Nordstrom Necromancer: A New Adult Dark Fantasy Inspired By Norse Mythology

by Amy B. Nixon

  The horrified gasp that escaped my throat was accompanied by a cloud of warm breath, which intertwined with the mist and disappeared, as if it was sucked in it. A sinister thought rushed through my mind – the haze was sucking away my life, like it had sucked away theirs.

  I gasped for air, writhing like an aspen twig.

  The haze had disappeared, as had the ruins and the waltzing corpses. I was standing in front of that desk, staring at Dann Nordstrøm’s creepily intense look.

  “What the fuck was that?” I whispered, tremulous and horrified by the lingering aftertaste of what I had just experienced.

  “What was what exactly? And please mind your language.”

  “That! The… the ruins and the corpses, the music and… everything!”

  His features darkened in a furrowing grimace, contrasting with the bright blue stare tearing through me. Intrusive and intimidating, his eyes made me shiver again.

  “You were there!” I exclaimed when he didn’t say anything. “You were there with me all the time!”

  “I never stood from my chair, Miss Dustrikke, and you never left this room.”

  My mouth fell open. I peeked over my shoulder to see nothing more than rows of tables and empty chairs, stacked neatly in their ascending formation. I could swear on the creator of the Python programming language, moments ago we had both been in that dreadful, gothic, post-apocalyptic excuse of a ruined hall.

  “You were right behind me in that place!”

  “Neither of us left the room.”

  So, I had… a hallucination, or something? A vision? Was it even possible? Did necromancers have visions? Omens? Predictions about the future? Past lives? What was going on?

  Judging by this guy’s pensive stare and refusal to acknowledge how it could have been real, there was no point in asking him for answers. I’d have to deal with it the way I dealt with everything else – on my own.

  “Forget about it. Why did you ask me to stay behind?”

  “You came late to my lecture. In up to five days from now, you must report the material you missed back to me.”

  “Why?” I asked in confusion.

  “Believe it or not, Miss Dustrikke, I don’t give lectures out of a need to bask in the glorious timbre of my voice. I like it when my audience grasps my words, therefore I’d like to make sure you’re up to speed in case you’re planning on attending.”

  Glorious timbre, my ass! Although I didn’t get whiffs of cigarette stench coming off him, his gravelly voice sounded like his throat was sore from smoking at least two packs a day.

  “What’s the point of attending? I thought this wasn’t a school.”

  “There are schools for necromancers, but Nordstrøm Island isn’t one. The points of my lectures are many. For once, they provide an opportunity for all island residents to socialize. As you might have noticed, I encourage my audience to engage in debates and express their opinion on the discussed material. The lectures also provide us with a way to explore and preserve our history. Of course, some individuals simply attend them for the purpose of learning about the Nine Realms. I don’t claim to be the greatest historian Midgard has seen, but I do consider myself well-educated on these matters.”

  I barely withheld the eye-rolling. Maksim had said this guy had taught in two institutions. Apparently, they had given him annoying confidence.

  “Fine, I’ll consider attending. If I have to report back with the missed material, will you be available on Saturday?”

  “Probably. May I ask why you chose Saturday?”

  I smiled wryly. “Because I need a few days to stop hyperventilating over your voice’s glorious timbre.” His eyebrows shot up. “Duh, I need time for proper research!”

  He let out a sudden laughter, which echoed through the empty room. The same raspy, velar notes from last Sunday, when he’d laughed at my opinion on his family’s motto while he was lurking in the shadows. Those very same unexpected, startling sounds that felt like they grated against my skin in the most uncomfortable way possible, filling me up with embarrassment and anger.

  I clenched my teeth, trying not to give him a piece of my mind.

  Dick.

  “Yes, you can come see me on Saturday afternoon at six. I recommend starting your research with the Norwegian edition of Seppo Koskinen’s Midgard and Beyond, volume one. You’ll find the book in Section RB1 in the library.”

  I bolted for the door before he could take up any more of my time.

