Ice again lanced out, and a ring of lightning crackled and whirred, blasting it apart.

“Hold!” Thor called. “This is a mis-”

“Yes, it was,” the dragon said, all hints of lethargy gone from its voice, though its tone was still low, almost reserved, as it sought to slay him. “A mistake to enter my lair, a mistake to lust for my blood, and a mistake to think to denigrate my hoard!” A web of light spat from its mouth, growing as it flew, grasping.

Thor shot into the air to avoid it. “I would never!” he protested. He had had good cause to seek its blood, certainly nothing so base as greed.

“Yet you claim to gild the rooftops of your hovels with more gold than is found in my hoard!” the dragon said. Its eyes, already shining, began to spill forth light, painfully bright. The beams threw back the darkness even further, revealing smooth walls and vaulted ceilings.

“Perhaps I exaggerated,” Thor said, voice strained, as he ducked and dove out of the way of the beams of light. One tagged his leg, and he felt himself slowed. “To exceed your treasure, it would take the gold on our roads as well.”

Wings the colour of the winter sky flared in outrage, and ice was again spat towards him. This time it was no lance, but a flurry of jagged balls. Slowed by whatever spell the dragon had cast from its eyes, Thor was hard pressed to weave between them, knocking one to the side with his axe, and that was before they hit the cavern ceiling and burst into uncountable shards, razor sharp.

Thor let go of his axe, momentum carrying him through the air, and brought his hands together. Thunder roared, and the falling shards were swept away. Stormbreaker returned to his hand even as he rued his words. This was why he always let Loki do the talking.

“You flit about my home like a buzzard, little godling,” the dragon said, its voice filling the cavern. “If this is all you can conjure, you will never take my head.” It spat another ball of ice, almost as an afterthought.

“I am not your enemy!” Thor boomed as he dove below it. “I mean you no harm!”

“Well, in that case,” the dragon said, the beams of light from its eyes fading.

“Really?” Thor asked, brightening, slowing to hover in place.

“No.” Radiance gleamed anew from the band of light above its head, spiking the eyes, and wings beat heavily, launching the dragon up into the air.

Thor cursed his unthinking words as he let gravity have him, barely avoiding the lunge as he landed on one knee. It was deceptively swift, and as he looked up powerful legs were already pushing itself off the wall to take another run at him, claws extended. He moved, and a crater bloomed where he had fallen, missing him by a heartbeat as he shot deeper into the cavern.

“I misspoke!” Thor shouted, juking and weaving. There came the sound of tearing fabric as dark claws caught his cape. “I came for your heartblood, yes, but that was before I knew you to be a thinking being!”

“The insult!” the dragon raged, snapping at the heels of the impudent godling. “Because we do not share your form, you think us beasts?!?”

“I’d never met a dragon before!” Thor shouted in protest. He jerked to a stop, rolling, allowing the dragon to shoot past him. He barely avoided the spikes along its spine as he near tumbled over its back.

He did not avoid the tail, the fifth limb flicking up to nail him right in the chest. The wind was driven from him, and then he collided with the ceiling, shattering one of the arches carved into it. He fell to the floor, dazed, but he still had his axe in hand, and he willed it to carry him away before the inevitable follow up could find him.

A wicked claw found him first, enveloping his chest and pinning him to the ground, cracking the stone beneath him. A toothy maw widened in a hungry grin as the dragon looked down on him, tongue flicking out as if to taste the morsel it was about to eat. “A pity you will never meet another.”

Its claw might be large enough to pin a man, but that just meant it was large enough for his arm to slip between its talons. Thor caught the descending maw, his hand catching it by the snout. “I am trying to use my words,” he gritted out. “Do not force me to raise my axe against you.”

“How easy it is to be polite when you are at my mercy,” the dragon said, snarling as it pushed down, neck muscles taut and straining. Its ice breath would have been enormously inconvenient in such a position of weakness, but it seemed to have taken his strength as a challenge.

Thor’s arm trembled in a way it hadn’t since he had challenged Hulk to an arm wrestling challenge, but he managed to free his other arm, hand seizing one sharp canine at the cost of dropping his axe. “At least tell me you prey upon innocent villages, or terrorise virgin princesses,” he managed, straining to breathe evenly.

