She removed everything she could without stripping.
The crack was narrow, and she'd never been slight; but after months with nothing to do but train, she knew it would be a squeeze. Her bags she dropped to the ground, the shield she'd been carrying for the kid, the extra weapons she'd slid onto her back. She carefully breathed out, making herself small, and turned to the side to slide into the gap.
It was tight, and the roughness of the rocks grated her armour, or what was left of it - the bulkier items outside, back with the group. How was Geva going to get through here? She should turn back, they should focus on just fighting through whatever was coming…no. She pushed forward, ignoring the sudden and unfamiliar feeling of claustrophobia as she did - and the burning of her lungs as she pressed ever forwards. She closed her eyes, focusing on the mental smell of pine sap from her home forests, the feeling of minds against her own and thick fur beneath her fingers rather than the slide of rough stone biting into her skin, rough against her bare arms.
It was slick in places, water running down from the ceiling and leaving white in its wake - cold and impossibly smooth to the touch. Mineral deposits carried down through the water over impossible timeframes. Puddles splashed underfoot, and she cursed as one foot suddenly dropped into a foot-deep crevice; icy cold and stinging. Dotted here and there were enormous great cracks that allowed her a moment to breathe again before continuing, and as she reached her axe into one she felt only the gentle breeze against her very fingertips and kept moving, not wanting to find out the hard way how long that particular diversion was.
The others weren't supposed to join her until she gave the all-clear but she could feel footsteps behind her, could hear the panting of another breath alongside her. A torch came through, dirty hand pressing it into her own - and she grimaced as she heard her weapons scrape alongside the wall as she holstered them to better grip the light. The tunnel widened once more and she let herself relax, breathing deeply and welcoming the comforting taste of the oxygen. Welcoming the reprieve from the incessant burning in her lungs from holding her breath for too long. She turned away from Sam, back towards the rapidly widening tunnel and swore as eyes reflected back at her, glowing in the gloom. The light of her torch bounced off the quartz in the rock, reflecting off the stained brown of the enemy's exposed bone and half-sloughed skin.
She cursed herself. A year in the Asgardian palace, a few weeks of mourning and her skills had declined enough to not notice an enemy in the fucking dark. She'd been surprised by her assassins, but shouldn't have been surprised here, where death lurked in pockets unseen. She blamed her panic, blamed her distracted state as of late. She hadn't paid attention to the various openings in the cavern she'd come into; had put the sense of wrongness down to the tight path she'd just taken. She shoved the torch back into the hands of Sam, quickly slashing at the first undead that had come her way.
It was messy.
She'd been taken entirely off guard, and it was only decades of training that gave her the reflexes that saved her life. She ducked, shuddering at the sensation of the enemy's weapon hitting her horn, rather than her head. She felt it stick for a second before what looked to have been a dwarf in a previous life attempted to wrench it free, taking her entirely off balance and leaving her recklessly slashing to defend herself. She snatched the torch back, and slammed it into a crack in the wall, hoping it didn't drop so they'd have some light. She could see in the dark, but not as well as the Bjornlings, and felt blind without their minds weaving within her own, lending their senses as they always had.
She swayed as she turned back to the enemy, jumping slightly to the side to avoid another attack. She'd taken blows to her horns before, but not like this - not with her metal wrappings removed, as armoured as they were decorative. She felt the pull of it, the shudder that travelled down her body. She kicked out, slamming the undead warrior back against the ground and stomping on its head as she stumbled forward a few steps; hating the heavy weight of the axe as it rested in her horn. It was short, at least - a small mercy if one could be given; and the relief that she felt as an arrow whizzed past her head was short-lived as a voice cried from the crevice they'd travelled through "Enemy engaged!"
She wasn't alone. Sam was behind her, and the others behind him - but she had no idea what they were facing back in that space.
She knew what she had to do. "What's happening behind?" She yelled, balancing herself against the wall and hacking forward with her axe.
"Do I look like I can see through walls?" Sam yelled, "I was a thief, not a psychic!"
"Go back and check, I'll be fine!"
"Fuck that!"
"We're coming, you bloody martyr! It's just fucking tight!"
There was a scuffle, and then a hand against her back, a simple friendly punch before the blonde rushed past her, sword in hand.
Aela darted forward with one axe outstretched, hooking its curved edge around the edge of the shield of an enemy and dragging them forward before sliding the other through the air, watching his head hit the floor before continuing onwards. She was off balance, but had been off balance before - had fought with injuries far graver than this. Footsteps and battle cries behind her showed that others had chosen to follow, coming to her rescue as soon as Sam had shouted that they had faced enemies.
The voices though…the footsteps, they were more than simply the small group she'd left behind in that room. A strong blow felled an undead to her left,and as she watched them pour past Aela realised it was the warriors she'd been training with for weeks, the weapons master that had greeted her with respect the first day she'd finally come to his sessions - and every day since. "Sten?"
