Table of Contents

The Fire Bringers An I Bring the Fire Short Story

Copyright Information

The I Bring the Fire Series:

Acknowledgements

The Fire Bringers

All Stories by C. Gockel & Contact Information

The Fire Bringers
An I Bring the Fire Short Story

Three centuries after the fall of Odin a lot of things have changed.
Some things still remain the same ...

Copyright Information

Copyright © 2015 C. Gockel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, subject “Attention: Permissions,” at the email address below:

cgockel.publishing@gmail.com

The I Bring the Fire Series:

I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves
Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II
Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III
In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5
Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV
The Slip: a Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir's Point of Smell
Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V
Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI
The Fire Bringers: a Short Story

Other Works:

Murphy's Star a short story about “first” contact

Want to know about upcoming releases & get sneak peeks and exclusive content?

Click Here to sign up for my newsletter.

Follow me on Tumblr: ibringthefireodin.tumblr.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites

Or email me: cgockel.publishing@gmail.com

Thank you again!

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I want to thank my beta reader, Kay McSpadden. Kay read and reread this story more times than I can count. I also would like to thank Sarah Easterly, Melissa Flores-Hosman for beta reading this story. Their suggestions helped me clarify situations and make the action more believable. Cherryl Crouch was the final editor of grammar ... she had a tough job. All mistakes are mine.

I also want to thank all of my readers. Your continued encouragement helped give me the confidence to write this story. I love you guys!

Finally, thanks must go to my husband Eric. If he hadn’t to stop writing fan fiction and start writing something I can own, this story never would have happened.

The Fire Bringers

Bohdi is enveloped in darkness. It is warm, soft, quiet …

“Other Dad.”

Someone grumbles; it’s probably him. His fingers close around his duvet, and he pulls it higher over his head.

“Other Dad.”

He rolls over, his nose butting up against upholstered softness. Ah, yes, the couch.

Wait—why is he sleeping on the couch? He doesn’t remember fighting with Amy.

“Other Dad, is that Henry on the floor?”

Bohdi bolts upright. The television set is on. Eisa, Amy and Loki’s daughter, is filling the screen. Except for strawberry blonde hair, and a leaner, whip-like frame, she is the spitting image of Amy—but she’s a little flashier. Today she’s sporting a complicated up-do from the Court of King Utgard of Jotunheim. Over her shoulders he sees the telltale ice windows of Utgard’s palace fortress. Whatever universe she’s in, she’s probably not working for Odin if she’s with Utgard. Further, she looks to be about 26—although it has been over three centuries since the fall of Odin, and she’s closer to 355. That means whatever universe she’s calling from, Amy is still around. Also, she’s calling him “Other Dad,” which means they’ve talked before and she knows he is Chaos's destructive half in this universe. Yawning, he falls back against the cushions. That was way too much deductive reasoning first thing in the morning. “Yes,” he says, finally responding to Eisa’s question. “That is Henry.”

“Mmmmm …” she says, eyes dropping to the floor between the television set and the couch. Bohdi looks down on the carpet. Henry, not Steve’s dad, but Steve and Sigyn’s son, is passed out there under a knitted afghan, sleeping off the aftereffects of a healthy night on the town. Sadly, Bohdi isn’t “suffering” from such indulgences this time. He has things to do today that didn’t allow him to be hung over. He glances at the clock underneath the television set. He blinks. It’s midmorning. His “things to do” should have awoken him by now.

Eisa sighs, pulling Bohdi back into the moment. “He’s so gorgeous, even when he’s sleeping.” Bohdi would argue with her, but Henry has been on so many most eligible bachelor lists his attractiveness pretty much is a verifiable fact. He is the new era’s golden boy, literally. The genes for light hair and eyes among Asgardians are dominant, whereas among humans the genes for dark eyes and hair are dominant. In Henry, the warring genes have come to a compromise and settled on dark gold. His whole body is that color, even his eyes. He looks a lot like the statues of Baldur the Beautiful in the old palace museum. And it’s not just his coloring—he has chiseled features and curly hair—and the guy actually likes working out, so he’s fit, to boot. He is also infuriatingly nice, and very shy about his looks, so it’s hard to hate him for being so handsome.

Eisa sighs again, this time with added drama. “If only he wasn’t in another universe …” Her face pinches. “Other Dad, did you get him drunk?”

Bristling at her accusatory tone, Bohdi rubs the stitches in his neck. “Of course I did. He’s joining the fleet tomorrow and running off for twelve years in deep space. As his uncle, it was my sacred duty to get him soused.”

Eisa’s lips purse. “Oh, I bet Sigyn and Steve will be angry.”

“The drinking or the joining the fleet part?” Bohdi asks.

“Both.”

Bohdi winces. “What did they expect?” Sigyn and Steve, mindful that spoiling had corrupted Baldur, went the opposite route when raising Henry. They hoped being strict would make him an upright citizen and a statesman for the new age. They succeeded—partially. Henry is not spoiled, vain, or power hungry, but he also wants nothing to do with statesmanship. After receiving his Magical Medical Doctorate, he’s running away to the fleet, to be his own person and to get away from the shadows cast by his mother, father, and big sister.

“Henry,” Eisa says in a sing-song voice, “Henry, my love, wake up, my darling.”

Bohdi rolls his eyes. Unlike Amy, Eisa is an unrepentant flirt.

Eisa kisses the air. “Oh, Henry, what you need is true love’s kiss.”

Even though he’s not drunk Bohdi almost gags. Not for the first time he wishes that they’d just gotten a regular television set, instead of a magical television from Brett and Bryant. Although it does have amazing reception—

On the floor, Henry moans.

Eisa squeals and jumps. “See! See! It is true love. Henry, my darling! Henry!”

Sitting up Henry rubs his eyes and looks at the screen. “Eisa?”

“Yes! It is I, my love!”

“I’m going to throw up,” Henry mumbles, pretty much echoing Bohdi’s own sentiment. Climbing too quickly to his feet, Henry makes a break down the hallway to the toilet. The sound of small thumps from the hallway trail in his wake. Bohdi half gets out of his seat to see what the ruckus was, but then he catches Eisa’s eyes zeroing in on him with laser-like intensity. “What did you do to him?”

Bohdi shrugs. “How was I to know the Light Elves would be bringing brandy?”

Sitting back in her chair, Eisa crosses her arms and glares. Okay, fair point, Light Elves always bring brandy.

“What do you want, Eisa?” Bohdi asks.

“Other Mom, of course. We want to cure the adze so they can join us in our fight against Odin, like your Daevas.”

“Your mom can’t just spit in the eye of any adze,” Bohdi says. “Daevas was a powerful magic user in his previous life, and it was partially luck that—”

“Just get mom.”

Bohdi raises an eyebrow. “Right, I’m just chopped liver to you.”

Eisa’s lips purse, and she has the decency to look slightly ashamed. But then Loki pokes his head into the camera view. “Yes.”

Bohdi’s eyes narrow. Loki’s eyes narrow back.

Bohdi’s about to quip something about Loki not liking to look at the new improved version of himself, when he notices this Loki doesn’t have a wedding ring on. They’re “calling” from one of the universes where things between Loki and Amy didn’t work out. Bohdi decides to hold his tongue—he’s nice like that.

But even as he comes to that magnanimous decision, Eisa groans. “Oh, here we go again,” and he can’t hold back completely. Putting a hand to his chest, Bohdi flutters his lashes. “No, we are not going to ‘go again.’ I, unlike some people, have restraint.”

Tilting his head, Loki smirks. “Are those more stitches on your arm? Did you manage to get yourself blown up again?”

