A/N: FINALLY another update- I feel like most of my author's notes start out that way XD Still, I haven't abandoned this, an am consistently working still on it, Not Today, and One Swallow Can Make A Summer, so I'm hoping to get on a schedule of posting a chapter a week, rotating which fic gets updated each week! Next on the list will be an update for Not Today, and then we should be on a good schedule. So stay tuned for those updates if you're interested- otherwise, I hope you enjoy this (very late) update! Skål!
Summary: Freydis was dead. At least, when she’d lost consciousness, she’d been sure she was. But now she has woken up in a cold, sterile environment, one she is certain is not Valhalla, and the world as she once knew it has changed. People now have strange abilities, some of them, and people they call ‘scientists’ are trying to give them to her. The bigger issue, though, is the fact they have also woken the very man who killed her. Ivar the Boneless lives again as well, in the same way Freydis does, and if they want to survive... she may have to learn to trust him again.
Masterlist
--
Seize the Moment and Stay In It
Leaving Ivar behind hadn’t been in Freydís’s plans. Björn, she hadn’t ever even intended to pick up, but this was another game entirely now. She was spiralling out of control, and she’d hurt Ivar simply for interrupting her. What kind of a wife did that? Hadn’t she been upset with Ivar for hurting her? For behaving toward her as no husband should? What kind of a hypocrite was she, to hurt him now?
You aren’t a hypocrite though, are you? Not really, a quiet voice whispered in her mind. The presence had returned, once again just behind her, but when Freydís now tried to look, she thought she saw some kind of dark shape quickly escape her peripherals, hiding behind her again as it laughed quietly. You cannot see me, it told her. Not like this.
“Can I see you?” Freydís asked the voice, her eyes slipping shut as she tried to call the figure it came from into view.
Not like this, it repeated. You know how.
It surprised her to find that she did know how. Her eyes glowed red as she began to levitate in the air, her body tilting back as if in a bed. She fell asleep.
When her eyes opened in that space from before, where the ground was cracked beneath her feet, with something glowing beneath. Now, Freydís was able to recognise it for what it was- that is, that it was magic, just the same as the magic she possessed. What exactly this place was, she still wasn’t sure, but she felt more connected to it now. It felt somehow more comfortable now.
The voice was no longer just that, as the same figure which had met her here before walked out from behind her, still just as mysterious, hooded and hiding her face. “See?” she said, seeming rather smug. “You did know how to see me.” Freydís rolled her eyes, unable to help herself.
“I did,” she replied. “But we’ve spoken like this before.”
The figure hummed and chuckled softly. “We have,” she confirmed. “But I think you have called me here for a purpose haven’t you? What is it you wanted with me?”
Freydís swallowed a bit. The truth was that she had wanted to ask something of this figure which was always with her, but how she had known that… It was baffling, at best. At worst? Outright concerning. “I don’t know where to go from here,” she confessed. “I mean, I do know, but I can’t do it.”
“You must,” the figure advised. “If you won’t, everything is lost. Surely a few moments of their pain will be forgiven? Ivar has done far worse to you, and they have done far worse to each other. Why not take this chance for all of you? For those in the future who you will save from this fate you are already suffering?”
“Then you are saying that this sacrifice is necessary for the greater good?” Freydís questioned for clarity’s sake. The figure nodded.
“I am afraid so,” it replied, and stepped forward, brushing a hand through Freydís ’s hair. “There is no other choice if you wish to put an end to the schemes of those who wish to play at weaving fate.”
Freydís nodded reluctantly, and took in a deep breath which she let out slowly. “Then I have work to do,” she almost whispered. The figure hummed, and then suddenly Freydís was waking, and she adjusted so she would land on her feet when she returned to the ground.
It was a dreadful thing, realizing what she had to do to her husband and his brother. But if she was going to find the information she needed from either Dr. Schmidt or Professor Andersen, she wasn’t sure she had much of a choice. So, she began the work of preparing her space, creating little fires all around herself in a circle by burning various sticks and leaves. Then, laying out her book in front of herself, she began to write the runes around herself which would allow her access to the right minds- even as wrong as it felt.
Her search began, seeking out the paths she needed to make it through to Ivar or Björn- whichever she got to first. They both had that final connection, she was almost certain of it, and if Björn didn’t for some reason then she was certain that Ivar would, and Björn would have the connection to Ivar. They were the final pieces of the puzzle.
Being entirely alone meant that there was nothing to break her focus or her concentration, and that made the process all the quicker and more painless for those she had already been through. They would barely notice anything, aside from perhaps being reminded of what had happened the first time she passed through their minds. This being the first time she was connecting to either Ivar or Björn, however, they would feel the full force of the spell, only to be relieved once she had finally reached her ultimate target. She just hoped they’d recover well enough.
When the spell finally reached Ivar, Freydís crawled her way into his mind just as she had with every other mind before his, and he cried out from shock at the sudden sight of her, and pain from the violence of the action. But that wasn’t the only shock- not by far. What shocked him beyond that was how grey her skin had become, the deep black around her glowing red eyes. Her teeth seemed almost like fangs as she cried out at the effort it must have taken to get into his mind. Not to mention how thin her fingers had become, looking more and more like ink dipped claws than anything else. What had happened to her? What had happened to his wife?
