildren in the same breath. Surrendering under such fierce assaults, he had wandered off to the longhouse in search of mead, and found not just that, but entertainment as well.
"...dressed and drawn in sky-fire, the reward for their trust. No brittle battle-slave could touch them, for no cause did they have, none to match the defence of hearth-warmth. The priestess spoke with the voice of her god, and all who had not the ears to hear suffered its fury…"
At the end of the hall, standing atop the table's end, Stephan held sway over a group of spellbound youths, apparently done with their chores for the day. Their reward was to be used as a test audience for the tale that the skald had called 'The False Healer', and by the gleam in their eyes and the stillness of their frames they found it to be more than worth it.
They were not the only ones present. Not halfway up the tables, two elders sat, close enough to hear but far enough not to intrude. The older of the two cocked his head at a particular turn of phrase.
"Did Kirsa truly shout a daemon to death?" he asked.
"I think it was the lightning that went along with it," Helena answered. Most of her attention was on the tale, or rather the teller, grey brows furrowed in thought as she stared at his back.
"It would do that," Thor said. He could not help but be proud - Kirsa had come a long way since she had been a fearful captive of raiders.
Helena gave a hmm, but it was distracted.
"Something on your mind?" Thor asked, draining his tankard.
She took a moment to respond. "The skald," she said. "What do you know of him?"
Now it was Thor's turn to level a considering eye, but this time at Helena. "He is of Nordland, a bard." He gestured at the show, proof of his words. "We rescued him from Skraevold, though he was not taken from Nordland like the others, but in Norsca."
"What cause did he have to venture north?" Helena asked.
"To see the land of his father," Thor said. "A courageous undertaking, if one that has not gone as he might have hoped."
The old shieldmaiden's eyes grew sharp at this, and they returned to the young man. "Did he say anything of this father?"
Thor thought back to his few conversations with the man. "He implied that he was a skald, and a man of…daring conquests."
This seemed to settle something for her, and she nodded, a faint smile crossing her face.
"You know him," Thor observed.
"We might," Helena said. She tapped a finger on a silver band she wore around one wrist.
"Neuner," Thor said, a reasoned stab in the dark.
"How - did you divine it?" Helena asked.
"I needed no vision for this," Thor said, not quite laughing, "merely the luck to overhear a conversation between your husband and Bjorn, and the wits to put the pieces together."
"The Blue Wind is known to grant them," Helena remarked, glancing at him. Her tone suggested nothing.
"I would not know," Thor said. "The magical traditions of this realm are new to me." Stephan's words caught his attention once more, and he pretended not to see the doubt that still lingered in Helena's eyes.
"- and drank of strength born of his ichor. The false-healer shared false-gifts from false-kindness, but even his Rot could not stand up to the hallowing sky-fire. Purged were the wolf-sisters, and purged was Vinteerholm, as bold Thunderer proved mightier than feeble Decay!" Stephan declaimed, raising a fist as if he held an axe to strike.
Helena gave a huff, approving and derisive all at once. "He has the same foolishness."
"Oh?"
"Few skalds dare to speak so of the gods," Helena said. "Those that do tend to suffer ironic fates."
"Tyrants will always have thin skin," Thor said, before smirking as a memory flitted past his mind's eye. "Do you know, my brother used to write mocking verses for petty warlords? Mother had taught him a sending spell, and we would make a game of scrying for their reaction to the insults." His amusement turned bittersweet as he remembered the nights they would all drink and offer up suggestions for Loki to craft into something true to be sent off, and of how only he now remained.
"A mischief maker, was he?" Helena asked.
"He was. Aye, he was…" he trailed off, getting lost in his memories.
The tale was soon concluded, and the audience properly appreciative. Stephan gave a bow as they beat hands against thighs or drummed on the stone floor, and the sound stirred Thor from his trance to rap his own tankard against the table. The youths did not linger long after Stephan stepped down from his stage, fleeing out the hall doors to find their next bit of fun, and Thor watched as the bard let out a breath, before knocking back a drink of his own. Beside him, Helena rose from her seat, setting her shoulders. He watched as she approached the bard, and saw as his face started at polite, then became guarded, before it was taken over by surprise, finally setting at hopeful. The two left the hall behind, and unless Thor missed his guess, they made for Harad. He silently wished them luck; to find anew a connection to a dead companion was not something to be taken for granted. He took up his empty tankard, and went looking for another keg of mead.
X
With the healing of the twins and the purging of the pall that had hung over the town, Vinteerholm seemed to let out a breath. Harad and Helena departed early one morning, and they took Stephan with them, if only just to visit the closest thing that could be called to a home of his father. There were those that were sad to see him go and surprised for it, unused to thinking well of outsiders, but whether one called him a bard or a skald, a skilled teller or tales was not someone to be thrown away, and his tales had been popular indeed. There was at least the consolation that he would return, in time.
They were not the only departures. Leifnir had demanded Thor's presence in the grove one evening to reveal that she had cast her working on the blessed ash tree, and that petty illnesses would thenceforth be a thing of the past. That she had done so in the presence of Aderyn was perhaps an error, and the mighty dragon was subjected to such a questioning that when she finally took to the skies it seemed less the sudden and grand departure she had intended and more a hasty escape from the healer's attention. Thor liked to think that her tail had whipped out in acknowledgement to his shouted invitations to return as she willed, but only time would tell.
Things began to settle down. The amazing became mundane. Few could forget that they hosted a god, but he was appreciated for the way his efforts saw the new walls race around the town, not for his ability to summon storms that could cast down mountains. The holy ash tree's healing light became something to look forward to each day, not a bewildering miracle. The juvenile mammoth was not a prize they struggled to feed, but something to be stepped around when he snoozed in the grove. The children disagreed - he was instead a mountain to climb, and the most exciting thing in the town. Weeks passed, then a month. Routine set in. Lingering sicknesses were banished, wounds that had never healed right finally did. Spring was just around the corner.
Then, on a morning that some would almost call warm for the season, three half dead Baersonlings staggered up to the north gate, half blind and delirious, bloodied and bruised.
Pest Control 3
- Location
- Australia
When Thor arrived at his grove, the three newcomers were already being seen to by Aderyn, Sunniva and Selinda at her sides. The girls were working carefully at a number of darts in the side of one man, taking great pains as each was removed. As they dropped each dart into the dirt, Thor saw why - they were cruelly barbed, made to do more damage on the way out. The wounded man did not so much as flinch with each one, only shivering madly.
