Gateway to Nifleheim

by Unknown

  His hopes and his mother's plans ended when the Caradonians accepted his application and called him up for training. They didn't strictly forbid their members from marrying, but seriously frowned upon it. It was well known amongst their ranks that if you took a wife you would never advance to a leadership position in the order, because the leadership believed it demonstrated a lack of devotion and focus. If he would never advance, why join at all?

  But he had wanted to be a Caradonian Knight for years, despite Sir Gabriel's urgings that he petition a secular order—one of the rare issues about which he and Gabriel failed to agree regardless of how much they talked it out. Gabriel encouraged him to let Marissa know how he felt and even offered to intercede on his behalf, but Claradon would have none of it. Curiously, when he failed to progress his relationship with Marissa, Gabriel was quick to point out other eligible young ladies, quite a number of them in fact, but not one could compare to Marissa and so Claradon paid them no heed. No doubt, Gabriel assumed once one of them got their claws into Claradon he would have to put aside his plans with the Caradonians and follow Gabriel’s advice into a secular order.

  All that notwithstanding, Claradon knew the religious knights were his calling: the sword and the staff, the scepter and the shield, warrior and priest; that duality was his destiny. He felt it in his bones. He would follow that dream and no one would dissuade him. Not Sir Gabriel and not even his mother.

  He often wondered what he would have done if Marissa had pleaded with him not to join the Caradonians. In his heart, he knew he would have done anything for her, to be with her—dreams and destiny be damned. To have her would have been worth more—more than anything. But she didn't plead; she didn't even ask. She didn’t speak out against or in support of the idea. She offered no opinion at all. She just didn't seem to care. After he announced his plans, if anything, she withdrew from him, which made Claradon question her friendship. Perhaps he didn't even have that. Perhaps even that was just in his head—a pathetic delusion of a lonely young man too long under the protection of his parents’ roof. Perhaps Marissa only spent time with him out of some sense of obligation to her mother’s wishes. Maybe she didn’t even like him. He just didn’t know. He just wasn’t sure.

  So after much thought, he decided to end things with her, not that there was anything to end—mostly just hopes, plans, and desires in his head. And ending it turned out to be easy. He just stopped calling on her, and she never called on him; she never had; he always had to initiate things—so that was the end of it. He hoped that she would show up one day, even if in anger—at least then he would know she cared, at least a little. But she didn’t. That hurt him badly, but it made him feel as if he had made the right decision, to move on. And so they lost touch, as simple as that. No battle, no harsh words, and no goodbyes.

  He never told her how he felt. How could he have the courage to face death in battle, but not to face rejection by a girl not yet twenty? He didn’t understand it, but that was the way it was. Maybe that failing meant he wasn’t worthy of her. Sad, because if so, then he wasn’t worthy of any girl, for he would be no braver with any other, probably less so. In any case, it was far too late to change things. He would have to learn to live with his regrets, but he never stopped thinking of her.

  He made it a point not to know how she fared in life these past few years. He didn't want to hear that she had married another and started a family. It was better not to know. The problem with that approach, of course, was that if the archduke's daughter became engaged, everyone would know. It would be a social event amongst the nobles, a highlight of the year, just as it was when her older sister got married a few years earlier. The Eotrus would all be invited, of course, and he would be obligated to attend. The horror of that was something he didn’t want to think of in the best of times, and certainly not with his father missing. If his mother were alive, she would find a way to get him out of it, but his father would have no such sympathy. But no invitations ever came. She must still be a maiden.

  She had probably long forgotten him, not that he ever really mattered to her anyway. He didn't even want to see her again—it would be too painful. Maybe just from afar, such that she couldn't see him, but he could see her. It would be easier that way. He’d like that, to see her face again, her smile, and the way she walked, and the smell of her perfume. Best not to think of such things he told himself.

