The Winter King

  Poppy knew that the only reason they would bother venturing out of the transportation room anyway would be so that she could take her throne and gain her queen’s powers before heading into whatever trouble the Midgard Serpent had waiting for them. If they couldn’t walk through the throne room or take a seat on the either of the icy chairs, then leaving this stairwell would be pointless.

  Then again, it seemed to Poppy that they didn’t need to transport into another realm in order to face something Jormungand had waiting for them; the Serpent had literally brought it to their doorstep.

  “I think I should try transporting onto the throne,” she said. If they aimed just right, she could stand on it or something, and maybe they could protect her legs from any bites or –

  “I know what you’re planning, but it won’t work,” Kris told her. “Those teeth out there will sink through anything, even metal. Some are old enough that they can bite through magical barriers, like armor spells. And the poison they carry kills almost instantly.”

  Poppy took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers caught on a knot, and pain made her wince as she ripped several strands out at once. Apparently, she’d made a bit of a mess of herself during that tousle with the Valkyrie. She wanted a shower right about then. She would seriously love a bath. Especially if Kris joined her in it….

  The very beginning embers of an idea sparked somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind. But she had no time to fully develop it, as Kristopher turned around and pushed past her again, heading back down to the warded transportation room.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “We’ll have to deal with this at the source,” he told her. “I’m going to face Jormungand. I would ask you to stay here, but –”

  “But you know that’s pointless.”

  He smiled, and though it was a proud smile, it was also very tight and didn’t reach his eyes. He was clearly frightened for her sake. “Please at least stay close and stay behind me?”

  “You are always telling me to stay behind you, Kris. What’s up with that?”

  “I’m very proud of my ass,” he said, and now his smile spread, and a bit of it actually did touch his eyes.

  She shook her head. “Okay, fair enough.” She descended the stairs and joined him at the center of the room. “Bring on the snake.”

  Kristopher chuckled, and goose bumps covered Poppy’s arms as warmth rushed through her middle. “I love it when you talk like that,” he said.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  They came out of the portal once again in the center of a forest.

  “If there was this much forest left on Earth, there wouldn’t be enough room for the oceans,” Poppy muttered. She’d never seen as many different kinds of trees as she had in the last few hours of her life. This time, they were shorter than the Valhallan trees, but the leaves were purple and red, and the bark was spiked like the outer layer of a cactus.

  “Stay away from the needles,” Kris warned. “They’ll put you to sleep.”

  “Right.” She made a mental note. They turned in a slow circle. “What are we looking for?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never been here before. I know of the Slumber Saps from stories that have been told of them in other realms. But everything else is new. If we’re lucky enough to find the broken root before we find the Serpent, we can plant the seed. Otherwise, anything we go up against will have to be done without –”

  The ground shook beneath their boots. Poppy, completely unprepared for the disruption, toppled to the side. Kristopher caught her at once, bent and lifted her into his arms. The ground where she’d been standing the second before split violently in two.

  Kristopher took several long cautionary steps back, hugging Poppy tight to his chest. Hands clasped firmly around Kristopher’s neck, Poppy stared dumbfounded as the fissure continued to spread, widening to reveal a deep darkness beneath.

  The ground stopped shaking. The world grew still but for the sound of their ragged, nervous breathing.

  Then something rose from the crack.

  At first, it was a slow reveal of scales and something that looked like leather stretched between wire. The scales were gold and white, beautifully iridescent. The leather was stretched taught, tan where it was thick at the wire, but nearly transparent at its most extended. They watched it in awe-struck silence as it continued to climb, emerging and taking shape. It rose further and further. Up and up.

  Then, just when they figured out that the scales were the side scales of a massive head, and the leather was the skin of a massive wing, the Midgard Serpent erupted from the crack in full and shot straight up into the air.

  I guess we fight without the extra strength of the healed root, Poppy thought. It was a distant thought though, almost drowned out completely by the insanity of what she was seeing.

  The power with which the monster took to flight was so strong, the backlash of wind knocked Kristopher to the ground. They rolled together, Kris being careful not to smash Poppy’s much smaller body beneath his. He gathered his wits before she did, and as she came up to her knees, Kris shoved her backwards hard, one hand on each shoulder.

  Her head snapped forward and she went flying to land twenty feet away, where she rolled to a stunned stop. “Stay out of the way!” she heard him bellow, but the last of his cry was drowned out by a mighty roar that filled the world with terrifying sound and got inside her, making even her soul cower in its fleshy hiding place.

  Poppy rolled to her stomach and pushed herself up on her elbows, but she was definitely stunned. She looked up, feeling the soreness in her neck from Kristopher’s rough shove. But when she saw what was in the ground exactly where she’d been kneeling a few seconds earlier, she understood his sudden treatment of her.

  The ground had been hollowed out where she had knelt. It looked as though it had been struck by an asteroid; a massive crater had been carved into the ground, and its edges crackled with slowly dying fire. Kris had managed to get her out of the way just in time.

  And now he faced off with the Midgard Serpent, and Poppy found herself staring at a scene that meant everything in her world. It meant the end of all that was good… or the saving of it. Her entire future was there, in the mighty figure of the Winter King and his even mightier enemy, the Midgard Serpent.

