Fragments of your Soul (The Mirror Worlds Book 1)

  The second demon leaped snarling at her, but her evasive movement came a moment too late. The body of the beast rammed her shoulder like an iron weight and flung her to the ground. She cried out in pain and tried to get back on her feet, but the demon was already over her and slammed her to the ground again. Her head crashed into something hard under the snow, and for a moment the red glowing eyes and bared teeth blurred in front of her.

  Suddenly the crushing weight of the demon was violently torn from her. Panting and still dazed from the pain, she sat up and saw Nod pressing the demon on the ground with his paws and attacking it with claws and teeth.

  Arvid looked around and realized that the battle was almost over. Some of the demons had apparently fled. The ground was littered with motionless, black bodies.

  Then she discovered Loke and froze. He was surrounded by three of the demons. One of them was of a kind which Arvid had never seen before. He towered over Loke, at least three times his height. At this very moment Loke stabbed one of the smaller demons down with his dagger, but the huge beast diagonally behind him simultaneously reached out with a huge, clawed paw.

  “Loke!” shouted Arvid. She started to run, but she knew she had no chance to reach him in time. With all her might she broke away from the current of time. The movements of the demons became slow, as if they were moving through thick syrup. Loke wasn’t influenced by this effect, but to Arvid’s desperation, he made no move to avoid the deadly slash. The almost arm-long, razor-sharp claws would hit him directly in the back.

  Then Loke’s body dissolved into nothingness. At the same moment his figure appeared behind the second of the smaller demons. With a single, violent thrust of his dagger, he pierced its head as if it were an apple.

  Arvid was so surprised that she paused and felt herself getting pulled back into the normal flow of time. The next moment she was blinded by an incredibly bright light and screamed. She closed her eyes and turned away, then she heard a deafening roar. It turned into a shrill, tormented shriek, and then there was sudden silence.

  Arvid was panting heavily. With tearful eyes she tried to blink away the black spots before them. Her ears dinned and rang.

  When her vision slowly cleared again, she saw a huge, black shape directly in front of her. Arvid was seized by sheer horror when she realized what it was, but at the same moment the demon attacked. Arvid could neither scream nor move. She stared petrified at the huge, wide-open jaws that hurtled directly towards her.

  Hardly an arm’s length away from her the black body burst with a loud, roaring noise. Hot, wet chunks of meat smacked down on her, and something hard scraped painfully over her cheek.

  For a moment she felt paralyzed. When she finally looked up, she saw Loke standing in front of her and slowly lowering his hand.

  “Lost track of that one,” he said.

  Arvid looked at him in disbelief. She was shaking all over and had to try with a vengeance not to laugh out loud and hysterical. She looked down at herself and felt an intense feeling of nausea came over her. Black, sticky blood and crushed pieces of meat stuck to her clothes and emitted a nauseating stench. Something warm dripped from her chin, but she wasn’t sure whether it was the blood of the demon or her own.

  “Come.” Loke held out a hand, similarly soiled with black blood. Arvid grabbed it and let him pull her to her feet, but she was still trembling violently. With all her might she fought back the emerging nausea and tried not to pay attention to the overwhelming stench. She looked at Loke, who studied her critically. His eyes were moss green. His fiery red hair hung from his head in long, tangled strands, and his freckled face had also gotten a few splatters of blood.

  The feeling of nausea and dizziness was unbearable. Arvid tried to concentrate on Loke, but it didn’t really help.

  He was out of breath but seemed uninjured. His slender figure was entirely covered by black cloth, and with this last observation Arvid finally gave up and threw up right in front of his feet.

  Loke’s house wasn’t far away, but in retrospect Arvid realized she would never have found it on her own. It wasn’t a real house. After she had dragged herself to the eastern edge of the plateau, Loke led them to a cave entrance in the ground that was hidden between several giant boulders and only became visible when they stood right in front of it.

  Arvid couldn’t tell how many steps they had descended into the depths, but the way seemed endless. She caught a glimpse of a large, brightly lit cave, but Loke went on downstairs to an underground stream that gathered in natural stone basins of different sizes, and then disappeared somewhere in the darkness. On the ceiling of the semicircular cave hung a strange mist that seemed to glow from the inside and dipped the front of the room in a mild, greenish light.

  “Over there you’ll find cloth,” Loke said now, pointing to a promontory. These were the first words he had said since they had left the battlefield. Addressing Arvid, he continued, “You can also wash your clothes here. They’ll quickly dry again at the fire upstairs.”

  He knelt down beside one of the stone basins and washed his hands and face. Then he turned around without another word and left her alone. Nod paced back and forth along the water, hobbling again since the fight. Arvid hesitated, too.

  Down here it was warmer than on the plateau, but still cold. Although Arvid’s clothes were sticky and smelled disgusting, the idea to undress in this cold was anything but tempting.

