Thirty Five

Their destination was the enormous scarred peak that dominated the valley. This was where the G had made their home. They arrived there in the late afternoon and Fyndraxis was struck with the bustling nature of the place. The G lived in the largest structure that he had seen in this world so far. This was a pre collapse building, and was the main lodge of a ski resort.
The lodge was built in a complicated time. The ski industry had romanticized the nordic ski aesthetic. They sold the dream of donning your favorite sweater, walking out of your A frame and joining your friends for a fun day in the sun wearing headbands and dayglo one pieces, skiing pristine corn snow and doing spread eagles. This would be followed immediately by the celebration of Aprés. In this devotion, all parties involved would drink schnapps and dip anything they could find in bottomless cauldrons of fondue. After schnapps and fondue, everybody would do cocaine and swap wives while their children slept soundly in cedar bunk beds, exhausted from their overabundance of rosy cheeks and hot chocolate.
The lodge was a monument to this dream. It was a four story A frame. In the 1970’s when it was built, it was the law of the land that any structure within sight of a ski resort couldn’t have vertical walls. Local contractors, seeing the wisdom of this convention, invented a structure that was all roof. From its peak, all the way down to the ground it was built upon. Just roof.
This was the A frame. It cleverly dodged the difficult parts of building a structure, (namely, having things plumb or square) by skipping them. Are windows too hard to frame? That’s ok we only need a couple of them. Are plumb walls an issue for you? No problem, just build a very steep roof that is almost walls.
Building materials were very easy to obtain for a structure of this nature as well. You could just use whatever you had lying around. Typically, these would be made from plywood and wood glue cut with cocaine. Anywhere that a builder would normally place insulation, air was used instead for its convenience and availability. If an A frame was built shoddily, that was ok too. You could try to do better on the next one.
The lodge was the big daddy of them all though. Because it was the main lodge of a resort, the builders eschewed their normal cocaine and plywood strategy and used enormous timber beams. Vast swaths of ancient old growth forest were harvested for their unique structural properties. It was a monument to the arcane art of timber framing. While the typical A frame was built to last almost a full winter, this one was built to weather the end of the world. And it did.
The first and largest floor of the lodge was dedicated to industry. Blacksmithing, brewing, wood working, textiles and leatherwork could all be seen in various states of activity. This was the bustle of a modern metropolitan city compared to the pastoral nature of the village to the south. Here, there was order and purpose where the southern village just seemed to be scraping by.
As Fyndraxis and Bird approached the hive of activity they were greeted by a man named Lange. He was a man of medium build, and at some point something catastrophic had happened to his face. There had been an impact that had shattered it, and it had healed in an off puttingly asymmetric way.
“Liberty, what’s up sister?” It seemed that Bird was known by her full name in this village.
“Hey, Lange. Seen Solomon?” Liberty’s accent had completely changed. Up until now, her speech could only be described as aggressively rural, possessing an utter disdain for consonants at the end of words. Now, she sounded like she had grown up watching the evening news, spending decades practicing her non regional diction. For Fyndraxis, it was like watching a dog walk around on its hind legs.
“Yeah, he’s around. What brings you up this way?” Lange asked, conversationally.
“I need a place to chill for a while, is he in the throne room?” she answered, a little bit rushed, not wanting to get involved in a laid back chat.
“You’re gonna stick around? That’s wicked! Yeah, he’s…” Lange was interrupted.
“Liberty Brown,” a booming voice called from the fourth story balcony of the Lodge. The owner of this voice looked as if he would have been very comfortable at the prow of a viking longship. The red beard and long auburn hair that he sported suggested that he was just briefly ashore to bathe himself in the blood of a few christians before drinking a barrel of mead and having a snack of salted herring. The cabled steel that his forearms were made of gave direct evidence to the fact that he spent his free time crushing the skulls of hapless monks going about their business on the English seaside. From their vantage, he seemed to be the tallest man in the universe, surveying his kingdom from on high.
“Come to trade me back my books?” He asked with a hearty laugh, “come on up here, you’re just in time for Aprés.”
