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drownedinlight ([personal profile] drownedinlight) wrote2011-03-02 05:17 pm

Rand of the Norse part 2

So here's the conclusion of the story I started a few days ago, Rand of the Norse. It now totals 7002 words, but I wrote about 3000 (rounded up) today. 

 
There is a thing the Aesir believe in called Ragnorak; it is the twilight of the gods, the end of the world as they know it. The Edda says that some of the gods feared Ragnorak, they would do anything to avoid it. But some of them, the wisest, bravest and most revered embraced the deeds that would lead to the time when it appeared they would go and be no more, when a new age would start. I was not sure if I could be someone who could stand before the mightiest of all wolves and be swallowed whole, or fight the Midgard serpent knowing I would not make it more than ten steps after I did. I was afraid of what Axel saw, because it grew the weight on my heart; it pointed me in a direction I did not want to journey.

I did want this destiny.

I was afraid.

Lady Freyja pursed her lips, before she nodded.
“A bargain, my lord husband. We shall depart tonight.”
Freyja did not find her mortal spectacular, but he was no more terrible than an elf or a dwarf, and Lord Odin found his mortal amusing, but not so fantastic as his dear wife. The bargain was a draw, and both owed a boon to each other.
But that was not all that came of that night.

I have no more story to tell you in the old way. All I can tell you is this: I ran.


Fifth: Destiny of Rand
Rand laid his head back against the cold, round shell of the wall of the train. Music pumped through his ear buds as he ignored his vibrating cell phone in his pocket. He probably could have turned it off by now, but that was what he had been raised to do. He had been raised to ignore his heritage and who he was, and now he chose to ignore something he was supposed to do as part of a greater plan. And no call from Axel, Chrysanta, or his mother would change that.

A pair of legs came across his line of vision, and Rand noticed a man take a seat across from him on the train. But he did not quite see the man first, but rather felt him. A spray of salt mist assaulted his nose, and finally he looked up to see a man with black hair and ocean colored eyes, changing a little bit in the light. They were completely alone.

“So…” said the man. Rand had not noticed he had taken his ear buds out, until he heard the man’s comment.

“Lemme guess, ‘we’re just alike, oh my gods, I’ve never quite met anyone like you before!’” The dark haired man laughed.

“Well, not quite ‘just’ alike, I’m saltier than you are. But you were right about that last part—I’ve never met someone quite like you before.”

“I’m not Greek,” was the first thing out of Rand’s mouth. The man laughed again,

“Yeah, the red hair kind of gives that away,” he said, gesturing toward Rand’s red roots. “I mean, I’ve seen one or two of us that looks a little more like our mortal parents, but for the most part we turn out more like our ‘divine’ parents. Who’s yours?”

“I um, I swore an oath not to say,” Rand replied. The guy nodded.

“They get you on those in the dramatic moments, one minute they just want your help and the next they’re all, ‘Swear by the River Styx!’ So what’s a demigod like you doing in a place like this?” he asked. This time, Rand laughed.

“Mostly, I’m just trying to get away. Someone I know has been having visions and well…The Old World ignored me, pretty much. Once they got me to swear that I would never tell who my father was, I never really heard from anyone other than a demigod ever again, and it just…”

“Pisses you off?” asked the other guy. “Yeah, I get that. They leave you, but then when an important prophecy comes up, or they need a quest done, they want to just ignore the fact that they abandoned you, and come back into their arms. Am I right so far?” Rand nodded along, leaning forward. Then the man did something he did not expect and grasped his forearm, holding him in place to look straight into his eyes. “But sometimes, it’s bigger than just you and them. Sometimes, even though they were wrong for doing what they did to you, you still have to do something to save people—people you love, people you don’t even know, people you’re going to know. Sometimes, things are just destiny.”

“I don’t want my destiny,” Rand retorted, his voice crackling in the back of his throat. The ocean eyes stared back at him, before the man tossed his rich back hair in a head shake.

“I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re afraid to face him, to face all of them, after all this time. Because you’re hoping, like all of, that he will love you and except you, but you know that he probably won’t. You’re afraid of getting hurt, of messing up. You’re afraid that you’ve been hiding this part of you for so long, you don’t know how to let it go.”

“Then how do I do it?” Rand asked. “Tell me, please, just tell me.”

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “But I will say, just embrace the power, feel his strength inside of you and make it your own.” The man leaned back, an easy smile growing on his face. “You’ll be fine, you know.” As the train slowed, the man stood, and Rand, still bound to his arm, stood with him.

“My name is Rand,” he said.

