In No Need of Help... AT ALL... (Þórodda)

[Deleted]

Alright, there were times when even Nimueh Ó Liatháin, High Priestess of the Old Religion and sorceress of the best schooling was at her wits end. A rare occasion, which made it all the more dreadful when it occurred, because usually she was never in need of a plan B. And whyever should she? Her schemes were sure to work out – apart from minor flaws in the system that could end you up in the otherworld of course – and if things really should go wrong, she could always rely on her magic. Every creature in Albion was to listen to her command, all the more if they were of magical origin. Some were more dangerous to deal with than others, like the Questing Beast for example, but when it came down to it, she should not expect any harm coming to her.

Alas, there were exceptions to every rule, it seemed and after being chased by two Wyverns for now almost thirty minutes, it slowly dawned on Nimueh that this might become a tight spot she might not be as easy to overcome. She had tried to contact them, delve into their mind, but she had been forced to realise soon enough that their close relation to dragons made them have a mind very much of their own, so all she had got for an answer was a nagging feeling of hunger and the joy of the hunt they were commencing. Just great. Ending up lunch for those nasty beasts was nothing Nimueh aspired, but if she was to fight them, she needed some space, and space was scarce in these deep woods.
Why in the Great Mother’s name were they so far from the Perilous Lands anyway? Wyverns this close to the 'safe' Kingdoms? And if they were here already, why didn’t they choose to attack someone worthy to die anyway? Someone like Uther perhaps or Arthur? Or Merlin? It was highly unfair!

Running from something did not only not look good at all, it was also truly shameful! Nimueh, the woman whose name was only whispered in fear, didn’t run! But then again, she told herself, she would stop running once she reached a good fighting spot… ah, there it was!
She just stepped out into a little clearing in the woods, getting into a defensive position in the middle of it and waited for one of the creatures to swoop down, come close enough to throw something at him.
Her first try, a nice fireball, just bounced off the beasts scales and didn’t even leave a scorch mark. Oh great… protection from magical assaults it seemed, too much dragon blood in there… Then it was the creature’s turn to attack and Nimueh ducked as its wings nearly touched her hair and could only escape one of its claws by jumping aside.
The second one was coming now and Nimueh enchanted a sharp stick on the ground to dart up like a spear to pierce the Wyvern’s wings, but it was smart enough to escape in due time.

And now they were both onto her, circling just a few feet above where she still tried to get back to her feet. “Just great… this is gonna get nasty indeed”, she muttered angrily, not willing to give up yet. But fact was, she really could use some assistance now, though it would be very much to ask for: such a miracle.

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Tag: Þórodda
Setting: In some forest in Albion
Timeline: After season 3
Time of day: late midday

[Þórodda]

So, this was Albion, was it? Þórodda had to admit, it was a pretty nice place. Boring for the most part, but the weather was lovely. It was almost hot in comparison to her native Sweden, and the diversity of plants was impressive. Unfortunately, no one really knew how to fight. She'd tried to find a good fight, deliberately insulting a few of the biggest members of every tavern she visited, but they were soft, unwilling to use weapons to defend their honour, so she'd cut them down. Then there had been those bandits who had decided that she was an easy target. They'd had little actual combat experience and had been killed quite easily, their swords not even touching Þórodda's armour.

Which brought Þórodda to her next issue with Albion. Everyone, from bandits to kings, seemed to have swords. To someone who came from a culture where swords were rare and valuable, the fact that even common bandits were armed almost exclusively with swords was almost beyond belief. Indeed, if Þórodda hadn't seen the glut of swords she'd never have believed it. Of course, the swords weren't all of a high quality, but the steel seemed to be homogeneous and tough in most of them, so the smiths in Albion must have come up with a way to mass produce both good quality steel and swords. If she ever returned to Norse lands, Þórodda was going to take a few dozen swords with her and retire on the money she made from their sale.

