Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
The man nods. He’s got a sharp chin and an even sharper nose, high cheekbones and small blue eyes. He looks young, too young to do this sort of thing, but his blond hair is going gray at the temples, which I suppose means he’s old enough. Hard to tell with these mortals and their flimsy life spans.
“Say we were to find a portal not too far from here,” I continue. “How would you propose we get everyone where they need to be and do so without causing alarm?”
The general blinks at me for a moment, and I have to reach into my power, scaling back on my influence inside his mind, letting him accept the situation as nothing unusual while letting analysis and agency come back into play.
Finally, clarity comes into his eyes. “We can mobilize using our trucks,” he says. “They are off-road and can go anywhere. If there is an obstacle and the trucks cannot travel any further, we are prepared to travel on foot. No one would bat an eye, as this is typical for our training.”
“And what weapons do you have at your disposal?”
“Rifles, of course.”
I mull that over. While Torben has been lost in the spellbooks, I’ve been trying to imagine how a mortal army could possibly stack up against the skeleton army comprised of my former subjects, Bone Stragglers, and the Inmost Dwellers who have escaped from the city, not to mention any Old Gods Louhi may have raised. Bullets might be able to blast off someone’s head, but the skeletons will need to be completely disabled limb from limb in order to send them to Oblivion.
“What about bombs?” I ask.
The general frowns. “We have some…”
“Then we will need those. How skilled are your troops with swords or bow and arrow?”
His frown deepens. “Most have minimal knowledge of either. They aren’t usually a requirement for the army these days.”
“But if they were given swords, they could figure it out?”
“If they had to.”
“They might have to. I take it you don’t have any on base?”
“No, sir,” he says.
Fools. To put all their stock into impersonal guns and bullets, not once thinking about ever entering a war that might require hand-to-hand combat…
But it will have to do.
I clear my throat and hand my mug and plate to the general. “Very well. As soon as we can take on some of the army on the other side, we’ll gain access to their weapons. I just want your troops to know what they’re up against. Can you call a strategy meeting with your top people? The sooner we get this underway with a plan, the better. At the moment, it seems we have more than enough time to start training.”
“Except we don’t,” Torben says in an odd voice.
I glance at him, and he breaks into a broad smile.
“Because I found the spell,” he says. “The spell that will bring us to the portal.”
CHAPTER FOUR
TUONEN
“Sarvi,” I whisper. “Sarvi, can you hear me?”
Just like every time I’ve asked before, which is maybe twice, or maybe a couple of hundred times, for I have no idea how long I’ve been in this dungeon, there’s no response. In the distance, something drips, a steady beat that has been driving me slowly insane. Someone—or something—cries out in pain from another cell. Bone mice squeak and scurry in the shadows, occasionally venturing into the light of the candles, whose wax drips into small white mountains on the stone floor.
The only reason I know Sarvi is even alive is because I can hear the unicorn’s labored breathing and the occasional rustling, as if Sarvi is adjusting. It’s a very specific sound of hooves against rock and sounds like it’s coming from the next cell over from mine. It hadn’t been clear where Sarvi went after their horn was sawed off, but it would make sense for Louhi to jail the unicorn as well.
More than that, I feel it in my marrow, the energy and presence of a soul that has been by my father’s confidant since the day I was born. Sarvi is not dead, but I fear for their life anyway. I’m not sure how much life essence is in the unicorn’s horn, but to see them crumble like I did, Oblivion could be lurking around the corner. Sarvi would become one more good soul lost to the eternal void.
I reach up and gingerly touch my own horns. The ends where my mother sliced them off still throb with pain. Even worse, I can’t make the horns disappear back inside my skull. They’re permanently out now, cumbersome to wield when there’s no relief on my neck and shoulders. One would think that being a God, even a lesser God of Death, would mean not dealing with mortal-like pain, but I fear that my mother did more than just gain magic from the ends of my horns. I fear she took whatever immortality I had.