by Dan Allen
Gork’s jaw dropped. “What kind of insane—oh. That.”
Freyjan.
He sheathed his spear-tipped axes and folded his arms across his chest. “Oy, freyjan! For your information, you have just broken the calibration of the most sensitive timepiece in Crystalia.” Without any change in inflection he added, “If you’re lucky, the timekeepers will only skin you alive.”
From atop the ball of the pendulum, the freyjan’s distinctive triangular ears turned in his direction. It released its bite on the cord and turned to look at him.
“Female freyjan. Tiger striped fur. Oh, no.” A pit formed in Gork’s stomach, and a sudden urge to secure anything fragile ran through him.
Goddess help us, it’s the Chaos Kitty—inside the Bastion!
“What was I supposed to do, just stand there and watch it?” the freyjan snarled from atop the pendulum. “It wouldn’t stop swinging.”
“Cat trap,” Gork mumbled with a smirk. “At least there’s more than one way to skin a cat, so we’ll have options.”
The freyjan sprang from the pendulum and landed in front of Gork, brandishing a pair of oversized gauntlets like a boxer. “Care to give it a try?”
Gork let out a deep bellowing laugh. One freyjan he could handle . . . he hoped. He narrowed his gaze, trying not to blink, before recalling that nobody ever won a staring contest with a freyjan. “Get out of here. Now.”
“Just point me to the fastest way to Arcadia,” said the infamous bringer of bad fortunes, “I’ll be glad to get out of this—” The freyjan smiled a mouthful of pointed teeth. “—place.”
“You’re going to Arcadia?” Gork’s brain clunked as the thought jammed his inner workings. Here was a freyjan headed to the one place nobody wanted to go, except him. The luck of it was simply unbelievable.
That’s it! Luck. Freyjans were born with it. And of all the cat-chimera in Crystalia, there was one freyjan who had it in spades—enough luck concentrated in one person to dry up all the luck of every city and village that came in contact with her.
That sort of luck could be handy. Very handy.
Gork stroked his fine-haired, blond beard. “You really are the Chaos Kitty?”
“The name’s Nyan-Nyan.” Her orange and black tail swished slowly in subconscious synchronicity with the pendulum. “Stop staring at my tail.”
“It’s going back and forth—it’s distracting.”
“Very funny,” Nyan-Nyan said. “Now, I’ll be glad to leave if you will just show me where—”
“Follow me,” Gork pointed to the largest of the five corridors that led out from the Pendulum Court.
“Is there food?” Nyan-Nyan asked.
“Don’t press your luck.”
Nyan-Nyan snickered, “I don’t need to.”
As Gork prodded Nyan-Nyan into the corridor, his nostrils filled with the scent of roast mutton smothered in garlic sauce—his favorite meal.
“Just in time for dinner,” Nyan-Nyan purred, licking her lips.
“Good gravy.” Gork’s brow furrowed in frustration.
“I do like good gravy,” Nyan-Nyan said in a delirious voice.
Food was to have been his bargaining chip. But if it was already on the table when they arrived at his father’s hold, dwarf tradition would dictate that he offered some to the guest.
One of these days, tradition is going to get me killed.
As he approached the threshold, two dwarf guards snapped to attention. A loud bang sounded, and the great reinforced wooden doors spread wide to reveal his father’s private dining hall in full array: tables stacked with meats and pies, pumpkin cream pudding—even fruit!
Gork stepped into the room beside Nyan-Nyan and was met with an enormous cheer.
“Come, lad,” bellowed his father, Holm Everbright, from the head of the table. “Let’s hear the big news.” Seated by his side, his mother, Gomi Lightbringer, smiled at him with a look that showed years of relief. “Congratulations,” she beamed. “We’re so happy for the both of you.”
Gork exchanged a befuddled expression with Nyan-Nyan, then his eyes met those of another. They were black as coal and rimmed by brightly painted eyelashes. Her cheeks were doused in blush, and the whole spectacle was topped by a statuesque setting of curly red hair.
“Hello, darling.” The dwarf maiden waved her pudgy hand and wiggled her sturdy shoulders that extended out of her sleeveless leather top. Gaudy lace spilled from the neckline like a headless scarecrow vomiting hay from its severed neck.
