The Ritual

answer. But let me convince you.
    ‘We have killed nine people. Including two priests.’ Loki grinned, swigged again from his horn. ‘Not bad, eh? Worst mass murderers that Norway ever has, and they still
don’t know it. That is the best part. They don’t expect it to happen in Norway, but we are some of the first ones to wake, you know? Varg and Bard Faust, they were black-metal killers.
Revolutionaries. They light the path for us to follow. But we go much further than them.
    ‘And Odin is coming, my friend. Make no mistakes about this. There will be murder. There will be blood sacrifice. We will have our revenge. You will see. You will see.’ He drank some
more.
    Sometime during Loki’s confession, Luke lost what had been a sudden hot desire to goad the man. He didn’t really know what he believed about the youths, or even knew to be true any
more, but he now doubted that Loki was lying about what the group had done before they arrived here.
    Luke started to laugh. He had to do something; it helped with the fear. Being afraid wasn’t helping him. Hadn’t done so for a long while. There was no time for fear now. Fear was
useless to him; a repetitive survival instinct when survival was no longer a possibility. It was time for something else altogether.
    Loki glared at him. This was not a reaction he expected, or wanted; Luke could see that. They wanted to be feared, and revered, as all morbid adolescents do.
    ‘What happened, eh? Loki. What happened to that sweet little blond kid that you undoubtedly used to be? I bet you had one of those patterned jumpers too. With reindeers on the
front.’
    ‘Better not to make too much of the piss, Luke. You are on the very thin ice already, my good friend.’
    ‘You were a healthy, educated, middle-class kid, Loki. Your country is the envy of the world. Because of your quality of life. What’s your excuse? You were spoilt and bored and
angry. And you went too far. Look at you now. An arsonist. Vandal. Kidnapper. A killer. And fuck knows what else.’
    ‘Luke. Luke. Luke. Still you are the sheep. You are sleeping.’
    ‘And your girlfriend was fucked up by something before you met her. She needs medicating, Loki. She’s lost it, mate. I thought I’d been out with some high-maintenance nut jobs,
but that fat bitch is in a different league. And maybe Fenris was too far gone too when you met him. Yeah, I think so. They were a couple of misfits who think you’re some kind of messiah.
Hardly candidates of the highest calibre for the revolution. What a sad and pointless tale it ultimately is.’
    Loki shook his head, disappointed. ‘Luke. You talk in your sleep.’
    ‘Because I can’t see the bigger picture, Loki. Because you, and Beavis and Buttmunch out there, have embraced sadism and the pitiless murder of innocent people. And I am a sleeping
sheep because I fail to see the importance of it. I fail to understand the significance of your actions. Nor will I ever, Loki. When you finally kill me, I . . . Well, I will be dead and you will
be a murderer. That’s all there is to it. It’s pointless. There is nothing magical or special about it. It’s just sordid and wrong and rotten and all fucked up, like you and those
dickheads who follow you around with their faces painted like ghosts.’
    ‘Exactly! Now you have hit the nail with the hammer.’ Loki grinned, then stood up and approached the bed. Luke could not help flinching, but hated himself for doing so.
    Loki tilted the horn and poured a long draft of a foul-smelling liquid onto Luke’s mouth. He tasted orange juice, and something like white spirit, or ethanol, and then he was choking.
    Loki reclaimed his seat on the dusty floor. ‘Good, yeah? I think so. Now, you are close to understanding that it is all part of the same thing. It does not matter if we hate Christians, or
immigrants, or faggots. That shows we are serious, yes. But you have to look deeper, my friend. Wotan woke in us. And we answered his call. But at the start we were like, er . . . yes, like the
children who want to do something, but don’t know how they do it, so they do something else, yes?’
    ‘No.’
    Loki raised his hands in frustration at the limits of his second language. ‘The devil is a good way to start, Luke. It is the start to be truly evil. To say fuck morals. I am evil. I am a
Satanist. I desecrate. I burn. I kill. To separate us from the rest, the sheep. Then, we realize it was Odin who stirs in us.