The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1)
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Authors: P.K. Lentz
The
Path of Ravens
~
P.K.
Lentz
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
51.
The Gathering of the Great Host
52.
The First Battle of Ragnarok
55.
The Second Battle of Ragnarok
With the Great Host of Asgard I stand, ready for
battle. To my left and right are peerless Einherjar, mighty
Valkyriar, and every man and woman of the Aesir and Vanir capable of
wielding ax, spear, or sword. Leading us is Tyr, son of the
All-Father Odinn. Two more Odinnsons stand among us. A fourth has
fallen already to our innumerable, world-devouring foe.
It will devour this world next, should our Host
fail. We know not from whence our enemy came. It knows no reason, no
purpose but the annihilation of life, and its onslaught has made
allies of the bitterest foes. Within the ranks of the Great Host this
day are towering frost giants and the undead thralls of the exiled
sorceress Hel, forces more accustomed to challenging Odinn's rule
than heeding it. My own people stand with the Host, too, wanderers
between worlds, mistrusted Interlopers in these eight realms. Of all
who were summoned this day, only the fighters of Svartalfheim have
declined to take the field. The sons of Odinn have sworn that once
the threat is past, they shall be made to pay for their refusal.
If the threat passes, and if any sons of
Odinn survive it. If Odinn himself survives. Those things are hardly
certain. For I have drunk of the Well of Mimir, and its waters
granted me four visions of the future. One thus far has come to pass.
Three remain. The worst of them.
It was not always thus. I was not always sworn
to serve Odinn and Asgard. A short while ago, I had not yet heard of
Baldr or Tyr, of Freya or Loki, for I was not born of their folk, the
Aesir and the Vanir. Two lives have I lived, in two worlds. My second
life has brought me here, to a battle which may be the last this
world ever knows, its Ragnarok.
It was a short while ago, but seems an age, that
I had sight in both of my eyes. I did not know at the time of my
second birth in a place called Hades that my name was Thamoth. I had
no name then, no past, no inkling of who I was or what path I would
tread.
***
My first breath sends fire down my veins.
Muscles tighten inside the limbs of a body I did not know until this
moment that I possessed. The pain drags me up from an abyss of
nothingness into—what?
I know not.
Pain fades, body remains. Owning flesh is
familiar, yet there is something alien about the arms and legs and
head that seem not to have been mine until mere heartbeats ago.
Mind is just as new as body. But I do have
thoughts, and I sense that I am not new to thinking. I just have not
done it lately. Long ago, perhaps, before—
Sleep? Oblivion? Something must lie beyond that
abyss from which I came. But my freshly functioning mind cannot
delve deeply enough to retrieve from it so much as a broken shard of
memory.
I know I must have a name, but it is lost
somewhere in that pit from which I came.
I know I must have a home, but I cannot think
what it is called or what it looks like.
I have a mouth. Warm, heavy breaths rush past
its dry lower lip. If I tried, I think I could speak. I know words.
One stands out from all others.
Wellspring
.
It causes my newly started heart to skip a beat,
though I cannot guess why. Is this my first memory?
The other words which fill my head are different
somehow. Their forms, their sounds, are alien, yet I grasp their
meanings anyway. A vague sense tells me that these other words did
not arise with me from the abyss. Here, at the surface, wherever here
is, the words of an unfamiliar language waited, embedded in the
tongue that goes with these unknown limbs, this flesh and blood and
bone and breath that are mine and yet not mine.
I have eyes. I open them.
The red surface before me teems with dark,
flitting shapes. I lie on my back, and the shapes are shadows set to
dancing by the flickering red light cast on an irregular surface.
Rock. I remember that I have a head and that heads are attached to
necks which can be turned left and right. I employ that function to
take in more of this place where my body finds itself.
I am not alone. Just beyond what I may now
conceive as arm's reach, I see another man. The harsh red glare
lights his profile as he sleeps serenely with arms by his sides. On
my other side the same sight is repeated. All around me lie the dark,
still forms of men, all similarly dressed, with arms and legs bare
and torsos covered by dark armor, feet clad in high-laced sandals.
I do not know my name or where I have come from,
but I gather based on their garb that these men are warriors. Reason,
which I also find I possess, tells me that if I have awakened among
warriors, I must likewise be one. Such conjecture fails to ring
either true or false. I do not know myself.
I lift my head a little, finding it heavy, and
see that the red light is cast by torches bracketed to the distant
walls of a large cavern. Their flames are not the color I think fire
should be, though I may be wrong. Over their hissing I hear another
sound which I recognize as the echoing footfalls of someone moving
toward me. Newborn instinct compels me to spring up and defend
myself, but I am not yet capable. My new limbs are leaden.
