Egill had disappeared off on his own again, after briefly mentioning that he couldn't help but feel that he had to go home. He had begun to recover slightly, the tremors over the past month and other signs of impending disaster had been overlooked.

When he didn't return for days, the situation became a little more uncomfortable. His disconcerted brother searched everywhere, but in his heart, he knew something was wrong and that the boy was gone.

"He's gone, Mats, gone." Sigurd was pacing agitatedly by Mathias' desk, who was fiddled absentmindedly with a bandage on his wrist and putting off replying to letters.

"I'm sure he's fi-"

A pair of fists slammed down on the table, cutting off the Dane's reassurance. "How long does it take news to get here from Iceland?"

"As fast as it takes to sail from there to here."

"Augh!"

"Hey, calm down, Sig." Mathias rose to follow the Norwegian to the window, suppressing a chuckle at his nervous behavior.

As swift slap to the face was the first reaction he got. "My brother could be dead and you tell me to calm down?!" He stormed to another window and started speaking as if to the missing child. "Why haven't we heard from you? What's going on over there? You're surely alright, aren't you?"

Hours rolled by without the situation changing. Late into the afternoon, a message arrived, stating only that ash had come in from the sea in Bergen.

From the sea…from the west…it was ash…Iceland! He had known something had happened, and now volcanic ash was turning up. Sigurd dropped the paper and dashed. Coming to Mathias' room, he didn't bother to announce himself, throwing open the door and began to talk, words tumbling out rapidly.

"It's a volcano! There's ash!"

The sudden entrance had startled the Dane, but he caught onto the words quick enough. "Ice? Is there news from Iceland?"

"The ash has already reached my country. We have to go and find Egill."

Mathias stared at him puzzledly for a few moments, then turned back to his own business. "Hasn't the kid told us a million times that the eruptions are nothing to worry about?"

"But-"

"'Don't worry about me, Bróðir, give me a few days and I'll be fine.' Isn't that what he's said?"

Sigurd clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes. "Yes, but…what if it's different this time? It's been a few days, and he's gone, poof. We have to go find him."

The haze was so thick that no boat could navigate the seas between there and Iceland. There was the option to take the same magical route Sigurd had given Egill centuries ago, and since desperate times call for desperate measures, the Norwegian overlooked that it most likely fell under the definition of illegal. He ordered that his ruler and friend, Denmark, come with him to find out exactly what was happening.

The air was thick with ash clouds, the smell of sulphur pervading, these were the first things they noticed. There was very little visibility, save for an immensely tall curtain of fire in the east, breathing became troubled, and a general air of tragedy and chaos came over them. Querying the people, the quickly heard the reports that the ground had simply split apart in a large fissure, spewing forth more rivers of fire than ever seen or reported of before. Sigurd easily recalled how he had repeatedly begged the child to stay away from the eruptions, and was now faced with the very real possibility that he had ran into the disaster instead of away.

Everything was generally darkened, with the sun reddened and blocked away by the thick clouds, the profuse rivers and spewing fountains of lava, as well as the fires they ignited along the way, providing much of the lighting. Whole villages were already being swallowed, lives already being lost.

"This is the end of the world…" Mathias muttered numbly. His first witnessing of an eruption was an overwhelmingly colossal one.

"Egill is dead, I know it, there's no chance he survived," the smaller of the two mumbled a despairing cry.

Mathias reached out to put a hand on his lifelong friend's shoulder, speaking a reassurance he had begun to doubt himself. "It'll be okay. We'll find him and he'll be fine."

Night fell without any sign of the boy. They heard, or perhaps fancied they heard, distant child-like cries, which served to provide hope that they weren't too late. It was a hopeless situation anyway, there was nothing anyone could do to remove the disaster nor rectify its results. Night turned day, back to night, back to clouded, red-skied day as the ash continued to be thrown from the fissured landscape, vomiting lava high into the sky and throwing super-heated rock and debris. The explosions began to die down, but the haze wouldn't leave.