"They barely made it to the gates," Ingrid said. She had been the one to fetch him after calling for aid. "Whoever did this to them ran them hard."
"Did they say anything?" Thor asked. He played at his beard as he took them in; they looked familiar but he could not place them.
"The other two were babbling, but this one didn't say a word," Ingrid said.
"Different poisons," Aderyn said without looking up. She was grinding something to paste in a small mortar, dabbing a finger in the mix and licking it now and then. "A hallucinogen for him and her, and I don't know what for this one."
Thor bent down to take up one of the darts. They weren't bone as he had first thought, but metal, stained almost yellow by something, perhaps whatever substance they had been coated in. He sniffed at it, and there was the expected copper tang, but beneath it there was something else, something that he had encountered before.
Footsteps approached, heavy and slow. It was Bjorn, and across his shoulders he carried a length of wood, a heavy cauldron hanging by a rope from each end of it. Both were filled with water, and steam rose from one.
"Just here," Aderyn said, only pausing in her work for the instant it took her to glance at Bjorn and take in his condition. He had recovered well since Helka, his wounds scarred over and his strength returning, but he was not returned to rude health yet.
Bjorn bent to set the cauldrons down, shrugging off the wood, and Aderyn immediately scraped the paste she was working on into the hot water. "Take a fallen branch of ash, and stir it well," she directed the Aesling, and he made to do so.
"Do you expect them to live?" Thor asked. He recognised the man with the darts in him now - he was from Harad's village, a warrior by the name of Eadric. The others were the same.
"I would have lost this one already, if not for your grove," Aderyn said, massaging her hand, the one missing parts of fingers. "Instead it will only be difficult. These two-"
She was cut off as Eadric gave a sudden gasp, body arcing and bowing. Sunniva and Selinda flinched back at the sudden movement, the dart they had been working on torn out by his movement.
"None of that," Thor said, and he placed a hand on the man's chest, pinning him in place. He glanced at the other two, but they were hardly breathing, let alone stirring.
Eadric was going nowhere, but his limbs continued to thrash. Bjorn was there a moment later, clamping down on his forearms and putting his weight on them. Legs still kicked, but no longer could he throw himself around. The man wheezed, eyes rolling back in his head, and Thor copped a full blast of the rancid breath. He snorted it out, but his brows shot up as he recognised it.
"The poison, it sets its victims to unthinking anger and fight," Thor said quickly.
Aderyn didn't question his knowledge. "Selinda, I need the rabbit's heart broth. Sunniva, the silver knife."
The apprentices were quick to obey, scampering over to an unfolded leather pack that sat nearby, holding all sorts of tools and materials. A pot sealed with tallow and a small knife were brought back, and it seemed they knew what their master intended as they opened the pot and used the knife to stir its sludgy contents.
"Ingrid - yes, thank you," Aderyn said, seeing the gate guard stirring the cauldron that Bjorn had left. She held her hand out to her apprentices, and they handed over not the broth, but the silver knife. She took it, and stabbed Eadric.
Thor watched, brow rising steadily higher, as Aderyn gently inserted the knife into the same wounds made by the darts, slowing only to reapply the broth. She did not insert it deeply, only enough to make the barest of new cuts, but it was still not something Thor had expected of the Shallyan. Not after what he had seen of her almost scientific practices since her arrival.
"This is a method of last resort," the healer was telling her apprentices. "The poison is in his blood, and we do not have time for him to digest an antidote."
"Rabbit heart?" Thor asked, keeping the man pinned. Were it not for his hand, he would be thrashing around wildly. "Not quite what I had expected of you." He would not say it was what he would expect from Helka, but it was what he would have expected from a wise woman.
"There is some craft to it," Aderyn said, focusing on her task. "I've yet to see a mortal poison that will have such an effect so swiftly."
"Do they teach this in the south?" Selinda asked. She had taken to tying her hair up in a braid around her head, using it to hide behind less often.
"Altdorf would not teach this," Aderyn said, not quite snorting. She discarded the bloody knife. "Poisons of rage oft have something of a predator in them, so the essence of fearful prey can disrupt them," she said to the girls. "But that is only part of the work."
The sisters shared a look, nodding. "Does it have to go into the same wounds?" Sunniva asked.
"Those who taught me claimed it did," Aderyn said, "though I suspect that so long as it is carried through the blood system, it would not matter."
"You are correct," Thor said. Trying to explain how his people ensured that antidotes were guided to target poison would be an exercise in futility. "You might consider using a hollow needle to inject it into a vein, rather than through cutting." It was all quite barbaric to his mind, but that same simplicity meant he knew little about it; he would likely have better luck explaining how to divert an asteroid than to impart useful knowledge of the body's systems.
"I see," Aderyn said, pausing slightly as she thought it through. Her gaze shifted to fix on him. "You have knowledge of such things?"
Thor suddenly felt some sympathy for Leifnir. "Little that would be useful."
"Hnn."
Eadric's struggles ceased suddenly, the man going limp. His breathing was ragged, and his muscles trembled minutely, strained by great effort. He coughed, almost choking, and Thor and Bjorn were quick to release him.
"Quickly now," Aderyn said.
Sunniva helped her roll him onto his uninjured side. He coughed again, hacking, and the phlegm that sprayed out was a garish yellow. They watched him for a long moment as he struggled to breathe, but then the fit passed, and he eased. Sunniva immediately began to tend to his wounds once more.
"The paste has dissolved," Selinda said from the cauldron, gesturing for Ingrid to cease her stirring.
"Good, fetch the cloth," Aderyn said, and soon they had a pair of clean rags to dip into the still steaming cauldron. They twisted and strained them after, removing most of the liquid, and then they were laying them over the faces of the other two patients.
"What is this treatment?" Bjorn asked, leaning over to sniff at the steam wafting from the cloth.
"The vapours will excite their hearts, and help them throw off the torpor they are in," Aderyn said.
"Is that springsap?" Bjorn asked.
"A small plant with long, narrow leaves and purple flowers?" Aderyn asked, pushing a lock of ruddy hair from her face.
"Aye," Bjorn said, satisfied. "I had only known it as a way to help sentries stay awake."
As they watched, the shallow breathing of the two comatose patients began to deepen, and the cloths were doused and strained once more, before being set over their faces again.
"Well done, girls," Aderyn said, a smile crossing her pock marked face. "I think they will sur-"
The woman gasped, sucking in a huge breath despite the cloth over her face. She jerked, trying to rise, and Thor reached out to keep her in place, but it was not the rage poison that affected her. She tore the cloth from her face, and her eyes roved around, before coming to a rest on Thor as he grasped her shoulder, steadying her.
