Beneath plant decay the ground runs in narrow heaves and swells. Branches. The top-most iridescent feeder branches of Yggdrasil, so massive that this lake must be a single raindrop cradled in one of its leaves.
Something shoots past my ear, bright and quick like a spear, glinting like metal. Another. I still completely and watch. There are small creatures, worms and minnows that flit about, following simple-minded survival routines. Whatever these are, they’re different. What passes by me is fish-like, but undeniably predatory. Their heads are more like beaks ringed in a lion’s mane of bony, metallic barbs. Six black eyes cluster the center of its sleek head as another body the size of my arm sailing past. There must be a score of them, and through Theriss’s gift I can sense more beyond my range of vision. I don’t dare move yet, don’t want to stumble into one. Instead, like the guards on the wall, I study them for a pattern.
It’s not long before I’m rewarded. Over and over, they shoot out in a corona toward the shore, then back toward the dark center of the lake in a cycle. They possess an aura similar to the water creatures of Kumiko’s realm. But they are not unaware, not dull like the lake fish around us. They’re hunting, and down here at a depth where the wall guards can’t see or reach, I don’t have any question what the fish search for.
My feet find bare purchase on the loamy bottom, and I take my first step. A bile-colored cloud of decay plumes around me. Fish turn, fly in my direction. They dart through the particles, examining, suspicious. One cuts between my knees. Another misses my shoulder. Do they know I’m here? I don’t think they can openly sense me thanks to Finna, but they still seem to know. I’m not dealing with creatures of the natural world. Everything here is of the gods, the Æsir, the nine realms. Even the Bifrost; it should pass through water. It should pass anywhere. But water caught between branches of the World Tree reject the astral bridge. Mortal rules don’t apply; this more than anything is probably what Crispin wanted me to understand. It’s not how I fight from this point on that will damn or save me.
It’s how I think.
Branches thicken and twine out like tangled roots, mounding higher and forcing me to churn the lake bed with trudging steps. Sentinel fish become a cyclone around me, agitated by what they know is there but can’t see.
My boot lodges in a knot, stumbling me into detritus. Silver and sparks envelope me; I can feel their furious thrashing and the tremble of energy-charged scales through my paper-thin layer of slime. It’s saved me so far, but I feel my luck’s running thin. Hunched between two branch tips higher than my head, I wait. Hold my breath, focus with Meridiana’s power and Theriss’s; sense the fish and subtly will them away.
The largest one glides past my nose, pivots a body nearly as long as mine with dangerous grace, and bobs a hair from my face, fins rippling like silver lace. Its hollow black pupil telescopes, eyes rolling, searching. It knows. It hasn’t proved it yet but it knows I’m here. I close my eyes to shut out its hungry persistence.
But it doesn’t leave. I can sense my will having an effect on them, but it’s not enough, not yet. The monster in front of me undulates, closing on me.
It’s too close. I can see, even in the dim light, the fine detail of its barbed teeth, terrifying blades that looks like they’d tunnel right through me.
I brace, and when it’s close enough, I raise my finger to its head, as fast as I dare, praying to every God I can remember. When it touches me, there’s a split second where it begins to dart, sensing victory, before I ignite Etain’s fire. Just a tiny burst, almost invisible to anyone who’s not me. The heat is tremendous, boiling the water instantly, taking its head with it. It thrashes, once, as muscle memory hangs on longer than it’s liquified brain, before it stills and sinks to the bottom of the lake.
I crouch, every part of me screaming to move, to run, but I fight it, watching. Will more follow? Did the others sense the disturbance?
After a moment, the whole sterling and pewter school turns on its axis and shoots away, retreating back into the deepest, blackest waters of the lake. I’d breathe a sigh of relief if I wasn’t underwater.
Still, I wait, time their progress. The second they disappear from view I thrust and launch myself from the bottom, flowing up and over the next branch in awful slow motion. My landing is soft, but the floor puffs like dust in a gale.