By the time she left, Ivar suddenly could see his surroundings again, and it was only then that he realised he had lost sight of anything but his own mind until then. Björn was kneeling at his side, but it did little to soothe Ivar, who was shaking and suddenly very, very cold.
“Was it Freydís ?” Björn asked, and Ivar managed to look at him, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. But still, he managed a nod. “What did she do?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Ivar answered, trying now to sit up. “She came into my mind, and…” A chill ran through him. “She didn’t look like herself anymore.”
Björn opened his mouth as if to answer Ivar, when suddenly he too cried out, and collapsed to the ground. His hands came to his head and he clutched at it, screaming from whatever pain he must have been in. If she was doing to him what she’d done to Ivar, then he knew the pain Björn was in. Ivar grimaced a bit at the thought.
Unfortunately, all he was able to do was wait for Björn to come back. Or, rather, for Freydís to release him the spell she had captured his mind in. Whatever it was she wanted, she had needed them both to find it, and then apparently she had it as Björn seemed to snap back into reality. He looked up at Ivar, eyes wide with horror.
“You’ve seen her,” Ivar surmised, and Björn nodded slowly.
“What has happened to her?” he questioned, barely getting the words out as he tried to shake off the pain.
Ivar swallowed, his eyes clouding with regret, along with many other things- one of which was grief. “That book,” he said. “I think she has gone too far into it, and it’s corrupting her beyond what we could have ever imagined.”
Björn was quiet. Ivar could tell he was thinking hard, which he may once have teased him for, but now he couldn’t find the levity to do so. Eventually, Björn asked him, “What do you think she was looking for?”
Well, Ivar certainly didn’t struggle to answer that. After everything they had been through, unless there was some sort of memory of Kattegat she sought, there was really only one thing that bound her and Ivar to Björn. That facility which had raised them from the dead, where she and her husband had first met Doctor Schmidt and Professor Andersen; where they had first been reconciled with each other.
“The facility we were kept in,” he said to Björn. “She wants a way in. My memories of jt aren’t quite enough, we have mostly the same memories, but yours… They trusted you more than they ever trusted us. My mind was just her link to you.”
“We should warn them,” Björn said, staggering to his feet quickly as he now had a mission in mind, but Ivar shook his head.
“No, they deserve whatever she would do to them,” he decided. “I won’t save those who have caused us pain, not when they will cause that same pain to others.”
Björn huffed in irritation. “Then what do you suggest we do?” he questioned sharply.
Ivar’s answer was simple, but first, he needed information from Björn. “You do know the way in?” he asked. Björn nodded. “Then we meet her there. Those people deserve whatever she would give them, but I cannot let her repeat my mistakes. I fear we would never get her back.”
He could tell Björn was unsettled at the prospect- at all of it, really- but he could also see that Björn was resigned to this. “We needed to get in anyway,” he figured. “May as well let her help us.”
May as well let her help us…
Ivar couldn’t help but wonder when his wife had become someone he and his brother, the legendary Ivar the Boneless and Björn Ironside, feared. What would they call her when history told their story? Their names were known already, but she had only once been Queen Freydís , defined by her marriage to him. The image of her eyes still burned in his mind, glowing red as she showed her power. No, she wouldn’t be Queen Freydís any longer. He thought something along the lines of Freydís the Scarlet was far more appropriate, now. He figured they’d see exactly why when they met her again.
Unfortunately, time would prove Ivar right. When Freydís arrived, she had the information she’d taken from Björn’s mind floating around in her own. That meant it was easy enough for her to get in, but it could only get her so far. What she had was a map now, essentially, but she didn’t have anything near an already cleared path into the facility.
She made surprisingly quick work of detonating any firearms pointed at her, turning the blasts back on them once they’d been fired. It wasn’t long before witnesses stopped trying to fire on her, knowing what she would do, but she hadn’t gone to spare those working in that facility. Freydís had gone for blood.
The hallways were flooded with red light as she fought through, alarms blaring in her ears to call out, ‘Invasion! Intruder! Danger!’ in their own high pitched, squealing ways, but Freydís didn’t stop. The warnings were about her, and were proven necessary when she wrapped magic around the throat of one of the guards, and used it to sever his head from his body with a single pop! The nearby guards gasped and cried out from shock as she then made his body turn on them, lifting his gun and firing a quick round. Their screams fell silent as she dropped him, and stepped over their corpses.
Her face now coated in a smattering of blood, Freydís stalked through the halls. The gunfire must have been significant enough a warning, because everything had gone still. No defenders rushed out to meet her, push her back and out. Anyone left had hidden, which meant she now had full access to the entire facility. Perfect.
Freydís stalked through the halls, searching each door for what she knew she needed. Any door that was locked to her, she simply decreed was not, and so every door was open to her. Eventually, she found what she had been looking for.
Doctor Schmidt was the first to face her. “Freydís,” she said. “Before you do anything rash…”
“Anything rash?” she repeated, laughing in the woman’s face. “Believe me, I am being perfectly reasonable.” Without waiting on an answer, Freydís reached out and took Doctor Schmidt by the throat, lifting her almost violently into the air.
She heard a familiar gasp of, “Freydís !” and turned to see Professor Andersen standing there, his eyes wide with fear as he looked at the two women before him.
