Light pierced thick and humid air for the first time in a thousand years. The beam diffused quickly; as the air flowed down the newly opened passage, it cooled and quickly turned to fog, turning the tunnel into a world of white in the beam of the flashlight.
A clicking issued from a backpack, and there was a quick moment of examination.
"Be careful not to wander off. This place has elevated radiation readings, probably volcanic outgassing. It's only a few milliSieverts, but we shouldn't linger too long," a man warned and entered the chamber.
"Noted. So why did they say it was a Viking tomb?" a female voice broke through the sound of electronic ticking, sounding doubtful. She looked around the tunnel entrance for any archaeological treasures as she entered the pitch blackness of the cave with her headlamp as her only source of light.
"Look, there," he shined his flashlight on barely legible runes dripping with condensation, the divots filled in with minerals over the centuries. "Left by the graverobbers who snooped around for treasure, no doubt. And a local at the diner said there was a rumor about this place being cursed by the All-Father, Odin, himself. Something must be in here and it's worth a look." Once, a statement like this would have sounded ridiculous. But after New York and everything after, many things had changed. Especially in regards of the old Norse Gods.
The woman looked up at the faded runes before looking back at her colleague. "What do they say?" she asked curiously, approaching the cave wall to reach up, seeing just how much taller the men who came before them were in comparison to her short frame. She looked at the walls for any more signs and saw other grooves–which looked more like gashes dug into the rock by force. Seeing the grooves sent chills down her spine as they brought back flickers of memory of a sci-fi flick she'd seen in her youth. The gashes also reminded her of a young man who had been mauled to death by a bear during her internship, years ago. She took a closer look and shuddered. They weren't tool marks. No, these grooves were definitely made by a predator, one which had some pretty impressive strength to leave gashes in solid rock. With the grooves just as worn down by the same elements as the runes, it was unlikely that she would be able to get a measure of just how deep these lacerations went.
"Looks like they carved their names into the wall. Vikings were the first graffiti artists, after all." the man said, chuckling.
She rolled her eyes at her companion's joke and followed the tunnel to an opening at the end. She exited into a large, broad chamber. Light streaming in through a hidden opening bounced off crystals in the walls, which glistened, making bodies of water look backlit by a single light source. The chamber was warm and fed from the heat of an underground thermal vent. It was truly a sight right out of a fantasy. The gentle sound of a spring trickling in the distance drew her in further and soon she found the source. She looked into the stream and could see that the waters sparkled with pristine clarity, baring to her the contents of the stream's floor invitingly. Feeling the heat emanating from the stream, she wanted more than anything to take a soak. But there was a spa back at the hotel that would have to do instead; aside from whatever was making the Geiger counter click every so often, for all she knew, the water was acidic and would dissolve her skin, like that fellow at Yellowstone who had decided to take a swim in one of the hot springs and had melted in a few minutes. She then looked up and down where the stream flowed, seeing more chambers the stream split and fed into.
"This place is amazing!" she whistled and turned around to see the chamber she'd just come through. She looked down at what she had stepped on, hearing and feeling brittle snapping sounds under her shoes. Her flashlight shone on fragments of what looked like broken pottery littering the stream bed. With the mineral deposits that had collected up over the years, it was hard to tell. "Doc! Doc, I think I found something..." she called down to him as he came up to the stream.
"Let's have a look," he knelt down as he came to a stop by the edge of the stream.
He picked up a couple fragments curiously and, after testing the water's safety using a pencil to make sure it was safe, scraped and panned off the settled sediment in the stream until he had a couple of fragile specimens.
She watched him fiddle with them for a few moments. "Hmm. These aren't pottery shards. Look, there's no... oh. My."
"What?"
"Look." He held the fragment up to her flashlight, and she gasped.
"It's an eggshell." The inside of the curve was white, and shimmered like the inside of a clam shell, while the outside looked almost like stone.
"The size of a mango, yeah."
"What animal could be responsible for... those?" she asked anxiously. She did not want to meet the creator of the eggs in the depths of the tunnel. It was bad enough that the grooves in the tunnel walls made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
"Not sure. But they're clustered at the edge of the stream, look. There, and there!" he pointed out with his flashlight.
