by Kody Boye
A sound like a strangled child drowning in a pool of depthless water echoed from the creature’s throat and tore all sense of sanity from Odin’s mind. Ears ringing, eyes watering, nose running and burning as though threatening to bleed, he reached up to claw at his head just in time for the creature to rush forward and extend its forelegs toward him.
He had no time to respond before the brunt of its weigh collided with his body and pushed him to the ground.
“Odin!”
Not a noise could be heard over the creature’s scream as its claws dug into his chest, through his jerkin and into his flesh, nor could he discern just what was happening as blood splashed over his vision and thrust him into darkness. Screaming, though loud enough to be heard over the creature’s immense roar, he thrashed his hands to and fro in an attempt to dislodge himself from the creature’s weight, but to no avail. Somehow, most likely during the time his senses had first been stunned into submission and the creature had lunged forward, his sword had flown from his hand and now lay far away, and while his father’s sword still gleamed at his side, there was no way in the Gods’ green earth that he would have a chance of drawing it and freeing himself.
In the moment he felt the claws rake down his chest and toward his abdomen, he came to a chilling realization that nearly made his heart stop within his chest.
Here, in the Abroen Forest, completely alone and with a man he could very easily call the one he loved, he was going to die beneath a creature whom even Virgin had not a name for.
This is it, he thought. This is the end.
A second scream broke the haze of his perpetually-dark silence.
Odin opened his eyes.
Through a haze of blood, sweat and tears, he saw Virgin’s dagger come down and bury itself into the creature’s neck.
The thing reared its head back and screamed.
For but a moment, its right leg came up in an attempt to slash at the Halfling.
Odin thrust his left hand down and pulled his father’s sword from its sheath.
A blur of silver flashed over his vision.
He closed his eyes.
He thrust his sword up.
Steel met bone.
The creature screamed.
Odin thrust his now-freed right hand up and forced as much of the blade as he could into the creature’s head.
In the moments following his stark revelation, Odin took in his first breath of clean air since the ordeal began.
I’m alive, he thought. I’m really alive.
The thing blinked but one time before its eyes closed and its body slumped forward.
He cried out.
The hilt of the silver sword pressed into what remained of the flesh on his chest and threatened to impale him on his very own weapon.
Virgin rushed forward. His hands fell under the creature. A short moment later, his sword came free of the monster’s head and fell at his side, glimmering in blood and the light streaming upon them.
“Odin,” Virgin said, slapping his face and grabbing his chin to tilt his head up. “Look at me. Look at me!”
The world darkened.
Odin’s vision faltered.
“Virgin,” he whispered.
“Dammit, Odin! Stay with me. STAY WITH ME!”
“Thank… you,” he managed. “I—“
“You’re going to be just fine. We don’t have much further to go.”
“Everything’s going… dark…”
“STAY WITH ME!”
His eyelids fell.
His head began to swim.
In a darkened pool of water, limbs spread and blood flowing all around him, he saw what remained of a once beautiful body and the skin that lay torn from it.
Could this really be?
Odin opened his eyes.
Light flashed before his vision.
Virgin’s hand felt of nothing but worldly things and all they held.
“Odin!” Virgin cried. “Odin! Odin!”
He heard nothing.
In but one moment, his world went dark.
Chapter 5
Nova stood before the king’s assistant’s office with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed to his chest. Unable or unsure of what to say in light of not only the recent situation, but his abrupt and unexpected return, he remained stoic and steadfast in front of the very door marked in gold and tried his hardest not to cave to his lesser inhibitions and turn to run back to his family.
For three days he had been at the castle. Not once had he spoken directly to the man he considered his lord.
Will he care? he thought.
It was highly unlikely that the king even knew of his presence, let alone the fact that he had been within the castle for three days. That, while a bit unsettling, was enough to ease his worries and concerns about the situation, though the two guards that rapidly approached from both ends of the corridor was enough to make the hairs on his arms rise on end.
“What business do you have?” one of the men asked, stepping forward while reaching down to grasp the hilt of his sword.
“My name is Novalos Eternity. I was one of the generals on the front lines.”
“All right, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
“It’s a personal, private matter.”
“Are you armed?”
“No.”
He waited for the man who’d appeared from his left to pad down every part of his body, arms held out like a cross and legs spread eagle, before both men settled back against the wall straight and rigid.
All right.
With that out of the way, he took a deep breath, braced himself for what was to come, then reached forward and knocked on the door.
Once, twice, then a third time—each resounding sound seemed to echo back at him and then down the corridor.
A disturbance rose in the room.
Nova drew in a breath.
The scrape of a chain, then a click of the lock entered his ears.
One short, drastic moment later, the door opened to reveal the king’s assistance, garbed in hues of gold and resembling something of a woman who had not had sleep for a very long time. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Miss,” Nova said, then swallowed. “Ma’am.”
