One moment, Grámtrist's massive sword was coming down on top of Thrúd despite her best efforts to ward him off. The next, her footing vanished from underneath her, sending her sprawling end over end into a very bright new environment.

Thrúd didn't so much as have a moment to correct herself before she crashed on a solid surface on her backside, tumbling to a halt beside Lúnda who also suffered from a less-than-graceful landing.

Groaning in unison, the two women slowly rose to their feet, dusting themselves off. Thrúd heard a fluttering of wings above her followed by a small pressure on her shoulder, alerting her of Hugin's presence. Thrúd was too distracted by her new surroundings to shoo him off.

"Where are we? What just happened?"

Lúnda took a few lumbering steps forward before turning around and spreading her arms out wide. "Lil lady, welcome to Yggdrasil! Yer one-way route to just 'bout anywhere in the nine realms . . . er, eight realms."

Thrúd blinked. "Wait, this is the Yggdrasil? The world tree?"

"That is correct, yes."

"CAW!"

Ignoring the loud bird call in her ear, Thrúd did her best to soak in her surroundings. She appeared to be standing on a massive tree trunk that made a makeshift path that wound its way so far, Thrúd couldn't see where it ended. There were other tree branches and limbs poking out here and there, but the only path she seemed to be able to follow at all was the one she was currently standing on. The entire atmosphere was tinted in a violet-blue hue that Thrúd's eyes were still trying to adjust to.

Her feet moved on their own accord, carrying her to a tree limb that seemed to just end with a massive drop into the purple void. Thrúd did her best to keep her balance as she peeked over the ledge. She immediately lost that balance once Hugin flew off her shoulder and flapped his wings in front of her face, cawing frantically.

Thrúd let out a shriek as she fell backwards onto the limb.

"Yeah, I'm with the bird on this one. Ya'll really don't wanna stray from the set path. No one comes back from that."

The goddess rose to her feet. "You understood him?"

"No," Lúnda shook her head. "I was able to piece that one together myself. Context clues."

Thrúd blew a loose strand of hair out of her face before she followed the dwarf along the massive trunk.

"So, what was that back there?" Thrúd asked after a few moments of traveling in silence, Hugin flying right next to them. "How'd you get us here? Where's Grámtrist?"

"Ain't nothin' to be afraid of," Lúnda said confidently. "Yer Traveler buddy may be able to make his way across the realms, but even he can't follow ya here. Hel, not even yer feathery friend can get ya here if he wanted to."

"CAW! CAW!"

"Only way he coulda gotten here is if he jumped through that door I kindly opened up fer us. And I don't see him round, do you?"

Thrúd rechecked her surroundings just to be safe.

"As fer how," Lúnda continued, "that was thanks to some dwarven ingenuity. But the catch is I could only do that one time. And I ain't about to go triflin' through Sindri's personal space again fer another travel stone. So, if this don't work, I'm afraid you'll be outta luck. Make it count."

Thrúd nodded in understanding. She couldn't reasonably expect this dwarf to keep going out of her way for her sake. Using other people for her own means was yet another page from the Odin textbook that she had every intention of burning.

Her mind went back to Grámtrist. "Still, how is that guy able to travel across the realms so easily? Last I saw him was in Svartalfheim."

"Can't really help ya there," Lúnda admitted. "All I can say is that Traveler's have their own methods of gettin' round. Maybe they've got realm travel stones of their own. I'm sure you can thank Odin fer that one, too."

Thrúd rolled her eyes. Of course.

"So, uh," Thrúd started. "How do we know when we get to . . . wherever it is we're going?"

"Trust me," Lúnda started with a smile as she walked. "Ya'll will know it when ya see it."

As if on cue, an archway of complete light manifested itself five paces in front of them, causing Thrúd to blink in surprise. Lúnda stepped to its side and gestured to it. "And there it is. Now, for the time being, I'm afraid that this is where we part ways once again."

Thrúd got closer to the arch, fascinated by its nature. The doorway had no substance to it other than the bright white light it was made out of. After a lifetime of traveling via ravens, this was a very new concept. Out of sheer curiosity, Thrúd peeked around it to the other side and found that the branch of Yggdrasil kept going with still no end in sight.

Not totally understanding how it worked but accepting it nonetheless, Thrúd looked down at the dwarf. "Thanks again, Lúnda. I owe you big time."

