Torga
Every day for the last two months, I found myself sitting aboard a ship bound for the ass end of nowhere with a thick band of enchanted steel around each wrist, which was then connected behind my back by a band of heavily enchanted cold iron.
The steel was mostly for show, the only real deterrent was the cold iron; I’d never encountered the stuff myself, but I’d heard that if you wanted to suppress magic- you used cold iron. While it didn’t work on my… Particular brand of magic, it was sufficient enough to suppress my more casual spells.
And don’t be confused, cold iron was different from normal iron. As far as I knew, cold iron could only be found mined on one planet, and it was a hostile barren wasteland somewhere outside normal space.
For perhaps the seventy sixth time today, I made a pass around the room with my eyes; not like there was anything else to do while I waited for us to arrive at our destination.
The ship was large enough to easily accommodate the hundred-plus crewmen it took to operate it, as well as the sixty guards stationed around the little holding cell I shared with fifteen other prisoners- each guard was armed with what appeared to be rifles constructed out of solid light, though I knew that was merely a trick of the eye.
Truth was, the rifles were constructed from normal materials, they were just so heavily enchanted that the light radiating from the runes used in their construction, masked the rifles true appearance.
Plus, it made them look cooler, so that was probably a factor.
You wouldn’t think Gods would consider stuff like that, but they did. Gods are surprisingly human in that way, in fact, the ‘rule of cool’ seem to play a heavy role in everything they did.
Which made some semblance of sense if you thought about it from their perspective; gods were immortal, and not just the live forever kind. The only true way to kill a God, was to force them to fade, and that took a lot of time and preparation to pull off- which was the main reason Gods were imprisoned for millennia instead of executed.
But with so much time on their hands, gods looked to any source of entertainment to keep themselves occupied. And since interfering with the mortals had been outlawed long ago, they were forced to try a new approach to entertain themselves.
Like making impractical, but cool looking, weapons and armor and waging war amongst themselves.
I suppose you could say I was imprisoned for the second reason, though I was innocent of most of the crimes I was being accused of.
I was by no means a saint, you wouldn’t even be incorrect to call me a monster, but the truth was- I was being framed. To make matters worse, I had no idea why someone was trying to frame me. Only their name was known to me: Orochi; the guy was apparently some bigshot eons ago but got himself imprisoned after trying to overthrow the only source of government the gods of Yggdrasil had ever known.
A while back, Orochi managed to escape his prison and had made it his personal mission to make people believe that we with the same person ever since. The truly sad part is it worked. I was being charged with the crimes he committed, while he was out there gallivanting across Yggdrasil- no doubt causing as much chaos as possible along the way.
I thought about leaving, as I said the cold iron didn’t work on my magic and it was all I would need to escape this ship and never look back.
But I wouldn’t give Orochi the satisfaction. Plus, I’d made a deal that I intended to honor for as long as I could.
One of the conditions for my imprisonment was that my wife and children be looked after, and in return, I would not even attempt to escape. So long as they were protected from the consequences of my actions, and the blame of the accusations being thrust upon me, I would remain here like a good little snake.
Did I forget to mention that?
Though I’d begun life as a human on earth, and then was reincarnated as a tiny serpent on some far-flung nature preserve here on Yggdrasill. I’d risen- through tooth, claw, and venom- to godhood.
And if the rumors about me are to be believed, I was one of the most powerful Yggdrasill had ever seen. A gross exaggeration of my abilities, but one I had no cause to correct.
I gained this power for one reason and one reason only.
I did it all in search of the one thing I held most dear; my wife Reina and I were married on earth. Like me, she’d been reincarnated on Yggdrasil after her death. Though her life ended decades before mine, I made it to Yggdrasil first.
From my first moments crawling through the dirt, I knew that I would not be happy until I found her and ensured that she could live the life that was so cruelly taken from her the first time.
Even if I couldn’t be a part of it, I wanted her to be happy more than anything.