Still, there had to be some sort of challenge here in Albion, because Þórodda had heard some very interesting rumours about immortal armies and magical beasts. So far she hadn't seen any but, having fought a draugr in the past, she wasn't about to discount those rumours. Besides, according to local gossip, Camelot, arguably the strongest of Albion's kingdoms, had indeed fallen recently, only to be taken back a short while later by a small group of knights. Those were some people who Þórodda would very much like to meet, Prince Arthur especially. A sparring match with him would probably make up for the lacklustre calibre of her opponents thus far, and that was the reason why Þórodda was walking through the woods, taking the shortest route to Camelot that she could.

You'd expect someone musing as deeply as Þórodda was on the socio-economic consequences of cheap, mass produced swords and a relative lack of feuds compared to the Norse kingdoms to be almost oblivious to their surroundings. Not so with Þórodda. A veteran warrior, she had developed something of a sixth sense when it came to danger, her subconscious alerting her whenever, say, a strange, bestial cry echoed through the forest. Smiling, Þórodda followed the sound, hoping for a challenge.

Reaching the edge of a clearing, Þórodda saw exactly what the challenge would be. A young, beautiful woman lay on the ground, two ugly winged creatures with bulbous noses and horned heads hovering over her, one of them about to go in for the kill. Þórodda had never seen anything like them, but that didn't stop her from issuing a surprisingly deep, wordless battlecry as she charged into the clearing, axe ready and her lips split into a snarling smile. This was more like it.

The creatures, seeing Þórodda, flapped up and away, gaining height. Then, with a screech, they dived down at her, own after the other. Þórodda held her ground, shifting her grip on her two handed axe as she watched the creatures from within her helmet. They came closer and closer, faster and faster and still she didn't move, even looking down at the ground and moving her feet into a better position. The creature, almost upon Þórodda now, let out another scream, not doubt intended to intimidate her, and Þórodda answered in kind, bringing her axe up suddenly, right hand about half way up the haft and the left down near the bottom, and swung at the creature with all her might, swinging with her hips for extra power. As she did so, Þórodda crouched down slightly, getting under the creature's path. The axe hit the creature's left foreleg, severing it, and completed its arc by landing in the soft ground. The creature, stunned and in pain from its lost leg, was distracted enough that it crashed into the ground.

Smarter than it looked, the second creature pulled out of the dive and began to circle clearing at just above tree height. It was still a threat, but not as much as the one that had crashed. Stealing a look at the young woman and the grounded creature, which was starting to get to its feet, Þórodda used her best English.

"You look at sky," she pointed up at the second creature, "I kill this." she said, gesturing with her axe at the first creature. She hadn't moved towards it yet and was still glancing up at the sky, not willing to assume that the young woman would agree to watch the second creature and not wanting to be killed from behind.

[Deleted]

In her long years on this earth and even more so after the terrifying experience of her almost-death and resurrection, Nimueh had come to the conclusion that anything could happen at any time. If there was a plan to this chaos laid out and conducted by some entity like the Great Mother of All who Nimueh served, the most effort of all was made in concealing that plan. This simple fact was just another example: What use and what purpose could there be behind being chased and killed by Wyverns, at least for a woman such as her? More fatalistic people might have called it bad luck, but bad luck was for losers, rulers like her created their own fate! If Nimueh ever had imagined to die (again, for that matter) it would have been in some grand fight, perhaps against Merlin again when he was a little less boyish and lead by good luck only and a little more on her league. But this… this was so… useless!!

Though while using up more and more spells that simply wouldn’t work against the Wyverns’ protective shield of sorts or simple stubbornness, Nimueh had to slowly face the fact that this fight might be her last. Wyverns were tricky creatures, it was no wonder the lands they roamed were called the Perilous Lands. They combined the ferocity and savvy of dragons with the mindset of a wild beast which made them abosolutely deadly. While dragons still had grace and honor written all over their majestic scales and wings, Wyverns were creatures of far meaner setting, with base motives their only guide: hunger and a lust to hunt and kill. Being hunted down by one was a true challenge, even more so when you had no weapons despite magic at your disposal, being hunted down by two was a clear death sentence to the abovesaid conditions.
So there was no shame in it when you thought about it that way, there were many excuses.

