Asgard Awakening Page 16

  He really didn’t want to believe that the villagers had killed all the kids off to appease some dark god, or had let it happen. Then again, in hindsight, quite a few of them had come across as terrified. But if that was happening, if they were being pushed into it, why didn’t they just leave, or go get help?

  No, maybe it’s not that simple. Get help from who? Leave to go where? Trav answered his own question, and part of him felt sick. He’d been a slave for years and had never given up on life, but he’d seen plenty who had.

  Knowing that human beings were capable of such evil was one thing, but Trav had seen it firsthand. Part of him wanted to give the benefit of the doubt, but he feared the worst.

  The noises up ahead were growing stronger. Since he was heading toward danger, Trav tried to think of a plan, but eventually he just accepted he didn’t have enough information to form one. The two fire flower, magic-crafted stones in his pocket were comforting, as was the spear in his hand. If he had to fight it out, at least he had decent weapons and some magic left to call on.

  Still, whether they were going to fight or not, he didn’t want to just go running in like an idiot. In fact, doing so last time had gotten him knocked out to begin with. He glanced at the harpy and whispered, “Hey, we are going to take this slow, alright?”

  “Of course. I will follow your lead. As long as we punish the warlock and settle my debt to these heathens, I will be content.” The harpy’s words held heat, but her mannerisms were distracted like she was focusing inward. Suddenly, she cocked her head and said, “I can transform now, I think.”

  Trav’s eyes narrowed in confusion before he slowly nodded. “My other Valkyrie can too, so I guess this doesn’t surprise me that much.”

  “Truly?” The Kin’s usual aloof air had disappeared. In its place, her voice held a sense of wonder.

  “Yes. What can you transform into?”

  “I am not sure.” She didn’t say anything else.

  Trav watched the harpy a moment longer before turning his eyes forward again. He could definitely hear chanting now and other strange noises.

  Farther up the tunnel, retracing the path he had originally taken before being captured, he found out what all the demon followers had been doing. After waving Yaakova to stay still, he’d slowly poked his head around a bend in the tunnel. The chamber with the altar was visible, and a large number of people had gathered, wearing dark robes and chanting. The altar was covered in fresh blood, and a huge puddle of it had run all over the floor, flowing into a small gutter that led deeper into the room. The demon worshippers seemed to be in some state of euphoria and were waving their hands around as little green motes of magic floated through the fetish-lit cavern.

  The warlock Toggit stood in front of the altar with his head uncovered, a knife held in his bloody hands. He chanted in a language that Trav didn’t understand at first but placed as similar to Sumerian after his borrowed memories kicked in.

  None of this made sense at first. Why are they celebrating, or whatever it is they’re doing? The warlock had to know by now that Trav had escaped. Apparently, a lookout had been posted—one robed person stood to the rear. Luckily, they were facing the other direction at the moment.

  Now that he was seeing the room again, and had a better view of the layout, Odin’s knowledge helped Trav to understand what he was seeing. Cycling through the filters of his emberstone eye helped too. He gritted his teeth.

  Through one arched doorway, he saw a veil door for the first time. The rift in time and space shimmered—its magical aura and flows were unique, interesting; it had been artificially stabilized. A large number of protective rune equations had been placed around it, both to stabilize the veil, and to keep it contained. The altar was magically attached to it somehow—the cultists had been offering prayers and power—and blood—to whatever was on the other side of the veil. Presumably, the humans didn’t have the power to break the rune equations binding the veil, but maybe something on the other side could.

  Now that his magical senses were turned to the maximum, he felt something terrible, something cold from the other side. Half-remembered fringes of Odin’s memories made Trav’s hands shake. What he was feeling had something to do with how Odin had died.

  Coming here to put an end to this madness had been the right decision. Trav wasn’t a fan of Asgard, but whatever was on the other side of the veil gate was pure evil. He didn’t like the look of the strange, wispy, fog-looking things coming out of the veil-gate, either. Another powerful, different sense of dread washed through him when he’d noticed them.