Bohdi blinks down at the stitches just below his shirt sleeve. They are a result of an unfortunate accident with some photon fireworks he was testing with Brett and Bryant … and possibly a lack of restraint. He glares back at Loki. “How many times did Hoenir have to stitch you up before your three-hundredth birthday?”

Loki opens his mouth, and Bohdi says, “I’ll save you the embarrassment of revealing the number to your daughter and go get my wife.”

Hopping off the couch, and out of view of the screen, he calls out, “Amy!”

The only response is the sound of Henry throwing up in the toilet. Bohdi winces, thinking of how he’ll explain that to his daughter, Durga. Maybe Uncle Henry has the flu? But then she’ll ask, “Why doesn’t Mommy help him?” or “A magical flu, will there be a quarantine?” Shaking his head he steps into the hall and his eyes go wide. The floor is riddled with framed photos that have fallen from the wall. Henry must have knocked them down on his way to worship the porcelain god. Bohdi drops to the first one. “You broke the picture of my parents!” Heart stopping, he quickly scoops it up.

He hears a sniff echo from the bathroom. “Sorry.” And then Henry pukes again.

Bohdi carefully plucks the large shards of glass out of the frame. Fortunately, the photo of his teenage self, grinning between his parents, wasn’t scratched or torn. His eyes go down to his name, neatly written in black ink in the margin of the photo: Triloki. He touches the script reverently. It was written by his mother’s own hand, and it means a lot to him, even if he doesn’t remember her.

Glancing around the hallway to make sure he’s not being watched, Bohdi concentrates and then feels the cold of the In Between on the hand holding the shards. Releasing them quickly, he yanks his hand back into the universe. Both hands free, he gently hangs the picture back on the wall.

From the bathroom, Henry calls out. “Is the picture okay, Bohdi?”

“It’s fine,” Bohdi says. He still goes by Bohdi, which means enlightenment, and he’d rather be enlightened than a ruler; he’s friends with Steve, and he’s seen the amount of bureaucratic BS leadership entails. Also, he stole the name Bohdi fair and square.

Frowning at the other fallen photos, he bends down and picks up the next one. It is of him in Alfheim making out with a cute elf. He hangs it up quickly, and similar photos of him in Vanaheim, Svartheimer, and Musselpheim with native inhabitants. He picks up a picture of him, sitting on the lap of a cute curvaceous trolless. He smiles at the memory. That had been the best. He never meant to play have-carnal-relations-with-as-many-hominids-as-possible bingo with Loki; but he won anyhow.

All the women in the pictures are Amy, of course. She can change her shape—although not in a puff of smoke like the myths. It takes days or hours depending on the form, but she prefers months or it is uncomfortable. When they’ve gone on missions in other realms, she’s shifted to be able to blend in with the populace. She can do illusions as well as Bohdi or Steve, but the magic to sustain illusions is detectable. When she finishes with a transformation, she is that species.

The second to last picture is his and Amy’s “big fat Indian wedding”. Surrounded by all of Bohdi’s extended family, they’re both in traditional Indian attire. Amy is wearing an amazing pale peach saree embroidered with gold that hides everything and nothing. Bohdi is wearing a blue sherwani. His stitches sparkle just above the neckline—his relatives had wanted to cover them up, but he likes them. He’ll never let Amy take them out.

He picks up the last picture. It’s a photo of Amy in mostly human form—she still has green hair and pointed ears—himself, and their one and only child, their daughter Durga. Taken four years ago, Durga is only two years old in the photo. She’s adorable with her dark brown pigtails, blue skin, velvety black bat wings, and her black, pronged prehensile tail—in the picture it’s wrapped tightly around Bohdi’s arm.

He frowns. In the picture Durga is smiling. Lately, she hasn’t been smiling as much. She’s begun to realize that being blue, having wings, and a pronged tail isn’t “normal” for little girls. He’s trying to convince her that it’s better. It’s hard with the occasional, nosey busybody suggesting they surgically remove her wings and tail. His jaw gets hard and he hangs the picture up on the wall. Feeling a mood coming on, he shakes his head. “Amy?” He calls. Again, he gets no answer.

He goes into Durga’s room. It’s neat and tidy—a sure sign that they’re out. Patting his back pocket, he looks for his phone and simultaneously closes his eyes. He sends projections throughout their house and to the backyard. It’s a rather nice backyard. Their home is near the lake, just north of the city—Bohdi prefers the city—but things tend to happen around Amy’s and his home that are best kept from major metropolitan areas: meteorites, spontaneous eruptions of mud monsters, that sort of thing. He doesn’t see the smoking husks of any meteorites, or any mud monsters, or leaf monsters for that matter—but no Durga or Amy, either.

… if only he had his phone. It’s in the couch cushions? He lets a projection go there, but doesn’t see it. He tries to remember when he last had it—it was last night in the bar in Alfheim—he texted Amy to let her know he was fine. He winces. He’d been showing off the inter-realm reception to the Light Elves. Had they stolen the phone? He puts a hand to his forehead. Of course they have, but to the Light Elves it is merely borrowing. They’re bound to return it in another hundred years or so.

Turning around, about to leave the room, he almost walks through Steve.

“Is my son alive?” Steve, or rather the projection thereof, asks. Bohdi squints. Steve’s bionic eye—a combined effort of Brett, Bryant, Amy, and Harding—isn’t glowing. He’s wearing the latest fashion in men’s formal office attire: a thigh-length silver coat with a high collar and red embroidery at the sleeves and hem. It looks a lot like the traditional Indian groom’s attire that Bohdi wore to his wedding. When the coats first came into fashion, Bohdi had spent about fifty years making “Where’s the wedding?” jokes … at first to be funny, and then just to be annoying. He’s not feeling in the mood now.

“Yes,” says Bohdi, running a hand through his bangs. A projection of his own notices Amy’s and Durga’s shoes are gone from the foyer. Why did she take Durga out today? It was Friday, a day she usually went to the office. She had to have realized Bohdi wasn’t drunk … just sleeping out near Henry in the event he started to choke on his own vomit. Bohdi sniffs—also he reeks of cigarette smoke, and he had been too tired to take a shower.

“Did you convince him not to join the fleet?” Steve’s projection asks.

Bohdi temporarily snaps back to his friend-frenemy-whatever. “Of course not.”

Steve scowls. “Deep space is still dangerous.”

Bohdi raises an eyebrow and his lip curls. “What about the whole “the military teaches discipline lecture” you gave me after you made me join the Marine Corps?”

Steve rubs the bridge of his nose and waves his other hand at Bohdi. “Henry doesn’t need discipline. Boy’s got too much. I had hoped that when he became a doctor at least one of my kids would outlive me.”

Bohdi can’t scoff. Claire looks for danger, and she is as cool as it had seemed before Bohdi had Durga. Now he can’t help empathizing with Steve. There is a part of him that wishes that Durga could lead a boring life. But she won’t—she is blue, and she has wings and magic so strong that even non-magical creatures can feel it in their whiskers and scales. She’s six years old and showing signs of “world walking readiness” according to Lionell, Bohdi’s elf house-husband buddy. Bohdi has destroyed all the World Gates in the vicinity, terrified that Durga will get herself lost in another realm.

He runs his hand over the stitches in his neck. Who is he kidding? Even if Durga looked normal, her life never would be. Her parents are Chaos incarnate. Her mother is the Chaos of creation, which isn’t so bad. Wherever Amy is, scientific discoveries bloom like flowers in spring, the arts flourish, and strange and wonderful creatures emerge. Granted, it had taken nearly a century to tackle Chicago’s invisible rat problem, and the Zombie Virus was disturbing, but Bohdi thinks both were small prices to pay. However, he is the Chaos of Destruction; things die around him, break, or just go wrong. Some people who know what Bohdi is have suggested that he shouldn’t be around children.

