chapter 1106 – classified and chained 3 – the great wolf’s prison


    “the barrier starts down there,” jeska said, gesturing towards a crack in the side of the fjord.


    like they had desired, john had no idea where they were. nightingale’s veil of impenetrable darkness lay over them, even after they had left the car. the single reliable piece of information he had was that they were somewhere along the coast. the continuous downward slope of the stretch they had wandered and the smell of salt water that permeated even the barrier that isolated them from the outside combined to make that much likely.


    all of that could have been part of an extra layer of misdirection though.


    john inspected the crack advertised as the entrance to fenrir’s lair. had it not been for nightingale’s magic painting its insides pitch black, adding to the already intense dead of night, it would have looked like a standard cave entrance. the kind that children explored when they lived around the area or that had warning signs in front of them for tourists, if they got partially flooded by the rising tide.


    “you will wait here?” he asked his four guides, the two women and the two bodyguards. the goddess and the valkyrie were still wearing the same clothes, each outfit screaming ‘fantasy’ in its individual way. to be more accurate, jeska’s outfit screamed fantasy. for nightingale it was her body itself that would have caused a mundane person to do a triple take before driving home to wonder when someone had the chance to drop hallucinogens into their coffee.


    anyway, the fact that they hadn’t changed indicated that their current cover worked both ways. john wasn’t sure how it hid them, but he trusted seasoned abyssals and a goddess enough to know what they were doing.


    “yeah,” jeska responded in a carefree fashion and rolled her neck. “no idea what fenrir will want to do with you, only that i want nothing to do with that.”


    “good fortune, john,” nightingale added.


    “let’s hope i won’t need it,” he responded, while turning towards the crack. for ease of movement, the elementals followed him in incorporeal form. only metra actually went after him.


    the first couple of metres were so narrow that john had to move sideways and still felt the occasional rock brushing over his clothes. a less sturdy shirt would have torn or at least lost a button. instead, it prevented his skin from experiencing any chafing. then again, the state of his arms proved that casually grinding against stone didn’t even scrape the surface anymore.


    “wonder if a loofa would still work on me,” john randomly chatted, once they were in a stretch of the cave that was broad enough for them to walk. first normally, then side by side, they descended into the darkness. “you know, those sponges you use during showering?”


    “why would you even ask yourself that?” metra shook her head in confusion. “you get scrubbed down by aclysia every fucking morning.”


    “just a thought experiment, really,” the gamer responded. “i haven’t had to deal with my fingernails or stuff like that in a while. i wonder if parts of me that are no longer connected to the whole lose their toughness. would a regular loofa suffice to get dead skin cells off me or would i need some kind industrial steel sponge? the variety people normally use to scratch out pots?”


    “i’ll be completely honest: i have no idea and i don’t fucking care,” metra told him.


    that was fair enough and the next step they took provided them with something else to concentrate on anyway. “we can enter the barrier here,” john told her, able to feel it with his fateweaver senses. without further delay, he led the way and, courtesy of the familiar mechanics, pulled metra right with him.


    the atmosphere around them was transformed immediately. gone was the all-encompassing isolation of nightingale’s shroud and in its place came repeated gusts of stinking wind, howling through the dark tunnel.


    “what died in here?” metra asked and sniffed a couple of times. as someone that practically lived on the battlefield, disgusting smells failed to overwhelm her. “smells like rot and bad teeth.”


    “that’s exactly what it is,” john said, himself feeling like puking at the stench. “fenrir’s breath is rushing through these caves. let’s keep going.”


    the cave opened into a proper labyrinth now, many of the walls showing clear signs of masonry. like the hall at the airport, so too did the level of work around here appear random in its level of distribution. ‘a tradition, perhaps?’ john thought, while looking down one of the several corridors. ‘each member of the organization has to spend some time further decorating the place?’


    between him and metra, stirwin manifested. although he had preferred the hatchling form earlier, he now took the stage 1 form of a long-limbed and relatively regularly sized crocodile. ever since devouring enki, he could do that much without any help from john. “i thought you may appreciate some light,” he explained his appearance, glowing brightly to unveil more of their surroundings.


    there wasn’t much to see, aside from more tunnels. “that really the entire reason you bothered manifesting?” metra asked, poking the celestial devourer with her left foot.