Instinct tells me to run, run from the plume, the evidence, but that will leave a trail, one that these things know how to follow. I hold again and wait. The school flies into view like a rain of arrows, piercing the lake’s breadth in seconds. They zig-zag their way back to the starting point, patrolling. But not on the same path. Their eerie regularity and precision was obvious from the start, but as I crouch and watch their progress disappearing, emerging, I see a change. They shift further to my left on each pass, like the hand on a cathedral clock passing minute after minute. Unlike a clock, their starting point isn’t the lake’s center. The lake is made like one half of an oyster shell and its guards begin their path closer to the north shore, the deepest, narrowest portion. The school’s path is like spokes in a lady’s fan, rays arcing from the center.
If I wait another pass or two...there won’t be much time since they don’t patrol in a full circle, but it could be enough.
Kumiko’s presence vibrates in my thoughts with nervous energy. And something else. Danger?
Impatience. She’s ready to go, ready to run.
Me too.
I count off the seconds. As predicted the sentinels don’t reappear. It’s now or never.
I climb over the next branch with slow, buoyant limbs. It’s the last, at least for as far as I can see. The lake bed stretches ahead flat and rippling under a constant but mellow current.
My trudge is a balance of urgency and caution. I don’t really know when the fish will return, or if they’re alone.
Threads of green light dance through the water, quickly becoming thick ribbons. Overhead there’s no hint of their origins, only the molten-silver puddle of a moon far above. But the Bifrost is close now; the lake rejects and betrays it to me.
Footing becomes less certain; I throw my arms wide for ballast down a shallow slope. Water around me glows now like green daylight, dense as Kumiko’s last breath at the gates. Her words, about it shredding me to pieces, are vivid in my mind, but I feel no resistance. It’s just a reflection. This is what I tell myself when the lake floor abruptly ends, plunging in a sheer cliff into a place where no light, not even that of the Æsir, can penetrate.
I can swim. It’s not as though I’m jumping off this cliff into thin air, but I may as well be. A cold current of water radiates from the depths like a winter breeze and the ledge extends as far as I can see in both directions. I sense the depth of the trench by what I can’t see and a primitive mortal core of my being feels terror. If I’m wounded, hindered, disabled in any way above this abyss, I’m not sure all the abilities I possess can save me.
The school is coming. I feel it as much as see it, shapes in my mind built of rippling hot and cold colors, Theriss’ gift of inner sight.
It’s now or never. I push off into the nothingness. Water around me thickens, dense, and clinging to my limbs. Its frigid dampness permeates the slime. It chills my skin and flows into my mouth, leaving me cold at my core. Maybe it’s Bifrost or maybe it’s just the water dragging me back. Either way, it doesn’t stop me. My feet till the darkness and evergreen light above is all that lends a true sense of direction, up and down.
A boulder rises from the abyss. I’d say mountain; its big as any of Freya’s realm, but its cragged surface is eroded by the gentle flow of time and water, its peak now domed. It stands in the water like an upside-down teardrop. My feet strike gritty bottom and I stop moving. For a moment after I pass the sentinels’ trajectory, I hang in the current and take it in. I don’t know when the scale and abilities of things in this world will grow commonplace, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The fish hurtle toward the stone with impossible mo
mentum and stop. As one, without warning or clumsiness. They simply freeze and arm’s length from the object.
A groove appears in the boulder’s face, then another on the domes’ far side. They part.
Pitch-colored eyes bulb from the slits, rolling with the languid pace of a creature so clever it doesn’t need to be fast to survive, to feed.
A branch at my feet constricts, clouding the water. It writhes like a sleeper adjusting their limbs in the night.
A tentacle. My breath seizes up as I realization hits. Those weren’t the branches of Yggdrasil I climbed. An octopus, which fills this lake; a lake in a drop of water in the branches of a tree that connects nine realms.
