"How did you find this place?"

Roth pulled his gaze from the grotto's narrow opening and hunkered down to scratch Váli's ears affectionately. "It was not I that discovered it. I merely followed Váli to his lair, I think."

Renic's glowing eyes, like bright orbs in the darkness, lowered to settle over the wolf. "I always wondered where he disappeared off to now and then." He twisted his head around to search the way they had come. "And I see why he chose it."

Roth nodded. They could not hear a single human voice this deep in the forest and 'twas his hope that they too might make use of it ... for their own deranged purposes. Without a word to either of his companions he stood and slipped edgewise through the narrow crevice, a vertical split in the rock that was almost completely obscured by creeping plants, weeds, and sharp nettles that drove their little hooks into his flesh as he bypassed them. Renic moved to follow after him.

It was not an easy space to maneuver through, but at length he and his brother reached the other side, their superficial wounds sealing almost instantly. It was the deeper lacerations that took far longer to heal — ones wrought by otherworldly means.

There was no moon tonight and it was as black outside as the bowels of the cave they had entered, but neither he nor Renic had need of the stars or the moon to light their way — their eyes could see clearly into the stygian gloom that mantled the jagged walls of the cave.

He knew not the hour or the moment he had realized he could see the world in hues of green, the details clear as though a viridian sun shone it's glow upon whatever object he gazed upon. He had always taken it for granted that others could see into the darkness as well as he was able to. His brother could, so why then could not everyone else do the same. However, his mother had swiftly disabused him of that illation and forbidden him to speak of "his gifts" to anyone but herself.

"How deep does the tunnel go?" Renic's voice reverberated quietly along the rock wall, their footfalls as hushed as Váli's imperceptible padding.

"There are many tunnels, brother; and they are all as long as Jorgmungand himself..." Roth had only managed to explore a scant few of the burrows today, yet had every intention of probing the depths of every subterranean shaft herein as soon as they returned from the hunt.

At length the passageway widened into a tall, cavernous chamber that was vaulted with thick veins of rock and thousands of hair-like roots that glistened with water droplets and fungi. The sound of dripping water seemed to echo all around them as though the very heartbeat of the black cave was counted in every purposeful drop. The pulse of life beat even here; in Niflheim.

There was no sound here, save their own blood thrumming calmly in their chests and the faint scuttle of cave-dwelling creatures.

"I think it will do nicely, brother." Thank Thor for Renic. He was sorry for the fact that his doughty brother should suffer his fate as well, but, in the same instant, he was thankful that he was not alone in his torments. Yet lately that was proving to be a curse as well.

His brother's answering smile was gradual and meagre, but still it came, as he knew it would. "Ay, a bit of stone and mortar should do the trick."

"Perhaps we may somehow find a way of separating the beasts at either ends of the cave." Even he could hear the dubiety in his own voice.

At that, Renic gave a troubled grunt. "Perhaps."

But separate them they must, for he did not care to wake from his lunacy covered in blood as he had the last time. And it was not the blood of a clansmen that had soaked his flesh last moon, it had been his and Renic's. Still and all, he supposed, it was better each other's than another's.

Not even this forest of theirs, it seemed, was vast enough to contain one creature's fury. Each had come to realize that there was evidently no amount of territory large enough to satisfy their beastly, second natures. There was room in these lands only for one valdyr.

"But can stone and mortar and iron bars hold them back, I wonder?" The same instant Renic spoke the cavern erupted into a blaze of light, briefly blinding the brothers as they hissed painfully and blinked the disorientation away. 

Minatory, green flames licked at the rock from a craggy ledge near the ceiling that spanned the entire circumference of the chamber. It encircled them like a massive halo. The stalactites and stalagmites cast an ominous shadows along the ancient, whitened walls that were painted with bat ordure. The sight was unsettling enough without the eerie voice that was forthwith heard behind them.

"I have been waiting... Good of you to join me at last."

Both men spun around to see a tall man, his dark hair like a long, black cape behind him, leaning casually against a boulder from the route whence they came, effectively blocking the exit. 

Neither brother spoke as the strange being pushed himself from his perch and approached them, circling the pair like a wolf might do. Yet Váli seemed unconcerned; and that, more than anything, reassured Roth of their not being in any danger. At least he hoped that was the case. Renic's upper lip, however, twisted up threateningly as he beheld the stranger with a lowering brow.

The creature — for it certainly did not smell or look like a mortal — stopped in front of his brother, both of them equal in height and matched in the breadth of their shoulders. He seemed to scrutinize Renic carefully; avidly. 

Roth, in the mean time, was taken aback by the resemblance between them: both had that rare midnight hair that none of their clansmen possessed. Both their eyes shared that remarkable shade of pale blue. And, stranger still, their features were hewn so similarly that he would have sworn the same carver had created each man's face with the exact same chisel.

But this was no man like his brother. A god then. What other conclusion could he draw. 

