Asgard Awakening Page 7

  Narnaste nodded, then said, “Yes, Lord, but if we are to talk, we should keep our voices down in case there are more Wild Ones nearby.”

  “Oh yeah, that makes sense,” Trav said softly. He still wasn’t sure why she was calling him Lord, but he would find out soon enough. With the sigil lanterns, moving was faster and safer now, so other than periodically sweeping his light to the rear, ensuring nothing could sneak up on them in the dark, he focused on Narnaste’s explanation.

  She said, “When we first met, I thought you were just a human. Unlike many other Kin, I do not hate humans; they are just not important to me. I do not believe that humans were responsible for the disappearance of the High Masters.”

  “High Masters?” Trav asked.

  “You might call them gods. Members of The Faithful, like me, feel the concept is too limited.”

  Trav sighed. “This conversation is going to go nowhere fast if you keep using obviously capitalized names that I’ve never heard before. Just assume I know nothing and explain everything.”

  “How do you know nothing, Lord? You are a High Master. It’s unmistakable. You are also a greater sigil crafter than the most talented line mages on Asgard. Are you teasing me?”

  The tall, scruffy man eyed the Kin woman while deciding how to answer. Not for the first time, he felt thankful that he’d been able to learn the language of Asgard so quickly. What Narnaste had just said had been fairly complex in the Asgard language.

  Trav had never been all that great with languages before, and he could only assume that the Voice had helped him learn. This theory was backed up by how at times he had randomly seemed to understand a word even if he hadn’t heard it before. It also helped explain his quick realization that the Kin spoke differently than the slaves, using different words and grammar. Trav decided to switch to the more formal Kin way of speaking during this conversation and confirm a suspicion before continuing.

  “Narnaste, can you sense whether someone is telling the truth when they speak?”

  The beautiful, inhuman woman narrowed her eyes and glanced at him before searching the way ahead again. “Yes,” she said.

  So much for High Master or Lord, thought Trav with a hidden grin. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the scarred Kin was still keeping secrets. That’s fine, he thought. Out loud he said, “Asgard is not my homeworld. I came to this one about three years ago.” He waited for the Kin woman to react, and when she didn’t, he said, “You suspected?”

  “I knew. If the Kin in charge of the slaves were not so stupid and blind, they could have figured it out too. You have a strange accent, stand differently, possess more self-confidence, speak more intelligently, and you have the aura of a High Master. I didn’t know what it was when I first met you, but now it is obvious. Well, the feeling is still rather weak, but close to you, it is plain if I allow myself to search for it.

  “Beyond that, the signs are all there for one who knows them. One prophecy of the High Masters is that upon their return, they will be changed, arriving from other worlds.”

  Trav frowned. “You can feel something from me? Are you sensitive to this sort of thing?”

  “Yes. Which is probably another reason you remained undiscovered for so long. If your captors had found out, the Dacith might have just torn you apart. At the very least, you would have been taken to the High Lords and given a trial.”

  “Then what?”

  “You would have been executed.”

  That aligned with what Trav already knew. The Kin leaders would kill humans for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time—like had happened to Beth. High-level Kin did whatever they wanted—Trav had seen evidence of that. He felt the deep, ugly hatred well up inside and struggled to suppress it.

  His new power responded to the dark emotion, swelling, growing. Trav felt a murderous desire to lash out, to manifest his anger on the world. Narnaste glanced at him warily, probably feeling at least something from him. The gesture helped Trav get himself back under control. This was not a game, his magic was real, and losing control would probably be a bad thing. He focused on breathing slowly, reminding himself that everything had its own time, even revenge.

  Once his burst of rage had been quelled, and he was back under control, Trav asked, “Okay, fine, but what is all this ‘Faithful’ stuff?”

  Narnaste shrugged uncomfortably, and Trav tried not to notice the interesting way it made her chest move—now was not the time for those sorts of thoughts, either. The Kin woman said, “I would never have revealed myself to you if you were not a High Master. The Faithful are not...popular now among the Kin. The popular thought among most Kin of Asgard is that the High Masters abandoned us or were killed somehow by human treachery. The Church of Self has more or less seized control of the three Kin countries. The Faithful exist in secret now, but we have known that, eventually, the High Masters would return.”

  Trav thought he understood—Narnaste was in some sort of fringe religion or at least adhered to an old, unpopular way of thinking. He said, “That makes sense, but now what? What do you want with me?”

  “I cannot force you to do anything. I am just a woman, not a Crafter, but I am not ignorant. The bond between us is of master and servant, which I was at peace with even before discovering your true nature. However, I request you make your way to a hidden town of the Faithful. I can lead you there. Of course, I will follow and assist you. The Faithful will help you reclaim your rightful position.”

  Trav said, “What about the slaves? I have been helping them for years. Actually, wait.” He thought about how the mine had been collapsed. Perhaps the Kin would even start a mine somewhere else. Actually, if he had to leave, this would be the perfect time to do it, at least from the perspective of not bringing more hardship on the other slaves.

