Chapter 4- Evil Without, Evil Within-
He had never liked moving among mortals. He didn't understand them. He wasn't much more comfortable with monsters, but at least he understood them. Monsters, Aesir, Fallen and of course, Giants. Fatalistic, ambitious and cruel, these beings were kin to him. Not literally of course, except for the giants, but he felt kinship with all of them. Mortals, though, mortals confused him, angered him and frightened him. Mortals could be fatalistic, ambitious and cruel, but not like his kind. Mortals were also optimistic, compassionate and on rare occasions even altruistic. They led brief lives, buffeted by forces over which they had little or no control, yet they rarely despaired. If you would've asked millenia ago, he would have predicted the end of mortals, yet somehow, it was the short-lived who prevailed. His kind, much the Aesir, had once been men. Men of power. Men of magic. Unlike the Aesir, they were never offered Idunn's gift.
Despite living as neighbors to the Aesir, they were shunned. Like all other mortals they could easily have allowed themselves to be satisfied living brief, desperate lives, hoping their works would bestow a mythic reputation upon them, conferring a weak sort of immortality in the memory of their descendants. They had seen death walking across the land and they had witnessed immortals born. In no way would they quietly accept death when they knew eternal life was possible. So they worked great magicks and achieved their immortality. Forging powerful rune magics, they bound their lives to elemental forces. Forces of stone. Forces of frost. Forces of fire. It was hazardous work and few of them survived the process, but they had done it.
The forces they worked with warped their forms however. They grew twisted, monstrous and...giant. Worse still, as time passed their fertility plummeted. Pregnancies were difficult among their kind. Women died during labor and stillbirths were common and all the magic at their command availed them not at all. So they turned to Aesir and mortal men and women for mates. Once in a great while such a pairing would result in a child that could be adopted into their tribe. A Jotun. Usually though, a pregnancy meant the birth of a creature twisted by the very magic that made them immortal. Trolls and sea serpents. Dragons and fearsome beasts of all sorts were loosed on the earth by Jotun births gone wrong.
Even as they found breeding difficult, dying came far more easily. They had conflicts with tribes of Aesir in Scandanavia, in Ireland and in Greece. They also had conflicts with the Fallen and their spawn. Over time wars on multiple fronts whittled away at their numbers until millenia later, only HE remained. Him and two others, who spent as much time warring against each other as they did anything else. So it was he embarked on a quest to insure his own survival, because even after untold thousands of years, he lusted for life and feared death. He had nearly succeeded too. Almost nothing could destroy him. Almost nothing, except...the sword.
The sword of Frey could kill any Jotun. There was no defense. No spell, no armor, no pact could save a giant from that blade. Fortunately, only direct descendants of Frey could wield it and of those, only one remained. Once he completed the ritual and re-established command of his slave, he would send forth his slave to end the threat forever. He would have done it himself, but fate had a way of bringing the blade to its' wielder when a giant came calling, and he had no desire to take that risk. Soon though, his worries would be over, his fears laid to rest.
"Well, are any of you going to answer me?" Turning around, Sophie saw Jason Lamperouge standing in the Wreck Room, glowering at them. The dutch girl's lower lip started to tremble as she fought back guilty tears.
"We brought them here." The Bertrand twins said after a few moments. To their credit, the appearance of the teacher hadn't provoked a detectable emotional response from the duo.
The instructor had surprised them. After several minutes of looking around the huge, pristine room, Janez had finally spoken up. "Obviously, staring at the walls isn't going to magically give any answers, so come on ladies...what happened?"
Antero frowned at his roommate's flippancy and Sophie gasped at his insensitivity. Danielle and Darielle's older brother had been one of the victims that day. The dark and light twins seemed unfazed though. They didn't eve twitch. "According to our parents.."
"This area is off limits! What are you doing here?" Everyone jumped like a whip had been cracked. Professor Lamperouge stood near the door to the control room scowling, his eyes flinty.
Which brought them to the present moment. "Why would you bring them here?"
"To show them the scene of the crime. Antero wished to understand why the school shut down the Wreck Room, since his reason for enrolling here was to receive combat training."
"Do you have any idea how foolish you're being? How reckless?" The American growled.
"I'm afraid I don't understand sir." Antero cut in, drawing that hostile gaze away from the girls.
"Jason motioned toward the elevator. "It would be better if we discussed this in my office."
"Sir?" Sophie said hestantly. "I hope you aren't planning on sending us away without explaining why."
The cyborg neo-sapien shook his head and sighed. "No Miss Brouwer, I'm not going to keep you in the dark, colloquially speaking. When I was a student here, we were often subjected to information sequestration. Several times the consequences of that policy were nothing short of disastrous."
"Thank you sir."
Exiting the elevator on the ground floor, the students found Pallas standing quietly under the watchful gaze of Otso Karrell. jason motioned for her to follow as well and the entire group marched to the genius instructor's office. Once inside, Mr. Karrell closed the door behind them and leaned against it, a barricade against any unwanted interruptions.
"So," Jason said. "tell me again, what broght on this sudden desire to trespass in an area off limits to students?"
"We were curious to see where our brother and the others died." The twins responded.
Otso spoke up then. "I think we owe them the truth Jason. The whole truth."
"What truth?" Antero asked, suddenly very attentive. It wasn't just him though, all six students present perked up at the big man's statement.
The American sighed, but nodded in assent. "Very well. You all have undoubtedly heard that the sophmore class, as well as Headmistress Fischer were all killed. What you haven't been told, what nobody has been told, is that it wasn't random and it wasn't an outsider. Nearly the entire class was killed, butmost of those deaths were to cover up the murder of one student...Gunnar Weber. Worse, the murderer was a member of that very class and has yet to be captured."
"Wait a second." Janez interjected. "How do you know Gunnar Weber was the target?"
"Because of how he was killed." The teacher code-named Paradigm answered. "All the other students were killed by the neo-sapien powers of the murderer, but Gunnar was killed with a dagger especially enchanted to kill someone like him."
"What do you mean...someone like him?" The Slovenian teen pressed.
"Gunnar was a rare type of SPB, an immortal. Normally if slain, he would return from the dead in a week or two. In rare cases it might take longer. The weapon he was killed with negated that ability. It stands to reason that he was the specific target. The killings weren't some mad rampage."
"Why shut down the Wreck Room then?" Sophie asked, her curiosity overcoming her shyness.
"Because we don't know why it was done. Maybe the next class would have had a target among them too. The Wreck Room has one entrance. One exit. Until we know why we can't risk possibly repeating that situation and the only person who could tell us is the student responsible and he escaped."
"Who was the student who did this?" Danielle and Darielle asked.
"Anthelion." Otso rumbled, looking at the girls. "Your brother, Denis."
Next: Conspiracy, Research and a Quest for a Sword...
Despite my best efforts, the differences in utility between the twins powers meant they couldn't be exactly identical in point expenditures.