“Perseus,” the man replied. “Good luck Rand.” The man went to one end of the car, walking out when the doors opened. Rand sunk back in his seat, and fished his phone out of his pocket. Selecting his message box, he selected play and decided to listen.


I barely got through the first message, Axel’s voice, cracked, broken, playing to me, and saying, “It’s now, it’s now.” But I kept listening to them as the train moved on; I listened to their brokenness, their begging, and realized how much of a coward I was. When my mother’s voice came over the phone, I nearly crushed it in my hand so I wouldn’t have to hear her cry. The second the doors to the train opened, I ran.
I ran as fast as I could, never stop, breathing only to keep running to them. For the first time in my life, I opened myself to receive the power of the air, and the storm coming in overhead, the godstrength I had always reject. It coursed through me and I ran faster. I ran to meet my destiny.



Sixth: Twilight of the Demigods.
Hot breathe heaved out of Rand’s lungs, making fog in the cold air. The setting sun was becoming eclipsed with the grey clouds as he ran on, making for only where he felt great powers clashing. He came upon them in a street that was usually occupied, but now was barren, save for fallen gods and two standing who Rand recognized as Odin and Loki. And as he panted, Rand saw Odin fall to his blood brother’s hands. And Loki laughed.

“Is there no one who can challenge me?”

“How about me?” came a voice Rand knew well. He saw a streak of brown hair as Loki turned, and Saga kneed him between his legs, again and again. “Hello father,” she said. Loki groaned, but the groan turn to a snicker, as he slapped his daughter aside, into a brick building.

“You’re a foolish girl—your fellow half mortals have tried as well, and failed. If you had sought to join me, I would have taken you on with your brothers and sister, but no. You chose them who would kill you, over your own father.”

“A father who abandoned me,” Saga spat. “Just like Odin and Freyja abandoned their children. And I’m not fighting you for them; I’m fighting for the people you would burn, just to see Odin and the Aesir destroyed.” An arrow came down and struck Loki in the shoulder. Rand looked for the archer atop a small high rise, and saw his mother, loosing as many arrows as she could into Loki’s back.

Loki barely turned, and only stretched out his hand, and grabbed her with the air, cinching her throat and taking all the breath from her body.
Rand couldn’t think, and he would no longer watch. He did not see the hammer, but felt it. And he grabbed it, thinking of all the pain he had ever felt, from Mark Dietrich, from the All-Father, from his father, all the sorrow and the disappointment and he lifted Mjöllnr to the sky where lightning crackled and thunder roared.

“LOKI!” he cried, swinging the mighty hammer in the face of the god, as the rain began to fall on them. Rand swung and swung again, missing sometimes, but landing blow for blow on the god, until Loki, managed to get enough distance between them. He could see the panic growing in Loki’s eyes, as they swerved from him to the hammer to the sky filled with thunder.

“It’s impossible!” he exclaimed. “Impossible!”

Rand saw Saga stand from the corner of his eye, and from behind Loki, he saw a torch of flame come up, steaming as it hit Loki in the back. Loki batted away at the fire, and Saga reached out on top of Rand’s head, asking,

“Can I borrow this?” before she soaked the dye out of every hair and threw it in her father’s face, making him scream. The earth sank beneath Loki’s feet, and now Rand saw Axel and Chrysanta, bother covered in bruises and cuts oozing with blood join them in a circle.

There we were all four of us for the very first time. Ready to be who we needed to be, ready to do the thing, the inheritance, our parents had gifted to us.

Seventh: Binding of Loki
Loki shifted his shape and struggled free from the earth, but when he tried to move outside their circle, he found he could not. And words flowed between the four of them without speech, and perhaps without time, as the rain poured down on them, and one by one, they spoke raising their arms to the heavens,

“By the air of the sky and all the surrounds us—”

“By the earth beneath our feet trend upon by all—d”

“By the water that lives in all things and flows down on us—”

“By the fire that breathes life into all hearts—d”

“We bind you, Loki, jötnar—”

“We bind you, Loki, Aesir—”

“We bind you, Loki, sky-walker—”

“We bind you, Loki, Trickster—”

“Your strength—”

“Your magic—”

“Your body—”

“Your soul—”

“We bind you by the power of the gods, who created us, we bind you by your schemes which created us, we bind you by the greatness of humanity which you would seek to destroy, and we bind you by ourselves, greater than you could have every imagined.”
Loki screamed his pitch growing higher and higher as his body froze tighter and tighter like the ice he was born from. Then he stopped moving, stopped screaming and just stood in the center of their circle like he could not feel the rain falling on him.

Breathe, breathing, panting, as we felt the power stilling around us, as we felt ourselves separating from a we, we did not know we had become, back to being separate Is and mes. But still, we felt everything around us, what we had done in this point in time. We also felt another power awakening in the thick air.

