Helvegen

Rosy clung close to my skirts as Fylja opened the long ebony doors to Jarngrimr's feast hall. Inside was a crystalline long hall lit by celestial blue Isa fire and otherworldly elfin plants that gave off strange, translucent glows. Nixies, fossegrim, wili, mara, dwarves, alfar, duergar, dokkalfar, and trolls danced among the huldrefolk and luxuriously dressed Northern Cunningfolk. A fossegrim fiddled on a golden violin, and there was a great frenzy of mead in horns as berserkers celebrated the capture of the princesses with their shieldmaidens in a tarantic reel, stomping the ground, feasting like the fire god Logi devouring an entire boar in Loki's eating contest.

Jarngrimr of the Sorrows loomed over the long hall atop a lindworm bone throne, the great dragon skull carved at the snout to sit her beastly form. She smirked, her eyes collier fire, and watched me languorously, predatorily tracing the slight, delicate curves of my gown with her slit pupils like iron claws. She ran her forked tongue over her left incisor and her right shoulder twitched with its whipcord muscle. I wanted to run a hand along the sharp planes of her face, as I always did in my dreams… Wait, stop. What was I thinking!

I felt spirited away - but that was a thing of the past, my sisters and I now fully enchanted in Utgardr, deep in the belly of the beast.

"Come, or the food will get cold!" Fylja pressed, squeezing my wrist. I side-eyed her and steeled my mouth, and Fylja sighed, backing off. "Fine, pester the Queen with your sullen disposition, I'm off to dance with the girls and non-ugly boys!" Fylja joined the huldrefolk reel as the fossegrim rosined his bow and the fey berserkers clapped in time to the tune.

Rosy took a big whiff of the roast boar, steamed apples, and cod laid out amongst sourdough, ale, and mead. "Why, Turry, this looks delicious! Maren, let's eat!" Rosy crowed, grabbing the hand of the plump Mara and bouncing off to our special seats at the table.

The Isa looked at me knowingly, their florid green eyes turned on the last of their witches. My mother's race I had never known, who father said were the Devil's own brood. I looked at a wizened volva, her ceremonial staff and beaded, antlered headdress a sentinel of silence in the frenzy, and her hard mouth reminded me of Lady Skadhi.

I swallowed the stone in my throat and looked away.

The gaunt mara gazed at me knowingly - Silje, her name was. "That's Heith, the chieftainess of the Isa. She's not quite sure what to do with the daughter of the princess who betrayed the Northern Holds. You and your sisters may be Isa by blood, but you will have to prove you belong here to the Northern Cunningfolk."

"That's rather cruel," Yuri sniffed, giving me a tempered steel look. "Turry, pay no mind to these monsters. We with our quick thinking will get out of this mess," she whispered low under her breath, squeezing my hand.

Rosy, Fylja and Maren were stuffing their faces on spiced pork belly. My twelve year old sister was already drunk off strawberry mead, Lady Freida's sacred drink. She laughed merrily and made faces at a nixie boy from across the table.

"Why is it that Rosy makes light of even the most dire of situations?" Yuri sighed, searching the crowd for a point of exit.

"She is adaptable, I suppose," I said, not taking my eyes off Jarngrimr.

Queen Jarngrimr of the Sorrows eyed me up. Then, she bellowed with laughter.

The reel fell silent, and the huldrefolk and Isa waited with bated breath.

Jarngrimr of the Sorrows raised her long, harrowed and bloodied drinking horn. "Hail the Aesir. Hail the Vanir. Hail the Jotun I be!" she shouted. "Tonight, my Bride has arrived - the girl I blessed nineteen years ago in return for dear Aslaugh's Stronghold - and she shall restore Utgadr to its rightful dominion! The promise Princess Aslaugh made to me nearly twenty years ago has come to fruition. Blood of Arcadia and the Northern Holds united in three enchanted maidens, to break the curse on our lands and the Barrier on the Maroon Sea. Turiel, my snowdrop, Yuriel, my meadowsweet, and Rosiel, my rosebud, you are all safe forevermore in my halls, and shall lack nothing in ways of pleasure, food, fineries, leisure or wealth. Do you not say I am a generous Queen, my children?" Jarngrimr mused, her tones amber boiling, a beastly music.

The crowd cheered. "Hail Queen Jarngrimr!"

I spat on the floor, and Yuri made the Thurisaz rune over her breast for thorny protection.

"To Helheim with that Devil," I grated.

"To Nastrond," Yuri said fiercely.

