Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Nineteen

I don't know how long I'm out. Long enough that when the world comes once more into soft-edged focus, it's Magni and Móði I can feel looming over my shaking form.

"Hnnnrrrhhh."

Everything hurts. Everywhere. The curse is gone, but the effects linger. In cramped muscles and healing bones, shattered from the ugly contortions my body forced itself into in its desperate and futile attempts to escape a pain coming from within.

"What did you hope to achieve by this folly?" Móði's voice, much too close. I hiss, pulling away from it. "Did you think to hide from us in this woman's skin?"

I don't answer. Somewhere up above, Magni spits. "Will it live?"

"Yes."

"Good." A thick, gauntleted hand grabs me by the neck and hauls me upright. The movement sends new lances of agony out through my twisted limbs, and I cry out.

"Brother! Please!"

"Still you feel for it? After all it has done? I told you, Móði, it is a beast. It will take us to Mjölnir and then we will be rid of it, as our father should have been in ages past."

Mad laughter bubbles up from somewhere inside my blackest heart. Magni hears it, hauling me up by the throat to look me in the eye and shaking me as he says, "Silence. My patience with you is d—"

With the laughter comes blood. Too much poison, left to fester, and it spills out over my tongue and teeth, and I spit it in Magni's ugly, leering face.

He howls, throwing me aside, and I bounce like a doll, over and over on the grass. I don't know where we are. Not where I fell. A park, perhaps, the sun higher now in the sky and the sound of cars and mortals roaring somewhere just beyond.

Magni's boot connects with my gut.

"Magni! No!"

"Poisonous piece of filth! I should sew your lips shut once and for all!"

Móði stands between me and his brother, hands on Magni's chest, looking back over his shoulder at me.

"Not this. Not now. Do not dishonor yourself for his sake, we are almost done," he says.

I close my eyes, not bothering to stand up.

All I can hear in my head, over and over, is the sound of Sigmund's voicemail.

* * *

Móði is right: compared to the distance we've come, we don't have far to go. An hour's walk, maybe. South, past more flat, ugly houses and dry, open bushland. Into the town of Bowral, population who-the-fuck-cares. In the early '90s, I left Mjölnir here. As a joke. Because who the fuck would expect Bowral, Australia, as the hiding spot of one of mythology's most unpronounceable artifacts?

No one gets the jö sound right. Sometimes hanging around with Sigmund in the comic store can get painful.

Nearly as painful as blacking out from magical torture. Hah.

We walk slowly. This is my fault. My bones have knit and my tongue regrown, but every single muscle in my body feels like it's tried to pull in opposite directions all at once. So a staggering limp is about the best that I can manage.

Magni tried pushing harder at first. Móði stopped him. Then offered me some healing runes and I told him to go jump in the fucking Ginnungagap. See if his overinflated sense of guilt will let him float.

The sun is high and hot and bright as we stumble down Bowral Road. Magni keeps glancing up at it, scowling, as if he can defeat its rays through disapproving thought alone. He's still in full chain mail and wool, grousing about the heat, and Móði laughs and says, "Soon you will have the hammer, and can bring storms to cool the air."