In my dressing table mirror, a woman I didn’t know stared back at me. Her face was the familiar face of Fríge, but her hair was loose, un-braided, and sporting neither the jewels of a queen nor the helm of a warrior. And emblazoned on her chest sat an image of Princess Leia, with a Bowie style lightning bolt over her eye and the words ‘REBEL REBEL' written in a bold font behind her. While both the Fríge and the Darcy parts of me were familiar, the mix of them both seemed utterly foreign, even after a full day in that form, leaving a strange sense of disconnection which I hoped faded before we returned to Alnford Hall, where Fenn's preserved body still waiting for salvation.
“Are you alright, Little Warrior?” Leof asked as he finished buttoning up a brand new pair of hideously expensive jeans. He’d needed to invest in several outfits, because it turned out his godly form had several inches on his already impressive height. He hadn't been the only one to need a new wardrobe, and I was only pleased he let me choose my own garments rather than letting Sjöfn shop for me.
I suspected that, if our eldest son was to join us in Middangeard, my estimation of Thor's height may have proven overly conservative. I'd been guessing at his stature based on my own divine height, but it turned out Fríge dwarfed Darcy. No longer could anyone joke that I was a little short for a giant. I still felt minute next to the behemoth I'd married, though. In truth, I doubted there would be much between Leof and Fenn in his new... or rather very old... form.
“I'm alright,” I managed to insist with a slight heave of my shoulders. “It's just strange seeing this form in geek-wear. I've seen it in gowns and jewels, armour and cloaks, and gossamer fine nightdresses which I intend to burn the moment we take back Ésageard, but slogan t-shirts are new.”
My husband chuckled as he pulled on a tight black t-shirt over a broad chest bound in muscle and rippling abs. Gods, he was perfect, and I bit my lip as I watched him dress, mildly annoyed that he needed to don clothes at all. My obvious interest only made him laugh further, his one eye glinting with mirth.
“I never though I'd see the day when you'd question a Star Wars based fashion choice,” he admitted as he fastened his leather cuff as his wrist, then pulled me up of the stool by my dressing table and slipped his arms around my waist.
“I'm not questioning it. I'm just trying to reconcile the ancient and the modern. While trying not to fret over the reason I chose this top specifically,” I admitted.
Leof saw more truth in that response than I necessarily wanted, and his gaze dropped to the words written on my front before refocussing on my face again. “He'll remember you're his Little Rebel. He has to, and you will make him remember.”
“I wish I could lie and say I don't know what state he's in. I want to say that at no point during the restless hours before dusk did I look towards Valhalla and see what’s been done to him. I want to deny any of it ever happened; that he was ever tortured, that he can remember the lives Tiw forced him to take, that being paraded in front of mortal Tiw worshippers like a circus sideshow has taken so much from him because it is another chain, another humiliation, another moment where his existence is beyond his control. I want to say that I know, without doubt, that when I pull him back he'll recognise who I am and what I represent. But I don't know, because even now it could go either way. I could lose him completely, or I could start him on the road to recovery, but he's the one who must make the decision. His fate lies with him, and he’s somewhere dark.”
“He'll chose recovery,” Leof told me, confident, his faith unwavering.
“How do you know?” I asked, frowning.
“I know because you'll demand it of him. I know because I've been where he is. You've been where he is too.” He smiled, kissing me tenderly, “Mínu Fríge, after all that was done to you, you come back, because you had people to save. After what Tiw did to me, you made me come back, not just from death, but as a Sire too, because you demanded that I either stand or moved aside. You will demand he comes back, and it might not be straight away... goodness knows I didn't give you a chance at first... but you will guide him out of the darkness, because that's what you do, Little Warrior.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” I murmured, not feeling it.
