8. The Mirror of the Lake of Shadows
The panic in Iria’s voice—a tremor seemingly born within
the very roots of her soul—lashed against my will. I required no further
entreaty. Without a word, I drew her against my chest for a fleeting moment,
seeking to seal the fissures of her fear with my own warmth, before turning to
face the encroaching dark.
At the threshold of the gloom, the sirens lay in wait.
Their pale, sinuous forms swayed in the currents like venomous kelp, their eyes
fixed upon us. Yet, they did not strike. Those guardians of the abyss withdrew
with a ritualistic slowness, parting to grant us passage through the frigid
waters. It was a silent truce, as though Hel’s own realm had deemed it had
claimed enough from us for one night.
Eirik searched with frantic hands for the mouth of the
natural chimney—the very conduit that had spat him out into the abyss. The
water grew dense, heavy with the malice of the creatures watching them depart,
but the path remained clear. With a titanic effort, driven by an adrenaline
that seared hotter than the cold, he found a handhold. He helped Iria ascend
into the narrow cleft and, as the roar of the tide began to swell, both
commenced their climb. Behind lay the sepulchral silence of the deep; ahead,
the air grew thick with the tang of salt.
The ascent became a calvary of stone and brine. They
scrambled up the damp crevice, that blind shaft through which Eirik had
ventured days prior towards the sirens' domain. Now, the route felt
transformed; the air of the upper reaches no longer reeked of sulphur, but
instead exhaled the promise of imminent freedom. Nevertheless, the ocean was
loath to yield its ground: the roar of the rising tide reverberated against the
walls of that vertical chimney, and the frothing water propelled them upwards
like a gelid breath.
At last, the fissure widened, opening into a vast basin of unnatural stillness where the crash of the waves faded into a dull murmur. It was no mere pond that received them beneath the open sky; before them stretched a lake of black waters, a surface of jet encased between high walls of rock, waiting expectantly for the light—though the radiant sun of the equinox already dipped below the far horizon. That dark expanse undulated with a hypnotic cadence, betraying the force of a tide that pressed insistently from below, churning the depths of the pool.
It was in that moment of truce that the air welcomed them.
Upon the cliffs, the Silent Woods rose like a guard of silver spectres; the
white poplars shook their leaves with a rhythmic tremor, producing an ethereal
murmur that was not noise, but the very voice of silence. That flicker of white
light in the gloom was the face of the threshold, but it was its extraordinary
fragrance that finally anchored Eirik to reality.
The mariner inhaled deeply, recognising the success of his
journey through that gelid, clean, and cutting trail of white fir needles, a
sharp essence that cleared the mist from his mind. Beneath that freshness
pulsed the herbaceous, wild spirit of purple heather, sustained by the deep
breath of an ancient, dry, and noble wood: the sacred juniper that drove its
roots into the stone of the world. That aroma was the proof: they had returned
to the exact spot where he had entered the abyss.
We embraced, the water still clinging to our shoulders, happy in the knowledge that we were safe and free, with the infinite firmament above our heads emitting a glow of hope and promise. I looked up, and a smile of relief touched my lips as I caught sight of the gannets circling above; their white wings were tatters of peace that brought back the scent of the woods. However, as they crossed the threshold of the shadows, the white turned to jet in the blink of an eye. Two immense ravens tore through the air, watching us with an ancient fixity, as if the sky itself had opened a single eye to judge our escape. A piercing chill, which did not come from the water, prickled my skin: those black heralds seemed to bring no peace, but rather the weight of a destiny yet to be fulfilled.
Unexpectedly, the mark upon my face vibrated with such
force that I thought I heard the ring of a sword striking bare rock. I felt the
three angles of Sowil flash beneath my skin, a pulse of red light that refused
to fade as a shadow, thick and nameless, began to seep through the crevices
surrounding the lake.
'You believed that love was a
key to cross my threshold,' Hel’s voice vibrated from the depths of the pool, frigid
and eternal.
As I looked up, searching for the source of that echo, I
was ensnared by the fixity of her gaze. Hel emerged from the gloom; she needed
no chains to halt us, for her mere presence was an anchor for the soul. As she
approached the water’s edge, the goddess revealed her divided countenance, and
within her eyes, the final battle of my destiny was fought. In her clear
iris—that which reflected the peace of the righteous—I saw the last flutter of
the white gannets fading like a dying dream. Yet, in her other eye, a socket of
shadows where the rigour of the abyss dwelt, the silhouettes of the ravens were
etched like ink stains upon fire, multiplying in a dance of death. My blood ran
cold; if the All-Father lurked behind those wings, my destiny had just become
far more perilous.
