Another chamber, another threshold. Freydis threw her torch inside. It landed to illuminate an empty space. Nothing on the walls other than carvings of forests, nor did the ceiling or floor contain anything. “Any chance it’s fine?” Sif asked.

  “With my luck, no.” Halfdan stretched his neck. “Alright. Give me room, in case I need to leap back before I get incinerated or strangled.” Holding his torch high, he stepped inside and waited. [Keen of Sense] told him of no reason to worry. Perhaps the trap had been undone, by age or other travellers? Halfdan took another step.

  He saw it then. In the other end of the chamber, as if it had stepped out from the other tunnel, a bear came. Immediately, Halfdan drew his knife in his free hand, crouching to a fighting position. He waved his torch in front of him, hoping the fire would drive the creature away.

  On the contrary, it seemed emboldened and moved forward, swiping its own paws against the berserker.

  “Back, you beast!” Halfdan sneered, swinging his torch wildly. But his display of aggression did not discourage the animal, which roared.

  From the side, Freydis came running to stab her spear into the bear’s side. The point seemed to go deep, but between the thick fur and the hide, it was impossible to tell if she caused any real hurt. The bear did not seem hindered, snapping its jaws.

  To make matters worse, another enemy appeared. A lithe woman, also wielding a spear that she nimbly used to attack Halfdan with. He parried with his torch in a desperate move, devoid of elegance, barely keeping her at bay.

  Armed with only the burning wood in one hand, a knife in the other, Halfdan could do little. His reach would not allow him to injure the female warrior or the bear, not without taking a grave wound in return first. [Mend Your Wounds] had its limits; if the animal bit his head off, or his abdomen was eviscerated leaving all his guts on the floor, Halfdan would die like any other.

  Instead, he tried to keep their attention on him, only defending while allowing Freydis to attack on the flank. She needed no explanation to understand his intention, and she moved constantly to take advantage of their positions, but every strike into the bear or the enemy warrior accomplished nothing.

  A stone flew, released by a sling as Sif stepped into the threshold, already loading her next projectile. The first one flew true, striking the bear on the snout, but as before, it only seemed to enrage the creature further. In addition, a strange child appeared from the shadows behind their foes, with leaf-green hair and clad in simple clothing. Like Sif, it wielded a sling, and now stones came flying from both sides.

  “Fall back,” Freydis called out, raising her spear into the air. “Stop fighting!” she told her allies, as she stepped back.

  Anger filled Halfdan at her words. He was fighting a desperate defence, unable to mount a proper attack with his poor weapons unless he risked it all and went berserk, and his only other hope was to provide an opening for her to strike. And now she retreated? Evading another swipe from a giant bear’s paw, Halfdan shouted back, “Attack, damn you! Or flee, and let my rage finish this!”

  “They only fight if we do!” Freydis retorted, pushing Sif out of the chamber, back across the threshold. “Look!”

  Her meaning finally got through to Halfdan, as he realised the enemy warrior no longer threatened his flank. Instead, she remained at the back, spear raised upwards. Keeping his own weapons ready, he stared at the bear, which stood upright on its hindlegs, paws ready.

  All of Halfdan’s instincts told him to attack, go for the throat. The threat was obvious, and a berserker did not retreat.

  But as he had recently discovered, not every fight could be won through sheer strength and fury; sometimes, even a berserker benefitted from stepping back and reevaluating the fight.

  The bear remained standing. As Halfdan lowered his torch and dagger, the animal let its forelegs fall to the ground again.

  “They’re us,” Sif spoke, her mouth open. She walked into the room again, and the odd, Elven-like child appeared from the other side, sling hanging loose in both their hands.

  “A clever deception. Who better to fight you than your mirror? Especially if you can’t hurt them.” Freydis leaned her head to the side, studying her counterpart.

  Halfdan stared at the bear. “Not sure whether to be flattered or insulted.”

  “Dangerous people, those who dwell in Alfheim,” Grani remarked. The young J?tun finally stepped inside, but no phantasm came from the other side to mirror him.

  “Why don’t you have a double?” Sif pondered.

  “Maybe it doesn’t work on J?tnar,” he considered with a shrug.

  “Well, assuming these fellows won’t trouble us no more, we should look for the rune. Sif, keep your distance to them, just in case,” Halfdan cautioned her. “Any suggestion where it might be?” he added, remembering that she had been right about the rune in Vanaheim.

  “Not sure,” she admitted. “Nothing comes to mind when I think about Alfheim.”

  “Some trees are sacred to them,” Grani suddenly spoke. “Yew, for instance, or beech. You should look in the trees.”

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  Halfdan glanced at him, noticing this sudden burst of knowledge from someone who earlier claimed ignorance. But rather than rush into a confrontation, he instead began inspecting the carvings on the wall, studying every tree.

  “I think I found it,” Freydis said after a while. “This branch looks oddly straight compared to the others.”

  Sif reached her first. “Yeah, that’s bjarkan, or birch. One more!”

  Two left, Hel and Myrkheim. Halfdan was ready to be done with this place. “What’s next? Which one is closest?”

  “We’re near the crown,” Sif said, frowning in thought. “The last two are both in the other end, by the roots. But Myrkheim is closest. Hel should be at the very bottom.”

