The Fires of Muspelheim

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  What Now?

  About Travis

  Copyright © June, 2015 by Travis Simmons

  The Harbingers of Light Book Five:

  The Fires of Muspelheim

  Published by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Cover Design by: Najla Qamber Designs

  Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press

  Editing by: Wyrding Ways Press

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means—by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either are the product of the authors imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  There are people that come into our lives and show us that warriors do exist. They are brave in the face of adversity. They are loving in the face of hatred. They are forgiving when they shouldn’t be. They support us when we’ve lost the will to support ourselves. They continue fighting, putting one foot before the other when most people would give up and sit down. They may not face demons and dragons and trolls like warriors in great fantasy books, but in their own way, the illnesses and personal demons they struggle with are just as overbearing and malevolent as any goblin or ghoul. I’ve had the good fortune to know and love many warriors in my life.

  I dedicate this series to my father, Edward Simmons, my mother Yvonne Simmons, and my aunts Penny Tresidder and Eleanor Jeanette.

  Acknowledgments

  To Nicole Fretwell, Kailey Varner, Michele Hayden, and Amy Campbell. Thanks for helping me to promote What Lies Behind! You guys totally rock!

  Special thanks go to Kristen Groth and Kenny Gay for attending the release party of What Lies Behind and winning the chance to name characters in this book! Kenny named the fire-etin Elyse, and Kristen the fire-etin Dylan.

  Gorjugan remembered the fire that cleansed the harbinger he’d inhabited. The fire that had chased him from his roost in Fortarian’s soul and back to the realm of the damned.

  Standing before him, Abagail glowed to life in the light of the torches, calling the fire of her birthright, bending the flames in the darkened stockades to her will. Her sister, the blonde seer was on the floor behind her, clasping a hand to her chest. A hand Gorjugan had just infected.

  He hadn’t been expecting Abagail. He hadn’t thought the harbinger would come with Leona.

  She was supposed to be alone! He thought. He was sure Leona would have been alone.

  Blinding light and consuming flames accosted Gorjugan. The white light tore through him as the human host died and his darkling soul was eradicated from the vessel. For a moment he knew the peace and love he’d once felt in the Ever After. Then he was sinking into darkness, into despair, into exile.

  Gorjugan floated in a miasma of darkness within the Underworld. Around him was the familiar creaking of a ship. He knew this ship. He knew the bed in which he lay. His emotions were dulled, the voice that pleaded with him to flee this place was muted under a haze of wyrd. His mind drifted on the moan of the worn wood of the ship, shifting as the vessel crested waves of fire that bore the ship through the Void underneath Eget Row.

  The interior of the boat was uncomfortably hot even for the giant snake, Gorjugan. It was a heat that was palpable and there was almost a noise that went with the heat. His senses were filled with the heat, with the moans of the tortured dead. He was in the sickness chamber. The beds where souls were condemned to an eternity of illness and disease.

  To his right someone wretched, their sickness splattered across the floor, wet and putrid in the head of the ship. Gorjugan tried to shift away from the oozing mess that crept closer to his bed, but he was bound with chains and spikes that held his serpentine form in place.

  A door creaked open and an orange light from outside the chamber seeped in. Screaming from the torture chamber chased him down into delirium. He knew this place. He could smell the oniony musk of his own fear, the smell of fear only a snake can emit.

  “You’re home now,” a gravelly voice soothed him. He didn’t need to open his golden eyes to see that it was his half rotten sister, Hilda, who ran a parched hand over his scales. “You failed me, you failed Anthros. As I promised, your sick bed was waiting for you.”

  Lanterns swayed from the wooden ceiling. A glow of golden light haloed Hilda’s head casting orange highlights through the half of her head that bore shining golden locks. The other half of her body, the rotten half seemed to absorb the light. The golden flames gleamed on the half of her skull that was rotten, flea-bitten, and spackled with brittle white hair.

  In the dim light he could just barely make out the beautiful half of her face, the part that hadn’t been rotted away by the touch of the shadow plague so many eons ago. Like always, Gorjugan couldn’t focus on her rotten half, even though it was with that hand that she always touched him; always petted him. He thought maybe that was another torture of hers. She knew how he hated her withered half, and she forced him to focus on it.

  :I nearly had it!: he thought at Hilda. It was the only way he could communicate in his birth golem form. When he struggled out of the afterbirth of Hafaress, he had been in the terrifying form of a snake. When in the Void and Eget Row, he could only speak mentally.

  “Nearly isn’t good enough,” Hilda whispered. It was amazing he could even hear her over the moans and weak crying surrounding him. The smell of vomit wafted to him as the ship listed to the side. “Not nearly good enough.”

  Gorjugan closed his eyes and tried to will himself from the ship. He would rather be anywhere, including the plagued blackness of the lake Elivigar at Eget Row. But he couldn’t manifest there. He was bound to the bed by a metal mesh lined with spikes and studs that pierced his flesh, keeping his contorting body in place.

