Chaos God 3, page 1
part #3 of Chaos God Series
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Chapter 1
“It’s fucking huge,” I breathed as I craned my neck back to try and see the broken top of the formerly magnificent Crystal Spire.
“The Spire is in ruins,” my silver-haired elven lover, Elora, sighed. “You would have been amazed by its full glory in the light of the sun.”
“I wish I could have seen it,” Shalanna murmured as she ran her fingers through her short black hair.
My ladies and I stared up at the Broken Spire with the bald dwarven blacksmith named Hezzig and the triple-braided dwarf, Finnern, by our side. The former dwarf king, and now my advisor, had spent a lot of time in the Crystal Spire while Odin Allfather had still lived, and I was glad he’d agreed to come with us to guide us through the massive palace. We’d come in search of more metal for the bald blacksmith to use, but the sheer height of the Spire had pulled me up short at the front doors.
Frida, my pet wolf-shark, looked up at the enormous structure with wide eyes as her huge tongue lolled out of her mouth with surprise. Then she shook her head and circled around us in a quick defensive patrol.
The Spire towered over us, and it had to be at least a hundred stories tall. The top was in ruins, and the overgrown grounds around us were littered with huge broken pieces of marble, stone, shattered glass, and twisted hunks of rusting and corroded metal.
“None of the metal out here is as good as we need at present,” Hezzig announced. “It’s all lost its integrity due to the corrosion of the salty air from the sea, and to re-refine it would take much time.”
“Well,” I said as I turned away from the broken pinnacle of the gleaming towers. “We knew that was a possibility when we decided to come here.”
It had been five weeks since we’d freed the small band of dwarves from the hideous demon queen and brought them into the castle as part of our community. Hezzig had spent the first two weeks tending to all of the weapons we already had, and he’d given every last one of them a fresh edge and repaired any battle damage. Then the bald man had turned to crafting new weapons and testing what qualities the different species of demons’ blood gave in the strange quenching process of his, and he’d quickly worked through the meager supply of raw materials we had on hand.
Even the chandeliers that once hung in the castle hadn’t kept the blacksmith’s crafting appetite sated for long. He’d quickly turned the slightly bloody iron into a few spare swords, a very fine set of cooking knives for Ingrid, and even expanded his smithing tools set with a few pieces he hadn’t been able to find in the castle. Then I’d suggested he use the bars of the lower dungeons to create other items, but the dwarf scoffed at this. Apparently, every castle of a lord required sturdy dungeons below, just in case. So now that he had completed all the items he needed for his workshop, we were on the hunt for more raw materials for Hezzig to use to create more weapons and armor for our people.
Finnern, Ayen, and I had scoured the old encampment near the lava fields for every last bit of metal we could find. My elven housekeeper, Ingrid, and her support staff had done the same within Castle Levi, but much of it had been corrupted from age and rust. We didn’t even bother trying to mine the mountains directly because we didn’t have any of the right tools or equipment, so our next best option was to salvage materials from the Spire itself.
I also couldn’t deny I was wildly curious to get a closer look at the former home of the Aesir, and now I was going to have it.
“Let’s have a look inside,” I said.
I looked at the massive copper doors in front of me which had turned a dull shade of aqua-green from all the years of neglect, and I wondered what they must have looked like in their former shining glory.
The hinges protested with a loud grinding sound as I pushed on the huge handles to open the doors. We were greeted by the suffocating smell of rot and decay, and a thin cloud of dust wafted out of the doors.
“I expect we will come across the sad endings of many lives within these walls,” Elora whispered.
“I’m sure you’re right.” I nodded as I stepped into the massive entrance hall of the Broken Spire, and a heavy feeling of déjà vu pulsed through the back of my mind like a memory from a long-forgotten dream.
The room rose forty feet above our heads and was topped with an elegantly domed cathedral ceiling. The walls at the front of the Spire were filled with open window frames that explained all the shattered glass on the ground outside and all over the dusty marble tiles inside. One enormous marble staircase led upward from the center of the room, and the wrought-iron railings were topped with gold and mostly intact. Marble columns that were nearly as wide around as Frida held the domed ceiling aloft at various points throughout the room, and they sat like sentries on either side of the twenty-foot-wide staircase.
It all felt weirdly familiar. I tried to get a grip on where and when I’d seen this room before, but it was like trying to trap water in a cheese grater.
“Excellent,” Hezzig breathed, and he walked straight over to the railings.
“That is a lot of iron,” Shalanna said.
“And it is in fantastic condition.” Hezzig grinned.
“Would pulling it out destroy the structural integrity of the staircase?” I asked. I still had plans to try and restore the Broken Spire to its original condition if we could manage it, and I’d rather not destroy the place further if we could avoid it.
“It’s possible,” Hezzig said after a moment of inspection. “And it will be very difficult to remove the iron from the marble with my current set of tools. I believe we should leave this here for the time being and move on in search of loose metal we can more easily carry back to the castle.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I agreed.