The boy never turned up. All of the survivors had fled, and the life left behind died off before the eyes of the two nations who had come in search for their littlest.

After many days of fruitless search, they had begun to give up that they would find him. They could only hope that he had left with the people or stayed away from the eruption in general, a scenario Sigurd rightfully insisted was more than unlikely. Preparing to go home, where they were most definitely needed and staying was pointless, they gathered pieces of evidence of what they had seen. Looking once more to the blood-colored unset sun, they planned to leave the next morning.

In this isolated land, by geography, by foreign rule, and now by the haze, they hadn't heard of the increasing global effects. Ash fallout had already reach the northern parts of the European mainland. Early summer days turned cold as the sun's rays were blocked off, crops withered as rain turned acidic. It was a year with no summer, with the colossal effects felt worldwide, but nowhere so much as the once so-called haven Iceland had been for its settlers. The land would inevitably turned barren, the little crops left made poisonous by the volcanic toxins, and its people, already poor and downtrodden, would take a fall faster than any other disaster that had hit them. It would have been no wonder if their nation had died in the initial blasts, far before his time. The splendor of Iceland's golden age was long gone, and with the boy so weakened and ill, how could he have survived the catastrophe if his people were doomed to die within the next few years? The despairing logic seemed infallible, searching for him futile.

Needless to say, as the first to voice this theory, Sigurd was heartbroken. He told himself that maybe it was better this way, if they had kept him away from the eruption, he could have suffered through the ensuing famines only to die. Now he only wished that someday, maybe in the coming years, when the haze left, they could find his body.

As they anxiously prepared for their final minutes in the dead land before leaving, a glance out into the fog revealed a gaunt figure collapsed some distance away, obscured by the mist, that hadn't been there before. Its face was hidden by a bloodied arm, with ashen hair blowing in the wind. Shudders shook the small body occasionally, the only sign that it was still alive.

Mathias did a double take, peering back into the haze. "…Ice?" he whispered softly.

The whisper broke Sigurd's concentration, and upon realizing what he had said, he scrambled in the direction the other man was looking. Not bothering to quieten his voice, he shrieked in recognition. "Egill!" Dropping what he had in his hand, he ran out to the ash- and blood-covered boy, followed a few steps behind by Mathias. Almost throwing himself to the ground beside him, he lifted the body up a little to look at his face, which had fresh blood trickling from his temples and mouth. "Egill, Ice, wake up!"

After a few, thick moments, his eyelids cracked open, fluttering, and revealed eyes bloodshot, inflamed and glazed over. There was even a remarkable change in his irises, once clear and blue, they now appeared an almost red-violet hue. He only stared past the two faces looking over him. "Where are you?" he eventually asked, his voice cracked and sputtering. "I can't see."

Sigurd gingerly began to pick him up, drawing pained winces from the boy. Rocking back on his heels, he balanced the child cautiously against himself. "I'm right here, you don't have to worry. We thought you were dead."

The child kept looking around, reaching up to find his brother's face. "Am I dead? Is it over? I can't… Everything's gone. I can't hear it anymore."

Egill hadn't responded to Sigurd's words, and was speaking much louder than normal, leading to another conclusion: he was both blind and deaf. "Can you hear me?"

The child kept grasping at the air, after having confirmed to himself that the body holding him was his brother's. "It's still there. I can feel it. Why aren't you talking to me, Bróðir? Are you dead too?" Soon after, his head fell to Sigurd's shoulder, having expended all the energy he could muster, he fell unconscious again.

The Norwegian tightly held onto him and stood up. At least he was still alive, maybe there wasn't anything they could do to save him, but they could at least try. "Let's go, we have to have him seen by the doctors."

The Laki fissure's explosion had died down within just weeks, but the lava spurted up for months, flooding large portions of the landscape. The ash cloud spread around the world, affecting every living person, non more than the Icelanders. The coming years would be known as the Mist Hardships, famine and poisonous gases ravaged the land, killing off yet another great portion of the people, as well as most of the livestock.

Iceland had hit an all-time rock bottom.