He gave me a cheeky grin, winking his good eye. “Thankfully, I have plenty confidence for both of us. I know you, oh Fríge Wælfréo of the Wen, the First of Your Name, Gullveig the Unburnt, Queen of Ésageard, Queen of the Ésa and the Wen and the First People, Mistress of Fensalir and Sessrúmnir, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Cats.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “I don't want the Iron Throne. Nor to share Daenerys’s fate.”
“You don't want it?” he repeated, his grin widening. “A different Targaryen then. You know nothing, Fríge Snow.” Shaking his head, he added, “Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.”
I rolled my eyes, muttering, “I never should have nerdified you, Woden.”
He laughed again and kissed me, not at all repentant, then he picked up my falcon feather cloak and headed for the door, “Come on then, the sooner we do this, the sooner you can stop fretting about it.”
Frowning, I glanced at the cloak, at a loss as to why I would need to take flight, only to be distracted by a subtle buzz of recent magic that clung to it, modifying the charm I'd wound into it so many centuries before. It would still do exactly as I’d intended, aiding me when I wanted to become the falcon I'd so often flown as, but Leof had added to the charm, granting me the ability to shift into a second animal form. My throat closed around a lump of awe, and love, and gratitude, so much of it that I couldn't speak as tears welled.
Leof read my discovery from my mind, and he glanced at the cloak in his hand, “I know you are mine; that you always have been and always will be. But tonight, he might need to run beside someone who isn't one of his pack, someone who will understand and care without judgement. I can give you both that.”
Pressing my body against his, I leaned into Leof, cupping his cheeks as I pressed a demoted kiss to his lips. “I love you. Even millennia on, I love you more with each passing day. I am in awe, my husband, and I will be yours for all eternity.”
“You'd better be,” he whispered against my lips, “because I wouldn't survive without you. You are my strength, my Little Warrior.”
“You are your own strength, I just remind you about it sometimes,” I responded, then headed out, grabbing my new motorcycle jacket on the way, while Leof donned his own.
We'd already reintroduced ourselves to our cohort at breakfast, alongside or upgraded Co-Sire, Second, Consort, and sentry. Our people took the discovery of Vili, Ve, Sjöfn, and Syn's origins far better than I would’ve predicted if I hadn't been a goddess of foresight, but they had been through the routine fairly frequently in the last year, and so maybe their lack of shock was to be expected. Though I had struggled to contain a laugh when Katie revealed her true form to the masses, as Tanya slammed her tray down on the nearest table, breakfast untouched, and stalked from the room in blind fury. No one cared to stop her, or to offer her injured, jealous feelings and concern.
The general acceptance of Milbank's residents meant there were only a few double takes as Leof and I descended down to the ground floor once more, and looks of confusion were quickly swept away by recognition as our people smiled and called greetings, using whichever of our names and titles came first to their minds. We nodded and called back greetings, and I began to feel a little more at home in my own skin. I wasn't the only one settling into my form, and the sound of Vili's deep laugh and Sjöfn's musical voice made me smile, in spite of where we were going and what I was about to do.
When we reached the basement floor we called past the security office where Ve was briefing our sentries as though nothing had changed, with the same snark and uncompromising expectation as he’d displayed as Gunner, while Syn sat amongst our sentries, nodding briefly to us when we entered.
“We're heading to Alnford now,” Leof announced for Ve's benefit. “We'll let you know if we're successful and keep you update on what time we’ll be returning.”
Ve nodded, frowning slightly as he demanded, “Be careful out there. Those bikes of yours aren't as unfamiliar as they once were, and if Tiw is watching from your thrown... Well, if he didn't know you'd retrieved your bodies before, he will now.”
“I suspect he'll have guessed who emptied his dungeons by now,” I insisted, shrugging as if the possibility didn't concern me as deeply as it did. “And even if he hasn't, he'd figure it out with what we're about to attempt. Thankfully he's preoccupied with tearing apart Ésageard searching for those I freed, terrified they could join our rebellion. He might not see us coming until it's too late.”
“Coming,” Ve repeated, his grey eyes narrowing and flashing godly gold. “You're just pulling Fenrir back, correct?”
