Page 51 of Thorulf
“Without a doubt, it did.” Thor sighed, stood, and held out his hand. “Would you like to go now?”
A surge of hope blew through her. She glanced from Thorulf to the god. “Can I? Now?” She narrowed her eyes. “I thought we needed to find our truth here first?”
“Perhaps not necessarily first,” Thorulf murmured, clearly sensing something. “And perhaps not at all if you don’t visit the Fortress.”
“What do you mean?” She looked from Thor to Thorulf. “What does he mean?”
“He means your truth is as much there as it is here,” Maya murmured, catching on. “You need to go to the places you couldn’t go as much as the places you could.”
“Why, though? What difference will it make?”
“For starters, Evil likely has fewer memories with us there,” Thorulf suspected. “Yet we might have more than we recall. At least on the immediate outskirts.”
He was right. They did. Ones of trying to find ways in.
“So we seek out those memories first?” Jade gestured in the direction of the chamber she’d shared with Thorulf. “When we clearly had many profound ones here?”
“Ja.” Lightning shot from Thor’s shoulder out of the cave as though he fought the gods even as he talked to them. “Best there for now.”
“Best where Evil hasn't been too often,” Loki echoed. “Fight the enemy someplace he doesn’t have the upper hand. Someplace he’s not so intimately connected to.”
Thorulf’s gaze was as troubled as hers when he squeezed her hand again. Frustration at what had happened reflected in his eyes when he looked at her. “I’m just as angry as you are that we were so...” he struggled for the right words, “that we were so vulnerable. That so much of what we shared was used against us.” He glanced from the direction of the Fortress back to her. “But I think Thor’s right. We should go to the Fortress. See what comes to us there when we’re out of immediate danger.” He looked at Thor. “Unless, as you feared years ago, we will bring danger with us to my people?”
“It’s always a possibility.” Thor looked at Thorulf and Dagr, straight about what they could expect. “But it would be more difficult there.” He gestured at their lair. “Attacking you outside the Fortress or here where he seems stronger would be wiser.”
“Here where he first came into this world.” Loki gazed up at the sky where Carman’s gateway had been. “Where he first sought you two out so that he might have a leg in a war that had barely begun.”
“So you must decide.” Thor didn’t just look at Thorulf and Dagr this time but at Maya and Jade. “Will you bring your search for the truth to your home? To your people?”
“Will you take the risk if it means gaining what it might take to find another Forge?” Loki continued, taking everything one step further. Being more honest than they expected. He looked from Thor to the four of them. “If it means harnessing the power we believe will finally convince our fellow gods to bring the war to the people? To our dragons who are so fierce?”
The four of them looked at each other, not having long to think.
“Yes,” Thorulf answered for them. “But we have one condition.”