Trap
All of us had training or experience enough to stay quiet, but there was a loud clattering and a quiet curse from the library that made me wince. I tried to adjust my vision, but there was no light at all in the room, and even my aetheric vision was clouded. I walked towards the doorway mostly from memory, staying low with my arms stretched in front of me to avoid hitting furniture or walls. Just as I touched the door frame the lights flared on again, brighter than before, leaving me still effectively blinded.
There was another crash from the direction of the library, this time with a shout of alarm. I tried pulling aetheric threads into a pattern to adjust my vision, but the aether was woven tight around me, a strange, stifling pattern that prevented me from drawing even enough energy to shift my shape. I snapped the illusion of armor, quickly capturing and storing the energy that had been used to maintain it into a hasty battery spell, and groped my way down the hall.
A figure lurched down the hallway towards me. I hissed, raising my hand to strike with sharpened claws, but paused before striking. “It’s me,” Loki’s voice said in a breathless whisper. “Sigyn?”
“Yes,” I murmured back, followed by a louder yell from the library. “Come on.”
My eyes had mostly adjusted to the light as we entered the room, enough to see Scathsa coiled in the far corner of the library, and the amorphous glowing shape between us. Scathsa was tugging on the aether, trying to gather energy for something, but the glowing thing seemed to have eir wrapped in a net of strands that pulled tighter as I watched.
As I hesitated there was a flash of movement beside me, and a pair of metal darts flew across the room. Both flashed harmlessly through the strange mass, bouncing off the wall on the other side with a loud clatter. The shape had no visible features, but I could feel its attention shift in our direction moments before a rope of bright white energy flared out, striking Loki solidly in his chest. He hit the far wall of the hallway with a bone-jarring impact.
My training had included fighting when blocked from access to the aether, but it had been a relatively brief overview, since it hadn’t been considered to be a potential problem in Asgard. All I could immediately remember was to conserve aetheric energy as much as possible, and look for a physical anchor or control point that might be disabled. The stored energy from the illusion pattern I’d broken was barely enough to allow me to shift into my native form, but if I did it here I’d be badly cramped in the Aesir-sized rooms and corridors. Shifting into any other form would require more energy than I had saved. I was keenly aware of the limitations of the body I was stuck in—virtually unarmed, and with almost no natural armor.
Another spear of light jabbed in the direction where Loki had fallen. I leapt to intercept it, without any clear idea of what I could actually do about it. The force of the blow knocked me back and sideways, sending me tumbling down the hallway. I looked up, shaking my head, to see Loki scrambling away from me just as Scathsa leaped out of the study, avoiding another strike by a hair’s breadth. E had shifted into a wingless quadrupedal form, something like a large, slender cat covered in scales, which I recognized as one of the shapes eir had grafted. Scathsa had evidently saved up enough energy from somewhere to make the extra transformation, and I felt a brief stab of admiration and envy, though it didn’t last long as I scrambled to my feet and turned to run.
The light seemed to shift around me as I rushed down the corridor, sconces ahead dimming while shadows darkened from the light behind. I glanced back when I reached the far corner. It was difficult to tell in the uncertain light, but it looked like the glowing thing was moving away from me—which meant it was chasing the other two. Even as I made that realization, a limb of light extended from it with blinding speed in my direction. I had just long enough to twitch to the side, so the force of the blow only brushed my side before smashing into the rock wall behind me, sending chips and dust flying. I darted around the corner before the thing could take another shot at me.
I nearly tripped on the carpet as I rounded the next corner. Scathsa and Loki were racing towards me, the light behind them brightening. I stopped, thinking that we might take shelter in one of the rooms along the hall, but Scathsa shouted “Downstairs!” I nodded and ran to the archway, reaching it seconds before they did, and clambered down the steps. Scathsa took advantage of eir quadrupedal form to launch off the walls and railings, bounding past me on the landing. I could hear Loki clattering down the stairs right behind me, able to move more quickly in his own accustomed bipedal form.
We burst out into the huge entrance chamber. Scathsa turned and gestured for silence, then sprinted for one of the empty stalls carved into the rock. Loki and I dove into the alcove seconds before the glowing shape pulled itself out of the stairwell. From the reflections of light above the half-open stall door, it appeared to stop, then begin moving around the room along the far wall.
I huddled down next to Scathsa and Loki. “Does it track us by sound?” I breathed, watching the shadows creeping above our heads.
“I don’t think so,” Scathsa said, though eir voice was as low as mine. “I think it’s tracking our movement, probably aetheric and vibrationally.”
“If we keep still here, do you think it won’t be able to find us?” Loki asked.
