A/N: Well, I feel a bit silly. I posted the wrong version of this chapter yesterday. I completely forgot a good seven hundred words that were supposed to go after the line break. Fixed it!
As afternoon shrouds us in a dull white haze, we follow Cleaved-Lip—Braeggvild to his father, apparently—away from our alchemical prison deeper into the industrial complex. Our dungeon sat at the edge of a steep hillside whose base is wiped away in rippling, white fog. Other complexes rise beyond that ephemeral ocean, here and there, as islands in a blank sea of nothing. Pipes, grids, rails, carts, and staircases spread out above and below us like a metal spiderweb. There is an old factory tower rising on our left, and to our right are massive habrium cylinders much like the one we just vacated. The natural world has encroached with the humidity, littering the habrium walkways with simple mosses that form mosaic carpets underfoot. No clanking, booming, billowing, or subtle sighs permeate the derelict air; what ancient, eroding machinery lies all around are clenched tight in rigor mortis. The complex survives through its barest skeleton; this sprawling creation is at least eight thousand years old.
"What would these Chitauri do with prisoners?" Hruothban says in a low voice. "Question them for Asgard's weaknesses? Ilofn and Oddoutril will give them nothing. Prince Loki's army will have to kill them."
The Aesir, for the most part, do not take prisoners. Enemies are to be slain in glorious battle, or put to work as thralls. Separating two captives from the rest makes no sense in this mindset. Any other possibilities—trying to divide and sway weaker-willed prisoners onto one's side, for example—are dishonorable. If dishonorable things happen to Asgard's prisoners, as they must from time to time, I was never made privy.
"Tracks." Braeggvild stops at the edge of a filthy slope, beside a horse-sized pipe crammed with poisonous-smelling mushrooms. Hruothban cheerfully drops to one knee beside him, the better to examine what is—I am not lying—an unremarkable green-brown moss identical to every other mossy spot in this haunted wasteland.
"They will fear for their lives," Lur vows. "Mother Chitauris will warn their sons of us for generations to come."
Braeggvild's cleaved lip twitches in a ghoulish scowl. "These are low-level repulsor scores. They are airborne. They've gone this way at some speed, maybe a meter from the ground."
Hruothban rights himself and thumps Braeggvild's back. "Show me."
We take the slope at a run, ziggzagging as the incline funnels out into a slippery depression where the ground is more water than mud. Primordial slime slathers my boots. Scummy water splashes up my knees. Braeggvild forges ahead heedless to the muck, presumably picking up a trail from the whiskery roots that strangle the depression's crumbling walls. Hruothban, Lur, and I wade after him. To my eyes this tattle-tale vegetation resembles nothing except for possibly Lur's overenthusiastic facial hair . . . I wonder if tracking is a skill I should acquire for my life in hiding. I might need to defend myself from marauders. Or give them cause to defend themselves from me.
A huge dark hole opens in the roots along the left wall: a tunnel descending into the rotten ground. Severed pipes poke from the gaping subterranean depths. More piping criss-crosses the underground ceiling, walls, and floors as a filthy, metal catacomb.
No—a honeycomb.
My heart shrinks. I have seen structures like this before, only cleaner, neater. Built into an asteroid field.
If this old industrial tunnel looks familiar to me, it would have looked like home to our quarry.
"They are in that," I say.
Hruothban squelches to a stop, ahead.
Braeggvild says, "What makes you so sure?"
"Ah!" Lur says. "A good place for hiding."
"Check it," Hruothban orders.
Braeggvild approaches the tunnel, staring at the ground plastered around the black entrance. Whatever he sees gives him pause. He hesitates a full dozen heartbeats before saying, "Your new thrall is right."
"Of course he is!" Hruothban thumps a friendly hand on my shoulder. "Summon a light, Enchanter. We will seek these cowards in their den."
"What part of they will swarm you do you not understand?" I say. My heart is trying to slither up my throat agin. "Come here. I'll draw a rune on you to give you Sight in darkness."
Open space is not a good area for long-term residency. Every hour in the Void between stars is a small eternity, each eternity piled one upon the next in relentless crushing waves. Imagine yourself, right here. Or in your room, better.
Your room.
Now, take away the furniture. Take away your home. Take away your flatmates and their cars that never work, especially in the rain. Take away your office and the people you pass on the streets, or speak to on the telephone. All the schools are closed. All cinemas are silent. No more London. No more California. All your friends are gone. All your family is gone. There are no more police. No receptionists. No Internet. Your children are gone. Your marriage is gone. Your world is gone. Your system is gone. The only person left in all the universe is you.
