Page 55 of Vicar
After all, Mórrígan, to the best of their knowledge, was their biggest enemy.
“Thor and Loki assume that, as it was with her son Darkness, Carmen held the door open long enough to get her offspring through or,” Thorulf shot Vicar a warning look, “Violence, like Evil did Jade, locked onto Trinity somehow and slithered his way through much earlier.”
“Either way,” Jade looked at Trinity with concern when they stopped at the Múspellsheimr chamber door, “we’ve no choice but to go forward.” She glanced from the door to Trinity. “Are you ready? You got this? Because I’ll,” she gestured at the men and corrected herself, “all three of us will be by your side every step of the way.”
“Yes, I’ve got this,” Trinity murmured softly, her gaze a little different as she stared at the door. “I...need this somehow.”
Though Vicar didn’t like the sound of that, her inner dragon still seemed aligned with his. Her Múspellsheimr side wasn’t surfacing yet.
“Because it’s not genuine Múspellsheimr magic,” Trinity said, following his thoughts. “But it’ll take me close.” Her eyes met his. “Usclose.” She nodded once. “Close enough to pull back the veil more.”
“Then we move forward.” He slipped his hand into hers, glad the Alfheim stone was firmly in her pocket. “And we’ll see what it has to show us.”
While he wished Thor could have brought a larger Alfheim stone, he now understood that her little stone,theirstone, was always going to be their best shot at protection. It was too much a part of them and their memories, the love they’d shared, to be anything else. He could only be glad Thor had held onto it. How he’d ended up with it had yet to be answered.
“Have you seen inside this chamber, Jade?” Trinity asked.
“No.” Jade shook her head. “Until you arrived, I had no idea Leviathan’s Keep was capable of all this. It wasn’t part of my journey back to Thorulf.”
Trinity inhaled deeply and nodded before she gestured at the door. “All right then.” She looked at Vicar. “Let’s do this.”
His Múspellsheimr self had been to this chamber countless times, so he knew what to expect. Trinity, however, had no idea. Or should he say this version of her because her much younger self obviously did. So said the way her eyes rounded when Jade opened the door, and her hand shook in his.
“Oh my God,” she whispered hoarsely, swallowing hard as she stepped inside and took it all in. From the pitch-black sky to the sizzling rivers of lava. Everything was aflame, from the trees to the mountains to the fire pouring out of dragons crashing into each other overhead. The cloying air smelled of soot, smoke, blood, and decay. There was nothing sweet in this world. Only sinister and at war.
“You all right, sis?” Jade looked at Trinity with concern. “You’ve gone white as a ghost.”
“I know this place,” Trinity managed, leaning against Vicar when he kept her close. Though she trembled much like her little dragon had under his bed, she didn’t shy away but kept looking. “I’ve definitely been here before. Or should I say been to the world it represents.” She trembled more by the moment as she looked up. Her voice dropped to a shaky whisper. “I thought it was a nightmare,” she shook her head, “hadto be a nightmare...but it wasn’t.”
“Remember, this isn’t real.” Vicar kept his tone gentle. “This is but a chamber made of Leviathan’s magic. Nothing here will hurt you.”
Trinity nodded and shook her head at once. Despite him keeping her close, her hand rested on the hilt of Loki’s Dagger as though she sensed something right around the corner. As if she expected something to attack. And who could blame her after what her tiny dragon had claimed happened?
Something that manifested moments later when Trinity finally managed to take a step further into the chamber.
She put a hand over her mouth, and Vicar tensed when her tiny dragon fell out of nowhere, like a tumbleweed caught in fiery flames. Terrified, flailing, her wail of horror made his chest clench.
“Oh,hell, no,” Jade ground out, pulling her weapon free, set to slay whoever went near her sister even though it was only a memory. It seemed she might have even sensed what was coming because moments later, a massive male dragon swooped down like a hawk after its prey.
“I’m transparent but only because this is a memory,” Trinity noted. Her voice might have been as shaky as the rest of her, but she was paying attention. Remembering what she needed to. “I was solid when I arrived here. Solid enough to attract attention. Which means I was born somewhere else first.” She breathed a sigh of relief and nodded once, glad for the confirmation. “It had to have been Alfheim.”
“While that’s good,” Jade conceded, rushing forward like the rest of them when tiny Trinity got caught in a fiery gust of wind and tumbled along, still wailing in fear, “does it matter considering you ended up here? More than that, wouldn't it have put a target on your back?”
Trinity eyed the dragons zooming toward her tiny self as closely as Vicar did. If he didn’t know Trinity needed him by his side, he’d have already shifted and protected her other self the best he could, despite it being a memory.
“Wouldn’t being born on Alfheim have made you more vulnerable here, Trinity?” Jade went on. “Because you’re about to be—”
That’s all she got out before an especially vicious male snatched tiny Trinity up in his talons and took off.
“I remember that,” Trinity croaked. “I remember the horror I felt. The utter helplessness.” She looked at Vicar. “That’s the dragon who tried to enslave me in fire until I was old enough to breed for him. Jade's right. I was considered a prize to be abused more than most because I was born in Alfheim, a world hated by Múspellsheimr dragons.”
Vicar tried to fight it, he really did, but his Múspellsheimr side had gone livid and screamed to the surface, pushing his Sigdir half down before he had a chance to stop it.
“I’ll kill it,” he ground out.
Fully Múspellsheimr now, he shifted and launched into the air. He’d find a way to reach into the memory and tear the other dragon’s head off.
“Vicar,” Trinity cried, but he ignored her. This wasn’t the time to coddle her but to begin reaping vengeance on all that had stolen her away. From the dragon who just took her to Violence, who took advantage of her Múspellsheimr half. Because he had. Bit by bit, year after year, he had whittled her into someone else.
