fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 8b.

[mekosuchinae]

( Previous.)

iv: loki dreaming.

Jötunheimr burned. Fire devoured the whole of it. In the distance, a spire cracked, the ice weakened in the conflagration; it fell into a burning canyon. An ice storm drove against the fire's flank for naught. Everywhere was fire, and in fire, death.

"How?"

He turned to Yggdrasill. Light flickered hotly across her face. In her hair, which had turned red as autumn, ash gathered. Her eyes glittered like coals.

"Múspellsheimr," she said. "Other worlds will burn, too. Asgard will burn."

He flicked his fingers impatiently against his thigh.

"Múspellsheimr would never. They are loyal to Asgard."

"Or did Asgard cut loyalty out of them?" she asked. "Múspellsheimr gave Asgard peace, but that was not enough for Odin. He set his law upon them."

"He brought order," said Loki, then he bit down on the inside of his lip. What did he owe Odin? He felt the weight of his father's hand on his shoulder.

"He sowed war," said Yggdrasill.

The great ice shelf began to crumble. In stages, in waves, it broke and tumbled, shattering as flame licked up through the cracks.

"How could they do this?" he asked. "With the Bifröst lost, they have no means of traveling to any other worlds."

"You of all my children should know," said Yggdrasill, the world-tree, whose branches contained many paths. "There are more ways than one. When the Bifröst broke, Asgard lost its power over Múspellsheimr. Múspellsheimr would make Asgard know its power."

She looked, sadly, across Jötunheimr as it died in the heart of the fire, burned out from within. Loki's skin ached with the heat. The light stung his eyes.

She said, "They will find a way. When they do, the sons of Múspellsheimr will set fire to the cosmos. All the worlds in all the universes will die."

"Then stop it," he said. "Can you not block the ways?"

"Loki," said Yggdrasill, "I will die first," and in the light thrown up by the devouring flames, she was strewn with ash.

He was brittle with fire. His mouth was dry, his hands, his lips, his eyes.

"Then what hope is there for any of us?"

Yggdrasill smiled. "What did your mother tell you?"

Frigg, laying her hand on his, had said, "There is always hope."

He gestured helplessly to the gutted remains of Jötunheimr. "But what can be done to stop this? To stop any of this? If the course is already set and even you cannot change it, then what hope does anyone else have?"

"There are more ways than one," said Yggdrasill. "Sif comes. You know the way. In time."

"No more riddles," he snapped. Smoke blew through his hair; it caught in his teeth. "Tell me directly."

"Together," said Yggdrasill, and in her, he saw Frigg. "There is always hope. You must remember that. There is always another way."

He stared at her. The thought was absurd. He started to laugh and choked on it.

"So I am to save the universe," he said. "Is that what you mean? I am your chosen hero. Loki World-killer."

The laugh strangled him. He covered his mouth and hid his face in the fire again. His hair stirred, thrown in disarray by the thickening smoke.

"Not precisely," said Yggdrasill. "You are one champion. The other is Sif."

Sif.

Yggdrasill touched his shoulder. He bowed his head. The smoke had got in his eyes.

"Without you, she will not know the way," said Yggdrasill. "Without her, you cannot bring peace. But the two of you together. Perhaps there is hope."

He stared into the flames, into the crumbling heart of Jötunheimr. His eyes stung, wet.

"But will she come?" he asked of the fire.

"You know if she will," said Yggdrasill.

"I'm afraid I've lost faith," he said.

"Not in everything," said Yggdrasill, "or you would not dream."

He lifted his head from the fire. His skin was too hot, burned. He felt melted and bruised and pulled apart, all over again. Who would come for Loki?

"She comes," said Loki.

"She comes," Yggdrasill agreed.

v: hvergelmir.

What was it her mother had said to her? "In the roots of the tree, three witches spin." They'd been there always, Urðr had told her, but Odin had set them there. A self-fulfilling prophecy, Sif supposed: if the sisters had to be there, then they had to be there. Destiny. What a horrid thought. If Sif sought Loki, she did so of her own volition.

She stalked on through the fogged land which stretched between Yggdrasill's roots. Mist clogged her nose. Shadows leered in places where shrubs and small, broken-looking trees grew doggedly close to Yggdrasill. How there was light enough for them to grow, she didn't know, but it was there; light fell in patches from Yggdrasill's leafy boughs.

A little pressure bit Sif's thumb, as though someone pinched the joint knuckle and led her by hand. She worried her third finger with her first; the absence of the second stuck out.

If you're to face Níðhöggr again.

