Grumbles tells him he is healed, but he wonders.
His body is, surely. All of the broken pieces are mended. All of the flayed, accordion-strips of his skin are sewn back together with care. Even the earthquake-like tremors have stopped shaking his limbs. But he is not healed. His mind reels and whirls and cries out its pain, still. It yearns for the balm of unconsciousness, is desperate to escape the absolute certainty of its own death. Because the memories are so fresh of the water creeping above his neck, filling in the final pocket of air and his lungs in one fell swoop. Because he remembers the grey mist of mercury replacing the water in his lungs just after, how he’d come apart in the flesh as well as in the head. Because Grumbles had done all of these things to him without care or remorse. Because now, he reaches for the halter in his crooked yet firm grasp, keeping Vidar for his own despite all he’s suffered. There will be more, the unhealed-healed stallion thinks, though he doesn’t know what more entails. He only knows that it is an endless circle between them (between a predator and its prey). I should strike him dead now, before more does me in.
But the little man’s commanding grasp on his halter changes his opinion. Changes him, even, at the molecular level. At the same time that his freedom and desire to smash Grumbles into a thick pulp dissipates, something else unfurls within him like a lotus. Power floods his systems, pulsing and violent and real. He knows, instinctually, that he could rain hell fire down on the twisted man in the blink of an eye. He could make him scream like Vidar had, could pull his intestines through his mouth with the flick of his muzzle, could pin each of his crooked fingers to the starry ceiling and watch him squirm for an eternity.
He also knows that he doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t want to hurt the man who had no problem doing so when the tables were turned. Grumblesnakes seems to realize the struggle playing out and grins at the horse. In one storm-silver eye, he watches the man’s face, recognizing the glee as a warning. But still, he won’t hurt him.
“Now,” Grumbles says, reaching up to smooth Vidar’s forelock with surprising gentleness. “For something entirely new!” He pulls at the halter and the stallion obliges easily, readily. He walks beside the two-legger. (I am the prey, he thinks, but the voice is growing dimmer every second within him, drowned out by the need to please and protect). The little man leads him through a doorway at the end of the torture chamber. He catches the twinkle of Ursa minor before he is ushered away. Good luck, it seems to wink at him, you’ll need it you stupid, naïve animal.
The next room is tenfold more expansive than the last. Walls of pewter stone rise high above them, encapsulating and encircling the arena of sand the pair walks onto. Staggered amongst the walls are hundreds of seats currently occupied by ghosts. There is one seat that seems fit for a king. An empty chalice fills itself before his eyes, brimming with a nameless, blood-red liquid. Grumbles catches his gaze before gesturing at the coliseum around them with a flourish. “Isn’t it something?” His captor-savior says, not actually looking for a response. His eyes shine with pride at his creation. Vidar thinks it is a justified arrogance. There is undeniable majesty to this place of stone and sand; he only wonders if his death will please Grumbles more for all its finery.
“My style is endless. Immortal, some would say, or they used to.” For the first time, the stallion can sense a hint of sadness in the man. He frowns, too, until Grumbles straightens and looks back at him. “But no matter. The place is yours, have at it!” The crooked man begins to walk away and he wants to follow him, tries to but the halter securely strapped to his face keeps him rooted to sand. Grumbles stops one time on his ascent to his chosen seat (and how the hope rises within Vidar then – he is coming back for me, he hasn’t forsaken me) long enough to call out. “Try not to bleed on the walls, eh? You wouldn’t believe the amount of power-washing someone else would have to do for me…”
The anxiety of being left behind builds within Vidar, but so too, does the feeling of power. It thrums in his veins, in his heart and limbs until even the walls around him seem to shake with it. As he watches Grumbles, even the floors begin to vibrate with the intensity of his newfound life-force. But no, it really is the floor shaking. A huge oaken door at the opposite end of the arena shudders on its hinges. Something is on the other side, something equally massive and eager to fight. The blue roan stallion turns to face it, suddenly charged with the electricity of battle. It is what he was born for, bred for. Whatever giant beast waits on the other side of the door would be his pleasure to dispatch. The rope halter rubs at his face. All for Grumbles.
