The flames flickered and drew weird shapes in the shadows of the courtyard. The day was still young, but with winter’s breath drawing closer the night fell over the land of Askr with large wings. A shiver of cold blew through the courtyard of the training fields and there sat alone beneath gentle flames was a child huddled together vying for warmth. But her hands clattered together for a different reason as she began to count against her fingers the bones that jutted from blackened armor and bright blue phantasmal horror.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Sharena tried not to stare. Her gaze kept to the long blade that sat neat on her lap. Its murky reflection shimmering against the flames that lapped as starved dogs do against the night. Her hands kept wrapped around the spear’s shaft where her knuckles would turn white and her muscles would cramp against the metal. Sweat dripped from her brow as if it were summer. But the winter’s chill had spoken otherwise to the heat that emanated from her. A heat not from the work of training. A different sort of heat.
A illness.
A disease.
A fear.
Those eyes that stared. Red. Piercing. Without soul. A hideous visage.
It wants.
Five. Six. Seven.
She watched as people die.
Their bodies strewn across the battle fields split apart as seeds do in spring with blossoming blood between petals. The blood would pour from the bodies as mead does from drinking horns.
Swamps of blood. Bodies that would pile. Their faces skewed in horrific ways that she could never become accustomed to. But even she knew how to become a killer, in a way. Knew how to place the spear in the right slot against the flesh. Ripping. Tearing. She knew it all. Knew the muscles. Knew the bones. She could count them. Could picture them wrapped so fine in the muscle and skin as though dressed for a grand ball.
After slaying so many, she knew the best where to put the blade. Where the best place to slice the muscle. Where the best place was to stare when a comrade’s wound bubbled with blood and she could not keep her gaze as the light faded from their soft eyes.
Shielded. But still facing. Towards the dead. The dying.
But not to the undead.
Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
She closed her eyes. Tried not to stare at it any longer.
It.
It.
She shook her head.
That man was no it. How could she think such a thing? That was her brother.
Allegedly.
Of course.
That was what he had said. That was what she was told.
It was hard to believe it, at first, but she knew that look in his heavyset eyes. She knew it well. How could she not? It was so similar to the look that her own brother—her real brother—would give at times. When he was wounded in the battlefield. When she was wounded in the battlefield. When all hope might be lost. When there was nothing left for the two of them and all they could do was pray.
Líf was her brother.
But she was never able to count her brother’s ribs.
Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.
That horror was still in her mind even as she kept her eyes closed.
No flesh. No skin. No tendons or muscles. Only the bone and cartilage. Naked. Laid bare for her to see.
Those ghoulish bones. Those teeth that clattered and moved as he spoke. The jaw. Mandible. Vertebra.
Snaked down his frame. Moving as a human would. So human. So alive. Waltzing to the tune of Hel’s drumbeats. The battlefield his own ballroom. Her body a dance for him to take. To take. To take. To take.
To replace his own sister with her.
Sharena opened her eyes. That image of his bones never faded from her mind.
Maybe if she stared deeper, she could see his organs. The lungs. Heart. Kidneys. Liver. Gallbladder.
Or were those gone? Taken by Hel. Taken by the undead. Was his soul gone?
His curse made her convulse.
He played the part. Stood away in the shadows where the light of flame would not touch. And even when it did, the sickness of that black armor only consumed. The abyss of his armor a black hole. His presence an executioner’s blade sharpened to kill. His form a ghostly visage.
Stalking her was his wont. Much to the displeasure of everyone within the castle.
It was difficult to keep herself maintained. Even if this was a summoned ‘Hero’, he was anything but.
Her brother.
That was what they kept saying.
But it was impossible for her to picture that. Impossible for her to see that. Just a horrible creature that clattered beneath the womb of a shadow alongside the other Cohorts of the Dead that were summoned here.
Horrible creature. Horrible creatures.
Insects. Scurrying in the darkness.
Crawling all over them. All over her.
His eyes peered hopelessly at her. Like a caged pup.
But Sharena knew he was a wolf.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
She kept counting those ribs. A mantra to herself. She wiped sweat from her lips. But maybe that was spit.
Keep. Counting. Ribs.
Over. And. Over.
One-hundred.
Two-hundred.
Not his. Other ones. Her father’s. Hel’s. Thrasir’s.
Maybe next her mother. Maybe next her brother. B-r-o-t-h-e-r.
Which. One?
