“So where did he go wrong?” asked Teclis. “That sounded like metal to everyone else, right?”. There were various murmurs of agreement. “So, Gialli. Care to enlighten us?”

“Give me a moment”, Gialli responded. The moment that the blinding flash had disappeared again, he had been hunched over the coining, poking and prodding it. He picked it up, tapping it on the floor a few times. It still sounded like metal as far as they could tell. He bit it once for good measure. He scrutinised it carefully, before sighing loudly, dropping it back to the floor, and standing up again. “That idiot”, he muttered. “That moronic, lead-for-brains “aren’t-I-so-smart” dullard!” He threw his hands up in exasperation, before pointing at the coin again. “It’s blank!” he cried. “there is no name written on that coin, Freya’s or otherwise. The first bit of gold we find, and it’s blank, but does he care? Of course not, because why would anyone take a moment to exhibit a scrap of care in a place like this?!”

“So it is real gold?” asked Tove.

“Yes, for all the good it’s done us” replied Gialli, almost going shrill. Tove bent down, staring at it, before taking a dagger out of her pocket and picking up the coin. “In theory then”, she said “if it did say Freya’s name…”

“Then it would open the door, I suppose”. Gialli’s energy seemed to have left him now, and he slumped onto the floor.

“I see”. Tove sat down as well, and Teclis, as last man standing (with Talani still sprawled out unconscious) followed their lead. The light intensified, as Tove put a little magic into the air. Her light was opalescent, and flickered gently, for all the world looking like a miniature star that had been plucked from the heavens. Teclis spoke up. “So do we keep going?” he asked. “Or are we looking for some other plan now?”

“I have a plan”, said Tove. The others looked over at her, where they could see she was now lying flat on her stomach, holding her dagger by the blade, almost like a quill. “And what pray tell”, said Gialli “is that plan?”

“Give me a minute” Tove replied. In the stillness of the chamber they could hear a faint scratching noise now, from where Tove was lying. “My handwriting is really bad, and coins are small, and daggers are not quills, but”, she blew gently on the coin, sending tiny slivers of gold skimming across the floor, “I think that this probably counts as saying ‘Freya’”. She held the coin out on her palm, and true to her word, scratched onto the gold face of the coin, in blocky lines, was the name ‘FREYA’.

The others looked at it, somewhat agog. Gialli shook his head softly. “It’s crude, but I can’t seen any parameters it doesn’t fulfil. May I?” He held out his hand, asking to examine it. Tove handed it over, and he scrutinised it the same way he had the others, examining it with a craftsman’s eye. “As you said,” he nodded to Tove “your handwriting is really bad”.

“Hey-“.

“But”, he interrupted with the ghost of a smile playing across his lips “it does, unambiguously, say Freya. Do you want to do the honours?” he asked, handing the coin back to her.

“One point, if I may?” interjected Teclis, before Tove could raise the coin.

“Go ahead” she replied.

“You’ve written that in common speech, haven’t you?”, Tove nodded. “Might it be worth, given her particular charges, writing her name in the Elvish tongue as well?”. Tove and Gialli looked at each other. There was a moment of self-recrimination for failing to remember that. “It certainly couldn’t hurt”, said Gialli. Tove handed the dagger and coin over to Teclis, and after another short while of scratching, the other side of the coin was marked with her name. “If you think your writing looks bad in common”, quipped Teclis “you should try writing Elvish with a dagger”. He passed the objects back to Tove.

“Is everyone ready then?” asked Tove. There was a round of nods. She took a deep breath, and raised the coin.

The light once again went from comfortable to blinding. Holding the coin, Tove could feel heat rolling off it in waves, feeling for all the world as if she had grabbed a coal from the fire, but without burning. Even with her eyes clamped as tightly shut as possible, she could see the veins on the inside of her eyelids, her vision filled with red instead of black. And then, in an instant, it was once again gone, even the magic light that Tove had placed before. In its place though, at the back of the room, was a lit brazier.

In the near-darkness though, there was noise. “Fuuuuuucckkkkk” droned the familiar voice of Reg, loud in the otherwise-quiet chamber. “Reg!” called Tove. She threw her hand out again, adding more light light. This time, it illuminated two more prone forms, Reg and Alf. What it failed to illuminate though, were the mountains of gold that had been in the room before. Now there were just mounds of pebbles, hundreds of small rocks, and one small piece of gold, their scratched coin.

“Water”, Reg rasped. Teclis hurried out of the small room, into the central chamber where they had stashed their bags, returning with his waterskin. He passed it across to Reg, who grabbed it hungrily, and began drinking in great gulps. “What happened?” asked Gialli. Reg managed to pull the waterskin away from his mouth, and in somewhat breathless words, rasped out an explanation. “Time moved faster… been about… a day” he gestured, exhaustedly, to Alf “two for him”. They looked at Alf, who seemed to be passed out. Tove gently shook him awake, pressing her own waterskin to him as he woke. Even though he was as magically capable as any of them, he was still an older fellow, and looked all the more his age for the time he had gone without food or water; 2 days apparently. They didn’t want to think about what might have happened had they been any slower in solving the puzzle.

