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

by Amy B. Nixon

  I loathed her for her elegance and height, for the way the light caught her shiny sunkissed hair, and for the fact she looked like no man would ever cheat on her. Then I loathed her some more for the ability to make me feel so tiny and incompetent, hitting on my insecurities so hard, I couldn’t even think of a witty remark. And most of all, I loathed her for making me lose my shit like crazy!

  I grabbed that top, put it on, and got fully dressed. For the past two days the temperature had been nice. Most of the snow had melted down to a few tiny piles scattered here and there in the courtyards, but I had no idea what the weather would be like on the fjord.

  Monika dressed up, curled her arm around my elbow and squeezed me in a strong grip. Aurora and Gabriella joined hands and walked over to us. Aurora caught Monika’s free hand, and the telltale cold whiff of Aperture spun around us.

  Lightweight and dizzy sensations overtook my body. Monika eased her hold on me, but didn’t let go of my elbow, and I opened my eyes.

  Then I started blinking vigorously. Not because I was trying to clear my vision. My eyes were in perfect condition. The reason was the sight in front of us. It seemed so unreal, that it had to be an optical illusion.

  We were standing in a deep valley, surrounded by mountainous cliffs from three sides. Narrow, uneven and partially covered by snow, their summits reached up, adorned by pale snowcaps. The pointy pinnacles and curves gleamed, almost as though they were trying to reflect the scene above them, but the glistening snow couldn’t capture the beautiful skies above us.

  The night was clear, the air was crisp. I didn’t dare to breathe in out of fear of ruining the heavenly dance of greens, teals and hints of purples, scattered all over the sky. They moved slowly, intertwining here and there, curling from one side to the other, revealing hundreds of twinkling stars. And the stars weren’t fighting for the chance to outshine the Aurora Borealis, but were simply adding to its glory.

  My gaze swayed sideways, then slowly down, over to the rocky edge that stood a few feet away, protruding above the waters. The Norwegian Sea stretched for miles ahead. In the vast nocturnal horizon the sky dancers caressed the ocean as it bathed in the brightness of their colorful lights.

  “Sweet mother of Chris Hemsworth!” I exclaimed loudly.

  I had only heard about the northern lights, but I had never been to a country where they appeared. I used to think the ones pictured on the web were heavenly, but after seeing them in person with my own eyes, I was deadly positive the northern lights were otherworldly.

  They adorned the skies, but couldn’t quite light up my surroundings on ground level. Even though the night was bright, I wished I could have seen the fjord during the day.

  “Shush!” Aurora hissed. “They’ll hear you!”

  I hadn’t seen them up until now, probably because I was too stunned by the greater picture, but I finally spotted the reason why we came here.

  To my right, the fjord curved in a jagged cliff. What hid behind it, took my breath away once again.

  I couldn’t count them. Their looks alone overpowered my common sense and erased all grammar, lexis and knowledge of math.

  Fully naked, they bathed in the freezing waters near the edge. Not a single piece of cloth covered their graceful upper bodies. I was absolutely heterosexual, but right then and there I couldn’t stop gazing at the naked female figures. They were the most refined, exquisite and sumptuous creations on this planet.

  Every inch of pale skin gleamed under the Aurora Borealis. After a few breathless seconds, I realized their naked skin didn’t have a silvery glow, like I had initially thought. It was actually iridescent. The lights refracted on it, recreating a luminous luster, which changed colors and hues with each movement these goddesses made.

  Some of them played in the water, others leisurely rested their elbows on the rocky shores, and some even brushed their elegant fingers through their sleek, waist-long black hairs.

  And then there were the ones who sang.

  As if their beauty wasn’t mesmerizing on its own, their sweet, resonant voices swept away what was left of my clear thoughts, and I felt spellbound. If there was indeed such a thing as an angel choir, it had to be the unison of their dreamy voices. They sang about the boundless azure, the vast world beneath the water’s ripples, the wonders of their home.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them for what seemed like an entire eternity, up until a loud splashing sound tore me out of my trance.