Finally, the door bursts in shower of splinters. One narrowly avoids impaling the stallion as it flies by him and ricochets off the stone wall. The ground shakes as the creature takes a step, the dust concealing its form for a minute. When it clears, Vidar is too shocked to make a move at first. What he thought would be an impossibly large animal is nothing more than a woman the same size as his savior. It is only when a pair of overlarge, gossamer wings shoot out from behind her and propel her in the air that he realizes she is also a fairy. And also intent on killing him.
A strange contraption covers her face, disappearing underneath a mop of fiery red curls. He doesn’t have long to wonder at its purpose before she is flying at him too fast. Much too fast, he decides, just before she crashes in to him. In the split second before she reaches him, her fingernails more like daggers and sharpened to a point, he inundates the sand underneath of him with water. It is something he learned long ago as a boy in the jungle – the power of water, how it changes things passively over time. Time is what he doesn’t have, though, so he speeds up its effect and produces quicksand. He isn’t quite quick enough, however. As the jungle’s son sinks into the ground, pulling the rest of the grains over his body in a thick shield, the fairy manages to gouge open his face from poll to muzzle.
He cries out in pain and anger as blood fills his eyes. But once his shield is complete, he rises and walks on firmer sand once more. Through the red curtain, he sees the fairy readying herself for another attack. This time, he doesn’t wait for her to reach him. He pressurizes and heats the air around him to levels that would kill him if he weren’t magically protected in battle. The sand on his skin begins to vibrate (or, more specifically, the graphite in the sand) until, with a pop, large diamonds float all around him. He sharpens them to match the fairy’s nails as she flies at him. With a grunt of effort, he sends them arcing in the air to meet her. To pierce her. Her eyes widen as she is struck mid-air, mid-arena. She falls to the ground like a missile, her red curls the afterburn. The sand swallows her up.
From the stands, Grumbles hollers his maniacal happiness at her demise. Vidar wonders if it is from that same source of sorrow for the man. He pities him, in that moment, pities the gluttonous need for vengeance that fuels him. Vidar takes no pride in his kills, only in himself. In his need to do what it takes to survive. Grumbles asks, “why the name? There’s no Norse in you.” He pauses, takes a gulp from his chalice. “You’ll like this next bit, even so. Poetic, I’d say.”
The now broken, open doorway is quickly filled with an inky shadow that leeches onto the floor beyond. The uneven sand makes the shadow amorphous as it draws nearer, less defined and all the more threatening in its uncertainty. But he thinks he recognizes it, anyway. A slender muzzle followed by a pair of twin triangular ears poke through the doorway. The rest of the animal slinks through shortly after, all black shadow to match the ground it walks over. Its eyes are green and glowing and turn on its prey immediately.
“Fenrir!” Grumbles claps his hands together once in obvious joy before falling silent once more. A hush descends over the entire coliseum, in fact. It is nothing like the dazzling flight of the fairy or the barely contained chaos of the swirling sand. Vidar understands why. The predator does not pity the prey, he muses, The predator needs no sound to hunt by, either, to strike fear into those it would take down. He regards the massive beast of baleful eyes and snarling, shining teeth. It begins to stalk him slowly, crossing the central spot where the fairy had fallen. Vidar turns tail and retreats, biding his time and circling the far walls. He knows the beast will follow – Fenrir will follow - for more than the halter on his face. The hunt begins.
Circle. Think. Circle. Think. Circle. Think.
He repeats his mantra as the wolf trails him. If he can think, he can win. But how? The sand under his feet reminds him of the Deserts, of the people that thrive in a land with little to give. They pull strength from deep reserves and he knows he must do the same. He knows that brute strength will not fell a beast so large, so unrelenting in its quiet pursuit. He will have to be clever (though he’s rather not). Make my weakness my strength. Fenrir pants. Vidar pants; the game is growing long. Then it comes to him.
He falls in the sand.
Think, he commands himself, because it is so hard to lie down and know that he will die in a second. Think, he tells himself as Fenrir pounces, grabbing one of Vidar’s ankles in his fearsome jaws. But as his bones are crunching, they are also changing. He elongates, his body thinning and his limbs disappearing into his torso. The horse stretches and presses and grows longer until he is more anaconda than horse. He feels his lower mid-section still held firmly in the wolf’s jaws, but he uses it to his own advantage. Flexing his absurdly muscular body, he pulls himself off the ground and wraps himself around the giant wolf. He tightens his lower half around Fenrir’s jaw and his upper half around his head. He nearly tangles himself in the other’s halter. So close, he can feel the green eyes boring into him. They seem confused, almost frightened. It takes all his strength to fight against the wolf’s resistance, but Vidar almost feels sorry when he yanks the beasts face in two.