The fish conclude their silent report and fly off into the shadows. Their hulking watch commander closes its eyes again and nestles into the lake bed with a ripple so gentle I don’t feel a change in the current. A thin amount of lake soil puffs out around its head.
All is still and it becomes an inanimate geological feature once more.
I need a minute I don’t have to get my head around this. Kumiko is waiting; like everything else, I pack this away for later, when time and sanity feel more certain.
Land rises sharply now, meeting the shore in a series of rocky steppes. I hang on the last one and pull just my eyes clear of the surface.
The full moon casts almost everything as black, or white, with little distinction between shapes beyond their silhouettes.
The fortress is only a few yards away. Its foundations are set with archere at regular intervals, the openings pricked with metal-tipped spikes. Bolts, I realize, daring shoulders above the water. Not aimed up for the far shore. Not aimed straight ahead for enemy boats. Downward; their tips point into the lake - tips the size of an autumn hog.
I squint, and their shapes become clearer in the darkness. They’re not bolts; they’re harpoons. And I’m not safe just because I’ve reached the shore. I pull myself onto a spongy embankment, tuck, and roll into thick brush and don’t allow the slime to recede just yet.
The creature beneath the surface keeps the fortress protected by coincidence. Considering the relative newness of square stones framing the archere, visible when I crawl closer to the walls, I think the inhabitants found this out the hard way.
A shape flashes in my mind: Kumiko. She’s crouched in an archway beneath the bridge, back the way we came.
Boots tap the wall walk overhead. Pause, tap, pause.
Two figures. Silence between the guards is more telling than any words. A hand juts out between the crenellation, pointing to the lake’s slightly cloudy surface, visible in the moon’s reflection. They grunt; one set of boots hurries away. The other continues its slow progress along the perimeter, watching.
Look at the night sky. Watch the moon, the stars. Think of your bed and warm mead. I have no idea if my influence is working, but I will the guard to forget, to focus on other things. His companion is beyond my reach; the clock is officially ticking down.
I take a deep breath, draw taut and focus on Kumiko. I’m about to discover if my influence was a success. I move, as silently as I can, toward her. Every scrape of my knees on the soft loam, every soft clank of my armor sounds like thunder, and my journey of a few yards feels like it takes years.
But no bolt comes thundering from above, and no shouts raise from the wall. Finna’s slime recedes from my body, but I barely notice it, I’m so focused on the last guard’s presence. Inch by agonizing inch, I move, and still, there’s nothing to indicate that I’ve been discovered. I reach my destination and take my first breath since reaching the shore.
“They suspect something.” Kumiko crouches on a dollop of stone beneath the yawning archway, her voice stolen by the water’s urgent current so close to the waterfall.
“Aye to that,” I chuck a nod at the lake, “but we’re on the inside now.”
She smiles. “Hold your enthusiasm a bit longer. Something stirs beneath this bridge that could make trouble for us if it wished.”
“Something lives beneath that lake that could make trouble for every living thing present if it wished.”
Kumiko lifts a winged brow.
“Story for another time. Now we’re in, let’s see about getting up.”
We look up at a moon amputated by the bridge high above, measuring. Something pale and small like an egg winks back from the leg of an arch. “What is that?”
“Boost me up? I can jump and grab it.”
“I don’t know if you should. This bridge could be an enchanted bridge. Tug its eye out and all the hells pour forth. Or it could be the petite egg sac of a mammoth-sized spider. Or a necromancer’s spore pod. Or–”
“Lir.”
“Kumiko?”
“You and your imagination are turning me into a third cart wheel; boost me up so I can give you two a moment alone.”
“Kind of you,” I grunt , crouched while she settles long feet on my shoulders. The process is awkward but her weight is nothing. Standing is the easiest part. She bends, braces, and springs high, an effortless leap that barely staggers me.
“Oh – no!” she hisses, landing with slight pressure. “Once more. Almost had it…” Kumiko bounces again. Her whispered victory cheer precedes her landing beside me on the piling.
