Chapter Text
Emil went back to the infirmary feeling like somebody had hollowed out his bones and took the marrow for themselves.
The coffee and the lack of sleep weren’t helping. He felt sort of like he wanted to sit down and cry. He wanted to go to sleep and see Nanny, and have her hug him and tell him it would all be alright. Whatever had happened, she would tell his father and he would fix it. He almost never did, but it always made Emil feel better.
He wondered how the real Nanny was doing.
She had survived the fire. Most people did, those that weren’t doing the night shift at the factory, at least. She made it out along with Emil, and she stayed with the family for a few months afterwards. But private nannies of her caliber did not come cheap, and the Västerström fortune had dried up quick. Nanny didn’t have children of her own to take care of her, having spent her life raising other people’s children. She didn’t have anyone to see to her retirement but herself, and so, when Uncle Torbjörn sheepishly told her they couldn’t pay her anymore, she packed her bags and took her letter of recommendation, and went.
Emil had refused to say goodbye to her as she was leaving. He’d still been just a spoiled child back then, who didn’t really understand just how much their family had lost. Who didn’t understand why Nanny couldn’t just stay.
He’d never even apologised for being such a horrible child to her. She was such a permanent fixture in his memories that he saw her every time he went to sleep, and he hadn’t even said thank you to her for everything she did even once.
He collapsed in the chair next to Reynir’s bed, feeling like a rotten child grown from a rotted family tree. Reynir and Vigdis were still asleep, though at least Vigdis wasn’t wheezing anymore. One of the doctors had drawn something on her chest that Emil didn’t see, having averted his eyes when Vigdis was told to unbutton her top. But she had breathed a huge sigh of relief, and though she had to sleep on an inclined bed, at least she was sleeping peacefully now.
Reynir still didn’t wake up. Emil was reminded of Lalli, when he came back from scouting with a nosebleed and wouldn’t wake up no matter how much Emil poked at him. He didn’t know what magic Lalli had used back then, that had exhausted him so much, and Tuuri hadn’t even told him what the cause was at the time.
This felt a lot like that. Stuck in a foreign country, his friend not waking up and being haunted by ghosts. It better not become a pattern.
Ah, but Emil could do something now that he couldn’t do back then.
He crossed his arms over Reynir’s bed, laid his head down, and went to sleep.
Reynir wasn’t in his area when Emil opened his eyes.
“Reynir!” Emil called out, trying to find him amongst far too many fluffy beasts roaming around.
Nothing. His voice echoed through the hills and creeks, no response incoming.
A chill went down Emil’s spine. Where was he? Shouldn’t he be resting right here?
“Woof!”
Emil looked down from the hill he’d climbed. There, at the bottom, was Reynir’s dog.
“Dog!” Emil quickly slid down the wet grass, mostly landing on his feet, “Where’s Reynir?”
Dog whimpered and turned around. He broke into a run, then stopped a ways away to make sure Emil was following.
Emil wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but he went.
Dog ran out onto the Dreamsea, occasionally stopping to let Emil catch up. They ran for what seemed like a long time until they made it to another’s mage area.
Emil stopped at the entrance. It seemed… Dark. And it stank. Dog laid down on the water right outside, ears flat against his head and eyes big and sad. He whimpered softly.
Emil gulped. After Reynir had that second vision, he mentioned a dark, smelly place. Was this it? Was this another mage they were supposed to ask for help, like Pastor Anne?
Dog whimpered again.
“Okay, okay,” Emil took a deep breath, quashed down the bad feeling in his stomach, and prepared his fire, “I’m going.”
The moment he stepped in, a violent shiver went down his spine. He felt… He felt abandoned, for lack of a better word. Like everyone he loved just left him to rot here because they would be better off-
Emil shook his head and smacked his cheeks. No, no, no, that kind of thinking led nowhere, he knew that from experience! It was just this place messing with his head. He had people who cared about him very much, and he was going to come back to them and with Reynir in tow! And that was final!
The feeling still didn’t go away completely. The air itself was making him queasy. It didn’t even smell of burning troll flesh, which had turned Emil’s stomach for two whole weeks when he first became a cleanser, but he’d gotten used to it. Eventually. This just smelled like a field latrine, honestly. Not pleasant, but Emil had pissed off enough Sergeants in his line of duty that he was used to that smell too.