  “And one final thing.” I had to turn back just when I reached the threshold. “Please don’t forget to take care of your purple sheep before lunch. I highly doubt everyone in the Dining Hall will take them as lightly as I did.”

  Once again – dick.

  ***

  Due to yet another one of my messes, I had to attend something mandatory – a meeting with the Elemental mentor the Council had assigned to me. I didn’t know his or her name, like I didn’t know the Council, but I couldn’t argue with authority if it meant learning how not to increase my murder count.

  Unsure of what to expect, I opted for a light lunch, ate quickly, and braced myself for my next dose of necromantic magic.

  To my surprise, the room Raisa at Administration had pointed me to was devoid of human presence. It held two desks with a chair behind each one, and another interactive whiteboard. For a place that wasn’t an educational or business institution, two boards in the same day seemed too much.

  The Elemental practitioner, who walked in a few minutes after me, wore a black guard’s uniform.

  “Dustrikke!” He barked my name, sitting directly on top of the nearest desk. “My name is Christof Brühl. I’ve been appointed as your Elemental mentor.”

  “Oookay,” I replied, shifting my weight from one foot to the other.

  Even with the white streaks in his greyish brown hair and the face of a man who was well into his sixties, he looked and sounded more intimidating than any of the other guards. He was even larger than Maksim Larsen; and while Monika’s brother had a boyish smile, this Brühl guy stared at me like I had eaten his lunch.

  “Which of your elements broke out first – air, water, earth or fire?”

  “Um, neither of them.”

  “Neither?! You created a Draug in front of everyone!”

  “Well, it was by accident, so I can’t do it again, and I don’t know how Elemental magic works, because I was raised as a human. Whenever my magic supposedly broke out, it happened without me knowing, because my family had a suppression spell put on me.”

  “Scheisse!”

  I had heard the swear word he spat in movies.

  “Are you German?”

  Brühl nodded, knit his eyebrows together, jumped off the desk, and walked to the whiteboard. He scribbled an uneven circle on it, then another circle inside the first one. Then he drew four smaller ones around the largest. First he pointed to the biggest circle, then to the four ones around it.

  “This is you. These are the four elements. You must learn how to control them.”

  Brute and vague, the drawing was a reflection of his words.

  “How?”

  “On a subatomic level,” he pointed to the small circle inside the big one, “which is this thing here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “During your Tuesdays and Thursdays with me you will tap into your eitr core. You will reach for your magic, which runs on a subatomic level, and you will learn how to control it. Go sit down and cleanse your mind.”

  Confused, I looked away from the board and scanned his face.

  “Go sit today, Dustrikke!”

  Over the course of the following hours he shouted, cursed and ordered me around. For whatever reason, I couldn’t cleanse my mind, disregard the world around me, rid myself of my human nonsense or do any of the other things he yelled.

  Maybe that was why I couldn’t make the small booklet he placed in front of me levitate freely in the air, like he wanted to. After a while, all I want
ed was to grab said book and hit him with it instead of tap into my core and call forth the air element, so I could make it fly.

  His improvised teaching methods were so unnerving, they made me wonder if he’d ever mentored someone before me, because it sure didn’t seem like it.

  Fruitless, our Elemental session finally ended.

  Too tired and irritated to deal with a bunch of necromancers shooting me curious or scared glances, I skipped the standard dinner hours. Opting for food later, when the Dining Hall would be less crowded, was a safer choice.

  As if this day couldn’t get any worse, there were groups of chatty people scattered in the corridor leading to my room. Staring at my shoes, I walked past them, and proceeded to my bedroom’s door quietly, until two girls behind me broke out in laughter.

  “Oh, Cinderella! Don’t forget to report downstairs for kitchen duty. You know, where your place is.”

  The words were spoken in English. Not in Bokmål, not in Nynorsk, not in Old Norse. Plain English.

