Chapter Text
Hidden in the Wild Woods of Midgard, a small wooden cabin stood in a small clearing. It was low-slung to the ground, as if the building itself was hunkering against the cold of the multi-year winter. An angled fence made of sharpened birch sticks protected a small copse of pine on one side; a lean-to on the other protected various provisions and equipment too bulky or dangerous to store inside from the worst of the elements. There were stalls for livestock under the lean-to, but these were empty of anything but roughly cut (and neatly stacked) firewood, the animals they were intended for long gone. The cabin was solid and well-built, sturdy, though utterly unadorned, without care to appearance. A purely practical crafting, devoid of any artistry except for the runes carved two fingers deep into the timbers of the doorframe -- though these were practical as well, powerful wards of protection.
The night was nearly pitch black; though the moon was full, it could not piece the thick cover of clouds, nor had it for many, many months. The only light in the clearing was a soft blue glow hovering over what would be an otherwise nondescript pile of stone and smashed wood against a cliff wall some meters away from the front of the cabin that gave the entire clearing a ghostly, ethereal quality. These woods were always quiet at night, and had become even more so in the advent of Fimbulwinter. The only sounds were the distant river -- somehow still running and not frozen over yet, though the ice crept over more of its surface with each day -- and an almost inaudible hum coming from the glow over the pile of rubble that was accompanied by a piercing, clean smell near the glow, as if the air itself was somehow being burned within it. There was not even a breeze to rustle the needles of the pines.
This stillness was suddenly interrupted, like a sword entering a gut, by a lance of surging white light, so bright it lit even the distant mountains like day. All the colors flickered within this column of light, but chaotically, as if someone had smashed a rainbow into uncountable shards of glass and scrambled it within the white. The light came also with a howling, crashing roar, like the thunder of a dozen lightning strikes at once, but not allowed to fade and echo, just a continuous noise that shook the ground itself.
And the Earth did tremble as this sword of light slammed against it. First, only the lightest snow and fallen needles fled before the power of this lance of light and shining color, then the heavier pack, then the hard ice and frozen ground itself began to chip and pull away, and the rocks and cliffs began to tremble, and the weakest trees began to creak and threaten a warning that they too shall soon fall --
And then it was over as suddenly as it had begun. For a moment the only sound was the gentle patter of snow and pine needles resettling to the ground.
Then the door to the cabin swung open, revealing a muscular, hard-faced man, his head clean-shaven but with a full, thick beard, holding an axe embossed with runes and gold filigree. Beside him was a boy just at the beginnings of puberty, holding a bow and nocking an arrow. Though the man was barechested, the boy was clothed in thick furs he had been sleeping in.
For a moment, the two stood in the doorway, holding in their breath, as they looked around. The boy was rapidly blinking the spots out of his eyes that had yet to fade from the bright light a few seconds past, but the man looked around the clearing, his eyes hard and unblinking. If he had any lingering discomfort from the sudden light, he gave no sign of it.
“Can you see anything, boy?” he asked in a low rumble. His voice was like two stones slowly grinding against each other.
“No, Father,” the boy replied, still blinking rapidly. “It was so bright, I --” He stopped suddenly with a small gasp, and pulled the string of his bow back, ready to fire.
“What? What you do you see?” the man asked impatiently, bringing his axe up as if to throw it.
“There’s -- there’s somebody on the ground. A body. I can’t tell if they’re alive or not -- and the ground’s all burned behind them. It’s still too dark.”
The man took a cautious step forward. “Wait here, Atreus. If we are attacked, do not stay inside, for you will be trapped.”
“Yes, Father. Ljösta,” Atreus whispered, and the string of his bow began to glow with a faint blue light that arced down the shaft of the arrow, gathering in the flint of his arrowhead like a flame on a wick. He whispered another incantation, and shot the arrow into the ground off to the side of the doorway. As soon as the arrow touched the ground, a dozen ghostly crows burst from it.
“Make sure there’s no one waiting to ambush us,” he told the spectral birds, which flew off in all directions. This was a trick he had learned recently; when he and his Father had been journeying to spread his mother’s ashes, he hadn’t the time to learn to do anything with his summons but sic them on whatever enemies were in their way (except Ratatöskr, and he’d rather avoid calling on his abrasive, insulting “help” anyway), but he had plenty of time in the depths of Fimbulwinter to expand their usefulness.
