“By tearing your skin off?”
Ljunge smiled, pointing. “Exactly! You understand!”
“I really don’t,” Erik said, chuckling. “I don’t think getting skinned is my thing.”
“Bah, it’s fine once you’ve gotten used to it.”
“You know other people feel things, right?”
Ljunge laughed at that. “They keep saying. Seems a terrible way to go through life.”
The food came. It was good, not that Erik could eat much of it. Tove watched him with concern in her eyes. Ljunge paid, agreeing to half-price after a minor argument with the owners of the shop. They thanked Erik repeatedly for choosing their restaurant. It didn’t seem worth explaining that he hadn’t done anything of the sort.
Erik had Göll lead them when they left the restaurant. She walked ahead of Tove, who kept herself next to Erik. Ljunge lingered at the back, idly watching women as they passed. If he had a concern anywhere in his mind, Erik couldn’t see it in the way the man acted. Perhaps he was truly sick of death. Or maybe he couldn’t care what happened in any case.
The ball grew in Erik’s stomach as they neared towering stone walls. The gates and inlaid carvings on the wall were lined in gold. The images were very different from the gates Hel had placed at the entrance to her city. These were of valkyries and Yggdrasil and swords crossing over shields. The gates ahead were open a crack and people flooded into it. People making for the gate passed by him, all of them revelrous. They talked with excitement about the battle.
“There are spectators?” Erik gritted his teeth as he looked up at the gates. The feeling in his stomach suddenly twitched, causing him to stumble forward.
Tove ran to him, forcing his eyes to meet hers. “What is it?”
Erik shook his head. “Just… nerves maybe. I’ve got a weird feeling in my gut.”
She looked ahead at the crowd flowing through the doors. “If…” She stopped. “Odin is great and wise. But if you believe… if…” She struggled with the sentence, conflicted. “If you believe you should go… elsewhere, then I will follow.”
Ljunge came to his side. “I am with the demon. I joined meaning to follow you.”
Göll turned, a concerned expression on her face, her fingers tracing the chain of the necklace he’d given her.
Erik smiled, trying to force the odd feeling in his stomach down. He let out a slow breath, looking over at the gates with narrow eyes. His lips turned down at the sides as he steeled his resolve, trying his best to sound casual.
“No.” He closed his hands into empty fists. “I mean, we already came this far.”
chapter|33
They walked toward the gate, Göll in the front with Erik beside her and Tove near behind. Ljunge kept his casual distance, not seeming bothered by anything around them.
The gate rose up above them as they approached. The turning in his stomach had become nearly unbearable. He felt as though his abdomen would burst and worms would fall out. Still, he followed Göll to the back of the crowd. They filtered in, hardly noticed by the people around who all buzzed excitedly at the prospect of their trip beyond the golden wall to see the einherjar battle.
A few of the more boisterous men and women cheered at Göll when they saw her armor, though the valkyrie showed no sign of caring if she did at all. Her eyes seemed to be focused somewhere beyond the cracked gate. The light from beyond it was blinding, though it seemed to die before ever traveling past the stone threshold. No light spilled over the wall either. It wasn’t so strange considering that a winged murderess stood beside him, but somehow Erik was awed by it more than anything he’d seen in Helheim.
The awe fell away, replaced by a sense of dread as the ball in his stomach seemed to crystallize. He winced, leaning forward, pressing his stomach but finding nothing there. Tove put a hand on his back and Erik forced himself back up straight. He turned and gave her a reassuring smile even as the feeling streamed out into his chest, pushing through him with each step he took. Erik gritted his teeth and pushed forward, ahead of the rest, wanting whatever he felt to be done or to kill him if it was going to. He shoved people out of the way, most of them hardly stopping to notice or care.
In the final steps before the threshold the light began to change. The sky turned a bright blue with the sun high within it. As he slammed his foot across the stone and found himself beyond the wall to Valhalla, the winding tendrils inside him faded, as if whatever it had been smoothed out into his body. It didn’t disappear. More, the feeling became suddenly normal.
He looked around as Göll and the others caught up to him. Tove rushed to his side.
“Are you alright? Why would you run ahead like that?”
Erik looked down at his hands, feeling as though he could move them more freely somehow. “I don’t know… there was this… feeling.” He looked at Göll. “I should have said something maybe. Is that normal?”
Göll looked at him for only a brief moment, a hint of concern on her face. “I have never heard it spoken of.”
“Has it gone now?” Tove looked down at his hands.
“Yeah, it’s… I feel better.”
She gave him a look, not believing what he’d said.
“Really. No joke.”
For the first time, Erik looked around. They were in a wide stone square, statues of Odin and Thor and others placed all around and people gathered around them, chatting happily. To their left, there was a large, open field, an enormous tree in the
