RAGNAROK IS COMING
— Jannat —
Tyrion had two jobs today.
Two missions. Laid first on paper, in ink and parchment and set upon an oak desk. In the margins lay the name of his queen and her decree of a war that had been centuries in the coming. And when the runner had delivered these sentences to Tyrion there was nothing that could be done to change the tides. Parchment was stone and engraved in stone was the end of Alfheim.
This war- it would destroy the races.
It would bathe cousins in blood and convert mothers against their children. It would put those children on the front lines with bows and spears in their small fists. It was going to call demons from the deep, those scaled and finned folk that should be left alone in their tropical hunting grounds.
The Elves above were going to dismantle each other in fits of fury.
The Sirens would circle like vultures and become a box that should never have been opened.
And the Merfolk, well they were the starting pawn. The domino's instigator. A flick and poke, a nudge to the start of it all.
This was his mission. Tyrion, high commander of the Merfolk's defence battalion, was here on the behalf of Queen Moray, to order a decree of war against their bloodsworn enemies of the deep. Here, was deep in the Southern waters of Fryew, Sea of the Sirens.
A no man's land.
When the Manta Rays and Orcas migrate, they do not swim through the calm waters of Fryew. The fish have internal instincts to warn them from its inhabitants, sailors and pirates and traders do not dare cross the tides. It is a barren sea, full of only the darkest and deadliest of creatures. The things that have sharper teeth than sharks and less conscious than the Lion's Mane. Making it through the waters alive so far, has been a testament to Tyrion's strength. Not just anyone can be the high commander of a race's defence battalion.
And so, in his hand, wrapped in thick seaweed that was as easy to hold onto as rain, was the eye of the red Hela: a Humboldt. The fight with the creature had set Tyrion behind two days and not for recovery. His mistake had been seeking refuge in the thing's territory to begin with, but more so to think he could have passed though without tripping the alarms.
But now to be a gift- if Queen Huil of the Sirens found appreciation in such a thing.
The Sirens were a tricky, vicious race. Not many have been born in the waters of Fryew and those who exist on the surface, those who have the option of being either man or beast, are not truly Sirens as they would claim. Mixed between the races with mere ties to the true creatures.
The Huils are among the last of the true Sirens in Alfheim but even their line has been tainted. Queen Huil is a purebred Siren. Her ancestors were more creature and Huil said to be an animal. Rumours of her children depict tales of Sirens feasting on the flesh of Elven sailors that got too close to the gunwale; but they have not been seen for centuries.
The Sirens keep to themselves. They demand no presence among the courts of the nine realms, demand no say in trade or wars or peace treaties. They live off the corals they fight for and seek no glory or respect in the eyes of the Gods and Goddesses of Asgard. There are no rules that have been set on them, no race that has managed to colonise their space of the world. They are enemies to the Merfolk because of existence alone. Because their life means the entire Southern space of Alfheim's seas are untouchable and because to try and claim those seas is like fighting smoke.
To declare war on smoke was a mission only Tyrion accepted.
Swim past the posts of Fryew, to waters that are still too hot metres down. Swim and avoid the things that reach for him in the darkness. Swim alone, for company attracts company. Swim, until the Sirens find you.
And it seems- after three weeks of searching waters that are never ending- that the Sirens found him.
It is impossible to tell where he was, how deep into the Southern continent he made it because there are no maps. No one has managed to collect landmarks for Fryew and successfully make it out alive- not that there would be many landmarks to note. Tyrion has been in constant darkness and the only light came from a sunstone brought from above, but without sunlight for the last couple of weeks its shine has faded.
In the dying embers of its rays, Tyrion caught the glimpse of a tail's fin, flickering and then disappearing behind the wall of underwater trenches. She would not have been seen if she wanted to be hidden and so Tyrion did the only logical thing and followed that fin.
