Read Underworlds #4: The Ice Dragon for Free Online Page B

hands pushing on my shoulders and back. Sydney and Jon were behind me, pushing me forward, holding me up.
    Clank! The Crystal Rune dropped to the floor at the foot of Odin’s throne. The sword was deep inLoki’s chest, and I dropped my hands just as ice crystals exploded in my face and scattered across the stone floor.
    When I fell, my sword dropped to the stairs with a clang. I snatched up the broken lyre and the rune in a single grab.
    A howl came from the mound of ice chunks. The dragon was no more, and Loki appeared in its place, screaming and squirming and clutching his chest with both hands.
    “We did it,” I said, watching Loki gasp for breath. “ We did it! ”
    I pulled Jon and Sydney to their feet. We strode to the high walls. Jon held up Loki’s helmet, and Sydney held the Crystal Rune. I held the lyre together with my hands and plucked one string as loudly as I could. Everything quieted for a moment as all eyes turned toward us.
    In the next instant, Loki’s monsters let loose a wail that reached the sky. Without Loki’s powerful runic magic binding them to him, they could no longer fight. Odin and the lords and beasts of the Babylonian,Greek, and Egyptian Underworlds quickly circled Loki’s armies in a death grip, pressing them to the shore and back onto their ships.
    Before we knew it, Odin and Thor burst into Valhalla. “Imprison the fiend!” Odin boomed.
    Thor smashed right and left, hammering columns into jagged bars and surrounding the wounded Loki behind them, like a zoo exhibit. Spitting and growling, Loki changed into a dozen different shapes, but no matter how strong or how small, he couldn’t escape his new prison. To make it that much worse, the gods set a viper over the cage to drip its venom on Loki constantly.
    Drip … drip … drip …
    “You will stay there until the real Ragnarok comes,” Odin proclaimed. “Loki, give the order now to release Dana and her parents!”
    Loki gazed up between the bars with glassy, wicked eyes. “Wait for it …”
    “Fenrir has escaped!” cried Miss Hilda, circling overhead on her flying horse.
    “And there it is!” Loki gargled a laugh. “My faithful servant makes his way to Niflheim, to execute one last command!”
    “Dana!” I cried, seeing her face in my mind’s eye. “Odin, we need to get to Niflheim now!”
    I wasn’t a hero. I was just a person with a friend. I had to bring Dana home. I wouldn’t go home without her or her parents. That was all there was to it. I wouldn’t go home. We wouldn’t go home.
    “Odin,” I said, “please —”
    Odin turned to the sea and raised his sword high. With that, Baldur’s longship was dragged to shore. It was a slender boat built entirely of pine, with a single trunk, tall and straight and smooth as iron, as its mast.
    “To go across the Sea of Asgard, beyond the rocks to the land of the dead, there is only one way,” Odin said gravely, pointing to his son’s funeral ship. “That way.”

J ON NARROWED HIS EYES AT O DIN . “S AY THAT AGAIN ?”
    But it was all too clear what Odin meant as we joined him, Thor, and the others, carrying Baldur’s body down to the water.
    “We’re going to ride Baldur’s ship to Niflheim,” I said, “because that’s where Dana is.”
    The gods rested Baldur on a platform beneath the mast. Thor laid a shroud on his brother and set the fallen god’s sword and shield over it. The Valkyriespiled bread and fruit by his side and stacked firewood around the platform.
    With solemn faces, the gods lowered torches to the firewood. The planks began to smoke and burn.
    Jon seemed to search everyone’s face for a sign that this was some kind of joke. “Is everyone nuts? This may be the mythological world, but that’s real fire,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I love sailing. But ride a burning ship? I don’t think so —”
    Even though my legs barely held me up, I walked the plank onto the deck. “I’ll use the lyre to keep the flames away from