RAGNAROK IS COMING


— Riptides of a Black Heart —

When the tides wage wars with the wind and they collapse together, when they fold over in anger and roar in salty distaste, Liogoo felt most at home.

It was seeing that groaning ship in the North's waters that birthed such a flutter in her chest, it had been nothing but instinct to glide through the water like silk ribbons, to bob just beneath the surface.

His name had been Everlain, that blood haired, tin faced Elf to spot her. He had been pulling a rope, arms thick with the muscle that marked a male a worthy lover of the sea and skin baked in the years spent under her gaze. Elves were beautiful, every creature knew that, but this one was beautiful like shattered glass and rocky sand. Tarnished and scarred, hefty and hard hearted.

He had turned to wipe sweat from his lips to his shoulder and it had to have been her stark eyes that caught his attention. Two gleaming orbs, unmoved by the current of that dark water.

A second they stared at each other.

A second pregnant with fear and wonder.

This Elf should run to his captain, warn his fellow sailors that the waters they roam are festering with flesh eating Sirens that have a taste for metallic, bloody pirates. He should be swinging from the bow, echoing across the skies and aiming for her heart.

That Siren should have ducked far below the surface and swam for her mother, for her kin so that they may ravage this ship together. So that they could rip those fleshy bodies to pieces, collect their bones for the queen's watery soldiers and feast on the sound of screaming pirates.

The Elf looked left and right, then leaned over his ship's edge. He smiled at that pretty little monster with eyes kinder than his face and beckoned her closer.

The Siren swayed her powerful tail towards the Elf's finger and grinned back, grinned all her sharp teeth at him.

She reached out a dark hand, soft like the Elves as it left the water but scaled and sharp in the timid waves.

"Come along, little Elf." she hummed, just as her sisters had. "Would you like to see sunken ships of dirty, wealthy pirates?"

But Everlain had been smarter than the little Siren had anticipated and when he grasped her hand, he made to lift her up and out of the water. To fish her from the sea, pluck her like a feather and leave her flopping and cold on his deck. Perhaps he would have traded her, the skin and songs of a Siren sells well. Or she could have become his pet, caught between six panes of glass for his amusement and pride.

Though he did not anticipate that Liogoo was a princess in these waters he pillaged. That the seaweed wrapped themselves around her fins and little crabs pinched themselves up his boat. That the static waves lapping in her ears were whispering of this particular pirate's crimes.

Hair black as coal, glittering gold handles of blades carved from a Siren's backbone. The fang of her sisters tumbling from his neck, scales rubbed and shimmering, warped into hair pieces.

A Siren hunter, her sisters' killers.

When Liogoo did not budge at his second pull and when she did not let go when he tried to back away, a gull cried for this pirate's demise.

He hadn't even had time to scream for his sailors when she slipped him into her arms, the seaweed a gentle caress when she swam them down, cradling his thrashing arms in her taloned fingers.

Liogoo gave Everlain her first kiss, and then dragged him to the deep dark of Alfheim's quiet waters to feast on his flesh.

"If you come with me you will only be endangering the lives of your people further."

Liogoo snapped back to the conversation, wishing desperately to be as warm as the day she'd been swimming in Elf blood. Stoic, the sire of Avrid, was nothing as she had imagined. How human he seemed. Large and a brute, but crumbling at the edges of his eyes and draining of life and colour; wasting away like a leaf in Autumn.

Avrid himself had his face contorted in a permanent scowl, a gruff of anger in his voice that was the most emotion Liogoo had ever seen the human display. They had been having this useless argument for an hour now, neither father nor son willing to back down.

"There is nothing I can do here but I know Dagur-"

Avrid threw a palm at the table. "You know nothing! You will be getting in the way of something that is far bigger than you."

"Oh I understand that you are so much more important now, Avrid. But my people are in that beast's dungeons and I will be damned if I do not die trying to get them back."

Avrid huffed. "There is every possibility that your people are dead."

"Then I will have no doubts when I tell their families to prepare the pyres."

Liogoo threw her head back and groaned. If they had to circle these exact lines again, she was going to swim headfirst into a cliff. Beside her, Tannis sighed, his chest brushing the back of her head and breath blowing in her hair.

Itching her head, Liogoo quipped in before they had this conversation for another hour. "Then it's settled. A family outing."

