i was maybe one thousand years too late — fenrir

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

The lake sinks into you.

Ace stands in the wind. You feel bone snapping in your mouth.

Nicoli follows in the forest made of light.

Your balcony bird. Akira watching you.

The elm tree and the carrion birds. The wanderer in the tall grass and Hela's feathered arrow in her back.

It cradles a wave, lying at your feet.

little wolf, the water murmurs.

You feel teeth on your wrist.

The lake pulls you into a memory. It's warm. You swim in sunshine and pine needles. You're still a child, holding a leather tether in your hands, strung to the neck of a little goat from the herd the commune keeps. Hafr licks your hand and you laugh. He searches for an apple slice in your pockets. The woods are branches of light. The woods thunder with energy. Spring roars in with ferocity. The trees are ablaze with green and gold.

Autumn, the water of your memory becomes murky with the taste of iron. Incense smoke drifts across the surface. You look for Hafr in the pen, the goats licking their salt block, chewing on the hay bales. He's not there anymore.

"I liked him," You say softly. Your sister pulls you along.

You watch yourself walk away.

you were not always like this, a small voice says.

You stand waist-deep in the still water.

I was different, you admit. you were just a child back then. I was weak, you spit out. So I made myself useful. I made myself known to the Gods.

The lake hums.

what is it like to be mortal, to change?

You don't answer.

You're treading water, as black as ink. Something silver lies below the plane, glimmering like a small fish. You try to drown it. It darts out of your hands. The memory surfaces.

The winter is bitterly cold. Snowflakes land on your eyelashes. Each inhale is laboured in the chill.

The door of the Hov opens and your face is bathed in heat. The smell of salt and damp earth hits you so hard you stagger backwards, pressed against the wall. One of the seers clutches a fox by its feet. The floor is slick with blood. A ceremonial knife drips from the altar.

"Him," the one who reminds you of an owl says. Her hair is feathery. Her eyes are so dark. Your chest tightens. The memory ripples.

You're here again. The light is different, green in the depths of spring, deep in verdant bloom.

The woman with the owl face cuts your hand with Tiwaz. You feel the sting of the knife.

"Go fetch water from the river."

You're drowning. The lake shakes, making waves. It crashes over you, harsh, stinging, and goes quiet again.

is killing only hard the first time?

Your lungs are too filled to answer.

You crawl out of the water, splayed across the bank, gasping for air.

The river is red and then pink, bubbling over the stones. A magpie flies over you. The birds sing. A green leaf blows from the canopies of ash trees, landing on your chest.

You shiver, bones aching, half sobbing as you drag yourself up from the mud, pushing the body off you.

His eyes are blue. His mouth is filled with loam. Fragments of skin and skull stick to the stone in your hands, darkened with blood. Your stomach twists. Your hands are stained and shaking. You kick him off your legs.

The body floats away, carried by the current.

It's evening when you make it back to the commune, limped through the forest, dragged your own body, raw like a decaying wound, through the springtime. You taste bile and blood. You don't even feel alive.

A tremor stays in your hands when you peel back the tent flap, treading water in.

They turn towards you, robes sweeping softly, a mountain ridge of blue. It's a hard gaze. You stumble, falling towards the ground. You can barely breathe.

"You're alive," the seer says flatly.

Somewhere, Ace cries out. You turn towards the sound.

The lake laughs as it leaves.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

"It begins with a death.

Sigurd rose from Fáfnir's body, slit out from his chest. He took two trophies. One of gold, one of flesh. When the blood of the dragon touched his tongue, he learned the language of the birds.

For him, they sang of the valkyrie Brunhild.

Brunhild had burned for centuries, condemned by the Gods for her disobedience. She was to decide between two kings, Hjalmgunnar and Agnar, but defied the gods and chose Agnar. She was given one grace as a mortal. A person who knew no fear could cross the fire and awaken her.

He was destined to know her.

He saw her there, the place where the trees fell to smoke and sky. Her armour was grown into her skin. Time passed differently at her house of flame, like a landscape, aging so much slower than the lives of men.

