Blood Fist groaned as the rockets bore it upward. Asmundre felt heavy in the straps and buckles. He could only look ahead. Yohan, clinging to the wall beside him, faded to blackness, and only the brightening sky remained - and the thin sharp line where the wall ended. The edge rushed up, changing from a perfect divider into a jagged barrier full of protruding crenelations and overhanging cranes. The top was not flat, but studded in low metal structures and steel beams that reached above a crude walkway of intersecting scaffolds.

“It’s not done.”

“Not even close,” Yohan said. “Never finished it.”

“Are they still - is anyone -?”

“What, still building it? Someone is. Not the Midgard.”

Then they were above it. Blood Fist arced gently over the top, and a different world appeared. Green hills rolled away to the horizon. In the distance, jagged peaks, as gray as the wall, stabbed at the clouds. Birds flew among the hills - great flocks of them - and lighted amongst the trees. There was a tree in the village. A stunted thing, barely taller than he was, that grew crab-apples. The trees outside the wall were.. Somewhat larger.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Asmundre twisted the mech’s head around to get a look back the way they had come, before the wall cut off visibility - blasted, barren hills of junk, a faint smudge on the horizon that would be Valhalla itself. “All the stories say Hel is a wasteland.”

“It is,” Yohan agreed. “Just, the stories forgot to tell you which world you were in.”

Asmundre’s stomach rose into his throat. Because of the revelation, and because they had begun to descend. The wall flashed by, but on this side, rather than the sheer steel wall, walkways and staircases and elevators criss crossed the expanse like old stretched out spider webs. Asmundre fired the Blood Fist’s jets, and the mech slowed. The red drop indicator flashed on again.

Yohan clambered around the chamber, positioning himself behind Asmundre and pointing over his shoulder. “Put us down there,” he said, indicating a depression near the base of the wall, and a small pile of stones. “There’s a bunch of rocks there. Big ones, like that place you lived. We’ll be able to hide Blood Fist there.”

“I thought you needed metal to keep the Midgard from finding it?”

“Not trying to hide it from the Midgard. Hugo and Jorge won’t follow us out here - not alone, anyway.”

Asmundre turned the mech towards the rocks, and they grew - and grew - everything seemed small compared the wall, and what he thought was only some stones turned out to be massive boulders that could have smashed the entire village.

“They probably don’t have the fuel to come after us anyway.” Yohan worked the hatch as Asmundre landed and stomped into the rocks. “Not if they want to get back up. We don’t either, you may have noticed. Not Midgard we have to worry about out here.”

If not Midgard, then what? Asmundre hadn’t yet wrapped his head around the trees - the shear greenness of the land outside the wall. He’d always thought - obviously Valhalla wasn’t like the junk piles. It had to be a paradise. But the junk piles would be their own kind of paradise compared to the desolate, Jotnar infested wastes.

The world had seemed simple. Valhalla was at the center and the top. Nothing compared to the flying city. Then came the farmlands - a ring of fertile ground around the city where the empire’s food was grown. Around that, the hills, and just at the base of the wall the junk piles. The remains of the construction of that amazing barrier.

And then, outside the wall - Jotnar.

Apparently the Jotnar wastes were green?

“What then?” Asmundre asked.

“Primitives. Witches.” Yohan slid down first, nimble in the exoskeleton. “Oh, and Jotnar.”

“You’re sure we should leave the mech behind then? It only took a little blood to drive it down to the village.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“You’ll run out quicker than you realize. Don’t worry though. We shouldn’t run into any big ones, and if we do, Blood Fist won’t be enough to fight them.”

Yohan started off toward the trees. Asmundre took the knife that activated the machine and jammed it into his boot. Blood Fist vanished behind the jumbled rocks, invisible once they had walked the few hundred yards up the slope. The sun vanished, hidden by the leaves overhead, and the day that had been shaping up to be rather warm turned as cool as the night in the junk. Well, maybe not that cold. Things chirped and cried in the forest. Asmundre thought he heard a fox - they must do better out here than they did in the junk. Maybe they had a secret way through the wall?

