RAGNAROK IS COMING
— Chapter Ten—
Do Me A Favour, Boy
That look of death on your face is entirely your fault, so stop moaning in my ear." Heather banged a cupboard, intentionally, as loud as she could, so Astrid moaned louder.
Her cheek lay flat against the cool marble floor, bathing blissfully in its refreshing bite. It was a monumental event to walk from her bed to the dining room, and then it had taken all Astrid's effort to open her eyes wide enough to see who came through the door. Heather had scrunched her nose up in distaste but began working at cupboards and drawers. It was then Astrid had fallen gracelessly to the ground and not moved in ten glorious minutes.
The door to her room opened again, but Astrid paid little heed to the footsteps that came in. Let it be Drago and let him slay her right here for her misery.
"There is something lifeless and…" a sniff, "rotten, on this floor, Heather. Would you mind getting rid of it?"
Astrid whimpered but managed to struggle to her feet in front of the intruder. Yrsa looked down her nose at Astrid, despite being very clearly blind. Grunting, she fell in a heap onto one of the kitchen seats.
"You look as merry as a snowman in the summer." Bjorn clapped her on the back; it took all Astrid's willpower not to sob right there. Gods, she hurt everywhere. There had been too much rebellious dancing and hiding under tables last night. Her face plunked on the table.
"I am going to die." Her voice came muffled through the table. Reverberations rang through her head as a mug thunked down beside her.
"The best way to beat a hangover is to keep the party going," Bjorn said, smiling a wicked smile.
Frode slapped the burly man's wrist and swiped away the cup before she could grab it. Astrid scowled at him under her lashes.
"Believe me. I'm doing you a favour."
Astrid failed to see it that way.
"What are you doing in here anyway?" She said, pulling a steaming cup of something Heather had poured under her nose. It smelled sweet, and a gentle steam that wafted up warmed her aching joints.
The three of them confused Astrid. They were close like a family was, but they couldn't have been siblings with the difference in looks and age similarities. Still, when Bjorn almost tipped every mug around him, Frode was there to catch them and Yrsa to slap her hand lightly across the back of Bjorn's massive head.
They were here, happily and yet trapped just as much as she was if the guards Astrid spotted earlier beyond their doors were any indication.
Heather came around the table then, round plates in her hand stacked with all sorts of condiments. She had barely set them on the table before Bjorn began heaping ladles worth of eggs and meat on his plate. Yrsa frowned, a scowl marring her beautiful face.
"Bjorn insisted you were dead after fainting in front, possibly the entirety, of England and the Archipelago's most powerful leaders. I begged to differ, and now he owes me a new set of breeches." Frode remarked after plating himself a healthy heap of fruit, no meat.
Bjorn smiled through a mouthful of eggs.
"It was a rather spectacular scene. Wonderfully executed, especially when you did that little twirl and then the fall? Oh, I thought Drago was about to burst a blood vessel."
Astrid's cheeks flamed hotter than a Nadder's breath. "Was it that bad?"
No one spoke apart from Bjorn's nearly silent chuckle; Frode gave him a warning stare.
She was going to die, right here, right now.
Her head felt like a million miniature hammers were bouncing back and forward in her skull, and there was no telling what Drago might do to her. She was a guest- granted a stolen one, but Drago did not need to take her from those dungeons. There was no need for food and fancy clothes. And Astrid knew- she just knew- she had pucked over that stage before consciousness stole away the last of her dignity.
Astrid groaned and focused solely on not gagging at the smell of food. Then she thought back to what Bjorn had said.
"England, what is that?"
Frode set down his mug and glanced at Yrsa. She only dipped her chin and continued eating something round and juicy.
"You mean where. Beyond the Archipelago, there are other lands." Frode began, "So many that we have yet to encounter but the most powerful and largest of them- the richest- is England. They do not rule through chiefs and warriors but rather skinny men who wear crowns of gold and silver."
Bjorn snorted. "Puny men with pea brains that know nothing of the word, fun."
"I find them to be classy and well mannered. They certainly make for better company than a bunch of savage beast-men that leave their muddy handprints on my new silk robes." Yrsa said, her blank eyes narrowing at Bjorn.
"Yes, well, you told me to fold after using them, so you can't complain that I did just that."