  As he thought through the last day or so, Trav actually realized something. Narnaste probably didn’t actually know how he’d killed the troll. After they’d woken up and she’d announced he was a High Master, she’d been taking a lot of things on faith or just rolling with the punches, which seemed to fit the fact that she was having a religious moment.

  Narnaste was keeping things to herself as well, so Trav decided not to tell her about his ability to touch emberstone. He decided to be honest about his motivation, though. “I want to kill one of your High Lords, I think. The Kin fucker that killed my wife.”

  “You had a wife, a slave?” The canine woman pursed her lips and said, “The High Lords are very, very powerful. Which one do you wish revenge on?” Trav told her, and Narnaste’s face fell. “Yes, he is one of the cruelest, and also not to be trifled with. You are not ready to face him.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yes, I can tell,” said Narnaste, nodding in approval. Trav didn’t know what she’d meant at first until he remembered her truth-sensing ability. She said, “Now, Lord, I must ask, do you know where we are going?”

  “Not really, but I’ve been following a pull. I think this is the right way to go.”

  “Ah, I see.” Narnaste focused on lighting the way and didn’t say more. Trav could tell she didn’t understand and wondered how often in her life she had just had to trust that others could see or hear things she couldn’t. A normal Kin person’s life must be very strange at times.

  Trav shook his head. No, he refused to think of Kin as people. They were monsters, all of them. Narnaste was an ally, and Trav would think of her as such unless she turned on him, but it would be wise not to forget what she was. Now that he was changed, he didn’t feel physically outclassed anymore. Of course, the muscular man couldn’t know for certain how much more powerful he was now, but he could sense that the change had been significant.

  The pulling sensation grew stronger as he walked with Narnaste in silence. He activated his emberstone eye a few times, but the glyph lamps were so good, he couldn’t really see that much better with the eye, and so he just turned it off. There was no reason to risk tipping off Narnaste to the eye if he
didn't have to.

  The pulling sensation got even stronger as the tunnel widened into what seemed to be a large cave. Suddenly, lights flared all around, and Trav partially shielded his eyes, ready for an attack. Narnaste growled next to him, probably doing the same. An attack never came. Trav strained his ears, listening for any signs of danger. After his eyes adjusted, he breathed out in wonder.

  “Wow.” Trav hadn’t been sure where the pulling would lead him, but he definitely hadn’t been expecting this—a temple of sorts.

  Narnaste gasped. “A memory shrine!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never even seen one before in person! I can’t believe we found one!”

  “A what?”

  “Come see!” said the Kin woman, bounding forward.

  Trav suspiciously glanced around first, but then he shrugged, following the shapely Kin woman forward. Despite his recent changes, he assumed that Narnaste still had better senses than he did. But just in case she wasn’t paying attention, he gripped the shiv in his pocket tightly and warily walked towards the old, stone building in the middle of the subterranean cavern.

  Chapter 9

  The temple was not large, but the closer he got, Trav had to privately admit that it was impressive. Each pillar had been carved with such detail; he could see individual facial features on each fighter in large, disturbing battle scenes. Men, Kin, unidentifiable things, and huge nightmarish creatures all fought each other to the death on a field under a lightning sky.

  “I bet that wouldn’t be fun,” he muttered.

  After he climbed up the steps and entered the open area inside, Trav stopped and looked around. The memory shrine was definitely not what he’d been expecting. The inside was all one bare room except for a pedestal with a dark, almost black sphere in the center. The globe had at least some translucency, weirdly distorting the light passing through it.

  Four large doors led inside, and Trav had a feeling based on the knowledge in his head that they probably corresponded to the four cardinal directions on Asgard. In fact, as he took another hesitant step inside and noticed that the walls were made of what looked like white marble with gold crown molding, something triggered his alien memories and rune knowledge. Narnaste slowly walked forward near the center of the room and the pedestal, almost in a trance.

  Trav felt a burst of adrenaline and a sense of dread. “Get back here,” he whispered as loudly as he could. Narnaste kept moving forward, her hand extended. “You stupid Kin! No! Stop that, you idiot!” Trav pulled his hair and shifted weight, from foot to foot, trying to decide whether to run or dash forward.

  Every instinct he had screamed at him.

  Narnaste touched the sphere.

  Instantly, the room lit up like a department store back on Earth, all white, sterile light. “Oh shit!” muttered Trav, and took a step back, but the area behind him, filling the doorway, was now hazy and as solid as concrete.

  A pulse of lavender light shot around the circumference of the room before doing a spiral along the floor, even passing under Trav’s feet before eventually running up the pillar, making the globe glow. Narnaste jerked her hand as if it had been burned, jumping back to land in a crouch, issuing a feral growl.

  The atmosphere of the room grew more dangerous as Narnaste turned, her unfocused eyes landing on Trav. Lips pulled back, the Kin woman bared her teeth. Lithe, powerful muscles in her limbs tensed.

  Something inside Trav snapped into place. Even after being a slave to inhuman monsters for three years, the only day worse than this one had been when his wife had been murdered. This day, well, maybe two days, had been a really shitty day among an endless parade of really shitty days. On top of everything that had happened, even witnessing poor Asta get eaten alive by a troll, now the Kin woman he’d just slept with was looking like she might attack him? Oh hell no, he thought.

