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Magnus was getting really, really, REALLY tired of these prophetic dreams.
It was a recurring one this time. On the bright side, it had nothing to do with Loki, or jotnar out for his blood, or much of anything really.
No. Instead, it was pitch black, dark and damp, where the decadent stench of rot and stale air filled the cramped place. There was so little space to move, Magnus could hardly expand his lungs to take a clear inhalation, if he was breathing at all. The quietude was unnerving. Even the thrum of blood in his veins, the nigh-imperceptible flick of blinking eyelashes, was not there. He was always somewhat claustrophobic, and the sensation of blind immobility brought on a rising panic that bubbled just beneath the surface of his skin. He felt far too heavy, like he was tethered down, trapped within something.
It took him way too long to understand that that something was a coffin, and within that coffin he was encased beneath six feet of pure, solid dirt. The realization almost sent his consciousness back to the waking world, back to the realm of Asgard and into his living-yet-not-quite-living self. Yet some giant hand gently clasped itself around his soul and pulled him back down, the way a parent soothes a frightened child. It was a presence so old and vast and knowing that Magnus couldn’t help but find comfort in it. Despite his rational mind trying to maintain its slippery grasp on the situation, he sank deeper and deeper, and the earth welcomed him.
And then he woke up, completely disoriented and a bit unnerved, not quite remembering the dream but feeling its effects. His body ached like it had been put through the wringer, and his thoughts were an indecipherable jumble of vague concepts. All he could do was lay there, staring numbly at the ceiling. Magnus wasn’t tired, per se, but he didn’t exactly feel refreshed after it.
The dream haunted him for roughly a week. Each night he dreamt, and each morning he jolted awake more lethargic than before. His movements during training were more uncoordinated than usual, he was essentially just holding his sword as he blocked and parried and stabbed and slashed. It’s harder to focus when healing his friends, and on more than one occasion he let their lives clumsily slip through his fingers. By dinner time he had to will himself against the monumental urge to let his head hit the table out of exhaustion. Then, the next day the process repeated itself.
When Mallory finally interrogated him about his frankly shitty performance in battle, Magnus just said he’d been having nightmares. This obviously made her worry, since dreams for demigods more often than not translated to reality. However, with Loki out of the picture for the time being, Magnus just wished he knew what the source could possibly be.
“I don’t know, it just feels… off ,” he tried to articulate. Magnus wrapped his arms around himself. “It’s like… you know when you have to turn a sock inside out?”
“… Sure,” Alex agreed easily.
“It’s like that.”
“Okay…”
“I feel like you’re not getting it.”
The two of them were laying on Alex’s bed, which was covered with pillows and blankets that made it fall more into the category of bird’s nest or dragon’s hoard, which Alex kept “organized” in a way that Magnus found completely incomprehensible. At the moment, the son of Frey couldn’t stand laying in his own, it felt too… constrictive. He couldn’t relax there. Thankfully, Alex didn’t seem to mind his presence, for the moment. The hair dye-stained pillow he was laying his head against smelled like Alex’s key-lime shampoo.
“Hey,” Alex sat up straighter, “I totally get it. I’m literally a shapeshifter. I know literally everything about having a body and living in it.” He gestured to himself in a grand arc for emphasis, as if to say, I’m so good at this body stuff I have one myself, see ?
“But, like, I mean- what about dying in one?” Magnus got a very nonplussed look with that statement. “Like… you’re dead but alive somewhere else.”
“ Ehhh , that’s Samirah’s job, pulling souls from bodies and shit,” Alex scratched his head. “Truly unenviable work,” he lamented theatrically.
Magnus thought about that. If his soul was removed from his dying body, then the body he saw in his casket was just… empty. Logically, the human brain was operated by electrical impulses between the neurons; soul-talk was a bit too philosophical for Magnus’ tastes.
“Wait a second,” he propped himself up on one elbow, “what happened to the body you decapitated me from?” That was definitely not a normal sentence.
“Er- the wolves ate it,” Alex looked a bit taken-aback that he would bring that up. “What, did you want it or something?”
“No? What kind of question is that,” Magnus grimaced. “Did I regenerate from my head?”
“Dunno. You were twitching for a while, though. It was super creepy.” Alex did not seem too affected by the conversation, absently picking at his cuticles. “What’s this got to do with your weird dreams?”
“Fuck, I dunno. None of this is making sense.” Magnus sighed heavily, he turned onto his back again to stare at the ceiling for a while. A comfortable silence fell over the two of them, Alex continued picking at his nails.
“Oh gods,” he realized, “I think I have unfinished business .”
Alex snorted and looked over at him. “Does the resident atheist believe in ghosts and the afterlife now?”
Magnus chose to forgo his partner’s usual snark. “No, seriously. I think my, like, soul or whatever has unfinished business or something,” Magnus made vague gestures in the air. “ And it’s trying to go back to my old body… or something.”
Alex hummed contemplatively. “Hmmm… I can tell you for a fact that hasn’t happened to me.”
