After about a half hour of running down the packed dirt, Josh was finally calm enough to register his surroundings. He stepped on the last step that opened up to a room.
In the center was a large, shallow bowl that had been used for a large fire.
A teardrop-shaped rune was often repeated on the walls, and Josh struggled to figure out what it could be until it clicked. It wasn’t a rune that he’d forgotten about, but in fact the jewel that the Wish Maiden had been holding in the first room!
His gut churned in nervousness. There had been nothing in the texts or rumors he’d heard speaking of a jewel, and since the Wish Maiden was in the very next room, it was important he figure it out.
His eyes scoured over every surface of the walls around him.
They were the writings of the various wishes that the Wish Maiden had been able to grant. They also detailed what one would need to say to invoke her power.
Like the room that he had fought Örvar in, there were large statues standing against all but two of the walls, runes behind them detailing what they were for.
There were seven scenes total, each of them featuring a different amount of statues.
The wall straight ahead of him featured the Wish Maiden sitting on a throne, a crown atop her head. Next to her, standing close with his hand on the throne, was a tall man. Tall for humans, anyway, as the man was nearly eye-level with Josh.
Unlike the statues in the previous two rooms, these were less lively in their depiction. Stiffer, not as dynamic.
Her being on a throne was new information. All the stuff he’d learned about her made it adamant that she was no equal to the Jarl, and instead was subservient to the Al-Seidr.
On the other walls, with the exceptions of the one leading to the hallway to the Wish Maiden and the one that lead to the hallway back up, there were carved reliefs in the wall. Men and women who were giving a man who looked like the one who stood beside the Wish Maiden (which meant that he was the Wish Maiden’s Emissary) baskets full of fruit, wheat, or fur.
Next to them other men and women were holding up their gains they had earned from trading with the Wish Maiden. Runes were written beside them in High Human, detailing what they had gained.
Josh was very out of practice when it came to reading High Human, but considering that it might give him some information to ensure that he’d get his wish, he put in the effort.
“Í skiptum fyrir tíu fullt af hveiti var vei… veikindi barnsins míns læknað,” he slowly sounded aloud. In exchange for ten bushels of wheat, my baby’s illness was cured.
There was one wall that described the process of how the Wish Maiden granted her wishes. Josh devoured the information.
“Ljós Kamana Kanyalunnar lét hjarta hennar ljóma og fór síðan í hendurnar á henni. Með glóandi höndum sínum myndi hún teygja sig og blessa hana,” he read. The light of the Wish Maiden made her heart glow, and then traveled to her hands. With her glowing hands, she would reach out and give her benediction.
When he got to the end, he ground his teeth in frustration. There wasn’t a single mention of the stupid jewel!
There was a statue backed up to all but one of the eight walls, covered even more in moss than the ones before.
The statues were simpler, less detailed, but he could still understand what they were. They were less smooth, the marks on the rocks from the tools more obvious.
Behind them were various mosaics. Like the statues, they were simpler, the individual stones they were composed of larger. Josh stared as he took in depictions of the wish maiden. One was of her descending to the earth, a pair of wings on her back. On the ground was a group of men, their arms outstretched to her.
Josh stared at the one with her having a pair of wings, puzzled. Other than her power to grant wishes, he had believed that she was just an ordinary woman with spiritual powers. Was she truly a bird wekufe? But then how was she able to blast the wekufe with spiritual power? He looked at the other mosaics, but they didn’t depict her with avian features. Only this one. The others showed her as a normal human, but he couldn’t deny how they constantly had avian references and visual motifs around her. He thought back to the earlier mosaics, and realized that they were there as well.
Growling to himself, he put it aside and chalked it up to her people’s reverence for birds. The human religions in this area worshipped them, so it would make sense that they would give her bird features as well.
On the opposite wall of the mosaic where the Wish Maiden descended to the earth, there was another mosaic. The Wish Maiden sat on a large throne. The stones that made up the throne were made of the clear calcite, making her look like she was sitting on air. The men prostrated themselves in front of her, with some of them handing over various valuables to another man who stood close to the Wish Maiden.
The simplistic design made it difficult for Josh to figure it out, but from the stories he had researched before he arrived allowed him to know what was going on. The men were handing over the valuables to the Wish Maiden’s Emissary, who would tell the Wish Maiden whether the gift was valuable enough.
