Fenrir's Binding: The Queen And The Barbarian

By evolution-500

Genres: Romance/Angst

Feedback: Always welcome

WARNING: This story contains violence, coarse language and mature themes. Reader discretion is advised.

Disclaimer: Killer Instinct" is a property belonging to Rareware and Microsoft while "The Boys" is a property by Garth Ennis and Dynamite Comics. I do not own these characters.

* * * * *

Chapter One: Dreams

"A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities."

- J.R. Tolkien

She heard a ringing in her ears.

Opening her eyes, Maeve found herself suspended under water, watching as suitcases, purses, bodies and necklaces floated and sank all around her.

Looking in all directions, she searched for some sign of the surface, then looked up upon seeing the light of the moon casting its rays along with the fiery debris of the plane overhead.

Maeve's lungs burned as she desperately swam upward, kicking and breast-stroking with every ounce of strength she had in her.

Breaking the surface, Maeve tossed her head back with a sharp gasp as she inhaled, coughing and sputtering, her hair plastered to her forehead as she grabbed onto a floating piece of luggage. Burning pillars of fire roared all around her, the inferno crackling, sending up embers and thick black smoke clouds into the air.

"Jesus, I survived that?!" she gasped.

Behind her, she heard a loud groan.

Turning around, Maeve watched as the wrecked plane sank into the water, watching the ocean bubbling as it hungrily consumed it like some ravenous monster.

What were the odds? What were the fucking odds of her surviving that?

The crash must have caused me to tear straight through the hull.

Shivering, Maeve frantically looked around. She needed to find out if there were any other survivors.

"HELLO?! IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?! IS ANYONE STILL ALIVE?!"

The plane groaned in response, the ocean gurgling as it slowly disappeared. Maeve watched as the tail vanished from view, leaving nothing behind.

Clinging onto the piece of luggage, Maeve held on for dear life, looking frantically around.

"IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE?! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME! IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, PLEASE SAY SOMETHING!"

The only sounds that greeted her were the roaring flames and the sloshing ocean waves.

Shivering, Maeve adjusted her grip on the piece of luggage that she clung on to, looking around for something, anything!

If she didn't get help fast, chances were likely that she would freeze to death. In Arctic waters, she recalled, an ordinary person wouldn't be able to last fifteen minutes. While Maeve herself had survived more than her fair share of danger, be it bombs, crashing cars, bullets to the chest and so on, she didn't quite know how good her durability was with regards to sudden plunges of temperature.

Taking in a deep breath, Maeve screamed.

"HOMELANDER! HOMELANDER! DEEP! DEEP CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

She didn't care that she was calling for two people that she absolutely despised - given the life-threatening situation she was in, she was willing to deal with the consequences afterward.

"IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, PLEASE! SAY SOMETHING! SEND HELP!"

As she floated further away from the wreckage, Maeve was greeted with an overwhelming silence. Unnerved, Maeve tried again.

"HOMELANDER! DEEP! SOMEONE! ANYONE!"

More and more her courage started to slip from her. More and more terror started to gnaw at her, as she repeatedly called.

Finally, the brave and fearless persona of Maeve fell completely, leaving exposed the frightened little girl that she had kept hidden from everyone's view.

"HELP!" Maggie Shaw shrilly screamed at the top of her lungs. "HELP! PLEASE! HELP ME! PLEASE GOD! HEEEEEEELLLLLLLP!"

All through the night she called and cried out, but only the wind and the ocean answered.

Sniffling, Maggie held tightly onto the luggage as she wept.

"Somebody...somebody please help me. Somebody please save me," she whimpered, resting her head against the top of the wet bag. "Somebody please save me..."

She no longer cared about her dignity. She no longer cared about keeping up appearances. She no longer cared if someone found her crying.

She just wanted to go home.

She didn't want to die.

"Somebody please help me..." she cried softly.

As she clung helplessly to the luggage, Maeve watched with despairing eyes as the ocean and cold wind dragged her to parts unknown.

* * * * *

As she was dragged through the cold waters, Maeve felt herself drifting in and out of consciousness, her breath emitting thick cloudy plumes of condensation, her form shivering, her hair plastered to parts of her face, parts of it frozen and stiff.

She didn't know when she had fallen asleep exactly - all that Maeve knew was that when the dreams came, she was completely unprepared for the surreal and strange experience that followed.

It all began under the gleam of the pale moon as it cast its silver light over the ocean, where she saw a swirling, grey, slightly iridescent and dense wall of fog up ahead in the distance that came to greet her. Lifting her head, Maeve stared mystified at the strange and ominous sight as it slowly approached and spilled around all around her, the smoky substance consuming everything in its path.

