Don't Blink
word count: 2,997
1: Passing through Sunlight
There was a goblin in the garden.
Cosette clutched her instrumod in a way sure to make her AI instructor frown. A few practice swings caused it to shift from guitar to trombone to flute, but there was never a sour note as it whistled through the circulated air of her small, white room. Once they had projected great vistas of mountains and forests untouched by man, and untouched by her since they were only illusions.
Cautiously, she approached her door as it noiselessly slid open, allowing her to set her bare feet on the warm tiles beyond, conforming to her heel. Cosette huffed to blow a stray blonde lock away from her eyes of green and red, feeling her spider-like barrette scuttle over to snatch the strand before it could trouble her again. At fifteen, she was getting too old for them, as well as the light dress of white, silver, and blue whose hem was having a hard time stretching below her knees.
The retracted kitchen was smooth and silent with tables, chairs, and appliances all put away, leaving nothing between her and the translucent membrane holding back the garden. The morning sunlight was scattered over the thick bunches of closely packed vegetables, with banamelons and other fruit hanging from the vines overhead. There were even a few scattered flowers to add some color, even if they weren't strictly regulation.
Then something caused those petals to stir.
Cosette shivered as she passed through the glassy membrane, even though the air beyond was hot and thick with humidity. Three times the size of her room, the garden was stuffed with carropork and rutaveal sunk into the black soil, their leaves reaching for the far wall where nothing could be seen but the haze of the sun and the other tall towers of flexglass.
Another rustle among the leaves. Cosette blinked away stray pollen in annoyance, having been born into a world free of dust, but when she looked again this invader had taken a definite and vaguely human shape. The girl bent low among the foliage and crept closer, careful not to make a sound, as the figure scurried ahead. For many minutes she followed with the air hazy and the leaves longer, even though she knew this garden was only a handful of footsteps from end to end.
It was close now. Something had caused the thing to stop, as if catching her scent. So Cosette sprang from concealment with the instrumod held high, bringing the now guitar crashing down on the creature's head with a loud twang. Only then could the girl clearly see the thing she had been following; a hunchbacked, green-skinned humanoid covered in spots and warts, clad in jacket and trousers of dirty brown. A thing she had no word for, having never seen anything of its like before.
"You felled one," called out a clear voice, causing Cosette to raise her head and glance around in wonder in what seemed like pristine wilderness with no sign of the apartment. She blinked and the glass reemerged to encase her, but when she blinked again the forest had returned, where a tall and unfamiliar woman approached her, clad sparkling armor.
Yet as she neared, Cosette could see this metal had been overcome by something strange as the bronze was turning to green and the steel edging off to brown. The woman herself was untouched by this corruption with snowy white skin and long flowing hair the color of wheatsticks. "You must be a sorceress, though it is a strange wand you wield."
"I don't know what those words mean," Cosette admitted, flushed with embarrassment. The creature nearby began to stir, so she gave it another whack that sang with the trilling of a flute.
"Your speech is strange to my ears as well," the armored woman admitted as she bent down to grab hold of the goblin, leaving as the misshapen thing struggling in her grasp. "I am Hildr, a valkyrie once charged with receiving the souls of fallen warriors, but now that death comes no more, I patrol this ruined land to manage troublesome vermin like these."
"'Ruined land?'" Cosette repeated in confusion as she turned her head again, and realized what she had first mistaken for a moss-covered boulder was an ancient automobile left on a crumbling street, and the mountains in the distance were tall buildings with their window broken and their stone stained, overcome with wild vines. "Where am I?"
"Where everything decays, but nothing fades forever. Where nightmares lurk under the broken remains of forgotten dreams. We call it Midgard, though others have other names," Hildr answered in amusement, as if it were asked in jest. Then she reached into her armor with her free hand and removed a large coin, tossing it to Cosette for the girl to awkwardly catch. "Sorceress or not, you've earned the bounty for this goblin."
Cosette glanced down at the coin, only for the light to strike its surface, causing her to shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she found herself standing in her apartment's garden with dirty bare feet, staring at a tarnished silver coin bearing the face of an old man with a single brooding eye.
2: The One-Eyed Father
Cosette had never stood outside the tower.
Apartments ringed its outer walls, but at its center were more places she could hope to know in a lifetime. She should have been returning home after band practice, but instead she wandered through the park with her instrumod shoved under one arm, turning around the rough silver coin in her hands. There were only a few scattered people moving about the straight stone paths set beside great looming trees, with flowers and other greenery neatly organized at their base. Occasionally, there was a flitter of a black dot as an nanosect worked to keep it that way. Light poured from panels along the distant walls, though they were fainter now as dinnertime was fast approaching.
