"I saw their starved lips in the gloam,

And horrid warning gaped wide,

And I awake and found me here,

On the cold hill's side."

The nightmare continued and the longer Ragnar stayed there, the more it started to feel like reality.

As soon as he felt the heat of the fire it would not go away no matter how far away he ran.

Unthinkable thoughts crept into his mind, the longer he was away from reality, the more he lost his sanity.

It was his body adjusting to this new state of limbo. For a man that has killed more souls than he can count, being around corpses was maddening.

Knowing you were about to become one like them was even worse. It was Hell.

The man screamed, he screamed until he could feel his throat turn raw and his mouth run dry. He was angry, more enraged than he had ever been in his mortal life.

He directed his anger at the world, frustration at the gods and rage at La Belle Dame.

She was the reason he was cursed with this, she had lulled him into this nightmare.

She was Eve. She was Loki. She was the devil.

He ran around the deserted scene and he jumped over the littered corpses, his heavy boots crushing snail shells and trampling flowers. Yet he always ended up by the fire never reaching the the huts or the surrounding countryside.

He could run for what felt like eternity as he tried to block out the never-ending chanting but soon the fire blocked his path again.

His two sons had become statues, static by the flames. Ragnar wanted to see them again, to see how stubble lined their now taunt cheeks but the survival instinct - fight or flight - stopped him from taking that crucial step forward.

He could never get close enough to see their chapped lips from repeating the same sentence over and over again,

"La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall."

His concept of time had gone in this nightmare as the sun never rose and the sky never changed. He did not feel fatigue in his eyelids or pains in his stomach or even the need to breath.

Ragnar Lothbrok's true body was not there only his spirit wondered this place.

He did not think it could get worse, every emotion he had has been purged off life and soul but then Gyda appeared.

His only daughter, the one bargaining power the universe had on him.

She was just as beautiful as the days when she was alive, a pure child of the Earth.

She stood alone in the field, the moonlight illuminating her pale features and small pink lips. Her lack of scars and war wounds was enough to bring a tear to the King's eyes.

He walked slowly towards the ghost, she was a shadow in his memory, the finer details escaping his memory. But the important things stuck, like her high pitch laugh when he picked her up and the way her blue eyes shone when she looked at her father.

He hadn't realised how he had missed her until now.

Ragnar reached for her, his body towering over her more than he remembered.

He looked in her eyes and she wasn't happy, she wasn't the child he remembered. Gyda looked at her father with tears glimmering in her eyes.

Ragnar suddenly became human. Ragnar's humanity came back to him in the midst of the fires of hell, the tricks of Loki were like that. The god knew everything about you and how to make you suffer.

"My daughter."

Ragnar whispered as he bent down to kneel in front of her. The girl smiled despite her tears and small dimples formed that made Ragnar's heartstrings rip. He ran his fingers through her hair.

"Father."

She replied and the sound of her crystal voice made the tears fall down his cheeks, a sensation on his skin that had become so alien to him that it hurt.

He grasped her in a hug, he pulled her slight body into him as he buried his face in her hair he still clutched.

His tears were like tar, heavy and sticky from being kept in him for so long. They were bloody and soon Gyda was not the innocent young girl, Ragnar made her bloodstained.

La Belle Dame tried to stop his tears but it was fruitless, they would not stop bleeding and blood covered his face and her hands and wrists became sticky.

She was powerless and that made her hysteric, her shouts of desperation became mixed with laughter,

"Stop. Stop."

Those words became her mantra but she knew it was her that needed to stop, that was the only cure. The only cure for Ragnar Lothbrok.

"No. No. Please,"

She pleaded with nature,

"I love him. I love Ragnar."

And it was that reason that she left. She turned her back on the King, on her lover and her life. She could not condemn him to die but she would carry out the sentence of death on herself.

She left him alone and couldn't even look at him as she ran out through the forest.

Reality only revealed itself when she could no longer sense Ragnar next to her and she had to stop running. The lack of warmth was a physical pain that, like heartache, demanded to be felt.