She got a glare from the chief but grinned all her sharp teeth right back, lest the human forget just what those dirty looks were going to get him. His sharp little eyes fluttered away and it made her wonder what these humans might taste of because they certainly did not smell any better than sheep shit.

Finally, Avrid pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. Do as you wish, but your demise will be on your own head."

The chief of this ridiculous village only nodded and looked over to the hobbled human. "Gobber, where are we with the ships?"

"Well, the bastards missed one and she just happens to be our best. I'll have the lass up and running in the next couple hours."

A nod from his chief and Stoic turned back to his son. "Will we be ready to leave?"

Tannis pulled on a slip of the still damp hair cascading down Liogoo's back and she turned to scold him.

"Step out with me?" he asked, rolling his shoulders as if restless.

She looked between an again arguing set of humans and Tannis. Sighing, Liogoo followed the better of two evils out to a crisp morning.

Midgard had very little of wonder going for it, but it would be a shame to say a sunrise was never stunning in every realm. The sun had only peeked over the horizon, a curious glance to see what this day might reveal and the light fog of an island's constant state of winter drifted down on them. Liogoo shivered and pulled her limbs together.

"Well?"

Tannis shook his head and led her further from the hall, walking down the mud path littered with the occasional mace or hammer.

Liogoo kicked the staff of an axe out of the way. "I hope your plan does not involve luring me away to kidnap me, because that-"

"I lied." Tannis snapped and Liogoo glanced up to him.

In Midgard's dull sun she could only see half of his face, the other shrouded in the last dregs of night but there was something akin to guilt flickering along his lips. Something heavy that pulled down his dark brows.

"About what?"

Tannis sighed a cloud of air and turned to let the sun warm his face. Liogoo tried to look away at the glow it casted on his reddened nose and flushed cheeks. On the scar she hadn't noticed until now, until it glowed. A small thing, no more than the size of her nail.

A surprise; that her attack had left a mark on his chin. A mark on the day she'd abandoned her kingdom for the chase, for a fate not chained to the sea. As if he felt her eyes on him, Tannis ran a finger across his chin, his eyes cold at the reminder the touch must have brought. But it was hard to feel guilty when he was a link in that chain trying desperately to pull her back to a pretty prison.

"Do you know when you left your mother sent out an army to find you, to rescue you. She'd thought you were kidnapped and she commanded every Siren, every monster and beast with fins and tails to search for you. The queen went out of her mind and your sisters never slept for months." He ran a glance down her, an assessing, stripping stare that left Liogoo more cold on the inside than Midgard could ever flush her skin. "And while you shucked your responsibilities for nothing more than a selfish dream, your kingdom fell apart right alongside your mother."

Liogoo cleared her throat, already exhausted on whatever tactic this was. "Spit it out."

Tannis lifted his chin. "Your mother is dead, Liogoo. She died in heartbreak and betrayal, weakened every day by the knowledge that her kingdom would be left to her sister because of your hate for her."

"My mother could not stomach the sight of me." Liogoo spat.

"That is not true and you know it. The queen was vicious and cruel yet she loved you with all the heart she had- but you were too pitiful to see past the wrong doings she committed."

"Wrong doings?" her hands squeezed into fists. "She murdered my childhood. Cast me in barbed fishing nets to teach the 'art of pain' when I was four, left me to the mercy of her rotten father when I was ten."

Liogoo reeled to him, yanking down his collar. "My mother did not love me Tannis, not with any shred of her black heart."

"She was wrong, but in her own way your mother did those things to teach you control because you were nothing but an uncontrollable, selfish hellion." He seethed right back.

Liogoo did spit on him then, right on his boots. "I hope she bled bloody and broken right to her deathbed, that my leaving reduced her to nothing but the hobbled bitch she was."

She was going to kill him. For the lies he spewed and the truths he woke, for the news of her mother's death that was a spear in her heart when it should have been as movable as a breeze.

But then a wrinkled human hobbled up to the two Sirens, her curled staff whacking both on the head hard enough it had Liogoo hissing. Tittering and slapping her toothless gums together, the thing that was no taller than Liogoo's waist, took her time walking between them and forcing Liogoo away from Tannis.

When Liogoo went to snap at the ignorant, old thing she turned and placed those cloudy eyes right into the Siren's soul.

A seer. That was what this rude raisin of a human was, something older than Liogoo supposed the village she lived in knew. Something with the power to see runes in the stars and the whispers of the Gods in the wind. A powerful creature that raised her untamable, silver brows in a gesture to follow.