    “right, ol’ fenrir’s claws, right?” it was a rhetorical question, as olaf already turned to the growling wolf. “stop your yammering already, fen, the guy here is far beyond the level that’d just get intimidated by you.”


    fenrir’s growl quieted down until it was completely gone. the red eyes remained hateful to the brim, and echoed in his deep voice, “descendance of cowardly traitors, all of you.”


    “he’s always like this,” olaf assured john.


    metra looked over the edge of the balcony and at the numerous chains. “he’d be less pissed if the prison conditions were less torturous.”


    “we considered doing that, but... hey, fenrir, if we loosened your bonds to replace them with more comfortable ones, what would you do?”


    “i’d tear you all to shreds before you could bind me down again, coward!” fenrir howled.


    “as you can see, no can do,” olaf said and grabbed both drinking horns to refill them. “when the gods chained him, they weren’t in a good mood and we lack the ability to make his accommodations more comfortable without risking that he breaks free. leadership doesn’t want to trigger the apocalypse over making the beast that will kill odin more comfortable.”


    “could at least make sure he’s not hungry.” john scratched the back of his head. “let me guess, leadership doesn’t want the beast that will kill odin to be in top condition?”


    “aaaa-yup,” olaf answered and downed the next two drinking horns.


    john was conflicted on this whole affair. personally, he didn’t want to treat his enemies as badly as many of them would treat him, specifically in captivity. creatures of intense malevolence and might may need to be kept in conditions that were deeply painful for them in order to assure that they were kept under lock and key. whether fenrir had been such a creature from the start or turned into it by the prolonged suffering, john did not know, only that he was such a creature now. with that in mind, was it truly improper to keep fenrir in this condition?


    “could just kill him,” metra suggested.


    john was not generally in favour of the death penalty, but given the alternative, he did support that statement with a nod.


    “leadership is afraid that might cause another fenrir to appear elsewhere and kick off the cycle anew, so they won’t do that.” olaf grabbed the cards one of his comrades had tossed on the table and checked what he had been dealt. “the sons of odin are one of the most powerful guilds in the world. our gods are benevolent to those that follow and cruel to those they triumphed over. fear none, slay all.”


    ““fear none, slay all,”” the other men echoed and knocked on the wood.


    “a tad outdated a worldview for me,” john confessed.


    “you’re a politician, you have to think in complicated ways.” olaf laughed and once more gave john a clap on the back. “we are warriors. we keep our bodies sharp and our morals clear-cut because people like you are fallible, and when your governing inevitably crumbles under the accumulated weight of centuries of small and large mistakes, people like us will have to protect what can be rebuilt.”


    john stood up and grabbed the drinking horns. metra did the same for the other two warriors. together they filled them up, so that all present who could drink had something. “well said,” he complimented and toasted. the three warriors grinned and emptied their horns in a series of gulps. the gamer only took a sip. the mead tasted intensely sweet of honey and cherries.


    “you should visit the hudson barrier sometime.”


    “is that what you call your capital still?” olaf asked. “i thought that was a temporary name. it’s so uncreative.”


    “not sure i want to hear that from a person from a country where the majority of places are named after their founder and a local landmark, like a river or a big boulder,” john responded drily. “i’ll consider giving it a more creative name though.” deeming the conversation over, john turned to fenrir. “is there anything you want, great wolf? anything, besides your freedom, that i could offer you in exchange for parts of your body – a claw, some fur, and a tooth?”


    technically john only needed a claw, but if he was already there, he might as well get a greater diversity of the rare materials.


    fenrir pondered his answer.