by Charley Case
Chapter Seven
As they stood in front of the blank wall tucked into the alley behind the bodega three blocks from the condo, Mila pounded a fist against the rust-colored brick. She stood back and waited while Remmy pulled out her phone and started up her game of Cupcaction!
After a few seconds, an eye slit-sized section of the wall slid to the side, seemingly into nothing. A pair of large cat-like eyes filled the viewport.
“Oh, hey, Mila,” a deep voice rumbled from behind the wall. “Remmy, good to see you again.”
“Hi, Wall Guy.” Mila felt stupid calling the creature that manned the Market door Wall Guy, but that was what he said he preferred to go by. As far as Mila knew, no one knew his real name, or even if he was a he. “How are things going?”
The eyes seemed to shrug. “Not bad. Been pretty busy now that summer’s just around the corner. People are stocking up after winter, I guess. You know how it is.”
“That’s good.”
“I guess.”
There was a pregnant pause, and Mila gave Wall Guy a smile. “Can we come in?”
“Sure. What’s the password?”
Mila snorted. “You already know who we are.”
“I know who you look like.”
“But everyone that could use a spell to look like us would already know the password. I don’t understand what the whole password thing is for. All magicals know what it is, and anyone that isn’t a magical wouldn’t even know that the Market is here.”
“It’s tradition,” Wall Guy argued as if that were enough.
Mila chuckled. “Can’t argue with that, I suppose.”
“So, what’s the password?”
Mila fought to avoid rolling her eyes. “Peabrains are forgetful.”
“Have a good time at the Market, Mila. Tell Finn I said hello.”
“Will do.” She gave him a lazy salute as the eye slit closed.
Small bubbles formed at the base of the wall, followed by more bubbles that seeped out of the bricks to form the outline of an arched passageway. Within seconds, the arch was complete and the bricks faded away to reveal a staircase that led down into the underbelly of the city.
Mila started down the steps, followed by Remmy, who still had her nose in her phone, fully engrossed in her game.
The wall reformed behind them as soon as they were inside. The bright light of morning changed to the flickering light of torches. As they progressed down the hundred steps to the Market, the lighting fixtures advanced in technology. After the torches there were gas lights, then bare light bulbs that hardly put out any light. The style and tech kept advancing every few steps until they reached the final light, which was a lantern that looked like it had come from the set of a medieval action-adventure movie, except that the flame was obviously magical in nature. The blue flame danced in the center of the glass and bronze structure with no apparent fuel source.
As they stepped off the last of the hundred steps, they passed through the spell that muffled the sounds from below. Now the loud roar of bartering and sizzling meats from the food court created a wall of sound that felt comforting in its own right.
A vaulted, whitewashed space at least two stories high and several football fields in area, the Market was enormous. Several hundred tents were arranged in roughly formed concentric circles around the center of the space, where the food vendors had circled their carts around an area for several picnic tables.
Several blacksmiths had set up shop in expansive tents that housed giant furnaces and anvils. Other vendors made potions, talismans, or other useful items. Some of the tents sold raw materials for spells, or the spell scrolls themselves. Items, weapons, armor, and goods; if it was magical, you could probably find it in the Market.
Mila plucked at Remmy’s sleeve. “You need to lead the way. I don’t know where I’m going.”
Remmy looked up as if surprised that they had arrived. She switched off her phone and stowed it in the pass-through pocket of her hoodie. “Sorry, I hate talking to Wall Guy. It’s this way.”
Mila followed Remmy, who wove in and out of the crowded aisles with ease. Luckily, Mila was small enough that she could do the same and keep up with the fast-moving goblin.
“Why don’t you like talking to Wall Guy?”
“I’m pretty sure he has a crush on me. It’s awkward.”
“Isn’t he, like, stuck in the wall or something? How would that work?” Mila laughed.
Remmy looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I said it was awkward.”
They continued to weave their way through the crowds, but an itch at the back of Mila's skull made her slow and glance to the side.
Between two booths, standing with arms limp at her side and head down was a haggard-looking woman. Her clothes were slightly askew as if she had been twisting around in a bed and had just woken up but hadn’t straightened out her shirt and pants. It looked uncomfortable, and Mila wondered how she could stand it.
The woman’s hair obviously needed brushing, and there was visible dirt on her cheek that she hadn’t bothered to brush off.
As Mila stared at the woman, the itch in the back of her head intensified. She reached up to scratch the spot but froze when the itch turned to a chill.
The woman’s head snapped up, and she locked gazes with Mila.
There was a vacant look in her eyes, but otherwise, she looked fairly normal, if a little creepy.
Before she could process the weird interaction, a small hand slipped into hers and pulled her back into the crowd. Mila looked down to see Remmy had come back for her and was now leading her by the hand.
“Come on, boss lady. We need to get to Christine’s before she’s working with the worms.”
They made their way through the Market until Remmy led them to a large round concrete pipe. She pulled Mila after her as she stepped out of the Market and into the sewers proper.
The trek wasn’t long, only about twenty minutes, but it was confusing. Several times Mila was sure that Remmy had gotten them lost and was doubling back, but every time the familiar passage led them somewhere else completely. Eventually the concrete turned to brick, then cut stone. Somewhere along the way, the sewers ended and became natural caves.