  Due to the angle he was watching from, Trav could also see into the second doorway from the altar room. His eyebrows climbed up when he saw it was a doorway to a natural tunnel, covered floor to ceiling in emberstone. At this point, he also realized that the pulling he’d felt before came from this area.

  He was about to turn away when he heard a faint voice. At first, he almost dismissed it, but then he remembered he was on another world. He focused, ignoring his ears, and trying to listen with his magic senses.

  The voice whispered, Help me. I can’t last much longer. You, I can see you. I can feel you. Whoever you are, save me, and I will serve you forever.

  Oh, Erinyes, it has been so long…

  I have asked so many times, and nobody hears me, but you are different. Ah, yes, you hear me! I swear upon the night and the day that you will not regret it!

  Take me, free me, and I will be your sword!

  The voice kept basically repeating itself after that. Trav reasoned that the voice was somehow connected to whatever had been pulling him to the mines in the first place. He wanted to find out what it was, but he had about forty cultists to deal with first.

  As with several other times since he’d been in the tunnels, he acknowledged that running away would be the smart course of action. But his earlier realization that higher risk meant higher reward made him pause. Plus, something about this situation was resonating with his divine mantle.

  The demon worshippers offended him.

  He ducked back around the corner and briefly relayed what he’d seen to Yaakova. She stayed silent while he whispered, and when he was done, she didn’t react how he’d expected her to. He’d expected a few questions or even a challenge to his ownership of whatever was in the emberstone cave. Instead, she just said, “I want to kill the warlock.”

  Trav frowned. “Didn’t you come here in the first place for the power you were feeling?”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t matter anymore. When you marked me, you gave me everything I needed. Plus, you said it is surrounded by red stone, and it is next to that veil gate. I have no desire to die. Whatever is there has been looking at us, I can feel it.”

  Trav just nodded. He was glad he had to focus on the veil gate to feel the—wrongness—on the other side. This little adventure had been more than he’d bargained for. One thing was for sure—he was never leaving Narnaste behind ever again.

  “Okay. Stand back.” Trav drew his shiv and began slowly scribing rune equations on the rock wall where he was standing. This would be a similar working to what the Kin had done to the emberstone mine he’d worked in.

  There was about to be a cave-in, a big one.

  As he drew, he instructed, “Be slow and careful, but look around the corner and try to see if the robes people have any more living sacrifices.”

  “Why.”

  “Maybe we can save them.”

  Yaakova narrowed her eyes at him like he was stupid, but she made a face and complied. After that, Trav paid full attention to what he was doing. Yaakova was a wild card. The harpy was dangerous and stubborn but hopefully wouldn’t turn on her new master. Trav’s divine mark was potent, infused with divine magic, and the Kin woman had consented to be bound.

  Worrying about Yaakova’s loyalty was useless at this point and distracting. Trav needed to draw the rune equations as carefully as he could and only release magic at a small, constant rate. This meth
od took a lot of control and massive amounts of focus. Luckily, he’d had several years of practice in single-minded patience.

  Once he finished this rune working, it would automatically activate. There would be a drain on his power then, removing most of what he had left. This would definitely alert the warlock that he was doing something, especially since they were so close. If Trav ran away at that point, he’d lose any chance of finding out what was in the emberstone cave, and Yaakova would undoubtedly die. There was no way she’d just run away—no matter what, she’d probably still want to kill the warlock.

  Kin were just like that.

  Besides, Trav didn’t have enough time to play argue-all-day-with-the-Kin. Time was not on their side. He couldn’t talk while focusing on his rune working, but flashes of worry seeped around the emotional blocks he was using.

  The idea of losing all of his remaining power for the day made him nervous. Logically, he knew he should feel lucky, though. Only the presence of so much emberstone nearby, and the magically-charged nature of the caves themselves, were allowing him to charge up such a powerful rune working. In essence, he was using the mountain to bring down the mountain, similar to how he’d destroyed the barrier on the prison cell earlier by turning it on itself.