“Ah, hello,” she said with a cold chuckle. “I don’t suppose you can help me, can you? I’m looking for information, about those you have brought back from the dead like myself, like my husband, and Björn Ironside. Do you have it?”
Professor Andersen opened his mouth to answer her, but Doctor Schmidt hissed out, “Give her nothing.”
Unfortunately for them, Freydís ’s mind worked quickly. She figured that Doctor Schmidt was willing to pay with her own life, if it meant keeping these secrets from her, but what about the life of another? Would she sacrifice Professor Andersen to the same end? She suddenly dropped Doctor Schmidt in favor of lifting Professor Andersen in the same fashion, deciding to find out.
“Do you still wish to give me nothing, Doctor?” Freydís asked, looking back to her. “Now Professor Andersen’s life is on the line, will you give him up to save your secrets?”
Doctor Schmidt swallowed, but her eyes hardened. “Kill him,” she said. “I won’t tell you anything.”
Freydís turned to look at Professor Andersen, whose wide eyes reflected the betrayal he felt at Doctor Schmidt’s words. “And would you give your life for her secrets?” she asked him. “Or do you want to give me the information I seek, and save yourself?”
Before he had the chance to answer, the most familiar voice yet yelled, “Freydís , put him down!” She turned to see Ivar and Björn rushing in, horror written across their faces. Ah, so they had seen what she’d done to get this far. Oh well, she supposed that couldn’t be helped.
“Why should I?” she questioned. “You know what they did to us, to others like us. Why should I give them any mercy now?”
She watched Ivar swallow, noticed how Björn kept an eye out, likely to be sure no one snuck up on them, and she tried to keep an eye out herself, as well. “Because you won’t ever come back from this,” Ivar told her. “I have always admired you for the path you never took. Don’t take it now.” Freydís turned back up to look at Professor Andersen, the fear he regarded her with, and even as a dark voice whispered in her ear to snap his neck, she remembered a night from over a thousand years before. She’d had this sort of fear when Ivar took her by the throat, when she had demanded to know what he’d done with Baldur.
Her magic weakened around him suddenly, and she let him drop to the ground. As soon as she did, she heard Doctor Schmidt scoff, “I knew you wouldn’t have it in you.”
“Did you?” Professor Andersen asked her, around each breath he managed to take through his choking. “Did you know? Or did you know there was a risk?”
“Of course I knew,” she said, but Freydís ’s eyes narrowed a bit.
“You’re lying,” she accused. “You couldn’t have known. I did not know myself until I released him.”
Doctor Schmidt huffed, as if irritated with all this. “Alright,” she said. “I knew there was a risk. But it was a necessary risk.”
Professor Andersen shook his head a little. “I wouldn’t have taken that risk,” he confessed. “Even though you told me not to tell her anything, I still would have done it if it would have kept her from killing you.” He took a deep breath, then stood to his feet as he looked to Björn, Ivar, and Freydís in turn. “But I won’t let my loyalty stay in the wrong place,” he told them. “I’ll give you everything you need.”
Freydís was stunned, but she wasn’t about to question his sudden change in heart. “You’ve made the right decision,” she said, and when he nodded, she saw no hesitation in his eyes. She felt no lie in his heart, when she looked, and she nodded in return.
They left Doctor Schmidt behind- Freydís , Björn, Ivar, and Professor Andersen- to go down the hall to what seemed to be an archive of sorts. There, Freydís watched as their guide went into a drawer to pull out a thumbdrive, which he then plugged into one of the computers. She kept an eye on everything he did to be sure all he downloaded to it was the information they needed, no trackers or anything of the sort. Fortunately, it seemed he did exactly as he was meant to, and was soon handing the thumbdrive over to her.
“It doesn’t have any sort of lock on it so you won’t end up without access,” he said, “but that does mean you need to be careful not to-”
“Not to lose it,” she finished for him, and nodded. “Thank you, Professor.”
Professor Andersen nodded in return as he released the thumbdrive, which Freydís pocketed and stepped back. “Good luck.”
“You too,” Freydís said. She didn’t imagine there was any version of this where Doctor Schmidt didn’t retaliate against him for what he’d done, and it was for that reason that she really appreciated his assistance. Doctor Schmidt had expected him to die for their research just as she had been prepared to, but he made a different call. He’d turned the tide in their favor in that moment.
With little else to say, Freydís turned back to Björn and Ivar, and the two looked to her for their next step. Seeing they were ready to go, she turned and put out her hands, magic flowing out from them and pouring into a sort of cloud that hovered before them. She stepped through, expecting for them to follow. As soon as they were, she closed the portal to shut the facility behind them. They would soon reach the end of their efforts now, and it would only be a matter of time.
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she’s the girl everyone whispers about. they all want to know how an art student can afford her Christian Dior, her Louboutins, her gorgeous downtown apartment. some say she has a trust fund. some say she must be a criminal. some say it’s her rich, reclusive boyfriend who pays for everything. they say she’s just using him for his money. but mostly they say just one thing about her, and it doesn’t bother her, because it’s the truth:
that girl is a problem.
