Atomic: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (A Loki Series)

By C. Gockel

Sigyn is prophesied to be the consort of a king. Instead she marries a fool. Centuries after his chaos destroys their marriage, the fallout really begins ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. Gockel
• Release date: Sep 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536523867

Book preview

Chapter 1

Sigyn’s grandmother had stopped eating the youth-bestowing apples of Idunn decades ago. Her fingers are papery with age when they grip Sigyn’s chin. Look up at me, child.

Sigyn cranes her neck to meet her grandmother’s eyes, so high above her own.

Grandmother’s gaze is foggy, but her smile is sharp. Oh, it might have been worth living to see you grow. Sigyn… Victory Woman, it means. You’ll find yourself consort to a man of great power. Grandmother lowers her head so her eyes are level with Sigyn’s. A king maker you’ll be, Girl. A king maker.

Mama, it hurts! It hurts! The language of the prayers is Japanese, and those words are the only ones discernible in the cacophony of cries of terror, pain, and loneliness crowding Sigyn’s head, or more accurately, her heart. Covering her ears would do nothing to stop the psychic roar. Only moments ago she’d been in Asgard, realm of those once worshipped as gods, beneath a golden sun and a crystalline blue sky. Now on Earth, in the city the prayers have summoned her to, the sky is choked with soot and smoke, the ground beneath her sizzles, and a wall of fire rings the eerily circular plane she’s standing on. Strangely, she feels an overabundance of free particles in the breeze. She is a magical being, and has more natural resistance to radiation than a human, but if she weren’t wearing armor, she thinks it would be too much for her.

My God, what have we done? This prayer is in English, and the accent sounds American.

It hurts! It hurts! rises in Japanese, above the wordless chorus.

She blinks. She must be in Japan. Sigyn turns, and something crackles beneath her feet. Looking down, her jaw drops. A thin crust of glass covers the sandy soil. Lifting her gaze, she sees a dome stripped of everything but twisted and charred steel supports. She’s on a battlefield, obviously. But where are the wounded … and the corpses?

Concentrating, she sends a magical apparition beyond the fiery ring, a trick learned from her ex-husband. A few meters away, her doppelgänger sees a reverse shadow on a stone wall that looks like the silhouette of a woman and child. Sigyn’s apparition moves on and sees a few more such shadows; and then an amorphous shape on the ground catches her eye. As she approaches, realization hits Sigyn swift and hard. Her concentration breaks and her consciousness snaps back into her body. She vomits, but she can’t expel the memory of melted eyes and skin sliding from a corpse.

Body bent, she blinks as ash falls around her like snow. What is she doing here? Prayers are only heard when they relate to a magical being’s higher purpose, but she can’t be here to mend those wounds. Although her skill with burns is better than most, the burns she saw are beyond the skill of any Asgardian.

Wiping her mouth, she picks a direction at random and moves toward the flames. Her armor is enough to