Death Is Certain

March 2012

I took a deep breath, which regrettably filled my nose with “hospital smell,” then I stood up tall and reached out with… I don’t know what. I don’t know what the fuck I did and I don’t know how the fuck it worked. It just did, and I was grateful.

I wanted answers. I wanted guidance. I wanted to fight back the darkness, get the gods back in touch with Midgar, and make my family safe. So I reached out and asked Fate. I even tried to say, “Please.” I think manners matter when you’re talking to Fate.

 Specificity and clarity do too. I was really hoping to see a vision of sunshine and puppies. I wanted to see healthy kids in fields of flowers making daisy chains and singing fucking Kumbaya. But that’s not what I asked for. I just opened myself up to Fate and wanted to know what was coming next. And the answer was death and darkness, the kind that could maybe render even Gunnar blind.

For the first time I had a “vision” where I didn’t see anything. Everything was darkness, which, I guess makes sense because, thanks to Mikaboshi’s influence, Everything is becoming Darkness.

I could still hear, though. I heard someone talking to me. A girl. Her voice was young and her words were ancient Greek:

“You are a child and you are not ready.

A Wolf-Age threatens and you are not ready.

Death can be a beginning but not when under the Star of Heaven.

To move forward you must accept that there will be pain.

To move forward you must accept that there will be blood.

To move forward you must accept that there will be death.

To move forward you must accept the offer you have been given."

A different voice spoke. Female. Young, younger than me again. She spoke Old Norse:

“A story begins.

Among the jungles of a forgotten land,

The king of beasts will lay dead at the feet of your dying children.

Their story is unwritten, their tale is untold.”

And then I heard the voices of kids – my kids.

Not my sons. Well, one of them, technically. But not one of the ones I’d given birth to. The ones who’d stayed at me and filled my house – and my life – with laughter and noise and life and energy and crazy awesome purpose. I heard Alex Vance, Amanda, Azzeza, Brendan Gair, Charlotte, Gunter, and Susan. I heard their voices, but there was no laughter this time. Instead it was one of the worst sounds imaginable. My kids were all crying out in pain.

The young norsewoman's voice continued.

“You will have a choice to make:

If they survive they will follow your story back to the start and you will one day find yourself in conflict. One of their number will die at the hands of one of your number.

If they perish there will be none who stand with you at the twilight. One of your number will die at the hands of one of your number.”

I heard a third woman's voice. She didn’t sound much older than me, if you can put an age on a voice. She spoke the All-Father’s tongue, too:

“A story continues.

Honeyed words hide blind truths behind unseen doors.

The honey will pour from an undying mouth.

The Zodiac will bear you upon its back,

With a map unlocked by blindness.”

Then someone put something in my hands. Someone who was a woman; her hands were small. They were gentle with me but they had a roughness to them, like they were work-worn. Whatever she gave me was cold, like ice, and pentagonal.

The third woman's voice continued, still in Old Norse.

“Beware the domain of the five-crowned kings.

It lies beneath the waves, but is where your quarry awaits.

Touch not the dead in their kingdom lest you become one of them."

Another woman spoke. A different woman, bringing the count up to four. This woman was old and brittle. She paused for breath after every line, her voice crackling over all the hard, guttural sounds of Old Norse:

                "A story will end, but not when you think it does.

                When you have won, you will nearly have lost.

                It is then that the struggle will truly begin.

                When the Wolf-Age is pushed back you must descend into Erebus.

                Fire and Ice will test you.

                Into the last bastion of death you must descend,

                For if it falls to the Star of Heaven darkness and death will become one."

A fifth female voice began. It felt and sounded as ancient as time itself, but she spoke Greek:

                "You are a corpse and you are not ready.

                Death is an ending that comes for us all, and it will not be stopped.

                To move forward you must accept that there will be death.

                To hold the line you must accept that there will be death.

                To stop the darkness you must accept that there will be death.

                To live again you must accept that there will be death.

                When the last light falters the face of the star will be the key."

I heard the sound of scissors sliding open.

                "The key spells death for one, but salvation for the rest."

                And the scissors slid shut.