Meddle - Little Boots / Poker Face - Lady Gaga / Lovalot - M.I.A. / Heavy Metal and Reflective - Azealia Banks / Problem - Natalia Kills / bad guy - Billie Eilish / High by the Beach - Lana del Rey / Don’t Hurt Yourself - Beyonce feat. Jack White / Like a Boy - Ciara / Rolling in the Deep - Adele / Why R U - Amerie / Good Girl Gone Bad - Rihanna / Savages - MARINA / Same Damn Thing - Anjulie
(all credit to @volvaaslaug for the amazing header and inspiration)
A/N: Hello all! Finally back with another update! I'm so excited to *finally* get to post this, as difficult as it's been to find time in my schedule for writing! Please bare with me as I'm probably not going to have the most consistent posting schedule in the world for at least another three weeks, but I hope to even out after that! Until then, I will be updating as soon as I have chapters ready, and I hope the wait won't be too horrible! Until the next one, I hope you enjoy! Skål!
Summary: Freydis was dead. At least, when she’d lost consciousness, she’d been sure she was. But now she has woken up in a cold, sterile environment, one she is certain is not Valhalla, and the world as she once knew it has changed. People now have strange abilities, some of them, and people they call ‘scientists’ are trying to give them to her. The bigger issue, though, is the fact they have also woken the very man who killed her. Ivar the Boneless lives again as well, in the same way Freydis does, and if they want to survive… she may have to learn to trust him again.
Masterlist
--
We Move As One
The dark of night was the perfect cover for Björn, Freydís, and Ivar to begin their journey to the facility that had once held them all captive. He and Ivar had both begun to notice Freydís changing along this journey, the way her eyes looked tired now, the darkness and shadows around them. Something was happening to her, something bad.
But that wasn’t the only thing. No, they’d also both noticed how her attitude was changing. She’d started snapping more often, letting herself be angry and threatening, even with the two of them. It had gotten to the point that they’d glance over at each other each time something happened, checking to see if they had both noticed it. With each thing, it became more and more obvious that they were both noticing it all.
They waited until they had a chance to speak alone, when she’d gone off to practice something a little more dangerous where it wouldn’t hurt one of them, to speak about the changes she had undergone. Ivar came to sit beside his brother then, and Björn lifted a brow at him. “You are here about your wife I take it?” he asked.
“I am,” Ivar confirmed. “You asked me to come, didn’t you? So I am here.”
Björn gave a small nod, then took a deep breath. He knew how Ivar could be, and didn’t think any sort of criticism of Freydís would go over very well with him. But, he figured that as this wasn’t so much criticism as it was concern, perhaps Ivar would be more open to hearing him out. He certainly hoped so. “I am afraid she is messing with something she does not understand,” he said. “I heard whispers of what her power is… It is not safe, Ivar. Not for us, and not for her. Not unless she fits a very specific condition.”
“And what condition would that be, hmm?” Ivar questioned Björn.
“She would have to be the one meant to wield this power.”
What Björn and Ivar did not know, was that Freydís had never been alone in the training of her power. It wasn’t as obvious as someone standing beside her, an external being helping her to train, but instead a presence she now felt with her at all times. But when she was training, practicing her craft, it was as if the presence was manifested, always just behind her where she couldn’t see.
The presence encouraged her to branch out, to attempt new things with her powers, and unbeknownst to her husband and his brother, it was pushing Freydís beyond a point from which she may never return. It wasn’t easy to get candles out that far, but she had managed it, and had set them up in a circle around her, lit so she could levitate in their center. The presence whispered words to her, instructed her on what she was meant to do, which pages in her book to find to give her the spell, and then it was cast.
It was disorienting to pass through so many different people’s consciousness, seeing different perspectives as she walked through their memories searching for the mind she needed. The path was long, from one to the next to the next, having to pass from a memory into the next person’s mind, where she searched for another memory which she could jump through.
This use of her power was supposed to be forbidden. The horrible effects it had on each person whose mind she borrowed might last for weeks or months, if not longer. Everyone took trauma differently, but no one would shake easily the image of someone crawling into their head, fingers grasping at their mind as they were overtaken by splitting pain, flicking through memories until suddenly she’s gone, nightmares left in her wake.
It was no wonder she wasn’t willing to use Ivar’s or Björn’s mind for this. They were her friends, more than that with Ivar and close enough at least with Björn, and she wasn’t going to subject them to that sort of violence. Besides, she shouldn’t need their minds anyway. They weren’t the only people in the world who knew Doctor Schmidt and Professor Andersen, so why should she have to resort to using her allies’ minds to get to theirs?
Unfortunately, she found that the final connection was proving difficult to make. She wasn’t finding someone with that last path to just one of the two, though she was finding people with memories of Björn and Ivar. The more she tried to find that last bridge, the more frustrated she grew, beginning to push harder and harder, moving through minds at a horrible pace, ripping through memories as fast as she could, until suddenly she gave an infuriated scream and released her last victim from her control, ending the spell with eyes wide, panting.
Björn and Ivar heard her scream, and they stopped their conversation about Freydís immediately to rush to her aid.
Freydís was hitting the ground, falling to her knees when they reached her, her eyes wild and furious. Björn hadn’t seen such a look since he’d faced off against his brother on the battlefield. To see it now in her, it was unnerving to both Björn and Ivar.