Egill's body had been greatly affected by the disaster as well. His legs, arms, and wide portions of his torso had been severely burned. He remained mostly blind and deaf for years, and the gases that killed over a quarter of the population and couldn't kill him had stripped his body of most of his coloring, leaving his hair a pale, ashen color and his eyes an albino's violet. Once the wounds began to heal and his vision fully returned, he made a habit of covering the scars, more from himself than from anyone else. He relived the events, the pain and horror over and over. He had been cast into an almost catatonic depression, he no longer smiled, his personality faded and turned to ice. He nearly refused to even speak.

Everyday was a nightmare.

He watched the people continue to suffer. There was nothing he could do, stripped of almost all power, besides continue to starve himself and bring back his food for the children. He struggled to find and answer. Why had the eruption happened and why then? Why did they have to suffer? His mental pain superseded any physical pain he felt.

He began to wonder if it had all been his fault. He didn't know what he could have done to awaken the fury of whatever god or being who had control over this. All he had ever done was try to save himself and it only got worse. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help but blame himself.

By means of isolation, physically or emotionally, he could protect those he cared for from himself, but who would protect him?

His mind wandered back yet again to the beginning. Ash shot violently into the sky, his first thoughts were to find what was happening, help the people, anything to make it better. He ran into the rolling clouds as the magma began to pour out, he could feel his skin searing, and all he could do was cry out…for anyone. Once he managed to open his eyes and stare the fissure in the face, all he could see was disaster. Bubbling lava, cinder…a burning rock brushed past his face. His vision soon turned black, a sharp ringing filled his ears. He began to question if he was still alive. For days, he didn't know how long, he wandered blindly, sometimes falling into a sort of paralysis, sometimes he lost consciousness completely. Finally, he stumbled free. He was dead, he had to be. He remembered fainting. Somehow, Bróðir had found him.

He had been trapped in a dark, silent world for four, maybe five years. He had later heard that Denmark's king had considered evacuating the rest of his people. The trade monopoly was ended soon after the tragedy, easing the suffering of the people slightly, opening them to somewhat freer trade. Denmark himself had been close by throughout the tragedy.

It was hard to come to terms with the fact that Mathias actually did care for him. He had spent so many years building a grudge against the man. He resigned himself to believing that he was just immensely stupid and never knew what he did, even though it had become so obvious how ill Egill had become. And now he had to find a way not to hate him.

A/N: Before I ramble, I want to ask you all to look at a fanfic contest. If there's enough interest here on ffn, it'll be held here. The link is on my profile because I can't link on here, obviously.

The virtual chocolate for correctly guessing the theme of this chapter goes to ShrapnelGirl~ though it wasn't really fair for her because of her nationality, but she's an awesome person anyway who deserves virtual chocolate. Actually, all of my readers are awesome people who deserve virtual sweets. But anyway.

As someone who's overly obsessed with volcanoes, I'm actually not all that interested by the Lakagígar eruption (aka this chapter). At once, it fascinated me, that's how I got all the facts for this chapter that I've had partially written for over half a year, but really, I'm much more interested by classic Plinian and ultra-Plinian eruptions like 79 Vesuvius, 1980 Mt. St. Helens, 1991 Pinatubo…etc. Really, a lot of Iceland's volcanoes don't interest me that much. XDD The most interesting thing about them is the reaction of hot tephra and magma mixing with glacial ice, which basically causes the ash to explode into microscopic size almost a hundred times smaller than normal ash. But I'm sure no one really cares. XD Oh yeah, I laughed to myself every time I use the word 'colossal' in the chapter, because I understand the volcanic explosivity index and I know where on the scale the eruption fell, which for interest's sake, is a 6, known as a ultra-Plinian or colossal eruption. And also, not even all of the most deadly eruptions in history even reach a 6. It was a pretty huge deal, has been blamed for deaths in Japan, and is one of, if not the most deadly volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Okay, I'm done rambling about my obsession.

It was about time I returned to writing this fic in story style instead of rambley, text wall style. .-.

~Butter~