The Vast Reaches of Helheim
Exhaustion fights her, but eventually, Euphemia claims the sleep she needs to cross into the dream realm—
Or at least, that’s where she thinks she’s going.
This time, when Euphemia awakens, it’s with cold water lapping at her waist.
Salt thick in the air.
A grey, sandy shoreline stretches in the distance.
Unfamiliar.
Bleak.
There is not a violet meadow or dark cave or formidable fortress in sight.
Unease twists inside her belly. She shouldn’t be here. She was supposed to return to Helheim. Find Ash—or Dagfinn—or whoever he is. She was supposed to finally have answers to all the mysteries that have turned her life upside down.
But this?
This is all wrong.
Euphemia’s heart pounds, panic sinking in—
A hand presses over her mouth. She recognizes the rough callouses. The slightly charred cedar scent that she’s come to find comforting over these past few days.
Euphemia turns to face him, her heart in her stomach.
She supposes it’s a good thing they’re wading in strange water because she’s not ready for whatever confrontations awaits them on shore.
Ash lifts a finger to his skull. His ocean eyes stare out at the sea, frozen in fear.
Sound floods around her. The sloshing of something moving through the water. Burbling, gurgling groans that sound muted and waterlogged. Like water is forever pooling in their throats. Clogging their lungs. Over and over again. Sobs wrenched between gasps and drowning.
Euphemia watches the Ash, awaiting his cue.
Slowly, he releases her mouth and taps the finger over her skull for emphasis. As if she needed the instruction, but she nods her understanding anyways.
Already, the waves climb higher, inching past her hip bones toward her navel.
Ash jerks his head for her to follow him, and they start to move slowly. Wading through sloshing water. Trying not to disturb whatever is beneath.
She feels it lurking.
Something drifting nearby.
Circling.
Swimming around them.
Between them.
It brushes against her leg. Something slick and vine-like. Her first thought is of the snakes in Nástrond. But surely, they can’t swim? Even if they could, this creature felt bigger. Thicker than a human body.
Whatever it is, it wants them to know it’s here.
It wants them to be afraid.
If that is the case, then Euphemia is already in its clutches. Fear grips her so fully, her hand is locked in a death-grip around Ash’s. The conversations they need to have are gone. The pain of seeing him at her father’s death evaporates.
All that hums in her skull is swim.
Survive.
Live.
Ash gives her hand a squeeze, a small reassurance considering she has no idea what they have stumbled into.
But she reminds herself that he has been here a long time—almost a year, if he is her husband.
By now, Ash has surely seen every inch of this realm.
He knows every pocket of despair and horror.
If anyone can get them through this, it’s him.
Ash leans his head toward hers, timing his voice with the cresting of a wave as he whispers against her ear, “You see it up ahead?”
Her stomach surges to her throat.
See what?
A monster?
Another creature of death?
If Euphemia makes it out of this alive, she swears she will find a way to never dream again.
Mustering a cask full of courage, Euphemia brings her gaze to where he’s indicating. But it’s no creature he stares at. It’s a building. A palace of bone and venom.
What is Nástrond doing here? she almost asks, but thinks better of it.
She nods instead.
The ocean hums in anticipation.
Another wave tangles itself between them, nearly pulling them apart.
It’s at her ribs now.
It’s rising too fast.
As the wave subsides, Ash buries his skull into her hair again. She almost thinks she hears him indulge in the scent of her for one fraction of a moment before saying, “When I say run, you—”
Laughter, echoes around them, childlike and venomous.
It encloses them like a circling shark.
Euphemia presses closer to Ash, tucking herself under the protection of one of his arms as he somehow manages to unsheathe his sword with the other. But what will that do against something they cannot see, she wants to scream.
Especially when the figure of a woman rises from the ocean, her body made entirely of the sea.
Curves of water ripple with seafoam around her hips.
Fish swim where her ribs should be, most of their scales missing, while some are made only of bones.
Seaweed dangles from her watery head like a tangled nest.
For the briefest moment, Euphemia swears the fish bear sharp, toothy grins at her.
She swears the watery woman grins too, a stream parting where her mouth should be to reveal sludge and sharpened seashells.
She giggles again, a horrid, wretched sound that feels like a dagger dragging down Euphemia’s spine.
Euphemia can no longer hold back her shock.
“What is that—” Is all she can splutter before the silhouette of water crashes atop Ash. “No!”
