“The barrier starts down there,” Jeska said, gesturing towards a crack in the side of the fjord.
Like they had desired, John had no idea where they were. Nightingale’s veil of impenetrable darkness lay over them, even after they had left the car. The single reliable piece of information he had was that they were sowhere along the coast. The continuous downward slope of the stretch they had wandered and the sll of salt water that perated even the barrier that isolated them from the outside combined to make that much likely.
All of that could have been part of an extra layer of misdirection though.
John inspected the crack advertised as the entrance to Fenrir’s lair. Had it not been for Nightingale’s magic painting its insides pitch black, adding to the already intense dead of night, it would have looked like a standard cave entrance. The kind that children explored when they lived around the area or that had warning signs in front of them for tourists, if they got partially flooded by the rising tide.
“You will wait here?” he asked his four guides, the two won and the two bodyguards. The goddess and the valkyrie were still wearing the sa clothes, each outfit screaming ‘FANTASY’ in its individual way. To be more accurate, Jeska’s outfit scread fantasy. For Nightingale it was her body itself that would have caused a mundane person to do a triple take before driving ho to wonder when soone had the chance to drop hallucinogens into their coffee.
Anyway, the fact that they hadn’t changed indicated that their current cover worked both ways. John wasn’t sure how it hid them, but he trusted seasoned Abyssals and a goddess enough to know what they were doing.
“Yeah,” Jeska responded in a carefree fashion and rolled her neck. “No idea what Fenrir will want to do with you, only that I want nothing to do with that.”
“Good fortune, John,” Nightingale added.
“Let’s hope I won’t need it,” he responded, while turning towards the crack. For ease of movent, the elentals followed him in incorporeal form. Only tra actually went after him.
The first couple of tres were so narrow that John had to move sideways and still felt the occasional rock brushing over his clothes. A less sturdy shirt would have torn or at least lost a button. Instead, it prevented his skin from experiencing any chafing. Then again, the state of his arms proved that casually grinding against stone didn’t even scrape the surface anymore.
“Wonder if a loofa would still work on ,” John randomly chatted, once they were in a stretch of the cave that was broad enough for them to walk. First normally, then side by side, they descended into the darkness. “You know, those sponges you use during showering?”
“Why would you even ask yourself that?” tra shook her head in confusion. “You get scrubbed down by Aclysia every fucking morning.”
“Just a thought experint, really,” the Gar responded. “I haven’t had to deal with my fingernails or stuff like that in a while. I wonder if parts of that are no longer connected to the whole lose their toughness. Would a regular loofa suffice to get dead skin cells off or would I need so kind industrial steel sponge? The variety people normally use to scratch out pots?”
“I’ll be completely honest: I have no idea and I don’t fucking care,” tra told him.
That was fair enough and the next step they took provided them with sothing else to concentrate on anyway. “We can enter the barrier here,” John told her, able to feel it with his Fateweaver senses. Without further delay, he led the way and, courtesy of the familiar chanics, pulled tra right with him.
The atmosphere around them was transford imdiately. Gone was the all-encompassing isolation of Nightingale’s shroud and in its place ca repeated gusts of stinking wind, howling through the dark tunnel.
“What died in here?” tra asked and sniffed a couple of tis. As soone that practically lived on the battlefield, disgusting slls failed to overwhelm her. “Slls like rot and bad teeth.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” John said, himself feeling like puking at the stench. “Fenrir’s breath is rushing through these caves. Let’s keep going.”
The cave opened into a proper labyrinth now, many of the walls showing clear signs of masonry. Like the hall at the airport, so too did the level of work around here appear random in its level of distribution. ‘A tradition, perhaps?’ John thought, while looking down one of the several corridors. ‘Each mber of the organization has to spend so ti further decorating the place?’
Between him and tra, Stirwin manifested. Although he had preferred the hatchling form earlier, he now took the Stage 1 form of a long-limbed and relatively regularly sized crocodile. Ever since devouring Enki, he could do that much without any help from John. “I thought you may appreciate so light,” he explained his appearance, glowing brightly to unveil more of their surroundings.
There wasn’t much to see, aside from more tunnels. “That really the entire reason you bothered manifesting?” tra asked, poking the Celestial Devourer with her left foot.
Stirwin playfully attempted to hit her foot with his tail. After he missed, he explained, “No, I’m personally interested in eting Fenrir. I heard he was a creature similar to myself. One capable of infinite growth.”
“That would roughly map onto the legend, I suppose,” John said.
