Midgard
“Let’s see what’s going on,” Loki said as he cast a shroud of invisibility over us. I turned my head and nodded, then circled higher into the sky, circling around the settlement.
It wasn’t hard to spot Tyr. He was standing in the town’s central plaza, on a pedestal that was surrounded by rubble, presumably from a statue that he’d destroyed to give himself a platform. His golden cape billowed in the breeze, armor glinting in the sun, as he waved a gold-hilted sword in one gauntleted fist, which I knew to be his artificial hand. Several mortals cowered on the ground near him, and more of the town’s residents were being herded towards the plaza by troops of Marauders, who were pulling them out of buildings and vehicles. I couldn’t see Thor anywhere.
Suddenly a white-haired Aesir flew straight up from the plaza, staring intently in the direction where Heimdall had set us down. I went into a silent glide, holding my wings as still as possible. Loki’s web of invisibility seemed thin and frail, but I knew that manipulating the aether to reinforce it would call attention to us as surely as if we were outlined in fire. The Aesir only stayed up a few seconds, evaluating the three warriors still running in the direction of the town, then lowered himself back to the ground near Tyr’s pedestal.
“That must be Vidar, the mage who disguised himself as a dragon,” Loki muttered as I flapped my wings again, spiraling closer to the town and trying to catch my breath. I nodded again but made no reply as I selected a tall brick building overlooking the plaza to land on, perching on its roof as quietly as possible. Fortunately there was plenty of noise on the street below to mask our arrival, between the panicked humans and rampaging Marauders recklessly discharging their weapons.
Tyr shouted, gesturing down a side street, and we saw Thor walking towards the center of town, flanked by two Marauders. In place of his usual costume of cape and armor, he wore nondescript local attire and a grubby apron. “We have to get them away from the humans,” I said. “They’re far too fragile for this kind of fight.”
Loki glanced at me, then looked back over the square. “I have an idea,” he said. “Can you channel some aetheric energy to me, and cover me while I set up an illusion?”
I picked up his pattern of invisibility, anchoring it to the rooftop, and began bending threads of aether into his grasp. Loki concentrated, weaving the image tightly to make it as durable and convincing as possible. “This should get Vidar away for a few minutes,” he said as he was finishing. “If you two can lead the Marauders out to the other warriors, I’ll try to extract Thor.”
Sif nodded, then turned to run across the top of the building. She used her spear to vault to another roof across the street and was gone from view in seconds. Loki set the illusion in motion, then gave me a kiss on the tip of my muzzle. “For good luck,” he said, smiling at me. I rubbed my nose against his forehead, then slid out of the area of invisibility and crawled over the side of the building, down into the street.
A pair of Marauders were herding a few straggling humans into the center of the town as Loki’s illusion began. Vidar’s gaze was immediately drawn towards the swirling, darkened clouds that heralded another arrival through the Bifrost, this one less than a mile outside of town and clearly visible across the open plain. I coiled behind a car, watching as he tried to call Tyr’s attention to the illusion, but his master brushed him aside, intent on Thor and his captive audience. Scowling, Vidar lifted himself into the air again.
I didn’t know what Loki had based his illusion around, but evidently Vidar considered it enough of a threat to abandon his master. A big Marauder standing at the front of the crowd shouted something I couldn’t make out as the Aesir swooped away, a second before I heard Sif’s yell and a fight break out on a side street. As the others turned to look, I wove a quick pattern and cast it around the head of the Marauder who seemed to have been left in charge. When zie tried to shout again, I canceled the sound out and replaced it with a call of my own in the rough pidgin language the Marauders used: “A thousand to whoever brings me her head!” There was a pause as the Marauders looked to their leader, who was waving zir arms frantically, then they cheered and began racing towards the alley. I raised my head, making sure that the leader could see me, then trotted off after the other Marauders. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that the leader was chasing me, and as soon as they had all cleared the square, I saw Loki leap down from his perch to confront Tyr. Confident that he had the situation in the plaza under control, I turned my attention to leading the Marauders out into the desert.
The bulk of them were already chasing Sif down the side street. I bounced off a car and over her head, then paused to look back. She took my hint, using her spear to vault onto my back, and I carried her past the last couple of houses and into the open plain. The other three warriors were nearby, slowing down as they approached the town. “I brought you some friends to play with!” I called as I leapt over their heads, then turned back to see the Marauders pouring towards them. “I hope you’re not tired out yet!”
“Tired? I’ve just gotten warmed up!” the large red-haired warrior shouted back. The three were armed in seconds, while Sif slid off my back and took up position alongside them. The Marauders coming out of the town slowed on seeing us, but their comrades behind pushed them forward into the warriors’ weapons.
Marauders are renowned throughout the Realms as being enthusiastic but inept fighters, relying on overwhelming numbers and ferocity to cow their opponents and fleeing when better-trained, more organized warriors arrive. Most of the Marauders we fought fell neatly into this mold and were dispatched quickly and with fairly little effort, despite being better armed than their usual warbands. With the first onslaught on the ground at our feet, the remaining invaders pulled back, under the direction of the leader I’d silenced earlier.
“Now it gets difficult,” the Vanir named Hogun said, with an air of gloomy relish.
“They’re coordinating,” Sif said, baring her teeth. “Sigyn, Volstagg, get the leader. Break it up now!”