When Tannis went to speak, Liogoo threw her hand into his stomach and walked behind a seer that moved faster than those joints should have been able to. Tannis coughed but followed silently.

The thing led them through the Village centre, meandering past broken homes and the odd Viking who all dispersed at the sight of her wrinkled face. She led them downhill, to a small patch of sand and ocean hidden in the dip of two valleys.

Liogoo crossed her arms when the seer only stood facing the ocean, silent and unmoving bar the odd twitch of her staff. It was thrice the size of her, but Liogoo had met many seer's with a strange affinity for tokens used like an extra appendage.

She tapped her foot and waited for two minutes before knocking the tip of her boot at the staff. "Well? Why did you pull our asses here?"

With a shrug, the Viking didn't so much as look at the Sirens before trekking back the way they came; though she hadn't left completely silent.

Because there, right where that staff had been nosing in the sand was a flawless image. A drawing of a man with a single shadow on the right side of his sharp face and the other composed of features Liogoo didn't recognise. Above it was a snake's maw, open as if the fangs were about to close over the man's face, dripping venom on his forehead in anticipation.

Liogoo frowned. "What the fuck is this?"

Tannis peered over Liogoo's shoulder and frowned.

"I thought you Kohuru were masters of knowledge." Liogoo went to punch him in the stomach again but he stepped away. "You haven't read the book of Eta Snorri? Mistletoe's Promise?"

"No." She hissed. "What is it?"

With a narrowing of his eyes, Tannis pointed to the snake.

"That is the snake wrapped around a stalactite, dripping venom to his face in punishment of Baldr's death as he lies bound to the cave by the entrails of his sons. A perfect rendering, missing only his wife, Sigyn, who collected the venom in a bowl, protecting her husband until her arms grow too tired and the bowl too full so she must leave him."

Liogoo jerked her head to stare at the picture, seconds before a wave crawled up to wash it away.

"Who's face?" She whispered, somehow already knowing the answer before Tannis prattled it.

"Loki Odinson."

…oOo…

Losing one's mind felt awfully like drowning, Astrid thought, pulling herself away from the edge of a balcony she didn't remember walking to.

It had been a stupid accident, falling into the icy waves of Berk's shores one winter in a desperate attempt to catch even a single fish to feed her docile mother and starving brothers. The waves had pulled her under with unforgiving hands, shocking her head with icy talons as if she'd split her head open and stealing her breath at the same time. The current had been just as cruel, ripping at her skin and eyes, dragging her further and further from the shore.

A riptide, Stoic had said, after hearing her wails and pulling the sodden girl to shore. One even he struggled against. It had left Astrid bed ridden for two weeks, lost in a flu that would have taken her life had the chief not personally fed and taken care of her and her family. Feeding the scowling girl one spoonful of broth at a time. Leaving her with a debt to Stoic that could never be repaid.

Existing in this Hel was just the same.

Cold hands had gripped her head and split it open to reveal a yawning pit of pain and fog. Had left her limbs unresponsive to every call bar one man's. Drago Bludvist, and he had her dancing and singing for him every night.

It could have been her body and soul finally giving up, could have been the process of starvation and heartache, of ripping her heart in two that left this numbness. This inability to do anything but breathe and blink. It could have been, but Astrid knew the difference in poison and the death of a soul.

Whatever Drago had done to her that last night- two, three nights ago, had left time nothing but a blur. Had left every night's memory a name in the wind and the day full of holes like a mouse ran rampant through her head, gnawing on corners of her memories.

Faces were no longer familiar, not that they should have been, but the men and women that glanced at her as she walked the halls would smile and wave 'hellos' as if they should have been. As if she should know names and wave back. No, Astrid only knew her own name and the one of that tall, cruel man. She knew his black heart because she had an inkling it began to beat in her own chest, fusing with her own and leeching her strength and sanity.

The problem lay in finding the source of this blanket, though thoughts were like pulling the end of cut string and a single decree from that man left Astrid stumbling to remember just why she should have been thinking.

It could have been fruitful to care a little more, perhaps take away this horrific headache, but that would require more thoughts than she could process. Would require string that didn't fray itself and an endness to these endless days.

Impossible.

So when Drago Bludvist called Astrid Hofferson to his side and strode onto a podium above strangers, she did not smile or wave. She did not frown or scowl. Astrid only stared, desperately trying to remember how she even got to this podium.