The more I experienced Yggdrasill, the more I realized; the only way Reina could be truly safe and happy in this world, was if I possessed the power to protect her until she gained the power to protect herself.
With that thought in mind, I strove for power beyond anything I could encounter… The next thing I knew, I was a God, and I possessed more power than I rightly knew what to do with.
Orochi may have given me a lot of titles I didn’t deserve or even want, but people called me the Devourer for a reason…
I shifted my weight to one side and used the cell bars to scratch at a spot on the center of my back. I was thankful the guards had thought it necessary to give us clothes- even if they were annoyingly bright purple jumpsuits, but did they really need to be so itchy?
I swear, if there were bugs in my clothes, the entire ship was going down. Locking me in a cramped cell in the bowels of the ship is one thing, but there was no need to be negligent about it.
The cell was a four-sided affair, constructed almost entirely from cold iron bars as thick as my forearm. The guards stood safely on a wooden catwalk that encircled the top of the cell, which served to give them both an excellent view and a place to escape if a prisoner tried to get a little handsy.
The other prisoners were a diverse bunch, and to my immense surprise, I’d enjoyed conversing with a few of them over the last few months. I dare say, were they not a bunch of backstabbing, arrogant, know it all, pricks. I may have even been acquaintances with some of them.
High praise, considering most of the people that I knew were now dead… And no, I didn’t kill them. Well, not all of them anyway.
Case in point, I knew two of my fellow prisoners; it was a man and a woman, I believed them to be a couple- but it ultimately didn’t matter.
The woman had skin darker than anything I’d ever seen and flaming red hair that billowed in an unseen wind. The man was a living bonfire with Ebony tresses that hung limply down his back and chest.
Both of them had smiled upon seeing me boarding the ship two months ago. The clicking of piranha like teeth rang in my ears, reminding me of just who they were.
Once upon a time, I’d beaten the woman almost to death for attempting to kill my wife. Just as I was getting ready to finish her off, the man swooped in and escaped with her. I hadn’t seen them since that day, and I’d started to think I’d never see them again.
But fate had other plans, and now we were cellmates. Isn’t that convenient?
I glanced in their direction and saw them staring at me, something they seemed particularly fond of doing.
Not to be outdone, I smiled back at them.
One of the guards fired into the cell, hitting the ground mere inches from my left leg. “Better keep that mouth of yours shut. If I see your teeth one more time I’m gonna knock them down your throat.” She threatened.
I quirked my right eyebrow at the thought of her attempting to follow through with that threat.
I wasn’t the best at sensing how powerful a god was, it just wasn’t in my skill set. Regardless, I made a promise that I intended to keep.
“My apologies. Won’t happen again.” I said while looking directly at the guard woman.
I leaned back against the cell bars, crossed my feet at the ankles, and stared defiantly at the piranha enthusiasts.
The man clicked his teeth threateningly in my direction. Well, I assumed it was threateningly. I didn’t speak piranha, so he could have been asking for directions to the bathroom for all I knew.
“Anyone ever tell you, that you have a wonderful voice? You should be a singer, or a pair of lawn clippers. You do you boo-boo.”
This time, it was the woman’s turn to click her teeth angrily at me. And whatever she was saying, it was a long one. She was going on a rant of epic proportions, though to me it just sounded like she was gnashing her teeth over and over again.
“You must have great dental plan. Did you have to get insurance to pay for any tooth related issues you may have, or is that covered by whatever tribe you’re from?” More gnashing of teeth, then the male joined in, and it went from sounding like I pissed off a pair of scissors to a pair of rage filled maracas. Now all we needed was someone in a funny hat and we had ourselves a party.
“Why you antagonize them?”
I looked away from the pair and found myself looking at one of the other prisoners.
The man- woman- thing was a walking swamp. Thick globules of gas-filled mud bubbles slowly bubbled up from beneath his purple jumpsuit to pop somewhere near the top of their head. Their eyes looked like fist sized emeralds and sparkled with a clarity that couldn’t be found in nature.
