Page 27 of Thorulf
Chapter Ten
“IRELAND?” JADE EXCLAIMED, shaking her head. The memory of their tiny dragons’ first contact had just faded.“How could Ireland possibly connect Thorulf and me?”
Like before, Thorulf felt a sense of loss when tiny Jade faded. A sense of wanting to stay in the memory. Wanting to be near her for as long as possible. Then again, seeing her like she was now, full-grown, was just as enjoyable. She was a ravishing green dragon with emerald eyes that reflected her human half. Eyes he could spend eons staring into.
“Thorulf’s Celtic magic comes from Irish gods,”Loki reminded, ushering them along down the tunnel.“Not to mention, the Forge took place in Ireland.”
Jade stopped short when she realized what he implied.“You think I was transparent in Helheim because I was born into Ireland first?”
“That would be my guess.”Loki kept ushering them along again.“Though I can’t imagine how that happened or how you made it to Helheim after that.”
There were certainly missing pieces in all this.
“So we’ve yet another mystery to figure out,”Maya said.“Though I suspect them meeting like that before they were born on Midgard was related to them being born on the same day in different years.”Everyone traveled single file through the narrowing winding tunnel in the rock as Maya kept reflecting.“So not only was Jade somehow born into Ireland, but she made it to Helheim then, crazily enough, might have somehow crossed over into Midgard without being born first.”
“So it seems.”Loki sounded quite taken with the idea.“Just imagine the possibilities in that.”
Possibilities, when it came to Loki, that would undoubtedly benefit him and this war. How else could it be when he might have not one but two dragons connected to the enemy? Where some might see that as more of a threat, not this god. He saw it as a crack in his nemesis’ armor.
“How are you, brother?”Dagr said, speaking privately to Thorulf.“While I sense you enjoyed seeing tiny Jade, seeing your mother was...difficult.”
It had been. More than anticipated.
“I miss her,”he conceded.“But I like that she might have been connected to such a moment even if she didn’t witness it happening.”
Though tiny Jade had remained in the cave forlorn at the end of the memory, tiny Thorulf had been whipped back into his mother’s womb before she strolled off.
“This tunnel hadn’t emptied into the Realm back then,”Thorulf realized, opening the conversation to everyone else.“It had just been a forest in those days.”
Back before the last war and the creation of Níðhöggr’s Realm.
“That’s right,”Vicar mused.“Ironic, is it not? Everyone had to be in the right place at the right time for things to go as they did.”
“You don’t strike me as the type to believe in coincidences,”Jade remarked.
She’d tried to keep Vicar directly behind her, but Thorulf had slipped past his sibling. His brother might possess more brute battle skills in dragon form, but Thorulf had always been the stealthier of the two. Now that they were deeper into the tunnels, Vicar couldn’t sidle past him if he tried. And he did. Several times. But Thorulf was done with him enjoying a view that didn’t belong to him.