“Well-“
“And I don’t wanna think about it, so don’t ask,” Alex cut him off with a huff, pointing an accusatory finger and giving him a thoroughly exasperated look. “As far as I’m concerned that body was just- just some old shirt that got torn up in the dryer. I’ve tossed it out and I don’t need it anymore.”
Magnus didn’t know what happened to Alex, who found his body or if it was even reported, how and where he was buried. The more he thought about it, the more it bothered him. Magnus wanted to know; he wanted to help . He looked at Alex’s pinched expression for a few seconds and he stared back unflinchingly, like they were having a silent battle of wits.
“Okay,” he finally relented. When Alex didn’t want to talk about something, there was no amount of prying that would get him to open up, and you were far more likely to get yourself hurt in the process.
Alex smiled at him, still a bit tense. “You just worry about yourself, okay?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alex rolled his eyes, leaning his cheek against his palm. “It means that you always do this teensy-weensy-” he pinched his index finger and thumb together here- “little thing where you constantly pry into other people’s business so you don’t have to think about your own problems, Magnus.”
“... Alright, I definitely asked for that,” the son of Frey concurred. He really was trying to get better at that, but, well, unhealthy coping mechanisms are a bitch and a half.
“Look, dude,” Alex sighed, “seriously, look at me. I’m here for you.” He stared right into Magnus’ eyes when he said that, looking right into the hollowed out tunnel of his soul. He could get transfixed on Alex’s heterochromatic irises for the rest of time. It always seemed like they revealed the two sides of a coin, light and dark, day and night. A paradoxical amalgamation of this and that. “Tell me what you need, talk to me.”
“I dunno,” the son of Frey sighed. Alex was a surprisingly patient person, despite the constant desire for new experiences and loathing of the concept of just staying still . He took Alex’s smaller hand in his own, intertwining their fingers together gently, methodically, like he was working through a particularly tight knot. “Can I sleep here?”
“Sure, bud, but if you kick me in your sleep I’m pushing you onto the floor.”
Alex was awoken by Magnus kicking her in his sleep.
Bypassing Alex’s irritated and sleep-addled brain, in Magnus’ defense, it wasn’t so much a kick as it was just a nudge . However, to someone who enjoyed a wide berth of personal space, the degree of severity tended to skew harshly, doubly so to one in the middle of a blissfully dreamless doze.
Being around Magnus while unconscious was like getting stuck with a particularly noisy radio beacon, pinging all of Alex’s thoughts and rubbing against every cerebral neuron in her head until each synapse was charged with surplus electricity. In basic terms, it made her dreams weird and it was hard to sleep. Alex was painfully aware of the phenomenon when she agreed to let Magnus spend the night there. Oh, the things she did for love…
The demigod should’ve known it was too good to be true. When she opened his bleary eyes, she noticed that her partner was having a pretty fitful rest.
Magnus groaned unconsciously, furrowing his eyebrows and shifting restlessly. His arms were almost crossed in front of him, like he was holding something against his chest. Alex thought he looked really uncomfortable like that, and contemplated whether waking him up would be a smart idea. She could see the sweat beading on his forehead, and the heat visibly building against his face with a faint bioluminescent glow like a heated coil.
The demigod mumbled something faintly, but Alex couldn’t make sense of it. His expression scrunched up in the same tense look he tended to get during training, which made Alex worry a bit. Magnus really only got that visibly stressed out when he was directly in battle or having a panic attack. They hadn’t exactly ironed out the wrinkles of the protocol regarding what to do if your partner may or may not be having a posttraumatic stress nightmare or whatever.
He shifted like he was attempting to roll over, but couldn’t move, and in failing that his expression grew more strained. Alex could see his eyes rolling back and forth beneath their lids, frantically scanning something she couldn’t see.
“Magnus,” she said softly, “wake up.”
He did not do that. Usually, Magnus was pretty good at listening to Alex, so now she was kind of out of ideas for the moment.
Alex reached over a grabbed Magnus’ bicep, which was just about the worst thing she could have thought to do. Immediately, it was like touching a live wire, and the child of Loki instinctually recoiled with a hiss. Magnus’ eyes shot open, but they were entirely blank, still roaming and searching for something beyond what was in front of him.
Magnus sat up like he was being hoisted up by a string, somehow weightless and heavy at the same time. It felt all-too-familiar, yet so unknowably foreign to Alex’s mind. It reminded her distantly of her mother, but also distinctly different. Mechanically, Magnus moved to place his feet on the floor and stood up. As he started walking to the tree jutting out of the ground in Alex’s room, the child of Loki hopped out of bed and planted herself firmly in front of it. Given the fact that traveling through Yggdrasil was dangerous on a good day, the risk right now was far too great.
“Magnus, seriously, wake up.” She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake some lucidity back into him, but that electric sensation made Alex incredibly weary of putting her hands on Magnus at all. Her partner just stood there, staring past Alex unblinkingly as if trying to figure out what to do now.
“ Bury, body, burn ,” Magnus muttered quietly, repeatedly like it was a mantra. “ Bury, body, burn .”
Alex snapped her fingers in front of his face, as if attempting to get a spark going. “Wake up, dude,” Alex attempted again. Maybe there was some kind of magic awakening spell that she was unaware of or something. That would’ve been very useful right about now.