  The clanking of his armor as Humphrey and Gorned carried it from the storage closet drew him from thoughts of Marissa. Before he turned to leave, he carefully folded up the sketch and placed it in his shirt pocket. He stepped up to the window to gaze one last time at the spectacular view of the Dor and its surrounding environs that his chamber's position in the high tower afforded. But it was to no avail. It was too dark to see much of anything, the moons hidden behind clouds. Unlike most nights, nearly all the Dor’s lanterns and sconces were out—only a few at ground level still burned. In fact, as far as he could tell, his was the only window in the citadel or in any of the towers that was lit.

  When he heard a light footstep behind him, he turned, expecting to see Humphrey, one of his impatient looks plastered to his face. But no one was there.

  “Claradon,” came a whisper—a man’s voice—but so slight that he wasn’t certain whether he had really heard it and he had no idea from what direction it had come. If it were Humph, he would call out again if he had something useful to say, so Claradon ignored it and continued about his business. He had just grabbed his gear bag when the window rattled behind him—a strange sound, different from when the wind shook it. He spun around and stepped back from the glass, but there was nothing there, just the darkness. He felt a sudden chill, and the candles and lantern noticeably dimmed.

  Then he sensed something off to his left. Something in the bedchamber’s sitting area, which was full in shadow since Humph hadn’t lit any candles in that part of the large room. Claradon didn’t hear it. He hadn’t caught even a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, but somehow, he knew someone or some thing was there. He spun toward it, dropped his bag, and pulled his sword free of its sheath. He raised it to the ready.

  He saw nothing there, but it was dark. More than dark enough for someone to lurk unseen in the shadows. But nothing moved. Nothing made a sound.

  He stood there tensed and stared into the shadows for several moments as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Where were Humph and Gorned—were they playing a joke on him? He was in no mood for that. After a while, he imagined he saw the outline of a figure sitting in the old leather chair in the far back corner of the room—the chair his father had gifted him and that he often sat in when he called on Claradon.

  “Who is there?” said Claradon, his voice sharp. Strangely, his breath misted before him, and the room grew colder by the second. And then he was sure—a large man sat back there in the shadows: silent and still.

  “Beware the scion of Azathoth,” came a breathy whisper, much louder than before; a man’s voice for certain, strangely familiar, though whether from the shadows or some other direction, Claradon could not be certain. Then it spoke again. “For he will call down death on us all.”

  “Show yourself,” said Claradon loudly, hoping Humph and Gorned would hear and back him up.

  “Step away from the window,” whispered the shadows, its voice quickening.

  Claradon started to back toward the bedchamber’s exit, sword at the ready, when the window exploded inward and a large shape vaulted in. Glass shards pelted Claradon, head to foot, and he went down on his rump, his sword fallen from his grasp.

  Before him was a creature the like of which he had never seen except in darkest nightmare. It was a monster. A six-legged beast the size of a full-grown mountain lion, pitch black in color, with a scaly, hairless hide, and long, clawed feet. Its head was twice as large as it should be and somewhat ursine in appearance, though it was no bear. Its teeth were as black as its hide and several were as long as a sabertooth’s.

>   Claradon's sword had fallen between him and the beast. There was no possibility to retrieve it before the creature would be on him. He scrambled back, grabbed his pack, and held it before him as a shield. The creature roared and pounced on him, Claradon, still on the floor. Its claws raked into the large pack that shielded his torso.

  Claradon couldn’t believe his ears when the creature spoke. “Give up your soul, human,” whispered the beast in a thick accent, its voice ragged, its breath foul and fast. “It belongs to us and will be ours in the end anyway.” Claradon twisted his shoulders and dodged his head to the side as the beast’s jaws snapped shut where his face had just been. The thing was powerful, but Claradon used its momentum to push it off him, and scrambled to his feet. He brought the pack up to shield himself and realized there was little left of it but tatters. Acrid smoke and a burning scent rose from it, as if the beast’s very touch had scorched it. His sword still out of reach, from his belt he drew Worfin Dal, the Asgardian dagger that Sir Gabriel had lately gifted him.

