A/N: Chap 20 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you to all who read and reviewed.
And now, the Titanomachy equivalent of Luke on Dagobah.
Chapter Twenty-One: A Daughter of Frigga
Taylor woke from the deepest sleep she'd had since she arrived in this strange universe. Which was odd, given her bed consisted of a slab of stone and a thin mattress filled with feathers and straw.
After the sheer luxury of her room in the palace, her stone and wood chamber looked almost like a medieval prison. The window had no glass, only a narrow opening with metal bars.
Hers was the only such chamber on that level of the tower. The only other chamber was a small bathroom. It did have running water, a square toilet, and a sink, but no bath or shower.
The only clothes she had were the same blood-splattered armor plate and skirt she wore when she arrived. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she got dressed and walked down the wooden steps. They did not spiral-the tower was square.
When she arrived at the base, she found her host standing by the fireplace, clad in the same attire as before. "There is wheat," he said. "Grind it for our porridge."
In that moment, he sounded so much like her father she found herself obeying without conscious thought.
The tower did not have a kitchen, per se. It had a hearth. The raised fireplace reminded her of a 17th century reenactment, with a stone oven and sunken area for coals, over which an old iron grill was set. Only the running water hinted at it being more.
Nearby, she saw a bowl of thick dark grain and a hand-cranked grinder. It reminded her of the one her parents used in their cabin. She filled the central chamber with the grain, and began to crank. It was not difficult at all for one of her strength, and the fresh, pure flour that emerged as the base of the grindstone gathered quickly. It was a heavy, coarse flour, but then again that was best for a simple gruel.
She ground it all and gathered it in a bowl. Looking around, she saw water and a stone bowl with an actual piece of glistening honeycomb. Curious, she moved over to what appeared to be a spice rack. She took a few cloves, nutmeg and a stick of cinnamon and ground them not with the wheat grinder, but with a stone mortar and pestle, until she mixed the fresh spices into the wheat with water and honey.
Buri returned to the tower, and as he did so she caught the smell of cooked pork. The 'bacon' consisted of thick, fresh cut pork steak on a wooden platter. "Sit, eat."
She brought the gruel and when he held up a wooden bowl, poured more than half of it.
"No," he said. "You will need your share. Half only."
She adjusted, then sat. He used a wooden spoon to take a massive bite of the gruel, raising a thick, peppery brow. Rather than speak, he grunted approval and continued eating.
There was no fork, but she found a sharpened knife waiting for her. The blade was made of a black material that did not feel like metal. She started to test it when he said, "Do not. It will remove your finger."
To demonstrate, he took his similar blade and rested it on his thick cut of pork steak. The knife slid from gravity alone through the meat.
"What's it made of?"
"The bones of my father."
The answer jarred her into silence, until she remembered what his father was. Instead, she cut a slice of the steak to eat with her gruel. The knife passed through the meat so smoothly it felt as if she were cutting air.
"If I wished the pampering my descendants crave, I would live among them," he told her. "I do not. The food we eat, I raised and harvested by my hand. The clothes I wear I made. While you are here, it shall be the same. I will teach you what you need."
He finally looked up at her. "It speaks well that you knew to prepare the gruel."
"My mother and father lived much like this in the summers, away from the city."
"The wise often seek respite from the world." He ate quickly-a chore to be finished rather than a sensation to be indulged. When he finished, he stood and walked to the hearth where a large stone basin served as a sink. He scrubbed the bowl and wooden platter first with a fine-grained sand and then water before placing it on a wooden shelf.
Taylor finished eating and did the same.
"The harvest will not be for another few months," he said. "We have wheat aplenty until then. Grind enough wheat each night to make the next day's bread. I made today's; from now on you shall make the bread."
Taylor said nothing. He noticed the silence. "Understand, child. Frigga believed you deserved this chance. She saw in your memories a worthy warrior despite your age. In my time, I have trained only three who were not kings of Asgard-my son Njord, and his twins. If you feel I am unfair, or my lessons have no value to you, you may leave at any time."
She shook her head, trying to enunciate the thoughts that stilled her. "It's not...I don't mind work. You just remind me of my father. I am honored to be here."
"Your father was Olympian?"
"The god of war, son of Zeus."
"In time, we will see what he has taught you. For now, we learn the chores of living. Come."