But that had been over an hour ago and now he was very much lost, metres down from the surface with nothing but fading rays. It was a maze that no algorithm could defeat. Worse- more than the pressure at his temples or the suffocating heat and worse than the aching in his every bone from constant swimming, was the glimmer of scales below.
That Siren had never left. She had been swimming beneath him and watching and it was not a relief anymore. Not a relief to find the creature he had come thousands of miles for. And he certainly felt nothing more than fear when the silence of the deep was interrupted by a familiar clicking.
The sound of the Queen's serpents.
They are legends like the mortal's boogeyman but far more deadly than any nightmare. Their sounds have been captured once by a Vanirian scholar who sat on the southern shores with the sole notion of capturing the existence of the serpents. His records claimed he sat day and night for two years, moving up through every natural shore and hovering above the seas for as long as he dared before the sound was caught in the shell of a sea snail. Trapped and studied until that scholar disappeared. Pulled into the sea, was the witness accounts. Lured like a lunatic leering for the moon, dropping that shell out of pure luck before he was pulled into the depths and never seen again.
It was an artefact of Queen Moray and lay polished and admired in her royal halls and Tyrion had once been young and curious. He had once ran the halls with a princess who found any reason to make his life a living hel, had once listened to that shell as a dare. The sound of evil clicking captured in a spell does not compare to the grumble of it from the throat of the beast.
It sent every scale and bone and inch of him shivering. Echoed through the waters louder than any whale and so, impossible to track.
Tyrion could only dive for the nearest alcove in the trench walls and pray that they register the colours wrapped around his bicep. A single white, woollen strip of fabric branded in his queen's sigil. Peace it called, but meant nothing if the Sirens were not listening.
And then she came from below, wrapped in darkness but there because he could smell the strangeness of her in every drop of the sea she encompassed. She stopped in front of him and Tyrion held out a shaking hand, the one with that sunstone. But she was too quick and disappeared through the trenches- at least tried to, because Tyrion jolted from his hiding spot. Hot on her tail, he could only follow the scent of her.
Trailing her had released him from the maze, led to the bareness of the sea again and brought to the seabed. His heavy tailfins dragged over the sand and it was the only tell of the landscape. That, and the strange glowing in the distance. It made him only a little more nervous when she slowed and stopped before it.
Beating like a heart, a luminescent blue anemone swayed with the sea. An anemone the size of a ship. And as it gave off light, it cast the rest of the seabed in a faint blue hue. And so Tyrion could see just how royally screwed he was. Because slumbering at the edge of the anemone was a sea serpent who could have used the coral like a pillow. Who's light snoring was that clicking he'd heard from miles away. And then the path drawn through the sand and the Siren making it.
With each fade of that light she moved feet further, a silent demand to follow her into the anemone but Tyrion found himself unable to move.
The merfolk were a people of beauty and grace. In appearance they were the richest of colours, shades and gradients that inspired Elven attire. Females wore pearls and shells and males adorned the spikes of puffers around their neck and starfish on their armour.
Here, Tyrion saw no added beauty and yet she was the most magnificent creature he had ever laid eyes on.
Her skin was flawless, not a scar or blemish and the palest of shades. So smooth he couldn't make out a single vein or crease. Where there were gills below the merfolk's ears the Siren had curved slices on her ribcage, as close to her heart as it could get. And falling from her hips was not the trademark tail and fin but a flowing garment of fins. It reminded him- no, it was the image of the Koi fish. Layered, silken membrane that sweeped the sand and he could have gotten lost in its movement. And before he could stop himself, before he could question it, Tyrion followed the path she left for him. In his eagerness he did not notice the curve of her fingernails or the spiked spine. He did not see her face and so he could not see the slitted eyes, sharpened teeth and merciless smile.
He followed her into the den of the Sirens and looked away only to take in its strangeness. The Elves lived in the forests but still in structures, in castles and homes built for grandeur and show. The Merfolk lived in shallow corals with hangers above made from jungle rope and bark but even they had quarters and magnificent displays of architecture. The Sirens seemed to live in this anemone. There was no decor, no guards stationed between junctions or even a marking to make out how one gets somewhere. There were only the soft spikes of the anemone that fizzed and glowed gently. An electricity that did not sting and Tyrion couldn't determine if that was simply because the Siren touched every spike before he did or that it was doing something else than keeping out wanderers.