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Alf came to slowly, drinking as much water as he could get his hands on. Blessedly, Tove’s nature magic allowed her to create water, so they didn’t need to ration it too heavily, but it was unlikely she would be able to do so until tomorrow, when she had an opportunity to rest properly. Some kinds of magic were easy, some were less so. Making water out of nothing fell into the second category. Still, it was better than not having any water at all. Reg asked the question first. “Did we do it?”. There was a deep voice from the main chamber in response.

“The third brazier is alight” came the tired voice of the apparently re-awakened Talani. A ragged cheer went up from the group, and Tove went back outside to start fussing over Talani, who laughed off her concern.

“One more of these shitty puzzles then”, complained Alf. Time spent in magical jail had made him, if possible, even more opposed to this place. “Let’s bloody well get it over with so we can get on with this”. They all got up, doing their best to ignore their tiredness, and trooped over to the last door. On the way, they glanced at the braziers. The only one left unlit was Odin’s, and there was a sense of dread that each of them felt internally about that. His reputation wasn’t exactly trickery, but it was certainly a terrible idea to take things he said at perfect face value.

They opened the door to his room carefully, and were relieved to find that, if anything, it was boring. There was a carving on the back wall, a relief of Odin, and below that was a candleholder of sorts, a stone tray that housed six perfectly new, unlit candles. Below that was writing: LIGHT THE FLAME OF KNOWLEDGE BY SPEAKING YOUR TRUTH.

“I’m betting on those candles being magic” said Gialli.

“Really?” snapped Alf. “I thought we were just lucky to bring six of us”. There was a snort of laughter from one or two of them, but it was clear they were both right. Six perfectly unlit candles did seem a bit too unlikely to not be magic. “What does ‘speaking our truth’ mean then?” asked Tove.

“Could be secrets?” offered Teclis. “We all share a secret and that’s ‘our truth’”.

“Not to disparage the idea” replied Reg “but I’m not about to spill my guts around all of you”.

“Well there’s no reason I can see that we can’t do this one by one” countered Teclis. “If you all leave, I’ll tell Odin a secret, and see if anything happens”. There weren’t many complaints from anyone about that, so they dutifully left the room, leaving Teclis alone.

Alone now in the empty chamber, Teclis leaned close to the image of Odin, and whispered, breathily, a secret so profound as to define him. He waited for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, but nothing happened. He walked back to the door, opened it again, and stuck his head out. “Nothing”, he said, somewhat ruefully.

“So what did you tell it?” asked Tove, grinning.

“Nice try”, he responded. “Anyone have any other ideas?”

Aside from secrets, nobody was that close to knowing what was so different about any truths that any of them had. They were an eclectic bunch: a half-giant, a half-elf, a child of Angrboda, and three dwarves. There were mountains of truths that separated each of them, from culture, to beliefs, to food, to art, to language-

“For fuck’s sake” grumbled Alf. He toddled back into the chamber, and spoke a single word. It was Dwarvish, but most of them spoke it anyway, and heard as Alf simply said “truth”. Immediately, one of the candles sprung alight. He turned back to them. “My first language is Dwarvish” he shrugged. “Therefore, my truth is…” he trailed off, having made his point. “I swear” he muttered “I am too old to be putting up with shit like this”. The rest of them though saw what he meant, and dutifully stepped up. Tove and Gialli echoed Alf, speaking in Dwarvish, and two more candles sprung to life. In a rumbling though clear voice, Talani spoke the word in Giant, a language he had taught Tove as well. Teclis offered the word in Elvish, a tongue that was almost the inverse of Giant. Reg went last, speaking the language of the Breach; a sibilant, hissing tongue that was filled with dark promise.

As they each spoke, a new candle flickered alight, until all six were burning. There was a click, and then the tray that contained them seemed to split apart, rotating in some strange, mechanical way until all six were next to each other, forming a single, torch-like light. Behind them, in the main chamber, a similar sound of rumbling stone could be heard, but deeper. They hurried back out.

There, behind the altar, the back wall of the room had split apart, a new doorway appearing. Stairs led from it into the darkness below, but at the top of the stairs now stood a single figure, a glowing vision of a tall man, holding a downturned sword, and with the faint image of a crown atop his head. There was little other definition, and certainly no face they could see. It spoke, that same deep authoritative voice as before, seemingly source-less. “A fine performance so far. Your trials are not yet ended, but there is hope”. With that, there was the same bright flash as before, and he was gone, leaving them once more in silence, and with yet another stage on their path.