Thrall

by E. William Brown

  It slammed into the roof like the fist of an angry god, making a thunderclap that would have deafened me if I were there in person. Runic wards flared and died in an instant, overwhelmed by the sheer concentrated energy of the attack. The golem’s force anchor struggled to hold it in place against the incredible recoil, but it didn’t have to work for very long because the stone surface shattered under the impact. Glowing, half-molten fragments of rock flew up to shower the area, bouncing off the force wall I’d spread to protect us.

  In a few moments I was through the roof. I played the beam in a circle, making a hole big enough for Mara’s monster form to fit through easily, and then turned off the beam.

  The edges of the hole glowed bright orange, dripping trickles of molten stone here and there. It cut through eight feet or so of solid stone, and then several floors worth of tangled passages. As I watched space seemed to twist around it, turning what had been a straight bore into a wandering tunnel through the maze.

  “Good start,” Mara said. “Hit it again.”

  I dropped into the hole to give my force anchor more to work with, and engaged the beam again.

  The noise was horrific, and I’m sure the heat was even worse. But my golem was protected by two inches of enchanted steel and a force wall that could laugh off naval artillery. The smoke and heat had no effect on it at all, and I quickly chewed my way through the maze. The interior walls were no obstacle to this level of force, and the enchantments that were supposed to confuse and misdirect intruders fell apart under the barrage of dispellings.

  Every few floors I turned off the beam for a moment to get a look at where I was going. The fourth time I did that I found another mass of solid stone in front of me, with a glowing spot marking where the beam had struck. It was a different kind of stone, heavy and dark, saturated with divine magic.

  Mara crowded up behind me, and peered at the barrier. “Orichalcum? Awesome! We’re almost through, little buddy. Give it everything you’ve got!”

  I did.

  This time my plasma beam crashed into the barrier and rebounded, smashing through the walls of the maze around us. Strange, insectoid creatures fled from the destruction, or died shrieking when their hiding places were shattered under a hail of molten rock. Dwarven runes flared to life, covering the surface of the final barrier in dense patterns of protection, and a heavy smoke of soot and stone vapor poured up through the gaping chasm I’d made.

  For a moment I worried about Mara’s ability to survive the backblast, but I needn’t have worried. She was a demigoddess of fire, and the protections I’d given her warded off the smoke and debris easily enough. She bounced in delight, brushing a blob of lava off her cheek and shouting at the top of her lungs.

  “More! More! Hit it harder, it’s starting to give!”

  I reached into my weapon’s enchantment, adjusting the feed rate of the water up and down. Using just a trickle of water gave me a violet beam of thin but superheated plasma, hot enough to melt anything. A heavier flow gave me a dense, orange plasma bolt that struck with the force of a battering ram.

  Thooom!

  The impact shook the whole prison. I did it again, and again, and I could see the dwarven wards failing under the repeated impacts of my plasma hammer. At maximum temperature even this magical stone softened under the beam’s heat, and then the impact of the next high density cycle blew the softened material away.

  A dozen more colossal hammer blows, and the ward broke. After that the stone crumbled quickly, and in less than a minute I broke through into a larger space. I played the beam in an expanding spiral, widening the hole until we could easily fit.

  The moment I shut down the beam Mara dove through the hole. She shifted in midair, becoming a two-headed fox the size of an elephant with tongues of fire running through her fur.

  I followed her down, and found myself in an open space the size of a sports stadium. But even that vast space felt crowded, barely able to contain the mountain of fur that filled it. What was that line from the Edda? Something about his maw reaching from the ground to the sky, and “‘twould gape wider yet were there room!”

  I could almost believe it. This monster was bigger than the ones I’d unleashed from the Sunspire, and the weight of divine power that flowed through him dwarfed anything I’d seen to date. Yet here he lay, bound by a flimsy-looking ribbon of translucent lace and magic that wound around his limbs and sealed his jaws shut.

  Not that the gods had stopped there. Apparently once they had him bound they’d decided to take no chances, because he was festooned in steel chains with links so huge I’d have had trouble getting my arms around one. The floor of the prison was a bowl made of orichalcum, set with hundreds of giant rings that anchored the chains. Even his tail was pinned down by webs of steel chain.