"Damn right ya do! Ya'll can start by not mentioning this to Sindri at all."

"Deal."

"CAW!"

Thrúd stepped through the door with Hugin close behind her. With one step, she was no longer on a Yggdrasil branch, but rather in someone's front yard. She was able to put together the fact that she was still within the realm between realms, however, due to the violet and blue hues that was still surrounding her.

Hugin flapped his wings and flew across the yard until he perched himself on the roof of what appeared to be a very charming cottage that was completely built around the natural foliage of the tree itself.

"So that's Sindri's house, huh?" She kept walking forward. She heard a crumbling noise behind her and found a similar archway, this one constructed out of rocks, tumble to the ground in a useless pile, much like the portal that she saw her mother and the others use on their trip to Vanaheim. Thrúd winced, hoping that Sindri hadn't heard.

If the continuing silence afterward was anything to go by, he hadn't.

Thrúd made her way toward the front door at a slow pace so she could completely take in the new space. But if she were honest with herself, she would admit she was intentionally stalling.

To the left of the house was a strangely out of place desk with a small branch of Yggdrasil standing behind it, brandishing a fancy windchime. Thrúd couldn't feel any wind inside the realm between realms, so she was curious as to why it would be here in the first place. Aesthetics?

To the right was a fenced off area with a gate in it. On the other side of the gate, she could see a strikingly large stag that almost seemed to be made of wood. She would have mistaken it for a statue had it not been grazing on the lawn. Peeking more around the corner, she found three other stags, each of them with the same wooden appearance. What set each of them apart from the other was a swirl of colors that peeked out from the cracks in their wooden skin.

"Whoa," Thrúd couldn't help but breathe out. She shook her head free of the distraction and steeled herself on getting over to the door.

Before she knew it, she found herself at the door. She could feel Hugin's glowing eyes on her, waiting for her to make her next move.

She let out a breath. "Here goes nothing." She knocked on the door. Not too surprisingly, no one answered.

Normally, if nobody were to come to the door, she simply would have barged right in to announce her presence. But if what Lúnda had said about the dwarf had any truth to it, then that approach seemed ill-advised. She knocked again. "Hello?" She called out, leaning her ear to the door to see if she could hear any approaching footsteps. "Hello? Sindri? Er, uh, Mister Huldra? Are you there?"

She knocked a third time, but this time she couldn't stop the annoyance from crawling under her skin. Thrúd instinctively reached for Mjolnir but thought better of it. "Listen, I made my way here to find you. So one way or another, I'm gonna find my way in!" She warned. After another sever seconds of silence, Thrúd's mind was made up.

"Alright," she shrugged. She rammed her shoulder into the door with enough force to break someone's bone. Just as she thought, the door was locked. She charged against it again, and again, and again until the door gave way to her strength. The doors swung open and Thrúd stumbled her way indoors.

Just as it appeared on the outside, the entire house appeared to be built around the pre-existing tree. Bits and chunks of Yggdrasil poked itself out of the walls and made a natural ceiling above her. There was a another worktable to her left, just like the ones at Lúnda's stations. Shelves were built into the walls around her with rolled up scrolls piling up inside.

Out of everything though, what surprised her most about this place was the mess.

From what Lúnda had told her, Lady Freya, Kratos, and even Mimir had been doing their part to keep the house as tidy as possible to prepare for when or if Sindri ever returned. Thrúd could see no signs of such housekeeping, and instead found dirty pots and pans strewn about on the floor in the cooking area, scrolls from certain shelves scattered over the living room, and dirty boot prints that did not belong to her. Thrúd slowly turned to get a full view of the mess.

"What the Hel?"

"Get out."

The voice suddenly appeared from behind her.

Turning around with so much speed her hair whipped across her face, she found the exact same dwarf that had penetrated the wall back in Asgard along with Loki, looking even worse for wear than he did back on Ragnarok. His beard was even more disheveled, with more loose strands of hair poking out from his braids. His golden armor was speckled with even more dirt and grime. And to top it all off, his bare arms were decorated with countless cuts and bruises.

In his hands, he held a tuning fork and an iron rod which he wasted no time in striking against each other.

