Temple of Cocidius

by Maxx Whittaker

  But the clues mean nothing to me. It’s pretty obvious what most of them mean, but how I’m supposed to use them, what I’m supposed to do, eludes me. Sound of a Storm has to be wind, but I have no idea how that helps me. What am I supposed to do, wait for a stiff breeze?

  There’s something I’m missing. I put my hand to the inscription, and though its faintly warm, there’s nothing otherwise special about it. I run my finger along its length. Still nothing.

  When I step away I kick an odd-shaped rock resting against the wall. It bounces, and something rolls out.

  The rock is a bowl, and inside...marbles?

  It occurs that when I went stomping through the camp on arrival and stumbling around like an idiot after Fenrir’s appearance, I probably knocked the bowl over. If I’d kept my head, this whole thing might have been a lot simpler.

  I gather all five in my palm. They’re beautifully simple, each a different color; milky white, a burnished red, chalky black, deep blue, and a brown the color of dark cedar. They roll gently in my hand, and though they look somewhat drab there’s an energy. Something about them feels alive.

  Now what? I have a child’s rhyme, five pretty marbles, a load of questions, and no time to ask them.

  I run out to the trail. Kumiko is crouched, ready to bolt.

  “Lir! Tell me you did something with the orb!” She can’t see me yet, but she’s heard me coming.

  “I did! I mean, I don’t know. I found these.” I hold out the marbles. “I don’t know what inscription means.”

  Kumiko scrunches her nose, squinting toward the camp. She’s stunning, exotic, and a fierce intelligence sparkles in her gaze. Her lips thin, her face firming. She’s come to a decision. “Let’s go.”

  “But won’t you…” I gesture to where the shadows gather.

  “Yes. He’ll follow me anywhere, catch me. But we have a few moments.” She pushes me back toward the wall, the camp. “Let’s not waste a moment.” She takes my hand, tugs me along.

  We dash into the ruin, me flopping along behind like a child on shorter legs. She’s preternaturally fast. Kumiko skids to a stop in front of the inscription and her eyes dance over it.

  “Elements, obviously. No idea what Thread of the delivered means, but the others…”

  “Right!” I want to kick myself for not thinking of it. “Sound of the storm is wind. Breath of a fish is water maybe?”

  “Roots of a mountain.” She laughs. “Easy. I’ve spent too much time here. The ironwood.”

  “Those massive fucking trees?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes dart, above, panicked. I can hear it, inside my head, this close. The roar. Fenrir.

  “Okay, okay. Spit of hell. Fire, obviously.”

  She nods, takes my hand that’s holding the marbles. She grabs the red one, and before I realize what she’s about to do, she throws it into the fire.

  “Wait! Shouldn’t we…” I take a step forward, my words forgotten. Within the fire, like a tiny star, the red marble begins to glow. It shudders as it heats, as the light within it begins to emerge, and with a flash that makes me wince, light erupts from it, casting dark shadows behind us. It glows like the one she gave me.

  Kumiko shrugs. “I had to try. We’re running out of time.”

  I pull the astratempus from my pocket. She’s right. The arrow has moved into orange. Too close to the inky dark of night. I’m not exactly sure how much time we have, but it must be less than thirty minutes.

  Fenrir crouches on the path, pulling lungfuls of air as he sniffs. His nightmare head turns, rotates, eyes locked on Kumiko. He doesn’t leap, doesn’t rend her apart, as if he doesn’t understand why she isn’t running, trying to elude him.

  She backs away, step by step, eyes wide. “Lir…” She doesn’t finish, just whimpers.

  Fenrir growls, takes a step the into the camp. Every muscle coils, ready to spring, his attention entirely on her.

  Shite. I have to do something, anything. My blades are pointless, but maybe something else? I lean to the fire and pull a burning branch from the flames. One motion: stand and throw.

  Fenrir darts, batting the flame from the air. It arcs back, and I fall on my ass.

  Super heroic.

  But I’ve broken the spell, whatever gave the massive wolf pause. Even has he leaps forward, I fall, the astratempus popping from my sweating fingers. Kumiko screams, Fenrir so close that the hot breath of his roar blowing her hair and ears back.