  More were joining, swimming towards the cliff, diving underwater, then emerging above like dolphins. Only, they weren’t dolphins. They had the same bewitching looks as the others, with the addition of something else which splashed across the water – a long, slender tail that glittered like a pearl.

  “Mermaids!” I whispered, totally awestruck and completely indifferent to the fjord and the northern lights.

  “They’re not mermaids, you foolish American girl!”

  Even Aurora’s hissed reprimand couldn’t overshadow my excitement. I broke free from Monika’s hand, and rushed over to the serrated edge for a closer look at the stunning creatures.

  “They are the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen!”

  “You can still see them? From there?”

  Monika’s voice made me turn my back on the water.

  “Of course. They’re just over that cliff. Can we get closer?”

  “Liar!” Gabriella ran to the edge, pausing a few feet away from me. “I don’t see anything, so how can you see them? Honestly, I am so done with everyone thinking you’re special! Learyn-this, Learyn-that! All I hear about is Learyn Dustrikke! Just because your name–”

  “GET BACK!”

  Just as Monika’s scream echoed over the rocky terrain, my jeans clung to my skin, as if they were soaking wet.

  Looking down, expecting to see waves crashing into the edge, I saw a pale hand with exquisitely long fingers clutching my ankle. Tiny water droplets made the skin gleam with various blues, teals and purples against the dark grey rocks. My jaw dropped. The Nøkken, whose hand was holding my leg, was like a mirage. Such beauty didn’t exist in our world. It just couldn’t.

  “Marked by Amyria.”

  Her voice made me think of a slice of warm butter melting under maple syrup.

  I heard Monika call out my name, but it was a muffled sort of sound, like it wasn’t real. Everything simply faded next to this creature.

  “Marked by Amyria.” She beckoned with her other hand to the waves, now reflecting her shining skin. Even her reflection alone was enchanting. “Come find the beauty of the blue.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, smiling at the beautiful Nøkken.

  I had no clue what Marked by Amyria meant or why she said it to me, but I wanted to see the fascinating underwater world from the song. Sleep, magic, Liv’s party and everything else had fled my mind.

  She had gill-like grooves on both sides of her swan neck. They were curly, like the ends of an antique drapery, and fluttered in the cold November air, as if the Nøkken was breathing underwater instead of above the surface. I bent forward, reaching for her, wondering if those gills disappeared in her natural habitat. Fairytale creatures existed. But what if fairytales had it wrong? What if these beautiful creatures actually used their gills for breathing in our world instead of in theirs?

  Something pliable, yet strong, circled my waist and yanked me back.

  At the same time, the gentle hand around my ankle strengthened its grip. I fell on the rocks, stuck between two pulling forces. Monika was trying to drag me away from the edge, while the Nøkken was trying to drag me over it.

  Only problem was, it wasn’t a Nøkken anymore.

  A gruesome thing had taken its place, erasing all traces of the captivating beauty floating there a second ago.

  Her elegant skin had turned into ferric steel, which hung onto me like a fist made of iron. The silvery nails, once so fragile, now appeared sharp and coarsely jagged, as if they had broken after violently trying to dig into t
he solid rocks under me. The long fingers were now membranous, and extended to a scaly arm attached to the body of a dreadful creature.

  A pair of pitch-black hollows stared at me, mirroring the greatest depths of the oceans. Blood-red stains surrounded her eyes, contrasting against the ferric flesh. What I initially thought were gills, now appeared as sharpened blades protruding from the horrifying creature’s neck.

  “Marked by Amyria.”

  Her voice no longer sounded sweet and charming. It was simply a gurgling sound, escaping through a set of jaws filled with thin, excrescent pinnacles.

  The creature’s hand tightened its grip, and a stinging sensation painfully pierced my ankle. It burned like nothing I had experienced before, making me feverish, even though the temperature around us was close to freezing.

  Gasping for a breath of cold, fresh air, I let myself get dragged away from the edge.

  Monika shouted words over my head. I couldn’t make out any of them. All I could do was stare ahead, where something even more terrifying than that creature played out before my eyes.