  Mara barely seemed to notice. She bounded down and across the room towards the wolf’s head, calling out in excitement.

  “Brother, the day of your freedom is at hand! I am Mara, daughter of Loki and Gaea, and freedom is my domain. Muster your strength, and together we shall break these bonds that bind you.”

  The great wolf shifted in his chains, and sniffed at Mara as she approached.

  “Check our kinship as carefully as you like, big brother,” Mara said with a laugh. “I could feel you even with the walls of this prison in the way, but I’ll wait until you’re sure of me. Just don’t take too long, because our enemies won’t be distracted forever.”

  Fenrir growled, or spoke, I honestly couldn’t tell which with the way his jaws were chained together. But Mara seemed to understand him.

  “Our allies blew up the Sunspire,” she answered. “Can you believe it? Odin had hidden it in Asgard for some plan of his, but that’s one scheme that backfired on him. Now he’s got a bunch of angry gods and divine beasts rampaging through the streets, all pissed off about being left to rot for thousands of years. Poetic, huh?”

  I was distracted from Fenrir’s reply by a flash of white from above. A swan landed beside Mara, and shifted into Aphrodite’s naked form.

  “I hope you’re almost done, Mara, because we’ve got trouble coming!” She said breathlessly. “The prison guards have found the hole you made, and they’ve opened a portal atop the prison. There’s a band of einherjar marching through, and I heard someone say they’re Tyr’s personal guard.”

  Fenrir growled at the name.

  Aphrodite looked up, and up, and up at him, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “Yes, I know. Maybe you’ll get a chance to end the treacherous bastard this time? But you’d better work fast, Mara. I don’t know how long we have.”

  Mara shifted back to human form and put her hands on her hips, and surveying the chains.

  “Right. Don’t worry, brother, we’ll have you unbound long before he can get here. Sunstrike, start cutting those steel chains free from the floor. I’m going to tackle Gleipnir.”

  Chapter 25

  I started with one of the tie-down rings that anchored the chains on Fenrir’s hindquarters. It was an unexpected challenge, but one my golem proved well suited to meet. At maximum temperature my plasma beam easily melted through the ring of enchanted steel, leaving a glowing puddle of liquid metal on the floor.

  I had some worries about how much the heat would spread, but thankfully they’d used chains instead of cables. The end of the chain glowed orange with heat where I’d cut it away, but the next link was barely red and the glow didn’t seem to be spreading beyond that. The Fenris wolf wasn’t exactly delicate to start with, so I doubted my work was going to do him any harm. I moved on to the next tie-down, and started cutting it away.

  Meanwhile, Mara stepped up to the ribbon wrapped around Fenrir’s muzzle, and took a close look.

  “Yeah, it’s a conceptual binding, just like I thought. Let’s do this. Release!”

  A shudder went through the ribbon, rattling the chains wrapped over it and sending a tremor into the floor. But it didn’t break. Instead, the reaction somehow led to one
of the wards that shielded the chamber against divination evaporating.

  “What the fuck?” Mara exclaimed.

  “Having performance problems, dear?” Aphrodite teased. “Maybe you should leave this kind of thing to the men.”

  Mara gave her the finger. “Fuck off, bitch. I can do this. I just have to figure out the trick. They’ve got this thing tied into the wards somehow, so trying to break it opens other shit instead.”

  I cut through another ring, and moved on to the next. Fenrir growled something, but I still couldn’t make heads or tails of his speech.

  “I know, brother,” Mara said. “But I don’t know what else this thing is tied to. If I just hit it again it will probably break the reinforcement spells on the ceiling and make it fall on us, or something stupid like that. I guess I could just keep hitting it until everything breaks, but then I might be too worn out to crack Gleipnir.”

  My talents weren’t well suited to this esoteric bullshit, so I just kept cutting rings while Mara pondered. I was almost done with his hindquarters now, but I could hear activity somewhere above us.

