The Valkyrie & The Viking

Chapter 6: Finna the Battle-Axe

Chapter 6

That morning she discovered that sunlight did manage to cut through the thick atmosphere of the strange new world, but just barely enough for her to see clearly in the short distance.

            Svipul stood up and brushed herself off as she took in her surroundings. “Wow,” she whispered, not wanting to wake the still-sleeping Viking, “this place really is beautiful.”

And it was. The land was covered with tall spires swirling up into the sky in fantastic shapes and forms she had never seen before. She approached one and looked at it more closely; when she wiped the dust off of the surface she could make out the faded remains of old carvings that had somehow withstood throughout the millennia to lend their beauty to the otherwise desolate landscape. Between images of ferocious creatures long extinct and scenes of happy celebrations were stretches of ancient text whirling throughout the rock. She tried to make out the words, but they were far too worn down to be legible. She doubted that she would have been able to read it anyway—the language was far before her time and in Dwarfish, a tongue whose sounds she had never managed to replicate with any good amount of success.

            She admired the pillar for one more moment before she moved her eyes away and looked at the rest of Nidavellir.

            For the first time, she noticed that there was something strange about the wind: it was blowing downwards toward the surface rather than beside it. The air was clear and smelled of the morning dew, but the ground at her feet was covered in a layer of something that looked like fog but felt drier, as if it was a pile of dust stirred from its slumber. The sky was covered with thin gray clouds obscuring the black sky behind it. The sun was a bright light out of place amid the rest of the darkness up above.

            She heard Domstoll stir behind her and moments later he was awake and taking in the view just as she had. “This place looks very different during the day,” he said.

            “Yes.” Now that she was no longer alone she remembered the reason they were there in the first place. She swept her eyes across the horizon, but there was no water in sight. Her stomach became queasy at the thought that there might not be the smallest trace of water for miles…or maybe there wasn’t any at all.

            Domstoll seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. “This land seems barren.”

            “I know, but we should still try.” Suddenly she was struck with a different idea. “Water was running from the roof of the cave down the walls, right?”

            “I think so.”

            “Then maybe we should try digging underground instead of going onward. We may not come upon ground-level water for many miles, so maybe instead we should search below ground.”

            “So we should dig a well?”

            “Basically, yes.”

            “That might take longer than simply searching for surface-level water.”

“Not if there isn’t any to be found on the surface.”

He sighed. “Alright, if you say we should. What tools do we have for this?”

            “Um…” She looked around, but couldn’t spot anything that would be useful for digging. But then she noticed a weapon dangling from Domstoll’s waist that she hadn’t noticed before. She pointed to it. “We can use that.”

            He looked down and frowned. “What, the axe? This is a battle-axe, it’s not made for manual labor.”

            “Killing people is manual labor enough, don’t you think?”