The first time I walked between realms to Vorsgard I avoided the outpost as an unloved extension of Odin-King's empire. I had just been released from a hundred-years confinement in the Eternal City, and wasn't in the mood for more of the Allfather's minions. It seemed that after a rainbow light from the sky ripped apart my marriage of eight years I didn't want to see him or Thor or any of the others longer than mandatory—fancy that. When my punishment ended and the man I thought to be my father returned to me my right to use the bifrost, I refused him out of spite to spend the next fifty years learning how to travel from place to place on my own, in secret.
Vorsgard earned the self-indulgent honor as the place of my first successful teleportation. Something about the ash-stained sky, smoldering nihilistic carnage and helplessness baked into every scrap of murky ground really spoke to me back then. I haunted the bleak roads as a dead person, mourning my mortal family.
The last time—the only time—I visited Vorsgard, its surface glowed red beneath low-rolling, shapeless smoke. Nine hundred years ago, Vorsgard still burned from the fires Buri set.
The dead planet's misshapen landscape is a seething orange-brown mire. Blistered mud flats are sculpted into uneven peaks and dark abyssal valleys by a careless volcanic hand. Charred wreckage thrusts upward from its blasted cities at precarious angles, forming a jagged canopy of ancient towers, corroded walls, and formless metal sculptures.
This was how Buri ensured his god-hood. This was the last civil war we Aesir ever fought.
There is a weak place in the wards above a field outside the former Ocean Capitol. I teleport here and draw a shield over myself against the sweltering heat, before heading East under a giant bone-white sun. The city throws sharp shadows across my path. Skeletal remains dapple the muddy ground with cast pools of cooler air as if from the largest trees that ever lived. Small rocks and immortal habrium scrap litter what could have been a main street, carpeting the abandoned walkways like a mealy underbrush. Dead-eyed buildings full of windows watch me from the greasy layers above.
Asgard's outpost is just beyond the city's threshold, protected by defensive wards above and beyond the planet-wide network that prevents Heimdall from spying. I can see the blinking force field from here, growing larger as I prowl through a maze of corpse streets.
Nothing moves in the rubble.
Slipping into a deep oceanic shadow, I murmur a spell to slick my right index finger in casting ink and draw a rune for Sight on my temple. The dark places fill with color, making Vorsgard's ruins a splotchy tangle of white-lit glittering decay and yellow-brown secrets. Hidden in a recess the color of boiled fat, I switch my lies to replace Odin-King's mighty ceremonial presence with an unrecognizable face and featureless black robe. Another instant, and I am wearing make-believe silver gauntlets set with runic inscriptions that look terrifying but mean absolutely nothing at all. Let Asgard's loyal warriors mistake me for a scout from the Black Tower. Let the colonists take me for a bizarre and dangerous ally.
Oh yes—and one more thing. I unsling my invisible bag and bury it at the foot of a cracked, lichenous wall. A tracker spell and all those idiot wards I laid over my bedroom door will be useful, here. If any person but me comes within twenty feet of this place I will know it. If any person tries to steal what is in this place they will die. I cover the invisible bag with debris, vanish my tell-tale footprints, and step out to face Vorsgard's newest kingdom.
The outpost is silent as I approach. No guards from either side appear above the white stone wall. Dried mud crunches as I come to a stop. The ground just shy from the force field is burnt with old magic, rippled and pocked from long-standing wards. The ground holds other secrets, too: shallow impact craters warn that someone broke through the defenses, not long ago, and their solid-loop failsafe generator has been activated from the inside. Two days? Three days?
The gate is closed. No alarms echo at my proximity. No challenge is issued.
There is only silence. And stillness. And the rustle of wind through the hollow streets.
An electric current races up my spine, down to the ends of my fingertips. I swallow the grin pushing its way to freedom and give the barren wall a disparaging glare.
"I'm going to give you the benefit of my doubt and assume that you can see me," I say. "If you can't see me, you are an incomparable fool and I have no interest in speaking with you at all."
No answer. Nothing. Whoever now occupies the outpost is playing safe. Very well.
I say, "I know that you are not the same people who were stationed here. Good. I am Vyir the Councilor, of the Long Wastes. Will you open your gates that we may talk?" Vyir the Councilor waits in parade rest for a response. A little military etiquette makes him into a benign figure clinging to his training, which in the face of cutthroat traitors also makes him worthy of disdain.
Sabotaging myself works well when I need to put someone at ease.
Unfortunately, my play opens to an audience of zilch.