  “We’re about to have company,” Aphrodite said.

  Mara growled in frustration. “I know, I know. Could you go distract them for me? I only need a minute.”

  “What, and open myself up to a serious punishment if we get caught? You do realize I could still tell all, and be found blameless? I can hardly refuse an order from the one who wears my command ring.”

  Mara clenched her fists, and turned to her with a scowl. “Yeah, and do you see me wearing it? Look, Aphrodite, it’s time to put up or shut up. Are you going to keep playing games with everyone, or are you going to stand up and strike a blow against Asgard?”

  A squad of armored warriors fell out of the hole in the roof, and hit the floor in a tight formation. Like Brand’s elite guards back in Kozalin they took a fall of hundreds of feet in stride. But this group was protected by a thicket of magical wards, and I could see at a glance that any mage who tried to stop them was in for an uphill battle.

  But in the moment that they were getting their bearings Aphrodite casually doffed her top, and arched her back to show off the most magnificent breasts in the universe. They were big, round mountains of perfectly shaped feminine majesty, capped with prominent brown nipples. They bounced as she uncovered them, nipples hardening as they were exposed to view-

  Alanna slapped me. “Focus on the task at hand, Daniel,” she chided.

  I jerked back to awareness, realizing I’d been caught in some kind of enthrallment even though I wasn’t even physically present.

  “Um, yeah. Thanks,” I said.

  Tyr’s men stood even less of a chance that I did. They were completely enthralled, staring at Aphrodite’s exposed breasts while their weapons slipped from nerveless fingers. Mara blushed furiously, barely managing to tear her gaze away.

  “Fuck, you make a girl feel inadequate,” she grumbled.

  “Sure you don’t want to put on my ring? You could order me to please you any way you like…”

  “I don’t do that shit. I don’t care if you get off on it. It’s still a binding, and I’m… that’s it!”

  By then I was halfway around the circle, burning through the tie-down rings for the chains that secured Fenrir’s forelimbs. But I wasn’t going to have time to finish. Another wave of troops fell from the hole in the roof, and this time there were elves and golems among them.

  “Sunstrike, take them out!” Mara ordered. “I just need a minute to focus.”

  I abandoned the chains, and flew towards the drop zone. Aphrodite enthralled most of the second wave, but some of them resisted. A couple of elves started casting spells, and a giant steel golem with hammers instead of hands lurched towards her. Fortunately I was a lot faster than it was.

  I arrived just as the golem was raising its hammer to smash Aphrodite flat, and deployed my force shield. The golem’s hammer bounced off the barrier, barely drawing enough power to register. Then I fired the plasma canon.

  Thousands of pounds of enchanted steel eroded away in a matter of seconds, like ice under a spray of boiling water. A glowing fog of steel vapor washed over the men behind it, and most of them died before they even had time to scream. They were the lucky ones. The ones with the best wards were just thrown across the room to smash into the unyielding wall of orichalcum with bone-breaking force, their armor glowing with heat as it burned off their flesh.

  “Such a gallant knight,” Aphrodite purred, completely indifferent to the carnage. “I’ll save a kiss to thank you when we’ve made good our escape.”

  But there were more enemies dropping into the room. Enchanted arrows burrowed into my shield, erupting in pyrotechnic displays of magic, and a bolt of lightning arced down from the roof to envelop my golem. It didn’t do any damage to the sturdy construct, but at this rate it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out which of their weapons could penetrate my barrier.

  “Fall back and protect Mara,” I said. “I’ll keep them distracted for as long as I can.”

  I swept the beam of my plasma cannon through the enemy troops, and then lilted it upwards to hose down the hole they were coming through. I was positioned so they had to get past me to get at Mara, but the room was so big there was plenty of room to maneuver. If they were smart it wouldn’t be hard for a group to split up, and circle around me to get a shot at her.

  “I’ll do what I can,” Aphrodite agreed. Her body dissolved into a wave of water that rushed back across the room, and swelled into a dome that hid Mara from sight.

  Was all of her magic so odd? Well, as long as it got the job done.

