Fate of the Gods

by Matthew J. Kirby

  So they followed it, from the place where Natalya had accepted that her simulation would end, into a woodland still as thick and deep as it had been before, but which Natalya no longer found threatening. Instead, its vast distances called to her, enticing her to wander from the path and explore. But she resisted, fearing what it would mean for her mind if she became lost in this simulation.

  “Monroe?” Natalya said.

  Yeah?

  “Just seeing if you were there,” she said.

  Oh, you mean you guys have time for me now?

  “I don’t think you realize how big that snake was,” Owen said.

  Big enough to turn into a path?

  “So you are listening,” Natalya said.

  Of course I am. But like I said earlier, the Animus is having a hard time showing me what’s going on. You guys are going to have to figure most of this out for yourselves. I’m actually starting to suspect that’s the whole point.

  “So what do we do now?” Owen asked.

  Follow the yellow brick road.

  “Right,” Natalya said. “Maybe this path is the Path.”

  Man, I wish Joseph Campbell were here.

  “Who?” Owen asked.

  Joseph Campbell? Monroe sighed. Let me put it this way. If you’re on the Path, then Campbell has the map. But he’s not here, so it looks like you’re going to have to find your own way. So I’ll leave you to it. Grace just walked in, and she needs to talk to me. But I’ll be here if you need me.

  “Over and out,” Owen said.

  A large bird rose up from the trees to the right and flew over them, caressing the Path with its shadow, and a light breeze seemed to follow it. Natalya spied squirrels scampering up and down the trees, and smiled at the angry flip of their tails that accompanied their scolding chatter.

  “If the last Forest had a giant snake,” Owen said, “then this Forest definitely has elves.”

  Natalya agreed with him, but if there was an Elf or Fairy archetype inhabiting those woods, she never appeared, and after walking a distance that didn’t seem measurable in miles, they glimpsed a break in the trees ahead. The edge of the Forest. As they drew closer, she saw a figure waiting in the road. It appeared to be quite large, but not human.

  “What do you think?” Owen asked.

  She shrugged. “I think we’ll find out when we get there.”

  Grace waited until she was sure that David wasn’t going to desynchronize, and then she left him in the Animus room to go for a walk so she could think.

  It wasn’t that she resented him for taking over the simulation. Even though she liked to tease him, she didn’t feel the same level of personal rivalry that he did. He had to prove that he didn’t need his older sister. Sometimes, it seemed as though he needed to prove it to her, and sometimes it seemed as though he just needed to prove it to himself. Either situation could be irritating. But watching him put that helmet on, and then knowing he’d left their world behind for a Viking one, had unsettled her and she wasn’t sure why.

  Maybe the vision had something to do with it.

  The Piece of Eden in Mongolia had shown her the future that most frightened her. The future she spent so much energy trying to prevent. It showed her a future in which David had done just about everything she had ever warned him not to do. He got older and ran with a bad crew, and got caught up in some really bad stuff. The vision showed her a David she didn’t recognize, and it ended the night that he died. A night that began with two detectives knocking on the door, demolishing their family, and ended with the faces of her grief-stricken parents. A night of screaming and tears and anger so hot an inner part of Grace burned to ash.

  After Isaiah had left with the dagger and the vision had ended, Grace had cried and hugged David so hard he probably wondered what was going on, but she hadn’t told him then, and she still hadn’t.

  Now she needed some air, and some sky. She knew of a balcony next to the office that used to be Isaiah’s, so she walked to the Aerie’s main elevators and rode one of them to the top floor.

  Outside, she found the day overcast with clouds that seemed the color and weight of cement. But even without the sunlight she’d hoped for, it felt good to stand in the open, surrounded by wind and mountains. For several peaceful minutes she just stood there, leaning against the balcony’s railing, thinking of nothing.

  But then she thought of David again, downstairs in the Animus.