I came out of the darkness with a shock. I could hear the normal world again, the beep and scurry sound that all hospitals are home to. It was there behind the sound of someone whimpering. That someone was me, because I suck at this “keeping my shit together” thing. I could see the normal world again; the bright sterile white-and-fluorescent was almost a shock after the complete blackness. It was just suddenly there, if a little blurry, behind the tears I felt like I’d been crying for a while. I felt stuffy and puffy and probably not terribly cute.

But I could think again, and there was only one thought:

Fate just told me, with no room for interpretation and in no uncertain terms, someone I care about is going to die.

                Step one was to stop crying and think to myself that I needed to fucking pull it together. That resolution I’d made not to be a mess? Wasn’t working so far. I looked for Gunnar immediately, maybe instinctively, since he’s been my “The sky is falling, fucking help me fix it” guy pretty much since we met. I don’t think I’m ready for that to be over, yet, so all I could think when I looked at him was, “Please gods, not him.”

I realized when I had to look up at him that I must have fallen to my knees. I stared up at him and it took me a couple of tries, but when I could handle that whole “speaking like a normal person” thing, I demanded that he make me a promise and that he’d better fucking keep this one. No, I didn’t explain to him what promise he’d broken because he might remember it better than I do and tell me that he never promised me anything.

                So I glossed over that bit and just told him whatever I said, whatever I promised, whatever I begged, not to let me near the spindle.

I wanted Gunnar to tell me it would be okay, because he wouldn't let me do anything stupid. I wanted him to say that it would be okay because I’m not the type of woman who does stupid things. I guess I wanted him to lie to me. But that’s not what Gunnar does, so for the first time since I met him, Gunnar failed, completely and utterly, to make me feel any fucking better. Instead he told me that wouldn't be a problem, because he didn’t have the spindle.

                He told me Nate had it. Nate had it because Nate was sure that Nate wasn’t going to use it. Nate, who’d made a deal with the darkness and doesn’t have a shadow anymore. Nate, who got mind-fucked by Mikaboshi and who we just either assume or pretend is okay now. Nate, who’d made a deal with Tesla to help get me back. Nate said he wasn’t going to use it. And when Nate told Gunnar this, Gunnar was pretty sure Nate wasn’t lying.

                Apparently Nate is convinced that he’s less prone to doing stupid shit than Gunnar is, and apparently Gunnar isn’t cured of the affliction of doing stupid shit like I thought he was, because he just handed over the Fate-Killer to the biggest hypocrite I know. The thing about Nate is that he doesn't lie – he just changes his mind. Because when Nate says, “This is the way it is,” he really means, “This is the way it is… For right now. Until something else comes along and I change my mind.”

Nate said he married Alli because he was more committed to humanity than to the divine, but I couldn’t tell you the last time he spent any time with his human wife. Nate said he’d always put humanity first, but he left Midgar wide open when he came to get me. Nate made a deal with Tesla when he came to get me, again proving that the life of one Scion was more important to him than the thousands of souls Tesla had burned in the Jersey underworld.

                And Gunnar gave him the spindle.

                I looked at Gunnar for a very long moment. My first instinct was to scream at him. Not because he really deserved it, mostly just because at this point I just wanted to scream at someone. That was just the sort of day I had been having and Gunnar’s the type of guy who would keep putting up with me after I got done screaming.

All sorts of “how could you”s and “what the fuck were you thinking”s were going through my head, but he doesn't need that shit from me. More than that, I just don’t want to fight with Gunnar, ever. I’ve got so many other people to fight, so many other people I just don’t fucking trust. I don’t want to put him on that list, especially if he doesn’t even deserve it.

I stared up at his face as I got off my knees. I tried really hard for it not to be like an evil-eye type of stare. I’m not sure how well I did, but he didn’t flinch and he didn’t give me any mean faces back, so I guess I did okay.

In the time it took for me to get up off my knees, here’s what went through my head:

Gunnar's a lot like me. We don't deal in bullshit when the truth works just fine. For that reason, I trust Gunnar. He doesn't tell me what I want to hear, he tells me what is true. That's why I've placed my faith and my hope for this world's future with him – not with the gods, and not really with Fate itself, but with Gunnar. Since I met Gunnar I have trusted him to do what is right, and while I may not remember a whole lot, I remember that that’s the whole reason I was willing to marry him right off the bat in Vegas. He’s the type of guy who doesn’t worry about what’s popular or what’s easy, or what’s going to keep him safe. He doesn’t even always worry about what will make me happy. Gunnar is the guy who does what’s right.

