Totentanz

Book 1 Chapter III: Der Verrat

DER VERRAT
German, "the treason; the betrayal".

For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first. -- Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

There were places in the world where the veil separating it from the Óhreinnjǫrð[1] became thin. Sometimes they were natural. Sometimes they were formed by something on the other side attacking the veil until they broke through. The second sort were the most dangerous. No one could predict where they would appear next. And no one could predict what would come through them. The monster Diarnlan killed had probably come through one such place. People kept a close eye on the sea in case any more monsters followed.

None did. After four months devoid of skrýszel sightings everyone began to relax.

Naturally that was when the next attack came. It didn't come from the sea. And it wasn't a skrýszel; it was just an ordinary jǫtunn. But even an ordinary jǫtunn was still far larger than a human and could do considerable damage to anything in its path.

This particular jǫtunn might as well have been sent directly to cause mayhem for Karandren. In the first place it arrived on the very day after he got into an argument with another student over whether it was possible or not for a human to survive a trip to the Óhreinnjǫrð. In the second place Diarnlan had taken Karandren and Erdreda to a farm for "practical magic experience" -- in other words trying to use identification spells to tell poisonous toadstools from harmless mushrooms -- when the jǫtunn tore a hole in the veil right in the middle of the farmyard.

Karandren and Erdreda were in the kitchen garden, poring over mushrooms the farmer had collected and brought back for them to study. Diarnlan told them bluntly she didn't trust them not to eat the mushrooms if they were allowed to hunt through the forest for them. Their oh-so-respected teacher kept a close eye on them in-between reading the latest instalment of some serial novel.

In spite of what Karandren had assumed at first, Diarnlan did in fact have hobbies beyond making her students' lives miserable. They included a fondness for reading some hapless author's work for the sole purpose of mocking it and poking holes in it.

If only she used up all her spite on those books and had none left for us, Karandren frequently lamented after each especially nasty insult.

If it wasn't for that book Diarnlan would have sensed the spike in dark magic long before the jǫtunn broke through. Unfortunately she was absorbed in sneering at a poor choice of words and a plethora of dangling modifiers. The two teenagers weren't experienced enough in sensing changes in ambient magic to know anything was wrong until it was too late.

Karandren was the first to sense something. "I've told you a dozen times, no edible mushroom has--"

He trailed off abruptly. An odd prickling sensation ran up and down his arms, as if insects were crawling over his skin. Growing up around ice spirits -- and being half glacier-sprite himself -- meant he was intimately familiar with ice magic. This felt like his mother's magic and yet nothing like his mother's magic. The similarities more than the differences were what unnerved him the most.

"Something's wrong," he said.

Erdreda snorted. "Of course something's wrong. You're an idiot and that mushroom is perfectly safe."

"No, I don't mean that. Don't you sense that magic?"

Erdreda's blank expression showed she hadn't a clue what he was talking about. Karandren risked a glance over at Diarnlan. She was always furious if she thought he was slacking off during his lessons. Yesterday she boxed his ears for -- in her opinion -- not working hard enough.