"Realised we'd left you behind, Girl" he answered, understanding her unspoken question and leaving it at that, pushing forward to continue the battle.
She kicked out, foot connecting with the chest of an undead and violently pushing them out of her way; and desperately reached up towards her horn. The axe was old, the handle crumbling. A hand axe, by the feel of it. She didn't dare wiggle it, too scared of losing the final thing that was so precious to her heritage. She shifted her stance, and tried to keep her centre of gravity low to accommodate for the change in weight.
She'd trained in such a way when younger, to accommodate for weapons of different weights - to prepare her for fighting with whatever she could scavenge on the battlefield. She quickly fell into a rhythm, slamming her axes sharp edge into enemy after enemy, pulling arrows from fallen corpses to puncture them into the soft, half-decayed faces of others. She'd been around corpses before; had experienced the smell of a freshly rotten body- not found quickly enough to be recognisable but not left long enough to lose its stench. Too often people wandered the Niflheim wilds, too often her party had returned to towns with mere diaries or trinkets; washed in a stream wherever possible. Too often she'd had to burn a corpse in the forest with her Bjornlings, praying to the Ancestors that the poor soul would be able to rest at last.
The room contained the stench of all those previous memories; intensified by the sheer numbers it contained. She lost track quickly of how many she downed; though knew they had to be rising back up to hit them with the numbers they were managing. She swung until her arms ached, and then screamed; tearing her way through their numbers to drag her companions back to their feet as they began to flag, keeping them behind her as much as she could - hating the defensive stance she had to take up in order to just focus on protecting the others as she tried to force them back the way they'd come.
Sweat streamed down her face as the others refused, as they tried to push past her with shaking arms and wavering shots. She couldn't make them out, didn't give her mind the energy to even try as they blended into one voice; shouting behind her that they wouldn't go down from their first fight, that they wouldn't allow her to die whilst they fled back into the corridor. She was tired, and angry. Angry that their superiors had left them, angry that she'd been separated from those she loved, angry that she was going to go down like this, swarmed by the undead.
Angry that despite the distance, she knew Eirik would feel her death, the loss of her loss keenly through their soul bond. That he'd have to deal with that alone, knowing there was nothing he could do to help. She hated that he would have to feel what she'd been feeling for so many weeks. That helplessness, hopelessness. The emptiness where another's presence used to be, permanently erased.
She had to keep fighting, to let that rage fuel her.
She could feel it, the anger, the pure savage rage and grief. Fuel to the flames of her dragon's gift, her ancestor's link. Could feel herself growling, fangs bared against the enemies that surrounded her. She tore with claws and blades alike, slashing and gouging, tongue feeling hot and sulfurous as if smoke rose from her soul.
Light flared at the edges of her vision as those undead fiends continued forward, some quick and some slow, shambling and rushing towards the group. She kept going, fighting til she burned, until she felt she could spit the flames of her dragon kin…but it wasn't enough. She could feel it. The potential.
But it was…muted.
She could almost feel a pull though, a draw down into the dark.
They were going to die, they were all going to die if she couldn't do this, if she couldn't save them. But she wasn't chosen, wasn't some beacon of ancestral power, she was just a woman with more Ancestral power than most. Bigger horns, more rage…
She wasn't some sort of…
And then she saw him. A flash, orange behind that snarling sea of death.
Loki.
She blinked, unable to make much out but there he was, behind the enemies. His hair was shorter, curling more behind his ears, and his clothing was…obscure, but he was staring at her over the heads of the enemy like his heart was breaking for her.
She shook her head. He wasn't there, he was dead.
He was dead and she was hallucinating, and as she opened her eyes he was gone, no glow in the darkness save for those eyes and the torch at her back, the small flames held by her companions.
Loki wasn't there, but her Asgardian gifts were.
She felt for them, just as she had over and over again in the previous weeks. Felt for that well of power, the same well that had allowed Thor to wield Mjolnir, for Loki to call his daggers from nowhere. A cry came from behind her, one of pain, and as she turned she heard their gasps and felt the rush of pure magic under her skin. She dropped the subpar axes and felt her axes, her beautiful, perfect axes return to her. Felt the drip of liquid magic as her armour poured over her skin.
This wasn't the dark black of the uniform Themsal had slid onto her back, or the glittering whimsical gold and peach that Odin had turned her gown into, back in Jotum. No, this was hers . Browns and blacks and greens, runes pouring and shifting as they appeared. Runes of protection, runes of power and strength and longevity. Gold, Loki's gold, crept up her hands and chest, sliding into the grooves the runes left and wrapping her in glittering light. Her cloak wasn't fabric like Odin's, like Thor's or Loki's, but a great furred mantle, the kind her father always preferred.
The opulence of Asgard, with the trappings of home.
