The God Wheel

by Brian Clopper

  Slif looked a little taken aback. “Um, yes.”

  Gabe snorted. “Terrific, another fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation. You mean to tell me the powers that be just threw you into this thing blind?”

  “Not entirely, but we are assessing constantly as we go.”

  Gabe glared at me. “So he’s missing his squire and that earns him an upgrade to hero according to the prophecy?”

  I spoke up. “Okay, this just seems unfair. Shouldn’t I, the person at the center of this so-called prophecy, be a little more informed than just the bare minimum? The least you could do is fill me in on it fully. If even some random troll knows a few if not all the particulars, shouldn’t I?”

  The troll glowered, looking ready to hop over the counter and offer up an in-person smiting. Why had my rather tame jab angered him so much when he and Slif had been duking it out in the insults department from the get go?

  Slif shot me a look and grabbed my arm. She pulled me away, pushing me back toward the restrooms. The couple with their son had finally exited the bathroom and strolled toward the front door, waving a goodbye to Gabe.

  The troll quickly shifted his sour expression to a pleasant smile and waved back, coming across surprisingly charming. I decided it was the dainty paper hat that assisted in turning his otherwise scrunched up and rather disgruntled demeanor to something akin to quaint and endearing.

  Slif whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “Hey, I’m just a little annoyed and took it out on the troll guy. I didn’t say anything half as bad as you did.”

  “That’s part of how trolls greet one another. They hurl insults. It’s comforting and proper with a person you know. But to harass someone you just met, Felix, that’s not appropriate etiquette.”

  “Well, excuse me for being a little new and grossly uninformed about all this. It just bugs me that I seem to know the least, and things appear much worse than the Entropy Queen’s dimensional prison suffering a few cracks. I still don’t get how me missing a squire weakened her jail or whatever.”

  “Because it’s a small fluctuation in the grand order.” Gabe spoke, startling me. He stood just a few feet away and had clearly caught most if not all of our back and forth. How had neither of us noticed his approach? Guess trolls are stealthy. File that intel away, Felix.

  The troll continued, “My apologies for letting your little dig get to me. I am here to serve the prophecy. I take it you need me to fashion the ring?” He glanced at Slif.

  “Wait, slow down. I still don’t follow how me missing a squire is that big a deal.”

  Gabe fixed Slif with a serious look. She nodded almost as if giving him permission to elaborate.

  He cleared his throat. It was an unsettling and prolonged gurgle that was entirely too phlegmy. I glanced over to see the old man with the cane heading out the door. He looked aghast by the troll’s disturbing utterance as he fled.

  When the bell above the door stopped jingling, Gabe said, “I’m sure your pantheon wished to spare you worry by omitting this, but your prophecy speaks of many mortals losing their squires, that the Entropy Queen stole away their magic to use as fuel to facilitate her jailbreak.”

  “So I’m not the only one trying to stop her? There are others with access to their gods running around? Then why aren’t we teaming up?”

  Slif answered with a quiver to her voice, “Because she got to the others and dispatched them.”

  “Like she sent crows after them?” I stiffened.

  “No, she employed other pliable agents.”

  “Most recent one fell to a tsunami. She took out a whole village just to do in one person.” Gabe removed his paper hat.

  “How do you know so much?” I asked the troll.

  “The arcane web. I dig deep into it. I do more than just forge weapons. Not much call for that when there are no mighty magical clashes in the world. I look into conspiracies, ferret out bizarre events, report on all things unusual, and send it along to the powers that be. Quite a few of my fellow trolls do the same.”

  “So you troll the internet for magical info?”

  Gabe huffed and rolled his eyes, clearly offended. “We search. Trolling denotes picking fights. Forcing the humor there, Felix. We call ourselves combers. We sift through a ton to reveal the relevant data.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t upfront with you.” Slif put a hand on my shoulder. “Yolla is too. We all thought it would do no good to know of past jeopardy.”