Magnus paused, his eyes no longer seeming far-away and dazed, but instead intensely focused as he stared through Alex. It sent a chill straight up her spine, freezing her in place and setting her on edge.
“ Move ,” he demanded. The singular word was a dense concrete brick of magic lobbed straight into her skull. While Alex could recognize its power, she wasn’t mentally prepared enough to keep her muscles from weakening and dropping her unceremoniously to her knees. Magnus used alf seidr so infrequently it was easy to forget he could do it at all, but goddamn did it pack a punch when he did.
By the time Alex shoved the weight from her mind and stood back up, Magnus had already approached the tree. Bizarrely, it seemed like the smaller branches were curling and bending to approach the teenager at its base in welcoming salutes.
“Hey, wait-,” was all she could shout before the tree yanked him up and out of sight. “ Shit ,” Alex swore quietly and- after swiping her phone off her nightstand- shapeshifted into a pine marten to scramble after him.
It was a bit difficult to track him through Yggdrasil’s everchanging labyrinth of branches and interdimensional portals. On the bright side, her small form made it unlikely for Ratatosk to catch wind of her as she weaved her lithe body along the World Tree’s immeasurable form. Unlike Magnus and other demigods with affinity for the earth and its flora, she could not manipulate Yggdrasil into opening a portal for her. However, she could read its minute movements and trust her instincts to take her where she needed to go. Each scrape of her claws resonated along the tree’s bark, hinting to her at the trails left by previous travelers. Magnus’ scent was familiar and unmistakable, and served as a guide straight to Midgard.
Of course he would go there.
It took a while, longer than Alex would have liked, for her own impatience and worry, but eventually she pushed through a gap between two intertwined boughs that was not a gap, but an entryway. Before Alex hit the ground, she shifted into a tabby cat and landed on all four nimble paws.
The demigod surveyed her surroundings for a moment. It was dusk and turning ever darker, and it seemed like she had landed in a Boston park. The willow tree above her swayed lightly in the night breeze, and the sounds of nature were pleasantly relaxing.
Alex trotted her way along the trails, padding after Magnus as briskly as a small cat possibly could. After a few minutes of getting nowhere fast, she shifted into a greyhound. As she loped ahead, Alex could still smell him: the scent of cotton and rosemary and mint.
Magnus had been stopped by a policeman, because of course he would be. He had an unbearable vibe that made people feel the need to keep both eyes on him, and a hand against their back pocket. The cop was obviously trying to converse with him and failing miserably. He had a flashlight in one hand, and a firm grip on her boyfriend’s upper arm with the other. Maybe it was a good thing Magnus wasn’t awake because it would probably give him a full-blown panic attack. When Alex shifted back to her human form, the officer blinked and pointed his trusty flashlight towards her. He reoriented his attention to Alex as if he had seen something strange from the corner of his eye. Understandable, but his conscious human brain would be none the wiser.
“Hi there, officer,” Alex greeted smoothly. She hated dealing with police, but it was easy once you got the hang of it. “Thanks for finding my buddy, he- uh- he sleepwalks a lot. I was looking everywhere for him.”
The cop did not relinquish Magnus’ arm, the teen himself was just staring at the ground and muttering something. Alex wanted to just grab him away from this man and leave as fast as possible. “Right, right, and you are?,” he began.
His girlfriend , she almost blurted, his caretaker . “I’m his friend, he was staying over at my place.” And you are?
The man finally let go of Magnus to adjust his pants. “Well then-,” he began, and was interrupted by Alex shapeshifting into a perfect copy of himself, right down to the bushy mustache and balding head and suspicious bump on his nose. Alex’s patience with law enforcement was thinner than the wire of her garrote, and it was fun to use this trick on a cop once in a while.
The human brain isn’t equipped to recognize oneself beyond a mirror. The existential dread that arises from concepts like doppelgängers and changelings, beings that can take your shape, voice, and place in life, is enough to make a grown man piss himself out of sheer dumb confusion when meeting one in person. Unfortunately, this man didn’t, but his eyes got blown wide and his mouth hung agape.
“I’ll take it from here,” the child of Loki parroted back with the man’s own voice. He did not respond. Alex put her hand to Magnus’ back- thankfully there was no adverse reaction- and gently pushed him along until they were out of earshot from the dumbfounded policeman.
As they were walking, Magnus slowed and then stopped again. He blinked a few times and shook his head as if to clear it. He rubbed his eyes, then turned to look at her, and startled at the sight of his partner. Magnus blinked and squinted, “Alex?”
“Oh, right,” she forgot she hadn’t shapeshifted back and did so, “sorry about that.”
“I don’t- whatever,” he learned a long time ago to not attempt to find methods in Alex’s madness. Not like he was one to talk, having walked out here in nothing but his sleepwear, and they were both barefoot. “Wait, what?” Magnus looked all around him. “Where are we? Is this a dream?” He almost said it like an accusation.
“Hey, don’t look at me , I just followed you here.” Alex decided to withhold the cop encounter thing. “We’re at a park or something, by the way. Seems like you got somewhere to be. You got a date, Maggie?”
