2 Further into the forest

As He gazed into the eyes of Trygvald one last time before he started to walk towards the forest. His heart now free from his burden, he felt peaceful at last and his face had a melancholic smile as he remembered his family. He did not hear all the commotion behind him as he enterted the outskirts of the forest.

As he was nearing the trees of the forest he heard an arrow whistling past him and struck the ground in front of him so he spun his head around and saw a handful of warriors clad in chain mail and heavily armed, running towards him. As the archers were firing towards him. And thus he began to run as fast as his legs could carry him, he did not know why but he did not want to die so he just ran and all of a sudden he felt the weird when running and looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his abdomen, but it did not stop him from running.

As he started to enter deeper into the forest he began to feel the pain from the arrow and when he turned to see how far away his chasers were, he saw a weird object traveling through the rain but it was to late to evade for it struck his left shoulder and he stumbled and nearly fell but found his balance once more.

"HOW COULD YOU LET THE KID ESCAPE AFTER HE KILLED TRYGVE AND HIS ENTIRE FAMILY LIKE THIS!!!!" shouted Jarl Einar as he held his friends corpse in his arms, Trygve was still alive when they found them and with his last breath he asked his friend Jarl Einar to avenge him and his family for their murder.

"GET ME THAT BOYS HEAD NOW OR I WILL TAKE YOURS!!!!!" The Jarl bellowed while fighting to keep his emotions in cheek.

He ran and ran till his legs could no longer run and with no where to sleep but the ground below his feet, he tried to find a shelter to rest and mend his wounds, but to his horror he heard something he could not believe. "AAWWWOOOOOOHH!!!". 'Wolfs...' and when he had just escaped from one threat into the jaws of another, he sighed and took his ax from his belt and prepared himself for battle so he tore out the arrowhead and shaft from his shoulder, giving out a bestial grunt while tears flowing from his eyes, and placed it in his mouth and dug his teeth hard into it. He then placed a hand onto the shaft of the last one in his abdomen, his grip was sturdy and hard as he held the arrow in his abdomen and broke it off it.

He grunted and spat the arrow out from his mouth while trying to find where the wolf's were hiding in the dense forest, as lightning would periodically give light to the otherwise pitch black forest. And there he saw shining eyes staring at him, then a flash of light unveiled the wolf to his eyes and it was enormous.

The largest wolf he had ever seen and he had spent four years living alone in the forest and periodically sold his wares in towns or small village communities to survive, and this wolf was enormous. Reaching nearly a meter in height and more then one and a half meters in length, they stared at each other for what seemed like eternity for him but when the next flash of light erupted and unveiled the forest from the darkness the wolf pounced forth making a wide swing with its claws and he extremely exhausted could barely get enough distance to not get to struck from it's sharp claws so he arched his ax and aimed to hit its skull but as the wolf shifted to save itself from the attack. It knew it could not disengage for it was already in motion and as its claws tore through his left shoulder, clothes and flesh.

His ax hit the wolf's neck missing it's intended target just as the wolf's claws missed his target, the neck. As the wolf landed to the ground it did so clumsily and nearly smashed into the muddy forest floor. While he nearly planted his face into the mud because of his exertion but remained standing.

Now once again staring at each other more hurt and ragged then before, he could notice that this wolf was all alone and it was very weak to be this huge, so it had probably not had any good meals for a long time and was probably starving causing it's weakened state, but it was determined to make this weak human into it's food. As the darkness once more vanished in a sudden flash of light, he took a leap forth aiming to kill this wolf in one go, with all his remaining strength but the wolf would not surrender so easily and did the same and thus both leapt forth towards each other and as he felt the ax pierced the wolf's flesh, the world vanished.

No more pain, no more hate.... nothing but emptiness. He tried to look around but he saw nothing. Confused and a little mortified he turned his head and body around, again and again. But there was still nothing, no fair maidens to take him to Odin's great hall. No songs for his entry... Nothing.. His knees gave in and he gripped his aching head, and began to scream and cry, lost and confused the boy had now nothing, and was surrounded by nothing.

