The dark was trouble enough. She had thought that by pressing through, eventually it would give way and let her out. In the stories, the trials were at their worst just before the hero worked his way free.
The darkness was not the worst.
The tunnels were dark mouths, and she could only see vague patches of blackness within. She steeled herself, and – as she had every time up till now – she stepped into the center tunnel.
The path had been rough and twisted in ways the previous ones were not. She found this troubling, and thought several times to go back, but she'd already tried in the previous tunnels, and she didn't want to prolong this blackness one moment.
That was before the noises started.
At first they were vague murmurings and whispers that graduated to creaks and groans. She could hear something moving beyond her line of sight. Once she felt a breath of wind past her shoulder and cheek, wind like the movement of some creature.
Now I know what it is to be hunted.
Sif began to be afraid. She was well trained in various weapons and forms of defense – including the use of her knife. But there was precious little she could do in the dark, and no art she knew to give sight to her blind eyes.
Her heart was up somewhere in her throat, beating in her temples, and the darkness pressed against her on all sides. She wanted to run, but dared not. She kept her hand to the wall, and kept on.
She was moving at quite a pace in this way before she turned an abrupt corner, tripped, and landed painfully hard on her knee. For a moment, she wasn't sure she'd be able to stand, and panic rose like bile in her throat. She lay still for the space of a minute, then pushed herself up and leaned against the wall. Her breath rasped loudly in and out of her throat. In the dark, she felt the wound, and tested it.
She was ashamed of herself. It was barely a bruise. The impact and the dark had made a bigger thing of it than it was.
Hardly was her panic quelled, when she was given good reason to revive it again.
Sif heard a footstep.
Down the tunnel, behind her, she could hear something approaching. And this time it was no phantom. She had been able to convince herself that the others had all been figments of her mind – but this one was of a different kind, more solid.
Sif drew her knife.
Whatever it was, it was coming fast.
Then it was above her, solid weight hitting her shoulder. Her knife was up. Something gripped her wrist, twisting the blade out of her grasp.
"Sif, it's me."
A little green light flickered up in his palm, casting his face and the tunnel in an eerie glow.
Sif collapsed against the wall again, almost sobbing. But the light was gone too soon.
"Are you hurt?"
His voice was a blessed relief after the silence and her own breathing and the noises all around her, "No. Do that again."
"I can't," he said. She could hear him moving in the dark. She couldn't tell what he was doing and she didn't care. He was there and that was enough. She thought – in that moment – that she loved him. But – she immediately countered herself – that had nothing to do with him. In that moment, she'd have loved him if he'd been a frost giant. It would pass with the dark.
She thought briefly of the old stories – how often the girls wed their rescuers. She thought maybe she could see why.
Loki took her hand and – clinging to it in a way she knew she'd be ashamed of when they were out of the dark – she allowed him to lead her back. He'd marked the doorway as they'd come in. He had to know how to get out. He talked to her, light and flippant, and she gratefully allowed herself to become distracted by his mockery and teasing. It had annoyed her in the past. But now, in the dark, it struck her as an admirable quality. To thumb one's nose at the dark and whatever horrors it housed…it was bravery. Not like that of the others, the way many of the boys she trained with would attack a ravening beast twice their size. But now that she thought about it, that seemed rather more like stupidity, though she was sure she'd come back to her senses and change her mind once they were out in the light once again.
Then there was something. She noticed that the sounds around them had stopped. Far from comforting her, the knowledge slipped something cold into the pit of her stomach. The birds vanish when a predator lurks in the trees. A patch of the dark to her upper left seemed much too dark all of a sudden, and she could have sworn she saw it move.
"Loki,"
He must have seen it too, because next thing she knew the entire tunnel was flooded with a deep green light. Loki had cast out his hand, throwing fire at the long-dead torches that lined the walls which were dry and caught the fire greedily. But Sif barely noticed that.
What she did see, was the front and forelegs of a giant black spider – horrible and hairy – at least twice the size of a grown man – leering over them from a hole in the ceiling of the tunnel.
It flinched back from the sudden light – too much for its eyes – making a grating kind of shriek that set every hair on Sif's body on end.
"Sif, run!"
She didn't need to be told twice. And she was dizzyingly glad that Loki's chosen color for fire was green. She didn't understand why, but right now she didn't care. The color was dark enough that it could light her way without dazzling her eyes.
Screaming, the creature pulled itself back from the hole, disappearing backward into the dark wherever it had come from. She tried not to think about the other tunnels she could have taken when she entered this blackness.
The way was rough and twisting, but Sif hadn't fought her brothers for first place every day they raced through the woods to be taken down by rough terrain.
"Through here," Loki gestured to a gaping hole of a doorway to the right and, taking the hand he offered her, she dove into the dark.
"What was that?" she panted.