Looking around in every direction, she squinted, trying to peer through the thick veil to see where she was, but to no avail.

And yet, part of her remained alert; for reasons completely unfathomable to her, Maeve felt herself instinctively tense up in alert, more awake and alert than she had ever been.

'This isn't an ordinary fog,' some almost superstitious and wary part of her warned from the back of her mind.

Clutching hold of the luggage, Maeve swallowed nervously as she stared ahead, watching and listening, waiting to see what happened next.

The air had a strangely charged and electrical, if not mystical quality, full of possibility, causing her skin to tingle and the hairs on her arms to stand up on end. For a moment, it seemed as if the air was getting brighter, pulsating with a low, rhythmic electrical hum, a pulsating effulgence that reminded her of an enormous heartbeat.

'What is this?' she wondered to herself as she stared, mystified by what she saw.

Finally, the fog started to lose its glow, then dimmed.

As Maeve tiredly drifted along the water, slipping in and out of consciousness, a sound broke the silence - an audibly loud fluttering noise, like a large dishrag or towel that was being flapped or beaten loudly through the breeze.

Lifting up her head to the noise, she stared in the direction where she had heard it, listening intently.

What was that? Was somebody out here?

The flapping came again, causing her to stir.

"H-Hello?" she said in a hushed voice. "Is anyone out there?"

Maeve heard the flapping again up ahead, her head tilting slightly to the side, straining her ears for the slightest noise, the slightest signs of there being voices out here.

What was that?

'Must be a fishing trawler or something,' Maeve reasoned to herself.

Someone must be doing their laundry, beating out their clothes or towel against their boat or something out here.

Accepting that as the explanation, Maeve felt herself become a little bolder as she cleared her throat and called out again in a louder voice, "Hello?! Is anyone there?! I need help!"

She heard the flapping again, this time closer.

Why the hell weren't they saying anything?

Maeve frowned.

Of course, she never considered the possibility that whoever was out there didn't understand what she was saying. Maeve's brows furrowed as she struggled to recall her Swedish. She really should have brushed up on that before leaving.

Was she even close to Sweden, though?

Hell, for all she knew she was drifting around in the middle of the Atlantic with no land for miles around.

As she opened her mouth to call out again, the fog darkened up ahead, and a shape started to emerge, moving closer toward her.

It was then that the dream, if it had been one, took a darker, more monstrous turn; what emerged from the fog was something completely beyond anything Maeve had ever imagined.

Flapping silently toward her on a pair of dark, twenty-foot-long, black leathery membranous bat-like wings was a creature out of a nightmare - a black humanoid thing with a long slender body with an equally long lashing barbed tail. The creature silently flapped toward her and started reaching out with a pair of horrible, prehensile paw-like clawed hands.

Upon seeing it, Maeve did the most uncharacteristic thing that she had ever done in her life - she shrieked at the top of her fucking lungs.

God help her, she was actually screaming.

As the apparition drew closer toward her, Maeve shrieked even louder and started to splash wildly around in the water, swishing and splashing at the entity as it glided toward her.

Like an eagle snatching salmon out of a stream, the creature scooped her up in its pawed, clawed hands, lifting her effortlessly out of the water.

Struggling in its arms, Maeve felt herself pressed against its strange body, its skin oily and smooth, reminding her of a whale's.

Looking up to its head, her eyes widened as she shrieked even louder in terror.

On the top of its head were a pair of long, inwardly curling horns, but its face...there wasn't anything there! 

No eyes, no mouth, no ears, not even a nose! Where there should have been a face was nothing but an empty smooth surface that "stared" directly at her.

Struggling in its grip, Maeve punched and kicked every area of its body, including its sexless groin, but no matter what she threw at it, it elicited no reaction from the entity.

Without even making a sound, the creature pulled her in close and flapped its wings, lifting itself into higher and higher altitudes, moving with such speed that Maeve was starting to feel lightheaded from oxygen deprivation.

Looking hazily down below, the last thing Maeve saw before she lost consciousness was a calm and still moonlit ocean.

* * * * *

The dreams became even more bizarre.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Maeve dreamt that she was soaring through the air, shivering at the cold air that struck her soaked body before closing her eyes again.

The next time she had opened her eyes again, she suddenly found herself on a harsh, rocky, stone-covered floor. Lifting her head weakly, Maeve found herself in the middle of an elaborate stone ring, surrounded on all sides by a series of towering Prehistoric stone posts and lintel structures reminiscent to Stonehenge.