Just that Nimueh didn’t do excuses. As hard as she was on others she was on herself, and going down like that simply wouldn’t DO. It was out of question!
But before she could come up with any last ditch attempt, something else happened, equally unlikely as finding Wyverns so far from the Perilous Lands, and equally crazy:
Some… thing burst through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing, roaring like some wild animal, so for a moment Nimueh actually thought some other creature had decided the High Priestess would make a good lunch. Oh great…! But then the creature revealed itself to be human… at least in the rough direction of that as it was just so… abnormal to Nimueh’s eyes, so abnormal actually that she thought she must have died already and found herself in the Otherworld again. But then again, would the Otherworld house such…peculirar abominations? But if she wasn’t dead and also not dreaming – WHO was that… person?!

It all just was too much for the time being, Nimueh’s brain had decided to stop trying to make sense of any of this, so for the first time in maybe all her life, she didn’t even mind being ordered around, but nodded numbly while the… was it a woman? Hard to say, really… the person by all means started to slash at the one Wyvern, wielding a large battle axe like it was made of air and not heavy wood and steel.
The other Wyvern that had escaped and was now circling again had his horrible red eyes all fixed on Nimueh’s weird saviour now, seeing her as the obvious threat she was. That could only be to Nimueh’s liking. What about she simply stole away now and leaving the Wyverns to deal with that battle axe alone? No one could really blame her, right?
But still, the moment the second Wyvern suddenly started to charge from above in the (wo)man’s back, treacherous and cowardly creatures as they were, the High Priestess found herself somehow crying out: “Watch out! Behind you!”

[Þórodda]

The young woman nodded dumbly and, although she had some doubts, Þórodda decided that the woman would be able to keep an eye on the creature in the sky. If not, well, then there wasn't much that Þórodda could do, except to hope that the Norns wanted her alive just a little bit longer. After all, the creature on the ground was the more dangerous of the two, despite its wound, because it was the closest to them and because the woman was still lying on the ground like a stunned fish. Still, who could blame the woman? She didn't exactly look like a common peasant, not with her fine clothes. Then again, this was the strange land of Albion, where swords were as common as clubs. Who knew how people dressed here?

The grounded creature had now regained its feet and was hissing at Þórodda. It moved awkwardly on three legs, and its left wing hung down low, bone poking through the skin in a couple of places. That, so far as Þórodda was concerned, was a stroke of luck, since it stopped the creature from getting away and the dead weight of the broken wing made the creature's limp more pronounced.

Knowing that time was precious, Þórodda didn't circle the creature, testing its defences like she normally would. Instead, she went right on the attack, aiming blows at the creature's head, remaining front leg and the wings. The creature hopped backwards, dodging just out of the way of the deadly axe. Hampered by its wounds, though, the creature wasn't fast enough and Þórodda landed several blows, shattering its lower jaw and opening up a couple of large cuts on its face. On a normal creature, those wounds would have fatal, but this one seemed to have been gifted with a very thick skull.

Now crying piteously, the creature backed away more slowly, tripping over its own feet. Þórodda advanced, smiling as she always did, and readied her axe for a final, decisive blow.

“Watch out! Behind you!”

Knowing that the other creature was coming, Þórodda decided that she wouldn't be able to deliver the final, decisive blow that she had hoped. Instead, she swung her axe at the creature's neck, taking advantage of it raising its head to give one last, defiant hiss. The blade cut through the tough skin and flesh, going in just far enough to nick one artery and cut through half the windpipe. The creature recoiled and screamed in pain, the scream quickly turning into a gurgle.

Not finished with her move yet, Þórodda allowed the momentum of the axe to go unchecked and aid her as she spun to face the creature diving down on her. The axe barely cleared the ground and, as Þórodda turned her head to view the second creature, began to come back up. She could see that she wouldn't get the axe back up into a fighting position in time if she tried to use the full reach of the weapon, so Þórodda pulled the haft of the axe upwards with her left hand, letting it slide through her right as she shortened the length of reach. Then, as the creature's claws reached out for her, Þórodda slammed her axe into its chest.