  “How in the nine worlds did you ever think that you could corrupt Hafaress to our side? How did you think infecting that little girl with the plague would work?”

  :I don’t know,: he thought.

  “Of course you don’t know, because there’s no way that she could have lifted that hammer if she’d turned to darkness. She needed to come to our side on her own. We are darklings Gorjy,” Hilda crooned. “We have more poisons to aid us than the shadow plague. Use your words!”

  :Yes sister, I will do better next time,: he thought. Hilda was all he had. She raised him when no one else would. He lived only to please her. Not fulfilling her demands was more punishment to him than he could ever imagine.

  “Next time?” she barked a laugh. “There won’t be a next time. You failed us all. You will stay here, writhing in pain on your sick bed until the end.

  “We are on the path of Helvegr. The end is near. You will stay here until we rise up against the gods and claim the Void as our own.”

  :But how will we defeat the gods without the hammer?: Gorjugan wondered.

  “It’s no matter,” sh
e said, turning away from him with a flick of her rotten hand. The fingers clattered together like dried reeds. “There’s another God Slayer.”

  :Another?: Gorjugan wondered. :How?:

  She turned to Gorjugan, her withered white eye rolling in her socket. Was she rotting further? Her healthy half smiled and her healthy hand tugged her dress around her shoulders. She ignored his question. “And this one we don’t need to be worthy to lift. We won’t need to corrupt anyone. Freeing Anthros is within our grasp!”

  :Where?: Gorjugan hissed into her mind.

  “Muspelheim.” The smile that cracked the rotten half of her face would haunt Gorjugan the rest of his life.

  Olice’s office was one of the uppermost rooms in all of New Landanten. Walled and floored in white marble it reflected the sun around the space in a dreamy glow as if Skye stood in the middle of the Ever After rather than the office of the commander of the elven guard.

  Olice was a tall woman, and thin as all elves were even if she were muscled like a man. Her hair was long and nearly as white as the marble that surrounded them. There was so much white shining light around the room that Skye’s violet eyes watered.

  He didn’t move though, no matter how he wanted to scrub at his burning eyes. Moving before the commander noticed you was forbidden.

  Finally, when he didn’t think he could bear the glowing office any longer. Olice looked up from her papers and cleared her throat. She made a motion with her hand and Skye relaxed. He pressed his fists into his eyes, willing the throbbing pain away.

  “We’ve received notice from Celeste today,” Olice said, leaning back in her chair as if none of this was very important. Skye knew differently. Celeste had been sent on a mission the light elves thought was most important. So important that they didn’t even let the council know, not with Garth eating out of Charissa’s hands. The counselor of the light elves was old and ready to go into the light. Charissa knew that, and she was doing her best to get him to side with the interests of the dark elves. Sometimes it was best to circumvent authority.

  “And?” Skye asked, moving to a high-backed chair on the other side of the desk.

  “There was definitely a portal opened to the south,” Olice said. “And through it came several people. From the sounds of it, more people still issue forth.”

  “But who are they?” Skye wondered.

  “More harbingers,” Olice said. “From her last message there were more than thirty, with more still coming from the portal. Fire bringers, all of them.”

  “All fire bringers . . .” Skye could barely comprehend it. The power of fire was strong in most harbingers, but to have so many of them all in one spot . . . “Any other abilities?”

  “As of yet, no,” Olice told him.

  “But where are they coming from?” Skye wondered.

  “As far as we can tell they are fire-etin. They’re coming here from Muspelheim.” Olice looked him in the eye. Skye could barely read the emotion behind her watery blue eyes, but he thought it was hope. Maybe these fire bringers could help with the darkling tide threatening their borders.

  With the fire-etin coming, maybe we can stave off the dark elves wanting to open the scepters. He wished for anything that would stop the dark elves from opening the scepters in the Fey Forest. There was no telling what would happen. They hoped it would just cleanse the nine worlds of all darklings, but the truth was it could do something far worse than that.

  “Muspelheim,” Skye said. His voice was barely above a whisper.

  “There’s more,” Olice said. “The guard has received word from our sources that soon Garth plans on announcing his . . . retirement.”

  “He’s going into the light?” Skye asked. He pushed to his feet. He wasn’t sure if it was the soft glowing of the sun through the white room, or the swell of emotions running through his body, but he couldn’t just sit there. “So this means Charissa is going to control the council. A dark elf in charge of all elvish affairs.”

  Olice nodded. “Until we are able to select another light elf to take his place. Which normally meant there would be no drastic decisions made by the council until a light elf was selected, but with Charissa in charge of things . . .”

  “The light elves will have to watch their backs.” Skye turned away from the commander and started pacing.