As she stopped she realised she was alone again and this time not even the thought of Ragnar could help her.

She broke into a run again to escape, to escape her decision. Her usual faery like steps turned into heavy lead weights that dragged her through the undergrowth of the forest.

Then it became too much for her already heavy soul to carry, her knees buckled underneath her and she fell onto the ground. She choked on the air that she didn't need, and began to sob.

They were ugly sobs, the sound of dry heaving adding to the gurgling sound of crying. She wrapped her arms around her body trying in vain to fill the warmth that the King had given her and then cruelly stolen back.

She believed for a moment that it was the King who had destroyed her, it was his own fault that his charm and personality made her weak at the knees.

It was Ragnar that tricked her into falling in love with him, but she was wrong.

La Belle Dame's fatal flaw was her selfishness, she was sent to save Ragnar Lothbrok and she did, but it came at the cost of her love for him.

The women wanted the world but her world didn't want her.

---

It was an abrupt awakening for Ragnar, one second he was cradling his daughter, the next he was in a cold sweat on Earth.

His gut reaction was panic when he could not feel the coarseness of Gyda's hair in his fingertips. Then he smelt the pine needles mixed with the honeydew in the air. He wondered if this was what Valhalla was made of but he could only taste blood on his tongue and no wine.

The forest was still. No bird songs, no life and no woman. Her cries were sprinkled on the breeze that calmed his cold fever but it was no longer a sound that mortals could hear.

Ragnar's mind was foggy like it was at the beginning of the day before he had met the fair lady.

It was only his memory that proved her temporary existence in the real world but she was no longer La Belle Dame to Ragnar. She was La Belle Dame sans Merci.

Ragnar stared at the sky above him between the branches and leaves of trees. He didn't want to think of the place he was before, he banished it to the dark shadows of his mind but the memory would never go.

Occasionally he would feel it as he drifted to sleep when he was between consciousness and slumber. It would jolt him awake, it would haunt him for the rest of his days yet the King would never tell a soul.

He lived slowly for a while as he awoke, his body bearing the consequences of hell. He ached all over, his heart the most.

Ragnar followed in the non-existent footprints that his one-day- lover had walked. He was in a trance, his feet leading him where he had to go, where the world needed him to be.

La Belle Dame has fallen to stumbling around the trees before she heard a branch crash behind her, she stopped momentarily to look back and regretted it instantly.

The sight only made her sob more, Ragnar stood there on the edge of her vision.

His blue eyes shone like bright stars and the mere sight of him consumed every sight she has seen and ever feeling she had ever felt in her memory. If she could only have one thought, one memory it would be him,

He was her poppied drug, the opium that kept her awake. As he came closer she outstretched her heart to him, her bloodied hand made clean for him.

She thought to herself that love made everything right, that love was more powerful than the gods' will.

Ragnar was coming for her, La Belle Dame thought that for once in her hellish life she might be able to remain in heaven.

The woman was wrong. Ragnar Lothbrok walked right past her.

She felt a slight bump on her shoulder. He couldn't see her, she was in the darkness again. She was back where she belonged.

The gods have cruel souls, they fill people with false love and true hatred. They gave La Belle Dame potential happiness, but it was something that a temptress could never truly have.

La Belle Dame may not be able to remember her past before Ragnar, her body however could recall the physical shattering of her heart. That had happened too many times for her to count.

As Ragnar passed her a chill ran up his spine. It was peculiar but like most of his memories from this day; he chose to forget it.

Ragnar returned to Kattegat, stumbling into the main gates. His sons thanked the gods they had their father back, the villagers kissed the very ground he walked on.

They would never know what brought their King back from his and Ragnar would never tell them.

But there was a tale spread in the village by a young women who was not yet a lady but too old to be a child. The woman had flaming ginger hair and a smile that stole men's hearts but she had no idea what her future held, the femme fatale she would become.

She told the tale of Loki, in women's form, exiled to Earth to live amongst them as she waits for her true love to return to her, sojourning on the cold hills side.

"And this is why I sojourn here,

Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,

And no birds sing."