by D. N. Hoxa
They said the masters got their magic from the remains of the dead gods, but if that was so, why didn’t the rest of this world do the same? Why was Alfheimr dying a slow and painful death, together with its people? Better yet, why didn’t the masters live here with their people instead of only coming here once a month?
It all sounded like a load of bullshit to me, but nobody knew how to answer me, and I’d grown tired of asking a long time ago.
I’d spent the whole night preparing, and I was there, waiting for Sim and Millie to show up, yet I still couldn’t quite believe that I was doing this. To agree to go to Mount Arkanda to find the dragon god was stupid, something an amateur would do, but here I was, at least half my mind made up to go through with it. I’d tried to picture every possible scenario just to make sure I got everything we’d need for the journey, but it had only made me more paranoid. I didn’t know much about the other cities of Alfheimr, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that I’d had to take all my savings with me because it would have been foolish to leave them in the apartment where anyone could find them. Plus, who knew if I’d go back home, die, or ever come back to Vanah? I also didn’t like being away from the screen I’d come through.
“Suck it up, Morgan,” I said to myself. I still had a decision to make.
It took Sim and Millie another five minutes to show up from the other side of the neighborhood, and when they did, my heart almost jumped out of my chest. If I wanted to back out, now was the time.
I didn’t.
Standing tall with my chin raised, I stepped out from the corner of the building after making sure that nobody was there to see me, and I made my way to Sim and Millie. They saw me, and neither of them could believe their eyes for a second, but the smile that took over Sim’s face after a second, the glimmer in his dark eyes, filled me with dread. My instincts were on fire, and I almost stopped walking altogether.
It’s a mistake, a voice in my head said, but I ignored it. I was doing this. If there was a chance, I would take it. And if I died…well, it was better than growing old in Vanah, wasn’t it?
“You came,” said Millie breathlessly, her smile huge, her eyes full of tears. I hated to ruin her good mood.
“Here’s how things are going to go.” I turned to Sim. “You’re going to show me exactly how to get to Arkanda. I’m going to say when we stop, where we stop, and for how long we stop along the way. If it comes to it, I’m going to leave you behind, you got it? I’m not going to fight for you or protect you in any way.”
“But if he dies, how are we going to get to the mountain?” asked Millie, but Sim beat me to it.
“Unfortunately, I can’t show you how to get to Arkanda. The only map I have is in here.” He tapped his temple.
“Good for you I have a pen and a piece of paper. I’m sure you can draw,” I said, pretending to grab my backpack, but he shook his head.
“I will do no such thing,” he said, serious for a change. “If I do, there’s nothing stopping you from leaving me at the first stop.”
Here I wished he was dumber than everyone said.
“C’mon, Morgan. We’re in this together. Three is better than two. We got this,” Millie said, her eyes so full of hope, it made me look away from her face.
“If you lead us astray, or if this is some kind of a game to get us somewhere alone, I swear to you, I will kill you in the slowest way imaginable.” I held his eyes without blinking because I needed him to know that I meant it. I wasn’t a killer, but by God I would become one just to see the life drain from his body.
“I give you my word that you’re safe from me,” he said with a solemn nod, like he really was expecting me to believe it.
I sighed. There wasn’t much more I could say, was there? I was already in this mess and to find out his real motives, I was going to have to play along until he slipped.
“Right, so can we go now? It’s already late,” said Millie, so eager she didn’t even wait for us before stepping onto the wooden bridge.
“Are you doing this for him?” I whispered to Sim. I wasn’t sure how much he’d told Millie, but I knew who he worked for, and I was hoping that others we were going to meet on the way knew it, too. I was hoping Ulius’s name was going to keep at least some of the monsters at bay.
“I guess you could say that,” said Sim, and without looking at me again, he followed Millie on the bridge. Not the answer I was looking for, but it was something. If Ulius was half as dangerous as everyone thought he was, we were going to be a little bit safer with Sim.
That was unless the imp had different plans altogether. I guessed time would tell.
I was as prepared as I was going to get when I stepped over that bridge to follow them, or so I thought. Two weeks of traveling lay ahead of me, at the end of which, I was either dying or going back home.
For the life of me, I couldn’t decide which would be better.
The nagging feeling in my gut, as soon as we crossed the bridge, grew. At first, I attributed it to paranoia, which was normal given the circumstances, if you asked me. But then, I began to notice the way people looked at us. Five of them, to be specific.
They were all positioned in different places, but there was no mistaking it—two women and three men had eyes only for us, and they were following every movement we made. I stopped walking, just to prove it to myself, and I was right. Neither of them moved from their places—or their eyes from us.
“Who have you told where we’re going?” I asked Sim and Millie in a whisper. The women were shifters, but I couldn’t tell exactly what the men were. Whatever their nature, when people in Vanah looked at you that way, you could safely assume that you were in trouble.
“No one,” whispered Millie, no longer confused as to why I stopped them when she, too, noticed the people staring at us.
“Sim?”