"Skaven," she said, voice hoarse. Her hand found his. "Harad, skaven, help."
After biting out the words she fell back, the combination of the journey, the poison, and the vapours draining her of every last bit of strength. She was able to keep her eyes open long enough to see Thor nod in silent promise, and then they rolled back in her head as she passed out.
The rising mood that came with death averted was stripped away, leaving only a grim worry. Thor had known that trouble had befallen Harad's village when he had recognised Eadric, for why else would they have come to Vinteerholm, but the pale fright on Sunniva and Selinda's faces and the poorly hidden fear in Ingrid told him that it was more than simple trouble.
"What," Thor asked slowly, "are Skaven?"
There was a moment where none seemed to want to speak.
"Is that not a name for a variant of beastman?" Aderyn asked. She was smoothing the hair of the woman who had fought to warn them, and she seemed more unsure than anything.
"Skaven are Skaven," Bjorn said, sitting back on his heels, face blank. "Rats the size of a man, they are foul things, scum, deserving only of death." His words earned a raised brow from Thor; the god could not recall him having such harsh words for any other.
"They steal into towns, and disappear families," Ingrid said, holding back a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. "Sometimes they take entire villages."
"Helka would always keep a rat in a cage," Sunniva said as she pressed a poultice into Eadric's wounds, not meeting anyone's eyes. "She said it would warn her if Skaven were about."
"She tested poisons on them," Selinda said quietly. "The old chief asked her to."
Aderyn frowned, opening her mouth to speak, only to hesitate with a second look at the Norscans.
"I was told of ratmen living under the earth, during our voyage to Skraevold," Thor said. The spectre of their presence had put a worry into even the bold warriors who had sailed with him. "Are these Skaven those same people?"
"They are not people," Bjorn said. There was a coldness to his eyes. "They are vermin."
"If you go into their pit, you never come out," Ingrid said, swallowing. "Not…not the way you went in."
Thor swept his gaze across those with him in the grove. There was true fear in them, and it drove a hatred before it as a whip did a slave. Asgard in all its millenia had never seen a species that marched in lockstep into evil, but he knew that words alone would not free them. Not against such fearful hate.
"If they have targeted Harad's village," Thor said, thinking about the region to the west that had so concerned Tyra and Wolfric, "then they are no army. A large force would have come for a larger place, like here, and I would have slaughtered them." His reasoning did not seem to reassure them. "I will go to them, and find out for sure."
"They are cunning," Bjorn warned. His ire was settling, though it was a case of a leashing rather than a fading. "It might be that they have let these three reach us to divide us, and make this place an easier target."
"I can be there and back again before the afternoon is come," Thor said, "but I take your meaning. I will take-" he paused for an instant to consider "-Bjorn and Kirsa."
"I am ready, Lord Thor," Bjorn said. He stood tall, ignoring the stiff stretching of his new scars.
"I take you not to fight, but to advise," Thor told him. He was not recovered enough to give battle, but such a thing would not be necessary. Not in his presence. "Ready what you need."
Bjorn bowed his head. "I will tell Kirsa," he said, and he put word to action as he left to seek her out.
"Ingrid, take word to the gates," Thor commanded. "Heighten the watch, call back the workers, and deny any hunting parties who wish to leave. It is likely that the Skaven who harried them so are still out there."
"Aye, Lord Thor," Ingrid said, touching a hand to the axe amulet at her throat, before hurrying off.
He turned next to Aderyn, ensuring that the healers would have all they needed, and then he left the grove behind, setting all to rights that needed setting before he could be away. He could not simply leave the town, but giving orders and informing the right people would not take over long. The warriors of Vinteerholm were warned of the situation, and Wolfric stepped forward to lead them. Word spread quickly of the threat that had come to their neighbour, and many were of mixed feelings as they heard that Thor meant to go to confront it.
The mood that Thor watched sweep the town did not sit well with him. He had seen the hatred they had for the raiders of other tribes, and the wariness they held to those that worshipped Chaos too deeply, but this was something else. Word of the Skaven had put a fear in them, bridled but unmistakable. The people of Norsca were not cowards, would spill blood for suggesting it - but every man and woman there, Baersonling, Sarl, or Aesling - were fearful all the same. The Nordlanders did not share in it, wary of lurking beastmen but confused by the insistence that Skaven were not the same. Grigori did, the Kislevite paling at the news and falling into black muttering, and he seemed to take it upon himself to explain the danger and difference to the people of the Empire.
Thor would need to take the time to ask after the whys and wherefores, but not then. Not while Harad and his people were assailed by an unknown enemy. Kirsa and Bjorn met him at the north gate, packed and ready. She had her dress and red cloak, and he had mismatched chain and leathers claimed from Skraevold. Selinda was with Kirsa, handing over a pouch and speaking quickly, while Bjorn waited quietly, a morningstar hanging at his hip.
"Are we ready?" Thor asked, drawing eyes. They had a small audience to see them off, the watchers atop the newly placed wall, the massive trunk a sight more stable than the palisade it had replaced, but also a goodly number of townsfolk. Aslaug was amongst them, and she bit her lip in concern as she met his eye for a moment.
"We are, Lord Thor," Kirsa said. She had set aside her usual pair of braids, instead putting her hair up around her head, almost like a crown.
Bjorn nodded, and no more needed to be said. They made for the vessel that would see them safely to Harad's village.
It was no ship, at least not one that would ever be carried by water. Amidst the flurry of carpentry that had overtaken the town in recent months, Thor's flying tree platform had not been spared. Where once it had naught but a trunk with sections carved out for a person to sit within, young hands in need of distraction or instruction had been set loose upon it. Now it had an interior hollow, with rough shuttered windows and even the start of what might be called a prow. It was there that Thor placed himself once his companions were safely inside, where a section had been carved out for him to both hold the body of the 'ship' and keep an eye on the horizon. Perhaps one day something finer would be crafted, something more suited to a son of Asgard, but for now, it would suffice.
They took to the air, leaving Vinteerholm behind, bearing north-east.
X
From the sky, there seemed to be nothing wrong with Harad's village. Smoke still curled up from the longhouse chimney, warriors still watched the walls, and folk still walked the village…but a closer look hinted at troubles. The gates were closed and barred, and there was no sign of activity beyond the walls - not just of the villagers, but nor of enemies, either.
There was space within the walls to set down, but Thor misliked the thought of letting any Skaven in the area know what they were about to face, and he picked out a spot in the forest nearby. The vessel set down gently on a patch of stubborn snow, and a wary family of rabbits watched from their burrow as Bjorn and Kirsa extricated themselves from it.