'But love is, above all, a
debt that is always collected in blood,' she continued, her gaze lingering upon me. No longer was
there in her expression the scorn reserved for a mere human; there was a dark
doubt, a suspicion that the blood flowing through my veins held echoes of a
lineage more ancient and powerful. 'I feared my secrets might be
profaned, and for that defiance, you have already paid a price and earned your
flight from my prison. But the abyss has a memory, young Eirik. Especially for
that which belongs to me and is cruelly snatched away.'
Before the uncomprehending stares of the youths, Hel waved
a hand, and the black water tautened into a slow whirlpool until it became an
undulating shroud of cruel clarity. Upon that restless, flawed surface, the
goddess projected a horrific vision—a truth veiled only by the gentle swaying
of the waves.
‘Look closely, Iria,’ the goddess decreed with bitter
conviction. ‘Behold the man you think you know. What you see
is that which he hides behind the silence you call devotion.’
I sought to look away, but the water claimed me with an
unbearable magnetism. Beneath the rippling surface, the darkness dissipated to
reveal a scene bathed in gore and perdition. I saw myself upon the deck of my
ship, a silhouette devoured by the mist. I saw my own hand gripping the iron,
and the face of the being emerging from the waves: a marine creature of noble
features whose eyes were a perfect reflection of Iria’s own. My weapon hissed
through the dark air, and then all vision became a surge of blood, whilst the
muffled cry of that being merged with the burst of the storm. Hel did not lie.
‘Father!’ Iria’s piteous cry rang out as she
recognised the image of her father, vanished amidst the ocean waves near the
bay where my ship used to moor.
That word pierced me more violently than any steel. The air
turned to lead in my lungs as I watched her collapse, her eyes fixed upon the
agony of that noble being I had annihilated. I could not speak; the truth,
naked and bloody, knotted in my throat. When I attempted to reach out, my hand
recoiled before touching her; it was not merely the cold of the abyss, but the
certainty that my fingers would no longer find the warmth of the woman I loved,
but the hardness of ice. It pained me to see her thus, so estranged in her own
suffering, as if grief were distancing her from my world into a reach I could
not fathom. The weight of my guilt, which until then I had tried to bury
beneath layers of oblivion and hope, emerged from the black waters with
devastating force. I longed to touch her, to beg a forgiveness I knew to be
impossible, but my hands felt foreign to me—stained by an invisible crimson
that all the salt in the ocean could never cleanse.
‘You suspected it,’ Hel whispered, gliding like a shadow
to my ear. ‘In every kiss you gave your beloved, you tasted the blood
of her father. You knew the man who sired her fell beneath your iron, and you
chose deceit so as not to lose her.’
Iria recoiled, her eyes still fixed upon the image. The
silence that followed was heavier than any condemnation in Niflheim. I felt the
magic that had bound us together fraying like an old sail. I buried my face in
my hands.
‘No!’ Iria’s cry broke against the cavern
walls.
She threw herself between the reflection on the lake's
surface and Eirik, with the desperation of one trying to cover an open wound
with bare hands. Her eyes dived from the bloody image in the water to the
grief-stricken face of her beloved. She did not understand what had transpired
on that night of mist and steel; Eirik had never spoken of that encounter, and
his silence now weighed upon her like iron.
‘No... he is no murderer,’ she murmured, almost to herself, her
judgment clouded by disbelief. ‘How could he have known it
was one of my kin? And besides, I too have sinned by keeping my condition a
secret.’
With slow determination, Iria allowed the mask of her
humanity to dissolve into the salt. Eirik watched, without understanding, as
she drew away and climbed upon a rock. He observed her with bated breath and a
trembling soul. She did not struggle to maintain the illusion of her legs;
instead, the silver of her scales shimmered with an ancient belonging. Horror
and wonder vied for the mariner’s mind as he saw that the strangeness he had
once sensed was real: her siren’s tail struck the water with a wild pulse, a
powerful and ancestral presence reclaiming its place in the abyss.
Hel, seizing upon the mariner’s vulnerability and shock,
loosed her final poisoned arrow:
‘It is not her skin that
makes you shudder, Eirik,’ the goddess’s voice was a sigh of ice at his back. ‘It
is recognition. Ask her, if you dare, who gave her life. The Jarl provided the
seed, but the womb that cradled her was mine. Iria is my own flesh, my progeny
in this world of tides.’
I was left breathless. That revelation struck me with
greater force than the sight of her silver tail. Iria—my Iria—was the nexus
between the being I had slain and the Queen of the Dead, who now laid claim to
me. The circle of my betrayal tightened around my neck like an iron noose.
Iria, seeing the doubt clouding Eirik’s eyes, let a tear
merge with the salt of the pool. Her gaze pleaded for the certainty that Hel’s
words had just shattered. Yet, Eirik searched the deepest reaches of his memory
for the warmth of Iria’s hands and the reality of her sacrifices in Niflheim.