  Halfdan tried to avoid imagining what traps awaited in the chamber associated with the realm and ruler of the dead. Then again, every other obstacle so far had been deadly as well, so it was hard to see how it could be worse. Regardless, Myrkheim first. “Let’s go.”

  *

  After walking a while, Sif suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. “What is it?” asked Halfdan.

  “It should be here. According to the map. Myrkheim, I mean.” She gestured at the darkness ahead, which swallowed up the torchlight rather than allowing it to expand and reveal they were near a chamber. Behind them glowed the runes that usually heralded the same.

  “Maybe it’s just around the corner.” Freydis stepped forward, raising her torch, but it did not illuminate anything. Instead, the darkness remained entirely impenetrable. “That’s odd… can’t even see the floor.”

  Suspicious, Halfdan threw his torch forward. It entered the darkness and disappeared entirely. “What is this?” He tried extending his foot, and while it met only air, he saw his boot vanish before he hurriedly pulled back, relieved to see it appear again.

  “Some manner of bespelled darkness,” Grani suggested.

  His voice made the hair on Halfdan’s neck rise, catching him by surprise; when he kept quiet or out of sight, the young J?tun seemed to disappear from Halfdan’s mind as well. “How do we dispel it?”

  Grani shrugged. “I don’t know sorcery. This is my master’s work.”

  “It makes sense,” Sif assented. “Myrkheim is the dark realm without sun. Each chamber has different defences, so someone who might be a good enough warrior to handle the draugar won’t know what to do against magic.”

  “Good enough warrior,” Halfdan mumbled, “what a description. Well,” he added, raising his voice, “what are we to do? We can’t exactly search for a rune we can’t see.”

  “Not to mention, who knows what else the darkness might hold,” Freydis muttered.

  “Afraid of the dark?” Halfdan raised an eyebrow accompanied by a smirk.

  “Only of whatever might make its home therein,” came the reply.

  Armed only with Sif’s knife, Halfdan had to admit a certain reluctance to braving the dark chamber, should some kind of enemy hide within. Not that it would matter either, considering searching for the rune was impossible.

  “Maybe we don’t need to find it,” Sif considered, making the others turn towards her. “There’s a limited number of runes on the gate. If we know – or have guessed – the other eight, we can probably figure out the last one we’d be missing. If nothing else by trying out the few remaining possibilities.”

  Halfdan stared into the impenetrable darkness, cursing magic and all challenges that could not be defeated by honest steel and brute strength. “A solid plan. A pox on this sorcery,” he spat, turning away from the concealed chamber. “Let’s go for the last one, then.”

  “Hel,” Freydis said, and the word seemed to conjure a cold stillness. It occurred to Halfdan that whatever they might find in that final chamber could be far worse than mere darkness, but he saw no other recourse. They could not hope to find this rune, so they were missing one while guessing two of the others, as for Asgard and thurs for J?tunheim. They needed to know at least one more to stand a chance of figuring out the gate.

  Without words, Sif turned and began leading them down another path.

  *

  Although Halfdan could not tell north from south within the complex, he got the sense that they went further and deeper than previously. He wondered how far it stretched, and the labour that had gone into this place, so far beyond what was needed for the gate, presumably. And yet after all their work, the Dwarves had abandoned this place – or been forced away.

  Sif finally stopped, without a word. Halfdan understood her; an oppressive mood lay upon them all. The other chambers had, for the most part, been empty. Dangerous, but devoid of dwellers. In the light of Freydis’ torch, Halfdan stared into the representation of Hel, realm of the dead.

  At first, it struck him as similar to the first chamber, Niflheim. A throne in the middle, on which a figure sat. Nothing else, however. No corpses on the floor, no horde of draugar ready to rise and attack. Just a bent over figure wearing a hooded cloak and clutching a staff.

  Somehow, it made Halfdan more worried; if there had been a score of draugar in the place, it would have seemed akin to previous dangers faced and defeated. “Well, we all know what’ll happen once we step inside.” The others did not reply. “Sif, you stay out here. Don’t enter the chamber.” He did not deign to look at Grani, assuming the young J?tun to be useless, and turned instead to Freydis. “Are you ready?”

  She gave a slow nod, renewing the grip on her spear. “I suppose as ready as I will be.”

  One hand resting on the hilt of the knife stuck into his belt, Halfdan crossed the threshold. He glanced at the sides, noting the carvings that depicted a scene from a longhouse or mead hall. Long rows of men and women seated for a meal at a table, though they all looked miserable. At the far end of the wall, a female ruler in the high seat was shown, though the sparse light did not allow Halfdan to tell the details. It gave an eerie comparison to the throne in the centre of the chamber with its own occupant.

  As he stood before the wizened corpse, he could tell this was different from the draugar. Although dead, they usually did not decay as such. Their flesh remained on their bones, and they did not rot away.

  This creature looked three days in the grave, with gaping hollows where eyes should be and the unmistakeable stench of death. And as Halfdan approached, the bent over spine straightened up, the head became raised, and the blind face turned towards the berserker. “The smell of bear and Aesir alike. Centuries upon centuries it has been since I was graced with company, but I did not expect this.” Her nose had rotted away, leaving open slits to serve as nostrils, presumably. The voice coming from the corpse was shrill, like a knife scraping stone. “Tell me, who comes to my grave?”