“Paper.” She holds out the crumpled wad.
Expensive paper. The sort my father used to write personal letters, the crisp line stone-polished to a light shine.
I smooth it open, angling to catch enough light for us to read. Lines, hooks, slashes. “I don’t know this language.”
Kumiko snatches the page from me. “Almost no one does.” She smooths the creases, reverent. “It’s the language of the Vanir.”
“You’re sure?” Of course she’s sure. She was a messenger for the gods of these realms. I just can’t fathom such a thing being here.
Kumiko skims. “The letter introduces itself to Kordram Sirus Blaloch.”
“Who wrote it?”
“No signature page. This must be one of the papers he lost when they tossed him over.”
“No. Look…” I trace the paper. “It’s crumpled.”
“He threw it over!”
“Likely when whatever he came to do here failed. Can you read it? What does it say?”
She squints, eyes deepening to ruby in the darkness. “Not all of it. I was brought from my realm by the Æsir because of my abilities. It’s their language I’m most familiar with. And this looks like one of the last pages of a longer letter…”
‘Svartr and Raudr fill the queen’s court equally, but that cannot last. Heimdallr lays his faith that you will tip the balance.’
“Heimdallr?” we whisper in unison. It’s nice to not be alone in my awe for a change.
“It makes sense,” I reason. “We’re at the foot of the Bifrost. If Akershus guards this side of the path to Himinbjorg, Heimdallr would have an interest in its defenses.”
“Was Blaloch here to serve or usurp?” asks Kumiko. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”
“Not to him, but it matters to me. I wonder, just how weighted are both pans of the scale?”
She looks up at the bridge. “Just one way to find out.” Kumiko crumples the letter again. “Nothing more I’m able to read, but I suspect plenty someone else could decipher.”
I tuck the paper away.
A stream of grit trickles from the arch above, a warning. Kumiko feels it, too. Something is restless and we’ve about worn out our stay.
“We’re both plenty capable of the climb, but I have a feeling there’ll be welcoming party at the top.”
“Too common,” I tease. “Too jewel thief.”
“Fly straight up to the tower?”
We start back along the defile. “Too obscure. If we just hop right inside no one will be impressed. I want saga-style heroic achievement.”
Kumiko elbows me. “As you wish, your grace.”
“Hush you.”
“I think it’s a bit reassuring,”
she whispers as we sidle along the fortress wall. “You know of Valhalla and Heimdallr, if not Odr. And I’ve never heard of Heijl yet I know Cerridwen, who you speak to in your prayers.”
“If Crispin has taught me anything, and he has, rather painfully at times, it’s the vastness of everything. Maeve’s trial showed me there are so many worlds and people, so many more than I ever imagined, each with their own realms and gods. And they travel.” I pause and try so hard to recall the man who came to my father’s court begging a horse, to reconcile him with Crispin. “Gods, people...they flow together.”
What I don’t say, but have chewed on since Blaloch’s letter, is if people and gods can move between the gates, so can prophecy, fate, and misfortune.
I look to the bridge above, the torches, catch a faint song of revelry. I’m the beggar beneath Loria’s docks; I have no fortune left to speak of. I’m the orphan peddling junk skimmed from the midden heaps, no family to guard my vulnerable years. A traveler shunted to the filthiest inns and seediest merchants for the odd sound of my dialect. Prophecy, fate, and misfortune have already flowed in. Standing on the pilings, looking up at the fortress’ enduring majestic grandeur, at a place I once occupied, I feel all I’ve lost.
Kumiko rests warm fingers on my elbow.
I also feel all I’ve gained.
“I want that,” I manage around a knot in my throat, meaning more than just the climb ahead. “I want to be up there. Let’s go.”
“You have a distraction,” she guesses, squeezing my arm.
I draw my knife and tug experimentally at a length of rope securing an archere hatch. “One bigger than you can imagine.”
Temple of Cocidius: A Monster Girl Harem Adventure Serial Part 5 Page 4