CHAPTER 65: PSYCHE’S SACRIFICE
“Don’t crush the mushrooms!” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen stumbled to an exhausted halt inside a ring of toadstools, then collapsed, unable to move any further. Beside him, the vampire frowned, slowing with him, but thankfully listened to instructions and avoided stepping on the fungi. Tl'oghk'etnaeyen quickly touched the closest one, channeling a surge of vibrant emerald energy from the Second Realm into the portal ring. In an instant, the mushrooms started to glow like fireflies and a bubble opened up between the realms around them, making the forest fade to spectral clumps of birch trees overlaid atop the lush underground forest of the Second Lands, neither Realm more solid than the other.
We made it, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen thought, collapsing. The Fury wouldn’t give chase in the half-lands—it limited her power. “We’re safe here,” he panted, dropping his face in the leaves in complete exhaustion. “Will…hide…us.”
Looking back the way they had come, the vampire bit her lip. “What about Björn and that cook?”
Tilting his head on the forest detritus to look in the direction of the house, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen shook his head. “That was a Fury. We’re lucky to have our own heads.”
“Oh,” Shannon whispered. “So Björn…”
“The barghest is probably already dead,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, “and if he’s not now, he soon will be.”
I just left him to die, Shannon thought. Just ran…
At the mental wash of remorse that hit him with those words, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen decided to ease her guilt before she did something stupid, like tried to leave the fairy ring.
Careful not to suggest anything, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, “There is no shame in running from a Fury. Besides, barghests are dangerous beasts. If Björn had spent much more time in this land, it would have resulted in the deaths of innocents—honestly it’s probably better this way.”
And he said it with a Horn of Truth around his neck, so—after she had failed repeatedly to convince him she wouldn’t have sex with him that evening—he knew that she knew it wasn’t emotive feel-better bullshit, but rather cold, hard facts.
Still, Shannon eyed the ethereal path back with concern. “How long until we can go check on him?”
“Give it three weeks,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen managed, still not being able to lift his cheek from the forest floor. “If that Fury catches us before I heal, we’re both dead.”
“Is there any chance he made it at all?” she asked softly.
“Against a Fury?” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen laughed. He shook his head. “Sorry. The Lord of War made those things to kill immortals that go bad. Things like you, me, a barghest…that’s their specialty. Björn will be a piece of cake. He’ll be dead in a couple of minutes.”
Shannon glanced back, startled, and must have seen that he was serious, because she swallowed and said no more.
#
He’d forgotten about the fucking sun.
Björn had been so excited to have a real fight for the first time in centuries and he’d completely forgotten about this cursed realm’s unholy ball of fire.
Björn was even then burning in his very bones, gasping as the sun tore the shadows from him and disintegrated them, in turn making the light penetrate even deeper…
He knew then that he was going back to Ásgarðr this day. He grimaced at that thought, imagining having to come before Odin’s throne and tell the wise old One-Eye that he had failed.
And without Björn to fight the rogue earthbound demigod, the humans here stood no chance. Nemesis, Ra, Psyche, Gaia… All pussies. Even Freyja’s champion was going to be a shit-flinging Valkyrie…
Björn chuckled at the thought of a Valkyrie, not affected by the darkness of this land, putting her booted foot through this prissy Fury’s face. Now that would have been an amusing fight to watch…
Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to see it. Björn flopped onto his stomach, trying to hide his face and chest from the unforgiving orb overhead. Even as he gasped, trying to crawl to shelter, it was tearing away what was left of his shadows, leaving him weak, disoriented, dying.
Mentally, he prepared himself to break the news to Odin. “Great Father, I have failed to kill Pestilence because I got battle-drunk and took a Fury’s sword in the ass…”
He wondered idly if he would ever see Jessie again. Despite their short time together, the couch-man was one of the first in centuries that Björn felt he could consider to be a friend. Unlike the rest of the world, it had seemed as if Jessie had understood him. Not only that, he had seemed genuinely interested in helping him regain control over his soul mate.
And, despite all of Björn’s bitterness about Mardöll’s betrayal, the couch-man had actually allowed him to start believing that perhaps he could convince her to accept him as her mate and finalize the bond between them. Like, perhaps it was as Jessie said and their differences were just a misunderstanding…
Thinking of Mardöll, however, Björn was instantly hit with a wash of regret. Given the choice, he wouldn’t have died this day, regardless of the glory. It left things unfinished between them, their bond unsealed, and he’d been alone so long already. With Jessie’s help, he’d truly hoped…
But now, after waiting so many years, he wouldn’t even been able to enjoy the feel of her silken body against his. He wouldn’t hear her whispers against his pillow, wouldn’t feel the warmth of her mead in his stomach. He would remain alone to bear Odin’s burden, just as he had been for ages.
