Chaos God 5, page 9
part #5 of Chaos God Series
“It was said that Niflheim was their domain, King Levi,” Romora answered in a worried voice.
“Niflheim? The frozen afterlife?” I asked.
“One and the same.” Finnern nodded. “But there was never any proof for this.”
“Right,” I breathed. “Thanks… have a good evening.”
“And you, King Levi,” Finnern said.
I turned and walked away from the table with my head spinning.
We’d had enough evidence for me to conclude that the lava chasm was Helheim, and now I was starting to suspect this new one was Niflheim.
I sighed as I went up the stone stairs to my bedchamber.
Frida was already sound asleep on the floor outside the room, and I stepped carefully around her as my head swam. Something that felt like anxiety bristled in my mind, and I fought down the urge to shift and fly out to the new lands immediately.
But it was late, and my ladies were waiting for me. I consoled myself with the decision to head out at first light in the morning, and I told myself I needed a good night of sleep just as much as my lovers did.
The room was dark except for the light of the half-moon flowing in through the open balcony, and I could see all three of my ladies laying comfortably in our side-by-side beds. There was a perfectly Levi-sized spot between Elora and Shalanna, and I smiled as I stripped off my clothes. Then I padded silently across the stone floor and crawled up the mattress to lay down with my women.
Shalanna shifted slightly beside me, and I could tell she was already asleep.
Freesia lifted her eyelids just enough to smile lovingly at me, and Elora rolled over to wrap an arm over my chest. I stroked a hand gently down the length of her silver hair as I mentally planned out my route for tomorrow.
I would shift into my standard hawk form and launch right from the balcony. I’d head straight west until I was over the Black Plains, and then I could shift a bit further north and head toward the location of the smoke columns.
Sleep crept up on me as I pictured the map Nestryn had been perfecting over the last several months, and I sank into unconsciousness. My sleep was mercifully deep and uninterrupted by the kind of vivid dreams that had come to me often since my arrival on Asgard.
I woke early in the morning just as the sunlight was starting to turn the eastern sky a dull shade of grayish pink. All three of my ladies were still sound asleep beside me, and I crawled slowly from the bed to not disturb them.
Then I got dressed in a light cotton shirt and comfortable linen pants, and I strapped my sword and dagger in place. I had no intention of finding trouble today that would require my blades, but there was no way in hell I’d be caught without them.
There was a pleasant breeze coming in from the sea this morning as I walked out onto the balcony, and I was about to shift into my hawk form when I caught sight of Hezzig’s bald head at the castle’s front steps.
I smirked ruefully as I decided to go and give them a proper kingly send-off before the group headed out to the tustrium field. I avoided waking Frida as I went into the hallway, and then I jogged easily down the staircase.
The front doors were wide open as the last of the mining group gathered outside. Hezzig was pointing and directing his workers with an impatience that showed just how excited he was to get going.
“Make sure you have filled your water pouches!” Hezzig ordered. “We will be mining until dark! No excuses!”
“Good morning,” I said with mirth as I walked up to the bald blacksmith. “I see you’re about ready to head out?”
“Aye, your majesty.” Hezzig grinned.
Azariah stood patiently as the rest of the group did a final check of their tools and supplies, and she nodded at me in greeting.
The mining group was mostly dwarves, but the brown-haired warrior named Varian was among them, too.
“I look forward to seeing your haul later,” I said to them. “I’m going out that direction to have a closer look at the area beyond the former lava fields. We’ve decided to call them the Black Plains, by the way.”
“Ah, an excellent name, your majesty,” Azariah said with an approving nod.
“We should come up with a name for those mountains, too,” I said. “Maybe toss around a few ideas during your hike?”
“Aye, King Levi,” Hezzig said. “We can multitask like that.”
“Good,” I chuckled. “Alright, I’m heading out. I want you all to look after one another, stay hydrated, and keep an eye out for demons.”
“No need to worry about us,” Hezzig assured me. “We will defend one another, your majesty.”
“Good mining,” I said.
Then I stepped back from the group as I leaned into an excitement-fueled shift. My body shrank significantly as brown feathers sprouted all over my body. My nose turned sharply down into a hard beak as my eyesight became piercingly clear. In about three seconds, my shift was complete, and I flapped my wings hard to lift off into the air.
“Safe journeys, King Levi!” Hezzig shouted.
I let out a confident screech as I rose higher into the air and headed straight west. The breeze coming in from the shores tried to push me further north, and I had to readjust my directions every few minutes as I flew.
The old end of the broken path passed under me a while later, and I continued further west until I spotted the row of mountains that had hidden the campfires’ source from view yesterday.
The temperature dropped slightly the further I got toward those three matching mountains, but it didn’t plummet like the wind Elora and I had encountered.
I watched the landscape below shift from the trapped-in-time ripples of the Black Plains into the rolling foothills, and then into the steeper mountains. As I drew closer and closer to the mountaintops, I kept my eyes open for the columns of smoke, but the wind from the ocean seemed to be pushing everything further north and west away from me.
