He fought forward another step. Frost formed on his forearms. He should drop it. Step aside and fail again. Leave this cold burden for someone else to pick up and carry while he crawled home to wait for the OverLord to rain death upon the world. To watch everyone he’d ever known and cared for die. He took another step, hauling the reluctant stone another foot. The other titans had fallen silent.
Van had gone well past Panam Manley’s line on the floor, but he didn’t stop. He needed to be more if he was going to stand in the path of the OverLord and stop him. He was nearing the pillar with the painting of Kir the Attraction. He reached out a hand and grabbed it, pulled himself to it. Another step. The pillar shuddered under his hand and spiderweb cracks raced up and down its surface as Van dragged himself forward. The cold radiated out, chilling the gym. Van ignored the nervous titans who looked up as debris rained down from the ceiling. Passing the pillar, Van shifted the stone to center it on his chest. It quivered like a living thing. The cold blasted through Van’s uniform.
Van staggered from exhaustion. He pressed forward. One more step. Then another. His legs were burning, even the soles of his feet were burning. Another step. The stone was now heavy enough to pulverize bone, but Van wasn’t bone. He was stone. He was steel. He was the son of giants who moved mountains, and nothing was going to stop him. Not when the world hung in the balance. He willed it forward another step.
Now past the pillar, he approached Kir the Attraction still seated in his chair. Another step. He planted his feet and stared down at Kir. The titan refused to meet Van’s gaze. “Stand with me against the OverLord.” Van trembled with the effort of holding the stone.
Kir finally looked at Van, hissed through his teeth, bit his lower lip. He seemed to be churning inside. At last, he muttered, “I only said I’d listen to your offer.” He raised his glass to his lips only to find it frozen.
Van stared at him a long moment. Then he roared. He swung the stone back across his body and released it. It rocketed back towards its resting place and slammed directly through the stone pillar with the picture of Kir the Attraction, shattering it into a thousand shards that sprayed across the back of the gym. Titans dove for the walls as the ceiling sagged alarmingly and more debris rained down.
Van still stared down at Kir the Attraction. “Stand with me against the OverLord or we all die.” He offered Kir a frost-covered hand. “Join me, brother,” Van said.
Kir the Attraction looked sickly at the sight of the ruined pillar. He stood, letting his long sequined robe trail onto the floor, and tossed his frozen drink back over his shoulder. A long silence hung in the air, then he pushed past Van’s outstretched hand and kissed him loudly and wetly on the cheek. “Yes.” He kissed Van’s other cheek, then looked over at the destruction of the Grunt-and-Groan Titan Gym, his gym, his pride and joy, and his eyes sparkled eagerly in a way Van reckoned few had seen them sparkle in many a year. No longer the hooded gaze of a titan protecting his bounty of stale victories, Kir’s eyes had the fevered sheen of a titan who sees new glories rising in the distance like a dragon taking flight. “Yes! Let’s fight them, general. Let’s show them how deep our strength runs.” Kir turned to his titans and spread his arms wide. “Gather round, boys. Let me introduce you to the general we’ll be following into battle tomorrow night.”
The other titans moved to Van, kicking aside the wreckage he’d visited upon their gym, and clasped his hand one-by-one.
Chapter 19.
Van awoke from a dream of thundering footfalls and tumbling rocks. At some point, he’d whispered, the stacks are going to fall I didn’t do it, and he’d seen the OverLord beckoning him to an open coffin, his monstrous figure backlit by the flames of a burning city. As Van opened his eyes, the dream wisps faded into the darkness of his tent. It was the middle of the night.
He breathed deep, swallowed hard, and felt something sharp against his throat. His hands were chained. Ankles too. As he shifted against his bonds, the blade—at least he assumed it was a blade, what else made sense?—pressed harder.
“Move again or make a sound, and I’ll slit your throat,” a woman’s voice harshly whispered into his ear from inches away. “Then blind you.”
Even to Van’s freshly awakened mind, that didn’t seem to make sense. “Wait,” he whispered back, “what would be the point of that? I’d already be dead.”