As Cosette continued with her eyes on her strange reward, there was the impression of the giant trees becoming stone columns and the sound of heated argument ahead in voices that rumbled with the sound of clashing symbols. Yet when Cosette glanced up, the trees were of bark and leaves, while only quiet conversations were overheard. Yet the coin remained solid in her hand, like nothing she had ever seen before. The jagged and imperfect edges, and the brooding face that seemed nearly alive. It even carried a strange smell as she brought it close to her nose to sniff, like the very opposite of flowery fragrance, only for this contact to cause her body to react in a way it never had before.
She sneezed.
Now she stood in a vast and ruined hall where the trees had been replaced with angular stone columns rising up to the arched ceiling. There windows sent scattered light down upon the vegetation that grew everywhere, though they were nothing compared to the giants looming before her.
"...why we should strike at night," a bulky, bare-armed man insisted as his red braided beard bobbed with every word. He spoke to other fair-haired men and women of the same immense size, all clad in fuzzy materials Cosette had never seen the like of, though their belts and clasps shone with metal. As if sensing her interest, this fiery giant turned and sputtered out in surprise, "Who is this? Where did she come from?!"
The twelve grave figures all stared in stunned amazement at this girl suddenly in their midst. A man with but one hand studied Cosette and declared, "A spy to be sure. Likely in the employ of Zeus or Osiris. Perhaps even Shiva or Siddhattha."
"No. She resembles an angel concealing her wings," a woman with long flowing golden hair disagreed, though her voice was no less troubled. Cautiously, she drew near as Cosette slowly backed away, until the girl caught some particle on the wind that annoyed her nose for the second time.
"Achoo!"
The park had returned with its tall trees and broad, straight avenues, where only a few people wandered. There was no sign of the ruined hall or the giants that occupied it. Cosette rubbed her nose, wondering about her own strange reaction, when...
"Achoo!"
The giants had all been searching the hall with eyes wide with wonder, only to be further dazzled as she suddenly returned to their company, leaving most unable to speak.
"Clearly a sorceress. Is that not a wand tucked under her arm?" pronounced the tallest and leanest of these colossi, bearing a shifty sort of look that demanded mistrust.
Yet Cosette was not looking to any of these menacing figures, but the "hall" that she now beheld with greater clarity. It was an ancient train station where the tracks had rusted into an earthen hue and became home to clinging plants, while the long and straight platforms had been kept clear mostly clear as the paths of the park she had just stood upon.
Guessing there was some relation to these giants and the tall armored woman she had met before, Cosette raised up the coin and told them, "I don't know anything about 'sorceress,' but I did capture a goblin and was paid with this!"
The coin was clearly familiar to them all as they stared at its gleaming surface, only for another voice to call out from somewhere behind. "Let her pass."
The giants parted at this command to reveal the man who had spoken. Oldest among them with his beard grey, and perhaps the largest, though it was hard to judge when he sat on a makeshift throne formed from metal parts framed around a padded bench. Two great black birds sat on metal perches to whisper into his ears, while this giant gazed down upon her through his single eye.
"I am Odin. The All Father they once called me," the man spoke in a deep rumble that seemed to echo with the trains that had once passed through this place long ago. "Where are you from? What is the name of your world?"
"Eden, of course," Cosette answered immediately, since she knew of no other.
The giants arrayed behind her gasped as one, but Odin cast her with a grim look as one of the birds muttered in his ear. Then Odin leaned forward to address her, "What we once called Asgard, before we were deceived and exiled here by your kind."
"My kind? We've always lived in Eden," Cosette argued. All the records said so, and there wasn't a record that wasn't available to anyone who asked for it.
"Always? Things never fall to dust in Asgard, but they will be forgotten. That was our error, and now it is yours," Odin spoke in a grim delight as the first hint of his white teeth appeared. "Our worlds have always been bound. In ancient times, they drifted near and we gods held some influence over your people. Then we parted and much was forgotten among us, as your kind grew to believe there was nothing greater than yourselves. When the worlds grew close again, your kind imprisoned us here as you took up your home in Asgard."
"I really don't understand what you're saying," Cosette admitted with a small shrug.
"Here on what your kind once called Earth, we gods have been locked in battle with one another to seize control of this rotting heap, but your appearance means the worlds are drifting closer once again. Soon we will be able to return home," Odin mused as he leaned back with his single eye glittering.
"From her words, it seems the humans have forgotten about their grand deception," the sly one noted, though it was hard to tell if he was delighted or annoyed.
"Ragnarok will come again!" the heavily muscled man roared as he raised his meaty fists.