Josh placed his hand on the satchel that was looped around his neck. Still got it. The ridges of the dragon scale that Josh had spent a better half of a year hunting down pressed against his hand. The stories all told of the wish maiden asking for some price in return for the wish, and it was always something extremely valuable. On the walls, he could see mosaics of men giving her bushels of wheat, food, and reams of clothing.
Josh smirked to himself. Those peasants probably could only give her food, but nothing will compare with the dragon scale I’m giving her. She’ll have to grant my wish.
Sure, there were rules of what she could grant. She wasn’t allowed to violate the laws written by the gods. She couldn’t send a soul across the Himnavegur, the bridge between this world and the next, and she couldn’t bring one back across it either once it had passed. But Josh didn’t care. His wish was one that she would definitely be able to grant.
He pressed a hand against his bag again. They better not say no, he thought. There’s no way they can say that this isn’t worthy enough of a payment!
With that in mind, he turned away and kept walking, entering the gap between the Wish Maiden and the man, and the wekufe. Every second he spent that wasn’t walking to her was a waste of time, as he was here for something much better than looking at old rocks.
His ears twitched when he felt the air pressure change. How deep do I need to go? If he went any deeper he’d end up in the domain of the Old Wekufe. When he was about to seriously consider whether to turn back or not, wish or no, he saw the end of the staircase.
He saw the remains of an old and elaborate archway, and his eyes lit up. Fucking finally! As he kept walking, though, he realized that something was wrong. He sniffed. I only smell one person, he thought, his mouth curling down in consternation. And a sword. Wasn’t there supposed to be a whole ceremony thing? He could smell old, rotting fabric, but certainly not what he’d been expecting.
The dust he was smelling was old, and there were no fresh scents. He didn’t smell death, though, so after another few sniffs to make sure there wasn’t any danger, he forged ahead.
The reason for the odd scents revealed itself when he reached the archway. His mouth dropped open in shock, his eyes wide, as his nose worked furiously to verify that what he was seeing was real.
Instead of a woman sitting on a throne, like the carvings on the walls had shown, a woman was lying on a stone platform in the middle of the room, a sword pierced into her chest. And not just any woman, but the Wish Maiden herself!
His eyes and nose furiously worked as he tried to comprehend that she was, in fact, not dead. She smelled like she didn’t even have the sword in her chest. What the fuck is going on?
He hesitantly walked closer, his ears working overtime to make sure this wasn’t some sort of trap. After taking small, careful steps, tensing to run away any moment it seemed like something would go awry, he was right next to the woman.
She looked almost exactly like she had in the carvings he had seen earlier. He was stunned, as he had believed that the statues and mosaics were depicting her in an idealized fashion. Instead, though, they had been very accurate. She truly was beautiful, her body just as delicate and well-proportioned as the statue had depicted her as. What even the colorful mosaics had failed to convey, though, was how vivid and bright her clothing was. The dress that had seemed like a flame in the carvings now was clearly a bonfire. Her long sleeves and high collar were covered in a fairly translucent white fabric, but at her chest where there was an embroidered nine-pointed sun, the material became thicker and changed colors. Starting from yellow, it then shifted to an under-layer that was orange, and then finally red. Peeking from the tip of the red edge was a pair of sandal-clad feet. Josh wrinkled his nose at the look of her shoes. No one had worn shoes like that since he was a pup.
Her dark brown hair was tied in intricate braids. Josh knew they had meaning, but it had been so long since he had been taught their meanings that he came up blank. The lessons had only been rudimentary, meant to let him know the status of who he was talking with.
Even sealed, he could feel the woman’s spiritual aura, and it felt like she was radiating light herself.
The stone platform she was lying on had runes carved into their sides.
Josh looked around, trying to figure out what to do.
The wall that didn’t have a statue was what Josh knew to be the last set of stairs. On each side of the entrance was a carving, standing out from the other images that were mosaics made from colored rocks. On his left was the Wish Maiden, being defended by a human man wielding a sword. The other side was a horde of monstrous wekufe, facing the couple with desire on their faces.
The Wish Maiden was displayed differently than before, even taking into account the ones giving her avian features. Now, she had the sun in her hands, her entire body and hands protective over it. Defending her was a human man. The large sword was enormous, nearly the size of him, and was held as if prepared to swing at the crowd.