Eighth: Awakening of the Gods
Rand did not see the Gods awaken, though he felt them as he ran to his mother, who had just left the building from which she shot many arrows into Loki.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, folding her into a tight embrace over her quiver and bow.

“I came to help you,” she said. Kjerstin pulled back from him, brushing some of his reddened locks out of his eyes. “It appears I gave you a push you needed, if one I did not intend.”

“Rand,” Axel called. Rand turned to see Axel standing by his father. Odin, dressed in battle garb and no longer as the wanderer, looked impressively tall and frightening, especially with his missing eye. Rand stepped forward though, ready to face whatever the All-Father would tell him.

“You have done a grave thing, Rand,” Odin said. “Revealing your powers as such, to an assembly of gods.”

“A very passed out assembly,” Saga murmured, loud enough for all to hear. Odin turned to glare at the girl.

“I was not speaking to you, Saga Lokisdaughter!”

“Yeah well, I’m not afraid of you, Uncle,” Saga retorted. “Rand did nothing but help us save your ass. And I am not my father, or my brothers or sisters, so don’t you dare go there, because I know everyone is thinking it. He’s not you either, your kid and the ginger isn’t Freyja. Rand isn’t his father, it isn’t a shame to anyone he exists, so stop thinking like that.”

“It is not only for shame that Rand has had to hide his identity,” Odin hissed. It was as the All-Father said this that Rand noticed a golden haired woman staring at him, a sword being gripped more and more tightly in her hand. She stood next to a large, red haired man who was still groaning and rising off of the ground. “Stay your sword, Sif,” Odin commanded to the blonde woman.

Rand realized that Lord Odin had kept him secret so that Lady Sif would not visit them in the night and slaughter both him and his mother, or visit some plague upon them. But more so he watched the red haired man rise from of the ground, and look around him, spinning and turning as he did.

“Mjöllnr! Where is Mjöllnr?!” Thor cried.

“Here,” Rand said. “I have it.” All the eyes of Asgard watched as he walked forward and presented the hammer to the god of Thunder.


That night over twenty years ago, when Lady Freyja excepted Lord Odin’s bet, they traveled to Midgard, followed closely by two others. The first was Loki, who, as I have said, sired Saga. The second was Thor.

As I walked, I felt no fear, I only felt peace. Resentment tried to boil up, but the contentedness of my heart squashed it back down. And the rain that fell on both of us as he looked me in the eyes for the first time comforted me in our meeting. Here I am, Father.



Ninth: Son of Thor
Thor looked at the hammer, and then back to Rand, who held it with perfectly straightened arms, many times before he finally accepted it.

“Many thanks. What are you called?”

“I am called Rand, Lord Thor.”

Thor’s eyes softened on him.

“You do not call me ‘father,’”

“I have sworn not to. The All-Father thought to protect me and your reputation.”

“Is this true?” Thor cried. “A son, kept from me for fifteen years.”

“Twenty,” Kjerstin retorted.

“Almost twenty-one, actually,” Saga added. “Rand, what do you want for your birthday, by the way?”

“Saga, not now, darling, we’re having an existential moment.”

“And he’s in love with the daughter of Loki!” Thor exclaimed. This time, all four demigods broke down into giggles, while Kjerstin only shook her head.

“Not that kind of darling,” Rand explained. “I am most definitely not attracted to Saga.”

“Why, Father, why keep this from me?” Thor asked, turning to Odin.

“I have no other answer but that I did as I felt was best for Asgard and for both of you, my son,” Odin said. “And it appears Rand has grown into a fine man, and warrior. And now, we must tarry no longer in the mortal world and return with Loki to Asgard.”

Out of the rain, there grew a great rainbow stretching to the sky. One by one each of the gods touched it and was transported away. Thor, the last looked between his son and the rainbow bridge, before he said,

“I shall return and we shall speak of many things then, my son.” Rand smiled shortly and nodded as Thor disappeared on the rainbow bridge to Asgard.

“Well, that’s that,” Saga said. “Rand, any chance you can stop the rain?” Rand shook his head.

“Sorry, I don’t think it works like that,” he said.

“Well, then, come along, my brother lives not far from here,” Kjerstin said. “He’ll let us stay until we can arrange transportation at the very least.

He could feel the questions on the tip of the other three demigods’ tongues, but they held quiet as they joined together to walk through the rain.

Here is as I have said it would be: my story, and with it all of myself and my heart, and all I am. And that is enough.

Piece WC: 2827
Project WC: 5393
Still Reading: Push Comes to Shove by Maud Lavin

 

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