He let a plume of fire rise in his palm and illuminate the area. This… Seemed to be the place Reynir had been talking about. ‘A dark, smelly place with the water running’ fit the bill. It seemed to be a long tunnel, with a disgusting river of sewage running in the middle, with raised sidewalks on either side. It was likely an actual sewer tunnel.
Why would this be anyone’s mage area? Surely even the bums would rather sleep on the streets than down here.
“Reynir?” Emil called out, “Anyone?”
It was only his own voice echoing. A cold breeze flew from the tunnel, bringing with it more stench.
Emil looked at the exit. Reynir’s dog was still there, lying down and whimpering. Not coming in.
Emil looked down the tunnel.
Going in was probably a fantastically stupid idea. Going inside alone was probably doubly stupid.
Well. Nobody had ever accused Emil of being smart, other than Emil, and not even he bought into his own hype these days. And Sigrun didn't raise a quitter, either. Or a coward.
Painfully conscious of Brynhildr’s last words, he pressed his back against the tunnel, made fire on both hands, and cautiously crab-walked deeper inside.
It was a long walk, and Emil’s leg was cramping. Nothing jumped out at him, at least. Maybe they really were supposed to ask this person for help? Maybe it was another mage turned troll who was stoically waiting to fulfill their god-given duty without bothering the living. At this point, Emil was willing to accept that this was just his life.
“Hello?” he tried again, “Is anyone there? Um, my name is Emil. You, uh, you wouldn’t happen to be a mage who stayed behind after death to guide lost souls to the afterlife?”
No answer. Well, it was worth a shot.
Back to crab-walking it was.
He went down, down, down until both of his legs were cramping. Then he ran into iron bars wrapped in barbed wire, like prison gates stopping anyone from getting past them.
He looked at it blankly, not sure what to do with this new barrier. There was no lock that he could see, no way to open it. No way forward. He still hadn’t run into anyone, so… What now?
He approached a bit closer, trying to look through the bars, but there was nothing. Just more dirty, stinky water and darkness. But just beyond the grate, he could see something… Snakey? Red and snakey floating in the water, like-
Like Reynir’s braid.
Horrified, Emil looked down.
“Reynir!” he jumped into the sewer water that nearly reached his waist and waded through the disgusting slime and something that better be algae until he reached the body nearly buried in that same disgusting mess.
Reynir had, for once in his life, gotten a stroke of luck. His clothes got stuck on the barbed wire and held him up enough that his head was above water. Emil had to turn off his fire, relying on feel and his glowing eyes to free Reynir from this new deathtrap he’d gotten himself into.
“I got you,” Emil whispered to him, or maybe himself, “I got you. Hold on.”
He got Reynir’s braid detached from the barbed wire, leaving his coat behind, and dragged him away from the grate. With strength born of adrenaline more than anything he managed to push Reynir’s limp body onto the raised platform and pull himself up after him.
“Reynir? Reynir!” he shook Reynir’s shoulders, to no avail, “Come on! Wake up!”
“He won’t wake up.”
Emil spun around, fire at the ready, to see the shadowed image of a young woman in a dress that had once been white and beautiful, before she came down here and ruined it.
“He’ll never wake up again,” she said, voice echoing.
“Why not?” Emil asked.
“Because I never did,” she said, and then her head lolled on her broken neck, her jaw dropped open and the bloodied tips of her fingers curled into claws in Emil’s direction.
Emil didn’t need to be told twice. He let loose another gust of fire big enough to fill the whole tunnel and reach nearly the end. Regardless of how powerful she was, it seemed there was no way for her to actually block the fire, because she screamed in pain and skittered backwards, turning into mist and reforming further down the tunnel.
Emil did some quick math. She was between them and the exit, which was quite long. She couldn’t block Emil’s fire, so as long as he kept releasing it and walking forward while she reformed, he had the chance of making it out before magical exhaustion happened again.
Or at least he would, if he didn’t also have to carry Reynir.