Pushing the dark thought aside, Bohdi takes a deep breath. “I did give him the ‘don’t wander off in boot camp and die’ part of the lecture,” Bohdi says.

Steve snorts, “Thanks for that.”

“Have you seen Amy and Durga?” Bohdi asks, patting his back pocket. “I’ve lost my phone.”

Steve drops his hand. “No … let me look.” His bionic eye glows faintly purple, and his hand drops idly to his hip and the pommel of Laevithin. Bohdi’s eyes drop to the sword. After the old order had been torn down and the new order had been established, Amy and Bohdi gave the sword to Steve. Steve’s nature is to keep things safe and the same and boring—there have been no tsunamis in Lake Michigan since Steve’s had the sword, no strange new viruses or volcanoes. After a few unsteady centuries, it’s what people need. But he does miss it.

Steve raises an eyebrow and looks sharply up at Bohdi. “Wait, you’re not fighting, are you?”

Holding up his hands, Bohdi blinks. “No … it’s just a misunderstanding.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “If you are fighting, you can’t be making up tonight. Chicago is hosting a peace delegation for the Light Elves and Dark Elves, I can’t have earthquakes tonight.”

Bohdi’s lip purse. Earthquakes, World Gates spontaneously forming, and magic-eating trees going crazy don’t happen every time Amy and he have marital relations … but when things are emotionally intense, like after a fight …

“Go to Niflheim,” Steve says. “That place is flat as a pancake, it could use a good earthquake!”

“I have a kid, Steve!” Bohdi snaps.

“Get a babysitter!” says Steve.

“You have Laevithin, you have enough power to counter our magic!” Bohdi protests.

Steve’s lips twitch. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“My wife is missing. Help me find her,” Bohdi says.

Steve stares at him for a long moment, but closes his eyes and then opens them, the bionic eye glowing bright purple. “She’s not answering her phone … Accessing data on her last known whereabouts … They went to Amy’s lab, right now they’re not on any of the security cameras—”

But Bohdi’s already running through Steve’s projection.

“Uncle Bohdi?” he hears Henry say, and then Steve’s voice in the bathroom. “What were you thinking!”

He passes through the living room, and Loki shouts from the television set. “Did you lose Amy?”

Bohdi doesn’t even pause to flick him off. He practically flies into the kitchen. Opening a cabinet, he reaches for a high shelf and grabs a handful of magically-charged marbles from a fishbowl they keep out of Durga’s still flightless reach. He jams all but one into his pocket. Clasping the one in his palm, he dashes to the foyer. Through the panes of glass beside the door he sees a beautiful Chicago day. The magic carpet on the floor lifts itself expectantly as he slips on his sneakers.

“Take Henry home,” Bohdi says, and the carpet waves its tassels in acknowledgement.

Dread coiling in his stomach, Bohdi grasps the magic marble tighter, focuses, and slips into the In Between.

x x x x

Durga loves Amy’s “office”. On the banks of the South Pond in Lincoln Park, the building was built in 1908. It is one of the most beautiful surviving examples of Prairie School architecture and has been declared a Midgardia monument. The Light Elves scoff, but Amy thinks it’s very pretty.

During the years after Cera, the Lokean Age, and then after the Technomagical Renaissance, nine separate World Gates sprang up in the quarter acre around the building, and a tenth even sprang up in the building itself. Lost bakus, unicorns, baby dragons, and others have a habit of stumbling through the gates. The building has been closed to the public, in part to rehabilitate those lost souls. Amy and her staff tend to their injuries before sending them home.

Right now Amy and Durga are in a “dragon recovery room”. There is a tiny faux cave made out of poured concrete for little dragons to sleep in, comfortably scrunched the way they like. Inside it there is a red heat lamp. The ceiling of the room itself is high, allowing for limited flight, and there are cement boulders arranged for perching. Right now, their Labrador-sized dragon guest is sitting on a boulder, a big toothy smile on his emerald, green-scaled face. He’s kneading his inch long nails in the boulder, basking in Amy’s and Durga’s company. The little guy isn’t injured—he’s just lost, and too young to say where he came from. Inquiries are being made in Alfheim, Nornheim, Svarthlheimr, and Niflheim—but it’s difficult to track down dragon parents. They’re extremely loving toward their children, and reward their progeny’s rescuers with treasure and friendship. However, visit the wrong dragon den, or fail to speak your business quickly enough, and they’ll try to eat you.

“He has a tail and wings like yours, Durga,” Amy says. “And just like you he can’t fly yet, either.” Which is why all the perches are no higher than eight feet, and all have little steps to the top.

Durga is silent for a long moment. And then, stroking the dragon’s tail, she says softly, “I want to see the blue people.”

Amy stops scratching the scales behind the dragon’s ears and looks at her daughter. Durga’s wearing a shirt specially designed to accommodate her wings. Its pale pink color contrasts sharply with her sapphire-hued skin, as does the white of her anklet socks and the light gray of her skirt. Skirts are easier when you have a tail.

Right now, her daughter’s tail is swishing agitatedly. She blinks. Durga’s eyes are on hers. Durga’s eyes are such a dark blue they’re almost black, and right now they’re wide and pleading. Her tiny bow lips press together, and her little nose sniffs. Durga is beautiful even when she’s sad. It’s not motherly pride, it’s true. Her features are perfect and her blue skin is magical.

But Durga is six years old and beginning to think she’s not beautiful. There are no blue princesses in cartoons, or princesses with tails or bat wings.

“I want to see the blue people,” Durga says again. The voice actually comes from a little pendant around her neck. Durga speaks at frequencies normally inaudible to humans. Fortunately, her “aunt” Harding’s hearing isn’t normal. The Marine communications specialist had detected the cries of Bohdi’s and Amy’s child when Durga was a baby. Brett and Bryant were able to create devices that lowered the pitch. At first the two “Gods of Electronics and Small Engines” crammed the devices into baby monitors. But as Durga has gotten older and mobile, they’ve concealed the devices in costume jewelry. This “Durga Translator” they’ve put in an ornate “Magical Princess Pendant” for their “little blue princess.” When they’d presented it to Durga she’d thought it would grant wishes. Her first words after getting the gift were, “Magic pendant, make me not blue.”

Amy’s brow furrows. “Durga,” she whispers. “We can’t go see the blue people. Only special doctors and scientists are supposed to see them.” The reason the building has been closed to the public, and turned into a magical rehabilitation center, is that the World Gate within goes to a tenth, formerly unknown realm.

Technically, Durga isn’t even supposed to know that the “blue people” or the Tenth Realm exist, but she has magical bat hearing.

Durga swishes her tail. “You’re a doctor-scientist and I’ll be with you.”

Amy bites her lip. Bohdi told Amy that Durga was becoming obsessed with seeing the “blue people.” To dissuade her, Amy has broken down and told Durga secret information: the blue people aren’t like her, they don’t have wings, and their tails are furred. They look like upright, blue, mostly hairless lemurs. Their DNA shows they diverged from Earth primates about 60 million years ago. How the ancestor of Earth primates and lemurs got to the Tenth Realm is anyone’s guess.

Bending down so that her eyes are level with her daughter’s, Amy says, “Durga, the blue people … they are a new people … when hominids from the Nine Realms go there, they have to be careful not to be seen. We don’t want to disrupt their evolution.”

“So use your magic and hide us.”

Amy straightens. She also doesn’t want her daughter to see how violent the “Lemurlikes”, as they’ve come to be known, are. “Perhaps when you’re older,” she says.