Sigurd, brave of heart, crossed the inferno and cut through the chain mail of her armour. The metal shell split open for him. She awoke. She had eyes the blue of battle blades. He was very taken by her beauty.

And Brunhild – she was mortal now. She was beginning to learn mortal things, how she felt when she touched his hand. How she felt when she heard him speak.

They spent three days and nights together. They told each other of their secrets. Their stories.

Sigurd heard the birds sing again on the fourth day, calling him towards the court of King Giuki. He was fated to leave.

So he swore himself to Brunhild, and she to him. He gave her Andvaranaut before he left, the ring he'd taken from Fáfnir's hoard, and promised to return to wed her.

Fáfnir had warned him, with blood seeping from his teeth and ash in his jaws, that death followed Andvaranaut. Its possession would lead to nothingness. But Sigurd had not heeded the dragon who had once been a dwarf, driven into the wilderness and into this form by his greed for gold after taking the ring.

Sigurd arrived at the court. He spoke of his journey, and they accepted him into their kingdom.

For years, he fought wars beside the King's sons, Gunnar and Högni. They made a solemn vow, blood for blood, over the brotherhood they had forged in battle.

And Gudrun, the King's daughter, after all this time, had fallen in love with the valiant Sigurd. For him, there was only his Brunhild, in her palace of fire. He dreamed of her. He longed for her.

One day, as he rode into the woods, he heard the birds chatter in the trees once more. Branch to branch, they followed him, whispering to each other of the helmet he wore, taken from Fáfnir. They knew of its enchantments, how it would let him change his shape, as Fáfnir once had changed into a beast all those years ago.

Sigurd was happy to share his treasures with his brothers. There was just one thing he kept from them.

Queen Grimhild, the Wise-wife, was eagle-eyed and ambitious, a sorceress learned in witchcraft and runes. She knew of Gudrun's love for Sigurd. He was a warrior, he was a man unlike any other, dressed in dazzling dragon-gold. She had aspirations for her family and her kingdom. She knew of the one thing he kept in his heart.

And so Grimhild brewed a love potion. She slipped it to Sigurd. He drank and forgot his Brunhild.

He'd lost something. This he knew. He couldn't voice what it was that left him empty.

Sometime during that spring, the lovely Gudrun was singing to the swans. When Sigurd saw her, that emptiness was filled with desiring. He asked her brothers for her hand in marriage. But Gunnar, who heard often of the beautiful valkyrie burning on the mountains, asked Sigurd to help him obtain her heart in exchange for his blessing.

They rode to the place where the trees fell to smoke and sky. But Gunnar could not cross the circle of flames that roared taller than the mountain side itself.

So Sigurd, with the helmet he took from Fáfnir, transformed himself into Gunnar and crossed the fire once more to reach Brunhild.

He gazed upon those blue eyes, battle blades and skies. But Grimhild's potion made it so that he felt nothing for her.

Brunhild thought there was only one person who could walk through the flames. She tested his power with her own, striving to push him out from her palace. But they were equal in strength, and Sigurd pulled the ring she was wearing from her finger.

Brunhild did not wish to marry Gunnar. But she was fated, as by the Gods, to marry the man who could cross the fire. Sigurd, disguised as Gunnar, spent one night with her, and when he parted, Brunhild let him leave with Andvaranaut.

So Gunnar married Brunhild, and Sigurd married Gudrun.

One day, the women quarreled on the riverbed. Brunhild, still wounded, treated Gudrun with bitterness.

Gudrun had splashed water from her hair while bathing onto Brunhild, and very haughtily, Brunhild declared she would not have this, as her husband was a king, the bravest warrior of the land, so far above Gudrun and Sigurd.

In her anger, Gudrun let slip that it was Sigurd, disguised as Gunnar, who had actually crossed the fire. She showed her the ring Sigurd had gifted her – Andvaranaut.

Brunhild's temper was god-touched, unbridled. She had been betrayed. In her fury, she went to Gunnar. She lied, telling him how Sigurd had laid with her the night that he rode in, disguised as his battle brother.

But Gunnar could do nothing about it.

A solemn vow is unbreakable.

But there was one who had not sworn brotherhood, blood for blood, with Sigurd.

