Nordstrom Necromancer: A New Adult Dark Fantasy Inspired By Norse Mythology

by Amy B. Nixon

  And what was the scary thing I was running from by leaving the US? My aunt had been so cryptic about it, she had practically thrown a 256-bit AES encryption algorithm in my face.

  Was I hiding from the wrath of gods and goddesses who didn’t like Freya’s necromantic spawn? Or was I being haunted by Casper’s vengeful Gjenferdet cousin? Or was some bloodthirsty monster trying to tear me to pieces and marinate me in hot sauce for dinner? What was this unnamed danger which had made her warn me to not leave the island under any circumstances?

  My head was spinning when I walked into the side building which housed the training grounds in the afternoon. Today it held only a small group of people. A familiar guard – Marcus Dahl – approached me.

  “I rarely do group sessions, Miss Dustrikke, and fortunately for you, today is one such rare occasion. You can go sit down. Watch and learn. We’ll start practicing next time.”

  Following his advice, I sat in a corner and witnessed how a dozen boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties vanished from where they stood, only to reappear seconds later. Well, only a few of them vanished to pop back up here and there. The others seemed to be having an issue with the vanishing act. Cold whiffs of air spun around the room each time someone disappeared or reappeared.

  The night my life changed from mundane to this supernatural craziness, I had sensed the same blows of cold, breezy wind. Up until now, my head had been too preoccupied to think about the guards’ transportation method. Obviously, they had Apertured me here.

  Ten minutes after the Aperture group exercise had kicked off, Marcus Dahl divided everyone into couples. What followed next was a Trust Fall exercise I was familiar with. The attendees were instructed to close their eyes and fall into the arms of the person standing behind them. Marcus explained it was an exercise to help them build confidence and trust the fall, so they could apply the trust in their own reflexes during an Aperture landing. When the Trust Fall session ended, the attendees had to practice on their own again.

  Strangely enough, I didn’t see the black smoke from two nights ago – the one that spun in my living room before it divided in two and revealed the two guards who’d brought me here.

  “You’ll get a dismembered body, Vee!”

  Marcus’ yell direction my attention to a tall, fragile-looking girl with shoulder-length, dazzling white hair. The color of her hair heavily contrasted with her skin. It was a mixture of ashy lilacs and deep purples, with hints of blueish in those areas which were darkened by shadows. I hadn’t noticed her before, probably because she was wearing a long sleeve blazer and was exercising in a far corner. But now that I was looking at her, I immediately remembered the purple hand from the library. It hadn’t been an optical illusion or a refraction of light.

  Staring at her in bewilderment, it took me a while to actually see beyond her unusual appearances.

  Her eyes were squeezed shut, her back was arched, shoulders slouched forward, head lowered in a position that clearly showed she was scared. Her fingers were stretched out in the empty air, as if she was trying to get hold of something that wasn’t really there.

  “Vee!” Marcus shouted again.

  Less than a second later, her wrist disappeared into thin air. She cried out in a high-pitched scream, which echoed over the thumps, bumps, groans, sighs and all other noises around us.

  I gawked at her, completely petrified by the unnatural sight of her severed arm and deafened by the screams ringing in my ears. Marcus cupped her face and whispered something. She stopped screaming, but her roaring pain kept pounding on my eardrums. My heartbeat accelerated, adding to the clamor inside me.

  The girl named Vee whimpered, then blinked. Her hand reappeared, perfectly attached to the rest of her arm. My eyes grew wider while she said something and walked away, heading almost towards my direction.

  I was sitting in a corner on a floor mat. The girl dropped on a mat a few feet away from mine. Despite knowing better than to meddle in other people’s business, I crawled to her.

  “Hey, are you going to be okay?” I asked quietly.

  She jumped. Her hair moved enough to reveal something pointy and purple, protruding from the strands. An ear. Elf ear!

  Frozen in my place, I watched her turn to me.

