Du Er Ikke Alene

Isak didn’t know where he was when he opened his eyes, and the first thing he was aware of was the heat, which was like nothing he had ever felt.

It was licking at his back, at his side, at his front; it was all compassing, everywhere all at once and inescapable, like the hug of an overbearing aunt he couldn’t escape.

His vision was filled with rays of light everywhere he looked in front of him: white, orange, yellow, red, green; beams of light rushing everywhere in front of his eyes and ricocheting by hitting each other or just changing their path randomly.

And next to him, a woman was standing there, her hand tight around thick leather reins. She was taller than he was; her hair shone as if the light was coming from within her instead of being bathed in sunlight.

They were both standing on a chariot, pulled by two horses whose shoulders and backs were covered in thick iron and galloping, pulling the chariot forward and behind it, held securely by chains: the sun; which was where his eyes finally travelled to.

It explained the heat he could feel bathing his body.

“Sól,” growled a voice.

Looking away from the sun, Isak turned his eyes toward the voice coming from behind them. His eyes had a short reprieve from all the light coming from the ball of fire, but when his gaze fell on the source of the voice, he almost regretted being half blind from the sun’s light.

If he and the woman were bathed in light, the wolf running after them was draped in darkness, each of his steps making the light that was just there disappear and bringing in the night. Spit dripping from his open maw, locked in a snarl as he ran toward them, his eyes focused on the chariot in front.

“Sól,” he repeated.

The shout was deafening; the growl echoing around space and rushing toward them like a sound bullet.

Isak blinked at it, feeling his hair move from the strength of the shout toward them and his body hair reacting as well, standing on end and making his body shiver even with the strong heat coming from the sun next to them.

He finally looked away, toward the woman next to him, toward Sól, who acted like she didn’t hear the wolf.

Maybe she was too used to it. Maybe she couldn’t hear it well, not with the other noises around them.

With his focus pulled away from the wolf, he could only hear the sound of her horses’ hooves as well as the crackling from the sun. His studies always told him that the sun was loud, but here it was barely over the sound of a torch. Or maybe the distance between the sun and where he stood was protecting him from the actual noise of the celestial object.

Either way, the hooves and the wheels of the chariot were louder to him, and maybe that was why she could easily ignore the beast behind them.

It didn’t scream often, but Isak didn’t really have any sense of time as he stood there, in this chariot pulling the sun, Sól’s chariot.

Under them he could see the realms, nine circles laying there, branches of Yggdrasil holding them in place across its unfathomably big tree trunk, even being so high that he could see the nine realms in just one glance, he couldn’t see the start or the end of the World Tree and just trying made him dizzy.

Wherever his focus was pulled toward, it hurt him in different ways: the heat, the noise, the sheer size of it all, and the beast snarling behind them and he didn’t have to think long of what the wolf would do to them if it caught them; Isak didn’t belong here.

Why was he even there? Why was he seeing this?

He didn’t remember eating anything weird the night before, and his dreams tended to be more rational, not that he lacked imagination. As a demigod, it would be hard not to have some, when his daily life could include running into random sjövættir that would try to soak him or worse, drown him, but his dreams had never been like this. Real like this.

His eyes caught a movement, and before he could turn toward it to see better, the chariot shook, and the woman screamed.

“How dare you?” she shouted before the chariot shook again and tumbled, sending Isak out of it and into the empty space around them.

The sudden action made the chains holding the sun break like old rubber bands, and the horses kept running forward as Isak started to fall.

He looked up and saw a massive chain raise and hit the chariot again; the contact making it explode, sending bits of wood everywhere at high speed; he barely had time to put his arms in front of his face as pieces of wood were coming his way and a small shard embedded itself in his hand, making him hiss.

As his body gained speed toward the World Tree and the realms held within, he saw the chain stab her shoulder.

The scream that followed was so loud that even with the distance between them, he could feel it in his bones; it resonated, from his ears to his brain in less than a second, his eyes tearing up from the pain at feeling his body being shaken that way.

Away from Sól he saw the horses keep running and already almost invisible among the surrounding darkness, he saw the wolf stop where the chariot had been hit and destroyed and heard it growl and howl and the night around them seemed darker the more Isak fell and the longer Sól appeared to be incapacitated, he couldn’t see her anymore, not since the chariot was hit a second time and her body was taken down by the chain.

His gaze went back to the sun floating there, broken chains floating around it, the celestial body still blinding him.

His eyes opened, and he groaned at being blinded by the dawn.

“Faen,” he groaned, raising his hand in front of his eyes to hide them from the sun coming into his room through his opened curtains.

He was barely able to blink his eyes open when he stood up to walk toward the window to hide his room from the sun.

The sun.

His hand started to tremble around the curtains he was still holding, and he released them, grabbing his hand with his other one, trying to keep the appendage steady.

Was there something about the sun today? He squinted at the closed curtains, trying to remember why thinking about the sun would suddenly make his hand shake.

He turned around toward his bed, groaning at how illuminated his room still looked, even with the closed curtains. Maybe it was just his vision, after being blinded by the morning sun, maybe it imprinted on his eyes or something.

If he were more alert, he’d realize his own body was emitting more light than his room had ever received from the sun itself, but it would end up fading before he could.

He went back to his bed and, just in case the apartment would decide to open his curtains again, he turned his back to the window and closed his eyes.