Frida nudged affectionately against my hip, and I reached out to give her a comforting pat on the top of her smooth head. She was nearly up to my chest now, and I still had no idea how much bigger she was going to get. I hadn’t noticed any change in the rate she was growing at, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t even close to finished yet.
Wyn and Hezzig had created a sort of storage saddle for my wolf-shark pup in preparation for this scavenging trip. The empty woven basket was strapped neatly on her back, and the wide slit down the middle fit snugly around her dorsal fin. It was secured around her belly with sturdy leather straps and iron buckles like a horse’s saddle.
“Should we go up the stairs?” Shalanna asked.
“Perhaps we should seek out the kitchen first,” Elora suggested. “There may be cooking knives, cutlery, bowls, and pans that may prove to be useful.”
“What do you think, Hezzig?” I asked.
“The kitchen should be a good source for material.” The bald blacksmith nodded as he scraped a hand over his beardless face. “If we can also find the armory, that would be fantastic.”
“Finnern, you’re familiar with the layout of the Spire, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I am,” the triple-braided dwarf said.
“Which way should we go?” I asked.
“It has been many years,” Finnern sighed, and his moss-green eyes were filled with melancholy as he looked around the destruction of the dead gods’ palace. “The kitchen is far to the eastern side of the Spire and one floor below this level. The armory is on the opposite side of the palace, but I would think that was the first place people would have fled to when Ragnarok began. The need to arm one’s self would have been strong in those first days, and I would be rather surprised if there was much left.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “Alright, let’s try the kitchen first, then?”
“I concur.” Hezzig nodded.
Chancellor Finnern readjusted his massive war hammer in his hands and then began to lead us to the right. The triple-braided man led us through a simple door tucked away in the corner of the massive entrance hall, and down a long hallway that was littered with more broken glass and the occasional skeletal remains of one of Odin’s servants. There were dark reddish-brown stains that had long since dried underneath the skeletons, and I imagined the long gone tissues of the bodies would have shown a fatal wound.
“Such a tragedy,” Shalanna whispered, and she laid a hand gently over her heart as we passed a skeleton that was huddled up on the floor.
“There’s nothing we can do for them now, love,” I murmured to my black-haired lover. “I’d like to give them all proper burials eventually, but now’s not the right time.”
“That is a kind and wise decision,” Finnern said over his shoulder, and he gave me a nod of kingly approval.
The hallway was lined with wooden doors, several of which were half-open, and I could see more human, elf, and dwarf remains alongside what appeared to be storage rooms filled with clothing, wooden crates, and linens.
I couldn’t imagine how many people had been required to run an estate of this size and importance, but I guessed Odin had at least a few hundred people working for him.
The shards of broken glass crunched under our feet as we walked the rest of the way down the hall and down a half-flight
“The kitchen is just down here,” Finnern said.
The former dwarf king continued to lead our small group, I took up the rear with my dwarven sword held loosely in my hands, and Frida walked behind us. As soon as we got to the bottom of the stairs, I could see the scattered cutlery and cooking tools all over the floor.
Frida tried to walk into the kitchen with us, but I stopped her with a raised hand and indicated that she should wait where she was.
The kitchen was large and filled with five separate workstations on wooden tables, and the half-petrified remains of whatever had been being prepared when the first attacks started was slowly turning to dust on the tables. Thankfully there weren’t any skeletons in the kitchen, and we spread out through the large room in search of usable metals.
“Raw iron is the most useful, but sturdy bits of copper and brass can also be beneficial,” Hezzig explained.
I started opening cabinets and rifling through wooden storage crates, and I found a pair of wrought-iron candelabras that were covered in a thin layer of dust. There wasn’t a speck of rust on them, though, and I dropped them gently into Frida’s saddle basket.
Shalanna stooped down and began to sift through a set of crates that were tucked under the massive table in the middle of the room. She stood up a few moments later with a large copper mixing bowl in her hands.
“Is this helpful?” the short-haired warrior asked.
“Yes, that is a good find,” Hezzig answered. “Well done.”
Shalanna smiled softly as she walked over and laid the bowl in Frida’s pack.
There was a loud clattering sound from the corner of the room where Elora was standing, and she smiled sheepishly over her shoulder at us. “I think I’ve found something.”
Hezzig looked up from the open hearth of the kitchen’s fireplace with a long, iron fire poker in one hand and a small iron shovel in the other.
“Let me take a look,” Hezzig said. The bald dwarf dropped the fireplace tools into Frida’s pack and then walked over to Elora. “Ah, these can be useful for buckles and hinges.”
“What did you find?” I asked my silver-haired elf.
“Cutlery, mostly,” Elora said. “But there are also cooking skewers of many sizes.”
Elora walked past me with a wooden drawer filled with long metal spikes that reminded me of shish kebab sticks, and she laid it gently into Frida’s saddle basket. We collected a few other useful items such as cooking knives, a few bone-handled ladles and mixing spoons, some glass bowls, and a small sack of rock salt that was still perfectly good for cooking.