  The monster dove at Kris, then he coughed fireballs at him, then he slashed at him with the length of his serpentine body, and with each dive and each attack, time slowed down, giving Poppy a surreal perspective as the Viking warrior dodged, rolled, cut, sliced, and used the magic of Winter against his opponent.

  Poppy forced herself to stay where she was on the sidelines. She desperately didn’t want to be the typical distraction that got a man killed while in battle. She knew this was not her fight; Kristopher – Erikk – really was the proverbial Thor with his hard, frozen weapon in hand, blue eyes sizzling with electricity, and long blond hair whipping around in a magical frenzy. This was his battle – until it wasn’t any longer. Pending that moment, should it come, all she could do was watch.

  She’d seen renderings of Jormungand when she was younger. She’d looked through books her teachers had given her, and the images she’d studied were indeed impressive. The Serpent was drawn as a massive sea serpent with spikes running all down its back, or it was drawn with a head resembling some sort of lizard, with the spikes splayed out around it like Dracula’s cape. She’d seen paintings where the scale of it was meant to be so large, each spike encompassed a mountain range. It had been drawn in every color of the rainbow, both winged and without wings, in the sea and in the sky.

  And now Poppy knew, gazing up at the terrible monster who would one day bring about Ragnarok, that they were all right. And they were all wrong.

  There was no end to the Serpent. It came out of the chasm and soared what must have been half a mile high. But the rest of its long, long body remained in the hole from which it emerged, hidden from sight. Therefore, there w
as no telling how large it actually was. Its body was covered in shimmering scales of all colors, and as it moved and dove and swung around in its attempts to strike Kristopher down with its fangs, those scales shimmered and shifted, changing colors like a crystal moving through the visible spectrum.

  The Serpent definitely had wings. But when the snake dove for its opponent, the wings pressed against the side of its body and vanished, blending into the scales like a chameleon’s skin. She could see how some accounts of the beast would claim it was wingless and others would insist on the opposite.

  Once the Serpent had made its attack, the wings emerged to lift it back into the sky. They spanned the length of a football field on either side…. At least, that was as much of them as Poppy could see. They disappeared behind the trees blocking her view, so they might have been much larger. Each wing was constructed like a giant kite, with a support system of bones or cartilage that fanned out, six long rods on either side. Between these poles of support stretched the Serpent’s skin like tanned leather. This was the only part of the Serpent that was monochromatic, and when his wings were fully extended, the sun shone directly through them, proving Poppy’s theory as to why. They were thin, colorless, and nearly transparent in order to better blend in with its scales when they were folded in.

  Each time it rose up, wings out, length of body coiled beneath it like a partially drawn rope, it opened its mouth and revealed its fangs. There were four rows of teeth, two in the front on the top and bottom, and two more behind those, rather like a shark’s back-ups. At the incisor location on either side were two long fangs, four fangs in total. Each set of fangs possessed one very, very long fang, and one only slightly shorter. They were so sharp, their tips disappeared into the thin sheerness of something too sharp to see the end of. There would be no stopping those fangs, and if the snakes in the ice castle truly were the Serpent’s children, she could understand how some of them would even be able to bite through magic.

  But it was the monster’s eyes that held Poppy’s attention the most. There was something… off about them. Granted, she was staring up into irises the size of pickup trucks, and that was probably odd enough. But it was more than that.

  They were as multicolored as the beast’s scales, slipping from red to orange to yellow and down into the blue end of the spectrum. They reminded Poppy a bit of the eyes of Dannai Caige, rainbow-hued and luminous. But at their centers, where there should only have been the black of the Serpent’s pupil, there was something else.

  Poppy frowned, squinting to try to get a better look. Whatever it was that caught her attention, it was out of scale with the rest of the giant snake. It wasn’t as large as it should have been. It didn’t fit. It was as if the thing she saw were hiding there in that darkness, not wanting to be seen or noticed. And that was exactly why she had noticed it, and why she tried all the harder to see it.

  She inched forward, staying well out of their wide ring of combat. But just when she thought she could make out what it was that was wrong, the dragon roared, tilted its head back, and breathed a spray of ire-laced acid that filled the air around them. Poppy screamed, running and jumping for cover behind a particularly thick tree as the spray flew into the trunk and sizzled.

  A half-second later, her heart leapt into her throat and she shot out from behind the tree, her only concern whether or not Kristopher had also found cover.

  He had. A shield of ice melted slowly around him like a thick, clear igloo. He was crouched down behind it, but his eyes were on her. Once he saw that she, too, was safe, he nodded. She smiled at him and hoped it was reassuring.

  Kristopher waited another beat before spinning and rising, using his sword to shatter the shield he’d created. It exploded brilliantly, and shards of the ice went flying outward toward the Serpent. As if by sheer dumb luck, or perhaps because the Fates deemed it to be so, the longest and sharpest of the shards shot straight for Jormungand’s throat. It struck between its scales and sank deep. Blood that looked like blue goo mixed with pixie dust began spewing outward with gusto.