  The short, snowy hair swung sideways, revealing her face. It was tattooed with some white, branchy swirls, which started at her high cheekbone, curved around her temple, and spread to the side of her forehead, reaching over her eyebrow. She had big, round eyes with bright violet irises, and just under them was a scattering of the most fascinating type of freckles I had ever seen. They were white, almost sparkling in contrast with her purple skin tone. I wasn’t even sure if freckles was the correct term, because her cheeks looked like the deep abyss of the universe, with hundreds of miniature stars shining against its dark backdrop.

  So, that was what Dökkálfar looked like. I was heterosexual, but I couldn’t stop staring at the beauty of her unusual appearances.

  “F-fine,” she mumbled, then dropped her gaze to her lap.

  “What happened back there?” I asked with bated breath.

  “N-nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Dustrikke! Don’t you dare mix with the mutt!”

  I turned around, trying to locate the one who gave the order. An unfamiliar face dripping with sweat grimaced back at me. The guy was thirty-ish. I had no clue what he meant by calling the girl a mutt, but he had no right to tell me what to do or who to mix with.

  “Get lost!” I shouted back. “I can smell your stench all the way from here!”

  “Mark my words, Dustrikke!”

  “Focus!” Marcus Dahl’s voice echoed around the room, prompting the guy to go back to exercising.

  Vee had moved to another corner. Her knees were pressed to her chest, arms wrapped around them. There was something in the way she looked at the others, something I instantly recognized. It was like everyone knew who she was, and they knew a secret about her. I guessed it was a dark secret she didn’t want them to know, and I could tell she didn’t want to be surrounded by these people.

  I had felt the same way last year when everyone knew my ex was cheating on me. Like my heart and soul had been exposed to the public, put on display, where everyone who passed me by could laugh at them; laugh at how stupid, naïve and unworthy I had been.

  Unworthy and ashamed.

  That was it. That was what I recognized in her.

  But I had no right to stick my nose in her personal life, so I didn’t make an attempt to go over there and talk to her. I remained in my own corner, trying to get my ex out of my thoughts, completely forgetting about Aperture.

  Good thing my former life sucked, otherwise I would have cursed my aunt to hell and beyond for sending me to this crazy place.

  Northern Stream

  I was standing on a tribunal, totally naked and surrounded by familiar faces I had seen through different stages of my life. My ex-boyfriends, my former best friend, all my other friends and acquaintances, people from high school and university, my late parents and uncle, my aunt. Every single familiar person I’d known in San Francisco, down to the librarians at Gleeson – all of them were in the crowd.

  The Phallus Who Shall Not Be Named stood in front of them, holding the whore with whom he had cheated on me. He was inciting the crowd to chant verbal abuses in my direction.

  Aimless idiot. Blinded bitch. Party pooper. Naïve sucker. Punchline. Crybaby. Depressed freak. Failure.

  I felt more naked than I already was.

  I felt invaded, ruined, wrecked.

  I felt like I wanted to cut up every single one of them and soil the earth with crimson quicksilver.

  “Learyn!”

  A distant voice called me.

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember the one to whom it belonged. She wasn’t in the crowd, but I sensed a weird sort of alleviation and weightlessness. It was a strange sensation, like I was being swept off my feet, rid of my emotions, and flown away
from this embarrassing hell.

  “Learyn, wake up!”

  Suddenly, I saw myself surrounded by purple strands of hair. Monika was gripping my shoulders, lurching over my bed. I was back in Norway.

  “What in the name of the Vanir were you dreaming about? You kept screaming, and your emotions were blasting all over the place like a raging tornado!”

  So, the screaming and the nightmares had started again. Running away from San Francisco was one thing; running from my past was a different story.

  “I’m sorry, Monika, I should have warned you. Sometimes I have nightmares with The Phallus Who Shall Not Be Named, my cheating asshole of an ex-boyfriend, and occasionally they make me scream.”

  She puffed, rubbing her temples. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “Your boyfriend cheated on you?”

  “No, my ex-girlfriend cheated on me. With a guy.”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “Me dating a girl?”

  I blinked a few times, trying to push the sleepiness away. Did it sound like I meant that?