“Again insults,” the dragon said, shifting its bulk to better bring its weight to bear. “Next you will ask if I am slave to the corruption from beyond the Gates!”

“Well,” Thor said before he could think better of it, “are you?”

The dragon’s eyes were not monochrome as he had first thought. There was a slit pupil in them, ever so slightly more blue than the glacier white of the orbs. He knew this, because as he spoke, they widened in outrage, before narrowing to absolute slits. Frost puffed from its nostrils, scorching the hand on its snout with the cold, and then it was opening its jaws to set loose a torrent of ice once more.

Cold. Cold, omnipresent and all encompassing. Until now, he had not been able to truly sympathise with Steve’s distaste for it. He could not see, not encased in ice as he was, but he could still sense, and he felt the dragon stepping back from its new Thorcicle. He could sense Wolfric and Grigori peering around the corner of the passage he had sent them down, and the dragon noticing them. He could sense the way it turned to them, drawing in a breath to deal with the last of the intruders. He could sense Wolfric’s certainty in him.

He could sense Stormbreaker.

Under the weight of a mountain, a storm erupted, appearing between one breath and the next. Lightning roiled across the vaulted ceiling, throwing the entire cavern into stark relief, and the scent of ozone filled the air. A single bolt fell to the block of ice that was Thor, and it shattered with the sound of a breaking glacier.

Mortal men were forced to avert their eyes, even the dragon narrowing its own to bare cracks, so bright was the afterimage of the bolt. When it faded, the God of Thunder was revealed, standing in a crater of stone and ice. His eyes glowed, and silver glinted in his beard as he glowered up at the dragon.

“Dragon,” Thor said, voice echoing through the cavern despite the storm overhead, “what is your name?”

The dragon stilled, taking its foe seriously for the first time. “Leifnir,” it said at length. “I am Leifnir.”

“Know this, Leifnir,” Thor said, grave and utterly unafraid. “I mean you no harm.” Lazy sparks fell from the head of his axe.

Cold eyes regarded him, head still and teeth bared, even as its tail flicked with agitation. The band of light it wore as a crown melted and flowed onto its skull, and between its black horns, an eye of light formed. “Swear it,” Leifnir said, reserve returning to its tone, though still it was frigid as the ice it breathed.

“I have no foes, save for those that would harm the innocent,” Thor said, setting the base of his axe on the ground, his hands resting on its head. “So long as we are not opposed in this, I mean you no harm.”

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Leifnir lowered their head, eyeing him. The moment stretched out, a looming silence spreading through the cavern. At length, the dragon spoke.

“I believe you,” it said. “For all that you came here speaking of taking my lifeblood.” It sat on its haunches, upper body rising higher as it looked down on him, imperious.

Thor winced. “Aye, well…clearly, I could have been clearer about how that was my original intent, one that changed. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Leifnir snorted, derisive, letting loose a cloud of mist, but before they could give voice to their thoughts another cut in.

“If we do not take its heart, my sisters will die.”

Wolfric emerged from the passageway, drawing the attention of god and dragon. His eye was fixed on the enormous being, and he bore naked steel in hand, reflecting the light of the lightning above. Grigori lingered in the darkness behind him, closer to the dubious safety of the bend in the hall.

“Humans,” Leifnir said, lip curling back in a sneer. “Superstitious wretches, all of you.”

“You said they would be healed,” Wolfric said, ignoring the dragon to speak to his god. His faith was clear in his eye, but still he questioned. “Is there a way to cure them without the heartblood?”

“They will be healed,” Thor said, resolute, “but I will not turn a thinking being into an unwilling sacrifice.” There had been a time when he would not have blinked, but that time was in the past.

Leifnir was frowning now, scaled face expressive. “You will tell me, Asgardian, why you sought my life. Did your village witch claim a curse from my mountain? Are they pained by the winds of my power?” The eye on its brow still shone softly.

“A sickness has fallen upon the sisters of my companion,” Thor said, turning back to the dragon. “One of such strength that they require an elixir brewed with the heartblood of a dragon to survive it.”

“Are you not a god?” Leifnir asked. “Your power does not stink of the usual corruption that comes with such claims.”