Guttorm was their half-brother. Of course, he would not slay Sigurd, but he was of a much softer temperament than his brothers. Brunhild used this to her advantage. She made a dish of serpent's venom and wolf's flesh. When Guttorm ate it, he became mad with fury.

So in the night, Guttorm crept into Sigurd's chambers and stabbed him to death.

And Brunhild, upon Sigurd's pyre, killed herself and burned with the flames."

You watch the candle light dance in the dark. The fire reflects on the still lake.

Ace looks up at you. You look at the bandages wrapped around their ear. As useless as you had thought Nicoli was, you admit there is some merit to his existence.

"You need to be more careful." The words come after a long pause. Your throat feels raw from speaking, from the taste of smoke and iron.

They shrug you off.

"What is the point of the story?" Ace asks instead.

You think for a bit, quiet for almost a full minute, face turned towards the circle of candles. The smell of sweet fruits and wet earth slowly die to ember. The fire feels warm. You close your eyes.

"Do not take cursed rings," You finally say.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

"I lied," You say.

You found a tree with its bark stripped after a storm, sap boiled, split in half violently, and Hela had pointed out the ragged line in the sky the night before, fine and delicate and brutal as it struck.

It's like that. It's a pure bright light bleaching your vision for a second. It's dark on your left. It's warm and wet and sliding down your cheek. It feels like your skull is being cracked open and spilling out.

You want to laugh. You do, mirthlessly, lungs shuddering with the effort.

You touch your chest, fingers knotted numbly into the puncture wounds. Ace turns towards the boy from Ten – you grab their arm instinctively.

"The story. There's more."

Hela had always been very pragmatic about death. All things die, she would say in her light, lilting tone, none can hide. Your sister could arrange her feelings like a tapestry, tucked into neat lines of thread.

And you –

Your voice is even. But you have your hand clutched against your chest. Blood churns out from between your fingers, your mouth, your eye. You grip onto life harder.

The winters and the roosters and the death of the Gods. Brunhild and Sigurd. A thousand strands of blood unspooled from the loom of a fox. Fate weaves. Fate is inevitable.

You're dying. It's pointless.

You're kneeling on the ground. The sound of your own breath seems impossible, how it keeps coming, how your heart beats furiously against you to stay alive. A blood clot rises into your throat. You cough it up, heaving, nails dug into your chest to hold the wound together for just a little longer.

So you hold their arm. So you find their hand. Reckless, stupid Ace who has never known to fear you. You've killed more people than you care to recall. You spent your nights chasing those who ran from Hela's arrow, hunted them down, dragged your knife across their bodies until they were split open for the flies and rotten in the morning. They should've been afraid of you. They should've known.

You think of the night on the roof, how you had promised to be the one who would kill them, more tenderly than you knew you could be. You wanted them to fear you. You clung on to how they didn't.

Nicoli's face hovers above you. He still smells of wax and sweetness and futility.

There is no prayer without sacrifice. There is nothing without bloodshed.

"Don't do anything stupid." You say to Ace, choking out the words. And then more softly, "I won't be here to stop you."

You open their palm gently, painting the wayfinder with your finger, dipped in blood. The fine details are smudged by your shakiness, vegvísir blurred.

You open Nicoli's palm too, tracing Algiz, like how you watched the hunters did before entering the forest all the years of your childhood. "Don't miss."

You bind it with your own blood, now soaked through your whole chest, and you thought it might be like this, dying, ruthless and desperate. You grit your teeth, washed in shades of pain. Just a little longer.

"Protect each other. I want you to swear it."

[Cait]

“The story.”

I am wildfire. Starry eyed and hungry for revenge, blood, they’re one and the same to an intoxicated mind, drugged up on a combination of adrenaline and Capitol-grade zombie serum. Strange shadows retreat and the cave falls quiet, save for the laboured breathing that echoes through the clearing. Mine, or his, who knows, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Fenrir holds a mangled hand close to his chest as he reaches for my own, blood spilling from every wound. They’ve all reopened in the struggling; he bares his soul to me, open wide like a mosaic. The story, he holds tight to this legacy. A never-ending enigma.