Meanwhile, his father continued to approach the body outside the burned circle. He -- for he could now see this was a man -- was lying face-down. He had longish, dirty blond hair that was stringy from lack of washing. Most of his body was covered by a dark red cape, which was also dingy, but one unarmored arm was splayed out over his head. He was breathing shallowly. He was either unconscious or well pretending to be.
Kratos thought it more likely to be the former, from the look of that bloody mat of hair near his temple. There was a sizable dent in the ground in the middle of the burned pattern, with some blood and hair already frozen in the center. He threw the axe next to the body’s head. It buried itself all the way to the cheek of the blade into the frozen sod, but the man didn’t react at all, just continued to breathe in the same slightly ragged pattern. He held out his hand, and the axe removed itself from the ground and spun obediently back into his palm.
“Boy,” he called out once he thought it unlikely the stranger would suddenly leap up and attack, “is this him?”
For the last several weeks, Atreus had been having the same dream, every night. They were awoken in the dead of night by a tremendous, shattering noise and blinding light, and when they looked out the door…
“Uh,” the boy said, as he approached behind his father. He was about to go closer, but his father put out his empty hand to stop his approach. The boy looked up at Kratos impatiently, who slowly withdrew his hand.
“Approach no closer than you need to see him clearly,” he growled in a tone that would sound unkind to those who did not know them, but Atreus knew to be a dispassionate order. His father just...sounded like that, even when he tried not to.
Atreus took another step closer. He examined the figure for a moment.
“I...don’t think so?”
“Why are you uncertain?”
“Well, in the dream, he was standing, and there was lightning all around. And...the burn wasn’t there.” He started to walk around to the other side of the man, thought better of it, and stopped. “And I don’t see Mjolnir, though it might be under his cape. Oh, and his armor’s all different. In the dream, he’s wearing hunting leathers and a travelling cloak. I never really got a good look at his face in the dreams except that his eyes glowed blue, but I think his beard was longer than this.”
Kratos considered this. In his younger years, he would have simply beheaded this unconscious stranger, to be safe, rolled the corpse into the ravine, and thought no more of it. Even now, the idea tempted him, especially considering the last stranger to arrive at their cabin. Then, he reached down to his belt. “Head.”
He held up a severed head with two glowing, golden eyes, backwards-curling horns sprouting from its forehead, and runes tattooed so thickly around its scalp they appeared to be close-shorn hair at first glance.
The head looked down at the body and considered for a moment.
“Well, brother, this definitely isn’t Thor. I can see a resemblance, yes, but it isn’t ‘im. His hair’s wrong, Thor’s gotta head of ginger minge you could scrub a pot with, but this bloke-”
“Is he from Asgard?” Kratos interrupted.
“Difficult to say. I don’t recognize the bugger and the Aesir didn’t dress like this when I was there, but I also haven’t exactly been keepin’ up on current events in Asgard besides what Odin saw fit to tell me in our torture sessions."
Atreus relaxed fractionally, but Kratos didn’t react as if he had heard what the head had said.
“Hey Mimir, the burn looks like it’s a pattern. Do you recognize it?”
Atreus pointed at the burn on the ground just beyond the stranger, and Kratos raised the head a little higher to give him a better view.
“Hmm...that’s strange… it definitely looks Aesir, but there doesn’t seem to be any meaning to it, as far as I can tell, and some of the elements look a little off. Although, look, there, on the far side.”
Kratos and Atreus looked. While most of the pattern was symmetrical and sharp as a brand on a cow’s flank, about a quarter of the design was warped, the lines and chains of the pattern stretched and squashed and bend back on itself at sharp angles, like someone had taken hold of a flattened bolt of cloth and twisted it.
“What does that mean?” Atreus asked.
“Beats me, lad. Brother, do you want to give our guest a slap on the noggin and see if he has any answers? I think all we’re gettin’ now is more questions.”
Kratos said nothing.
“If he is from Asgard,” Mimir said to Kratos, more quietly, “this might be your only chance to get some intel, before they send someone else to find out why he didn’t return.”
Kratos said nothing still, and Mimir was about to continue, when he finally spoke.
“If he is from Asgard, then I do not care who he is. But I must know how he passed the repaired ward.”
“Aye,” Mimir said grimly. “Might be why he’s in such a sorry state, but if he can get through alive, even unconscious…”
Kratos returned Mimir’s head to his belt, and let Mimir’s thought hang unfinished.
Fortunately, he had chains that he knew would be able to hold even a God.
