#low effort beats my lengthy rambling | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beautifulramblingbrains · 6 years

Text

The Dog - Chapter 2

Fandom: Vikings Characters: Ivar, Ubbe, Hvitserk, OC (However brief they appear.) Rating: This is Mature content with trigger warnings.

A/N: This was not meant to happen, but hey, it did. After my prologuey start, a couple more original characters have been added. Please note, this story deviates heavily from the show. I’m just a real lover of fictional history stories and getting lost in those worlds, and want to drag as many people with me as I can. Shout out to @murmelinchen for her forever guidance. FYI: Lines are time jumps, big or small.

Read the First Chapter/Prologue here

Tagging who I did before and whoever was interested in my ramblings: @pathybo @oddsnendsfanfics@sparklemichele @singingpeople@captstefanbrandt @equalstrashflavoredtrash @whenimaunicorn @kiiiimberlyriiiicker1995 @emmysrandomthoughts @pokeasleepingsmaug @underthenorthstar (If you want in or out of the tags just tell me, it’s all cool :))

Ivar surveyed the long ships progress; the loading and docking of the men while Hvitserk stood by his side. In the distance he could see Ubbe with his guards dock without looking back towards him standing on the high hill. Hvitserk still wouldn’t talk, a face like miserable thunder.

Ivar had had enough. “If it pains you that much, why don’t you go with your beloved dog brother?” Hvitserk looked to him, frowning, and also contemplating. “Your sorry face makes my heart bleed.”

A call from down by the dock was the last before the ships were to leave. Hvitserk still hadn’t moved, though fidgeted restlessly.

“Let Ubbe remember with his time away where he really belongs,” Ivar said, more to himself, but Hvitserk heard him clearly.

“You’re wrong to mess with our blood.” Finally, the mute boy spoke. “I can’t just stand here.” Ivar’s eyes widened as Hvitserk broke away, down the hill.

“Hvitserk!” Ivar called, shocked that he’d made such a decision. He hadn’t thought he’d take the bait.

“I’m going with my dog brother, to remember where we really belong,” Hvitserk stopped, hesitating, turning back to get his point across. “Because right now, I don’t feel it is here for me.”

Ivar seethed, face crumpled, eyes narrowed until Hvitserk docked, taking up only a small distance away from the dog. May the seas take their boat, he thought, for I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

But there he stood in his heavy furs, head hooded, watching until the masts disappeared and his men shivered around him in an unsaid oblige to watch. Ivar didn’t freeze from the cold, for his rage boiled under his skin, spreading like wildfire. But there was one thing that kept him from erupting; kept him from scarring the people around him with his temper. The thought that Ubbe wasn’t the same person he once was, and Hvitserk now had to deal with it.

Ivar the Boneless will triumph, even from countries apart.

Ivar smirked from beneath the darkness of his hood.

Avery knelt in her dark green dress, white pinafore stark against the material and still tied around her waist, pressing her hands together while whispering the lord's prayer beneath her breath. She stared into the flame of the candle for a long time. “Thank you for this sanctuary. Thank you for blessing us with time for recovery and healing.” After she’d finished, the room was still as quiet as it was before, not a sound, the room no bigger than a crypt if she thought about it long enough. It’s high windows of the Keep only blessing one the size and width of her hand high above her head, unreachable, making the darkness ever more imposing.

In her bed lay sleeping children, the eldest no older than eleven. They weren’t hers and they weren’t related. They were victims, all of them; victims of continuous war. They had all lost their families and been sent to various places, travelling off the back of the Lord. They all ended up here, put together like broken puzzle pieces and glued to fit. Avery was chosen and commanded to take care of them, and that she did, being the oldest of all the girls; blushing at the use of Lady used idly and comically from her masters because of her efforts.

As much as it was a sanctuary, it played a part in keeping her stashed away with a future unknown. She supposed that is what she prayed to God for in her underlying message of thanks; for answers asking if this were really it; the life she would now lead until she became nothing more than a spinster, or, perhaps a nun.