  Despite my better judgement, I turned. An unfamiliar girl stood on an open-door threshold leading to the room across mine. By her side was none other, but the same blonde I had seen after my Draug incident, clinging to His Excellency. The stunningly beautiful girl who’d been glaring at me so furiously that night, she made Brühl’s scolding stare seem like a loving gaze.

  The blonde opened her mouth, speaking once again in English, and what came out of it made some of the others giggle.

  “Do make sure the silver-plated glass is polished to perfection.”

  She waved off, as if to dismiss me, and turned to her friend.

  I had heard all sorts of crap before, especially during my gothic phase in high school – from Morticia Addams to Living Dead Girl – but this was definitely something new.

  Heatwaves of annoyance rushed through me. This entire day had been testing my nerves since the moment I woke up. Christof Brühl, Dann Nordstrøm and the people at his lecture had abused my short fuse so profoundly, I simply couldn’t keep it together any longer.

  “Hey, bimbo!” I said loud and clear, also in English. “What did you just call me?”

  Everyone immediately shut up.

  The blonde turned in a slow and graceful, almost pirouette-like twirl. A remarkable feat, having in mind she was impossibly tall. She was sticking a head above me, and her boots’ heels weren’t even half the height of my stilettos. As if her height and pretty face weren’t enviable enough, her curvaceous hourglass-type body was making me turn green.

  “Cinderella,” she repeated with a smile, cocking her head to the side, making her long, sleek hair and perfect bangs dance around her face. She had to be close to my age, but damn, no amount of makeup and high heels could help me achieve her beauty. “Aren’t you the one who came from that American fisherman village?”

  Was this bitch for fucking real?

  “San Francisco is not a fisherman village,” I snarled through gritted teeth, “and my name is not Cinderella.”

  “What was it that they named you, then? Ash? Cinders?”

  “Dust,” I nearly spat out the word.

  “Yeah, my version’s way more poetic.”

  My last nerve string was about to snap, and she was dangerously marching all over it. And how the hell did she know such details about where I came from or what my Americanized name had been?

  “Fuck off, blondie, or my next Draug is coming after you!”

  “Didn’t Mommy and Daddy teach you to never make empty threats before they took a dirt nap six feet under?”

  That was it! Bitch was going down!

  I let out a battle cry and plunged myself in her direction with the intension of strangling her with bare hands. She did something wavy with her fingers, swirling them through the air, and fireworks of emerald sparks erupted from her hot pink nails.

  In the blink of an eye, I hit an invisible wall. My inertia automatically sent me flying backwards, until I fell a few feet away flat on my ass. Grunting like a primitive animal, I got back on my feet, ready for another round.

  Someone grabbed me by the waist and pulled me from behind.

  “Calm down, Learyn!” Monika’s voice rang in my ear.

  “Let me go!” I growled, half-swinging, half-rowing with my hands through the air as Monika kept dragging me away from the bimbo. “I’ll tear off her hair extensions and strangle her with them!”

  “My perfect hair is perfectly natural, thank you very much,” the bitch drawled, still smiling.

  Before I could test the natural hair theory, Monika managed to drag me all the way back into our room, shut the door, and bar it with her body like a living shield.

  “You need to learn how to behave around her!”

  “Who the hell does she think she is?”

  “Aurora,” Monika puffed out the name with a tone that hinted I should have known better.

  “Like the Disney princess?”

  “Like the northern lights, Aurora Borealis.”

  I almost tore down my blouse, furiously taking it off.

  “Yeah, sure, that makes more sense! She’s too big of a bitch to be a Disney princess. Why is she giving orders like she owns the freaking place?”

  “Because she literally owns the place. Well, her family does. She’s Aurora Nordstrøm, Hallvard’s niece and Dann’s sister.”

  Whoa! Why did Aurora Nordstrøm act like she loathed me more than I loathed the emotional wreck I had become after my ex?

  “Fuck,” I muttered, realizing it was going to be nearly impossible to overcome my problem with authority around the annoying Nordstrøm siblings and a scowling mentor like Brühl. “Is she the resident Queen Bitch or something?”