“Retrieval is my only mission,” I promised with a grin that did nothing to reassure my brother-in-law. “We'll be home soon.”
That promise made, I backed out of the security office, with Leof following, and headed for the car park and our bikes. There was a chance, once our helmets were on, that Tiw wouldn't recognise our forms anyway, even if he was watching and by some miracle hadn't guessed the truth, or at least chose not to believe the truth that he was beginning to lose control. He'd held existence in a stranglehold for too long, but not for much longer.
“You didn't tell him the full extent of your plan,” Leof appraised as he climbed astride his Triumph Sprint.
“We've already agree to this course of action,” I replied as I did the same, picking my helmet off the seat of my bike and climbing onto it. “You agreed we need to do this, and that we can pull it off. There's no need to give Ve a heart attack over it.”
My husband laughed as he bundled my falcon feather cloak into his pannier and then tugged on his helmet. When I did the same, his voice reverberated through the in-built intercom, “He'll be furious.”
“No,” I said, grinning to myself. “He'd be furious if we told him now, but when we return, he’ll be relieved by our success and survival, and he'll let our recklessness go.”
Still chuckling, Woden rolled his bike out of it's parking bay and headed for the exit ramp. I followed close behind him, pleased, at least, that there was no more Osier to create a multi-bike accident. We made our way through the gloom of a summer dusk, keeping to vampire hours through habit rather than necessity, winding our way through late evening traffic as we headed north, towards the shelter where Aethelwig remained, leading Fenn's people and watching over his body. She had stubbornly refused to entertain the idea of selecting a new Chief, based on my promise that I could recover Ábroðen, and it was time I made good on my pledge.
“You're sure this will work?” Leof asked as the miles rolled by underneath our wheels.
“I can pull him back,” I promised. “His soul is mine to command and I can choose to return him to his body, and even if Tiw has shored up his hold on him, his magic is no match for mine. I can retrieve Fenn. The problem is getting a hold on him in the first place; finding him. Souls can always find those who killed them, which makes you our best hope,” I admitted, hating that truth while also being grateful it could be so simple. “But that means sending you to where he is, and having you pull me along with you so I can get a grip on him... Entering Valhalla always poses a risk. But we are Woden and Fríge; it's all easy magic for us, we just need to make sure we don't take our physical forms. No bodies, and we can't be killed, even if Tiw or his dead find us, he can't hold us, not like that.”
“Still, if we can get to Valhalla and back without being swarmed by Tiw's armies, that would be comforting,” Leof answered. “Because currently he has control of Fenn, and Fenn has control of magic, and taking on Tiw, Fenn, Viđarr, and the forces of Ésageard is a little ambitious, even for us.”
“Don't worry, I'll make sure our own army has come together before I try to wrestle the throne from Tiw's fingers,” I swore as I turned onto Alnford Hall's long drive. “What we're doing today is purely the recovery of someone who doesn’t deserve to be left in hell.”
That was all. Truly.
Wolves looked up as our bikes roared towards the camp on the doorstep of the shelter that housed vampires, donors, and cohort day guards alike. They recognised the machines and several raised their hands in greeting before the realised something wasn’t quite right. When I parked my bike and climbed off, tugging my helmet free, several pack members pulled up short, momentarily drawing a blank. Even Thel looked lost as she wound her way through her people. Only when I let my eyes flash gold did recognition spark as her own eyes widened in surprise.
“Darcy?” Realisation dawned, and despite having known for some time the truth of who I was, she still bowed low. “Lady Fríge, you achieved the unachievable.”
“Thel, you don't need to bow to me,” I insisted as I tugged her upright. “As for my achievements... Nothing is unachievable if you go about it the right way, and that's what I'm here to prove, I hope.”
If anything, her eyes grew wider, and she glanced towards the hall, “Can you do it? Really? What are you going to trade?”
