Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (35 page)

“Do you like that feeling?
”

Yes.

“More than anything else in the world,” he sighed.

“Does it matter then what other people might think or say?”

No.

Did it, though? Did it really,
truly
matter whether or not another man looked upon him in scorn and considered him something less than human—a deviant, low-life creature that laid upon the bottom of the sea and sucked the scuzz and shit from other seafaring creatures? One could say that it did—because in this day and age, personal opinion meant the world—but when he looked into his past and granted himself a single, concise look at the men who had shaped his life and whose friendships he harbored, he could not help but feel another person’s opinion
didn’t
matter, for evil dwelled in places obvious and foolhardy and could never be stopped no matter what.

“No,” he whispered, only turning his head up when he felt the moment necessary and true. “It doesn
’t.”

“I
’m glad,” Virgin said, “because it makes me feel so much better knowing that you have a clear conscience about the way we feel about each other.”

Odin closed his eyes.

When Virgin wrapped both arms around his body and pressed up against his back, Odin couldn’t help but feel as though the world was but a simple place where they were the only two fish in the sea.

The night came swiftly and would have swept Odin into a land of dream had a storm not come to wreak terror above Lesliana. His head on Virgin’s chest, their hands entwined, their limbs locked, secured and placed within one another’s—it could have been a perfect moment were lightning not shattering the sky and thunder growling upon the horizon, and while he tried his hardest to fall back asleep, he found it almost impossible to in the midst of such unexpected tragedy.

What are you scared of?
his conscience taunted.
It’s just a storm.

It seemed not to matter whether he had endured such things before—had, in past circumstance, slept beneath a tent while Gods struck their hammers overhead or under a thicket of trees that occasionally showered them with teardrops of moisture
—because in that very moment, something seemed completely, utterly wrong.

Trembling
despite the warmth ebbing from Virgin’s body, Odin closed his eyes as tightly as he could and squeezed his companion’s hand in the hopes that it would somehow bring some form of comfort.

Outside, the angry beast in the sky growled on.

“Come on,” he whispered, adjusting the position of his head on Virgin’s chest. “Get over yourself. You’re acting like a kid.”

Was he, though? As a child, he could recall standing before the windows sweeping across the southern end of his father
’s living room and watching the lightning crack the sky in two. At times, he remembered, it resembled something like spider webs, woven by such great creatures that could and should not be named, and during others it could strike the air so fiercely that it transcended the boundaries of normal color to create a collage of horror across the horizon. Red, blue, yellow, sometimes even violet—his father had always told him that being too close to a window could result in one’s demise: that once, as a child himself, one of his peers had been struck through the heart and killed instantly while standing before a pane of glass. That, however, had not dissuaded Odin’s pursuit any, and while his father had often warned him against such things, he had never listened. Stubborn child or not, he’d held his own even when it seemed to strike closer each time he looked, so why now, of all times, did he have to be afraid, when he was a fully-grown adult sleeping with a partner?

You
’re just freaking yourself out,
he thought, sighing, stroking the slight hair at Virgin’s stomach and pressing his hand flat against his companion’s abdomen.
Don’t worry.

Things would be fine, he knew,
were he to allow himself peace.

Softening the hold on his eyes, he pursed his lips and attempted to strike the flame of which normally
sparked the fire of sleep.

One moment passed, then two.

A rumble of thunder echoed through his ears.

A flash of white filled his vision.

Odin opened his eyes.

Though he could see nothing of
the sort, he couldn’t determine where the illumination could have come from.

“You
’re getting yourself wound up for no reason at all,” he mumbled.

“Huh?” Virgin asked.

“Nothing,” Odin said, straightening his posture alongside his companion and resting his head on the pillow next to him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong.”

“All right,” the Halfling mumbled.

Rolling onto his side, Odin closed his eyes, drew his legs up to his chest, then began to count backward—first from the three-digit decibel of one-hundred, then slowly and as carefully backward as he could.

One-hundred came first, followed by ninety-nine, then ninety-eight.

A second flash of light greeted his vision.

When he opened his eyes a second time, he saw before the bed a thing he thought he would never again see in his entire life.

Hovering off the ground and producing a constant flow of white that seemed to come out of nowhere and reflect everywhere at the same time, the orb of light he had seen floating along the skirt of the Dwaydorian road levitated no more than three feet away from his head and offered a slight movement that could relate to some kind of intelligence. At first it seemed only to shake left and right, to and fro; then, out of nowhere, it began to bob up and down, much like a ball when bounced along a hard surface, and came closer with every fluctuating movement.

Paralyzed likely not only
by fear, but the distinct possibility that he could be suffering some kind of pre-sleep abnormality, Odin could only blink and tighten his fingers around the sheet as the orb came closer to the side of the bed.

No.

