by D. N. Hoxa
But the closer we got, the more hope slipped from my fingers. The castle was now in plain view, and soon the trees ended. The ground to the castle was uneven and steep, with nowhere to hold onto to reach the broken stairs that would lead to the gates.
“I need to stop,” Sim said breathlessly, falling on his knees on the ground. “I just…I need…a minute…”
We stopped, too. We stopped and looked at the castle, so much bigger than it had looked from afar. And so much less than a castle.
It was broken—most of it was broken. It was made of big, grey, rectangular stones, and half of them, if not more, were missing. Its walls were broken and the two towers that had looked so fierce from afar had more holes in them than I cared to count. The place looked dead. Deserted.
“It doesn’t look like someone lives here,” I whispered, filled with dread. Had we come all this way for nothing? Was the tenth master already dead?
“He has to be here,” Millie said, then took in a deep breath and shouted: “Hello?!”
I didn’t tell her to stop. I was already sure she wouldn’t get an answer.
I sat on the ground next to Sim. “It’s empty.” My voice sounded as defeated as I felt.
“It’s not.” Sim shook his head. “It can’t be.”
“Hello? Is anyone in there?” Millie continued to shout. Her voice echoed back to us as if it were bouncing off the broken walls of what had once been a castle to tell us that that was the only answer we were going to get.
“He’s here. He never leaves. He’s here,” Sim said, but he didn’t sound sure. No, he sounded just as desperate as I did.
“It’s over,” I whispered. “It’s over.”
“It’s not,” Sim insisted, raising his voice. “It’s not over—it can’t be. He is here!”
I allowed myself to close my eyes. All the faces of the human slaves in the mine jumped at me from behind my lids. All those people stuck in this place forever, just like me.
“We have to go inside.” Millie turned to us. “Maybe he can’t hear us. Maybe he’s asleep.” Her eyes were the only ones filled with hope.
Sim took in a deep breath and stood up. His legs shook, but he didn’t fall. “You’re right, he could be sleeping.”
I almost laughed. “He’s not sleeping.” He just wasn’t there.
“He could be,” Sim insisted. He sounded so unlike himself, it was ridiculous.
“Come on, Morgan. Get up!” Millie said and came to grab my hands to pull me up. “We came all this way for something. We’re not leaving until we search every inch of this mountain. Let’s go.”
“She’s right. We can find him. I know we can,” Sim said, but he was only trying to convince himself.
I let Millie pull me up, and my gut screamed in protest. I doubled over, and bile came out my lips before I could control it. I was weak. I needed food. I needed water. I needed rest.
And even if the stupid master wasn’t in the castle, maybe we could find something in there. Maybe we could push ourselves to live another day. Maybe.
So I let Millie hold me by the hand and pull me when my body refused to cooperate. The ground was very steep. I still had a sword in one hand, the other in its sheath, and I used it as well as I could, and I still almost fell back on my ass three times before we finally reached the half-broken stairs that led to the gates of the castle. Passing out seemed like the most wonderful thing that could happen, but wonderful things didn’t happen to me, so I wasn’t holding my breath. We took the five wide stairs made of grey rock that led to the double gates of the castle. The wood of them was white, as if it had been there for more than a few centuries, yet it somehow still stood. I looked up at the towers, probably more than a hundred feet high, and was terrified to see the holes in them once more. It felt like they could fall on top of our heads if only a bit of strong wind blew their way.
Millie didn’t hesitate. She went for the door on the right and tried to push it open.
“Come on, help me,” she said, and Sim was eager to do just that. He put his back against the door and pushed.
I honestly didn’t think it would work, and I didn’t think I had the strength to help them, so when a terrible sound, like a lion growling, reached my ears, I jumped back.
The gate opened just a bit, but it was enough for us to fit through.
“Woohoo!” Millie screamed, her smile so big, it scared me a little. Sim couldn’t decide whether to be happy or afraid, while I was a hundred percent sure I wanted to be afraid. Nothing in this world had ever been what it seemed. Why should a broken castle on the side of a mountain be any different?
“Let’s go, Morgan. Come on,” Millie shouted, and without waiting for me, she slipped inside the open gate.
“Millie, no!” I said, but it was too late. She was already out of my sight, and Sim disappeared next.
Dragging my feet as fast as I could, I followed. Even if death awaited us on the other side, it was better than standing there, waiting for the masters’ guards to find us. Taking in a deep breath, I prayed for any amount of luck the skies could send my way, and I stepped inside the gate.
The view took my breath away harder than any knife stab could.
The room was massive, the ceiling at least thirty feet high. The walls to the sides of the gates were made of grey stones. The holes in them let just enough light in, and the rest slowly melted into solid white rock. Whoever had made this castle, they had dug a hole into the mountain and had turned it into a room.
Then, they had filled it with gold.
Gold—so much gold. They didn’t put this much of it in one place even in movies. It was all you could see—shining, yellow gold and colorful stones that seemed to wink at you with the light that came through the holes in the walls.
