by Steve McHugh
“They’re already at war,” Hel snapped. “Avalon came for you today. You stopped them, but they will be back. And in greater numbers.”
“Like Tusken Raiders,” Mordred said before he could stop himself. “And, as I say that, I realize you have no idea what Star Wars is, so I should shut up now.”
Remy patted Mordred on the hand. “Good job.”
“My point stands,” Hel said. “They will find a way in, and they will kill you all. Children, women, men, griffins, they don’t care. You join them, or you die.”
“Cronus and Rhea were murdered by Abaddon. Most of the other Titans haven’t fought in centuries. Atlas was only here because he sided with us when we went to war, and he’s proven himself to be a traitorous dog. We don’t have the power to end a war.”
“No,” Diana said. “You don’t. But you do have the power to help us end one.”
“My son Helios is dead,” Hyperion said. “He joined Avalon and murdered innocent people. Selene is still in mourning for the loss of her love and lives her life going from battle to battle, trying to stop herself from feeling. Eos is who knows where. My family here on Tartarus is all I have left. All any of us have left. And you want us to risk that to fight Avalon?”
“Yes,” Mordred said. “Because otherwise we might as well bow our heads, drop to our knees, and beg that our deaths are swift. And I don’t know about you, but I’m far too old to beg for a goddamned thing. I’m going to fight until I can’t breathe, because anything else is just inviting Avalon to do what they wish.”
Hyperion looked between the members of the team, before turning to Lorin as Charon entered the square on his horse. He wore armor identical to Hyperion’s.
“And you?” Hyperion asked Lorin.
“The griffins will fight,” he said. “Abaddon and her people invaded our lands, killed our people. We will repay that act in their blood.”
“I’m coming too,” Charon said. “Anyone who argues gets punched.”
Mordred noticed hundreds of people walking toward the square, all of them wearing the same style of armor, but in different colors, carrying different weapons.
“I recognize the armor,” Hel said. “You wore it when you fought the Olympians. My grandfather told me about it.”
Hyperion sighed and looked up at the sky, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hands. “I did not want to get involved in this war, but I guess it was inevitable that Avalon wouldn’t just leave us be. Stopping them before they turn their full attention to us is probably the most sensible thing we can do at this point.”
“You’re going to fight with us?” Mordred asked.
“Do you have somewhere safe for the children and those who can’t fight?” Hyperion asked.
“Zamek is coming here to change the destination of the realm gate to Shadow Falls so that we can all go there,” Mordred said. “We just need to figure out how we’re going to actually get everyone from here to the realm gate.”
18
LAYLA CASSIDY
When Layla stepped through the realm gate in Nidavellir and into Shadow Falls, she was greeted by several guards who relaxed the second they realized who it was. Zamek, Tarron, Nabu, Dralas, Chloe, and the saber-tooth panther followed through a moment later. Several of the guards looked at the giant cat with a mixture of awe and terror.
Tarron made sure only he could activate the realm gate, then jogged after the others to where they waited for the lift.
“You okay?” Layla asked Zamek. They all stepped into the lift, which started to descend.
“My people might be free,” he said. “Most of my people are who knows where, but those in Nidavellir have a chance to take back their homes. That is a momentous thing to see. But my place is with all of you. Freeing the realm of Nidavellir is only the beginning of what we hope to achieve here. I want to find the rest of the dwarves, just like Tarron wants to find the shadow elves.”
“My place is with Tarron. I do not care much for going home. Those I loved are dead, and the vast majority of fire giants were not people I wished to spend time with,” Dralas said. “They were never people who understood me. They are about war and carnage, and I just wanted to protect my friend.”
Tarron patted Dralas on the arm. “You can come with me to find the elves,” he said.
“That would be nice,” Dralas told him.
Once the lift reached the bottom of the mountain, they were met by Tommy and several guards.
“That’s a massive bloody cat,” Tommy said, pointing to the panther. “What did you feed it?”
“I think they’re always big,” Layla said. “You get used to it.”
“Is it friendly?” Tommy asked. “To weres, I mean? Some animals get funny around us.”
“It’s been around me all day and hasn’t tried to eat me once,” Chloe said, gaining a playful nudge in the ribs from the panther.
Nabu winced as he took a step, and Layla and Chloe were both there to ensure he didn’t collapse.
“What happened?” Tommy asked, concerned.
“Dying,” Nabu said. “It’s complicated.”
“The crystals in Nidavellir poisoned him, and soon he’ll die,” Chloe said. “Not complicated at all.”
“Can we save you?” Tommy asked, his voice full of emotion.
“No,” Nabu said. “It’s part of my cycle. I die, I am reborn in time. But I refuse to go before I’ve helped you keep Helheim safe from Avalon.”
“We have to get to the dwarven realm gate,” Zamek said. “I need to change the destination to Tartarus and then help Mordred get back here with everyone in that realm.”
“What if we worked together?” Tarron asked. “If we could modify this dwarven realm gate like we did in Norumbega, we could create a rudimentary elven gate. One powerful enough to stay open for a long time, using the dwarven realm gate as a power source.”
