7. Erik

1000 YEARS AGO

Nine times I almost broke and tried to force my way out of the cave I had trapped myself within. But the gods were mocking me. They had sealed it themselves; I was sure of it. It was no longer just rocks holding the wall in place, but a magic so ancient it slithered through the cavern like serpents come to witness my suffering.

No matter how much I battered the rocks, tearing at them with my bare hands, they did not shift. This had been my choice, but the hunger had quickly consumed me, and when the months had turned to years, my desperation had driven me to the brink of madness.

Andvari whispered to me sometimes and his laughter made my bones weak, like he was sucking out the marrow and making a meal of me.

I was a rabbit in a trap, but it was a trap of my making. And sometimes I remembered that I had to endure this hell if it would bring me salvation, though that clarity came and went as swiftly as two sides of a coin spinning on its axis.

The hunger grew maddening. Insufferable. And soon, I saw visions. Shadows. Light dancing in my periphery.

Sometimes I saw a girl who looked like the moonlight given flesh. Other times the sun in ethereal form. But then I forgot I had seen them at all, and I could not recall the beautiful faces that looked upon me through the cracks in my mind.

Andvari was taunting me. I despised him and all of the gods along with him. Their omniscient cruelty. Their punishment for a crime I didn’t commit.

I cursed my parents’ names. There were times when I scratched and tore at my skin, trying to release my soul from this wretched body. Other times I lay still for days, weeks, months. Years perhaps.

Time was nothing and everything. Time was a trick of the mind. A plague that killed humans, brought mountains to their knees, dried up oceans and ravished stars themselves into oblivion, but never me. I would live on and starve and fall into insanity. That was my fate. The gods would not free me, the debt would never be paid.

Fabian visited less and less. Sometimes he called out to me, other times he only came near enough to listen for signs of life. There had been times where I had begged him to release me, but he had stuck to his word and kept me caged. Perhaps he had not come at all, and it was another illusion cast by the gods, mocking me, making me believe there was someone out there who cared for me, only to dash that hope to pieces.

Now, I lay on my back, feeling weightless, like I was floating in a limitless abyss. The hunger had hollowed out everything else inside me. I could barely remember why I had come here, but when I came too close to forgetting, Andvari would appear to remind me. Like he did now.

“Draugr, you are cursed for your parents’ blasphemy against me. You are starving yourself in payment of the debt owed to me.”

“Am I getting close to paying it?” I asked, my voice like the snap of dry bark.

“That depends,” he purred, and I felt his holy presence fill up the space inside the cave, drowning me in his powerful ambiance. “Do you feel you have the answer to the prophecy?”

“I think on it sometimes,” I admitted. “I try to find meaning, but I fear there is none. That the prophecy is just another way for you to torment me.”

“There is meaning, Erik Larsen.”

I closed my eyes, going over the prophecy in my mind. “Twins of sun and moon. Sometimes I see such things. Then I forget them.”

“Yes…” Andvari whispered. “And what does it mean?”

I rubbed my face, having no answer. It was all too dark in here. Too dark to see or hear or speak or think.

“I cannot have children,” I whispered. “It cannot be that.”

“Oh, but you can, Draugr.”

My brow creased and my heart thudded once in recognition of this news. The first gleam of hope in a void with no end. “Children?”

“A human mother could bear you a child,” Andvari said, beginning to laugh. It was cold and vicious, his amusement in my torment another reason I despised him and his kind.

“And what animal would that child be?” I growled, thinking of the monster I would create.

Andvari’s voice began to fade as he started chanting the first line of the prophecy. “Warrior born and monster made. Warrior born and monster made.”

“Stop!” I clawed at my ears, willing him away.

Silence fell. And Andvari didn’t speak to me again for a long time. Days and months and years dripping by. Falling one by one, until I was surely lost.

“A circle of gold,” I whispered into the frozen air, though it was not nearly as cold as me. “Shall join two souls.”

I repeated the line of the prophecy for a while, my tongue heavy and begging for blood instead of words.

The sun? Could that be the circle of gold?

“Two souls…twins…children,” I repeated what little I knew from Andvari’s ramblings.

A new torment had come to play havoc with me since the god had hinted at such an answer to the prophecy: the image of a fanged child with eyes the same shade as mine and blood spilling from its teeth. I saw it everywhere. Eyes closed, eyes open, there it sat and watched me. And I held onto one decision in the darkness of my cage in the face of that unholy creature. I would never birth a child with a human. It was just another trick of the gods. Another lie to drive me mad.

“The slayers are rising in numbers. Many are gathering now,” Andvari’s voice cut into my ears like a blade, slashing through the quiet and rousing me from my state of stasis.

Fabian hadn’t visited for many weeks, but the last time, he had he’d spoken of the battles between the slayers and my family. Clarice and Miles had joined him in the fight. When he had visited, he had asked me to help them, but I had refused. The answer lay here, this payment surely still worth something to Andvari.

“Why are you telling me this?” I breathed.

“They will come for you if your brothers and sister are defeated,” Andvari growled, seeming frustrated by that fact.

“And then you will have no one to torment,” I said, realising why it bothered him so.

“All the answers you seek are in the prophecy.”

“Am I on the right path? Is starving here helping at all?” I pleaded.

“A debt must be paid,” Andvari whispered, but I didn’t know if he was confirming or denying what I had asked.

“Is this the debt?” I demanded, my anger rising.

I stood and hunger gripped me in an unyielding fist. I dreamed of blood. It was all I had thought of when my mind began to fade, and I could hardly recall the words of the prophecy when it took hold of me. It was my truest captor now, the thirst so deep after all this time without blood that it was hard to think of anything else.

“Please,” I demanded when Andvari didn’t answer. “If I am wrong, then tell me so that I can find another way to pay the debt.”

Andvari chuckled and began to recite the prophecy again. At some point, I snapped. The words broke me, or perhaps it was the lack of blood. Those words poured through my head in an endless circle, puncturing my skull and breaking me from the inside out.

I roared, punching stone, and tearing at the wall, but it didn’t buckle, even with all my strength behind the blow.

“You’re keeping me here!” I bellowed at Andvari. “You won’t let me out! You will never let me out!”

“You chose to come,” Andvari said sharply. “I am helping you keep your promise.”

I sank down to my knees, my mouth burning and my throat so tight I was suffocated. “You are not helping me. If you were helping, you would tell me what to do.”

“A riddle hides a secret in its words. It is there in plain sight if only you would pay attention.”

I groaned, pressing my forehead to the icy floor. “The words are branded in my skull. I see them in the darkness bearing down on me like the great wolf Fenrir. And still I cannot find the answer!”

“Erik…” A warm presence floated around me, though I could not see Andvari in any fleshly way. “I admire how you try. I come here because you are the only one of the cursed who attempts to pay his debt.”

“Then help me,” I snarled. “Help me pay it.”

“The answer lies between the moon and the sun, Draugr. You will find your answer there.”

I laughed bitterly. “On earth you mean? Somewhere on earth is my answer, is that supposed to be helpful?” I spat.

“You see things too literally,” Andvari sighed. “Look into the space between the words, what does that tell you?”

I closed my eyes, wishing he would leave me be.

“I do not know,” I sighed. “I do not know.”

“A river can be water, but it can also be a life force. Do you see better now?”

“I see that your words hold more riddles. I see that you take pleasure in my pain. I see that the gods are cruel and unforgiving.”

“That is where you are wrong, Erik. I can forgive. And I will forgive. But you must pay the debt…” He drifted away and silence found me once more, wrapping me in its lonely arms, never to let go.