Their mouth wasn’t so pretty, but the less said about that the better.
“Pardon?” I asked. I was genuinely confused by the question; the muck person hadn’t bothered speaking to me before, and this wasn’t the first time I’d gotten into ‘disagreements’ with the piranha people.
“Now, we all have to listen to this.” They replied, their voice sounding like they were trying to talk around a mouthful of water.
“Antagonize? Not sure I understand what you mean. I was just making small talk to help pass the time.”
“You lie. You know elemendigos are sensitive about teeth.”
I blinked slowly at the muck person, then shifted my gaze towards the piranha cosplayers. “You… You’re called elemendigos? That’s what your race is called?” I asked, fighting to hide my amusement.
“I think the proper term is elemental wendigo.” Another prisoner, this one resembling a humanoid pigeon, spoke up from across the room. “Talasians-” he motioned to the muck person. “Just have trouble with nouns, so they tend to combine names into whatever they want. Case in point, elemendigos.”
I thanked the bird man for clearing my confusion up, then looked back to the muck person. “Thanks for telling me what they were called. I honestly had no idea what their race was, or really anything about their culture. Thank you for enlightening me.”
“What puny man do to come here.” Muck person asked while looking me up and down.
“Nothing special. No need to concern yourself over it.”
“Gen-o-siiide.” The female elemental wendigo hissed. Her voice came out broken and disjointed. Clearly she wasn’t used to speaking in anything other than piranha.
“Were I you piranha lady, I’d keep my mouth shut before I end up in the sequel.” I stared at her, and I knew all hints of humor had vanished from my eyes.
I knew for a fact the two of them worked for Orochi and while they weren’t solely responsible, they played a large part in landing me here, away from my wife and family. However, they were the reason one of my closest friends now lay in an unmarked grave.
It was no exaggeration to say that I held a grudge against the two of them…
Something slammed into the side of my head. At first, I’d thought one of the guards had thrown a piece of trash to get my attention. But when something shiny tinged off the ground, I realized that it was a shard of whatever those guns used as ammunition.
“Which one of you shot me?” I asked without taking my eyes off of the elemental wendigos.
Someone off to the side stumbled and almost dropped their rifle, so of course I had to look and see who it was. There was a youngish looking man with the features of a rodent standing next to the woman who’d threatened to knock my teeth down my throat.
When one of the guns are fired, there are a few seconds after the round leaves the barrel, in which the chamber expels any remaining mana buildup in a thin wisp of brightly colored smoke.
And that’s exactly what rat boy’s rifle was doing.
“I’ll remember you.” I smiled up at him. Even through the thin dusting of fur on his face, I could see his skin pale. He fidgeted beneath my gaze, repositioning his rifle several times as if he were unsure of where to point it.
One of the other guards yelled at me for threatening him and warned me not to do it again, but I’d had my fun.
A door somewhere near the top of the room opened, light flooded into the room, accompanied by the sound of footsteps.
I assumed it was just a shift change, time seemed to drag on in the cell, but it had been a while since the guards were swapped out. A shift change now would be understandable, the only confusing part was there was only a single set of footsteps coming into the room.
I wanted to ignore it. Nothing good ever came from eavesdropping on the guards; the last time I’d done so. The only piece of information I’d been able to learn, was that several of them had an STD…
A pregnant silence settled upon the room and the sound of urgently whispered words filtered down to my ears.
I couldn’t make out everything that was said, but I heard three phrases, and that was all I needed to hear.
They got her.
The prisoner.
Hospital in the silver city.
The cold iron bar keeping my arms behind my back fell away and I stretched out my wrists. Twenty-five rifles trained on me in an instant, and I could hear the sound each trigger made as it was slowly squeezed.
“I’d like to make a phone call. Is that not possible?”
A bullet whizzing past my head was the signal for every other guard in the room to fire at once.
Guess we’re doing things the hard way… Such a pity.
