CHAPTER TWENTY
Thorgrin walked slowly through his old village, bewildered. Here was the place he had grown up, and yet it seemed so foreign to him. The streets were empty, the doors to the houses all left open, as if it had all been abandoned in a rush.
He walked through it slowly, a harsh driving wind whipping his face, stirring up the dirt, and he had never felt so alone.
Thor turned the corner and saw his father’s home, and he walked towards it with dread. It was the only home in the village with the door closed.
He reached it, turned the knob, and slowly pulled open the creaking wood door. His heart stopped.
Standing there, facing him, was not his father—but Andronicus.
Andronicus stepped out, smiling and sneering at the same time, his body half decayed, and reached out a long bony hand for Thor’s throat.
“My son,” he said in his ancient, awful voice. “You may have killed me. But I can still haunt your dreams.”
Thor reached up and swatted the bony hand away, slicing his wrists—and as he did, the landscape changed.
Thor looked down and saw that his wrist was bleeding, scratched not by his father’s skeleton but by a thicket of thorns. Thor struggled to walk through the pile of thorns, higher than his head, scratching his arms every which way as he pushed through. He was entangled, and with each step he was in more pain, the thorns embedding more deeply into his skin.
Thor struggled with all his might, and finally broke through to the other side.
Before him lay a wasteland, sky the color of ash, the soil mud. On it lay thousands of corpses, the corpses of the Empire, of the McCloud’s, of every soldier Thor had ever met and killed in battle. There they all lay, moaning.
Rafi stood in the center, and raised an accusing finger at Thor.
“This blood is on your hands,” he said, his voice horrifying, cutting right through Thor.
As one, all the corpses rose, turned to Thor, and charged.
Thor raised his hands and screamed.
“NO!”
Thor blinked, and found himself standing on a footbridge.
He looked down and saw the raging waters of the ocean below. He saw a single, small boat, bobbing wildly in the ocean, empty. He realized that he had been on that boat, sometime long ago, and now he had made it up here, on this narrow footbridge. Just one step to the right or the left, and he would plummet to his death.
Thor looked up, and saw that the footbridge stretched for miles in the sky, and ended at the top of a high cliff. At its edge there was perched a castle, overlooking the sky, the ocean. Light flooded in through the castle windows, a light so bright it hurt Thor’s eyes to look.
On the footbridge, not far from him, stood a woman, wearing light blue robes, holding out a hand. He sensed instantly that it was his mother.
“My son,” she said. “Your wars are done. The time has come to meet. For you to understand the depths of your powers. For you to know who you truly are.”
Thor wanted desperately to take a step towards her, but he sensed something behind them, and he turned and saw standing, not far away from him, a boy, who looked like him. He was taller than Thor, with bright blonde hair, broad shoulders and a noble face. He had a strong jaw and a proud chin.
He looked up lovingly at Thor.
“Father,” he said, reaching out a hand. “I need you.”
Thor turned and looked back and forth between the two, torn, not knowing which to way to go.
Suddenly, the footbridge beneath him collapsed, and Thor felt himself plummeting, screaming, down to the raging waters of his death.
Thor woke screaming.
He sat up in bed in the darkness, breathing hard, and looked all around him. Gwen, awakened, sat up beside him, grabbing a candle from her bedside table, pulling it towards her and holding it up to Thor’s face, examining him with concern.
“What happened?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
Gwen breathed heavily, and Thor could see it was burdensome for her to move in bed, being as pregnant as she was, and he felt badly for having wakened her. They lay in her parents’ former chamber, now her chamber, in a huge four-poster bed piled with luxurious furs. Krohn jumped up and came running over to Thor, licking him several times.
Thor jumped up from bed, threw on his robe, and hurried over to the small basin against the wall and splashed water on his face. He breathed deep, water dripping down his face, and looked out through the open-air arched window. Down below lay King’s Court, perfectly silent and still, all the revelers gone home. The two moons hung low in the sky, one red, one violet, and they let in a soft light through the clouds.
Thor breathed deep, rubbing his face, trying to clear his mind. He had been having too many nightmares of late. He kept seeing the faces of all his opponents, reliving times from battles. It clung to him like a fog. He had also been having recurring visions of his son, and of his mother. He felt something ominous was on the horizon, but he did not know what.
Most of all, Thor was feeling an intense desire, growing stronger each day, to seek out his mother, to know who he truly was, to understand his destiny.
“Everything is okay,” Thor said softly, his back to Gwendolyn.
He turned and walked over to her, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Go back to sleep,” he added, taking her candle, returning it to her bedside table, blowing it out.
Gwen lay back, curling up beneath the covers.
“Come back to bed,” she said.
“I will. Soon enough,” Thor said.
He needed to get fresh air, to clear his mind, to shake off the demons of the night.
Thor walked across the room, Krohn following at his heels, and strode out of the chamber and into the castle hall, closing the door gently behind him.
It was brighter out here, several torches lit along the wall. The two soldiers standing at attention outside the door stiffened at his presence.
Thor turned and made his way down the twisting, ancient stone corridors, and finally up a narrow, spiral stone staircase, to the parapets. The roof was his place of refuge, a place he had come to escape the demons of the night.
Thor crossed the castle roof, Krohn at his heels, running his hand along the wide, smooth stones. He looked down at King’s Court. It was beautiful, tranquil, shining beneath the moonlight, thousands of torches arranged neatly along the walls, everything built back perfectly. A few revelers slept on the castle grounds, too tired or drunk to make it back to their beds. King’s Court was so safe now, they could sleep out in the open with no fears. The city grounds were strewn with the mess of the day’s parties, hundreds of banquet tables still laden with leftover food, a mess that would have to wait to the next day to be cleaned up.
As Thor looked down, he marveled at all that Gwen had accomplished here. And he marveled at all the twists and turns life had taken for him. Growing up, he had never in a million years expected to find himself, an outsider, invited into King’s Castle—much less living in it, standing atop it in the moonlight and surveying the court. As an outsider, he had just hoped and dreamed to maybe one day enter its gates. Now here he stood, at the very peak of it all. He was overjoyed, yet it was also so surreal. It was scary, in a way, being at the top of everything in life; a part of him feared there was nowhere left for him to go from here but down.
Thor felt so confused about life. Finally, he had everything he’d ever dreamed of. He had a wife-to-be who he loved, and who loved him; he had a child on the way; he was respected by his peers, and loved by the people. And yet somehow, for some inexplicable reason, he still felt that something was missing from his life, and he did