  “How many has she taken out?” I asked, trying to ignore how my blood boiled with rage and also felt iced by fear at the same time.

  “Got a real-time counter running on this very topic. My cousin Clive whipped one up and shared with the rest of us combers.” Gabe pulled out his phone and checked. “One hundred forty-three since she began two days ago.” He paused and did a double take. He peered more intently at his screen. “Make that one hundred forty-four.” He awkwardly stashed his phone back in his apron pocket.

  Slif studied me, searching my expression for any clue as to how I was feeling. I recognized the look. My mother had employed the same studied gaze. She’d always known when I’d been hurt by someone else or done something stupid. “She will keep trying for you until she succeeds. You can’t run away. She knows the only thing that can stop her is one of the mortals she stripped of their squire. Some sort of poetic justice. Prophecies are big on that.”

  I knew she wasn’t trying to call me a coward. She really did wear her pragmatic nature on her sleeve. “I won’t, but surely I shouldn’t be doing this solo. Shouldn’t we be finding someone else to help?”

  “You have a pantheon at your disposal. You’re not alone,” Slif said, trying not to sound dismissive but failing to hide her ire.

  “Yeah, but only one of you at a time is by my side. If we found another in the same straits, we’d have access to two deities and two of us mortals to put our heads together. Or does the prophecy say it’s just one against this Entropy Queen?”

  Slif said, “Not sure. I don’t know all the prophecy’s intricacies.”

  Gabe swatted his hands together as if preparing to get cracking on his next task. “So we should be moving things along. The sooner I get you out of my hair, the better.” He walked over to the store entrance and glanced out the front window as he flipped his open sign to closed. “Really don’t want to suffer an attack here. This place is special.”

  It surprised me to see such attachment. Gabe had seemed to come across as merely gruff and loud, but he was displaying quite a bit of nuance. In my mind, trolls were simple creatures. At least that was how they’d been portrayed in fiction. Gabe was rough and tumble but also a little bit of a softie.

  I thought of the girl and her mother. We’d just missed them thanks to the bird attack. “You enjoy the smiling faces on your customers, especially the little ones?”

  “Nah, couldn’t care less about the snot-nosed brats. Always getting their grubby little fingers all over my glass.” He waltzed over to the display case and buffed out a smudge with his apron to drive home his point. “But I can’t beat the rent on this place.” He shuffled over to the office door. “And it sits atop my forge. Got a lot invested in my subterranean crib and I’d hate to have to relocate and excavate and rebuild all over. Not a fan of toiling if I don’t have to. Now, my cousin Clive, toiling agrees with him. He’s one that finds all that drudgery jazz invigorating. Attributes his killer complexion to a hard day’s labor.”

  Slif motioned for me to head over to the troll.

  Gabe opened his office door and stepped inside. Slif and I squeezed in, the goddess closing the door behind us at the troll’s prompting.

  A desk with a sleek new laptop along with a small filing cabinet, a high back leather office chair on casters, and a mini-fridge were the only items of furniture. I didn’t see any door or hatch that would open up to a basement hangout.

  “We don’t have to jump through another portal to get to your forge, do we?” I didn’t ma
ke eye contact with Slif, afraid I might have offended her.

  “Nope, but please keep all arms by your side at all times and know it’s wiser to enjoy the ride on your back instead of on your belly.”

  “What?” I said.

  The troll clutched the top of a rather out-of-place bowling trophy resting on the mini-fridge. He pulled it down as if it was a lever, and I heard a loud click and rumble from below. The tiled floor vibrated for half a second and then suddenly dropped away, all of it.

  We fell while the rest of the office stayed fixed in place, each furnishing boldly ignoring that they no longer had anything holding them up.

  I spied horizontal metal brackets anchoring each piece of furniture to a wall, all except the chair. It wobbled and tipped to the right a few inches, but it gave off a faint yellow glow and righted itself. I watched three of its four casters spin about lazily until I impacted with a very sloped smooth slide. I awkwardly situated myself to lie back, ignoring how numb my tailbone felt from the jolt of hitting the slide. It hadn’t been a hard impact, just a surprising one.