“Come on, wake up!” Emil hissed at him, smacking his face, “I can’t carry you out of here, you have to wake up!”
Reynir’s head lolled.
“What will you do then?” the ghost asked, staying far back enough that Emil could barely see the faint outline of her form. “He will just slow you down. You can actually make it out if you leave him behind.”
“I’m not doing that,” Emil hissed. It sounded like a good idea. It sounded like a very good idea. He could make it out, come back with help. Or not come back at all. Reynir wasn’t his boyfriend, after all, why put all that effort into him? Nobody would blame him for leaving him behind. He could say he had tried his best, he would be devastated at the funeral, and it would be so tragic, but he would be with the one he loved with no dead weight-
“Get out of my head!” he screamed and shot another stream of fire at the ghost. The pressure in his skull popped like he’d climbed a mountain and did a jaw-cracking yawn.
Dammit, he hated it when they did that. That Giant in the Silent World had tried the same thing, tried to lure him in, until Lalli stopped him. He’d said trolls and ghosts tried to do that, get into a mage’s head and make them offer themselves up on a platter. Lalli was pretty clear that mages that didn’t learn to block out ghosts didn’t last long.
But Emil had almost forgotten. He wasn’t a mage. He was a guide.
And she was a ghost. Emil just had to remember that he was the one with the advantage here.
He grit his teeth and stood up, keeping Reynir behind him. “You- You’re a ghost, aren’t you? You have unfinished business, right? Whatever that business is, we can help you take care of it so you can move on. I have tea and cake at my house, you can come with me and you can tell me everything. I’ll help you.”
Echoing laughter filled the tunnel, but the ghost lady didn’t appear.
“What would you do to help me, traitor!?” she hissed, furious, “You’re just like him!”
“Like who?” Emil asked, keeping his fire ready, “Who did this to you?”
She screamed, loud and echoing, the whole tunnel wavering with the force. Emil barely managed to stay on his feet. He could feel his ears ringing even after he was pretty sure she stopped.
“HE TOLD ME HE LOVED ME!!!” she screamed, suddenly right in front of his face, “HE TOLD ME WE WOULD LEAVE THIS PLACE TOGETHER!!! AND HE LEFT ME HERE!!!”
She tried to wrap her bloodied claws around his neck, but Emil hadn’t spent all that time grappling with Sigrun for nothing. He caught her hands in his, managed to interlace their fingers, and ignored the pain when her claws sank into the back of his hands.
“Got you,” he grinned, and then released a flame as hot as he could make it.
She screamed and trashed, trying to break free, but Emil had planted his feet and held on tight, burning her until she would have been nothing but ash and cinders if she were alive.
She screamed and trashed and then pushed, and Emil hadn’t been prepared for that, hadn’t shifted his weight in time, and when he took a step back he tripped on Reynir and then they were both falling into the water-
Emil jerked awake sprawled on the floor, wet from head to toe. He blinked the droplets out of his eyes to see Vigdis standing over him with an empty wooden bucket and a terrified expression.
“Freya’s tits!” she swore, “You were on fire!”
“I was?” Emil blinked.
“You and the bed!” Vigdis said, “I- I didn’t know what else to do!”
Reynir suddenly coughed, spitting water and looking around blearily. “Wha-”
“Reynir!” Emil scrambled to his feet, “Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah?” Reynir looked down at himself, “Why am I wet?”
Emil breathed a sigh of relief. “Because you’re an idiot who follows strange women into a sewer!”
“Huh!?” Vigdis balked, holding the bucket like a shield in front of her.
“You found her too?” Reynir asked, confirming he was an idiot.
“Your dog led me to her area,” Emil said, “Where she tried to drown you and rip my throat out!”
“What?” Reynir looked confused, and then understanding dawned, “Wait- The crying lady? I saw her- I mean I heard her in my vision! She was crying and asking for help-” Reynir winced, “She sounded so sad.”
Emil deflated like a popped tire. “Yeah, I know. She said- She said that someone left her there to die.”
“Where is ‘there’?” Vigdis asked, having gathered her wits, “If she’s a ghost, if we find her and give her remains proper burial rites she won’t have anything left to cling to in the world of the living.”