-------------------
Thor woke with his head exploding and his arms refusing to obey his command. For a few confused moments, he thought with mild horror that he had actually lost a drinking contest with Volstagg -- though not by much, if this was his state on regaining consciousness -- until he regained a little more of his senses and remembered he hadn’t even seen Volstagg in nearly four years, let alone drank with him. Blearily, he opened his eyes.
He was looking at an uncarpeted wooden floor of roughly hewn logs, made smooth by the wear of feet and dirt ground into the grain. It was dark and the air stung his eyes, wherever he was. It smelled of stale smoke, roasted meat and various herbs, and sweat. Perhaps he was in an smokehouse. Where the smokehouse itself was, that was the next question.
He also discovered that the reason he couldn’t move his arms wasn’t the mightiest hangover Asgard had ever witnessed, but the thick chains tying him to the post at his back. A quick flex test told him that these chains were magically reinforced. Moreover, they burned slightly as he pressed against them. He could actually see the links start to glow the more he pressed, and a tiny tongue of flame even made its way out of one link like a curious snake testing the air. He relaxed. They were beginning to hurt faster than they would break, and he couldn't move his hands more than opening his fingers. Whoever bound him knew what they were doing.
He looked up.
Ah, so his first guess of cure-house wasn’t entirely off base, though he could see now that this was actually a one-room dwelling. Very primitive, by the looks of it. Fandral had talked him into going camping for a few months with the Warriors Three on Vanaheim in a place like this a few centuries ago. He was bored out of his skull the entire time, to the point he carved his father’s face into the side of a nearby mountain just to have something to do. With Mjolnir. He took a moment to inwardly wince at the memory -- it had caused a minor diplomatic incident, not that he had cared at the time -- then refocused on the present.
Sitting off to the side on a bed was a boy, with the thin and spindly look of a child that was just about to begin his growth into to a man. He was holding a bow, decorated with gold and writing that Thor couldn’t quite read from this distance, and writing in a vellum notebook bound with leather string in the light of his bowstring, which was glowing blue.
Directly in front of him, standing with massive arms folded over his chest, was a muscular man with skin so chalky and pale that Thor immediately thought it to be war-paint. He wore leather trousers and a belt, though the only thing covering his torso and arms was a thick leather pauldron over one shoulder, lined with fur. The thick red tattoo winding its way around his body, like a sash that had been pressed into his skin in wide bands and loose circles, only solidified his assessment. He had a highly decorated axe tied to his belt that practically hummed with magic even to Thor’s relatively (compared to the rest of his family, anyway) untrained senses. He could almost taste the thing. And it felt...familiar to him, but distantly. It was like the sensation of meeting someone at a party that you knew you’ve met before, but couldn’t place when and where, or even the details, just the vague familiarity.
The bearded man was staring at him with the sort of icy glare that told him at once everything the man was thinking, but nothing.
“I would like nothing more than to bury this axe into your neck,” the glare said, “but I will not tell you why.”
“Boy,” the man grunted, and it took Thor a moment to realize he was talking to the child, as his unblinking stare never left Thor’s face. The boy looked up, and with a wordless exclamation of surprise, dropped the notebook and nocked an arrow, pointing it at Thor’s face.
OK, this was still far from the worst thing he’d ever woken up to.
“I’m going to assume this isn’t Xandar, then,” he said with a forced cheerfulness. He’d heard rumors that Xandar had come into possession of an object that sounded suspiciously like an Infinity Stone, but neither of these two looked anything like Xandarians. And he knew a Xandarian would die before being caught in a state of half-undress in a dirty, wooden hut. At least Asgard had trees.
“How did you find this place. How did you get through the ward,” the man said, ignoring him.
Thor blinked a few times. Ward? “I… didn’t? Well, not on purpose, anyway. I was on my way to Xandar, and next thing I know I wake up in this hut, tied to a post. Which, granted, wouldn’t be the first time I woke somewhere with no idea where I was or how I got there and tied to something, but there are usually more women…” he trailed off, as he noticed a set of antlers mounted to the wall. He knew that animal, and knew it only lived on one place in the cosmos.
“Is this Midgard? ” How had the Bifrost managed to send him to Earth? It was in the complete opposite direction!
“You will answer my questions,” the man said. The tone of his voice didn’t change, not that it was friendly to begin with, but the magic axe moved from his belt to his hand.
