Magnus Chase - Rise Of Darkness

Chapter 23 - I Get An Ego Boost

Saar, Cyrus and I made our walk of shame down the corridors and hallways. Gray walls and metal doors lined our path left to right. White tiled floor, like back in the previous room, squeaked under our wet shoes. Shorting out, glaring ceiling lights were in a patterned above us.

Saar popped up next to me. "This is bad." she whispered to me.

"No crap!" I hissed back, using a different word.

"Yes I know, but I'm talking about Cyrus." She motioned with her head behind us. The berserker, muscles were strained, muscles showing in their neck and arms. Eyes starting to fade blue. "They look like their about to freaking explode!"

"They might." I whispered gravely. I stored that situation in my mind for another time, our room was here.

A zombie out of the two that were marching us with a jotun behind us, pulled out a thick ring of keys. It looked like a ring of spikes with all the keys smashed together, no room to even jingle.

The guard garbled something incoherent as it jiggled the key in the key hole. Finally, with a morning screech, the door opened.

"Hey, watch those hands buster!Nyah!!!" Saar exclaimed as we all got thrown into the room.

A groan escaped my lips as I was sprawled on the ground. My shoulder did not like the impact to the hard floor. I knew I could heal it, but something was compressing me not to. But my natural abilities were still working on its own.

"Thank the gods!" Someone cheered on front of me as I got up. I got nostalgia from the last time I heard those words, when I had returned from Alfheim, Alex had greeted me with those exact words. I thought she was glad to see me for a second, but only really had focus on the glasses she let me borrow.

So now, as I see him bolting at me from the other end of the cell, I took off the hat I had been borrowing the whole time, holding it out for him. Knowing him, it probably complete his paradise look.

But instead, not even allowing me time to understand what was going on, Alex pounced on me with a giant hug, his arms wrapping around my shoulders as his warmth was suddenly connected to mine.  His pink and green bucket hat fell to the floor carelessly.

"You guys made it!" He exhaled through the hug, his breath on my neck.  Heat lit itself on my face, but not like the one that burned when I was talking to Hel. Getting over my initial shock, I tightly embraced the other einherji.

I had never been more glad to feel his warmth in my life. The last time I felt this feeling, the last time I saw his eyes, had not been under good circumstances. Seeing the chilling, bone shocking sharpness of pain in Alex's eyes was not what I wanted my last sight to see her as.

But now, pulling away and studying his eyes now, was a gleam I never wanted to forget.
"Surprisingly," I breathed "we did."

Then came the massive punch to the chest.

"OW!" I was flown all the way back into the wall behind me from his hit.

"Brother," chided a voice jokingly "don't plunder Magnus just yet, I want a hit out of him too."

The wise but sadistic undertone, the leveled voice, there was only one other person I knew.

"Sam!" I called out, building the warmth inside me. I slid over to her rested form against the back wall.

"Oh sweet mercy," I muttered once I saw her condition. Samirah's hijab was shredded, but still tightly wrapped around her head. Her armor was in a thousand pieces over the ground of metal and chain mail. This revealed the cuts, scraped, bullet holes, slashes, and even her broken leg.