The large redhead yelled and charged the group, the others following suit. I jumped straight up into the air with a beat of my wings, then dove down to land on the leader with all my weight. Zie staggered, but didn’t fall. I grabbed the horned helmet with both foreclaws and my teeth, beating my wings, and was surprised when it came off easily in my grasp. Tossing it aside, I looked down to see zir glaring up at me. Most Marauders were of mixed ancestry from various species across the Nine Realms. The leader looked Aesir, but zir size and faintly reddish skin hinted at Fire Giant descent.
Distracted by zir enraged grimace, a blaster bolt hit my side, slamming me into the ground with the breath knocked out of me. Before I could stand, the leader smashed against me and wrapped zir hands around my neck, weapon forgotten as zie attempted to strangle me in a berserker fury. Zie held my head up too high to bite, and simply ignored the damage I did as I struck and clawed frantically at zir body.
Just as I was starting to think I might be in real danger of blacking out, an axe bit into zir shoulder from behind. The tremendous grip weakened and I twisted away as zie turned to face Volstagg. The red-haired warrior hesitated at the expression of deranged wrath on the berserker’s face, but even while I gasped for breath, I whipped my tail forward, coiling it around the Marauder’s leg and pulling zir to the ground. Volstagg’s axe quickly put an end to the leader’s rage.
As I stood up, I caught a pulse of aetheric disturbance from the spot Loki had set for his illusion. I looked over, just in time to see the last of the illusion collapse under Vidar’s explosive attack. The Aesir staggered, then rose up into the air and began soaring back towards the town.
“We have to keep Vidar away from them!” I called, leaping into flight and bending every aetheric thread I could grab into speed. Vidar didn’t seem to notice me as I darted towards him, right up until the moment we collided. I wrapped my limbs around him and folded my wings, pulling him into a bone-jarring plummet to the ground that left us both breathless and somewhat stunned.
I recovered seconds before the Aesir did. He didn’t seem to be armed, but I knew that he was an extremely adept aetheric weaver—much better than I was. He’d thrown up an arm to protect his face, and I bit into it, wrenching my head sideways. I hope that the pain would distract him as I attempted to gather and weave the threads of power around us into a smooth capsule that would prevent either of us from using them effectively.
Vidar snarled, clouting me on the side of the head, then yanked the bundle of aetheric threads out of my grip. My heart sank as a new pattern flared inside his and his body began to shift, realizing that he’d grafted other shapes for quick changing as well. I released his arm and backed away as his body changed and swelled, reaching for the threads to activate one of my own grafted patterns, but before I could channel enough energy to shift he flung a cage around me, cutting off my access to the aether just as I’d planned to do to him.
A whimper rose in my throat as his form filled out into that of an enormous blue-gray dragon, almost certainly the shape he’d used to deal with the Marauder groups Thor had found. The instinct to defer to an enraged larger, and therefore older, member of my own species as overwhelming, an urge that required special training to overcome—training I hadn’t been given. I crouched close to the ground and hissed, mantling my wings and hoping that he didn’t recognize the quivering of my tail.
“We should have destroyed you worms when we had the chance,” Vidar growled. He reared up, flaring his wings, and swiped at me with his foreclaws. I dodged and backed up further. “There’s no place for treacherous animals like you in a civilized universe!”
Despite his size, Vidar clearly hadn’t spent enough time fighting in the shape of a dragon to fully utilize the form. He missed obvious openings, failed to follow up attacks properly, and left huge gaps in his defenses. My own psychological handicap of fighting against an older dragon was rapidly crumbling under his blatant clumsiness. Still, he did have the advantages of size, strength, and the ability to manipulate the aetheric threads he’d denied me. I guessed that Vidar wanted to defeat me in the form of a dragon to satisfy his vanity, and whatever remnants of vengeance he’d been carrying from the war so many centuries ago.
“And where do you think we learned to lie?” I said, twisting aside from another rake of his claws. “We had to adopt Aesir words—intrigue, deception, fraud—into our language for concepts we’d never seen before!” I was fairly sure this wasn’t entirely true, but it was at least plausible, given the history of our two species.
“The honor of my people was compromised the moment we agreed to a truce with you serpents.” His tail lashed out, catching my leg and pulling me to the ground, a mirror of the maneuver I’d used against the Marauder I’d fought a few minutes ago. I rolled in the dust, and the claw he slammed down only scratched my neck instead of crushing it. “With Tyr on the throne—or his son, I don’t really care which—I will lead the armies of Asgard to Nastrond and destroy every one of you crawling horrors.”
The scales on my back flexed, a reaction to the jolt of fear I felt at Vidar’s almost casual declaration of genocide. We’d protected ourselves against exactly that for ages, but if he were determined enough, with all of Aesir society at his command, it would likely only be a matter of time before he found our true home.
I squirmed, avoiding another slash of his claws by a scale’s width and trying to get out of his reach so I could stand up again. Instead, Vidar scored a hit on my side that sent me tumbling in the dust to land on my back. Before I could wriggle away, he had me pinned.
“My campaign will begin with your death,” he said. His wide grin opened into a gape, and he dropped his head to rip out my throat with his teeth. I raised my claws to defend myself, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
Before he reached me, something flew into his face, knocking him aside to stagger away. I struggled out of his grasp and glanced over at Sif’s fierce smile. “It looked like you could use some help,” she said, gripping her spear and taking a defensive stance.
I opened my mouth to respond, but was silenced by Vidar’s deafening roar of frustration. I scrambled to my feet as he lunged at Sif, then turned and threw myself back into the fight. We’d have time to exchange banter later—if we survived.