“I don't need to trade, not for him,” I promised. “It would be impossible to do alone, but thankfully, I'm not alone,” I told her as Leof came to my side. He squeezed my hand as I added, “I don't know what state he'll be in, when he comes back. It might take him a little while to adjust.”
“It doesn't matter as long as he's back,” she answered. “However long he needs, we'll give him. He deserves that much. Come, I'll show you were we moved him to when all the others were buried or cremated.”
Thel led us up the stairs to our shelter, across the entrance hall, and up the grand staircase. She made her way to one of the smaller bedrooms, where our people and hers weren't crammed into bunks, displaced persons from a war that had already dragged on too long. The room itself was cold and sterile, hastily painted white with only a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling above the pine table upon which Fenn's body had been placed, still flawless thanks to the spell I'd woven, but cold and still. My heart lurched at the sight of him, aching in my chest as my throat constricted and I coughed to hide the sob which threatened to escape in its place. Tears blurred my vision as I went towards my Ábroðen, and it took more willpower than I cared to admit to prevent them spilling.
“Do you need anything?” Thel asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she watched me.
“No. This is up to us. Keep anyone else out of here until we've done what needs to be done. We need to send our souls to Valhalla, so don't panic if we fall unconscious, it just means we're doing what needs to be done, ok?” I explained as I peeled off my jacket so the image on my shirt was unobscured.
Thel managed to chuckle as she studied my top, and then promised. “I'll keep the others out. You won't be disturbed.”
Once she'd gone to stand guard, closing the door behind her, Leof asked, “What happens if he isn't in Valhalla? If Tiw is busy displaying him to the Bloodied Hands followers or Haltwhistle's rogues...”
“He's in Valhalla,” I promised. “Like I told Ve, Tiw is tearing apart the rest of Ésageard searching for those I freed. Their disappearance is a distraction, taking him away from bolstering the allies he has on earth. He isn't dragging Fenn out for audiences at the moment, and that means Fenn has been left in the place where all of the battle-slain now reside.”
When I'd first made my nightly visits to Valhalla, in the wake of Leof's death, I hadn't understood the arena itself. It could have been another realm, outside of Middangeard, Ésageard, Helheimr, or any other realm. The truth was that Valhalla sat within Ésageard, as did Folkvangr, and the fens upon which Fensalir had been built. But unlike my halls, which had been built on meadows and fens, with a natural sky overhead, Valhalla's mead hall had been built in a cavern, under a vast mountain to the south of the capital city and the king's palace.
The cavern could easily swallow the immense void where the wyrdæ slept, and both it and the arena had been named after the hall which sat within. That reality explained why it had always been dark and starless. Once upon a time, Woden had used enchantment and imagination to replicate a sky that seemed real, to create weather, and variation, so that his warriors could train in a shifting climate, in any condition, always preparing. His skill for magic had made Valhalla an intricate artwork, painted through strokes of sorcery. Tiw hadn't maintained the illusion. I doubted he had the skill. But the reasons for the darkness and decay didn't matter; my only concern was ensuring Fenn left them behind.
“At least if Tiw is preoccupied, he might have left Fenn to his own devices for the last day...” Leof offered, but I could hear the doubt in his voice.
“You know better than that. Just because Tiw and Viđarr are busy elsewhere, that doesn't mean Tiw hasn't left his orders with the dead. Fenn is being hunted, hounded, tortured. You know that better than anyone,” I answered, dismissing his optimism, not to be cruel but because I understood our reality.
“Maybe not better than anyone,” he replied, appraising me. “You see too much. Alright, Valhalla, here I come.”
His magic coiled around him, glittering, reaching for me and taking hold of my of essence as he gave the usual command, “Bifröst.”
The bodies we'd only just reclaimed tumbled to the floor beside Fenn's table while Leof's soul dove once more through space, through dimensions, following paths, branches in the tree of existence, that we'd learned so long ago, dragging me along with him. Only as we drew closer to the arena, he focussed on Fenn specifically, on the painful, much regretted bond that had been forged in the violence of battle. He would always be able to find Fenn, because Fenn had taken his life.
