"What is this place?" Skaði Banamaðr could not help the words that fell from her mouth. It was bitter cold. She could feel the ache in her bones as she stood there. The wind was whipping through the trees and there was frost covering the ground. It was a forboding place. Maybe this place was Jotunheim, the land of frost and giants. Stomping her feet, she looked around to see what else she could make out in the dense fog but there was nothing.
Skaði began to walk. There was no sound, it was as if the place was the hollow between heartbeats--a vast, terrible nothingness. For some reason, she moved on though, unable to explain why she kept going. Her breath came out in great puffs of frost. Then something bright in the darkness caught her attention, a star of her own desire and longing--Valena Martell.
What wss her lover doing here in this cold vast place? "Val!" She screamed but her lover did not turn did not act as though she heard her at all.
Valena Martell awoke with a shudder in the fog of someplace eerie. There was a distant sound like thunder that kept creeping closer and closer. Though for some reason her feet could not move from where she stood. It was as though she was waiting for something. Her heart began to thunder in her chest as she stood there trapped, realizing that the sound around her wasn't a storm at all, but the drumming of hundreds, maybe even thousands of hooves.
Then she saw her and knew why her body had kept her there waiting in this....dream? Skaði was yelling her name, and a chill worse than the frost came over Valena. She knew that in her lover's beliefs what she thought of as hell, was actually a cold place named Niflheim. Was that where they were? She felt her teetch chattering and her bones quaking beneath her skin as her lover approached.
"What are you doing here? What is this place?" Skaði's voice came out comforting in the midst of all this uncertainity. Valena didn't move as she spoke to her, it seemed she was almost in a trance or or....a dream. Valena had these sometimes, dreams of what may be coming or what might come. Ill omens, that's what Skaði called it. "Val, you're scaring me."
Valena looked toward Skaði with her bright glowing eyes, finally able to speak. "Something comes...." She could feel the horror and forboding of it coming upon then, ready to devour and consume them. She looked int the mists trying to figure out what it was exactly, where this calvary she heard was coming from. What was it's meaning?
She turned to speak to Skaði but all the air left her lungs. There he stood, tall and ghostly pale so that she could see through him. His hair and beard were in braids and there was a wide wicked grin on his face as he faced her down, as of yet alone. He had a great spreading rack of antlers that seemed to be littered with omens and portents of death. Small sparrow skulls, death herbs and the like. He smelled like fresh churned earth. She stumbled forward finally able to move, only conscious of one thing. That she had to get Skaði out of here. That they had to run, that whatever was coming was death or worse. "RUN!" She screamed.
Valena bolted right before Skaði reached her. The fear and terror in her voice was petrfying. She spared one glance over her shoulder to see the God of the Hunt standing there, grim and ghastly, a head hanging on the side of his saddle--a head she knew. Then all at once she heard the hooves of hundreds, the wolves of the hunt were upon them.
She fled after her lover, her heart beating. Skaði didnt' like running, she'd rather meet something head on, but the way that Valena ran made her know that she could not just stay behind, that she had to go with her. Valena didn't know much about defending herself and Skaði would give her life for hers.
Skaði knew of the hunters, she knew their reputation and of this night that they dead were said to walk the earth as the veil thinned--though the hunters had more leeway than that. But why were they after them? Why were they chasing them?
There were no answers, only the thrumming of her heart that said if they were caught all would lost in a great tide of blood. Though she ran as fast as she could, heedless of the branches that scratched at her skin she didn't seem to make much headway. Valena was just ahead of her when she first felt the hot, stinking breath on her neck of someone behind her.
Valena chanced a glance back just as Skaði screamed something unintelligible at her. The hunter was hot on Skaði's trail and Valena's steps faltered for one brief moment before the felt teeth sink into her neck and rip her backward.
Skaði was screaming as she watched the wolf shifter tear her lover apart before she could get there.
Then everything went up in smoke. Or mist.
Skaði woke up panting to find Valena standing beside their bed, tears streaming down her face.
"It comes," Valena spoke ominously. "We and all we love may not survive it."
"It's a dream," Skaði shushed her. "A terrible one, but just a dream love."
Valena looked at her with bright shining eyes that saw to the depth of her soul. "Do you really believe that?"
Skaði coudl not say a word.