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Wednesday, 1:13 pm in Outtakes and Deleted Scenes

UNIII+ drabble written as part of 29shards’ Cycle 1.  This one is for the 13th August prompt, Rebirth.

The wraiths swarmed over them like a vicious sea of inky black; individual shapes becoming lost and indistinct amongst the writhing throng of teeth and claws that ripped at her skin and her clothes and her hair and Miriah cried out in rage, fingers catching the edge of a crumbling windowsill,  Muscles screamed as she attempted to pull herself up and out of the sea, but the wraiths were greedy and claws like frosted knives raked ribbons against her calves.

But she made it.  She had the high ground.

With the chaos manageable for one terrible moment her eyes whipped around frantically.  They’d been pulled apart when the wave hit, but…  There.  Nekro had cut herself a decent-sized circle in the ocean of black; the wraiths as always hesitant to take on someone that was half their own.  And Loki…

Miriah’s eyes followed the smoke; a huge ring of fire circled a rusted-out hulk of a car about three hundred metres left of Nekro’s circle.  Loki was perched in a crouch on top of the car, ripped and bleeding and even from this distance Miriah could see the manic burn in his eyes that – through the flames and the smoke – made him look every inch the destroying god.  The fire was holding against the mass of wraiths, but individuals  were breaking through with fast-growing frequency; re-forming themselves out of the churning smoke of their dead comrades.  Loki was throwing them down as fast as they came up, but he looked… tired.  Miriah wondered how long he’d be able to keep the ring of flame burning, and as if summoned by her thoughts the god looked up; straight into her, gaze hardening even as he did so.

The next thing she felt were the claws on her shoulders.

Because of course she had been perched on a windowsill, hadn’t considered that even though her back was hard against plate-glass that maybe the blackness beyond that meant it wasn’t so much as obstacle for their tormentors as it was for her.

“Miriah!”  Nekro’s voice, but even as she felt herself ripped backwards Miriah’s eyes were still locked on Loki’s and the god was moving; tattered wings snapping open as he launched herself straight for her and she only had a moment to appreciate the irony of getting saved by someone who – not that long ago, really – would have relished her death-by-carelessness.  Then the only thing she knew was shattered glass; glinting viciously in the blackness, ripping into her arms and legs and face like thousands upon thousands of tiny teeth.  Hungry and cold and impossibly ancient and she wasn’t sure if the numbness in her limbs was from the blood loss or the desperate, freezing cold.

“Get away from her!”

The heat.  Terrible, wild, scorching heat all around her and her entire vision was filled with a scarred expanse of perfectly-defined torso, the odd mauve colouring for once looking not so much like dead flesh as… right somehow.

The wraiths always went for the largest prey in the room.

Her scream was barely articulate as that massive heat was ripped away from her by long claws of unfocused shadow; hands and forearms crunching on shards of broken glass as she struggled to get herself upright, to reach for guns she knew were long empty but what else could she do against the horror that had engulfed the jötunn god and ripped him into the blackness.  Her finger tightened on the trigger,

(please oh please i know you can make this work it always works please workpleasepleaseworkpleaseibelieveplease)

and fired.  Once, twice…  five whip-crack shots into the darkness and Miriah swore the pin-razor screams the wraiths made as they died were not hitting her eardrums at all.

And then the room was a whirlwind of bloodied white as Nekro joined the fray, yelling obscenities in French and in an instant Miriah was on her feet and standing back-to-back with her once-enemy as they fought back the darkness.

The last wraith was the biggest.  It always was, but between Miriah’s not-bullets and Nekro’s stolen claws they tore it apart like a hurricane through smoke, and when it cleared…

“Loki!”

… there was very little left.

One milky-green eye rolled blearily in her general direction, and Miriah thought she could almost see the hint of a smile pull at the god’s stitched-shut lips.  She tried not to look lower; to where a huge smear of greenish black mercifully obscured the worst of the evisceration.

“Oh, a-hah, man…”  Words were hard, and Miriah struggled to find some kind of quip.  The kind that she always made, because she’d been here before and she knew – absolutely and completely and with more certainty than she knew anything else – that Loki would make one too, and then he’d pull himself upright, and they’d move on.  Because they always did.  Always.

“Always except today, sunshine.”

Her arms ached.  The room felt too cold.  She tried to turn, to tell Nekro to find something they could use to make a fire because the room was cold and Loki was dy–

No.

“Sorry, kid, I really am.”  Loki was talking again but he… wasn’t, either and Miriah noticed that the too-dim eye wasn’t looking at her at all, but rather over her shoulder to where Nekro was standing and looking at them both with such an expression of sorrowful compassion that Miriah just wanted to grab her and slap her and scream because it was all okay, damnit, he was okay and–

Loki’s not-speech cut her thoughts again.  “I held on as long as I could, kid, but…  This is it, I think.”

A clawed hand reached up to caress the side of her face and when it pulled away her skin felt sticky with blood.  It didn’t burn.  Miriah felt herself choke back a sob, though it felt very far away.

“Sorry it ended like this, sunshine.  And whatever you think later, it’s not your fault.”

She felt herself start to ask him what the hell he was talking about when a scream cut through her heart and the earth itself and the room was full of light; light and warmth and for one terrifying, joyous moment Miriah knew everything would be fine.  Because she’d seen this before; a million years and a million lives ago.  Fire and sun and corn and life and–

The light dimmed; golden motes still swirling and spinning against the squalor and the decay of their Hell, but despite everything Miriah’s smile was like the sun because…

“Loki?”

That wasn’t right.  It shouldn’t have been a question.  Shouldn’t have been a question just like the eyes that looked back at hers should have been a toxic, iridescent green.  Not this odd combination of brilliant gold and deadened gray.

The thing that was not-Loki pulled itself upright and Miriah scrambled back from it, frantic, terrified, she had to get out, to get away to–

Her back hit soft white fur and she felt Nekro’s hand’s come down gently on her shoulders, Nekro’s voice whisper softly in her ear.

“Je suis navré, mon chère.  This is the way it is.”

But she didn’t hear.  All she could see was the figure in front of her unfold like a sunrise; proud and tall and golden haired and unmarred and beyond beautiful in a way that made Miriah’s heart ache.  And she hated him for it, with every last inch of her being, and all the more for when he turned those depthlessly compassionate eyes back to her.

“I’m sorry,” said Baldr in a voice like sunshine.  “It’s the best I could do.”

• Tags » 29shards, baldr, loki, miriah, nekro, short fiction, urban nordica, writing