Necklaces, rings, coins of all sizes, cups, spoons, plates, crowns, and things I didn’t know how to name in all shapes and sizes covered both sides of a thin, worn out, red carpet that led to a high chair that wanted to imitate a throne. The chair was wooden and more wooden things were hung on the rough rock wall behind it—wooden swords and spears, arrows, and staffs. It was like someone had dumped two trucks of gold into the room. Some coins and precious rocks had fallen on the red carpet, too.
“Oh, my God,” Millie whispered. Exactly how I felt.
“You weren’t kidding,” I said to Sim. With this gold, even if we never made it back to Earth, we could have everything. We could buy the masters themselves. We could be free.
Mesmerized, we walked deeper into the room, inspecting the incredible pieces of art shaped from gold—a large snake as thick as my thigh carved into perfect detail, an eagle with its wings wide open, its feathers looking real enough to touch, the head of a woman with braided hair and eyes closed, and about thirty necklaces hanging around her golden neck, a golden vase filled with seven gold-made sunflowers. This was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I didn’t have the potential to have ever imagined it.
And it was all too good to be true.
When the gate behind us screeched as it moved, we all jumped around. For a second there, I’d actually believed that all that gold was simply there for the taking, and we could do with it whatever we wanted.
We couldn’t because its master was still alive.
We were finally standing in front of Kassian, the dragon god, the tenth master of Alfheimr—and he most definitely was not sleeping.
Sixteen
All the gold around me suddenly lost its shine as I looked into the face of the one they called dragon god. He was about six foot tall, with wide shoulders that melted into arms bulging with muscle, and narrow hips. The clothes he wore, a brown shirt tied with a leather tie around his hips, and plain, black pants, did nothing to mask the raw power coming off his skin. His hair was darker than the night sky, a few inches long, and connected with his beard that covered half his face of flawless, beige-colored skin perfectly, and almost touched his chest. I could see only a thin line where his lips were supposed to be,
and his sharp nose and swollen-looking, green eyes would make Lion-eyes look like a nice little kitten. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, and my muscles clenched, as if my body could already detect the predator that he was, even if my mind was still trying to come to terms with the looks of him. I had never seen a more beautiful person in my entire, miserable life.
“Only fools come to my mountain of their own free will. Fools—and creatures who wish to die a very painful death.”
His voice was rough underneath, coated with a thin layer of cunningness that wanted you to believe in every word it said. And I did. I believed him with all my heart.
“Which ones are you?” Kassian asked, and my instincts screamed at me to start running. I would, but the only door in the room was right behind him.
“We’re humans,” Millie said, her voice shaking. If I could find mine, I was sure it would sound the same. “We’ve accidentally come through a screen, and we want to go back home—to Earth.”
Kassian smiled, and it transformed his eyes completely. Even the color in them seemed to shift into a darker green.
“So you are fools,” the dragon god said, and his eyes met mine. I held my breath as if that was going to somehow save me. I didn’t exhale until his eyes moved to Sim, unimpressed. “And you, imp? Have you come for my gold?”
Sim refused to speak. He looked worse than he had when he’d seen his old friend Gorin.
God damn it, the dragon god could see that we were about to piss our pants, and he was enjoying it. Bastard. We’d made it this far, hadn’t we? He could at least respect that.
And I hadn’t come all the way here to give up at the very end. No, I was going to try until my dying breath. So I ordered myself to relax, to find my voice and to speak.
“You’re a master,” I said, and I could have fooled the whole world with my voice, but not him. It felt like he could see right through me—all my fears and my desperation, but I kept on going. “It’s your obligation to take humans back to their world if asked, so here we are. We demand that you take us back—right now.”
Oops. I might have gone a teeny tiny bit too far.
“Demand?!” he repeated, and all the layers coating his voice disappeared. Raw anger crashed into my ears like a physical force, but that wasn’t even the worst part of it. “You demand from me?”
And he grew in size right in front of our eyes.
Oh, shit. I couldn’t have been imagining it, could I? Because he grew bigger by at least a few inches, and his eyes were no longer green but black, completely devoid of light. Then, I noticed his skin. The sleeves of his shirt were folded below his elbows, so it was easy to see his forearms, and the silver scales that blinked in and out of existence as he clenched his fists. Fuck.
“Do you not know what happens to the fools who dare make demands of the dragon god?!” he shouted, and his voice echoed like a fucking thunder. I shouldn’t have said that stupid word. I should have just said asked.
“We don’t want any trouble,” I said, but it was already too late. Kassian raised his arms toward us. “Move!” I shouted and jumped to the right to get out of the dragon god’s way. I had no idea what he could do, but I really didn’t want to find out. All this time in Alfheimr, I’d heard so many stories about magic and what it could do, how powerful it was, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes.
Well, now I was. And I felt it on the left side of my body, too. It was almost invisible, but you could weakly make out the ripples in the air as they widened and sped toward you after leaving Kassian’s hands. I jumped, and I thought I was fast enough, but before I landed, the magic he threw at us hit me and knocked me on the piles of gold covering the room. That’s when I learned that gold was very nice to look at but definitely not nice to fall on.