She could tell that it was still nighttime, but there was some sort of light source that allowed her to see everything with crystal clear clarity.

Was that...a glowing chariot in the shape of an oversized seashell?

Mounted and hanging from some of the lintels like a race of ugly gargoyles under the cloudy moonlit night sky were more of those creatures like her captor, but it was the man walking toward her that caught her immediate attention as he slowly moved closer.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, she couldn't make out his features at first.

She heard him mutter something, but it sounded distant.

When Maeve weakly opened her eyes again, she saw more details up-close.

From what she could see of him, the man was old and deathly pale, yet strangely...luminescent, his form glowing with thick, grey and wild-looking hair that was partially braided, his face concealed by a long grey beard that draped all the way down to his chest.

Wearing nothing else but a long, elaborately designed white silk skirt with strange black runic symbols, the old man stood tall and proud over her, his exposed, bare-chested incandescent form long, lean yet muscular, glowing brightly underneath the night sky like a star. As if his whole being was dabbed in phosphorescent materials.

Clenching a long silver trident in one hand, Maeve could make out neon blue tattoos and runic symbols that shimmered in the moon's light along with the intricately jeweled gold necklace that he wore around his neck, his wrists bound in gold bands with large emeralds.

Kneeling down on one knee before her, the man roughly lifted her by her chin, turning her face from side to side as he studied her, tilting his head curiously.

As he looked down at her, Maeve felt discomforted by his stare. He did not look at her with desire, nor with interest as she would have expected; on the contrary. If anything, the old man was looking at her with only mild curiosity, as if he came across a stray piece of grass that had landed on his foot or something.

Opening her mouth to speak, Maeve froze when she got a clearer view of him, shutting up altogether.

His wrinkled face was handsome, with a strong, hawk-like aquiline nose and thick grey brows, but his eyes, however, were dark and fearsome-looking emerald gems that glowed, completely devoid of either irises or pupils.

Homelander was scary in his callousness and unpredictability, especially when he was in a bad mood, but this...man...his aspect was downright terrifying!

Maeve didn't know why she felt the way she had, but...something was off about him. Some atavistic part of her felt wary of this strange person. Her instincts were yelling - screaming, more like it - for her to get as far away from this man as possible, that he was something much, much worse than even Homelander, prick that he may be.

Something dark... and dangerous.

As she drifted in and out of consciousness, Maeve heard the man utter words, whether to her or to the creatures, but she couldn't tell.

The next time she awoke, she saw a dark, towering, muscular silhouette of a man stepping into the stone post and lintel ring as he approached the old man, the former kneeling down with his equally gigantic sword in reverence.

Even in the gloom of night, she could still make out the two of them as they greeted each other.

"Sæll og blessaður, Lorð Nodens," Maeve heard a deep voice say in an unfamiliar language as the man bowed. "Hvernig ferir veiðiinn fyrir Krawlingrinn khaos?"

"Hmph. Hann er slipperyr smár bastard, ek munu gefhannr at. Ek munu takhannr enn," The old man bristled, his voice possessing a craggy sharpness, yet somehow...musical, possessing a strangely ghostly and lyrical quality, his words sounding distorted and echoing, as if speaking in a deep cave. His vocals didn't sound human at all.

Placing a hand on the other man's shoulder, the old man's expression softened. "Koma, Tunth-ska, gamall frænda. Standa."

The man nodded, then rose. "Hafþúr einnhverr news ór Gargos eðórr Kthulhu's khampion?"

Maeve watched as a frown formed on the older man's face as he shook his head.

"Ek sjá," the other said lowly in disappointment.

"Kalm þinn sjálfr," the old man said, giving his shoulder a slight squeeze of assurance, "ek munu vitþaur enn."

"Hm." Lifting his head, the other man nodded. "Hvernig megekr aið þú, Lorð Nodens?"

The old man gestured to Maeve as he spoke, "Einn ór minn nátt-gaunt vitumk þessi einn inn hafrinn. Líteptirr hana."

"Gerþúr viljtilr klaim hanfyrirr þinn sjálfr?"

The old man scoffed. "Gereigir germikr hlæja!" He said derisively, looking almost offended at what the other was saying. "Hvat er vífr til mik? þat er Nyarlathotep's kollr at ek viljtilr veiði, eigi heartinn ór vífr! Takhanar fyrir þinn beð fyrir allr ek kare! Gerhvatr þú munu með hana."

"Með þinn kommand, Lorð Nodens. Mayþinnr veiði meet rikki frami!" Maeve heard the other man say before blacking out.