I had a different bond. I would always love Ábroðen, and have an echo of his emotions, hidden just underneath Leof's, at least when we were in the same realm. Almost as soon as we entered the dark arena, I felt the undercurrent of pain and fear, unrelenting and beyond reason, coming from the man who’d done so much to hold me together when my husband couldn't do so. So often while I'd stayed in his camp, I'd felt his role and Leof's had been reversed, spun on the heads, echoing interactions I'd had with the other. I hadn't seen the warning in that observation; that I had one last role reversal to fix. I only hoped I was as successful in retrieving Ábroðen as I had been Leof. More so, ideally...
We both had our connections to the wolf whose conception came about through our word, because of the stories we wove. So much pain and begrudgingly-given understanding lay between the three of us, and I doubted any of us would ever completely sever the link. At least, I hoped that was the case. There was always the chance Fenn would be unsalvageable, unreachable... But I refused to think about the painful prong where the fork of all potential fates diverged. I would take a different path. I had to. I would make it from nothing, if I had to. Somehow.
We reformed in a quiet glade, a little way from where the sounds of battle and the snarling of a wounded animal echoed from behind a screen of trees. I moved toward the ruckus before I noticed or even thought to question that in his spirit form, Leof had still chosen his vampire appearance, not his divine one...
Later, I would debate what his choice meant, but right then it didn't matter. All the same, as fangs descended to cut into the tongue I’d given myself as I forced the incorporeal to take form, I realised I had done the same. I had chosen to appear as Darcy, not as Fríge, and certainly not as ever-pregnant Dunthryth. Darcy had become ingrained in my identity, but that wasn't important as I followed the sounds of fighting.
Conn followed me without question as I headed for the clamour of weapons ringing against weapons, and claws scraping against shields. He'd brought us so close to the commotion; as close as he dared without dropping us right into the middle of a battle. His control did him credit, especially as the echo of Fenn's pain wiped caution from my own mind.
“They'll report back to Tiw the moment they see us,” Leof observed without asking me to stop and consider the dangers of charging straight towards the enemy.
“Then we need to move fast,” I answered as I wound my way through the narrow belt of woodland that separated our glade from the fight. “Use magic, kill them all before they spot us. Tiw might still guess the ‘how’ and ‘who' of the matter, but it might buy us a few moments.”
“Alright. I'll do that. I'll take out the dead,” Leof replied, magic already flickering around his hands again. “You need your strength for what you're about to do.”
On another day, in a different place, I might have argued. But not then. Instead, I gave a sharp nod and crept toward the edge of the trees, sticking to the shadows through both necessity and habit. Some vampire instincts died hard, but in the long run, that was probably beneficial.
I knew what lay ahead of me, and even if I hadn't, I'd seen enough of Valhalla while Leof was trapped there, and during my time with Tiw, that I could have guessed how horrific the scene would be. Yet somehow the sight that met my eyes still caused the false heartbeat in my chest to stutter. The dead were as they always had been, at least under Tiw's rule. Rather than strong, healthy warriors, they remained grey skinned corpses with bony limbs and cataract covered eyes. They wielded rusted and nicked weapons that nonetheless inflicted damage, on each other and on the beast raging in the middle of them. But it was that monster in their midst that stole my breath.
Fenn was neither man nor wolf, but something in between, half transformed, like some badly made horror movie wolf-man prop. His head had elongated, lupine, with tufts of grey and black fur sprouting in a haphazard pattern, but his eyes were neither wolf yellow, nor his usual emerald. They weren't the gold of a giant-god either, but the soulless black that I'd seen so many times when visiting Conn; beyond comprehension, less than animal, feral. His lips peeled back from teeth which were part canine, and part human, all smeared in the thick black blood of his foes. He no longer retained the awareness to direct his spirits shift from man to wolf, and that realisation choked me.
