It was a memory of Sinmara. It had to be. But how had he not only accessed someone else’s memory, but also invaded, without consent, the mind of a woman as powerful as the queen of Niflheim?
“...Who knows...” he whispered, remembering the strange sensation he had felt after his second awakening — the feeling of knowing that something in his vision had changed, but without having any idea what. Yes, that was it...
Perhaps Tryg no longer saw only the near future. Perhaps his eyes could also glimpse the past. They seemed to penetrate the minds of others and drag him into their memories when their gazes met, just as Sinmara’s gaze had met his a short while ago.
But if that were true, then why had he not managed to access her memories before? Their gazes had met several times after his awakening, more times than Tryg would like to admit, even.
Every now and then, Sinmara caught him staring at her amid the silence, and he turned his face away, embarrassed. Of course, Tryg was not only admiring the fox-queen’s beauty. He was also looking for some emotion in her that was not her usual melancholy.
In any case, the point was that there had to be some condition for Tryg to access someone’s memories. But what had changed between the instant he had invaded her mind and the other moments before?
“Hmm...” he muttered, his fingers on his chin and his gaze lowered.
When he raised his head, searching for the queen, Tryg then realized she had stopped. And not only her. The entire scene was also frozen, as if time itself had been halted. He raised an eyebrow, confused, but did not let himself be carried away by the strangeness, nor by his curiosity.
Tryg needed to get out of there as soon as possible. He had a lot to do there, in the waking world. If time was passing in the labyrinth, no matter how slowly, it would still be time his mother could not afford to lose.
Besides, he did not want to be the kind of indecent young man who snooped through other people’s minds without permission, especially the mind of the woman who had helped him so much. Ah, and he also really did not want to face the wrath Sinmara would certainly show when she discovered what he had done. But...
“Damn it, how do I get out of here?” he wondered, letting his gaze run across the dreadful battlefield.
His gifts were sometimes very inconvenient. First, his vision of the shadows had made him lose consciousness and fall to his death during Ragnarök. Now this...
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Why can’t I have a simple power like Thor’s? ‘Having trouble moving forward, Trygve?’ Boom! Lightning. Problem solved.”
The scene began to move again — the dark clouds returned to motion in the sky, the rivers of blue blood resumed their descent, and the warrior with white hair and blazing eyes started walking once more.
“No!” he exclaimed, slightly desperate because of his intrusion. “Stop! I don’t want to see.”
The scene froze again. Tryg blinked, stunned. Apparently, he also had some control over the memory he was witnessing. Over its time, perhaps.
“Interesting... Can I go back too?”
At the sound of his words, the scene began to rewind at the same speed it had advanced before, slowly taking the young, staggering Sinmara back to the top of the earthen hill from which she had come.
Tryg let the events run in reverse while walking beside the queen.
“I want to leave. I want to get out of here. I want to go back...”
He tested several commands, trying to return to reality, but nothing happened — Sinmara continued climbing, in reverse, up the mound. Until, suddenly, she stopped, as did the entire scenery, this time without any command from him. Tryg waited a few moments to see if the scene would continue rewinding, but nothing changed.
“Advance,” he said, and time began to move again. “Stop.”
The scene froze. Tryg placed himself beside the queen, reasoning. Perhaps the memory had reached its end. Or rather, its beginning. After all, no one was able to remember the moments before and after a past event they remembered, only the fragment carved into their mind.
“So, if I reach the end of the memory... maybe I can go back.” It was a gamble, but Tryg saw no other alternative and decided to test it.
But what would he do while the memory ran? He felt a little bad witnessing something personal from his teacher, something she had not given him permission to see. However, Tryg had been brought there. His gift had brought him there. It was possible there was a reason...
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Forgive me, Lady Sinmara... Advance.”
The scene flowed. The warrior went back to descending the hill, stepping around the bodies of her people, almost stumbling over some of them here and there. Halfway down, wherever she was going, she fell to her knees, groaning, still holding her arm, still gripping the hilt of her sword.
The expression on her beautiful, dirt-streaked face was one of complete grief and suffering, tears welling from her white eyes. Sinmara seemed to be going through one of the worst moments of her life. Even so, she roared and forced herself to rise again and continue.
Tryg did not leave her side for even a moment. Even though his teacher had no knowledge of his presence, he still felt compelled to accompany her. Felt that he needed to be beside her. Wanted to be beside her. And that desire did not come from nothing.
Somehow, Tryg seemed connected to his teacher. He seemed to feel her grief. The pain. The hatred. They were feelings so intense, so deep, that he found himself with an immense desire to go back in time and join her, help her, even as weak as he was.
Later, after climbing up and down many hills and stepping around hundreds of fallen frost giants, Sinmara froze, staring ahead. Her face almost completely abandoned sadness and pain, twisting into the most furious and cold expression Tryg had ever seen on the queen’s face.
He followed her gaze and saw the dreadful image that had stopped her. A tall, strong man, with black skin furrowed by incandescent cracks, as if it were made of magma. He wore intricate armor, gleaming and dark as onyx. In one of his hands, he carried a sword that blazed with the most chaotic and brilliant flames Tryg had ever seen. In the other, he held the head of a Jötunn with crystalline skin, blue blood dripping from the severed neck.
Sinmara growled. Then she burst forward, screaming, “Surtr!”
Tryg’s eyebrows shot up. “Surtr?!”
The eternal king of Muspelheim stared at her. His apathetic gaze seemed to carry the experience of a long and cruel life, as well as the calm of a cloudless summer sky. He did not even seem to care about the fearsome warrior running toward him.
