Chaos God 6, page 14
part #6 of Chaos God Series
Suddenly I could isolate the direction the voices were coming from, and I stepped over to the foot of the bed. With a slow breath, I knelt down and lifted the yellow linens away to look underneath.
A narrow streak of moonlight flowed under the bed and illuminated a small, gilded mirror that had a faint blue light of its own. The light pulsed slowly like a dying heartbeat, and the voices were coming right out of the reflection’s surface.
I was immediately reminded of the magical talisman that had provided the bitch Gaelyra with the power to hold the people of Freesia’s village hostage. It was some kind of memory locked in place and time within the confines of the mirror.
From the angle I was looking at the mirror, I could just make out the shape of two figures in the glass. One had a distinctive eyepatch, and the other had long strawberry-blonde hair.
“Fuck,” I gasped.
I lowered closer to the dust-covered floor and reached my arm under the bed. The mirror was just within my reach, and the second my skin came in contact with the gilded frame, a huge shock of static electricity snapped into my fingers and up my arm.
“Shit!” I cursed and yanked my arm away.
The mirror’s pulsing light faded away, and the voices of the two Aesir drifted into nothing. The mirror looked like any other object after that, and I reached out again to pick it up.
More slowly this time, I tapped my finger to the golden edge, and I felt nothing. The electricity had been discharged from the mirror, and it was cool in my hand. I brought the mirror out from under the bed and sat up to have a look at the thing in the moonlight.
It was oval-shaped and fit nicely in the palm of my hand. The golden frame was dirty and tarnished from age and abandonment, and the delicate filigree was a dull brown. The only image in the reflective surface was my own face staring back at me, and I realized how long it had been since I’d held a mirror.
My face was recognizable to me as my own, but it was also much different than it had been the last time I’d looked at myself in the plain rectangular mirror in my old apartment’s bathroom. My hair was longer now, and it hung just past my shoulders in the same dark and unruly waves as always. My eyes had a few more creases around the edges than I remembered, but they were the same shade of blue. I looked older, wiser, but I was still me.
I sighed and turned back to inspect the golden frame, and I suspected the metal could be brought back to a shining finish with the right care and attention. I couldn’t bear to leave it there under the bed, lost and forgotten, so I wedged the small mirror into my pocket.
It wasn’t like hearing voices was a brand-new thing for me. I’d heard more than one voice since coming to Asgard but never quite like this. The voices had always been in my dreams, or Sylmarie speaking directly to me, or isolated in a single moment.
This mirror was different, and there were two voices locked in a loop. I wondered why the moment had been locked into the mirror, but I couldn’t even begin to try and figure out why or how it had happened. Maybe Sylmarie or Emneth would be able to give me some kind of explanation about memories locked in random objects.
The room was utterly silent now, and the pressure and pain from my head had eased away into nothing. Without the agonizing migraine in my temples, I suddenly realized how tired my body was, and I remembered how much I’d done today.
I’d woken up from a nightmare, battled and killed two frost giants, hiked for most of the day, and then immediately started to hunt down the conclusion to a centuries-old mystery. Castle Levi wasn’t far from the Broken Spire, but now all I wanted was to crash into my bed and sleep for a week.
The mirror warmed to the temperature of my body in my pocket as I walked out of Odin and Frigg’s bedroom, and I exited the Spire the same way I’d entered. I stopped long enough to scoop up the pile of books in my arms at the top of the grand staircase, and then I walked back out into the mild evening air.
The moonlight kept me company on the walk back to Castle Levi, and the halls were quiet as I trudged up the stairs to my bedroom. I stopped to give Frida a thorough pat on her belly before I opened the carved wooden door. Elora, Freesia, and Shalanna were all sleeping soundly in our double-bed when I entered the room.
I tiredly pulled off all of my clothes and dropped them on the floor without a single care, and I crawled as carefully as possible into the bed between Elora and Freesia. Shalanna had taken over the majority of the second bed, and I smiled at how comfortable she looked despite the heavy swell of her belly.