Durga’s brow crinkles, her shoulders slump, and she bends even further at her waist. The weight of Durga’s wings always makes her lean forward a little, like a child carrying a backpack. Now her back is nearly parallel to the ground. Amy’s heart constricts. People have asked why Amy hasn’t surgically removed the wings, commenting that Durga is flightless. But Amy is sure that one day Durga will be able to fly; do you remove a weight today that one day may give your child the gift of flight? She’s so glad that Bohdi’s never once argued with her on that, or Durga’s blue skin or tail. Other parents, with magical statuesque-non-typicals, have divorced over whether to surgically alter their children.

From behind her comes a voice. “Amy, you’re here! I have a problem.” Amy turns to find Hoenir, now a fellow veterinarian in the rehabilitation center, waving a digital tablet. Hoenir is still youthful, even though he doesn’t eat apples. They wonder if it is a carryover from living as Creation for so long.

Amy sighs. “Is Senator Fellman insisting that his daughter be allowed to work in our facility?”

Hoenir nods. “I keep telling him that no matter how magically capable his daughter is, if she doesn’t have a doctorate of veterinary medicine, or at least a certificate to be a veterinary technician, she isn’t allowed to join our staff.”

Amy grumbles. “Kids these days—”

Hoenir shakes his head. “Thinking they can skip the science and go straight to the magic.” He huffs.

Amy walks over and takes the tablet. Reading it, her skin heats. It’s even worse than she expected. The senator’s precious child hasn’t had a day of college-level biology or chemistry. But she did mend a broken bone, and that makes her an expert, to the senator’s mind.

Pulling out her phone, Amy dials the senator’s number. She almost presses the connect button, but then stops herself. If she makes this call, she will explode—she will shout at the senator, and it will become an “incident.” This is a job for Steve, he will chuckle and be charming and convince the senator that his daughter should take an internship elsewhere … or else. He’ll do it by … well, Amy doesn’t know precisely how he does it—if she did, she’d do it herself. Hitting the button for text, she clicks on the Darth Vader icon she uses for Steve and starts to type out a message, but then Hoenir says, “Hmmm … where did Durga go?”

Amy lifts her head. Durga and the dragon are gone. Amy sees shadows playing on the walls in the cave. “She’s in the cave, don’t worry,” she says.

Hoenir’s phone beeps with a text. Glancing down, his eyebrows rise. “Oh, a totoro … I’d better get on it. Talk to you later.”

“Sure thing,” says Amy, heading into the cave. “Durga, you know if the baby dragon has found some pennies you shouldn’t …”

She stops. The baby dragon is curled up in a ball at the tiny area at the cave’s end. But there is no Durga.

Amy crawls out of the cave. “Durga?” She peers behind rocks, and even goes up to the perches to see if Durga’s pressed herself against the rocks to hide.

She doesn’t see her anywhere. She must have snuck out of the room while Amy was talking to Hoenir. Feeling frightened and angry at herself, or Durga, or both, Amy pulls out her phone. “Show security cameras in the rehabilitation center.” All the camera views flash on Amy’s phone in a neat grid pattern. Amy sees Durga in the former ballroom that houses the World Gate to the Tenth Realm. Amy clicks on the feed to enlarge it. The guards are talking to Durga jovially as she walks to the circle of tiles that demark the World Gate location. Amy breathes a sigh of relief. During the Magical Renaissance, computerized, technomagical World Gates were invented, but the gate to the Tenth Realm is only accessible to those who can World Walk without technological intervention. Durga’s in no danger, she’ll just walk over to the Gate and—

Durga vanishes.

For a moment, Amy thinks the feed is dying. She taps her phone repeatedly, and then she sees the guards running over to the gate. Amy bolts through the door, down the hallway, and up to the former ballroom that houses the gate to the Tenth Realm. Gripping her phone tightly, she siphons all of the magic off of it, and before the guards can ask her questions, she leaps up onto the platform. Rainbow light envelopes her, and she is in the Tenth Realm.

She blinks down at her feet. The forest floor beneath her is rich black hummus. She lifts her head—the mountainous forest around her is unusually dry, and the smell of rotting vegetation is not as strong as usual. On every side, enormous fernlike trees with wilted pastel blue leaves obscure a yellow sun. Magic tickles her senses, and a hum comes from about four feet in front of her. There, on the ground, is a copper and gold circular device, about six inches high. Concentric circles of glowing pink mark its face. It is a magical “blind generator.” It makes the people within a ten foot radius invisible to the Lemurlikes and other animals of the Tenth Realm.

“Dr. Lewis, don’t worry, we’ve got her!” says a voice. Amy spins in place. A Fire Giant woman dressed in human field gear is balancing Durga on one arm.

The woman smiles. “Did she World Walk without you?”

“Yes,” Amy says, running over to the woman and taking Durga from her arms. The team of two human scientists and a Light Elf mage chuckle. The Light Elf says, “When my children started to do that, it was worse than when they learned to walk.”

Amy can’t laugh. Bohdi told her that Durga was exhibiting World-Walk readiness, and he had gone on what Amy had thought was a paranoia-fueled mission to close even the smallest World Gates within a mile of their home—even a public one to Alfheim. The local alderman thinks it broke of its own accord. Only Steve, Bohdi, and Amy know otherwise.

Amy bites her lip and clutches Durga close, overwhelmed by relief, guilt and shame. “Never do that again.” Of course Bohdi would know better than she does; Bohdi spends more time with Durga.

The destructive side of Chaos is great when the odds are against you. Steve’s new administration was happy to have Bohdi on their side in the beginning—even encouraged him to hold onto Laevithin when they had enemies that needed slain. That had changed as Steve had restored order. Suddenly, Bohdi’s ability to break things without even trying was not as welcome.

Bohdi had eventually gotten tired of the hostility toward him in the administration. He remained friends and an advisor to Steve, but he’d gone on to independent career paths. He cleaned up in the stock markets—until he was banned from every stock exchange in the Nine Realms for eternity. And he is barred, by law, from coming within three hundred meters of any gambling establishment. He still occasionally takes jobs in security consulting, but professionally, he isn’t as busy as Amy. He’s been Durga’s primary caregiver ... and it’s worked. She thinks Bohdi’s magic, and the natural childhood inclination toward chaotic death and dismemberment cancel each other out.

Amy presses her nose to Durga’s pigtails. Maybe for a little girl who is blue, and has wings and a tail, having a father who has long since accepted Chaos and change … Well, Durga couldn’t have a better Dad. Her face flushes. She wanted to give him a break today—to let him sleep in, but she should have trusted him …

Completely oblivious to Amy’s pain, Durga leans over her shoulder and pipes up excitedly, “I see blue people!”

Instead of following Durga’s gaze, Amy quickly scans the ground beyond the survey site. All she sees is dense blue foliage that looks drier than normal, and none of the husks of the red nut fruit that are the Lemurlikes primary food stuff. Looking to the sky, she sees none of the small pteranodon-like creatures that normally flit through the trees, either. The Lemurlikes are gatherers first, but they hunt as well—cooperatively in small bands with stones—especially when the red nuts have all been eaten. Since she sees no nuts, and no small animals, it is a lean season, and a lean season means …

“The ceremony hasn’t begun yet,” the Fire Giant says. “It will soon. I’m excited to watch it.”

One of the Light Elfs snorts. “Fire Giants.”

Amy gulps, and a human says, “There are no other kiddie-inappropriate scenes today, either.”

Amy scowls; it’s a reference to rape and murder—the Lemurlikes engage in both in normal times.

The other human says, “It will be a few hours before the ceremony.” He nods toward Durga.
“She can stay for a moment.”

