Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

DEATH

I’m surrounded by idiots.

It’s not their fault, of course. They are but mere mortals. Still, I expected more from soldiers, though I suppose the fact that I have gently coerced them into following my orders has taken away a bit of their resolve and gumption. I have to remind myself that when I’m inside their minds and controlling them by the power of suggestion, their overall intelligence takes a hit. Their brains have to decrease in power in order for me to mold them.

Torben and I have taken over the northernmost barracks in Finland, the Jaeger Brigade. Here, there are over a thousand men, and a few voluntary women, trained to handle the raw and desolate terrain of Lapland and the surrounding area. I guess the threat of an invasion from Russia is always on their mind.

Originally, I wanted to take military from all bases across the country, but Torben attempted to use his human logic to illustrate the risks. Apparently, if we had the whole Finnish army under my control, people would notice, and it would cause widespread panic, not just here, but around the world. He then went on to tell me that even though I was an all-powerful God —which was nice of him to finally recognize—I couldn’t possibly control the brains of the entire world.

He had a point. I have my limits, as much as I hate to admit it. Even coercing the soldiers here is draining my energy, fast. I’ll feel better once I get back to Tuonela and I’m back in my own realm.

Of course, that can’t happen until Torben does his job.

We’re all waiting on him.

“Well?” I ask him. “Have you figured it out yet?”

The old man glances up at me from the stack of books he has been pouring over, a gray brow raised. “The answers won’t appear out of your impatience,” he says.

We’re sitting in the command room of the barracks. The generals in charge of the troops loiter near us in a perpetually half-dazed state, ready to do our bidding, except we don’t know yet what that is, other than getting them to tend to my every whim.

Torben and I are by the wood stove, the sound of the crackling flames filling the room while the generals exist in silence. I’ve tried a few times to read the spellbooks Torben has procured from his cabin, but the magic seems foreign to me. Even his Book of Spells that he depends on the most doesn’t strike a chord.

Then again, it’s not really striking a chord with him either. None of his books have a list of portals to the Underworld. All they have, as he has told me ad nauseum, are spells to conjure up the portals, and none of them seem to be working. We’ve been here for days now, and every second that ticks by, I fear I’m losing my connection to Tuonela, that I’m losing precious time. The only thing that calms me is the fact that time here passes so much quicker.

I sigh loudly, voicing my displeasure, and then snap my fingers at the general closest to me. “You there. What’s your name?”

“General Anton Pekka,” he says, snapping to attention.

“General Anton Pekka,” I tell him, “bring me more cardamon buns and coffee. Black. None of that oat milk shit.”

The general salutes me and scurries out the door and down the hall.

“You really shouldn’t boss them around like that,” Torben says in a tired voice as he licks his thumb and flicks to the next page.

“Why not? They won’t remember any of this.” At least, I assume they won’t. I never did put this to the test.

“Because it’s not right,” he says. “Morally speaking.”

I scoff. “And suddenly you’re a better judge of morality? No one is a better judge of morals than the God of Death.”

He gives me a pointed look. “You may be able to judge the morals of others, but have you ever taken that gaze inward and judged yourself?”

I wave my hand at him. “Bah. You should speak, Torben Heikkinen. I know what you did. I know what everyone has done. Humans are fallible.”

“And so are the Gods.”

Well, I suppose he’s not wrong about that. Right now, the entire Underworld is crumbling because of some fallible gods who should have stayed buried eons ago. I’ve been trying not to think about it, lest I lose my temper, or worse, my hope. I know Hanna has made her way back over—I have to believe that—but I have no way of keeping tabs on her from here. Even our connection was severed the moment that cave collapsed and we became stranded in the Upper World. She remains as unreachable to me as the rest of my family.

I have no idea what I’ll be heading back to once we find the portal. I don’t know if having an army of a thousand soldiers will make any difference if there is no Underworld to fight for. And if there are still vestiges of the Tuonela I know and love, I don’t know if these mortals can actually make a dent against Louhi’s army.

But this sort of thinking does me no good. I must coerce my own thoughts into something positive. If I took to heart all the possibilities of what might be happening over there, of what might be lost, there’s a chance I could give up.

“The longer I stay here, the less I become,” I whisper to myself.

Torben pauses and looks at me. “Not that you need any compliments,” he says gruffly, “but you are not becoming less of anything.” He looks me up and down. “If anything, I say you’re taking up more and more space.”

I have to admit, that makes me sit up straighter.

Soon, General Pekka comes back with the sweet cardamom buns and coffee, which I quickly polish off. It distracts me and alleviates a bit of my impatience.

The general hovers in the background, clearly waiting to take my dishes away, but I don’t want his servitude at the moment. I want his intel.

“General,” I say to him, “you understand what I’m trying to do with your troops, don’t you?”

The man nods. He’s got a sharp chin and an even sharper nose, high cheekbones and small blue eyes. He looks young, too young to do this sort of thing, but his blond hair is going gray at the temples, which I suppose means he’s old enough. Hard to tell with these mortals and their flimsy life spans.

“Say we were to find a portal not too far from here,” I continue. “How would you propose we get everyone where they need to be and do so without causing alarm?”

The general blinks at me for a moment, and I have to reach into my power, scaling back on my influence inside his mind, letting him accept the situation as nothing unusual while letting analysis and agency come back into play.

Finally, clarity comes into his eyes. “We can mobilize using our trucks,” he says. “They are off-road and can go anywhere. If there is an obstacle and the trucks cannot travel any further, we are prepared to travel on foot. No one would bat an eye, as this is typical for our training.”

“And what weapons do you have at your disposal?”

“Rifles, of course.”

I mull that over. While Torben has been lost in the spellbooks, I’ve been trying to imagine how a mortal army could possibly stack up against the skeleton army comprised of my former subjects, Bone Stragglers, and the Inmost Dwellers who have escaped from the city, not to mention any Old Gods Louhi may have raised. Bullets might be able to blast off someone’s head, but the skeletons will need to be completely disabled limb from limb in order to send them to Oblivion.

“What about bombs?” I ask.

The general frowns. “We have some…”

“Then we will need those. How skilled are your troops with swords or bow and arrow?”

His frown deepens. “Most have minimal knowledge of either. They aren’t usually a requirement for the army these days.”

“But if they were given swords, they could figure it out?”

“If they had to.”

“They might have to. I take it you don’t have any on base?”

“No, sir,” he says.

Fools. To put all their stock into impersonal guns and bullets, not once thinking about ever entering a war that might require hand-to-hand combat…

But it will have to do.

I clear my throat and hand my mug and plate to the general. “Very well. As soon as we can take on some of the army on the other side, we’ll gain access to their weapons. I just want your troops to know what they’re up against. Can you call a strategy meeting with your top people? The sooner we get this underway with a plan, the better. At the moment, it seems we have more than enough time to start training.”

“Except we don’t,” Torben says in an odd voice.

I glance at him, and he breaks into a broad smile.

“Because I found the spell,” he says. “The spell that will bring us to the portal.”