Heathen Scales

Chapter 1

I remember the day I learned I could kill.

I was eleven years old and unable to control my hamask when embarrassed. After a few turns with the bow and arrow, my sweaty palms peppered with black scales and my pupils pulsated from slits to circles at nervous intervals. My hands shook as I nocked the arrow, which landed a few feet in front of the target I had aimed at.

I didn't look at the person I handed the bow off to, and I didn't get back in line for my next turn. From the thwip of an arrow into the target, I was sure that they knew how to handle a bow and that they could control their hamask without a problem.

As much as I tried to be invisible, my height made it a tad problematic. I was built like a heron, with too much neck and ridiculously long limbs that were as thin as reed stalks. Ducking my head was painfully noticeable to everyone around me.

My heart beat fast when I thought I could see people looking in my direction, and my stick legs moved me away faster until I was speed-walking away. Then I gave up on being unnoticed and ran.

I had the ideal destination in mind: far away and quiet. My bare, roughened feet slapped against the stone as I rushed to the nearest stalagmite. Or stalactite. In the realm of Nidavellir, there is only one direction: down.

If you look up from Askaval, where I lived, you are rewarded with a bird's-eye view of the dwarven country of Myrkheim. From Myrkheim's view, Askaval is the land on the ceiling. Gravity works well in both places. The whole business was so confusing that several wars resulted from it. Warfare is the only method my people have when it comes to solving problems.

The neighborhood kids thought it was a great game. They would all sit on the roofs and watch the warriors storm across the stalagnates in a blind rush to kill. The armies would crash against each other like ocean waves, sending up a spray of stray warriors that would plummet either up or down, falling to their hometown and landing in death. From what I heard, it was very entertaining.

Me, I had little taste for killing dwarves or the occasional goblin. I preferred to make use of our little gravity situation.

I ran up the side of the stalagmite and kept going. As I had discovered a few years before, gravity kept my feet on the stone. I spread out my arms and twirled on my heel, kicking out at the lantern-shrooms that floated past and pretending they were stars.

All I ever wanted in this dark world was a shred of peace.

There are two Norse words for 'peace', but I rarely ever heard them. My people didn't like peace, because it was the absence of the war that defined our lives. Even in death, where the gods sent your spirit to either Valhalla, Folkvangr, or Helheim, you were expected to rise and fight in Ragnarok.

There was no end to the fighting. There was no peace. There was only war, war, and more war. I despised war, knowing that it was an insult to people that risked their lives to fight it.

Like a fool, I had made it my enemy. I soon paid for it.

Imagine a heronlike girl standing sideways on a tall stalagmite that was perhaps eleven battle-ax handles high, which would make that... around twenty-three feet, I would say. There is a blunt thud of a stone hitting her back, and she stumbles back a few steps. She lunges for the stalagmite, and her fingers brush the stone as she plummets the rest of the way down. The only thing below her is solid rock.