Behind the crumbling ruins and tower was a farm, complete with crop lands filled with wheat, turnips, beets and various squash. Apple, pear and walnut trees lined the cropland, while close within was a large pigsty and a poultry coup with the largest, meanest-looking chickens she'd ever seen.
Near the bank of the river, past the crops, she saw a long field of drying flax.
At the far end was a pen of ten massive sheep, each of them bristling with thick, filthy wool. "You need clothes," he said. "First we care for the animals. Every morning, we must do this. After, we gather wool and you will finish preparing the flax for linen."
"I've...never processed wool or flax before," Taylor said.
"If you wish anything else to wear, you will learn."
So the sunless day passed. Though some of the chores were familiar, Taylor never sheared a sheep before. To sheer one the size of a compact car made it more complicated. In this, she found herself grateful to have retained her strength. The shears were so large she doubted she could have even lifted them if she were mortal. The wool gathered from one sheep was enough to fill the interior of her father's truck bed.
Buri showed her a simple barn with a thatched roof more than large enough to hold the sheep or pigs in winter. It held wooden troughs that could either be used to wash wool, or hold feed and water for animals in winter. In the middle of the barn she saw a large, ornate spinning wheel, and behind that, a wood-framed loom.
Taylor had no idea how to use either. "Um…"
"There is a book on these devices," Buri said. "The second level of the tower holds a library. Fetch the book and read it. Then I will show you what else you will need."
He didn't stay for questions, leaving her alone in the barn as he walked away to scare a goat or whatever immortal hermit gods did. Taylor stared after him, then back at the two ancient- looking devices, and then at the massive pile of filthy wool.
Her own clothing itched from the previous day's fight and still held stains from wolf and troll blood.
"Right."
She walked across the farm until she reached the tower and found the stairs. She'd thought the second level was Buri's room, but with his instructions she tried the heavy wooden door and found it opened without issue. She stepped inside, only to freeze.
The tower's footprint could only have been four or five hundred square feet. The room she stood on held at least two thousand square feet, and had twenty-foot tall ceilings despite the ten-foot ceilings in the hall outside it. Huge windows that did not exist on the outside looked not onto the farm, but onto scenes that could only have been other worlds. It reminded her, more than anything, of Brigid's paintings.
Dominating every available surface were shelves and shelves of strange, golden-backed books.
"This is so cool," she whispered.
"I'm glad you like it," Frigga said, appearing suddenly at her side with a fond smile. "It took me twenty years to organize it. Grandfather never bothered with it himself."
Taylor managed to keep from screaming. "You enjoy doing that, don't you?"
"I was raised by witches, girl. Of course I do." She laughed, a light, happy sound. "He likes you. Sweetening the gruel was probably what won him over. I did the same thing as a girl."
Freya's magic was so powerful that Taylor could not tell she wasn't standing beside her as she moved forward into the library. "Every book that Odin has collected has a copy here," Frigga said. "And he has been collecting knowledge for the entirety of his ten thousand years. Some, here, I wrote. Though my mother Nerthus wrote some as well, as did her mother Njorda."
She stepped at one shelf and indicated one golden volume. "Books on the preparation of fibers for clothing."
Taylor pulled the book from the shelf; it was heavier than she would have thought and the cover seemed to be made of metal. Glancing up at the queen, she looked back down and opened it.
For one brief moment, she thought she wore her mother's Brisingamen again. Knowledge flooded into her mind; of scutching, hackling and spinning the flax to make linen; of washing, carding and spinning the wool.
She sat using the loom with aged, expert hands. She didn't even have to look to send the shuttlecock through the yarn. She dyed the wool and linen; she washed it and gathered it in spools. She measured and cut and sewed and….
When she closed the book, the day was darkening outside. There was no sign of Frigga. With a shaking hand, she replaced the book on the shelf and made her way downstairs to prepare flour for the next day's bread.
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
Taylor now knew that the reason women wore dresses before the industrial revolution was because making pants was a pain in the ass. She gave up after her first two tries and instead crafted a loose skirt that she cut in the middle and sowed up the sides, forming culottes.
Her undergarments were not form-fitting. She had no elastic, and used a draw string to tighten her hand-sewn underwear. It worked for her modesty, though. Every day, she performed the chores set to her, read one of the magical Asgardian books, and went to bed. She went four days without exchanging more than ten words with Buri.
On the fifth, though, after the animals were cared for, he handed her a heavy stick with a handle shaped like that of a sword hilt. "Show me what your father taught you."