Euphemia screams as the wave rip him from her. The top of his skull disappears into the blue. Into darkness that should not be so dark. Not when the water is only—
Euphemia realizes now that the water has already creeped up to her chest. It grabs at her collar bone. Claws at her throat. It wants to take her too.
Ash’s head pops up from the waves with a gasp. “Get to shore! Now!”
Euphemia jumps, fearing the worst at first. She never thought she’d be relieved to see that hollowed out skull of a face. “I’m not leaving you!”
He dips back under. Then resurfaces again.
“I’ll be fine,” he insists, teeth gritted, clearly straining against…something she cannot see. Something formidable enough that it frays the edges of his voice. “I know how to handle the Wave Maidens.”
The Wave Maidens?
Euphemia doesn’t linger too long on it. It is yet another piece of the jumbled puzzle that is becoming this man, this place, and everything he knows or doesn’t know.
“Nine of them,” he continues, the jaw of his skull sinking closer to the water’s surface. His words splutter against the rocking waves. “Some harmless. Others deadly.” Another swallow leaves him coughing and spitting out the sea. He gestures below. “This maiden is one of the harmless ones.”
“Harmless? She’s trying to drown you!”
His head dips again. Comes back up. “Just a surging wave that wants to carry me to shore. You have to be careful. Don’t let the Blood-Haired one catch you.”
“Blood-haired?” her voice cracks.
The image her mind conjures is one that will haunt her every day forward. Another silhouette, but this one of blood. His.
He points near the shore, off to the side. “There. The pool of red. Don’t go near it.”
“I didn’t plan on it. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
The words leave her before she can stop them.
Before she, herself, even knows she was thinking them.
Euphemia searches for his hand under the water, but her fingers slip over something thick and slippery instead. Tightly spun cyclones of water, coiled around him like tidal ropes. She gasps and jerks her hand back. “It’s wrapped around you.”
Once the initial shock passes, Euphemia doesn’t hesitate.
She claws at the watery ropes, desperate to untangle him.
“I promise I’ll be alright,” he says, his neck straining to keep his skull above water. “I’m more worried about you. You have to make it to shore.”
This is madness.
Euphemia can’t just leave him here. He’s her—
Regardless of who he is, he’s bound by whirlpool ropes that seem intent on dragging him toward a watery grave.
“You promised, Euphemia.”
He says it so gently, so pleadingly, pressure builds in her chest. It takes her a moment to realize what he’s referring to.
Then it hits her.
The promise they made at the start of it all. That she would heed his instructions if they were ever in danger.
Euphemia’s fists clench at her sides. She can’t leave him like this. That was never meant to be part of their deal.
“I won’t be able to hold on much long,” he adds, his words gargling, the battle nearly lost. “She will rip me away and take me to shore. I will be fine. But you will be left here with the other maidens. You have to go.”
That thought stops her cold.
What other maidens are there if blood-haired is one of them?
Bone-sucking?
Tidal-drowning?
When she doesn’t move, he bellows a singular, “Go!”
And then he finally loses the battle.
Ash is ripped under the water with brutal swiftness.
Euphemia wants to cry out to him. To call out his name. To scream. But there is only hollowness in her throat.
She watches, helpless, as he is swallowed by the chaotic waves. Only a stream of shadow and bubbles to indicate where he’s going—and some small hope that he is, in fact, still breathing. Still being whipped through the ocean. Toward the shoreline. As he promised.
And Euphemia remembers she is alone. In an ocean. Haunted by water spirits or whatever they may be.
She does not intend to meet the other eight maidens.
Instead, Euphemia starts swimming—but for untrained limbs like hers, it’s more like thrashing and bobbing. She wades through waters already too deep.
Her feet kick uselessly. Her arms flail.
But as uncoordinated as it is, somehow she is moving.
The distant shoreline grows nearer.
The water slips below her chin. Her shoulders. Her ribs.
A wave sneaks up behind her and Euphemia only has a split moment to hold her breath while it takes her under.
The ocean tosses her around in its current, until she loses her bearings. Until she is dizzy and disoriented. Until the sea is just dark water and fractals of sunlight.
Euphemia follows the light.
She resurfaces with a gasp, her lungs already aching. Skirts weighing her down—unless that’s just the ocean grabbing her. The same way it grabbed Ash.
She can feel herself becoming lead.
No ocean floor beneath her.
Just sinking.
Barely able to keep her head above water.