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Mimir didn’t kill them, which was nice. Instead, he just scolded them and then gave them a new set of orders to follow, which, yayyy. (Can you tell that was sarcastic? Hearth wasn’t super excited about that. In fact, he was hoping for an easy and smooth-going retirement.) These orders included a lot of things to do with Fenris Wolf, which, nooooo . (That one was serious.) Hearth was hoping that he wouldn’t have to deal with that particular wolf. He was hoping that they wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the island where he was bound, but with Blitzen on the team it was only a matter of time.
Randolph had been right; Magnus had achieved Valhalla. That fact single handedly kept Blitzen and Hearthstone alive, so in a way Hearth had three life debts to pay. He made the executive decision not to think about it like that, which was difficult considering that it had been engraved in his mind for the bulk of his childhood. Either way, now he was watching Magnus and Blitzen scramble up the world tree like their lives depended on it. Ratatosk was behind them, barking up a storm as he clawed his way behind them. Hearth couldn’t hear any of the horrible words he was no doubt saying, but he could see their effects in his companions. Magnus had tears in the corners of his eyes, his muscles trembling as he fought to carry himself further. Blitzen had steeled his face, but Hearth knew him well enough to see how his eyebrows pinched in every so slightly.
Beside him, Sam was adamantly fighting her own fear-filled trembles, trying her best to keep the camouflage head-scarf level with the tree. Hearth wished he could help her, but he couldn’t think of anything that would work in such a small area. All he could do was watch as Magnus and Blitz ran further down the branches, both of them stumbling every once and a while in accordance with Ratatosk’s barking. Hearthstone could only imagine the kinds of things he was saying to them; probably going after Magnus’s mother and Blitzen’s father, tearing at every seam he could find to try and claw his way into their heads. From the looks of it, it was working; Magnus stumbled and fell, soul-crushing anguish present in his expression, and Blitz went down almost right after him.
No, Hearth thought, energy suddenly zapping through him. He quickly reached into his pouch, uncaring of how it rustled their hiding place, digging through it for the only rune he could think of that would help: Thurisaz, the rune of encouragement and empowerment. He threw it at the pair as far as he could in his position. It smacked Blitz square in the forehead, glowing for a moment before it dissolved into the open air. A second later, Blitzen snapped out of his squirrel-fueled daze and grabbed Magnus, shouting. Hearth watched as they jumped down into the knothole.
Interlude: “What we tell ourselves” by Blitzen Freyason
“More often than not, I dream of rope. Binding, thin as hair and as taught as the gods. I dream of greater dwarves, forging, crafting, tying knots and anchors on rocks. I dream of a wolf, standing solitary on his island, teeth gnashing. Sometimes, I even dream of my father; checking on the bonds of the beast before being killed and eaten. I wouldn’t call them nightmares. Okay, rereading that, maybe I would call them nightmares. But they don’t feel like nightmares when they happen. I’m more of an apathetic observer witnessing the tragedy of my father’s passing. That sounds kinda weird, but you can’t tell me you’ve never been in a similarly apathetic nightmare-dream.
“I always wake up paranoid about Fenris Wolf. Something about him breaking out of his bonds and starting Ragnarok, which would be pretty bad for me and my buddy Hearthstone. I would rather not die before I open up my shop, and he still needs to perfect his magic or whatever nonsense he’s talking about. I think he’s already perfect at rune magic but who cares about my opinion anyway, right? (That wording makes me sound bitter, but the tone is fond. Sarcastic and fond. Hearth cares a lot about my opinion, I promise.)
“Me and the crowd I hang around aren’t strangers to bad dreams. Magnus has more bad dreams than good ones and Sam regularly gets night-terrors about her impending wedding with Amir. I think she’s scared of tripping up over her vows, or her dress, or the chairs, or over open air. Whatever the case, sometimes she wakes up in a cold sweat, blushing to the base of her neck. (The first time it happened, we were all sleeping over at Magnus's place for a movie night. After that, she refused to sleep in the same room as all of us, and I’m pretty sure she got a new night-terror about all of us crowding around her like worrywarts.)
“The nightmares that I do have often have nothing to do with the end of the world. There is no impending doom, no Ragnarok, and no wolf at the end of his rope. Instead, there’s a tavern filled with dwarves, all of them cheering for Junior. His cup is full of ale, his expression full of cheer. There’s a party happening, and everything is centered around that old dwarf and his latest craft. Then, everybody turns to the door where I’m standing, and starts whispering to each other. When I say whispering, I mean that they turn to murmur in the ear of their neighbour, but I can hear each individual word.
“‘ He’s just like his father, ’ some will say, ‘ an incompetent fool. Do you think he’ll die a fool too? ’ I, like the respectable dwarf I am, ignore all of this and take a seat beside Junior, because I’m an idiot in my dreams. Junior is the kind of guy to say even worse things directly to my face.
‘ Blitzen, ’ he said. That’s the only part of his whole rant that I can make sense of. The rest of it is always a blur, but it always hurts. Every sound he makes sets deep anguish in my soul, stemming from the very core of my being. I can never remember the words, but I know he talks about my father. I know he insults me for my interest in fashion. I know he mocks me for my feelings. And all of it hurts.
“That’s what Ratatosk’s barking sounded like to me. Senseless insults, all of them feeling like knives in my heart. My brain could only try to fill in the blanks with insults I’ve heard before; things about my father, things about my interests, things about my birth and my mother. None of the things I could come up with even came close to how hurtful the squirrel’s awful sounds were.
“I probably would have died without the rune, succumbing to my own words and Ratatosk’s barking. I recognized it only after it had smacked me in the forehead; Thurisaz. The rune of encouragement. It shimmered in the air for a moment before it defended me, counteracting each of the squirrel’s comments.
‘ You are stronger than they know, ’ said the rune, words being pushed directly into his mind, ‘ and one day, everyone will see that. Your dreams are yours, and they are worth dreaming about. ’ It said a few more encouraging things that buzzed through my head in a split second, and a moment later, I found the strength to stand. Moving through the haze that the negativity and the positivity provided, I grabbed Magnus’s arm and managed to tell him to jump with me; straight through the Knothole and into Vanaheim.”