The creature hadn't had much height before it dived, so it wasn't anywhere near terminal velocity when it hit Þórodda, but it had a lot of mass and momentum. As a result, when the axe hit the creature's body it was ripped out of Þórodda's hands and the haft smacked her around the side of the head. Less than a quarter of a second later, a heavy, wounded and very angry creature slammed into Þórodda and knocked her head over heals, moving her some four metres away from where she had been standing. The creature, having more height, went even further and slammed awkwardly into a tree.

Þórodda was knocked unconscious for a few moments and, when she opened her eyes, she felt like she'd won a drinking contest the night before. Her head hurt and, when she tried to sit up too fast, the whole world spun. Gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain from where her weapons had bruised her, Þórodda slowly stood and looked for the creature, expecting to be attacked at any second. Finally she saw it, a couple of metres behind where she was. Unlike its still breathing brethren, the second creature had snapped its neck on hitting the tree and its head was bent over backwards at close to 90 degrees.

Suddenly remembering the woman, Þórodda looked around for her, found her and asked in a gruff but still somewhat concerned voice,

"You...right?" She paused and considered her words, wondering if they were right. In the end, she decided that they were. "Yes. You right?"

[Deleted]

It was all Nimueh could do not to stare, mouth open like an imbecile as she watched her peculiar savior go about his murderous task of simply chopping down a Wyvern like it was made of wood. The creatures were cunning, but so was their adversary and the beasts were bested in both ferocity and swiftness. Even as the other one was coming down, it didn’t seem to pose any larger problem for this person. He or she even had time to all but finish off the first before she whirled around to get the second. For a crazy moment Nimueh expected the Wyvern to just run the (wo)man over as (s)he just stood there, waiting for it, but of course there was a plan attached to it all. A good plan, the best to come up with, as far as Nimueh with her limited fighting skills could fathom. She was a tactician, but she let other people do the bloody work of bashing each other’s head in. That’s what Blood Guards were for, or any kind of mercenary.

Just then, the tide seemed to turn, as the Wyvern knocked Nimueh’s savior was knocked of his feet, even leaving her unconscious for a few heartbeats as far as she could see. That wasn’t right! Even though she had no intentions of getting involved in gruesome fighting, it was enough to make her scramble to her feet and approach the scene. But the second creature had been catapulted against a tree and seemed very much dead, posing no threat neither to her nor to the figher, however out of it (s)he seemed for the moment. But what about the first one? Again she searched for the Wyvern’s mind and found it far less pleased than before, not much fighting spirit left, on the brink of dying. She could very well leave it aside for the time being, though you never knew with these Wyverns… they were as tenacious as cockroaches when it came to dying. So just in case she added a mental warning to not move in on them again if it didn’t want to share its brother’s fate.

The stupor of the fighter was not a long one and after (s)he had checked on the imminent danger part, Nimueh found herself being addressed. The voice was deep and gruff and didn’t give much away of the person’s gender. Hestitantly walking over, Nimueh answered. “Yes, I am fine." Resuming her usual regal posture, she the stated. “Not to sound impertinent or anything” - as if she ever cared… - “but… who are you and where did you hail from so suddenly?”

[Þórodda]

“Yes, I am fine. Not to sound impertinent or anything, but… who are you and where did you hail from so suddenly?”

Þórodda grinned at the young woman and laughed out loud, amused at the regal posture that she had adopted. It didn't matter to Þórodda whether the woman was nobility or not, mostly because she had seen her lying on the ground, panicking as the wyverns circled above her, but also because Þórodda had little respect for any who assumed that respect was their due. The woman might be stunningly beautiful, but her stance and manner suggested that she was used to people bowing and scrapping in her presence. Well, unless the woman decided to show a little gratitude, Þórodda was going to remain amused at her posturing.

Still laughing, Þórodda probed the inside of her mouth with a finger, feeling for loose teeth and trying to find out why she could taste blood. She paused for a moment, staring at her badly grazed hands with something approaching curiosity, and then continued to probe, finding no loose teeth and one place where she had bitten her cheek. Þórodda turned her head to one side, spat out the blood and absently wiped her bloody hands on her trousers. The iron reinforcement on her axe was great at extending its lifespan, but the iron also seemed to cause excessive damage when the axe was ripped out of her hands so savagely. Þórodda made a mental not to not put herself in a situation at hand.