She sighed wearily. “Just shut up, titan. We’re lighting the lamps now. If you call for help, I’ll—”
“Yeah yeah, I got it,” Van muttered. Fucking valkyrie.
As the light bloomed from the corners of the huge tent, Van got a good look at his captors. Several valkyrie ranged around him on top of his enormous wooden bed. They wore their silvery-white uniforms and all had feathery wings protruding from their backs. Several, including the raven-haired Alkylis, held long, sharp spears poised to turn him into a pincushion. Another stood near his crotch with the business end of her spear inches from his cock, which Van thought seemed a little excessive.
“I was wondering when you’d come for a chat,” Van said, trying not to think about the skewering he was in for if they didn’t like what he had to say. He didn’t seem to be in a particularly good negotiating position. He pulled against the chains that bound him to the heavy bedframe, but they did not yield.
The valkyrie pressed their spears closer. “Let’s just blind him and be done with it,” Alkylis hissed to the others.
“Quiet, Alkylis. You can’t just go around blinding everyone.” Queen Aoleon sat in a chair at the end of the bed, the only other piece of furnishing in Van’s tent. “Bring her in.”
Van lifted his head carefully to study the queen a moment. She sat on the dumpy, faded-green chair as if it were a throne. She looked ageless, her dark skin was smooth as a fresh plum. She carried herself with an aloofness that seemed to place her above the messy world. She returned his stare until he let his gaze slide off her. The other valkyrie, there were seven in the tent altogether, met his eyes with tight faces. They might have been more impressive in a different setting, but in the dim lamplight, they looked a little ridiculous standing amongst Van’s mess. The tent, given to Van by Captain Jahrom, was of thick green canvas, staked out to form a square. Some enterprising soldier had seen to it far too much antique titan-sized furniture had been dragged in. Heavy, overlapping rugs covered the floor. A single tombstone jutted up from the ground near one side, a stubborn reminder of what lay beneath. Van had left an empty beer mug on it.
Guards were meant to be stationed outside, though Van wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d snuck off to roll dice with the others. Maybe he should have mentioned to them that some players in this game had wings. They probably hadn’t thought to keep an eye on the ceiling of the tent, where the large, square sky flap had been rolled back to show the stars.
The valkyrie all looked up as four more of their sisters slowly descended through the sky flap in a flurry of whispering wings. They held Kyle in their arms. Van felt a bolt of terror shoot through him at the sight of her limp body, a paralyzing worry that she was dead. Then she stirred and her eyes opened. She caught sight of Van and smiled.
If there had ever been any doubt that Van had fallen deeply and foolishly in love with Kyle, it was erased in that moment. Watching her slowly descend, carried by angels, was like the first rays of the sun after a long and dark night. She was safe, and he felt as though he were floating slowly down beside her, rather than chained to a bed.
And a rather dirty bed at that. He glanced around nervously. His sheets were tousled and stained. An empty beer mug lay on the bed next to him. Two more stood on the night table. The titans from the Grunt-and-Groan had been eager to celebrate their new alliance, and Van had been equally eager to forget his duties for a few hours. He’d helped them work through every barrel in the gym before staggering back to his tent to mumble at the guards to wake him at sunrise. At least, he hoped he’d mumbled something like that. It all was a little blurry. Van looked around at
the mess as the valkyrie carefully rested Kyle on the bed beside him. He also noticed that he was wearing only his undershorts. And was definitely overdue for a bath.
He plastered a big smile on his face. “Hi, Kyle. If I’d known you were coming by, I’d have cleaned up.”
She smiled so softly that all his concerns about her came bubbling back up. “Hi, Van.” She looked impossibly frail, almost willowy. Weaker than he’d ever seen her, like a stiff breeze could carry her away.
“Are you okay?” He tried to turn towards her, but the spearpoint dug deeper into his neck. He grunted.
“I’m just fine, Van,” she answered, as though she hadn’t just been carried in. Her wings made a blanket of feathers beneath her and she shifted against them. He couldn’t stop staring at her, even as she closed her eyes to gather her strength.
