Tiffany had been putting on a show, a strong front.
He said, “Go ahead. Do you want some mist too, so nobody can read our lips?”
“Yes, if you can do that. Thank you.”
“Alright, one moment.” He turned toward his Valkyries and shouted, “I’m going to make some mist! Everything is okay. Stay there.” Narnaste nodded, and he turned back. “Alright, go ahead.”
Tiffany nodded and waved her fan. An intricate drawing flared to life on the fabric, blazing a pure, metallic silver. Through his emberstone eye, Trav could see the bubble that formed over their position. He pursed his lips in approval. Then he summoned Hex into his hand and pointed at the ground between where he stood and everyone else. “Mist.” In seconds, a billowing carpet of grey fog sprung from the ground, obscuring his sight of the village, and diffusing the sun’s light.
With the light dimmed, he could see Tiffany’s dark, twinkling aura more clearly. It was really quite beautiful.
“Very impressive,” she said.
“You too.” Trav had put some things together, coming up with a reason for the charade. “You are not actually in charge here, but you want to be, and you need me for something, am I right?”
The goddess didn’t beat around the bush. “Yes.”
“Well, in good faith, why don’t you tell me what I’m feeling from the village through my mantle, then?”
“That is the Oracle. It’s almost dead and can only answer a total of six questions every year. I got to use mine mid-winter last year.” She smiled, but now that Trav knew what to look for, he could see her nervousness. “I asked some questions for you, too, things you would want to know.”
“What did you ask?”
“Before I answer that question, I have something to ask for confirmation, then something to tell you. How long have you had your mantle?”
“A few weeks or so. I haven’t been tracking the days too closely.”
She said, “I thought so. As for me, I accepted Zorya’s mantle twenty years ago.”
Trav processed that information and gave her a closer look. I see it now. Yes, she was definitely older than her appearance would suggest. “And?”
“I’ve only started remembering around the time when I, Zorya, died. For a long time, I was just absorbing star charts and celestial information since my mantle includes the night and the stars. The human brain can’t hold all the information that a Restless acquires, so to fully integrate, our minds need to grow, to expand even as we relearn everything we used to know. This is probably happening with you, too.”
“Maybe,” said Trav. He wondered if he would ever think of Odin as himself. The thought disturbed him.
“The point is that even after absorbing all of that information, I have had more time to...get used to this. You still have huge holes in your other memories, right?”
“Yes.”
“I understand. There is another Restless in Faith, in the village. He received his mantle differently than I did, and probably you too. I think we’re all different in how we became what we are, but we all get more memories and knowledge over time. Do you remember how Odin died?”
“No, and I’m assuming that it’s significant. Did you say there’s another Restless back there?”
“Yes, Thanatos. He is an idiot and completely useless—you’ll see. It’s good he isn’t a threat, but he won’t help us either. But yes, the memories you are missing are significant.” Tiffany sagged. “I don’t know how to tell you this, or even where to start. I guess I will just...get it all out there. Is that okay?”
“I’ll listen.” Trav folded his arms and acted aloof, but he felt dread building in the pit of his stomach. Something was telling him that this might be a turning point in his life.
“Okay, before I start, I want to tell you that I have traveled, and I have met other Restless, some Originators, some Inheritors—what we are calling mortals who received a mantle. During my travels on Asgard, I even met Fulla and Gna. I know where they are.”
The names struck a chord in Trav, just on the tip of his mind, like they should mean something to him. He mentally filed the names and asked, “What about memory shrines, have you found any of those?”
“Yes, although none I could open. They are all for your Pantheon, here.”
“Right.” Trav didn’t entirely understand, but now he knew the other Restless had probably seeded their own worlds with memory shrines. This was not surprising. The Restless were all born paranoid, after all.
“Anyway, I’ve been traveling because I have been avoiding death. On my homeworld, a seer told me that a powerful goddess wants me dead—an Originator, one of the ancient Restless. On top of that, she told me that my entire world is in danger and that only I have the power to stop it. Of course, this was said in front of several other Restless, and I was ‘volunteered’ to travel in order to save our world.
“I came to Asgard because of the Oracle. Not many know it even exists, much less where, but I was able to find ancient texts and figure it out. I never thought that looking human would be such a problem in this world.”