Darkness clouded her vision. Clouded her mind. She felt the tug of something graze her mind as a hand caressed her soul. Maybe this was the sort of curse that was placed on Alfonse when Hel had initially cursed him. They said it was a curse on the blood. A curse of the seed. It did not matter who was the original undertaker. All that mattered was the blood.
Sharena felt the unease of those eyes gaze upon her as Líf stood in the shadows. His shadow danced. But he kept stilled as though he were nothing more than a coffin.
She felt her heart seize in her chest. Heard every beat that resounded through her very veins. Maybe if she looked in the mirror, she could see her own ribcage.
Maybe… that was what he was counting too.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
She felt a hand upon her shoulder.
Blood rushed to her head as a different sort of chill touched the very essence of her soul. It ignited her skin with the touch of frostbite. Brought her body one step closer to death’s end. She could see herself stand at the precipice of life, and over the edge, was that pretty death. If she looked down. She could count her own ribcage. Her body split open. The ribs so enticing as they looked cracked and brittle.
Sharena’s gaze took to the hand.
Her gaze trailed up the shimmering abyss.
The musk of death seemed to bleed from the hollowed-out suit of armor. Over the cloak of fur that stained red with blood from some unknown creature of human. Maybe that was her own. In another life. In another Askr.
His hand laid upon her shoulder so unnaturally. So forced to be human. The length of it was all wrong. As if this was an imagination of how a Human should look. It stretched at such an odd angle. Draped over her shoulder in a strange way that was neither living nor dead. His fingers looked strange as they clutched into her clothes. The shadows did not make sense. The curve of his armor was all wrong.
It was wrong.
Further up the arm, the shoulder, the neck, was that face.
A pallid creature. A creature whose skin was so thin that she could see how the blood settled within it bruised. How the eyes were heavy lidded and barely there. He did not breath. Did not shutter. Did nothing.
Only stood there. Counting. As she sat there and stared at him. Counting.
“L-Líf.” Sharena managed.
Her tongue was heavy in her mouth. And she had to wonder now: Did he have a tongue that wagged behind those teeth? Were there any cords of muscles that wrapped around that finely dressed bone? Was there truly nothing?
Twenty-One. Twenty-Two.
“Are you…” Líf began. His voice was uneasy. Those teeth did not move. There was no tongue that lapped between them. His voice only reverberated through the air. It carried strangely. Echoed though the castle. Hung in the air as a stale note.
His gaze was transfixed at how Sharena looked at his hand that stuck to her shoulder. Like a pain, he snatched it away and held the gauntlet close to him. He squirrelled it away so close to him like the ghoulish thing that he was. He held his wrist as though it was her touch that had wounded him. As though her life was sinking its teeth into his fingertips and poisoning him, as the death poisoned her.
“Are you fine?” he tried again. His gaze took elsewhere. Anywhere but her.
She still stared. She began to recount the ribs.
One. Two. Three.
“Y-Yes…” she replied. “I think I trained for too long.” She forced a smile to her lips. But it did not reach her eyes.
“Ah… I see.” Líf’s gaze was still elsewhere.
He flexed his fingers strangely. The clattering of the armor against armor echoed through the hall. The metal rang deep in her ears and swelled inside of her mind threatening her skull to split itself in two. That sweet pain engulfed her, and she had to force herself not to thrust her hands against her head and screech in pain. She merely clenched her teeth together; tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth as the smile grew wider to hide the pain.
“Good thing you were here.” Sharena continued. “I might have fallen over and hit my head if you didn’t catch me.”
A lie. But would Líf see it? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What did it matter? In the end, he was only here for his own selfish reasons. For he must have known what his soul did to anyone that he stood too close to.
He was only a ghoul.
Four. Five. Six.
“I apologize if I trouble you with my presence.” Líf managed to chance a glance towards Sharena. The gaze struck Sharena as though a knife cut clean through into her heart. “I understand station here in the realm of the living is…” his voice trailed off.
He did not need to finish that sentence.
He shouldn’t be here.
His place in this realm was considered an affront to the living.
Even if he was here under the command of the Summoner and the contract that bound the ghoul to this place. A ghoul was still a ghoul. The dead was still the dead. And it showed in how he shifted in this place. How the very way he stood here drove Sharena to madness.
Even as she sat here, she wanted to gag.
Couldn’t he see that?
The silence must have been enough of an answer for him. There was no pleasantry in it, and Sharena wanted nothing more than for him to leave. Even if she would not admit that fact to herself, or to her… brother.