Before he could muster the courage to ask- anything, she pulled to a stop and then swam into the clearing in the middle of the anemone too quick to comprehend. He could only make out her movements in the staggered light. Slipping over the looming darkness below that held unknown creatures in the belly of the coral, she swam for the only feature in the Siren's dark home.
A clam. And like everything they own, it is oversized. Big enough to rest on flattened spikes of the anemone and need a few to seem stable. The Siren swam to it and over, letting her fins brush like a hand over its hard surface before disappearing into the thicket again.
There was such a silence, such a terrifying silence. One that felt full of watching eyes and yet utterly barren. And because she had led him this far, Tyrion took a full minute before he swam the few metres to the clam and prepared himself for finding a way to open it when something groaned. He stilled, inches from reaching the luminescent algae spotted shell. And then the lip of the clam cracked open and from it rushed out waters that were almost searing hot. From that crack came a clawed, webbed hand. Ghastly white and those claws- they could slice him in half without much effort.
Tyrion did the only thing he could think of and bowed his head. "I am Commander Tyrion of Moray's defence, and I am here to ask for a moment of your attention."
That hand retreated and for a minute Tyrion did not breathe. For a minute there was nothing but the gentle flashing of the anemone, the sway of seaweed webbed through its spikes and a gentle caress of hot, tropical waters. And then the Sirens began to gather. A few, at first. Sifting through the seaweed far below his tail and slipping across in the burst of light so fast Tyrion saw only the billow of hair and flutter of tail. To his left he caught the movement of hands gripping spike and seaweed, hiding behind them and peering out until they were gathered everywhere. Around the edge of the clam, in the thicket and below.
There had to be hundreds that began filtering in and in seconds he was surrounded, each one more terrifying than the other, all shades of luminescents or pales. Blues and whites and greys, and slipping closer than any was a Siren the colour of the deep. As dark and hollow, with white rings adorning the end of her scales.
Nothing like the colourful merpeople, nothing so beautiful and yet all females.
It was a common thing for Sirens to bear few male children and often they would take male partners from the Elves above, but the union rarely produced children that could withstand life under the sea and so they are forced to cherish their male children. Rare and almost impossible to produce, the males are then kept hidden and safe and the females are the warriors. The females are their queens and commanders and hunters and the males worshipped like babes and treated as such. It is a demeaning existence and one Tyrion found of great insult that the males simply accepted such a fate.
Still, it was a weakness if there ever was one.
Tyrion finally rose from his bow and waited with that package in his hand a second more before the clam creaked open. And as slow as the tide retreats, the maw of the thing finally revealed the precious pearls inside.
The first thing he noticed was the sheer beauty of Queen Huil and he found his heart beating like he was a teen again but more because she looked picturesque to the drawn images of her tucked into old history tomes. She looked as splendidly terrifying as the tales told, like she might tear into his flesh with one lunge and cradle his head as she did. It was said that Queen Huil was born from the pond Sirens and so the royal family all have longer fins. Flowy rather than the sharp cut of the sharks that swim around her home or the heavy weight of the Merfolk's fins. They flutter like a betta fish, flowing in pairs. Wings from her shoulder to elbow, a courtesan's skirt at her hips and plaited tails as long as her hair. Hair that is octopus ink black, like the slit in her opulent blue eyes. There are tales that her great grandmother was of the ice Sirens and those eyes are the descendants of that grandmother: icy-blue with a cat's sliver.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and held out the eye of that squid. Unwrapped it only to reveal a perfectly round, perfectly bland, boulder. Tyrion jerked back, confused and lost and then the anemone let out a new wave of light. She revealed an inscription on the boulder's surface. And then his heart stopped cold.