I’d expected sleep would consume me the instant I laid my head on the pillow, but I struggled to get comfortable at first. I shifted position several times before my body felt like it could relax, but my mind kept spinning.
Odin and Frigg’s voices echoed in my head like an annoyingly catchy song stuck on repeat in my mind. I tried to tune the voices out and relax my body, but they just kept going. Then I tried the classic advice of counting sheep, but that didn’t work, either. I must have laid awake for close to forty-five minutes before exhaustion finally started to win the battle.
My eyelids felt like there were ten-pound weights tied to each one, and I started to sink into the mattress. Sleep felt right within my grasp when that pressure returned like someone had flipped a switch inside my brain.
“Ugh!” I hissed through clenched teeth as my entire body was shaken forcefully awake.
The sensation that something was crawling around inside my skull and trying to break free was overwhelming, and I knew I wasn’t going to get to sleep anytime soon.
I considered staying where I was, but Elora, Freesia, and Shalanna had all almost woken up due to my tossing and turning already. They were peaceful and restful now, and I didn’t want to disturb them. Just because I couldn’t sleep didn’t mean they should suffer, too.
I carefully climbed out of the bed, pulled on a fresh pair of linen pants and a light cotton tunic, and I scooped up a single taper candle as I walked into the hallway. The wall sconces were mostly out, but there was one left burning at the top of the stairs for me to light my candle on. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, so I started to pace down the halls.
My bare feet were nearly silent on the cool stone floors of my castle, and I soon found myself at the end of the hall. I decided to try and bore myself back to sleep by naming the inhabitants that were asleep behind each door.
Ingrid and her human husband Quintus were at the end of the hall, and in the next room over was their son, Goren, and the young warrior, Elion. The room across the hall belonged to the elven botanist, Nestryn, and then were two of the three blonde sisters, Azariah and Astrid. The middle sister had recently moved in with the brown-haired man, Varian, and I’d heard they were happy together. Ylva and her husband, Rathal were next, and then Ylva’s older sister Merial and the dwarven botanist, Grenna. An unlikely friendship had sparked between the older women, and I was glad they each had companionship in one another. Ayen and his lover, Sassa, were in the next room, and then Finnern and Romora. The twin dwarves, Ginen and Grorec were in the last room before Sylmarie’s bedchamber, and then came the room I shared with my ladies.
“God,” I sighed with frustration, and I could tell this tactic wasn’t doing much good.
So I carried on down the other end of the corridor, and I named as many of my people and their roommates and lovers as I could remember until I came to the end of the hall. This side of the castle was where Wyn, the blacksmith, Hezzig, many of my warriors including Gorn, Vulmar, Sontar, Halrond, and Cedoric slept. It made this side of the castle a bit more like a frat house, but they kept the noise and chaos to a minimum, and I was thankful for that.
I turned around at the end and headed back down the hallway once more.
Frida’s large smooth head popped up when I neared her guard post outside my bedroom door, and I gave her an idle pat on the top of her head. The adorably ferocious predator cocked her head to the side as I continued past her, and a few seconds later, I heard her yawn as she stretched. I looked over my shoulder and saw Frida with her shark tail high in the air and her massive front paws stretched out on the stone floor. A shake raced down her spine, and then she loped after me like an enormous puppy.
“Hey, girl,” I murmured softly. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Frida looked up at me like she was just happy to have some time with me, and I realized how much time I’d been away recently.
“Do you want to walk with me for a while?” I asked.
Frida opened her mouth, and the many rows of her sharp shark teeth were put on display as her huge tongue lolled out of the side of her mouth.
A wide grin spread across my face, and I gave her smooth shoulder a good petting. I imagined a young boy with black hair sitting on top of Frida’s back with a smaller red-haired girl behind him, and a boy with silver locks and half-pointed ears running alongside my wolf-shark. Frida was so attached to my ladies, and I knew she’d protect our children like a mother wolf.