“I want to stay, Mommy!” Durga cries.

Amy peers through the strand of trees to where the Lemurlikes are stomping out a patch of bare black earth among the foliage. The Lemurlikes have hairless stomachs, limbs, and backs. The female breasts are slightly more prominent than the male Lemurlikes. Like other hominids, the females’ faces are mostly hairless—or rather furless—the men sport beards of soft fuzz. Aside from those differences, the sexes are nearly identical. Both sexes have triangular ears, covered with fur, close to the tops of their heads. Long sharp, black nails tip their hands and feet, and they have pronounced canines. Males and females alike have manes of longer fur on their heads that go halfway down their backs. They have similar manes of longer fur that cover their genitalia and buttocks. Over their tails the fur becomes short, fine and velvety looking.

“They’re pretty,” says Durga, as other Lemurlikes begin pushing sticks into the ground around the packed earth. Purplish bark strips have been tied around the tops of the sticks. “They’re demarking the edge of the ceremonial area,” the Fire Giant woman says. “How interesting!”

Amy’s jaw tightens. Using flagged sticks to demarcate their “ceremony” areas are about as far as Lemurlike tool use goes. They were already doing it when this realm was first discovered, about two hundred years ago. Amy had accidentally-on-purpose introduced a gene for opposable thumbs into their population shortly after their discovery—sometimes when she wishes for such things, they happen. The creatures did not go on to develop new tools. Nor did opposable thumbs give them any interest in leaving the several hundred square miles of their forest home.

Amy shakes her head … she’d wanted them to be so much more. But it seems like the creatures are stuck in their evolution. Some of the scientists call it “perfect equilibrium with their habitat.” As far as the mages and paleontologists have been able to uncover, the Lemurlikes have spent the last half million years in this forest. Sometimes they’ll go to the edge of the savanna north of their habitat to harvest tubers—but perhaps because of the large carnivores there they seldom stray out of the forest long. Sometimes they go to the sea to harvest salt in the shallows. While they’re there they’ll collect mollusks they catch in the tide waters, but then they return to the forest. The Lemurlikes have brains the size of Homo Erectus—but Homo Erectus wandered all the way to Asia, used primitive weapons, and had fire. The Lemurlikes don’t need either. The forest is warm with only medium-sized predators, and they have salt to preserve their kills.

When they’d first discovered the Tenth Realm, Amy was sure that famine in the forest would force the creatures to leave and spur them on to greater things. That was before she knew about the ceremony.

Females begin filling the circle. They range in age from toddlers to elderly, some are visibly pregnant, others are carrying suckling infants of both genders. The Lemurlikes separate into two teams, and sit facing each other. Lifting their heads they begin to hum.

“They sing pretty,” Durga says.

Amy’s grip on her daughter grows tighter. More Lemurlikes come from the forest to the ceremony site. All the females take a place in the circle. The males fan out into the trees, calling out for any lost females to join the rest. A few of the males come within three paces of the spot where the onlookers are, but behind their magic wall they are invisible. The Lemurlikes, compelled by the same magic that elves had used to ward humans from “faerie paths” in the old days, veer away at the last minute.

“Mommy, I want to talk to them,” Durga says.

“We have to leave soon, Honey,” Amy says.

“But we’ll come back, right?” Durga says.

The hum of the females in the circle grows louder. Throughout the forest, more humming rises. There are other ceremonial circles in the forest, undoubtedly filling with females and separating into teams. In a few hours the females in the circles will attack each other. They will fight to the death with their bare hands and sharp fangs. Any surviving members of the losing female team will be strangled, and all of the dead bodies will be salted, preserved, and slowly eaten. By the time the bodies have been consumed the red nut fruits will be back, and the Lemurlike population will be half as large. With only a third of the remaining population being female, the replacement rate will be slow.

Bouncing in her arms, Durga says, “Mommy, we’ll come back right? They sing so pretty!”

Amy realizes she hasn’t answered. “Maybe someday?” she replies.

Apparently, correctly registering her hesitation as “maybe never”, Durga protests, “No, I want to come back, tomorrow!”

Amy imagines that scene: Lemurlike bodies stretched out on the ceremonial plain being crudely skinned with the creatures long sharp nails. “No, Durga,” she says.

Flapping her wings, Durga shouts, “Tomorrow!”

Somewhere far off a pteranodon calls. From the forest rises a roar, unlike any animal Amy’s ever heard, and then beneath her feet, the ground begins to shake. Amy falls to her knees, and Durga rolls from her arms. Someone shouts. Amy looks up and finds her eyes on a pair of Lemurlike males a few paces from the circle. The creatures are hooting among themselves and stepping backwards. It takes a moment, but Amy realizes that they see her. Durga stands and faces them. “Hello,” she says.

“Durga, no!” shouts Amy, crawling quickly to her feet.

The males screech, and through magic, Amy understands. “Females! In the arena! In the arena!”

“The generator is down! We’re no longer invisible.” one of the scientists says.

“Back through the World Gate!” says the Light Elf.

“They are not us!” cries a Lemurlike. “Eat them, eat them instead!”

All the females in the circle lift their heads and turn toward the scientists. Two rocks simultaneously hit the Fire Giant in the head. She goes down, squarely in the place where the World Gate is, and male Lemurlikes swarm onto her body from the trees, blocking the exit from the Tenth Realm. Amy feels the Fire Giant’s life extinguish. Someone pulls a pistol and starts firing, but the Lemurlikes in the circle are rising and racing toward the scientific team. Durga screams in fright, the world rocks—literally, or figuratively—Amy is not sure. She just manages to will her child and herself into invisibility. She extends the shroud over the Light Elf and the human scientist. “Run to the trees to the south!” she shouts to them, sprinting to the first tree in that direction. “I can open a new World Gate.”

The Light Elf and the man, once again visible to her but no one else, begin to comply, but they’re close to the downed Fire Giant and are knocked down by the swarming Lemurlikes. As soon as the creatures realize there are invisible somethings in their midst, they begin to attack them. The Light Elf, realizing what’s happening, sets their fur on fire—but it’s only small flares, not an inferno like Bohdi could cause. The pistol fires, too—but there are just too many of the creatures. Amy pulls Durga behind the tree. She doesn't have enough strength to open a Gate that extends from where Durga and she hide to the other team members. She has just enough strength to open one for her and Durga. She just needs a few minutes undisturbed.

As the life of the Light Elf and the man slip from their bodies, Durga cries.

“More in the trees!” cries a Lemurlike.

Clasping Durga tight, Amy runs.

x x x x

Bohdi steps out of the In Between right into the main office of Amy’s lab. He finds himself surrounded by a desk overloaded with papers, bookshelves that buzz with magic, and framed anatomical illustrations of dragons, totoros and bakus; but there is no Amy or Durga. He sees Durga’s coat thrown over a chair. Focusing, he sends his projections throughout the building—but sees no trace of them.

Steve’s projection emerges a few feet from Bohdi. His bionic eye is glowing purple. “Neither of them are on surveillance cameras. Looking through old footage now.”

They could have slipped through a gate to Alfheim to visit associates there—that is the most likely reason for their absence, but Bohdi’s gut is a twisted mass of worry. “Have they gone to the Tenth Realm?” Bohdi shouts. His skin feels cold, though inside he feels like he’s burning up.

The side of Steve’s lip curls. His head ticks to the side. “I’m playing your robot butler at the moment while hosting the Light Elf and Dark Elf peace accord that may be the event of the century. Be. Nice.”

