Fingers withered to talons tore at her. Mouths buried themselves in her belly. Things best unmentioned violated her. Her throat ached from her continuous whimpering whines. Her mind shorn of any desire for escape, for respite of pain, all that remained of her was the desire to see justice done. That much the geas allowed her.
Her mind, sharpened by pain, hardened by geas, and guided by instinct, ripped through her memories. Her whining stopped, replaced by hoarse words whispered through her abused throat. “I stood on the steps of the Kremlin when the Red Army marched through. I climbed the stairway from the heart of Cheyenne Mountain to prove I could. Mother held me as she watched bulldozers topple the Berlin Wall.”
Mort’s voice held as much amusement as confusion. “Did we break her already? I thought she was stronger than this.”
Power built around Mary; it whipped through her, numbing the holes torn in her by the zombies. Her words grew stronger, but her voice remained harsh, her throat still ruined by abuse. “I have eaten jin wo, I have lain under coral reefs with a rebreather,” she turned her head to where she last heard Mort’s voice, “I dated you.”
Confusion ruled Mort’s voice now, laced with more than a hint of panic, “What is she talking about? Stop! Stop talking now!”
Mary felt her geas tested by the older one, the one first broken on the night of storm and fire. Her words came out in a rush, eager to finish before she was silenced. “I have seen the roots of a mountain and the sinews of a bear. I have heard the footfall of a Cat. I have tasted the spittle of a bird and the breath of a fish. I have felt the beard of a maiden.”
The light spun Mary upright, stretched her arms painfully to her sides. Her face burned where Mort slapped her, her ears rang when he screamed, voice full of power, “Stop! Now!”
Mary felt Mort trying to force his geas onto her. It struck Melody’s geas, covered it, coated it. Her tongue froze as Mort’s geas begin to take hold. Her heart beat once, twice, thrice in the silence. Then Mort’s geas shattered, blown apart by something burning like a star within her. Her next words came out in a shout, “Gleipnir! To my hand!”
Nothing filled her hand; a solid Nothing, made of links so fine it felt like rope. Only after reflecting on how Nothing could have a texture did she realize that her tormentors had fled, save one. Mort’s voice was quiet, the way a man’s will be when he faces unaccustomed terror. “What have you done?”
Damp, hot breath rushed past her. Drool splashed to the ground beneath her; a stream of it forming beneath her. A voice like thunder reverberated through her chest, and fear clutched at her, trying and failing to find purchase. Some of that failure may have been the way the voice slurred its words. “What do you want, girl child?”
Mary’s words were firm, even if her voice rasped with pain, “I need a sword, and I need to be free of these bonds.”
“How can I help with either of those?”
“You have a sword you do not want. There has only ever been one bond you could not break.”
Something monstrously huge snorted, blowing her lank hair behind her head. “Flattery. Why would I help you?”
“You really, really don’t want that sword.”
Laughter, constrained by a mouth pinned shut, echoed through the endless darkness. “You are bold, child. There will be a price. It will be high.”
“I will pay it, for freedom and a sword.”
“So be it. Grip this.”
A hilt touched Mary’s palm, and her fingers grasped it before she could consciously will them to. She tried to move another part of her body, but nothing budged. With all her might she clung to the hilt, hoping it would free her. Suddenly it jerked upward, and her grip nearly broke, leaving her trying to hold a massive weight with nothing but her fingertips. Something meaty fell to the ground with a splash and rolled beneath her. Air rushed past her, and the screams of zombies too slow or crippled to flee filled her ears. Her attention focused down to nothing but the sword she clung to.
It was too heavy. She grabbed at it to no avail. It fell to the ground beneath her with a muffled clang, bouncing once to settle with a thud against whatever else the Fenris wolf had spat out.
The Fenris Wolf’s voice, unhindered by the sword, was an avalanche of sound. “You wish to be free as well?”
“Yes.”
“So be it.”
Suction pulled at Mary’s body, her mind, her very soul. Things that transcended being fangs and became something else slashed at her, tearing. Her very being stretched, tore, ripped to shreds in a tidal vortex greater than anything she’d ever imagined.
Then she was free, falling to land clumsily draped over her sword’s crosspiece. Her right arm was nothing but pain and ice. Weakness clutched at her as she lost the little blood that remained in her after the zombies had gnawed at her. She reached over with her left arm to massage some feeling back into her right hand.
And touched nothing.
A shriek tried to bubble its way out of her as the pain of dismemberment hit. She clamped down on it, clamped her left hand over the gaping, frozen wound that used to be her right arm. Shock made her dizzy. Whether she could die in Hel or not, she had stepped into the realm with a mortal body, and the magic of the place finally gave up its attempt to sustain her life.
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“You… took my arm.”
“You’ve got another. Leave me be, I have a chain to gnaw.”
With that, the thunder of mountains grinding together drowned out all other sound. Mary’s mind drifted. Her heels drummed against the ground spasmodically as nerves misfired. The socket of her shoulder, flash frozen by Fenris’ bite, cracked. She smelled her heart’s blood flowing from the wound, splashing into the pool that had formed from her earlier desecration.
It splashed in the pool.
It splashed on the great sword.
Her heart’s final beat splashed onto the lump of half-digested flesh and armor that lay beneath her.
***
Lightning raced through him, lifted him from the ground, shook him like a terrier with a rat. His hand, all that remained of him, resurrected by the heart’s blood of a willing sacrifice, groped for his sword as his eyes opened. He could not see light, but he could still see evil. Before him, elemental in his hunger, Fenris gnawed at Gleipnir. About the small space given him, a horde of corrupt things stared, shocked, at the resurrected god in their midst.