  That still bothered her. And it hadn’t bothered her before. David had gone into simulations on his own, but something had changed since then, and the only thing she could point to was that vision. It scared her now to let him out of her sight, even into a virtual reality.

  She had to get her mind off it somehow, so she went back inside, and, out of curiosity, she tried the door to Isaiah’s office. It opened, which wasn’t too surprising, since he had probably taken everything with him and there wasn’t any reason for Victoria to lock the door. But she looked around anyway, and found the desk and its drawers empty.

  There was a bookcase, however, and Grace thought reading might distract her and help her pass the time, if she could find something interesting. The titles she scanned dealt mostly with history, including a few biographies, most of it probably related to the Templars. There was a book on the Borgias, one about a guy named Jacques de Molay, and another called The Journal of Haytham Kenway, among many others. But she also noticed a couple of random books that didn’t fit the pattern, one of them a book on Norse mythology.

  Having just experienced the memories of Östen, she pulled that volume from the shelf, and then made herself comfortable in the big chair behind the desk. The first thing she decided to look for in the book was any mention of a magical dagger, because if the Vikings had a prong of the Trident, maybe there were legends about it. But after checking each of the mentions listed in the index, she concluded none of them fit. So she started just flipping through the pages, stopping to read anything that looked interesting, and realized pretty quickly the Norse gods were strange.

  Especially Loki.

  Here was a handsome half giant who could convince anyone to do just about anything, including getting Thor into a dress and a wedding veil, and he went and had three kids with a giantess. One of them was a half-dead girl they put in charge of the underworld, another one was a sea serpent, and the last one was the giant Fenris wolf. The gods kicked Loki’s kids out of Asgard, which made the three of them into the mortal enemies of the gods.

  That brought Grace to Ragnarök. The end of the world. Or at least the fate of the gods. In the final battle, Loki’s wolf-son killed Odin, and the sea serpent killed Thor, which meant that, in a way, the gods had brought about their own demise. Grace turned the page to read on—

  A folded sheet of paper fell out of the book onto the desk.

  Grace set the book aside and picked up the paper, which contained a handwritten note. As she read it, she realized that it had been written by Isaiah, and her eyes widened in fear at his words. The situation was even worse than they had imagined. Much worse.

  He didn’t want to be a king. Isaiah wanted to destroy the world. He wanted Ragnarök.

  Grace jumped up from the desk and ran from the office, back to the elevators, where she jabbed the button and fidgeted furiously until the elevator came, and she rode back down to the ground floor. She didn’t trust Victoria or Griffin enough to go to them with this. That left Monroe, so she sprinted across the atrium toward the laboratories, and after searching several darkened rooms, she finally found Monroe seated at a computer terminal. Owen and Natalya walked in their Animus harnesses next to him, and he gave Grace a quick, perplexed nod as she came in.

  “It looks like you’re going to have to find your own way,” he said into his headset, and she realized he was talking to Owen and Natalya. “So I’ll leave you to it. Grace just walked in, and she needs to talk to me. But I’ll be here if you need me.” He touched a button on the display and then swiveled in his chair to face
her. “Everything okay?”

  She handed him the note without saying anything, and waited as long as she could to let him read it before speaking. “What is he talking about?” she asked. “Disasters? Cycles of death and renewal? Ragnarök?”

  Monroe shook his head, then refolded the note and tapped it against his knee. “It seems that Isaiah has developed some peculiar ideas.”

  “Peculiar ideas?” Grace said. “He thinks the world needs to die!”

  “To be reborn, yes. It’s a common mythology around the world. First, a cataclysmic event occurs. It could be a great flood. It could be fire. But it wipes the slate clean, and, afterward, the survivors are left with a purified new world. That’s a part of Ragnarök people sometimes forget. The cycle starts over. Apparently, Isaiah thinks we’re long overdue.”

  “I—I thought he just wanted to conquer the world. Not kill everyone.”

