I really didn’t want to think too much about how it felt to have my breasts pressed against hers. Big, soft, extremely sensitive breasts… no, bad thoughts. No distractions right now.
“That sounds like a plan,” I said. “Why do elves braid their hair, anyway? Doesn’t that just give enemies something to grab?”
“It’s a statement of skill. A fearful novice might cut her hair short to prevent it from being used against her, but a skilled warrior need not sacrifice beauty for victory. Besides, grabbing the end of a waist-length braid is an excellent way to get your arm cut off.”
“Um… right, I guess I can see that. If it was shoulder-length having it pinned would limit your mobility, but if there’s a couple of feet of play you’ve got plenty of room to turn around and take a swing at the guy holding it.”
“Yes, and if someone can get close enough to reach the base of your braid they could just as easily stab you. There, that’s done. I do wish I could armor you, though.”
I shook my head. “Too many people have seen me wearing you recently. The Vanir don’t seem to use dryad armor very often, so it would be too conspicuous. Even the bracer is a little risky.”
“Perhaps, but I will be quite upset if you command me to leave you entirely. You will need my aid to return to Midgard, and there are too many ways that an arranged meeting could go awry.”
“I know, Alanna. Believe me, I have no intention of getting separated from you. I’m a little concerned that someone might try to find you with divinations while we’re still here, but our wards against that are pretty decent.”
“Such spells will not reveal me,” she said confidently. “I grew wise to such tricks in the days of Cronus, and my alliances in the unseen realms run deep. No spirit or dream could betray me to some upstart god, and the dead arts of modern wizardry will avail them naught.”
I stopped fussing with my clothes, and really looked at her for a moment. Even now, in the middle of this crazy mess, she carried herself with the calm self-assurance of a consummate professional. As if the threat of angry gods and soul-eating monsters were no big deal, just another day in the trenches.
I put my hands on her shoulders, and met her gaze squarely. “Alanna, you are amazing. I’m lucky to have you, and I want you to know that I realize it.”
“Luck, Daniel? Do you think it was chance that led Hecate to send the grove where I dwelt in obscurity to you? Or that Hecate knew of me, and desired my support for your cause? Or yet, that the strongest familiar in the world would seek a bond with the most interesting wizard of the age? No, the only uncertainty lies in our future. Will our bond be a brief alliance of convenience, to be set aside when our current troubles are past? Or will we stand together through the turning of the ages, and forge a shared legend for ourselves?”
“You can be pretty intimidating sometimes,” I admitted. “I know you’ve got hidden depths that you still haven’t revealed, even now. But that’s okay. The more you show me of yourself, the more convinced I am that we’re good for each other. I’m in this for the long haul. Unless you’ve got a collection of terrible habits you’ve been hiding?”
“Secrets of the past I may hide, but never my true self. I have enjoyed our partnership thus far, and I have high hopes for the future. Now go, and bring this adventure to a finish before my fragile self-control fails entirely. Working such magnificent carnage together has brought my passions to full bloom, and seeing your soul behind such innocent eyes is not helping. If you tarry much longer I shall carry you off to my playroom, and introduce you to all the delights of womanhood.”
I couldn’t suppress my laugh.
“You’re my kind of woman, Alanna,” I said, drawing her into a hug. “You can seduce me later, alright? I’m planning to do some serious enchantment work on my new body as it grows, so I’m going to be stuck this way for at least a week. Let’s see, now. Which one of these paths leads to the right exit?”
Alanna had been happy to show me how to get out of a dryad’s bower, but that was a challenging task under the best of circumstances. Without my mana sorcery it would have taken months of practice to learn how to negotiate the mind-bending inner geometry of a dryad’s tree, and that was with a normal dryad. Alanna’s inner nature was such a maze of shifting connections that I might never be able to navigate it without her help. But she seemed impressed that I could even make the attempt.
A wordless tug pulled me towards one of the shorter passages. I pushed into it, and felt the welcoming warmth of Alanna’s magic surround me. Then I was through, stepping out into open air again.
The Sunspire’s explosion may have looked impressive, but Asgard was a sprawling megalopolis far too big to be destroyed by a single blast. The quiet courtyard I found myself in had escaped with just a little damage to the trees, and a few broken windows. The sounds of marching feet and officers shouting orders reached me from somewhere nearby, but a quick look around showed that the nook where I’d appeared was empty.
Good. I put my hand on the tree that I’d emerged from, and felt Alanna’s presence there.
“We’re clear,” I said.
Good. I’m sorry, little one, but I must go now.
Somehow the ancient dryad had managed to possess a normal tree, and use it as a connection between Asgard and her own inner world. Now she withdrew from it, leaving just a normal tree behind.
“Is there any way for someone to tell that you’ve done that?” I asked.
“I leave few tracks for any hunter to find, my wizard. This tree will be more healthy than most, and if she survives Ragnarok she’ll develop a dryad of her own in time. But there are many ways to explain such a change, especially in a city full of elves.
“I guess so. Alright, you said you know the way?”
I was relying a lot on Alanna for this last errand. I hadn’t wanted to do anything that could give away what I was planning, even to my other companions. Mara had other loyalties, after all, and even the twins weren’t entirely trustworthy. But Alanna was another story.
