The Well of Mimir

The cabinet door creaked back open and I froze. Some trick of physics, I guessed…I hoped. The door was crooked, the hinges broken, it was just swinging back open because the panel had not found a point of equilibrium. The door stopped, hung silent, quiet, a quarter of the way open, leaving me a good look at the back of the head…and then it moved, the disturbed body falling out of the cabinet, pushing aside the cabinet door as it slid gruesomely, limply out to sprawl on the floor at my feet.

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The smell in the bathroom was hideous, as though someone or something had died in there. Well, perhaps not quite that bad. The stench was certainly unpleasant though not enough to gag…yet. Unfortunately, the janitor only came in once a week, and there was no one else I could complain to; this was the evening shift, the seven-to-midnight drag, so I would be alone in the building until sometime just prior to midnight. Hours to go.

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He was going down under the mountains, down to find the roots of the earth from which the stone peaks grew. Down where it was said fiery dragons dwelt, gnawing on the roots of the mountains, stealing away precious metals and gems to hoard and hide in cavernous galleries.

The old women told of a world his people had lived upon before they lived here, where the dragons had gnawed away the mountains and the earth had crumbled into the sky, leaving endless clouds and winds, with not even a rock to stand upon or a pebble to throw. They called the lost world Iapater. Some said if the dragons gnawed upon the mountain roots long enough, this world too would crumble apart and fall into the sky.

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The almost invisible line floating above the glass-smooth water suddenly tensed and jumped, the dark pole it was attached to bent and quivered as something on the other end fought like mad to escape.

“Caught yourself a giant,” Mun commented to his companion, who lay at the foot of a tree on the pond’s bank with his double-horned, fur-lined helmet angled down over his eyes, arms crossed over the stained leather vest wrapping his slowly rising-and-falling chest.

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