"There is trouble?" Bjorn asked, eyes roving the trees around them with just as much wariness as the rabbits had for them.
"The village is locked tight," Thor said. With the vessel 'designed' as it was, there was no way to talk with the passengers as he carried it in flight. "We shall make the final approach on foot."
"Kirsa should stay between us," Bjorn said. "Skaven will take their prey from the end of the line without the man in front of them any wiser."
"Not if Thor is that man," Kirsa said, lifting her chin in challenge. Even so, her gaze still strayed to the forest, flitting from shadow to shadow.
"Skaven are cunning, and full of foul tricks," Bjorn said. It was all too clear that he spoke from experience. "We must not-"
"Peace," Thor said, raising one hand. "You are safe as you walk by my side, but that is no reason not to take precautions. Bjorn will lead, and I will bring up the rear." He did not fear their tricks, for they could not hope to compete with those of his brother, but taking precautions would hurt none.
Perhaps it was his words, or perhaps it was the way Stormbreaker hovered at his back, but Bjorn subsided. "Aye, Lord Thor," he said, giving the trees around them one last scowl.
At Thor's direction, Bjorn led the way through the forest, stepping over gnarled roots and old mast. The trees there were not the same enormous old growth as those near to Vinteerholm, but they were well established all the same. For long minutes they trekked through them, and Thor found himself scanning the shadows and watching heavy boughs despite his surety. He could still hear the chatter of squirrels, still saw the occasional bird lifting into flight, but the nerves of his companions affected him still.
They reached the edge of the forest without incident, and a distance away there was the village, the river to its west. They would cross the open field where Gunnhilde had slain the raider Reket, freshly covered by a late snow, and then enter through the gate. The path was exposed, but nor would any foe be able to sneak up on them.
They were hardly out of the forest's grasp when a sentry standing in the narrow gate tower noticed them, leaning forward even as he put an arrow to string. Thor called his axe to hand and raised it high, and at the sight of it the sentry seemed to sag in relief. He turned to the side, calling something to someone below, and waved them on, urgency in his frame.
Bjorn hurried forward, still casting glances over his shoulder at the treeline, as if it would reach out to pull them back. He picked up the pace, even after seeing nothing.
Something sharp pricked at Thor's neck, an irritating bug bite, and he clapped his hand to it by instinct. It was no bug he found, however.
A dart sat crumpled in his palm, bent by the force of his slap. It had the same yellow sheen as those taken from Eadric, and there was a tiny dot of blood on its tip.
Thor didn't hesitate. He took one stride forward and collected Kirsa under one arm, then another to collect Bjorn in the other, and then he was skyborne, making a huge leap across the field and over the palisade wall. Stormbreaker kept him from making an undignified landing, and he released his companions to recover from the sudden movement. Shouts came from the sentry tower behind them.
"Thor?" Kirsa asked, stumbling as she righted herself on the frozen ground.
"The foe is cunning indeed," Thor said, revealing what he held in his palm.
"You are poisoned?" Bjorn asked, concerned, likewise righting himself. "Is that-?" He gave Thor a wary look.
"It will take more than a pin prick of such a small poison to affect me," Thor reassured him.
Kirsa was less sanguine, reaching quickly for the small pack she wore. "Selinda gave me a powder, you must drink it-"
"Kirsa," Thor said, taking her hands in his. "Fret not. A poison for mortal men will not touch me."
"If you are sure," she said, tension leaving her slowly as her surety in him warred with her worry for him. Reluctantly, she allowed her hands to slip from his.
Movement drew the eye, and they turned to see Harad himself approaching swiftly, though he slowed once he realised who it was he was seeing. The axeman had his weapon in hand, and there was a healing cut across one cheek.
"Thor," he said, deep voice holding a kernel of relief. "My people reached you."
"The three of them arrived this morning," Thor said. "We came right away."
Bristly white brows furrowed deeply. "I sent a dozen by ship five days ago."
Thor shook his head, a grim cast to his features.
"Skaven," Harad said, the word sounding like a curse. "They arrived a week ago, and we've not had a moment of peace since."
"They attack regularly?" Thor asked. He looked around, but could not make out any signs of battle.
"Were it so easy," Harad said, shaking his head. "They have not the numbers to assault us, but to leave the walls is to find a lonely death and if we do not watch them constantly, they will try to slip in."
"There is at least one in the field beyond as we speak," Thor said, showing him the bent dart.
Now it was Harad's turn to eye him warily. "Did you pull that from your flesh, or your clothes?"
"Fear not," Thor said again. "I will not be driven to rage by such a paltry thing."
"Eight of mine have been, and we lost two of them to it," Harad said.
"The rest live?" Kirsa asked, stepping forward.
"Some have endured, some still suffer," Harad told her.
"I have a treatment for them," she said. "Something to help calm them."
"That would be welcome," Harad said. "We have them in an empty granary - Audun!" A moment passed, and then a middle aged man emerged from a nearby house, a handaxe in one hand and mistrustful eyes on the roofs. "Show our guest to the sick. She has something that may help."
Perhaps Aderyn would have been able to aid them for sure, but that would have meant her leaving the patients they had known about behind, and she was not a fighter nor one of Thor's besides.
Audun turned and left, not looking back to check that Kirsa was following. After a last look to her god, she did so, and Thor grasped the small frisson of worry that came with her leaving his sight. She was not defenceless, and his aid was only a prayer away.
"It is a small infestation then?" Bjorn asked of Harad. "If they have not attacked outright?"
"So it would seem," Harad said. "They thought to ambush me, brought a black rat near as large."
"It did not go well for them," Thor said.
"No," Harad said, and he flicked his thumb across the cut on his cheek, a satisfied look on his face. "After I slew the big one, the rest fled. A night later, they began their harassment."
"Helena is well, though," Thor said, probing. He could not imagine she was anything else, given Harad's mood, but he had to ask.
"She guards the last granary while I am not there," Harad said, frustration and anger bubbling up now that he had something close to peers to speak with. "If the shits get in, that will be their first target."
"The last granary?" Thor asked. Last time he had visited, he had spied more than one in use.
"The rats in the food stores weren't just rats," Harad said, a bitter frown on his face. "By the time we realised, they had ruined a whole granary."
"They seek to kill you slowly then," Thor said, resting his chin on one fist as the situation became clear.
"Their cunning is only matched by their cowardice," Bjorn said, again his hatred rising.