Your loneliness is a second person inside you, wearing your shell as its skin. You are a hollow mask. Your isolation is so full that you cease to exist.
What is the point of language? You speak a language of one.
Words mean nothing at all outside your own head. Everything in your mind—everything you can think of—is gone forever. All that's left in the cosmos is inside your own hateful, damnable memories; here and gone in a thought.
You ache to be able to vanish in a thought. If everything in the cosmos can disappear in an instant, why can't you?
You can't.
There is no un-doing. There is no going back.
Make it stop.
Soon, words and phrases start sticking out in your mind. You realize you can play games with sounds: making noise that means nothing—what does it matter?; taking one word that has a very nice texture and making a song out of it: starting low and going high, or starting high and meandering low and then going high again, like a tolling bell. Bells—hilltops, churches, brides, white, fog, city, light, nightclub, people. Walking through grass and trees. You talk to yourself because if you don't talk to yourself, the Cosmos is too empty to bear.
Then, after a long long while, you start imagining that if you can only believe hard enough you can hear the singing of birds and whispering grasses. You can make people appear beside you. You won't be alone any more. And—oh—that . . . to not be alone with your own thoughts. To get away from the creature wrapped in your own head.
When the Chitauri pulled me from my endless drifting, I thought I had been rescued. I remember lights booming in the deep dark. Pinprick stars receded under a real, moving glow. This was an act of creation on par with the start of Time. With so many eternities spent screaming in my head, I never knew if I really really shouted when grasping mechanical arms clamped ice prongs around my boney chest. So long had passed since I had seen any light. My starved brain couldn't make sense of the movement, the touch. I goggled up at the solid metal bulk tugging me into its belly without comprehending the ship.
If I'm not wholly mad now, I certainly was then. Lights and movement—and sound: the gorgeous catastrophic energy of sound, crashing booming breathing being—smashed me into a billion little pieces. Nothing I witnessed made any connection at all. Bright glowy-things and wall-things and floors and objects, any objects, alarms and voices—living moving real real alive beings—entered my cosmos for the first time in an ocean of eternities. I was birthed anew in metal claws. I flailed my stick-arms and kicked against my spacefaring cradle. I re-entered the universe as a wailing, sobbing infant in a thousand-year-old body. I was entirely senseless.
And I was theirs.
The tunnel into Vorsgard plunges down for almost two kilometers. Flattened habrium pipes lay steps for us to ease the way, but the metal is treacherous in a sharp grade half-buried with dirt and vegetable scum. Hruothban creeps ahead in the red shadows, beckoning us forward one secluded cover at a time. I crawl, face down, pressed so tight to the dirt that the brown stink of pipe and ground, crusted mud and green-brown carpet fills my soul with a pungent acrid grave-smell. The odor is almost a tactile, manacle presence but worse, underneath it all, is a familiar reptilian musk.
My throat spasms. I squeeze my right hand in a fist. My bare fingers ache. I want my invisible bag.
I don't know how to explain my invisible bag's contents, but between fantastically having the Gauntlet and not having the Gauntlet I am willing to take the risk. I'd think up a good lie afterward.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Magic. Wishes.
Brother! Can you turn their swords into paper?
I left the bag under a wall. I don't think it can be discovered, inside a ruin within ruins, but I must retrieve the bag before we leave Vorsgard. If the Chitauri find it we are lost.
If the Chitauri find me, I am lost.
I force my eyes open. Forward, forward.
I hate the two prisoners we're coming after.
Why did I agree to come? I could have dug up my bag and teleported from the bifrost site, through the gap in Vorsgard's wards, anywhere I wanted to go. Back to Midgard, maybe. Go get a stiff drink.
Red red florescent pain silhouettes the two men, in my head. I can't push them away. I can't leave them down here.
I want to.
I can always magic myself invisible if we are spotted. Let Hruothban, Lur, and Braeggvild buy my ticket to safety.
Rock pillars grow from the ground ahead, separating the downward slat from a flat area—a horizontal cavern. Hruothban drops behind a pillar's base and waves us to his side. Braeggvild, Lur, and I huddle up beside him in a breathless hush. Bioluminescence spills from the cavern's toothy opening in a sickly blue wave, slicking the flattened pipes in a sheen like sweat. I am shivering again.
"I will go first," Hruothban says. He knocks his plasma rifle into guard position. "Enchanter, you stick close to my left and provide magic aid should I require any. Stay within range so I can cover you."
"Or I can make us invisible," I say. This may be dishonorable, but Thor and his friends learned not to mind me sharing their adventures whenever Odin's son decided we should have a happy bonding experience—my skills allowed us to walk right into Laufey-King's palace on Jotunheim without being caught.