“Yes,” he humored her, “it was supposed to be a surprise, but I thought it would be really romantic to take you out here-,” he stopped abruptly and inclined his head like he was listening to something.
“And what?” She kind of wanted him to finish his sentence.
“And… and…,” Magnus’ face grew dreamy again. “I have to go…” Magnus turned and started walking again. Alex decided to lock arms with him, securing the bond by clasping his hand, as well. Her partner didn’t even react, which was a shame because Alex loved when he gawped at her. If she couldn’t stop him from whatever it was he was trying to do, then following him hand-in-hand was the next best thing, Alex supposed.
The demigod pulled out her phone and called Mallory as Magnus pulled her along. Of all her hallmates, she was the most willing to accept the technical wonders of the 21st-century smartphone. The daughter of Frigg was definitely not happy when Alex explained the mess they were in, but even so, Alex knew she could trust her friends to rush over as fast as possible. They’d do anything for Magnus, even if none of those idiots realized it themselves.
The earth was singing to him.
It was a strange thing to believe, but it was true. It was a hum that he could feel in his bones and blood more than hear with his ears. It reminded him of when he would place two fingers against his friends’ necks, the beating of life force through the arteries. Every step Magnus made bounced and reverberated against it.
Magnus was awake, of that he was certain, because even in the shroud of night everything had a beautiful clarity. It almost felt like he was a balloon on a string, being pulled along to his inevitable destination. Alex was hanging off his arm, amicably following his movements.
“Where are we going?” She finally asked him. They were walking together on a dirt path. It was a cool evening and empty of other passers by. The copse of tall, thin trees enshrouded them both. It was almost romantic.
“I don’t… know,” Magnus replied earnestly, “I just feel like it’s the right way to go.”
“You and your intuition,” Alex rolled her eyes. Sometimes it was scary how good his instincts could be, and other times he tripped over his own feet and cracked his skull open. It was a mixed bag.
Speaking of tripping, it was just then that Alex kicked her bare foot against something hard. She heard something crack and swore aloud.
“ Shit fuck , what the fuck is this?” She grabbed onto Magnus’ shoulder and clutched her foot. “ Ow , I think I broke my toe.”
“Let me see,” Magnus grabbed her by the ankle and inspected it in the dim light. Placing his hand- which Alex remarked was very cold- against the top of her foot, he probed with his mind. “It’s not broken.” That thing was pulling incessantly at his attention, it was very distracting. It was taking all of Magnus’ self control to not just leave Alex there and keep walking.
“What is this thing anyways?” Alex felt at it with her hands, something rounded and made of stone. “I- I think it’s a headstone… we must be in a cemetery.”
“Can we go now?” Magnus asked impatiently, staying still was making his head hurt. Before he could stop himself his legs were moving again. Instead of continuing on her bad foot, Alex opted to perch on his shoulder as a red squirrel.
Next to Magnus’ face, Alex could hear his breathing grow more ragged and wheezy. It rattled through his airways with each inhale and exhale. Yet his pace did not slow, it actually became more hurried.
“Are you okay?” She squeaked. It was a good thing Magnus understood squirrel-speak. Magnus clutched at his shirt and nodded decisively. When Alex looked at his face, she was expecting more of a worried and frantic look. Instead, it was tense with anticipation and excitement. It was the look of someone reaching the finish line of a race, wild and hungry. Alex opted to keep any of her reservations to herself.
“Hey, you two!” A voice- TJ’s voice- called out from their left. Magnus paid no attention to it, but Alex looked over and caught sight of a swaying camping lantern, followed by the three forms of their friends. Mallory, Halfborn and TJ jogged over to meet the pair of demigods, and Alex shapeshifted back to fill them in. She tried not to look too pathetic by hobbling on her bad foot.
It was an unusual congregation: five teenagers in various stages of undress, from shirtless Halfborn to TJ in his full winter coat and boots. They all shuffled together, following their team healer.
“I’m guessing you were buried here?” Mallory asked Magnus.
“Yes… I was…,” he replied heavily, like just the process of speaking was fatiguing. Magnus bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. “I still am …”
“Isn't your family super rich? I bet you guys probably have a whole mausoleum,” TJ remarked.
“I don’t know… probably-,” the son of Frey stopped abruptly and TJ bumped into him with a small “ sorry ”. He pivoted to a particular row of graves. Magnus walked along the row, the lantern light catching various tombstone shapes and names. Finally, he paused in front of the right one:
Magnus Chase
1994-2011
In Loving Memory
It was the most basic form of epitaph, practically placeholder text. Nothing about the person he was or how he came to pass, only that somewhere at some point, someone had cared for him in some capacity. It was kind of sad, really. The dim light TJ was holding illuminated the headstone to the right, as well. Natalie Chase , Alex mentally tallied the death date: 2008 … He was only fourteen , she thought.
Magnus lurched forward, taking a few staggering steps with bare feet towards his plot of burial ground. He paused for a moment, letting the earth’s magic thrum up from beneath his soles and into his legs, pooling in his stomach and filling his lungs, and coursing into his arms. It reached the very top of his head and set his hair bristling with electricity. Magnus dropped to his hands and knees.