"Who are you?" Renic's voice stirred the cold, dank air and seemed to petrify the very walls with its steely timbre.

The stranger cocked his head to Roth without taking his eyes away from Renic's. "Ask your brother," the god said. "I believe he sees what you have yet to..."

Renic glanced between them, wary suddenly. "Your words puzzle me." He raised his eyes to the eldritch flames still lapping within their long, circular sconce. "What tricks are you playing here!"

Tricks?! "Loki." Roth's eyes flared. The greatest trickster of them all...

"Well done." Loki inclined his head, whether genially or in mockery Roth could not yet tell. "But there are still more revelations to be divulged. For, you see, I know what you are," he said, looking to Renic again.

Two narrowed gazes watched Loki as he moved to stand beside Váli, who gazed on dispassionately at all three of them, and patted the wolf's head distractedly.

"Tell me," he continued, "how is it that two monsters are borne of a perfectly natural woman?"

"We are cursed by the gods." Renic glanced briefly at his brother before returning his eyes to the perceived threat.

"Wrong!" Loki thundered mordantly. "You are cursed by blood! My blood." The flames whelmed upwards like forked tongues licking at the jagged ceiling. "I am he that sired you."

"What?!" Roth stood frozen, disbelieving. He was unable to stop his fists clenching fiercely at his sides, his body tensing like a crouched wolf. 

"You lie," Renic growled. "Our father was Harald!" He lay a heavy hand atop Roth's shoulder, sensing his brother's unstable enmity. "Do not listen to him. He is the deceiver god."

Loki waved a casual hand, ostensibly bored with the subject. "Believe what you will. Nevertheless, I come to offer my assistance; however unwelcome it may be. I promised your mother-"

"You stay away from our mother!"

"Tis too late for that..." Loki smirked.

Roth, therewith enraged by the man's insolence, charged him suddenly, heedlessly.  

But Loki easily frustrated his attack by shoving him to the floor, his fingers curling mercilessly about his neck, subduing him instantly. Nevertheless, he struggled in the god's iron grasp, yet for all his strength he could not budge Loki even a little.

He had not been bested since that day Heida had beaten him in a test of speed, but even she could not possibly hope to do so now. Not with the agility and strength he now possessed; and had gained since killing her would-be rapist. Howbeit, this was no mortal and he felt that long-forgotten, insidious fear whelming instantly into his gut as the god's fingers tightened at his neck.

"I could crush you, boy," Loki whispered furiously, his eyes aflame with blue rage.

"Let my brother go." Renic advanced on the pair, cautiously withal. And Loki unexpectedly complied without further ado, shoving Roth from him as he straightened.

"My time is not yours to waste, so listen closely. Whatever your belief in my intentions, do not overestimate my patience again. I have none. Not for either of you." His eyes flickered between the twins. He raised his palms in a wide arc, indicating their burning underworld. "This is where you will come to escape the full moon henceforth." 

Whereas before, when he'd first entered here without Renic, it had struck Roth as a sort of Niflheim, dark and cold, but now it seemed more like Muspellheim instead, the flames as otherworldly as the realm he imagined. 

"Here is where you must hide yourselves from the world. For your own sakes as well as your people." Loki studied Renic. "You cannot deny my logic in this, despite that I am the god of lies."

Renic remained still, and Loki thereby took his silence as accord, his eyes then flicking over to Roth. As Roth stood slowly he too offered a slight, disgruntled nod. Cautious now, but never cowed.

"Excellent."

Roth poked tenderly at his reddened throat. "Will they not get out?" He could not refer to his savage twin — the beast within — as himself. To him it was another entity entirely.

"You must reach the cave betimes and pass through the mouth long before the change. Once the throes begin you will grow too large to get back out and, to that end, I myself have reinforced both entrances with an indestructible ore from Asgard."

"Both? There is another means of entry?"

Loki acknowledged the question with another smirk. "You will be bound here till you are both once again returned to your natural state; only then can you leave."

The brothers turned to look meaningfully at one another. "But will we leave here alive?" Roth asked hoarsely.

"Not indefinitely, no." Loki held a long, pale ruminative finger to his lips. "That is to say, one beast is like to destroy the other ... eventually. And that I did not anticipate." He seemed only mildly vexed by the idea. "Pity." He stroked his chin.

Roth felt Renic's gaze shift back to him, but his own remained steadfastly rooted to the giant before them. "There must be a way—"

"Impossible. Besides which, you have unfortunately drawn the eye of Odin himself; and consider this, if you will trust nothing else I say: you do not want his intervention. He has even less patience than I."

The roar of flames did nothing to dispel the silence that stretched between the god and his supposed sons. Both he and Renic glared cautiously at the stranger who stood as still as the stalagmite beside him.

"Now then," said the god, his eyes flaring briefly. "There is another matter to discuss, while I have your attention." He clasped his hands behind his back in a casual manner and took a turn about the room as though he was discussing the harvest. "There is the matter of the Blood Bond to discuss."