He sat and cried until there was no more tears his body could muster. After a while he gathered whatever strengths that remained in him, and looked up from his hands. where he noticed that his surrounding had changed, there was now grass beneath him, he began to turn his gaze upwards until he saw what was in front him. His old house, his home. Where he saw his sisters outside playing with each other, he quickly began to pick himself up from the ground. And began to run towards the house and his family that was standing outside, now looking at him while smiling towards him, as he moved closer they got further away from him, and he saw how his mother opened her mouth and said. "So energetic, why don't you help your father with chopping some firewood, he....." But every word uttered grew more distant then te last until he could no longer hear nor see them, but he continued to run until, be began to fall downwards.

He opened his eyes and saw darkness and felt rain on his face, and warmth spreading throughout his body, then the light of thunder banished the darkness once more to reveal a dead wolf laying over him while it's blood was warming his body, and an ax protruding from its spine. He had now survived his first night as an outlaw. Could it be worse than 4 years as an orphan? Laying beneath a wolf in the mud he felt that he could not fight against fate any longer, so he slowly closed his eyes. When fully closed he got distracted by the warmth of the wolf's blood which reminded him how he had to survived a fight with a wolf while heavily wounded. So he opened them once again and searched for his knife, he slowly moved his left hand towards his belt and managed to get the knife out with only one option for him that remained, he decided that he needed to cut open the beast. So he slowly put his remaining strength into cutting it slowly so it would not stink for cutting open the intestines, so he had to do it carefully or risk surviving with that stench.

The wolf weighed just a little less then him even though it had been starving for some time, but he managed to cut what he needed nonetheless, and started to pull out all its internal organs. And when that was done he slowly moved the wolf's much lighter corpse to the side and started skinning it for he had no food and can't spoil this even though him whole body aches and he was still bleeding from my shoulder and an arrow stuck in my abdomen that he need to get out.

After he had skinned it he started cutting and scavenging the meat he could eat now and what he could probably save when he has fixed a fire for he needs to fix his wounds and stay warm, for it will start to get even colder soon. He managed to see a clearing just a couple of meters to his right and started to move there and as he went he gathered all the sticks he could and to search a spot so he could prepare a fire, but when he found a dry spot, he started getting dizzy after he had managed to find it under a tree. He knew he had to act as fast as he could, otherwise he would die if he lost consciousness. So he began stacking the sticks so he could make a good fire, and then he began to strike a piece of flint with his knife, sparks flew but no fire, so he struck again and again. By now he could barely sit up straight, and had no fire. with blurred vision he once again tried and as he were to strike the flint he missed and hit one of the tips of his finger's and it got cleanly cut off from his left hand.

It did not stop him from trying once more and hit the flint while sparks spewed into a ball of wood chips, and it started to give smoke and he dropped the knife and flint he began to blow were the smoke came from and it began to generate even more smoke and he continued to blow at it until it started to burn. As the fire began to eat at the ball of wood chips he sat down and proceeded to take off his clothes and then wrapped himself in the freshly cut wolf skin

He felt how the warmth of the fire had begun to warm his cold and aching body, he placed his knife in the fire and began to gazed deep into it, which got him thinking of the God of fire. Loki, the deceiver of the gods. Loki 'Mover of stories'.

He saw how all weapons aimed at Baldur could do him no harm, so he wondered if there was anything which was not bound to not harm Baldur. So he disguised himself with the power of fire, and asked Baldur's mother Frigg if all things in the world had sworn to not harm him, she gave him the answer which were the mistletoe but she did not know that it was Loki, so he made himself a spear made of mistletoe, and gave it to the blind god Hodr who had yet to throw or try to harm Baldur and could only hear how the others have had a good time doing it. So Loki approached him and gave him the spear and encouraged him to throw the spear at Baldur, not knowing that this spear would be the death of Baldur, Hodr felt that he could at least try to partake in this new activity and have some fun for himself. Loki knowing this helped Hodr aim the spear and Hodr threw the spear and as it flew towards Baldur everyone was grinning at the good throw and arch but the spear did not stop or miss Baldur no, it contuined to fly in an emaculate arc towards Baldur until it pierced his body, and with that final act a spark flew from the fire awaking him from the hypnotizing fire.