Bohdi takes a deep breath. Steve is being very nice; he’s putting off important and powerful people right now to help Bohdi. Part of it might be because he doesn’t want Bohdi upset—especially not in a major metropolitan area—but somewhere under that calculus there may be caring, too.

An alarm goes off in the building and the lights in Amy’s office flash red. Steve’s projection looks at the ceiling. “That is an intruder alert. You didn’t check in at the front desk, did you?”

“Of course not!” says Bohdi.

Steve’s projection takes a step closer and raises a finger at him. But then he stops, his mouth opens, and he says. “Durga World Walked through the gate to the Tenth Realm on her own.”

Bohdi almost steps through the In Between. But he needs to calm down, he doesn’t want to get to the Tenth Realm and set it on fire. Well, he does, but Amy would be pissed. He sucks a hard breath through his teeth and wills the molecules speeding up around him to be still. Telling himself that Amy and Durga will be fine for a few minutes in the Tenth Realm, he slams out of the door of Amy’s office instead, Steve’s projection trailing along.

He tries to walk calmly … instead he storms through the hall. Shouting over the alarm at Steve’s projection, he fumes. “We should close the World Gate to the Tenth Realm.”

“No, we should not. We need to observe it to keep our enemies from taking sanctuary there—”

“Our enemies are the Lemurlikes … we’re enabling our replacements!” Bohdi snips.

“Of course,” Steve’s projection replies smoothly. “And I approve.”

Bohdi shakes his head. Steve’s about to go off on his ‘this peace won’t last forever, we always get along at the beginning, someday I’ll go too far,’ schtick …

“Fuck you and your self-sacrificing bullshit, Steve,” Bohdi snaps, his hands fisting at his sides.

“Because you’re upset, I’m going to forgive you for that,” Steve’s projection snaps back.

Bohdi should say he is sorry—because he feels it, but he can’t. Despite Steve’s doom and gloom predictions, Bohdi, Steve, and Amy are still friends. Talking about their replacements is acknowledging that someday they won’t be anymore.

Instead of apologizing, Bohdi says, “Can you turn off the alarm?”

The alarm stops and so does the flashing of the red lights. And then they immediately start again. “You tripped another wire,” Steve says.

“Well untrip—”

“Be quiet!” Steve hisses. Bohdi almost snaps back, but then he notices that Steve’s bionic eye is completely lit up, and his other is wide with alarm. “I can’t connect with the research station in the Tenth Realm.”

There’s only another ten steps in the stairwell. Bohdi pulls out a marble, and steps through the In Between anyway.

x x x x

Bohdi emerges through the World Gate to the Tenth Realm and curses. A Promethean Wire “container” has been dropped over the gate’s platform. Human sized and shaped like a bell jar, it has auto lock clips at the bottom that adhere it to the floor. Circling it are ten Einherjar in full magical Kevlar armor, with rifles already upraised. “Halt there, we have Promethean wire-tipped bullets,” one orders.

The bullets could kill him, but Bohdi doesn’t halt. The men fire and Bohdi slips through time, ala Sleipnir. Unlike Odin’s trick of stopping time itself—which wouldn’t stop the Promethean bullets—Bohdi leaves time behind completely. The bullets appear suspended in midair in the quiet twilight he enters, and the alarms are mercifully silent. He circles the Promethean container but sees no console to lift it. He curses … and then sees the ghostly shimmer of Steve’s projection at the door of the ballroom. Steve’s still in real time, and his projection doesn’t even blink. Bohdi almost immediately goes to Steve’s side, but then thinking of the bullets that had just been fired at him, plucks the rifles from the Einherjars' hands first.

Dumping all but one of the rifles at his feet, he slips back into time beside Steve—just in time to hear the bullets impacting against the walls over the scream of the alarms.

The alarm goes silent and Steve hisses at Bohdi. “You could have waited for me.”

Before Bohdi can respond, the guards’ cries of surprise fill the ballroom. “Where are our rifles?”

Bohdi whistles, smiles, and waves the one in his hands.

Narrowing his insubstantial eyes at him, Steve’s projection booms, “Einherjar!” All eyes snap from Bohdi to Steve.

The guards’ jaws drop, and their eyes flit between Bohdi, standing above the pile of their rifles, and Steve, just a few steps away. Bohdi can tell the instant the headpieces they wear tucked behind their ears have determined that it is a projection of the real Steven Rogers, Director of Inter-Realm Cooperation, Commerce, and Interventions. They stand just a fraction taller, their jaws get a little harder, and their eyes light with respect. The closest Bohdi ever has gotten to that look is fear … but these guys don’t know him, which is probably for the best—people do stupid things when they’re afraid.

“Lift the container,” Steve commands.

“Director,” one says. “Communications to the Tenth Realm have been cut off. We’re following standard procedures so that—”

“I know that, Commander Hsu,” Steve says. “But I am altering that protocol. Civilian lives are at risk. Lift the container.”

“Yes sir,” the man who must be Hsu says.

Hsu waves his hand, murmurs a few words, and a little light flashes on his headpiece. The auto locks disengage and the container is lifted from above.

Bohdi narrows his eyes at Steve. “You could have done that,” he hisses.

“You already disorientated them enough,” Steve mutters.

“Sir, should we prepare for a rescue party?” Hsu says.

Steve’s eyes slide to Bohdi. He tilts his head. “What do you feel, Mr. Patel?”

Bohdi can feel all eyes on him, and normally he gets a kick out of moments when the Director of Virtually Everything defers to him, the skinny unknown wearing a blue choker and dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. But he can’t gloat; he’s too keyed up, too worried. Instead he focuses at a point in the old ballroom floors, tries to set aside his anxieties, and tries to feel the truth.

Someone starts to say something. Bohdi’s dimly aware of one of Steve’s ghostly arms lifting and then there is silence.

He takes a deep breath. Creation and Destruction, the two sides of Chaos, always find each other and are often oddly in-sync even when they are apart. Hoenir and Loki both decided to incarnate as humans at nearly the same time without consulting one another. He usually has some idea if Amy needs him, and vice versa.

His hands tighten around the rifle. He can’t clear away his anxieties—all he feels is terror. He doesn’t know if it is real—maybe it is just the reality of his wife and daughter being marooned on a primitive realm with raping, murdering, cannibalistic savages. His jaw grinds … truth doesn’t matter. He looks up at Steve. “Send me. Just me. It will be dangerous for the rest.”

Steve nods, and Bohdi walks toward the platform.

Hsu strides next to him. “Sir, all intel indicates the Lemurlike are violent; however in our armor—”

Bohdi thrusts the rifle he is carrying at Hsu; it will just get in the way. The Einherjar stammers. “Don’t you need this—and armor?”

“No,” says Steve. “He doesn’t.”

Bohdi is at the top of the final step, reaching into his pocket when Steve says, “Give him your headpiece, Hsu.”

And that is a good idea—Bohdi doesn’t have a phone, after all. Turning, he takes the small electronic-magical gizmo from Hsu and slips it behind his ear.

As Hsu backs away, Steve says, from the bottom of the steps. “Do what you need to do.”

Steve’s jaw is hard. And Bohdi knows what he means. The third, most enduring, most vulnerable, and maybe most valuable member of the trinity must be saved. All other lives are secondary.

Amy would hate it if she heard them discuss it like that.

“Thank you,” says Bohdi.

Steve nods. Bohdi tightens his hand around the marble and is enveloped in rainbow light.

x x x x

Once, Amy was a slow runner, but that was before she was a magical. Focusing her magic on her muscles, bones, and sinews, she moves with the silence and agility of a deer. Hopping over fallen trees and rocky terrain, she lands with nearly catlike stealth; Durga’s weight in her arms is the only thing making her slightly unbalanced.