"Aye," Harad said, "but with you, Bjorn, we have three warriors who could hold the town." He looked to Thor. "And then there's you."
"Do you know where they camp?" Thor asked. With the balance shifted by their arrival, their cause could only be weakened by a hesitance to strike - especially since his display in entering the village.
"We know where they likely make their lair," Harad said. "There are some foothills nearby that were once mined for iron. My Helena and I could not leave the village to strike them, but now…"
But Bjorn was frowning, tugging at one side of his braided moustache. "If you know their lair, they likely wanted you to find it. Did they let you follow them to it?"
Harad scowled, face thunderous. "No. That damn fool boy slipped out and hid in the forest one morning. He claims they departed east, and returned from the same direction the next evening."
Thor could only think of one person that would stir such a reaction from the old warrior. "Stephan?"
"Aye."
"The skald?" Bjorn asked, startled. "Surely he has not the craft."
"Damned fool luck, and his damned laughing god putting his hand on the scale," Harad said.
"Where is he now?" Thor asked.
"Scrubbing and washing," Harad said flatly. "I thought I was free of his bloodline causing me trouble, yet here I stand."
Thor smoothed over his beard, hiding a smile. "The eagerness of youth," he said, like he had not done a dozen things more foolish on a single adventure when he was of a comparable age.
"Pah."
"If you know their lair," Bjorn said slowly, "then Lord Thor could deal with it before the day is out, no?"
"I could," Thor said. He was not sure if the dart had drawn his blood on its own merit, or if it was his slap at it that had done so, but he did not think the foe to be a threat to him, even should they ambush him in such a mundane way again. He was perhaps too used to Loki's seidr in any potential mischief, for all that he had assumed the Skaven incapable of tricking him. "The only choice is in the how."
"They cannot stop your flight," Harad said, considering now. "You could be on them before they could prepare."
"I could," Thor agreed. "I have not faced Skaven before, but where there is one rat, there is another, yes?"
"There is always more," Bjorn said.
"I mislike leaving for their lair when some still lurk around the village," Thor said.
"They could not overcome us when it was but Helena and I," Harad said. "Now there is Bjorn and Kirsa as well."
"Even so," Thor said. He drummed his fingers against his hip as he thought. The village was still quiet, but word seemed to have spread as to their arrival, and more than one villager found a task that required them to drift within view of the gate. "I would feel better if I knew the danger here had been dealt with."
"Deal with it we shall," Harad said. He glanced to Bjorn. "How are your wounds?"
"Better," Bjorn said, though he grimaced.
"Then I will ask you to hold the gate in my absence," Harad said, and Bjorn hefted his morningstar in response.
"You wish to join me?" Thor asked. "I would not dream of denying you the fight."
Harad grinned, but there was nothing nice about it. "One of the rats out there gave me this little cut." It was closer to his eye than most would be comfortable with. "I will return the favour."
Thor answered his grin with one of his own, and the two axemen turned for the gate. There were Skaven to slay.
"They barely made it to the gates," Ingrid said. She had been the one to fetch him after calling for aid. "Whoever did this to them ran them hard."
"Did they say anything?" Thor asked. He played at his beard as he took them in; they looked familiar but he could not place them.
"The other two were babbling, but this one didn't say a word," Ingrid said.
"Different poisons," Aderyn said without looking up. She was grinding something to paste in a small mortar, dabbing a finger in the mix and licking it now and then. "A hallucinogen for him and her, and I don't know what for this one."
Thor bent down to take up one of the darts. They weren't bone as he had first thought, but metal, stained almost yellow by something, perhaps whatever substance they had been coated in. He sniffed at it, and there was the expected copper tang, but beneath it there was something else, something that he had encountered before.
Footsteps approached, heavy and slow. It was Bjorn, and across his shoulders he carried a length of wood, a heavy cauldron hanging by a rope from each end of it. Both were filled with water, and steam rose from one.
"Just here," Aderyn said, only pausing in her work for the instant it took her to glance at Bjorn and take in his condition. He had recovered well since Helka, his wounds scarred over and his strength returning, but he was not returned to rude health yet.
Bjorn bent to set the cauldrons down, shrugging off the wood, and Aderyn immediately scraped the paste she was working on into the hot water. "Take a fallen branch of ash, and stir it well," she directed the Aesling, and he made to do so.
"Do you expect them to live?" Thor asked. He recognised the man with the darts in him now - he was from Harad's village, a warrior by the name of Eadric. The others were the same.
"I would have lost this one already, if not for your grove," Aderyn said, massaging her hand, the one missing parts of fingers. "Instead it will only be difficult. These two-"
She was cut off as Eadric gave a sudden gasp, body arcing and bowing. Sunniva and Selinda flinched back at the sudden movement, the dart they had been working on torn out by his movement.
"None of that," Thor said, and he placed a hand on the man's chest, pinning him in place. He glanced at the other two, but they were hardly breathing, let alone stirring.
Eadric was going nowhere, but his limbs continued to thrash. Bjorn was there a moment later, clamping down on his forearms and putting his weight on them. Legs still kicked, but no longer could he throw himself around. The man wheezed, eyes rolling back in his head, and Thor copped a full blast of the rancid breath. He snorted it out, but his brows shot up as he recognised it.
"The poison, it sets its victims to unthinking anger and fight," Thor said quickly.
Aderyn didn't question his knowledge. "Selinda, I need the rabbit's heart broth. Sunniva, the silver knife."
The apprentices were quick to obey, scampering over to an unfolded leather pack that sat nearby, holding all sorts of tools and materials. A pot sealed with tallow and a small knife were brought back, and it seemed they knew what their master intended as they opened the pot and used the knife to stir its sludgy contents.
"Ingrid - yes, thank you," Aderyn said, seeing the gate guard stirring the cauldron that Bjorn had left. She held her hand out to her apprentices, and they handed over not the broth, but the silver knife. She took it, and stabbed Eadric.
Thor watched, brow rising steadily higher, as Aderyn gently inserted the knife into the same wounds made by the darts, slowing only to reapply the broth. She did not insert it deeply, only enough to make the barest of new cuts, but it was still not something Thor had expected of the Shallyan. Not after what he had seen of her almost scientific practices since her arrival.
"This is a method of last resort," the healer was telling her apprentices. "The poison is in his blood, and we do not have time for him to digest an antidote."
"Rabbit heart?" Thor asked, keeping the man pinned. Were it not for his hand, he would be thrashing around wildly. "Not quite what I had expected of you." He would not say it was what he would expect from Helka, but it was what he would have expected from a wise woman.