It wasn't exactly Haevetien, but it had the heft and size of an arming sword. She assumed a combat position as he stood opposite, a similar sword in hand.
He moved fast; much faster than any mortal man could have. Though she was far faster, he was far more skilled. In truth, she suspected he could have challenged her father in sword combat. He bested her easily, five times in a row, before stepping back.
"Why do I win?" he asked.
"Greater reach, greater skill and experience," Taylor said, having gone through similar lessons with her father and the Black Order. "Father was forced by our circumstance to make me believe my training was a game; if he had his way, I would have trained daily instead of over the summers only. Plus...I grew accustomed to being the most powerful combatant because of my flight and magic."
He grunted. "I win because you did not use your wings," he said. "You fought Ulic, king of the Trolls, to a draw using your wings. They were granted you for a reason."
"I...didn't want to hurt you."
"Then do not. Surely you control whether your wings cut or strike?"
So doing, she looked back at the ancient god and tried again. This time, he only beat her four times out of five.
"Those were reach, skill and experience," he said, almost sounding happy. "But you made me work this time. We spar daily, until you can beat me daily. There are works in the library which teach combat. Learn well."
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
With the wheat prepared and the dough rising for the next morning, Taylor finished a dinner of roasted pork and vegetables in the stone oven. Despite her broken protection, her own innate power allowed her to remove the cast-iron pot from the coals where it had been cooking since mid-day. She took the whole pot to the table and removed the lid.
After two weeks, she'd learned the ancient god's moods. So when he sat up and looked at the roast, she knew she'd captured his interest. Using his celestial bone knife, he halved the entire roast, and used wooden spoons to capture half the vegetables within. Taylor took the rest and they settled into their evening meal.
As always, the ancient god ate quickly, though she noticed how he seemed to linger over the pork roast, chewing just a little slower. When they were nearly done, she asked the question that had been lingering in her mind for the last few days.
"Will I ever fly again?"
She felt no concern when he didn't answer immediately. It wasn't that he ignored her. He was just so old that his perception of time made conversations sometimes odd. Plus, he was enjoying his roast and stew.
"Odin's boy flies with a hammer," Buri finally said. "You have wings."
"My wings were too small relative to my body to give me lift," Taylor said. "They were symbols of the magic that let me fly. But my magic is gone."
He glanced up at her, regarding her with those sky-blue eyes of his. She had no doubt that he could see the truth of her existence, of her very…
"You did not lose your magic, child. You lost your soul."
Wait, what? "What?"
He reached across the table and held her hand. Though his hand was huge and calloused like wood bark, his touch was gentle as he traced with his thumb one of her runes. "This spell of protection...was far more than just to shield you. Clever woman, that mother of yours. She took the seed of an earth-bound god and crafted a shell to contain the spirit of the divine. Tell me true, child. You did not gain your full magic until you ate or drank a potion of her making."
With a feeling of numbness she couldn't explain, Taylor nodded. "I was dying. She'd made a potion at my birth, and...that's when the tattoos appeared."
"Yes, I could see it. This body of yours is that of an earth-bound god. A physical being of great power, like your father or myself. The divinity you imbibed was the magic of the spirit-a celestial power that would never manifest in a physical being ordinarily. Not any more, at least. Your mother crafted a physical shell, and then filled it with spiritual divinity. When that shell broke, the divinity of spirit was shattered apart from you. I have no doubt that as we speak, it exists in another universe entirely. It will be bereft of your wings and your strength, but will possess all the magic you lost."
It took Odin looking deep within her own mind to realize that. And yet he saw it just looking at her? "How can you know?"
"It is written in the spells that cover your body," he said. He let go of her hand. "A terrible fate awaited you-one that neither a physical god nor a god of spirit alone could face. And so your parents challenged the fates themselves to craft a primordial god of old. An act of hubris that I would never have tried, and could not approve of. It speaks well of your character that their desperate gamble saved their world, instead of condemning it."
He stood and walked to the basin to wash his bowl. Taylor stood and followed to do the same with hers, and the oven. When they were done, and she ground the wheat for the next day's bread and set it under a linen cloth to rise, he said, "Come with me."
They left the tower into the cold, brisk night air. He paused long enough to strap a long sword to his hip, then after a moment's thought handed her one for her own. He then grabbed a wooden staff and began walking to the end of the valley.
The sky overhead was free of clouds, and with the thin envelope of atmosphere, the galaxy lay bare before her. They walked for an hour, moving up steep, deep stairs, until they at last came to a rocky ledge that looked out over eternity.