When she reached him, the queen delivered a wide, vertical slash with her pale sword. It was a movement more than familiar to Tryg, only rougher, more reckless. It lacked the precision and delicacy that had been taught to him again and again. Even so, it was a dangerous blow.
Dropping the head he was carrying, the fire giant held his sword with both hands and easily defended the strike. Then he attacked, aiming for his young opponent’s neck. Sinmara dodged by a hair’s breadth and retreated, grunting. She advanced again, delivering a thrust.
Surtr struck hard against her sword, making it ricochet away. Sinmara lost her grip, and her weapon flew far off. She tried to retreat again, but Surtr was more agile and kicked her in the chest.
“No!” Tryg shouted, worried.
He followed his teacher as she rolled across the earth watered by the blood of her people. She only stopped when she collided with one of the thousands of bodies of her companions, gasping nonstop, the air knocked from her lungs.
A moment later, she spat out a torrent of bluish blood and growled, “Bastard...”
Sinmara stretched out her hand, trying to reach the only weapon nearby. Surtr, however, already close to her, kicked the spear away and rested the tip of his sword beneath her chin. He brought her frowning gaze up to his.
“The prodigy of the frost giants...” The king let out a chuckle, without humor. “They sent a child to command their army.”
What the Hel is happening?! Tryg wondered, staring at the wounded Sinmara, kneeling beside her. They loved each other, didn’t they?
The queen gritted her teeth, tears running down her hate-filled face. Then, discreetly, she touched the ground with the tip of her index finger, making a column of ice sprout from the ground beneath Surtr.
The fire giant, however, jumped back with a somersault. Sinmara did not stop and, while mud and debris still flew through the air, she ran, grabbed a sword along the way, and delivered a diagonal slash. However, battered as she was, she could not execute any efficient attack.
Surtr stopped the slow blow, holding the edge of her blade with the tips of his fingers. Then he slapped her with the blunt side of his blade. Sinmara slid through the mud, dirtying and almost completely hiding the whiteness of her hair.
Planting her hands on the ground, she tried to rise once more, tried to keep going. However, her body, clearly wounded and exhausted beyond what was possible for any mortal, faltered and returned to the ground. Tryg stopped beside her again, wishing more than anything that he could help her somehow, in any way.
The queen let out a dreadful scream that seemed to reverberate and push away the very air around her, her hands pounding and crushing the earth between her fingers.
“I swear I will kill you...” she spat, glaring at Surtr, her eyes burning. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, nor in this millennium. But one day I will have your head, Surtr... One day I will make you pay for all the misery you have spread...”
The king was silent for a moment. Then he sighed and spoke in a neutral, tired tone.
“Do not make empty promises. You are finished, girl. Your people are finished.”
He swept his eyes over the massacre, his gaze distant, and let out a long sigh. Tryg did the same and realized that the corpses — each one cut, pierced, and charred — were those of ice giants. He couldn’t believe it…
Surtr did indeed seem to have single-handedly slaughtered an entire army. The army of her people.
“We have been fighting for so long, have we not? You and I. But now... Now it seems we have truly reached the end.”
Surtr focused his gaze on Sinmara again and pointed the tip of his flaming sword at her face, terrible flames reflected in her eyes.
“You fought well, Sinmara. But you will never leave this place. This will be your grave, just as it will be for your people. It is what you deserve.”
“No...” Tryg looked at Sinmara with concern. “Please, get up...”
The king raised his sword, preparing the end of the woman who would one day become the queen of Niflheim. Who was supposed to be his great love.
“Stop... Don’t do this,” Tryg pleaded. No one heard him.
Surtr’s sword descended mercilessly.
Then, the memory was gone. Reality returned, blinding and cold.
In the blink of an eye, Tryg had returned to the labyrinth. He squeezed his eyelids shut as he was struck by the sudden variations in temperature and brightness. He blinked and narrowed his eyes several times, trying to adjust.
So much had happened, so many oddities, so many sorrows... And the emotional storm churning and squeezing his chest did not help his recovery at all.
Eventually, Tryg managed to open his eyes. He found himself facing an older, healthier, and even more beautiful Sinmara, dressed in her delicate misty dress, with her straight white hair loose and trembling in the wind. She had lost the smile that had enchanted him so much before and now had a confused expression on her tilted face.
“Are you all right, young man? Are you... crying?”
“Ah...” He wiped his face with his hand. “I’m fine. Something got in my eye.”
“Right...”
Tryg stared at the pale sword in his hand, took a quick look around, and thus confirmed that no time seemed to have passed in the labyrinth. He had returned to the exact instant after the one in which he had entered his teacher’s memory...
He then looked at Sinmara, at the blade she carried, and shuddered. It definitely was not a good moment to tell her what had just happened. Not yet. But the main reason was not the weapon she carried, nor the fact that she had already threatened him for less.
The main reason was that Sinmara had finally shown happiness and ease around him. Tryg did not want to lose what he had earned and that which he now valued so much.
“Can we begin, or are you going to keep stalling?” she asked, placing a fist on her waist and narrowing her eyes, impatient.
Yes... That’s it, I need to train. Focus, he thought, shaking his head to chase away his reverie.
Tryg was back in the labyrinth. For now, he needed to concentrate on what mattered most. Later, he would think about everything that had happened, as well as — and more importantly — when and how he would tell the queen that he had invaded her mind.
He nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Prepare yourself. I will begin with the basics, but I will not go easy on you.”
Tryg smiled. “I don’t want you to.”
Sinmara sketched another faint smile and charged. Her excitement worried him a little, but also pleased him.
It was good to be back.