"There is some craft to it," Aderyn said, focusing on her task. "I've yet to see a mortal poison that will have such an effect so swiftly."
"Do they teach this in the south?" Selinda asked. She had taken to tying her hair up in a braid around her head, using it to hide behind less often.
"Altdorf would not teach this," Aderyn said, not quite snorting. She discarded the bloody knife. "Poisons of rage oft have something of a predator in them, so the essence of fearful prey can disrupt them," she said to the girls. "But that is only part of the work."
The sisters shared a look, nodding. "Does it have to go into the same wounds?" Sunniva asked.
"Those who taught me claimed it did," Aderyn said, "though I suspect that so long as it is carried through the blood system, it would not matter."
"You are correct," Thor said. Trying to explain how his people ensured that antidotes were guided to target poison would be an exercise in futility. "You might consider using a hollow needle to inject it into a vein, rather than through cutting." It was all quite barbaric to his mind, but that same simplicity meant he knew little about it; he would likely have better luck explaining how to divert an asteroid than to impart useful knowledge of the body's systems.
"I see," Aderyn said, pausing slightly as she thought it through. Her gaze shifted to fix on him. "You have knowledge of such things?"
Thor suddenly felt some sympathy for Leifnir. "Little that would be useful."
"Hnn."
Eadric's struggles ceased suddenly, the man going limp. His breathing was ragged, and his muscles trembled minutely, strained by great effort. He coughed, almost choking, and Thor and Bjorn were quick to release him.
"Quickly now," Aderyn said.
Sunniva helped her roll him onto his uninjured side. He coughed again, hacking, and the phlegm that sprayed out was a garish yellow. They watched him for a long moment as he struggled to breathe, but then the fit passed, and he eased. Sunniva immediately began to tend to his wounds once more.
"The paste has dissolved," Selinda said from the cauldron, gesturing for Ingrid to cease her stirring.
"Good, fetch the cloth," Aderyn said, and soon they had a pair of clean rags to dip into the still steaming cauldron. They twisted and strained them after, removing most of the liquid, and then they were laying them over the faces of the other two patients.
"What is this treatment?" Bjorn asked, leaning over to sniff at the steam wafting from the cloth.
"The vapours will excite their hearts, and help them throw off the torpor they are in," Aderyn said.
"Is that springsap?" Bjorn asked.
"A small plant with long, narrow leaves and purple flowers?" Aderyn asked, pushing a lock of ruddy hair from her face.
"Aye," Bjorn said, satisfied. "I had only known it as a way to help sentries stay awake."
As they watched, the shallow breathing of the two comatose patients began to deepen, and the cloths were doused and strained once more, before being set over their faces again.
"Well done, girls," Aderyn said, a smile crossing her pock marked face. "I think they will sur-"
The woman gasped, sucking in a huge breath despite the cloth over her face. She jerked, trying to rise, and Thor reached out to keep her in place, but it was not the rage poison that affected her. She tore the cloth from her face, and her eyes roved around, before coming to a rest on Thor as he grasped her shoulder, steadying her.
"Skaven," she said, voice hoarse. Her hand found his. "Harad, skaven, help."
After biting out the words she fell back, the combination of the journey, the poison, and the vapours draining her of every last bit of strength. She was able to keep her eyes open long enough to see Thor nod in silent promise, and then they rolled back in her head as she passed out.
The rising mood that came with death averted was stripped away, leaving only a grim worry. Thor had known that trouble had befallen Harad's village when he had recognised Eadric, for why else would they have come to Vinteerholm, but the pale fright on Sunniva and Selinda's faces and the poorly hidden fear in Ingrid told him that it was more than simple trouble.
"What," Thor asked slowly, "are Skaven?"
There was a moment where none seemed to want to speak.
"Is that not a name for a variant of beastman?" Aderyn asked. She was smoothing the hair of the woman who had fought to warn them, and she seemed more unsure than anything.
"Skaven are Skaven," Bjorn said, sitting back on his heels, face blank. "Rats the size of a man, they are foul things, scum, deserving only of death." His words earned a raised brow from Thor; the god could not recall him having such harsh words for any other.
"They steal into towns, and disappear families," Ingrid said, holding back a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. "Sometimes they take entire villages."
"Helka would always keep a rat in a cage," Sunniva said as she pressed a poultice into Eadric's wounds, not meeting anyone's eyes. "She said it would warn her if Skaven were about."
"She tested poisons on them," Selinda said quietly. "The old chief asked her to."
Aderyn frowned, opening her mouth to speak, only to hesitate with a second look at the Norscans.
"I was told of ratmen living under the earth, during our voyage to Skraevold," Thor said. The spectre of their presence had put a worry into even the bold warriors who had sailed with him. "Are these Skaven those same people?"
"They are not people," Bjorn said. There was a coldness to his eyes. "They are vermin."
"If you go into their pit, you never come out," Ingrid said, swallowing. "Not…not the way you went in."
Thor swept his gaze across those with him in the grove. There was true fear in them, and it drove a hatred before it as a whip did a slave. Asgard in all its millenia had never seen a species that marched in lockstep into evil, but he knew that words alone would not free them. Not against such fearful hate.
"If they have targeted Harad's village," Thor said, thinking about the region to the west that had so concerned Tyra and Wolfric, "then they are no army. A large force would have come for a larger place, like here, and I would have slaughtered them." His reasoning did not seem to reassure them. "I will go to them, and find out for sure."
"They are cunning," Bjorn warned. His ire was settling, though it was a case of a leashing rather than a fading. "It might be that they have let these three reach us to divide us, and make this place an easier target."
"I can be there and back again before the afternoon is come," Thor said, "but I take your meaning. I will take-" he paused for an instant to consider "-Bjorn and Kirsa."
"I am ready, Lord Thor," Bjorn said. He stood tall, ignoring the stiff stretching of his new scars.
"I take you not to fight, but to advise," Thor told him. He was not recovered enough to give battle, but such a thing would not be necessary. Not in his presence. "Ready what you need."
Bjorn bowed his head. "I will tell Kirsa," he said, and he put word to action as he left to seek her out.
"Ingrid, take word to the gates," Thor commanded. "Heighten the watch, call back the workers, and deny any hunting parties who wish to leave. It is likely that the Skaven who harried them so are still out there."
"Aye, Lord Thor," Ingrid said, touching a hand to the axe amulet at her throat, before hurrying off.