The doubt, though stinging, began to dissipate before the evidence that her
pain was as real as his own.
‘I care not whose blood you share, my love,’ I finally murmured, reclaiming a
steadiness born from my very core. ‘I care only who you are when you look at
me.’
Hel narrowed her eyes, and the air became a shroud of
frost. She was infuriated by the mariner’s refusal to break—that her revelation
had not cast him to his knees in search of mercy. Her features hardened; the
goddess was unaccustomed to a mortal drawing strength from his own ruin to hold
her gaze.
‘All the world knows our laws
and the price demanded for a crime of this nature, do they not, Eirik?’ she decreed, her voice resonating with
the weight of tombstones. ‘You chose silence, but your sin remains etched in
the memory of the water.’
‘My father was the Jarl of
the island,’ Iria said with a broken voice, ignoring the presence of her
mother. ‘He was the lord of these waters... but you could not have
known, Eirik. None upon the surface suspected that the lineage of men was
intertwined with that of the depths. You fought for your life, and I... I...’ she faltered before what she was about
to reveal, and concluded by steering her words another way, ‘I
belonged to you before even your name was first spoken.’
Despite the forgiveness Iria poured upon his shoulders,
Eirik sank to the edge of the pool, unable to meet his own reflection. He was
not overwhelmed by the threat of condemnation, but by the crippling shame of
his deeds—a stain that not even the waters of the abyss could wash away.
‘But blood demands blood,’ Hel declared, interposing herself
between the two and addressing Iria. ‘This youth ended your
father’s life. His sentence shall be served in the eternal silence of my
realm.’
‘You speak of debts, daughter
of Loki, yet your lineage is ill-suited to dispense justice. Your mirror
reflects only your own blindness.’
The voice did not arrive from any specific point, but
seemed to emanate from the very roots of the stone. It was a profound
vibration, like the internal cracking of a glacier or a thunderclap that
refuses to burst, charged with an authority that made time itself seem to daze.
Behind Hel, the gloom seemed to retreat before a will older
than the abyss itself. From the darkness emerged a tall figure, approaching
slowly, wrapped in a heavy travelling cloak of midnight blue. A wide-brimmed
hat cast an impenetrable shadow over his face, allowing only one eye—solitary,
gelid, and burdened with the weight of millennia of knowledge—to glint in the
half-light.
Beside her, Iria gasped, feeling a shiver that was not born
of the lake's cold, but of a vibration in her very bones; it was as if the air
had suddenly acquired an electric charge.
As I looked upon his figure, fear was not the first thing
to strike me. It was an echo. A low note that resonated in the marrow of my
bones, recognising the authority of that presence before my mind could process
it. My blood, which a moment ago seemed frozen by Hel’s scorn, began to burn
with a terrifying familiarity. That stranger was no stranger; he was the origin
of a void that had always pursued me, an immense shadow that now, at last,
deigned to cast itself upon me.
The wayfarer halted his advance and, for a brief instant, the brim
of his hat ceased to hide that solitary, gelid eye. His gaze did not rest upon
Eirik with the curiosity of a god towards a mortal, but with the intensity of
one contemplating his own reflection in a turbid pool. It was an eternal
second, a bridge of silence where I felt my soul weighed and judged—not for my
crimes, but for my lineage. For me, the stranger’s presence was overwhelming:
he was not a man, but a living reminder of the sagas told to me as a child, a
figure radiating an aura of authority so absolute that even the pain of my
sentence seemed suspended. Then, with a slight and almost imperceptible nod,
the stranger averted his gaze towards Hel, breaking the spell.
Hel turned and recoiled, her face contorted by a mixture of
visceral hatred and a respect born of fear. Her fingers clawed at her robes,
recognising the wayfarer who required no introduction.
‘Eirik is a murderer,’ she managed to hiss after composing
herself, though her voice sounded like the rustle of dry leaves against the
roar of the tide. ‘And for that, he must pay. His destiny is
mine.’
Standing beside her, Odin did not deign to look at her. His
silence was more devastating than any shout. He stepped forward, and the strike
of his staff against the ground echoed like a final verdict, making the waters
of the lake shudder in terror in concentric circles.
Without a word, the All-Father raised a hand towards the
rift in the ceiling of the universe. The gesture was imperious—a direct command
to the celestial spheres. Yonder on the horizon, the Moon was wrenched from its
natural course by an invisible force; the satellite ascended with unnatural
speed until it fixed itself directly above the cavern. Suddenly, a pillar of
silver light, solid as marble and sharp as a spear, descended from its round
surface, piercing the darkness and striking the centre of the lake. Under that
impact of lunar purity, the surface tautened and froze into a silver canvas of
absolute perfection—a crystal that reflected not only light, but the very
nature of the cosmos.
