Chapter Text
Ærra Geola, 879 AD
A faint rushing noise could be heard within the close and tomb-like blackness of the tunnel. When Godric relit his wand, Helga saw that the black-haired man had pressed his ear up against the rough stone wall.
“It sounds like this tunnel probably follows the Fleot.” he said, stepping away.
“The what?” snapped the Lady. She was pressing hard against the nearest wall, straight-armed, as if she could expand the tunnel by doing so. Admittedly, she probably could if she wanted to...nevertheless, something seemed off with her.
Helga opened her mouth to ask what ailed her, but then shut it again, remembering the proud woman who had stepped in to defend her, a stranger, on the hill above the wharf simply because that now-deceased Englishman had insulted her as a woman. It seemed highly unlikely that the woman would appreciate having her weakness pointed out in front of two more strange men.
Well, Helga thought, cheerfully determined, they might as well not be strangers then!
“So!” Helga clapped her hands together. “Shall we introduce ourselves to one another? I think we are safe here underground for the moment. Shouldn’t be too long until we can go back up!” This last was directed at the Lady, who was still pale-faced and sweating, bracing herself against the close tunnel wall.
The black-haired man twisted around to look at her from where he had been peering into the strangely greenish gloom further down the tunnel.
“Aren’t you even a little curious about where this goes?”
Helga shrugged.
“Not really – it’s a bit damp for my tastes.”
Godric straightened and lifted his wand higher, trying to illuminate more of the tunnel.
“Well I certainly am. But I agree that we should introduce ourselves if we are to spend the next few hours together regardless of where we do it. My name is Godric Gerefa-hinder.” His voice was a rumble, even at nineteen, and the name rolled out like a peal of thunder.
The Lady frowned in confusion and finally stood away from the wall.
“That doesn’t sound like the kind of name you would have...”
“That’s ‘cause it ain’t.” the black-haired man said, rolling his eyes. “When are you gonna stop introducin’ yourself to people like that?”
“When I’ve finally earned something better for myself!” Godric countered hotly.
“What’s wrong with just Godric?”
Godric scoffed.
“Even an insulting title is better than being nameless and unknown.”
The black-haired man narrowed his eyes at his friend.
“Do you ever listen to yourself talk, or are your thoughts of glory just too loud to hear anything else?”
Helga jumped in to interrupt what seemed like a brewing argument.
“My name is Helga! I carry the name Hafela-pyf also.”
The Lady nodded in approval.
“That’s a good name.”
“Yeah, maybe if you’re a Dane.”
“For fuck’s sake Godric, she is a Dane.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not a Dane.” Helga said, confused.
The black-haired man looked at her askance.
“You’re not?”
“Wait, she doesn’t even look like a Dane, Sal!”
“Well you don’t look like an idiot, an’ yet here we are!”
They briefly and enthusiastically scuffled across the tunnel, fetching up against the opposite wall and narrowly avoiding the lady, who shoved at them irritably.
“Are you children? Stop that!”
They stepped apart and straightened their clothes, Godric smiling sheepishly and his friend rolling his eyes.
“So you ain’t in service to her?” he asked her pointedly.
Helga shook her head. “We only just met today.”
“And a fortuitous meeting it was.” The lady broke in. “My name is Rowena Ubb-hmm. Hraefnclawu. And Helga, you have such an interesting second name – I’d love to hear the story behind that at some point.”
“Oh, it’s not that interesting, lady.”
Rowena fixed her with a piercing gaze. “There’s no such thing as an uninteresting story.”
“Well, thank you very much, Lady. And what did you say your name was again?” Helga turned to the black-haired man, smiling at him.
He shrugged. “I’m just Sal, no long fancy names to worry about here.” He shot a pointed glare at Godric, who at least managed to look sheepish.
“We’ll think of something for you too!” Helga said cheerfully, patting him on the shoulder.
“It should be alliterative as well.” Rowena said, sounding amused.
She was met with two openly confused faces and Sal’s raised eyebrow.
“Do none of you know what alliterative means? No?” She sighed heavily.
“It means that two words both begin with the same sound, like Helga Hafela-pyf, Godric Gerefa-hinder...do you see the pattern now?” She shook her head.
“The education in this country really is poor. If you don’t even know how your own language works, how can you possibly understand the principles of seiðr? It’s a bit pathetic, honestly.”
There was a long, tense silence at her words.