Josh was confused. The Wish Maiden had always been seen as powerful, like the carvings and images he had seen before he had fought the snake. But now there was a man who had to protect her from the wekufe?
Speaking of them, Josh inwardly snarled at how his kind were depicted. Monstrous creatures that were nothing more than simple spirits, little more than masses of flesh, eyes, and fur. It was such a far cry from the vibrantly-colored kittiwake birds who lived in the southwest wetlands, or the caring water wekufe in the Tiorvijarja Hot Springs, that even half-breed Josh was insulted.
Not only were most wekufe more than that, it was an insult to say that all wekufe were merely bloodthirsty creatures out to kill humans. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to him, though, as it certainly reflected the way humans treated him when they encountered his pack. Josh purposefully refused to think about how they acted when they realized that he was a half-breed, turning his eyes back to the human male and the Wish Maiden.
Josh had been alone for a while, almost a half-century now. But he didn’t care, as he didn’t need anyone. Fuck his pack. He was free now, no longer having to serve as stupid protectors of humanity,
Taking in the man’s features, Josh felt his stomach turn. The two of them looked so similar, and with the exception of his wolf ears they could’ve been brothers. He sneered at the thought.
He looked back at the woman on the pedestal. She wasn’t dead, as she smelled like any other woman (human at that, despite how they portrayed her as an avian wekufe), and she was still breathing. He held his hands out, to shake her shoulders and wake her up, but pulled them back quickly when he found them starting to pull towards the sword.
He had been ignoring it before, but the action forced him to actually look at the sword. It was a long, two-handed sword, and Josh’s mouth dropped again in shock when he saw the eight-pointed circle engraved on the hilt. The fucking Aegisjmalr? Why the fuck was the symbol of protection and defense on a sword that was pierced into this woman’s belly?
With a growl, he stood firm. I want my fucking wish, dammit. Josh leaned down and shook the woman’s shoulders.
No response.
His brows furrowing, he shook them again, ignoring her soft skin that was easily felt through the thin fabric. After a third time, he was forced to admit that it wouldn’t work.
Josh stared at the woman’s lips. Would he have to kiss her? He had overheard his mother whisper stories to the young girls about a handsome man who had awoken his true love with a kiss, but he didn’t want to. Yeah, she was pretty (as the tightening of his pants could attest), but if she found out that a half-wekufe had kissed her, even a fucking dragon’s scale wouldn’t be payment enough for his wish.
With a jerk, he pulled his hands back, realizing that during his pondering his hands had wandered over to the sword. Josh shook his head, chills running down his spine. I ain’t touchin that thing. It radiated magic, and the wolf inside of him howled and whined at the power it held. He would surely fry if he tried. He wasn’t no one’s puppet either, and the fact that something was trying to get him to touch the sword made him even more determined to not.
But how do I wake her, then? The idea of turning back now was ludicrous. He had spent multiple winters getting the scale and tracking her down, and to leave when he was literally right in front of her would be basically giving up. And he ain’t no quitter!
He shook her shoulders one last time. When it didn’t wake her, Josh let out an aggravated sigh. “Fine!” he barked out. “I’ll do it!” He didn’t know who he was talking to, but it felt good to give voice to his frustrations anyway.
God damn it all to hell!
He reached out, and with a clawed hand grasped the sword. The instant the grasp was complete, a preternatural wind blew past Josh, causing his hair to rise.
JÁ. VERĐUR VERNDARI FYRIR DÓTTUR MÍNA. ÉG VEL ÞIG.
YES. A WORTHY PROTECTOR FOR MY DAUGHTER. I CHOOSE YOU.
The voice was deafening, coming from everywhere and nowhere. Josh jolted at the sound, his head turning every which way to find the source. In the process, though, he shifted his arm, and without a sound the sword was pulled out.
Josh’s eyes flew back to the woman, stumbling on his feet. The fuck? Not only was his head still swimming from the voice, but the wound in the woman’s stomach was bloodless. Before his eyes, the skin sealed itself shut, not even leaving a scar.
How was this possible? The woman was completely human, so that shouldn’t have happened. He watched in shock as soon the only evidence of the sword was the tear in her dress.
His nose twitched as he tried to make sure that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. They weren’t, but before he could do anything else the woman let out a feminine groan, her eyes flickering open to reveal orbs of blue-gray.