“There’s more.”

A candle floats down from the sky.

Nicoli picks it up gently, like he is tending to a wounded child. He lights the flame with his leftover flint, and a sour taste pricks my mouth as last night catches up with my conscious self.

It comes to me in a flash. The candle-lit warmth is a cold, blue flame and Fenrir’s words are bittersweet in their fragmented disposition. My eyelids droop at the memory – his soft-spoken voice catches on the wind and rings loud and true on the open air. His pain had echoed through his words – as if he was somewhere else, living a different lifetime, seeing beyond the realm of the modern world.

I had felt the anguish, saw the red trail marks it left on my skin as if it was my own pain. Even now, it lingers, sits deep in my chest and labours my breathing. I wish I could do more, be stronger, shoulder the weight of the world for him. I wish I paid more attention to the meaning of the fable. I regret so much of my life.

There’s more to his story. So much more I have to learn. There always is.

“So you can’t go, then,” I blubber, hands gripping too tightly to his shirt, too soaked with blood, none of it mine and that feels so wrong, so cowardly. “You – you need to tell us how the story ends.”

I am only a child, desperate for a mother’s touch, or a bedtime story, of which neither were possible. Fenrir gave me more than I’d ever had before in a few short days of our joined existence.

It’s not meant to be like this.

“You can’t go.”

Adamant, I bite my tongue, I’m scared of what I’ll do without you here.

“You promised you’d be here. At – at the end.”

You said you’d be the one to kill me.

The laughter from that night on the balcony bubbles up, only to die in my throat before I can honour it. Impossible, I’d thought. I’m going to kill myself, one way or another, whether I want to or not.

How badly I wish I was wrong.

Fenrir holds my hand steadfastly. Traces a shape along my veins, down the broken lifeline of my palm. Grabs Nicoli’s and does the same, wasting his own final moments on hand-holding, and I want to scream at him stop! Don’t waste your strength on us! We can save you, we can do something still, don’t give up on me.

But his mind is made up. The gaping hole where his eye once sat sags with the weight of the dying day. He sinks to the ground, too far gone to repair the broken connection between body and soul. All that’s left to do is honour a final request.

“Protect each other. I want you to swear it.”

I look deep into his one good eye, listen to his laboured breaths with my one good ear. Think of how much we have in common, and how far apart our worlds are. Simultaneously realise how similar we are when my instinct kicks in and has me reaching for Nicoli’s free hand.

The promise is easy to make – will be even easier to keep – because I was ready to die for Fenrir days ago. Nicoli is as much my own blood as the rest of the Bellisario line, if not moreso.

I stare steadily into his eyes – “I swear,” – let my tears fall over my cheeks, over the death-filled air between us.

I hate this fucking place.

“I won’t leave you.” It is a prayer to Fenrir, to Nicoli – to the gods I don’t believe in. I clutch his hand as he coughs up another mouthful of blood. I wipe his lip and hold even tighter, wishing we could combine our souls – one and the same, a heart beating for two, the brother I never had.

The sun sets; the moon cries. My heart bleeds. I pray to a faceless man for a painless death – for Fenrir, for Nicoli, for myself – and for a proper ending to a story that – cruelly, unfairly – has only just begun.

“Tell me more. Please, Fenrir.”

I can’t let you go yet.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

I keep no tally, but my mind is demanding figures during the wrong moment. Exactly how many prayers has Ripred truly answered versus not? I have prayed for good health before. Fevers have been overcome and long sleeps have been awoken from but the old have never lived another day. A young cousin never walked again and how many prayed for Jenoah, Daniela, and Laurel?

This is the wrong time to have doubt. But I am witnessing a life trickle away and not for the first time. Exactly why Ripred? Why? Why? Why?

I leave the pleading to Ace, as they cling onto Fenrir. I am just simply silent, standing over both, even in this moment I cannot switch off the bodyguarding. Both are so vulnerable, the truly wicked would take their chances right now as my senses are on high alert. I can fumble through my satchel for the bandages and analgesia plants, but no consumable can patch up what Ripred has already written in permanent ink.