“Do I need to hit anything?” Dralas interrupted.
“Not just yet,” Tarron said.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Zamek said. “Tarron, you get to the mountain and start going through what we’ll need, and I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
“I will go with Layla, Chloe, Nabu, and the big cat that really does need a name to Helheim,” Dralas said.
The team made their way through the city of Solomon to the temple where Kase, Harry, Antonio, and Leonardo were waiting for them outside the realm gate, along with a huge congregation of people.
“I assume they’re here to go help Helheim?” Layla asked.
“We’ve just been waiting on you all to get back,” Tommy told her.
Zamek changed the realm gate destination to Helheim and activated it. “It’ll stay open for as long as you like now,” he told everyone. “I need to get back to the others, but you can start feeding people through. It won’t stay open indefinitely, but if you keep redrawing this rune every ten minutes or so, it should stay open a few hours. Long enough for me to work on the other realm gate before getting back here.”
Zamek ran off, leaving Harry and Leonardo to reapply the rune in question as hundreds of people started to march through the realm gate. Tommy, Olivia, Persephone, and several other high-ranked people went through first, presumably to get set up with what needed to be done. Layla and her team waited for about an hour until Caleb and Sky arrived. She’d been keeping an eye on him in Shadow Falls ever since Layla had left him with her, and her expression suggested it hadn’t been a fun time.
It took a few hours before Layla followed everyone else into Helheim. She’d wanted to make sure that there were enough people in Shadow Falls just in case anything bad happened.
The smell and sounds of battle hit Layla as soon as she walked through the gate into a courtyard where a dozen soldiers were sparring. Layla noticed the glances from the soldiers as she turned her arm into a blade, and she quickly remade it, looking around at the large, green-and-blue-tiled floor, and the gray stone walls. There was a large gap in the wall, showing the city below,
the spires of dark and light wood reaching up toward the orange-and-red sky.
“That is ominous,” Kase said from beside her as they moved away from the realm gate to make way for the continuous stream of people.
“This place gets its reputation because of the sky,” Nabu said. “People came here and said it was as if the sky were on fire.”
Tommy led them out of the courtyard and into the gigantic city that was surrounded by hundred-foot-high walls. “That’s not exactly inviting,” Layla said, pointing to the guard towers that sat higher than the walls. There were a dozen that she could see around the front of the wall.
“It encircles the whole place,” Tommy said as they walked through the city. “Hel made this city almost impenetrable. The river Gjöll isn’t far from here, and anyone wanting to fight us has to cross it first. The only way over it is across the bridge Gjallarbrú, which is guarded by Modgud and her giants. When Abaddon’s people come, we’re going to know about it. We can see them building their forces in the pass through the mountains to the north.”
“What’s this city called?” Layla asked.
“Niflhel,” Dralas said quietly. “I have been here before. It was not a fun experience.”
“How many enemies are there?” Chloe asked.
“From what I was told by Hel, a lot,” Tommy said.
Layla’s team separated; Tarron and Dralas walked off into the city, and Chloe told Layla that she would go check on Caleb.
“He’s been taken to the library,” Tommy said. “No idea why.”
Tommy ducked under a doorway and into a large room where several people Layla had seen in Shadow Falls or Nidavellir were gathered around a long table that could have seated fifty. There was a large map on the table dotted with several flags of various colors. As Layla got closer she saw Helheim written in the top corner. The city they were in—Niflhel—was marked on the bottom along with the realm gate that Layla and her team had come through. A blue flag sat on top while several other strongholds were marked with black flags.
“We lost all of those?” Layla asked.
Olivia looked up. “Yes, most of the realm is now in the hands of Abaddon.”
“Where’s the gate to the Yggdrasil tree?” Layla asked.
Persephone pointed to a spot near the far side of the mountain. Thankfully there were no strongholds there. Niflhel was the last populated place before the dwarven realm gate.
“Most of the population of this city are soldiers,” Sky said. “The civilians fled through the realm gate several weeks ago.”
“Where are they now?” Layla asked.
“Asgard, Midgard, and a few other places,” Persephone told her. “Places with a greater chance of holding out. Hel has been evacuating them for a few years now, so we don’t have to worry.”
“How many blood elves?” Dralas asked.
“Approximately two hundred thousand,” Tommy said.
“That is not in any way a good thing,” Kase said.
“How long have they been there?” Nabu asked, sitting on a chair nearby. “I’ll explain my predicament shortly, I just need information at the moment.”
“A few days,” Olivia said, raising an eyebrow in question toward Layla.
“They’re just there watching,” Persephone said. “Modgud is less than thrilled. She has several hundred giants who really want a fight.”
“They’ll get one,” Nabu said, getting up to look at the map.
“Tommy said my father was taken to the library?” Layla asked. “Any ideas why?”
“He thinks he knows how Avalon found us,” Persephone said. “All he told me was that we weren’t betrayed, and then he asked to see the library and off he went.”
“I’ll go see him,” Layla said. “Just point me there.”
“I’ll take you,” Sky said. “I don’t need to know troop movements and plans, and it’ll give us time to catch up.”
