What the Shadow Hides

The flames along the corridor's lamps steadied, brightening back to their usual warm orange, and Harshal gasped, dragging air into his lungs like he'd been holding his breath the whole fight without realizing it.

Why here, first. His thoughts came fast, tangled. Odin. And now this — Logi. He rubbed a hand across his face, smearing soot and ash further into his skin. What is even happening. I just wanted to earn some money.

He pushed himself upright, brushing the worst of the dust from his clothes, and moved toward the balcony without another word to the empty corridor. He stood at its edge, one hand raised, calling his blade to him. It arrived in a flash of light and steel, and he stepped off into open air, the blade carrying him up and away in one smooth arc.

The world around him shifted.

He was standing now on stone that wasn't stone — a rune-carved platform floating in open cosmos, no planet, no star, nothing solid anywhere near him except the ground beneath his own feet.

The contractor appeared without ceremony, form flickering into place like it had always been there and simply hadn't been visible until now.

"Did you bring all of it?"

"Yeah." Harshal exhaled, tired down to his bones. "I did. Took a whole lot of effort, too. You should throw in some kind of tip."

He held out what he'd carried: Zeus's severed head, Thor's Mjolnir, the Eye of Knowledge, each item passed over in turn.

The contractor took them, then handed back a scroll. Harshal unrolled it just enough to check the sum — exact, to the last coin. Nothing more. Nothing less. His jaw tightened at the edges, but his face stayed otherwise unreadable, carefully blank.

The contractor's hand rose then, palm open, gesturing toward him — expectant.

Harshal followed the gesture to his own hip, to the blade still resting there.

"No." His voice went flat, final. "That was never part of the contract."

The contractor's mouth curved, something almost amused in it. "So? I can just take it."

His hands rose to his cloak, and it fell away in one motion, discarded like it had never mattered at all. Zeus's severed head settled onto his own shoulders, merging into him somehow, becoming part of him. The Eye of Wisdom followed, sinking into his brow. His frame began to grow — taller, wider, the platform's stone groaning faintly under the sudden new weight — until his shadow stretched out and swallowed Harshal whole.

Harshal stared up at it, genuinely thrown. There's no source of light out here. His eyes darted around the empty cosmos, no sun, no star, nothing that should cast a shadow at all. So how is there a shadow?

This writer is really stupid.

The contractor's hand closed around Harshal's throat before he could react, hauling him off his feet and hurling him across the platform. He hit the edge of the rune-carved building hard, momentum carrying him nearly over the side, fingers scrabbling for purchase before he caught the ledge and hauled himself back up.

He barely had time to stand before Mjolnir came down from above, catching him square across the skull, driving him back to the stone.

The contractor was on him again in an instant, hand closing around his throat once more, hauling him up only to hold him there, still. "I will not let you die so easily."

He threw him inward this time, deeper into the platform, and a thunderbolt followed a half-second later, catching Harshal full in the chest before he could brace for it.

He lay there a moment, smoke curling off his own skin, and then — slowly — he started to laugh.

He pulled himself up, dragging his blade free as he rose, and the steel answered him, black flame rippling along its edge, hungry and alive.

"Even Bhairava couldn't kill me." His grin spread wide, blood at the corner of it. "What makes you think you can?"

He swung the blade toward him in a wide arc, cutting clean through the rune-carved stone of the building itself without so much as brushing the contractor — and a heartbeat later, the slice released, a wave of black flame tearing loose and surging across the space between them.

The contractor swung Mjolnir up to meet it, thunder cracking against fire — and lost. The wave punched clean through, leaving a deep dent scarred across the hammer's head. Fury twisted his expression, and he charged.

Harshal charged to meet him, closing the gap fast, launching himself into the air, blade angled straight for the contractor's throat —

Lightning caught him first.

It struck clean through him, and he dropped, hitting the stone hard, sprawled flat on his back.

The contractor laughed, loud, triumphant, already turning away. "I defeated him! I killed him!" He lifted Ur, Harshal's own blade, still smoking faintly, and started for the gate without a backward glance.

He was nearly there when Harshal's voice rang out behind him.

"Where are you going, coward? I'm not dead yet." He pushed himself upright, slow, deliberate. "And remember — I can control elements."

The contractor didn't turn. "So what. I've already defeated you. I don't care."

"You should." Harshal was fully standing now, something cold settling into his voice. "You idiot. You should." He raised one hand, palm open toward the ceiling. "We're surrounded by comets and asteroids out here."

He closed his fist.

Somewhere beyond the platform's edge, rock tore loose from its path, gathering speed, and crashed straight through the building's wall — slamming into the contractor before he could so much as turn around.