Mila hadn’t thought about it until she spotted a faint blue light spilling out of a crumbled section of tunnel up ahead, but there was no light this far into the sewers, and she could see just fine. In fact, she hadn’t even noticed it get dark along the way.
Mila smiled. This was one aspect of her growing abilities she absolutely loved. There was nothing scarier to her than trying to fight in the dark. It seemed that wasn’t going to be a problem in the future. She felt a little confused since Victoria had said that night vision was not one of a Valkyrie’s abilities and had guessed that Mila was able to see better in general due to the heightened senses that came with her magic growing in power. But Mila was sure they were in complete darkness, and she could see just fine. This wasn’t enhanced senses, this was a whole new ability.
Before she could think about it more, Remmy led her through the crumbled section of tunnel into the blue glow.
Mila pulled up short, and her mouth dropped open as she stared up at a million blue stars filling the sky above her.
“That’s the face I like to see,” a husky woman’s voice said. “Lets me know how good a job I’m doing.”
Mila’s teeth clacked shut as she lowered her gaze from the beautiful view to see a woman in a black and red-checked flannel shirt. She was pretty in a country girl sort of way, with curling blonde hair that hung past her shoulders and a mischievous glint to her piercing blue eyes. She held an extra-large cup of coffee and had a friendly smile on her plump lips.
At first, Mila thought she was just really tall, but after a quick glance down, Mila decided long was a better descriptor.
The naga was completely human from the waist up, but her bottom half was a three-foot thick snake body that Mila guessed to be twenty or thirty feet long.
The tightly packed scales covering her snake body gleamed in the blue light that Mila now realized came from the glow worms Remmy had mentioned, not from a sky full of stars at all.
“Hey, Christine.” Remmy waved up at the smiling naga. “This is—”
“Dr. Mila Winters,” Christine finished. “I would recognize you anywhere. The way Finn goes on and on about you when he visits, I feel like we have known each other for quite a while.”
She held out her free hand and Mila shook it.
“I hope he’s not telling you too many of my bad traits,” Mila joked.
“Hardly. If I were to believe everything he says about you, then I would have to believe you were the goddess Shiri herself in the flesh.” She waved a hand towards a corner of the large cavern where a living room of sorts had been set up. “Would you like to sit? I can get you some coffee or a soda if you like.”
“Actually, coffee sounds great,” Mila laughed. “I haven’t had my fourth cup this morning.”
“I know the feeling. Go take a seat. I’ll be over in a second.”
Christine slithered across the cavern to a kitchenette that had been carved into the stone wall. She took a human-sized mug from a set of well-camouflaged stone-faced cupboards and began to fill it with coffee.
Remmy patted Mila’s hip to get her attention. “You going to be okay on your own? I’m going to talk to my people and let them know I’m spending the day with you.”
“You’re spending the whole day with me?”
“Duh!” Remmy rolled her eyes. “Finn is better to spar with, but you’re more fun to hang out with.”
“Thanks?”
Remmy jogged off. Mila took in the details of the cavern as she walked over to the area Christine had indicated.
The millions of glow worms all over the ceiling were such an overwhelming sight that she had completely missed the other features of the cavern. The bare stone floor of the space had been leveled and reflected the glow worms in a highly polished finish that Mila realized was not the product of tools or waxes, but a side effect of a several-hundred-pound naga slithering over it for hundreds or even thousands of years.
At first, Mila didn’t see anyone else in the cavern, but when she glanced at Remmy, she understood why. The goblin had skipped to the far end of the cavern and opened a hidden door that spilled the warm glow of artificial light into the cavern. For the few seconds, the door was open, Mila could hear the raucous babbling of dozens of goblins. A cheer went up as Remmy entered the room and shouted, “Morning, bastards!” As the door closed, it cut off all sound.
In the ‘living room,’ Mila cocked her head as she looked at the familiar L-shaped couch and coffee table.
“Something wrong?” Christine slithered up behind Mila and handed her a steaming mug.
“I have that same couch and table.” Mila nodded thanks for the coffee and blew on it a few times before taking a sip.
Christine laughed. “That makes sense. Finn bought it for me to make the place feel homier. Honestly, I think he just wanted a familiar place to sit when he visits. In fact, he sent a lovely group of Selkies over and they modernized the entire cavern. I honestly don’t know how I went so long without a kitchen. Your mate is quite the noble, making sure that those under his care are comfortable. More than I can say for rulers I have encountered in the past. Please, take a seat.”
Mila sat in her usual spot on the couch out of habit, while Christine coiled her body into a pile that resembled a snake-skin club chair. She even leaned back against one of her coils and rested her large mug on the “chair’s” armrest. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Dr. Winters?”
“Well, I don't really know where to start.” Mila bit her lip as she thought about how to begin. “Remmy tells me that your people have some experience fighting the Drude in the past, is that correct?”
Christine’s eyebrows rose slowly in surprise. “We did, but that was ages ago. Why do you want to know about ancient history?”