"And tore them in the process?" Yrsa countered with a fierce curl of her lip. "Your fat ass stretched the material, so they are completely useless."
"It's not fat." Bjorn looked down at his bloated plate. "Its muscle."
Astrid watched the two of them bicker back and forth for a bit until her thoughts began to drift to her brothers. Ryther and Sunnil. She had no idea if they made it through the raid or if Drago had to them as well. But she was going to find out. She would survive whatever Drago threw at her, do whatever he wanted to get her answers.
Taking a sip of the sweet thing Heather gave her, Astrid watched Frode meticulously separating the different round, blue fruit sizes. She remembered their conversation through the fog in her head. He seemed different from Yrsa's scowling, self-important sneer and Bjorn's living-life-out-loud personality. He was quiet, calculating, and it reminded her of someone. Someone intelligent and calm.
"Hello? Midgard to blondie?"
Astrid snapped out of her thoughts to see Bjorn waving a hand in her face. She blinked and averted her eyes from Frode, who had been staring right back at her.
"What?"
"I said, you'll have to apologize for some way to Drago, any plans?"
Astrid shrugged and averted their gaze. She knew what he was implying. Yrsa tipped her chin to Astrid in, what could be, sympathy; or abhor.
"Don't be shy about it. You are here for a purpose, and that purpose is Drago's whore." Astrid's face went scarlet, and she had to grip the edge of the wooden table to stop herself from bouncing over and slapping that preen off Yrsa's face.
Frode winced.
"Oh, it is nothing to be ashamed of; rather, it is your saving grace because you can fall a thousand times." Yrsa flicked her wrist. "You can degrade the name Drago has heinously built for himself and flaunt around as if no one is watching a hundred times, as long as you get on your knees a million."
"Yrsa, that's enough."
"It's the truth." Her nose flared at Astrid, not in anger but a rare kind of despair.
"This is the truth you omitted from your ale-muddled brain last night—a truth you will need to use to survive. You are here with the benefit of Drago's breathless whispers to save you from the end of starvation's blade. But you only have a limited amount of time before he tires of you to do whatever you want."
Frode slammed the palm of his hand on the table, and Astrid flinched. "Yrsa."
"And I may not be able to see the light of day or stars in the night, but I see things that others cannot."
The entire room had stilled as Yrsa's voice stole the very sunlight and cast spells of shadows in their veins.
"I can see something in you, girl, some flame or ember of light that flickers through the shrine of guilt and regret in your heart. I see that you are different, and I wonder. I have been wondering since I first met you if you are what has been coming." Her colourless eyes danced as if they could see beyond the walls of this world and into the next.
"If you are the change within this world, that ripple shredding through the soil beneath our feet like a beast on wings and a man on fire. I wonder if you are what has been coming or if you are Drago's whore."
Astrid didn't know what to think, what to do. Yrsa had ripped her to the core, but she knew everything the blind seer had said was true. That was what Yrsa had to be, a seer that saw through curses and drew runes in the sand to contemplate the tides of time. Berk had one, Gothi, but she was primarily crazy rather than an actual creature of the earth and Gods.
Before she had to say anything, Paeton came through the door but stopped whatever he was about to speak with one look between the grave faces of the five of them. Astrid looked at her hands instead of Yrsa's cold eyes and Frode's pitiful subtle eyeballing.
Bjorn, however, stood, nearly knocking the entire table over with a grin stretched from each ear, although Paeton paid him no heed.
"Astrid, you are to see the apothecary now."
She gladly hurried to the bedroom at the other end of the room and dressed without letting a single thought drift from the act of changing. At least she tried to.
They were all dresses.
Every single last piece of clothing in the wardrobes were dresses of every pattern and fabric, and none of them was any less revealing than the one she wore last night.
Astrid scavenged through until she could find the least revealing outfit possible. It was a simple white thing that clung to her torso, hips and legs, but the neckline plunged to the tip of her navel; it was miles better than that ridiculous thing from last night, though.
Sighing, Astrid stepped into the only pair of flat shoes available and walked back out of her room.
They had all left, and it was only Heather that stood in the kitchen, her hands lost to a sea of bubbles and dishes. Astrid moved out of her sight before the girl could say anything and met Peaton waiting at the front door.
