Gateway to Nifleheim Read Online Free

whispered. “So be it. I will make my father proud, in this at least. To victory and Valhalla.” Then he spoke in his loudest voice. “You will not feast on the flesh of an archmage of Lomion today, creatures. Feel the wrath of Par Talbon, son of Mardack, of the ancient line of Montrose.” The tip of the wizard’s staff began to glow and a beacon of light burst forth from it in all directions. It drove back the smoke, mist, and the darkness, and revealed the unspeakable horde that encircled him not ten yards out.
    As the beasts charged screeching and roaring, Talbon grinned, and spoke but one word in the old tongue as he used all his strength to break his arcane staff across his knee. The ancient staff exploded—a magical blast the likes of which Midgaard had not seen in an age. Leagues away, the mighty walls of Dor Eotrus shook.
     
     

II
    THE OUT ER DOR
     
    A group of armed men on horseback slowly rode through the sprawling, moonlit streets of the Outer Dor—the town that surrounded the citadel called Dor Eotrus. Though bundled against the night air, their accoutrements and bearing marked them as more than mundane passersby to those few citizens out and about despite the late hour.
    One of the lead riders was diminutive, the size of a young child, though his gravelly voice and wrinkled face marked him as the oldest of the group by many years. Beside him loomed a glinty-armored leviathan of a knight known as Angle Theta. Next came Sir Ector, a young knight of more pedestrian proportions, and Dolan Silk, a wiry man of sickly pallor and strange ears. Behind them rode several soldiers dressed in the blue and gold livery of House Eotrus.
    “Like a good baker’s belly, the Outer Dor grows a bit every year whether we like it or not,” said Ob, the tiny man, to Theta. “For generations, the town got on fine with two walls, the inner being a good bit taller than the outer, as it should be—you’ll see when we get there. Solid the walls are—granite and mortar, cut into blocks big as a wagon. Smooth and plumb even after all these years. You don't see that kind of workmanship anymore; almost certainly gnomish.” Ob uncorked his wineskin, lifted it to his lips, and took a generous drink.
    “Ten years ago, we put up a third wall a good ways out. Not as stout and fancy as the old two, but solid enough to stop what don’t belong. We figured that gave the folks room enough for growth, good pastry notwithstanding. But only three stinking years later, we were bursting at the seams with new folk, and they set to building outside the walls again.”
    Theta looked at the well-ordered rows of wooden buildings and gravel covered streets that extended well beyond the outermost wall. “They’ve been busy,” he said in an accent that was difficult to place, save to say that it was foreign.
    “Most show up on our doorstep and set straight away to building,” said Ob. “At least they’re not slackers, not most of them anyways, and they’ve kept our carpenters well fed these past few years.”
    “From where do they come?” said Theta. “And what attracts them?”
    “Some come from the east, out towards Kern, but most are from down south around Lomion City.”
    “My father says most seek a quieter life away from the big cities,” said Ector, “but some others want a bit of adventure.”
    “Which do they find here?” said Theta.
    “It’s not the quiet or the adventure,” said Ob. “Freedom is why they come here. Some folks think the council has gone a bit oppressive these last years, so they set out chasing greener pastures, and some of them end up hereabouts. You see we got the freedom up here in the North, away from the big cities and the stinking bureaucrats. Here a man can live as he wants, so long as he leaves others to do the same. That’s the way we like it. That’s the way it has always been around here, and that’s the way it’s always going to be, as long as there’s an Eotrus in