A red-lit figure enters my field of vision,
towering over me. I angle my eyes to look up at the arrival and
find it to be a man similar in appearance to those lying inert around
me. He crouches, putting his face over mine, and his upside-down
smile suggests that he is pleased.
He sets a hand on my chest. I see it rather than
feel it, since like him and all the rest, I wear a stiff breastplate.
"Welcome," he says. He whispers it,
but the cavern turns it to a shout.
The spoken word sounds oddly foreign to me, but
I understand it. After licking my lips and drawing fresh breath, I am
able to answer.
"To where?" I return in the same
tongue as he.
His smile fades. "A cave. Full of dead
people. And a witch." He points. "We are not to disturb
her."
The strangeness of his answer imbues me with the
strength to sit up—almost. My new companion quickly slides an
arm under my back and lends welcome assistance. Looking in the
direction he pointed, past a dozen irregularly-spaced sleeping
warriors, I see a woman sitting in a red-lit alcove. She is naked,
her bare skin decorated with the finely painted characters of some
arcane script. She kneels and gently sways, head lolling back and
forth. Now and then her body jerks violently, as though a hot ember
has landed on some part of her.
A second ago, I might have asked my companion
how he knew she was a witch, but having seen her myself, there is no
need; I would have guessed. I also would not dream of disturbing her,
with or without his warning.
Something else my companion has said piques my
more immediate interest.
"Dead?" I ask. I turn my gaze back to
the cavern floor around us and know instantly that he is right. These
men and a few women around me are not just sleeping.
He nods grimly. "One by one, we return to
life." I surmise from his tone that he is only slightly less
mystified by the occurrence than I. "I say
return
,
but..." He hesitates, mouth twisting in thought.
Guessing the cause of his hesitation, I finish
for him: "These bodies are not our own."
My companion's eyes, pink in the unnatural
firelight, suggest I have stolen his thought. "We all felt
thus."
I accept the hand he offers to help me rise and
take another look around the cavern at the warrior-corpses on the
floor. All lie on their backs, heads facing a common direction, arms
straight by their sides. Someone has deliberately laid them—
us
—out.
There are more than twenty bodies at present, but large swaths of
empty space suggest there were at one time many more.
I draw the conclusion that the missing bodies
already have risen and are the others to which my companion refers.
"Where did the rest go?" I ask.
He brings my attention to a dark spot at one end
of the cavern. "The tunnel. I am to wait for four of you to
rise. You are the second. When we number five, four will leave while
the last remains here to greet the next batch of four, as I have
done."
"Second?" My eyes sweep the chamber,
but the only other presence to catch my eye is that of the witch, who
frightens me and thus does not long hold my gaze. She is lost in her
trance, and I wish it to remain that way. I see nothing else of note,
but the cavern is large and its walls alive with pulsing shadows
capable of hiding much.
"This way." My companion leads me
toward the tunnel mouth. "I don't suppose you have a name,"
he asks as we pick our way over and between corpses. His
hopeless tone tells me what answer he expects.
"No," I tell him, fulfilling
expectation.
"None of us did. One man knew a few words
in some other language than this one we seem inclined to speak.
Another had visions of the sea."
"I know such a word," I inform him,
proudly. It is a stupid thing to be proud of. "
Wellspring
.
Does it have meaning to you?"
He ponders for the space of a few steps. "I
understand it," he concludes. "A place to get water. Does
it mean more to you?"
"I know not," I admit. "I suppose
it must."
We reach a boulder not far from the black tunnel
mouth. There, in its shadow, sits a figure clad as we are, in armor.
Its back is against the big rock, greave-shielded shins drawn up
beneath a pensively drooping chin. The chin is delicate, as are the
limbs. A female.
She looks up, our eyes meet, and I freeze. Even
in the faint crimson glow, and even in these bodies which are not our
own, I know her.
Syllables form on my tongue. I cannot resist
speaking them.
"
Ayessa
." The sound fills the
cavern.
Like all the dead I have seen, she is physically
beautiful. Her hair, which is tied back, is of some dark shade. Her
eyes, their color unidentifiable in the low, flickering light, are
wide and reflective over smooth cheeks that glow softly pink in the
torchlight. It is not the face of the Ayessa I once knew, even
if I cannot recall what other face she once wore. It is not her face
that I know, not even her eyes, but it is her, of that I am sure. It
is some power other than sight which informs me, something within her
which screams out to me and makes me want to weep. With joy, I think,
but maybe something else, too.