Gork’s stomach heaved. Suddenly, he had no desire for food. “Hello, Brimmy.”
Seated next to her was his uncle, Frowert Gaslighter, and his aunt, Flomm Meatcleaver. “I hear you and Brimmy have set a date for marriage,” Frowert bellowed. He bounded around the table with a speed that surprised Gork and wrapped him in a bear hug.
Nyan-Nyan snickered again.
Gork stepped on her foot and was rewarded with a screech.
When Gork got air back into his lungs, he was pleasantly surprised to see the look of confusion on Brimmy Brassbuckle’s face. She looked from him to Nyan-Nyan and back again. The beginnings of a fire stoked behind her crossed bushy eyebrows.
Gork smiled for the first time that day. Nyan-Nyan’s luck had just provided all the ammunition he needed to blow up Brimmy’s surprise trap.
“Er, son . . .” His father nodded at Nyan-Nyan. “It seems we have a guest.”
“Yes.” Gork’s smile grew as his uncle retreated to his seat, apparently repulsed by the freyjan figure to Gork’s right. “This is Nyan-Nyan, the Chaos Kitty. I’ve invited her for dinner.”
His mother flinched. His father’s ears grew red. But the look on Brimmy’s face was priceless. Gork was quite sure he saw two faint streams of steam issuing from her nostrils. She had sprung a surprise engagement party on him in an attempt to put him in such an awkward position that he couldn’t refuse. She had tried other such tactics before, but this feast took the cake—it even provided cake.
As he seated Nyan-Nyan in the chair next to Brimmy and took the remaining distant chair on the opposite side of the table, Gork felt his appetite returning. He dished himself up a large slice of cake and devoured it while Nyan-Nyan made an embarrassing mess of her plate in a feeding frenzy.
A bit of gravy splattered on Brimmy’s cheek. She winced.
Gork licked frosting from his fingers, leaned back, and stretched his hands behind his head while the speechless gathering stared in horror at the legendary freyjan of fell fates.
“Nyan-Nyan is going to Arcadia,” Gork announced. He explained his idea for retrieving ancient Arcadian metal to reverse engineer the Dark Consul’s rune magic. “I propose to go with her. Such a lucky coincidence cannot be overlooked.”
“Lucky?” Brimmy was almost on the verge of tears. Gork was enjoying a heaping portion of sweet satisfaction.
“I protest,” said his mother. “I will not have my firstborn son leave on a hopeless quest for ancient artifacts, only to get himself killed in the Blasted Tombs with . . . with . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.
Nyan-Nyan looked up, a leg of chicken clamped in her teeth.
“—with a freyjan.” Gork twisted the edge of his mustache. “Cat got your tongue?”
His father slammed his fork into a pile of mashed potatoes and then recoiled as Nyan-Nyan leaned over to lick some from the edge of his plate.
“It was spilling,” she whispered behind her paw.
Brimmy hyperventilated with pent-up rage. Gork hadn’t been so happy in a decade.
“If I’m old enough to marry,” Gork said. “I’m old enough to decide for myself.”
“No arguments here,” Nyan-Nyan said with her mouth full. She had undoubtedly deduced that Gork was a member of a royal ruling clan household and that his company would offer many potential benefits . . . such as food.
“With a freyjan traveling companion,” Gork continued, “I would have the one thing ev
ery previous expedition to the Blasted Tombs lacked: luck.”
Aunt Flomm pointed a shaking finger at Nyan-Nyan. “Wherever she goes, doom follows.”
Gork shrugged. “I don’t think the Blasted Tombs will mind about that. They’re already doomed.”
Nyan-Nyan dropped a cream puff into her mouth and crushed it between her fangs like a rat skull.
Brimmy’s head drooped and banged softly on the edge of the table.
Victory! It was all Gork could do not to burst into song. Excitement surged within him, a mix of curiosity mingled with ambition and the hope of long-sought freedom. “Across the Frostbyte Reach, our enemies strike with increased precision, as if some unseen hand is guiding their actions. They bring superior strength and armor. Our armies cannot stand for long against the hordes of darkness. Soon they will breech even the holds of Dwarfholm Bastion.”
