#i'm posting this early (even in my own timezone) bc life is about to get H E C T I C

[vagueandominousvibes]

Fourth chapter for Febuwhump 2023 is out! I’m only doing some of the prompts, but you can read today’s under the ‘Keep reading’, or the entire fic over on Ao3!

The God in the Well

Chapter 4: Forced to Hurt a Loved One

Shadow groaned. His head felt as if someone had repeatedly hurled bricks against it from the inside — between his eyes, about an inch up. The echoes of shock waves passed through him, making his entire nervous system burn.

He forced his eyes open. A faint golden light filled his eyes, but beyond it lay only shapeless darkness. 

He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up. Another brick hit the inside of his forehead. He gasped and curled in on himself as every nerve in his body lit up. His muscles cramped. Shivers doused the fire with unbearable cold, and still his head throbbed. 

When it passed, he wiped his eyes and tried again. 

This time, he managed to get onto his knees. There was no ground or floor. Just that shapeless darkness, with neither sky nor horizon. That golden light still clouded his eyes. He tried to rub it away. It didn’t dim. He frowned. It hurt. 

Carefully, he covered his forehead. The light disappeared. He ran his fingers across the hurting spot. There were lines there, carved into his skin. He brought his fingers to his eyes. Red.

His heartbeat was getting louder. He needed a mirror. Or something to see his reflection in. Anything —

Out of the shapeless darkness, a tall ornate mirror appeared. A golden snake twisted around the rim, and ravens perched at the top, staring down at him with unseeing black eyes. At the bottom, two wolves prowled.

The mirror itself was dark. His own reflection, grey and wide-eyed, stared back at him. He pushed his hair out of the way. A single eye had been carved into his forehead. Blood pooled in the lines, but didn’t trickle. The eye emitted a soft golden glow. 

In the mirror, the eye blinked.

Shadow yelped and scrambled back. It made his head start hurting all over again, but he forced himself to ignore it. 

The eye in the mirror stared at him. 

“Mímir?” Shadow tried.

NO. The voice, heavy with years uncounted spent upon a spire, observing what no one else could see — with echoes of wars lost and won — with murmured spells in cracked tones — resounded in his head. The eye continued to stare at him.

“Who — I thought —” He swallowed. “We came for knowledge!”

AT WHAT PRICE?

“What do you mean?”

The eye closed. A sigh, like the wind hurtling through naked branches, rattled Shadow’s bones. There was no reply.

“Hello?” Shadow pushed himself to his feet and approached the mirror. 

The eye remained shut.

“Voice?” He touched the mirror. The eye disappeared. Instead he saw the clearing. Mímir’s head hung above the well. His own body lay in the moss, and Vio lay half on top of him, forehead pressed to his chest. Nearby, Green had passed out in Zelda’s arms, kneeling, with tears and blood dripping down the left side of his face. Zelda was shaking him, speaking to him.

Across the clearing stood Red and Blue. Both looked pale and deeply horrified. Red had covered his mouth with his hand. His other clutched Blue’s arm. Blue was eyeing up the back of Mímir’s head, his fingers curled around the hilt of his hunting knife. 

Fondness welled in Shadow’s chest. Blue had no idea what he was up against (none if them did, a part of Shadow whispered), but he was still ready to throw down. “Idiot,” Shadow muttered affectionately, and focused on Green, who was still unconscious and losing blood. That couldn’t be good.

Under his fingers, the mirror opened. 

·

He thunders through the night. Steam billows from his reindeer’s nostrils, thawing the snow and ice hurtling towards him. Roars thunder around them. Footsteps shake the clouds. Gleaming projectiles — arrows, spears, and broken shards — rain past them, towards the world of humans far below.

Something looms above them — a shadow, too large to make out. He digs his knees into his reindeer’s sides, releases the reins, and lifts his hands above his head. His voice rolls through the snow and ice, bathing all other sounds with its echo. A dome springs out above them. A fist the size of mountains bears down upon it and shatters. 