Frida walked up and down the castle halls with me several times before she yawned and laid back down in her spot outside our doors. I smiled as she rolled onto her side, and by the time I came back to the top of the stairs, she was snoring softly again.
I continued my pacing, but the energy and pressure inside my head wouldn’t dissipate. It felt like I’d chugged a hundred espressos, and I wondered if I was ever going to sleep again.
Sometime later, I found myself at the end of the hall staring at the discolored space on the wall where the macabre tapestry had once hidden a secret room.
Ingrid had discovered the room by accident shortly after we’d moved in, and we’d all been shocked at how much useful stuff had been crammed into the space. Loads of clothing, furniture, and personal artifacts of the castle’s previous occupants had been stashed away in here.
I opened the door and stepped inside with my lone candle. The yellow light flickered over the few boxes and bits of art that were still kept here. The space was much emptier now than it had been, and I was able to move around the room easily.
I wondered if being surrounded by Loki’s possessions would help me think a little clearer, but I knew that was based on wishful thinking. Regardless, I started to look through the remaining items in the storage room.
There were a few small wooden tables stacked together on one side of the room, and I took a few moments to inspect the masterful hand carvings on the edges of the tabletops. Then I picked one with an intricate carved design of vines and flower buds, and I moved it into the middle of the room. I set my candle on top of the table and moved on to a heavy leather and brass trunk that sat in the corner.
Once the trunk was moved closer to the light of my candle, I opened it and sorted through the items inside. Most of the things were unremarkable items like a set of silverware and a glass pitcher. There were folded silk handkerchiefs with tiny L’s embroidered on the corners, and a small portrait of a woman with long light-brown hair.
Another trunk was filled with more novels, and a quick flip through the pages revealed they were written in a language other than English. I set them aside without much more investigation, and I moved on to another stack of paintings that had been moved into the back corner of the room.
They were mostly landscapes and scenery, and they depicted the areas around or in front of the Crystal Spire. The first several paintings were of the same gardens that had been the backdrop of Frigg’s portrait. There were also a few paintings of the sun setting over the ocean’s horizon. They were beautiful, and I decided I wanted to hang them in the castle. I’d mostly ignored them when we’d first found this room because, at the time, we’d been trying to make this place sustainable. We hadn’t had the luxury or time to enjoy things like artwork when we had to focus on food and security.
I leaned the paintings against the wall closest to the door, and I continued browsing through the room.
All the while, the sensation that something was inside my mind, alive and filled with energy, kept pushing on the inside of my skull. It pushed me to keep going, and I wondered if it would ever go away.
I toiled away for at least an hour in that room as I sorted through everything one piece at a time. By the time I was finished, I’d moved everything into a new place, and I stood there with an unexpected feeling of accomplishment.
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but a small breeze definitely wasn’t it.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, and I tried to shake away the sensation of air moving across my bare forearms.
But the slight breeze continued, and I knew I wasn’t imagining it. There was an open window in the corridor two rooms over from this one, but I’d closed the door to keep from waking anyone up. Plus, I hadn’t felt a bit of wind the entire time I’d been in here, so I knew it couldn’t be from the exterior window.
I licked my finger and held it up to try and figure out which way the air was coming from. Then my mouth fell open, and my eyes went wide as I located the source of the tiny breeze in the back corner of the room.
“What the actual fuck?” I muttered to myself.
I picked up my candle and carried it over to the dark corner. The breeze shifted the flame and made the yellow light flicker wildly through the room.
The same sense of déjà vu that had guided me so many times before filled me, and I could almost see this room in another time. The walls appeared brighter and cleaner, and the storage trunks almost faded away to be replaced with walls of art supplies. Half-finished canvases seemed to hover in every corner of the room like a desert mirage, and the smell of oil paint lingered in my nose like a memory of a dream. I could almost feel the slick greasy paint on my fingertips as I knelt down to touch the slight breeze coming from the stone floor that looked as solid as a wall of concrete.