  The astratempus bounces off the stones. I scramble up, reaching for the timekeeper, reaching for my blade.

  I stop, gape.

  Sparks hang in the air. They flicker but don’t drift. Spittle stretches in a perpetual thread from Fenrir’s jaws.

  He’s suspended mid leap, an eruption of stone and gravel on the air behind him.

  Kumiko’s hands shield her face, a vain attempt. caught mid-breath. The fear, and horror, on her face is heartbreaking. Her foot is raised, her body slightly canted, on the verge of darting, fleeing.

  The only thing still moving is me.

  Fuck slow time potions.

  “Kumiko!” I grab her arm. The air around her warps. Her body vibrates, so violently that for a moment I think I’ve done something very wrong.

  She stumbles back a step, and I hold her up, keep her from backing into the fire. “Kumiko!”

  She shakes her head, turns to me. “What…Lir, what -”

  I shove the marble into her hand. “Run! Just run!”

  I hold up the astratempus. It ticks now with a sharp warning, the arrow flinching like its stuck. still ticking away the seconds of our salvation. “We’re almost out of time. Take it to the roots.”

  She’s gone before I finish the last word.

  Have to love a decisive woman. I rake the red marble from the coals. It’s cool.

  I run from the camp.

  Who knows how long we have. I tuck the marbles in my chest piece and mount my horse. He animates, bucks.

  “Shh...just me. It’s just me.”

  I expect him to fuss. He flies before I have the reins. North, the way I’d meant to go.

  I’m a sound rider, which is fucking lucky because I need a free hand.

  Grey.

  Please, please let this work.

  I hold the marble high, the wind from our breakneck pace streaming past. I raise it higher, praying to every god I can think of.

  Nothing.

  Fuck.

  Storm….storm.

  The pass.

  I hold it up as we cross the bridge and align with the waterfall’s pass at least a mile off.

  The stone vibrates in my grip. I almost lose it. Light bursts beneath its surface, turning it a milky translucent. somehow tinged with grey.

  Yes! Three down.

  I toss it back in my bag as we reach the trees. The horse slows, but not much, weaving between the ancient wood like its brought aspirants here a thousand times before. For all I know, it has.

  But not like this. I’m not dying here.

  Inside my armor the astratempus snaps. Time drags to a start. Starlings spring to life, winging low. The lake ahead laps gently.

  Behind us, a roar, of rage so absolute that a tiny, animal part of my mind quails.

  Please, please tell me Kumiko made it.

  We draw up at the edge of the water, and I dismount, hand already in the bottomless bag.

  Blue marble.

  I kneel, hope, and dunk the marble.

  Nothing.

  “Come on, come on.” I repeat it like a prayer, shake the marble below the surface. Still nothing.

  In the distance, I hear Fenrir.

  The marble still doesn’t glow. Desperate, I cast about. There has to be a way. What was the clue?

  Breath of a fish.

  Shit. It’s not the water. It’s something in the water.

  I wade deeper, trying to hurry without disturbing anything below the surface, chase it away.

  Turns out I don’t have to worry about that. F
ish swarm me. They’re as long as my arm, like eels, with strange white markings that pulse as they undulate around my legs.

  They look like predators, dangerous. They froth around me, hugging my legs, and the pain is immediate. Not intense, but burning, and I wonder if they’re poisoning me. One bites, and another, shredding the flesh of my legs with wire teeth. The pain is intense, but I’m upright. Finna and Freya’s gifts fighting the toxin.

  I’m afraid I’m going to lose a finger, or three, but I plunge the marble down regardless, desperate.

  Bubbles created by the eels run across my fingers, the marble.

  Blue flame and light, instant and incandescent.

  That’s four.

  Before I can pull the marble free a fish latches to my wrist. My body can’t keep up. Pain and poison buckle my knees. Grabbing it by the tail, I rip. It takes a chunk of my flesh but I’m free.

  Or not.

  Blood spattering against the water sends the others into a greater frenzy. They ripple around me, twist at my ankles. I try to run for the shore but can’t lift my legs. I throw the blue marble into my bag on the cusp of submerging.

  No. Not when we’re so close.

