Editing AfterRagnarok:The Mythic (section)

== Freyr #662 ==

You remember... a stage. An impression of movement, lithe and irresistably compelling. The raw emotion, the urgent, confusing need which flooded a mind just emerging from childhood. And with that emotion, you are there. A boy again, staring up at the pale gold-scribed creature as they dance above the sword, as they spin and form graceful shapes. Not much older than you, really, but so far beyond, so far removed, as to be like touching the sun. You can smell the people around you. Hear the faint whipping thrum of the dart-and-rope as Miekke weaves it about them. See the sheen of sweat on their pale limbs.

Then the memory, your...sense of the scene... changes. And across the stage, in the crowd, you are being watched. A woman; tall, ice-white, with eyes crackling with fire. There's a terrible lurch of recognition, of realisation that you know her.

Then she steps up, is striding across the stage towards you. You start back. But Miekke moves elegantly with her, makes her part of their languid dance, and the dart and rope that spins around them has become a weighted noose. Skuld bends to sweep up the sword from beneath Miekke's feet, and in her hand it warps and shimmers; she holds a wolf, a snake, a bloody spear.

The two dance close, bodies pressed, moving as one, the noose blurring about them as they spin. Faster, faster. The crowd are stamping their feet, roaring for blood. The stage is a swirl of snow-white flesh and ash and knotted rope. Faster and faster and faster still, a blizzard, a whirlwind of snow and blood and death. The beat is the clash of swords on shields; the roar of the crowd the cries of the dead and dying.

Then with a stamp and a crash of sudden silence, the dancers... freeze. Wrapped in each others' arms, the rope wound round their throats.

Skuld's arm thrown out. The spear, cast long. It arcs over your head, the crowd, the battlefield.

"I dedicate these deaths..." the dancers whisper as one.

"...to Odin."

"Hey." A boot prods you. You open your eyes. Alfvin, one of Surtr's guys, is standing over you. You're in a courtyard you don't remember coming to, near the town's main gate. A thin crust of snow crumbles off you as you rise stiffly to your feet. "You doze off or something?"

Behind him - hooded, older but utterly unmistakable, is Miekke. In the flesh.