Iceland x Reader: Borealis - Chapter 3

Trees had offered great comfort to you in the past. When you had lived with Uncle Tino, the two of you would often sit together on low tree branches and watch the sky. At the time, they were fascinating. Trees were just as alive as you were, yet couldn’t talk or sleep or walk like other creatures. They made you feel lucky to be yourself, and were often graced with beautiful fresh leaves or curling bare branches.

Now, you wanted to punch a tree.

Emil had dragged you down a dusty, collapsing hole, sticky with sap. It led to a small room filled with rubble and dirt, causing you to complain about his sense of hygiene.

Then both of you got into a huge argument about who was better-looking (you thought he was, but you would never tell him that), and he ended up dragging you kicking and screaming down another corridor.

“When we get outside,” you threatened, “I will get your brother to bathe you with horse soap twenty times. And I’ll write down every curse you scream.”

Emil rolled his eyes. “Only you would enjoy doing that, ______.”

“Well I’ll make sure you don’t enjoy it!” you exclaimed.

Your journey continued for about four more seconds before you asked another question.

“Emil? Where are we going?”

Your friend turned to face you, his delicate nose cutely smudged with dirt.

“To somewhere important. Don’t ask any more questions-- I want to see the shock on your face when we get there.”

You pouted. “You’re no fun, Steilie.”

“Steilie? Seriously? What are you, five?” he rolled his eyes.

“Hey,” you gravely said, “You can’t say that. We used that in the last chapter.”

…

You saw a snowy eyebrow rise up. “What in Midgard are you talking about?”

You sniffed. “It’s an out of plot reference. You wouldn’t understand. It’s terminology selectively for fangirls.”

“Fangirls?”

“Get with the times, Stelie.”

“Okay, then… Whatever. You’re weird. And stop calling me that!”
“Never. Now call me big brother.”

“WHAT!?”

You burst into laughter, the cheerful sound ringing out across the long passage. Your miffed friend soon joined in, both of your voices tieing together in a pretty, happy sort of sound.

As you laughed, you tripped over a thick root in the middle of the ground, causing you to lose your balance. Emil caught you, however, holding your waist to prevent you from meeting the ground. You ended up turning around at the last second in surprise, which instantly made the situation about fifteen times more awkward.

You simply stood still, staring at your friend. After a few minutes, you suddenly remembered where you were.

“Umm, Emil? You can let go of me now.”

His eyes flickered with first confusion, then realization. Then he dropped you.

“Hey I didn’t mean it like that!” you huffed.

He blinked. “Oh, uh, sorry. I was distracted.”

You snorted. “I could tell.”

You looked ahead at the ongoing tunnel. “Emil, how much farther? Can we take a break?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he agreed, “But we wouldn’t have been this tired if you hadn’t thrown a fit on the way down.”

You threw a tiny pebble at his arm. He shot you a sleepy glare.

“I’m sleeping right now,” you mentioned as you lay down on the ground, “And don’t you dare wake me up unless we’re being eaten alive.”

You drifted off to your dreams, unaware of the shifting ceiling above you.

It seemed only moments later you were woken up by something wet and sticky dripping onto your face. You awoke with a scream.

There was no one in sight. The sticky sap dripped down across your face as you looked around in shock. Wiping it off, you quickly got up, frowning.

“Emil!” you yelled, “This isn’t funny! Get over here.”

There was no reply. You heard a soft sound as sap dripped next to you.

Wait-- Why was sap dripping? It certainly hadn’t been doing that before. You looked up at the large root in the ceiling to see a large gash cutting across the ceiling. It looked as if somebody had angrily swung their sword a bit too much.

You began to internally panic. Who had made the gash? Was it Emil, or someone else? Either way, your friend wasn’t here to tell you know.

Suddenly, you heard footsteps running towards you. Gasping in worry, you tried to conceal yourself behind a thick net of roots.

To your relief, it was only Emil rushing up to the spot where you had once stood.

“______!” he called, “______, where are you?”

He seemed a bit strange, somehow. His voice was much flatter, and his accent a lot less thicker. His eyes kept shifting around the room, seemingly flickering at any second.

He must be really worried, you reasoned.

Just as you were about to rush out and hug him in relief, someone grabbed onto your arm to hold you back.

“Hey, dragă! Wait, he’s not the real thing! Just a changeling!”

You nearly screamed in shock, but the mysterious person clamped a thin hand around your mouth.

“Oh, please don’t yell-- He might hear! Come on, I know another way to get out from here.”

You blinked. “What?”