As he pondered over the story of Baldur's death, he starts to see his breath began to fog, and understood that if he's unlucky the first snow will fall tonight and he might die here as a result of that, so he looked at the knife he placed into the fire. It had began to get very hot, so he looked at the arrow still in his abdomen and began to straighten his back and readying himself for the pain soon to come. After letting it gather some more warmth he removed the cloth on his hurt finger first and put the hot knife on top of the severed part of the finger.

The smell and sound of sizzling flesh made him a little nauseous, and the pain was ungodly. before he removed the knife he looked at the arrow he had to remove, and bit down hard onto a piece of wood he had found, he began with removing the knife from the finger and readied himself to close the soon open wound in his abdomen.

As he moved the free hand to the arrow and took a firm hold on it he grunted as it was extremely painful to touch the arrow, with a mighty pull it was out and as it came loose it did so without any problems, he then scrambled to place the knife on the bleeding wound. He nearly screamed in the process of closing the wound with the steaming hot knife, but he succeeded in suppressing the scream and as he closed to wound he dropped the knife and keeled over to his side as all the strength he had left began to fade away, same with the world around him.

He found himself now in complete darkness, and in that darkness he saw shadows dance around him, and one of them stood behind them with eyes like the embers of a dying fire staring at him. In those embers one could see mesmerizing patterns intertwining into more complex shapes then before, when he saw the shadow move and a silhouette of an arm and pointed it to the never ending darkness behind him and as he turned he saw how a something red rose in the distant horizon.

As it moved across the dark horizon towards the sky above, it revealed itself as an eye just like the ones that belonged to the creature of shadows. As he saw the eye stare at him he felt as if the eye could see everything, lies and truth alike nothing could escape its gaze. In the dancing patterns within he could feel as if he could gaze into the future but as he felt so he heard a shrieking and decaying voice call out for him.

"My star, I saw it high and far

At the parting of the ways

A light on the edge of the outer night

Like silver set ablaze

Where the round world plunges steeply down

But on the old roads goes

As an unseen bridge that on arches runs

To coasts that no man knows."

With that a star started to shine for its first time and unleashed its blessed light onto him which blinded him, and as his eyes recovered the voice continued.

"I would not find the burning domes and sands

Where reigns the sun, nor dare the deadly snows

Nor seek in mountains dark the hidden lands

Of men long lost to whom no pathway goes"

A vast desert dwelled now in front of his recovering eyes, and he could not believe what he saw, a boundless dessert stretching from one horizon to the other, he could not possibly fathom what his eye was showing him, he could see how the blazing eye has fully crossed the horizon and entered the heavens above. The sand shifted for a moment before he fell straight through the ground but the voice started to hum once more, and with it a world anew came forth from the empty space below.

"But where they bloom those flowers fair

In what air or land they grow

What words beyond the world I heard

If you would seek for know"

As he now looked around him he saw a beautiful valley surrounded by mighty mountains and a rainbow passed over a mountain into the valley floor making a bridge to the bright star now giving the world light anew, a gust of wind came and carried the shrieking voice forth.

"In a boat then, brother, far afloat

You must labor in the sea

And find yourself things out of mind

You will learn no more of me."

As sudden as the shrieking voice came it vanished, and with it the light got even brighter as he tumbled downwards, and the closer he got to the ground the brighter it got until nothing but light remained, he slowly opened his eyes to see that the sun had risen from the east to shine it's warm light once more, but as he gazed towards the sun which lies hidden behind the trees he could feel something warm flowing down his cheeks, as he touched it he came to realize that he was crying.