“Your question—“
“My name is Novalos Eternity. I was one of the generals on the field of battle at Dwaydor.”
“Your name—“
“Novalos Eternity. I was with the king’s champion on his pilgrimage and on the front lines.”
The woman’s face lightened, as though granted something akin to a wish. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Something’s happened. Something terrible.”
“Come in, come in.”
“My lady,” one of the guards said. “Permission to enter requested.”
“Permission to enter granted,” Dora the king’s assistant said, waving the two guards in before beckoning Nova forward.
When the door closed behind them and Nova stood fully in the room, he watched the woman circumnavigate the room until she stood directly across from him. Once there, she waited a moment—deliberately, it seemed, for Nova to say something more—before seating herself in her chair and lacing her fingers together.
This isn’t going to go the way I wanted it to.
He’d expected a less formal meeting—a moment of clarity and, ultimately, of emotion. That seemed impossible, nor expected from a man who had just spent the last few weeks on the front lines of battle. This meeting, as personal as it might have been, was meant to be formal and nothing more.
“Sit,” the assistant said.
Nova pulled the chair out, settled himself in its plush lining, then crossed his arms over his chest.
“What’s happened, Mr. Eternity?”
“Odin’s run away,” he said. “And Miko’s dead.”
“Who?”
“Odin’s mentor,” Nova said. “He died on the front lines after Herald appeared with
a Dwarf carrying some kind of projectile weapon. He passed moments after we arrived.”
“Dear God,” Dora said. “What’s happened to Odin? Where has he gone?”
“That’s the thing, ma’am—it’s hard to say.”
“Hard to say?”
“He said in a note he left that he was going away to find the answers he felt he could find and mourn his loss. “
“Where did he say he could find the answers?”
“The Abroen,” Nova said. “With the Elves.”
“The Elves?” Dora frowned. “I don’t—“
“Miko… ma’am… he told Odin that he was his father in the last moments of his life.”
“His father?”
“Yes. His father. An Elf.”
Dora said nothing. Instead, she bowed her head and closed her eyes, as if willing herself to remain calm and focused despite the situation at hand.
What’s happened to us? Nova thought, trembling, almost unable to maintain control over his own emotions. How have we become so weak?
A friend lost, a moment sacrificed, a truth told and a life wasted—it seemed without any concept of reality that the world was falling apart, breaking piece by piece like glass struck by a rock and expected to hold over the test of time. Their world, as harsh and welcoming as it was, could not be built without some form of structure, nor could life ever truly exist without the foundation upon which all men walked. One could not eat and live, could not breathe without lungs and could not think without a mind, so to feel human emotion was to deliver upon oneself a grand junction of things that could easily threaten to swallow one whole were they not careful in guarding not only their thoughts, but feelings.
Without Miko and Odin in his life—without the two people he had ventured toward some five years ago in order to secure not only his present, but his future—it seemed there was little to live for, save his family and just what all he, Katarina and his father-in-law had.
“Ma’am,” Nova said. “Are you—“
“I just can’t believe it,” the young woman said, straightening her posture and turning her head up to look Nova in the eyes. “I can’t believe it.”
“Are you—“
“He ran off. He ran away?”
“Odin—“
“Odin nothing, Mr. Eternity, or whoever you said you are. Our king’s champion, ran away from the country. Did I not hear you correctly?”
Nova swallowed a lump in his throat. “You did, ma’am.”
“This is outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!”
“In his defense,” he said, testing the air as if treading through infested water, “he did just lose his father.”
“I don’t care who he lost, sir—he’s the champion. What is our king without his champion?”
“Ournul—“
“Hasn’t had a champion for thirteen years? I know, but I also know that we haven’t had war for centuries. Our lord is defenseless in his current position.”
“But I thought—“
“I am, as you are well aware, a woman, and though they are his rules, not mine, I’m not allowed in the king’s personal quarters. I shouldn’t have to explain myself though. This… this is an outrage!”
“Will you—“
“You have no need to worry about me not reporting this to the king, Mr. Eternity. He will hear it right away.”
“Should I—“
“Go? Yes—you should.”
“How’d the meeting go?” Katarina asked.
“It went fine,” Nova lied.
Alone in the room that served as both his, his wife’s and his father-in-law’s personal quarters, Nova stared at the ground and tried not to look his wife in the eyes for fear of allowing himself persecution. Hands knotted around his pants, curled almost to where the joints in his fingers threatened to pop, he took deep breaths and tried to come to the realization that after all this time—after all this horrible, necessary waiting—he was finally home.
Shouldn’t I be happy? he thought, sighing, his eyes ready to weep and reveal to Katarina the emotions that dwelled beneath the surface.