❅

They emerged from the trees of the red weald and halted once the longhouse was in view, each absorbed in his own thoughts. They had been gone a considerable length of time and the hall was quiet now except for the snoring that nearly drowned out the hushed voices still talking quietly within.

"Did you believe what he said when he inferred that he was our maker?" Renic glanced back into the shadows behind them, lest they be heard by Loki himself. Only Váli's unblinking eye-shine stared back from the dark.

"There was no inferring done tonight. The man as good as called himself our father." And Roth felt the truth of it in his very bones too. "There is no other explantation for what we are."

"As to the Blood Bond," said his brother, "I will have no need of that ... ritual."

Roth said nothing. He was not so lucky. It was his damned duty to procreate. Loki had been very clear about what to do; and what it meant to forge the bond. Nevertheless, Roth still harbored question about the entire process and if it would work with Frida. More importantly, did he really care whether it did or not?

Renic tilted his head back with a resigned sigh. "Things were so much simpler when we were younger."

"And unchanged."

"Ay. Now I do not know who to trust; our own mother has clearly deceived us."

"Not quite."

"What do you mean?" Renic pulled his eyes from the sky to consider his brother.

"Do you remember that tale she used to tell us as children..."

Renic's brow furrowed still further. Roth's tongue glided across his upper teeth in vexation as he watched Renic's stupid brow puckering as it always did when he was thinking. And he was always thinking; always weighing his thoughts. 

He had found himself itching to flatten that brow with a good smack on more than one occasion; and then he almost snorted at the inclination, for he doubted Renic would allow the offense to go unavenged even by his brother. Especially not by his brother.

"I do," his twin answered at last.

"The story of lovers are always fraught with difficulties, but none more so than the girl who dared to love a god. Loki came to Midgard often to see her; and one day revealed himself to her in the forest under the guise of a weary traveler.

From their love she bore him two strong sons — halfling children with both the blood of mortals and the essence of giants. In time they grew. By and by they were feared; yet when their village was threatened by greedy men, who dared to harm their people, the sons of Loki triumphed over all their enemies, crushing them like the giants they were. From that day forward they were known as the savior of their people and none dared trouble them again."

"Our mother was only halfway right though," said Roth, remembering the hearthside story. "We are the bane of our people. Not their saviors."

Renic's face grew grim and distrait, and he therewith betook himself up the hill, Roth's pace matching his brother's. 

When Roth descried Brenna's figure searching the gloom anxiously from the doorway, he nudged his brother with a chuckle. "She waits for you, brother."

When they emerged into the light of the torch burning at the post beside the door, her eyes lit up at the sight of them; at the sight of Renic. She wrapped her mantle closer around her to ward off the chill, gave a relieved smile, and then stepped back into the house now that she was assured of their return. They, likewise, followed her thence.

The benches were bestrewn with sleeping bodies, the floor littered with drinking horns, but those that were still awake sat around the fire chatting softly. Roth could no more forbear his teeth grinding viciously against one another than he could prevent his own heart from beating as he remarked Heida laughing quietly with Eirik. 

He knew he should be happy for her, but he had not the noble spirit of his brother. With a disgusted expulsion of air he grabbed Frida's hand, her eyes rounded with surprise, and dragged her after him as the others watched on. He passed his brother and Brenna, her glare instantly suspicious, but neither of the two stopped him as he disappeared down the hallway with his unwilling betrothed.

"Roth!" Frida whispered fearfully, "have I displeased you?!"

Ignoring her question he pushed her roughly up against the wall of the darkened corridor and silenced her terrified gasp with a hard kiss. Finally, she ceased her struggles as his intent became clear to her. Though she was still and pliable, her heart hammered erratically in its cage against his own callous organ.

Odin take him! He endeavored to feel something the while he held her there. He closed his eyes and tried to will his lips and even his hands, as they settled at her protruding hips, to believe that this was Heida; not Frida. However, he could not deceive his nose. It was not Heida's alluring scent that saturated his senses.

The body beside his was not tall like Heida either. Frida's flesh was not as warm as her rival's and her eyes, though equally large, were not the counterpoise to Heida's silver pools — they were not the eyes he wished to lose himself within. Frida was, instead, cold and terrified.

It was that acrid stench of panic that first breached his cogitations, repelling him such that he wrenched his mouth from hers with an aggravated suspire. He was unaffected; and not even his manhood had been stirred by the kiss. But somehow he must beget an heir off her.

The question was how...

Leaving her trembling in the hallway he stalked back towards the fire pit in the main hall where his mother appeared without warning to block his way. Their eyes struck each other instantly — hers wary and his furious. Accusing.

"You know," said she fatally, her shoulders slumping. "He told you."

"Yes. We know." Renic had come up behind her, and the brothers' eyes met overtop their mother's head, the shadow of their sire seeming to hang like a pall over all three of them. 

⭐️