To prepare for a possibility was one thing; an eventuality was another thing entirely. Skuld had sounded certain of it. Urðr had been the one to ask for her hair, and all three sisters had worked it till Skuld had handed her the mesh woven from Sif's cut hair. If the fates said a thing would come, it would come. Sif ground her teeth.

As she walked, she drew her sword from its sheath. The weight was off in her hand, the loss of a finger a fractional imbalance. A fraction could throw everything off, she knew. She swung the sword experimentally, rolling the hilt so it balanced on one finger then the next. The hilt struck high on her third finger and fell away from her hand; she plucked the blade out of the air.

Again. Again, until she got it right. She swung the sword twice and rolled it.

She'd said to Loki that they all made their own choices. If destiny existed, how could it be anything but the cumulation of choice? Loki had chosen to send the Destroyer after Thor. He had chosen to open the Bifröst to Jötunheimr. The hilt landed poorly on her little finger, but she held it. Sif had chosen to leave Asgard to look for Thor. Sif had chosen to leave again to look for Loki, knowing this second time she might not return. They had both of them, Sif and Loki alike, chosen to put their hearts aside and feign indifference where none existed.

Choices. She had chosen as a girl to ignore her father as he shouted at her of her own good. Her mother had chosen to help her. The princes had chosen to accept her as friend. The queen had chosen to extend patronage to Sif. She had chosen to train in war, to fight, to learn and understand the science of the sword, the glaive, the lance, the shield. Perhaps in the end, Sif had chosen to love Loki. Perhaps it was only that she'd chosen to allow herself to love him. There was always a choice.

But.

She practiced striking, lunging out on one foot and then spinning with her sword held diagonal before her chest, whipping it out as she stopped on her heel. The balance was still off, just a bit. She stepped again, cutting through the fog as she advanced.

But.

The choices of others affected her choices. Was that destiny? If Odin had told Loki truly of his birth when he was young, would he still have tried to kill Jötunheimr? If, when they were in the sunburnt lands and the sun was hot in Sif's throat, Loki had looked at her with the sand in her hair and the burn on her face and said, "I love you and I want to kiss your throat," would Sif have dashed the water from his hands and kissed him? Would she have laughed, too frightened of the hugeness of her own heart, and acted as if it were a joke? If her father had said, "Whatever you wish, I will support," instead of, "No, no, I refuse this, and you will put that down," would she have spurned the queen's offer? Would the queen have offered?

And the question welled up in the part of her mind which dreamed of fire and smoke: if she had spoken to Loki through the Destroyer, would he have called it off?

We are all responsible for ourselves, she thought viciously as she sliced through the fog. It remained, that Loki had done what he had done. It remained, that Sif had done what she had done. Whether the future was a question or a statement, the past was bound; it could not be changed.

She twirled her sword and rested the tip on her shoulder. The tugging on her thumb dragged her left around the tapering end of a root. The anger bled out of her, viscous liquid from a wound.

The past had not changed. Her understanding of it had changed. It remained, same as before, and the consequences, too, remained, but what had been simple before was no longer.

Had it ever been simple? She had thought it so only because she had known so little. Matters had been simple between her and Loki when they were children only so long as she hadn't known how to qualify or quantify her feelings for him. Ignorance made it seem simple when it had never been so.

The trees growing in the shade and strange sunlight of Yggdrasill thickened. The fog cleared some then closed about her again. Sif balanced her sword in her palm. The knuckle where her second finger had gone chafed, the skin rubbed raw. Absently, she listened for sound, but there was no sound in the fog but for her footsteps, which were soft, and her breathing, which was steady.

Self-awareness was a heavy thing. Sif knew who she was but she thought- She presumed- She suspected she had known so well that she had never questioned anything, not in the way she should have questioned it.

She ran her free hand over her hair. The shortness of it, the rasp of the ends on her palm, startled her. She'd never worn her hair so short, not even as a child. Her father had forbidden it, then it had been a sort of taunt to her father and those like him who would say what was and was not appropriate for a maiden and a challenge to those who would fight her, a means of saying "look how good I am, that I don't care if you can grab my hair."

She dropped her hand. The trees, crowding each other, had formed a thicket. Sif pushed through it, mindful of thorns and springy branches. A mist roiled over her feet. A slender branch, brushed too quickly, whipped back at her; the mesh repelled it. Sif felt only a tap. Would that the armor covered her shins, too.

