Chapter 8: The Monastery—Ambush Reversed
The monastery rose against the gray English sky like a prayer carved in stone, its bell tower reaching toward heaven with the arrogance of men who believed their god would protect them from Viking steel. Paul stood at the treeline, his vision from three days ago overlaying reality with disturbing precision—every stone in its proper place, every angle exactly as he'd foreseen.
Except now they knew what was waiting.
"The trap is still there. Hidden archers, rigged gate, concealed soldiers. But we're not walking into it blind."
Ragnar raised his hand, and the warband split into three groups according to their revised plan. Floki took a small team armed with torches and oil-soaked arrows, cackling with manic glee as he disappeared toward the base of the bell tower. Lagertha led her flanking force toward the chapel entrance that Paul's vision had revealed. The main body would wait for Floki's signal before moving.
Paul crouched beside Ragnar, watching the monastery with eyes that saw both present and remembered future. The archers were there, just as his vision had shown—dark shapes moving behind the tower's narrow windows, arrows nocked and ready for targets that would never come.
"There," Paul murmured, pointing at the bell tower. "Seven archers. They're watching the main approach."
Ragnar nodded grimly. "Not for much longer."
Floki's fire bloomed at the base of the tower like a flower made of destruction. The oil-soaked wood caught instantly, flames racing up the support beams with hungry enthusiasm. Within moments, thick smoke was pouring through the tower's interior, and Paul could hear the muffled shouts of panicking men.
"They're dying before the battle even starts. Men who would have killed Vikings are burning because of my vision."
The archers appeared at the windows, coughing and desperate, some trying to shoot through the smoke while others simply tried to escape the inferno their sanctuary had become. A few jumped, hitting the courtyard stones with sounds like breaking pottery. Others stayed too long and burned.
Floki returned to the treeline grinning like a madman, soot streaking his wild hair.
"Your visions make excellent kindling, seer!" he called out, loud enough for the whole warband to hear.
"Visions make excellent kindling. There's something in his tone—not just humor."
Ragnar's horn sounded, and the Vikings poured from the forest toward the monastery. But instead of charging the main gate as the Saxons expected, they flowed around the burning tower toward the chapel entrance Lagertha had scouted.
The gate trap sprung on empty air.
Paul watched from inside the courtyard as the massive wooden beam came crashing down, the entire entrance collapsing in a shower of splinters and stone. The sound echoed off the monastery walls like thunder, but there was no one there to crush. The Saxons had wasted their surprise on vacant ground.
"All that planning. All that preparation. And we just walked through the side door."
The Saxon soldiers poured from their hiding places in confusion, shouting orders that contradicted each other as their carefully laid ambush fell apart. Paul could see their commander—a grizzled veteran in mail and leather—trying to rally his men for a conventional fight in the sacred space of the monastery courtyard.
"This is it. The moment Ragnar should have died."
Paul activated Odin's Whisper.
[ODIN'S WHISPER ACTIVATED]
[DURATION: 120 SECONDS]
[MANA COST: 100% CURRENT MP]
[REMAINING MP: 9/12 (RESERVE)]
The world split into reality and perfect future, and Paul saw the next two minutes unfolding with crystalline clarity. The Saxon commander was moving toward Ragnar with deadly intent, sword raised for a killing stroke that would take the Viking leader in the shoulder and open an artery. Two other Saxons were flanking toward Lagertha, coordinating an attack that would put blades in her back while she engaged another enemy. Bjorn was about to overextend himself pursuing a retreating Saxon, leaving himself open to a spear thrust that would pierce his side.
"Not today."
Paul flowed through the melee like water finding its course, his Dane Axe moving with the inevitability of fate itself. He intercepted the Saxon commander mid-charge, his blade catching the man across the throat before the killing stroke could find Ragnar. Blood sprayed in a perfect arc, and the commander dropped like a felled tree.
"Lagertha! Left side!"
His warning carried across the courtyard, and Lagertha spun just in time to catch one of her flankers with her sword. Paul was already moving, his axe finding the second Saxon's ribs before the man could recover from his surprise.