She’d woven the clothes I now wore just last night, using some exotic blend of skill and magic to produce an outfit that perfectly fit my adopted persona. The odd concoction of silk and leather fit me like a glove, and made me look like some sort of swashbuckling pirate princess. I could have done without the giant boob window, and the short skirt left a lot of bare thigh on display. But the cloak was enchanted to swirl around me as I moved, incidentally hiding my figure from behind, and the staff I carried would probably warn off any rowdy einherjar I came across.
It was also a pretty decent magical focus. Not that I was going to get into any fights in this state. I didn’t dare put enchantments on any of my equipment, for fear someone would recognize my distinctive style of magic. When I was growing this body I’d enchanted one of the vertebrae in my neck with a power tap, and a basic set of healing and flight spells. Aside from that I was banking entirely on subterfuge from this point on, because with Asgard already on high alert getting into a fight was just asking to get smacked down by some angry god.
Valhalla was far enough from the Sunspire that its halls had escaped with minimal damage. The streets were crowded with troops of soldiers marching here and there, moving to bolster the city’s defenses and contain the monsters I’d freed from the soul prison. I caught a few men checking me out as I made my way through the streets, but no one paid me any serious attention.
From there Alanna’s directions took me into the periphery of the devastated zone. There the blast had shattered windows, stripped the roofs off of houses and sent clouds of debris flying through the air. Here and there a building had collapsed entirely, and quite a few trees were down.
All in all, though, Asgard had weathered the blast a lot better than a modern city would. Most of the buildings were made of stone, with outer walls a foot thick, and the blocks they’d been built with melded into a single solid mass using earth magic. The rest were grown from a single mass of living wood, instead of being b
uilt with boards held together by nails, and again the Vanir liked their walls thick enough to take a beating.
Even so, they’d taken a heavy blow. There were impromptu medical stations set up everywhere, staffed by worried-looking Vanir women and filled with injured people. Work crews struggled to clear the streets of fallen trees, and now and then a party of armored warriors rushed past.
I found my way blocked by a tree that had fallen into a fountain, smashing it and sending jets of water spraying across the street. A group of burly, bare-chested men armed with heavy axes were working on the obstruction, cutting the tree into sections and hauling them out of the way.
It was strange to be so tiny. I barely topped five feet in this body, and those guys were all well over six. Not to mention being built like linebackers. Shit, their arms were as big around as my waist. Any of them could just pin me down with one hand, and… and…
I shook my head, and pushed my way through the crowd that was threading its way around the mess. Ugh. No. I was not going to think about that.
Too late, my wizard, Alanna said, sounding amused. I did warn you that your stolen form would influence your thoughts.
“I was hoping it would take more than an hour,” I grumbled. “Fuck. Did I get something wrong with this body, or is that normal for elves?”
Did you think Aphrodite was lying when she spoke of the passions of Vanir women? Their blood runs hotter than a minx in season, and the physical prowess of the einherjar strikes to the heart of their greatest weakness. Your human instincts will hold your body’s urges at bay for some time, but I’d advise you not to dally.
“You can say that again.”
A thunderclap sounded in the distance, followed by the distinctive bellow of the lightning lizard. But I didn’t see the jellyfish thing in the sky anymore, and I had no idea how the rest of that fight was going. There was no telling how much longer the distraction would last.
I picked up my pace, hurrying through a residential district and across a park. The strange distance-warping nature of the city came into play, whole blocks passing beneath my feet in a step, and soon I found myself at the foot of a stairway wide enough for the Fenris wolf. At the top was a broad avenue paved with polished marble, lined on both sides with grand palaces.
Turn right at the statue of the winged warrior, and go down that alley between the palaces, Alanna directed.
“Where are we?” I asked. The streets here were nearly deserted, with just a few Vanir hurrying about.
This district holds the homes of the gods, she said. Odin’s hall lies at the end of the avenue, but we need not approach it any closer. This path will take us to a servant’s road that threads between the halls of the Aesir warriors and the towers of the Vanir gods. Our quarry lies at its end.
Nothing makes you sweat like being surrounded by enemies who could squash you like a bug. I walked quickly, and carefully didn’t stare at the fancy buildings as I passed. Stone walls enclosed the grounds of each palace, which helped with that, but even the servant’s entrances on this back street were fantastically ornate. Some were tasteful, and others gaudy as hell, but all of them grabbed at my attention.
Good thing I’ve got a healthy resistance to advertising. I kept my eyes on the path, avoiding eye contact with the other pedestrians without obviously looking away from them. After what felt like a million years, but probably wasn’t more than ten minutes, I finally reached the far end of the road.
There was a high wall in front of me, covered with wards against sneaky intruders like me. A narrow path led left and right along the base of the wall, and far off to the right I could see a heavily guarded gate. There was a whole band of einherjar formed up for battle, and two warriors who stood head and shoulders above the others.
I turned left.
Those two were definitely Thor’s sons, Alanna said. That’s promising.
“If you say so. Where’s this back door you mentioned?”
