Brand was filthy. Days in the forest left him covered in mud and leaves. He hadn’t taken time to eat and his mouth was dry as a Hel cursed desert but he wasn't in pain any more.

  The oath had clawed into him with the subtlety of a red hot knife. The suring pain wouldn't let him harm Vellia, but that’s what he’d done, at least that would be true if he stopped now.

  The plan was in motion costing blood and lives, more than Brand expected. He couldn't predict that Vara, the Aesir goddess of flame, would be summoned. She carved a path of destruction through South Bastian, ending when Brand killed her, if only temporarily.

  That one fucking Bryer stupid enough remain a virgin for the prude-ish godess had ruined everything with that summoning. The explosive spell used to finish Vara sent Brand flying across the realm until crashing into a Midgard mountain range days away from where he was needed.

  That led to Thora, the avatar soul currently living in a beast core within his chest and meeting Tanya again after four years. It was more than a small consolation but blood had been spilled, life had been lost, and every second he spent not executing the plan ment more would die. Tanya was a distraction, so the oath punished him, and by the state of South Bastian and the war to come, Brand couldn't fool himself into thinking otherwise.

  He felt the destruction though his perception before seeing it in the clearing. The goudge in the land was deap, its edges turned to glass with a single swing of her flaming sword. The wound in the land went all the way back to the city maybe six miles in the distance and in the other direction passed the horizon.

  “What is this?” Thora said, her insubstantial voice thrumming through smartly done magics.

  “You don’t recognize Vara’s handy work?” Brand said, crunching glass as he ran the edge of the newly formed canyon.

  The avatar recoiled and Brand was surprised he could feel her do so. Maybe because her soul, the patterns making up her very being, was fueled by his mana. They were one in the same after a fashion, a situation he needed to end soon.

  "I didn't know the gods were so powerful before then," Thora said. "But I rather know about the beast kin girl."

  Brand said nothing. The thunderer in his chest was the last person he wanted to talk to about Tanya, not that he would know what to say.

  "You want to finish what you started," Brand asked.

  "What?"

  "You tried to kill her four years ago in Vellia."

  A waterfall of emotion washed over Brand stealing his footing. He fell into roll shattering glass against his skin before bursting into a run once again. Fear and shame crept in, making him want to hide, to deny actions that weren't even his. A wave of regret and self-loathing slammed into him next. Fucking hells, he was acutaly tearing up.

  "Stop that!" Brand shouted in what had almost been a whimper.

  Thora squirmed, retreating into the recesses of her beast core but spoke with feigned defiance. Almost believable, almost.

  "Stop doing what?"

  "I don't know. Just stop feeling so gods damned much because I feel it too!"

  "You what!"

  Brand ceased his run coming to a walk. The sprawling wall surrounding South Bastian now loomed overhead and as broken and dotted with breaches as it was, charging the structure would bring too many eyes.

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  "I feel what you feel probably because my mana makes up the eneagram of your soul. Its basic mana resonance theory. And of course you wouldn't know that," he added, realizing his muzing was wasted.

  “I thought I imagined it,” Thora said. “You actually love that beast kin.”

  It sounded like an accusation and by what he was feeling Brand knew that’s exactly what it was.

  “And what of it?” he barked back.

  “Your children would be kin!” Thora said, again, like he should be ashamed.

  “What makes you think I want children or that I’d care if they were kin or not?”

  Brand’s heart hammered away with the shock pouring off Thora. The little zealot really couldn't believe he didn't care. He imagaged her mouth would be agape if she had one.

  Brand cursed as he made his way through a collapsed opening into South Bastian. “You’d better learn to adjust the way you think thunderer, or you can find your own way.”

****

  Through the man’s own perception, Thora could see Brand was angry. She’d overstepped, but how could she not? The man was mad, not caring if his children were beast kin.

  It was blasphemy like Thora hadn't ever seen. Taking a kin woman on a raid or brothel was one thing but taking one as a wife, and Brand surely loved this girl and not just for the warmth of her trench. He loved her with a passion Thora herself didn't know in her first life or now, but she was still kin and so would any children she birthed.

  As a human, Brand needed a human woman to keep his blood pure. It was one of the first lessons Thora learned as a thunderer, that she was precious, that all human women were holding the very existence of men on their shoulders.

  But Thora hadn't been precious to Magni or his sons and avatars. She’d been the god’s lover for a time, the luckiest woman in the nine realms if anyone asked, but then he told her to lay with one of his sons.

  It had been an order, one given a second time with the god messaging Mjölnir’s hilt when she didn't agree immediately. The threat was clear if not spoken so she obeyed and spread her legs selling herself like a whore. Soon, every thunderer avatar wanted their turn and Magni was happy to oblige making a game of it right up until Thora refused.

  She remembered the sound of Mjölnir breaking her bones more than the pain. The booming of thunder nearly ruptured her ears as it slammed into her chest with a casual toss. She must have soured for miles across Gimli forming a crater as she landed in more pain than she’d ever felt in life.

  Thora hadn't refused again. Some lessons only had to be learned once and now she knew she was Magni’s whore and not a warrier.

  Soon the shame of it became too much and she begged for true death, to join the dead in the garden of soul to live out her eternity in peace away from the god she used to worship, so why was she still defending his dogma? The answer was simply. Thora didn't have anything else.

  She’d been a thunderer her entire life. Her parents had been thunderers. Her lovers and friends all worshiped Magni. Could it all have been a lie? No, a man’s children were sacred and they had to be, well, they had to be human, but the thought felt hollow like an expression that didn't fit her, not since Gimli, not since she died.

  Brand stood from the pile of rubble he’d been resting on. He was still drenched in sweat but his breath was steady.

  There was still more Thora wanted to ask him. She still knew nothing of his allegiances other than to the kin woman and the strange comradery of the man trying to capture him in the dragon tooth mountains. He’d killed vellians and beast kin alike, seeing to not hold either side. In fact, how was he even supposed to traverse the city as a dark skinned human among so many kin?

  Thora felt Brand‘s aura ripple and change as he walked. Runes appeared in her perception, dozens of them in an intricate wep folding around his body. Then another layer of magic formed, one without runes and draped over the first.

  Brand’s features shifted when the magic settled. His face was now pale, eyes blue, and hair a silky blonde that bordered on white. His tattered clothes were now a mixture of white and gold like something a noble would wear, a very high ranking noble in fact.

  “You're an illusionist,” Thora said. It was yet another practice that clashed with any man calling himself a warrier.

  “How else am I supposed to get into the castle?” Brand answered, turning to the massive building.

   “Why would you want to go there? Every noble left in the city will be there, or do you plan to kill the rest of them.”

  Brand chuckled, probably looking like a mad man as he spoke to himself. “No. I’ve got something else in mind.”