It was right here, he could feel it. He wheezed like he was having an asthma attack, desperately sucking in what little air he could. Alex knelt down beside him and warily placed a hand between his heaving shoulders. As she rubbed tiny circles, she could feel the muscles tensing under her palm. She could almost feel it rolling off of him, a buzzing restlessness that made her gums and behind her eyeballs hurt.
“I cuh- can’t-t bre-athe,” Magnus stuttered, taking momentary pauses to gasp. Alex could guess as much, but there wasn’t much she could do. Magnus didn’t have an inhaler. He placed his palms flat against the dirt. It was practically humming against him, similar to the strange buzz one feels as blood rushes back into a deprived limb on the cusp of falling asleep. The demigod grasped at clumps of grass, then began pulling at them in a panic. All his sudden movement made Alex jump back for fear of getting elbowed or covered in dirt. “Geh-get me out,” he begged, “ get me out .”
The ground, often so opposed to being moved or manipulated, seemed to relent slightly to the son of Frey. It allowed him to claw his way downwards, disturbing the quietly resting earth. However, it wasn’t to the extent that dwarves could mold rock, and therefore Magnus’ fingers and palms quickly turned bloody and ragged. A few of his nails were ripped clean off the nail beds. He paid it no mind, though, seemingly unaware of the pain while he pulled apart the dense, gritty soil to reach his own coffin.
His friends were patient with him, or maybe they just didn’t know how to stop him, or maybe they didn’t even want to. Surely, there was some kind of secondhand catharsis to be found in watching a person unearth their own grave when you are long dead yourself. While Halfborn and Mallory and TJ and Alex peered into the deepening hole, Magnus just kept clawing at the cold, dark, wet dirt.
The body of the earth seemed to simultaneously gape and close around him, it turned his thoughts dim and fuzzy and gave him tunnel vision. There was only the pulse of blood and distant pants of breath reaching his ears now, and the deep low buzz set behind his molars. The smell of pungent earth and utter decadence and an alkaline aftertaste clogged his nose and coated his dry throat, reminiscent of his dream.
Once his hand, smeared with blood and grime and plant matter, scraped along a carved, lacquered surface, Magnus felt himself grow even more frantic. He tried to stick his fingers at the lip of the coffin’s lid, but he couldn’t find it and his hands were getting too slick with his own blood. Magnus just couldn’t get a good handhold. The idea of being so, so close , yet unable to finish this deed, made his throat well with a pitiful keening whine.
“Okay, that’s enough,” someone behind him said with exasperation. Magnus felt something snag the back of his shirt and physically pull him up and out of the hole he dug like a kitten by its scruff. When Halfborn set him down, he swayed on his feet, entirely disoriented. The shaking in his arms and legs wouldn’t settle down. “We will take it from here.”
Magnus looked at his own trembling, torn up hands, with bleeding palms and coated in dirt up to the elbows. Plant debris stuck to his eviscerated palms and his fingers looked like he stuck them in a meat grinder. He watched the blood well up, then run down and drip onto the ground. Gross.
Mallory reached over and took his wrists in her own hands. “You just sit right there, yeah?” She pulled him down and he numbly complied. Once he was sitting on the grass, he looked up to see what they were all doing now.
Alex had shapeshifted into a grizzly bear and was finishing what he had started, using her long claws to make the hole in the earth larger with broad and powerful swipes. Mallory pushed his bangs away from his face, where they had been plastered by sweat. Magnus hadn’t realized he was sweating, how hot his blood felt, or how fast his heart was beating. He sucked air through his tight lungs, and placed his hands on the ground again, feeling it beating in tandem. It was calming, a large purring cat with a grass pelt. He felt kind of bad for digging into it, and mentally apologized.
Alex was much more efficient at the job, it only took her about ten minutes to make the hole large enough to open the whole casket properly. TJ hopped down and finagled with the sealed opening a bit. Magnus dug his fingers into the soil, every atom in his entire body vibrating with anticipation. He could feel the pulse through the very tips of his fingers, letting his blood soak through the topsoil.
As soon as the lid popped open, it was like a taut wire being cut with a sharp snap . Magnus finally took in a full breath of air, as if something heavy was pulled off of his chest. Alex immediately recoiled and gagged from where she was standing, plugging her sensitive nose and walking a few feet away from the grave. Her curly head of hair was bristled.
“Sorry, sorry, fuck - that’s awful. No offense, Magnus,” Alex apologized nasally, nose pinched shut, and went to sit next to her partner, giving him a pat on the back. Mallory took that as her cue to go help the others remove the body from the coffin. “You doing okay?”
Magnus tried to respond with something intelligible, but it came out more like a half-asleep mumble of letters in the vague shape of words. The earth, in all its wisdom and love, was calling him home. It was a home more than any place, person, or thing he had ever known. It absorbed the blood from this body gladly, and most importantly, it begged for the return of his rotting corpse. He should never have been left to decay inside a wooden box, said the earth. It was cruel beyond measure. He hummed and pressed his face to the cool dirt, Alex just patted his back again awkwardly.