“I am god of storms, not healing,” Thor said. “And I am mighty, but the hallowing of evil is not a gentle process.”

“Does it know of another dragon, then?” Wolfric asked. “A foul dragon, one we can slay without guilt.”

Thor had his own suspicions as to the suitability of heartblood from a corrupted dragon, but he had not time to voice them.

“‘It’?” Leifnir said with a scoff, tossing its head back. “I am the last daughter of glacial Ymirdrak, and my beauty is peerless, even if you lack the eyes to see it.”

“Of course you’re a gi- a lady dragon,” Thor said swiftly. “The shimmer of your scales and the sharpness of your frill make it clear.”

Leifnir settled, frill fluttering for a moment, catching the light that still lingered above. “Just so.” Her claws clacked on stone as she crossed them.

“Thor,” Wolfric said. There was a raggedness to his voice. “My sisters?”

“For sufficient recompense, above what you already owe, I could cleanse whatever rot has brewed in your squalor,” Leifnir said. She spoke as if long suffering, but the gleam of interest in her white eyes could not be hidden.

Thor had seen the ways the idle eddies of her power had reacted to the background corruption of the land. Guided directly, perhaps it could have a positive effect on the sickness that Decay had sent to take hold in Astrid and Elsa. “I will make right my intrusion into your home. What would you have in return for healing those that suffer the touch of Decay?”

“I want your axe.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Your axe,” Leifnir said, gesturing to it carelessly. “Though the haft is plain, I can sense its power, and the head is a clear masterwork. It will have pride of place with the arms of the other would-be warlords to enter my lair.”

“You know not for what you ask,” Thor warned her. “This is the final weapon of King Eitri of Nidavellir, forged from the heart of a dying star and my own lifeblood. Its value is beyond reckoning.”

“Then it seems I have chosen my price well,” Leifnir said. Never had a dragon’s smile been so warranted.

“...ask for something else.”

Leifnir abandoned her regal seating, rearing up and crashing down, the impact echoing through the great hall. “You invite yourself into my home! Belittle my hoard! Creep into my bedchamber as I sleep, and you feel your prized weapon is too much to give up to make right your transgressions?!”

“Yes?” Thor said.

A snort was his answer, setting his hair and beard to flying and threading them with ice. “You would do well to be thankful that I am slower to anger than my hot blooded cousins.” She began to pace, claws carving gouges in the stone floor.

“I do not deny that I have offered you insult,” Thor said, “but you do not possess the only method of healing those in my care, and my axe means much to me, far beyond the power it possesses.”

A rumble came from the dragon’s great chest, and she ceased her pacing, flicking away a chunk of sundered ice. “What could you offer me that would suffice?”

Her words had brought the origin of Stormbreaker’s haft to the forefront of his thoughts, and with it, something unique enough to be considered valuable. “I would offer you a potential companion to raise, one as long lived as you." He fixed her with a gimlet eye. “Though I would expect you to treat them with utmost care,” he finished sternly.

“A companion? Pass,” Leifnir said, uninterested. “Mortal creatures require such care and upkeep, and then you wake up and realise they’ve either perished or bred and multiplied one hundred fold.”

“It would not- hmm, very well,” Thor said. He frowned in thought.

Perhaps a solitary creature like Leifnir was not one to whom the idea of a companion would appeal, even if the thought of a familiar face was one that would lighten his own spirit. Thor glanced back at Wolfric; the man had lowered his sword, though it was still bared as he waited, and Grigori had joined him. The Kislevite was watching the proceedings wide eyed. The storm overhead still roiled in silence, and its light glinted off Wolfric’s dark eye patch.

A thought strolled into his mind, one he could not readily dispel. It would be a sacrifice, but was it not one he had made before? He turned his gaze back to Leifnir. Something about his bearing made her tail lash with interest. “Then I would offer you,” he said slowly, “mine right eye.”

“You claimed you would taste awful, but now you offer a sample up to me?” Leifnir bantered. “Why would you think a slop of flesh, quick to rot, to be a fitting offer?”

“It is not an offer of flesh, but of craft,” Thor said. “Of glass and metal, something unique in this realm.”