He turned next to Aderyn, ensuring that the healers would have all they needed, and then he left the grove behind, setting all to rights that needed setting before he could be away. He could not simply leave the town, but giving orders and informing the right people would not take over long. The warriors of Vinteerholm were warned of the situation, and Wolfric stepped forward to lead them. Word spread quickly of the threat that had come to their neighbour, and many were of mixed feelings as they heard that Thor meant to go to confront it.
The mood that Thor watched sweep the town did not sit well with him. He had seen the hatred they had for the raiders of other tribes, and the wariness they held to those that worshipped Chaos too deeply, but this was something else. Word of the Skaven had put a fear in them, bridled but unmistakable. The people of Norsca were not cowards, would spill blood for suggesting it - but every man and woman there, Baersonling, Sarl, or Aesling - were fearful all the same. The Nordlanders did not share in it, wary of lurking beastmen but confused by the insistence that Skaven were not the same. Grigori did, the Kislevite paling at the news and falling into black muttering, and he seemed to take it upon himself to explain the danger and difference to the people of the Empire.
Thor would need to take the time to ask after the whys and wherefores, but not then. Not while Harad and his people were assailed by an unknown enemy. Kirsa and Bjorn met him at the north gate, packed and ready. She had her dress and red cloak, and he had mismatched chain and leathers claimed from Skraevold. Selinda was with Kirsa, handing over a pouch and speaking quickly, while Bjorn waited quietly, a morningstar hanging at his hip.
"Are we ready?" Thor asked, drawing eyes. They had a small audience to see them off, the watchers atop the newly placed wall, the massive trunk a sight more stable than the palisade it had replaced, but also a goodly number of townsfolk. Aslaug was amongst them, and she bit her lip in concern as she met his eye for a moment.
"We are, Lord Thor," Kirsa said. She had set aside her usual pair of braids, instead putting her hair up around her head, almost like a crown.
Bjorn nodded, and no more needed to be said. They made for the vessel that would see them safely to Harad's village.
It was no ship, at least not one that would ever be carried by water. Amidst the flurry of carpentry that had overtaken the town in recent months, Thor's flying tree platform had not been spared. Where once it had naught but a trunk with sections carved out for a person to sit within, young hands in need of distraction or instruction had been set loose upon it. Now it had an interior hollow, with rough shuttered windows and even the start of what might be called a prow. It was there that Thor placed himself once his companions were safely inside, where a section had been carved out for him to both hold the body of the 'ship' and keep an eye on the horizon. Perhaps one day something finer would be crafted, something more suited to a son of Asgard, but for now, it would suffice.
They took to the air, leaving Vinteerholm behind, bearing north-east.
X
From the sky, there seemed to be nothing wrong with Harad's village. Smoke still curled up from the longhouse chimney, warriors still watched the walls, and folk still walked the village…but a closer look hinted at troubles. The gates were closed and barred, and there was no sign of activity beyond the walls - not just of the villagers, but nor of enemies, either.
There was space within the walls to set down, but Thor misliked the thought of letting any Skaven in the area know what they were about to face, and he picked out a spot in the forest nearby. The vessel set down gently on a patch of stubborn snow, and a wary family of rabbits watched from their burrow as Bjorn and Kirsa extricated themselves from it.
"There is trouble?" Bjorn asked, eyes roving the trees around them with just as much wariness as the rabbits had for them.
"The village is locked tight," Thor said. With the vessel 'designed' as it was, there was no way to talk with the passengers as he carried it in flight. "We shall make the final approach on foot."
"Kirsa should stay between us," Bjorn said. "Skaven will take their prey from the end of the line without the man in front of them any wiser."
"Not if Thor is that man," Kirsa said, lifting her chin in challenge. Even so, her gaze still strayed to the forest, flitting from shadow to shadow.
"Skaven are cunning, and full of foul tricks," Bjorn said. It was all too clear that he spoke from experience. "We must not-"
"Peace," Thor said, raising one hand. "You are safe as you walk by my side, but that is no reason not to take precautions. Bjorn will lead, and I will bring up the rear." He did not fear their tricks, for they could not hope to compete with those of his brother, but taking precautions would hurt none.
Perhaps it was his words, or perhaps it was the way Stormbreaker hovered at his back, but Bjorn subsided. "Aye, Lord Thor," he said, giving the trees around them one last scowl.
At Thor's direction, Bjorn led the way through the forest, stepping over gnarled roots and old mast. The trees there were not the same enormous old growth as those near to Vinteerholm, but they were well established all the same. For long minutes they trekked through them, and Thor found himself scanning the shadows and watching heavy boughs despite his surety. He could still hear the chatter of squirrels, still saw the occasional bird lifting into flight, but the nerves of his companions affected him still.
They reached the edge of the forest without incident, and a distance away there was the village, the river to its west. They would cross the open field where Gunnhilde had slain the raider Reket, freshly covered by a late snow, and then enter through the gate. The path was exposed, but nor would any foe be able to sneak up on them.
They were hardly out of the forest's grasp when a sentry standing in the narrow gate tower noticed them, leaning forward even as he put an arrow to string. Thor called his axe to hand and raised it high, and at the sight of it the sentry seemed to sag in relief. He turned to the side, calling something to someone below, and waved them on, urgency in his frame.
Bjorn hurried forward, still casting glances over his shoulder at the treeline, as if it would reach out to pull them back. He picked up the pace, even after seeing nothing.
Something sharp pricked at Thor's neck, an irritating bug bite, and he clapped his hand to it by instinct. It was no bug he found, however.
A dart sat crumpled in his palm, bent by the force of his slap. It had the same yellow sheen as those taken from Eadric, and there was a tiny dot of blood on its tip.
Thor didn't hesitate. He took one stride forward and collected Kirsa under one arm, then another to collect Bjorn in the other, and then he was skyborne, making a huge leap across the field and over the palisade wall. Stormbreaker kept him from making an undignified landing, and he released his companions to recover from the sudden movement. Shouts came from the sentry tower behind them.
"Thor?" Kirsa asked, stumbling as she righted herself on the frozen ground.
"The foe is cunning indeed," Thor said, revealing what he held in his palm.
"You are poisoned?" Bjorn asked, concerned, likewise righting himself. "Is that-?" He gave Thor a wary look.
"It will take more than a pin prick of such a small poison to affect me," Thor reassured him.
Kirsa was less sanguine, reaching quickly for the small pack she wore. "Selinda gave me a powder, you must drink it-"
"Kirsa," Thor said, taking her hands in his. "Fret not. A poison for mortal men will not touch me."
"If you are sure," she said, tension leaving her slowly as her surety in him warred with her worry for him. Reluctantly, she allowed her hands to slip from his.