  “Not really. Did you do something to provoke her?”

  “No, I saw her once, in the crowd during the whole Draug thing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! I saw her only for a second. She was looking at me like I was her nemesis. She can’t hate me so much just because I accidentally caused a scene in her home! Okay, I’ve caused more than one scene. But your brother said it himself, emotional outbursts here often lead to destructive magical outbursts.”

  Monika frowned, picking at her nails.

  “I came out of our room only after hearing your voice through the door, but it looked like you knew each other well enough to have years’ worth of rivalry, which is impossible. You mentioned you hadn’t known of the supernatural world’s existence up until last Sunday, right?”

  “Yeah, and that’s when I saw her glower for the first time!”

  “Trust me, it would take a lot more than an accidental Draug to make Aurora take such interest in someone.”

  I wondered if Monika had had a crush on Aurora at some point to say that, but it wasn’t my place to meddle in her personal affairs.

  “Oh, which reminds me – we have a meeting with the Council tomorrow. I’ll come get you before dinner.”

  I grimaced, grabbed a towel, and headed for the bathroom, hoping a hot shower would ease the strain on my insanely short fuse.

  ***

  The next day, I got up early and spent hours in the library, mumbling all sorts of keywords in the hopes of finding a book to explain my hallucination with Dann Nordstrøm and those corpses.

  Not a single book responded to my call. Frustrated, I had to admit defeat. I’d been deprived of sleep, my brain had been flooded with insane amounts of supernatural information, and I’d kept reading creepy stuff before bed. Naturally, I had lost it for a little while, and my poor brain had fallen prey to insanity. It was all there was to it. A hallucination, triggered by my crazy surroundings.

  As I headed for lunch, I faced a brand-new problem – one which had had the decency to leave me alone. Up until now.

  “Hey, baby.” The sleazy voice preceded a sleazy arm that curled around my elbow. It was Maksim’s friend, Axel. “Heard you tried to take down Aurora yesterday.”

  “Don’t call me baby,” I hissed the words, j
erking away from him.

  “So feisty! The things we can do together!”

  I quickly headed for a few empty chairs. Only problem was, Axel sat next to me. I decided to be crystal clear, because he was obviously slow when it came down to figuring female signals.

  “Go away. I’m not interested in dating or fucking you, and I won’t change my mind. Ever!”

  He whistled in amusement.

  “Straight to the point, huh? But sex magic is groundbreaking, Dustrikke. You can’t begin to imagine the things we can do together, two Elementals of our lineage. I’ll rock your world so hard, you’ll–”

  I shoved him aside, knocking him off the chair.

  Jumping up, I glanced around, attempting to locate Maksim, and saw his head protruding from the others on a nearby table. Pretending I couldn’t see or hear the rest of the people in the room, I marched off, tapped Maksim on the shoulder, and glared at him from above.

  He grinned. “Oh, hi!”

  “Don’t Hi me!” I retorted, lowering my voice. “If I remember correctly, you were going to tell your buddies to back off. If you don’t keep a leash on Axel, I can’t promise I won’t kill him and transform him into a new Draug next time he decides to use his little head for thinking!”

  He caught my wrist and pulled me down. “Don’t go telling people about more Draugar after you made a Draug in front of everyone.”

  It didn’t sound like a threat. His expression and tone were genuinely concerned. Too bad concerned looks didn’t work on me.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  I yanked my arm free and walked out of the Dining Hall.

  All afternoon long, my head exploded with remarks my former “friends” in San Francisco had made about me.

  You’re being childish. Get over it. You’ve become depressed and aimless. People have real problems, so stop acting like yours are the end of the world.

  But it was impossible. I simply couldn’t outgrow everything that had happened. I was about to turn twenty-one in less than a month, and I still couldn’t start acting like a grown-up. As if my state of mind wasn’t already screwed, now the need to learn how to become mature was even more pressing than ever before.