The resulting ringing in Thrúd's ears was deafening. She covered both ears with her hands as tightly as she could but found the effort to be in vain as the ringing continued. Her body squirmed in a very undignified manner as it tried to correct itself from the sudden disorientation. Before she could so much as stand still, the dwarf approached and gave her a hearty shove at her midsection, pushing her out the door and rolling in the front lawn.

Her ears finally stopped ringing as Sindri slammed the doors shut once again.

"CAW! CA-CAW!"

Thrúd stumbled up to her feet. "Shut. The fuck. Up." She pointed up at the bird on the roof with a bird of her own.

A fire ignited in the pit of her gut, Thrúd all but stormed inside the house once again, this time with minimal effort due to the damaged door. She found Sindri's back facing her as he made his way to a staircase built into the trunk of Yggdrasil that led up to a tiny second level.

He stopped short.

"Oh yes," He started with his back still facing her. "Just barge right back inside after I told you to leave."

She ignored his bitter remark and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around to face her. "I am Thrúd Thorsdottir."

"I know that."

"Then you should know what this is." With her free hand, she held Mjolnir up to his face.

She couldn't tell exactly what was going on inside the dwarf's head, but his face went through a whole list of emotions in a very short amount of time; shock, confusion, realization, then his face finally settled on anger.

Eyebrows furrowed down and nostrils flared, he directed his gaze back to the goddess. The fire from the nearby pit cast all sorts of unpleasant shadows across his features. "Get this thing out of my house."

Thrúd shook her head. "Not until you help me."

Sindri shoved the hammer out of his face and continued up the steps. Thrúd followed. "There's this guy-"

"Don't care."

"He has a way to travel across the realms to find me."

"Good for him."

"He has the power to destroy Mjolnir!"

Sindri didn't so much as falter his gait as he climbed the rest of the steps and walked into the tiny room, slamming the door shut. "And I should care, why exactly?" His voice came from the other side.

Hunching low to not hit her head on the ceiling, Thrúd kept herself level with the door. "Um, how about because you made the stupid thing? It's legendary and has history?" She could hear shuffling on the other side of the door, but Sindri didn't respond. "Shouldn't blacksmiths be like, I don't know, proud of the shit they make?"

"Most of the time, yes," his voice came from below her. She looked down to the bottom level and found the dwarf with his arms full of shiny, sharp looking weapons that have barely seen battle, if any at all, walking over to the ajar entrance. He didn't seem to care that the sharp edges were scratching at his skin. "But not when it comes to that one."

Thrúd leapt from the top level and kept pace behind Sindri as they exited the house, still not used to dwarves having the ability to basically teleport. "Well, that's ok. You don't need to be proud of it. You just need to help me."

Sindri let out a dry, bitter laugh. "I don't have to do shit, young one." He turned around to face her, the two of them next to the ledge of the platform that this house rested on. "First you send that disease infested spy out to look for me," he gestured to Hugin who was still perched on the roof and watching them in rapt attention, "then you ignore the message I sent with him. So you decided to take it upon yourself to somehow break into the realm between realms with I'm going to assume Lúnda's help-"

Thrúd winced.

"-trespass on my property and damage my home. And after all of that, you still have the audacity to make demands?"

For a moment, Thrúd was speechless. Before long, she found herself able to say one word. ". . . yes?"

Sindri tossed his armful of weapons over the edge, sending them tumbling for an eternity. He marched past Thrúd toward his house. "Get off my property." He griped.

Thrúd naturally ignored his request, opting to follow him instead. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't plan this out very well. A lot of shit has happened recently, and I haven't had the chance to work on my approach."

"A lot of shit has happened to everybody. That doesn't give you an excuse to make your problem someone else's too."

"But no one else can help me with Mjolnir like you can."

"Oh dreki shit!" He waved her off. "All it is is some iron and stone compacted together on a stick! I'm sure someone could-"

"You made Mjolnir." Thrúd jumped ahead of him and held the hammer out to his face while blocking the entrance to his house, all but forcing him to look at it. "You know what makes this thing tick better than anyone else, living or dead. This thing put you and your brother on the map, didn't it?" Sindri's face grimaced at the mention of his brother. "You have to know something, anything at all to improve it. Make it stronger somehow. Please Sindri," she didn't bother hiding her desperation any longer. "If this thing gets destroyed, I'll have no way of giving my father peace."

