I lay comatose on the ground for what seemed like days as charred petals and frost set over my body, the rose garden of Jarngrimr's heart frozen over like tundra. The vines witherered, and blood from thorn pricks, black draugr filth, erupted from my veins as I boiled over.
Seized with chills, I looked at the center of the gardens: there stood Skadhi, the great ice Jotun who watched over me. She delicately plucked the last remaining red rose and crushed it, bringing the petals to her nose as her apparition inhaled. Her hard blue lips softened as she gazed upon me woefully, then she floated over on buckskin boots, three feet above the ground, a mix of ghost and great strides. Her head reached the clouds, and her breasts had a fox pelt over them with rabbit skins hanging from her belt."I felt the amethyst shatter, goddaughter," Skadhi Ondurdis said gently, lifting me up into her palm. She poked at my empty belly – I had barfed up breakfast – and she g"You are a monster, us Tuniskans know never to trust Wotan or his ilk," I heard Yolanda's amber voice cut through the air like a knife as Gullinkambi alighted on Jarnja's High Seat in the Dark Woods of the Northern Holds."I take after my mother Sithgunt the Seeress. My father takes as he will. Tempered by Jotun blood, I would not make snap judgments about the bergresar daughters of the Seeress," Jarngrimr said softly, pacing on her wolf's feet as her black cloak breezed on the frozen wind. She was skinning the white hart left over from Eleleth's apparition, and Heith was by her side, divining portents from the cursed hart's offal."Turiel could have died, and if I were still watching on from the branches of Yggdrasil, my body trapped in her amethyst godstone, unable to aid my girlfriend, she would have been mincemeat," Yolanda chided sternly, taking a whetstone and grinding her Tuniska scimitar to a sharp, shining point. The curved blade shimmered in the midni
Rosy and Maren served us jellied cow heart on rye bread steamed in fresh colostrum. I sat beside Yolanda, across from Jarnja and Heith, with Fylja in the middle. Rosy had used her freshly learned healing skills to apply poultices to our scrapes and bruises – "Just like jelly!" she had exclaimed, dabbing them onto Yola, Jarnja, and I's wounds as the three of us sat in such thick silence, it could be cut like fat from an auroch.We ate without a word until my younger sister could contain her twelve year old exuberance no more.Rosy oogled Yolanda: "Yolanda! My best friend! You are alive, my, why, this is the best day EVER."Yolanda smiled, flexing her biceps, enticing and gorgeous as the midnight sun in a leather tunic and buckskin trousers. A daggertooth dragon fang rested on a thong around her sandstone breast. Yola idly fingered it, then took it off her neck, and draped the necklace over Rosy's curling red locks. Rosy bounced on the balls of h
In the High Seat of Yggdrasil, in Wotan’s keep, he gazed keenly at his enemy Eleleth, the White Seraph. Gritting his teeth, the Gray Gizzard Wolf – Wotan the Raven – spat at the ground past his gold teeth, and swiveled the telescope in disgust at the astronomy window of stained glass.Frieda, his wife, Queen of Valkyries, stepped through with a mead bowl and ruby sword, her tears amber. Lust stirred under the stirrups of Wotan’s faded blue trousers, and he grinned at his wild wife.“Free, a drink for your parched ember, from your golden lap,” Wotan winked.Freida grinned, her strawberry blonde hair, peach skin, and freckles aglow as her eyes glowed like copper. “Not my lap – my sword.”Freida, Warrior Mother of the pantheons of the Northern Holds and land of midnight sun, took her blade – shaped like a longsword – it’s opal flesh shining like moonlight out of i
