We're All Mad Here
A Thor, Norse Mythology Fanfiction
A/N- I used Valhöll instead of Valhalla because it looks magical. Yeah...
Part Three of Five
For a moment, Thor thinks he is traveling through Hel. The air itself is a great weight on his shoulders, an intangible crushing pressure in the beguiling form of fog. It winds through the labyrinthine cavern following him, lapping at his heels in silent mockery. Thor's hair clings to his neck as impossibly cool sweat slides down his face, and each empty step is far more labored than it should be, but the god is on a quest of his own making and he has come too far to turn back (if it is even possible to turn back.) He may be dead, felled in the quiet of the night to a small blade or poisoned dart, never to see Valhöll. He and his warriors had watched the heavens for Naglfar, the ship of lost souls, yet it had not come. Why, he longed to ask, to know, why?
But little Skuld was found in the garden, jotun (and how could they have forgotten the heritage of the most feared and respected women in all of Asgard? How could anyone have forgotten?) blood soaking into freshly tilled earth.
Sweet Verðandi in the kitchen, an empty spool in her hand and eyes clouded as they observed the world as dispassionately in death as they had in life.
Urðr, the old, clever crone, older than even Odin, sitting trapped at her loom, silver hair worked into the warp as her blood dyed the strands dark.
There were no answers to be had, so Thor sought out the question that pulsed hot and heavy on his tongue. It took time to find the entrance, a tiny crack in the earth, and he is ashamed to think he almost missed it. An oubliette, Loki's prison was meant to be difficult to find and impossible to escape (though they always thought he would escape, eventually, escape and return with blood on his lips and murder in his mind.) Thor had been the one to hold his brother down, because no one else could get close to the trickster. The trickster. The silver tongue. Maker of Mischief. Enemy of the gods.
Odd, how so much could be pared and separated into spiteful kennings. Odd, how it was so easy to forget the bound one had once been the most free, unhampered by social niceties or tradition's chains.
Odd, how Thor remembers dragging a despairing body down these very passages (though changed by time, shaped by eons) but now all he can recall are wide green eyes (eyes filled hate, with betrayal) and a kitten's claws scratching at his arms.
But even kittens grow into great beasts, and Thor pauses mid-step as a tongue as sharp as any knife cuts through the mist to flay his skin from his soul. "Oooh, Thor. Mighty Thor. Brave Thor. Terrible noise-um Thor." Sigyn stepped into his view, shadowed faced framed by limp streams of brown, wearing a glistening crown that holds a haunting familiarity. Her lips quirk as her movements, light and almost gay, bring her closer. "Dear, dear brother mine. You look surprised."
Sigyn smiled, reaching for his cheek, and Thor caught her hand with his own. "Lady Sigyn," Blood flaked like rust from her fingernails. "You are..."
"Hungry?" Sigyn asked, dancing backward and sweeping her hands through the mist. With a twist of her wrist and a burst of magic the fog quivered in her palms and transformed. She offered up hands full of dripping honey and spiced nuts. "You have traveled far, son of Odin, would that I not be remiss in my duties as host. Come, rest awhile. We are family."
Her words were bees stinging at the thick hide of his pride, and Thor swallowed down old guilt. She laughed at his expression, high and sharp, broken glass, and dropped the conjured sweets. They vanished back into the haze before hitting the ground, and Thor wondered if they had ever truly been. "Where is Loki, Sigyn?"
"Where is Loki?" She stopped then, proud and still as a statue, baring her teeth in a snarl. "Where is Loki? Where is Loki? WHERE IS LOKI?"
Thor touched the hammer at his belt.
"Shhh." A new voice cautioned with the accompaniment of growls. "You shall upset father."
Hel was as terrifyingly beautiful as Thor remembered. She waltzed, smoke and ash clinging to her bare legs, with a pair of rumbling beasts guarding her flank. Eyes like the sun laughed at him from a scarred, tooth filled face, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up - an instinctual reaction to the creature destined (or so they said) to kill his father. If he struck now, if he drew his hammer and-
"Now now, uncle." Hel continued, blood painted lips quirking. "Is the fire in your veins so eager to taste my embrace?" She held open her arms, one soft and gold like a promise and the other the dark of dreams. "I am flattered!"
"Calm, child." Sigyn admonished, smoothing her own skirts and taking on the air of a queen. The two women were warped mirrors of each other, and wolves at their heels the same. "Why, the crown prince of Asgard is our guest, and it has been so long."
"Yes." Loki's voice, far younger than Thor remembered, banished the concealing fog to reveal a great hall hewn from the earth. "It has."
Thor looked up into the face of his brother, and found himself falling into the dark abyss of his kinsman's eyes.
