“You’re alive,” I whisper.
To my surprise, Eidunn doesn’t complain. She doesn’t resist. She accepts my hug and repays it two-fold, sobbing into my shoulder. I don’t want to let go. Her body shakes against mine. We’ve both been prey so long… we were bound by more than friendship.
“You’realive,” she says.
I cry. She cries. Hours of tension finally release. I feel lighter than ever. We may die tonight. But we will die together. And we will never be slaves again. We will die free.
“I’m right here,” I whisper, though I can barely believe it myself. “How is your eye?”
She ignores my question.
“What is happe?—”
A tremor runs through the earth.
Elof’s head snaps toward the trees, his eyes open and sharp.
Ylvin’s white fur bristles.
Eidunn stiffens in my arms.
A second of silence… but then.
Ari’s roar shatters the night. He’s closer now. He’s come for the hammer. Come for me. I let Eidunn go. Her eyes are terrified, tears pouring down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her.
“Don’t be,” says Elof as he turns to the tree line, stretching his massive shoulders and cracking his bull-like neck. His calm is even more unsettling than Ari’s roar.
The trees at the edge of the ridge are split apart. Two massive hands drag them to the sides. They fall away like twigs.
Ari’s face appears. Twisted in anger. Recognizable yet so foreign. Seeing him like this, I feel… I feel I am mourning a man still breathing. Somewhere inside that towering monster is the man who pulled me out of the river. Let him survive this ordeal. I can’t take another corpse to my name. Not his. I pray he hears me through the storm in his mind.
“Ari!” I shout.
Ylvin runs to place herself in front of Eidunn and me. To stand between us and the monster I once shared furs with.
“Stay back,” she says calmly.
Elof steps forward. Slow, steady. Resolute.
He expands. Like Ari did, but controlled. With purpose. Nothing snaps. His body doesn’t complain. First his legs. Then his arms. His flesh turns to stone. Old as time.
I swallow hard, gripping Eidunn around her shoulders. She does the same to me.
Two giants stand before us. Mightier than the tales ever described.
Ari raises himself over the ridge, but Elof doesn’t give him the chance.
He jumps at Ari, growing mid-air into an enormous man of stone. A living mountain. He collides with Ari’s frosty form, a landslide crunching into an avalanche. My vision swims. The sheer force rattles my insides. The air crackles with raw energies.
Eidunn and I cover our ears. The ground shakes.
Elof’s attack pulls Ari with him down the mountain and crashing into the forest.
A battle between giants.
Forces of nature no one can stop. Tearing each other apart.