“Nobody knows anything about this,” he said, shaking his head, more concerned than I’d ever seen him, which in itself was a red flag.
“Keep your heads down and walk fast,” I said, drawing my hood. If these people were really after us, they were going to follow us, and we would know soon enough. My heart was in my throat until we passed the street and disappeared between two buildings. Caught between stopping to see what would happen and moving so that we had an advantage, I turned to walk backwards, my eyes stuck on the beginning of the street.
A minute passed. And another.
Nobody came after us, but the feeling in my gut didn’t fade. Those people had looked at us like they knew exactly what we were up to. How easy would it be to follow two humans and an imp, then attack them out of sight in the dead of the night? I sure hoped we wouldn’t have to find out.
It took us the whole day to finally reach the boundaries of Vanah. The people we passed stared shamelessly, like it was their damned birthright to know everything about us, but we didn’t give them a chance to approach. We walked with our heads down, as fast as we could, which wasn’t fast enough. Sim and Millie needed to stop for food and water and rest more times than I could count, and it irritated me to hell.
Well, it scared me, but I masked it as irritation. Not sure if they could tell, though.
We decided to spend the night in an abandoned building, one you’d find in Manhattan probably full of people and documents and computers. Here, all the rooms were empty, except one. There was a printer in there, an old one with all its buttons missing for whatever reason, and blank pieces of paper all over the floor. It wasn’t safe there by any means, but it was better than the streets.
“We’re going to have to take turns keeping watch,” I informed Sim and Millie, who were making themselves comfortable on the floor. By the looks on their faces, I was going to have to take the first shift.
“Nobody’s going to come looking for us,” said Millie, yawning. “We’re fine. Just get some rest.”
“I’ll need to rest before I can focus,” said Sim, who knew very well that people were going to come looking for us,
if we weren’t careful. It looked like it would be just me and him keeping watch tonight.
“Sleep,” I said with a nod. “I’ll wake you when the time comes.”
I did need rest. I didn’t feel tired, but I was still wounded from the night before. Sleeping wasn’t going to happen because to do that, I’d have to trust that Sim wouldn’t turn on us, and I wasn’t ready for that. For now, I sat in front of the heavy metal door on the second floor of the four-story building, right where I had a view of one of the windows, showing the front entrance.
“I know you don’t trust me, but I haven’t lied to you,” Sim said after a while. I’d thought he was asleep, so I jumped at the sound of his voice. Millie was already snoring. How I envied her calm.
“I still don’t trust you,” I said, just to make sure he didn’t get any wrong ideas. “You’re a thief and a liar. I’d be a fool if I did.”
“Touché,” he said with a smile, his eyes half closed. “I always wanted to ask you, where did you learn to fight like that? I’ve seen a lot of your fights, and I must say, I’m impressed.”
“You’ve also witnessed my strength firsthand,” I reminded him just to spite him, but he didn’t react. He just waited for me to answer, and for some reason, I did. “My father. He was a boxing trainer, and he trained me since I was a kid.” Six years old. Every day, sometimes Sundays, too. He was strict, disciplined and accepted nothing but the best. I had to give him my one-hundred-percent even when I was bleeding and my body ached; otherwise he’d give me the look—that look of disappointment that I immediately associated with regret. Regret that he’d found me. Regret that he’d taken me in, adopted me, provided for me, gave me a life. I couldn’t stand that look, so I did everything to avoid it. Maybe the poor guy never felt that way. Maybe he never regretted taking me in, but I felt it in my bones, every single day. There was no escaping it.
“I bet he was proud,” Sim said, making me flinch.
Maybe my father was proud, maybe not. I wouldn’t know because the last time I saw him, he was lying on the floor, bleeding to death while all I could do was watch him.
“What about you? Who taught you how to steal and lie professionally?” I snapped, cursing myself for falling into this trap. Thinking about Charles Kahn always got to me. Especially since I knew how badly I’d let him down.
“Life,” Sim said with a sigh. “The greatest teacher of all, don’t you think?”
“I wish you’d let it go,” I said, despite my better judgment. “She’s innocent. She doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.” He knew I was talking about Millie. Whatever business he had with her, I wished he’d stop.
“She will, in time. We all do,” was all he said. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what the hell that meant because I knew he’d only confuse me and make me more paranoid than before. The silence that followed our short conversation was both a blessing and a curse, but at least Sim didn’t speak again for the rest of the night.
Five
The sound of water was supposed to be relaxing, but it had the opposite effect on me. It had been twenty-four hours, and we had yet to encounter trouble, which should have also calmed me down a bit, but it made me edgier instead. Nobody came looking for us at night, and when Sim took over his shift, I dozed off for a couple of hours, just to be able to walk straight during the day. Now that we were on the road again, with enough food and water to last us another three days only, we weren’t going to stop as many times as we did the day before. Millie and Sim were going to hate me for it, but that was okay.