  “Not everyone. I’m pretty sure Isaiah plans to survive. Then he can set himself up as humanity’s next savior and ruler.”

  Grace remembered another detail from the note. “Who are the Instruments of the First Will?”

  “Something I’ve only heard rumors about.” Monroe held up the note. “Where did you find this?”

  “In a book on Norse mythology. In Isaiah’s old office.”

  “Have you shown it to anyone else?”

  “Not yet. I don’t trust Victoria, or Griffin.”

  Monroe gave her the note back. “You hang on to that, but let’s keep it between us for now. I want to find out if Victoria knows about this. If she does, then I want to know why she’s keeping us in the dark.”

  Grace nodded.

  “Try not to worry. This doesn’t change anything. No matter what Isaiah has planned, we’re going to stop him.”

  She wished that reassured her, but it didn’t. Grace now knew this was a doomsday scenario, and now that she knew that, she needed to do something about it that much more urgently. She looked at Owen and Natalya again, the hydraulics and machinery of their harnesses whispering as they strolled in place. Then she noticed a third, unoccupied Animus next to theirs.

  “Could I go into their simulation?” she asked Monroe. “I want to help.”

  “What about your ancestor’s simulation?”

  “David’s got it.” And she couldn’t let her fear for him stop her from doing what needed to be done. Besides, she told herself the dagger’s vision wasn’t real. He was safe, for now. “I can help Owen and Natalya.”

  Monroe looked over at the Animus machines and studied them for a moment. “It would be possible. But you should know it might be very dangerous in there. I’m worried about the risk to your mind.”

  “Owen and Natalya are in there,” Grace said. “If I want to help them, it’s my risk to take.”

  “True enough.” Monroe rose from his chair. “I’ll let them catch you up with everything once you’re in there, if that’s okay. It’ll take me some time to tie this third Animus into the other two.”

  Grace found herself a chair of her own. “I can wait.”

  It did take some time, but eventually Monroe had the empty Animus ready to go. These three machines looked different from the others, more industrial, like they were stripped down to the bare hardware. Grace stepped inside the ring and climbed into the harness. Several minutes later, she stood blinking in the Memory Corridor, waiting to join the simulation. Monroe let Owen and Natalya know that she was coming in, and then he counted her down.

  The world that appeared out of the gray void did not feel right, in a way that was hard for her to describe. It lacked a certain specificity. She stood on a path made of stone, but she couldn’t say what kind of stone it was. A beautiful forest grew all around her, but she couldn’t identify the types of trees. It wasn’t that she lacked the knowledge. It was something about them that made them unidentifiable, like they were somehow all trees. They looked very real, as real as any rocks and trees she had ever seen, and yet, not real.

  “Grace!”

  It was Owen’s voice.

  She looked and saw him waving at her from farther down the path. Natalya stood next to him, and they waited as she jogged the distance to catch up. When she reached them, they seemed genuinely happy to see her.

  “What is this place?” Grace asked.

  Owen spread his arms. “This, my friend, is the Forest.” Then he tapped his foot. “And this is the Path. With capital letters. You missed the Serpent.” He pointed down the stone trail ahead of them, and Grace saw a distant figure in silhouette where it looked like the Forest ended. “We have something up there we’re not sure about yet.”

  “This is a simulation of the collective unconscious,” Natalya said.

  “Oh, right.” Grace remembered Monroe explaining that concept, back when they’d hitched a ride to Mongolia in an Abstergo shipping container. Now she took in her surroundings from a different angle, and its strangeness made more sense. “So these are archetypes.”

  “Yes,” Natalya said, sounding a bit surprised.

  Grace nodded down the path, toward the something. It looked like an animal of some kind. “So is that an archetype?”

  “We don’t know,” Owen said. “We were on our way there when Monroe said you were coming in, so we decided to wait.”

  “And why exactly are we in here?” Grace asked. “Monroe didn’t really explain the point.”

