My blade strikes, and a wraith dies. I watch, coming up from my roll, as my sword passes through the shards of rock that make it up. At first, there’s an instant of worry as it seems to pass between the pieces, but then it strikes something inside, something noncorporeal. The essence that makes up the wraith. My cold iron blade cuts through it, through initial resistance, cutting the wraith in half.
It explodes.
I’ve barely closed my eyes, turning my head as thousands of jagged bits pepper my skin, bloodying me, staggering me back as innumerable tiny slices open exposed skin.
The remaining wraiths shriek, so loud it feels like the world quails, and draw up into the sky, regrouping. I stagger to the overhang, leaving a trail of blood behind me, breath already coming in small hitches.
Not good. Only one dead and I’m already in bad shape. The wound in my shoulder throbs, and a tracery of blood winds down my arm to my elbow, wet inside my furs. The cut on my leg isn’t serious, just hampers my movement. But worst are the cuts from the explosion. They’re tiny, but there are so many. I wipe my face, groaning at the pain, trying not to think of how much blood is on my hands.
I ready my blade. When one comes close, tries to get in, that’s my chance.
Please, please, please.
The remaining wraiths swoop back and forth just out of reach, observing me before pulling back.
Dammit. They’re going to let me bleed out, know that time is my enemy now.
No. I will not die on my knees, hiding in a cave. I stagger forward, anger and adrenaline giving me strength. My strides lengthen.
The wraiths shriek, mocking cries that ride the wind.
I keep forward, finding my stride, gaining speed. The first wraith darts upward, while the second flaps lazily backward, just off the edge of the steppe.
Mocking me again. I smile, and I know my grin is red with my blood. If it won’t take me seriously, I’ll make it pay.
I’m almost there. Another shriek echoes above me. I remember the way my sword felt hacking through the first wraith, the resistance at its core as I carved through.
I wonder…
It hovers beyond my reach, beyond the cliff.
I run for it with everything I have, the first wraith darting in behind me. When I jump, its stone talons bite the flesh of my scalp. I stab an arc above my head and thread the creature above me. My blade anchors and I grab the tip, holding on while I skewer its spiritual and corporeal form.
I throw all my weight into our fall and drag the creature down.
My feet plunge through the wraith below. Stone chips nick and slice but my body slides through. Momentum drags the one I’ve anchored. It shreds its companion as we fall, locked together.
This has an effect I didn’t anticipate - the wraith I’ve caught splinters into stones. For a few seconds I fall at a velocity that parts skin from flesh on a frigid wind. Debris rains down.
The wraith above knits together. Stones continue pelting me. It worked. I’ve shredded one and now the second one drags us back up the cliff.
Its razor-sharp fragments spin, stab as we ascend. They eviscerate the flesh of my hands and wrists. Blood lubricates the haft of my sword. My grip is slipping.
It flings me onto the steppe. The impact robs me of breath and sends my blade skittering across the ice and stone. I don’t know if I can wield it anyway. A few of my fingers won’t bend. A tendon on my left wrist dangles like frayed cord. The anguish is less than my wounds with the Drengr but my fear...with the Drengr I had a plan. I have none, now, and the horrible foreknowledge that I probably can’t defend myself. If I can’t lift my sword, I’m nothing but a terrified rabbit running in circles until exhaustion gives the hawk its dinner.
I have to try. Stumbling up, hunched in pain and defense, I stagger across the tier.
A shooting pain in my back knocks me to my knees. Then another.
The wraith dips and swirls overhead, hissing like poison smoke. It dives, darts. When I look back to gauge the distance, I see it: A single fragment of its wing glows, spins madly, and fires like a sling-bullet. I manage to dodge this one, but there must be thousands making up the wraith’s form.
The next one, I’m not so lucky. It catches my bicep, pierces the fur, even its imbued inner layer, like cutting butter. The shard buries in my muscle and begins to twist.
My cries don’t sound like my own. I grab my sword in limp hands, bury its tip in the wound and dig. It’s not bravery. I’m so desperate with pain all I can think of is making it stop.