  Eventually Nod lowered his muzzle into the water and began to drink. Arvid watched him for a while, then stripped off her clothes and threw them in one of the smallest pools. It took all her willpower to slide into the cold water. When she finally did, it felt as if icy hands squeezed the air out of her lungs. The cold stung into her skin like needles. Trembling violently, she scooped up water in her face and forced herself to wash her sticky hair. As soon as she had washed off blood and dirt, she quickly climbed to dry ground and covered herself in cloth from head to toe. Compared to the freezing cold of the water the fabric felt almost hot, but only for a moment.

  With chattering teeth she knelt down in order to also free her clothes from dirt. When she was finished, she wrapped everything in a cloth and quickly climbed the cold stone steps, closely followed by Nod, who had mostly remained dry.

  In the lighted cave her feet were caressed by soft, warm fur and carpets that almost covered the entire floor and piled up in several niches in the walls. Here it was much warmer. Amazed, Arvid let her gaze wander through the vast, domed room. It seemed like a part of a palace and its highest point must have been five or six meters high. In the center hung an opulent cluster of mild glowing star lamps over a cup-shaped water basin. They lit up all the walls evenly.

  Loke was nowhere to be seen. Nod sank exhaustedly down on the furs in a corner while Arvid went on after a moment’s hesitation. First she discovered massive, richly decorated wooden chests. Where the walls were not covered by bookshelves, large, ornately embroidered tapestries hung. On one side there was a semicircular niche with a dark wooden desk. Opposite was another open passage.

  Arvid turned around her own axis. Except for the distant murmur of water and the occasional bright sound of water drops everything was quiet. She was still freezing. Even though she was firmly wrapped in cloth, she felt naked and vulnerable in this foreign environment.

  “Loke?” she called hesitantly. She waited, but got no reply.

  When she turned around, she was suddenly facing an unfamiliar shape and jerked so violently that she almost dropped her bundle of clothes.

  “Come along,” the figure said simply.

  As Arvid’s eyes met his, she realized that it was Loke. He was taller, blond and of indeterminate sex.

  “Damn, do you have to scare me like that?” she hissed and remembered that she was supposed to be mad at him, after all he had said to her earlier.

  “No,” he repli
ed dryly, “but I admit it has its charm.”

  Arvid didn’t know what to say to that, so she just sighed and followed him through the passage into the next room. It was smaller and even warmer, which was due to the flames that blazed in a round fireplace on the far wall. The floor was bare and cold. In addition to a table there was a meter-long, low rock niche that was richly furnished with cushions and skins and probably served as a sort of bench.

  Without a word Loke took the bundle of clothes from her hands and spread the contents carefully before the fire on the ground.

  “So?” he said encouragingly.

  “So what?”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “I’ve already told you,” Arvid said. She sounded irritated, but after the last few hours, it was difficult to put on a good face. Every muscle in her body ached, she felt tired and exhausted, and her feet were numb from the cold.

  “Oh, right, someone wanted to hurt you,” Loke said with mock sympathy, but Arvid immediately noticed that he was still angry. “At least that’s what you imagined. Or has Nod fooled you into this nonsense?” He snorted. “The gods wanted to take you to Asgard, nothing more. I would have gotten you out of there, without you almost getting yourself killed!” He smoothed the last garment out and rose again.

  “Oh, but of course, it was all so obvious,” snarled Arvid. “Should I just go along, hope for the best and wait for the day you show up and save me like… like a prince?” She walked over to the alcove and sat down with a jerk.

  Loke looked at her intently. “And so you summarily decide to escape, all alone, unprepared and through a country you don’t know. After all I had told you, you really thought I would just wait idly if the other gods really wanted to kill you?”

  “You mean I should have trusted you blindly? The god of lies and chaos—how the hell could I ever trust you?”

  “I never gave you any reason not to trust me!”

  “But the rest of the world out there!” Arvid flared up. “What was I supposed to do? Let them lock me up and wait for the day I’m of use to you and you decide to help me? When would that have been, in one year, in two?”

  “What are two years? Your skills could have developed in peace, but instead you run out there completely unprepared and almost get yourself killed by demons!”

  “Two years are a decade in my world!” shouted Arvid.

  “Who cares if you’re dead?” Loke yelled at her so loudly that Arvid held her breath in shock.

  He glared at her, his eyes burning with anger, then his gaze suddenly wandered to the door. There was a growl. As Arvid turned her head, she saw Nod standing there, hackles raised and teeth bared. His green cat’s eyes were wide and fixed on Loke, whose stance relaxed. He breathed out audibly, but his face still showed extreme tension.

  “Calm down, Nod, it’s not like I would kill her,” he hissed.

  Nod actually calmed down, and Arvid breathed deeply in relief. Quietly cursing, Loke went to the other side of the stone bench and sat down. His appearance had changed in the course of their dispute and was now clearly male. His body had become bolder, his shoulders appeared broader, but his hair was still as blond as straw.

  Nod stood in the doorway for a moment, then he trotted over to Arvid and laid down across her bare feet. His fur was wonderfully warm.

  Arvid would have liked to ask Loke why Nod was still in this form and if it was true that he could no longer change back, but after what had just happened, she had inhibitions. She leaned back and closed her eyes. A soothing warmth and heaviness spread through her body. Although she still heard Loke quietly ranting and raving, she felt, for the first time in days, perfectly safe.