“Because there’s a Drude here on Earth that needs to be taught a lesson.”
Mila had expected a lot of things on meeting Christine for the first time, but white-faced fear was not one of them.
“A Drude walks the Earth?”
Mila nodded.
“Shiri help us all!” Christine breathed the invocation with a look of horror on her face.
Chapter Eight
“My people were one of the last races to be targeted by the Drude and their armies of thralls,” Christine began. She was shaken but had quickly gathered her wits before starting her tale. “My people are not plentiful, but we do wield a larger measure of power than most. Even now, there are only five naga on Earth, spread throughout the continents, and that is up from the original four that boarded the great ship all those millennia ago. We live long and lonely lives, only coming together to mate when the urges drive us from our caverns to seek one another out. After copulating, we return to our homes and brood our eggs, but even then, only one in a hundred will hatch. This keeps our numbers low and places a premium on life.
“On our homeworld, however, our numbers were relatively plentiful, and our power made us formidable in battle. We were left alone out there to find our own way, independent of the greater community of gathering races under the then-new Dwarven Emperor’s quickly expanding empire. Even then, the empire knew we were a powerful foe, and while not even close to the empire's vast power, we were strong enough that they left us to our own devices.
“Then the Drude appeared on the still-forming political landscape.”
Christine stopped and took a drink of coffee before continuing. She leaned forward on her coils, locking her gaze on Mila to be sure she understood the next part fully.
“The Drude were something no one had ever seen before. Their magic was different from the rest of us, drawing its power from some strange place we couldn't touch or access. With this strange infernal magic came abilities no one had ever considered, like infecting the minds of others until they were driven mad, or the ability to suppress magic in their enemies, making them as weak as babes. But most terrifying of all was their ability to rip the soul from an unwilling host and replace it with infernal magic. That killed the person but preserved the body and the magic flowing through it. The Drude could suddenly take naga captive and turn our own people against us, and build an army of powerful magic wielders to ultimately fight the dwarves with.”
Mila nodded. “I’ve seen that firsthand. It’s terrifying.”
Christine’s eyebrows rose in shock. “You’ve had dealings with the Drude directly?”
“I was the one who found him. His name is Azoth.”
“You are lucky to be alive, even if you are a Valkyrie.”
It was Mila's turn to be surprised. “You know I’m a Valkyrie? How?”
“I told you that my kind has a greater measure of power than most.” Her lips broke into a coy smile. “That, and your mate may have let it slip while bragging about you to me. Don't worry, I keep my own counsel. Your secrets are safe with me.”
Mila shook her head while trying to hide a smile for Finn and his near-inability to say anything bad about her. “If the Drude were so powerful, how did you defeat them? Was there some tactic or device you found to weaken them?”
Christine shook her head sadly. “We didn't defeat them. There was no magic bullet. My people would have become thralls of the Drude if the rebellion hadn't taken place.”
“The rebellion?”
“The Valkyries’ rebellion.”
Mila put up a hand to pause the conversation. “Wait. Are you telling me the Drude had subjugated the Valkyrie at one time?”
“To be honest, no one is a hundred percent certain of what happened. The story goes that the Drude came first, and the Valkyries were a way for the universe to balance the sudden influx of evil. But, when the first couple of Valkyries arrived, they were quickly overpowered by the vast army of the Drude and enslaved. But because the Valkyries
are Celestial magic users, the taint of a Drude can only last for so long, and eventually, they can break free. One particular Valkyrie realized she would soon be free and used her time to study how the Drude were able to separate a soul from a body. She took that knowledge and created a weapon that took what the Drude could do a step farther. The tale goes that the weapon could not only separate a soul, but it would also allow the user to reform that soul and force it back into the original body.”
Mila swallowed, keeping her face expressionless. Christine was describing the Reaper, but it was obvious that she wasn’t certain that it existed. That was the number-one mandate of the Valkyries: keep the Reaper safe and keep it secret.
Luckily, Christine was far too engrossed in the tale to notice Mila's strange behavior.
“With that kind of power, the Valkyries would be like gods, able to choose who had power and who didn't. No one was safe from them. Even the Dwarven Emperor was vulnerable if a Valkyrie could get close enough, but the ones who were truly afraid were the Drude.
“There is a legend that when the first Valkyrie made her escape, she used the weapon on her master and his household, ripping all magic from them and leaving him and his people on a barren planet, devoid of all magic to fend for themselves.”
Christine waved a hand. “But that’s just legend. The true story is that for whatever reason, be it rebellion or the Valkyries showing up at just the right time, a war started between the two powerful races that still rages out there in the vastness of space. It seems the war still rages here on Earth as well. Once the Drude left our homeworld, we joined the Dwarven Empire and were protected from further attack, though it was at a steep price; but that’s another story.”
Mila frowned, looking down into her still-full cup of coffee. “What do the Drude’s spaceships look like?” Mila suddenly asked. She thought about how they used the pent-up magical potential in Finn's old ship to create a gigantic explosion. If the only way to fight a Drude was with raw power, it might help. “I know the Drude chased my sisters to Earth after it had left on its voyage, so the ship must still be here somewhere.”