Maybe more than I do.

So I’d backed him when he killed the son of the devil. I’d backed him when he stole from a god. From Fate. And for my faith in him, he’d spent the last year of his life helping me pull my ass out of the fire with no real benefit to himself.

I’d pulled the trigger for Nate, but it was Gunnar who was with me in Guinnee when I got Marie’s soul back. I’ll be clear, that part’s not Nate’s fault. I didn’t want Nate going to Bikini Bottoms; it was too dangerous and I didn't think he'd survive it. So, commendably, Nate kept working on the “saving the world” problem by dealing with Nazi werewolves. Nate said he felt responsible, even though I’d told him not to, and then he sort of forgot about feeling responsible after freezing his ass off in Niflheim. I guess maybe he’s responsible when it’s convenient. I’m not mad because he did what I told him… it’s just that I’m mad because he did what I told him.

It makes sense, I swear. Like, he shouldn’t be the type of guy who lets some headcase like me with a great ass and a big mouth change his moral compass. Either you feel responsible because your friend shot someone in the face to protect you, or you don’t. That's not the sort of thing you should just let yourself be talked out of.

Anyway.

Nate kept working on other things, while it was Gunnar who was with me, drinking the waters of the Well of Mnemosyne. Nate wasn’t even in the Vault because he had other things to do. I’m not saying they weren’t important or that I blame him, just that he said he’d be there, something else came up, and then he wasn’t. But Gunnar was.

Every time I needed him Gunnar’s been there, and fuck it all, I’m pretty needy. He’s been loyal and faithful to me, and in return I’ve put his mind and body through the ringer. So with one knee off the ground, I told myself that I am not going to do the same to his heart. Not after the way he’s managed to take care of mine; not after being the one guy who didn’t take off running when he found out I was damaged.

And since his refusal to run for the hills, Gunnar has made my life better in every way possible. I don’t flinch when people touch me, anymore. I don’t even remember why I used to. When I sleep, I don’t wake up crying or screaming anymore. I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up because the pain and the guilt and the memories are so bad. Because of Gunnar I am stable, almost as normal as I was when I was a kid before my mom got sick. And even with the world falling down around our ears he’s given me the best reasons to soldier on: two sons more beautiful and perfect than I could have dreamt, and a daughter on the way.

With Gunnar around the future looks bright and shiny, and if I can’t trust him then maybe I should just save us both some time and go jump off the side of Mag Mell now.

I let out a small sigh. “Well I guess now would be a really shitty time to stop trusting you.”

And I let it go, both the thing with the spindle and what about vision made me freak out. Kas wanted to know what I’d seen, and didn’t seem all that satisfied when I said I needed time to figure out what it meant. She left it alone, but I could tell she wanted to poke at it. Gunnar didn’t push me, though. I don’t know if it was out of trust, or pity, or understanding, or he’s just gotten used to how I work. He just didn’t push, and I was grateful.

 So we went back to Gunnar’s place to meet back up with everyone else and we it was decided that we would accept Malsum’s invitation. I told the Band, after some thinking, about most of my prophecy. I told them about my kids screaming, and not to touch dead things, and the domain of the five-crowned kings, and the map of blindness, and I told them about pretty much everything except the part where one of us is going to have to die. I wasn’t ready to process that, yet.

But I was ready to get going. After all that time in the Labyrinth, standing still and doing nothing, I wanted to keep moving now. To keep working. I worried about how much time we’d all lost while the Band was saving me. That maybe it didn’t matter that Gunnar and I had gone to Duat because nothing was done with the intel we gathered, and maybe now whatever lead we’d had on them was lost. So I told Jamie I’d come back, told Dorthen to keep him safe, and I was ready to go meet with a wolf-god.

First we went to the White House. Something else had come up. Nate wanted to do something about Ixion hanging out there, and probably screwing with the President. Probably not literally.

So we headed to DC from Chicago. It’s still a little bit of a ghost town; not everything’s been repopulated since we gave the word to get everyone away from coastal and low lying areas when the earthquakes kept happening. So it was pretty easy to just waltz up Pennsylvania Avenue. Nate did some talking, we got past some guards and, no surprise, we ran into Ixion. He’s still a cocky sack of shit, with a douchebag smile on his face. I don’t even remember what he said that set me off, but really, does it matter? It doesn’t. No one who walked in there with me could reasonably have expected me to see Ixion and not go ballistic.