The latter of the two bent down to help his wife to her feet, but a shock of concern coursed through him at the sight of her fingertips. Where once they had been just the same color as every inch of the rest of her skin, now they looked like she had dipped them in black tar, almost as though her skin were decaying before she was even dead. “Freydís,” he managed, unable to tear his eyes away from them. “Your hands…”
This brought Björn’s attention to the offending limbs, and his eyes went wide with shock. “What were you doing?” he asked her, and she looked up at him slowly.
“I’m trying to get information for us,” she replied. “I can connect to people’s minds through other people’s memories of them, and use those memories to continue into the mind of the person I want. But I can’t start with someone who has a strong mind, I can only enter their mind through someone’s memories of them.”
“Freydís, where did you learn this spell?” Björn questioned, beginning to look intensely troubled by her explanation. She stretched out a hand, and out of thin air materialized a book, which hovered between them. Like Ivar, the sight of it alone caused dread to creep into Björn’s chest, making him want to get away from the thing as fast as he could. “Why do you have the Book of the Damned?”
A cold wind blew over them as Björn spoke the book’s name, causing Ivar to look up and around into the trees. Everything went still again, unnaturally so, and his eyes turned back to his wife. “Freydís…” he said softly, and her eyes hardened.
“It was a gift from our generous benefactors,” she said, almost hissing out the bitter title. “But I understand this book, unlike anyone else who has ever tried to read it. It’s as if it were meant to be in my care, as though the spells in its pages were meant to be cast by me.”
Horror washed over Björn as he realized, “That’s because they were.” Ivar looked at his brother with confused eyes, wondering why he seemed so shaken, and finding that this response was likewise shaking him up. “I should have realized when you said you wielded chaos magic…” Björn mumbled. “No wonder your fingers are turning black, Freydís, those spells are the darkest in the world!” He gestured toward the book eagerly, making Freydís snatch it back as though she were afraid he would try and take it.
“Maybe they are!” she snapped at him. “But they are my spells and I will use them when and how I see fit! Get off your moral high horse, Björn Ironside. You know you would do the same given the chance! Both of you would! But this power is mine, and as you told us, mine alone!”
Björn shook his head. “I don’t think I would,” he replied. “Ivar might, but I think you know that, and you want to believe I would too. It makes you feel better about what you’re doing now.”
Freydís hissed out, “You don’t know what I would do.”
This caused Ivar and Björn both to look at each other in concern. “Freydís…” Ivar began. “I know you’re desperate to stay free, and to help the others, but…”
“Do you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Then you will understand why I have to do this.”
Ivar, unlike Björn, knew better than to argue with her just then. Freydís had always had a tendency toward stubbornness- just as he had- and so it wasn’t any surprise to him that she was quickly getting stubborn on this matter. It seemed like whatever that book was doing to her was causing a darkness to grow in her, one that reminded him of how he himself had once been, when he had called himself a god and forced the citizens of Kattegat to follow him with undying fealty. It had been a dark time in his life, and he didn’t like seeing it reflected in her now.
“What will you do once it’s done?” he questioned in return. “Because I don’t think this is the sort of power you want to give up. Is it? Would you give it up?” Freydís smiled as if everything were just as simple as the day they’d met in York, so long ago.
“Of course not,” she replied. “What’s to say there won’t be another threat? What if our lives are to be shortened because we have already been dead? Why would I give up the power to bring you back again?”
“Freydís, you sound like Doctor Schmidt,” Björn said. “I thought we were angry at her for interrupting the design of the Norns and the gods? Now you want to do the same?”
She shrugged slightly. “I may as well be a Norn now. Maybe this is my place.”
“And now you sound like me,” Ivar pointed out.
“No, you said you were a god, but you only had their favor. I can do whatever I wish with this world- you’ve seen it, have you not?” she countered. As he had seen it, he swallowed hard, remembering their reunion. “See? You remember.”
“I also remember that no matter how much I believed I was a god, I was not a god. Freydís, you are a witch, not a Norn. Your powers can obscure reality, but they cannot control it.”
“Can’t they?”
Freydís tilted her head, something in her eyes causing a feeling of dread to grow in her husband and his brother. “You both know I can rewrite reality if I wish to. It wouldn’t be the same as what Doctor Schmidt did when she woke us from death. I would just… rewrite things so that you had never died, and so that you were healed of whatever took your life.”
She said it as if that were some small feat, not a big deal in the slightest, while Björn and Ivar both recognized the disastrous effects that she could bring about, using her powers this way. “This is why I say I may as well be a Norn,” she clarified. “If I can rewrite fate, what is the difference between us?”
“The difference is that it is the role of the Norns to write fate- it is not your role to rewrite it,” Björn argued. “As a witch, you can guide people to their fates, and seek out your own, but you cannot rewrite it!”
“But I can!” she shouted, shooting up to her feet to get in Björn’s face. “Perhaps I should rewrite your own! Would you like that, Björn Ironside? Perhaps I should send you back to Kattegat and declare that you do not let Ivar kill you, and you will remain King there until Ragnarok comes for you! Is that what you want?”
“Freydís-”
“Be quiet!”
