Kevin Hearne - Trapped

The root of Yggdrasil disappeared into dark, bubbling waters ringed by an epic stone wall with eleven different arches for egress, from whence eleven rivers flowed. One of them, Gjöll, flowed near the gates of Hel and must be crossed. But now that the dwarfs had crafted flying machines, there would be no bargaining with a bridge keeper. Even the massive wall was no obstacle, but Freyja wished to preserve the fiction that it was. Once the dwarven gunships landed on the banks of Gjöll, half of them split off and went to bombard the walls of Hel, hoping to draw fighters to the walls and distract those inside from our true purpose.

As they flew off with Freyja’s blessing, I took the opportunity to look around at the alien landscape of Niflheim. I sort of wished Freyja had a digital camera on her so Granuaile and I could pose like tourists on top of the stone wall encircling the spring. We’d point east with huge smiles on our faces, and then the caption would read, Nidhogg is over there!

In Niflheim, even under weak starlight filtered through mists, there are blues and hints of soft pinks reflected in the ice. They hint at comfort and reflections of a brighter world; they whisper of the fires raging in their primordial opposite, Muspellheim. In certain light and with a little imagination, great crags of ice could be mistaken for those old red-white-and-blue bomb pops sold from the backs of square white trucks.

Once we circled up into the sky and headed for Hel, above the mists, I saw distant purple crags with black hash marks sparsely distributed about them, lonesome trees howling of their isolation in the chill winds. Still, even with that icy anguish for a backdrop, the swirling mists offered colors and hopes that something inside them might not be so cold. All that ended once we sailed over the wall into Hel.

In Hel, there are no blues or any other suggestions that somewhere there might be a sun or an ice cream man. The color palette is confined to that of a Gustave Doré engraving, grays and blacks and subtle shadings of these rendered in harrowing crosshatches and highlighted with sudden, glaring areas of nothingness, like splotches of vitiligo sent to haunt the dead with memories of what real light did to the eyes. The clear air is redolent of dishwater and mildew, and the mist is formed from the moist, clammy exhalations of snuffed dreams and hopeless sighs, which collect in the lungs like clotted cream.

Freyja drove us into the mists at some predetermined point, but I saw nothing to indicate that this stretch of sickly mist was a waypoint of some kind. It was, to me, an unkind plunge into air that felt like spiderwebs and snot.

Behind us, the black dwarven ships followed, eerily silent, running on compressed rage, I suppose, or some other inventive fuel.

Granuaile started to choke and cough a whole second before I did. The mists crawled up our noses and into our lungs and settled about our brachia like wet snow. We both looked at Freyja, who appeared undisturbed—but also appeared to be holding her breath. I guess she just “forgot” to suggest that we do the same. I turned around, letting my back serve as a breaker through the mist, and was able to take a couple of clear breaths that way, enough to hold for a while. Granuaile followed my example.

I was tempted to “accidentally” jostle Freyja and cause her to expel her breath, but I decided to let her have her petty revenge. I had killed her twin brother, after all; this was a small fraction of the grief I deserved.

Until we landed on the icy rocks of Hel, we didn’t get clear of the mist. It hung over us at a low ceiling of ten feet, depressing the horizon and swirling slowly like dead leaves in a current. Nothing moved nearby. Behind us, the dwarf gunships landed single file, forming a wall in the process. Their guns all swiveled to face behind us.

“It would be no use turning all those guns on Fenris, would it?” Granuaile asked.

“Hel loves her beastly brother,” Freyja practically snarled, yanking a spear out of a slot in her chariot. “She surrounded him with a kinetic ward long ago. Not arrows nor bullets nor Odin’s spear can reach him now. We have to kill him up close.”

Granuaile’s green eyes found mine. She smirked and put up her fist. I bumped it.

“So where is he?” I said.

Freyja pointed with her spear into the mist in front of us. “That way. Not far.”

“Why can’t we see anything?”

“The mist is like that. Though you think you can see the horizon, you can’t. Your functional visibility is less than twenty yards.”

“Great. Can he hear and smell us now?”

“Most likely.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“Yes. Go that way and kill him.”

I waited patiently for more detail.

“Preferably,” she added, “before Hel finds out we’re inside the walls and sends everything she has against the Black Axes. Once they start firing, it’s going to draw a horde. Some of them will get through and over the ships, and then our army of five thousand won’t stand a chance against her hundreds of thousands.”

Freyja’s sentence was punctuated by a shuddering hiss, followed by more all along the wall of gunships.

“What kind of guns are those?” Granuaile asked.

“Circular-saw launchers,” Freyja said, grinning at us for the first time. “Aimed at the neck, but they take off arms and legs too. Don’t you love the dwarfs?”

“They’re charming, yes,” Granuaile said.

“Let us go,” Freyja said. “Time escapes us. I’ll speak to Fenris and front him. You attack from the flanks. Beware: He is very fast and can change his size.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“He is a son of Loki Shape-shifter, giant-born. Like Hel and Jörmungandr, he can grow or shrink as he sees fit.”

“Lovely. So if we run across a wolf puppy, don’t believe it.”

“Precisely.”

I cast camouflage on myself and drew Fragarach, plus the knife hanging out on my right thigh. I carried that in my left hand, and once I used it I would have another waiting on my left thigh. Granuaile held her staff in her left hand and spoke the words for invisibility as she drew a large knife in her right. She disappeared from view.

“I’ll take the left and Granuaile will flank right,” I said.

“Forward, then,” Freyja said.

I padded into the mist on bare rock and checked my connection to the earth. As in Asgard, the magic was still there but strained and weak, like getting only a single bar of wireless signal. If I needed a surge of power, I’d have to draw it from my bear charm. I quietly boosted my strength and speed as I walked, knowing I’d need both against a monster like Fenris.

Behind us, the sounds of the gunships swelled as they brought heavier firepower online. There must be a whole lot of draugar coming our way. Hel was not a master strategist, but she didn’t need to be with the type and number of soldiers she had at her disposal. When your army is truly disposable, there are no letters to write home to loved ones, no veterans’ benefits to pay, no logistics to worry about, then there’s no need to be clever in battle. Just drown your opponent in bodies. Freyja was right: We had no time to be cute. We had to finish quickly if we wanted to get out of there.

I failed to find him after twenty yards. Nor did I find him in the next twenty. But I heard Freyja’s voice call out to my right and behind me shortly afterward and a rumbling reply directly to my right. I turned but saw nothing in the thrice-damned mist. Still I moved toward the husky voice.