  The beast should have been on him in an instant, but it hesitated, eyeing the dagger, somehow repelled by it. Claradon saw that the thing was horribly wounded. At least two of its legs were blackened and charred and dragged behind it. Even worse, much of one side of its torso was ripped open, its bones exposed to the air, and the black ichor that was its blood smeared the floor and Claradon’s garments. How it still lived at all was a wonder.

  Gorned and Humph rushed into the room.

  “Dead gods,” shrieked Humphrey, drawing the beast’s attention.

  Gorned’s sword was out in an instant, his eyes wide with alarm. He grabbed Humph by the collar and pulled him back, behind him. In that moment of distraction, Claradon lunged. The beast reared back, but it was too slow. Claradon’s dagger thrust caught it in the neck and sunk deep before he jumped back and pulled the blade out.

  The beast fell over onto its back, its legs flailing wildly as ichor gushed from its neck.

  Claradon grabbed a lantern from the sideboard and threw it at the beast. The glass housing shattered and doused the creature with burning oil: its shrieks were deafening. Claradon dashed to his cupboard and threw open the doors. He reached in and grabbed a battle hammer and a two-handed axe. He tossed the axe to Gorned and the two set upon the beast. They hacked and cut and smashed it until it moved no more. The flames persisted and they doused it with water to keep it from spreading.

  Humph sat in the corner shaking.

  Gorned kicked the beast to make certain it was dead. Claradon had already mashed its head to pulp with his hammer and it had long since stopped moving, but Gorned slammed it once more with the axe for good measure. “Best to be sure,” said Gorned. “That some kind of a troll, you think?”

  Claradon shook his head. “As far as I know, trolls have two legs, not six. I don’t know what that thing is.”

  “Ob will want to see it,” said Gorned. “And probably won’t believe us until he does.”

  “Sir Gabriel as well,” said Claradon. “Humph, I need you to head down to the lower levels, find Ob, and tell him what happened. We will wait here.”

  “What if there are more?” cried Humphrey.

  Claradon looked surprised. “I don’t know,” he said. “I doubt there are more of them.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Humphrey. “There could be army of them attacking the Dor even now, and we’re up here all alone. I’m not going down those halls by myself. What if they are waiting down there, in the dark? What if they came in through other windows? I’m not going—no way, no how.”

  Claradon turned to Gorned.

  “He might be right,” said Gorned. “Ob would have my head if I left you alone up here. You can order me to go if you want, but I won’t.”

  “Then we will all go together,” said Claradon. “But first, we need more water to douse what’s left of these flames. We can’t have the tower burning down on us.”

  While Humph and Gorned dealt with what remained of the creature’s smoking carcass, Claradon took a lantern and walked to the far end of the room where something had lately lurked and spoken to him. There was nothing there. No one in the shadows, and the chilling cold he felt when whatever it was had spoken to him was no more. He stood before the old leather chair that had once belonged to his father. That old friend had sat in his father's study for as long as he could remember—wrinkled, bursting at the seams, and patched over and over again. His mother had nagged his father for years to get rid of it. It wasn’t until after her death that he finally broke down and decided to replace it. To his father’s surprise, Claradon rescued it from its destiny as kindling and placed it in his own chambers.

  There was no evidence that anyone had recently sat in that seat. It looked undisturbed and the cushion wasn’t warm, but as Claradon bent to check it, he smelled pipe smoke—the very blend his father smoked on those rare occasions that he lit his pipe. It was gone as fast as it appeared. Claradon stepped away, quicker than his courage wanted, and rejoined the others, but said nothing of the shade that had spoken to him or its ominous warning.

  ***

  “Not much left of it,” said Ob as he, Claradon, Dolan, Gabriel, and Theta studied the scene. Several knights and guardsmen searched the other rooms and patrolled the hallway. A haze of smoke still filled the room, which smelled strongly of burned and putrid meat.

  “You overcooked it quite a bit, you did, Mister Claradon,” said Dolan.

  “Lots of legs, like you said,” said Ob as he nudged the smoldering heap with the toe of his boot. “You sure there ain’t two or three of them piled atop one another?”