It couldn’t be. Sources of light did not appear for no reason at all. There could be no magical source in the air, for he felt no tingle along his skin, and this could be no microscopic star in the sky that had fallen to the earth only to shine upon the world because stars, though able to fall, never persisted until they touched the land. For those reasons alone, there seemed no purpose for this thing, other than to illuminate a warning or offer catalyst to what his future could be, and for that his terror seemed all the more merited.

“Virgin,” he was able to whisper, the word drawn out and strangled within the constricted confines of his throat.

The Halfling said nothing.

Could Virgin even hear, smell, see,
breathe
in that very moment? If he could, Odin couldn’t know, for it seemed that no matter how hard he tried, all sense of knowledge had been cut off.

It began as a low hum that escalate
d in pitch when the somber note rose to a fluctuating falsetto that vibrated within the air and wind. First this sound echoed across the room, amplifying its affect and radius until no space was left behind—then, slowly, it seemed to affect everything. The floorboards began to crack, the windows vibrate, the end tables jitter like scared rats being chased by a mouse and the mattress bounce as if two people were upon it making love. It seemed, without any rational explanation, that the world was about to end—that regardless of how normality ruled their lives, the earth was about to cave in and reveal a world beneath that was something less than stellar. That in itself was enough to force tears from Odin’s eyes and blood from his lower lip when his teeth sunk too far in, but what might have terrified him the most was the fact that something began to reflect from inside the orb.

Within this creation
’s isolated confines of light, he saw the face of someone he thought had died weeks ago.

Father.

A creature born of two flesh, two blood, two parables conjoined but completely isolated in two different parts of the world—this was the thing who had abandoned him at birth and found him in youth: when, for all the purpose in the world, he had appeared garbed in black and offered him salvation from a place hellish and starved of life. For four years he had known this man, this creature, this
great stag of the Elven race,
and for four years he had come to know that creature as someone who could be the man that had created him. It had been but some weeks ago that he had died, and while still ever closer in his heart, this illumination could well reveal that existence did continue upon the other side of life.

“Father,” he whispered.

Odin,
the orb replied.

Completely monotonous and sounding nothing like Miko, its voice spread through the air like a wave of water forced through a strait only to wash onto a beach broad and without an
y natural break. This sound, as dull as it was, seemed to shine with radiance that could have made him blind, had it a source of light, but since it did not, Odin simply allowed it to flood through his ears and into his mind, all the while crying as it fully connected that this thing was so much more than he could have ever possibly imagined.

“Are you,” he said, then stopped as a strangled sound echoed from his throat.

Behind him, Virgin tensed.

No.

He couldn’t wake now, not when he was so close.

Odin,
the construct said.

“Tell me what you are,” he said. “Tell me what you
’re doing here.”

Odin.

Odin.

“Odin.”

He barely realized the word had flown from his lips until he felt blood running down his chin.

The floating orb of light floated back until it hovered directly against the wall.

Odin.

“I don
’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Odin.

“Please… answer me.”

Odin.

Its luminescence began to fade.

As the tears flowed down his face and mixed with the blood at his chin, Odin considered for a moment that he could now be closer to his father than he ever thought before.

He closed his eyes. He braced his heart. He waited for the thing before him to fade into the air as though nothing had ever really happened.

A grey hue began to flow over his vision.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the construct holding on to what could arguably be its last moments of its short existence.

Odin,
it said.

The word floated through the air like a hum before it died away.

When the sound faded, the construct, too, disappeared from sight.

Odin curled into a ball and cried.

“Did something happen last night?” Virgin asked.

“No,” Odin said, buttoning his jerkin into place.

To anyone looking upon the situation, they could have said his outright lie was bold and brass enough to have been crowned
something of a wonder. Their lips, had they been there, would have said that yes, something had happened, and yes, that something had affected one of them to the point where they shed tears and blood. However, since there were no eyes, no lips, no faces, ears or noses, there would be no speaking the truth, because in that moment, Odin had not the reason to tell his companion what had transpired the night before.

“I remember you waking me up,” the Halfling said, turning his attention to vaguely regard him as Odin made his way across the room, toward where his swords lay propped against the wall. “That did happen, right?”

“It stormed last night.”

“Were you afraid?”

“For some reason, yeah. I don’t know why though.”

“The storms this far south sometimes get bad, especially with the hills and the dark mountains so close. Some say it
’s evil itself that drifts over these plains.”

If that were the case, Odin wouldn
’t argue, as he would have to face yet another moment of weakness during a tumultuous freak weather apparition.

Shaking his head, he reached down, grabbed his swords, then attached each to his side
s before grabbing for the cloak that lay hanging on the rack directly beside the door.

“Where might you be going?” Virgin asked.

“I’m hungry,” Odin replied. “Aren’t you?”

“Don
’t leave by yourself.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“What might happen that you
’re so worried about?”

“Some Elves frown upon Halflings such as ourselves,” Virgin said, clasping his hands around Odin
’s upper arms and looking him directly in the eyes. “Besides—if you want me to be perfectly honest, they might think you’re not just the Halfling you claim to be.”