Shoving out the other end of the thicket, she came to a stop at the lip of a great, bubbling spring. The water popped. An iridescent bubble peeled off it and rose higher, higher, then splattered coolly on her finger when she touched it. She crouched and held her hand over the water, testing the air. It was cold. Her reflection wobbled over the surface. Tiny glimmering fish darted through the pool; she wondered that they could. Laying her sword across her knees, she dipped her fingers into the water. A powerful shiver ran up her arm. She shook drops from her hand and, lifting her sword again, stood. How did it boil?

Her thumb pulled, urging her to cross. The spring was wide, laid over with that same near omnipresent fog. She could make out a smudge where the other shore must be, but that was only a suggestion. Just as easily it could be an island or a root which had gone to rest in the mud. The water wasn't too deep, rising halfway to her shin at the shore. If it deepened, she would have to swim. Sif weighed her sword and her choices.

Verðandi, in memory, spoke: "Once you have started, you cannot stop. Do not turn back. Do not go astray."

Sif sheathed the sword and stepped into the water. If Thor had punched her in her shins, once each, she thought that might have done it. The shock ran up into her knees. She'd swum in the cold springs of Asgard, but even in winter they couldn't compare to the force of this cold, the bone-freezing strength of it. Sif took another step and another. The water rose a half inch, lapping higher on her shins, and it began to pour into her boots. Her toes numbed.

A light current rolling along the bed of the spring dragged at her. The water was going somewhere, pulled down into the earth. Sif forced her feet on. Her teeth shook; she clenched her jaw. The pressure on her thumb remained. Once you have started. All the stars, she hoped that was the far shore before her.

Deep in the fog, which bank hid all but the faintest implication of Yggdrasill, a grinding started like stones rolled together in a hand.

"Here you've come again," said the wyrm, "when you should've run."

Sif grabbed for her sword; her fingers brushed the hilt. Then Níðhöggr spilled out of the fog, which scattered in his wake, and the spring burst about her. She staggered and tumbled, rocked back. Water filled her nose and dragged her over the stony bed. Sif scrambled for a grip, rolled over onto her front, and leveraged out of the water. Her face stung with cold; her fingers trembled with it.

Níðhöggr loomed, titanic and terrible, before her. The fog gathered slowly again at his back. In the clear places she saw: knots torn out of Yggdrasill, the roots ravaged and bloodied, oozing sap from deep, rending cracks.

Then he stepped forward, and the water surged again, rising nearer to her knees. Sif whipped her sword from its sheath. Her fingers hooked about the hilt. She reached back for her shield.

The wyrm's eyes spun and spun, like insects in a jar. "Oh, please," he rumbled, "as if such a tender maiden as you could ever hurt so innocent a beast.

"You are no innocent," she said, though her jaw ached, "and I am no maiden."

"Semantics," said Níðhöggr. "Nevertheless. You cannot hurt me. Your sword is useless on my hide. Have you forgot already?"

And he darted for her. Sif took a step back and threw her shield up. His teeth hooked over the shield, snaggled shark's teeth reaching for her face. Bearing the shield with her arm and fighting to hold her ground, Sif flapped her hand at her throat. She caught the mesh hood and dragged it over her head. A tooth slammed into her head and rebounded.

Níðhöggr withdrew. His long, serpentine neck coiled.

"What's this?" he murmured. He gleamed, red as blood, water dripping from his scales. "Has the turtle found her shell? Wherever did you find such a thing?"

Sif put her weight forward on her toes and launched beneath his snout. She brought her sword up, scouring it across the underside of his throat, a place where wyrms were often poorly guarded. The edge skittered off scales. Fuck, she thought.

Casually, Níðhöggr hooked a claw around her leg and flicked her across the water. Sif landed hard in the shallows of what had been the far shore after all. Her ankle twinged. Níðhöggr sauntered toward her, thick ripples wandering out from his muscled legs. Sif gathered her weight and rose again, and though her ankle protested, it held. A sprain. Her sword lay glittering in the water by her foot.

"You may as well surrender now," said Níðhöggr as she scooped her blade up. "I'm going to eat you sooner or later, and it would save us both on time if you just gave it up."

"I will never surrender," she declared, "not to anyone or anything."

His tongue flickered out. Níðhöggr cocked his head, a fluid gesture which twisted his neck.

"Ahhhh," he said. "You're Loki's champion. You would bring the World-killer out of the dreaming muck, and slay me!"

"You are nothing alike," she snapped. "Loki is-"

"A serpent in the house of Odin," whispered Níðhöggr. His eyes glowed, huge as lanterns. "A snake slithering in your throat. Bespelled by the wicked Loki."

