‘Broken doesn’t mean ruined.’

Mioko paced, muttering, while Jack sat on the nearby log, his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped. He watched Wolf, who made his way around the clearing’s perimeter, creating a barrier of urine to keep trespassers away.

“She didn’t,” Mioko told herself. “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.”

“Mioko!” she heard.

“Hmm?”

“I asked what you were going to do. I know you’re not going to let this go.”

“I have to—I need to see a friend.”

She opened and crossed a lockbridge, emerging in Valor Hall’s blue-matted atmosphere. “Em?” she called, her voice uncertain.

Emeric immediately rounded a corner and stopped on seeing her. “Mioko. Are you hurt?” She shook her head, and he beckoned, then disappeared back around the corner.

Mioko wound her way along old brick walls, which flecked white paint. She stopped in an office doorway, where Emeric sifted paperwork, manning the fortified position that was his desk. Manila folders stacked around its perimeter like sandbags along a trench. His short hair was disheveled, his collar unbuttoned and loose, while his sleeves were haphazardly rolled up. It wasn’t hard to see he was fighting his own battle.

“It’s gone,” Mioko said in a low voice.

The shuffling papers paused but continued again. “I know.”

“And it’s all my fault.”

Emeric stopped then and glared at her as she looked away. “And what do you mean by this?”

“I did it, Em. They’re all dead because of me.” Her voice a quiver.

Emeric stood, his chair rocketing back and crashing into the wall behind him. It was only a few steps around the desk and he crossed them with purpose. Her gaze fixated and followed him, though blurry. When his open hand came around, she was weeping before it arrived. She wanted someone to put her in her place. Someone to tell her how bad she had messed up. She wanted to be punished so that her outsides could distract her from her insides. So when the slap arrived, she leaned into it, the thunderclap causing lights to erupt in her vision as her head turned with the force.

Mioko met his gaze as he crossed his arms and sat on the ledge of his desk, a manila tower collapsing. He shook his head. “Do I know the city is destroyed? Yes. But do I know why you want credit for it? No. Why, girl? Why do this?”

“But I did…I—I…”

Emeric leaned back and retrieved a stack of photos, then forced them into her grasp. He pointed to lockbridges that showed zombies emerging. “This is you?”

“No, but they were after me. I led them there.”

Emeric scoffed and tossed his hands in the air. “Bah. If I take a ladder and a hammer to my neighbor’s house and break all of the second-floor windows, the police will come. Who do you think they arrest? Me or the hammer?”

“But without the hammer, you couldn’t break them…or at least, not as many.”

“This is my point. You are not the hammer. You are the ladder. Even if you led them to Haeliheim, you were what someone used to reach where they could not have otherwise. You did not swing, nor were you what was swung.”

Mioko shook her head. “But if I wasn’t there. None of this would have happened.”

“Girl, you come to the wrong place. You want for me to be agreeable. And this is not to be. You will not find that here. I will not join your delusion.” He extended his open hand to the door. “That company will need to be had elsewhere.”

Emeric returned to his seat, rubbing the back of his head. “No. With your logic, I would hold as much blame. These people were here for safety. And I helped find their new life long before you arrived. So, your claim makes me your accomplice, no?”

“What? No. You’re not responsible for that!”

Emeric nodded. “So, you understand then. Good. I am sorry you cannot find what you are here for, but I have work. And I must see that this does not happen again.”

“I can help.”

Emeric raised an eyebrow.

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Mioko nodded vigorously. “Innangard. I have a place that I’ve been evacuating others to. I helped them flee the stories. It’s not much now, but it can be great. I know it.”

Emeric nodded slowly. “Good. Then you got the obelisk moved.”

“Well, no. Not yet, but I will as soon as I find where Hnoss has hidden it.”

Emeric groaned.

“What? I couldn’t get it. Hnoss almost killed me, if you remember.”

Emeric groaned again and buried his face in his hands.

“What?”

“How many people have you taken to Innangard?”

“I don’t know, but they’re fine! There’s nothing wrong with them. Everyone’s fine!”

Emeric stood and moved to hug her. But she didn’t know whether to hug him back, so she stiffened as he squeezed her tighter.

“What don’t I know?” she sobbed.

Emeric gripped her shoulders and moved her away. “The obelisk is a battery. Without it, your life is Innangard’s fuel. And if you die? Or if it reaches the bottom of your energy?” Emeric shrugged. “The person with those answers is gone, but it cannot be good.”

Mioko pulled away, shedding his touch. “Then tell me something. How can you expect me to survive when no one tells me anything? I can’t play the game if I don’t even know the rules!”

