The Son of Nott: Gods of the Ragnarok Era

By Matt Larkin

As flame dwindles, night rises.

A pyromancer and prince, Audr fought for years against the sorcerer kingdoms. He fought to save his people. He fought to save his precious son. He fought to save the world from the grasp of Hel. He fought ... and he lost.

Now, he sees one last desperate gambit before him: to journey into the lands of night and claim the most forbidden power of all.

And the price may prove more than he can ever imagine.


Dive into a world of dark, Norse-inspired fantasy.

The Legends of the Ragnarok Era series tells standalone stories set during the Ragnarok Era and can be read in any order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Incandescent Phoenix Books
• Release date: Jun 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9780615897288

Matt Larkin

Along with his wife and daughter, Matt lives as a digital nomad, traveling the world while researching for his novels. He enjoys reading, loves video games, and relaxes by binge watching Netflix with his wife. Matt writes retellings of mythology as dark, gritty fantasy. His passions of myths, philosophy, and history inform his series. He strives to combine gut-wrenching action with thought-provoking ideas and culturally resonant stories. In exploration of these ideas, the Eschaton Cycle was born—a universe of dark fantasy where all myths and legends play out. Each series in the Eschaton Cycle represents a single arc within a greater narrative. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matt.a.larkin/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/mattlarkin

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Extra Resources

For full color, higher-res maps, character lists, location overviews, and glossaries, check out the bonus resources here:

https://tinyurl.com/y47j3gcj

Part I

1

Audr

Year 1200, Age of the Vanir, Sixth Moon

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Though the iridescent lights dancing in the night sky ought to have offered welcome, they now seemed sickly, as if the heavens writhed in the same twisting rot spreading across Midgard. Or perhaps the lingering fever set Audr’s mind into such a malaise, even as he leaned upon his son, one hand clutching the wound in his stomach.

Aurvandil had said naught when their dogs perished and they’d been forced to trudge through the snows on foot. Nor had Audr’s boy made mention of the bitter words they had shared what now felt a lifetime ago, before leaving on their ill-conceived assault on Hacibey. Rather, his son had simply slipped Audr’s arm around his shoulder and helped him forward.

When Audr could not walk for the pain, Aurvandil had carried him, no doubt drawing upon his Fire vaettr’s strength to manage it. And true to his word, his son had not let him fall. Not once across the endless miles from the Black Sea to the hills of Kvenland.

My boy, Audr rasped. My precious boy …

A hand. A face. Ashes.

A normal man would have died from the wounds, but the spirit squirming around inside him sustained him, even if it could not quite heal the putrescence spreading out from that wound. Oh, but Brennandi took the opportunity presented to press itself ever tighter around his mind, like a burning tendril waiting to spark the conflagration and gain control over him.

Burn, the vaettr cooed in his mind.

Yes, all these spirits wanted was to burn all that might burn and leave Midgard in ash. And still, Flame was better than the Hel-cursed Mist they struggled against.

Never in his life had he witnessed aught so foul as the sorceress Grimhild and the war she’d brought to Hacibey. An army of the dead squeezed the life from Odling lands and must, surely, soon come for Audr’s people, as well. The sense of it, almost like a pyromantic vision of the impending future, froze the blood in his veins, stole the breath from his lungs. It was coming …

Aurvandil paused, glancing in the direction of Turun, though neither of them could make out the town—or aught else more than five feet ahead—through the mist. I should take you to Groa.

On any other day, Audr would have spurned such an offer. Aurvandil’s wife, the witch, was an outcast, unwelcome in Turun by order of the fire priests, barely even tolerated in the whole of Kalevala. Had they felt bold enough, he imagined the lot of them might have driven her all the way back to Pohjola in the far north. But Aurvandil was his boy, and Audr would not allow him to lose his wife.

Loge …

The priest won’t help you, his son snapped. "You just called me your ‘precious boy.’ Can you not trust me, then, Father? Can you not follow my lead for once? Groa can save you. Maybe find a way to save us all."

Audr sputtered a painful laugh. After the horrors they had seen in the Odling lands, who was he to argue with Aurvandil? Much less with urd.

Not far now, Aurvandil said.