His uncle coughed conspicuously. “Nonsense.”
“It is true.” King Holm Everbright sat forward in his chair and wiped his lips with his beard, which drew a reproving look from Gork’s mother. “We’ve interrogated orcs. Beyond their demon champion Cernonos, they speak of the Midnight Queen—some new agent of the Dark Consul. And with a princess of prophecy missing, we have to plan for our own future.” He dropped both his fists on the table. “We must be willing to make any sacrifice necessary to defend our homeland.”
“Not our son,” the queen whimpered.
His father breathed out heavily. “I have always thought you to be a disappointment, Gork. You’re a bit of a lightweight. You eat about as much as a woman—except her.” He nodded at Brimmy. “You’ve always got your nose in a book. Your ax weighs about as much as a toddler’s hammer—”
Gork rolled his eyes. “We get the idea.”
“But perhaps the Goddess had this path in mind for you. A different sort of dwarf. A different task.”
Gork figured his father’s concession came from his hope that with Gork gone, the crown would eventually pass to one of Gork’s younger brothers. The twins, Gort and Tort, were so like their father in every way that it was impossible to tell the three apart except by length of beard and size of belly. They even carried the same battle ax, a fact his father was keen to remind him of.
So be it, Gork thought. He set his jaw. If this is to be my destiny, I will face it. His only immediate misgiving was whether anyone would miss him if he did not return—Brimmy aside.
As feasting quickly dwindled to picking at crumbs and conversation took the air of a family pet funeral, Gork decided to make a quick getaway. “I’ll just be getting some things ready for my trip.” He snagged Nyan-Nyan’s gauntlets from under the table. “These could do with some repair.” With that, he sped out of the hall, breathing a sigh of relief as the great doors banged shut after him.
Gork hauled the heavy gauntlets to a slide shaft and spiraled his way down the polished rock to the forges. Brimmy couldn’t follow him down the slide. It upset her digestion.
In the flickering light of his forge fire, Gork studied the Knuckle Smasher gauntlets. It was a metal he had tried to work before and failed. A dull grey, the gauntlets seemed to soak up light. Worked in the Dark Realm with alchemy known only to the Dark Consul’s minions, the metal carried a curse that was woven into its very composition. Each strike of the gauntlets siphoned strength from the target, while granting it to the attacker. The more enemies the berserk Knuckle Smashers punched, the stronger they became.
But too heavy, he thought as he removed the leather liners. Nyan-Nyan would be slowed by the cumbersome loot. I’ll have to resize them.
Gork stoked his forge with a large bellows and raised his hammer. It would be a long night, but striking the metal over and over again was the only sort of therapy he could think of for an aching heart.
Dwarfholm Bastion was his home. He was leaving now, as much an outcast as an emissary. Harder and harder he struck, raining blows on the metal, singing the song of his sorrow in pings that echoed through the forge.
Images mingled in his mind, scars of a life torn by unfulfilled expectations. He watched his father turn away in disappointment after Gork lost in the first round of a wrestling tournament. Anger flowed from his heart, like fresh blood from a wound.
His younger brothers pinned him to the ground to paint his beard purple to match his new suit—in front of his first crush, who never even spoke to him afterward.
For no other reason than pointing out a defect in the work of a master smith, Gork was sent back to a lower forge to straighten nails for weeks. Not only was nobody afraid to treat him like a nuisance because of who his father was, they seemed to think his father expected it.
The next was his scalding memory of being left to entertain overweight and overbearing female visitors from the Brinebreakers for days when the men went on a hunting trip.
Not to forget being assigned a pot as his final forging project instead of an ax.
As his emotions welled up within him, the metal began to glow red, orange, and then white, heating without flame.
His anger, disappointment, and fear had brought the metal to the point of workability.
Amazing!
Gork played with his emotions, alternately thinking about his annoying twin brothers to heat up the metal to the working point, and then quenching it with satisfaction as he thought of his clever escape from Brimmy’s marriage trap.
