Adding to the Sigrun-angst trending this week, with my own far-fetched variation on the theories as to how Sigrun is going to get out of this one.
Warning: far fetched is a generous term. Also, I explore the idea of a younger Sigrun a little bit- what she was like as a beautiful, awkward teen and all, for the purposes of explaining why she can flip her lid as spectacularly as I hope she might one day
[spoiler]
There is only so much patience Sigrun can muster before she really loses it.
Read patience as ‘self-control’, because they are essentially the same thing for her. Patience means resisting the urge to sink her fist gullet-deep in the face some smug ass telling her how to do her job or talking down to her team. Patience means staying her hand on the trigger of her rifle, when a troll is tantalisingly unaware of her presence, but to shoot it would mean alerting every other grossling in a mile’s proximity.
Patience was also not picking up Mikkel by the collar and throwing him into next Odin’s day when she came across him out in the Silent World, trailing the two non-immunes like helpful, rebellious ducklings.
Patience can be a good thing as well- for example, trusting Emil to find his own feet in this dangerous profession he seems to have stumbled head-first into. All he needs is some protection, firm guidance and the occasional slap on the back to let him know he’s doing ok.
Patience is also dealing with that unfathomable, skinny Finnish thing- for example, not punching him in the face every time she catches his wide eyes gleaming from a shadow. Well, that also has something to do with repressing her battle instincts.
In conclusion, Sigrun has decided she is not going to be patient anymore.
Nor is she going to pretend she has the self-control to wait for Mikkel to pull her the hell up.
As a tentacle approximately the size and thickness of a tree trunk bares down on her, Sigrun casts her mind back to the last time she truly lost control.
She was young- still in braids. She was angry in the way that most, if not all, teenagers are. Angry with her parents for being wonderful and understanding. Angry with herself for being gangly and awkward and flawed. Angry with the world for falling to its knees and choking on its own blood before she had a chance to get out there and discover it.
And most urgently, angry with some guy whose name she can’t even remember. He made some off-hand remark about her. Something disparaging and unprovoked, possibly about the sprinkle of acne that haunted her chin from fourteen to eighteen. Possibly about her breasts- because she had none, and she can at least remember this guy as one of those guys who liked calling girls and women out for being sans curves or whatever.
What she remembers most vividly is flinging down her cup and launching herself effortlessly across the length of the table. He was on the other end of what was at least an eight foot table and had had to shout to be heard.
Sigrun basically flew to the other end of the table and landed on the guy’s shoulders. His face was smashed into her abs, his shoulders were wrapped in a crushing embrace as she crossed her legs around his neck, and he was knocked over backwards the incredible momentum which had sent her soaring.
Sigrun didn’t even bother using her fists. She leaned back and lunged forward for extra power, and bit the guy’s earlobe off with a single snap.
At this point, the guy also lost his control. So they went rolling, cursing and spitting around the mess hall, knocking over tables and chairs and just barely missing their colleagues as people leapt out of the way as fast as possible. Sigrun remembers her fists took on a life of their own and found his squishy bits, like there were magnets mounted in her knuckles and in his spleen and gonads.
Sigrun remembers someone lifting her off him by the collar and turning around in mid-air to elbow this rescuer in the face. This rescuer later turned out to be her mother, whose nose is still slightly crooked from the event.
She was only stopped because someone took the initiative and leaped on her, kicking off a dog-pile that ended with her under about ten people and still straining with all of her considerable might towards her opponent.
“GIVE ME YOUR THROAT!” she was screaming “GIVE ME YOUR THROAT!”
That was the day Sigrun discovered she is something that is referred to, in polite company, as ‘a berserker’. A kind of berserker anyway.
Not the one who loses all sense of self in a blinding, red mist during battle. Those are so common these days they are no longer remarkable. She is of a more dangerous and ancient genus- the kind of berserker who maintains a complete sense of self all the way through their rage and is able to calculate their every move.
In short, she retains control of all of her mental faculties while receiving a massive boost, aided by adrenaline and primal rage, in her physical, and kind of just flies off the handle.
This is what Sigrun does now.
“Mikkel,” she barks, just before the tentacle bears down on her “Tell the kids not to look!”
“What for?” asks Mikkel.
He reaches the end of the rope and notices, rather belatedly, Sigrun is no longer attached to it.
He looks up in time to see the pearly flash of a crazed grin whip by.
“Ah. That’s why.”
Sigrun is visible only as a smudge of cackling red in a forest of tentacles, groping around above the water. She has a knife in one hand, and that is all she has to protect herself.
Reynir’s red head pops around the door-frame. His eyes are so wide in fear he has begun to look a little bit like an owl “What’s…is Sigrun ok?”
“Sigrun is fine.”
There is the sound of fleshing wrenching and blubber parting as a tentacle splashes into the water, parted from the rest of the body.
“Reynir, go back inside.”
Reynir obeys, silent and grey-faced.
“Mikkel! What the hell is happening?” shouts Tuuri out the window, as if she cannot see it for herself.
“I believe our illustrious leader may be a berserker, Tuuri. Do yourself a favour and close your eyes.”
Mikkel crosses his arms and waits patiently. This shouldn’t take very long.