Avery clamped her eyes closed and banished the thought. When they opened they felt clearer. Poisonous thoughts shouldn’t linger on the mind, for when they fell asleep it would curdle their brain and seep into their everyday life - so they say. And girls young and scorned who kept secrets were the most poisonous of all.

But Avery had never spilled her thoughts on the future to anyone. And sometimes at night she would dream her blood didn’t run red but black, spilling out like oil, drowning the children beside her in their sleep. And many times she woke with a fright.

Remembering the dreams, Avery pulled her pinafore off, blew out the candle and crept in the dark to get in beside the youngest, the barest of cloth to cover her between the four of them. She must have been in a state of sleep and consciousness because she could hear so vividly a conversation of worries one of the priests brought to Benedict Biscop; the head of the Keep, a strictly religious and stern man in constant robes and situated in a fine room with a long table that Avery wasn’t allowed to enter.

Though he was stern, he found happiness in that he’d rescued some orphaned children and resided them with God’s people and the church’s men, and showed it regularly with lavish meals sent to them along with small parcels of delicate materials.

Though, it wasn’t the most appropriate place for young girls of any age to grow up, and there was always something wrong with the way religious men watched them. Perhaps Avery’s age and presence was the only thing that kept them safe.

“Stop,” Avery told her over-thinking mind. What ludacris thoughts. But the memory of the priest and his worries, along with the word ‘raids’ specifically, slowly seeped its way back in. And when she finally fell asleep, she dreamt of the oil catching fire.

A loud crash had Avery frightfully jumping awake. She put a hand to her chest and stared towards the door, concentrating for a moment until her vision blurred. One of the young ones sighed next to her and turned over which drew her attention away - until she heard it again.

Letting her feet down to the cold stone, she found her leather boots and slipped her feet in, tiptoeing towards the door. It opened with a harsh creak and she froze on the spot, looking down the empty hall towards the twisting stairs at the far end.

She glanced back to the youngsters still asleep, took her cloak from a stool and put it on her shoulders, heading down the hall. Footsteps, like someone sprinting echoed from the stairway, scratchy and far away. There was a voice, a low voice.

Avery crept closer, almost silently. She took the torch from the adjacent wall and went to the top of the steps, treading each one carefully. It only lead down to another floor, one on level with the Keep’s wall, and a lengthy hallway until she would be near Benedict Biscop’s living quarters. It was usually warmer down here, for her room was high, and they always had better fires and people to tend them regularly. But there was a weird chill, it breezed down from the quarters - the same one’s Avery headed to.

“Hello?” she said in the smallest whisper, searching ahead with the torch. “Is there somebody there?” She kept herself to the wall, hand out in front to keep steady until she got to the two-way corner which split the hall. She stopped and peered round it, seeing the door to Benedict Biscop’s quarters was open.

“Father Benedict?” Usually there was always a guard here. Usually the door remained locked and Avery had certainly never seen inside. But she found herself in the doorway, looking at the thrown sheets from the bed now littered with items, the overturned candle still burning. The room had been torn apart and left.

Further in, until she got close enough to stub the abandoned candle, she crouched low and licked her thumb and forefinger, dousing the flame. She then put it back next to the overly large bed and took a step back.

Something cracked under her heel.

She waved the torch down by her feet and got low again. Recognition, the thing from her nightmares - blood that looked black on the stone of the floor. A tooth, now splintered after she stood on it. “Lord, have mercy.” She stood and walked backwards, her chest heaving, the need to vomit rising. A smell became distinct, an unearthly metallic - death.

Avery bumped into something solid behind her and she turned her head over her shoulder half expecting for it to be the wall.

But it weren’t. And oh how she wished it was.

A bald man sheen in sweat and blood slapped across his face, tattoos etched like demonic callings weaving between his eyes, tilted his head. It made it harder to focus, to view him as even human. Avery felt her lungs seize up and the scream about to rip from her throat when he flung himself forward, grabbing her mouth, and pushing her back towards the bed. She dropped the torch when she buckled backwards, finally screaming out but it wasn’t long enough, for he had her pinned and was ripping at her skirt.