  “At least those who have spoken out so strongly against opening the scepters.”

  “Me,” Skye said.

  “Among others,” Olice said. “But you are certainly one I worry about. For that reason, I’m assigning you to the southern-most post. You will join Celeste with the mountain dwarves until this matter is settled.”

  “But it could take them a long time to implement their plans,” Skye said. “They need the blood of harbingers that haven’t chosen the light or the dark.”

  Olice spread her hands wide. “Skye, we sit above the harbinger’s settlement! Any of the new arrivals there would work.”

  “The dying blood,” Skye said.

  “I know, that’s the horror of it.” Olice sighed and clasped her hands before her. “What do you suggest?”

  Skye cleared his throat and came to stand behind the chair he’d just occupied.

  His mind was no longer on the white room. His thoughts were with Abagail instead. He’d just started to grow close to her, how could he leave now?

  “Let me stay a little longer. We don’t know when Garth is going into the light, and that kind of thing doesn’t just happen without some kind of announcement and preparation for the ceremony. At that point, when it comes to that, I will be better prepared to leave.”

  Olice stared at him, unblinking.

  “I can help prepare,” Skye said in nearly a whisper.

  “Prepare what?” Olice asked.

  “A counter attack.”

  His words hung in the air between them. Finally Olice gave a great sigh and leaned forward, resting her head on the desk.

  “It’s something we are going to have to do, isn’t it?” She asked the floor.

  Skye didn’t answer. She knew how he felt about this.

  “I just hoped it wouldn’t have come to it.”

  “None of us want it to come to that, but it has.”

  She raised her head and nodded.

  “Not all of the dark elves stand behind the decision to open the scepters.” Skye reminded her.

  “Just like not all of the light elves stand behind our decision to keep them closed.” She shook her head. “Civil war. Is it really coming to that?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “Alright, but I will form a trusted team. Be prepared for when it happens. We will need to keep close dibs on the harbingers too: make sure none of them disappear. You know what that could mean.”

  Dark elves being too eager, he thought.

  He opened his mouth to say just that when a deafening roar split the air. The floor shivered beneath his feet. Trinkets and glass baubles rained down around the office, tumbling from shelves high on walls and vibrating off the desk. Glass skittered across the floor making standing hard, and falling dangerous.

  Olice sat up, clutching the arms of her chair, her eyes wide.

  The floor heaved and Skye collapsed to his knees, his hands over his pointed ears. Glass and debris dug into his shins. He felt blood wetting the legs of his trousers.

  There was a concussion to the air, and the building swayed. Skye heaved forward, barely keeping himself from falling face first into the glass strewn floor. The motion lurched his breakfast from his guts and out his mouth. Wine and eggs, half digested, slipped over the marble, and with it so did Skye; a trail of blood left in his wake.

  There was silence for a moment. The room stopped shaking. Skye pushed to his feet, his legs burning as he did. His stomach felt as though it would protest further at any moment. He hoped it didn’t. The commander and he were on speaking terms, and she trusted his counsel from time to time, but vomiting once in front of her was bad enough.

  �
��I’m sorry,” he said, indicating the vomit on the floor. “I will clean that.”

  Before he could move a large stone rocketed out of the sky and smashed through the roof. Glass broke as the stone tore through the ceiling above him. The rock continued along its trajectory and out the wall to his left. Stained glass rained around the room and the stone landed in the street below.

  The building swayed once more. There was a deafening crack, and the room tilted, held position for a second, and then settled back into position.

  Skye’s eyes were wide and wild. Every nerve in his body screamed to run, but he couldn’t get his feet and cut-up legs to obey.

  “Skye,” Olice said. “Leave. Now!”

  “What is it?” Skye asked. The order seemed exactly what he needed. He raced for the door, dodging toppled furniture, and kicking debris out of his way as he went. Smoke and dust filtered through the shattered opening in the wall behind him.

  “I don’t know, but there’s been a great discharge of power,” Olice said. She was right behind him, her sun scepter in hand and following him down the stairs.

  Smoke and dust billowed up the stairs. Everywhere Skye looked there were elves streaming out of doors, shouting to one another, and racing down to the ground level. Another projectile whistled out of the sky. He heard it connect with something. There were deafening screams and a blast of cool air as the hallway to his left, just off the landing he was crossing, disappeared—vanishing out to the midday. The sudden light in the dark hallway made his eyes burn.

  There were hands pushing him this way and that as more and more elves, both light elves and the shadowed features of dark elves. Skye had no choice, he was carried further down the tower until finally the stairs spilled open into a grand hall with its own stained-glass ceiling shimmering merrily in the sun as if nothing were out of place.

  He stopped for a moment and let the other elves stream around him.

  “What is it?” Olice asked.

  “Nothing . . . I don’t hear anything.” He was sucking in air, but he was sure that he didn’t hear any more attacks outside.