They passed a frozen stream, skirted the edge of a hill, and came into a valley beyond. There, in the shelter of fir trees, stood a weather-beaten cabin Audr might rather have described as a hut. As if Groa felt no cold, the hut showed unpatched gaps between the woodwork and even an obvious break in the roof where the thatch had fallen through.

A small tendril of smoke wafted out of the chimney, blending with mist, making it almost imperceptible.

The last time Audr had stood in this valley, he had nigh to lost his son. Yet even back here, Aurvandil steadfastly refused to speak of the foul things Audr had said against his wife. In fact, the boy held his silence, no doubt musing on the same words neither of them dared utter once more.

Instead, Audr’s son helped him over to the cabin, easing him down onto the rank bearskin rug Audr had once disdained. Now, even the noisome vapors permeating the cabin held little offense for him.

The dying care not for odors.

In the tiny fire pit, a pitiful flame danced. Within, a specter wreathed in darkness watched Audr, ever present, ever hateful. It was within flame, beyond flame, a relentless admonition that he might never escape urd. That it would claim him, body and soul, as it must.

A hand. A face. Ashes.

No! No, Hel damn it all! He had defied that future, had spent his very life to stop the Niflungar.

But within, the knowledge, pyromantic insight, much as it pained him … Grimhild lived.

Burn.

Brennandi used so much of its strength to keep Audr’s body from giving way to massive rot from his ruptured gut. A moon, at least, the vaettr had kept him alive. Still, still, its voice in his mind refused to fall silent.

BURN.

Burn it all. Oh, but he had tried. He had unleashed an inferno upon the Niflungar, until his limbs trembled from the effort of maintaining any semblance of control and not letting the vaettr consume him. He had burned and burned and slew so many, even as he had done twelve years back in Rijnland. And still, still, he’d proved no match for those Hel sent against him. The Children of Mist were winning.

Maybe now, they had won. If Grimhild yet lived even after all he had done, the Lofdar were truly lost.

And so very many of the Lofdar had died, frozen and choked by the mists of Niflheim. Even now, he could not say how many had managed to return to Kalevala, though he dared hope more than just Aurvandil and himself.

Groa appeared from the shadows, so silent and shrouded he might have mistaken her for a wraith. Fever-induced fancies, of course. She cast back her shawl, revealing her disheveled pale hair and the scarred-over runes carved into her forehead and arms. Without a word, she knelt down to sniff his wound. Then the witch clucked her tongue and scrambled away, still on hands and knees. Oh, yes, I see it, she muttered to some unseen voice.

Audr blinked, trying not to stare into the flame. Trying not to see what urd seemed ever waiting to claim him there. Oh, how he had once longed for the pyromantic gift. Only to now have it suffocating him. Twelve years, and it would not release him. There was no release from memories of what he’d seen, of what he still saw in flames, ever daring him to look and behold urd in all its relentless predations. Oh, to glimpse the future was damnation for the present.

Brennandi would have him if this wound did not. More than once on their trek back, Audr had considered begging Aurvandil to end his mortal life. It might allow him to break urd … But what if he alone could save his son from the vision he’d beheld? Was there any path yet before him which might stop Aurvandil from burning?

By his side, his boy squeezed his hand. Aurvandil’s wife returned a moment later with a horn of mead and a ceramic jar of something she poured into the mead. Then offered Audr the draught.

Oh.

Right. Well at least she had mixed it with mead.

Beyond the flames, a shadow flitted, perhaps scorched by the blaze now engulfing the entire room, writhing or dancing, he could not say. In twisted gyrations it moved, edging ever closer, and, though he could see naught of its features beneath the tattered shroud it wore, he knew it watched him.

Oh, he knew it for a fever dream, for he had seen such things all too oft in the past dozen years and grown worse since his wounds taken at Hacibey. But the draught Groa had given him seemed to drive him within the flame that was watching him. To blend his soul with that of Brennandi, the Fire vaettr that was his gift and curse and source of his power.

Ever watching.

Mine …

A voice like shards of ice wormed through his brain, shredding his soul. And it hated. A loathing deep enough to swallow the whole of the Gandvik Sea. Enmity toward the living they could not begin to comprehend, much less ever feel. Naught in the Mortal Realm could ever bear such rancor.