How rutting naive they had been- Moray, she was a fool. A damn fool for declaring this mission. He would follow her to the ends of the tides but this was a poor call, a mistake that is unforgivable.
"The Sirens- they have been the silent killer on our shores for decades. Slowly draining all our resources and it is time we said enough, time we stopped accepting that they are unmovable. I want you to go and demand an audience, demand to be seen and explain to Queen Huil what is coming and she will see sense or we will destroy everything she loves."
A pretty speech Moray, but it seemed his own queen's frustrations as a new ruler was going to get them all killed. Because the queen of the Sirens had the number- the power to obliterate the Merfolk with only a handful of her people. She has only been playing games these years, offering up pieces of her existence to ward away outsiders because there is a danger in being this dangerous. There is a fault with having a kind that has already locked onto the merman in their midst, with having exchanged his gift to them with a warning.
Because on that boulder was a perfect picture of Tyrion embracing his queen. Of the two of them locked into a goodbye that would be the end of her reign as ruler of the Merfolk. No matter his station, a queen would never marry a half breed. The Sirens understood this, captured it and are using it. As if they could understand the rules and games of the thrones above.
Tyrion let the boulder fall to the darkness below and didn't care to note the hands reaching out from that darkness.
"Do you mean to blackmail me with this trick?" He whispered with barely held temper.
There was silence and then darkness as the anemone's light faded into black. An orb of light floated behind the queen and it was only then he noticed the three other heads laying on the clam's soft flesh. Tyrion instantly knew who they were: her children, the Hild sisters.
When the Great Whale of the North gave birth to her first calf the waters shimmered for a moment. They celebrated her new life and all that it would offer the seas. When the Hild mother gave birth to her first, fourteen crows fell from the skies. Ten of them burned on descent and the four remaining cast the waters into such a toxin from the poison in their souls that only the wicked Kohuru managed to wash the waters clean. It was a celebration as well, one could say, the beginning of new life that was destined for deathly acts- or at least that was the tale told.
Then are the rumours of the one who ran off to join Radox, who slipped from the grasp of the slave pit in lower Alfheim and right into the arms of Yggdrasil. But that was so long ago it is hard to remember if there had been three or ten Hild sisters. If they were sea monsters that stole the teeth of children or a sailor's tall tale of discovery. There was no doubting their existence now. Not when Jyno Hild's piercing eyes were glaring at him like she planned to skin his flesh and gobble him up. And when she pulled a bottom lip under teeth fanged like a piranha the shiver down his back rattled bones.
Jyno Hild was the kind of creature Tyrion supposed seers had visions and nightmares about. The kind of face one might capture between brushstrokes and paint and then hide that masterpiece from any who might fall victim from her stare's reflections on a man's soul. But despite her fierce beauty, Jyno was nothing but a carbon of her mother. Those icy eyes, slitted in a black darker than the shadows from Helheim and the hair even more so. Ravens and the night sky would be a shade too bright against her sea depths, the utter personification of nothing. Then sharp, diamond-cut cheeks that had Tyrion's fingertips itching to trace and feel how easily they would slice his flesh.
He was stuck. Enamoured and enchanted- destined and cursed to watch this creature forever. He could picture an entire life trying to sneak glances and found himself terrified at the images of desperation that did not deter him.
Jyno smirked as if she knew every thought trespassing Tyrion's own mind. But her sharpened teeth were no longer horrifying. Instead the glistening white of them made him anxious and excited, almost addicted to the image of her biting on his skin with a face of absolute pleasure. Her angled eyebrows would curve and dip in the middle. That pristine, snow-white skin would crease in between, two lines as her eyes closed half-way. Muddling under her lashes and daggered fingers would grasp his neck and they would rip each other apart trying to get closer. Tyrion was not embarrassed of his thoughts and worse- he was not confused.
Sirens are poisonous creatures- any being knows that. Any cultured swine has been sung the cautionary tales of the Sisters so that they may never fall prey to the creature's harmonies.