“I promise—”

“I don’t give a shit what you promised to someone that’s no longer here. I’m here. Now. And if this stuff is killing me, then what? You’re just going to sit back and let me die? Then what was the point of him doing that? If you were always going to let me die, then why? Why did he do that at all?”

Emeric sighed, then returned to his desk, removing a small cube from a drawer. He passed it to her and nodded towards it.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

But Emeric didn’t respond, simply waiting as she looked the cube over. It looked like a Rubic’s Cube, only the sides were two by two. Not much of a puzzle, she thought. There were symbols on each side, a single image that the design broke apart, but solving would align them again. A few turns, then Mioko forced her mouth wide as her ears popped.

She looked around the room as she returned the cube to Emeric’s upturned palm. “Did the air pressure just change?”

“Something like that,” Emeric replied. “But now we can speak freely. You can never be certain who is listening. Or watching.” He gestured with an open palm, indicating the chair opposite his desk. “Sit. Please.”

Emeric returned to his seat and sat the cube on her side. “You have seen these markings before, no?”

Mioko nodded. “Yeah, they’re on my journal and—”

Emeric raised his hand. “No need. Just know they are a form of magic. Runes. And Brandrrafn—a Dwarven trained master smith—discovered a new use for them.” He looked on as Mioko tried to withdraw. “No. You cannot run from this. If you want answers, he is at the center of it. You will not get answers otherwise.”

“I know, Em. It’s just—hard.” After a time, she nodded.

“I do not know much. Only what was necessary most likely. But Brandrrafn and Hnoss are refugees from Asgard.”

“Why would he need to keep that a secret? Does this have something to do with Einmadr or whatever?”

“Likely. But your parents fled on the back end of the Aesir-Vanir war. I set up their place in Haeliheim, like the other refugees. Though Brandrrafn was different. His danger was not in war’s collateral damage but in opposing Odin, the high-king.”

“So they were conspirators? Traitors even?”

Emeric shrugged. “A matter of perspective, really. If your leader betrays his people’s ideals and the people’s response is to stick to those ideals… Who is really the betrayer?”

“So what happened?”

Emeric pointed to the cube. “This form of rune magic is uniquely your father’s. No one, not even Odin knows of the obelisks Brandrrafn created. No one ever used the magic in this way or has ever since. But it is dangerous. More potent. And cannot fall into Odin’s hands.”

“So what? He left that to me for some reason?”

Emeric shook his head. “No, I do not believe so. He merely wanted to give you the opportunity to live. Even that was a gamble.”

“Then why is all of this happening?”

“As much as I admire your father, I do not think this was his intention. I think you have just been dragged into a war that never ended. That obelisk is where you get your magic. The two of you now share an identity. You are both linked somehow, but it was meant to power your Innangard. So, what you already had was small and temporary. The obelisk has to get inside in order to sustain it. Why did you start moving people before you relocated the obelisk?”

Mioko scrunched her eyebrows and shook her head. “I had to save them, Em. Hnoss was destroying their worlds. What choice did I have? I couldn’t just let them all die.”

“Well, the more you add or change, the greater the strain on you. If the world loses power, I do not know if you die, become brain dead, or what happens to Innangard’s inhabitants. Maybe they perish. Or maybe they are dumped into Jormungrund.”

“So, what can I do?”

Emeric shrugged. “Getting the obelisk would be the obvious answer. Outside of that? Get stronger, maybe. Innangard will not fall immediately. Parts of you will probably leak into it at first. Your struggles may become its own.”

“Like my emotions…”

“Possibly. That place cannot be independent of you without its power source. So look for anything uninvited. It should not be there unless you allow it. And if your psyche is what breaks down, things may be let in anyways.”

“I think some some things have already gotten in.”

Emeric shook his head. “Then it is worse than I feared. You cannot waste time. You recover the obelisk or you actually become the reason those people die…the ones you thought you saved. Until you can do this, you fight off anything that shows up. If it kills you… Well, you were dying anyways, so…”

Mioko nodded absently.

“Oh and another thing.” He pointed to the cube before picking it up. “Without this field in place, do not talk about Asgard, the obelisk, or anything that you think your father wanted to keep secret. You understand, no?”

Mioko nodded and Emeric twisted the cube. She pointed as he began to dump it back in a drawer. “Can I borrow that?”

“You have a safe place to keep it?”

“Yeah. I have a storage bag. It’s something dad made, so it’ll be safe there.”

Emeric nodded and passed it over. “Do you have other friends that you trust?”

“Jack, maybe. And I can count on Squirrel, I know.” Emeric arched an eyebrow, but she waved off his concern. “No, she’s good people. After you, there’s no one I trust more.”

“Just remember, girl. What he did for you…all those things were with purpose. Do not throw that away.”

“I won’t.”

“Then you probably have some place to be, no?”