“I… should go…” He shuffled away from her. His legs awkward and his gait strange.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
“Huh…?” Sharena drew back from him slightly. Confused now. She stood suddenly, nausea overtaking her, but she swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. “Wait… Líf—”
That word spoken was nails on chalk. Dreadful. Horrible. Unnatural. As if that name made for himself was a curse when spoken by his… sister.
But that was what he wanted.
To torture himself as those sinners did.
Right?
She stood there gripping his fur cloak. Her dried blood permeated the matted and disgusting fur. He did not need to tell her the truth of what it was. She already knew. It was not obvious. But it was something that only a sister would know. Only something that family would realize.
Because they were family.
Weren’t they?
Her blood felt wet. Felt strange. Felt unnatural.
Would she be the same as him if it were the other way around? Would it be Alfonse’s blood stained against her cloak?
She kept her gaze on that red.
“Insanity.”
Sharena’s gaze looked upward as he turned towards her.
That horrible gaze with nothing behind it.
Insanity.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
“I am a death that is fixated on something that will never be.” His voice was guttural. Strange. Abhorrent.
The Summoner had once described to her creatures that were so unlike the makings of what was within Askr. Within Miðgarðr. Within any Nine Realms. Creatures that commanded Humans to do what was the impossible. Strange shadows that could possess and do what no one else could. She always thought these things fantasies, but seeing Líf like this… perhaps what the Summoner regaled was more real than what they realized.
He turned strangely. A husk that commanded the armor as though it did not know how to move in it.
“Seeing you…” he sighed as if to reminisce upon something that could never be. “It makes me happy.” He closed his eyes and maybe tears may have fell. But a ghoul could not cry. “But it drives me closer to the insane.”
Sharena noted how he fingered his sword. Rubbed his finger against the hilt as though contemplating a thing. Maybe he thought to split her open so he could count her ribcage and see how he could split the divine between each other.
“If I become obsessed with it… I would be no more than those other ghouls that track their own scent as Jǫrmungandr does its tail.” He gave pause. His brows furrowing. Anger coursed through him as he suddenly grasped the hilt of the blade. But he never flourished the sickly metal. “Into eternity! Wandering fruitlessly until Ragnarök.”
Sharena was quiet. Unsure of what to say.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
Líf kept his gaze. Felt the weight of the sword in his hand. Noted how she kept her soft gaze upon him even if he threatened her. She knew he would not be able to maim her. He was under contract. Under oath. Their Divine Relic would not allow such wonton death and destruction by Heroes summoned to this place. But, even if that were the case, sometimes it was impossible to know for certain…
Any creature driven to a corner would do the same. His sadness was etched into his face as he brought his hand away from his sword ashamed of what he had almost done.
He turned again. Turned to her once more. Turned away. His fingers clenched. Digging into his fleshless palms. Brows furrowed. Bloodlust returned. His soul WRITHED. Wiggling and worming around in his beautiful armor as he wondered if he should thrust himself back into this palace, this reflection of failure, or withstand Sharena’s pleading eyes once more.
Sharena held no joy knowing that she tortured him as he tortured her.
Her fingers lost their grip upon the cloak as he began to walk away. His footsteps resounded through the empty halls that rattled inside her mind as a roaring beast that pleaded to be put out of its own misery. He waltzed through his own palace of pain. Singing to his own march. Perhaps he wandered through this place to dig himself in a hole to die again.
But the undead do not deserve graves.
Only the dead do. As do the living.
Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
“Would you like to go home?” Sharena called out to him. Then realized how stupid she was to ask that.
Líf stopped. The shadows furled around him as though greeting back their servant.
“Back to your realm… I mean…” Sharena stumbled over her words. Her face went red with embarrassment as she stammered. “To… To…”
Hel.
His [ mother ].
Nineteen. Twenty.
“I suppose there is no home for me.” Líf uttered. He did not turn to look at her. But his laughter echoed through the palace. Squealed like a hog doomed on the butcher’s block. Was this a mercy? Would sending him home be that for him? Or would it be a different sort of nightmare? A different dream. A different misery. “Sharena… Do you think you would be happy with who I am now?”
She only replied with silence.
There was only silence.
Silence.
“Whichever you wish me to turn, it will be on your orders.”
The shadows dug their pretty claws into his bones. Ripping. Tearing. Gnashing. They enjoyed him as he stepped through the abyss.
“I am good at taking orders.”
He disappeared into the darkness. The winter howl’s consuming him.
Sharena stood there.
Twenty-one.
She stared down at her own hands.
Twenty-two.
She began to recount his ribs.
One… Two… Three…