  “The collective unconscious and the Ascendance Event are connected to the Trident,” Natalya said. “When we came in here, a talking light told us to follow the path through fear, devotion, and faith. We’ve already gone through fear, I think. We’re supposed to go to the summit.”

  “With a capital S?” Grace asked.

  Owen shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” Grace said.

  Owen and Natalya nodded, and the three of them set off down the stone Path. Gradually, the simulation seemed less strange to Grace, replaced by a vague familiarity, even though she had never been there before. It wasn’t quite déjà vu, but it was similar to that. She assumed that’s because archetypes were in some ways familiar to most people. That was one of their defining characteristics. As for the figure up ahead, it had begun to resolve itself, and it wasn’t long before Grace could tell what it was.

  “It’s a dog,” she said.

  “A big dog,” Natalya said.

  “Maybe it’s the Dog,” Owen said.

  The closer they got, the more likely that actually seemed. This dog was enormous, and had a wolfish appearance, with fur the color of dried blood, yellow eyes, and a thick mane around its neck. Grace had never been afraid of dogs, but this one was big enough to look her straight in the eyes while seated on its haunches. She felt a bit safer when it started wagging its tail, brushing it back and forth over the Path as the three of them approached.

  “So what happens now?” Grace whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Owen said.

  “Well, what happened last time?”

  “The Serpent attacked us—”

  The Dog barked, startling Grace. She jumped, and so did Natalya and Owen. It had been a single bark, very loud and very deep.

  “Let’s not talk about things attacking, okay?” Natalya whispered.

  But then, with a soft whine, the Dog stood up on its four feet. Grace prepared to run, in case it charged at them. But it turned in the opposite direction from them and trotted away down the Path, past the edge of the forest, into the sunlight of the open countryside beyond. They watched it go, but the Dog soon stopped and turned back to look at them.

  It barked again.

  “What’s it doing?” Owen asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Natalya said.

  Another bark.

  It looked to Grace as if the Dog might be waiting for them. “I think it wants us to follow it,” she said.

  Natalya looked again and nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  So they left the Forest behind and ventured out onto a se
ction of the Path that wound through a dry countryside of white rock, thick grass, and short, gnarled trees. The Dog led the way, quickly adopting a routine in which it barked and waited to see if they would follow, and when they did, it proceeded to the next spot, where it barked again. There was just no way of knowing where it was leading them or why.

  Watching the Dog lope along made Grace think of the Fenris wolf, the monster she’d read about in the book on Norse mythology, which brought Isaiah’s note to mind. She would not have thought that following a Dog would help in her in the mission to stop him, but this was important somehow, and she had to trust in that.

  Just like she had to trust David.

  Soon they’d traveled far enough into this new terrain that the Forest behind them disappeared over the uneven horizon. With each bark, the Dog sounded more desperate, and possibly even impatient with them.

  “Let’s try not to get lost in here,” Owen said, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t want my mind to be trapped in this place permanently.”

  That must’ve been one of the dangers Monroe had mentioned. Grace shuddered at the idea of her mind staying in this simulation while her body just kept walking forever like a zombie in the Animus.

  “I think we’ll be okay if we stick to the Path,” Natalya said.

  “I hope so,” said Grace. So they continued following the Dog, trying to keep up with it, until it stopped and barked at something off the Path.

  Grace looked for what it might be, and she spotted some kind of stone monument at the top of a green hillock nearby. When she and the others turned in that direction, the Dog barked one more time, and then shot away from them up the mound toward the structure, tearing a seam in the tall grass.

  “I guess we go that way,” Owen said.

  “Didn’t we just decide not to leave the Path?” Grace said.

  “It’s not that far,” Owen said. “We’ll be able to see the Path from up there. And we might even see more of the simulation.”

  “It still seems risky,” Grace said.

  The dog barked at them from the top of the hill.

  “It also seems like that’s where we’re supposed to go,” Natalya said. “But let’s keep the Path in sight at all times.”