While it may have looked as though all this was just her being rude to the young woman, Þórodda was really using her laugh and battle damage assessment to buy her enough time to work out what to say. What was the best way to explain to such a good looking, if snobbish, woman that Þórodda was heading to Camelot in order to see if the knights there were capable of putting up a better fight than the rabble she'd seen so far? In the end, Þórodda decided to stay simple and neutral.

Walking over to the dead, wyvern, Þórodda kept her eyes on the woman and answered her question.

"I Þórodda, I go Camelot. They skít-good fighters, yes?"

Having reached the wyvern, Þórodda grabbed hold of her axe and pulled it free. She rested it on her shoulder, holding it with one hand and walked casually over to the other wyvern, which was still clinging to life. It looked up at her with dull eyes and made a feeble attempt at clawing at her with its remaining front leg. Þórodda casually kicked the attack to one side and then hacked off the creature's head in two swift, powerful blows.

[Deleted]

Truth be told, Nimueh was still oddly fascinated by what was displayed before her very eyes. The same sort of sick fascination you felt when watching a completely alien being, a wild animal perhaps, go on with its natural actions and behaviour. There was just so much that striked Nimueh alien about this person, who she now slowly believed to be a woman beside all the peculiar things she did. Killing for one… Killing women was by no means a foreign sight to the High Priestess, she herself killed though with no visible weapons, and she had even seen women wield swords, but never before had she witnessed someone killing with so much… pleasure. Not a woman anyway. Some of the Blood Guards were a different story, but this? For her savior – as much as she disliked to even think that word as it just reeked of dependance – killing seemed to be more than a necissity. It was a passion.

Nimueh kept herself from staring openly though she truly would have wanted nothing else at the moment. The way this woman put the same finger that had just been spotted with blood from a wild creature in her mouth to probably check for damages, the way she just wiped the same bloody hands on her trousers, smearing the sticky substance everywhere – it was totally gross! One single word flashed up in Nimueh’s mind as she puckered up her face and winced in disgust: Savage…
If she ever had run across a savage before, now the time had definitely come! Still, could she allow herself such a blatant display of dismay and contempt?
This savage, however it disgusted her to be in close proximity with her, after all had just saved her life. Nimueh was never one to be overly grateful, but she definitely was one to quickly sniff out chances.

And what a chance that would be… the moment the woman, if she really was to be called such, brought up the name of Camelot herself, some things inside Nimueh’s head clicked into place, along with the name she had just been provided with. During her long teaching to become a High Priestess, foreign religions and cults had been a part of it all, and so Nimueh could at least roughly place the woman’s origins, if it hadn’t been obvious by her choice of weapon and clothing style before. The Northern Lands might be far and many people considered the stories coming from there to be mere myths, only that the Priestesses usually knew better to discard such things as fantasy. And now she had a living proof right before her very eyes.
“Þórodda? As in Thor, the God of weather and thunder? I daresay, your entrance was similarly dramatic and effective”, she commented, keeping her voice level and not giving away any of her scornful thoughts. “I am Nimueh Ó Liathàin, High Priestess of the Old Religion, and as much as it pains me to admit it, I think I owe you my life.”

What had caused her to walk the way of pure honesty with her counterpart, Nimueh couldn’t quite fathom. She just had an indistinctive feeling that this Þórodda was a force to be reckoned with, and that she, though as rough a diamond as a rough diamond could be, might be a force well to be used, given the circumstances.
“You talk about the Knights of Camelot? Yes, they are good, but I think there is only one who could hold anything against your… methods for long: Prince Arthur Pendragon himself!”
Oh wouldn’t it be funny if dear Arthur was to be chopped to pieces by this savage, just like those poor two Wyverns had met their end? Whenever it was going to happen – Nimueh would make sure not to miss this show for anything in the world.