Peaton was staring at something in his hands, some slip of paper with the strangest expression Astrid had ever seen. Despair and yet utter joy. She cleared her throat, and in an instant, Peaton crumpled the slip and tucked it away.
"Are you ready?"
Astrid shrugged and crossed her arms.
...oOo…
"Liogoo."
Liogoo woke up instantly, a silver blade balanced between her fingers.
Avrid lowered the dagger with his hand and gestured to the door, a finger placed on his lips, telling her to stay silent and not wake Tannis. Liogoo glanced at the Siren and saw him lying across the bed opposite to her. He had been trying to stay awake with one hand fisted and perched under his chin, the other holding the small knife Avrid gave him. But the moonlight and gentle breeze from a cracked window must have lulled him to sleep.
Avrid had already left, and Liogoo shuffled after him into the candlelit corridors. Her head was still groggy from sleep, but she managed to catch up as he walked through the inn and outside.
The low bustle of crates and arguing vendors surprised Liogoo. Still, the market sat up with stalls trying to catch late shoppers and night owls, but it was much different at night. Long-handled torches flared through the silent night air, and some vendors had begun singing harsh songs of the sea. Many of the stalls had been cast in shadows, exposed only by the faint flicker of a flame.
"This way," Avrid said, walking the other direction and into the forests beyond.
Liogoo followed dutifully, still not sure she was fully awake.
"Where are we going?"
Avrid picked lint off his shoulder. "Whomever you stole the Fraebole from, want it back, and I would like to know how much and where they got it."
"So you found a lead."
"I found one man, and I need you to interrogate him for me."
Liogoo didn't question why he couldn't do it himself. She feared if she drew attention to herself, Avrid might remember she was here and leave her out of it.
They walked through the rather unimpressive forest long enough for Liogoo to know the interrogation wouldn't gain her any moral points. Sure enough, in the distance, she could hear the quiet whimpering of a man.
Avrid stopped and kicked something in the dirt and mud. It moved and made a strangled cry at the sight of him. No essence meant no border spells that cancelled sound from those within, and so Avrid had to make do with what they had.
He had tied a ragged piece of fabric around the thing's mouth, limbs gagged in thorny vines that drew blood as soon as the human moved. Liogoo sniffed and frowned in distaste; it had pissed itself.
Liogoo looked to Avrid, but he only nodded between her and the man and then sat down on the fallen stump of a tree, crossing his arms. Sighing, she heaved the human onto his knees.
"Where did you get it?" she said, poking the human. He only swayed a little and mumbled something through the fabric. Liogoo rolled her eyes, humans were pathetic things, and it consistently failed her how Avrid came from this realm and was one of the most feared among the Radox. She untied it and asked the same question.
"Dagur." He spat, "Dagur the Deranged is my leader, but I know nothing, nothing, nothing, I swear." He sobbed pitifully, and Liogoo glanced to Avrid. Perhaps the name meant something to him.
Avrid watched the man with distaste. "Dagur of the Berserkers?"
The man nodded furiously.
"Last time I checked, Dagur was barely a man. There is no way he can be a chief."
"I swear that is all I know, I swear."
Liogoo slid her hand down the side of his face and smiled as he flinched at her touch. "I believe you. I do."
The man looked from Avrid to Liogoo, his eyes were full of fear, but more than that was his anger. This human was trying to play them, pretend to be more afraid than he let on so they may underestimate him. Liogoo would not make that mistake.
She bent down to his level, and the human followed every move of her legs, her chest. Filthy things, humans were consumed with their wants and thought of nothing other than of them. It was mind-numbingly callow.
Liogoo looked up her lashes at him. "And this Dagur," she ran a hand down his arm, "what need does he have of Freabole?"
The man's eyes glazed over, and Liogoo had to stop herself from poking them out.
"I… I don't know. I'm just the supplier."
"From where do you supply it? Where is the source?" Liogoo smiled at him, hiding the sharp canines.
The man bristled. He wanted to tell her, but this was part of Liogoo's charm: singing soft words and bringing them from the reef and feeding on their flesh.
"I only deliver them to Dagur. Another ship transports them to my crew and me. We take it to Berserker Island, and from there is another chain."
Liogoo looked to Avrid. He had a blank expression. To anyone else, they may have thought he wasn't even paying attention. Forseti was laid carefully on his knees, and he had begun wiping the spotless blade with some random rag and the slick sap from the trees on either side.