And just like the fairy, the wolf disappears into the sand once he’s dead. Vidar slides to the ground, resuming his normal form but wearing the snake’s patterning across his body. He notices a deep laceration in his left rear ankle, tests it and finds it sound but painful. He thinks he is lucky.
The lights dim and a grey smoke begins to wash across the sea of sand. The stallion flinches, remembering the mercury gas, but he finds no ill effects of breathing it in (meant for fear, he thinks, or drama. Style, as Grumbles seems fond of saying). He decides he will not be so ill-prepared for whatever lurks in the darkness this time. Using the power swelling in his breast like barely-contained lightning, Vidar grows a pair of ox horns on his head. He can feel the strange weight of them fusing with his skull. He borrows Fenrir’s fangs, too, jolts as they slice into his closed lips. Blood drips down his chin, but he feels better, anyway. It doesn’t last long.
His parents step out of the growing gloom.
They stagger towards him, slowly, their hind limbs dragging. He sees immediately that they are dead - draugar - come back to half-life to haunt him. Crito is missing half his face (though Vidar hadn’t known any of it in life). His bay roan hide is stretched taut, pieces of it gone and showing the rotting muscle underneath. Seaweed trails his feet, crowns his head; it’s as if he’s walked from the ocean’s depths to be here, to drag his son back to a shared watery grave. What is far worse is Lagertha, though. The grey mare is nearly white, unhealthy. One eye hangs loosely in its socket, bouncing with every ungainly step she takes towards him. An undead monkey clings to her spinal cord. He thinks he will be sick.
All three draugar wear halters, controlled by Grumbles just as he is. The fighter knows what it means – that it is kill or be killed. No matter that they are his parents. No matter that he’s never met Crito and now… now he has to send him to a second death. He swallows his reserves and charges the slow-creeping false parents.
The two undead horses are on him when he moves between them. In close quarters, they are quicker than they’d appeared before. When not-Crito and not-Lagertha surround him, their teeth flash and they moan. God, he can’t stand the sound. Every time he head-butts one with his ox horns (tearing away Crito’s spleen with one sweep and part of Lagertha’s tail with another) they make the most horrifying sounds. The smell nearly does him in, too, but then he thinks he’s likely not much better himself. “Ssssssooooooonnnn,” the once khaleesi begins, and he can’t take it any more. With a thunderous clap, he silences all of them, even himself. Only Grumblesnakes can comment on how the rest plays out – the coliseum is otherwise deadly silent.
It is the most difficult task he’s ever taken part in, fighting those he loves unconditionally. Crito manages to bite into his shoulder, tearing his patterned skin with ease. In retaliation (and crying, silently in his head) Vidar explodes and shoots fire through his mouth. The dead stallion goes up in flames, quickly, his rotten flesh no match for the quick sparks. When the monkey leaps on him, he grows sharp spikes along his spine. The hellish creature impales itself on one, thrashing but unable to free itself. He can feel its’ slimy fingers scrambling on his back. This time on purpose, he calls the lightning to himself. It races down and strikes him and the monkey, electrifying both to different degrees. The monkey’s charred remains slide down and disappear into the sand. He wheels to face the last, fire burning in his veins.
He can’t kill his mother. Think, he thinks, glancing at Grumbles for help. A silent plea, please don’t make me do this. But the crooked man is grinning. The grand finale. The worst blow so far. Worse than any torture he could have dreamed up in the hours after the tank and lightning and mercury. I am the prey, he remembers, finding no answers in his captor-savior’s gaze. Lagertha is on him and at first he takes it. He takes her teeth and hooves and rotting, stinking smell. But when he knows the tide is turning in her favor – unequivocally – he re-enters the playing field. Vidar pressurizes the air again, squeezes until he thinks he might pass out. The undead horse breaks apart into a hundred million pieces that descend into the sand. He has won. He has lost so much.
Vidar