Mine … own …

Yes, like stalking urd, the vision hunted Audr, promising him his end would come soon. He’d not have thought even a Fire vaettr could bear such acrimony. Why would any being so hate him?

Before him, a burning hand reached through the dark to grasp the face of Audr’s son. Audr wailed in fury as the vision played out once more.

Aurvandil! Aurvandil!

He’d die before he allowed this to unfold. But if the last Prince of the Lofdar must fall, he would be damned if he did not take the hateful Niflung sorceress with him. It would be Grimhild who turned to ash.

And yet, the shrouded hand reached for him, now straining through fire that ought to have held it back. Edging ever closer …

When he woke, he was drenched with sweat, chilled, with his fever broken and the wound in his gut seeming burned shut. Clean, but throbbing. Audr sputtered a cough, sparing a glance around and spying Groa but not Aurvandil.

He returned to Turun to fortify the town against the Niflungar, she said, guessing his first question.

The Niflung sorceress, Grimhild, seemed possessed of the very power of Hel. Audr could not imagine what Aurvandil, even as a Firewalker, might possibly do to ward against her, should she once more bring such foul Art to battle. Not that his boy would surrender without a fight.

I must join them. He rose, finding he could at long last do so without overmuch pain.

Something stalks the shadows of your mind, I rather think.

Audr glowered at her words. If she only knew. Some urd, yes, and the ceaseless apprehension of it, a constant weight upon his chest in waking, a restlessness that stole his sleep, until every passing moment of life seemed an effort.

Groa, however, rolled her eyes and snickered at some unspoken thought. Yes, of course I would know. She wasn’t even looking at him, nor, Audr mused, actually addressing him.

Seidkonur—witches—claimed that any use of the Art breached the Veil to the Otherworlds and thus exposed the soul to wretchedness. Innumerable foul vaettir lurked just out of sight, beyond a gossamer curtain few Men could perceive. Hungry, eager for a way to push in and sate themselves and their rage upon hapless mortals.

Audr, given the choice, would have liked to blame his vision upon the draught Groa had given him. Or perhaps he’d have blamed the perverse sorcery Grimhild worked in Hacibey. But then, he’d suffered such a vision already, born of his own pyromancy-induced nightmares.

Regardless, he didn’t deign to offer Groa an answer to the subject. The fire priests would be aghast to learn he’d even allowed her to drug him. But after what he’d seen at the Black Sea …

There is something ancient and terrible inside the Niflung sorceress.

Groa nodded, clearly having no doubt as to whom he referred. A snow maiden, long dead.

Dead?

Oh, the souls of the Otherworlds are our dead, as we are theirs. Madness. He wanted to deny it but could not give voice to the thought. And you cannot match such icy fury, even with the Art of Fire. Hence, my husband believes I ought to introduce you … to my mother.

Audr didn’t bother hiding his disdain. So then, the solution to the foulest sorcery he’d ever seen was to call upon more sorcery? To compound blasphemy upon blasphemy. Another witch, he fair spat. A child of a Witch-Queen, in fact.

We must travel across the northern border, to lands the sun dare not reach. Where the goddess reigns.

She meant Nott. The goddess of fucking night, whose hand stretched across Pohjola, in the farthest extreme of Midgard.

But then, he had already borne the wrath of Hel herself. The horrors of the Otherworlds even now closed in around the Lofdar and threatened to wipe them from the face of Midgard. If it meant salvation for his people, how could he turn away from any aid, even that of an erstwhile foe?

Grimacing, Audr wrapped himself in the filthy bearskin. So be it, he said, groaning from the effort of standing. He could not afford delay, even in his weakness. Let us make haste into the night.

2

Days Gone

Tongues of flame laced around Laevateinn as Audr charged through the halls of Rijn Keep, the runeblade’s fires brighter than a torch. Already, the Budlungar castle burned, the blaze sparing stone walls but leaping over tapestries, slithering across rugs, and bounding to the thatched roofs of outbuildings.

The sword, forged by dvergar long ago for the Lof