The thundering roar of rage chases them onwards, through broken battle lines and shattered shields, towards the Outskirts — a ravaged land of ice, blizzards, and roaming trolls, where neither gods nor fae dare enter. 

But has not been named the King of Trollwinters for nothing.

His reindeer protests. He holds the reins firmly. Jagged pillars of ice jut from the ground, with snow hurled halfway up the exposed sides. He watches the darkness, frost crackling at the tips of his fingers, and rides on. Behind him, the war still rumbles.

·

Darkness fades into blackness. He murmurs under his breath — spells taught in time immemorial — and a shimmering blue glow rises from the snow disturbed by his reindeer’s hooves. 

They ride.

·

In the Outskirts, time moves in unpredictably ways. There are swirls and eddies where it thunders past, decades and centuries slipping away in minutes and seconds, and there are stagnant pools where nothing moves.

He doesn’t know where Green is.

Still, he rides on.

·

He follows a trickle caught in centuries long gone. It smells of holly and evergreens. 

·

It is another eon until he knows. 

He pulls the reins and leaps off his reindeer. With a spell, the wind blows through him as if he was never there. He pulls his hood up. He can feel the trickle, slow and meandering — less than a step away — where time slows. It tickles his palms when he extends his hands, kissing the tips of his fingers with dangerous promises of untouched snow and silence.

Generations will fade …

They will forget …

Your friends will wait …

He grins and raises his arms. Cheeky.

It only takes one spell to stop time. A single word of monumental power. He discovered it and wrought it, curling it around his tongue for centuries, like a string wound tight. He has used it sparingly, when the need is greatest. It is a lonely word. A quiet word. A word he will entrust no other with.

He casts it now, and feels the weight bear down upon his shoulders as the world grinds to a halt. He is a wedge between two trembling seconds that threaten to slip. He is all that keeps the world frozen.

He draws a deep breath and lowers his arms. Now, he has all the time in the world to find Green. Now, he has no time at all. 

·

The stilled trickle proves large. Within it, trolls sleep off the exhaustion of war. They lie frozen, mouths agape in mid-snore. Trolls are heavy sleepers — he should know — with one exception: smells. The smell of fairy blood will wake them from a mile away, and although they lie frozen, he still walks with deeply ingrained caution. 

He finds Green chained to a rock. He is beaten and unconscious, and his armour has been stripped from him and crumpled like sheets of paper. Shadow kneels in the snow and touches his cheek. Locked in time, it is cold. In time, Shadow will apologise for not finding him sooner. Outside time, Shadow is silent.

Only one chain holds Green — but one troll-forged chain would be enough to hold continents. No amount of magic can break it, and now amount of power can shatter it. The metal has been fused around his wrist, without lock or seal. There are scratch-marks and bruises along his arm, where he has tried to pull himself free.

Shadow sighs. There is nothing for it. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and releases time. 

Warmth returns to Green’s skin. The trolls cough awake.

Shadow draws a knife of ice and carves through Green’s wrist. Red splatters the snow. Green screams. The knife shatters in Shadow’s hand. The ice wraps itself around Green’s wrist, stemming the blood and cooling the hurt. Green is gasping, and the trolls are rising. The ground rumbles.

Shadow hoists Green into his arms and runs.

·

They make it to where he left his reindeer, but it is long gone. Closing his eyes, Shadow finds it in his mind and calls. It raises its head, fur now streaked with grey, and grunts. A long time has passed, but it will come for them, even here in the Outskirts.

Shadow finds a crevice in a pillar of ice. He shuffles inside. They will be safe here. For a while.

Carefully he sits with his back against the ice and Green in his lap. Green is shaking, jaws clenched and stump clutched to his chest. 

“May I?” Shadow asks, reaching for the stump.

Green turns his face into Shadow’s shoulder and lets him.

Blood, bones, and healing have never been Shadow’s skills. Still, he knows how to create. Holding Green’s arm, he gently shapes a new hand — a hand of snow and ice, which will do as a place-holder. Perhaps Blue can make a better one.

———

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