Durga whimpers and some Lemurlikes call, “There in the trees.”

Amy focuses and drops silence around them, but it’s hard to maintain while simultaneously keeping them invisible and moving so quickly.

Amy calls up a memory of the terrain from above … does she run toward the savanna or the sea? She could survive underwater, but she won’t have the energy to keep Durga alive in the depths—especially if they attract carnivorous sea life. At least on the savanna she’ll be able to run. She picks the savanna and veers west, Durga still whimpering in her arms.

“Broken twigs! Went this way!” she hears one say behind her. “I smell them,” says another. Amy swears and runs faster. Hoots rise from behind and also in front of her. The tribe she was just observing is calling a neighboring tribe. They’re preparing to kill cooperatively.

She bites her lip and pulls Durga’s tiny frame closer—she can feel her tiny heart beating against hers. Amy can raise the dead, and she can’t die—but she can be injured. If Durga is killed and her body goes cold or is hopelessly mangled while Amy is injured, her daughter will be lost for her forever. She hears hunters up ahead, behind, and to her right and left. She isn’t Bohdi or Steve, she cannot walk the In Between, even if she can create World Gates, raise armies of the dead, cause evolution with a thought, and, by her very presence, fuels scientific discoveries of all kinds.

“Bohdi,” she murmurs. He hates this place, was always warning her about it and the Lemurlikes … they are murdering, raping, cannibalistic savages … she had tried to tell him that so were many early humans.

More hoots sound in the forest around her. Sucking in a breath of oxygen and magic, she pushes her power to her limbs, eyes, and ears. If she can dodge them …

She hears the stones whizzing through the air before she feels them. And then she’s falling, Durga spilling from her arms. Amy lands with jaw-rattling force on the ground, Durga falls a few inches in front of her; the shroud of invisibility is lost.

Amy crawls forward on her hands and knees. “Momma!” Durga cries. And then, lifting her head, Durga screams, the world seems to rock, stones whizz from the trees, and everything goes black.

x x x x

Bohdi emerges at the research outpost just as Lemurlikes are ripping the limbs from the corpses of the scientists and elf mage. The magical generator is dead, but he doesn’t have time to ponder why.

“Another!” cries one of the Lemurlikes.

They turn toward Bohdi. Grasping his marble, Bohdi puts his face on all of the Lemurlikes, drops invisibility around himself, and weaves through the throng as they attack each other.

His headpiece crackles with Steve’s voice. “Status.”

“All the scientists are dead,” Bohdi says. “Searching for Amy and Durga.” Bohdi’s words are detached and distant to his own ears. He doesn’t feel distant, he wants to set the forest on fire. Amy would survive, but Durga ... He scans the foliage and sees broken branches and trampled undergrowth in the direction of the savanna. Bohdi starts off at a jog in that direction, sending projections ahead as he does.

Suddenly, a cry splits through the mountains. “Momma!”

Bohdi’s projections hone in on the sound. He sees Amy crawling toward Durga, her green hair twisted and filled with leaves, her pointy elven ears caked with dirt. Their daughter is crying, one of her wings is hanging limply, her hair is in disarray, and her face is covered in grime. Lemurlikes are stalking toward her.

Bohdi screams, and the Lemurlikes next to Durga erupt into flames. Eyes going wide with fright, Durga screams and the world rocks.

The Lemurlikes, now walking torches, stumble and fall in the underbrush, setting it alight. Bohdi almost sobs as the fire approaches Amy and Durga. The magic marble in his hand is almost out of charge; with a snarl he tosses it to the side—the tree it hits catches on fire. Pulling another marble from his pocket Bohdi slips through the In Between, and emerges in the flames next to Amy and the sobbing Durga.

Durga throws up her arms and one of her wings. “Daddy!” she cries and begins to cough. Bohdi cools the fires on his skin. Covering his wife and daughter with his body, he sends his projections as far as they will go. He finds a cliff of solid rock on a mountain between the forest and savanna. He pulls the last marble from his pocket and slips into the In Between, Amy clutched awkwardly with one arm, Durga coughing in the other.

For moments that stretch too long they are in the In Between. Amy and Durga are heavy, and the marbles aren't as powerful as Laevithin. Bohdi reaches with his memory for the cliff face, pulls with his mind—and then brings them back into the universe two feet above the cliff. They crash to the ground and Durga screams in shock. The sound pierces Bohdi’s ears and the world rocks and sways. For a horrible moment, Bohdi thinks the rocks beneath them will collapse and crumble. He sends out projections, looking for another safe place to land and sees flaming trees tumble to the ground, setting the forest alight as they do.

Durga whimpers, the world stills, and Bohdi takes a deep breath. Amy is still silent and unconscious. Bohdi’s last marble still has some power; he can’t use it to heal Durga’s injuries or create a World Gate home, so he presses it into Amy’s hand. Steve’s voice crackles in his ear. “Bohdi, status update?”

“I got them. We’re safe for now.”

Durga whimpers, “My wing hurts,” and Bohdi can’t do anything but pull her onto his lap.

“Should I send in a team?” Steve asks.

Bohdi cranes his neck to look out over the forest where he just came. The World Gate site is now a raging inferno. “Negative. There is a forest fire. I’ll wait for Amy to wake up. She’ll bring us home.” He looks down at her and adds, “She didn’t sustain injuries severe enough to kill her—she should wake up pretty fast.” Her heart has stopped a few times. Whenever that happens her recovery takes a little longer.

“Fine—let us know if your situation changes.” He hears Steve take a long breath. “We have your location on satellite; if need be, I’ll come get you.” He means he’ll create a World Gate for them. Steve can do it, but he hates it, he says it gives him a three-day hangover without the fun part—and he’s hosting a peace accord today.

“Will do,” Bohdi says. He watches from the barren mountain top as the fire catches on a breeze and jumps through the trees. His projections hear the screams of the Lemurlikes. He imagines this will cause a row when Amy wakes up; he’s destroying her creatures and their habitat. He is too angry to care.

He kisses his daughter’s head—she smells like dirt and soot. “Sleep,” he says, closing his eyes and imagining the neural electrical patterns of deep sleep dancing in her mind. She slumps against him and he waits.

x x x x

Amy wakes up on her stomach, a pain in the back of her head, and cold, hard stone beneath her. She takes a breath and smells soot; for a moment she isn’t sure if she is awake or dreaming of Nornheim.

Raising her head, she sees billowing clouds. Pushing herself up, she sees Bohdi sitting a few feet away from her, Durga asleep on his lap, one of her black wings askew. He turns and looks at her, his eyes practically glowing in the smoky sunlight. His jaw is hard, and he’s frowning. He looks furious.

The events of the past few hours slowly come back to her. She doesn’t blame him for being angry—he should be angry. She should have believed him when he told her Durga was showing World Walk readiness, she shouldn’t have brought Durga to the office, and she should have brought her home the instant she retrieved her in the Tenth Realm.

“I’m sorry,” Amy says quickly. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Bohdi’s jaw sags, his head jerks and he looks quickly away. Amy blinks. He looks surprised, but why?

Walking on her knees, she goes over to him and Durga. “I better fix her wing,” she says, hands at her side. She’s afraid to take their daughter away from her husband’s arms. She nearly got their child killed, and just thinking about it makes her arms shake. Not meeting her gaze, Bohdi gently lifts the sleeping Durga from his lap. Amy holds out her arms for their child—but they’re still shaking. As soon as Bohdi sets Durga in her embrace, Amy’s whole body sags, and she feels tears prickle the corners of her eyes. She puts a hand on Durga’s chest, the smoke is giving her a horrible suspicion … she concentrates. “Her lungs are burned,” Amy whispers.