  We descended the slide, which curled round and round so many times I lost count. Gabe rode on his belly, not heeding his own advice. Slif stayed on her back and had somehow managed not to lose her cap. The bell atop it clattered against the slide but didn’t jingle once.

  It was dark, but the stalactites that pointed down at us glowed slightly, providing a muted lighting. I had a hunch the slide and the rock formations weren’t natural, that the troll had carved them through either extensive manual labor or magic. Magical means seemed the more likely culprit, unless he’d had his workhorse cousin build all this.

  The troll definitely overshared, but that was actually comforting. It made him more relatable and reduced the likelihood of a freak out on my part. I should’ve been losing my mind. Here I was meeting a pantheon of gods apparently manipulating the course of my life, there was some weird evil queen trying to break free and cause mayhem, and I’d become acquainted with a troll who ran an ice cream shop and combed the arcane web for magical happenings.

  Yolla and Slif, while goddesses, were also relatable. Of course, that might have a lot to do with the fact that they knew me inside and out. It was unnerving to think that my pantheon might monitor all my actions. Part of me wanted to ask but wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.

  The slope of the slide became more gradual. Eventually we came to a stop, the chute having deposited us in a circular cavern with one prominent feature, a large metal vault door that could easily allow a van to fit through. As to how a vehicle would make it down the slide without clipping quite a few stalactites in the process flitted through my head, but I didn’t fixate long on the notion.

  Gabe hopped to his feet and marched toward the vault door. He approached a small keypad with a tiny digital screen. “Not much call for my skills since the Catacomb Uprising, but I dabble.” He looked at Slif as he punched in a four-digit code. “Don’t worry. All my handiwork is sold to museums and private collectors and not warlords or uppity mortals with a hankering for spilling blood. I know my place. I carefully vet all buyers to make sure they’re legit. Only once has anything wound up in the wrong hands. Dispatched Clive to get that glorious battleaxe back, but he mucked things up and accidentally dropped it in a volcano. Always been a bit of a butterfingers.”

  The vault door cycled open, angling slowly outward in silence. I couldn’t detect any grinding of gears.

  Gabe noticed me straining to detect any sound. “Not going to hear a thing. That’s craftsmanship, my boy.”

  He waddled into the vault. We followed.

  Lights situated within sconces placed slightly higher than eye level and pointing upward flickered to life as we approached. Spaced five feet apart, they provided ample illumination.

  We walked through a long corridor hewn from the earth. The lights extinguished after we passed.

  Gary held up his phone. “Even get wi-fi down here thanks to a router I boosted with a little magic.”

  I resisted the urge to check my own phone for how many bars. Instead, I patted my left front pocket, confirming that the tech was still by my side. Did hopping through portals fry it or cause any damage? I hoped not but knew now was not the time to check.

  The walls widened and were soon covered by large metal hexagon panels that fit together seamlessly. On our left, there was a long display case mounted on the wall. Under glass were a variety of weapons: swords, pikes, a spear or three, and a very large axe that looked impossible to lift except maybe if one was a giant. What was the sense in forging a weapon no one could wield? How silly of me. If there were trolls, then giants likely existed.

  Gabe noticed my focus on the axe. “A beauty, huh? Slorn used it to defeat the Cadre and free the powers that be two centuries back.”

  Slif cut in. “Um, maybe spare us the three-dollar tour and get on with fashioning the ring.” She produced a red, glowing gem from a pocket in her cape and held it out. “I have the portal stone you’ll need.”

  The goddess hadn’t wanted the troll to share more. Something told me she didn’t like that Gabe had revealed that these so called powers that be could find themselves in harm’s way. She didn’t want me to know they were fallible. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that I had read her correctly.

  She cast nervous glances at me, but soon pointed ahead. “Don’t see that every day, Felix.”