She shot forward with the speed of a hawk, axes spinning. She was untouchable, death itself as she moved like wind through the forest, the undead crumbling like dust in the wake of the sheer power of her blows, thrown back against the walls like dolls. She could feel their movements in the air, and each and every throw of her axe landed - the God of the Hunt indeed, as what was she now but a predator, cornering prey?
All she had to do was think it and her axe was back in her hand - not flying back, as Mjolnir had always done, but simply reappearing where it ought to be. A blow caught her stomach and she simply pulled the polearm from her own skin, barely feeling it, and twisted it, hurling it back into the rapidly thinning fray and watching as four went down in its wake.
She roared, and the sound was near deafening in the space, echoing around her. She felt…
Alive
She felt stronger than she ever had, and her companions rushed forward, no longer attempting to fall back, to try their chances at the other side of the crack. She fought with them, for them , for their safety and their lives. For her own. She was awake, after months of being half asleep. Filled to the brim with power, with possibility.
A voice, purring and sensual filled the delicate cracks of her mind, demanding that she chase the feeling, the sensation.
Find me. Unleash me
A light pulsed in the distance. It was bright, and white and blue, and Aela couldn't help but squint against it. Was it the enemy, or something new from her own unexpected burst of magic?
Or newcomers, flaring with light.
She frowned, fight or flight bringing a low growl from her chest, swinging without thought. Whoever they were, she needed to defend herself and those behind her, needed to get all of them out of this alive. She hadn't seen a single one of them drop and wasn't about to fail them now. She shook off the detritus of those she'd been fighting so far and squared up against the newcomers.
And then…everything stopped. Aela blinked, fatigue suddenly threatening to overwhelm her. She turned, glancing at those she'd saved, that she'd protected, and then forwards towards the newcomers. Their clothes were dark, and she realised their faces were smeared with black, exactly as theirs were. These weren't strangers, but warriors.
And none were moving.
Was this…Asgardian magic? Was it hers?
"You are magnificent"
No…she looked up, and he was back, fingers twisted in the air; voice a whisper that echoed in the now silent, wide space between them. He sounded breathless, almost reverent, and looked so tired.
"I don't have long, and I shouldn't be here, but I've been working so, so hard and I'll have to start all over again in just a moment"
How was he…
"You're dead"
His mouth thinned into a mere line, sorrow hitting those eyes once more, eyes that looked haunted.
A ghost. He was a ghost.
She wanted to cry.
Her voice cracked as she spoke to him, watching as he remained unmoving across the battlefield. "I miss you"
"I miss you too" he parroted. "What I'm doing is…awful, and so difficult, and when I reach my limit I go back to happier times and allow myself an indulgence, knowing it's meaningless really, a way to keep my sanity somewhat intact but in this cycle… I thought of that moment with Mobius, when I begged to see you down here and he allowed me a glimpse" Loki stopped to chuckle, a sound devoid of any happiness, "to shut me up, I think, and show me the consequences of my past actions. That was months ago now and something he made me promise to keep quiet. And…I knew I had to come back and see it"
He was making no sense, this ghost. Cycles? Work? What was the afterlife doing to him? Was this real, or a hallucination? Who was Mobius ?
She had a thousand questions, but instead just asked, "See what?"
"I had to see you shine , my love. I needed to see you shine"
His entire body shuddered like it was being pulled apart, and he vanished, and time continued again with such immediacy that Aela felt as if she'd been cleaved in two.
"Quick!" the leader shouted, obscured by lanterns, swinging and rattling against their blows to the undead around them. "Come with us, before more arrive!"
A small body ducked under her arm, and she failed to grab them to push them back to safety behind her. Aela watched as the small warrior reached them and was safely pushed into the centre.
"Decide now, Nifl"
He stepped forward, and Aela blinked before taking a small, tentative step towards him. He wasn't an undead, half rotten and sagging, but a Frost Giant. Small, for one of his kind, but a Frost Giant nonetheless. And for a moment…a fleeting, insubstantial moment she felt young again, small, standing before the Frost Giants that frequented her home and visited her realm often. The leaders who traded with her father and the other lords, who patted her head with frozen fingers and snuck treats back to their camps at night - preferring to erect camps in the wilderness than stay in the uncomfortable warmth of the keeps.
He stepped forward again, gesturing to her urgently; the glow in his eyes reflecting off the jagged edges of her rage. "Your fight is done. Your people are safe. Come"
She felt the magic seep away, felt those axes melt into nothing and her gear with it, the weight of it vanishing in an instant as her own, standard issue gear returned. She sagged down, landing heavily on her knees in the remains of an enemy. Geva - she recognised those unforgiving, strong hands now - grabbed her under her arms and yanked her to her feet, shoving her unbalanced, subpar axes back into her hands with a shocked, angry expression.
"You've got some bloody explaining to do, Horns"