Thinking of how long it could be until he found the cowardly sorceress a second time, Björn felt that bitterness returning in a cruel, bilious rush. After spending lifetimes looking for her, it could be centuries before he saw her again. Or, if she continued to intentionally run from him, millennia. His heart ached just thinking of it. Perhaps Odin and Freyja had given him their ‘gift’ as a joke, an amusement to pass the time…
At least she had escaped the Fury, which meant she was still bound to this realm and her current body. It would make it easier for him to find her again, should he manage to make it back from Ásgarðr before the weak fool stumbled over a rock and died.
Björn felt satisfaction in that, as he lay bleeding and burning on the ground, unable to escape the light of the sun. He, at least, could do his job in their arrangement. He, as her sworn protector, had allowed the weak woman and her stupid dog to escape. Now she owed him a good bedding.
Unbidden, Björn remembered what Jessie had said about women in general not liking the idea they ‘owed’ a bedding. Hmm. He would have to find the couch-man again, once he returned from Ásgarðr, and ask him if that still applied if she actually did owe him.
He couldn’t help but imagine the way the sorceress, upon realizing he had sacrificed himself to save her, would spread her warm body out beneath him, inviting him closer, touching him with those tender lips…
Björn, who had been crawling across the yard towards the cover of trees for what had felt like centuries, realized in dismay that, in all of his struggles, he had only covered a couple feet. And, even though the sun was sliding down on the horizon, this cursed land would still be fully illuminated by the sun for at least another two hours. He definitely should have thought twice about going to battle in broad daylight, he thought dimly. There had just been something about the idea of a good, honest fight for the first time in decades that had left him not quite thinking straight.
Except it wasn’t an honest fight. He thought again to the way, mid-fight, the Fury had pulled something from that blood-stinking belt of hers and cocked her arm back as she aimed it at his queen, huddled beside the car as she whispered to the couch-man. To spare her weak body whatever punishment the Fury had intended, Björn had lunged in front of the blow and taken it in the shoulder, instead, thinking it just some enchanted silver.
It had been nothing of the sort. It had been silver, yes. Enchanted, no. Alive was more like it. Holding a soul… The living metal had taken hold in his chest, sinking in claws, and like an insect through meat, had started burrowing…
Then, as Björn had been trying to understand why a Fury had been using blood magic, frantically tearing the moving thing out of his chest muscle before it could get to his heart, the Fury had bowled him over with her wing, disintegrating a good part of one shoulder in the strike. Gasping, Björn had shifted to a new shadow, the living metal burrowing into his body taking his full concentration. He had grabbed it with a talon, pulled…
The Fury had swooped in and kicked him with the force of Thor’s hammer, tumbling him through the air like a rag doll.
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As he’d been airborne, he had found the presence of mind to finish yanking the burrowing thing from his body and throw it at the Fury, who took it in the neck even as he tumbled away from her from the momentum.
Then he was hitting the front of the limo with a crunch of buckling metal and breaking glass. He had rolled to the ground, groaning, bleeding, his whole body on fire.
A moment later, the Fury had him by the foot and was throwing down into the gravel again and again…
Why isn’t she killing me with her sword? Björn thought, vaguely surprised as the ground kept rising to meet him. The whole time, he hadn’t seen her with a sword. If she had, the fight would have been over in moments. What happened to her sword?
Then he remembered the luminescent blade that had come hurtling out the window to bury itself in a tree. He frowned. Unlike the ridiculous movies that his queen had insisted he watch, swords were not thrown at an opponent. That was idiocy.
Why did she throw her sword? Björn wondered, as the Fury left him there and went looking for it.
“There it is!” he heard the Fury snarl distantly. His vision already narrowed to a tunnel, Björn watched her stalk up to the ash tree and yank her sword from the trunk. Instantly, it flared the same beautiful, radiant white as her wings. She spun, sword held in a white-knuckled fist, and stalked back towards him, death in her eyes.
“The Morning Star is here and I need that djinni and I do not have time to screw around with mindless. Fucking. Third Landers,” the Fury snarled, kicking him with each syllable. Then, planting her feet, she took a steady stance near his head and raised her weapon, aimed at his neck.
I really would have liked to see her smile, Björn thought, reviewing his fleeting time with Mardöll in his mind as he prepared to return to Valhöll, just as he had done a million times before. Just once, by my deed or action…a smile…
Just as the sword was coming down to sever his connection to this realm, there came the roaring thrum of an accelerating engine and a limo slammed into the Fury from the side, pinning her against the crumpled hood with her own weight as the vehicle careened across the churned front lawn, bottoming out on the torn tufts of earth several times before burying itself in the wreckage of the house.
