Ragnarok

SEVENTY-FOUR

Somewhere

Eirek Fossen spun around as an unfamiliar whine tore through the air, standing his hair on end. He had walked with dire wolves and plotted with a God, but none of them frightened him like this sound.

It portended doom.

His doom.

When he saw the sound’s source, he braced himself against the massive bone wall, growing week in the knees.

“Lord Fenrir,” he said, his voice oozing fear.

A giant plane, in the shape of a crescent, crashed through the portal, pushing Fenrir up and over. The giant toppled backward as though in slow motion. It roared in frustration and something else. Pain? Fossen didn’t think it was possible, but then saw his Lord’s lower jaw dangling loosely.

“No,” he whispered. “No…”

The ground shook as Fenrir and the plane stumbled back from the portal and crashed to the ground, pulverizing hundreds of dire wolves and scattering more.

Fossen took a step toward the portal. But what could he do? The plane was obviously a move of desperation. Things were not going well for their enemies on the other side. Fenrir might be injured, but it wouldn’t stop. As soon as it freed itself from the plane, it would return to the other side. And it would heal.

Something hard jabbed Fossen’s back. He spun, not realizing he’d been walking backward, away from the portal.

He found a cage, a fifteen-foot cube, built of bones-human and dire wolf-held together by some kind of solidified secretion. He stepped back from the cage, eyes widening at the sight of the human bodies that filled the cage. The corpses were hacked into pieces-arms, legs, heads, torsos-all packed inside, floor to ceiling. The body parts glistened and he realized that they, too, had been covered in some kind of secretion.

Preserved, he thought, stepping back from the cage, but bumping into a second.

He leapt away from the second cage and spun around, finding himself surrounded by a field of the structures. Fear rose in his chest, but he squelched it. He knew Lord Fenrir killed and ate human beings, among other things. But she did not, would not, eat Fossen.

Gunshots rolled across the plains bringing his attention back to the portal. Lord Fenrir lay on Her back still, but was beginning to stir. Two figures ran over her body, heading back toward the portal. Fossen squinted his eyes. He couldn’t see the mens’ faces, but the shape and gait of one of them was familiar.

Stanislav.

He shouted the name, “Stanislav!”

But a moment later, the two men disappeared through the portal.

The crescent-shaped airplane shifted and fell partly away from Fenrir, who shrieked. She was getting back up, recovering from the blow, but slowly.

Fossen, came Her voice. You have failed.

“No,” he said, feeling a tremble in his legs. “The portal is stable!”

But it is not secure. You brought the children of Adoon to my doorstep.

“The children of what?” Fossen’s thoughts became panicked. “I didn’t know. How could I have-”

Fossen’s twitching body froze. Dust rose in the distance between him and the portal. He saw this world in shades of monotone gray, like old photos of his father, Edmund Kiss. It had unnerved him, but not nearly as much as what he saw now.

Dire wolves.

Perhaps a hundred of them.

Running toward him.

He’d been around the creatures a lot. He understood their moods. Their body language. These hundred predators were out for blood.

His blood.

“My Lord, why?” Fossen shouted.

No reply. Fossen ran away from the approaching horde, quickly arriving at the bone wall. Gripping the protruding bones, he climbed as fast as he could, reaching the top just as the hundred dire wolves arrived at the base and launched up toward him.

“The portal is open!” he shrieked.

He turned toward the glowing sphere.

Fenrir stood again, the plane falling away. The giant’s head turned toward him, its jaw dangling sickly, its body covered in white blood and ruptured wounds, looking very mortal.

Not a God.

Tears welled in Fossen’s eyes.

He stood still.

The portal winked out, drawing a gasp from his lips.

“We can start again,” he whispered.

The leash remains.

Her voice sounded almost sad now, as though filled with a disappointment more deep and complex than anything he had felt before. It brought tears to his eyes. He fell to his knees, weeping, waiting for the dire wolves to reach him and exact the punishment he now knew he deserved.

But then, as though by magic, the portal returned, blooming brighter than ever before. Fossen flinched away from the light, covering his eyes with his arm. A hot breeze washed over him. He chanced a look and in the fraction of a second he had left, he recognized the mushroom cloud rising into the gray sky. Then the shockwave hit, first melting and then obliterating his body, the dire wolves and the massive bone tower, leaving only dust and one more crater.