After a pause, he asked, “Did you hear they made me a general?”
She nodded grimly. “That’s part of why we’re here.”
Alkylis pressed her spear into his throat and spit out, “As useless as any titan army may be, we still can’t have the son of a demon running it.”
Van had nearly forgotten the other valkyrie in the room. He glared at Alkylis until she eased her spearpoint back a tiny bit, then he looked over at Queen Aoleon. “Release me,” he commanded.
“After,” she replied. Her flat stare would have been answer enough.
“After what?” He looked at Kyle again. “You said you could heal her. She looks just as bad as before. What have you been doing?”
The queen ignored him and looked at Kyle with a touch of impatience. “You wanted to be the one, valkyrie.”
“Van, don’t worry about me,” Kyle said. “I’m getting stronger every day. But the Rain of Spears has some concerns. We’re here to address them.” She leaned over a little closer to Van, causing his heart to thump like a broken cart wheel, then she whispered, loud enough for the other valkyrie to hear, “They don’t believe the army you’ve been placed in charge of is of any value.” She nodded earnestly at him, like she was speaking to a child, but Van got the feeling she was mocking her sisters rather than him. “They think the titans will just bend their knees when the OverLord comes, follow the titan tradition of bowing to the strongest.”
Van shifted and looked up at the stars through the open tent flap. He could admit, grudgingly, how that would be a concern, having just won over the loyalty of an entire stable of titans by carrying a rock across a room.
Kyle continued, “But there are even greater concerns, Van. That’s why we’re here. We are concerned about you.”
One of the other valkyrie threw a black leather pouch onto Kyle’s lap. She sat up slowly and fiddled with the drawstrings that held it closed. “Would you like to hear a story, Van?”
Van tried to nod and nearly impaled himself on Alkylis’s spear. He’d listen to Kyle talk until the mountains fell if she’d let him. How had Saint put it during Van’s lonely wanderings through the Nether? Until the Second Titan Wars had long ended and been written into history books and the Open Nations were no more. Van thought he could listen that long. As long as it didn’t tire her out too much. She needed rest.
“The legends tell us the first titans are descendants of the three giants who roamed these lands long ago. Mountainous beings of stone and flesh. Very little is known about them, and they have not been seen for thousands of years.”
“Except by the OverLord,” Van said. “He spoke with Malachisin.” The valkyrie exchanged wary glances at the giant’s name. Van suddenly felt he was seconds from being skewered.
“The OverLord told you that?” Kyle asked carefully. When Van nodded, she shared a look with Queen Aoleon, then continued. “The evening before they met in battle, nearly one hundred ten years ago, he told the Great General Grand Reffe his story. The General passed the story along to us before his death. The Rain of Spears and all our valkyrie sisters have always known of Malachisin’s scheming ways. But that was the first time we learned it was he who had created the OverLord and the Nether. The story has been passed down across generations.
“The reason I went into the Nether was to learn more, but I wasn’t able to get near the OverLord. And then, as best as I can string those events together, I think I attracted some sort of shapeshifting stalker. I knew time was running short, but when I found the urn, I thought it may be important given the OverLord’s story. My hope is destroying it will weaken him, maybe end him all together.”
“I was there when you grabbed it. That was me standing below.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t take a chance. There’s too much at stake here. I hope you know I’m grateful to you for pulling me out of that… darkness. Being tossed around like a toy, helpless… it’s a place I hope to never find myself again.” Kyle began fussing with the pouch again. “The story I have to tell you goes even further back than when Malachisin looked down upon the titan who would become the OverLord. Back to when this world was young and newly forged, built by giants unfathomable in scale and purpose. Forgers and tinkerers. Builders. They made this world. Then they built a ladder to the world above this one. They climbed up and left this world behind, never to look back. But something went wrong in the world above, and three giants were thrown from the heavens. Jugor the sorrowful, Ergoth Sintan the wrathful, and Malachisin the schemer. Jugor with golden eyes, Ergoth Sintan with eyes of red, and Malachisin with white eyes. The valkyrie were created as guardians to keep the three giants from ever returning to the world above.