  Ahead, a large forge stood with impressive flames dancing about, reaching toward a domed exhaust hood.

  Gabe worked the bellows twice, intensifying the fire. “An eternal flame, never goes out.” He removed his ice cream shop apron and donned a thicker black one from a hook as well as grabbing a pair of metal tongs. He retrieved a band of metal from a chest loaded down with many drawers. The troll motioned for Slif to place the gem on the anvil off to the side. She propped it up at the anvil’s base.

  “Steel causes the least interference with dimension hopping. I forge it right and you’ll only feel it get slightly warm after exiting a portal.” He placed the four-inch strip of metal in the tongs and eased it into the forge, turning it constantly.

  “How do I work it?” I asked.

  Slif said, “You concentrate on imagining your god wheel and it will generate a portal to that location.” She pointed at the gem resting at the base of the anvil. “It will only take you to one place. A portal gem that can transport you everywhere is much harder for a novice to steer.”

  Gabe removed the heated steel from the forge and brought it over to the anvil. He snagged a hammer and began working the metal, pounding it into a longer, more uniform length. The troll said, “Feel free to look around. I just need about ten minutes and I’ll have her done, gem fixed in place and everything.”

  I walked over to a long tool bench and marveled at the many small items the troll was working on. There was an ornate scepter, a spear point shaped from a very red metal, and what looked like a pedestal that might eventually house a crystal ball.

  Slif drew up next to me.

  “This prophecy stuff is frustrating,” I said. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

  “But you do value knowing what to expect, don’t you?” she said.

  “I guess, but I don’t like it set in stone. How can a prophecy possibly know everything about what will happen?”

  “Because the prophets who put them to paper don’t inhabit just one place in the timestream.”

  I looked at her. “Oh, no. Don’t feed me some metaphysical reason about how they experience past, present, and future simultaneously or that time is fluid.”

  She laughed, which was altogether pleasant. “To some, but to most of us it is intractable and we can only tread along its length in one direction.” She considered for a moment, then said, “How about this? I won’t try to explain time, but I can give you a sense of reality and just how much a threat the Entropy Queen is to its fragile state.”

  “Um, fire away.”

  “
Reality is a pool, infinitely deep but not much more than a large puddle looking at it from on high.”

  I wondered if she mentioned the bird’s eye view because she spied on my life from above, minding my struggles from a detached point of view.

  “Mortals hop along, splashing about, but not doing much more than creating a few intrepid ripples.”

  Thinking I understood where she was going with her analogy, I offered, “They can’t really make any substantial waves because they’re hopping out and back into the water. Their impact is marginal at best.”

  “Very good,” Slif said, picking up a ring that had a spiral design and admiring the troll’s handiwork.

  Gabe now wrapped the steel around a metal rod held upright by a large clamp. He smiled at us and grunted as he worked.

  “There are mortals, magicals, and celestials. Magicals are the trolls, giants, elves, and other such types. The celestials are the gods and cosmically birthed individuals.”

  “Was the Entropy Queen one of the powers that be?” I asked, watching Gabe secure the portal gem to the ring. He’d removed his gloves to do this step. I wondered if the metal was still hot. Likely so, as trolls had much more of a tolerance to heat.

  “No, she worked against them, always.” Slif seemed certain of herself. I tried to detect any doubt in her but couldn’t. “Mortals and magicals wade about in reality, while us celestials are removed, above it all.”

  “Except a whole lot of you run our lives from a pocket dimension hippocampus adjacent.” I grinned at my attention to detail.

  “Yes, but we’re still outside of your reality. Our existence is elevated.”

  I knew she didn’t offer this statement in a superior manner.

  “When one of us jumps directly into reality, we enter from so high up, we displace a lot of the pool.” She closed her eyes. “That is disastrous. And that’s what she wants to do. She’s sitting up on an impossibly high diving board, keen on making waves.”

  “But why does she want to destroy reality?”