I dig the shard free. It shoots into the air, hangs, and drives back. In desperation, I raise my sword. At what? What am I really fighting? But this is my training, all I can think to do – hold my stance and defend to the last.
My blade recoils. There’s a sharp ping and the wraith shrieks.
It takes a second for my pain-addled brain to understand what’s happened. The wraith has a jagged hole through the bottom of one wing.
I accidentally deflected the shard back through it.
Another shard begins to superheat, rotate, ready to fire. I bring my blade up, aim this time.
Come on, come on…
The shard fires, and I move, react before I can think. The shard pings from my blade, shrieks back at the wraith with deadly velocity. “Fuck yes!” I shout. I can’t believe that worked.
The wraith hisses and plummets a second before recovering. Pieces of it fall, obsidian shards raining down.
I can do this. I can kill it with its own weapon.
I get two more but miss the third. And the fourth, while I pry the third from my leg. My hands are too weak, and my body feels slow. Blood loss leaves my head feeling empty. Drawing up my knees, I struggle to get my arms atop them. I lay my sword like a bridge between my hands. Gravity does the rest, the rolling, tipping. I can angle a little with my legs. The next three shards hit their mark, striking my blade so hard I’m afraid it will shatter. All three hit the wraith, tearing ragged holes in it. It doesn’t hang as high now. Handfuls of stone fall in a small avalanche. Its scream is furious, rage that stabs my ears. It falls, daylight streaming through the holes I’ve made.
The eyes could be a weakness.
Struggling to my feet puts me eye to eye with the creature. It flaps furiously, tilting in the air, orienting on me. A hundred shards turn white, spin.
Oh, no.
There’ll hardly be anything left of it after this, but apparently, it doesn’t care. It whips, letting go with all it has left. I angle my blade and pray to all the gods.
Hundreds of stone chips bury in my flesh; legs and chest, face, eye. They perforate me, digging agonizing furrows through my flesh, violating me, obscene channels that explode with blood, viscera. My eye detonates on impact, and the shard that takes it lodges in my skull, knocking me back.
I scream.
Clawing at my face, I drop to my knees. The wraith dissipates with a last screech and blows away on a cloud of smoke. It evaporates with my remaining eye, its broken form face-down in the snow. Its fragments cease boring through me, rotating in my flesh, but my body throbs around them. My life pours out into the snow. Cold air bites the mutilated meat of my eye socket. I can’t even scream. There’s nothing inside of me.
I have seconds left. The world is dark, even with my last eye opened.
I’m so tired.
Just close your eyes. Rest a while.
It’s hard to tell where death ebbs, retreating from Freya’s magic. Maybe the moment I realize the voice inside has the same eerie-soothing cadence as the Gardener, beckoning me to eat one more bite, drink one more goblet; rest a minute longer.
My eyes snap open, both of them. I can see. I can feel. But the torment of those final moments, feeling my life pour out, what happened on the first tier, now this… my mind quails, can’t examine it or it will break me.
I turn my head and retch.
I can still remember it. The feel of the shards rotating inside me. My eye exploding in my skull. I r
etch again, body convulsing.
Freya’s warm hand strokes the sweat in my hair. “You jumped. I can’t believe you jumped.”
For just a flash there’s something around her, mist or ice fog. Maybe my imagination. I blink, and it’s gone. “What do aspirants usually do?” I ask, struggling to my knees.
She shakes her head. “Die. By the second tier they lie down and die. Well, one jumped. He’d lost his mind, though.”
Yeah. I can understand how.
“Up.” She stands and offers her hand. “The last steppe awaits.”
She helps me stand, though I don’t need it. My body is as healthy as it’s ever been, but I’m shaking uncontrollably. I’ve spent my life conquering challenge after challenge. I’m a warrior, I’m tested, and I spent a year preparing for this. I’m faster than any man I know with a blade, haven’t lost a duel in years, and I beat a succubus at Yarot.
And I still wasn’t ready.
The Drengr, the wraiths, there’s no way I could have beat them without being ripped apart. They were too fast, the odds stacked too deeply against me.