Björn, blinking, forced his body into a dazed sitting position. Seeing the unconscious human form slumped over the steering wheel, he froze. “Jessie?”
Jessie had tried to sacrifice himself? For Björn? The fool! Did he not know there was nothing that could stop one of the Lord of War’s Chosen, when she had been sent to kill?
Knowing it would not end well for the couch-man, Björn groaned and struggled to get to his feet. “Jessie! Get out and run!”
The couch-man remained lifeless against the wheel.
Even as Björn’s startled mind was trying to comprehend that, the scattered pile of debris at the front of the limo shifted as the Fury clawed her way out with a scream, her wings slicing through the wreckage like hot knives through mammoth fat. She let out a snarl as she threw the last two-by-four from her shoulder and stalked around to the driver’s side of the limo…
Seeing that, Björn tried desperately to get to his feet. “Fury! You leave the mortal out of this!”
The Fury hesitated, glancing over at Björn with cruel, calculated cunning. “This human is your friend?”
Björn didn’t like the look in her eye. “Your fight is with me, not him,” he growled. “He’s no match for you.”
“True.” The Fury tore open the limo door, grabbed Jessie by the shirt, and yanked his limp, bleeding body out of the vehicle. Dragging the couch-man behind her, she approached Björn with a triumphant sneer. “But then again, the cowboy told me he’d handle you if I handled my sister, and yet here we are.”
The Fury casually tossed Jessie to the earth beside Björn and, surprisingly, turned and stalked back to the house to start clawing through the wreckage.
The cowboy… Björn frowned, remembering Pestilence and what he wore. As he did, a wash of cold chills prickled his skin. Could this Fury, a Champion of War, be fighting for Pestilence?
No wonder the energy of this realm felt spoiled and rotten. If Pestilence could corrupt a Champion… He wondered how many others’ minds the demigod had twisted into fighting for him.
It could be dozens…hundreds…
Knowing that a Fury, one of the uncorruptible, had succumbed to Pestilence’s rot, Björn knew that he had vastly underestimated the gods’ playing field.
He was also, unfortunately, too late to correct his error. With the Fury distracted digging through the rubble, there was really only one thing left for him to do.
“Jessie,” Björn said, grabbing the little man by the arm and shaking him. “Get up and run, couch-man. You might still survive this if you flee now.”
“Oohhh,” Jessie groaned, moving only a little. “Fuuuuck.”
“Run,” Björn said, lifting him with one hand, trying to make him get to his feet.
“I think my leg is broken,” Jessie whimpered.
And, when Björn looked, he could see bone jutting from one of the couch-man’s shins. He grimaced and started to climb to his feet, not sure what the Fury was doing as she excavated the rubble, but willing to take any opportunity to help his couch-man escape.
“Come on,” Björn said, throwing Jessie’s arm over his shoulder. “I’ll help…”
Jessie, for his part, whimpered and sobbed like a blubbery little girl. Normally, Björn would have cast such a coward aside to face his own fate alone, but he knew that this time, at least, it couldn’t be helped. Jessie had shown courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and, to Björn at least, had earned himself a spot in Valhöll, were he to ever accept Odin’s favor.
“Come,” Björn said, shuffling them out onto the gravel driveway and towards the forest. If he could get them to the forest, perhaps he could hide the couch-man in the undergrowth and distract the Fury long enough for her to forget about him, as she had forgotten about his mate.
“She’s gonna kill us, isn’t she?” Jessie said, a sheen of sweat standing out on his face as he struggled.
“It’s likely, “Björn said, still trudging along.
“And you’ll be going back to that Valhöll place?”
“Of course.”
Surprisingly, Jessie grabbed the front of Björn’s T-shirt and pulled him until their faces were almost touching. “Listen to me,” he said, his gaze intense. “Break the cycle.”
Break the cycle? What in Loki’s feeble green butt-paste did that mean?
“They put you back out there on that eternal battlefield, you cross right over to that other lady’s hall and bring those badass women some goddamn flowers, you understand?”
Björn snorted with disgust.
Jessie wrenched him closer. “And be gentle with Mardöll. It doesn’t sound like she appreciates murder. You really want to be with her, you be nice to her. You figure out what she wants and compromise. That’s the best goddamn advice I can give you. Be nice and compromise. Take it to heart.”
Björn blinked down at the little man, immediately thinking of all the reasons why he shouldn’t capitulate to the frivolous demands of the fairer sex. “But she doesn’t respect my—”
“Compromise, goddamn it!” Jessie snapped. “Be nice. Or you will always be alone.”