Slowly, the gauntlets began to take shape. Resized for smaller hands and short fingers, the new gauntlets narrowed at the fingertips to razor claws into which he poured every drop of his molten malcontent, hardening the metal with infinite resolve.
Never before had a dwarf unlocked the alchemy of the Dark Realm. Perhaps Gork himself might never be able to do it again. This one time, his aching, searching soul had unwound the protective runes and rewound the binding scripts of curses unspeakable.
Gork hoped that the gauntlets had retained their original power, and only changed in form. He couldn’t test them, for his wide hands could not fit inside the gloved gauntlets. One thing was certain. The freyjan traveling with him would wield a weapon like no other, fueled by the fire of Gork’s blazing heart.
Hours later while Gork polished the new gauntlets, as if on cue, the deep sound of the morning horn resounded through the forge.
Dawn.
The pieces were finally complete. Curling lines of white gold inlay traced across the fingers in a barely visible tiger-stripe pattern. The metal between was even darker than before—black and white, mingled together in a form that could only be wielded by a chimera, a creature of both darkness and light.
Gork stood back to admire the gauntlets, but a figure in the doorway cast a wide shadow over his workbench.
Oh, great.
Brimmy’s red hair was no longer ornately styled. The frizzled locks poofed out like so many broken broom heads. “So, this is where you’ve been all night.” She stopped when she saw the exquisite gauntlets. Like all dwarves, her eyes were inexorably drawn to the gleam of metal.
“Do you think Nyan-Nyan will like them?” Gork lifted the claw-tipped metal gloves to show them off better.
“You . . . you spent your last night in Dwarfholm, alone in a forge, making armor for her?”
“Well, I didn’t think anybody else would want to come down here in the middle of the night,” Gork said.
“What about me?” Brimmy whined. “How do you think I felt, pacing the floor all night, wondering where you were?”
“Possibly not as miserable as me.” Gork’s voice was low as he hung up his smock and rebuckled his belt and holstered axes. He shouldered his lightweight, short halberd.
Brimmy’s jaw dropped in shock.
“This is my choice.” Gork turned away to close the forge shutters.
“What are you doing? The fire in your forge will go out.”
Gork took a deep breath. “What fire I need, I take in my heart.”
“But the light? We mus
t keep the light of the Goddess alive.”
Gork stared at the dark shutters, the afterimage of the burning forge lingering in his vision. “We light these token flames,” he said as he thumped his chest with his fist, “but the Goddess honors the light within.” He looked at Brimmy. “Do not waste oil making a shrine to my memory.” He tucked the reworked gauntlets under his arm.
Brimmy’s expression twisted to a spiteful glare, like a snake shedding its old skin to reveal what truly lay beneath. Her machinations for a place by the throne were undone and her contrived romance with Gork was unhinged; the naked ugliness of ego and envy laid bare in her snarling frown. “You never loved me.”
“No. You never loved me. You wanted to make me into a thing all your own. But I am not a scrap of metal to be worked under your hammer, nor my father’s. I forge my own fate.” Gork turned out the door and began climbing the steps. Soon he passed through the Pendulum Court where fourteen dwarf mathematicians shouted and cursed and alternately gestured to scrolls of detailed calculations and the out of sync pendulum. Gork skirted around the edge of the room and crossed into the narrowest of the radiating corridors. He turned at the eleventh exit and stopped at the door to his personal room, then drew out a rune-marked key. Scrollwork on the metal lit up as it came into proximity with his royal blood. He inserted the key, and matching curling lines of light arced over the knob. The latch clicked, possibly for the last time. He left the key in the lock and stepped into his room.
Gork loaded his pack with as many useful things as he could fit, put on a warm coat, and set off back to the great hall, where he assumed Nyan-Nyan would be sleeping by the fire. He moved automatically, not hesitating or allowing any creeping doubt or second-guessing to dull his bravery. Gork continued on the path before him, whether it was a martyr’s complex or a fool’s blind hope.
Much depended on it.
The gates to the banquet hall opened. Gork faced a full array of dwarves in battle dress, standing at attention. He walked slowly between the two rows of warriors. At the end of the corridor of soldiers, his mother and father stood.
Gomi held out her hands to her son.