But Avrid did nothing without careful calculation. He wasn't ignoring her. He was letting the man have a sense of privacy with Liogoo, a feeling that he could say whatever to her and it would stay a secret between just the two of them. It was brilliant, but she had no idea how Avrid wanted this to play out, and his silence was not adding to her confidence.
Liogoo rolled her eyes and focused on the human. "What about the rumours? Surely a man of your station would have heard the gossip about the realm? About a dragon army, perhaps?"
The man focused entirely on something on the other side of her. She smiled.
"Nothing?"
He did not speak and pressed his lips together so hard; they formed a single white line.
"Shame, I thought we could have done this the easy way. Where you tell me your little secrets, and I tell you one of mine."
Liogoo ran small circles with her index finger over his chest, right over his heart. She looked at the man with eyes of honey, her lips forming a gentle, sweet smile. The human was so focused; he didn't even notice the sharp points of her nails until Liogoo's hand slipped like a knife through melted butter right into his chest.
And when the pain hit him, he cried out in agony, eyes scrunching and his entire body jerking in Liogoo's firm hold. Still, she kept that darling smile stretching the pale blue of her cheeks.
"I'll ask again."
"You demon! Witch!"
"This dragon army, to whom might I find the culprit of its creation?"
The man withered against Liogoo's crimson fingers, and the more he moved, the closer liogoo got to his furious heart. Sweat had begun to collect in his brow, but the man wielded nothing. Nothing, until Avrid stepped silently closer to Liogoo, his chest brushing against her side. Nothing, until Avrid's hand, slid so gently over Liogoo's elbow and pushed the talons of a Siren further and further, until she could feel the wet slap of the muscle. Not until blood ribboned from the wound and tapped the floor in a dance of agony did Liogoo stop. But he kept pushing, and the tip of Liogoo's nail scratched something thick and heavy.
The human looked all but ready to pass out, but Avrid knew how much pain a body could take. He knew the worst ways to torture a male and ensure they did not escape him by falling out of consciousness.
He stood so casually as if he might be commenting on the colour of grass beneath them. A familiar feeling tickled the base of Liogoo's spine.
Fear and exhilaration. This creature was the Avrid she'd heard stories about: the cruel human that outstood all odds and rivalled those that dare questions him. This was the commander of Harbotta Silver and the beast below. The court leader who Odin demanded was separated because they were too dangerous, too coordinated, and conniving to be allowed in one gathering.
Liogoo looked to Avrid and found only cold menace in his emerald eyes, dulled only by Midard's lack of Essence magic.
Avrid let go, and Liogoo pulled her hand from the human's chest. He fell in a slump on the earth, not dead yet.
"I'll ask one more time."
The human's eyes were foggy; he was drifting, dying but still, he answered with unwavering words as if adrenaline was all that kept him going.
"His name is Drago, Drago bludvist. He has been leading the attacks-"
"Attacks?" The man nodded slowly, fighting the urge to fall into unconsciousness. Liogoo used her booted foot to kick him, responsive lightly.
"The- The raids. Killings with the army." And then his already laboured breathing began to slow, one, two. Dead.
Liogoo rolled her eyes and looked to Avrid. He only jerked his head in the man's direction as if to say, well? What are you waiting for?
She nodded and bit the sensitive skin of her finger. A single drop of crimson blood welled to the surface, and she hovered it over the gaping dead man's mouth. She watched it fall, watched as life bloomed back in the man's eyes and his chest began trying to stitch itself together, but a Siren's blood would not save a wound like this. Siren's blood could poison those of magic and heal those born without knowing not how to raise their Essence from beneath the surface.
The human looked around wildly. Still enough adrenaline seemed to course through his veins for the pain of a hole in his chest to avoid warrant notice but knowing you have died. Knowing where one goes…
Liogoo did not let the human begin asking the questions.
"I give you minutes more on this earth. Minutes where, if you tell me what I need to know fast enough, I might find it in my affections to bring you to a healer before you die, again."
He was still in utter shock, but her words seemed to register on his pale face, and he nodded slowly.
"Good. Tell me what you mean of these 'raids'?"
"T- the dragons come from the night, and t-they raid villages. Plunder the people."
