Chapter 32
Drak
Atorment unlike anything I’d ever experienced tore through my muscles, head, and heart. I could only compare it with the gnawing ache of watching Myrah crawl toward me across a battlefield of our friends, slain for the gods. But that was a lifetime ago.
And once again, I slipped away from the grasp of the woman I loved.
The grief and desperation clawing at Lux’s voice weighed heavy on my bones, and something wet dripped down my neck. Each drop soothed the exposed skin where Sunna’s rays slowly turned my flesh raw and red, and steaming.
“Rune, come back to me,” Lux pleaded.
Rune? Rune. What made her use my former name?
I refused to let myself believe she remembered. If the ruins of Old Skaldir didn’t convince her, and if the details of the memories I’d shared with her didn’t help her remember…nothing would.
Despite the burn of the golden spear and the sharp ache of it piercing my flesh, this anguish was minimal compared to the pain in her voice. The pain of this separation.
I tried to flex my fingers and lift my arm—to reach for her—but my hand wouldn’t move. Consciousness disembodied, and I became lost and unaware of my limbs. The only thing keeping me from darkness was the sting of the spear perpetually searing through me.
Peeling my eyelids back, I tried to meet Lux’s gaze. I opened my mouth, desperate to ask her what had changed, but she faded from view, her face distorting, becoming vague and distant with the sound of her breath.
“Lux?” I said into the empty space that replaced the feel of her presence beside me.
The weight of the spear and the grip at my chest faded, and I let my eyes drift closed as relief washed over me. All the pain in my body melted away, and I glimpsed my time in Valhalla.
Then, the full nightmarish memory of waking in Odin’s realm without my wife came rushing back.
Rune
Valhalla
I reached for the spot between my shoulder and chest where the enemy had lodged the axe. The last thing I remembered was being pinned to the ground by the enemy’s weapon. Now I woke in a bed, my body completely free of pain.
How was this possible, and where was my wife?
Wooden beams made from some strange combination of Blackthorn and Yew formed the longhouse surrounding me.
Small, scattered flames drifted through the room, unattached to any wax and not burning from a candle.
Though minuscule, they were fiercely bright, enough to pierce the darkness.
Something about them was ethereal, unexplainable.
A woven blanket separated me from the voices echoing in the beyond, but none sounded like her.
“Where are you?” I whispered as I planted my feet on the floor. I couldn’t feel the cold wood against my bare skin, nor the ridges of it against my heels.
Raucous laughter burst from the other side of the tapestry. I stood, marveling at the effortless motion of my body, and soon I was at the edge of a table that stretched infinitely, dissolving into the ether.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of men and women gathered around the yew table, shouting, drinking, arguing, and slapping each other on the back.
All manner of warriors feasted on leg of lamb dripping with decadent juices.
Crisp chunks of bread steamed from plates placed along the center of the table.
Countless horns, ceramic cups, and small wooden bowls held foamy ale and mead that was potent enough to fill my nose with the scent of sharp rye and honey.
The smell reminded me of a simpler time, as if I was home working the farm Myrah and I built at the base of Freya’s feet.
A bolt of lightning shot through my heart.
I lifted my hand so slowly it still felt detached, but when I palmed my chest, my awareness of my body solidified. The rhythmic pump of a beating heart thumped beneath my hand.
Dizzy, I leaned forward and lifted a ceramic cup from the table. The mead inside teetered at the brim but didn’t spill. I brought the edge to my lips, feeling the cool, smooth surface of the ceramic against my mouth, as warm mead spilled down my throat and heated the center of my chest.
When I emptied the cup, I set it down and saw that the mead still reached the rim, pooling to the very edge as if I had never drunk from it. The cup was brimming, just like the legendary horn from the saga that recounted Thor’s drinking challenge in The Tale of Utgarda-Loki.
Blinking, I took in the longhouse's vastness—the impossible blending of two types of wood into one, the endless stretch of the table disappearing into shadow, and the weapons: axes, swords, arrows, lances, and spears, held in the hands of men and women or strapped to their clothing.
The ethereal glow of floating flames shone against their healthy, radiant skin.
Despite the loud arguments and the clash of blades, the warriors fought with gritty smiles etched across their faces, and none of their strikes ever landed.
Blades and axes came close, whistling past an opponent’s head, but never struck.