Or you will always be alone…
As Björn’s mind was trying to digest that, the Fury dropped to the ground in front of them, a silver bowl in her hand. Without ceremony, she grabbed Jessie by the throat and ripped him away from Björn’s shoulder.
“You like picking fights with things that are stronger than you, little human?” the Fury sneered, her full attention on Jessie, now. “I have a present for you.” She held out a silver bowl between them, and Björn caught the flicker of something ethereal inside the rune-etched vessel.
Öndkar, Björn thought, on a wave of horror. It was something he had never expected to see in the First Realm, a tool a blood magus used to fight the effects of other blood mages…or kill them forever.
“So, barghest,” the Fury said, watching Jessie with a sneer, “I want you to beg. If I feel you are genuine enough, I might only use this on you.”
She is going to feed one of us to the öndkar, Björn realized. The act would give it life, make it a stórröndkar, eater of souls—a terrifying artifact in the wrong hands. She could then use it to kill by the taste of blood alone…
Björn met Jessie’s terrified eyes, knew that one of them was about to die forever. He opened his mouth to tell the Fury he’d had enough lifetimes to serve a hundred men, and to harvest him, instead.
The Fury interrupted him with, “Oh, wait, that’s right, I don’t care if you beg.” With her one hand, she grabbed the top of Jessie’s head, and even as the couch-man made a startled sound, she tore Jessie’s head from his shoulders and kicked his body away as hot blood splashed across Björn’s face and chest. With the other hand, she casually held out the silver bowl, chuckling with profane pleasure as the öndkar started catching the blood dribbling from Jessie’s severed neck…
Instantly, the ethereal fire of the öndkar flared with the taste of Jessie’s soul, reaching out, claiming the spirit that was even then being pulled from the severed head as the Fury watched on in sadistic pleasure…
Seeing it, so unexpected and fast, Björn lost control. With a wordless scream of rage, Björn dove under Jessie’s bleeding head, taking hot, wet spatters of his friend’s blood down his scalp and neck as he dislodged the bowl and took the Fury to the ground in a blind rush. Bowl and head went rolling in opposite directions, but the ethereal flames continued to dance upon Björn’s skin, sizzling where the wet spatters of Jessie’s hot blood now were wreathed in spirit fire.
Björn grabbed the öndkar and, blind with rage, now, started slamming it into the Fury’s face, over and over, wrath powering his sword arm as he drove it into her head and neck again and again. Her eyes widened as she tried to put up a defense, holding up her hands in an attempt to shield her face. Björn, completely losing his awareness of anything but his warrior’s rage, grabbed one of her arms and broke it, then held the other aside as he climbed atop her, driving the bowl into her throat again and again, trying to use its rim to sever her head…
The Fury kicked him off her with a scream, her face broken and bleeding, her sword arm hanging limply from her shoulders. She scrabbled to her feet, and Björn saw hesitation as she looked at him, then at the four Inquisitors that had witnessed the fight, still crouching in the grass. Upon seeing her use the öndkar, they were getting to their feet, looks of confusion and horror on their faces.
They see her for the monster she is, Björn realized with satisfaction.
Snarling, the Fury bent to pick up her sword, making it flare with eye-searing brightness once more. Björn snarled and held the öndkar up, ready to die with it in his hands.
Instead of attacking him, however, the corrupted Fury rushed the four mortals she had brought with her, ripping them open with her sword, beating them to pieces with her wings. Then, as the corpses of her Inquisitor comrades slid, twitching, to the ground, she gave Björn one last look, then took to the sky, flying hard, leaving him snarling on the ground, still clutching the öndkar in a fist.
Once it was clear she wasn’t coming back, Björn glanced back to his friend’s lifeless form. The wound of Jessie’s neck burned with a steady blue-white fire, just as the blood slicking Björn’s body. Seeing Jessie’s blood still afire with ethereal light, the bowl still consuming his essence, Björn let out a howl and started crushing the öndkar into the ground in an attempt to stop the process, flattening it, twisting it, tearing at it….
The öndkar broke in half in his fist and the explosion that followed hit Björn like a dozen of Thor’s hammers to the head and chest. He coughed, gagging, as the heat reverberated throughout his body, setting his innards on fire.
You fool…you just destroyed an öndkar with your hands…
Björn writhed as the sickening feeling spread, making the droplets of blood on his head burn ice-hot, gripping his mind, making him nauseous as he started seeing double.
The flames, however, had blessedly gone out. And, after a few heart-pounding minutes of that spectral heat raking his insides, the fire in his bones, too, eased. Björn slowly rolled back to his hands and knees and looked around.
The öndkar was broken. Jessie was dead. Seeing that, not knowing whether or not he had been fast enough in stopping the transformation, Björn collapsed under the blazing sun, finally allowing the Void to claim him.