Relenting just enough to spare yet another glance at the hammer, Sindri let out a slow breath before he looked up at Thrúd in her eyes. "This was among the first weapons that Brok and I ever crafted," the dwarf started. "We were young, stupid, way too eager to prove ourselves to the Aesir. Too excited for the opportunity to know exactly who we were dealing with. We got the job, we made Mjolnir. And before you knew it, the Huldra Brothers were a household name."

Thrúd squinted her eyebrows in curiosity, unsure as to where this was going.

"Your father took that hammer and slaughtered hundreds, thousands, millions of innocent people. Just because he had the tool that made that possible. What should've been our proudest accomplishment in our lives was nothing more than the beginning of mass genocide! We spent a lifetime trying to rectify, making weapons for those who'd use them for selfless purposes. As you can imagine, it did very little to repair the damage that was already caused.

"So, Thrúd Thorsdottir, you break into my home and demand that I improve upon one of my biggest mistakes of my life?" Thrúd had no response to his question. The only thing she found herself capable of doing was letting her arm go slack and hang at her side in defeat, unable to meet Sindri's cold glare anymore. With a roll of his eyes and a huff of frustration, Sindri ran a filthy hand through his already messy hair.

"Listen," he began once again, "I still don't know how you managed to get here- and you'd better believe I'm going to be beefing up my security after this!" He added with a finger pointed at her, "but . . . you're here, and the damage is quite literally done. And I suppose that you did save me the trouble of finding the hammer. So, here's what I'll do."

Thrúd wasn't sure what to expect, but her hopes began to slowly rise.

"I will give you three chances to give me a good enough reason to not dismantle this hammer right here, right now."

Her hopes took an immediate nosedive.

"What, right now, right now?" She lamely attempted to clarify.

"Ask another braindead question like that and I will take back my offer."

Unprepared for this challenge, Thrúd did her best to wrack her brain for any argument solid enough to sway Sindri's opinion her way. In her mind, they were perfectly logical and made total sense, but he didn't seem to be in the most agreeable mood at the moment. She knew he was intentionally setting her up to fail, so Thrúd decided to fight fire with a little more fire.

"Well, first of all," she gestured to Sindri before motioning toward herself, "you'd have to get it. And I may not be a badass Shield Maiden, but I think I could hold you off."

Sindri's unimpressed expression never once faltered. Before she could even blink, he vanished into thin air with a fwip. Thrúd blinked, opening and closing her eyes as if they were playing tricks on her. Looking left and right, she wasn't ready for Sindri to reappear behind her and swipe the hammer from her grip, marching over to the edge without breaking stride.

"Hey!" She dove forward, tackling the dwarf and wrestling Mjolnir away from him. The two rose to their feet, panting heavily as they did so. With another fwip, Sindri vanished once again with just as much ease as before. This time, he was gone longer, leaving a paranoid Thrúd out in the open with her hand clutching Mjolnir's shaft like a lifeline.

Once again with her back turned, a mallet flew end over end and smacked her hand, causing her to drop Mjolnir to the ground. It laid on the ground for mere moments before Sindri scooped it back up and fwiped his way over to the edge, holding Mjolnir over it.

After Thrúd finished nursing her smarting hand, she froze solid, not daring to make a move outside of holding her hands in front of her in a placating gesture, praying that Sindri wouldn't let it go.

With a snort, Sindri tossed Mjolnir back to Thrúd. It landed at her feet with a dull thud.

"So, I can take it from you." He held up one finger. "That's one. What else you got?"

Thoroughly embarrassed, Thrúd picked up the hammer and dusted the dirt off, trying to find something that Sindri could possibly reason with.

"Well, think of it this way," Thrúd began. "You said that this was one of the first weapons you made with your brother, right? What if me wielding it is a way to keep his memory alive? Wouldn't he want me to use it for the original purpose you guys made it for?"

She had reservations about getting personal since she didn't know Sindri or his brother, but it seemed to be worth a shot. Her reservation was warranted, however, as Sindri's unamused stare turned to a full-on sneer. He marched his way back to Thrúd with a finger pointed up at her. Thrúd held her hands up in a non-threatening manner.