She looked up and around them, seeing nesting signs at the edge of the stream. Basing on what they'd seen, it looked like the animals nested in the hot springs. However, with no sufficiently intact specimens to give them a sense of the creature's size–although eggs were not directly correlated with animal size, as the kiwi demonstrated–it left more questions than answers.
The two ventured across the shin-deep stream, hopping carefully from rock to rock, and ventured further into the small network of caves until they reached branching tunnels at the end and stopped.
"Which way now?" she asked, looking over at her companion before looking at her device. "We can go a little ways further before it's unsafe."
She watched as her friend walked up to a pile of rubble. He picked it apart, and studied his surroundings now and then, staring at the walls before he finally turned to her.
"We go this way," he pointed behind him with his thumb.
"I'll bite, why?" she asked as she approached the mouth of the cave.
"More runes up there–likely placed as markers so they wouldn't get lost, and the triple horn of Odin on some of the rocks down here. Looks like it may have once been sealed off before our grave robbers busted their way in." he explained and entered the tunnel.
She approached the mouth of the tunnel and looked down at the rubble. It was hard to see, as it was broken up, but a piece of the ornate interlocking triangle could be seen on one smoother piece of stone, the edges of the breaks still fresh and unweathered. Taking his word for it, she followed him into the new tunnel. The further into the tunnel they went, the more she began to see scorch marks where something of intense heat had charred the floors black in areas. It was odd to say the least. But there also had to be a way out of the caves ahead of them, as there was an odd glow in the fog ahead which looked like sunlight.
"Emi! Come! You have to see this!" echoed oddly from up ahead.
"Coming!" she called.
Walking carefully, she sidestepped one of the oddly-placed burn marks, but misjudging her footing in the fog. Sliding on the damp stone, she kept from twisting her ankle, instead stumbled into the next chamber, colliding with her colleague, but managed to catch herself on him before she could fall further. "Sorry…" she apologized.
When he did not respond, she looked up at him and found him staring in silent wonderment. "Doc? Doctor Nickolai...?" she asked curiously, and waved her hand in front of his eyes–and then turned to follow his gaze.
There was an odd glow in the center of the room that lit the fog with a golden light. She instinctively glanced at the ceiling, but the light wasn't coming from above. Instead, a golden dome seemed to fill the center of the foggy room.
The Geiger counter was clicking more aggressively, and he said, "I think we found the source of the radiation..."
"Yeah..." she commented, stepping carefully on the floor; it was level–almost too level, despite appearing natural. But then her caution was rewarded when she kept herself from walking straight into a line of knee-high rocks.
"What's this?" she asked, examining the one she'd almost hit. It had obviously been placed there on purpose, along with the others in the line, but for what purpose, she had no idea.
Her companion said, almost reverently, "Emi…. Do you realize what we just found?" he asked with uncontained excitement as he reached out and touched one of the rocks.
"Can't say that I know what I'm looking at, Doc," Emi admitted. Norse history was not her strong suit. But she had no doubt that she would learn about them working with the Doc as his forensic anthropologist.
"Contrary to popular belief, a 'Viking Funeral' didn't always involve a ship pyre; boats are expensive, after all. But they did use ship imagery. Look at the lines of the rocks; they're in the shape of a ship..." His flashlight beam followed the line of the rocks, and they did indeed form two curved lines, with the two of them standing near the point. "The Norse would bury their dead surrounded by stones to form a Stone Ship..."
He pointed his flashlight beam at the center, where the glow was. "And there we have the main corpse."
"Wait, what?" Emily blurted.
Her companion turned and grinned at her, before hopping over the stones and approaching the glow, the Geiger counter in his backpack noticeably clicking more. Not that much more, but enough to make Emily nervous.
But she forgot that when the Doc flicked his flashlight beam on the glow, and now he was close enough for the beam to penetrate instead of diffuse in the fog–revealing a corpse.
"Oh. Guess they were telling the truth about the tomb... and maybe the bit about Odin," Emi said, and hopped over the stones as well. The vision became more unusual the longer she looked. The corpse was aglow with a radiant light that came from… nowhere. She checked the ceiling again, only to find it as a solid dome of rock. It was as though the corpse was the source of the heavenly light.
Steeling herself, Emi approached the slab for a closer look, watching as the Doc already had his camera out, but was frowning. "My camera isn't working. Some kind of interference."
