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The mist dissipated from around my body into an unfamiliar enclosure. The woman was nowhere to be found. Instead, in front of me slept an enormous beast, two heads full of teeth and claws. Its body was the size of a bear with jaws like a wolf. With a silent breath, I took a step back. Usually I got the better end of an exchange with women. We’d have sex; I’d give cab fare. I guess I appreciated the challenge.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I mouthed looking for an exit. She’d sent me here; I could only hope she would take me back. I continued back peddling away from the two-headed beast, heart pounding in my chest. It was another circular room but darkened by mist more than the previous. The hound snored softly.Hurray for small miracles, I thought.
My heel thumped against something and my heart stopped. I turned. Beneath me, the skin of a two-headed dog began to smolder like the embers of a dying fire. The all too aware glow of its yellow eyes found me and bared two sets of vicious fangs.
Predator instincts or not, I ran for the only exit that I could see which is to say, into the blackened abyss beyond. With each step, the glow of the hound’s skin told me that the pack had awakened. Their burning skin illuminated the hall; the black stone walls reflected the horrible scene in front of my eyes: a nearly naked man running for his life from a pack of wild, two-headed hounds. There was only one explanation.
I was in Hell.
The hounds nipped at my heels. I turned back to gage the distance when one leapt towards me. I twisted, falling onto my back and extending my foot out, throwing the hound over me. Its jaws snapped wildly as it sailed through the corridor.
I just started to regain my footing when the second of the pack plowed into me with a double head-butt. I groaned feeling the force crack ribs beneath my burlap coat-of-arms. Its right head snapped at my face. I threw my arm between its jaws forcing it away. Razor sharp teeth sliced through my skin and I let out a bellow of rage, punching the beast between its heads. It shuttered, releasing me, my left hand hung limp and blood dripped down my arm. Five more hounds charged me, skin ablaze and eyes burning.
Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was the manifestation of my eternal suffering, but I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I got up to my feet just as the first of the pack arrived, welcoming it with a kick to the chest. It stumbled slightly as agony exploded from my foot, its chest was hard as steel. The first attacker leapt onto my back, pinning me to the ground. The hound’s ember skin hissed as it began to burn into my flesh. I cried out as the jaws closed around my shoulder, cracking my collarbone. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes, sure the rest of the pack would descend upon me any time to finish the job.
I opened my eyes back in the woman’s room still laying on my stomach. My broken collar made it impossible for me to look for the dogs, but the missing weight from my back made me hopeful.
“Respect is something you would be wise to learn, lest you find yourself in a similar situation.” The woman hadn’t moved from her bench facing the brazier.
I lay my head down on the cool stone with a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” I whispered. My body must be in a state of shock because I was only vaguely aware of a growing sense of exhaustion.
“Rise, Youngling. Let me look upon what the tide has wash upon the shore.”
I lay there breathing, trying to get my head wrapped around her request. “Look lady, I was just mauled by a pack of burning demon dogs,” I croaked, “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t just jump up and—”
A piercing crack emanated from the stone beneath me; I pushed myself up to my knees by reflex then examined myself in stunned silence. My wounds were closed, all signs of scare tissue fading with them. I looked up at her reverently.
The woman was standing now, a dark wooden walking staff held in her hand, as tall as her eye. She was much taller than I’d first guessed but her hair still flowed down to her waist. I tried my best not to look at her tits – I knew where that had gotten me last time.
“I think you and I got off on the wrong foot miss…”
“You may call me Sigyn.”
“Miss Sigyn—”
“Just Sigyn,” her accent was sexy and soothing all at once.
I took in a deep breath and asked the question I’d been wondering all day. “What’s happening to me?”
She walked towards me. Her eyes locked on mine, until she stood a foot away searching my features. She gently cupped my hand then with blinding speed she pulled a knife from her loincloth, slicing across my palm. I gasped in pain, a cross of anger and confusion in my eyes as I looked back up at her. She nodded back to my palm.
The wound had begun to seal itself. I looked back at her; she must have seen the questions in my face.
“I may have a use for you yet, Youngling.”
I poked, testing the new flesh at my hand. “So what does this mean?”
“You are a man of little faith, Silas Bishop—”
“How does everyone I meet know that name?” I began, frustrated; though the emotion never reached its full potential as she spun, staff leveled at my head, cracking my skull at the ear. I fell to the side in a heap.
“You burst into my realm and expect me to reveal to you truth such that the gods themselves seek? All things come at a price, Youngling, a truth I can see written in your own mind. Listen well, for Odin himself in all his wisdom sought prophecy among the seers and desperation is all that could drive him to pay the toll.” Her voice burned with scorn in my eardrums even over the ringing.
I gasped in a stuttering breath as I returned to my senses, eyes opening wide. I’ve killed a lot of people; I’ve taken a lot of beatings. All that fighting had left me blunt – tact wasn’t my strong suite. I pulled myself up to my knees and sat back with my eyes cast down. My head throbbed. The last thing I needed to do was antagonize the woman anymore. I’m accustomed to deadly games, but I clearly didn’t know the rules to this one.
My skull throbbed along with my collar and back. Whatever was holding me together certainly wasn’t keeping me from feeling the pain. I was accustomed to that, though. Mind over matter; pain is my body’s, my mind is my own. “What’s the price?” I asked, not looking up.
I could hear the smirk in her voice, “Already you kneel before me and that is a start.” It was a tenant of information brokering: always set your terms, they’re non-negotiable. All I had to give now was my obedience; I had to hope it would be enough.
“You imagine yourself a broker of men’s lives not of information, Bishop. I have long known mortality the blessing that it is – a lesson you are certain to learn yourself. Now, cursed with the frailty of your body and the endless suffering of the Gods, living in the shadows of those they have created.” Her words dripped with bitterness, I dared not look at her even as my heart began to race with excitement.
“I find myself… inconvenienced,” she said. I looked up when she paused, her hair tossed over her shoulder, her hand reaching to her neck. On it, I saw the strange rune that was burned onto the headless corpses. “You,” she said, her gaze bearing down on me, she knelt down cupping my chin in her hand “are free of the restrictions placed upon me in this realm.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. “So long as your body lives, you remain tethered to the realm of Midgard. Yet, in your pain, you drift between worlds; down to Niflheim itself.”
I wetted my lips. I felt flush. Why was it so hot all of a sudden? “You mean I can get back?” I asked. My mouth must have been dry too because it came out in a croak.
The sudden lust in my body was overwhelming as she spoke. “Yes. I have what you want,” she said reaching between my legs and grabbing my hard shaft, “Mortality ever plays to my advantage.” She shoved me to my back, legs parting over me and mounting without a flinch, still holding the massive walking staff vertical. It happened so suddenly I couldn’t control myself as I began thrusting wildly. She slammed the stick down with an ear-shattering crack, pressing her body onto mine, a bestial smile gripping her face.
“The nine realms hold perils for gods as well as men. The mists of prophecy are clouded by immortal threads of will but I care little for that. My son walks free while my daughter keeps me in this cage.” Her words nearly lost to me in my uncontrollable lust. My eyes locked on her hips as we writhed together on the glossy black stone. “Find the portal to this realm, there the Wolf shall greet you; answer to me until I’m free, a slave to all who bind you.”
What had she just said? I think it was important, but I was close now, deep insider her ethereal hips. She slammed her hand around my neck stopping me cold. Her eyes deep black and her mouth twisted in fanged smile, she looked down on me as a harpy to her prey. “You would know your way through the Underworld? Then you will satiate my desire.” With that, her fangs dug deep into my neck and my scream finally echoed through the cavern.
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