  Gabriella, who had also run off to the edge earlier, was disappearing in a haze of splattering water, monstrous faces and flashes of crimson drops, flying in every direction. Slowly, I understood why she was waving her hands among the creatures, convulsively twisting the visible upper part of her body, and screaming at the top of her lungs. She was being mauled, torn and ripped to pieces by needle-like teeth and claws.

  Her high-pitched, agonized screams intertwined with low, gurgling sounds, produced by the Nøkk.

  I was never one to feint from the sight of blood, but as I watched hers dripping from the holes, ruptures and wounds the Nøkk opened in her, my heart rate slowed down.

  The world went into slow motion.

  “She’s dying,” my own voice sounded distant and surreal.

  I had never seen a person die before.

  When I had witnessed that swallow drawing its final breaths, I hadn’t even understood it was dead. And when I had seen the guards I murdered, they had already died before my eyes landed on them. Now, I was watching Gabriella die a horrible, monstrously graphic death in slo-mo, and seeing a person’s demise for the first time in my life made me realize something.

  Death was inevitable.

  It was always part of us, like a perverted sort of a guardian angel, constantly following our shadow, waiting for the perfect moment to show itself and take us away. All of us, not just me and my magical ancestors. It was meant for all, regardless of how many decades or centuries we had. It didn’t matter if we would die of old age and natural causes, or if we would die prematurely, torn apart by savagery. It didn’t matter if it happened in our bedrooms, at a hospital, or among friends and foes.

  Death didn’t ask where we were, how old we had gotten, how long the gods had meant for us to live. Death didn’t care if we were ordinary humans or centenarian necromancers. And there was nothing unusual about it, even when it was violently inflicted by supernatural forces.

  Because death just happened. Simple as that.

  “She can still be saved!” Aurora’s yell flew past my ears with a wave of determination, a whiff of strange optimism. “Monika, I want you to calm them down, then we can get to her.”

  “I can’t!” Monika squealed, still dragging my body. The hopelessness in those words heavily clashed with Aurora’s voice. “They’re too many! Learyn is the one who can control the ocean.”

  Something in my being came to life, snapping me out of my lethargic cadence. “Me?”

  “Yes!” Aurora appeared in my peripheral vision and grabbed me by the elbow. “Do it now! Pull the waters away from the shore, so I can see her, and we can save her!”

  “I… don’t know how to do that kind of magic.”

  “You’re an Elemental, for fuck’s sake! Do it now!”

  “Aurora, she still hasn’t learned how!” Monika cried out. “We’ll never succeed, the ley lines–”

  “Gabriella’s dying!”

  “Aurora, please, it’s against protocol!”

  “She’s already dead,” I whispered, still not lifting my eyes from the edge, where the winds carried a deafening turmoil of scratches and gurgles over the crashing waves’ rumble. The shore was wet, the grey rocks soaked with blood and water, and Gabriella had fully disappeared, leaving only a sea of merciless Nøkk in sight. “She’s dead.”

  Aurora was quick to scold me. “We’re necromancers, you moronic Dustrikke!”

  “No, Aurora, no… there are intersecting ley lines. I need to follow protocol. She’s already… We need to go, NOW!” Desperation was something that didn’t quite suit Monika. I had seen her become anxious, break down and get all fidgety, but I never expected to see her like this. “No… no, even the guards won’t be able to fix it, please–”

  “Oh, for the love of the Vanir! Move your incompetent ass, Monika!”

  Aurora was yet again sweet as always.

  “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” I asked, trying hard to bite back the panic I felt now after hearing and seeing despair in my roommate. We were two-and-a-half necromancers against a horde of vicious Nøkk.

  “No one’s dying, bitch, now step aside! I know a spell to hold them at bay, but I need to be able to see them. Monika, take my arm, and keep out of my way!”

  She obeyed, clasping fingers around Aurora’s arm. Monika’s chest rose and fell so swiftly, it looked almost as if she was about to start hyperventilating any second.

  Aurora raised her hands, extending them towards the sea. She shifted her weight between both legs, drew in one deep breath, then started chanting something. Judging by the few words I heard over the rumbling of crashing waves and the guttural gurgling of those crazy Nøkk, it was Old Norse.