“I guess we just… pull it out?” TJ said, lacking any confidence in the sentence.
“Make sure nothing breaks off, or anything- well, you can probably just cut those.”
“I’ve got it, woman,” Halfborn scoffed. There were a few thumping and snapping sounds that did not sound very reassuring from where Alex was sitting. Halfborn hoisted something out, not unlike the way he had pulled Magnus out of the hole earlier. Mallory chided him again on being careful.
Alex looked at the thing in the lantern light. It seemed more like an empty old doll than anything else, the way Pottery Barn had been nothing but a lump of clay before Alex breathed life into them. He was wearing a tuxedo, it wasn’t as nice as the one he wore to the wedding, though. It was just a dull and practical black blazer over a white dress shirt with matching pants. Magnus always wore boring clothes, but this was its own realm of stiff and drab that made Alex almost gag all over again.
Magnus’ mortal body was surprisingly intact, peaceful like he was simply sleeping. However, Alex now knew that Magnus’ sleep was anything but that. She was more used to seeing him bleeding out, shot, stabbed, horribly mangled and missing some limbs, decapitated, disemboweled, and so on. Such was the life of Valhalla’s honorable dead. This was almost more unnerving. It was too quiet, like he was about to open his eyes and sit right up.
The strangest part was the creeping green overgrowth seemingly permeating his body. Vines crawling across his graying skin, large, fanning leaves poking from his hair, and colorful flowers budding up. Alex noticed, as she looked closer, it seemed to focus at his middle. Verdant clovers, vibrantly purple comfrey, a few yellow roses, and speckles of bright white yarrow petals pushed through and brought a bizarre contrast to his limp deadness and the fabric of his formal attire.
“Did you know that I died by drowning?” The Magnus who was alive next to her asked quietly, which startled the fuck out of her. He had sat up again, and his face and arms and front were smeared with dirt. “It was a nicer way to go than bleeding to death, I think,” his voice had a soft and dreamy lilt that made Alex want to strain her ears to it. It was a gentle placidity she wasn’t used to hearing. “Technically, I didn’t even have a weapon in my hands when I died.” He turned to look at himself, “Oh, that’s where Surt threw melted concrete at me.” He put his hand against his stomach like he was feeling an echo of the blow once more.
Alex could smell the embalming chemicals from where she was sitting, and it stung her nose and eyes. There was the fragrant heady mix of various floral scents, too. She swallowed thickly. “I didn’t know that,” she responded.
Magnus mentioned Surt to her, of course, but he skimped out on a lot of the details. Obviously, she could relate. Alex didn’t like talking about being mauled to death any more than he did drowning or whatever. While their long-dead einherjar friends were more forthcoming on their causes of death, Magnus and Alex hadn’t quite gotten there. There was also the matter of the Valkyrie body cams that broadcast the entire ordeals to the whole hotel…
Also, Magnus just had a hard time explaining anything, even though Alex could tell whenever he was way too stuck in his own head. At least his thick skull protected him from concussions. Magnus got up, wavering on his feet a bit, and Alex gripped his arm to steady him. He was still really warm, feverishly so for a normal person.
“What now?” Mallory asked him once they got closer. Alex pinched her nose shut, again. The overbearing smell was making her nauseous.
Magnus stared down at his corpse, eyes and jaw sewn shut, arms folded over his blooming abdomen. It seemed like even when confined to that box, the earth was trying to break him down, to reclaim him wholly. He appreciated that.
“We burn it,” he stated confidently.
After closing his now-empty casket, and resealing his grave, they had dragged his corpse over to a grassless, treeless area. It seemed like the cemetery had been doing construction, as there was a large man-made hill of dirt where construction vehicles had excavated. His friends gathered up some firewood for kindling, and once they had arranged it around his lifeless body (far more reverently than they typically operated, Magnus couldn't help but notice) Mallory produced her trusty old lighter. She handed it to him wordlessly, and Magnus accepted.
Alex also gave him a small bundle of tinder, all the small sticks tied into a neat package with a grass knot. He almost smirked at her strange display of affection.
“Thank you.” She just nodded and walked over to stand by the rest of their hallmates.
The demigod looked down at himself one last time, then sparked the lighter.
Cremating a body takes a surprisingly long time, Magnus mused. He supposed that’s why there were special places you paid hundreds to do it for you. It didn’t help that he was naturally resistant to heat. Mallory mentioned something about how the embalming chemicals should make him more flammable, but it was taking hours regardless. Halfborn has suggested they stick him on a raft to burn, in true Viking fashion, like they had done with Gunilla. However, Magnus refused the idea, mostly because he wanted the cremated ashes, but also because he didn’t want to be a Viking. No offense to Halfborn.
Magnus didn’t really know how to feel about the whole thing. He wasn’t even sure which family member organized his funeral and burial, but he guessed it was his Uncle Frederick. The demigod wished they didn’t waste thousands of dollars to stick him in a fancy box in the ground, next to an empty plot with a headstone where his mother never was or would be. It was all so meaningless. He wondered who even went to his own funeral besides his uncle and Annabeth- probably no one. A part of him hoped it was no one.