Movement drew the eye, and they turned to see Harad himself approaching swiftly, though he slowed once he realised who it was he was seeing. The axeman had his weapon in hand, and there was a healing cut across one cheek.
"Thor," he said, deep voice holding a kernel of relief. "My people reached you."
"The three of them arrived this morning," Thor said. "We came right away."
Bristly white brows furrowed deeply. "I sent a dozen by ship five days ago."
Thor shook his head, a grim cast to his features.
"Skaven," Harad said, the word sounding like a curse. "They arrived a week ago, and we've not had a moment of peace since."
"They attack regularly?" Thor asked. He looked around, but could not make out any signs of battle.
"Were it so easy," Harad said, shaking his head. "They have not the numbers to assault us, but to leave the walls is to find a lonely death and if we do not watch them constantly, they will try to slip in."
"There is at least one in the field beyond as we speak," Thor said, showing him the bent dart.
Now it was Harad's turn to eye him warily. "Did you pull that from your flesh, or your clothes?"
"Fear not," Thor said again. "I will not be driven to rage by such a paltry thing."
"Eight of mine have been, and we lost two of them to it," Harad said.
"The rest live?" Kirsa asked, stepping forward.
"Some have endured, some still suffer," Harad told her.
"I have a treatment for them," she said. "Something to help calm them."
"That would be welcome," Harad said. "We have them in an empty granary - Audun!" A moment passed, and then a middle aged man emerged from a nearby house, a handaxe in one hand and mistrustful eyes on the roofs. "Show our guest to the sick. She has something that may help."
Perhaps Aderyn would have been able to aid them for sure, but that would have meant her leaving the patients they had known about behind, and she was not a fighter nor one of Thor's besides.
Audun turned and left, not looking back to check that Kirsa was following. After a last look to her god, she did so, and Thor grasped the small frisson of worry that came with her leaving his sight. She was not defenceless, and his aid was only a prayer away.
"It is a small infestation then?" Bjorn asked of Harad. "If they have not attacked outright?"
"So it would seem," Harad said. "They thought to ambush me, brought a black rat near as large."
"It did not go well for them," Thor said.
"No," Harad said, and he flicked his thumb across the cut on his cheek, a satisfied look on his face. "After I slew the big one, the rest fled. A night later, they began their harassment."
"Helena is well, though," Thor said, probing. He could not imagine she was anything else, given Harad's mood, but he had to ask.
"She guards the last granary while I am not there," Harad said, frustration and anger bubbling up now that he had something close to peers to speak with. "If the shits get in, that will be their first target."
"The last granary?" Thor asked. Last time he had visited, he had spied more than one in use.
"The rats in the food stores weren't just rats," Harad said, a bitter frown on his face. "By the time we realised, they had ruined a whole granary."
"They seek to kill you slowly then," Thor said, resting his chin on one fist as the situation became clear.
"Their cunning is only matched by their cowardice," Bjorn said, again his hatred rising.
"Aye," Harad said, "but with you, Bjorn, we have three warriors who could hold the town." He looked to Thor. "And then there's you."
"Do you know where they camp?" Thor asked. With the balance shifted by their arrival, their cause could only be weakened by a hesitance to strike - especially since his display in entering the village.
"We know where they likely make their lair," Harad said. "There are some foothills nearby that were once mined for iron. My Helena and I could not leave the village to strike them, but now…"
But Bjorn was frowning, tugging at one side of his braided moustache. "If you know their lair, they likely wanted you to find it. Did they let you follow them to it?"
Harad scowled, face thunderous. "No. That damn fool boy slipped out and hid in the forest one morning. He claims they departed east, and returned from the same direction the next evening."
Thor could only think of one person that would stir such a reaction from the old warrior. "Stephan?"
"Aye."
"The skald?" Bjorn asked, startled. "Surely he has not the craft."
"Damned fool luck, and his damned laughing god putting his hand on the scale," Harad said.
"Where is he now?" Thor asked.
"Scrubbing and washing," Harad said flatly. "I thought I was free of his bloodline causing me trouble, yet here I stand."
Thor smoothed over his beard, hiding a smile. "The eagerness of youth," he said, like he had not done a dozen things more foolish on a single adventure when he was of a comparable age.
"Pah."
"If you know their lair," Bjorn said slowly, "then Lord Thor could deal with it before the day is out, no?"
"I could," Thor said. He was not sure if the dart had drawn his blood on its own merit, or if it was his slap at it that had done so, but he did not think the foe to be a threat to him, even should they ambush him in such a mundane way again. He was perhaps too used to Loki's seidr in any potential mischief, for all that he had assumed the Skaven incapable of tricking him. "The only choice is in the how."
"They cannot stop your flight," Harad said, considering now. "You could be on them before they could prepare."
"I could," Thor agreed. "I have not faced Skaven before, but where there is one rat, there is another, yes?"
"There is always more," Bjorn said.
"I mislike leaving for their lair when some still lurk around the village," Thor said.
"They could not overcome us when it was but Helena and I," Harad said. "Now there is Bjorn and Kirsa as well."
"Even so," Thor said. He drummed his fingers against his hip as he thought. The village was still quiet, but word seemed to have spread as to their arrival, and more than one villager found a task that required them to drift within view of the gate. "I would feel better if I knew the danger here had been dealt with."
"Deal with it we shall," Harad said. He glanced to Bjorn. "How are your wounds?"
"Better," Bjorn said, though he grimaced.
"Then I will ask you to hold the gate in my absence," Harad said, and Bjorn hefted his morningstar in response.
"You wish to join me?" Thor asked. "I would not dream of denying you the fight."
Harad grinned, but there was nothing nice about it. "One of the rats out there gave me this little cut." It was closer to his eye than most would be comfortable with. "I will return the favour."
Thor answered his grin with one of his own, and the two axemen turned for the gate. There were Skaven to slay.
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
- Location
- Alta California
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Even as a Skaven fan and sympathizer* I can admit that the Warhammer world would be better off without Hellpit and the Top brass of Clan Moulder if that's what this is leading up too.
I'd hardly call them lockstep with evil, not unless that locked step is a pressganged ankle chained one.
I'd hardly call them lockstep with evil, not unless that locked step is a pressganged ankle chained one.
TBF, even Thor in chapter notes he has never known an entire race to be inherently evil, so I think he's already taking a more impartial view of things than the people who have been admittedly terrorised by Skaven for generations.
Though Hellpit probably is literally the worst example of Skaven structural evil, true.