  “Of course not! I meant the girl cheating on you with a guy when she’s in a same-sex relationship.” This type of betrayal was a hundred times worse than the type of cheating my ex had pulled on me. At least I didn’t have to worry about him playing for both teams. “Monika, I’m so sorry, that must have been horrible, and here I am reminding you of it with my own stupid drama. I promise I’ll try not to wake you again.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not like you can control your dreams. But you don’t have an issue with me being gay?”

  “Why would I? Your personal life is your personal life.”

  “Yeah, tell it to my parents. They still think something’s wrong with me, and I came out years ago!”

  I wanted to hug her, return the support and kindness she and her brother had been showing me since I came here, but I was afraid my emotions would disturb her again.

  “Like I said, it’s your own life and not theirs. As long as it comes to me, you have nothing to worry about. I promise.”

  “Thanks.”

  She turned off the lights and went back to sleep.

  I stayed up for a while, listening to the storm outside, cringing at each thunder disrupting the skies. I hated thunderstorms ever since one specific stormy night when my aunt received a phone call and told me my parents had died. It had happened eight years ago, but I still hated thunders occurring at nighttime.

  Lying awake and staring at the thick darkness in our room, I thought about my dream. I had decided to take a year off university to cope with my messed up subconsciousness and to learn how to outgrow my past. Nearly a year had passed with zero progress. I seriously needed to do something about it.

  Regardless of the nightmare, I managed to fall asleep again.

  The past week had been extremely exhausting, and it showed, because I woke up late on Tuesday morning.

  I slept through my first alarms. Now that they weren’t turned off, they were repeating in intervals over and over again, finally yanking me out of hibernation. Seeing what time it was, I jumped out of bed in a hurry. After grabbing an empty notebook Monika had lent me, I stormed off to the second floor, since I had decided to check out those History of the Nine Realms lectures.

  When I entered the auditorium, everyone burst into laughter.

  “My apo–” My yawn interrupted my apologies. “I’m sorry for being late, but surely that’s not the most hilarious thing on the planet.”

  “Maybe not, but your outfit is!”

  Some bitch on the first row of amphitheatrically aligned tables was playing the fashion police. I peeked at said outfit, and immediately understood why it was met by a wave of laughter.

  I was wearing the PJs from last night – a set of white T-shirt and shorts with purple sheep splattered all over them. I had forgotten to get dressed before putting my shoes on. FML! I sincerely hoped this wasn’t one of those freaky dreams people talked about. Squeezing my eyes shut, I mentally repeated wake up, wake up, wake up.

  But when I opened them, the laughing didn’t stop.

  Shit! It wasn’t a dream.

  “You can all go collectively fuck yourselves!” I proclaimed out loud. “Preferably outside, as I don’t want to participate in an orgy.”

  “Silence!”

  The loud explosion of gasps, giggles and ghastly exclamations that followed my words was outshouted by the one whose lecture I was late to. Dann Nordstrøm in the flesh. Did I seriously have to screw up around him all the time?

  As soon as he yelled, the whole room went dead silent. Now I stood even more mortified than before.

  “I’m late and my casual outfit isn’t appropriate, but can I please stay for the rest of the lecture?”

  Contrary to my expectations, more silence followed. Now what? Was he going to throw me out? He took his time thinking on the subject while I stood there like a circus animal. Was it so unbearably difficult for him to say yes or no?

  Finally, he spoke.

  “If you wish so, you may stay.”

  That was the plan. I wasn’t going to dart for the door because of a wardrobe malfunction. Well, at least this type of wardrobe malfunction. It wasn’t like I had flashed someone. And besides, my purple sheep were badass.

  I strode towards the staircase aisle, looking for an empty seat. Most of the auditorium was taken up, but there was a spot a few rows ahead. So far so good, except for the moment I reached the first landing. My sleepy legs forgot how to climb. I stumbled, nearly falling face first onto the stairs, grabbing the nearby table’s edge for support at the last second. A new wave of giggles swept over the room.