And that’s when I finally understood all the stories I’d heard about magic. The energy that hit the left side of me was like a living, breathing thing, spreading onto me, burning my every cell without fire, taking my breath away. The knife wound in my gut was nothing compared to this. On a scale from one to ten, if a fist to the face was a one, this was a one hundred. I let go of my swords because I had no control over my fingers. For a very long, agonizing moment, all I knew was the blinding pain that felt like it was never going to let me go.
But it did. It was slow to retreat though it had been extremely fast to hit, but it let go of me, and when I could finally see again, the pile of golden coins where I’d fallen wouldn’t let me get up fast enough. I barely found my feet and held onto whatever I could grab until I stood up again.
Sim and Millie were on the piles of gold on the other side of the red carpet. Neither of them was moving. Maybe Kassian’s magic had hit them harder than it had me because I could tell Sim was still breathing. His chest moved slowly up and down.
And Kassian…
He was back to his original size, smiling at me like this was the most fun he’d had in centuries. That was probably even true. Searching for my swords was useless—I’d spread golden coins everywhere in my attempt to stand, and now I couldn’t see them. To start digging was stupid, so instead, I began to walk backward. I was well aware that there was nowhere to go, but I had to get as far away from Kassian as possible and find a weapon.
“Pathetic humans and your demands,” he said, slowly walking up the red carpet. As long as he didn’t shoot me with his magic again, I could find a way to get us out. “You’ve always thought you were the center of the universe, ever since the Allfather created you.”
“We just want to get home, that’s all. We don’t want any trouble,” I said, hoping to keep him talking until I found a decent weapon. There weren’t any, unfortunately. I kept looking, but there was only gold, all around us, and the only weapons in the room were the wooden ones hanging on the wall behind the wooden throne chair.
“Everybody wants a home,” the bastard said, still approaching me slowly. I saw a very heavy-looking golden ball, a bit bigger than a tennis ball, and grabbed it quick. If he tried to do his magic thingie again, I’d throw it at him until I reached the wooden weapons, but I didn’t want to provoke him by starting to run already. I went slowly, just like him. “And trouble you did find. Now, you’re going to die, just like every other human who comes to our world.”
“Not without doing your dirty work for you first.” I took another two steps deeper into the room, closer to the end of it and to the wooden weapons. The spear was first. I could throw it at him and buy myself some time to grab a bow and arrow because the wooden swords weren’t going to be of any help.
But Kassian was surprised. He either didn’t want to hide it, or tried and failed, but I saw the way his black brows shot up. I took my chance.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen your mining site. I worked in it for eight days. Thanks for that, by the way.” I tried to sound bitter, but I just sounded like I was in a hurry because I wanted to quickly get the words out and hopefully buy some more time.
It worked.
“That place is not mine,” Kassian said through gritted teeth.
I pretended to be surprised. “It’s the masters’ place, and you’re a master, aren’t you?” I said breathlessly. Just five more steps and I would be close enough to run to the weapons. He was in the middle of the room now, still walking up the red carpet, and Millie and Sim were still not moving. Please, please, please let them be okay, I prayed. If any of them died, all of this would have been for nothing.
“And for the record, searching for Odin’s body? You must be high on something,” I said in a rush, taking another two steps to the side. So, so close now…
Kassian squinted his eyes. “How do you know what they search for?”
They? What did he mean, they? He was a master, too, wasn’t he?
“A man told me all about it. His name is Weston, and he was one of the first humans to ever start the masters’ wild search,” I said. I could have talked for hours if he listened, and he was listening. “He knows what you’re looking for bec
ause he was there when it all began.”
Suddenly, Kassian turned so pale he looked like a black-and-white picture with the black hair and beard.
“Weston is alive?” he whispered, which threw me completely off.
He knew Weston. How the hell did he know Weston? Had the old man told the truth? He said he was the masters’ favorite of the first humans.
“He is, and so are more than five hundred people that you’re keeping here as slaves without any right. This needs to stop, whatever it is.” Some of the fear left my body soundlessly. Kassian was the dragon god, but he was still a man. A master, and I’d sworn I’d find all the masters on Earth until they freed every human they held captive. He was just the first one, and the initial surprise was finally wearing off.
I took another step to the right. Now, I could run.
“If it were up to me, I’d have never allowed you in here in the first place,” Kassian said, pinning me to the ground with his words.
“Allowed? What do you mean, allowed?”
“But since you’re already here, I can show you some mercy.” He raised his left hand. Instinct took over, and I threw the golden ball at his face with all the strength I could muster, which sadly wasn’t much. I hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and had fought twice in a night to get here.
Fortunately for me, it worked. Kassian moved to the side to avoid being hit by the ball and lowered his hand. I didn’t think anymore, I just ran for the weapons hanging on the wall.
“Don’t!” he shouted when I was but a few inches away from grabbing the spear.
I stopped moving. I really didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to try to fight a master, probably because I was pretty sure I was going to end up dead. So when I heard the urgency in his voice, I stopped.
“Take us back home—that’s all we ask,” I said, breathing heavily now that it had almost come to the end.
“I can’t take you home,” Kassian said. “I no longer have that privilege. I gave it up when I gave up my title.”