She could not think but for Loki, Loki with his dark hair, his careful eyes, glowing, spinning, yellow as the sun. The sun, she thought. Hot breath blew across her face. Her hair, clipped short, fluttered against her brow, and Sif brought her shield up against Níðhöggr's snout.

He pulled back. "Oh, that should've worked. You're more clear-headed than the last few I've ate."

"I won't fall for your deceits," she said clearly, though her tongue was slow with cold.

"What deceit is there in it?" he wondered. "Loki would have swallowed Jötunheimr. I would swallow Yggdrasill. We are of a kind, he and I, both of us wyrms twisting in the roots. He would tear down one house. I would tear them all down."

"Loki," she said, and his name swelled in her throat, "is no monster. He is not a demon or a beast; he is Loki."

"And I am Níðhöggr," said the wyrm impatiently. "Name a thing what you would. That does not change its nature."

"And what is your nature?" she demanded. "To lie?"

"What is Loki's nature if not the same?" he murmured, then Níðhöggr snapped at her again.

She fell into a roll and emerged, gasping, from the water. Her hood slid; she dragged it up again. Her fingers had loosened about the hilt, weak with cold, and she tightened them again till the bones hurt with it.

"Quick," Níðhöggr laughed. "I would have your answer before I snatch you up."

Her chest struggled against the chill. Even under the protective mesh she was wet, and she shivered throughout. She held her shield between herself and Níðhöggr as he paced about her.

"Loki lies," she said, "and he tricks and he play games, but he has never been false."

"Yet you say he lies. How is that not false?"

"You would make a simple thing of something which is not," she countered. "He lies, and he says things to wound, but he is brave, too. And he is true." Her brow knitted. "Even his lies are true, when you understand him."

"How very clear," drawled the wyrm. "And what else? What else is there?"

Sif rolled her thumb over the hilt of her sword. The weight of the blade was off, only a hair. She wished she'd her finger; then she thought of Loki, lost, and she said, "And I love him."

"Abide my wretching," said Níðhöggr.

He circled her, always circled, waiting for her to weaken, for her hood to fall again, for the cold to get her. Why he didn't just push her down and swallow her whole-unless, of course, his mouth wasn't so wide. She kept her shield up and mirrored him, circling so she always faced him. Those eyes spun and spun, buzzing in the sockets. She focused instead on the end of his nose.

Couldn't get through his scales. She'd cut him before-how? Jammed her sword up his nose. Blood pouring out his snout, burning a divot in the earth as he blew it from his nostril. Inside, under his scales: that's what she had to get to, the places where he hadn't anything to stop her sword.

Oh, easy, she thought fiercely at herself. I'll just ask him to open wide. Then she thought: oh, no. That is stupid.

"So," said Níðhöggr at last, "what are you thinking? Shall we dance until night falls and your legs give out?"

"We could do that," said Sif. "Or."

His neck unfurled slightly. His teeth showed.

"Or?"

"I bet you can't take me whole," she said. She smiled, teeth bared. "You'd have to do two bites, wouldn't you? That's what's got you so furious."

"'Furious' is such an overstatement," said Níðhöggr, but she'd got his attention.

Sif threw her shield aside. She strode for him, her arms at her side, and said, mocking, "Come on, then. Give it a try. Unless you think you can't manage it."

He'd gone terribly still, all but for his eyes. The muscles in his throat tensed. Fire organ, low and in the front. That was what bulged.

"If you insist," he hissed, then his jaw unhinged and he barreled for her.

Sif held her eyes open and her arms down though everything in her said: fight, fight, run-

The world darkened. The upper and lower halves of his jaw drove into the spring on either side of her. Water rushed up her knees. That long, snake's tongue shifted, undulating to wrap about her. Sif grabbed at it with her left hand and slammed her boots into the strip of muscle. His teeth snapped shut. Darkness engulfed her, and Sif began urgently to climb.

The tongue rolled under her foot, propelling her toward his throat. The incline started to level. Sif jabbed a leg out, catching it on the roof of his mouth. She moved quickly, awkwardly, shifting so she slid feet first into the contracting ring of muscle. It clamped about her knees. The mesh had rucked up on the left side, and her left knee popped; she hoped desperately it was only a dislocation. Then the rest of her passed through into the throat, and her sword was pushed hard against her chest.

Her left knee pulsed hot with pain, but she drove both her legs in opposite directions and caught on the ridges. A putrescent smell washed over her, and beneath that was the dizzying fragrance of some gas: the fluid which the wyrm must strike for fire. The organ that held it was below, but she did not know in which way, for it was dark and as Níðhöggr turned her understanding of the directions turned.