The Hole of Karia was one I’d heard about before but never actually thought I’d see. It was placed in the middle of the asphalt, a twenty-foot-long hole, in a neighborhood that looked a lot less like Manhattan than I was used to. The Hole was perfectly round, and it had four smaller holes to the sides through which came water—cleaner than the river in Vanah but still dirty. The water swirled around the edges before falling into the hole into some unknown place. Nobody had ever tried to figure out where it went. All we knew is that to look down at it was to see death. It was so dark, not even sunlight could penetrate it. You also couldn’t hear where the water ended up—it just fell and fell endlessly and gave you a sense of never-ending torture.
“Welcome to Micco,” Sim said to Millie. “It’s a small city, smaller than Vanah, but people live a bit better here.”
I snorted. That was a lie. Nobody lived better in Alfheimr. The land was dying.
“Where does that come from?” said Millie, enchanted by the Hole of Karia, and she made an attempt to get closer. I grabbed her by the arm.
“Don’t go near it,” I warned her, and she was wise enough to know that I meant it.
“It was here long before Ragnarok,” said Sim. “Some say Odin used it to make his enemies disappear. Nobody knows how far the hole goes. It’s eternal.”
“How fascinating,” said Millie. “Tell me more about Odin.”
I zoned them out because the stories didn’t interest me, but the people watching us did. We walked around the Hole, and I kept my eyes on them, but there weren’t nearly as many people as I’d expected, which was odd. It was morning, the sun was shining, and everyone should have been going about their business, but here I could only see four. All the stores were closed, too, which was strange. There were no days off in Alfheimr, not according to Sennan, who’d seen it all—or so he said.
“Where the hell is everybody?” I asked, a bit panicked, imagining a scenario where the whole city was hiding in the buildings, half of them come from the old world, half of them from the new Manhattan, just waiting to devour us when we were unaware.
Before Sim could answer, a horn blew somewhere in the distance, and it made me jump in place.
Something was wrong.
Then, the four people who were watching us turned around and disappeared down a street to our right.
“A game,” said Sim, half-excited, half-scared. “They’re having a match.”
“A match? What match?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me. Instead, he grabbed Millie by the hand.
“Follow me,” he said and went after the people who’d run down the street. Not going to lie, I wanted to know what that horn was about, too, so I didn’t argue. I just followed.
From what I’d heard, Micco used to be inhabited primarily by shifters, people who turned into monsters straight out of a nightmare—though I’d never seen one myself. But as we moved closer to the crowd at the end of the street, I saw imps and pixies and even Arcs and Diviners, too. As we neared the crowd, I realized, there were a lot more people there than I’d thought. A lot more.
“Jesus, it’s like the whole city’s out here,” I said in wonder, trying to see what they were looking at. Whatever it was, nobody paid us any attention as we approached, which was weird as fuck. Two humans in a crowd and nobody bats an eye? Yeah, something definitely was going on here.
“It’s the fight of the year,” said Sim, as eager as a little boy to approach the crowd with Millie’s hand in his. I was hesitant at first, but there was no helping it. I needed to see, too.
The crowd was cheering, some of them cursing their hearts out, throwing things at one another, pushing each other as hard as they could without making it look like a real fight. I elbowed my way behind Sim and Millie, panicked out of my mind to be so close to so many creatures at once—right until I saw.
It was a stadium in the middle of the street, except this one had fallen at least a couple hundred feet below ground. What would have been more than a two-hundred-foot tall stadium back home was now a two-hundred-foot hole below the surface, with thousands of broken benches, and the ground below was no longer set in green grass but small yellow stones. It was like the people here had tried to turn a modern stadium into an arena worthy of gladiators.
The horn blasted again, but this time it didn’t make me jump. Both ends of the stadium suddenly exploded, and the people all jumped to their feet, their arms to the sky, screaming like t
hey’d seen an actual god. As soon as the fire from the explosion settled, two people came out, one dressed in a long, black cloak, and the other naked from the waist up. He was also barefoot.
When the horn blew for the third time, everybody stopped screaming at once. It was surreal, like someone had suddenly sucked the sound out of the place with a button. Guess watching a fight in broad daylight out in the open was much more exciting than watching people try to kill one another in an underground cage.
“But they don’t look like fighters,” whispered Millie, trying to contain both her excitement and her horror. She was right—the two guys standing ten feet away from each other didn’t look like much.
“It’s not that kind of fight,” Sim said, proud of himself to be able to enlighten us. “They’re both Arcs, one of the few who were blessed.”
My breath caught in my throat. “With magic?”
“No, not magic. They still can’t wield it, but they’re saying that the one with the cloak can see the future—or at least fragments of it.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” I’d never heard of anything like it before.
“What about the other?” Millie asked.
Sim grinned. “The other can read minds.”
I was about to comment that there was no way in hell that was possible, when someone grabbed me by my arm. The woman was a good head shorter than me, her skin wrinkled, her back hunched, her grey hair floating in every direction with the wind, but that wasn’t even the strangest thing about her. It was her eyes—they were completely white, like someone had filled them with rotten milk.