Although there was a great selection of paths to choose from, finding the correct one was easy. All they had to do was walk towards the source of the stinking, increasingly hot gusts. The sll and the used-up air made John dizzy, but he had been through much worse. Headstrong, he kept advancing through the rune-covered tunnels. It took them about twenty minutes of walking for them to arrive at a massive underground chamber.
The curved, rough cave walls were inlaid with the anchors of several dozen chains, each of them covered in runes. Depending on how much strain there was on each individual chain, the runes glowed with more or less intensity. A pair of chains, particularly thick, was secured to the ground and connected to the collar around the neck of the beast around which the other chains wrapped like massive slings.
The wolf whose ability to grow had put fear even in the heart of gods was a magnificent, terrible and sorry sight. Magnificent for the natural elegance of a wolf embodied in its grey-furred form. Terrible for its sheer size, with teeth as large as n and eyes red with bloodlust. Sorry for the malnourished and sickly state he was in.
Panting transford into growling, when Fenrir laid eyes on the three beings that walked onto the balcony placed before his face. Chains stretched and flared in intensity when the great wolf leaned forwards and bared his teeth. Had he reached the stone platform, it was doubtless that he could have taken it, and them, down in one bite. Just like he had bitten off the massive hand whose skeletal remains rested on the bottom of the cave.
“Would you look at that!” A cheery voice reached John’s ears. It obviously could not belong to the massive wolf growling at them with an understandable hatred for all things human. Directing his gaze over to one of the many other balconies, each capping one of the many side tunnels, he saw a tall, blonde man waving. He was the embodint of a stereotypical viking warrior, with braided beard and blue runes painted all over his tanned, weatherworn skin. While waving, he tossed the ad within his drinking horn everywhere. “John Newman! The Gar! Finally, we et! Co here!”
“You know that guy?” tra asked.
‘I don’t have the slightest clue who that is,’ John responded ntally to keep the front of niceness. “Let’s greet him,” he said and walked to the edge of the platform. It was only five tres across, a tiny leap for a superhuman. He and tra were across swiftly and Stirwin followed incorporeally. “He-“ he started, only to be grabbed by the shoulder and enveloped in a hearty hug. In the brawny arms of the two-tre tall man, the Gar felt a surging return of his nerd-natural distaste for excessive body contact.
Luckily it was over almost imdiately. The massive man backed away until only one hand was still on John’s shoulder. He used it to manoeuvre the overwheld Gar towards one of the eight wooden chairs that were arranged around a simple table. Around it sat two more viking warriors, both of similar, almost brazen expectedness in how they looked.
“ad?” one of them offered.
“I really shouldn’t,” John managed to string together a couple of words before the energetic n interrupted him with loud laughter.
“Not a no!” the blonde man said and gave John a pat on the back that knocked the air out of his lungs.
That he was capable of that spoke to his Strength. That Particle Skin didn’t activate, to a total lack of aggression. While the blonde viking fell down into the chair on the other side of the table corner, one of his comrades dunked a drinking horn into a literal barrel filled with ad. It was shoved into John’s hands with such intensity that he grabbed it without thinking about it.
‘Okay, no,’ the Gar thought, finally regaining his composure. It had been a while since soone had treated him with such aggressive benevolence and he had never been good with physical contact in the first place. ‘I’m still the Gar though, I can’t just be shoved around. Especially not in front of tra.’ “Who are you people?” he asked, no longer interested in keeping up the appearance of niceness.
“Aaaah, I guess you wouldn’t know who I am,” the blond warrior didn’t sound bothered in the least, “Olaf Strongliver, does that tell you anything?”
John’s mind raced through his mories. At first there was only the faintest sensation of rembrance. That was unusual in and of itself, as the Gar had been living with near perfect mory for about a year now. Any Abyssal viking warriors were unlikely to co from a ti before he started raising his Stats. That ant, for him to feel familiarity with the na but nothing precise, it had to be a recollection from that window in ti between him entering the Abyss and his Intellect rising to a level that gave him his practically flawless ability to recall the past.
“…You were part of that chatroom, weren’t you?” John asked, when it dawned on him. “GrimPatron? Was that your userna?”
“Would you look at that, you DO rember !” the viking shouted and banged his drinking horn against that of the Gar. “He does rember !” he shouted at his two comrades, who shouted so jovial congratulations. It was the level of earnest non-sarcasm only drunk and very good friends were capable of. Horns were raised. Three n drank. John raised an eyebrow. tra laughed. Fenrir growled. Empty horns were tossed on the table.