  A flurry of frost magic rained down on me, having no effect on my golem. The giant mass of ice that formed around me was kind of interesting, but I wasn’t an elemental. I just fired the plasma cannon again, and the whole thing exploded into a cloud of steam and flying ice fragments. The dispel arrows were more of a threat, but it would take a lot of those in quick succession to accomplish anything.

  I was too far away from Mara to hear her directly, but the same enchantment I’d come up with for my cameras could carry voices. I activated my link to the earring I’d made her, so we could communicate at a distance. But she was just muttering to herself.

  “...I am the fire dancing free in wind…”

  A dispelling blew my force shield down, and an implosion of black magic sucked me in before I could even think of a response. If I’d been there in person I would have been crushed into a paste, but my golem shrugged it off easily.

  “...the bright spark that burns forever in the night…”

  An armored man appeared out of nowhere behind me, and brought an enchanted hammer down on my golem with such force that it actually dented the steel. Maybe he thought I couldn’t shoot him without hitting Mara, but I didn’t need to hit him directly. I rotated the golem to point the plasma cannon straight down, and fired a brief shot. The backblast sent me rocketing into the air, and I caught a glimpse of the fireball washing over him before he vanished again.

  “...the secrets hidden in the depths of the void…

  For just a moment, no one was attacking me. No more troops were jumping down the hole, and the ones already in the room were dead, dying or at least playing dead. I sent another jet of plasma up to wash over the breach, hoping they’d back off and rethink their assault.

  “...and the furtive revelations of silence…”

  But my hopes were in vain. Instead, a new portal opened right in the room. I turned my plasma cannon on it without even waiting to see what came out, but this time the beam was reflected back at me. I dodged aside, and shut it down before I melted myself.

  Striding through the portal was a giant of a man, eight feet tall if he was an inch, clad in heavy plate made of a dark metal my sorcery didn’t recognize. In his left hand he held a black sword that dripped with liquid green fire, while a round shield with a mirrored surface was strapped to his right arm. His right hand was missing. />
  That, and the aura of divine power that surrounded him, told me who I was looking at. Tyr, the Norse god of justice and war. The god who sacrificed his right hand to trick Fenrir into letting himself be bound.

  “...beloved brother, blood of my blood…”

  He didn’t waste time on words, instead rushing across the hall towards the dome of water that hid Mara. I hurriedly dropped into position to block him, and extended my force shield again. But I wasn’t sure it would actually stop him.

  My golem didn’t have any secondary weapons, but maybe I didn’t need one. I fired off a burst from the plasma cannon again, this time aiming at the floor in front of Tyr instead of directly at him.

  “...drink deep of my nature, my gift for you…”

  I was hoping the wash of superheated plasma that spread across the floor would slow him down. But instead he jumped over it, diving forward to thrust his sword into my golem. I dodged aside at the last moment, and the blade cut a deep gouge in the construct’s armor.

  I felt Alanna flinch as the edge pricked the golem’s wooden core. Whatever deadly enchantment that sword carried, it could hurt her if it connected. I had no idea how much of a threat that was, and had no time to ask. But the fact that two inches of enchanted steel didn’t even slow it down wasn’t encouraging.

  “...for no chains can bind the dancing flame…”

  Tyr flicked his sword at Aphrodite’s barrier, and a whip of green fire lashed out to strike the water. It collapsed instantly, washing away into a shallow puddle, and Aphrodite reappeared behind Mara. She screamed in pain, curling up on herself while patches of green fire ate into her skin.

  “...no barrier can contain a riddle’s unknown answer…”

  My golem’s flight enchantment was powerful enough to withstand the recoil of its plasma cannon, which gave it some amazing maneuverability. I zipped towards him like a cannonball, only to stop just out of his sword’s reach to fire a burst of plasma at him.

  It was a good thing I hadn’t carried through with my initial impulse to ram him, because his sword was in the way. It split the plasma beam somehow, the energy washing by to either side of him without touching a hair on his head. I was already rising up, firing again to burn away a lash of green fire that he sent my way. But I’d distracted him just long enough.