“I didn’t have a choice!” Bohdi says, and she can hear the tension in his jaw when he speaks. Rage, at her? She deserves it.

Not knowing what to say, Amy wills the cells on the surface of Durga’s alveoli to regenerate and hastens macrophages to clear away the debris as the old cells slough away. Then, she focuses her magic on the injury in her daughter’s wing. In less than a quarter hour, Durga is almost completely recovered; Amy doesn’t wake her, giving her body time to finish, and her mind peace … Bohdi has been completely silent since Amy’s awoken, and she is sure they are going to fight. She takes a breath, steeling herself for what is coming. “It’s done,” Amy says.

She expects a tirade about listening to him, in believing in him.

“I destroyed your pet project,” he says, tersely. One side of his lip turns up, and he looks down at the ground.

Amy blinks, confused. Then she looks out over her shoulder in the direction the smoke is blowing from. Her jaw sags, and she gasps. The forest that is the Lemurlikes’ only habitat is going up in flames. Her elven ears flick forward, and she catches the sound of screams of the Lemurlikes above the crackle of the flames and the boom of falling trees. She closes her eyes and sends projections down through the burnt corpses of trees … there are charred bodies everywhere.

“I would do it again,” Bohdi says.

Amy’s eyes go to him. His nostrils are flared, he isn’t looking at her, and Amy feels utterly hopeless. He isn’t angry at her, he’s angry at himself. Bohdi would die for her and Durga over and over again, she’s never doubted it. But more than that he would kill for them; and to Bohdi, no matter what he says, that is hard … a reminder that he is Destruction, that he is the force that brings endings—to the deserving and the undeserving.

Amy swallows. “I can bring a bunch of marbles back with me next time and regrow the forest …”

Bohdi’s eyes snap up to hers, and she sees anger but also fear there. She looks away. She can’t die—she can be flayed alive, and torn limb from limb, without the relief of death. He never wants her coming back to this realm.

“They’re important, Bohdi—they’re the only new people.”

He tilts his head sharply, and the stitches in his neck glint brightly against his brown skin. “Even you’ve said they’re not close to the Homo erectus’ level of development. They are—were—a dead end.”

Amy sucks in on her lip and looks away. They can’t be a dead end, she can’t let that happen. She closes her eyes. “But they’re the only hope the Nine Realms has for regeneration next time.”

“The Magical Renaissance has just begun!” Bohdi says. “We’ve got colonies in the clouds of Venus, on Mars, and on Jupiter’s moons—not to mention Niflheim!”

“It’s just begun, and our society is already getting old. Young people take magic for granted, they don’t want to put in the study necessary to understand how it works.”

“Steve isn’t Odin!” Bohdi shouts.

Amy’s brow furrows. “No, he’s not, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be!”

“He’s not a dictator,” Bohdi hisses.

“No, Steve is the spider behind the scenes, pulling all the strings! Sometimes we do the pulling for him.”

“We’ve always wanted to, though,” Bohdi rejoins, sparks hopping from his fingers. “He’s never asked us to do anything we’ve found morally repugnant or wrong.”

“Because he still knows he needs us,” Amy says. “He will forget, Order always does.” She sighs in exasperation. “Even he knows it, that’s why he agreed to keep magical beings away from this realm. So the Lemurlikes could develop on their own, in their own way.”

“He’s not a savage, Amy!” Bohdi says.

“You don’t know what the future will bring, maybe he won’t be savage enough,” Amy snaps back.

Bohdi looks away, and she feels her heart sink. She doesn’t want Steve to become like Odin, or for Bohdi to have a showdown with him. Neither does Steve—that’s why he gives Bohdi and her so much free rein—and at the same time protects them from those who might exploit their power. He knows he needs change, and he is enlightened enough to know Order can be its own worst enemy.

She takes a deep breath and tries a new tactic. “We don’t know if these people will be the next definers of the Trinity,” Amy says softly. “But wouldn’t it be great to see what they become?”

“They won’t become anything,” Bohdi snips. “You’ve tried—you gave them thumbs—they didn’t start making tools. They’d rather kill and eat each other than leave their forest home.”

And that’s true. Amy looks out over the rapidly burning forest, Durga’s weight growing heavy in her arms. “We need to give them another five hundred years. I’ll replant the forest and—”

She stops, one of her projections seeing something that makes her jaw drop and her heart stop. “What is it?” Bohdi says, suddenly up and at her side, staring out at the devastation, his gaze hawk like, predatory and dangerous. “Get us out of here, Amy” he says.

“Don’t your avatars see it?” she whispers.

“See what?” Bohdi says.

Instead of trying to give him directions to what she sees, Amy closes her eyes and imagines the scene appearing before them. She feels magic moving through her with unusual force, she opens her eyes to see her own illusion shining before them. It is of a family of Lemurlikes—the burning forest is behind them, and they’ve moved out onto the savanna. An enormous catlike creature, the size of a small elephant is crouched in the grasses before them—but it doesn’t strike them. One of the Lemurlikes has picked up a piece of flaming wood and is brandishing the makeshift torch in front of her like a sword; the cat creature is cowering before the comparatively tiny blue hominid.

With a roar of fury and fear, the cat slinks off in the other direction. The Lemurlikes congregate and then begin breaking apart a single, lone dead tree on the plain. Each taking a branch, they spread the fire among themselves, and begin walking deeper into the savanna, the forest fire approaching the forest edge.

Amy stands and clutches Durga closer. “I won’t be coming back here anytime soon, Bohdi,” don’t worry.” She turns in place, taking on the inferno that was the Lemurlike’s former home. So many of them had died … but if they hadn’t been motivated to leave the forest, they never would have begun using tools and flame. Her magic would prevent her from creating such a blaze. “I couldn’t make something new without you.”

He looks at her with one eyebrow raised. She doesn’t think he believes her.

“They’re your creatures too, now, Bohdi. You gave them fire.” And it’s true. They needed his fire—the danger, the destruction—to become something new.

Rubbing his jaw, he looks out across the forest, which is rapidly becoming a blackened plain. He doesn’t look angry anymore. Her elven ears tremble with the sound of trees falling and fire crackling. At last he says, “When you do come back, bring me.”

“Of course,” she says, as he turns around. They usually are in on each others’ schemes and projects and are seldom apart for very long.

Touching his stitches, he says, “There’s something you should maybe know—”

Amy’s eyes get wide and she says, “I just realized something—”

“Durga might cause earthquakes.” The words leave their lips at the same time.

Amy smiles. Bohdi looks down at the ground. When he raises his eyes again, he’s smiling, his orange eyes almost glowing. She feels a familiar warmth, a zing of connection and desire that is always there. Just sometimes it is closer to the surface.

“Let’s go home,” Amy says. Tonight, she thinks, they will cause earthquakes of their own.

All Stories by C. Gockel & Contact Information

The I Bring the Fire Series:

I Bring the Fire Part I: Wolves

Monsters: I Bring the Fire Part II

Chaos: I Bring the Fire Part III

In the Balance: I Bring the Fire Part 3.5

Fates: I Bring the Fire Part IV

The Slip: A Short Story (mostly) from Sleipnir's Point of Smell

Warriors: I Bring the Fire Part V

Ragnarok: I Bring the Fire Part VI
The Fire Bringers: a Short Story

Other Works:

Murphy’s Star, a short story about “first” contact

Want to know about upcoming releases & get sneak peeks and exclusive content?

Click Here to sign up for my newsletter.

Follow me on Tumblr: ibringthefireodin.tumblr.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CGockelWrites

Or email me: cgockel.publishing@gmail.com

Thank you again!