Chapter 8) Into the Abyss.

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Another day started and Ivar woke up due to muscle cramps. A strong, painful contraction rippled through the muscles of his calves, making his feet spasm and grit his teeth. Now that he was forced to sleep on a cold damp floor, the pain and cramps came more frequently. In Kattegat, his mother would apply hot drenched skins to lessen the tension, or order a thrall to run him a hot bath.

Of course such luxuries were out of the question in this damned shed. Aside from massaging and stretching his feet, there was no practical solution that would magically make the pain go away.

To make Ivar's morning even more sour, the Giant barged through the door. Inspecting the sack of peeled onions, an approving hum escaped the tall man's lips.

With three long-legged strides, he was right besides Ivar and sank his calloused fist inside his pockets.

Ivar half expected the brute to draw a knife and gut him. But that thought could not have been further from the truth. The Giant retrieved a key, which unlocked Ivar's shackles.

Without a word the Giant exited the shed, carrying the onion sack on one of his broad shoulders.

Ivar's breath had been caught inside his throat, his eyes still staring at his free legs in disbelief.
Piglet scurried around the edge of his box, eyes still groggy of sleep. That soft gleam quickly casted out once her gaze focused on Ivar's unlocked shackles.

It took the both of them a moment to put two and two together. In that moment, Piglet's hand had covered her mouth and Ivar's jaw had nearly dropped to the floor.

Then their eyes locked like magnets, one with predatory desires and the other growing out of proportion.

Ivar flung forwards and chased Piglet out of the shed like a rabies maddened dog. The young woman managed to slam the door in his face and took a sprint across the muddy field, leaped over a wooden hedge and tumbled down onto the ground.

Ivar dragged his body alongside the door and found himself knee and elbow deep in mud and pig feces, the murky grim did not stop him from slouching through the mess to close the distance between his prey.

Ivar was about to throw himself up the hedge when Piglet squatted back on her bare feet and picked up a hoe, ready to imbed the iron blade into his skull if he dared to leap up.

Piglet fumed words in her mother tongue, undoubtedly curses and stomped the wooden tip of the hoe angered on the cobblestones.

Ivar only glared at her with an unrelenting stare. Baring his teeth, he barked like a dog which startled Piglet, letting the hoe slip through her fingers.

He could hunch his upper body over the frame, it was not a tall fence and it was the only obstacle between him and Piglet. Although it would please him to strike out to that inferior creature, his newly learned place in this world made him pause his chase.

As it was, his insufficient hunt had earned him another round of mockery and ridicule. Serfs, peasants and maidens stopped their daily labour to wonder what monster had scared the dark skinned slave girl all across the pigsty.

Although every inch of his body was clayed with mud, Ivar felt utterly exposed. He'd made a fool out of himself and looked not much better then the pigs that joyfully tottered around to greet their new cage mate.

Ivar tried rubbing the mud from his chin, only wiping more of it onto his face. To make his humiliation worse, Piglet vengefully emptied a trough over his head. A mixture of spoiled leftover food, rotting crops and yeasting oats dropped all over his head, face and lap.

The pigs' curiosity evolved in gluttony, nearly breaking their short stubby paws to be the first one in line for the feast. Ivar had to push and pull between wiggling tails and fat bellies to crawl himself out of the circle of pigs. By the time he managed to free himself, Piglet was long gone and he found no better option than to hide back inside the shed.

Word must have spread about his little frenzy. Ivar had dozed off a little and the cool water hit him like a battering ram. What hit him next was the Giant's fist. It knocked him out for a brief moment.

He woke up while his body was dragged along by the Giant; the man's fist locked around his ankles. Like a rag doll, he was pulled across the pigs tide and quickly the flooring changed: cobblestones made his head bounce up and down. A grey sky drifted above him, an unpleasant drizzle watered onto his face. The hazy silhouettes of an immense fortress flash by him, but the world was spinning too hard for Ivar to focus. Once his eyes did manage to focus, they focussed on one solid thing; a well.

"Wait, no, no please-" Ivar tried, but the Giant picked him up by both shoulders and threw him down the dark chimney.

Ivar's faint cry echoed all the way down until his feet hit the surface, followed by the rest of his body. The cold water seeped through his ragged clothes and took him under. His arms made a weak attempt to keep his head above water, but soon his clothes weighed him down. He screamed, again and again and managed to smother a whimper as a bucket tied with a rope, dunked down next to him.

Ivar tried to steady himself, as good as he could. Like a fish caught on a hook, he was being reeled in.

The Giant sat on the stone edge, while two peasants did the heavy work.

With a cold deadpan expression, the man rubbed his thumb over Ivar's dirty cheek, then rubbed off the mud on his own trousers and tsked.

Without any warning he gave Ivar a hard nudge against his chest, who's arms flung around in desperate need of something solid, anything to remain above ground.

The second time Ivar hit the water was even worse, because he knew that this was nothing more than a game to his master. A sick little game to show him who was in charge, a game he might not survive.

The trial of being pulled up and pushed back down repeated itself two more times, before Ivar's illusions of surviving were gone. Once the water reclaimed him, his arms lacked the strength to resist. Soon, the oxygen deprivation took away his thoughts and like a body without a soul, it reacts to reflexes. Ivar took a breath and water started to fill up his lungs. His body grew heavy and he sank further and further into the darkness, swallowing him whole.

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A/N: So yet again, Ivar mistreated Piglet and I'm not saying he deserves being drowned repeatedly… But I certainly enjoyed writing the whole thing. I must say I'm very much in love writing this entire story, it's rather refreshing to write about a new fandom and I love doing all the research. Ivar is a very rewarding main character to drabble about and there are a lot of options for the storyline.

Thank you again for reading and you'd make my day by leaving a comment!

Xoxox Nukyster