  He hit an artery, thought Poppy. She began to feel something akin to hope. The fight would soon be over.

  The Serpent lurched backward, its mouth wide open, its fangs glistening, a terrible cry of fury erupting from its long, long body. More blood splayed outward, and Kristopher barely managed to avoid being drenched in it.

  Then the ground shook again. More fissures opened up in the dirt around Kris. He looked down just in time to jump in order to avoid falling into one of them. And as he was looking down, the Serpent struck final and true.

  Kris’s head shot up just as the Serpent’s fang descended.

  In that moment, Poppy at last saw clearly what it was she’d noticed in the monster’s eyes. Kristopher’s sword rose in defense, in one final attack, and pierced the Midgard Serpent beneath his jaw. The icy blade of the weapon sank deep into the beast’s skull just as the Serpent’s tooth pierced Kristopher’s heart.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Poppy could feel it in her own chest. She froze as it took her breath away, and she watched as her entire world fell to his knees in a clearing a few feet away.

  “No.”

  She shook her head. No, no, no, no, no….

  The Serpent tried to wail again. It tried to scream. But the sound came out garbled, strangled and drowning in the blood that now seeped and boiled up exuberantly from the hole in its head. Kristopher’s sword had gone straight through, and she could see the very tip of the ice blade poking out from the top of the Serpent’s skull.

  Kristopher had fallen to his knees. The snake’s fang had gone through him as well; its razor-sharp point went clean through the Viking’s chest to emerge on the other side before it curved downward and back, nearly piercing him once more. Red blood soaked his chest and drenched the ground beneath him, yet he maintained his grip on his sword, fighting to the end like a true warrior.

  No…. She’d only started; they’d only started. This was all still brand new. She hadn’t had a chance to do anything yet. Neither of them had. There was so much to learn, there was so much to do.

  She wasn’t seeing what she was seeing.

  Yes you are, Poppy. You know you are.

  No, I’m not. She shook her head again and closed her eyes, willing it to go away.

  Yes you are! Now grow up, see what is there, and fucking do something about it!

  Her eyes flew open again. Her inner voice had always been particularly harsh when she was doing something wrong and knew it. Like she was right now.

  Somehow she forced her feet to move. They took one step, two, and then they were running, and finally she was sliding into the red mud beside her lover, and her arms were going around him. She caught him just as his strength gave out, and he slumped into her embrace.

  The Serpent’s fang receded, pulling from Kristopher’s chest as Jormungand slid heavily and limply back into the abyss. The hole left behind by its massive tooth oozed more blood, but its flow was slowing. He was dying.

  “Kris,” Poppy whispered.

  Beside her, the ground shook one last time. She ignored it, though. It wouldn’t dare swallow her up right now. It wouldn’t dare! The multiverse would not fucking think about messing with this precious moment! “Kristopher, look at me.”

  She heard the sound of a blade through flesh. She felt something wet coat her right arm and the right side of her body. She felt more rumbling, heard the scrape of stone on stone, and she knew what was happening. Kristopher’s sword was pulled free of the Serpent’s head. Jormungand was falling. His blood was drenching everything around him. The ground of Midgard was swallowing it back up. It was all happening, really happening, and Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off the man in her arms.

  His hand dropped to the side, and his sword skittered to the ground inches from his loosened grasp.

  She leaned in, her lips a breath away from his. “Look at me!” she yelled.

  Blue eyes opened. She moved back a
little as they focused on her. “You killed him, Kris. You defeated Jormungand.”

  “Of course I did,” he said softly. His voice was weak. He tried to speak again, but his words hitched, and a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his mouth. “I can do… any…thing,” he told her. “Because… I’m….”

  Thor, she thought. I know.

  He smiled. “Santa Claus.” He chuckled, the sound for once as terrible as it was wonderful.

  And then his eyes shut again. His body became heavier in her arms, and all that was impossible became reality. Right there, in that moment – when Kristopher Scaul’s heart stopped beating and the poison of the Serpent took his life.

  “Kris… no, no, open your eyes. Kris! Kristopher, look at me!”

  Her voice rang out hollow and helpless in the stillness of the clearing. She tore her eyes off the man she clung to and looked around as if searching for something that would make it all untrue. The ground was destroyed, broken into pieces like a shattered puzzle. The Midgard Serpent was nowhere to be seen.

  She knew now why the Serpent had attacked the Tree. She knew everything. The thing she’d seen in its eyes, the thing that didn’t fit, had been a long, ghostly white face. A stretched out visage nearly without features. The Serpent had been possessed by no other than the Entity. And now the Entity had taken her king.

  “Bullshit,” she spat, unable to look back down at Kristopher’s fallen form. She looked up instead – and when she did, she saw the hole in the clouds and the ray of light shining down from it, and the half dozen winged figures that began descending toward her in that brilliant beam. “No,” she said. “No!” she screamed. “Bullshit!” she bellowed at the tops of her lungs.

  You’re a warlock. Warlocks can resurrect.

  Her breath hitched. She went still and looked back down at the man in her arms. And just like that, she realized the voice that kept speaking in her head wasn’t actually her own.