They stood on the very edge of Asgard itself. "Sit," Buri said.
Taylor sat. The ground in front of her burst into orange flame as Buri sat opposite.
"There are beings far more ancient and powerful than myself," Buri said. His voice deepened, and took on an intonation that almost sounded like chanting. "In other dimensions, I am billions of years old, as are my son and grandson. In some dimensions, I can shape the human soul and my own descendents helped form the humans of Midgard."
As he spoke, the fire shifted into a dark red, and suddenly Taylor saw. Versions of Asgardians so insanely powerful that they dwarfed her parents and their pantheons.
"When this Universe formed, it held within it the promise of every potential to ever exist. For the One Above All is a being of potential, and is sustained by possibility as we are sustained by food or magic. That is the truth of this multiverse-that every possible version of existence must exist. That if anything can happen, it must have happened. And the magic of this universe is the art of drawing energy from those other dimensions and shaping it to our will."
The fire flashed, and Taylor's heart thudded painfully as she saw an image of her father kneeling down between two massive, familiar trees. "Dad…" she whispered.
"Know that the truth of this Universe...this unique multiverse of potential and possibility...is not the Universe that you originate from. For just as there is an infinity of dimensions within this Universe, there is an infinity of Universes within existence. Each holds their own Creator, and their own laws. Some are replete with dimensions like ours, others are but a flash of light and then nothing."
The image in the fire changed; Taylor saw a golden man with a black beard and hair staring soullessly at her from the flames. "Into every Universe exists forces of destruction. A Galactus, or a Scion. And against that, are forces of protection. An Eternal, or a Telos."
"I...don't understand?"
"You were crafted by your parents to be a protector of your universe, child. You were created to be the guardian of your galaxy. This worm….this star-devouring dragon you fought, knew this. It knew your potential. And so even unto its own death, it struck in such a way as to rob you of that potential. It could not kill you, for beings such as yourself are nigh impossible to truly kill. It shattered the shell that held your soul, thus separating you as one might split a diamond."
In the fire, she saw herself leaping from the branches of Yggdrasil, falling sword-first into the nebula-sized body of Scion.
"But know this, Telos of America. There is no greater power in existence than potential. It is sufficient to feed gods and sustain untold heavens, and it cannot be denied forever. You will be made whole in time; you will face greater threats to save those you care for. Until that time, I shall teach you all I can. And yes, child, that includes using your wings to fly again."
Taylor found herself blinking back tears. "Because it's the right thing to do?"
For the first time since she met him, Buri smiled at her. "Because, in my universe or yours, you are a daughter of Frigga, Daughter of Njord, Son of Buri. You are precious to me, and I would have you reach your fullest potential."
~~Titanomachy~~
~~Titanomachy~~
The daily chores continued. The latest crop of flax matured and she joined Buri in pulling the plants up by their roots to begin the long process of creating linen. They prepared more wool to replace blankets and rugs in preparation for the Asgardian winter, which like everything else was crafted to capture the beauty of the cold. She wove a heavy woolen kilt for herself, and a vest she fashioned to fit around her wings. She also made a throw blanket for Buri.
And she read books that filled her mind with science eons ahead of anything mortals had dreamed off. Asgard was the opposite of Clark's Law-they started with magic and dissected it over thousands of years to create their science, and it brought them to the point where they could build machines to easily manipulate gravity, mass, or even time. Though that was merely to side-step time dilation when they traveled faster than light.
She learned of the dark matter tunnels through space-time that comprised the Yggdrasil of this universe. It connected planets from far distant galaxies, but it was not unique. She learned that the other beings which Earth worshipped as gods were just as the Asgard-beings from other dimensions that were empowered by that dimensional energy that most just called magic.
Months of reading and nightly lessons, Taylor harnessed Asgardian magic for the first time. There was nothing instinctual or natural about it. She meditated for almost four hours before she could feel the miniscule dissonance in the air around her. She could not perceive it with her mortal senses, but rather with her mind alone. And she knew what it was because just the perception alone made the dissonance more pronounced.
She concentrated, focusing her sight on the air before her, until it began to shimmer and coalesce into a writhing, dark pulse of nothingness.
It lasted only a second, but there was no denying it. Having once sensed and manipulated it, Taylor remained aware of that constant background dissonance, almost like a sense of static in the world.
"I have magic again!" She grinned to herself.