"Ah—sorry," humble Vyir sputters. "I don't know if you cannot hear me or if you are choosing not to respond. I do not mean to invade what is clearly your outpost, but I must speak with someone in charge." This sword-polishing gets me nowhere fast, either, so I give up the humble chit-chat to carve a few runes into the dirt outside the re-generated force field. Green sparks shower upward, mapping the charge circuit into a grid. I tear into the grid with Holding spells, siphoning magic from main channels to flood smaller capillaries. Charge lines buckle, compensate, mutate as they try to hold back an unprecedented surge. The old failsafe's heart opens before my eyes in a spectral mirage like green rivers in the dirt; the loop completes it circuit and the force field snaps.
There is no better joy than rending another sorcerer's spells into ash.
Orange auroras crash around my feet. I walk through a hole in the shield easy as walking through a door.
Breaking into the fortress itself is even simpler; another few spells and the Open rune unlocks a towering habrium gate that grinds aside to reveal an orange-lit passageway. I construct a personal shield just in case the colonists are the strike-first type, and step out to meet them as a genteel messenger from the stars. Once they hear what I have to say, they will forgive my transgressions.
The passageway is deserted.
I hesitate on the threshold, eyes narrowing.
The outpost is lit front to back in flawless even light, sterile and unblemished. No one comes to meet me. No footsteps echo in the passageway's clandestine depths.
Hairs raise on the back of my neck.
Something wrong here. Either the colonists have abandoned the outpost after all, or—
Boobytrapped?
A smirk snakes up my face and this time I allow it. Oh, clever-clever. You mocking trolls. Perfect. I take my time drawing detection spells on the floor and walls. Magic shimmers out in a cheerful wave, caressing the passageway's sloping gray stone, delving into every nook and cranny that were once—millennia ago—murder holes through which defenders could pour caustic potions or plasma gunfire. I have to keep an eye out for any cretinous heroic types who might like to take a cheap swing at a sorcerer, but the mud path behind me remains empty.
My spell comes back negative.
No boobytraps.
No heroic types.
No guards.
Unimpressed, I skulk down the passageway while my magic evaporates into smoke. My boots clap loud with each step, but I don't bother masking the sound. There is no one else here.
What, then? Could the renegades have attacked the outpost and fled? Or are these people already too familiar with honor of Asgardians, and chosen to lie in wait for an over-confident fool to blunder into their midst? This line of reasoning stops me cold.
When the passageway ends at a second strongdoor, I press my ear flat to the habrium. If there is an ambush waiting for me, this would be a good place to stage it. I close my eyes, listening past the enveloping quiet for a tattle-tale click or cough or stray footstep. No sound trickles through from inside. I hold my breath a full dozen heartbeats before reaching for the lock.
The strongdoor opens on a greased track. On the other side is a large durstone chamber with empty arms racks arrayed from six fortified walls. There is a smaller passageway extending back into a supplementary staging area I can just see from my position, crowned with three reinforced doorways. Footprints in soot betray a company who recently used this ready room to fight against an invasion. I cannot tell if they were successful. There is no one here, now.
Quiet seeps in at the corners of the world. The silence grates my ears. I hate empty silence. I want to call out to someone. Let me turn the hunt through an isolating fortress into a game of fetch-me-forth—Am I getting warmer?
I stick my tongue between my teeth to keep my mouth shut.
Slipping through the right-hand door leads me to a short hall. The lights flicker, here. The stale air has a spongy, dense texture that puts me in mind of alchemical bombs. Airborne soot leaves an acrid sulfur residue in my throat. I can hear my breath coming loud in my ears.
What sort of people take an outpost and don't bother to set up camp or loot?
Char marks blister the floor and walls, making the hall a blasted, soot-streaked tomb. Explosions have ripped chunks from the grated walkway. An ax is buried in the far right end, deep enough to buckle the durstone.
Well done, I tell the ax's vanished wielder. I think you slew the wall. Was it a grand battle fit for the ages? Oh, the tales of Vorsgard's prowess!
The stone is not amused.
Fifteen feet onward there is a wedged-open door leading to another smoky hall, and stairs pointing down to a lower level. I take that direction, aiming a wary hand at the recess in case I need to fire off a defensive spell. Impermeable darkness drowns all but the top eight steps. The floor below is a pit of absolute black, stricken from the cosmos as a deep, Helish pool. Too dark for my Sight rune to fill with color.
The Void.
Not the Void.
I conjure fire in my right hand to break the deep darkness into manageable tones. Green-tinged flames crack the abyss with make-pretend rune colors: living yellows, oranges, reds. At my command the enchanted flames flap into a ball of light and whisk down the stairs. Pops, snickers, silk ripples, whispers fill the hall with comforting noise. I follow close behind them. Emptiness prickles through my chest.