Liogoo furrowed a brow. "As intake the humans of the villages? Where do they take them?"
"I do- I don't know. I only know that whoever it is always wins. No village has survived the attack apart from one."
"Which one?"
"Berk. The island of Berk." The name meant nothing to Liogoo, so she again looked to Avrid.
Her blood went cold as she saw Avrid's face go from pale to grey. Forseti trembled - trembled in his hand. Liogoo had seen Avrid's sword skills; his hands never trembled, not even a slight shake in all the terrible situations they had been in. Now it looked like he could not stop them from shaking. She knew there was no magic in this realm, and yet she could have sworn something dark slithered around Avrid's wrists; a blink and it was gone.
"Avrid?" He only stepped up to the human who had begun to shiver. He was dying again, blood loss pulling him from life.
Avrid's voice was steel against boulders. "How did Berk survive when all else perished?" The man seemed to sense that if he spoke the wrong words, Avrid might very well do more than just let him die.
"The chief has been Hel bent since he lost his son and wife. He lets no traders through the borders without knowing exactly who they are and where they come from, w- where else they travel. His warriors are second to none. Berk is the most fortified island in the Archipelago."
The man was slipping again.
"Is the chief dead?" He said it with such a casual tongue, yet she could hear something like fear or anger in his voice. It was hard to tell.
"No, but Berk is ready to fall. Scavengers begin to close in, and Drago will attack again. I- I'm sure of it."
"The dying man's face crumpled then. "His son, I knew him as he grew up. H- Hiccup is that-
The end of Forseti grinned wickedly through the human's back.
...oOo…
It turned out the Alchemist's room was nothing like the one back on Berk. That one had been warm, a fire constantly wiping away shivers from bones. That one had wooden chairs decorated in sheepskin and the Alchemist himself always smiling, telling wicked tales of his life as a trader and stitching up the warriors with witty jokes.
This was nothing like that. This room was as cold enough to freeze Helheim.
Paeton had led her to a section of the castle built further down from the main foyer. Not as far down as the dungeons- but far enough she shivered at damp stone walls and barely lit corridors. It had taken a while to get here but when they did, Paeton had knocked on a rotting door. There was a strained voice from the other side and he pushed the door open.
If this were the Alchemist, then Astrid would rather be in a room with an enraged Nightfury.
His hair was the colour of Berk's snow-capped mountains and contrasted with the darkness of his skin. He was old, older than even Gothi by the look of the lines so deeply set in his skin. He seemed a draft away from flaking into ash. As he glared at them with dark eyes seemed wholly black in the flickering of torches, he frowned deeper than possible. Astrid's brain was warning her to run but, as always, her body failed her. She wrangled whatever dignity she had and refused to shiver when the Alchemist smiled, roving those demonic eyes over every inch of her.
Peaton grunted a welcome at the Alchemist. The old man huffed as he got up, his every joint creaking. A shiver escaped her hold, and it was all Astrid could do to stay still as he brought one shriveled hand up and then down the side of her cheek.
Peaton grunted again, and the Alchemist took a step away, looking to the guard. Astrid closed her eyes, willing herself to be brave and ignore the subtle smell of blood staining the entire room.
"You have an hour, Professor," Peaton said, closing the door with a definite click. Astrid whirled around, and for the first time, she was honestly glad to see Peaton in the room.
The Alchemist's smile wavered slightly, but he managed to stumble to the middle of the room where a table was buried under masses of scrolls and ink-stained cloth. Beneath the table were piles upon piles of small, metal pointy things and huge devices she had never seen before. It was more than difficult to force the lump in her throat and remind herself to breathe.
The Professor waved a veined hand in her direction, pointing to the chair beyond the desk. She looked behind her again to Peaton, but he only stomped his foot in patiently; he reminded her of a pissed bunny. Astrid sighed but followed suit.
An hour went by without the Professor using any of his knives or long metal stick things. Instead, he made Astrid do some of the strangest tasks. For what seemed like a lifetime, he instructed her to hold her body weight by dangling from the ridges of the door. It had been tiring and a pain in the ass but nothing like what she was expecting.
Peaton watched her every move. He was probably waiting for her to strike at the old man and make a run for it, but after the first ten minutes of holding herself up, all Astrid wanted to do was collapse into nothingness.