“Tell me about it,” groused Trav.
A smile crossed Tiffany’s face, quick as a hummingbird, and she was back to business. “I will skip all of my journeys, trials, and hardships to get to the point.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The goddess sucked in a breath and began speaking faster than before—like she needed to get the words out. “I had all day with the Oracle, and I used almost all of it, thinking about my questions. The Oracle is picky about what questions you can ask. Any question with an ‘and’ is usually just ignored, and you will have one less question to ask.”
Trav asked, “What was your first question?”
“The first question I asked was what I should do to attain the power to avoid death. The Oracle’s answer was that I should marry or join my life to another Restless to start a new Pantheon. When I asked who the best candidate was for me to marry, I was told Odin.”
Trav raised his eyebrows at that, but stayed silent, listening.
Tiffany continued, “I asked how to find Odin, and was told that I would meet him if I waited in the village for a year. That seemed really straightforward, and was obviously correct.” She gestured at the two of them.
“While I lived here, I began wondering what it would be like to meet Odin, one of the pantheon rulers. A king. I already knew that you’d been killed, in fact, that was one reason why I was marked for death, after all, Zorya had seen too much. In fact, it already cost Zorya Utrennyaya her immortal life. My sister is truly dead.”
Trav asked, “What does that—”
“Please hold your questions until the end,” Tiffany interrupted. “I just need to say all of this. When I heard what the Oracle said, I improvised, changing the questions I’d planned to ask. My next question was to ask what I could tell you that would make you more willing to listen to me. How I could get you to work with me.” She met his eyes. “I don’t understand the full significance of the answer, but the Oracle told me that members of your family still live and were transported through the veil like you were.”
Trav’s jaw worked, but before he could get any words out, Tiffany rushed to continue. “I asked the Oracle to answer the next question you would ask after I relayed that information. I got a response. So Trav, the answer to the question you have in your mind right now, probably, ‘Like who?’ is that you have recently been within a couple hundred paces of your cousin Ashley.”
The sad grass on the ground softened Trav’s fall, guiding himself into a kneeling position at the last moment. His knees had given out. After three long years as a slave, he’d refused to wonder what had happened to his family anymore, or even how he’d wound up on Asgard. Ash is alive. He could scarcely believe it.
Tiffany squatted in front of him, her expression like steel. “The next part is why we needed the eavesdropping shield up. Are you ready?” Trav nodded woodenly. S
he said, “With my sixth question, I took a gamble. Since I would be meeting you before I could consult with the Oracle again, and I only had one more question, I needed to make it count. If you would get no benefit out of working with me, joining with me, the next question would have been useless, but I would have gotten many other answers as well from the silence. I asked the Oracle why it was in your best interest to work with me.”
“My best interest?”
The goddess nodded and pressed her lips together. Her words came more slowly now. “I memorized the Oracle’s message. It said, ‘Dark forces have unleashed the veil wraiths, Odin’s chances of ever seeing his mortal family again will improve with your help, and Frigg plans to return to Asgard with an army to destroy it.’”
Tiffany closed her eyes, and her voice was labored. “Trav, Frigg is the Restless who wants me dead. One thing Zorya saw that got her killed was Frigg killing you. She stabbed Odin in the back, literally. Odin did something to bond her, to give her power, something she’d been asking for a millennium. After it was done, she betrayed you.”
“Frigg?” Trav’s mouth formed the somewhat unfamiliar word, but even as he said it, a torrent of emotions erupted from his mantle, making him go lightheaded for a second.
“Odin’s past wife, the goddess Frigg, is coming to Asgard,” said Tiffany. “And nobody will even talk to me about veil wraiths. I think they might be tied to the prophesied destruction of my world.”
The blonde woman hit the ground in frustration. “Zorya had a smaller, minor mantle—a star goddess! I don’t know how I got mixed up in all of this, but this is...so big. So I am here to meet you, and to ask you for your help. Please, join me and help me save my world. I am tired of pretending to be strong all the time in front of others, with no real confidences, no real friends. Please, I just…”
An ugly sob bubbled out of the blonde Restless woman’s throat, and Trav automatically put an arm around her as she lurched forward. Her mantle might be ancient, but the woman beneath was probably barely thirty, and literally carrying the weight of a world.