From deep within came a voice, quiet yet harder than steel.
Not willing.
“What?”
I did not willingly sacrifice myself to resurrect you.
“Your heart’s blood was given. You took the actions that led up to that sacrifice willingly. That much I know.”
I lay down my life to see justice done.
Tyr looked deep within and examined the tiny spark that had been the mortal girl whose body he inhabited now. He saw guilt, and shame, and a burning desire to see justice done. He saw something else, something that flowed like all the water in the world, flowing down from the dawn of time until the present. But he saw no evil.
“You have done no wrong, and a great deal of right. What would you have, child?”
I would have what I sacrificed myself for. The sight of justice.
“You will never be as you were,” a wry smile twisted Tyr’s lips as he pondered his statement a moment longer, “but then, neither will I. Would you be my hand, then?”
No. You will be mine.
***
Cold liquid slid down Mort’s leg when Mary rose, glowing with a clean white light, into the sky. The gauntlet Fenris spat up rose with her, great sword in its grasp. The hand was bigger than her arm had been. The sword was a massive blade, meant to be a great sword for a giant, but the gauntlet held it easily.
Mort pulled along his link to the Niflhellions, forcing them to swarm to him. He had to get through the gate, perhaps then he would be able to evade the bitch long enough to get back to mother. She would know what to do.
He took one step, and fell to the ground, his legs cut cleanly at mid-thigh. He hadn’t felt the cut, but when he fell dripping to the floor his thighs burned with pain that forced a womanlike shriek from his throat. He pulled again on the horde and felt them coming.
The great glowing sword was above him, the woman who had been Mary looking down on him with eye sockets filled with molten gold. Her voice was sledgehammers applied to his eardrums.
“You will not pass this gate.”
“Try and stop the horde, bitch.”
Her brilliant gaze lifted from him to stare out across the plain. Whatever she saw, her frown deepened. She slipped into a pose that reminded him of a dancer rather than a warrior, and his gurgling chuckle had all the mockery he could fit into it as the horde descended on her.
She spun. Her sword hand spun with her, following her, just a touch behind the rest of her body. The great blade reached out like Hel’s own weed whacker, tearing through the zombies like paper. Wherever he looked, great swaths of zombies fell, heads and limbs and even torsos joining the rotting slurry on the ground. Still the dead came on, undeterred. Their moans echoed from every direction, the only gap being the small area about Fenris. Whenever anything came near him, his great maw swallowed it.
In minutes, a writhing, rotting, moaning wall of body parts formed around the spinning dervish. It slowed her not at all, but Mort rejoiced quietly at the mass of undead around him. So close, he felt their limbs, their bodies, their putrescent minds. He pushed on the spell connecting him to them, shoved it more and more. With a tearing sensation, his consciousness slipped free of his burned body, merging with that of the horde.
He had a million limbs, a million hands, a million feet. Did it matter if none were connected? He laughed from a million throats. Madness claimed him as he watched the glowing figure puree his million forms. He opened his mouths, and his words echoed through Hel, “Stupid cunt! Did you think you could kill the dead with a sword? You cannot break me, not with a thousand swords!”
As his bodies surged forward, the sword spun in a complex pattern, slicing anything that came within yards of the gate into sections so small they could only ooze. No matter, oozing would get him to her eventually. When it did, he would show her what eternal torture meant. He was so wrapped up in his plans that he almost missed her next words.
“Fenris Wolf! Are you hungry?”
“Always.”
“Will you take these walking dead as your meat?”
“If you free me, I swear I will take them first.”
Mort called out, mocking, as he oozed toward the unprotected wolf, “Stupid dog. You are nothing! I will consume you and add you to me!”
He realized how hollow his boast was when some of his mass, pushed to where Fenris could reach it, disappeared into the great wolf’s maw. It was hot and cold, nothing and everything, hunger given physical form. When Fenris’ mouth opened, light itself was consumed.
The bitch with the sword spoke again.
“The Soviets are nations once more. Cheyenne collapsed a year after I ran it. The Cats on the Wall were turned into monuments. Jin Wo tastes like crap, and the swallows are extinct anyhow. My rebreather was recalled for medical reasons,” she stopped, and somehow looked directly toward where his consciousness resided. She stared at him as she continued, “and we are so broken up.”
As she spoke, Mort felt power growing as the sword spun faster and faster, its edge becoming sharper and sharper, “The bear is dead, the roots of the mountain shattered. The Cats footfalls are silenced forever. The spittle of the bird and the breath of the fish are no more, and the maiden’s beard is shorn.” The sword stopped, hovering, above the Nothing that bound the Fenris Wolf. “Gliepnir is no more!”
The sword plunged down, shattering Nothing into dust. Fenris threw his head back and howled. At that point, all that remained for Mort was screaming.
***
Mary looked on as the horde of Hel disappeared down Fenris’ ravenous maw. Again, instinct guided her. When he had scoured the violated ground clean, before he turned to her, she spoke.
“You are Vengeance.”
The great wolf, taller at the shoulder than she was, sat down on his haunches and stared at her. She saw his hunger, but they both knew she could not flee. It appeared prey that did not run made him curious.
“I am Vengeance.”
“I am Justice.”
Fenris’ roar shook the ground, “You will not chain me again!”
“I have no choice, great Wolf. But if I chain you, I will not deceive you, I will not torture you. I am Justice.”
“Try, insect!”
The Fenris Wolf charged. Her sword hovered nearby, the part of her that was Tyr urging her to use it, to skewer the beast barreling down on them. To keep herself from giving in to fear, the great sword plunged into the ground, a yard or more of it firmly stuck in the rock beneath her. She spread her hands, wove her chain, and waited.