“Get off of me!” She beat him, tried ferociously to dig her nails into his face while simultaneously fighting her clothes back down. For only a brief moment, screams from the past echoed behind her eyes, seeing the flames in the village, finding her parents, their blood on her hands. It was happening. It was all happening again...

His strength felt inhuman, he smelt like something long dead, and he was speaking in a weird language she didn’t understand. He slapped her for her struggling efforts, snapping her head from side to side until she saw stars and felt the world draining away. Avery’s eyes danced, heavy, the room buzzing. In her daze she saw the three children in the doorway, rubbing their eyes, the eldest coming up behind the demon on top of her.

Reality shot back when what she was seeing was real. The eldest jumped upon the demons back and made him move just enough for Avery to gather herself and get towards the pillows. He was shouting loudly now, having flung the eldest, Eda, to the ground.

There was something; a moment when he looked at Avery that she saw every intention. When he turned back to Eda, horrified Eda pleading with an extended arm, Avery slipped from the bed while he was too busy pulling Eda from the floor. She found the torch, the thinned, spike-like end, and crept towards him. The children were screaming, Avery’s face was throbbing. She lifted it behind her head, over her right shoulder, baring her teeth and willing her might, and put all the force she could gather into bringing it down into the fleshiest piece of his neck.

It didn’t work as well as she had initially thought, but enough so that he let Eda go and that he had to pull it out of his skin. Avery and the children ran from the room, and she shut it behind her, pushing the little ones ahead, guiding them towards an exterior door that lead to the walkway of the wall where she could finally get a glimpse of what was happening beyond.

They busted through and were met with a contemporary description of Hell. The battle of the church’s men against Heathrens. Cries called out around them, the sounds of metal clashing, arrows zipping. Avery ordered the children to crouch by the brow of wall while she got her thoughts straight. The only logical place she knew to go was the cellar of the kitchen. Their quarters were now compromised. Outside was too dangerous...

She dragged them back inside, carolling them down the steps as Benedict’s door was thrown open and an eerie shadow cast upon the wall. Her feet worked so fast, holding the back of the nightgown of the smallest as they fled for their lives. Down and down they went, three floors, passing corridors that seemed more perilous than theirs as the screams got louder. They passed figures battling, not sparing them a glance and finally reached the bottom, the fire was still roaring, logs spilled across the floor. Avery found the hatch under a rug and flung it open, her lungs heaving. The wooden stairs were steep and it was cold, but the children didn’t argue. Once inside, she grabbed Eda’s shoulders. “Stay here.”

“Avery! Don’t go. Don’t leave us,” Eda said. The youngest was sniffling into her sleeve.

“Get behind something and don’t come out until I come back. I’m going to look for a way out. I can’t do that with Kendra, she’s too small, and she needs you. Somebody needs to hide the hatch.”

It was irony. They knew of the room from when they would steal food, the old cook that worked here showing it to them in the first place. And now it would save their lives.

Eda nodded slowly, tears brimming her eyes. “Okay.”

“If I don’t-”

“No, Avery! Don’t!” Eda interrupted her, but she continued anyway.

“If I don’t, wait a day and follow the path towards the South. Keep heading south.” Avery didn’t know exactly why, and didn’t believe anyone was truly safe, but directions and commands were sometimes the only thing people had left apart from their faith in God. She briefly touched the rosary around her neck, hidden under her clothes.

There wasn’t time for goodbyes and Avery ruffled her hair, then took off up the steps. The hatch closed heavily, the last thing she saw being three pairs of frightened eyes. She pulled the rug over, hoping they were strong enough together to lift it. They had to be. On the way out, a cleaver was still stuck into pork, and Avery took it. Honestly, she wasn’t a warrior, but there was a difference between warriors and survivors. Survivors being far more dangerous.