  “Silence, please!” Dann Nordstrøm’s voice restored the discipline.

  I rushed to sit down, and just as I was about to sigh with relief, the lecture attendees on both my sides decided to move seats.

  The silence around me grew tormenting. I had always preferred the idea of having someone directly telling me to fuck off rather than having them hide what they really thought about me.

  “Can everyone please return their attention to the interactive board? Good. Now that you’ve all settled down, let’s continue from where we left off – connections between Midgard and the other realms. Contrary to what Marvel movies will tell you, the Bifröst Bridge doesn’t act as a no-speeding-limit highway.”

  Some chuckles escaped from here and there. They had nothing in common with the mocking laughter from earlier.

  “Yes, yes, I know you all love Thor and The Avengers. Let’s get back to historical facts.”

  Maksim hadn’t been exaggerating. I had to give it to him, His Excellency was indeed an excellent lecturer. He explained everything in a no-brainer way even newbies like me who’d never heard of necromancy before – or studied Norse mythology for that matter – would understand. Moreover, he actually engaged with his audience, unlike some professors I’d seen in San Francisco. The kind, who rattled off their lessons without giving a rat’s ass about who sat across them. The same ones who didn’t care that faster learning did depend, to some extent, on a teacher’s approach towards students.

  This guy was the opposite. He engaged with everyone, made jokes, walked around, asked questions, and drew on the interactive whiteboard behind him. And as he talked while clicking through images and graphics, he didn’t deliver the lecture in the boring, slumber-inducing monotone voice I expected to hear.

  History had never been my favorite subject growing up. Still, there was something about the way he explained how the links between the realms worked that made it more than bearable. Enjoyable, even.

  “Thank you. This will be all for today. I’ve given you enough food for thought, and if you have any questions, we’ll discuss them next Tuesday.”

  Either I had been extremely late or the lecture had truly been pleasant, but I didn’t even notice how quickly it was over. While making my way towards the door, I heard a loud and clear command.

  “Miss Dustrikke,
I’d like a word with you.”

  Fuck! I waited for everyone to leave before stepping onto the raised podium which held His Excellency’s desk. Well, at least this time I hadn’t killed someone, insulted his family’s motto, or transformed the island’s fauna into Draugar.

  He studied me from head to toe. It made me uncomfortable, especially because I was still in my PJs, but I refused to yield to his arctic stare. He had unnaturally light blue eyes, the color that resembled a crystal clear sky on a truly rare San Franciscan day. No clouds, no mist, no storms brewing on the horizon. Pale, icy blue eyes that locked with mine for what seemed to be the most prolonged second in the history of mankind.

  And then the world unraveled around me.

  I was standing in what was supposed to be a spacious hall, or at least it had been once before.

  Erosion had struck the stony walls, demolishing them to nothing more than crumbled ruins. They laid bleak and barren in hues of fading greys. Jagged outlines of damaged columns spanned up to an open sky, devoid of stars. A pale crescent moon barely illuminated its onyx darkness, shedding light on a thinning haze.

  My eyes swayed down as I stepped onto something hard and uneven – a serrated piece of rock, chipped off the marbled tiles. Messy blue-ish patterns covered the icy floor, like human veins running under its surface. I shuddered at the sight of ebony trees protruding from the ground. The trees were dead. They shouldn’t have been able to break through the stone.

  I navigated my way across the ruins carefully, diving deeper into the remains of a dead world.

  Until it wasn’t dead anymore.

  Eerie tones flew past my ears. A haunting rock ballad, coming from somewhere ahead. I braved the freezing temperatures and kept walking. A man and a woman, locked in a tight embrace, appeared out of the blue and spun around me, stirring the cold air. I barely saw their formal clothes before they disappeared. Just as I wondered if they had been some crazy mirage, created by my imagination, another couple broke through the haze.

  More and more people manifested before my shocked stare, all of whom were waltzing. Trying to tell mirages from reality, my eyes lingered on the formal suits and puffy dresses. Torn and battered, they revealed naked flesh. Rotten, flaky, decomposing flesh.