But Jyno was not singing.
And Tyrion was not her prey- not anymore.
It changed the entire tip of his universe, this revelation and he could only really comprehend two words.
"How strange."
Tyrion's blood was bubbling hot. That voice, by the watery Gods she sounded like Valhalla's calling and he ached to hear her chirp, hear her sing or utter his name-
"Yes, how very strange." Queen Hild had a very different kind of burning in his veins. "That you venture so very far from your lover."
His queen- she meant nothing. Not anymore. That mission, the one to cast the realm into chaos- it was a distant memory. A calling Tyrion couldn't remember why he had been so determined to fulfil and against Jyno his mission was an oath broken. Ties and loyalty severed.
Let there be carnage.
Let the Merfolk fall victim to Jyno and may she rule like a damn goddess, Tyrion would happily wave at his people from beside her bloody throne.
There was a silence he should have filled and one Jyno seemed almost desperate for him to do so. Because despite her savage grin, she understood as well. Jyno was shaken right to her roaring core. And he knew, because of that tremor in her lips. Because he was gathering up the pieces that made Jyno Huil Hild like they were the antidote to death. Because he was determined to learn what made her heart swoon or drop, who grieved her, who she loved or hated or despised. Who did she want dead? Whoever and whatever she wanted, Tyrion was ready to offer his heart and hands if she would only let him.
Another beat of silence and her strong jaw slid barely a centimetre to the right, towards her mother. Towards the queen of Sirens and the rest of the Hild sisters in the clam that he would take a spear to the chest for and simply because they were the kin of his. But his was telling hers to play this cool. To pretend and her wish was his written destiny.
"I came to warn you," Queen Huil raised a perfect brow. "That your waters are being surrounded as I speak."
Such a heavy silence ensued. No more beating of light, no more swaying of seaweed or clicking of Sirens preening to grasp his tail fin and drag him deep into the depths; and Tyrion realised that snoring had stopped.
He continued, if only to break the silence before it became deadly. "That I have been tracking my way here and my location is followed by my folk above the waters and the folk of air, by the Elves. I send a signal and they will storm the springs below the caves we know are undoubtedly beneath this clam."
The caves that hold the most precious and rarest kinds of treasure.
Not a single squirm from Queen Huil and Tyrion found it genuinely impressive because her daughters were displaying the cold fear she was not. Tyrion couldn't face Jyno. He could feel that fear though and as heart wrenching as it was, as much as it sent his own emotions spirling and bones rearing to dispel this fear, Tyrion simply bathed in it. In this connection and the feeling of having something else to see on such a base level.
"I know now that we were wrong. That you will kill our every man and woman in the battalion before roaring to the lands to rid the earth clear of everything that marks our time in history and future." Tryion looked to Jyno then and felt her butterflies in his own stomach. "But we will do what we came here for and your children and males will be slaughtered. You will win the battle but we will win the fight."
The stone sinking in the Sirens' heart echoed in his own.
Queen Huil looked like she couldn't care less but that was nothing but a mask.
Tyrion took an inhale before he really thought about the consequence of it because the smell of her-
"That was before this new… development."
That made a mark.
Queen Huil dropped her chin, tilted her head.
Jyno beat him to it though.
"Don't you see it, mother?" She breathed whisper-quiet. "This half-breed is my mate."
…o0o…
The sun seems to be a constant. A contender in an endless battle against darkness and its own hieroglyph but one that has not yet given up. Rising only to fall and again ascend. Sometimes she is angry and red, halting everything below her in inescapable roars and sometimes she is nothing but lazy rays barely peeking over and between her fluffy garms. Then are the days where she is hidden beneath sheets that are rumbling with such a heavy and destructive pain and she cries and wails and nothing could save those who are there to witness her grief.