My only contribution is a lit candle in the dim caves, a flickering flame that can so easily be extinguished with one change in the wind.

All I can do is watch on, even my cheeks are not dry. My emotions are running for the guy that I once feared, the one I described as obscure as he took me on the peculiar journey in the forest simulator during our first encounter. They are limited memories, just a handful of days but our commonality lies in being the victims of the same fate. No matter how cruel either of us observe the world, we are both experiencing what I can now only describe as a taste of hell. I do hope Fenrir’s next journey is far from there, hopefully somewhere familiar amongst a fortress of woodlands…

Fenrir reaches out for my palm, and I bend down on my knees, placing the candle beside us. He traces a symbol in blood like he did Ace, but it looks different to theirs. ”Don’t miss.” And I nod, ”I promise.” It is all I can do now, let Fenrir leave us with promises, now bound by his own blood. There is no way these can be broken, not without Ripred marking them off as a sin. I failed to protect Fenrir but there is absolutely no way I can fail that again. But then, what about protecting myself?

All this worrying about the others but what exactly is my own fate? My own chances of surviving all of this. I guess only Ripred has a say in that.

I stand back up onto my feet, moving the candle a little closer to them both. I can’t just keep standing here, watching on hopelessly over something I have zero control over. None of this was on my list. None of this was a part of my prayers.

”I am so sorry.” I say as I finally wipe my cheeks with the palm that Fenrir did not mark. ”I will give you both a moment, I will still be in sight.” A part of me feels like I am intruding on a true relationship. They both deserve a moment without me in the shadows.

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

In the light, Nicoli clasps Ace's hand with more certainty than you've seen him possess, and the vow is made. The candle burns with it. The flame flickers in the wind. It feels like a small heart beat, a promise now alive, pulsing in the den.

Your chest convulses. Your lungs beat against your bones in painful desperation. This time, it feels like your body is shaking apart, collapsing under the monumental effort of keeping you alive. You fall, leaning against Ace, fingers still knotted with theirs.

Nicoli walks away slowly, a boy and his god, candle cupped in his hands. "You have to go."

"I won't leave you."

You choke out a laugh.

Why does this feel more significant than any iteration of death you dreamed of here? Since the day you emerged from the river, you had always known you'd die somewhere cruel. All the stories that had ended like hell, all the fire and the fighting, the sundering of bone and the beasts with a thousand rows of sharp teeth. Of all those possibilities, you had never thought someone would be holding your hand.

They touch your face and wipe at the blood. You want to laugh again at the gesture, the uselessness of it, but it gets caught in your throat. Tears fall from their chin. You raise your hand shakily, thumbing it away.

"I never promised that."

There is no such thing as a soft beginning. You are proof of it.

All things were forged from the blade of a knife. It's what's given to exist. It's the thing that all Forresters know, that death is pact you make with life at your first breath.

You think of Brunhild and Sigurd. People weren't made to be without suffering. Some people weren't made for soft endings either.

"I promised I'd keep you alive."

You don't know what you meant back then, but it becomes the truth when you say it. Eyes resting on theirs, you reach up hesitantly and tuck a strand of hair behind their ear, still bandaged and bloody. You hold your hand there. "So be careful."

They squeeze your hand tighter, crying. You cradle this tenderness.

"Tell me more. Please, Fenrir."

Your sister told you so many stories over the years.

In your memory, you think of her some time ago, face lit by a fire in the winter. The embers burned against the muted blue, the smell of pine and ash soaked into the wool of your clothes. You remember the crisp crunch of snow beneath your feet. You remember her humming a hymn underneath her breath. The trees were stark and dark blue in the distance.

"What do all stories have in common, Fenrir?"

Hela sits on the stump of a great oak and rests her chin in her folded hands. It starts to snow again at sunset. You wait for nightfall and the beginning of the hunt. You turn your face up towards the sky, the cloud patterns swirling indigo. It feels so vast.

It's just like your sister, to speak in riddles when she's bored. She always has something clever.

You know this one though, smiling at the ease of it. The snowflakes land on your cheeks and become water in the heat of the flame. You close your eyes. The world is lavender behind your eyelids. Yes, you think, I know this one.

They end.