What is the point of this?
I look to Freya, ethereally beautiful. Her eyes lock on mine, and I know.
Trust.
I was never supposed to breeze through each tier. No one could. I was supposed to beat them, and trust that Freya would be on the other side to put me back together.
I breathe deep on biting mountain air in. I can do this.
She’s watching me, bottling whatever impatience she feels, like she knows what I’m thinking. I take her hand.
“Good.” Freya nods, solemn, then leans in, planting a gentle kiss on my cheek. “Hold on to that.”
The steppe darkens, and the fist appears. This time a single finger extends. Up close, the skin has a look of blue dragonhide seasoned by a handful of millennia, tougher than any metal.
It traces a rune on the ground with terrible gentleness. The motion is a bare vibration through my boots. As the hand withdraws, light touches the rune and it begins to glow with trenches of fire along the steps. Molten mineral seeps from its cracks, hissing furiously where it spills over the ice. Icicles form midair and shatter like glass. I don’t think I’ll ever get my head around this place, the impossible upside-down of it all.
When the steam clears, the ground is frozen again, and in the center stands a figure in black armor, with the same onyx mask topping it. Its armor is smooth, with no obvious seams, and brutal. Serrated spikes erupt from its shoulders, knees, and elbows. It carries a scythe twice as tall as I am, and its blade drips blood that steams into the snow. Not blood from any wound it’s inflicted; it seems to be filled with it, glutted on the life force of however many it’s claimed before. The Draugh swings, almost experimentally, and the air screams like it’s been violated.
Well. Shit.
“You can win this,” Freya says from behind me. “The Draugh’s weapon is intimidation, and–” She stops cold, mouth agape.
I turn back to the Draugh, ready to dodge, roll. Something is wrong, off. Its body shifts, expands. Its stone skin cracks. I look to Freya, but it’s clear she has no idea what’s happening.
The Draugh is shining now, streamers of light escaping through the layers of its armor. It grows blinding. I shield my face with an arm as something rips its way from inside. A spear bursts from the Draugh’s chest, and zips, cutting the Draugh in half with its screeching orbit.
She steps from the shattered remains.
Her face is an onyx mask, like the other creatures, but her body is cast from pure bright silver. Draped robes gleam like tinsel silk, baring her metal arms and the tops of her breasts. She grasps the spear in one hand, its glowing blue tip the same as the jewel in Freya’s staff. Metal wings extend from her back like silver lace.
Her mask is blank, hollow eye sockets and a fixed expression. Well, not a complete void. A crack appears where the mouth should be, then opens, and a deep sucking noise emits from it, like she’s trying to swallow the world. Wind whips around me. I brace, trying not to be pulled in.
Is this the challenge? What the hell is happening? And why does she look so much like –
Cold realization trickles through my focus. I turn. Freya’s eyes are wide with horror, and her body looks insubstantial. “No. Oh, no. She’s not supposed to –” She fades and scatters into a shower of glittering fragments.
“Freya!” Her golden dust streams across the steppe, sucked into the onyx mask’s infinite darkness.
Freya is gone. I can’t believe it. This can’t be happening.
The mouth doesn’t close; impossibly, it speaks. “I am Helreginn,” it says, its voice like wind in a tin box. “I keep a portion of the dead.”
“Where’s Freya?”
“Freya keeps a portion of the dead. I keep Freya.” She raises her spear and strikes the ground. I’m not sure what she means, don’t have time to wonder. She’s stalking me, steady and inexorable. “Defend yourself, have courage, die well.”
“I don’t plan on dying today.”
Helreginn pauses. “None ever do.”
She’s on me. Her spear whistles through the air, a long broad stroke I have no trouble ducking, her arm fully extended. I spring up, confident her momentum has given me an opening.
I’m wrong. So wrong. Her arm stops cold, not bound by the laws of flesh or inertia. It passes me by a hair. Reverses. I see it too late. I move directly into her path.
No. I raise my blade, try to deflect, but I have no leverage. My form is shite, feet unset. She bats me aside like a toy, the edge of her blade skimming along my back. I tumble away. The wound she leaves burns with cold fire that saps my strength.