Freydís whipped around to face Ivar as she snapped at him, cutting him off from his attempted intervention, only to find that in her anger, she had rid his face of a mouth. Björn gasped in horror as Ivar’s eyes went wide, and his hands came up to feel at the suddenly all too smooth skin. His chest rose and fell rapidly as panic began to set in, and something began to flicker in Freydís’s eyes, making her obey immediately when Björn cried out, “Freydís, let him go!”
Her hands shot out and there was a flash of red as he regained his mouth, and they shared a distraught look, before she suddenly pushed hard against the ground with her magic, vaulting herself into the sky and immediately disappearing from sight.
Ivar looked as though she may as well have struck him- but then, he might have deserved that, he thought. He had struck her before, and far worse, but even as Björn helped him up, he found that wasn’t the reason he wouldn’t hold this against her. No, that would be because he could tell this wasn’t really her.
“It’s that book, isn’t it?” he asked Björn, looking at him anxiously. “Don’t try to spare me from the truth. She is my wife, and I need to know-”
“It’s the book,” Björn answered. “They warned me about its power before they sent me to hunt you down. Every spell in it is corruptive, and the one who can use it… she is its rightful owner. She would have been able to use it as early as Kattegat, if she’d known she had this power.”
Ivar’s brows lifted as he looked up at Björn. “I thought she gained this power here, from the experiments?” he questioned.
Björn shook his head. “It was being exposed to whatever they gave her that brought it out- she already had it.”
Understandably, this was quite an unnerving revelation for Ivar. If he thought back to everything he had ever done to her- starting with Baldur and concluding with taking her own life- it began to occur to him that she could have simply spoken him out of existence with little more than a word, just the same as she’d done to his mouth only a moment ago.
“We need to find her,” Björn continued. “We know where she’ll be going, but we can’t let her get there first. If she’s been reading that book too much, I don’t think she’s thinking of mercy anymore. We’re past the point of her being reasonable.”
He shook his head. “We both have specific experience with Doctor Schmidt,” he pointed out. “Think about it. If she needed to reach her mind with that spell, she only needed someone with memories of her. We have memories of her. All she would have had to do is go through our minds, and she’d be there.” Björn’s eyes went wide as he realized this. He didn’t know just how horrible it was, but she’d stopped instead of pressing through the people she knew and cared about.
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A/N: Eeek, another awkwardly long break! Thank you again so much for your patience- midterms absolutely drained me of all my energy but hopefully this chapter will be well worth the wait! That said, answers are coming soon! But not before we ask a few new questions ;) Enjoy! Skål!
Summary: Freydis was dead. At least, when she’d lost consciousness, she’d been sure she was. But now she has woken up in a cold, sterile environment, one she is certain is not Valhalla, and the world as she once knew it has changed. People now have strange abilities, some of them, and people they call ‘scientists’ are trying to give them to her. The bigger issue, though, is the fact they have also woken the very man who killed her. Ivar the Boneless lives again as well, in the same way Freydis does, and if they want to survive… she may have to learn to trust him again.
Masterlist
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Together We Can Turn the Tide
Björn was stunned. Of all the things he’d expected to find, Freydís floating in the air, eyes glowing red, some sort of energy dancing around her fingertips… that wasn’t it at all. And the way she had greeted him had sent chills down his spine. His brother, he perhaps could have expected such a blatant display of power from, but not from her. She’d been angry the one time they had met, certainly, but now she seemed… different. Now, she seemed like she would rip his body in half with the flick of her wrist if she was pushed to it. He didn’t doubt that she could.
"Freydís,” he said quietly, blinking as he watched her. There was a strange sort of blur around her head, like a crown almost, but it faded away as she ceased… whatever it was she was doing, and her eyes returned to their natural blue, and she slowly lowered herself to the ground with the book she’d been looking through. She moved her hands, her fingers almost gesturing as if she were saying to switch something around. The book disappeared. “Freydís, what-?” he began to ask, but she cut him off with a low chuckle.
“This must come as a shock to you,” she commented, keeping her voice low. “I know they would have told you what I can do, but I don’t think they could have told you how that would actually appear, hmm?”
“No,” he confirmed. “They could not.”
Freydís hummed quietly, giving him a slight smirk. “I am surprised they told you, they did not tell me anything. It wasn’t even until I heard that news broadcast the other day that I heard the full extent of what I can do. I’ve been studying, of course, but as with all things, it does take time.”
“Does it?” Björn questioned almost sarcastically. He was met with a wry grin from Freydís. “What happened to you? The last time we met, you wanted me to hang Ivar from a tree, and suddenly you are guarding him while he sleeps? What changed?”
“Everything changed,” she hissed in reply. “Our lives changed. We were woken from death and taken into a nightmare with no question of if we’d have wanted it, and we needed each other to survive. How could I want death for him now? How could you, if you were in our place? Could you?”
“I was in your place!” Björn shouted suddenly. “You are not the only one who was taken from death! I was supposed to be feasting in Valhalla, and instead, I have to hunt you two across the Earth once again!”
Freydís grinned widely even as Ivar was jolted rather suddenly awake by Björn’s yelling, and instead of answering her husband’s questions as to what was happening, she replied, “So you are angry, too. Good.”
“Freydís,” Ivar eventually snapped, standing and coming to her side. “What is going on here, huh?” The shock of seeing the brother he’d killed on the battlefield would come later, he was sure of it, but for the time being he simply wanted some answers.