Leifnir’s interest was piqued, and she took a step forward, hunkering down and extending her neck to inspect Thor closely. “Your pupils, I see the difference,” she said, and as she spoke a blast of chill air washed across him. “An interesting artifact.”

“It is an artifact that could be yours,” Thor tempted her.

Indecision warred in her white eyes for a moment, but only for a moment. “Very well,” she said, raising her claws. “Be still.”

“No, no, that’s quite alright,” Thor said, stepping back in a hurry. “I can remove it quite easily.”

“Then be about it,” Leifnir said.

She watched with interest as he reached up, using one hand to hold his eye open, and the other to twist and pop the eye free. A sunken pit remained, though she glimpsed it only briefly before it was covered by a scarred eyelid. He reached out, and she accepted it carefully, holding it between the very tips of two razor sharp claws. Somehow, it was undamaged by the experience.

“Does that satisfy you?” Thor asked. “My eye, for the intrusion and the service?”

“It does,” she said, entranced by the device. The eye on her brow faded, but her own eyes began to glow softly in turn as she looked it over. “What offer would you have made had it not?” she asked, not looking away.

“My aid in the destruction of an evil foe,” Thor said. His empty socket itched, and the lid over it felt queer.

Leifnir snorted, still not looking away from her prize. “Well that you offered this first.”

“On the day you find yourself outmatched, would you not be grateful for the assistance of a god?” Thor asked.

“I am a dragon.”

A shadow crossed Thor’s face. “There is always a greater foe.”

Leifnir did not answer, but her gaze did shift to him.

“Are you ready to leave?” Thor asked.

“No.”

“Then we will wait until you are,” Thor said.

“No,” Leifnir said again. “Where is your collection of huts?”

Thor frowned, and Stormbreaker floated closer.

“I have given you my word,” Leifnir said, baring her teeth at him, “but I will not leave my home in such - disarray. I will repair it, and join you at your home within a turn of the sun.” She paused, eyeing him. “You do not intend to walk back, do you?”

“It is the town of Vinteerholm, near straight west from here,” Thor told her. “Walled, in the process of raising a higher one, and by a broadening of a river, nestled between two fingers of the mountains.” He eyed her, suspicious. “The mammoth is not for eating,” he warned her.

Leifnir gave a hmph, a strange thing to see from a dragon. “Then you may leave,” she said. “I will not have you hovering while I see to important matters.”

Thor did not move, another warning on his tongue. He would brook no delay, not when Astrid and Elsa’s lives hung in the balance, but he could feel her sincerity. “Very well. Within a turn of the sun.”

Her attention had already returned to the eye, and she gave no indication that she noticed their leaving, Wolfric and Grigori falling in behind him as he led the way back down the passage.

The moment they were out of her direct view, Grigori let out a shaky breath. “That - I did not expect that,” he said.

“Nor did I,” Thor said, thoughts elsewhere. Half his vision was gone, and when he sought to look with more than flesh, he was able, but only in his remaining eye. There was a block, something stopping him from seeing the currents of power about him with the eye that he now lacked. A reasonable result, but for some reason he had expected it to be otherwise…

“Lord Thor,” Wolfric said, breaking him from his thoughts. He was holding out his own dark eye patch in offer.

Thor smiled at his follower. “Your heart is in the right place,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder, “but I would rather you not deprive yourself. I will manage until we return.”

“I should have spoken,” Wolfric said. “To lose your eye, even for my sisters-”

“It is worth it a dozen times over,” Thor said.

“You could have offered my sword-”

Again, he was cut off. “Your sword is not mine to give,” Thor told him. “And what would she have said when she found herself unable to lift it?” he added, inviting him to share the joke.

Wolfric managed a thin smile. “Even so,” he said.

“Even so nothing,” Thor said as they reached the end of the hall and the other passageway entries. “Let us be off. If we are swift, we can reach our camp of last night.”

“Your ice-tiger friend might be there,” Grigori laughed, before attempting it again in Norscan. “Small angry beast, say hello?”

Wolfric managed a laugh, some spirit returning to him now that they were leaving, their goal apparently achieved. They may not have the heartblood, but they had the aid of a dragon, and that was no small thing.

Carefully, Thor stood astride his axe and took up his companions, and soon they were flying up the passage to the peak of the mountain once more, home beckoning.