"Don't you DARE presume to know what Brok would have wanted!" He demanded. "You don't know the first thing about him or what he wanted. Not like you'd care anyway. All we were to the Aesir were tools that outlived our usefulness." He took a few shuddering breaths to calm himself down before holding up two fingers. "That's two. You're damn lucky I'm giving you one last chance after that one. But you're on thin ice," he warned. "Consider your next argument very, very carefully."

Without waiting for her to say anything, Sindri made his way back to his house, leaving Thrúd to follow him once she felt safe enough to put her hands down.

"Well, how about this?" She started hopefully as Sindri made his way over to the worktable to the left of the house's entrance, taking out a variety of tools and laying them out. "I'm not Thor." Sindri couldn't hold back his guffaw. "I may be his daughter, and I know the shit he did in the past. But I think that you know that I have no intention of doing anything like what he did."

"I don't have the foggiest clue what your intentions are with that hammer. That's the whole point of this fucking conversation!"

"But come on, Sindri! Do you really think that I'd be all that eager to make the same mistakes my dad did? All that horrible shit? And, you know what? Yeah, my dad did them, but Odin is the one who told him to. Odin is the one who had my dad do all of that. He's the reason for basically everything going to shit in the first place! And even though he's gone, you know as well as I do that his, I don't know, presence or some shit like that is still around! People are still afraid of him, and that's what I'm tryin- what I'm going to fix. But I need this hammer to do it."

Thrúd knelt on one knee, holding out Mjolnir in both hands. "Sindri, if you do me the honor of allowing me to wield Mjolnir, I swear on my life that I will wipe Odin's entire influence from each and every realm."

She felt this plea was a tad on the theatrical side, and she never was one for the arts, but for this being her final gambit to save the hammer, Thrúd decided that a demonstration of humility was a small price to pay.

Sindri seemed to consider her words. He remained silent for a few moments, tapping a hammer on his table in thought. During her speech, Hugin flew inside and landed on top of the ajar door, his curious eyes sweeping through the room.

After a few minutes of tense silence, Sindri pursed his lips and nodded, seemingly coming to a conclusion. "Odin's entire influence, huh? That's pretty rich coming from you."

Thrúd flinched at the comment.

"Tell me, Thrúd Thorsdottir," he all but spat her name out, "what is it you've done since you found that family heirloom of yours?"

For the moment, Thrúd ignored his thinly veiled insult. "I . . . freed a stuck coin for a friend of mine."

"Hmm," Sindri hummed, inspecting a pair of tongs as he paced back and forth. "Very generous, not at all what the All-Father or your father himself would have done." He said this with as much sarcasm as he could possibly muster. "And then?"

"Then I . . . traveled to Svartalfheim to offer my services."

"Svartalfheim! A frequent destination for the All-Father." He added with a fake flare of excitement. "Anything else?"

Pissed off at the prospect of being talked down to, Thrúd stomped to a standing position. "What are you getting at?!"

Sindri leaned against the table. "Thrúd, think about it. What's the one thing all of your 'generous acts of kindness' have in common?"

Thrúd blinked, having an idea of where this was leading. "The All-Father?"

"The one and only." Sindri agreed. "You said you freed a stuck coin for a friend of yours. I'm going to assume that that was because you thought that's the opposite of what your granddaddy would've done. Then you, what was it? Went over to Svartalfheim to offer services? Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm also going to assume that that decision was reached because that's also the opposite of what he would have done. Am I that far off?"

Thrúd said nothing.

"If all you ever do is the opposite of what Odin or your dad would have done, then you're thriving on their influence. You've had this hammer for a few days now, and by some miracle, not a single act of yours while wielding it came from one of your own original thoughts or ideas." He leaned even farther over the table. "Odin may be dead, but you are still wrapped around his little finger. You're just as much a slave to him as the rest of the realms are. How could you possibly hope to help the realms get rid of his influence when you can't even shake it yourself?"

Thrúd wanted to yell back at him, disagree with him, say anything at all to show him how wrong he was. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find anything strong enough. Regardless of how long she thought, she knew she'd never be able to prove him wrong.

Because he was absolutely right.

Ever since Thrúd found the hammer in Niflheim, she did her best to not to make the same mistakes that her family had made with it, going as far as toppling a statue of the All-Father in an act of solidarity. She hadn't realized that in her quest to completely eradicate Odin's presence, she hadn't taken herself into the equation at all.