In Valhalla, they trained to stay sharp for Ragnarok while never harming one another.
When the warriors decided a fight was over, they returned to the table, downing ale and tearing into the flesh of roasted boar, spiced and cooked to tender perfection.
I fixed my gaze on the far end of the table, and everything I had taken in since opening my eyes seemed to pass in a single, fleeting breath. Two beats of my heart at most.
I couldn’t see Odin, but I sensed his presence.
This was Valhalla.
I did not hold a weapon like the other warriors around me.
My sword remained strapped to my back, heavy and familiar, just as it had been before the Battle of Sundered Sky.
Its presence anchored me with the reminder of fighting alongside my shield-maiden.
My muscles tensed, and my pulse fluttered painfully beneath my skin.
This was the end, and Valhalla had become my final resting place.
“Myrah,” I whispered. Nobody around me noticed or cared that I spoke to the open air. The clink of weapons drowned my voice anyway. “Myrah!” I shouted this time.
I drifted through the battles and the throng of drinkers, ignoring the tempting aroma of sizzling, mouth-watering meat.
Shoving past still more warriors, I found my reflection in a bright mirror staring back at me.
My hair was long and woven into a thick tail that reached down my back.
The sides were shaved short, and my clothing reflected a time long past.
I tore my eyes away from the mirror and pushed through the endless onslaught of bodies, people, warriors clad in leather and gripping the hilt of their swords.
“Myrah!” My voice seemed to suck away as soon as I gave breath to it. Tears pricked my eyes because I already knew it didn’t matter how far I ran or how loud I screamed; she’d never answer.
Myrah wasn’t in Valhalla. She was either still alive, or she had gone to the place her vision had foretold.
While I had been chosen for Valhalla, Freya claimed Myrah’s afterlife for Folkvangr.
But we refused to be separated, so seeking to bargain with the gods, Myrah made her offering not at a temple altar, but at the very roots of Yggdrasil.
Together, we’d ventured to the center of the nine realms, the peak of Vylheim, and she’d called upon Freya, petitioning for Freya to choose me too. Or to release her.
When her pleading was not answered, Myrah wept, but tears did not fall from her eyes. Blood did. Blood, the same shade that later spilled from the eyes of Freya’s statue.
I knew all of this not as a memory, but as a perpetual awareness that existed both in the present and the past. In Valhalla, I knew all that I’d experienced without having to recall it in pieces. Knowledge was all at once, forever, and disembodied, like a part of my mind existing outside of me.
Awareness struck me with agonizing clarity.
Myrah had sacrificed her heart to Freya so that we could be together.
But Freya did not change the vision; all she did was cry tears of blood while speaking over us with one horrible promise—“If Myrah tries to leave Folkvangr, her rebirth will be cursed. Her blood, my tears. This is my reminder that her fate is with me.”
I was in Valhalla, and Myrah was bound to Folkvangr. But that was in death. She’d survived the battle. She was alive, and I had to find a way to her.
I had to.
I wasted no time considering whether to wait for her here. Leaving was my destiny.
“I’m coming, Skald,” I said. “My wife.”
Gripping the hilt of the sword strapped to my back, I yanked it upward, then grabbed the blade to unsheathe the length of the enormous weapon.
Despite a lifetime of mastery, I could not direct it toward me; the weapon seemed to resist my will.
For some reason, it was impossible to slit my throat.
No matter how hard I tried, ending this existence was out of my grasp. Impossible, yet frustratingly close.
I couldn’t end my existence here on my own. Yet somehow, I knew there was a way to leave. A path existed, and I damn sure would find it.
Letting the sword fall to my side, I formed a tight grip around the hilt and pinned my gaze into the ether.
The table stretched endlessly, and though I could not see its far end, I knew Odin sat there.
The god who hung from Yggdrasil for all the universe's knowledge that one being could hold.
The god who traded his eye for this wisdom would know the process by which I could end this afterlife and return to Midgard, to Earth, again.
With the sword in my grasp, I forged ahead, driving forward through bodies and battles, ever tempted to stop and drink and eat and relish in the joy of this eternal feast. The celebration pulsed around me, swelling with victories, aromatic glory, and the near-tangible force of happiness in triumph, each essence the same and yet distinct in how the individual warrior absorbed their own success.