  Whatever she was doing, it didn’t seem to bother the creatures. More of them approached the shore. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were cutting off our way to the water, guarding the oceans. Unfortunately, I knew better. Their actions weren’t defensive – they actually wanted to drag us into the depths.

  As I stood close to Aurora, not daring to take my eyes off the monsters, my freaky nightmare took a turn for the worse.

  One by one, the Nøkk made their way onto the shore, dragging their claws over the rocks, adding graveling noises to the cacophony. Their tails, once pearly and mesmerizing, disappeared to make way for sets of steel-colored legs, allowing them to step on solid ground.

  I was stuck in a horror movie, and it wasn’t the fun Tim Burton kind of horror.

  My heart skipped a beat, then two, and three. Despite the burning sensation in my lower leg, my body felt frozen and petrified.

  Monika shrieked. I slowly turned, only to see her stumbling, falling on the ground and crawling backwards. Her back hit a larger rock, which prompted her to produce another high-pitched scream.

  “Get back here!” Aurora yelled a few steps away from me. “I can’t see them!”

  Her entire body was overtaken by convulsions, trembling at an uneven pace. The spasms alone were scary, but what was even more horrifying, was the bare skin on her hands, neck and face.

  A dozen wounds opened and closed on their own, all over her flesh, one second at a time. Crimsons and rich burgundy reds appeared on the edges of each opening to reveal something more disturbing than the Nøkk. Her pink flesh, that should have showed underneath each wound, wasn’t flesh at all. Every cut, slit and ripped piece of skin streamed gleams of bright emerald light, flashing for a mere second before the wound closed over the light.

  “Monika,” I whispered with unease, scanning Aurora’s unnatural skin. “Something’s wrong.”

  But Monika didn’t reply. One glance at her helped me understand why.

  The Nøkk weren’t coming only from the water. A brand-new horde had emerged and surrounded us from each side, trying to break through an invisible wall. It kept pushing back every creature that came close to it. One by one, they took turns, scratching at the inc
orporeal shield, pawing at it, swinging their claws again and again. Monika shook her head like a crazy person, changing the directions of her wide-eyed stare rapidly. Everything about her screamed a haze of purple shock.

  “Monika, come back!” Aurora shouted again.

  She wasn’t kidding earlier. Now I saw how the spell could work only if she was able to see them. With every new attempt to break through the shield, the force pulling the Nøkk away from it slowly lost its power, until it finally stopped working. Hell-bent on reaching us, the creatures formed a tight circle, clawing over the invisible dome, no longer obstructed by the spell that was supposed to drag them away.

  I ran off to Aurora with a plan in mind.

  A muffled scream died in my throat, and my plan vanished. Her wounds were no longer closing. Her entire face was covered by blazing emeralds. It was as if someone had slashed her open so many times, so chaotically and so deeply, the blade had pierced her core and her emerald magic was streaming from it.

  Her magic! Her eitr core!

  “Aurora, I think… You’re… Are you turning into a Livløs?”

  “Don’t be absurd!” she retorted, breathing unevenly. “I can control the spell; I just need to be able to see the Nøkk!”

  One of her arms dived down and blindly groped through the air, as though she was trying to grab me. I slowly realized she still hadn’t taken her eyes off the sea, despite the fact that in her eyes, there was nothing but an empty shore ahead.

  Dodging her hand, I hurried over to Monika and kneeled down. I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to steady her. Irresponsive, she kept throwing her head in every direction.

  The burning in my ankle had spread to my knee. I hadn’t noticed when my veins had stopped pumping blazing agony up my body, because my pain and fear had blended into an overwhelming haze. A moment later, it enveloped my entire limb, instead of just hurting in the places where Ariel’s bloodthirsty twin had scratched me.

  Tremulous and sweaty, every fiber of my being burned to a point of incandescence.

  “Monika, look at me!” I shouted, but she wasn’t listening. “Can you kill one of them? I can maybe turn it into a Draug, and then–”