A little further down. There’s a spot where the path joins another, and there’s a little open space planted with trees for shade. There used to be a bench standing under a large oak tree, and a little pond full of decorative fish.
“I see it,” I said.
The wall the path followed had a curve to it, that didn’t fit into the mostly square grid of Asgard’s streets. The little park area Alanna described filled what would otherwise have been wasted space, between the path and the edge of some god’s grand estate. It was also well out of sight from those gates, and the guards on duty there.
Just put your hand on the oak tree, Alanna said. I’ll take care of the rest.
It looked like a perfectly normal tree. But the moment my bare skin touched its bark, I felt the familiar sensation of being drawn into a dryad’s bower. In the blink of an eye I was pulled through a mind-bending geometry of extradimensional spaces, and deposited in a cozy bedroom with walls of living wood. Alanna was standing beside me, with her arm around mine where I’d been wearing her bracer.
A blonde dryad looked up from the bed, and her eyes went wide. “Alanna!”
My familiar stepped away from me, and opened her arms just in time to intercept an airborne tackle hug.
“Oh gosh you’re back it’s been so long I missed you Melania will be so excited are you here to save us is this your new wizard Tifa come quick it’s Alanna!”
A second dryad stepped out of the wall, looking around wildly, and glomped onto Alanna just as enthusiastically as the first. She returned their hugs with a tolerant smile, and waited patiently for them to run down enough to let her get a word in edgewise.
“Yes, yes, I’m back for a visit. I fear I can’t stay long this time, and I have urgent need to speak with the grove’s mistress. May we use the hidden door?”
The dryads finally released her, and I got my first good look at them. They were twins, both blonde and blue-eyed, with pointed ears like an elf. They looked older than a typical dryad too, more like ageless elves than teenage beauties.
“Introduce us first,” one of them said.
“Yeah, if your new wizard is a Vanir we want to meet her,” the other agreed.
“To speak my companion’s name on the wind would be to betray her,” Alanna said. “I risk the wrath of the gods of blood and iron to secure your escape from the doom your mistress fears, and I can say no more of that for now. But know that I do indeed have a new wizard, a man so canny even death cannot thwart him for long, and my companion speaks with his voice. We would speak with your mistress, to see what may be done on your behalf.”
The dryads obviously had conflicting feelings about that, but after a moment of consideration they nodded in unison.
“If you can give no name, we shall call you Navnlos,” one of them said.
“We are Tira and Tifa, the twin guardians of Idun’s secret door,” the other went on. “We can grant you passage, if Alanna vouches for you. But you must vow never to reveal the secret of how you entered the grove.”
“I so swear,” I agreed.
“Then be welcome, but do your business quickly and don’t linger. As soon as the fighting out there dies down there’s going to be a swarm of young gods going around checking on everything important in the city, and we’re at the top of the list.”
“We shall speak quickly,” Alanna agreed. “Can you send word to Idun of our coming?”
“Already taken care of,” Tifa said. “Iri was visiting me when you showed up. Come on.”
She took us both in hand, and drew us into the wall she’d stepped out of. That put us in another bedroom much like the one we’d just come from. Then she let us go, and Alanna pulled me through another wall.
We were standing in the shade of an entirely different oak tree, some distance inside Idun’s garden. A field full of flowers surrounded us, bordered on three sides by a winding length of hedge too tall to see over. On the fourth side I could make out more fields full of flowers, a different assortment in each field, with more hedges to mark the boundar
ies. Here and there a tree rose above the hedges, and in the distance I could make out the tops of a large grove. Beyond that, the upper branches of a much larger tree were visible.
“This way,” Alanna said, pulling me along a path that led away from the oak.
That was pretty slick. I guess the fact that they were twins let the dryads link their bowers together, so people could step directly from one to the other even though they were on opposite sides of a heavily warded barrier. It made sense that Idun would have some secret way to get people in and out of her grove, since she’d had more than a thousand years to work something out. But I’d been expecting a sentry on the take, not a magical bypass.
Come to think of it, how the heck can dryads be twins? Aren’t they supposed to be born from their trees, somehow? One more thing to ask Alanna about later.
As we walked, I saw that the fields were clearly part of a garden laid out by someone with sophisticated plant magic. Each field grew several different plants, all of which seemed to be in perpetual full bloom, along with just enough grass to cover the soil and prevent erosion. Gravel paths wound through each field, passing under trees and circling the shores of small ponds that seemed to be connected by a maze of shallow brooks. Wherever the path crossed a stream there would be a few large rocks perfectly situated to act as stepping stones, and other stones were positioned in shady nooks and other spots where a visitor might want to sit.
It had to be artificial, but everything was carefully arranged to look like it had just happened by chance. The overall effect was oddly charming, like the landscape itself wanted to welcome visitors. Then again, for all I knew that was literally true. There was enough magic here that it wouldn’t surprise me if the fields and streams were all home to a family of dryad-like nature spirits.
“I guess you’ve spent a lot of time here,” I ventured.
“I visit from time to time, when my heart grows weary of the world. It is a very hospitable place for my kind, and many of us have gathered here. Idun always gives us a warm welcome, although it can be a bit awkward for me.”
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