His attention turned to the corpse, barely able to contain his excitement despite his inability to document their encounter.
"Remarkable! He looks as though he died only yesterday. The radiation must have prevented his celular structure from decomposing!" he said with elation. "This has to be related to Asgardian technology!"
As she neared the slab, Emi looked the corpse over. He appeared to have been in his twenties and was rather scrawny for a Viking. At the very least, he was certainly far from the beefy depictions of Vikings in the media–not to mention the Asgardians who had settled in Norway. Anxiously, Emi edged in for a closer look as the Geiger counter in her backpack began to increase in warning. The ethereal light revealed more details; she observed his features as she neared. He looked like he was of Scottish descent at first glance, and was flecked with abundant freckles. A short beard hugged his jawline and lips. She scoffed. If he'd been alive, she might have considered dating him. He was very handsome and easy on the eyes by her standards.
Looking down, she studied his outfit. He wore a padded green tunic and leather pants with dark armor plating on his shoulders and upper chest. It looked like biking leather to the untrained eye. Clinging to his shoulders was an old and dusty fur cloak. If she had to take a guess, it was likely bear fur. Her gaze fell to his waist and saw a belt buckle with a dragon engraved on it. Remembering that detail, she looked back at his chest and saw a buckle with a dragon engraving as well. Curiosity got the better of her and she reached out, wanting to feel the grooves of the ornate buckle. She hissed in pain and a bit of confusion as static buildup bit her through her gloves and she quickly pulled back, shaking her hand furiously as she felt the charge race up her arm before it dissolved.
"I need to document this extraordinary find! Work already!" the Doc grunted in frustration and suddenly yelped as a flash lit up the area in a burst of light. The Geiger counter gave one last flurry of clicks and then went quiet.
Emi and Doc Nick shared a look. "Did you break something?" he asked.
"I... I touched it, and got shocked through the gloves," she admitted.
"Emi... the glow is fading," Nickolai said, looking worried.
"Shit, shit, shit! Start documenting!" Emi turned to the corpse, and started to look it over; if she had disrupted something with her touch, they might have only minutes before the environment started to destroy the corpse.
She pulled out a sketchbook and started to make notes about the corpse's attire and body. The corpse appeared to be wearing a prosthetic on his left leg that began just below his knee. It was a strange contraption that was a mix of metal and wood and looked like it had spinning gears with a slit in the base for interchangeable parts. It possibly had multiple uses, leaving her with more questions.
"My camera's working again! Yes!" Doc Nick said, and started to photograph all that he could.
"I wonder how this fellow died," he mused thoughtfully. They had no permission to remove the corpse to study back in his lab. The tomb was on protected land–and if Asgardians were involved, that would just make things even more legally complicated.
Emi looked back to the face of the corpse. Her gaze drifted down to his wrists and saw very faint scarring what looked like they may have been gashes at one time. She hummed in thought and flipped his wrist over. To her surprise the same scarring could be seen through damaged brackets on the other side. She looked over to his other wrist which also bore the same scarring and her fear grew. She knew what it meant to have gashes on the wrists extend on the adjacent side. But she had to check his only remaining foot to clarify her fears. Sure enough, as she peeled back the loose fabric, she could see his foot had matching scars and with an accompanying tear out the rear, she didn't need to peel back the leather fabric to know there were matching scars. It was strange, usually these types of wounds were made using nails to secure the victim, but compared to the injuries she had witnessed having exhumed and documented victims in the East, they were much larger. Victims were also stripped of clothes as an act of dehumanizing them–and to expose them to the elements–but the tears in the clothing matching the scars looked like it had been hastily done. She knew exactly what this meant and she winced in pity for him.
"I think this poor guy was crucified," she admitted.
"Crucifixion? This far north?" he asked with a tone of skepticism. He wandered over and looked the evidence over.
"Look at the lacerations down the extent of his wrists. They extend to the other side," Emi picked up the corpse's hand to get a clearer view as she exposed the wrist to the Doc. The skin... she was a forensic anthropologist, so most of the time, the corpses she was called upon to examine were not exactly fresh. But she would have sworn that the corpse had only died moments ago. His skin had not yet begun to cool to ambient, although that might have been a trick of perception from just how warm it was in this cave. That being said, it had the tactile sensation of still-living skin, so whatever process had preserved him had even staved off rigor mortis. It was not at all what she had experienced with corpses in her college years studying the forensic sciences. "They're even on his ankle."
