Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Prologue

Alis's Note

As a very quick guide, for Old Norse words, "ð" (eth) is pronounced halfway between "d" and a soft "th" (midh-GARDH), "þ"/"Þ" (thorn) is pronounced as a hard "th" (thurs), "y" is a hard "i" (ig-DRA-sil), and "j" is a "y" (yoe-TUN).

* * *

Everything is true. Some of it's embellished. That's the trick.

This is how it goes.

Once upon a time, a girl fell in love with a monster. Or maybe it was the other way around. Or both. Point being, there was love involved, that awesome, terrifying force.

According to prophecy, the monster was doomed to die in a bloody battle that would claim the lives of all the gods. He was, on balance, okay with this, because fate is fate and the Wyrd is the Wyrd, and everything needs to die at some point, even gods. The monster sighed, and shrugged, and got on with his life.

The girl didn't. Because she'd been born a mortal—not a monster, not a god—and the one thing every mortal knows, somewhere down inside, is that there's always another story. Always.

And so the girl conspired with others, her stepdaughter and her monster's not-entirely-ex-lover, and they rewrote and rewove and moved the stars themselves out of their orbits. Metaphorically speaking.

Literally speaking, the girl died. She died, and her monster didn't. Sort of. Because what she knew, and her monster didn't, was that by then he wasn't really her monster at all. He was someone else, or half of one. A blank canvas, an empty book with a scratched-out title, written and rewritten. And, somewhere beneath the scrawl, what that title said was:

LOKI

"Lain!"

Flashback. Night. Interior shot of the foyer of an office building. Big and open, spacious. Currently smeared with blood and stinking of smoke.

Three people. One is a boy. He's the one who's just done the yelling. His name is Sigmund Sussman. He's twenty-two, and this has been, without a doubt, the weirdest month of his entire life.

The second person is a man. He's got a thousand years and change on the boy, but doesn't look a day over thirty. He's got blond hair, pale skin, and is dressed in the sort of fur-and-leather outfit that went out of fashion in the early eleventh century. He's currently clutching his face, howling.

He just got bitten by a snake. One that was hiding in the bag the boy, Sigmund, had been carrying for exactly that purpose. Snake-infested laptop bags; next season's hottest antitheft device.

The man's name is Baldr. At least, that's what everyone's been calling him. Actually, he's really Loki. That's something he only figured out recently. He's currently pretty pissed off about that.

The third person is a monster. Seven feet tall, horned, skin like burned earth and feathers like bonfire and ash. This is me. I'm also a Loki, and a Baldr, but mostly, right now, I answer to Lain.

* * *

Things got confusing. Things always get confusing when a plot twist rewrites fate.

Loki doesn't really know what he's doing here, other than writhing in pain. I know this now because I'm him, even though I wasn't then. Back when he'd thought he was Baldr, and thought he'd been trying to kill Loki. By which I mean me. Now that he knows that he, in fact, is Loki, he's very slowly coming to terms with the fact he needs to die.

Loki is supposed to be dead. That was the prophecy, the Ragnarøkkr. All the gods would die, all their enemies would die, and the slate of the world would be wiped clean to start again.