It wasn’t until I was right above those mountain peaks that I finally spotted the wispy little columns of smoke right where they’d been yesterday, but what I saw next made my beak fall open with shock.
I urged my already sharp eyesight into an almost telescopic level of clarity because I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Far below, in the little valley between the three mountains and another range further west, was a gathering of small stone houses with slate roofs. A dozen narrow columns of smoke rose up out of stone chimneys, and there were sparse evergreen trees dotted between the houses.
“Holy shit!” I gasped, but the only sound I made was a startled squawk.
A few human-shaped figures were shuffling through the village, and I could see other evidence that the place wasn’t occupied by super-intelligent demons. There was a long clothesline strung up between some of the houses, and dark cloaks, shirts, and pants flapped in the wind. There was also a stash of hand-crafted items like baskets and pottery near the middle of the small village.
I instantly shifted my body into a much smaller and sturdier form, and my feathers disappeared into the tough exoskeleton of an armored flying beetle. I wasn’t ready to give away my existence just yet, so I remained close to the mountains as I began to descend toward the ground.
But before I could even clear the last bits of the mountain peaks, a brutal gust of blizzard-force winds slammed into me, and I was sent tumbling back to the southeast.
My small insect body went careening ass over teakettle for a solid minute as the frosty winds pushed me back.
“Fuck!” I screamed, but whatever insect sound I made was carried away on the wind.
Chapter 7
It felt like I tumbled through the brutally cold air current for a solid minute before I was finally able to right myself. Thankfully, my insect body seemed resilient enough against the cold, and I didn’t think I’d gotten any frostbite despite the subzero temperature.
I took a deep breath to work through the fog of dizziness from my tumble, and I gazed around at the ground to get my bearings back. The wind had pushed me so far back in the direction I’d come from that I could see the group of miners working to dig up the tustrium.
I gritted my teeth with determination and shifted back into my hawk form for more power. I raced back against the push of the wind, and I dove under the icy currents wherever I could.
It was slow going, and it took me quite a while to make up a lot of the ground I’d lost. I urged my muscles to thicken and lengthen to better fight against the wind. After a while, I was coming up close on the mountain peaks once more, and I decided to take a more southern route around the three matching peaks.
I banked hard to my left and descended a bit to try and come in under the freezing gusts. My eyesight increased as I went, and I tried to get a better look at the village below. I urged my eyes to sharpen even further, but it was like looking through a magnifying glass that was too close to my face.
Then the wind picked up again and forced me back once more. I shifted my body again to grow in size for increased strength and wingspan, and I dove even lower until the village disappeared behind the peaks of the mountains. I was risking being seen with a six-foot wingspan, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to fight the currents in anything smaller.
Then another brutally frozen gust slammed right into me, and I tumbled back like I’d been thrown into a blender set on high speed.
My stomach lurched into my throat, and I forced my last meal to remain in place as I careened through the air once more. My head spun for several long seconds as I worked to right myself in midair, and I felt the chill taking root in my extremities. Suddenly I was pretty worried about the potential of spontaneous frostbite if I kept at this.
“Goddamnit,” I sighed, and I glanced back toward where the columns of smoke were located.
I thought about trying again, but the icy chill was biting at my every appendage. I could feel the blizzard-level winds still increasing in speed as they rushed in my direction, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to overcome them unless I took on a form that would destroy any chance of stealth observations.
At least I’d gotten a good enough look at the village to see that it was inhabited by people and not demons. That’s what I really needed more than anything else.
With a last look toward the smoke columns, I turned back and started to descend toward Hezzig’s mining group. I knew hiking out to this village with a small army was going to be my next step, and I wanted to get back to the castle to start planning that out.
It looked like Hezzig was having a lot more success with his task than I was with mine, and the small wooden carts and wagons were already fairly full of the shiny blue-gray metal.
They’d cleared out a twenty-by-twenty-foot square patch of the top layer of soil and volcanic rock to uncover a huge vein of the tustrium, and now they were cutting it up into manageable blocks.
I glided down on my hawk wings, and I eased the shift out of my limbs as I landed on a nearby boulder. My arms and legs stretched back out to my six-foot-four frame as the hard exoskeleton faded back into my skin.
“Ah! King Levi!’ Hezzig half-gasped, half-laughed with surprise at my sudden appearance. “I should have known you would stop by to check on our progress.”
“Oh, you know, I was in the neighborhood,” I chuckled as I stood up and walked over to the bald dwarf in charge.
“We have a much larger vein here than I could have ever hoped for,” Hezzig grinned like a little kid. “We will not be able to gather it all today, or even over the course of a few days.”
“There’s that much of it?” I asked with shock.
“Oh, yeah.” Hezzig nodded enthusiastically. “The vein goes far beyond this area that we have begun with. This is the largest source of tustrium I have ever heard of, and it is a wonder that it was left undisturbed until now.”
“I wonder if Odin knew about this?” I mused more to myself than the dwarf.
“It is possible that he knew of this vein,” Hezzig said as he scratched his head thoughtfully. “I would not be surprised to learn that Odin Allfather knew of many mineral deposits but did not actively mine them, for he did not need them.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” I nodded.