“Maybe if you people an’ your invading hordes hadn’t wrecked the whole place, we woulda actually been able to learn something. Sorry we’re too stupid to have learned your fancy words while we were runnin’ for our lives.” Sal finally hissed out from between his clenched teeth.
Rowena looked down at him coolly.
“That’s no excuse. I had the finest magical education possible and it was given to me in war tents by vikingr and old women.”
Godric growled at that. “Is that what you call being taught curses and blood magic by oathbreakers and murderers?”
Rowena stepped right up, eyes blazing and matched him toe-to-toe. She was just about able to look him in the eye and took full advantage of this.
“Have a care for how you choose your words, unless you’d rather be unable to choose them at all.”
Godric’s hand twitched toward his belt but Rowena was much faster, laying a hand on her wand almost instantaneously.
“Please, I don’t think any of us exactly had the most traditional learning experience but there’s no need to fight about it!” Helga said loudly, wringing her hands.
Sal shot her an uninterpretable glance, scoffing and turning away from them to stalk away down the tunnel.
“There’s really no reason to fight at all. Why don’t we see what lies farther down the tunnel instead?” Helga suggested hopefully.
With one last baleful glare cast at each other, Godric and Rowena separated.
“Fine. But I’m not spending any more time with you people than I absolutely have to.” the lady snapped.
The four of them walked in silence for a few minutes. The tunnel had begun to slope downwards slightly, the walls becoming rougher and the sound of the river grew louder as they followed it along, audible now even without putting an ear to the stone.
Out of nowhere, Rowena spoke up.
“Sjálf-viljandi”
There was a brief pause.
“Bless you.” said Sal, sardonically.
Rowena, who had begun to blush even before anyone responded to her, scowled.
“I just thought it fit you.”
“Oh, it’s a name!” Helga exclaimed, clapping once in realization.
Rowena huffed.
“I really meant what I said before about the state of your education.”
Sal raised an eyebrow.
“We wouldn’t have learned to speak your language even if we had all gone to school.”
“Well, you should have.”
“What does it mean, Lady – sjalvandi, was it?” Helga asked curiously.
“Close – it’s sjalf-viljandi. It means ‘of one’s own accord’.”
Sal looked vaguely impressed, but Godric interrupted before he could respond.
“I don’t know, I think sardheafod fits him better.”
Sal shoved him, face reddening. Helga thought he looked at her very quickly, but she wasn’t sure.
“Don’t be vulgar in front of the ladies, Godric!”
Godric looked at him like he had lost his mind.
“When have you ever given a care to what other people think, especially about vulgarity? Or was it someone else I’m remembering who made a game out of swearing where the priest could hear us but not see us when we were children?”
Sal rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. He couldn’t quite conceal a mischievous smirk from breaking out, however, and didn’t contradict Godric.
Helga laughed loud and full at that, surprising herself, while Rowena rolled her eyes.
“Typical. Boys are the same everywhere.”
“Lady, you speak quite often when no one has asked for-”
“Wait – do you see that?” Rowena said sharply, interrupting Godric. She peered through the gloom and pushed his arm, still holding the lit wand aloft, higher in order to see better, completely ignoring his resulting growl of irritation.
Perhaps thirty feet further down the tunnel, the path abruptly ended. A sort of rough doorway could be seen there, constructed of three slabs of stone. Beyond that it was utterly dark; the wandlight did not penetrate there.
The sound of the river was now a roar, and Sal had to shout just to be heard.
“I’ve seen structures like this before – I think this is a tomb. We oughtta be careful here.”
Godric looked at him a little strangely, but Rowena just rolled her eyes.
“Don’t let your ignorant superstitions frighten you. The dead are dead and will remain so.”
He scoffed, raising an eyebrow.
“You definitely never saw the inside of a wizard’s tomb before if you think a man can’t be dangerous after his own death.”
She glared at him, looking down contemptuously.
“Don’t patronize me, thrall.”
Sal’s returned glare was like poison.
“I’m patronizing you? I ain’t the one who’s mistakin’ a healthy dose of self-preservation for fear an’ a lack of education for stupidity! It’s a bit rich besides for you to be accusin’ me of being scared when you didn’t even want to come down here.” he hissed.
Helga was wringing her hands, looking back and forth between them.
“Oh, will you please stop fighting? Can’t you see how much you have in common?” she chastised them anxiously.