They entered the lodge and Bird gave a familiar greeting to those that she passed by. Everyone that they passed seemed to be tidying up after a long day of work. Toward the back of the lodge they found the stairs that would bring them to Solomon and his throne.
The throne room that he occupied was a long peaked affair. It was on the top floor of the lodge, where the roof was truly walls and ceiling in one shot. The view out of the front of the hall was a triangular vista of the valley and its verdant green hills in the distance.
Solomon was seated on a throne that sat on a raised dais at the back of the hall furthest from the scenic view that the gable framed. The throne itself was fashioned from wooden skis in various states of repair. Some seemed whole and perfect and others were splintered wrecks showing damage from impacts of one form or another.
“Well, well, Liberty,” he said as they stood before him in front of the dias, “I know the look of a woman who needs something. What’ll it be?”
“Wendigo got a little too close for comfort down south. I need a place to hang out for a while,” she explained to the King.
“Sure,” he answered, trying to quickly work out a solution in his head, “tonight you can share the hall. We can figure out something in the morning. Aprés is about to start, so you know how that goes.”
Bird did know how it went. Every afternoon the G celebrated Aprés. This was a right passed down from the skiers of old and went in an unbroken chain all the way back to the founding of their religion. This right was a celebration of life and a reflection on the day’s activities. This is celebrated in times of feast and times of famine, rain or shine. While attendance of Aprés was not obligatory for all devotees of the G, without a doubt and by mandate, somebody, somewhere, will celebrate this rite every day.
“I’ll have Roxy set you up with a yurt in the morning,” as he was saying this, outside the lodge somebody began playing a drum. People began to join in on the beat clapping their hands and using whatever they had as improvised percussion instruments, “Liberty, is that a sword you have there?”
“Yeah, I was meaning to talk to you about that. It’s kind of a long story,” she began to shout over the growing din.
“You’re always finding the coolest shit,” he shook his head, laughing, “I don’t know how you do it. It’s like you’re an attractor influencing a coolness field. You have this enormous mass of cool, and cool things are just attracted to you. Give me the short version, I have to do the dive.”
“There is no way to do the short version. Maybe after the dive?” She was yelling now, competing with the rhythm from outside.
“Sure, join me for my last drink?” This was an inside joke for them and Fyndraxis was left out of the loop.
“Yeah,” Bird chuckled and shook her head.
Solomon produced a bottle of brown liquor and a couple of rocks glasses from beneath his throne and poured them both a heavy measure. His hands shook the slightest bit and it was difficult to tell whether it was from the weight of the bottle, the DT’s, or his age.
From afar, Solomon had looked the picture of health and vitality. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that time was beginning to take its toll. One could see it in the lines around the eyes and the dark circles underneath them. It could be seen in the whites of his eyes, for they weren’t white, they were in fact yellow.
The drumming outside was becoming a cacophony. It was gaining in volume and speed at an exponential rate. Solomon and Bird raised their glasses to each other and threw back their shots. Bird winced and Solomon gave a wet smile. Solomon put aside his glass, grabbed his bottle and sprinted for the open air at the end of his throne room. He moved well for a man his size, but it was clear from his gate that his knees were shot. Once he had reached the balcony he vaulted the railing that was holding the sky back, and with that he was gone and a mighty cheer went up.
Every day around this time Solomon would perform “The Dive” not only as a devotion to gravity (which was his deity), but also as a covenant of trust with his followers. It existed as a daily vote of confidence. If he lost the trust of his flock, he would simply be committing suicide by throwing himself bodily from the tallest building around. Luckily for him, his followers loved him and trusted him implicitly. They caught him everyday in a blanket like so many firemen rescuing a treed cat.
After The Dive, Solomon spent a while checking in on everyone and being a good and present leader. This involved drinking a very large portion of the bottle of liquor that he had jumped off the building with. Bird in the meantime had gone downstairs the old fashioned way to see everybody and give her greetings. She had of course done the dive in the past, but didn’t see it as a daily necessity like Solomon did. Solomon and Bird spent a while orbiting the crowd and mingling, but like two massive bodies always do, they eventually came together after they had run out of people to talk to.
“Want to give me that long story now?” Solomon picked up their earlier conversation.