  The Month of Diligence

  Several days passed without any special incidents. Loke was mostly taciturn and repellent. Often he disappeared for many hours without Arvid knowing where he was, although she had explored the caves and found other rooms. Some were used as storerooms; others contained jumbled collections of items, boxes and sacks or carelessly piled books and scrolls.

  Nod kept her company at the beginning, but after a while he looked for a place by the fire, which he didn’t leave again. Arvid soon realized that he was in pain. It came from the injury he had suffered in the battle against the demons south of Beram’s yard. It was a nondescript little bite that had obviously inflamed. The fur around it was wet and gave off an unpleasant odor.

  Arvid didn’t know much about such things, but when on the morning of the fourth day she found Nod cramped and shivering before the fire, she couldn’t stand it any longer and went to search for Loke.

  She didn’t find him in the main cave and not in one of the smaller cavities either. Her calls went unanswered. As she stood on the stairs, the distant noise of water came to her ear. She hesitated a moment and then began to walk down the stone steps. The floor was cold and damp. As Arvid reached the cave with natural stone basins, her teeth already chattered with cold again.

  At first she thought that no one was here, but then she saw a movement in the dark and heard a bright ripple.

  “What do you want?”

  The voice was full and deep, yet undoubtedly female. Arvid saw a naked, long-haired figure rise from one of the back pools, back turned to her. Its skin was of a strange grayish-silver color, that wasn’t only due to the peculiar light of the cave. Her matted hair was almost the same color. She looked so strange that Arvid took a moment to respond.

  “Are you… Loke?” she said haltingly.

  The woman had now turned around to her. She was clearly not human, because she towered over Arvid, almost twice as high. Her features were angular, the lips narrow and dark. Her eyes were like shining, gray pools, in whose middle pitch-black irises swam. She no longer had to answer. Arvid knew immediately that she was in fact Loke. As strange as she looked, her eyes betrayed him immediately.

  “Of course I’m Loke,” he said, amused. “Have you come to keep me company?” He pointed to the icy water that played around his legs.

  Arvid shuddered at the mere thought. “No,” she said, shivering, “I need your help.”

  “Oh, something new,” said Loke. “I thought you’d never ask.” He threw his hair back, which stuck in wet strands on his stone-gray skin, and climbed over the edge of the pool.

  Loke had a knack for irritating her, but she swallowed her anger and continued, “Nod is not doing well. He is in pain. I think the wound on his leg is inflamed.”

  “Possibly,” Loke said, now climbing out of the water completely. “Demon bites can be quite disgusting. They often become inflamed.”

  Arvid instinctively took a step back before his gigantic figure. “Can you help him?”

  Loke chuckled, grabbed a towel and began to dry himself with it. Arvid shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, trying not to stare.

  “I may be many things,” Loke said, “but I’m not a healer. Nod has to deal with several problems. The wound may be the smallest.”

  “He can’t change back.”

  “Yes,” Loke confirmed and turned to Arvid, who took another step back.

  Loke seemed to sense her insecurity, because for a moment a gloating grin appeared on his face. Nevertheless, his shape suddenly became smaller and his hair a little darker. His eyes suddenly appeared clear and human.

  “Switching between similar shapes is easy,” he said, “but taking the form of an animal requires some experience and control. If one lacks this, it can be very dangerous. Under normal circumstances, Nod would never have dared. Something has probably driven him to do it.”

  Arvid, who felt a little more comfortable in the face of Loke’s new form, knew exactly what that had been. “He was very scared,” she remembered, thinking of her escape from Vero-Maghen and their failed plan. She had not seen what exactly had happened, but nevertheless
it was clear that Nod had been cornered.

  “That’s very likely,” Loke said contemptuously and wrapped himself in a black cloth robe. “Nod has always been a coward.”

  “Nod is no coward,” Arvid said sharply. “A coward would never have helped me.”

  “Oh yes, he would,” Loke said coolly. “I had ordered him to do so. He’s not good for much, but at least he is obedient.”

  Arvid bit back the angry comment on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t want to start another dispute. Silently she followed Loke upstairs.

  “I don’t get it,” she admitted, when they reached the main cave. “Why can’t he return to human shape, when he has managed to transform into an animal?”

  “My goodness, are you really that dull-witted?”

  “What if I am?”

  “All right, I’ll tell you.” Loke dropped into the seat niche and put his feet up against the wall. “The reconversion from animal to human is just as challenging as the original transformation into an animal. That alone makes it difficult, at least for Nod. His capabilities are limited.”

  “But he studied at Vero-Maghen.”

  Loke made a derogatory sound and picked up a book that had been lying next to him. “That doesn’t make you more talented,” he said. “The transformation required all of Nod’s willpower—as a human. Now he has an animal form. His animal instincts and impulses will be difficult to suppress, which severely limits his mental control.”

  Arvid had settled on the edge of the niche, but kept a safe distance to Loke. “I thought that shapeshifters only change their appearance,” she said. “Is he really an animal? I mean… completely?”