Yohan seemed to know which way to go - or did a good job faking it. After a while, tired of guessing, Asmundre asked him. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a village down around this way. Saw it on our way down. But, ah, no real way to tell how far it is.”

Well Asmundre had thought Yohan seemed to know where they were going. “You’ve never been out here before?”

“Sure, outside the wall, plenty of times with the Midgard. But never on foot. And never in this exact spot, no. We need to get to a place called Bried. It’s something of a city.”

Great.

They continued in silence for a while. Asmundre had enough to absorb as they passed under the trees, following an old path made by the gods knew what, and didn’t want to interrupt the experience with chatter. It was enough for now just to try and soak in all the green.

“What’s always boggled my mind about pennies,” Yohan said, after they had walked for an hour or so. “Was how you could have a penny, right?”

“Uhuh,” Asmundre said, not really listening. Yeah, you could have pennies. He’d rather have a bed right now, though.

“And you could take that penny to a bank. And they take your penny, but you still have a penny.”

Okay.

“But they don’t just keep the penny. They give it to someone else. And maybe you go to a shop and you sell them something - I don’t know, some salvage I guess, that’s what you were up to, right? - and you get that same penny back. You follow?”

Was this getting to a point?

“But you still have a penny in the bank. The same penny in your hand. Is it the same penny? Do you have the same penny twice? What do you think?”

Asmundre didn’t know what to think. Or if he could. The world outside the wall, as amazing as it was, had turned foggy. Not actually. Asmundre was sure it was actually rather bright. But it felt foggy. “Uh,” he said. “What’s a bank?”

Yohan twisted around to look at him, jaw hanging.

Must be some Valhalla thing. Asmundre shrugged.

“Did you hear that?”

Of course he had - Oh, Yohan looked serious. He was talking about something else. Asmundre started to respond, but Yohan raised a hand and cut him off. The former Midgard scanned the trees, then darted back. Grabbing Asmundre by the arm, he dragged him off the path and into the brush.

“What did you hear?” Asmundre asked. But Yohan didn’t have to answer - Asmundre saw it.

A beast burst from between the trees. Moving on four legs, it squeezed between the trees, metallic claws churning in the soil. Exposed gears turned in its haunches and hoses coiled around its neck. A rider sat on the creature’s back - it still looked more animal than machine to Asmundre, despite being almost entirely metal - and the rider was almost as enormous. Twelve feet tall, maybe more. Still man-shaped, if too large, the figure held in one hand a long spear.

The metallic beast paused in the path and sniffed. Asmundre tensed. Sweeping the spear back and forth, the figure studied where the beast sniffed.

“Ak nort!” it barked. It’s voice was harsh, like rocks grinding together, but also strangely high pitched. It chewed on its next words for a moment, looking right at them through the leaves. Then, “Come out.”

“Fuck,” Yohan muttered.

“Saw fall, yes,” the giant said. “No hide. Come out.”

“Can we outrun it?”

“What do you think?” Yohan said.

Honestly, Asmundre hadn’t been thinking much of anything. Fatigue and excitement were fighting a war inside him and he only had so much adrenaline.

“Well come on kid,” Yohan said. “Games up. Maybe she won’t eat us.”

The former Midgard stepped out onto the path. Had he said eat? And she? Asmundre followed, slightly alarmed. Yohan raised his hands, and only after he had did Asmundre think to raise his as well.

“Better,” the giant (-ess?) said. “Fancy mount you fall in.”

“You can’t have it.”

The giantess laughed and slapped her mount, which didn’t appear to mind. “You hellions. From inside wall.”

Is that what they called us? Hellions?

Yohan answered the giant with a nod. Asmundre hoped he’d been kidding about the giant eating them.

“Come on then,” the giant said, and wheeled her mount around. “You not make it hour. Jotnar around.”

“Great,” Yohan muttered.

Asmundre had to agree.