Page 26 of Last Thrall of Asgard

LOKI

Damn it.

Damn it.

Oli was everything he was supposed to be.

Spontaneity can represent some of the greatest joys, beauties, and pursuits in life, eh? I hoped he still felt that way after meetingDeath.

He had faults a plenty, and not a one of them was something I couldn’t tolerate. Not a one was a part of him that I didn’t want to know better.

If only my faults were as simple.

The following chapter contains:

Dubious Consent (only at first), Unintentional Poisoning, Bondage, Breath Play, Edging, and Praise Kink.

Chapter four

The Benumbed

OLI

Iawoke with a gasp, lurching into a sitting position.

Had I fallen? I remembered Loki’s words, that I was headed toHelto meet his daughter of the same name, and the very floor beneath me had vanished, everything going dark, darker than when sleep took me after landing in Freyr’s lake.

Now I was in a bedroom, not open the way Heimdall’s had been, but a small, fully enclosed room, similar in décor and feel as where Loki had feasted with me to better catch me off guard before sending me…

Was this Hel? I almost dared not leave the room, but this one had a door, unlike Loki’s feasting hall, and I was alone, with no idea which god I was to meet next. Whoever it would be, it seemed I needed to meet them in Hel by first speaking to the goddess who ruled it.

Damn imp indeed, but at least my belly was sated, my senses appropriately hazy from drink to meet my mortality in the land of the dead, and my ass rested. My clothing was neat, my hair still loose, but not unattractive, which I was able to check in my reflection through an oval of polished metal near the door.

Not bad for a dead man.

Oh, I hoped that was not the case simply by being here.

I steeled my resolve and exited the chamber.

I was in a city. Not quite like how Asgard looked, but I was in a bustling courtyard with throngs of people going about what seemed to be daily, happy life. I was supposedly beneath the very roots of Yggdrasil, and indeed, in the distance, it seemed as though this city was in a great cavern, deep within a mountain, but the walls, impossibly high and spanning up seemingly forever, were knotted roots. I thought perhaps straight ahead, far, far from me, was a gate made of those same roots, and I imagined Garm, the giant hound that protected its entrance, was chained on the other side.

Yet here, in the courtyard of homes and halls and something near a castle that the room I’d left connected to, it was peaceful for a place called the land ofdishonorabledead. The people here were of all kinds, but one thing they had in common was that they all seemed to be my age, returned—or maybe aged up in cases—to a time in their prime.

“It is notdishonorableto die other than in glorious battle,” a voice startled me to turn toward the expanse of the castle behind me. I would swear she had not been there when I took in the scene, but then, she was the daughter of Loki.

There was no mistaking Hel for anyone else. She was beautiful, tall, lithe like Loki, and one half of her looked quite like Loki too with fair face and long fiery red hair. It was intricately braided, and she wore a crown made of the same knotted wood as Yggdrasil’s roots. The half with her fair side was lush and living with blooming flowers. The other half was bare and black, her hair on that side black too, and her skin slightly sunken, almost like a skull, bluish black in color with runes tattooed upon her cheek that I thought might be prayers for the dead.

That side was somehow still beautiful, the whole of her a testament to being the overseer between life and death.

I’d expected her to be in armor, but like the delicate beauty of her crown, she dressed simply, wearing an elegant white tunic with dark blue trousers. It was an asymmetrical tunic, shorter on her fairer side, and long to her ankles on the side of death. Death lasted longer than life, I supposed, if that was its meaning. Her eyes were blue like Loki’s too, but the death side glowed.

“M-my lady.” I bowed, for what else was one to do?

Hel inclined her head in return. “You yet live, Oli. Do not fear that. And do not fear me. Some of your stories call this a place of suffering, but it is merely a place for souls to live out more of the lives they lost. It is not for the wicked. Those souls are elsewhere. And Valhalla, while for heroes and warriors, is only for those who wish to reside there. Even some of them choose to come to me.”

I felt a great relief hearing all that, and as I looked again at the people, the happy, peaceful dead, living their afterlives in Hel’s court, I wondered if my parents were here. I didn’t know if theylived. I didn’t know who my father was, but my mother had been sold when I was young.

“It does not do a mortal spirit well to dwell on death,” Hel said, coming toward me and taking my arm with her dead-like side. Only it didn’t feel like death, cold or unpleasant, although her touch did make me shiver. She began to lead me deeper into the castle courtyard, away from the bustle of souls. “You are here to do me a service.”

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