Chapter six

I was sitting in a smoky dimly lit room with people strewn haphazardly all over the place. The sign outside claimed that this was the sunset tavern but I was seriously doubting that fact as I looked around the place. After our marathon session of sex was over , Loki had sent me here to Svatalfheim to receive an object from a contact she had among the dark elves. I had thought that she could grant me the power to become a god very easily using her own powers but apparently I had misunderstood what she had said. She claimed that she needed a few objects before she could make me and I quote 'her greatest masterpiece' and since she was a wanted criminal among the Aesir she couldn't retrieve the objects herself without putting herself in jeopardy. According to her even coming to talk to me in Midgard had been risky. Because I had killed most of her followers there weren't a lot of people she could send, so I was forcefully volunteered for the task.

The first object she wanted me to get was a dark violet jewel named the heart of darkness, it was the center piece of the crown of shadows that had adorned the head of every ruler of the dark elves since the great dwarven blacksmith Sindri forged it from a fallen star. Loki said that the jewel was a remnant of the place where she and the rest of the gods had originated from, which was destroyed by a cataclysmic event she had called an ultranova, a truly fearsome event if it was able to make the gods themselves flee. Although I didn't understand most of her explanations from what I did understand she was going to use the heart of darkness to give me some form of magic.

So here I was in the middle of what I was sure was a drug den trying to remain inconspicuous but failing miserably. All the people around me had ebony skin , pure white hair and stared at me with eyes that had red irises. I hid my pale skin ,yellow hair , and blue eyes under a cloak but what the cloak couldn't hide was my figure. All the elves around me were slender and graceful, I on the other hand have always been large and blocky even amongst my peers, it had even earned me the nickname 'the bear'. Needless to say I had been getting curious looks from all directions since I walked through the door. Their curiosity had only intensified when I had asked for ale when the hostess asked me what I wanted. The pretty elf had smirked at me and told me that they didn't serve ale. In an effort to not stand out even more I gave her a couple of gold coins from the pouch that Loki gave me and asked her to bring me whatever that could get me. The way she was smiling when she walked away made me think that she was going to bring me something bad.

I looked around around again and there was far less attention focused on me than before, most of the elves had gone back to to what they were doing before I entered , drinking small canisters of colorful liquids, smoking from hoses connected to fancy looking instruments with bubbling liquid inside or simply snorting powder up their noses. I turned towards the center of the room towards what I thought was the most interesting sight in the whole room. Through the different colored smoke that shrouded the whole place giving it a surreal look, I could make out an old dark elf who was bald except for tufts of white hair near his pointy ears playing a tall string instrument which had hundreds of strings and dancing to the strange resonant music he was producing was a light elf scantily clad in a few pieces of sheer silk with a metal collar around her neck. She had smooth white skin like the first snow of winter that almost seemed to shine in the middle of this poorly lit room , her head was decorated with a waterfall of long golden hair as if someone had spun the light of the sun itself and bestowed it upon her, her eyes were were also golden but a slightly darker shade as if they were pools of molten gold. I have heard legends about the beauty of light elves but I couldn't believe what I was seeing , even though I thought that all my feelings were dead even I felt sadness when I saw the heart breaking expression on her face as she danced, slowly removing layer after layer of clothing until she was completely naked. I felt no arousal as I saw her beautiful body laid bare , I only felt like I was doing something wrong and that was saying something coming from a man with no conscience.

As I was wondering if it would be worth it to blow Loki's mission to rescue this light elf , a man in a dark cloak similar to mine sat at the same table as me and said, "What does the snake eat when it is hungry?"

It was the code phrase that Loki had taught me so I replied, "The snake eats its own tail."

"So you are the champion that Loki sent? You do look rather imposing. Well met stranger , I am Selanus second prince of Svatalfheim."