I placed the candlestick holder on the floor and leaned down to try and find a gap in the stones. It was hard to tell exactly where the faint breeze was coming from, so I laid my hands flat on the floor. The stones weren’t perfectly smooth, and there were plenty of ridges and valleys in the natural texture of the tiles that made positioning furniture difficult from time to time. We’d discovered we had to position furniture where they would sit steadily on all their feet rather than exactly where we desired them, and that had made an impact on how the castle was decorated.
Now, it was giving my palms a lot to explore as I felt out the various minute dips and hills of the stone tiles.
I adjusted my right hand so just the tips of my fingers were sliding slowly across the stone, and I felt a tiny push of air coming up between two tiles. In a modern Earth home, there would have been a clean line of grout between these tiles, but Asgardian castles were built differently.
The tiny gap was only a quarter of an inch wide, and I traced it with my finger for about a foot before I found a tiny bulge between the stones. It was no bigger than a pencil eraser, but it was a distinctly different texture. I pressed on the tiny nub, and I nearly had a heart attack when a loud click echoed through the room.
“Holy fucking fuck,” I gasped as I leaned as far back as my kneeling position would allow.
The tiny breeze strengthened into a steady rush of cool air, and the tile directly to the left of my hand had popped open by about an inch.
Exhilaration raced through me, and I couldn’t help but remember my first experience in an escape room when I was sixteen.
I’d saved up for weeks to take my first girlfriend to the new escape room in downtown Boston because she’d been so excited about it. The idea of being trapped in a locked room and having to solve puzzles to get out hadn’t excited my horny teenage brain, but being locked in that room with Becky had been all the convincing I’d needed.
Unfortunately, Becky had gotten bored with the escape room pretty fast, and she was a good Christian girl, so making out in a room filled with security cameras was a hard no for her. I turned to trying to solve the puzzles just so we could get out of there before the hour-long timer would force the employees to rescue us.
Getting out so I could take Becky somewhere and maybe get my first feel of real boobs had been my main motivation, but then the challenge of the puzzle started to grab me. I worked hard to solve the well thought out clues in that escape room, and when I located the hidden key under the candelabra’s wobbly base I shouted with victory.
I was hooked after that, and I started to daydream about being able to open my own escape room someday.
Now, it was like that first time all over again, and I hadn’t even known I was solving escape room-style puzzles.
“Cool as shit.” I grinned as I looked over the gap in the opened tiles.
There were hidden hinges on the back side, and I could see that the tile would lift all the way up like a trapdoor. After a cautious inspection of the underside of the trapdoor tile, I grabbed hold of it and lifted it.
The hinges creaked and resisted movement, and I pulled harder on the ancient mechanism. The inside of the trapdoor was an empty hole of pitch-black nothingness, and I couldn’t see a damn thing.
The breeze continued to flow upward, and I knew there had to be some kind of exit on the other side in order to allow any kind of air current to exist here. I held my candle down into the space as far as I could reach, and I could just make out the surface about ten feet below that indicated a floor of some kind.
“Alright, Levi,” I muttered to myself. “What to do now?”
I could close up the trapdoor and come back tomorrow, but as soon as I began to think of the idea, the bright green presence that had been pushing on the inside of my skull came back with full force. In the same breath, the surging sensation of déjà vu overpowered any bit of hesitation I had before.
Sylmarie’s encouragement to follow my instincts came to me again, and I knew I was going down there. I also reminded myself of all the reasons it was plenty safe for me to do so. I had my shifting magic, and I could flee or fight anything that might be hiding down there.
And there was a lingering feeling that whatever was down there was meant for me. I could only assume the altar ceremony had indeed left a touch of magic in my body, and now it was giving me a strengthened sense of intuition.