  “I’m sure,” said Claradon.

  “Well, you earned your pay for the day, soldier,” said Ob. “You killed it right and proper. Would’ve been nice if you left it in fewer pieces and didn’t burn it to cinders so we could figure out what the heck it was. From what is here, I just can’t tell.”

  “It was wounded, badly, even before it smashed through the window,” said Claradon. “Charred and busted up more than enough to kill a man.”

  “Yet it climbed up near two hundred feet,” said Gabriel from where he stood by the window, holding a lantern over the sill to light up the outer face of the wall. “I see a blood trail down the facade. It must have seen your light, and climbed all the way up from the courtyard. That’s determination.”

  “That stone is sheer and smooth as a baby’s bottom,” said Ob. “Even a Hand assassin couldn’t scale it on his best day.”

  “Well that thing did,” said Gabriel.

  “Let’s get that window plugged up,” said Ob. “My head is starting to spin from the darned wailing again.”

  “It spoke,” said Claradon.

  “Who?” said Ob.

  “That thing,” he said, pointing to the remains. “It said something about giving up my soul.”

  “Your soul?” said Ob. “It’s just an animal, boy. How could it talk? And even if it could, what would it know of souls? You sure your head’s on straight? Did Gorned hear it too, or Humph?”

  “They weren’t in the room yet.”

  Ob pulled out his sword and poked its tip around in the remains. “Maybe it was no beast at all. Maybe it was a man—all dressed up in a costume, trying to look like some kind of monster. If it spoke, that has to be it. Dagnabbit, maybe I spoke too soon before. Maybe the Black Hand is involved. That’s all we need. We might be better off with an invasion. I’ll take a stand-up fight any day over stinking assassins.”

  “It’s too charred to tell for certain one way or the other,” said Gabriel.

  “This was no man,” said Theta.

  “Then it must be some creature what come out of the caves up in the hills,” said Ob. “Some holdover from olden days. But such a thing couldn’t talk—it would be just an animal. What say you, Gabe?”

  “I say we had better search the grounds and the Outer Dor in case there are more of them. To climb up the tower wall in the condition it was in, and to put
up the fight that it did, tells me all I need to know. It’s dangerous, and if there are more, we need to root them out and put them down. The quicker the better.”

  “Maybe this here fellow and his kin are what jumped your patrol,” said Dolan. “Maybe that is why it was wounded, maybe.”

  “Maybe so,” said Ob nodding his head. “Maybe so.”

  “Do you know what it is?” said Gabriel to Theta.

  “As you said, there is not enough left to tell for certain,” said Theta, “but more than likely, it's a reskalan.”

  “What is a reskalan?” said Dolan.

  “They’re foot soldiers out of Nifleheim,” said Gabriel.

  “A what out of Nifleheim?” said Ob. “You are joking, right?”

  “He doesn’t joke,” said Dolan.

  “Then you’re daft,” said Ob. “Nifleheim and everything about it is a fairy story handed down through the ages. Me grandpop used to tell me tales of Nifleheim when I misbehaved. Them monsters are nothing but figments and bunk, dreamed up to scare the whelps, nothing more. The only ones what believe different, is some religious weirdos, and country bumpkins. This thing is an animal—a strange one, I’ll admit, but an animal just the same, and now it is dead and that’s the end of it.”

  “How would it have gotten here?” said Claradon to Theta, “If you’re right about what it is?”

  “A wizard would have conjured it up,” said Theta.

  “From Nifleheim?” said Claradon.

  “Aye,” said Theta.

  “Oh boy,” said Ob. “Now we’ve got magic and monsters. Next you will have giant bunnies attacking us and maybe a unicorn or two. You people are loons.”

  ***

  Two small Lomerian longboats drifted down a river whose water was as red as blood and plagued by jagged rocks and treacherous currents. Mist limited one’s vision in all directions, though it was thinnest behind and thickest ahead. The lead boat flew the black; the trailing boat flew a white sail, though otherwise, the boats were as twins.