“Not here, I’d like to talk alone,” she shot a look toward the top story of the Lodge.
“I think I’ve had a little bit too much whiskey for that,” He chuckled half joking. He had indeed had most of the bottle, but was surprisingly coherent. Bird rolled her eyes at this, but bade him back upstairs to the throne room.
Once upstairs away from everyone, Bird pulled the Daemon Blade from where it was on her waist and set it on the floor. Solomon had a seat by it and Bird joined him on the floor.
“So,” Solomon began, “what’s this long story?”
“I’ll have him tell you himself,” she untied the cord that had been fastening Fyndraxis to her hip.
“Huh?” Solomon said, looking about the room for somebody who wasn’t there.
“Hi there, Solomon. I’m Fyndraxis,” the Sword spoke.
“Fuckin’ what?” Solomon stood bolt upright and popped both knees and a hip. He looked at Bird and lowered his eyebrows. He looked down at the sword and then back at Bird. He then knelt down, getting his face very close to the sword and whispered, “Hello?”
“Yeah, Hi there,” Fyndraxis reiterated.
“Talking sword?” Solomon said to Bird, but pointed at the sword.
“Yeah,” Bird said, “a very deadly, unbelievably dangerous talking sword. He and I are going to defeat the Wendigo and I figured you ought to know what I was carrying around. I don’t want anybody else knowing about this. Just you and me.”
Solomon took a few seconds to think.
“Yeah, this could be a bit a problem if everybody knew. Is this old world stuff?” He asked, finally.
“Yes, I am old world stuff,” Fyndraxis said, beginning to get a bit crabby from being talked about as an object, which he was.
“Oh, sorry man,” Solomon said, “how did you end up in there?”
“I’m really not sure,” Fyndraxis stated, “You’ve caught me mid journey of discovery.”
Solomon laughed. He went and found the glass that he had put aside earlier and poured himself another drink.
“I think I have a lot of questions for you, Fyndraxis. What do you remember of the old world?” He retook his place on the throne and swirled his whiskey in his glass.
“Quite a bit, but nothing about my own history,” Fyndraxis explained.
“Interesting,” he said, as he sipped his whiskey, “Do you know anything about Physics?”
“I know quite a bit about Physics,” the Daemon Sword noted.
“That’s good,” Solomon said, with a broadening smile, “I have some Physics textbooks, but I’m afraid that I’ve reached the limit of the knowledge I can glean from them.”
“Well, I’m happy to share what I know,” Fyndraxis offered.
“Good, how about two hours in the morning,” Solomon said, as if he was closing a deal.
“I don’t know if I could squeeze it all into two hours, but I’ll try,” Fyndraxis backpedaled.
“No, I mean daily,” Solomon said seriously.
“Like, everyday?” Fyndraxis asked, confused, “I have a thing at noon that I can’t really miss.”
“Well, looks like we will have to wrap things up before then,” the King clasped his hands together, like they had come to some sort of agreement.
If Fyndraxis could have shot Bird a look that said, help me, he would have. Unfortunately, he was on his own on this one. Solomon ruled here, and if he wanted to do Physics with a Daemon Sword for a couple hours a day, there really wasn’t anything they could do about it.
“Alrighty,” Fyndraxis said, trying not to sound annoyed.
“Liberty,” Solomon said, “make sure to talk to Roxy about a yurt tonight, we’ll have you set up in the morning. I’m too hammered to do Physics tonight, so you are off the hook for now Fyndraxis. Man, I’m starving. Let’s go get some food.”
The G had set up banquet tables in front of the Lodge and were busy preparing a feast. Fyndraxis noted the fine dishes that they had prepared. Roast venison with fiddleheads, a ramp quiche, and somehow they had made fondue. There was no evidence of any dairy at the lodge, but somehow, somewhere in the valley, somebody was making cheese.
Bird ate her fill and made sure that she was seated next to Roxy so they could talk about yurt logistics for the morning. Solomon continued his journey of inebriation into the small hours of the night. Bird and Fyndraxis found a quiet place in the lodge, and she eventually fell asleep while the G partied without them. While Bird slept, Fyndraxis tried to catch up on some much needed digital housekeeping.