  My blade is in my hand, and I swing through the water in broad strokes. I halve the eel-fish in great swaths, and their blood is like ink, dying the water as they perish.

  But it’s not enough. There are so many, and they pile over each other. Their teeth gnaw at my leathers, and the burning in my legs grows. Finna’s gift isn’t enough, not when it’s ten and then twenty, all pouring poison into my veins.

  I’m fucked if I don’t escape.

  I try, one last time, to lurch for the shore. But their weight is too much, and I fall to my knees, instead, my momentum arrested.

  I’ve failed. Everything I’ve done, all that I’ve been through, undone by some gods damned fish.

  The eels leap from the water, and I bat them away, my blade in my hand, but it’s not enough. I’m being dragged under.

  And then, she saves me.

  Kumiko arrives like a cannonball, plowing a furrow through the water that sends it cascading upward on each side of her. She angles herself as she enters the water, wrapping her arms around me. Her impact rips me from the lake, drags us up the shore. I feel ribs crack, snap where her arm wraps my torso.

  But I’m free.

  I lurch to my feet, pulling Kumiko with me. The most tenacious of the eels still cling to my leathers, and I shake them off, wincing as each movement sends waves of agony to my brain.

  Kumiko stands as I do, still clinging to me. She’s panting, holds a hand up to my face.

  A brown marble, glowing like a dark star, rests in her palm. I grab it up. “How much time?” she pants.

  I don’t have to look at the astratempus. “Less than ten minutes.”

  She closes her eyes. “Dammit. I hoped...Oh, how I hoped.”

  I shake her gently. “Not over yet. Not over.”

  She leans up, kisses me on the lips. A quick press of her flesh that lights me on fire, inside. I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t believe me, thinks we’ve lost.

  He’s coming.

  She pushes me away.

  Fenrir bears down on her. Kumiko doesn’t move, doesn’t flee. Time slows to honey as her eyes lock on mine.

  Kumiko knew she would be caught, would die again if she saved me from the lake. And she did it anyway.

  Ten minutes, and I will not fucking fail her.

  I think of the astratempus, how much time has passed since I last looked at it. “Last cycle,” I call, even as Fenrir’s jaws close around her and pierce her soul.

  Her scream guts me. She evaporates.

  I don’t wait, don’t watch the wolf vanish. Before I’ve mounted the horse, Freya’s healing knits my ribs, the wounds to my legs, and Finna eradicates the poison. The horse obeys my will without a single command. We fly back to the camp, because that’s where all of this started, and I know that’s where it will end.

  Only one riddle on the wall has yet to change from pale red to golden.

  Thread of the Delivered.

  “Thread. Thread…” From her clothes? I haven’t delivered Kumiko from anything so far. From myself? The tent? Think.

  I stare, at nothing, at everything out ahead of me, feeling time tick away. At the gorgon face with its hollow black eye sockets. They hold a strange terror, for being nothing more than empty spaces. Maybe because they remind me so much of the draugr, of Helreginn.

  Those last moments, Helreginn’s hand around my neck, choking the life from me. Memory that invades my mind as I stare at the gorgon.

  Thank Heijl for the spider.

  Spider. Thread of the delivered.

  “Please. Fuck, please…” I gently pat my leathers like I haven’t fought, fallen, rolled, and nearly drowned. A hundred things that would have crushed an even bigger creature.

  I tap my finger at the bend of my elbow. She trundles out from the fur band of my chest piece. I can’t understand how she survived it all, can’t believe my luck. The spider waits, legs trilling slowly, brimming with industriousness. I hold out the chalky black marble. The little spider hurries over to it, back legs looping and weaving. Her web lines its rounded face and the marble glows a bright onyx.

  I have to choke back a sob of gratitude. “You might be the most magical creature of all,” I tell her as she zips up my chest. She stops at the chain of the astratempus and raises her front legs a few times. To communicate something, to get my attention. Then she disappears over my shoulder and into my pack.

  What is it? I have mere minutes left to figure out what to do with these orbs. There’s no time to solve another riddle. I pluck the timekeeper free. It comes loose faster than I expected. I fumble and nearly drop it, grab with both hands.