Thor, ignoring this, continued on. The man was indeed quite intimidating, but he knew Heimdall could pull him out at any moment, so he wasn’t especially concerned. “Would you happen to have a phone somewhere around? Or perhaps I could send an electronic mail?”
Thor had never sent an electronic mail before and didn’t have the faintest idea how to do so, but he had heard about it from Jane, and it sounded terribly convenient.
For whatever reason, this seemed to throw the man slightly, as his eyes briefly looked unsure, though his stance didn’t change at all.
“I couldn’t tell you either, brother. Sounds like gibberish to me,” said a voice from the man’s hip.
Thor blinked, and regretted as it made his head swim briefly. “Did you just talk out of your arse?”
The man reached down, and pulled what Thor had initially presumed to be a wineskin off of his belt that he could now see what was a man’s severed head. He held it up, and turned it to face Thor.
The severed head opened its eyes. Then its mouth.
“Well--”
“Ohhh my God!” Thor yelled, his feet scrabbling against the floorboards. The support pillar behind him groaned as he pressed against it.
The talking head paused, taken aback by the outburst, and then continued, “Well, this definitely isn’t him and I still have no sodding clue who it could be.”
“How do you speak?”
The head paused, his mouth still open. “What?”
“I can see that you obviously have no lungs, your neck was bisected at the vocal cords, and you have no apparatus to move air through them even if you still had them. How are you talking, Head?”
“Oh great, another one,” the head muttered. “Well, as unpleasant as it is, that part is actually pretty simp-”
“Focus,” the man snarled, shaking the head very slightly.
“Right, right. To bring us back, how did you bypass the wards around these woods? They are still intact, so whatever spell you did didn’t break them by brute force.” The head paused, as if considering something. “Did you slip between the worlds?”
“Well, in a manner of speaking. I was using the Bifrost to travel to a port on Vanaheim to catch a ship to Xandar -- it’s beyond the reach of Yggdrasil by a few hundred light-years -- then I felt like I was being slammed into a mountain, and then I woke up here.”
Now both the head and the stoic man holding him had expressions of surprised confusion, though the man with a body recovered faster.
“I am tired of this.”
“Brother,” the head started just after, “I think he may be more than a bit off his head. Maybe we should --”
“Oh, by the way, have any of you seen my hammer? I’d call it, but you’ve been such wonderful hosts and I’d rather not break your home. It’s very…” he looked around, looking for a word, “cramped. Charming. I mean charming. Yes.” He grinned winningly.
The mood in the air, already tense, seemed to tighten even more. The boy, who’d been silently pointing the arrow at Thor’s face and occasionally glancing at the man and head, spoke now.
“Your hammer?”
“Oh, yes,” Thor said cheerfully. “My hammer, Mjolnir. Have you seen it around? I don’t have it on me at the moment, but if you could just point me to it, I can collect it and be on my way.”
The man had replaced the head on his belt, and was now holding the axe in a throwing stance over his head. The golden vambrace on his other arm expanded into a circular shield.
“You will not return to Asgard. Your message shall remain undelivered.”
Thor smiled then. “Oh, good, threats, now we’re getting somewhere. I know not what your quarrel with me is, but I do know how to deal with those.” Behind his back, he spread his fingers.
The man swung his axe towards Thor’s neck, ice growing into wicked, jagged edges over the blade.
Then the back wall of the house exploded, and Mjolnir settled into Thor’s palm. Thor knew he couldn’t break the chains around him, but the pillar? He could break the pillar.
He surged forward, and half of the support pillar came with him, splintering at the end. He swung around and backwards, bringing his feet up in a backflip. The edge of the pale man’s axe collided with Mjolnir's side. It rebounded with a clang and the sudden sharp smell of ozone.
“Let’s take this outside, shall we? I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t want to break any more of your hou-”
The man yelled wordlessly in his face, then slammed his shield into it. Thor flew out the hole Mjolnir had just entered, slamming into the rock wall behind. He felt the section of pillar he was still tied to explode into splinters, and the chains fell away.
Huh, there were blades at either end. So they were a magical weapon, and not just chains. Chain seemed rather long to be useful, though.
“Thank you, I appreciate it! I would feel terribly guilty if I broke your home in addition to your face,” Thor said, as he began to spin Mjolnir.
Then the axe came flying out of the house towards him, the pale man leaping behind it, face distorted in a yell of anger and hatred. The child followed him, an arrow drawn and ready and pointed right at Thor's center of mass.
Thor smiled. It’d been a while since he’d had a good fight.