The outpost could benefit from some décor. Tapestries illustrating past victories over prior Walls, possibly. Or elvish statues—with or without the eye-bursting inverse rear facade elves seem to like—; even some of those offensively inane motivational posters Midgard started inflicting upon its serfs. Red shadows eek out uniform durstone blocks as lifeless and dull as my dungeon cell. Block after block. Step after step. On and on, and on. Warriors are not on a whole require to do much heavy lifting when it comes to having an ability to think, but even they must go mad stuck too long in a place like this.
There is a plasma rifle on the floor by the last step. My flame draws it from the lightless rift as a ghost, laying alone and unmoored in the center of a dirty, pocked habrium grate.
An abandoned rifle?
Biting cold claws up my spine. Black specks swarm my vision. I pause, hands flexed at my sides, preparing to cast the moment anyone dares leap at me.
The lower level is silent.
No sound at all from the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. No one shifts in the dark outside my well of light.
I push my mask into a terse smile, and bend down to examine the lost weapon as one might examine a sweet left by some misbehaving child. I don't recognize the make or model, but the the weapon's organic sensibilities leaves a squirming pain in my throat I cannot identify.
No, I can. The mishmashed, fluid, patched-together build reminds me in an unpleasant way of the—
I don't want to think about them right now. Not in the dark. Not underground.
Curious eyes.
Curious, curious eyes.
I am not in the Void.
I am on Vorsgard.
Only Vorsgard.
I am alone.
Clapping my hands together in a joined fist, I release my flames to scatter across the ceiling's stately, even face. Green floods the level. The odd-colored shadows evaporate under real light.
I am standing in a command room.
Shattered divination scopes glitter from the dark between overturned desks, a broken Asgardian seal, and the Allfather's iconic crest. Scopes, and desks, and pieces—but no colonists. No garrison. No investigators.
No looting.
Did the anarchists merely want this garrison dead? Could they have truly had no other plan than that? Take the outpost, kill the survivors, retreat back to their hovels?
That sounds like sub-sentient aggression, rather than tactics. A wild beast slaying another who wanders too close to its territory. But if so, how did a technologically inferior colony overwhelm our outpost?
I'm going to walk into a back room somewhere to find everybody drunk on the floor, aren't I? I can just picture it: Creeping through this entire fractured, desecrated fortress only to come to a last door in a last hall in a last wing with bright light shining from the seams. I'm going to huddle with my back flat against the wall, holding my breath, listening for enemy warriors. I'm going to slide open the door ve-e-e-e-ery carefully, expecting that ambush. I'm going to see the chieftain and his warriors with the defeated colonists in thrall, every last one pissed to the end of his cups.
I'm going to have give them Svaldir's unholy Grimace.
One scope at the fore is not completely smashed. The instrument lies in almost one piece, halfway under the toppled imperial flag. The divining glass is locked in an angry warning, its corrupted surface projecting white fog on the display above. I brush the glass clean with a few lazy swipes of my palm. The display isn't heavy, so I heft it like a tray between my hands and manipulate the side controls with my thumbs. The fog clears in sections, left to right. In seconds the display is revived from its stupor as the cosmos's least effective mirror, replacing my dark fire-wreathed reflection with roving shadows.
I address the divining glass: "Can you hear me?"
Garbled noise bubbles up from the display. The shadows jump and slither.
Possibly the divining glass has been told not to speak with strangers. I transform my voice into someone's . . . who is above questioning. "I am Odin Allfather, High King of Yggdrasil. I ask you again: Can you hear me?"
Blurp. Blubb.
Oh, all right. It's broken.
After a quick check over my shoulder to ensure that I am still alone, I enchant the display to hover at eye-height while I try to fix it. This is the tedious technical sorcery I meant to have Ilda do, in sending her with the contingent to Vorsgard. Ilda likes picking apart artifacts. I dare say she loves magic devices more than people, possibly because they are the only things in the cosmos that can't outwit her just by asking for the salt. This mechanic's magic, though, raised my hackles whenever the Black Tower's masters tried to make me learn. Servant's work. Bad enough to be a boy mage—and Nine Godless Realms forbid I switch to my other shape where anyone can see—but a boy mage who is also a prince does not let himself be reduced to servant's work. Divination scopes should perform on command when I call for my attendant to bring one. I shouldn't have to stand here fiddling with runic pathways and charge knots. I speak and the damn device should do as I ask.