"Shh," Loki stopped. A flame lit in his hand and Sif scanned the surroundings in the glow. Rubble surrounded them, like this was the ruins of a once-great palace. All was stone and dust and earth. The ceiling was lost in shadow, as was one dark corner which made her uneasy.
"This way," he pointed, "Come on."
The light winked out, but she'd seen the way the rubble had been spread, and how he'd managed to lead her through it without her having the slightest suspicion. She could trust his lead.
She heard something crash a ways behind them and an awful – angry – shriek.
They re-doubled their pace.
Suddenly Loki stopped and she came to a skidding halt beside him.
"What is it?" she gasped.
He was equally breathless, "A door."
She saw the growing green of the letters he traced, and then it parted like a curtain and she could see a lighter tunnel beyond.
She leapt through and Loki came behind her, closing the gateway with another glowing sign.
"Have we lost it?"
He shook his head, panting, "Bought time,"
And they practically flew down the corridor.
The tunnel twisted and forked a dizzying number of times, but Loki never slowed and Sif followed him, grateful finally to be able to see. Let that monstrosity show its ugly face now.
There was another gate, and the tunnel beyond it was bright as a dim room.
They had to be close.
"Through here,"
They ducked under a low doorway.
No sooner was she through, than the wall beside Sif exploded, sending huge rocks and tumbles of dirt flying past her. She hit the ground. Next thing she saw was the underbelly of the huge creature hunting them and the surging, rippling legs. She struggled for her knife, but couldn't reach it, twisted against the ground as she was.
There was a silver glimmer above her, and a soft, wet sound. The monster screamed and reared back on its hind legs, reeling toward its attacker. Scrambling free of the debris, she glanced up in time to just catch the motion of Loki's hand as he flung another knife.
Her foot was caught.
There was no way for him to fend it off for long – how many knives could he have?
Her foot was caught.
She scrabbled at it when suddenly there was another pair of hands helping her own. Loki was crouched beside her, he hauled her to her feet.
The spider hit the far wall and the simulacra he'd placed vanished.
"Damn," it whirled with alarming speed for something of its size and thundered toward them. He threw out his hand behind her shoulder, "Vythja!"
Brightness tore a hole through the air behind the pile of rubble. Loki hauled her to the top, then pushed her and she fell, breath knocked cleanly out of her, onto stone tiling. Loki landed, hard, on his back a little ways away from her. The gateway closed with snap, cutting off a last angry scream from their pursuer.
Gulls screeched in the distance, and a light breeze ruffled her hair. Her breathing was hard and uneven. The ground was firm. All around them was peaceful and silent. She could hear Loki's labored breath beside her. They were in the old ruins, where all of this had begun.
She flopped down with her back against the time-worn rocks, and after a breathless, panting moment, she began to laugh.
They were alive.
She struggled up to where she could sit, facing the doorway. Loki had sat up too, and both were laughing in the helpless, giddy way that is so catching when one has been afraid.
They'd made it out alive.
Once she'd caught her breath, she hit him, "You told me you were unarmed."
He chuckled, cherishing the spot, "No I didn't. You did."
She rolled her eyes, "You could have told me I was wrong,"
"What fun would that have been?" He flopped back down.
"Oh, that was your idea of fun?" She leaned over him.
He waved her away, then pushed himself back up into a sitting position. Brushing himself off, he looked at her slant-wise, smirking, "Good thing I know so many tricks,"
Pulling her hair back from her face, she turned on him, "That's what it was all about?"
Loki opened his mouth, seeming very much like he wished he hadn't spoken, but she cut him off.
"I almost got killed for your hurt pride? You goose!" she laughed, "You proud, sensitive, goose!"
Loki said nothing and let her laugh. Glancing at his flushed face, she thought he could see the joke.
She decided that she'd let him off and a few moments later lay back down against the rocks, "How'd you get us out, anyway?"
"The runes can be spoken."
His voice was dull, all of a sudden. She couldn't tell if it was fatigue, the way he had a hand up to his face, or something else entirely, so she sat up, "Then why didn't you do it before?"
He had his knees up and was leaning against them, playing with the grass pushing up between the rocks, "It's harder. And we had to be in the right place."
"Are you alright?"
He gave her a strange look, "I'm fine."
"Good," she grinned at him, "For a minute I thought I'd hurt your feelings again, and Norns only know what you'd do to me this time!"
He gave a breath of a laugh, "I thought we made that clear –"
"I know, I know. It was my own stupid fault," she plucked a stem of tall grass growing beside her and traced a pattern with it on the ground, "Thank you," she said at last, solemn now that the first wave of relief had passed, "I don't know how long I would have lasted down there."
He didn't answer, and after a moment, she looked up. He was watching something on the ground that was hidden from her eyes by his foot. He sensed that she was watching and his eyes flicked to her. He nodded once, then turned back to his foot – or whatever was beyond it – not seeming to know how to respond. Finally, he gave up trying, shook himself and stood up. He offered her his hand, "They'll be wondering where we've been."