Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter XLIII - Heida

She cleaved to the dank walls, the air withering in her lungs as she strained her ears to listen for something, anything, that might alert her to another's presence. But there was nothing. Only the imperceptible sound of scuttling — a large insect perhaps — and the interminably slow dripping of moisture from the roots that hung from above. Finally, she moved forward, her hand out in front of her face as she endeavored both to keep from walking into anything and to brush the hair-like roots out of her face.

The fingers of one hand crept stiffly along the damp rock as she, walking tripod on her left hand and her knees, began exploring the space she'd fallen into. Whatever the length of time she'd been below the earth, she could not say, but her knees ached and her heart was near to bursting with dread, to say nothing of her throbbing ankle.

The fall would likely have done far more damage if she were not ... other. She'd sustained far worse than this in her life — she had only a small scar on her brow to prove it — but her bones, if indeed they ever broke, had always knit themselves together with preternatural speed. No matter the damage to her ankle, it too would heal itself soon enough ... if indeed she ever made it out of here alive.

She knew instinctually where she was. Her marrow was frozen with the certitude of it. Niflheim. With this thought uppermost in her trembling heart, her outstretched palm collided with something that was undeniably not made of rock. A toothy snout.

She snatched her hand back with a yelp of horror, an atavistic foreknowledge compelling her to flattened herself against the cavern floor. Her eyes she squeezed shut and held her breath as small sounds of hysteria slipped involuntarily from her lips.

It was him. The valdyr.

He made no sound and he made no move, but still she waited; and quailed with gut-wrenching fear. Erelong, she heard it grunt, a puff of fetid breath blowing in her face, however, it still did nothing more than snort loudly over her. She opened first one eye and then the other, yet she could see nothing but a very obscured shadow, albeit a hulking one.

The creature circled her. She could hear it snort alternately from one side and then the other as it prowled to and fro. Whatever it meant to do, it ostensibly had not decided to eat her; at least not yet. Heida's body was folded in on itself, her thighs almost flush against her torso and her amulet, fortunately, still secure around her neck. Her amulet!

"It will protect you... from them," her birth mother had told her.

"Them?"

"The wolves!"

Was that why the valdyr made no move to dispatch her? Gods above! Had her mother just saved her life this night by bestowing this periapt all those years ago? There was nothing to do but test that theory, for she could not lie here indefinitely, lest the beast reconsider its tentative mercy.

She unfurled herself and paused to see what effect her movements had wrought, but the quiet padding and grunting continued. Little by little she became ever more stouthearted and finally began crawling away again as she had been in the midst of doing before she'd, quite literally, bumped into him.

The valdyr, though, kept pace with her instead of allowing her out of his sight, and she heard him circling her all the while she pulled herself across the floor. At one point she made to turn right, following the curve of the cavern walls, but he blocked her path with a low growl which precipitated her into a frozen state of shock.

Would he devour her now?! But he made no move against her and, at length, she becalmed herself somewhat — as best one could be calmed in the face of a man-eater — and took the route that lead to the left, as per the creature's decided insistence.