"But that's impossible if his wounds have already healed. Perhaps he was a victim at one time, but he doesn't look like he would have died from his injuries. Unless a tetanus infection got him later." he said and snapped a few more pictures of the corpse's wrists before pulling away.
"I don't know what else to tell ya without cutting him open, Doc," Emi said with a shrug. "And I'm worried that I might have done enough damage already." She motioned to the slab; the glow had completely faded by this point, leaving them in the dark with their flashlights as their only source of light. She flinched in guilt. They were going to have to work fast if the Doc was going to preserve the right to further excavate this site and she could further examine the corpse.
She followed him to the edge of the burial plot and watched as he bent down, studying the Stone Ship.
"These stones don't match the colors of the local rock formations. And it must have taken a massive line of people to build a Stone Ship of this size! I wonder what quarry they got these stones from…" Doc Nick mused in excitable thought. "Or if they even needed to... given that Asgardian tech is involved," he added.
"Perhaps we should wait until the body is preserved before we ask technical questions?" Emi offered.
"Yes, yes. We'll be back," he said excitedly. "Once we have this place sealed off and protected. Don't want this find of the century being desecrated if word got out before it's secure. There are a lot of lunatics out there who would do such a thing. Like that anti-Asgardian movement that desecrated those ancient Stone Ships in Northern Germany. Can't afford to have that happen here." There was a pained tone to the Doc's voice. But then his tone turned more upbeat. "Just think, this really is the holy grail! Or at least one of Idunn's Golden Apples! You're not going to find a body THAT well preserved twice in a lifetime. I knew I was right to follow up on that email. And because of it, I'm going to be in the history books!" he said jovially. "Oh, you'll be in the books too, of course!"
Emi paused briefly, hearing his excited rambling. She clenched her jaw tight. She didn't think she liked the idea of being in the spotlight. Which was probably why she was happiest working in this field. Forensic anthropologists didn't exactly get that much attention in the media. Not unless you get a show about them popping up now and then which was a good thing on its own, as it drew in new faces who grew interested in the field. In Emi's case, she was naturally drawn to the morbid and the macabre, starting with her love affair with paleontology as a kid. It just grew from there. But the idea of being in the spotlight made her feel ill.
Emi glanced back at the corpse one last time, feeling guilty. He'd been here for centuries undisturbed, and in five minutes, she'd probably doomed him to rot within a week. By all rights, her license as a forensic anthropologist should be yanked for that sort of clumsiness, or at least brought up for review. These weren't the bad-old days of archeologists being little more than looters any longer.
"Hurry up, Emi! The faster we get back to the sat-phone, the faster we can get this place locked down and prepped for a proper excavation," Doc Nick called from ahead.
With a regretful sigh, Emi turned and followed her companion out back the way they entered. Hopefully, the information they'd found would be enough to have a proper expedition mounted, and quickly, before the corpse decomposed. He belonged in a climate-controlled case at a museum, at the very least, like Ötzi the Iceman.
Then Emi froze as there was the sound of metal scraping against rock from somewhere in the chamber. "Wait, wait, Doc. Did you hear that?" Emi had asked, feeling her fear spike.
"Probably loose rock in another chamber, I need to hurry if we're to get this place secure," he dismissed, continuing walking towards the tunnel mouth.
Ghost stories of King Tut's curse dancing through her head, Emi looked back, shining her light on the slab...
And shrieked, as the corpse was now sitting up and stretching–which turned into a painful flinch as her high-lumens flashlight hit him in the eyes, making him reflexively shield them.
"What the–!?" Doc Nick blurted behind her, but Emi paid him no mind, as she watched the corpse get to his own two feet–if you counted his prosthetic–and take a wobbly yet clearly defensive stance.
There was a moment as she stared at him, the impossibilities of the moment cascading through Emi's mind. But before she could say anything, the figure, breathing heavily, suddenly burst into motion and ran at them.