Scathsa shook eir head, looking distracted. “It’ll find us eventually,” e said. “I’m sure if it felt us, it’d know. It’s like a spider—sensing movement along the strands of its web.”
“So what do we do?” I said. The thing was nearly parallel with us along the far wall, still moving slowly. I shuddered as if I could feel its attention slide along my body. “We can’t keep running, we can’t hide, and I don’t know how we’re going to open the gate. I’m guessing Heimdall wouldn’t be able to get us out through this aetheric net, assuming he can see us at all.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s an aetheric construct.” Scathsa peeked up over the door of the stall to glance at the glowing shape, then hunched down again. “I could unravel it, given time, but it’d attack as soon as it felt me poking at it. We might be able to disrupt its form with physical damage, but I don’t think that would work for long, and I’m certain we couldn’t do enough damage to slow it down anyway without weapons.”
“I have some knives left,” Loki said, “But I can’t draw energy to charge them with magic, and it’s just ignoring them now.”
Scathsa nodded. “It’s locked the aether down tight around us. Part of the trap—we can’t use the aether without breaking into the weave, but if we try it’ll feel us immediately and start attacking.”
Something was tickling at my memory, but I couldn’t quite put a claw on it. The bright blob was still working its way around the cavern, and had almost reached the front gate. “So what do we do?” I repeated, unable to keep the anxiety out of my voice.
“I’m trying to come up with a solution,” Scathsa replied sharply. “If you can think of anything that can disrupt tightly-woven aetheric webs aside from doing a ridiculous amount of physical damage—”
“A Spellbreaker weapon,” Loki said, his eyes widening.
“Well, yes, that would be perfect, but we don’t have one… do we?” Scathsa said, tilting eir head as e took in our expressions.
“I never did get around to putting it into the armory. It’s still stored in my personal vault, and I have the link with me.” Loki pulled a talisman out of his pocket, then shook his head. “But it requires magical—aetheric—energy to open the link, and even more than usual, to get it from Asgard to here.”
“I can give you all the energy you need,” Scathsa said. “That is, I can pull it out of the net around us, but that thing will be on us as soon as I start.”
I watched as the aetheric construct completed its course across the gate and began creeping across the wall back towards us. “I’ll keep it away from you,” I said. “Ready?” The other two nodded, and I took a deep breath before jumping over the half-open stall door and into the open area of the cavern. As I did, I used the energy I’d hoarded from the remnants of my illusory armor to shift into my native form. I could feel the tugging of the aetheric net as Scathsa immediately began pulling threads out. The glowing shape’s attention seemed to be divided, so I charged it.
The construct probably didn’t have anything to worry about from any normal physical attack. Its reaction would depend on who had programmed its responses, and what priority they’d been given. It seemed a safe bet that a charging dragon would be rated as a more important threat than aetheric manipulation that didn’t involve a direct attack. At least, I hoped so.
And, as I collided with its suddenly solid surface and was thrown backwards across the floor, I found myself proven correct. I scrambled to my feet, scooting backwards just in time to avoid a blow that gouged a crater in the stone floor, and reflected that all I had to do was survive until the others could retrieve the Spellbreaker. Which might not be as easy as I’d thought.
I wasn’t able to avoid all its attacks, and the ones that hit were painfully hard, as I raced and dodged frantically across the wide cavern. I could feel that my regenerative ability was lagging, probably from lack of aetheric access. Injuries that normally would have healed in seconds were lingering and being compounded. My reaction time was slowing as the damage built up.
A solid hit to my side knocked the wind out of me, and I heard the cracking of my ribs before the pain reached me. I drew on my warrior’s training, pushing the pain and fear out of my mind, and went on the offensive against the construct. Roaring, I gripped it in my foretalons, biting savagely as I beat my wings for leverage. Blows rained down on my head and sides as I climbed almost on top of it and began raking at its mass with my back claws. I couldn’t get a firm grip on it, even as it seemed to be compressing into a more solid mass beneath me. Its attacks were slower and farther between, but stronger as it concentrated on damaging me enough to stop my assault. I roared again, letting the ancient bloodlust of my ancestry flow through me as I bent all of my will and power towards destroying my foe—an assault that I couldn’t keep up for more than a few seconds before a particularly heavy hit to the side of my head blurred my vision, making everything seem very far away. I shook my head, trying to recover, and it took advantage of my weakness to curl around the large joint of my right wing and wrench it hard enough to dislocate. Screaming, I thrashed in helpless pain, and found myself suddenly dropped to the floor as the semi-solid construct underneath me vanished. The aetheric net was loosening, and my body was recovering quickly, but I couldn’t quite focus on Loki as he dropped the Spellbreaker and ran to my side before I fell into darkness.