Prologue
The rain was pouring heavily as Mortimer Azrael drove up the forest mountain in his black Lamborghini Aventador. He lived in Los Angeles, working as a contract killer who was usually employed by the richer folk of the world from New York to Tokyo, but now he had been called upon by his niece, who lived in Michigan. The second he received the off-white envelope branded with a peacock, he knew he had been called into the service of the White Queen and declining such a request would be an insult to the family that he reported to all those years ago. Despite this, Mortimer had always been a neutral force among his comrades and saw his work as an honor with a strict code: Death is not a debate.
When Mortimer finally reached the top, he was greeted by a young woman holding an umbrella and wearing a navy-blue uniform with a pistol – a Glock 19, Mortimer noticed – at her hip. Her hair was silver, her complexion fair, and her eyes seeming to be multiple colors at once. “Mister Azrael,” She said with a faint French accent. “Mistress Albarmato has requested an audience with you.”
Azrael exited the luxury car, not a single drop of rain hitting him. He was a very tall man – two feet larger than the silver-haired woman – with short black hair, a pale skin tone, brown eyes, and a strong build. He wore a black suit over a black shirt and paisley-printed tie. “Camille, you know you won’t be hit by the rain. Why do you bother carrying that around?”
“Mister Azrael, you carry around a suit made out of flexible body armor day to day, I don’t think you can say anything. Also,” Camille looked to a pair of well-dressed elders in the mansion, “they are afraid what they cannot understand, and the rest of us would not like to be feared right now. Follow me, Mistress Albarmato is waiting in the cellar.”
“What does she need done? I have a tight week anyways – I might have to assassinate a rapper on Odin’s day; people might take it as a hate crime because he’s black. Or maybe not, you really can’t tell with the media these days.” The assassin said as he was led through the circles of talking people, who more or less looked like they were made up of characters from soap operas and western movies. Mortimer heard them conversating over the matters of horse breeding, new properties of land they had purchased, and games of badminton. “The Queen’s really opened up her heart to the world, hasn’t she?”
“Hasn’t she? When her son went on his odyssey, she was the one who stopped that bastard from waging war with Norway and forging an alliance with them. It’s a shame the poets never saw that…” Camille entered another room decorated with more taxidermy animal heads than need be.
The assassin stopped short and shot a sharp glare at the white-haired woman. “I remember a different story. One not bastardized by your queen’s husband. My great-nephew did not venture beyond our home to wage war with the other-” An old man in a white suit and ten-gallon hat noticed Mortimer, raising his eyebrow. “The other families. He wanted to learn about them and make alliances with them for the better of our own.”
“Then explain to me the events between him and most of the Aztec.” Camille demanded.
“They started that fight and you know it!” The old man in white put a hand on Azrael’s shoulder.
“That’s enough, son. Whatever it is, let it go.” Mortimer gave Camille a final angry glare, he exhaled, and relaxed his shoulders.
“We’ll talk about this later.” The two continued their walk, but Mortimer stopped just as the old man walked away. Azrael scoffed as he left. “Mortals. They think they’re the dominant creatures of this realm now because we’re out of the picture. We created them, gave them gifts of fertility, rain, harvest, game, the arts of music, war, architecture and all we asked for in return was their love. Then they start worshipping a man who died on a stick instead of us. And now look at where that’s gotten his false pantheon. He’s as forgotten and unloved as the rest of us to these new mortals. Disgusting, putrid, godless things they are. They worship people who make fools out of themselves on YouTube – imagine that, Camille… Midgard’s really gone to shit without us.” Mortimer turned back to see the old man in white talking with more young women, and a smile crept across his face.
The Reaper brushed off his suited shoulder and felt that small little bit of power surge into his body as the old man dropped to the ground. The attendants of this party would conclude that the old man suffered from cardiac arrest due to his age; a valid hypothesis in Mortimer’s mind. Cardiac arrest in of itself was not a death that would raise any sort of confusion, which made it one of Mortimer’s preferred methods. “Let’s go,” Mortimer straightened his tie. “I’ve spent more time than needed here.”
“You know,” The uniformed woman started, “There is a faction amongst us that believes the Soldier is a man of strategic wisdom, honor, and not the bastard that wages war on everything he comes across which he has always shown himself to be. You believe he would not have a war between every single one of us and see the Tree burn to ash. He would have you, dear Reaper, and everyone who places false trust in him – the Tick Tock Man, the Ferryman, the goddamn Shadow King – fight and die for his own amusement if he had a mind to. That bastard shouldn’t’ve been given a throne anyways… I remember the time Kratos came along as a replacement for him. Poor man; killed immediately and sent to rot away in Tartarus.”
Camille led him to a bookshelf in a corner guarded by suited men and flanked by statues of roaring lions. Mortimer noticed that all the men had the peacock brand that was on the envelope tattooed on their necks. Camille reached into her dark blue vest and retrieved a laminated tag marked with a number in place for a name: #001, Head of Security. “Search him for any weapons.” She ordered. Two men patted down the assassin. They found a silenced M9, a ballistic knife, and a black penknife.
“So how is your queen these days? I hear she is living much better than most of our kind. Her house is large enough to sustain an entire family if need be.”
“You are to answer to the queen’s questions only. Please do not speak out of turn or interrupt.” She placed the weapons in a wooden box and gave it to the nearest man to her. “Put this in storage.” She searched through the titles to find a red leather-bound copy of the Iliad and pulled it. The bookshelf beeped and moaned open, revealing four inches of concrete behind it and steel lock mechanisms. The pair were met with two men in black body armor armed with dark rifles. The stone hallway was then lit by bright lights and led the quartet to a staircase.
“Security is tighter. Why?” Camille gave no response.