Well, she thought, that part isn't completely true.

Growing up, she had known that either one of her brothers would inherit Mjolnir. They were older, stronger, but most importantly, they were men. The thought of her never even so much as getting to hold it had been a catalyst for a plethora of fantasies for the young goddess. All superficial, but she couldn't help it when the weapon of your father was that legendary.

She couldn't stop the daydreams of herself wielding the hammer to fight off monsters and saving the day, to be celebrated by the masses and be paraded on the shoulders of adoring fans across the realms. The fantasies all came to her as naturally as breathing when she was growing up.

Now that it was hers, not only was she not living up to those expectations of herself, but she was also hurting the realms in the process.

If all I think about is how to get rid of Odin . . . how long would it be until I became like him?

The mere thought made her stomach churn. Her head was light from the amount of information she had just processed in a short amount of time. She looked over at Sindri, standing behind the table and inspecting each tool he had set on it.

Thrúd was aware she couldn't prove him wrong, but like Hel she was just going to give Mjolnir over to him.

"You asshole!"

Sindri jumped.

Lúnda and everybody else may treat him with kid gloves, but I sure as Hel don't have to.

"You think you're so special because one of Odin's actions affected you personally? You think that gives you the right to just be a complete dickhead to everybody? Fuck you and fuck you for thinking so!"

In a fit of rage, Thrúd slammed the hammer into the floor, digging a small chunk out of it before storming over to the table and slamming both hands on it.

"Do you really think that you're the only person that Odin took someone you cared about from? I've got news for you, that's pretty much all he fucking did! The bastard killed my dad at Ragnarok just for saying 'no'! And what? Now that your brother's gone, you're just going to throw your whole inventory into the void because they remind you of him? You pussy!" She did her best to make sure a small amount of spit was flung at him.

"And what were you even doing after Ragnarok? Because whatever it was, Lady Freya and the others took time out of their very, very busy schedules to keep it nice for when you got back. And the first thing you do when you get here is throw them out and trash the place? How fucking childish can you get?!"

Sindri avoided eye contact.

"I'm giving you an opportunity to use your skills for something genuinely worthwhile and you're sticking your nose up at it? Fuck, if you were gonna be this useless, Odin should've just killed you and left Brok instead. I bet he actually had some talent." Sindri looked as if he was going to refute that claim, but Thrúd didn't give him the chance. "If you're not going to help me, fine. But you're not going to touch Mjolnir. I'll find some other way to fix it."

With that, Thrúd spun around, picked up Mjolnir and marched out the door, making sure to slam it as hard as she could. Hugin was startled from her viewing spot, his wings flapping in a frenzy before flying out the nearest window, leaving a stunned Sindri in their wake.

Outside the house, Thrúd had no course set. She just had to stop looking at the dwarf. Even the thought of him was making her blood boil.

She muttered out curse after curse with each step she took. Her mind was such a whirlwind, she couldn't think of any place that she'd want Hugin to take her to. Thrúd paced back and forth in Sindri's front yard, completely unaware of a new presence.

"Excuse me."

Thrúd had no clue how that managed to snap her out of her rage. She turned to the kiosk at the side of the house.

"Since weapons are raining from above, I can only assume Master Sindri is back. I told him many years ago that he simply can't toss them over Yggdrasil. It seems he's forgotten that lesson. At any rate, here are the weapons he nearly impaled the lindwyrms with. Maybe someone of your stature could inform him of his actions?"

And now squirrels are talking to her. The one-eyed squirrel gestured to the desk in front of him where every weapon that Sindri tossed over was now sitting. How this knee-high rodent was able to carry them up, let alone find them, Thrúd had zero clue.

Ah fuck it, weirder things have happened recently.

"Believe me, he hasn't forgotten that lesson. He just doesn't give a shit because he's a selfish asshole. You try talking to him yourself . . ." she trailed off.

The squirrel gave a small nod. "Ratatoskr. Caretaker of the world tree," he introduced himself. "And I suppose that was to be expected. Ragnarok certainly took its toll on him."

"Well, someone needs to remind him that he's not the only one who paid a toll. Not an excuse to be a prick who wont even-"

Her sentence was cut short by the front door opening. Sindri stood in the entryway, his face still a mask of self-pity and anger, but not as intense. He gave her a stiff nod, motioning to the doorway before going back inside.