Hell ravaged outside and fear momentarily crept back in. The screams and cries were enough to instill fear even in the bravest. The kitchen lead to a small area with chickens scuttling about by her feet, a small gate into the courtyard. Avery wrapped her cloak around her and pulled up the hood, shadowing herself in the darkness of the Keep. It felt like time passed slowly, and her gut kept telling her to stay where she was and not move. But the stables weren’t far, hoping that when she got there she wasn’t the only person with the same thought. Perhaps find some church men struggling with an escape.

The air around her grew quiet. Avery took it as a sign and snuck out, past holdings, the storehouse, and carts left idle. She darted between each one, further towards the Keep’s large gate and where the stables would be. But the closer she got the more she lost her faith. They were ransacked and empty, every horse Benedict Biscop held here taken. Those were his most treasured. The others were kept outside the walls in the surrounding village, not far, but not protected and cared for.

She checked anyway to find hay and horse manure, then went to the arching iron gates splayed open for all to enter and leave, looking down the hill and across the land. The village surrounding laid in ruins, burning, some with people still rummaging, others flinging women and children to the ground. Avery could see the glint of the moon on the river and that would be her chosen path. Behind her stood the Keep she’d known for a year presented as a Headstone.

Catching her breath, Avery wiped at the blood from her mouth where the monster had slapped her. Overall, she was fine considering what might have happened.

“Stúlka.”

That thick accented language burned her ears. Avery turned to see another burly demon standing loosely, sword in hand, helm in the other against his hip. He was covered in a similar grime, chest still heaving from his murderous efforts.

“Stay away from me!” Automatically she held the cleaver up towards him. “I am not a...afraid…” she suddenly lost her voice, watching great flames beginning to lick out of the windows in the top tower of the Keep, furthest away - where her and the children would have been sleeping. “Oh my-” she bolted towards the courtyard. From out of the shadows came the bald, tattooed man from before, blood still wet, but not looking any less threatening, blocking her way. Two of them stood between her and the children now locked in the cellar. “I am not a threat to you. Just let me go,” she pleaded.

The two spoke briefly. Then another voice rose up behind her and she swiveled between them all, still holding the cleaver up. There was a strong smell, something unnatural burning in the air. The three got closer, more men began to appear; happy, excited, thrilled with the carnage. Eventually her back hit the wall of the arching Keep entrance as they closed in from both sides leaving her nowhere to go. The first one came towards her quickly and she slashed at him to no avail. He knocked the cleaver away and grabbed her only weapon, lobbing it somewhere over his shoulder, and heavy handedly grabbed her neck, forcing Avery to walk.

But it was the wrong way. And the children…

She didn’t care what would happen to her.

She pushed with all her might and tried to run, only for her hood and hair to be grabbed and yanked back. Avery kicked, lashed out by violently shifting her weight.

A thick blackness billowed into the air above the Keep and desperation sunk in. “You don’t understand! There are only children in there! They don’t know to run! Let me tell them! Let me-” They gagged her, tying rope around her wrists. She was still screaming into the dusty cloth in her mouth, catching a glimpse of the monster from Benedict Biscop’s room showing the wound she gave him. They smiled and joked in their strange language, the quietest being the one who held her, guiding her casually away from the Keep as it creaked and groaned, while she shrieked with it hysterically.

They all didn’t seem to mind.

Avery still fought as she was tied to a horse to walk behind it, pulling back even though it was pointless.

The very top tier made an awful rumbling noise, part crumbling away… and that smell…

Avery watched as the tower began to lean, right over the kitchen, right where she had led them. It buckled, like her knees, and ploughed down into the building below. She lost all her senses, letting the darkness swallow her, just a secondary pain from her wrists as they jolted in her collapse. Then... nothing.

She will burn in Hell.

Avery woke to the sound of a rhythmic wheel turning, the rumbling beneath her head bouncing it off of wooden planks. It was bright daylight, blue skies, cloudless as she stared up. Her eyes felt heavy, body like lead, and as she tried to raise her hand her wrists were still bound, mouth gagged. Everything came rushing back.

Sitting up the world spun. She was being watched by an old man on the head of the cart, turned right around, legs in the back with whatever bounty they’d stolen, and her. Behind them trailed a line of horses. They were walking slowly, but timely, and peacefully.