There wasn’t a funeral for Uncle Randolph either. It was just a memorial service that Magnus didn’t bother attending- same as with his mom’s- partly because he was supposed to be dead himself. He felt kind of bad for his surviving uncle, both his siblings were gone. Gone gone. And here he was doing that thing Alex was talking about, again.
“What are you gonna do with it now, just leave it here?” TJ asked, shaking Magnus from his thoughts. His friend had taken a random branch and was whittling it to pass the time.
Magnus hugged his knees, then rested his chin on them. “I’m gonna scatter them at Blue Hills. That’s what we did with my mom, anyways.” That felt like the right thing to do. The thought of being with his mom again, even though they would both not be themselves anymore, was comforting. Their ashes and bones would become the earth, and from earth they would become plants and animals and back to earth one thousand times over. In the way that everything and everyone he knew would dissolve back to Ginnungagap when Ragnarok came, and it became just one and nothing at all and something new entirely.
He turned to look at all his friends individually, staring long and hard at each of them as they were illuminated by the warm glow of his funeral pyre. “Thank you for helping with this, by the way.”
Halfborn, as usual, whacked him roughly on the back, knocking the air out of him and definitely cracking something. “Of course! It was refreshing to see such a crazed glint in your eyes for a change.”
“Thanks,” the son of Frey wheezed. It was especially hard on his worn lungs.
“Of course we’re gonna help you with something like this,” Mallory confided, “you idiot,” she tacked on.
Then, Alex quickly leaned over and pulled him into a hug. The girl wrapped her thin arms around him, squeezing their warmth together. Her hair smelled faintly like sweet, spiced vanilla. Magnus knew the human anatomy inside and out. He could feel all the vertices of her chin, her collarbones, her sternum, her ribcage, her shoulders, humerus and radius and ulna, and every single one of her metacarpals gracing his back. His face got hot and every muscle in his body tensed, frozen in the instant of experience. Before he could even process it, she pulled away and sat back next to him.
“Um,” he said. Magnus felt like she had lodged a live grenade in his chest and pulled the pin. At any second his heart might explode into a gory splatter.
“What?” Alex challenged. TJ snorted, grinning into his palm, and Mallory rolled her eyes. “You looked like you needed it.”
“Uh,” Magnus tried again. “Thank you?” He still wasn’t really used to all the physical affection that came with having many friends.
“You’re welcome.”
There was a brief period of silence, everyone just watching the giant bonfire they’d made of Magnus’ former self. The flames roared and hissed, and their intense glow and heat was like a second sun crashed down onto Earth. It was hard to make out any human features through the fire that engulfed him like a giant orange cocoon. For a while the smell was terrible, but now there was something sickly sweet to it. It was the aroma of herbs and spices and firewood. Mallory joked that it smelled like potpourri, but it really wasn’t far off.
For the next hour and a half, they all passed the time chatting about mundane shit. Halfborn pontificated about Germanic literature, and how he was attempting to restore a specific piece of Old Norse history. A lot of it flew right over Magnus’ head, but Alex seemed mildly interested when it came to art restoration work. It was one of the few things the berserker and the ceramicist agreed on.
Mallory brought up how she was getting along with some Valkyries, and how their job seemed exciting and interesting. When Halfborn asked if she was considering a position, she just shrugged. Magnus thought she would make an exceptional captain, and he knew Samirah would be willing to put in a good word.
TJ also brought up how they should start a Dungeons and Dragons campaign sometime, to which everyone around him wholeheartedly agreed. He went on an extensive ramble about classes and fantastical races and different books, and it wasn’t long before the fire began dimming. They were easily able to tamp out any residual embers.
Magnus and company scooped up whatever ashes and clumps of grave soil they could, crushing his bones into white powder. They allowed him the honor of bashing in his own brittle skull like it was a morbid piñata. Everyone looked pretty much the same on the inside, Magnus thought, when the physical flesh and personhood were stripped away everyone was just another inert and insignificant piece of the universe.
TJ dumped out his gunpowder flask- which he always had on him for some reason- and they funnelled it into that. When it was packed full, Halfborn pulled out his own mead horn from gods-knew-where and filled it with the rest of the ashes. Magnus caught a glimpse of Alex, and noticed her face was strangely thoughtful and reserved. It had been for a while now. He had half a mind to inquire as to what was eating at her.
“I-I should probably tell Annabeth about this,” Magnus mentioned instead, pocketing the flask and securing the horn around his waist with its leather strap. He flexed his hands, all the dried blood and dirt and grass was making him feel weird and itchy. His regenerative abilities had sealed up his sliced fingers and palms, and were steadily healing over. Magnus hoped he wouldn’t get an infection or something. Somehow, it had not fully dawned on him before this moment that he was only wearing a thrift store sleep shirt and shorts, and no socks or shoes.
“Uh, yeah, I would think so,” Alex scoffed, shaking herself from her ruminations. “Do you wanna start with the dreams, or the grave robbing your own corpse?”