“Oh, Elora, before I forget,” Finnern said after a few minutes. “Romora asked me to thank you for the spare linens you brought to her, she said they were greatly appreciated.”
“I’m so glad she has found joy in them.” Elora smiled brightly. “Ingrid did a wonderful job repairing the minor damage around the edges from so many years being in storage.”
“Yes, that hidden room has produced many wonderful items,” Shalanna agreed.
We’d finally sorted through the last things we’d uncovered in the hidden room Ingrid had discovered in the castle just before we’d located the dwarves hiding from a nest of blind albino demons. My elven housekeeper and head cook spent weeks repairing and cleaning all of the linens that had been stored away, and Elora insisted on presenting the deep crimson blanket to Finnern’s lover as a welcoming present.
I was pleased at how well the dwarves had integrated into our small community, and they had quickly come to see Castle Levi as their home. They’d been scraping survival out of the mountains like blood from a stone for many years before the demon hive had trapped them. Finnern and his subjects had been on the brink of destruction when I’d accidentally come across them, and after my warriors and I had freed them from the demon queen’s clutches, they’d settled quite happily into life at the castle.
The walls of my home were filled with a new lease on life from all its inhabitants, and the constant bustle of my people brought joy and a sense of purpose to me. Nearly every room in the large stone castle was now occupied by at least one human, elf, or dwarf, which was part of why I had a desire to restore the Broken Spire to its former glory. We were comfortable enough for now, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to fit within the castle walls forever.
“I believe that is everything we will find here,” Finnern said. “Shall we move on?”
“Are there many fireplaces in the palace?” Hezzig asked.
“Yes, almost every room has its own fireplace,” Finnern confirmed as he began to lead us back toward the massive entrance hall. “Before the Crystal Spire was brought to ruins, the columns of the roof were dotted with a complicated network of chimneys.”
“The fireplace tools should be a fine source of raw iron,” Hezzig said. “Was there a fireplace in the entrance hall? I neglected to look for one.”
“Yes, there is a hearth large enough for five full-grown men to stand shoulder to shoulder within it.” Finnern smirked.
“That is a very grand fireplace,” Shalanna giggled.
I saw that Finnern was right as we re-entered the massive hall, and I spotted the huge fireplace for myself. It was twenty feet across and seven feet tall with a huge wooden mantle made of a deep brown beam that must have once gleamed in the flickering light of the fire. There was a sturdy iron set of fireplace tools on the marble tile just to the right of the hearth, and Hezzig went right over to them.
“Excellent,” the blacksmith said with quiet satisfaction as he tested the tools’ weight in his hands. “We are having a fair bit of success.”
“Shall we move on to the next floor of the palace now?” Elora asked.
“I believe that is a good idea.” Hezzig nodded. “Perhaps we can find some iron railings that have already been broken free from the foundations of the palace.”
“This way,” Finnern said, and he started to walk up the massive marble stairs.
Our footsteps echoed through the empty Spire as we climbed the steps to the next floor, and it was just as grand as the entrance hall.
The second floor of the Broken Spire was also done completely in fine white marble and towering columns. It wasn’t quite as tall as the first floor, but the gold-inlaid ceiling still rose at least fifteen feet above our heads. The corridor was twenty feet wide and ran the entire width of the palace in both directions. Dim rays of sunlight shone inside all along the corridor from the glassless windows and illuminated all the destruction around us. There was a deep crack in the floor that ran down the middle of the hall to our left and zigzagged like a bolt of lightning.
“I think we should go this way,” I said and pointed in the opposite direction.
“That is wise,” Finnern agreed. “The floor does not appear to be very stable over there.”
We turned to the right and started walking down the long hallway.
Open doorways led into what had once been lavish sitting rooms and places for opulent social gatherings. We stopped briefly in each room, and Hezzig collected any fireplace tools that were present as the rest of us searched for other sources of iron, copper, and brass. For the most part, the fire pokers, tongs, and shovels were the only items we collected in every one of the rooms, but we did find the occasional candelabra, decorative bowl, or small statue of one of the many Aesir.
“Perhaps we should keep one of these,” Elora said as she held up a true-to-size brass bust of Odin’s one-eyed head.
There were similar busts of Odin’s sons, Loki and Thor, and several other faces I didn’t recognize. We’d found them in a large room that was filled with comfortable seating and a large, stringed instrument that reminded me of a piano and church organ mixed together. There were also what looked like the remains of playing cards and a few chessboards with pieces that had been carved from white and black opals. The board sent a shiver of recognition down my spine, and I quietly tucked the black king piece into my pocket.
“May I have a look?” Hezzig asked as he walked over to where my silver-haired lover stood with the bust in her hands. “This is an alloy of copper and a very weak metal known as tillium.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that none of these busts are worth melting down,” Hezzig explained. “Tillium is too weak for weapons or armor, but it is ideal for casting busts such as this. We may keep them all in their current forms.”