The Professor did not speak. Not once. He only watched Astrid with those dark eyes, calculating and scribbling in a leather-bound tome. He took her arm then and made her raise it above her head and repeat several random words.
And do that again and again.
Any fear had given way to boredom by now, and as she looked to the guard, even he seemed to be dozing off in the corner, a hand propped up against the wall and his head.
Astrid shook the numbness from her leg and accidentally knocked a tray of metal instruments. Paeton jumped, his hand sliding and banged his head against the wall. Repeating the last of the words, Astrid smiled innocently at Peaton.
He frowned and cleared his throat. "Are we nearly finished here, professor?"
The man grunted and finally let her arms fall. When he spoke, his voice was deep and musty.
"She is too small, too weak. The Freabole that was injected seems to have left no lasting damage in her" He pointed with a charcoal black finger to her temple. "How long were you in the cells, girl?"
Astrid looked to Peaton and frowned. "Long enough."
"Too long. You are bones, a walking skeleton with barely enough meat to hold yourself up. You weigh as much as a bag of flour, and yet here you are, alive." He looked barely impressed but Astrid took it as a compliment.
"Thank you?"
Peaton shifted. "She was a prisoner. That is how prisoners are treated; what is so surprising?" Astrid refused to show how much the truth ate at her. She was no one, nothing and yet she had been given a chance by the gods to be paraded around a whore. To be the lone survivor of her village and watch as the man who destroyed it took over the entire Archipelago.
"She should be dead."
Astrid knew she was skinny. She could feel it, the exhaustion and pain in every point of her limbs. Astrid knew how near death she was; she knew better than any of them.
"What is that supposed to mean, old man?" Peaton seemed to get increasingly frustrated, that foot smoothing a hole in the ground. "What are you saying? Give her a few hot meals and she'll be fine?"
The Professor sighed and pulled out the tome he had been scrawling in since they came.
"Her body weight diminishes with every passing second; her lungs, heart and most of her vital organs are shutting down as we speak. Her blood flow is so low I can practically see it slugging through her veins, I-"
"I'm dying?" Astrid asked.
The Professor shook his head and flicked the inside of her wrist. She watched as he plucked a metal stick from his tray of instruments.
She could do nothing but watch in fascination as he brought it to her skin, and before she could stop him, the metal stick went right through her skin as if she were made of water.
Before she could find it in herself to yank the thing out of her, the Professor did it for her and pressed a cloth to her wrist. He held the stick upright and then tipped some purple liquid from it onto a ceramic bowl.
Peaton frowned. "What is that?"
"That," The Professor said, tipping the last of the contents out. "That is her blood so saturated with Freabole it seems to be the only thing keeping her alive."
"I don't understand."
The Alchemist drew in a long breath. "When I say she should be dead, I mean she is dead. As in, there should be no heartbeat, no flow of blood, no ability to keep the air in her lungs." A shiver ran cold down Astrid's back.
Peaton came closer, inspecting the purple liquid with a grimace.
"And Freabole is keeping her alive?"
The Professor looked to Astrid and scratched the back of his head. "Freabole is a substance that takes over the bloodstream. It has, when introduced to oxygen, turned the girl's blood a purple pigment. When she was injected with the substance, it affected her differently as it does all the Immunes. Our dear Yrsa's sight was affected by it."
Astrid could picture Yrsa's blank eyes, unseeing and yet completely aware of everything. And then what she had said to Astrid.
'I may not be able to see the light of day or stars in the night, but I see things that others cannot.'
"Yrsa wasn't always blind?"
The Professor's face shrewd in frustration, as if he had explained this already. "The Freabole does different things to different species. I tested it on a Terrible terror, and it made the thing bleed from every orifice. A boar and it went mad, a human-"
Peaton's hand tapped the hilt his sword. "You are not permitted to expel this information, Professor. Just tell me what is relative to Astrid. You can tell the rest to Drago himself."
The Professor grunted as his eyes flicked to the sword. "You would be doing me a favour, boy."
Peaton took a step back from the Professor. "Your hour is up. Astrid, come with me."
And she couldn't stop him as Peaton yanked her from the chair and pulled them back out the door. She couldn't say anything past the thought that turned her to jelly.
That she should be dead.