"We should not use his magic in place of skill," Braeggvild warns, but he sounds hesitant. Honor or no honor, there is something gratifying about being able to slip into a enemy's stronghold literally invisible.
Hruothban flashes his broad smile. This is still a game to him. A glorious adventure. "Vyir, my very good friend, make us invisible should we find ourselves in an emergency. Such a time may come when we are very grateful for magic. Otherwise, save your reserves."
That was tactful. I give him a Yes, my lord as befits some squashed dullard like Vyir. My pulse is fizzing in my ears. It hurts to breathe.
"Braegg," Hruothban orders next; "Lur: follow us at three-pace-tail. We are eyes first, claws as last resort."
Hruothban thumps my arm. That touch is almost too much. I recoil.
We head for the bioluminescence, staying low and watching the cavern for movement. Hruothban selects a route that keeps us close to the left wall, sheltering us from prying eyes—at least from that direction. Mineral deposits crust the ceiling and floor in uneven serrated fangs. A sweet stench like overripe figs drifts between the rocky jaws, filling my lungs with disembodied horror. I can smell my prison down here.
Hruothban ducks behind a low outcropping and drags me after. Although the cavern continues ahead, he points to a gap that leads down a steeper plunge into a sticky recess. We ease along this side path inch by inch until we're well out of sight. I almost bolt when the ground slurps at my boots. When I put a hand on a stalagmite for balance, my palm comes away wet with slime. The cave floor is coated in transparent ooze.
I cast two more silencing spells: one for me and one for Hruothban, lest our sticky footsteps alert anything that might be listening.
If they catch me . . .
If they catch me . . .
My chest hurts.
Images race past: what they look like, what they sound like, how it will feel to vanish from sight, how the ground with clank underfoot as I dash for the surface. They aren't ambush predators. They'll show themselves first. They enjoy intimidation. If I prepare for the moment, maybe I won't be caught in pathetic stupor the second time.
I don't want to know how I must look to Hruothban and the warriors behind us: a trembling, broken coward. A ruin. I am not the person I was before I fell.
Ten meters farther on the ooze grows thick underfoot. The slime congeals into a white wrinkled dough half a meter high, filling our path from one side to the other. Black pustules the size of butterfruits swell from the slick expanse, hard-surfaced and darkly engorged.
A tremor races down my arms.
Hruothban's back tenses. He's evaluating this new sight as a potential threat.
"It's waste," I say. "This is a byproduct from outfitting a weapon they call the Leviathan. The pustules are parasites that thrive in charged, nutrient-rich compounds."
Hruothban does not move. "Can it see us?"
"The parasites?"
He gives me a sloppy smile.
"The parasites don't have eyes."
That's good enough for him. Hruothban strides toward the ooze. I grab his wrist.
"Don't touch them! They . . . secrete a powerful acid if disturbed."
Hruothban turns around to regard me. A pinched line forms between his brows. His unspoken question etches his angular face with sudden mistrust.
"The Elves," I invent, "captured one. I got a fairly good look at it. As I have said: I will share any information I can so long as you ask me nothing to compromise my masters. Even after your pay for my return to Asgard I must maintain this request."
He waves this honor-bound blithering aside, but it serves to satisfy him. We start forward with maintained care, pausing only so he can signal my warning about the parasites to Braeggvild and Lur.
The line between his brows does not abate.
The over-ripe fig smell increases as we step up onto the dough. Hruothban's agile, well-muscled stride navigates the dough's minefield without hesitation. I . . . find a route more cautiously. There is a barb-wire fence inside my head eight times larger than any individual pustule. Any time I get too close, phantom pain crackles up my right hand.
"Say! Did your science tutors ever give you starch to play with?" I say to him, to take my mind off of everything we're doing.
"Science tutors?" Hruothban laughs. "Do you take me for a councilor's son? No, no. I went to the common school like everybody else."
"This stuff we're ankle-deep in reminds me of the day my brother and I had fun making war with wet starch." I can hear the words coming out of my mouth, but it's not me talking. "You can turn starch into a goo with something—I don't remember now—and it stays more-or-less solid so long as you keep it moving. We were supposed to play nice and then get on to the next lesson, but I put a handful on his seat when he wasn't looking and after he sat down—no force alive could stop us. He climbed on my chest and raked it through my hair, so I had to smack some in his face. I think they were only able to pry us apart after we were both blind, deaf, gagging, and had starch dripping from our shorts. That was a very good day."