  He carefully drew a line terminating in a box and began attaching glyphs to the endpoint. This portion of the working would function as the fuse. After the rune working was activated, he’d only have about twenty minutes to escape. The continued chanting of the cultists filled Trav with dread and made his stomach turn. It sounded like their ritual had changed.

  The harpy suddenly came back, leaning in close to whisper. “I just checked. There are no captives. In fact, the last sacrifice looks like it was one of them.” Yaakova looked disgusted. “The witchcraft they are using is sloppy, inelegant. It’s like using a large rock to stir a stew pot.”

  Trav nodded—his drawing was almost finished. “Alright, get ready. When this thing is done, hold back long enough to let me throw one of the stones in my pocket. Then you can kill anyone you want. Well, you might want to go after the warlock first.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” The harpy smiled, her expression predatory and bestial. Trav was suddenly reminded again that earlier that day, she’d been ripping his pants off and would have gladly killed and eaten him.

  Somehow, Trav was still surviving Asgard, barely—he was hardly comfortable, though. He doubted his benefactor, Odin, had ever gone through anything quite like this before.

  Chapter 21

  The rune working was almost finished, and Trav was sweating bullets. “I’m about to be done,” he whispered. In the background, just a murmur now that he’d tuned it out, the voice from the emberstone tunnel still pleaded to be released.

  He turned to look Yaakova in her unsettling, inhuman eyes. “Get ready.”

  “I am ready.” The harpy stood crouched, watching their rear so nobody could sneak up on them. She practically trembled, she was so ready for violence.

  Trav examined his entire rune working on the wall with a critical eye, making sure he hadn’t left anything out. “And you will prioritize the warlock. He has to die as fast as possible.”

  “Yes. This is obvious, and you have already said so before.”

  “Okay, good.” Trav felt strange doing so, but he whispered again, speaking aloud to the voice in the emberstone cave. He was fairly sure the voice was female, but he still wasn’t certain. “Hey, you, the one who is trapped and wants to escape. I have heard you, but who are you? What are you?”

  He was not surprised when the voice responded. I am...Disir, I think she called me. Sigrun said she would have chosen me if I were not a woman. I lived in peace for a while in a grove of trees, and blessed warriors, but then one day I woke up in this...thing. I have been here for ages.

  Being trapped sounded fairly terrible, and it reminded Trav of his own imprisonment. He decided to speak his mind even while Yaakova glanced at him oddly. “I cannot promise anything, but I will try to free you. Now be silent.”

  I understand, said the voice, then it went still.

  Only a couple lines remained of the last rune equation before the rune working would be complete. As he began scribing one of them, his mind wandered, thinking about the insanity of his current situation. A few minutes earlier, Yaakova had reported that the demon worshippers had been getting louder, and one of the women had thrown her robes off to be mounted by several men while the chanting continued. “These people were just born to be someone’s noisy neighbor in an apartment complex,” Trav muttered.

  He gathered himself, mentally calming his mind once more. “Okay, here goes nothing.” With one more movement of his shiv, he completed the entire rune working, which immediately started soaking up his remaining magic power. He’d been expecting it, so Trav didn’t waste any time. After drawing a fire flower stone from his pocket, he primed the weapon and threw it right into the middle of the demon worshippers.

  Even as Trav’s rune working flared to life, the enemy warlock’s head snapped around. The bald man shouted, “Kindred, the intruders have t—”

  The rest of his words were cut off by the roar of Trav’s enchanted stone exploding.

  Charred bodies of demon worshippers were blown all over the room. The explosion had caught at least ten of them, stopped by the tightly packed bodies, but it had torn apart the unfortunates who’d been nearby.

  A huge plume of fire blossomed in the midst of the cultists, and pieces of stone that hadn’t shredded the robed revelers pinged off the ceiling. A few cultists screamed, but many kept chanting.

  The robed worshippers who had not somehow ignored the blast turned to reveal feverish eyes. Trav figured they were all on drugs or being influenced by dark magic. Either way, none of these people were acting normally, or reacting how people normally would.