Movement in his peripheral vision—Bjorn charging after a retreating Saxon, exactly as the vision had shown. Paul lunged forward, grabbing the boy's belt and yanking him backward just as a spear thrust split the air where his torso had been.
"Alive and embarrassed beats dead and dignified," Paul gasped as Bjorn stared at him in shock.
Two minutes of perfect battlefield control. Paul existed in the spaces between heartbeats, moving through a dance of violence that he'd already witnessed and mastered. When Odin's Whisper finally ended, he staggered against a stone wall, his mana completely depleted and his body shaking with exhaustion.
"I saved them. Ragnar, Lagertha, Bjorn—all alive because I saw their deaths and refused to let them happen."
The battle ended with Saxon dead scattered across the monastery courtyard and Vikings looting everything that wasn't nailed down. Paul watched Athelstan's face during the pillaging—the monk's expression carefully neutral, but pain flickering in his eyes as sacred objects were stuffed into Viking sacks.
"This is... complicated for me," Athelstan said quietly as Paul approached.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Absolutely not."
Ragnar found Paul leaning against the chapel wall, still recovering from his mana drain. The Viking leader's eyes were bright with the particular intensity that came after surviving what should have been certain death.
"You see true," Ragnar said, gripping Paul's shoulder with a hand that could have crushed stone. "Odin's gift is not given lightly. This should have been my death."
"Because I saw you die and couldn't let it happen."
"The Norns showed me threads," Paul replied, borrowing the metaphor from Norse mythology. "I pulled the right one."
Ragnar nodded, accepting the explanation with the pragmatism of a man who lived in a world where gods spoke directly to mortals. But as he walked away to oversee the looting, another figure approached from the smoke and shadows.
Floki's eyes were too bright, blood streaking his face like war paint. His usual manic grin was absent, replaced by an expression of uncomfortable intensity.
"That wasn't Odin's whisper, seer."
Paul's stomach dropped into his boots. "What do you mean?"
Floki leaned closer, close enough that Paul could smell smoke and blood and something else—the particular madness that lived behind the boatbuilder's eyes.
"I know the All-Father's touch," Floki said quietly. "I build his ships, I hear his winds, I feel his presence in every wave that carries our warriors to glory. Your visions smell of... something else. Foreign. Wrong."
"He knows. Somehow, he knows the system isn't divine."
"The gods show us mist and shadow," Floki continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than a shout. "Fragments of possibility, dreams of what might be. You see stone and blood, exact and perfect. That's not prophecy, Paul of the south. That's something else entirely."
He walked away before Paul could respond, muttering under his breath in Old Norse. Paul caught fragments—something about foreign threads and borrowed power and things that didn't belong in Midgard.
"How long before he figures out what I really am? How long before he decides I'm a threat to everything he believes?"
That night they camped in the looted monastery, and Paul lay awake on a stone floor listening to warriors celebrate their victory. He'd saved Ragnar's life, prevented a massacre, and proven his value to the warband beyond any doubt.
But Floki's words echoed in his mind like a curse: "That's not prophecy. That's something else."
"Something else. If only he knew how right he was."
[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: SAVED A LEGEND]
[REWARD: +0.2 MAGIC, +0.2 AGILITY]
[SYSTEM POINTS EARNED: 200]
[TOTAL SYSTEM POINTS: 250]
[MENTAL STRAIN: ACCUMULATING - MONITOR USAGE]
+1 CHAPTER AFTER EVERY 3 REVIEWS
MORE POWER STONES == MORE CHAPTERS
To supporting Me in Pateron .
Love [ In The Vinking With Deja Vu System ]? Unlock More Chapters and Support the Story!
Dive deeper into the world of [ In The Vinking With Deja Vu System ] with exclusive access to 27+ chapters on my Patreon, you get more chapters if you ask for more (in few days), plus new fanfic every week! Your support starting at just $5/month helps me keep crafting the stories you love across epic universes like [ Game Of Throne ,MCU and Arrowverse, Breaking Bad , The Walking dead ,The Hobbit,Wednesday].
By joining, you're not just getting more chapters—you're helping me bring new worlds, twists, and adventures to life. Every pledge makes a huge difference!
👉 Join now at patreon.com/TheFinex5 and start reading today!