Emi tried to get out of the way, but her shock made her slow, and the figure shoved her out of the way, and she hit the ground with a thud. A following yelp from behind her indicated the Doc had likewise been pushed. She rolled to watch the figure dash out of the chamber recklessly, leaving them behind.
###
"Oh… I'm going to feel that in the morning," Nickolai complained, sitting up. It figured. It just figured. Asgardians showed up, and reason and logic and things like that went and cried in the corner.
"How did that... did we just unleash a draugr?" Emi asked intently.
"What do you mean, we? You touched him," he pointed out, watching her get back to her feet. Meanwhile, his joints ached from the sudden collision with the wall, but he pushed himself up to his feet as well.
Emi let out a sharp gasp. "Nikki's alone." She ran ahead, familial instinct clearly propelling her. With a weary sigh, Nickolai turned to follow.
They soon caught up to find their 'corpse' kneeling in the afternoon sun. He appeared to be soaking in the warmth of the sun's rays with his back arched and facing the sky, his eyes closed.
"Is he…?" Emi approached the unmoving figure. He whirled to face her. The corpse swiftly rose to his feet and patted himself down for a weapon. He withdrew a small dagger from his left arm bracket and pointed it at them, his lips pulled back in a grimace.
"Whoa, he's not!" Emi backpedaled away from him. She landed on the gravel with a yelp of pain.
That made the reanimated corpse–who, despite his age, appeared to be quite healthy (damn Asgardians!)–blink in surprise. He backed up another step, and was clearly taking a closer look at them. Nickolai wondered what he saw... and how he was interpreting it.
He considered his own outfit. Sturdy hiking boots, thick jeans, a flannel shirt and a vest with bulging pockets, his digital camera dangling from one hand, a yellow hard-hat with a lamp on his head, and Emi dressed much the same. How would this man interpret it? If he was Asgardian–which was Nickolai's current reigning theory–he would likely be somewhat dismissive. But if he was actually a Norseman, preserved since the Viking era for whatever reason...
He shivered in academic excitement and calmed himself. Oh, the questions he could get answered...
Clearing his throat, he carefully put the camera in its vest-pouch after thumbing the video to 'record', and then spread his hands in the universal sign for 'I come unarmed'.
"Ow..." Emi moaned, and then looked up. "Doc! Wait!"
"It's all right..." I hope. He eyed the dagger in the draugr's left hand. Blade of approximately nineteen centimeters in length, iron blade approximately five centimeters wide, sharpened on both edges, with no visible blood channel. Iron crossguard, with what looked like a leather accent at the pommel.
And, despite having spent a few centuries in a foggy tomb, it looked like it had been forged recently.
Thoughts of analyzing it to be able to settle some long-term arguments over Viking forging techniques danced in his head, until the draugr pointed it at him, still panting, and Nickolai made one final observation: centuries old or not, it looked pretty damn sharp...
Hoping that he wasn't about to make a mistake that would end in some rather pointed consequences, Nickolai, his hands still open and raised, stepped forward and said in Norwegian, "Hey... could you put the knife down? We're not going to hurt you."
The corpse blinked, confused.
Well, not Asgardian then. They all spoke fluent English and all of the Scandinavian languages.
After a moment, the corpse coughed and said in what sounded like Old Icelandic, "Uh... what did you just say?"
His heart pounding excitedly, Nickolai riffled through his head, trying to recall how the language had shifted... right... Old West Norse, which had led to Icelandic, was different in consonantal fusion than Old East Norse.
Taking a deep breath, trying to keep his giddiness under control, he said in his best approximation of the old language, "I asked if you could put the knife down. We come in peace."
The corpse blinked again, looking confused. "I can barely understand you... but... wait. Where am I?"
Nickolai swallowed, his excitement making his mouth dry, and forced the old words to his mouth. "You're on the island of Svalbard, in the..." How to say 'Arctic'? "In the Northmost Sea. We just woke you up."
The... well, not-a-corpse blinked at him. "Svalbard? I'm... How... You... you don't sound Norse!"
"I'm not. I was trained in Old Norse in... school," Nickolai said carefully. He'd come to a halt just outside of easy lunging range.
The not-a-draugr looked at him, looked at the knife, and carefully put it away in an arm-sheath. "Old? Who are you calling 'Old'? You're not exactly getting any younger yourself!"