The pair blinked.

"Well, that certainly seems hopeful."

Thrúd left Ratatoskr, heading for the door.

"And do try to remind him that Yggdrasil is not his own personal waste basket!"

Thrúd entered in time to see Sindri clearing the worktable of his tools. He put various weapons in chests and tools on hangers for several minutes before he even so much as spared her a passing glance.

"Before I even consider doing anything to that hammer," he finally started, "you're going to have to learn to use it properly."

"What do you mean?"

"You've gotta be able to summon it. You know, like your dad could?"

Thrúd's eyes widened, and, to her horror, she couldn't hold back the embarrassed blush from creeping up on her face. "How- how did you-"

"I doubt you would have made a show out of embarrassing yourself earlier trying to take the hammer back if you could summon it."

Fuck.

"Summoning it is one of the easiest things to do with Mjolnir. If you can't then you're not using it correctly yet."

"Hey! I've been trying my best! All I've ever used was a sword and mace before this."

Sindri made a face of mock distress. "Oh boo hoo. You found a new toy and found out you had to practice with it to improve? Gods," he muttered under his breath before approaching Thrúd, holding his hand out to her.

Knowing what it was he wanted, Thrúd couldn't help but hold Mjolnir protectively closer, like a mother with her child in the presence of a stranger.

Sindri rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to take it apart. I think I've proven that I can take it from you whenever I wanted to, anyway."

Agreeing with Sindri's logic, Thrúd reluctantly handed him the hammer. He set it on his table before going around the corner and walked over to a bookcase built into the tree. Without so much as looking at the shelf and instead looking right at Thrúd, the dwarf reached out and adjusted several items. This action activated a mechanism that caused the case to spin into the tree, revealing a small crawlspace inside with a hole in the floor.

Eyes wide and any trace of anger gone, Thrúd slowly approached the newly opened space. Sindri stepped aside to allow her to see it.

Thrúd put her hands on both sides and leaned down to try to see the bottom of the hole, but it was too dark. Looking up, she saw a few links of dangling chains, seemingly hanging there for no reason.

She looked back down and gulped. "So, what, are we going down there for something?"

"No." Sindri said behind her. "You are."

Turning quickly, she only had time to watch as Sindri smacked the tuning fork and rod together once again. The same ringing in her ears returned full force, distracting her from being able to prevent herself from being shoved into the hole.

Screaming as she fell, Thrúd let out an oof as she landed on multiple hard objects, the breath being pounded out of her on impact. After several wheezes to regain air, Thrúd pushed herself up to a sitting position to get a better look around.

She was in a dimly lit cavern. The only two things notable about it was the small sliver of light above her from where she fell, and what it was that she was currently sitting on.

A mountain of gold jewelry. Rings. Thrúd struggled to rise to her feet as the rings shifted underneath her like a shiny sand dune. She couldn't see up above, but Sindri placed Mjolnir at the edge of the hole.

"Summon the hammer, and you'll be able to get out." Sindri called down to her as if it were the simplest task in all the realms.

Thrúd had a myriad of rude names to call Sindri at the moment, but she reserved them all for herself for having fallen for the same trick twice.

"And how the Hel am I supposed to do that? How long will this take?!" She called up.

"As long as it needs to, I guess." She could tell he let out an indifferent shrug.

"What if I get hungry? You can't just starve me down here!"

After a few moments, she could hear his feet shuffling. A few moments more, a turkey leg landed on the pile next to her.

"There you go. Anything else?"

"After a while, it's gonna get messy down here!" Thrúd warned. "Sooner or later I'll have to take a sh-"

A bucket landed at her feet.

Thrúd couldn't help but let out a dry, humorless laugh with her hands on her hips. "Yup, that's just great." She muttered to herself.

"I'll see you soon," Sindri called back down. "Or not. I don't really care anymore."

With those words of encouragement, she could hear his footsteps fading away from her until they ceased altogether, leaving Thrúd in the cavern completely alone as the reality of the situation slowly sank in. She shook her head clear of any doubt before it could hinder her concentration.

She let out a long, slow breath.

"Alright, dad," she prayed quietly. "Help me out here."

The daughter of Thor raised her hand and snapped her fingers.