Hot anger pooled into my muscles, but I forced myself to swallow it back. In the back of my head was a foreign feeling, not quite my own but not a stranger’s either, that I recognized to be the stag’s mantle. It pulsed and vibrated, almost like a voice, though no words were said, telling me that as reprehensible as this all was, I needed to keep my calm. If only it were that easy.

“Well,” I said to his still-laughing form. “I’m here. Talk.”

He stood, blood still trickling from his nose and down farther to his neck. It made for a gruesome site when he bared his teeth into something a bit too primal to be a smile. “Took you long enough.”

My hands curled into fists again. “Tell me what you want to tell me, and then get out of my sight.”

“Sight,” he mused, eyes getting that faraway look again. “That’s all it comes down to. Sight.”

Great, now he was going to ramble again. Just my luck. I wanted this to be over with. Standing this close to the monster, and he was a monster, was making my skin crawl.

His eyes cleared up again as he raked his gaze down me in a predatory way. I stared back at him, refusing to flinch. He made another bared-tooth smile at that. “I have to say, I admire your courage being here.”

I lifted my chin. “I already told you, Lydian. You hold no power over me anymore.”

“Your heart is racing like a frightened rabbit,” he countered.

“Your heart is kept locked away somewhere in the Erlking’s palace,” I said. “Keeping you in this place. Maybe once you cooperate, I’ll actually bury it, let you rest.” I refused to let him control the situation in any way. I was the one making the threats. I was the one with the power. I was the one in charge. He could try to flip that dynamic all he wanted, but it wasn’t about to change.

“I can never rest,” he said, beginning to pace in a feverish manner. “Not after all that’s happened, not after what I know, not after the world began falling apart.”

“What are you talking about?” I nearly shouted. “Enough with the riddles. Tell me.”

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked. When I nodded, his eyes hardened. “Very well.”

The field around me shimmered in the air and shifted, changing into a different place all together. I could see all of the nine realms; I somehow stood within them and outside of them at the same time. Yggdrasil, the tree of life, held them together but something was gnawing at its roots. A giant serpent with gleaming red eyes, his entire impossibly long body wrapped around the tree. I stared as Lydian’s riddle came back to me. What happens when the serpent stops eating his tail?