Today she has been gentle. Breathing deep with chalk grass and beetles beneath, calm and Astrid can still feel her like a hand because grief and pain rises and falls like the sun. At night there is no battle- not even a fight and darkness in the form of pure fear has taken over. Nightmares that she cannot shake have ripped her from sleep more times than they have consumed and in the morn there is no telling if there is to be a storm or peace.
It hurt the most when she hurt those around. When her anger came out in angry screams and snaps at those two boys that could not fill any more of her own heart otherwise it would not be her own. But it was worse when Avrid took her hands in his own- like now. When his green eyes- that were not wholly green if one properly looked- was her peripheral and centre. And he had such a sense of calm in them it was distracting her inner rage, the one that gripped her throat and constricted until she was pulling nothing but acid through her nose.
Breathe was the only word she knew.
Breathe, he whispered in an accented voice that had become a dog's dinner bell to the end of that hurting.
Breathe; as if it was that easy.
As if the wind against her cheeks wasn't the touch of a crude, dangerous man. As if he wasn't engrained in her skin, or the slice of a knife of those once watered down memories of an alchemist's experiments.
It had her. Every memory and ache had her in the palm of its hand. Had her soul wishing for a way out and damn every shaking breath and that ache in her jaw from holding back a dam of tears. The more she tried to push it back the harder it bit in the night but this was getting ridiculous. This was pulling her from her own nightmares where reality was only worse.
"Sunnil won't stop crying, Astrid."
Rhyther.
"Shush now Sunnil." Avrid's warmth was gone and with eyes that were no longer her own, Astrid watched Hiccup- who was now Avrid- gently redirect her oldest brother and the child in his small arms. "Go set him beneath the maw of Toothless."
Indeed Rhyther did. He shuffled a blonde four year old beneath the sharpened jaw of a Night Fury and for whatever reason, boy and dragon coincided like flame and water is curious. And then Avrid was in front of her again and Astrid wanted to tell him she managed two breaths in his absence- but that is a damn pathetic thing to be proud of and even more that she wanted his approval.
And yet when he sat down in front of her crossed legs with his own, he offered a smile that only took over half his face. An amused one- a gentle, light one.
"Can you tell me of it?" He asked but it was not really a question because this has happened before and when she wanted to do anything but reiterate her nightmares, Avrid does not give up.
So she took a breath- forced her lungs to accept it or move on- and nodded.
"Drago."
There is not much that seems to anger Avrid. Not much that shakes his general note of calm snark that is equal parts sarcasm and the other a mask, not much but a select few names.
Liogoo pulls him into a strange sense of quietness.
Loki and he is nothing but a stone wall.
Drago, and Avrid loses his calm and becomes something that Astrid assumes got him the position of an Elder in the most dangerous regime in the nine realms.
Like now. His jaw is coming close to shattering his own teeth and he is flickering what he can of a calming smile which is alarming against the murder in his eyes.
He gave a nod. "The memory- of him."
Astrid shivered at the same time he did.
"I want you to pull it forward, now." and before Astrid could even crease her brow in confusion Avrid pulled a scarred palm into view. "In your dreams you have no control over your subconscious, but you dream as a protocol to run through dangers that you may face in the real world."
He had already lost her but Astrid listened as if she understood.
"And so you dream of the things that you fear the most. Because you have not yet healed from the wounds in which the nightmares fester from, they have an inescapable power over you." Avrid explained and he kept that hand out for a reason Astrid could not understand.
Avrid tapped her chin and pulled her gaze back up to his eyes. "So you take away its power by dredging up the memories and going through them."
Whatever peace she had found in his voice was blown in those few words. "No Avrid I can't, I-"
"Am stronger than what happened to you."
But that was not the point. That does not consider what he is asking.
"Not now, there are better times to deal with this and I can do nothing more than apologise that I will not take away your pain now." Avrid held her quiet with a glaring stare. "But I will not wrap broken bones with parchment."
Broken.
"For now I want you to tell me what you remember of the dream."
What you remember.
Astrid folded her hands in on themselves. "I don't remember any of it."