She pushed her thumb into the sword hilt, but she could not make out the guiding pressure. If Níðhöggr, bearing her, walked back- Had she lost it? Fear flooded her. Sif shoved her left foot harder into the side of his throat, and the explosive agony that tore up her side cleared her mind. Her stomach flipped. There was something she was forgetting. She felt it nibbling at her under the pain and the sickness churning in her belly.

What had Verðandi said to her? A charm in her left hand. She'd used Loki's charm up, but that, she remembered suddenly, had been her right hand. Her left hand.

"Take my blessing with you," the queen had said, "that you shall find your way even in the darkest of places," and her wrist had beat with warmth under Frigg's steady hand.

"Oh," Sif gasped. The stink choked her. She coughed and in the coughing snapped, "Be light, damn you."

A flickering in her eye, so soft perhaps she imagined it; then her left hand burst with light. The inside of Níðhöggr's throat was a lurid pink, like tenderized flesh, and nearly delicate bones lined it. A thing like a bladder fluttered some thirty, thirty-two feet beneath her, to the left which she had thought up. The organ.

She began to slide down to it. Her leg throbbed and threatened to give. Under her left hand, Níðhöggr's flesh was warm and warming, and it was slick as with blood. The organ began to inflate, thickening: he meant to cook her in his throat.

Sif slid faster, her feet ghosting over each pair of ribs. Her left knee popped again and she bit back a snarl, for the leg spasmed and pulled away from the side. She drove her foot out again. The pain rolled over her in waves now.

The angle began to change: he was lowering his head. She'd another twenty feet to go.

"Fuck it," she snapped, and she dragged her legs back in and slid the rest of the way down. Her sword jolted in her grasp; she clutched it tightly. The organ swelled, enlarging both truly and in her reckoning as she neared it. His throat was slick, hot and wet as she raced faster down it.

Left leg already wrecked, she thought, and she threw it out to brake. If the joint hadn't broken before, it did so now; she felt the snap in her hip. Sif slammed to the right, and her shoulder smashed into a line of bone. The organ was nearly full now; it blocked the passage to his belly. In a moment, he would let the gas out up his throat in a controlled stream.

Sif leaned hard into the right side of his throat and tucked her legs up to her chest. With his throat turning down, it was easier to maneuver so her head was closest to the organ. Arranged, she jerked the mesh down over her legs, her feet. She hoped it was enough.

A soft hissing started, and Sif thought of how very badly she intended to shake Loki and then to kiss him, and she cleaved the organ with her blade.

The gas erupted. A shining fluid vomited out of the torn organ, then everything but Sif was fire, and it enveloped her entirely. She'd a sensation of intense, consuming heat and of violent motion, then the fire punched her through Níðhöggr's teeth and she fell freely into the cold spring. Her left leg bounced and Sif screamed, but she could not hear it for Níðhöggr's awful shrieking or the sudden and wild snapping of fat and bones in a wildfire.

Sif raised her face. Heat washed over her skin. She stared up at the wyrm, which was a silhouette, a skeleton limned in a colossal and undying blaze. Níðhöggr, burning, was consumed from within. He staggered and collapsed, clawing at his throat, into the heart of the spring. The wave threw Sif against the shore. The fog burned away, and steam began to rise in white, hot plumes where Níðhöggr died.

Her leg numbed. The cold of the water was not so bad now. Sword, she thought abruptly. She had to cut off its head, take it, take it to- She splashed about in the shallows, but of course she'd lost her sword.

Níðhöggr wailed, then the underside of his twisting throat burst like a blister. Blood gushed in waves through the flames, which burned only hotter for it. The steam thickened. If that didn't kill the damned thing, she thought, her sword surely couldn't.

Sif made to rise. Her knee buckled beneath her, and she landed in the shallows again. Her thumb pulled at her, the charm dragging and dragging. She felt it now, clear as a song in her ear. Loki, calling to her.

"Hold," she snarled at her leg, "hold."

Three more tries then she got her balance on the shore. Her left leg dragged, heavy. If she'd her sword-but that was lost to Níðhöggr, who guttered, dead, in the waters. Sif looked over her shoulder. Smoke and steam rose entwined from the burnt-out corpse. His tail looped in the waters until it vanished. If she could have but brought his head to Thor, she thought wistfully, how he would have roared at the size of such a beast.

The pulse beat and beat in her thumb.

"I know," Sif said. "I know. I'm going."

Dragging her leg, dripping as she went, she walked on, on through the clearing fog, on through the brush and the wyrm-bitten roots, on to Loki where he dreamed, alone.

7. | Masterpost | 9.