They both stared at her in disbelief.
“In common?” They said in unison. Looking at each other suspiciously, they turned away toward opposite sides of the tunnel, leaving Helga to look at Godric in consternation. He just shrugged.
After a minute of teeth-grinding, Sal spat to the side and stalked forward toward the door.
“I ain’t gonna stand for anyone implyin’ I’m a coward.”
He passed out of the pool of wandlight, through the strange greenish gloom, and disappeared through the door, swallowed up by the blackness beyond.
Godric whooped and immediately jogged off after his friend, thoughtlessly taking the light with him.
It went out the instant he passed under the lintel.
“Oðinn auga, you’re a pair of idiots.” Rowena said loudly, lighting her own wand angrily and storming after them.
Helga, not wanting to be left alone in the strange tunnel, hurried along in Rowena’s wake, passing through the door just moments after her.
Many years later, they would not agree on whether passing through that door had ultimately been a mistake or the wisest action any of them had ever taken. But for now, they were young, and unaware of the effects one’s actions can have on the future in the way that the young often are.
When they had all passed under the lintel, they found a small round room with no discernible exits. At the center of it lay a roughly-hewn stone cist. Placed carefully around the cist were grave goods of considerable age, gold shining bright as the day it was formed and bronze darkened by time. Jewelry, coins, weapons – all the belongings the interred must have owned in life and more. A magnificent chariot stood against one wall.
Helga stepped into the room last. She saw Godric, admiring the chariot’s design. She saw Sal, staring narrow-eyed at a gold, collar-like necklace lying in a puddle on the eastern wall. And she saw Rowena bend down to pick up a lone stray coin off the floor next to the cist. The instant her fingers closed around it, she was yanked away into nothingness in a swirl of color. Helga cried out in surprise at this, causing Sal to whip around. He took in the situation immediately.
“No one else touch anything!” he bit out urgently.
Godric, whose hands were hovering inches above one of the chariot’s wheels, pulled them away like he had been burned and spun around.
“Helga, what happened? Where did the lady Rowena go?” Godric shouted.
“She-she just disappeared!” she stuttered out, shocked.
“What happened right before that? She do anything, touch anything?” Sal snapped.
“Yes-yes.” Helga swallowed. “She picked a coin up from the floor.”
“And where was the coin?”
“Besides the box in the middle of the room.” She pointed to the spot where it had been, on the north side of the cist.
“We have to go after her, of course!” Godric declared. He grabbed the nearest coin, but nothing happened.
Sal rubbed his forehead and sighed through his nose.
“Didn’t I say we should be careful?” he muttered to no one in particular.
“Godric, we don’t even know where she went. There’s no guarantee that we’ll end up in the same place even if we can find another coin to transport us.”
“We have to make some kind of attempt! We can’t just abandon her!” he cried, clenching his fists.
Sal shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like she weren’t ready to do just that to us at the first opportunity.”
“That’s not true! She stood by me when that man accused me up on the street!” Helga stepped forward.
Sal wrinkled his nose and threw up his hands, not saying anything while they began searching the room. He just leaned against an empty patch of wall, crossed his arms, and watched them do it.
He did, however, jerk forward in surprise when Godric touched an iron sword hanging on the wall not far from where the coin had been and disappeared as well in another nauseating swirl.
The light went out.
Helga stared blindly in the direction of the array of objects where Godric had been standing. She walked toward the pile slowly, hearing Sal move to join her in the dark.
“I don’t suppose you have a tinderbox?” She asked.
With a rushing noise, firelight filled the room; when she looked over her shoulder she saw him holding flames in his hand. She just managed to suppress her normal reaction to seeing someone’s hand on fire.
“You a witch or not?” he smirked at her, but the whites of his eyes showed in the flickering light. He was as spooked as she was.
She laughed nervously and said nothing. Honestly? She thought silently. I don’t really know.
She must have imagined the strange look he threw at her immediately after.
Without saying a word, they both moved forward and began picking up things from the pile.
Within minutes, Helga’s fingers brushed the rim of a bronze bowl, and she was gone.
Sal stared at the place where the bowl had been.
“Is my life ever gonna be normal?” he asked the room. Reaching forward to pick up another one of the numerous collar-like necklaces scattered around, he could have sworn he heard a phantom voice laughing at him as the room melted around him.
In their absence, the greenish gloom remained, as it had, and would continue to do, for time untold.