  “Stand down, woman!” Trav heard his own voice crack out with such authority, he almost didn’t recognize himself. As soon as he’d spoken, all of the tension in Narnaste’s limbs vanished, and she blinked owlishly. She glanced back in confusion, then terror, and scrambled over to Trav, hiding behind him. “What were you thinking?” Trav hissed.

  “Something—something is making thinking hard. The power, it’s too much!” she muttered, her voice slurred. Up close, now Trav could see how dilated her pupils were. The Kin woman was sweating bullets.

  In the center of the room, the globe pulsed, its lavender light growing brighter. Thinking fast, Trav drew his shiv and tried scribing a quick glyph equation that would erode a hole in the wall, but as he drew, no lines appeared. “What the—” he muttered. The light in the globe grew brighter and all around the room, runes began to flash.

  Despite himself, Trav took a step back. He turned to the distressed Kin woman next to him, and asked, “What did you call this? A memory shrine?”

  Narnaste seemed to have regained more of her senses. She nodded.

  “What is it for?”

  “I don’t exactly know, I just know they are sacred. Relics of the High Masters. Nobody I know has ever seen one in person. Only one or two have been found, but they are said to be very powerful. I’ve only seen drawings, and that was only when I was with other Faithful. They are holy places. I don’t know what is happening!”

  “Oh great,” said Trav. “Just wonderful.” He turned to fully face the center of the room, watching all the runes appear, running in rings around the walls. He was only half surprised that he could actually understand what they meant, and what was happening.

  “Oh wow,” he breathed. Whoever had set this building up, had really known what they were doing.

  After another few breaths, the entire building flashed with runes from top to bottom, and the crystal globe in the center of the room exploded in light. Trav shielded his eyes while Narnaste cried out in terror. Without thinking, Trav dropped a hand, resting it reassuringly on the crouching Kin’s head.

  When the light faded, Trav exhaled in startlement. A woman stood before him, armored from head to toe, her fierce, inhuman gaze directed fully at him. Every bit of her body glowed lavender, and she seemed somewhat translucent, almost like a hologram. She wore a round shield on one arm and held a spear in her other hand, butt on the ground like she was about to give judgement.

  Red sigils glowed at each corner of the temple. The room pulsed with runes and lavender light as the armored woman spoke. “Announcement: Name Amain. Returning directive, prime function. State passkey or be eradicated.”

  The world seemed to shrink for Trav and then turn sideways. The next thing he knew, he was standing in a featureless void, facing an old, scarred, one-eyed man. When the man spoke, Trav immediately recognized his voice. All the sourceless mutterings in his head for the last three years, the Voice...how could he mistake it for anything else?

  “We finally meet, boy.”

  “Boy?” Despite the strangeness of the situation, Trav refused to be talked down to. Not now, not after surviving the mines as a slave. Now that he was free, he wasn’t taking anyone’s shit ever again.

  The stranger smiled, showing his teeth, the expression right between friendly and predatory. “Save the fire, boy. I’m here to help you. In fact, I have spent a great deal of time and effort to be here.”

  Trav decided not to play coy. “When you spoke before, I could barely understand you most of the time. Why are you suddenly not only actually understandable, but also appearing to me like this, and stopping time or something? I really doubt that our little conversation here is real. Out there, or wherever I actually am, I was in a bad situation.”

  The bearded, weathered old man, dressed in furs, reached up under his eye patch to scratch his socket. “You wandered into enough energy for me to steal some, and get some of my mind back. Besides, what’s real, boy? If information, if knowledge is accurate, does it matter how you get it? What is real to one person may not be real to another. All that should matter to you is the truth. Barring that, all you should care about is the truth you can
impose with your will.”

  After thinking about what he’d just heard, blinking, Trav scoffed, “That was some obvious bullshit dressed up like sage wisdom. Who the hell are you?”

  The man laughed, a real belly laugh this time, and his single eye twinkled. “That’s perfect! I don’t generally make mistakes, but it is still good to see proof that I chose well.”

  By this point, Trav had a good idea what had happened. Talking to Narnaste earlier had given him the last few pieces of the puzzle. “So you are a god, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Who are you? Why are you in my head?”

  “I have had many names, boy. And—”

  Trav held up a hand. “That’s evasive. Name.”

  The god’s eye narrowed and his mouth firmed. “I can tolerate a bit of cheek, but you should still offer some respect.”

  “Bullshit. I just spent three years as a fucking slave and got to watch my wife die while I was powerless to do anything. The best I’ve been able to do is bust my ass working so other people wouldn’t die doing the same thing. All this knowledge, probably your knowledge, has been in my head but I haven’t been able to use most of it. Heck, I haven’t even seen most of it. My life has been hell. For you to be in my head in the first place, you need me, and last I checked, I’m a freed slave with a half-crazy, horny Kin woman. I am wearing rags, armed with a shitty knife, and about to be destroyed by some glowing armored woman. I don’t exactly have a lot to lose.”

  “That is fair, and not incorrect. However, you don’t know the full scope of—”