Nickolai shrugged and gave a wide and hopefully disarming smile. "Well–"
But the fellow stared at him in sudden horror and staggered back. "Toothless!"
Nickolai jerked back in sudden confusion, wondering what the... No, he had all of his teeth, and as far as he knew, there was no taboo against smiling in Norse culture–
"TOOTHLESS!" the fellow bellowed, his eyes wide and panicked, cupping his hands and shouting at the top of his lungs.
A crunch of gravel at Nickolai's side announced Emi's presence.
"Is he... all right?" she asked softly in English, watching the young man–and now that he was moving around, Nickolai could see that he was truly young, in his mid-twenties at the latest.
Blinking to shift himself back to English, Nickolai shook his head as the young man was shouting the word Toothless at the top of his lungs, sounding like he was on the brink of despair. "I... I don't think so," he said softly.
That was the last thing he said before the young man whirled and turned to look at them. He ran over and grabbed Nickolai by the biceps and babbled something in Old Norse.
Nickolai took a deep breath and transitioned back with a degree of effort, the old language, with all of its rule shifts, coming with difficulty.
"I'm sorry, you spoke too fast. Can you repeat it?" he asked carefully.
"Please! Was there... was there someone… or something else in there? A message, something?"
"There were runes carved on the walls..." Nickolai started, and with a jolt, the young man ran off back into the cave–and when he went for a short scabbard on his thigh, he found it empty, and his fingers jerked back as if burned.
He turned back to look at Nickolai. "Please," he said, sounding like he was begging, "I need that elf-light you have there."
Nickolai held out his flashlight without question, making a mental note at exactly how the Old Norseman referred to it. Fascinating.
"Thank you!" the young man snatched it and ran off into the cave.
Sharing a look with Emi, they wordlessly followed.
The fellow was running the light over the etchings on the wall, despair on his face. "No, no, no..."
As Nickolai's steps crunched on the gravel, the light suddenly shone in his face. "These aren't runes! They're dragon marks! Where are the runes?"
Nickolai blinked. "Dragon marks?" he blurted in English, and then repeated it in Old Norse, as Emi made choking noises.
"Yeah, you know?" the young man extended a hand and made a raking motion with stiff fingertips against the wall.
Emi said quietly, "I don't understand a word he just said, but I understood that just fine."
"Dragon marks, you say," Nickolai said faintly.
The Old Norseman nodded. "Uh... I'd say Gronckle or Nadder, judging by the look of them. But you said there were runes?"
"I... might have been mistaken," Nickolai said quietly. Dragons. Well, people took Instagram photos with Thor these days...
That appeared to make the Norseman's fragile composure crack, and he started hyperventilating. He fell to his knees and the flashlight rolled out of his hands, coming to a halt illuminating the wall and the run... the dragon claw marks in the stone.
Emi knelt down next to him and pulled him into a hug, drawing him tight against her shoulder as though she had practice.
He broke down into shaking sobs as Nickolai watched. Feeling uncomfortable, he turned and looked at the marks on the wall for several minutes. Forming his hand into a claw, he mimed a few slashes at it, and saw that, yes...
They were claw marks.
Then he gasped in realization.
"What?" both Emi and the Norseman asked, looking up in unison, his tears making wet marks on his cheeks but looking calmer.
"Emi..." Nickolai said in English. "Those were dragon eggs by the stream."
The Norseman looked at them and said quietly, "I don't recognize your tongue. Where are you from?"
"Uh..." Nickolai stammered. Images of uncontacted tribes drinking Coke and wearing jeans suddenly sprang to mind. Bad enough that he'd given the Norseman his flashlight and shown him their modern clothing.
His hesitation made the Norseman's eyes narrow, and he stood and backed away as he wiped away the remainder of his tears in frustration. "Where!?"
Nickolai sighed and said, apologizing to his future self in case this irrefutably contaminated his find, "By the Christian calendar, it's AD Two Thousand and Eighteen."
The Norseman blinked. "Those are those people from the South who worship... I don't remember what Jorn said about them. I remember that King Olaf was converting people in his kingdom to that god, though."
"Saint Olaf of Norway?" Nickolai asked, relieved. Finally, a temporal signpost he recognized!
"Uh... I suppose? What's a 'saint'?"
