One of the concrete walls had been split in two. The crack was tight, but enough for a person to squeeze through. This was it.
Her foot touched the ground on the other side of the wall and the unforgiving red glow of the Forgotten Downtown gave way to the fading winter light of Reykjavík. It was afternoon and the sun was low in the sky. She wasn’t squeezing herself through a crack in a concrete wall, but a tall wooden fence where one of the boards had fallen off. She was surrounded by apartment buildings. She was disoriented, confused as always after having gone so quickly between places and worlds. Was this the right place? Yes, those were the student apartments. And there, in between houses, she saw a glimpse of the city walls. She was in Seljamýri, a bit further north than she had hoped for, but close enough.
Katrín stumbled through the portal in the fence. Garún caught her, supported her.
“Are you all right? How is your arm?’
“It stings, in a strange way, but more like pins and needles. I hope it’s only bruised, or broken.”
Katrín looked to Garún for some form of comfort or reassurance that everything was going to be fine, but when Garún didn’t respond she looked away.
“Worst case scenario, it comes off,” she said in a cold voice.
The man fell through next, right on his face. Garún yanked him to his feet. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t even moan, and it worried her. Why was he so calm when faced with terrifying circumstances such as these? Styrhildur and Hraki went through last. Hraki was fortunate that the portal had been simple enough to carry an unconscious person through.
Garún took off her backpack and got the white masks, handing them to Katrín and Hraki. They were rough but fitted them well enough. She’d spent some time down in the cavern making them out of pulped paper and glue. Kryik’traak hadn’t asked her anything when she requested him to provide the materials she needed. She’d mixed a considerable amount of delýsíð into the white paint she coated the masks with. One layer with a heavily diluted delýsíð mix, another with regular paint, again and again. The masks could only be worn for a short amount of time, since the delýsíð fumes could potentially prove lethal. This in itself was cutting it close enough.
She put on her own mask and pulled another over the prisoner’s covered head. It surprised her how close it was to the effect she had been hoping for. The assistant now looked more like a form rather than an individual, ill-defined and out of focus, like a single person lost in a mob of people. The masks themselves made their faces distorted and strange, completely forgettable. The eye couldn’t capture any details, not the length of their hair, the colours or cut of clothing, barely anything besides roughly the shape of them. She could only tell the difference between Katrín and Hraki because he was tending to Styrhildur, putting on her mask, and Katrín was clearly wounded. The assistant was quite similar to Katrín, and if his hands hadn’t been bound she wouldn’t have been able to spot the difference. The only uncertainty was how noticeable this would be in a group of people. Would it make them disappear into the crowd or stand out?
The air raid sirens were still sounding. Smoke rose from nearby houses, numerous black columns rose in the distance. Garún stood in cover by the fence, waiting for a chance to sprint towards the ocean. She held her pistol tight against the assistant’s back, making it clear in no uncertain terms what would happen if he tried to run. The street was crowded with people, most of them human students at the university. Some were carrying buckets filled with water, others dragged injured people between themselves or on makeshift stretchers; panicked horses drew wagons filled with trunks and valuables. She wondered how many of them had been at the protests, if they’d lost someone to the uncolour or if they’d been wearing white armbands. Many were injured or covered in the blood of others, their faces filthy with soot.
There was no time to waste. Sæmundur’s galdur had been greater and more dreadful than they had ever imagined. All they could now hope for was that the chaos would conceal them. Garún sprinted. The prisoner almost fell over, but Hraki held him under his other arm, keeping him up. They only had three guns up and ready. Three shots. Not much, but enough to get to the shoreline. Hopefully.
People stopped in their tracks and stared. At first they hesitated, frozen from fear and surprise. The masks, the prisoner, the pistols in the air. It was clear that the people saw that they had something to do with the attack on the city, but how? There was no way of knowing if they were agents of the Crown or someone else. After that fretful moment of initial hesitation, people ran out of their way or ducked into hiding, letting go of whatever they had been carrying. Tried to hide until this unprecedented pandemonium had passed.
They ran down the street. Screams and sirens filled the air, gunfire and explosions in the distance. Houses were on the verge of collapse, with gaping, open wounds after Loftkastalinn’s crazed bombardment. Smoke flowed out of them as fires roared. The roads were blasted to pieces in this area, which had been heavily hit. The tram that went between the residential student district and Svartiskóli was