“Your dearly departed brother has come to visit, my love,” she answered him, putting a calming hand over his heart, and what Björn saw was like magic. Or perhaps it was, how would he know?
“I can see that,” Ivar said to her, in that way he had of making it seem like every answer in the world should have been obvious. “What is he doing here?” Maybe the shock wasn’t coming after all. To be fair to Ivar, they’d known he was going to be brought back, and they’d known someone would be sent after them, so it sort of made sense that they would send Björn. And with everything else that had happened, they were both a bit beyond questioning anything.
“That answer you will have to have from him,” Freydís said. “Though I imagine it has something to do with the people who want us to be returned to them.” She turned to Björn and asked him, “Am I right?”
He shifted uncomfortably under her knowing smirk, and then nodded. “You are right,” he confirmed, and gave a small, irritated sort of huff at the way she began to laugh. “What?” he asked. “Why is that so funny to you?”
“Because you won’t be taking us back to them.” All the humor in her voice disappeared within a moment, and her eyes were suddenly hard, piercing once again into his. The switch almost seemed to come instantaneously, and it unnerved him. “We won’t go back, not unless we are dead. Do you really want to try and kill us? You won’t succeed.”
“How can you be so sure I would not succeed?” Björn demanded. “You forget who I am.”
“You forget who I am, now,” she said. “I know you would have heard that I can rewrite reality. So why should I be afraid of you, Björn Ironside? Why, when you should be afraid of me?”
“So you are a witch now,” he retorted as if it were no big deal. “I am told my last wife was also a witch.”
Freydís shook her head, and for the first time he felt like he noticed some trepidation in the motion. “No,” she said. “Not like this. There is no one else like me, now. I have my husband, but otherwise? I am alone, and I am alone in my power with no question. They did not grant me wonderful powers, they cursed me. They woke me from death and changed who I am. How can you stand for what they are doing? You can’t convince me that you truly support them.”
“It doesn’t matter if I support them or not,” Björn said. “You two have figured out this world. I still need what they offer. And even if you have forgotten what Ivar has done, I have not forgotten it and I think it is time he pays for something.”
“He’s paid enough,” Freydís said warningly, lifting her hands into a defensive position.
“We’ll see.”
Björn suddenly pulled a sword and attacked him, but a bright flash of red pulled it from his hand, wrenching it away and throwing it into the ground. He turned to look at where that had come from, and found bright red balls of energy- magic?- in Freydís’s hands. So, she really was a witch.
But it was of no matter to him, he could fight without his sword. He just had to somehow get around Freydís, who he knew was going to be a problem. If he wanted a shot at Ivar, a good shot, he needed to somehow incapacitate her. Otherwise, no matter what he did, she would stop him from reaching her husband. He needed another approach.
“He cannot fight for himself, huh?” Björn asked Freydís, almost chuckling at the thought. “Does Ivar need a bodyguard, still? He stands on his own two feet, and yet he needs a witch to protect him. And here I thought he once struck fear into the whole world.”
Ivar’s eyes narrowed, and he reached out a hand to press gently down on Freydís’s wrist. “She is not the only one they changed when they brought us back from the dead,” he said. “If you want to be rematched so badly, just say so. I will not have any qualms with killing you again.”
“Do you think you can?” Björn taunted. “I don’t think you can kill me again.”
“We’ll find out,” Ivar said with a grin, and suddenly he had attacked Björn, swinging at him with a sword he’d pulled almost out of nowhere. Björn ducked under it, diving for his sword which Freydís had stolen from him, and then bringing it up to catch Ivar’s blade and throw him off. His timing couldn’t have been better- if Ivar had gotten to him a moment sooner, or had Björn reacted a moment later, he’d have been dead.
The two fought for a long time, and as they did, Freydís began to think about something. If they wanted to take down whoever had done this to them, they were going to need someone on the inside, or at the least, someone who could give them information they would no longer have. She’d considered finding a way to infiltrate the facilities, to get to Professor Anderson and get him to join them, but there were too many variables in that plan to truly rely on it. They needed something more certain, and she had an idea.
Fortunately, the two Sons of Ragnar were rather evenly matched, and so they were still fighting when Freydís had come to her decision, which simply left her with the task of restraining the two to stop them, before she could give them the plan. It wasn’t a difficult thing for her, not with her power.
Freydís lifted her hand, and both Björn and Ivar were suddenly frozen, every muscle in their bodies seizing up and refusing to allow them any movement. She pulled them apart and released Ivar. When he made for Björn, she held up her hand in front of him, stopping him from getting to him. “No,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind about simply killing him. We could use someone like him on our side.”
Ivar looked over at her, stunned. “You want him to do what?” he asked in shock. “You really think Björn will do that? Help us?”
“I think he will,” Freydís said. “Because I think he, too, is angry, just as we are. They stole our deaths from us, and made our lives theirs to play with. And I think…” She turned to look at Björn, who was refusing to look at her. “I think he does not enjoy being their slave any more than we did.”
He turned his head further away, and she smirked, knowing that had been an undeniable sign that she was right. Björn Ironside was angry with the same people as Ivar the Boneless once again, something which hadn’t happened since their father had been murdered in Northumbria, and they had raised up a Great Heathen Army to avenge his death. That didn’t bode well for the victims of their anger, certainly not now with the addition of Queen Freydís, who may as well have been the most dangerous person in the world, now. No, it didn’t bode well for them at all.