While Cosette couldn't shake the feeling of doom ahead for the pleasant people that shared her tower. Yet she could only shut her eyes, and welcome the return of the sterile park.
3: The World Tree
"The curse of Asgard is to forget,
yet ancient branches may still bear fruit."
The whispered verse disturbed the comforting darkness of Cosette's sleep. She recognized the voice of the sly god as she sat up in bed, causing a soft glow of grey illumination to seep into her small room. Barely breathing, she slipped into her dress, socks, and shoes, awakening her barrettes and clutching her instrumod; the last mainly to steady her shaking fingers. The safety of her whole world was at stake, and she was the only one who knew about it. She did not wake her mother, careful not to make a sound as she passed through the retracted kitchen and into the garden. Dim illumination followed her footsteps now that the sun had set and silence fell over the tower, though she couldn't shake the feeling of a looming presence nearby.
So she shut her eyes.
"It took hours to summon you. Our worlds are not yet near, but they will be soon," the slender giant remarked as she opened her eyes, moonlight illuminating his untrustworthy features. "I am Loki, your sole ally in this looming conflict."
"Why would you help me?" Cosette demanded, thinking this giant couldn't be any more suspicious, even if he was holding a net behind his back to ensnare her.
"Because I helped make your 'Eden' possible," Loki informed her quietly with a cruel sense of pride alighting his grim visage. "The humans of that time prepared a safeguard should our worlds meet again. Simply awaken it and the gods will be banished for another three thousand years."
"How?" Cosette questioned in doubt.
"Follow closely. Keep your feet silent and your eyes well open," Loki instructed as he led away from the sprawling garden set at the heart of the ruined city and towards the train station rising with its crumbling majesty in the distance.
Guards had been set before its stone archway, now lying face down on the ground with no mark upon them. Cosette was sure Loki had done it, but there was no time to ask as they passed into the darkened interior. There flickering torchlight illuminated the slumbering forms of many fierce warriors. Loki led a twisting path around them as if they were no more than lifeless boulders, though Cosette stepped with greater care. She could see in the distance the male gods had all passed out from feast and drink, while when her companion grinned as he glanced over this.
It was to a metal door Loki led her, claiming a torch from the wall before proceeding down the rusting steps, whose sharp cries left Cosette gasping for breath, but there was no response from the hall above. Down into the dark they descended, past where the trains themselves had been stored and left to fall apart.
Cosette began to detect a faint hum calling from below, like the sound of a mother lulling her newborn to sleep. It was clear Loki heard this noise as well, pausing occasionally to cock his head to one side and listen closely before moving on. Until they reached a heavy reinforced door, well battered but still holding from whatever men and beasts had attempted to breach it. The source of the hum was clearly on the other side.
With a great heave, Loki tore it free from its hinges.
Cosette had never seen anything like what lay beyond. The concrete room was filled with all manner of tubes bound to a series of massive cylinders where something rotated within, producing the soft sound that had drawn them there. "The safeguard?"
Loki simply shook his head as he raised his eyes, glancing around carefully as he moved about the room, searching without speaking for a half hour, until he finally stopped near to the center with a satisfied nod.
"Now what?" Cosette demanded as she approached.
"Now shut your eyes," Loki instructed as he put a heavy hand on Cosette's shoulder. The girl did as she was told.
When Cosette opened them again, trails of light were flowing before her, rising up in a great bundle as if they were the roots of a massive tree, sinking through the ceiling to nearly cover the floor, save for the small circle they stood up. The rest of the room was nothing but white stone, lacking doors or windows.
"Yggdrasil," Loki answered her unspoken question with a wide grin on his thin lips. "The pulsing heart of your precious tower. Now if I was a wicked one, I would tear out its roots and leave you humans for dead."
Cosette waited tensely, but Loki seemed to content to simply stand with his arms crossed, observing this state of flowing light. So she asked, "What do I do now?"
"Play a tune," Loki answered in amusement.
"I only know one song...," Cosette admitted awkwardly as she raised her instrumod up in flute form, blowing a few practice notes before embarking on the melody she had been taught to perform on a dozen different instrument forms, though she had always preferred the sweet sound of the flute.
Notes filled the air around her and soon came an answer in the strains of a violin playing in accompaniment. Cosette nearly stumbled in surprise, but Loki silently urged her to continue. Her unseen music partner was soon joined by another, adding the deep rumble of drums, and then after trumpets joined. By the time Cosette reached the end, the room was filled with an invisible symphony, surging to a grand crescendo.
A large holographic screen flickered to life before them with a simple message, "Access to F.E.N.R.I.R. granted."
The war was still to come, but Cosette suddenly felt much better about their chances. failing to notice the eager gleam shining in the depths of Loki's dark orbs.