“We watched Malachisin the closest. The first among us had been told that his scheme had caused all three to be exiled, and while he hid his pain, he seethed in anger and plotted a return. Jugor held a solitary vigil in the mountains. Ergoth Sintan raged and tore apart the land, but she directed her anger at this world, not the world above, so the valkyrie let her be. Until something changed. Angered at the circumstances that had driven her from the sky, she had vowed to refuse the other two the right to touch her, blaming them for their weakness and inability to find a way back home. She held true to her word for generations, but eventually she grew lonely and sought out Jugor. They joined and she became with child.
“When he learned of the life that grew in her belly, Malachisin began hounding her. He painted a picture of all her offspring would be denied, stuck in this place. He planted an evil seed in her mind. He watered that seed with poison whispered into her ear until she could bear it no more. Hoping she would clear his own path home, he convinced her to try the ladder the giants had left behind, to fight the valkyrie and regain the heavens.
“She tried. One giant against legions of valkyrie thick enough to darken the sky. Spears rained down and the valkyrie blinded her. Still she climbed to the very edge, where this world ends and the other begins. She might have succeeded, such was her fury, her strength. But as she reached the border, someone from above pushed the ladder from the heavens, severing the connection between the worlds. And Ergoth Sintan fell from the skies.
“She crashed to the ground and broke into a thousand pieces. The child in her womb, a boy, shattered as well. The first of your race, the shards of that child, crawled forth from the shattered remains of their mother to become titans. Children of Jugor, marked with golden eyes, and children of Ergoth, marked with red eyes. Born of battle and violence.
“With Ergoth Sintan’s death and the fall of the ladder, the valkyrie splintered in the ages to follow. Some believed our job to be complete. With no ladder, how could the other two giants ever regain the skies? Others felt our role remained the same and believed Malachisin would not rest until he found a way to seed this world with mayhem and destruction.
“And what were we to think of the titans? Were they our responsibility as well? The valkyrie settled on watching them closely. There was little difference among the sons of Jugor and those of Ergoth. Jugor’s were perhaps more prone to isolation; Ergoth’s perhaps more to violence. But soon another kind of titan emerged from the shadows. For Malach
isin had grown jealous that the other giants had spread their seed where he had not. And he had begun to see how that might serve his ends. He began taking the children of Jugor and Ergoth and turning them to his cause. When he did so, their eyes became white.” She glanced up from the pouch in her lap to look Van in the face. “You’ve seen this.”
Van licked his lips. “First the OverLord. Then Bearhugger when he came up and you saved me from him. Jaygan the Dragon, Billy Blades, and a bunch of others in the Nether.”
She nodded and finally opened the black leather pouch. Something like a small bronze funnel fell out, along with a delicate silver tray and an even smaller pouch. She fussed with the items a moment. “We knew nothing of what was happening at the time. The valkyrie took part in the battle to beat back the OverLord one hundred and ten years ago, but they did so quietly and in small numbers. The Great General Grand Reffe was the real cause for victory. And our ancestors rejoiced. Though we valkyrie never truly trusted the titans, it was clear the General was the right champion for our world. The OverLord retreated and the Nether quieted.
“It was only years later, when the General revealed the OverLord’s story of his link to Malachisin that we began to understand how the titan race was being manipulated. How Malachisin had been slowly poisoning their bloodlines, adding a third branch to the family tree. One loyal to him and in many cases controlled by him. This third bloodline, led by the OverLord, had already started one war that nearly ended our world. Those among us who still cared to guard the gates, who passed along the traditions and old ways to our daughters, saw a new threat. We know not how Malachisin might gain the skies, but we saw evidence of his terrible hand turning the titans into a weapon that would lead the other foul creatures of the Nether into battle. Whether to destroy this world or gain the next, we didn’t yet know. To be honest, we still don’t know.
The Piledriver of Fate (Titan Wars Book 2) Page 15