Gentle coaxing prompts a holographic aura, which I reroute by enchantment into telepathic commands. I can override the injured scope by addressing the sprite directly. The divining glass sparks and fizzes—twice. The fix isn't a good solution, but my patchwork magic isn't going to be seen by anyone else.
This protracted humiliation over, I poke the display with a cautious fingertip. The shadows fly apart. The glass clears, revealing the last divination summoned by the command room's sorceress.
Intruder. Warning. Intruder. Bright alarm-red jolts the display in a scream. The warning is made colorless by my green fire, but the flash is recognizable all the same. Eight dots wink to life on the floor above me.
There you are, you cowards. Thought you would let me trap myself down here before coming to say hello?
The anarchists are congregating in a large storage hall with—if I am reading the scope correctly—a hole blasted through the outside wall into open air. The dots are lurking around their unplanned window, possibly discussing whether I am an outpost-survivor to cross off their list or someone they want to take alive. As I watch, six make an exit out the punctured wall. One more leaves the storage hall heading right, back toward the outpost's hub—in my direction. Leaving the last to stay behind as guard.
The garrison is dead. No sons of Asgard would have surrendered their outpost. There are no bodies, which means that the garrison is rotting in a mass grave somewhere and my investigatory force has already been here and gone—or been dragged away. If they're gone, I expect they are out looking for the colony. If they've been captured, they are lost. The six above me are scouts or a retrieval party, sent back here to get their hands on valuable modern supplies before my force returns—or sent to make sure there are no more unexpected visitors. Whoever these colonists are, however they overwhelmed the outpost, they are not a people I can negotiate with.
They are killers.
They will not care what I might have to say.
All right. New plan.
After I kill the man sent to assassinate me, I will place a tracking spell on their guard and take my leave. Asgard can deal with them as Asgard does best.
I set down the divining glass with a calm, cool smile. A sharp gesture dispels my green flame from the command room's ceiling. As the colorless dark crashes around my head, I wag my fingers to limber my hands for combat and climb the stairs back to the light. I feel nothing.
That's a lie.
This is going to be fun.
My poor would-be murderer is nowhere in sight when I reemerge in the staging area. I could head for the gates, but this chamber—for all its heavy damage—is filled with debris enough to make waiting here for him a smarter move. There is a broken stone table and plenty durstone rubble at my back to provide cover, plus an escape route should I need it. I won't need it. I take my time positioning myself to the right of a smoldering ex-column, where I am not visible from the left door, and conjure six throwing knives.
Footsteps clank in the adjoining hall. He's wearing armored boots. Good. That will make him slow.
I squeeze the knives in my fists.
Pebbles tremble at the hall's threshold. Rubble scrapes under a heavy gait. I can hear him at the door, now, ten feet from where I am. His breathing is a labored hiss—he is wearing a helmet with an air filter. The smoke is dangerous to him. No, he is not from Asgard.
I wish he and his friends hadn't already met the garrison. I'd have liked to scare the hell out of him stepping from behind this column dressed in all black with no breathing mask on.
His metal footsteps clank into the staging area. I tug the emotionless warrior's trance over my mind, settle into the nerveless pre-battle rush that replaces my weak flesh and bone with liquid fire. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I whirl from behind my cover, sight him for the knife throw, arms uncrossing to—
Leering skeleton head. Oily pus-colored eyes in greasy red-rimmed sockets. Long brown teeth around a mouth black as the Void. Dark gray-gold on boiled waxen white. Grasping hands sharp nails. Curious eyes curious eyes.
The creature before me is not a colonist. It is not from Vorsgard. It is not Aesir.
A rafter collapses in my mind. My soul inverts.
The creature has a plasma rifle, although I don't see or care until a blast hits me in my left shoulder. Electric pain crackles up every flayed muscle in my body.
My limbs jerk. The durstone floor jumps from under my feet, rotating in space, smashes into my back. I arch from the floor in a congealed knot. The walls and ceiling flicker. I can't inhale. A second flash of pain. Wet warmth soaks my ribs. Damp trickles into my right eye. My knives were flung into the air when I fell. They clatter around me.
The ghoulish face appears in my vision, silhouetted against the scorched blackened ceiling. Curious curious eyes look down at me, watching to see if I can move.
My stomach floods with slippery ice. My heart shrinks so small I could disappear inside myself.
Killers? Yes.
Looters? Yes. What they came for wasn't weapons or technology.
The Chitauri warrior scoops up my limp, twitching hands and binds my wrists together with a pulsing yellow cord.