“Let’s start by leaving! This place is giving me the creeps,” TJ interjected. “Can we go to McDonald’s?”
The next day, after Magnus had gotten an immensely refreshing ten hours of uninterrupted and dreamless REM sleep, he got a knock on his door. He yawned before answering it, and was greeted by Alex, looking exactly as she did the night before.
“Did you… sleep well?” Magnus asked, noting her frazzled hair and reddened eyes. She just blinked and didn’t respond to his question. Alex held out something to him, almost reverently.
It was a pot with a lid- no, it was an urn. Magnus didn’t say anything either, his throat conspicuously closing shut. He numbly took the urn from her hands, which he noticed were coated in dried clay and paint.
Its body was rounded, almost heart-shaped with a smaller base. The shape and weight of it seemed molded to his cupped palms. The lid fit perfectly, with a spherical nub at the top like a handhold. The body was a gorgeous marbled mix of earthy, muted pine green, reddish copper, brass and platinum hues. Alex had explained to him the process of raku firing when she had asked him to help her with it once. It took a lot of flammable material, and Magnus was notoriously inflammable. The process left a lot up to the chaos of the universe- air pressure, temperature, the quality of the clay itself, milliseconds of time- which was very Alex .
Despite the child of Loki’s typical lack of meticulous detail work, she had painted on some impressionistic smatterings of purple flowers, almost tracking the minuscule black cracks in the glaze. On the “front” of the urn- it’s broader surface- was a carved symbol of a sun, a large spiral with many sharp prongs jutting from it along with a smaller row of petals across its circumference. The lines she had carved were also traced with metallic gold paint. When Magnus turned it to catch light, he could recognize the technicolor luster overglaze setting the piece awash with a rainbow shimmer. He could feel the magic she had manually worked into the clay and paint of it, radiating like something small and delicate and newly born. He almost wanted to ask what its name was, like how dwarves treated their precious craft.
“It- it’s just until you have time to, you know, scatter them,” Alex said casually, hands now at her sides and picking at her white pants. “And you don’t have to keep it or anything. I just figured it was more convenient than hogging other people’s stuff or whatever. You can do whatever you want with it afterwards, toss it out or break it or-“
“No,” Magnus cut her off, “it’s beautiful.” He had witnessed what her father did to her art, what she had done to her art. It wasn’t right. Alex just stopped and looked at him. “I- I don’t… thank you,” he admired it for a few moments longer. She really spent all her free time on this, and that counted for something.
Magnus had seen himself through Alex’s eyes. The way he walked and talked and acted around her, but this was something different. It was something more. It was like she had absorbed what constituted his personhood, contemplated all his facets, and refined him into a tangible shape again. When they had burned the hollowed out and empty vessel of his mortal body, it was an act of purifying destruction. It was the star’s collapse back into nebulous dust. This felt like Alex had done the action’s opposite, constructing with solidifying heat this new vessel and firing it to the closest approximation of perfection Magnus had ever beheld. The stardust congealed back into something bright and new. This was her love: solid and vibrant and real.
“It’s been a while since someone’s said that to me,” the ceramicist smiled, and it felt like his heart was just modeling clay in Alex’s hands. She looked… relieved. Happy, even, and that made Magnus happy, too. These tiny words were what he could give back, and he would give them one million times over.
“Will you come with me?” the son of Frey offered. “If you’re not busy…”
“Of course I will,” Alex stated resolutely. Her warm and mismatched eyes were practically glittering with the opportunity, and Magnus just wanted to drink that in for an eternity.
Magnus did talk to Annabeth about it, eventually. Over the phone, she sounded a bit disappointed that she couldn’t come to Boston to scatter the ashes like they had with his mom. She had schoolwork.
Magnus promised that he understood, it wasn’t supposed to be anything too special, anyways. He tried telling the same to his hallmates, and yet they insisted they come along- as did Samirah and Blitzen and Hearthstone. Thankfully, Jack was mostly quiet, tethered to the chain around his neck.
They made a whole day trip out of it, piling their motley crew into and out of Boston’s public transportation in lieu of attempting to ride along Yggdrasil again. Magnus liked the casualness, but loathed the crowds. When he sat next to Alex, she secretly took his hand- the one not holding onto his urn- in hers, which was a nice bonus.
When they got to their destination, Magnus almost felt embarrassed about it. Though, he couldn’t entirely articulate why. Part of him kind of felt like there was too much of himself laid bare, standing in the topography of the nature reservation. Maybe even his dad was watching him, which would have been doubly weird. It was the same spot he and Annabeth scattered his mom’s ashes, and thinking about that was bittersweet.
He let them go without fanfare. Each handful of blackened ash and white bone powder scooped from the urn Alex had gifted him was casually carried off by the uncaring wind. The demigod felt relieved about it. He took a deep, liberating breath, and let it go with the wind.
He didn’t want to be special, and he didn’t want to be some savior. The demigod just wanted a place to belong. Magnus knew he did belong, both disintegrated in the welcoming, all-encompassing earth with his mother, and here presently standing alongside his new and unconventional family.