Yuriel stood at the prow of Naglfari, the Jotun Queen’s ship made of human nails, a cursed gift of Ragnarok from her father, as it swelled in the Northern Sea. Steel beams and old rotted wood held the keratin of dead men stripped of their cuticles together, and it stank of rotten meat.Dominic stood by her side, arranging the rigging of lindworm sinew. In the distance, the Seething Sea churned and boiled, waves of knives and Titan bones stewing to rot in gray-silver waters, as snow fell like dandruff from Ymir. Great icebergs moved as Yuri’s eyes glowed from amber to gold, and she held a piece of driftwood, parting the waters and ice stones as Aegir and Ran granted us safe passage.Rosiel shivered in Yolanda’s arms, my Valkyrie holding her close to ward off the cold. Ice bezels formed in Yola’s dark hair, curls of rose oil whipping in the wind.“Do I have to go? I doubt the fish here will taste good – probabl
By midnight, we had entered the Lokabrenna Strait, where the Pole Star resided, and Jarnja had not tired yet. Loki’s bondage isle, the Serpent Spit, rose in jagged obsidian cliffs up into the aether.Jarnja cautioned me back. Yuri and Dominic docked the boast. I held a breath I didn’t even know I was capable of taking:“Fylja, manage the steering against the swells as we are docked. Turry and Yola, take wing, and we shall clear this strait of monsters and sea beasts as Heith keeps the tides at bay. Dominic and Yuriel, manage the ship and hold the magick binding Naglfari together. Ask Aegir and Ran’s blessing. Here.” She handed them a flagon. “Offer them this mead.”I looked at Gullinkambi, then at Yolanda, then at Jarnja again.All three grinned knowingly at me – the rooster included.“Gullinkambi, let’s go!” I said, and he swelled into his giant cockere
I awoke to a beautiful Eastern woman with scars over her flesh and kohl lined eyes, vermillion eyeshadow like an Oni geisha, and long silken hair frothing in curls over her violet eyes.She smiled, revealing white fangs, as she tended to my wounds.“Huh?” I murmured, agape at this strange woman’s beauty. She was as tall as a Jotun Queen, but there was no fur or wings or claws about her. Simply red nails filed to a serpents tooth touch and berry stained lips of violet.“You came too, my Bride,” the mysterious woman winked.“This must be Vanaheim, where I am to meet the ghost of my mother. My guardian spirit has come to bring me home. Did I die, fair protector?” I murmured, flushing as I noticed she was in revealing Eastern robes, something called a kimono that Yuri was always trying to unsuccessfully replicate from purchases from the Peri traders at the ice markets. I sighed, smiling. “At leas
I awoke in a canopied bone bed with Jarnja’s human form. She smiled, her knee length black hair spooled around me like the Norn’s web of wyrd. She arched her sleek, sun dappled hips, and spread her arms around me widely.“Do you stay mortal for the three days of the new moon?” I asked, curious. We had done nothing I had remembered, just virginally kissed, then gone to bed.It seemed Jarnja was taking a step back at her seduction game, though with her Oni beauty, I would have been her slave.She had been sweet, told me stories of the Eastern lands, the Spice Kingdom she was raised in, the Orient past the Silk Road, and her fellow bergresar sisters, who would be in Surtr’s court in Vidagol where we would reconnaissance with other Jotun allies like Logi and Hela, Queen of the Dead, in order to foment our negotiation position with the gods of my people.The Northern Gods were not exactly the gods of the Jotun: The
Yolanda was scouting ahead and had been gone since dawn. Jarngrimr paced the deck, in wool leggings, a Waterman fishing jacket, and captain’s broadshirt and piratical black tricorn hat.She spied out her spyglass up atop the rigging, muttered to herself, and climbed down, her long, silky, nixen hair furling out like a nixie’s ruddy black mane.She glimmered at me, hopping off the rigs and sails in gold black boots lined with polar bear fur, and grabbed my waist, hauling me up into her arms.“I ache for a fight, dear Turiel,” Jarnja simmered, yellow fire in her violet black eyes.I laughed, tickling her chin. “Jarnja, we must tie the rigging into half quarterstaff, and move the prow widdershins.”“You know how to sail Naglfari?” she asked, inquisitive.“I’m a quick learner. When Dominic was asking how to woo Yuriel, I asked him to teach me the Watermen Ways in return.”Q