His torso was mainly human, but for the tufts of fur which warred for dominance with his replica of tattooed flesh. Human arms ended in claws, but it was his legs that horrified me. One seemed mainly wolf, his foot having elongated into his leg, so that the ball of his foot became the pad of a paw. But the other leg remained fully human, and the combination hindered him, slowing him as his hips and pelvis contorted unnaturally, painfully.
Streamers of magic lashed out, just as they'd done when he attacked the brick factory shelter, but they had no focus, no control, which made them both ineffectual and dangerous all at once. Of course, magic had never been his primary weapon. That had always been his own body, but as he lashed out with his clawed hands, seeking to fell the dead who attacked him, they plunged swords into his twisted limbs, wounding, taunting, but not killing. They had played with Leof in such a way too, because Tiw demanded such cruelty from them.
Anger rose inside me, a torrent of it, hot and demanding retribution. Without thought, my fury ignited so much more, and my own magic completed the task I’d set Leof, spearing through dead chests, or tearing heads from necks, causing thick gloops of congealed blood to fall before the bodies of the dead disintegrated out of existence again. In a second, I had torn through those tormenting my Ábrođen, those who had tortured Leof, and a snarl grated in my throat, even though there was no one left to scare away or warn of oncoming violence.
“I was supposed to do that,” Leof murmured, arching a brow.
I shrugged, feeling a fleeting sense of embarrassment. “My temper isn't known for taking a back seat.”
His lips twitched but we weren't in a place for jokes, and so we refocussed on the one creature I'd left in tact. Fenn dropped to all fours, his human leg dragging behind him as he sniffed the earth, bewildered by the sudden disappearance of assailants. I suspected he'd try to flee at any moment, though how fast and how far he'd run in his current condition, I didn't know. Either way, I needed to intercept him. I needed to peel away whatever fetters Tiw had placed, and then I needed to contain him long enough to return home.
Stepping from the treeline drew his attention, and he turned towards me with a snarl, even as I raised my hands in surrender. His magic lashed out, more focussed with fewer targets to aim for, but it never made contact. I wasn't one of Tiw's dead, forced to maintain a corporeal, suffering form, and when Fenn's energy thrust forward, I let it pass harmlessly through me, just as those in my ghost army had allowed weapons to pass through them when I called upon them to fight Tiw's dead. I didn't fight him, because fighting would have given him something to rebel against, instead I moved slowly towards him, making reassuring noises as if soothing any other injured animal.
All the while, I let my own energy twist into him, seeking the place in his head where Tiw had wrestled his will from him, all based on a cosmic loophole that declared the usurper to be Lord of Valhalla. But I had given Tiw control of Ésageard; a temporary sacrifice, not a permanent abdication. And now I demanded my quota. I had claimed Fenn's soul before the valkyries took him, and Tiw had no right to keep him.
Of course, Tiw had boxed up Fenn's mind, just as he’d done with all of Folkvangr's dead. As he'd warned me at the wolf camp, he wasn't prepared to let may play the same trick twice, by taking control of the dead who should be mine. But back then I'd only been a vampire, ignorant of so much of my knowledge, and there had been whole regiments of dead warriors to unbind. That wasn't the case with Fenn. In that moment, I had only one mind to unwrap, and that proved as easy as removing Tiw's block on Conn's magic. I needed to peel away the layers, nothing more.
Once his mind lay open to me, it proved easy to find slither of foreign magic which remained, the probing needle of enchantment that could bend Fenn's will into submission because he ranked among Valhalla's troops. It seemed almost too easy to wrap my own energy around that shard and tear it from Fenn's mind, even as the part-man/part-wolf Ábroðen had become lashed out at me, he new rebellion as ineffectual as every other attack. Of course, removing his link to Tiw didn't pose the most complex problem...