Nickolai opened his mouth to answer, and then froze. "Thaaaat would take some explaining." And do incredible damage to a pre-Christian Norseman's personal accounts of the pagan religion. He swallowed and thought. "When you last remember, how many years had Olaf Haraldsson been ruling Norway?"
The Norseman quirked an eyebrow, ran his hands through his hair, and said, "Two or three, I think?"
Nickolai's heart gave a funny jump. Something must have shown on his face, because the Norseman's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"Um..." Oh, God, how to explain this... "I'm from a land to the south, Deutschland. My assistant here, Emily, is from a land far, far to the west, past Iceland and Greenland. But... the issue for you is not the distance. It... it is the time."
"What do you mean?" the Norseman asked, still looking at Nickolai carefully. "What is the time?"
"How many winters have you seen?"
"Twenty," the Norseman said suspiciously.
Nickolai took a deep breath, braced himself, gave a silent apology to the fathers of history, and said, "For every year you've lived, you've spent fifty asleep."
"What."
"It... it has been a thousand years. Olaf was crowned in the Christian year of One Thousand and Fifteen."
The Norseman looked at him as though he had gone crazy. "No, that's…That's… A thou… A thousand…"
The Doc watched as he backed off in clear panic and denial as his head jerked, unable to process this new information.
"A thousand… YEARS!" his response to the news wasn't exactly what the Doc had expected, but he had predicted the news would not go over so well.
Nickolai watched as the Norseman's body began to sway and then went limp as he began to back off again, his knees collapsed and he toppled to the solid rock floor with a heavy thud. Immediately Nickolai raced over in panic, fear raced through him and fed his imagination worst case scenarios. He was relieved to see eyes flicker open as he kneeled over the young man. Huffing a sigh of relief, he began to help the Norseman back to his feet.
Nickolai struggled to help their friend up, praying he hadn't injured himself in the sudden and unexpected fall. He checked the Norseman's head for any visible injuries, bumps or blood to indicate scrapes, but was relieved to see none. Instead, he saw a few braids woven into his hair and his mind wandered. It had not been confirmed that the Norse ritually braided each other's hair, but he knew through historic documented encounters that they did ritualistically wash their hair every morning, which was a romantic gesture between husband and wife. Looking closer, the Norseman didn't show any indications that he was married, no ring for that matter aside from the ones that adorn his middle fingers that appeared to be connected to leather. He counted three braids near their Norseman's right ear as Nickolai balanced him up against his chest and wondered who may have braided them and just how close to him they were. He observed that the Norseman yanked his head away with a grunt when his fingers drew too close to these braids. They likely held sentimental importance. He would have Emily look him over for any injuries later. For now, he did not want to upset their friend and complied with leaving the braids be, despite the gnawing urges to get a closer look at them. "Are you alright?"
"I, I remember now…" the man mumbled in his arms, dispirited and looking as though he had done something horrible. He looked down to his arms–more specifically, his wrists–and appeared to be relieved before resting his full body weight against Nickolai.
Emily wasted no time coming to his aid and Nickolai hefted him to where he could get an arm slung over his shoulders. Between the two of them, they managed to get the young Norseman back on his feet.
"Nickolai," Emily strained under the weight. "What's going on? What was he saying?"
Nickolai looked down at their 'young' friend before looking over at her. "He's not a draugr," he reassured. "He's just... lost. But he's awfully weak."
"We should get him back to the Jeep then–"
"No, no! Look at him, Emi! He's a living relic from the past! If we take him to the Jeep, we'll contaminate him more than we already have!" he argued. Dread hit his stomach as the very thought of exposing their friend to modern advances crept into his mind. There was still so many questions he wanted to ask him. And was afraid that the wonders of the modern era would taint his memory, let alone his way of life. It's bad enough that they'd already exposed him to a fraction already with the news of Olaf's death and their clothing attire alone.
"But Doc. He's going to need water, food. We can't deny him that," Emily argued.
Nickolai looked at her, then around them. She was right. There was no way they could safely give him water or food. And eventually he would have to transport his find to the mainland for further observation.
Nickolai inhaled deeply, regretting what he's about to say. "Alright, but… just the Jeep."
AN: I was supposed to upload this last Friday, but things got too busy. After today, I will upload chapters until it's caught up with the story on A03.