We took our seats at the table in silence. I cut some bread with my ivory dagger and Yuri bit delicately into a pear. "I suppose we should eat," she muttered. "Best not to suffer on an empty belly."

"Say Maren, do you know the one about Thor and the nanny goat? She nannied him to death!" Rosy joked, ribbing Maren.

"Good one, princess! I am beginning to like your spunk," Fylja chuckled, her umber skin blushing and her eyes like black pearls and bright, merry midnight. She looked at me in deep concern. "Princess Turiel, please eat! The food of Utgardr will make your Magick strong, as it always does Volva Heith's. Please, do not scrimp to please Queen Jarngrimr, she had all of this delicious food prepared in your honor, Hakkonsdottir."

Heith, the wizened volva and leader of the Isa, sat at Jarngrimr's right hand, ferociously eating mackerel. She gave me a trickster eye, then winked.

I looked away, to Jarngrimr.

The Bergresar Queen had spent every minute watching me with starving eyes, silent. Sitting beside the food, she would have none of it - she simply drank from her horn like a warlord, smirking.

"I hate this place, it stinks of damp earth and death," Yuri shuddered, looking at the lindworm skeleton piled and welded together to form the backing of the long hall and the Bergresar Queen's dark throne.

"We will get through this, my dear sister," I calmed Yuri, giving her a reassuring massage to ease out the kinks in her neck. She smiled faintly, fretful.

"When I woke up to Silje sucking the life out of me, I thought, things couldn't get any worse, but now they are as bad as burning alive eternally in Muspellheim as Surtr turns the roasting spit of our souls," Yuri said quietly.

"There are bright places even in the hollow sun, mama always said," I comforted.

Yuri's gaze wandered the merry crowd. "Dominic? What in Helheim?" she gasped, seeing a familiar Waterman face emerge with a bouquet of gardenia and roguish, piratical smile.

"Dominic! What are you doing here! Were you captured too? Oh Dominic, you're saving us all!"

Dominic was of Indrajit stock, sienna skinned, hazel eyed, and black curls like a sinning saint. He beamed at his beloved. "Yuri, Yuri - please let me explain!" he implored.

Yuri's gaze hardened as she embraced him. "Explain what?"

"I and my crew saw it on Fenrir's Isle, past the Stronghold Aslaugh erected, on the far reaches of the Maroon Sea: Loki escaped his bindings. I swear to all the As and Van it was true. Sigyn had burnt through the chains with enough bowls of poison from Skadhi's torturous serpent and had unleashed her husband, and the two of them were dancing across the sky. Then, then, oh, Queen Jarngrimr came with her horde on longboats, and she rode the gallows. Queen Jarngrimr said, if we granted her passage across the Maroon Sea from the Northern Holds, past the Stronghold as citizens of Arcadia only could, she could stop Ragnarok. We made the deal with her, not knowing she meant to take you three hostage. Yuri, Rosy, Turry, I am so sorry. I had no idea she would invade Arcadia. Now my tribe and I are captive here, same as you."

Dominic looked in curiosity at me. I blanched.

"Skadhi said Loki was up to mischeif. The Bound God, free?" I stumbled over my words.

"Jarngrimr was sure Aslaugh's promise would stop Ragnarok, when the time for the tithe to be paid came..." Dominic said, perplexed. "She said, as I was enchained, that you, Turry, are the only thing that can stop Ragnarok. She said you are Arcadia and the Northern Hold's last defense against Loki's reckoning, and the last witch standing in the world, thanks to her fairy godmother blessing nineteen years ago."

Rosy choked on a roast apple and thumped her chest. "What? No way?"

Yuri began to sob.

I slammed down my plate, and stormed through the throngs of dancing Isa and huldre.

I stared down Jarngrimr, the bergresar twice my size, with a menacing eye.

"I'm your bargaining chip against the gods? A tithe of some sort? Enough games, you Devil! Tell me why you spirited us away!" I demanded, slamming my dagger through her paw of a wolfish foot.

She laughed softly, prying her bloodless wound out of the knife and flexing her claws in warning.

"You are the promise dear Aslaugh gave me in return for the Stronghold barrier long ago: her firstborn tithe," Jarngrimr said slowly, her voice like meat through a grinder. "Tell me, girl, have you managed to summon your fetch yet? It would be quite useful in the coming war against Loki."

I froze. "How would you know I was trying to do that?"

Her crimson eyes burbled over. "The bergresar are gifted in dark Magick. I have an inkling, after dinner, that I can show you how. No witch should be without a fetch, and no Bergresar should be without her intended Queen."