They reached another steel door three levels down, Camille put in a code into a padlock, confirmed a retinal scan, and pushed the door open to a baroque room filled with classic books, divine statues, and a throne ornamented with ivory tusks, gold, platinum, velvet, and more jewels than any man could think of off the top of his head. And perched on it, wearing a white dress with a pink hue, a white fur coat, and her chestnut brown hair kept in an intricate bun, was a woman appearing to be no older than her mid-forties drinking steaming tea. “Uncle Morty,” She greeted with a midwestern patois, “I thought you wouldn’t show. Sit, the tea is gettin’ cold. I was just upstairs with Natalie Oswald talking about her step-sister’s new horse. They look exactly the same, but I trust that you ain’t gon’ tattle on me once you leave. Saturn knows her lips are as huge as the sun is bright.”
Mortimer sat opposite to her on a redwood chair decorated with silver Celtic knots too elaborate to follow. “Regina Albarmato, the White Queen, Matriarch of the Hellenistic House. Where is the rest of the family?”
“Dealing with mortal affairs, mostly, but there are some of us that live lives outside this mountain.”
“Elaborate. Mortal affairs has several definitions with our kind.”
“Well, of course my brother Edward is in LA running that tower of his, Adrian is living on his ship in the Atlantic, and I believe my husband is… well, you know my husband…” Regina looked at her tea with blank eyes, reminiscing of the days when her unfaithful husband and the young women he would sire a new royal child with and the young women Regina would inflict furious wrath upon with the help of her agent, Argos Panoptes.
“As per usual, I presume. Why was I summoned here? Security appears to be at maximum and if you wanted someone dead you would have sent one of your own assassins or even Camille here. So, that begs the question, what do you want from me?” Regina gave him a blank stare, took a final sip of her tea – chamomile – and sighed.
“Gods are dying. Dying faster than they should be. Last week Susanoo was found dead outside his office tower in Tokyo – he apparently jumped from his window on the thirtieth floor. Seconds after he died, there was a massive tsunami and heavy rain. Nearly flooded a portion of the city. Oh, and, uh, there was a citywide blackout. Last month, Cernunnos was found filled with holes in his body… his death resulted in the local wildlife aggressively attacking each other and tourists before simultaneously dying. The trees died as well; the whole forest was covered in dead leaves. There are more gods than that, uncle, many, many more that died and took pieces of the world with them.”
“So you think someone or something is hunting us and you want me to protect you from them? That doesn’t sound right at all. I don’t see you needing me to begin with. As said before, it looks like you have security down pretty good.”
“No. The reason why I have so much security is because of the brewing storm. When the apes will fight each other to the death after the three-year winter and we will decimate the World Tree. Everything comes back to life, everything kills each other, the realms burn down with the tree before being flooded, the things that survived rise out, start everything anew, and the whole damn thing starts all over again.”
“Ragnarök.” Mortimer whispered. He pulled a silver flask from his jacket pocket and drank until he was sure he would drown if he swallowed one more time. He offered the bottle to the White Queen, who proceeded to copy the action. “You’ve felt it too… I thought we would have at least another few thousand years. Do we know the location of the big snake? The Goddess of Death is running the tower with Edward and the Father of Wolves is chained in its bowels.”
“The World Serpent is sleeping in a lake in Norway buried under the seabed. He shifts every now and then, shaking the earth as he moves. When he awakens, all of the land in a fifty-mile range will be destroyed. And the only thing stopping that from happening is him.” Regina stood and walked to a mirror in the far corner of the room. Then, as she walked, her form changed. The White Queen held out her smooth hand to the mirror, making it contort like a lake when it was touched. The glass reflected a dark room of concrete on the other side, filled with racks and shelves of firearms, blades, and military grade equipment. It was lit by a single light bulb. “Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name, and for that, you are one of my most trusted allies, Reaper. My messenger, grace my great-uncle with our discovery.”
The Queen’s herald – a tall woman with a fair complexion, a pair of wings made out of rainbow forming from her shoulders, glowing eyes of all colors, and long, white hair – rested a long wooden box on the table. “The Fates foretell of a war on the eve of Fimbulwinter – one between the gods of old and man-made deities. Use this in your journey, Reaper.”
Mortimer walked slowly to the box, cautiously opened it, and saw a long-lost possession that made his brown eyes glow black. He pulled a long scythe from the wooden chest. Mortimer felt the sleek ebony shaft that curved inward before turning into a sharp, long, slender blade with the images of crow feathers carved into it. Azrael grinned and grew large, corvid wings from his shoulders. He tapped the end of his scythe on the floor and heard the bodies of the two guards outside fall. Like the old man, he felt the power of their deaths make him stronger, for he was Death.
The White Queen pointed to the mirror, and the Reaper went to arm himself for his mission. He grabbed a black, silver-etched FN-Scar and outfitted it with a flashlight, laser, silencer, and a scope he removed from an Acog scope with a purple reticle. Next was a minigun, then a Benelli M4 shotgun, a sniper-rifle, many pairs of sidearms, and a collection of knives. The Reaper turned to the back wall and strapped on a bulletproof tactical vest, a bandolier with shotgun shells, a small belt of flash and smoke grenades, black camouflage cargo pants, black combat boots, and a black helmet over a skull mask. The Reaper put a pair of night vision optics on and looked at the White Queen with glowing green eyes and a skeletal smile.
“Go, my Angel of Death…” The mirror began to distort again. “Find the mortals that declare that they are the gods, and not the beings that made them. Find him – search all of the earth for the God of Light.” The mirror closed, the White Queen and the Rainbow Messenger returned to Regina Albarmato and Camille Chroma, and the pair sat at the table observing a map of the world.
“Find Apollo…”
ns 15.158.61.16da2