His sympathy was overshadowed by shock, though. He believed that Tiffany had told the truth, and now he had a lot to think about. It felt like he’d still been a slave just yesterday, but now he was holding a crying woman delivering messages of doom.
He replayed everything he’d just been told. She said Odin bonded Frigg—that sounds like what I’ve done to create my Valkyries. Then he thought, Odin’s ex-wife killed him? Wow. Oh yeah, great. Now Trav had inherited the old god’s baggage. All power truly came with a price.
He hadn’t even stepped foot in Faith yet, and he’d already been rocked to his core. For sure, he needed to consult with this Oracle as soon as possible—it sounded like that would be in two months or so. He wanted to verify the thing was real and functional as one of the first things he did, too.
There is a possibility I can see my family again. Ash is alive! Those simple, but powerful facts had opened up layers of scars on his heart, touching emotions he hadn’t even known were still alive.
The old Trav, the Travis Sterling from America, might have been entirely overwhelmed in that moment, but he’d had survived the mines. Slavery on Asgard hadn’t been able to break him and had pounded his pride and endurance into a solid sheet of steel with an edge. So as he knelt on an alien planet with a dead god’s memories riding shotgun in his head, comforting a sobbing woman with crushing responsibility, a small, but strong part of him—his survival instinct—whispered. The voice inside kept asking the same question over and over again.
If I bond a goddess, I wonder how many bars of power I’d get from it.
End of Asgard Awakening,
---Book One of Asgard Awakening
Trav’s adventures will be continued in the next volume of Asgard Awakening, book two!
Please read on for a note by the author, including multiple ways to connect on social media.
…And don’t forget to review this novel!
About the Author:
Blaise Corvin served in the US Army in several roles. He has seen the best and the worst that humanity has to offer. A sucker for any hobby involving weapons, art, or improv, he’s a fairly hard core geek.
He currently lives in Texas with enough geeky memorabilia to start a museum.
Being a professional author, he must sometimes talk about himself in third person within author biographies.
It’s all very eccentric.
Cheers!
To Readers,
PLEASE, PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW!
You are wonderful and reviews are amazing for all authors, but especially indie authors like me. Your reviews help me pay the bills. Seriously.
If all you can think of to say is, “I liked this book, you should try it too,” that would be awesome!
In 2016 I published my first book. Now I’m full time. This is pretty amazing, but also extremely scary. …lol. A lot of writers don’t admit to that. The uncertainty can be intense.
As a reminder, Asgard Awakening is part of the VeilVerse universe, a project that I started with my friend, William D. Arand. To read his current VeilVerse story that follows the life of Trav’s cousin Ash, please check out Cultivating Chaos.
Ways to connect with me:
1. My Facebook fan group
Amazon and other distributors are pretty terrible at letting you know when my new books are out. For the latest news and updates, join my Facebook group:
Blaise Corvin Reader group
http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/
2. My website
If you’re interested in checking out my website, the URL is http://blaise-corvin.com/. You can find news, Delvers artwork, and maps.
The site is still a work in progress so please be patient with me.
3. These are my social media pages. Connect with me!
Twitter - @Blaise_Corvin
https://twitter.com/Blaise_Corvin
Facebook - Leave me a like on facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/BlaiseCorvinWriter/
GameLit Society Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/
Blaise Corvin Reader group (best place for updates)
http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlaiseCorvinBooks/
Harem Lit Facebook group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/haremlit/
My Patreon!
http://www.patreon.com/BlaiseCorvin
If you really love my work and would like to support me further, Patreon offers a great way to help me pay the bills and keep writing!
My email
If you want to drop me a line for any reason, you can email me at:
[email protected]
Until next time (--and please leave a review!--)
Thank you for joining me on this adventure! I couldn’t do it without all the knowledge and encouragement I get on a daily basis from everyone I interact with.
I can’t wait to spend time with you again with Trav, in Asgard Awakening, Book Two.
:)
-BC
The Veilverse Universe is owned by Blaise Corvin (that’s me!) and William D. Arand.
Asgard Awakening follows the adventures of Travis Sterling. To read about his cousin Ash, please check out William’s series, Cultivating Chaos!
Cultivating Chaos
Asgard Awakening Page 25