All that zen I’d been holding onto? Yeah, lost it. I blame Ixion. Seeing him standing there with that over-confident, over-zealous, conde-fucking-scending grin on his face, I couldn't hold back anymore. I made an executive decision. Fuck zen, fuck fear, and fuck moving on. I was perfectly okay with being angry, especially being angry with Ixion. Because that assclown fucking deserved it. So all that anger I’d been trying to put away and leave behind, I took it back out, balled it all up and I used it. I was tired of being good, of keeping my anger in check. So I took a swing at him.

See, I'd had a thought while I was in the Labyrinth. It was kind of brilliant if you ask me, and you probably won’t, but I don’t care and I’m going to tell you about this thought anyway.

Ixion is smart and fast and strong and clever so I'm going to do something he probably wouldn't expect: I'm going to be more like him. I'm going to study him and I'm going to mimic him and I’m going to beat him and I swear to the gods I will sheathe my hands in his blood and ichor before I let this be over.

I just needed him to show off, first. I needed him to show me how to be a better asshole. So yeah, I didn’t hit him. Not only did my blow not connect, it wasn't even coming in for a landing before Ixion had landed a blow on me. And then a minor manifestation of hell broke loose.

People started pointing their guns at Ixion, who was so fast and now, consequently, was so screwed. I mean, as far as the mortals could see, and as far as Harlan the Glib had convinced them, Ixion just punched a pregnant woman for no reason. What kind of asshole does that?

Well, Ixion’s the kind of asshole that does that. He also rigs his simulacra to explode, and thinks it will be more than a small inconvenience to us, now.

So the mortals were gotten the fuck out of dodge, a move probably orchestrated by Ciara who is kinda cool now that she’s back again. I had Nate toss me his book and I felt connected to some of my abilities again. I threw a shield up to contain the explosion, made it stronger so the blast wouldn't break it, waited for Ixion to blow his own brains out then immediately dropped the shield and saved the mortal inside.

How do you get rid of one of Ixion's simulacra? Get it to blow itself up, because Ixion is an arrogant fucking douchebag. I know that he didn't care about the life inside his shell, but I also know that, relics or no relics, I am one of the best fucking doctors on Midgar.

Every gun was trained on Ixion while he was inside the bubble. Kate, Kas, Gunnar… I probably would have had Sibyl out, too, if I thought she’d be worth a damn against this mecha-asshole. But instead I let him blow himself up before I dropped the shield. After that it was just a matter of saving the mortal at the gooey center and pulling off that creepy fucking exoskeleton. Like I said, best fucking doctor in Midgar.

So we averted that crisis, got Ixion out of the White House, and then the Band decided, for realsies, to accept Malsum’s invitation. It was Harlan logic. “We know it’s a trap, so let’s go spring it.”

I’m not sure if I make it clear enough when I write these things down, but Harlan logic is the type of logic you should use if you’re built a lot more like Hercules. Harlan is not built like my Uncle Herc. Harlan almost dies a lot.

Anyway. We found a boat, the Eurydice, and a captain, Nestor, and both were headed vaguely in the direction we wanted to go. There was a dinghy, or whatever you call those yellow floaty boats, aboard with the name “Zodiac.”

The Zodiac will bear you on its back…

Correct me if I’m wrong (or don’t, because I’m not wrong) but Eurydice is the woman who dragged my half-brother, Orpheus into hell. That’s um… not foreboding at all. Especially not in conjunction with the captain’s, “Welp, I’m probably gonna die,” attitude. But it will all be fine, right? Maybe we’ll get lucky and not get dragged into hell.

Who the fuck am I kidding? Almost every adventure I have had since I left my yoga pants in San Fran has involved me going to one hell or another. It’s like I’m on a self-guided tour of all the places I would never, ever, ever want to visit. Oh yeah, and there was that prophecy about how someone is going to die.

Yep, this can only possibly end well.

“Losses and wear and the texture of age
Adds a truth to the heart
And a light to the face
It's good when you don't give as
Much of a fuck
As you did when the threats mount
To make you suck

A burst of rage
A lively cry
Emotions wide
Your death is certain for sure…”

Iggy Pop, Death Is Certain