  “Kill the warlock,” Trav snarled, but when he turned, Yaakova was already gone. She’d dived forward into the mass of remaining heretics with savage glee, claws flashing.

  “Block them! The ceremony is almost done!” screamed the warlock. His bald head reflected the room’s witchlight, and he bellowed, “One of you go to the altar and give yourself to our lord!”

  Trav ran into the room and shoved back one stinky, robed devotee so hard, the cultist collided with three others, falling to the ground. Smoke from the detonated fire flower stung Trav’s eyes, and the haze in the air made the light reflect strangely, making the scene even more otherworldly.

  The chanter that he’d knocked down rolled and the figure’s hood dropped, revealing her as one of the women from the village. She looked dirty and terrified, but feral too. A murderous snarl crossed her face. Trav cocked an arm, ready to thrust with his spear, but he looked into her maddened expression and hesitated.

  His inaction almost cost him his life.

  He barely caught motion out the corner of his eye and turned in time to mostly dodge an attack by a tall man with a bushy beard. The villager’s crude sword whistled through the air, just the tip managing to hit Trav, slicing through the meat on the outside of his arm. If he’d been slower, the attack would have taken off his entire limb.

  While he reeled, the woman had produced a dagger from somewhere and lunged forward. She almost had Trav dead to rights, but his survival instincts had been honed in a hard school on Asgard. He dropped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The woman howled as she overextended, hanging in the air over a very irritated Trav.

  His system full of adrenaline, Trav kicked out as hard as he could with his superhuman strength, and the woman was thrown back like a rag doll. Before the attacking man could recover, Trav struck his spear between his enemy’s ribs and ripped it out in a shower of gore.

  He spared a glance for Yaakova and verified she was still alive, but the Kin was having a hard time getting through the press of bodies to the warlock. The dark magician frothed at the mouth now, screaming, “Midgard Children, stop them! Free the children of your l
ord into this world! We are so close! Don’t let our sacrifices be for nothing!” The unkempt, evil man thrust a hand out at Yaakova, conjuring a purple fireball, but the harpy woman was fast. She grabbed a cultist and threw the screaming human in the path of the magic projectile.

  Trav hissed as he caught another painful cut, this time to his leg. Focusing on his own fight had to be his priority for the time being. He darted back as another male cultist stopped chanting and tried stabbing him with a crude knife, made with an antler handle. Trav knocked the man’s hand to the side with his spear before skewering him through the throat with his own shiv. As his enemy died, he noticed that the rail-thin man had been missing half his teeth.

  The next few seconds felt surreal. Since Trav had upgraded himself with his new magic power, he’d only fought Kin or had killed animals for food. This was his first time fighting humans since then, and he wondered when regular people had all gotten so slow and fragile.

  A woman with grey hair screamed as she clawed at his face. Trav stepped around the attack, grabbed one of her arms and broke it with a twist of his wrist. Then he thrust-kicked her into another group of cultists that seemed to be coming out of their stupor.

  A couple more cultists rushed him, so Trav faded back toward the door, thrusting with his spear. The dwarven-made weapon had been designed to wound Restless, so human flesh offered almost no resistance at all. A flash of light out the corner of his eye preceded Yaakova screaming, “Dodge!”

  With a curse, Trav dove to the side, barely avoiding a purple fireball that splashed against the stone wall behind him, burning a ragged hole. “Don’t get cocky,” he muttered to himself.

  Yaakova finally broke through the mass of bodies to reach the warlock. She screamed in triumph and vindication as she used her great strength to tear him apart with her claws. Meanwhile, a cultist had climbed to the top of the altar. He threw his hood back, and Trav couldn’t recall the man’s name but recognized the village blacksmith. The scruffy, muscular, smiling man deliberately pulled out a knife from underneath his robe. He stared Trav right in the eyes, his pupils dancing, his face shiny with sweat—and cut his own throat.