“It is also possible this vein was uncovered by the activity of the lava fields,” Hezzig added.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“The volcanoes have had decades to alter this landscape,” Hezzig explained. “They brought magma up from the deepest layers of Asgard. It is possible this vein was deposited here by the earliest volcanic eruptions, and then it cooled and solidified beneath the lava after Njord’s actions.”
“Whoa, so this might be a brand-new deposit of tustrium?” I asked.
“It is possible.” Hezzig nodded. “All minerals come from within the ground at one point or another, and we know little of what has been transpiring here since the volcanoes took over.”
“It’s really interesting to think about,” I said. “I wonder if Nestryn can figure any of it out through the soil samples, or if he’s just looking for what plants will need to grow.”
“I believe his focus is more on the nutrients plants need, my king,” Hezzig said.
“Makes sense.” I grinned. “Alright, you guys are doing great work here, and I’m going to let you get back to it.”
“Actually, we were about to head back to the castle as well,” Hezzig said. “Our carts are at maximum capacity, and we did not wish to prepare more blocks than we can carry today.”
“That’s smart,” I said. “I’ll travel back with you guys.”
The long walk back to the castle would give me some time to think about what I’d seen in this new village before I had to explain it all to my ladies. I was still pretty surprised to find a whole other community of people, but I had no idea if they were humans or elves because the few figures I’d seen had worn thick hoods up over their heads. I guessed they weren’t dwarves just because of Chancellor Finnern’s comments about the old dwarven city in the area and its destruction.
I helped the workers load up the last few blocks of tustrium, and I was shocked at how light the material was. The workers had hauled out irregular-shaped blocks that were no larger than copy paper boxes, and they only weighed about ten pounds each.
“Wow,” I murmured with surprise. “These are so much lighter than they look.”
“Oh, yes.” Hezzig nodded as he loaded a block into a cart beside me. “After a proper forging and quenching, tustrium is far stronger than it is heavy. This is part of why it is such a valuable material.”
“That’s awesome,” I said.
We loaded the last few chunks into the carts and then began hiking the long distance back to Castle Levi. I idly pondered the wild possibility of a form large enough to fly all this material back to the castle, but I knew that would require a much larger shift than even the massive hawk-dragon form I’d taken into the depths of the chasm. I found my mind wandering distractedly through various pack animal options, but then I pushed the idle thoughts forcefully away.
Instead, I shifted my focus back to the village and what its existence could mean. The extension of the chasm that ran diagonally from northeast to southwest beyond the Black Plains seemed to be a very likely suspect for the icy winds that had pushed me back today. The blizzard had rushed at me directly from the shadowy crack in the planet’s surface, but it had looked like the little village was protected slightly by the mountain ranges on both sides. It seemed that its position at the bottom of that valley helped the icy winds to blast right over the top instead of smashing through the stone houses.
I was so curious about the people living in that village, though, and I hoped they would be welcoming to my arrival. If they were living in a chilly climate, and well away from good farming areas, I had plenty to offer them in regards to a trade or cooperative relationship between us. I didn’t know immediately what they could have to offer me, but I knew that if I was going to be God King of the Nine Realms, I’d need to get all the people of Asgard under my banner, so to speak.
Plus, having them as “my people” would keep them from becoming competition.
I smirked to myself at that idea as we made the final hike through the mountain pass to Castle Levi. I reminded myself briefly to discuss a potential secondary base in the Black Plains with Hezzig, Finnern, and Ayen later on. After an initial conversation with them, I could send a messenger to the village to tell Wyn, Erik, and Eirlina about the plan, and we could hammer out further details.
The older elves had become my sort of representatives and local leaders in the village while I was away at the castle. Erik and his mother had been held in high esteem by the people of the town for quite some time, and I trusted them to keep things moving in my stead. Wyn was a natural addition to the team ever since he’d moved into Eirlina’s home, and they were the cutest little old couple I could imagine. Their love was obvious, and I was very pleased that they’d found happiness like so many of my people had.
“My gods,” Elora gasped with excitement as we marched up to the castle’s outer gates. “There is so much tustrium here!”
“Hey,” I greeted my beautiful lover. “Yeah, Hezzig did an awesome job, as usual.”
“Everybody, follow me,” Hezzig announced with a proud smile. “I will show you where to begin stacking the tustrium.”
Azariah and the other miners followed the bald blacksmith around the castle’s inner walls to his workshop in the back corner of the grounds.
I pulled Elora into my arms and gave her a firm kiss on her lips.
“Did you find the answers you were looking for?” Elora asked as her cheeks flushed.
“Yeah…” I huffed out a big breath. “I found some answers and some more questions.”
“Let us go inside,” Elora suggested. “Freesia and Shalanna are sitting down for a late lunch, and you know as well as I that they will wish to hear this.”
“Good idea.” I kissed Elora’s pale blue cheek, and we walked inside together.
My other two lovers were exactly where Elora had said they would be, and we sat down together at the table.