Hruothban nimbly skirts a pustule. His passage kicks up a slimy chunk that slaps a monster. Black liquid erupts from the parasite in a steaming, foul-smelling pool. Acid boils through the dough, leaving behind a blistered, weeping ruin that almost looks like melted skin.
I speed up to avoid the runoff and fall in place closer by his side. "Say! I wouldn't worry for your shield-brothers. They will be happy we are coming for them. Imagine if we abandoned them. What if we had left them here, to an uncertain fate? Imagine if we never bothered to come looking. What sort of people would we be, do you think? If we never bothered to come looking. Do you think we would be right? Would you be worthy of a red cloak, if you have a red cloak? You're not a member of the War Council, Hruothban, are you?"
He makes a sharp gesture at me, a wordless warning that I should be silent. His face is tense, almost incredulous.
Anyway.
We seemed to have arrived at the ooze's point of origin. The mass under our feet has thickened to cement. Above us, the stalactites run heavy with long streamers of glistening transparent waste. There is a cavity in the ceiling between rocky formations, looking up into industrial double doors.
"What is above us?" Hruothban is so quiet that I have to lean forward to hear him.
A hanger, I suspect. If this passageway is thick with cybernetic waste, there must be lots of nasty playthings up above. The Chitauri will be readying their invasion for Asgard. I make Vyir say, "How in Nine Wretched Realms do I know?"
Lur and Braeggvild reach our position a few moment later, and join their leader's examination of our way forward. Lur locks and unlocks his plasma rifle, and Braeggvild voices what I can smell the warriors thinking: "Can we blast through those doors?"
"That looks like a waste chute." Hruothban sounds hesitant. "I suspect it is alarmed."
"Good time we see a battle," Lur grunts.
"What did I say about staying away from direct combat?" I protest.
Hruothban turns to Braeggvild. "I could have Vyir cast his magic to make us invisible. We could scout their stronghold until we find the dungeon. If the door is alarmed—"
"Od and Ilofn may be badly injured by the time we reach them," I say. "We need to find a straight route, now."
"Any idea where we are in these creatures' household?" Hruothban asks Braeggvild.
Our tracker has no idea. None of them have any idea. I haven't any idea. The Chitauri don't build in systematic boxes, the way we Aesir do. They tunnel deep into solid rock and hollow out caverns for storage, housing, barracks, dungeons, and whatever else they need. The result is a scrambled maze filled with disjointed pockets. Good luck navigating that, even without the labyrinth's sadistic inhabitants. The dungeon could be eight hundred meters left, or three meters down, or back the way we came but at the bottom of a vertical drop.
"I think this is as close as we're going to get," Hruothban relents. He aims a cocky smirk at Braeggvild and Lur, who spread out in anticipation for a fight. "On three, we fire into the doors. Stand offtarget just in case anything hostile comes through. Keep firing until I give the clear."
"We can't fight them," I say.
"We have no other choice."
That's not true. We have one other choice.
"Here," I say, "give me a rifle." The trick is to reach for one anyway, as if you have every right. Lur passes me his before I can yank it from his arms.
"Are you an artillery expert, Thrall?" he suggests.
I give him a big, innocent smile. "Hah. I wish. No, I'm going to re-spell it like Ilda did so we can send off a seismic shock, vaporizing slime and doors in the process. That way you can save the charges on the other two. We'll need all the firepower we can get trying to reach that dungeon. Hruothban, when I'm finished making this an explosive you can do the honors."
They wait in terse anticipation for me to finish getting my dirty magic all over their pretty bang-toy.
"It's times like this," Lur says, with his eyes on the industrial doors, "I think maybe I wouldn't mind having a mage as a fellow combatant."
"Oh, truly?" I check the rifle's power setting.
"Not all the time, mind you—not in place of honest fighting, but-"
No one is facing me.
I point the muzzle at Hruothban's head.
Hruothban says, "Have you ever been in combat, Vyir?"
"Many times." I pull the trigger. The rifle hums in my arms. The flash is uncomfortably bright. There is a smell like burned wires.
Braeggvild and Lur go next, one after the other, while they're trying to figure out what happened.
I spin around and fire up into the waste chute, so the alarms will sound.
Then I have to sniff the ends of my fingers, because that burned smell is a little concerning.
I take Hruothban and Braeggvild's rifles for safekeeping, pat them down so I can recover my throwing knives, step back a good two meters—staying clear from the starchy mass and the parasites, because those damn things really do pack a jolt—and recast an invisibility spell upon myself.
The Chitauri will be here soon. The Chitauri, the reptilian stink, the curious eyes. All I have to do is wait. Wait, be silent, don't freeze.
Now we can find out where the dungeon is.