“My eye?” the All Father flinched. “Who in the Ever After would ever ask for such a thing?”
“It’s a simple request. Either I have your eye and you gain our site, or you may never know what your actions have caused.”
The All Father rubbed his hands on his robe and took a deep breath. “Alright.” He nodded woodenly.
“You seem uncertain about this, All Father,” Skuld said, easing forward through the wyrd.
“You’re asking for an eye,” he responded incredulously.
“An eye for an eye,” she responded. If she was gaining any pleasure from his discomfort, the All Father couldn’t tell.
The All Father reached up to his eye. His fingers were cold where the tips touched his lids. He looked steadily at Skuld, knowing this would be the last time he saw out of that eye. His hand began to shake, but this was something that had to be done. He had to know what damage his disobedience caused.
He huffed out a deep breath and plunged his fingers into his socket. His fingers sank into the warm, wet cavern of his eye socket, and as if nothing was holding it in place, his eye popped free of its confines. Blood tricked down his cheek and there was a strange moment where the All Father was looking down out of that one eye where it dangled against his face.
His hands shook and his body responded in turn. His chest rose and fell frantically in erratic breaths from the pain and the disorientating feeling his double vision brought on. He reached into the folds of his white robe, smearing blood over the ink stains, and pulled out a knife. Before he could think about what he was doing, the All Father cut the tendons and veins free, allowing his eye to fall into the Well of Wyrding.
He cried out in pain. His hands began to shake and the knife slipped out of his wet grip. It sunk beneath the surface of the wyrd like it was falling through mud. Like his tear before, the blood didn’t mix with the wyrd, only trailed deeper and deeper into the murky depths.
The silver wyrd held his eye steady, not allowing it to sink like the knife did. The bloody organ bobbed up and down on ripples of wyrd.
“Yes,” Skuld said, reaching up to his empty socket. Blood bloomed between her fingers as her hand closed over the wound. “Now your eye is dead. It’s a sleeping eye. While your waking eye is alive in the sky, darklings will be weaker. But when the sleeping eye dominates the night, then the nine worlds will know fear, for you won’t be able to see what is coming in the night, and you won’t be able to protect them.”
The All Father said nothing. Though she had healed his eye, the pain of his loss still slithered through his head with fiery intensity. He groaned through his teeth, barely hearing what she said.
“Now,” Skuld said. “You may see what we see.” She dipped a finger into the wyrd and when she removed it, a sparkling drop of wyrd clung to her long nail. She held it up to the All Father. “Just a drop will do.”
He leaned down toward her finger, and opened his mouth. The drop of wyrd fell upon his tongue. A taste like honey and rain flooded his mouth, and suddenly his surroundings vanished.
He existed in the void. Around him were stars and darkness. Beneath him the Tree at Eget Row. Around the tree the rainbow road of Eget Row ran like a web, streets reaching out to doorways to all of the nine worlds.
It was something he’d seen many times before from his room in the Ever After. But this time it was different. This time there was a darkness on the road. A darkness that slithered and writhed over the cobbles of Eget Row like a perverse snake. The shadows reached out, and pulled themselves along the rainbow road, seeking out new homes.
As the All Father watched, he became aware of doorways splintering, cracking and allowing the darkness into the worlds. The fabric that kept Eget Row safely away from the nine worlds and allowed Heimdall to police the expanse of the void and protect the nine worlds, was crumbling.
The darkness reared up before one such broken door, and like a cloud of charred smoke, it slipped through the fissures and into the world.
“No!” the All Father cried out, coming back to himself. He looked at Skuld with his one whole eye.
“Yes. Your hatred for the darklings have called them from their hiding places. Your disobedience of the laws that govern the void has given power equal to the darklings as you created when you made Boran. There must always be a balance. If there is absolute good, there has to be an absolute bad.”
Over the rise of the hill, Anthros called again.
“I have to stop it.” The All Father’s eye was rooted on that crest of hill with hid the monsterous wolf from site. He was bound to a root of the great tree at Eget Row that rested within the Well of Wyrding. Anthros was bound by a silvery strand of thread, wyrded like the strongest steal. He’d never escape without the power of a god to help him and the darkling gods weren’t able to enter Eget Row, not with Heimdall standing guard.
“I’ve already told you what I thought would help.” Skuld told him.
“Is that certain? If I do what you suggest and seek the aid of Surt, will that purge the darklings from the nine worlds?”
“I thought you would have learned by now, purging the darklings from the nine worlds is what got you into this mess. They can never be purged, but if you lessen your power, it stands to reason theirs will lessen as well.”
“Then that’s what I must do,” the All Father said. He gazed with his one eye off in the distance where he could see the fires of Muspelheim burning like a cancerous plague in the void. “I must go to Surt.”
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About Travis
Travis Simmons was kicked out of magic school for his refusal to study and his penchant for mundane activities like cooking. While selling his sword he stumbled upon dogs that he wrongly thought were magical and imagined he could commune with them. After a vicious zombie attack in which witches helped him push back the undead horde, Travis found himself apprenticed to a necromancer.
Afraid that winter was coming, Travis tucked into his magical studies, but always chased his dreams of writing tales science fiction tales and fantasy stories where he could explore his wild imagination about life on other planets. Adamant that Travis learn the esoteric ways of the occult his master made his life a horror of practice and studies. But no matter how he tried, he could never conquer Travis' questing mind.
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