‘Behold the torn veil that
the water dared not show you, daughter of Loki. The mirror of water reveals the
absolute truth,’ Odin decreed.
Beneath Odin’s command, the lake had been transformed into
a canvas of living silver, causing the ripples to vanish; from the depths of
the liquid crystal, reality emerged, stripped of adornment.
In the lake's reflection, Eirik’s image appeared
silhouetted against a tempest of shadows. He was seen upon the deck of his
ship, battling a sea that seemed intent on devouring him. Then, a sinister
figure erupted from the depths: the Jarl of the island. The warrior sprang from
the foam not as a man, but as a force of nature, his face twisted by a blind
fury and his steel gleaming with lethal intent. There were no words in the
reflection, only the violence of the leap and the desperation in the attacker's
eyes as he lunged at the youth—who reacted by instinct.
The surface showed how Eirik raised his sword in a
defensive arc, but the metal found no flesh. The blade sank with a crash amidst
sacks of provisions and timber, missing its mark against his marine opponent.
In that precise moment of confusion, a blinding light—a lightning bolt that
came neither from sky nor sea, but from the very rift of destiny—pierced the
Jarl through the back, perforating his chest exactly where the heart beats. The
image of the fallen man dissolved into bubbles of light before his body plunged,
lifeless, into the abyss.
Hel pressed her lips into a line of mortal pallor. But she
remained silent, recognising in the reflection the nature of the light that had
snatched her consort’s life. There was no accusation in her gaze, but a sombre
acceptance of the greater force that had intervened.
The moon-crystal darkened once more, leaving the grotto in
a sepulchral silence.
‘Can you not see the attempt
at cruel punishment upon a man who was, and is, innocent, daughter of Loki?’
That grave, deep voice resonated superficially in Hel’s
consciousness as she contemplated the last trace of light upon the water. After
a moment of heavy reflection, she spoke with a voice that carried the chill of
the depths.
‘The Jarl performed his
duty,’ she
proclaimed, without averting her eyes from the lake. ‘He
did not leap out of cruelty, but out of necessity. This youth not only sought
our daughter’s heart, defying the laws of her lineage, but his steps had led
him too close to the Skellig rift—the very threshold where we now stand. The
Jarl acted to protect the secret of the abyss, to prevent a mortal from
profaning the entrance to my realm. His sword was the justice of a father and a
guardian.’
Odin, who until then had remained like a figure carved in
the gloom, stepped forward. In the distance, the croak of ravens tore through
the air like the tolling of a funeral bell, stifling any trace of protest.
‘It was the Jarl himself who
paid for your error; he sought blood without just cause,’ Odin clarified. ‘It
was you who sent him to commit an act merely to safeguard the secret that hides
the shame of your progeny. My hand was merely present so that justice might be
done in favour of an innocent young mariner, who arrived upon these shores only
in search of his love, and who still has a thread to weave in the tapestry of
the worlds. Once already he crossed the profound silence and returned because
his hour had not yet come; it shall not be you who attempts to close a door
that destiny left open.’
Hel recoiled, her mask of coldness cracking before a defeat
she could not dispute. In a sudden and violent reflex, born of the rage pent up
by the failure of her own deed, she tore a strip of dead skin from her withered
cheek, which fell into the water like a dry leaf. She clenched her fists, but
her silence was the only response before that superior will.
Odin took another step, and the glint of his solitary eye
seemed to consume the last shadows of the cavern. His voice was no longer a
murmur, but the roar of the tide against the cliffs of eternity.
‘Do you truly intend to call
me to account?’ Odin thundered, his voice laden with the weight of
centuries. ‘Me, who allowed destiny to take the Jarl’s life to
extinguish his hatred before it reached this youth? Do you demand that I now
serve the sentence you had intended for my own descendant?’
The silence that followed his words was absolute—a void in
which time itself seemed to stand still. Hel took a step back, her face a mask
of stone and wonder at the lineage revealed, while Iria and Eirik remained
bound by the water and our bewilderment, marked forever by a truth that the
ocean could no longer hide.
- I. OVERTURE: My Name is Eirik
- II. EXORDIUM: "MYTHOS", Symphony of a Wandering Soul
- III. RESONANCE: My Story and the Secret of the Shadows
- IV. PRELUDE: Eirik's Dirth
- CHAPTER 1: Eirik and the Secret of Avalon
- CHAPTER 2: Discovery in Atlantis
- CHAPTER 3: In the Shadows of Hades
- CHAPTER 4: The Pull of Niflheim
- CHAPTER 5: The Icy Breath of Yule
- CHAPTER 6: Return to Mabon
- CHAPTER 7: Eirik and the Mystery of the Sirens
- CHAPTER 8: The Mirror of the Lake of Shadows
- CHAPTER 9: Finale
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