Severing his connection to Loki proved more complicated; dimming the glowing beacon that allowed his biological father to find him, even the curse that bound him to Tiw faded away, took a little longer. Loki had been an accomplished spell-smith, even in the distant past, and his beacon wriggled and thrashed, squirming from my grip in a way that attempted to replicate my own enchantments but in a rougher, more violent way.
I resented that Loki had learned so much from me, back when I brought my mother’s Wen magic to Ésageard. I had avoided teaching him, as much as possible, but he'd watched me, fascinated. Sharp eyed and keen minded, he'd seen how I worked.
My beacons and blocks were balls of living yarn, tangling and re-tangling, seemingly without beginning or end, and without rhyme or reason. It wasn't the fight that made my enchantments hard to break, but their constant shifting, changing, hiding and re-hiding the ending and beginning so that even if an invading sorcerer caught a glimpse of how to unlock whatever I had done, the puzzle would change in a fraction of a second, and the ball of yarn would be remade in an entirely different way. Loki's magic reminded me more of a ball of angry electric eels, with many endings and beginnings, each strip needing removed separately, and each capable of rebellion. It was a halfway house between the simplicity of Tiw's enchantments and the complexity of mine; it still proved frustrating to undo. But even that didn't cause me the most concern.
The more complex task would come once we got Fenn home, when we tried to calm the frightened beast he'd become and help him recover. If he would allow us to help him. He might chose to turn his back on the understanding I would offer, just as Conn had tried to do... He could rant and rage, a danger to himself and others, unable to hear me.
“Shh. It's alright, Ábroðen. I'm a friend,” I murmured to him.
“We can't take him back like that,” Leof said behind me. “Lashing out with magic like that, he could kill someone or dismantle the hall.”
As much as I hated offering the only solution I had to that conundrum, I knew Leof was correct. “I know. I'll bind it. I can restore it later... if we manage to get him calmed down.”
Regret weighed heavily in my chest as I did to Fenn what I'd done to Woden so long ago, wrapping a living, writhing ball of enchantment around the spark of divinity that lay in his chest, strand by strand cutting off the flow of his own magic so that he could no longer attack with it. His body would be weapon enough.
That didn't mean I approved of my own course of action. I did it, in the absence of any alternative, but I loathed the act. I loathed that I once again had to force submission onto another, especially onto someone who had been controlled for so much of his existence.
Fenn's head jerked away from me, his ears flicking towards the sound of running feet in the south, many boots crashing through the undergrowth. A low growl rumbled in his chest as he backed up a step and turned away from the treeline where a fresh wave of the dead would soon erupt. I knew he wanted to run and that we couldn't afford for him to do so, and so I did as I'd done to Glen at the Tipi; I gave him a command and forced my will upon him, even though I'd only just freed him of Tiw's oppression.
“Be still!” I ordered, and my wolf complied instantly, no longer trying to turn away or leave, all because his soul belonged to me, as the instigator of his birth and as the Lady of the Slain. He obeyed, even as his ears flicked again towards the sound of approaching foes. A whine of terror escaped him, but he remained in place, and I despised his fresh submission as well as my part in it.
Ignoring a welling sense of self-recrimination, I wrapped my essence more securely around Fenn's, then glanced back at Conn. “We need to go. Now.”
Nodding, Conn asked, “Can you make it back with him, or do you want me to take you both?”
Shaking my head, I insisted, “You get yourself home first and I can bring Fenn. It'll be easy enough, especially if you're on the other end, acting as a beacon for me.”
Leof gave me one last appraising look, then did as I asked, commanding, “Bifröst", and disappearing into a tornado of coloured lights. The rainbow bridge truly was beautiful, the rippling of energy bursting across worlds. I wished more beauty lingered in Valhalla, as it had long ago.
Without waiting for the dead or Tiw himself to find us, I repeated the process, sending my soul across the unfathomable void, this time dragging Fenn along with me, while hoping I could find a way to mend all that his gaoler had done to him.
Please Ábroðen. Please come back to me.
