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As Ralof and I made our way through the fortress, it was not long before I found a serviceable sword. I was very pleased and couldn't wait to try it out.
Battle was starting to lift my spirits. This, I understood. The give and take, the death blow, blood in the air. I don't know that I every really enjoyed such things, like the shield-biters seemed to, but I understood them. I was surrounded by things I could not understand, so the battle was... comforting. No doubt my opponents found it less so.
We cleared a store room. I took as much food as I could carry. Many long sea voyages and inland raids taught me that you can never have too much food. Ralof kept pointing at bottles of strange liquids, they didn't smell like mead, but I took them anyway. That seemed to make Ralof happy and we continued.
Soon we heard sounds of battle that didn't involve us, but they died out just as we came into a torture room. Two of Ralof's comrades were dead and two of the enemy were wounded, but victorious. One of them had cracking blue flames, like small lightning, all around his hand.
Magic.
Magic made my comrades vanish. Magic brought me to Alfheim. The wyrm almost killed me with magic.
I suddenly decided I HATE magic.
No more magic in that room.
I was feeling good, like I'd accomplished something worthwhile, and I grabbed myself a nice battleaxe and a shield. Sword, axe, and shield... I was feeling whole again. Then we walked into the next room. There were no enemies there, but...
Torture is one thing. A good torture can be quite amusing, especially when the blood eagle is performed. Good wholesome justice there. But... to leave a man in a hanging cage until he starves and rots to bones. Who were these people?
I wasn't in a mood to be forgiving when Ralof urged me to continue, which was unfortunate for the archers we soon encountered.
I tore through them in such a rage that I didn't notice the arrow in my wrist until it was over. Ralof made me drink some of the strange liquid after I pushed it through. I obliged him, hesitantly. My wound immediately healed!
More magic. At least, for once, it was to my benefit, but that doesn't mean I had to like it.
I was in a pretty foul mood again when we ran into the giant spiders. I think they bothered me more than the wyrm. Wyrm's are supposed to be huge and powerful... spiders are not. One of them bit me and my blood felt like it was on fire, but that only made me want to kill them more than I already did. After it was over, and I was standing in the middle of the bodies, I thought... is this what my life is going to be now? Hip deep in giant spiders? I would have cried, if vikingrs cried. We're a stoic bunch, after all.
A bit further on we ran into a sleeping bear. Ralof clearly wanted to sneak past it, and started to slink along really quietly
I wasn't in the mood.
After the bear we had no further encounters getting out of the caves. The open air felt nice, but we had to quickly take cover as the wyrm passed overhead. Once he was gone, Ralof spoke at me some more. I think he was trying to make me go away, but the way I figured it I needed to stay with him for two reasons:
First, he saved me from the wyrm and I needed to repay that debt.
Second, he seemed to know where he was going whereas all I knew was that I was supposed to go north. Ralof was going mostly north, so I'd have ended up following him anyway.
Eventually he stopped trying to wave me off, and instead pointed out a huge ruin on a mountain across a lake from us. Such a place must be the work of giants, I thought, and my heart sank further. Alfar, wyrms, giant spiders, magic... why not giants?
I trudged after Ralof until we came to some standing stones. Those caught my attention. We had standing stones back in the Isles, when I was young. Most people avoided them and said they were gateways to Alfheim. I thought to myself that gates can be passed in two directions. Maybe this was the way home to Midgard! The stones had carvings on them. The one of an axe warrior caught my attention. Surely if there were a passage home it would marked in such a way. I ran up to the stone and threw my arms around it and, to my surprise, a beam of light shot down from the sky and the stone began to glow! I stood back, preparing myself to be whisked homeward and away from this awful place...
... and I waited.
And waited.
And the glowing lines faded.
My heart sank so deep I thought I might be standing on it and I wanted to just lie down and die, but then a rage exploded out of me and I pulled my battle axe off my back and beat on the stone with all the power of my frustration and fear and hate until my arms were numb.
For all my effort, I couldn't even chip the stone and only ruined the blade of my new axe. Probably more magic involved.
I hate magic.
Ralof just watched, in obvious disapproval. He didn't understand. He couldn't understand. And I couldn't make him understand. We walked on when I caught my breath and didn't say anything. There wasn't any point. I felt so powerless.
I thought on my life as I walked. I wondered if this really was Alfheim, or if it was the Christian Hell. By their standards I'd certainly led a wicked life. I'd helped slaughter several whole villages less than a full season ago. I didn't want to think any more on that possibility. I wasn't used to thinking such things, and felt that I probably wasn't very good at it. We vikingrs aren't an introspective lot.
When a lone wolf broke me out of my self-pity by leaping from a nearby ledge, I just beat it to bloody pulp while Ralof watched...
... maybe he did understand, a little.