Emil perked up. “That could work, but we’d have to be quick. She died somewhere in the sewers, how many of those can there be?”
—------
A lot, as it turned out.
Gefn ran her hand down her face, looking at the dusty blueprints of Reykjavik, both the originals from the Old World and the new fortifications running through the length of the coastal wall, made to stop sea beasts from sneaking in through the waste disposal tunnels.
There were a lot of tunnels.
“And that should be all the possible access points,” some Skald or other said as he finished circling all of the manhole covers that marked a possible entrance point, “Mind you, all of those are locked. Each segment has a single access point and there are multiple doors above-ground separating them, each with their own key. We take security very seriously here.”
“Isn’t there a rune that can open locked doors?” Reynir asked, very unhelpfully.
“...There is,” Asa confirmed, “And if our ghost was a mage, it’s likely she knew it if she finished almost any kind of course.”
“Have we made any progress on that?” Gefn asked, “There cannot be that many missing mages in Iceland.”
“You would be surprised,” another Skald, a woman with thick glasses and braids grumbled, and then deposited a huge stack of files on the table, “Mind you, this is just the people who were registered mages and were reported missing by someone in the last fifty years. If someone was trying to cover up her murder they might have made sure it wasn’t reported at all.”
“So potentially a waste of our time,” Gefn translated, “Well, we have eight hours of sunlight left and no better ideas. Get to it.”
“Um, excuse me, ma’am?” one of the other teachers came in hesitantly, “There’s some weird foreign people outside? They say they’re looking for two of your students. Since we’re on lockdown, I thought I’d check in with you.”
Emil looked up sharply. “Is one of them Finnish?”
“Um, I think the one with the fur and the grey hair might be?” the teacher said, “His Icelandic was pretty bad.”
Emil slumped down in his chair in relief. “That’s Onni. I sent him a message we needed help. Seems it got through.”
Then he shot up. “Wait. People, plural?”
“Yes,” the teacher nodded.
Emil found his second wind and ran out. Tuuri had told Lalli to keep watch over Onni, so if he came here then that was the perfect excuse-
Emil was barrelling full-speed down the hall when he ran smack-dab into the person he’d been looking for.
“Lalli!” Emil grinned like a complete idiot that didn’t even care he was sprawled on his ass in the middle of the hall, “You’re here!”
“Mrrrr,” Lalli glared at him, “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Emil was still grinning, holding his arms open in invitation. Lalli didn’t like other people initiating hugs, but if Emil offered one Lalli never turned them down.
But instead of hugging him, Lalli grabbed his bandaged hands and inspected the blood peeking through the gauze. “Who did this?”
“Ah, technically, I did,” Emil smiled sheepishly, “I clawed at them in my sleep.”
Lalli didn’t buy it, of course. He was the one who told Emil that serious spiritual injuries tended to translate into the waking world, one way or another. Onni was still walking around with the tip of his right ear missing, technically because Hakan had been a bit careless when playing hairdresser, but also because Sleipnir bragged he’d managed to cut him when Onni had ripped him away from the tank, that time Sigrun and Mikkel collapsed and Lalli had started screaming out of nowhere.
At least he’d changed out of his half-burnt and wet clothes.
“A lot happened,” Emil said, plaintively, “And I didn’t see you in so long. Hug?”
Lalli’s frown softened and he crawled closer so he could throw his arms around Emil’s neck and Emil could wrap him in his arms, and everything felt so much better.
“Lalli!” Reynir came running too, “You’re here!”
“Mrrrr,” Lalli’s fingers dug into Emil’s sweater, “So Stupid is still alive.”
“Barely,” Emil muttered into his shoulder, “You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep him that way.”
“Keep me what way?” Reynir asked, having understood only half of the conversation. “Hey!”
“Alright kids, break it up!” Sigrun’s voice rang through the hall, though she sounded amused, “As cute as this reunion is, we have work to do! I was told there’s something for me to kill here, and I’m not leaving until we find it!”
Emil finally looked up from Lalli’s shoulder to see Sigrun, Mikkel and Onni coming down the hall, looking excited, amused and constipated, respectively.
And finally, finally, Emil felt like everything might just be alright.