Avery’s eyes narrowed at the men that dragged her from her home. They stared at her, blankly and unabashedly. Trying to appear fierce didn’t work. They were eating too, sharing across to each other. Avery didn’t know where or how far they’d come. It was just open land for miles, greenery, and severely cold. She only realised she was shivering when she automatically tried to pull her cloak further around her, finding it hard work with tied wrists.

The cart stopped suddenly, almost sending her over the back. They left her for the best part, idling themselves with building a camp. It might have been an hour or so that she watched until she was approached. They said something foreign to her, a command. When Avery didn’t move, they resort to grabbing her. Men laughed while she was hauled over one of their shoulders, kicking and hitting out, her yell muffled. She was all but thrown into a put-up tent and she scrambled right back, warily eyeing Benedict Biscop’s room demon.

Avery’s mind raced. He was going to try again, his pants were already half undone and nobody seemed to care to stop him. His wound had been covered. She owed him, that must be going through his mind, and it must have been the reason why she was still alive.

He yanked her ankles, pulled her down, removed her ragged mouthpiece and tugged her mouth to his, a disgusted sensation causing her to cringe, pulling constantly away. He said something, pinning her with his body, travelling down her neck, smothering her. With hands bound they were useless. She was going to die either way. She lifted her head and chomped down into his cheek as hard as she could until her teeth hurt, unrelenting to him shouting out some curse she didn’t understand. He rose up on his knees, seeing blood through his fingers; blood she had caused again. But before he lashed out this time, she kneed him, wiggled away, clambered up and ran from the tent.

Outside people laughed like it was some hilarious joke, the entertainment after a successful raid - and that wasn’t far from the truth. The demon came out from the shadows, absolutely furious, spitting onto the grass. Avery pleaded to all the amused faces, panicking, dizzy, lost. They all looked small and as if they couldn’t stand up to this unrelenting demon or as if they wouldn’t want to. They’d rather watch her get torn to shreds - except one. One who didn’t laugh, one who was polishing his helm while seated on a log doing his best to ignore the commotion. The crowd of people found her too amusing to stop and she ran to him and halted.

“Please…”

The quiet one stood up, frowning, looking at the blood by her mouth then to the unamused demon storming up behind her.

He’s big enough, she thought. And just when the demon reached for her, she slipped behind the quiet one, a curious expression gracing his face.

They made a brief exchange, the quiet one suddenly squaring his stance, the conversation getting a little heated until the demon threw his hands up exasperated and strode off. Then he merely rolled out his shoulders and sat, continuing to polish his helm, two feral dogs as symbols on each side.

Avery caught her breath, the wind whipping her cloak out behind her while watching the crowd disperse. Putting one foot sneakily behind the other, she backed up, looking unsuccessfully for a treeline or cover. There was nothing. But it was better than staying put.

“Think very carefully, stúlka,” he finally spoke to her, not gracing her a glance. “I will not care for you a second time.” He spat into his rag, smoothing it across the snarl of one of the dogs.

“I knew you understood me! I knew it,” her voice only squeaked from the fear still rattling her bones. “To Hell with you!” Avery turned, bolting across the grass.

What she didn’t see was Ubbe The Dog stand, pull back his arm and lob his helm directly at her head. Watching her tumble to the ground in a heap, he sat down back on his log, eventually joined by Hvitserk casually strolling over. “We move on tomorrow at first light. West,” Ubbe instructed, taking the ale Hvitserk offered - tasting better stolen.

Hvitserk peered to the girl out cold on the field. “We take slaves?”

“She stabbed Hendrick.”

It was enough for Hvitserk, and he nodded in acknowledgment.

Ubbe downed his drink, throwing the cup out to the field. “Bring out our holy man Benedict.”

#the dog #chapter 2 #ubbe #hvitserk #ivar #oc #fanfiction #vikings #vikings fanfiction #ubbe fanfiction #beautifulramblingbrains

51 notes · View notes