Garún furrowed her brow. “What on earth are you talking about?’
The smile faded on Styrhildur’s lips. Someone started chanting anew, and Garún joined in, raising her fist and cheering, unaware of Styrhildur’s numb expression next to her, barely holding it together.
Jón handed the megaphone to Jónas Theium, who was leafing through a worn notebook. He had been adamant about wanting to speak, to “recite powerful, revolutionary poetry’. Garún was of the mind to tell him to shut up and listen to something beside the sound of his own voice for once, but people had raised their fists in support and she’d let it go. Let the pretentious bastard play out his little role. At least he’d shown up, despite having been so opposed to the protest. Garún guessed he just saw it as a platform to further himself. Whatever. Let him have his little moment.
A crackle from the police lines. Somewhere at the back, a person was speaking into a megaphone system.
“This is an illegal protest. Disperse and vacate the premises immediately.”
The drums kept on banging, the chants fired up again, doubled in force. The tinny voice on the megaphone repeated itself.
“This is an illegal protest. Disperse and vacate the premises immediately.”
Garún looked around. She saw people who looked a bit unsure, afraid of the police force that had surrounded them. But they still went on. She found Diljá in the crowd and joined her, seeing the same fierce determination reflected in her that she felt burning in her own heart. Sometimes that fire burned so much it hurt. Today she could let it burn brightly. Today she could find it an outlet.
“The weight of suffering breaks the worker’s back,” Jónas Theium started, enunciating into the megaphone in a theatrical voice, “as the dawn’s rays strive to reach him, still eluding—”
Theium didn’t get much further in his recital as thunder echoed through the square. One of the burning blue-white shots burst through the air crackling with a violent, unnatural energy. Streaks of chained almost-lightning shot over the crowd, following the volley of blasts. People screamed and cowered, Diljá grabbed Garún by the arm and reached out to her and the other huldufólk. A wave of empathy washed over the crowd, agitated feelings of fear, worry and outrage feeding back on each other, as the huldufólk and blendingar checked if anyone was injured. Nobody seemed to have been hit. Warning shots. Then Garún saw the firing squad, a line of the Crown’s soldiers that had just stepped out from behind the line of policemen, stepping behind them to reload as another line stepped forward, crouched, aimed their skorrifles at the protestors.
People were screaming obscenities at the soldiers and police, telling them that this was a legal protest, that they should fuck off, that only a tyrannical government would shoot at its own citizens. Another flash from the cameras. People weren’t running. They stood their ground. Garún shrugged Diljá’s hand away and took off her backpack. She’d been prepared for this. With a chilling realisation, she felt that part of her had been hoping for this. She poured out the pack’s contents. The stones were weighty in her hand, but not too heavy. Styrhildur and Hraki had emptied their backpacks as well and people were grabbing the stones. Garún felt Diljá’s disapproving feelings on the matter as she reached out to the group for consensus, but she ignored it.
The first stone went flying through the air, crashing into the police lines. Styrhildur followed its trail intently. Hraki threw his stone after his sister’s and the crowd followed, letting loose a rain of stones beating down on the rows of officers and soldiers behind them. They raised their riot shields and held fast. Garún saw a few of them go down, their faces bloodied.
Then they fired.
The skorrifles whirred and flared with a blooming whiteness, crackling energy surging through them, around them, finding tender flesh and warm blood. Where the thaumaturgic shot found purchase the energy latched on to the wound like hooks, coiling around it and burrowing into its victim, exploding in a blossoming gore as bone and muscle and stringy tendon burst out in a twisted, cancerous growth.
A handful of protestors ran off from the crowd. They were chased by police, hit with thaumaturgic batons, collapsing in violent seizures and throwing up as they were arrested. A few escaped their grasp. Most stood their ground. Why weren’t they running? If they all made a run for it, they had a good chance of making it. The police hadn’t blocked them off.
The delýsíð. The seiður emanating from it was keeping them unified, determined to an unnatural degree. Subduing their survival instinct. Garún felt it herself. She didn’t want to run. She felt as if they could win. As if facing this slaughter could somehow be a victory to their cause.
“Garún,” Diljá said, reaching out to her, finding no connection, looking at her pleadingly. “The signs are messing with people.” She looked around at the angry crowd, stones in their arms. “We have to take them down. People are going to get hurt.”
She nodded and rummaged through her pockets, found her red-tinted googles. She put them on.
The world was almost unrecognisable. People looked like weathered statues. The sky was flat and grey, all of her surroundings distant and artificial. Seiðmagn was the only thing that stood out in this bland world.
Their signs flared like violent rashes, hyper-coloured, pulsating sickeningly with an unnatural turmoil. The seiðmagn bled out from the signs and over the crowd, which drank from it, becoming tainted by its aura. It held them all under its spell. She had to unmake it.
There was more movement behind the line of soldiers, who were busy reloading their thaumaturgic skorrifles. A thick, heavy cloud of murky, sorcerous energy, potent and almost caustic in nature, blurring one’s vision just to look directly at it. A cloud pregnant with malevolence and the promise of violence. She slid off the goggles and saw it. Heavy