The strange man turned you around to face him. He had pale skin, similar to Emil’s, but with a more pinkish tinge. His strawberry blond hair and bright red eyes were weird enough; but what really freaked you out was the sharp tooth poking out above his lower lip. He had a tiny hat perched on his head like a bird, and wore strange red and black robes. He was weird, you thought, but not bad-looking or anything.

“Wait. Emil didn’t tell you?” the stranger asked, tilting his head to the side.

You huffed. “Tell me what? And what’s your name by the way?”

He blinked, and then gave a bright smile. The weird tooth was still there.

“I’m Vlad! But anyway, Emil and I were supposed to meet Arthur at the end of this passage. I guess he decided to take you along.”

He led you down a different corridor (not a cleaner one, to your dismay), and then began searching on the walls for something. He was weird, but strangely enough, you somehow trusted him.

“Um, nice to meet you then, Vlad. I’m ______. What on earth are we meeting… um, Arthur… for?”

Vlad stared at you in shock. “So wait-- Emil didn’t tell you a thing?”

You rolled your eyes. “No, he kinda just carried me into the woods, got me to smack my head into a tree, and made me get covered in sap and dirt. All in an effort to get me away from his brother.”

Your new friend grinned. “Heh, what did Lukas do to you?”

“He threatened to kiss me if Emil didn’t call him big brother.”

Vlad snickered. “No wonder Emil got so mad.”

You looked at him in confusion, mixed with a weird feeling of slight hope. “What do you mean?”

Vlad blinked. “Um… nothing.”

Then he pouted. “If this was my reader-insert, I would totally ship us right now. Isn’t this super-romantic? We’re in a rotting cave under a dying tree that’s a metaphor the world. And it’s candlelit!”

You blinked. “Reader-insert? Ship?”

“Never mind! Lets go!”

The cheerful man pulled out a small stone from the wall. It was opaque, and looked like a small robin’s egg with little brown cracks.

“What’s that?” you asked, hesitantly touching its smooth surface.

Vlad looked up at you in surprise, his bright red eyes framed with thick reddish-blond lashes.

“It’s a turquoise! You’ve never seen one before?”

You shook your head, your face flushing in slight embarrassment and your loose hair slipping over your face. Vlad simply shrugged in reply.

“That’s okay,” he said reassuringly, “I didn’t know what a ‘sneeze’ was until Lukas blessed me for one!”

You giggled slightly, but then frowned in realization. In all of the excitement, you had forgotten your main question.

“Vlad,” you began, “where’s Emil?”

The sharp-toothed man squirmed a bit as he polished the stone. “Er, well, you see, ______… I really don’t know any more than you do.”

But when he saw your anxious expression, he quickly added: “But I’m sure Arthur can figure it out, so we’ll ask him when we find him!”

You sighed and nodded in response.

Vlad turned toward you with his eyebrows slightly furrowed. “By the way, how did you meet Emil?”

You blinked. “Oh, well, I was looking for my Uncle Berwald. My other Uncle Tino is really sick because he’s scared that Berwald is dead, so I set out when I was a little girl to go look for him and bring him back. I’ve been attacked by and discovered tons of monsters, but still haven’t found him, so I was considering going back home. But I was then captured by some weird ice giants, found Emil, who had been frozen in a block of ice for about a year, and rescued him. And then we got here after Matthias thought I was a reindeer and nearly chopped me in half.”

Vlad stared at you for a moment with his pink lips parted in shock.

“I have to admit, that’s a pretty weird story you’ve got there.”

“It’s true, though!”

The strawberry-blond man raised his hands calmingly “I’m not saying it isn’t! I’m just saying it’s weird.”

You mumbled an apology and frowned. “It’s not that weird...”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “Okay, of course it isn’t. Now, put your hand on mine, we’re teleporting to Arthur.”

Still frowning, you looked at the dull blue-green rock in Vlad’s hand.

“If we could teleport, why did Emil make me walk half a mile?!”

Vlad frowned. “I have no idea. Maybe he just wanted to make you suffer.”

“Damn him,” you muttered.

The red-eyed man chuckled. “We haven’t got all day, dragă.”

Sighing in resignation, you gingerly placed your palm on top of his hand. You had been cringing, expecting it to be cold like Emil’s, Matthias’s, and Lukas’s hands, but Vlad’s hand was instead the same temperature as yours.

As the blue stone in his hand began to glow with a sparkling, aqua-colored light that tinged the depths of your vision, you smiled at the knowledge that you would at least be skipping four centuries’ worth of walking.