5. Chapter 5

Victory hopped after the king as he crawled head-first over the edge of their nest, acting more like a wingless bat than a hawk. She looked at her brothers skeptically. Sparkles and Warrior shrugged in unison, their wings flapping a little. Victory spread her wings and leaned out to track the king's progress.

"What the Hel?" The king shouted. "Where is the fucking tree?"

"What tree?"

"Nests are supposed to be in a tree!" He yelled up at her as he flipped right side up and started a retreat back up the edge. "This thing is just floating in the air! What the fuck!"

Warrior, the largest and most obnoxious of Victory's brothers, huffed. "He cannot be a king, not if he's this stupid."

"Shhhh!" Sparkles hissed and slapped at Warrior with one wing. "Shhh!"

"There is no tree!" The king repeated, standing up when he was properly back in the nest, his bizarre genitalia swinging free. It was a little mesmerizing, and Victory tried not to think of plump mice.

"This is only a temporary nest. It will cease to exist when we don't need it anymore." Victory nudged at him with her beak, trying to be supportive. The king grabbed at his genitals, which he tended to do a lot. Victory was flattered but king or not, he was a little too small for her.

"I really hate magic. Okay, fine, so tell me how we're getting out of here."

"Uh. Fly?" Sparkles offered. Victory and Warrior leaned in toward the king, hoping he'd give the signal.

"I don't have wings." The king held his arms out. It was a genuine problem, and fairly odd, but the king was from Midgard so Victory did not think it was her place to comment.

"You don't look like a hawk," Warrior said for all of them.

"I'm not a fucking hawk! I'm Hawkeye!"

"Perhaps hawks don't have kings in Midgard? Maybe they just have Eyes?" Sparkles pondered, because he might have been the smallest of them but Victory knew he was really the smartest.

"It's a god damn NICKNAME!" The king flapped his arms, but he didn't get any leverage out of it.

"I guess." Warrior stared at the king.

It made sense to Victory, who figured if their king was the Midgardian version of Heimdall, then at least he was royalty enough to count.

"Is that why I'm here? Because someone thought I was the king of hawks?"

"Of Midgard hawks, yes!" Sparkles flapped excitedly. "There is no king or queen of Asgardian hawks, not for thousands of years. I think we're just being stubborn."

Warrior grumbled something about insect-eating mouse-brained birds. Victory shoved at him with her foot.

"Vedrfolnir is our god, and only a royalty can speak to him directly," Sparkles continued, lost in his deep flying thoughts.

"You honestly think I'm royalty? Man you guys are so very screwed."

Sparkles huffed up, his feathers bristling. "If you were not royalty Heimdall would not have sent you to us."

"Uh huh. So we go talk to this Verfollynor—"

"Vedrfolnir!" Victory and her brothers yelled together.

The king backed up. "Whoa, okay. Verdfolneer."

Sparkles clucked like a chicken and Warrior shoved at him in embarrassment. Victory hopped forward a little, figuring it was time to pick their battles, and the fact that Midgardians clearly did not know AllSpeak was not one of them. "Yes, we go and you talk to him."

"And then I go home?"

She exchanged looks with her brothers. "I don't know."

The king sighed heavily and cast his eyes up to the sky, finally looking a little like a bird of prey, despite his distracting genitals. It eased Victory's heart.

"Fine. We go talk with the hawk god. Naked. I can't believe I just said that. Whatever. Look, how do we get out of the floating magical nest?" He pointed out at the sky.

Sparkles's eyes went comically wide and Warrior shoved his face under a wing.

Victory hunched down a little, trying to meet him eye to eye. "Your Majesty, we need to fly to Yggdrasil. You will have to ride one of us."

"Oh no!" Warrior squawked, because it was pretty clear who was big and strong enough to carry the king any great distance.

"What he said! No!" The king folded his puny arms up against himself as he yelled at them. "Absolutely not!"

He squawked enough to be a hawk, Victory thought sourly. She clawed at the nest viciously until everyone shut up. Boys.

"We're leaving now!" She batted at them with her wings until Sparkles got sick of it and launched himself out of the nest, and the king (honored be his name, whatever it was) was forced to jump on Warrior's back or get knocked clear out of the nest.

"Hey! You kids got names?" The king yelled as they finally headed out, shifting around on Warrior's back with a grimace.

"Victory, Sparkles, and Warrior!" She answered.

"Sigurder, Sindari, and Vader! Got it!"

Victory bobbed at the garbled reply, wondering if maybe Heimdall couldn't have at least picked a more fitting king for them. It was a slightly blasphemous thought and she was sure Heimdall was going to hold it against her, but she rebelliously refused to apologize.

"My name is From a Hill in Barton!"

Without a doubt, Victory was not going to apologize.

Towards the East, Yggdrasil's soul thrummed like a steady heartbeat, leading them to Vedrfolnir. Victory really hoped that the king would know what he was supposed to ask when they got there, and would forego mentioning his terrible, terrible name. That's what titles were for, anyway.