They left the building, with the panther walking beside Layla, occasionally bumping her hand so that she’d stroke it.
“So, you thought about getting her a saddle?” Sky asked.
“I don’t think she would like that very much,” Layla said, receiving a lick in response. She looked across the city and saw that part of the large wall was missing. “That where Mammon attacked?”
Sky nodded. “So I’ve been told. It happened just before Hel arrived in Shadow Falls. Mammon didn’t do much damage to anything but the wall. Some of the soldiers here think he was just testing out his power. It’s being repaired at the moment.”
“What about the civilians in the city?”
“Most have been sent under the mountain to the south.”
Layla turned around and looked at the reddish mountain range, the color making her think of NASA’s pictures of Mars. The pair set off walking down a cobbled street toward a large white building in the distance. “How many soldiers do we have here?”
“Just over twenty thousand in the city.”
“Hel and her people have been fighting here for two years. She’s lost over thirty thousand soldiers in those two years. Avalon lost five times that many though, so I’m going to assume that’s why Abaddon was brought in with all the blood elves. Abaddon and her people are ruthless and well organized. Hel’s generals told us that they’ve lost two forts in the time she’s been fighting here. They said that there are patches of soldiers still active in the mountains and forests to the north, but they probably only total a few thousand in number, and there’s no way to get them all here. Hel’s scouts are still in the mountains. They sent a thousand troops to guard the Yggdrasil tree temple, and we have more ready to head there.”
“What about Mammon? He still there?”
“I did a walk of the walls yesterday, and yes, he’s still there. He flies between the two highest peaks over there.” Sky pointed in the direction of the mountain range where the blood elf forces were amassing.
Layla squinted, but couldn’t see anything. “He’s still not at full power, I assume.”
“I’m assured he won’t be for several days, maybe longer. Jinayca told me about some books in the library here that detail what was done to him. He had most of his body covered in blood curse marks. I don’t even know how he was able to turn into his dragon shape. I assume he’s sacrificing people to cure the marks, but that’s something I don’t really want to spend too much time thinking about. It just makes me angry.”
“And Hades?”
“We don’t know,” Sky said, clearly upset about it. “Abaddon brought him here for a reason, we just can’t figure out what that reason is.”
They stopped outside the large building, and Layla looked up at the majesty of the blue and gold domes that sat on the left and right wings of the building. It was a hundred feet high, and reminded Layla of the library in the dwarven kingdom.
“I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not the library,” Sky said.
“But . . . pretty building,” Layla said, pointing. “What is it?”
“Courthouse of sorts,” Sky told her. “It’s where prisoners would be sentenced. The library is over there.” Sky pointed to a small red-stone dwelling that didn’t look big enough to house anything more than a few rats, let alone a library.
Sky pushed opened the door and motioned at the lantern-lit interior, which appeared empty except for a wooden door.
Layla stepped inside and pushed it open, revealing a set of similarly lit stairs leading down beneath the city streets. The smell of old paper and books hit her instantly.
“Down there is the library,” Sky told her. “When you’re done, get some rest. There are some rooms in the courthouse that we’ve taken as our own while we’re here. Anyone committing a crime is liable to be punished by being on the front lines in the next battle.”
The panther took one sniff, lay down on the floor, and looked very much like she had no intention of moving again.
Sky laughed. “I assume she’ll start standing on your desk while you’
re trying to work next.”
Layla scratched the cat behind one of her ears. “I’ll be back soon,” she told her.
The cat lowered her head to the ground and closed her eyes.
She began the descent to the library, wondering how long it must take for books to be taken up and down the stairs. About halfway down, she started to hear voices, and when she finally reached the bottom she found Harry and Chloe at a table next to the staircase playing a game of cards. Suddenly, Layla’s powers vanished, and her arm fell to the floor as pieces of metal.
“Hey,” Harry said, putting his cards on the table face up and giving Layla a hug. “Yeah, no powers down here.”
“That sucks,” Layla said. “When did you get here? I thought you were helping Leonardo.”
“Leonardo thought I’d be more help here, so he sent me through a little while ago,” Harry said. “Good to see you’re okay; you look knackered though.”
“It’s been a long few days,” Layla told him. “But thanks for making me feel better,” she added sarcastically.
Harry gave her the thumbs up.
Chloe got up and hugged Layla. “Good timing. Harry cheats at cards.”
“I do not cheat,” Harry said. “You’re just not very good.”
“My dad here?” Layla asked.
“Five stacks back,” Chloe told her. “He’s been reading.”
Layla took in the majesty of the library. She couldn’t see the end of it, as it just kept going and going, and somewhere in the distance the lights all blurred into one. The library had stacks of shelves on either side of a pathway. Each stack was fifty feet long, and as far as Layla could tell contained a mixture of scrolls and books.
“There are tens of millions of pieces of work here,” Harry said. “We had someone from the city who usually works here come down and show your dad where he needed to look.”
“Is all of this just from Helheim?” Layla asked.
“All of the Norse realms,” Chloe told her. “And the Greek, and essentially there’s a copy of everything here somewhere. They have a . . . scribe, I guess you could call her—she’s not exactly chatty.”