One could argue that he had lost many things within the past few weeks. Life, happiness, security, friends, the sense of peace that he’d grown to know and love within the first twenty-three years of his existence—all had been forcefully taken away, stripped like bark from a tree that was being prepared to be chopped down by men with axes to serve as the foundations of homes or kindling for fire. That in itself was enough to ground any man’s sense of right into dust, thus reducing his life to little more than a few elementary things.
When choice events took away everything that seemed necessary, life could feel little more than a process, orchestrated by tasks that made up the entirety of one’s being.
Knowing more than well that he should have been happy not only for his safety, but the fact that he was now with his family, Nova turned his eyes up to look at Katarina and found an expression that chilled him to the bone.
Her eyes, as beautiful as they always seemed to be, were empty—soulless pits that could not bear any form of expression.
You’re so beautiful, he thought, rising, taking her into his arms when she came forward and bowing his head into her hair when she began to cry. What would I ever do without you?
“It’s all right,” he whispered, stroking her lower back. “Don’t cry, honey.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Help what?”
“Why does it seem like you can’t cry for yourself?”
Because my heart feels empty inside.
Unable to respond, he took a deep breath, expelled it, then gently broke apart from his wife until he could look directly into her face.
Though he could not explain just what it was that made his heart ache so, he could at least be content with the fact that they were now reunited.
Maybe the humans, Elves and Dwarves had driven the enemy back to Denyon.
Maybe things would go back to normal.
Maybe…
Maybe.
Maybe they could finally start the family that he’d so desperately wanted since the day they’d been married.
That night, as the full moon fell across the horizon and lit the world with its waxing crescent, Nova lay in bed with an arm around his wife’s waist and thoughts in places they’d rather it not be. Eyes on her skull, his heart in their space, it seemed in the brief three or four days he’d been back there had been nothing but superstition surrounding his return and the fact that the king’s champion had not accompanied him.
They know, he thought.
Of course they knew—how couldn’t they when the tall, fire-haired man had not returned with the king’s champion, whom, by all respects and measures, had developed a bond normal friendships seemed not often to have? That in itself was enough for suspicion to be raised, for voices to whisper within close quarters and for hands to be gestured around the grounds, and such was that suspicion that Nova feared not only for his safety, but for his wife and father-in-law’s, who rarely left the room unless they specifically needed to.
Whether he liked it or not, his family was pressed into a tight corner, one he could not willingly break from unless he had the nerve to try and get the king to put armed guards in front of their room.
Which isn’t happening.
Sighing, Nova pushed himself upright, reached up to run his hands through his hair, then sought out his father-in-law across the room, who sat reading by candlelight.
“Nova?” Ketrak asked, lowering his book. “Is everything all right?”
“Not particularly,” he replied, easing himself out of bed and making his way across the room.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything, or at least it seems like it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” his father-in-law said, carefully bending the corner of the page and setting it down on the table before him. “Is it anything you’d like to talk about?”
“Not part
icularly.”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t need you knowing my inner demons, he thought, sighing.
Rather than say anything in response, Nova placed his elbows on the table, reached up to cup his face within his hands, then closed his eyes, almost unable to resist the urge to look at Ketrak’s face and examine the plaintive emotions that lay just beneath the surface. It seemed almost impossible to do. To turn his eyes away from a man he’d come to love and respect—
whom, by all measures, had filled the hole in his heart that his adoptive father had once filled, was comparable to stabbing needles into one’s eyes and expecting them not to bleed.
You know what you want to do, his conscience whispered. So why not do it?
Crying would only show weakness he had no need for, particularly in an hour when he was still attempting to recover the loss of one friend and the disappearance of another.
“I should be happier,” he finally said. “But… I’m not.”
“It’s understandable, son. You’ve just lost two friends.”
“One friend,” he corrected. “Odin just ran off.”
“Do you know where?”
“To the Abroen Forest,” Nova sighed. “Likely to find the Elves.”
“Does he even know how to navigate those lands?”
“I can only hope he found a map or ran into someone who could help him.”
In the moments of silence that followed—when Ketrak waved his hand over the candle as if to warm his palm—Nova wrapped his arms around his torso and rocked himself in his seat. He swayed in tune to the harmonic silence that placated the room like some dark entity in an attempt to calm his shattered nerves. When that seemed not to work, and when Ketrak offered him a look that could have shattered glass, he settled back into the armchair as far as he possibly could.
Ketrak surely wouldn’t judge him, would he?
Of course not, he thought. He’s never judged me.
Then again, neither of them could forget the night before he’d left his wife for nearly three years—when, out of the blue, a vision had told him to find a boy in a tower far away in order to save not only himself, but his family who could also be harmed by repercussions. Had that been why Ketrak had been spared, saved in a moment of grace from an entity that had swallowed a town whole, and had that been why Katarina had held on, despite his absence and the fact that he had basically abandoned her?