A servant came in the morning to let us know we were allowed to leave. He'd returned our weapons and waited to guide us to the open courtyard in front of Hades' palace. After pointing us in the right direction for the city gate, he returned inside.

"Friendly fellow," I said sarcastically as Loki led us out of the courtyard and into the narrow streets.

"Did you notice his feet?" Shannon asked.

I frowned. "No. Should I have?"

"He gets beaten. Those were fresh whip marks, and it looks like Hades goes after feet, to make it painful for the servant, or should I say slave, to walk afterward. They probably deliberately get duties that require them to walk," she said.

Heat rose in my cheeks. I felt idiotic that I hadn't noticed when it was clear the others had. Obviously, I needed to work on paying more attention to my surroundings, starting now.

"We shouldn't have any difficulty getting out of the city as the gatekeeper, only stops souls from entering who don't have Hades' permission," Loki said as the towering sandstone gate and grey stone bridge came into view.

Sure enough, the large male in entirely black armour with a red dragon on his chest completely ignored us as we walked past. We strode over the bridge, and in front of us, a wide grassland stretched to rolling foothills and then cliffs. Warriors, men and women in a diversity of armour and weapons, fought in groups on the grassland. The clang of metal-on-metal rang out, along with shouts, insults, and laughter. In the distance, another bridge rose.

"It's Valhalla, the rock of the fallen, where those honourable warriors who prefer to continue to live the warrior lifestyle can continue to spar with each other for their afterlife. I was given the option to join them, but it didn't hold that much appeal," Baldur said, shrugging as we entered the grassland.

A few of the warriors lifted a hand, waving to him, or to Loki, both of whom acknowledged the waves.

"The giantess who guards the bridge is aptly named Modguor, or Furious Battle. From time to time, she joins the warriors here in Valhalla when she's bored. Perhaps a word into some of our former Einherjar and Valkyrie would distract Modguor?" Baldur suggested to Loki.

He nodded. "That is an excellent idea. I'll go talk to them and you go talk to the other group," Loki agreed, pointing to the two different sets of warriors sparring.

Baldur and Loki joined the warriors amidst much back slapping. The immediate respect and inclined heads from the warriors reminded me of the power of Asgard. Even in death, these warriors didn't hesitate to jump to do their princes' bidding. Although Fomora had warriors, we didn't have a massive standing military. Most of them spent their time maintaining order at our outposts and cities, or protecting our scientists as they conducted experiments in the waters of Litaui and Tír na nÓg.

When the two princes rejoined Shannon and me, they had grins on their faces.

"Let's make our way towards Gjallarbrú bridge by walking along the riverbank. The Gjoll is full of rapids. It's incredibly loud. It will disguise our approach as long as we remain unseen, giving them the chance to draw Modguor out and away from the bridge. Although we don't want to go into it, it shouldn't suck at our energy as fiercely as the Styx did," Loki said.

Sure enough, as we crept over the bridge two hours later, the giantess' roaring and thumping on the ground vibrated the wooden structure even with her out of sight. I breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the far side.

My breath came out as frost in the air. But it didn't hang there. Instead, it blew back in my face, stinging me with the frozen icy blast.

"Damn it. We'll have to venture further inland to get around Hraesvelg," Loki breathed in a barely audible murmur. "He's perched in exactly the direction we need to go."

To the left of the bridge, a massive shape rose in front of us, easily twice the size of the dragon gods, with feathered wings outstretched. Corpse eater, the giant eagle. The wind hit with such strength, we needed to drop to our bellies so we didn't get blown off the frozen cliff top. On hands and knees, we crept along the cliff's edge, away from the bridge and giant for several hours, until the gale-force winds from his wings no longer buffeted us and he wasn't in sight.

Instead, the stench of rotting flesh and stagnant water wafted up the cliff. Looking below us, Nidhogg the serpent had coiled his massive red-orange scaled bulk around piles of bones and partially eaten bodies. I didn't know if he could reach this far up the several kilometre cliff face, but either way, I moved as quietly as possible to not draw his notice.

Loki beckoned us up over the end and onto the frozen plateau. "Whatever you can do, Shannon, to help us move quietly, we're going to need. We are far deeper into Hecate's territory than I would have liked, and I have no illusion powers here to hide us." His gaze never stopped moving, even as he spoke, and his uneasiness had the hair at my nape rising.

"Yes, of course," Shannon said.

A low ground-level fog rose from the white snow-covered surface. It swirled around us and moved with us as we crept inland from the cliff's edge. Although I placed my foot carefully to minimize any crunching of the snow, the sound didn't carry. I couldn't hear the others as we walked.

But looking across the mounds of white, nothing stood out. Except us. Shannon had used her torc to change the colours of her armour and fighting leathers to white, and Baldur's were already light-coloured, predominately white, but Loki and I were in black. We didn't blend into this landscape.

Perhaps that was why Shannon had the fog wrapped around Loki and me, but not herself and Baldur. She was trying to disguise us, to protect us. I exchanged a glance with Loki, and saw his jaw clenched tight, muscle flexing. He'd noticed as well.

In silence, we walked.

From the position of the sun, it had been at least an hour, perhaps two, since we'd left the cliff. I kept my eyes roving, looking for any hint of danger, and Loki corrected our path, keeping us on an arced trajectory around Hraesvelg's current perch towards the spring Hvergelmir, the roaring cauldron at the base of the cliffs and the Ghost Gate.

Baldur walked in front, scouting slightly ahead. If I didn't know where he was, he would have been difficult to spot. I hoped it meant that anything out on this frozen wasteland would have the same difficulty. Although this had to be using considerable energy, Shannon continued to step lightly.

Another hour passed.

Surely we were on the return part of our arc, headed back towards the cliffs by now? It all looked the same to me. If it weren't for the sun, I had no idea how Loki would navigate. Even with it, I hoped we weren't lost. As a Fomorian, using the stars, sun, or moon to find my way was not a skill I'd honed. Instead, we used changing ocean currents, gradients of salinity, underwater topography, and vegetation if we didn't have access to the usual tools of navigation.

A change in the landscape appeared as ice-covered mountains rose up in the distance, both in front and to our right. Were those the same peaks I'd seen from the bridge? Could we almost be there? It gave lift to my step, and I smiled, relief relaxing tense muscles. I shifted and rotated my shoulders.

I opened my mouth to point them out to Loki from his position beside me. Yet he'd already seen them. He was peering towards those same peaks. Still, the tenseness of his form and frown on his brow had me hesitating to speak.

What was he looking at?

Narrowing my gaze to try to see through the sun's glare off the snowy landscape, I made out Shannon, then Baldur's forms in front of us. Was there something moving ahead of them? Off in the distance?

I squinted my eyes even further and my heart clenched.