Helreginn stands across the steppe unmoving, watching. Gods dammit, I wish she had a face. I’ve fought men in my time, and some women; sometimes to the death, sometimes sparring, and in every case their face was as much a weapon as my blade. Rage, uncertainty, grit, resignation; clues that told me when to press, retreat.
But Helreginn’s face shows nothing. Has no features, not even eyes that might tell me when to move, how to react. It’s unnerving, saps my will.
She’s moving again, crossing the arena like a force of nature, slowly, completely sure of her dominance.
Not this time. Time to take a risk.
I leap forward, blades coming around the sides of my body like pincers, counting on her methodical slowness and my sudden movement to give me the advantage.
Turns out, she’s not so slow after all. Her spear is up, and it meets my chest as I hurtle forward. I slide along its length. It cuts through with ease, erupting from my back.
Bad call, bad risk. Oh gods, I’m dead. The pain is complete, blinding, and then fades so quickly that I know it’s mortal. I’m already numb. I hang on her spear for a long moment, body twitching, hands grasping weakly at the haft. I can’t read her, see her face, but I can feel contempt. It radiates from her as she pulls from me. My blood sprays her stone skin and freezes there in an awful tattoo. It paints the snow crimson, a bird’s wing born of my death.
I fall to my knees at last, don’t let myself pitch over. I will not die on my back.
“She could heal you,” Helreginn taunts while I bite my lip and try not to sob my pain. “She can heal you any time. Freya chooses to restore you between the tiers.”
Helreginn rests one finger on me, its tip cold on my forehead. The pain vanishes. I feel whole. My blood still soaks packed snow, but I’m hale.
“See?” she taunts. “She chooses to let you suffer.”
Why? Maybe Helreginn is right. Maybe that’s the trial, realizing that Freya has been toying with me, watching me suffer. Why would she watch this horror, knowing she could help?
She’s let me be tortured, broken, mutilated. What lesson is there in it?
“Mmm.” Helreginn circles, menacing false strikes with her spear. “You begin to see the truth. Your doubt is wisdom.”
I don’t want to believe it. I remember Freya’s fa
ce, the infinite compassion, in her eyes.
Hold on to that.
“You’re a fucking liar.”
Helreginn doesn’t answer. Her body ripples, pulses. She looks like the Draugh before she erupted from him.
For a single breath the mask isn’t blank. I can see Freya pressed behind it.
She’s screaming.
Helreginn groans like a wild beast and her mask smooths. Traces of Freya disappear.
Backing away, I don’t remember picking up my blades. I block the horror of my wounds. Healed, I have a second chance.
I have to get Freya out. This is about more than my quest now.
Helreginn starts toward me again, spear trailing behind her.
She won’t fool me again. I know how fast she is. I circle, cautious, looking for an opening. Her skin is pure silver; maybe my steel blade?
She lurches without warning, darting forward almost faster than I can detect.
This time, I’m ready. I roll, and her blade passes along my back, leaving another trail of fire. But I’m inside her guard. I strike as hard as I can at her head with my steel blade, bellowing in rage and desperation.
It clangs off, numbing my hands.
The butt of her spear punches my flank. My ribs crack, shatter. Blood sprays from my mouth in a fog.
And like that, I’m dead again.
I can’t hold myself up this time. Curled on my side, pain consumes me, my entire world, but through the haze I see...Helreginn turns on me. Something doesn’t make sense.
A tracery of wings on her back. Memory flashes, brief, Freya’s bare back, her tattoos. The same wings on Helreginn.
She looms, spearpoint at my face making me forget about tattoos, wings. Coughing is a ceaseless spasm of blood-filled lungs.
She doesn’t have to stab. I’ll be dead in seconds.
Everything...everything gone.
“You fought more bravely than the others. Your end was no different.” Helreginn’s voice is flat and weighted, like a millstone. She arcs her spear high.
I close my eyes. Father, take me into your house once more. Mother, prepare the hearth. My brother, ready our horses –
Temple of Cocidius Page 6