GrimPatron, or Olaf Strongliver, a na likely earned for the reasons at display, had been one of the ten people who hung out in the Discord chat linked up to the information SecretBlonde, or Herman Glaurum, sold on John during his fledgeling days. ‘That only leaves whoever TorchCarrier was open. I’ve t everyone else.’
“Want to play so cards?” Olaf asked. On top of the wooden table, a practically dieval piece of carpentry that would have fit well into a fantasy inn, lay cards that were so worn down that they couldn’t allow a fair ga anymore. Each of them was damaged in their individual way so that, once soone was familiar enough with them, one could tell which card was which by the back.
“No,” John responded firmly and handed the drinking horn back. That Olaf took and emptied it without showing any signs of negative emotions further cented that he wasn’t malevolent in any way. He was just overly enthusiastic. “I’ve co here for so specific things.”
“Right, ol’ Fenrir’s claws, right?” It was a rhetorical question, as Olaf already turned to the growling wolf. “Stop your yamring already, Fen, the guy here is far beyond the level that’d just get intimidated by you.”
Fenrir’s growl quieted down until it was completely gone. The red eyes remained hateful to the brim, and echoed in his deep voice, “Descendance of cowardly traitors, all of you.”
“He’s always like this,” Olaf assured John.
tra looked over the edge of the balcony and at the nurous chains. “He’d be less pissed if the prison conditions were less torturous.”
“We considered doing that, but… hey, Fenrir, if we loosened your bonds to replace them with more comfortable ones, what would you do?”
“I’d tear you all to shreds before you could bind down again, coward!” Fenrir howled.
“As you can see, no can do,” Olaf said and grabbed both drinking horns to refill them. “When the gods chained him, they weren’t in a good mood and we lack the ability to make his accommodations more comfortable without risking that he breaks free. Leadership doesn’t want to trigger the apocalypse over making the beast that will kill Odin more comfortable.”
“Could at least make sure he’s not hungry.” John scratched the back of his head. “Let guess, leadership doesn’t want the beast that will kill Odin to be in top condition?”
“Aaaa-yup,” Olaf answered and downed the next two drinking horns.
John was conflicted on this whole affair. Personally, he didn’t want to treat his enemies as badly as many of them would treat him, specifically in captivity. Creatures of intense malevolence and might may need to be kept in conditions that were deeply painful for them in order to assure that they were kept under lock and key. Whether Fenrir had been such a creature from the start or turned into it by the prolonged suffering, John did not know, only that he was such a creature now. With that in mind, was it truly improper to keep Fenrir in this condition?
“Could just kill him,” tra suggested.
John was not generally in favour of the death penalty, but given the alternative, he did support that statent with a nod.
“Leadership is afraid that might cause another Fenrir to appear elsewhere and kick off the cycle anew, so they won’t do that.” Olaf grabbed the cards one of his comrades had tossed on the table and checked what he had been dealt. “The Sons of Odin are one of the most powerful guilds in the world. Our gods are benevolent to those that follow and cruel to those they triumphed over. Fear none, slay all.”
““Fear none, slay all,”” the other n echoed and knocked on the wood.
“A tad outdated a worldview for ,” John confessed.
“You’re a politician, you have to think in complicated ways.” Olaf laughed and once more gave John a clap on the back. “We are warriors. We keep our bodies sharp and our morals clear-cut because people like you are fallible, and when your governing inevitably crumbles under the accumulated weight of centuries of small and large mistakes, people like us will have to protect what can be rebuilt.”
John stood up and grabbed the drinking horns. tra did the sa for the other two warriors. Together they filled them up, so that all present who could drink had sothing. “Well said,” he complinted and toasted. The three warriors grinned and emptied their horns in a series of gulps. The Gar only took a sip. The ad tasted intensely sweet of honey and cherries.
“You should visit the Hudson Barrier soti.”
“Is that what you call your capital still?” Olaf asked. “I thought that was a temporary na. It’s so uncreative.”
“Not sure I want to hear that from a person from a country where the majority of places are nad after their founder and a local landmark, like a river or a big boulder,” John responded drily. “I’ll consider giving it a more creative na though.” Deeming the conversation over, John turned to Fenrir. “Is there anything you want, great wolf? Anything, besides your freedom, that I could offer you in exchange for parts of your body – a claw, so fur, and a tooth?”
Technically John only needed a claw, but if he was already there, he might as well get a greater diversity of the rare materials.
Fenrir pondered his answer.
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