The waves sloshed rhythmically against the long line of stones that formed the outer wall of the basin, shielding it from the rest of the ocean. Stones that broke the surface of the water like monstrous teeth from a primordial gum. That is where the effigy appeared.

That night, Aslák Freyrsen was standing at the shore with his wife, Hilda Marensdatter. The biting, salty wind beating at their faces, as they confirmed the whispers of their neighbours to be true.

“Again…?” Hilda’s voice rang through the howling wind, her words muffled by the thick, woven headscarf protecting her face from the sand. Before she could finish her thought, her husband put his arm around her, both to comfort her and further shield her small, stout figure from the elements.

“I will go into town tomorrow,” he said after a few moments of silence, “Vala Aulis will know what to do.” Hilda nodded solemnly. She did not want to admit it in front of her husband, but the visage of the idol made her sick to her stomach.

It’s long hair was violently moving in the wind, matted heavy from salt crystals and water. It was heavy enough on the scalp of the torn-up face, that the thrashing movements only kept driving the wooden pale deeper into the soft, decaying meat that was exposed on the underside of the upper jaw. Hilda thought, that something must have been done to secure the horrible face from sliding down the pole and into the water, but if it was an unseen nail or dark magic, she couldn’t say. The only thing she knew was, that this thing had appeared on her family grounds, and something needed to be done about it, before history repeated itself.

The semester had only just started and Jarl Asláksen was already behind on the reading. The stagnant air of late summer made focusing on his textbooks hard, and the constant sound of pages turning from his roommate, Asbjørn Birkelund, desk was not helping on his mood. Jarl did not care a lot for university, he was mostly there to drink and party. It was honestly nothing shy of a miracle that he had made it through to the master’s degree, but as a lazy breeze turned the pages of his textbook, he was beginning to think his luck in academia had finally run out. His head was starting to ache.

“See anything interesting?” the voice of his friend brought Jarl back to reality.

“No… You must have given me the wrong book,” his thin lips curled upwards, a boyish grin revealing a row of snaggled teeth. He pretended to search inside the pages of the thick textbook, “no, nope… No akvavit, not even a measly rye liquor, just a bunch of stupid words.”

Asbjørn rolled his eyes and got up from his seat to stretch his legs.

“You’re gonna be in big trouble if you can’t even find a preliminary topic for your thesis,” the words were spoken with indifference, but Asbjørn knew the anxiety they would stir in his friend. He laid down on Jarl’s bed and started thumbing through the magazines, most of them were about boats, the rest were pop-history trash, sensationalised historical events that everyone already knew enough about, and conspiracy theories. He let an amused puff of air out of his nose at the thought of Jarl, a history student, reading magazines like these.

Jarl had closed the book on his table and was sitting turned towards Asbjørn. The strawberry blonde hair and freckles almost made him look innocent, almost. Like a god of hedonism in disguise, Jarl sat in his deep red, velvet vest, a traditional piece of clothing – probably even one he had inherited from a family member, Asbjørn thought. Jarl was of an old family line, though he never spoke about it, and even his closest friends at university knew next to nothing about his home-life. It had taken a surprisingly long time before Asbjørn found out that he was sharing a room with what was basically royalty in the post-Ragnarok society.

“I also don’t know what I’m gonna write about…” said Asbjørn, meeting Jarl’s gaze and flashing him a small smile. The history student shot up from his chair, “you dumb fuck, what are you giving me such a hard time for then?” his words were harsh, but he was laughing as he said them. The tense and studious atmosphere collapsed around the two young men, as Jarl grabbed at the wrists of his roommate, prompting a playfight between the two, that left them both laughing and yelling as if they were little boys again.