Freydís moved to Björn, kneeling in front of him so they were eye level with each other. “I’m going to release you,” she informed him. “It’ll be up to you if you join us, if you leave us alone, or if you attack us. But I can tell you what waits for you if you choose any of those three options. If you leave us alone, nothing. We will let you go in peace, and if we see each other again in this world, it will be by chance alone. If you attack us, we will kill you. You see now I have enough power to do it. I could simply speak it out, decide that you are already dead, and you would be. There’s no version of this where an attack on us turns out well for you. Or…
“You can join us, and together we will take revenge on those who try to play the Norns and determine our fates, robbing us from the gods and from our feasts with them. I can only promise you your death, or your revenge, and your freedom. But I can also tell you this… if we don’t stand up against them, no one else will, and they will continue this work they are doing, mocking the will of the Norns, and it will happen again and again, until they cannot be stopped. The choice is yours. What will you do?”
Björn looked away from her, unable to bring himself to look her in the eye. He knew he would be betraying them all if he didn’t agree- her, his brother, anyone else who might come after them, and that was something else weighing heavily on him. There were others, others whose names he knew. If he agreed to this, to work with Freydís and Ivar even if all his pride screamed against it… He might not be able to save them from being brought back, it was too late for that, but he would be able to save them from those who would think to own them. And even if it meant standing with his brother, his greatest enemy, he would fight for those who didn’t deserve that fate. It wasn’t their fault Ivar was their only hope.
When he finally looked back up at her, Freydís could tell he had made his decision, and she smirked just a bit. “I think you will help,” she told him. “Am I right?”
“You tell me I have a choice, but I don’t really, do I? Not unless I want to leave countless others to a fate they don’t deserve. So what choice is there?” he asked her, and her answer was simple.
“None.”
“Then you have my decision,” he almost huffed. “Now let me out of this… whatever it is you’re holding me with.”
Freydís chuckled softly as she waved a hand and released his body to him again, standing and watching as he followed suit. “It is just a bit of chaos magic,” she informed him.
“‘It is just a bit of chaos magic’,” he repeated mockingly. “Shut up.”
Ivar seemed ready to knock him out for speaking to her that way, but Freydís simply grinned and gave a small giggle. “You won’t say that once you have seen what all it can do,” she told him with a knowing smirk. Björn sighed heavily.
“I don’t know that I look forward to that,” he confessed, which earned a dark chuckle from Ivar.
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
Freydís rolled her eyes, shaking her head just slightly. “Don’t get into this,” she said. “Björn, we need to know what you know, so we can make our plans.”
Björn nodded, and, though it felt increasingly wrong, sat down with his brother and his wife. “What I know…” he repeated, watching the other two resurrected Vikings who were looking at him. It was a shaky alliance at best, but one that needed to come together in order to stop a growing threat. “What I know isn’t good. We aren’t the only ones they have brought back from the dead. You were their first two successes, I was their third, and they continued after us. The process is nearly perfect now, though they have not been able to recreate what they did in you, Freydís.”
“In me?” she questioned, tilting her head.
“Your power,” Björn clarified. “It seems they enhanced Ivar and I in very similar ways, though they also fixed his legs, but with you… What they did to you, they haven’t been able to reproduce.”
“And they have tried?” Freydís asked him.
Björn nodded slowly, taking in a deep breath. “Every other person they have tried to give your power to… they die again, and cannot be brought back, as though the power you hold is draining more than just their life from them. It drains their very being, and they cannot be brought back again. The experiment more than fails- it ends.”
Freydís and Ivar shared a look with each other, and she looked back to Björn. “I don’t understand,” she told him. “They said they were already trying to recreate an experiment that had succeeded once before. You’re saying it’s only been successfully done twice, then? And I was one of those two times?”
“They did come close, once before, and she survived the process they put her through to give her the powers they did. But her body couldn’t hold it. She died during training, which makes you…”
“The only true success,” Freydís finished. “Why is that?”
Björn shrugged. “I don’t know, but if you want answers…”
“They’re going to be in that main facility.”
“Exactly.”
Freydís took in a deep breath and turned to look at Ivar, who still seemed rather stunned. “We need to go,” she told him. “To stop these experiments and to find out why I survived when no one else did.”
“I agree,” Ivar replied slowly, nodding just a bit. “We should rest tonight, start that journey in the morning.” He hoped to have some time to process all of this.
“That is what we’ll do, then,” Freydís said. “Rest, both of you. I’ll keep watch for us again.”
“Again?” Björn asked. “You kept watch already? Why won’t you sleep now?”
“I don’t have to be awake to keep watch,” she answered, again smirking. “Just a bit of chaos magic.”
Björn rolled his eyes, but didn’t fight her, instead settling in with the two of them to rest. The next day would bring hardships for them, he knew, and they needed to begin to prepare by just sleeping that night. But there would be no way to prepare for working with Ivar and Freydís after everything they’d gone through before. Still, there was something which now felt undeniably right about the arrangements, and as he let his eyes slip shut to give in to sleep, he decided things might just be looking up after all.
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