There was a moment of silence, one where Avrid simply stared at her. And then he gave a small nod.
"Try to get as much sleep as you can, we have one last stop tomorrow before we reach the Academy." he whispered and turned to Toothless.
Astrid closed her eyes. She pulled in a breath that was too deep to not shudder in her chest.
The Academy, where she will go her separate way from Sunnil and Rhyther. Where she will face beasts and creatures that there have only been scriptures and poems written about. AEsir, Dwarves, Elves and things that do not yet exist in Gothi's tomes. Where she will be in the heart of Radox.
Avrid had tried to explain it several times, giving her the history and present state of the regime but it was hard to see the beauty when he described the failings and successes of it. How they held the leaders of the nine realms in the palm of their hands through threat alone. It would be an insult to him to say, but Astrid found no honour or respect among such morals. But that judgement was- perhaps- better left unsaid.
For over two months they had been travelling around Midgard and Avrid had been trying his best to explain the state of the nine realms against her own knowledge of it, but it was like learning a new language.
They had been crossed-legged in a meadow large enough to feel like Valhalla. Sunnil and Rhyther were catching frogs for dinner because Avrid had been teaching them the ways of the forest. All the things Astrid had been too busy to show them. How to build a fire from nothing but stones and twigs, or bind together bark to make rope and track rabbits, deer and all manner of creatures that no one in the Archipelago could even imagine. Great, long necked things that were nothing but stretched out horses with the pattern of a painter on its hind who lived in scorching lands or bears that were entirely white. It all made the world seem awfully big and Avrid- he had explored it all. From tropics to deserts and the different men and women living in them. Ones with complexions fit for their surroundings and languages that Avrid always knew how to speak.
Perhaps this was the reason for his strange accent. Perhaps he had learnt so many things that he forgot who he was.
But they had pulled to a stop somewhere Avrid called Zuania- or the United Colonies. He assured that their presence to the society here would not be welcomed and so they'd strayed from encountering the locals. Instead, Toothless landed in this meadow and then promptly stretched before curling under the rays of the sun.
Avrid taught the boys to fish but Sunnil preferred to chase than wait for them and so Avrid sent them on the important mission of finding food in the form of slippery creatures that worked well as a distraction. Astrid, was catching her breath- as usual.
She felt like an invalid. Like a crippled old woman fit for nothing but coddling lest she trip and break a bone simply from walking. Avrid assured that she was getting better and the circles under her eyes were gone and the hollowness in her face too, but she felt no stronger. She felt no better than a fawn and there was no herb or tea or broth Avrid could find that was making her feel even remotely better. She said yes every time though.
Everytime they stopped at another market or tribe or growth of creature in what felt like the entire world, Avrid found a healer and convinced them to look at her. Some would raise a hand and dismiss her as dead- that had been a shaking resolve- and others scanned her flesh and eyes and smacked their lips before shaking a head. Avrid demanded something anyhow, and the healer offered all mushy foul pastes, salves, tonics, potions and all manner of things she had ingested in every way imaginable; every way. Nothing was helping but Astrid always nodded and said, 'yes, I do feel better'. Avrid never believed her.
He was incredibly good at pretending, but no matter who this Avrid was or what he became, Astrid knew Hiccup and his tells had not changed. He was getting increasingly worried. Anxious, because she was getting no better no matter where they went. Whatever Avrid's friend had done to heal her back on Berk was unreachable- according to Avrid- and so they were stuck looking for what he called 'mortal medicine', until they made it to the Academy.
Which was tomorrow.
By tomorrow they would be heading for another realm, for Yggdrasil. That had been one of those life-altering revelations: Yggdrasil, the Home Tree, is an entire realm upon itself and in it resides Radox and all their thousands of undefeatable warriors. A gathering, he called it. A gathering of the inhabitants of Radox to come together after sailing the realms for years at a time. After not seeing loved ones, they come to memorise the dead and 'convene the courts', for whatever that meant.
…o0o…