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I shake my head, noticing that snow is starting to fall in the forest. I’ll be frozen solid by the time we get to his cabin. “I’ll figure it out,” I tell him, hating that I don’t have an answer yet.
“I think you already have,” he says. “We talked about you building an army here. The only issue was there wasn’t any time. Now, we have time. Whether we need an excavator to clear out the portal tunnel to Death’s Landing, or I need time to create or locate another portal, you have time now to do some recruiting.”
I stare at the back of his head as we walk. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it. Sure, I could probably find some people and command them to fight for me, and I could probably grant them some sort of reward in return. Perhaps not immortality, but I could get them a spot in Amaranthus if it still exists.
But where would I find these people who know how to fight? How would I gather all of them without attracting any attention?
“You know, Finland has mandatory army training,” Torben says. “Our army during wartime is nearly two hundred thousand soldiers strong. Even with current conscripts, you’re looking at twenty thousand people, easily.”
“Are you suggesting I go to the nearest army base, magic my way in, and command all the soldiers to fight for me in the Underworld?”
Torben looks at me over his shoulder and nods, a glint in his eye. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“That almost seems too easy,” I say, weighing the options carefully.
“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be easy at all,” he says. “And there are major moral and ethical implications of brainwashing the free mind and using them to fight for a cause that doesn’t directly affect them. But as you’ve said about having to make tough decisions…this might be one of those decisions. This might be the only way you’ll be able to defeat Louhi, Salainen, the Old Gods, and the Bone Stragglers.”
I find myself nodding, though I’m having a hard time coming to terms with it.
With the truth.
The battle for the afterlife will happen in the Land of the Dead.
But it’s the mortals who might end up saving the world.
THE END…for NOW
Because the fourth and final book, Goddess of Light, is slated to release November 2024 (date may change) and you can preorder it now at your own peril.
The novella God of Death is still coming in 2024.
I’ll have some teasers and excerpts from these for my REAM subscribers. Also feel free to follow me on IG, Tik Tok, Threads, my newsletter, etc. if you want to stay updated (I’ve also been posting lots of Underworld Gods art…and I’m due to post a NSFW art piece of Hanna and Death for my newsletter soon!)
AND I’ve included a short story about Tuonen if you’d like to turn the page…
Tuonen: Son of Death
An Underworld Gods Short Story - Previously published as part of the Bookish Box’s Winter Anthology
There’s a bell that rings when someone has died. It’s located on the pebbled shores of Death’s Landing, a place where the newly dead end up, confused and shrouded by fog. Despite the confusion, most people know on some innate level that they are dead and that they are to ring the bell to continue their journey to the afterlife, even if they have no idea what exactly this afterlife entails.
But some people, like Aven Morris, are so completely against the idea of death, particularlytheirdeath, that the bell doesn’t even appear to them. Every single cell in their body tells them that they are alive, that there’s been some mistake. They can’teven remember the last moments of life on the other side, anything that led to their death. To them, one minute, they were living as usual, and the next, they’re standing on a misty shore, black water gently lapping the rocks, wondering how the hell they ended up there.
In those cases, the lack of acceptance doesn’t change anything. The bell doesn’t need to ring for the ferryman, because the moment someone dies, Tuonen and Lovia, the son and daughter of Death himself, feel it in their bones. It’s an internal alarm that will forever sound for them, a scar of responsibility to the Finnish Underworld, the land of Tuonela.
So, while Aven Morris stood on the shores in disbelief, Tuonen, who was on ferryman duty that day, knew he had to pick someone up and bring them to the City of Death.
Unfortunately, Aven’s death happened during a game ofPukata, one of Tuonen’s many vices. While Tuonen and his sister, Lovia, shared the duty of ferrying the newly dead down the River of Shadows to the afterlife, Tuonen did everything he could to distance himself from his job. Sometimes, that included gambling on games of Pukata with the dead of the Golden Mean on the very days he was supposed to be working.
“Fuck,” he swore, feeling that alarm sound through his body. A second later, his opponent’s ramfrog headbutted his ramfrog off the table. The frog fell to the ground, its tiny, exposed bones shattering into pieces. Other than their heads, the frogs were especially fragile.
“I win again!” said Harald Drumsheller, grinning at him with missing teeth. He held his hand out and wiggled his fingers, indicating payment, while scooping up his winning ramfrog with his other hand. The ramfrog peered at Tuonen with a haughty look, two large black eyes underneath a massive bare skull with curled ram’s horns, before a long tongue slid out, tasting the air.
Tuonen grumbled and shoved his hand into his coat, pulling out a small bottle of frostberry liquor and handing it to Harald. Tuonen enjoyed gambling in the Golden Mean, the middle ground in the City of Death. Beneath it were the dark and disgusting tunnels of the Inmost (what most mortals would consider Hell), where the horrible people went to live among monsters. Above was Amaranthus, a nirvana or heaven. Most people, however, weren’t entirely pious and good, nor evil and malicious. Most people ended up spending eternity in the Golden Mean, a place that was comfortable at best and bearable at worst. It was here Tuonen related to people the most, where the gambling was always easy. After all, in Amaranthus, they already had everything they could ever want.
In the Golden Mean, the most popular things to bargain for were alcohol, which was scarce at times. Even the dead still had a need to get drunk.
“Lucky for me, I have to go anyway,” Tuonen told Harald, getting to his feet.