  Its outer ring, the sleeve disk that holds the device together, slides around the face like it was made to do this. For a second my particles feel separate, insubstantial and the world isn’t a place or a time. It’s a bright white vacuum that is only as big as I am, and goes on forever, all at once.

  Then my feet are on the stones. The camp surrounds me and the air is once again pregnant with terrible anticipation. But the arrow hand of the astratempus sits ten minutes higher on the face than it did a second ago.

  I have added a boon to the astratempus.

  Fuck yes.

  Ten minutes to solve the puzzle and the realm, but not ten minutes until Kumiko and Fenrir appear.

  Six marbles. I roll them together. Nothing. Touch them to the riddles- all of which glow golden- to no result. No altars or containers reveal themselves.

  The spider. The eyes. I run for the columns.

  Each face has an open mouth and two eyes. Six openings. This has to be it. Which orbs go where?

  I should have paid more attention to my lessons.

  Gorgon. Kiss of a Goddess seems easy. Does it matter which opening? Mouth seems logical, so in goes the green marble. A residual green glow radiates out, but nothing happens to reassure me.

  Breath of a fish? I set the blue stone in the gorgon’s eye. It dulls and winks out.

  “No! No, fuck.” I poke my finger into the tiny opening and rake the marble free. It lights again.

  Shadows tip and draw like the change of a high-noon sun.

  Fuck me. Think harder. Roots of a mountain.

  He’s coming. The air stills and thickens.

  Mountain. Stone. This time it glows.

  The gorgon’s bitterness and spite. Spit of hell.

  Sparkles blow across me on a sudden breeze.

  A mechanism clicks, and the gorgon’s tongue raises.

  Now the mortal. I run for the other pillar. Sound of a storm for the mouth. The face lets out a hiss before I’ve added marbles to the eyes.

  Kumiko appears. Her eyes lock with mine.

  “Run.” I drop the last two marbles into the eye sockets.

  She looks exhausted, confused. Maybe disbelieving.

  �
�Run! Run!”

  Fenrir rears up behind her.

  “Just jump! Jump the columns!”

  She makes a single bound no mortal could hope to manage, and Fenrir still has her heel in his mouth.

  I hold my breath, wondering if I failed. I crank the astratempus. Nothing. There won’t be time to try again.

  Kumiko clears the columns at the peak of her arc.

  One face hisses. A cloud of gossamer mist billows between the columns and only between them. No wind or motion disturbs it.

  Fenrir lunges. The mist solidifies, thickens. He strikes it. The columns strain, crack. The mist becomes bulging strands, a net. It envelops him, and he falls to the path with an impact that topples the stone posts, leaving them in chunks. I dodge back as a hail of ivory chunks rains down around me. When the marble dust clears, at first, I think he’s gone.

  I look to Kumiko. She’s gone, too, nearly out of sight at a far bend in the path before she realizes he isn’t behind her.

  Daring closer, I hear the whimpers before I see him.

  Fenrir is a wolf. A plain wolf, the wiry sort who haunt the timberline.

  Kumiko skids to a stop, creeping close, trembling with a fear that can’t be diminished by safety or size.

  Then she turns to me, throws her arms around my neck.

  “Oh! Oh.” I put my arm around her waist. “Whew, in those last few seconds-”

  She rips free and my blades go with her. Kumiko whirls and plunges them both into Fenrir.

  A yelp splits the air, and he’s silent. She stands like that a moment, blades deep in Fenrir’s body, before she shrieks. In it, I hear all her fear, her torment, and her rage. She stabs the blades downward, again and again with feral noises

  Then she’s silent, but the wet grit of steel over bone and blood goes on for a long minute, until I grab her back, her arm, and finally tear her away.

  Kumiko falls to her knees, panting, blades abandoned in the grass.

  I don’t know what to say. The others lived mostly in their own realm, mostly undisturbed, even when an aspirant appeared. Kumiko’s whole world is a nightmare for the entirety of a solstice.

  Her long soft ears cradle her face like hands beneath her cottony tumble of hair. Her shoulders heave; with panting, or tears? I’m not sure. I move closer, wanting to comfort her.