Word Count: 688

He didn’t know why he was there, other than the fact that his brother needed help and he was at a loss of what to do, so he turned to the only place he could possibly think that he hadn’t already checked. Sessrumnir itself was not as interesting as he figured it could have been had it still been populated with people. From what he could tell from the library to the underground hotsprings, that this was some kind of gathering place for intellectuals. Or at least he hoped the people of the wonder that he shared a name with were intellectuals. If they weren’t, well, that wasn’t really something he could control. Still, there were rooms that looked like lecture halls, or at least some kind of stage in front for someone to perform. It was similar to what he’d read about the Library of Alexandria when he was still taking courses in history, and then when he was curious and researched things for himself. What it had to do with the “Sessrumnir” from Norse mythology, he still did not know. Or maybe Norse mythology came after the wonder on Jupiter.

But a time to contemplate his name’s meaning when compared to his wonder was for another time. For now he was looking for something that might help Valhalla in fixing his cracked starseed. Sessrumnir had only caught a glimpse of the stone before Ganymede was able to put it back into his brother’s chest, but he was fairly certain the starseed wasn’t supposed to look as it did.

Granted, searching for some kind of answer would be helpful if he could actually understand what was written in the thousands and thousands of books, but it didn’t look as though they wrote in any kind of modern English. The closest he’d found to Earthen writing was from a desk in a small office just off of a hallway. It was in a diary-like book, and the words seemed to be in Latin, but he only took so much Latin in high school, and he wasn’t a practicing Catholic. Still, it seemed as though that was the best place to start.

How he managed to make it back to the room in question was beyond him. There wasn’t anything special about it, other than the fact that it looked like it might have been someone’s personal study. An office, perhaps. Maybe even the office of his past life. There were few pieces of furniture that had been strewn around, as though someone had rushed through looking for something, leaving books and pages everywhere, now covered in a layer of dust. The desk drawers had been riffled through as well, but apparently they saw no value in the diary he’d found on a previous visit. Still… what were they looking for? And were they able to find whatever it was?

Approaching the desk once more, Sessrumnir pulled out the drawers to inspect them, but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary, or anything that might help him. But as he was reaching his hand inside, a strange feeling seemed to overtake him. Confused, he withdrew his hand and followed his sudden compulsion to reach underneath the desk. He could feel a tiny circle that seemed to be engraved into the wood. And as he leaned down to see just what it was, he realized he’d seen the mark before.

It was the same mark as his signet ring.

Removing the ring from his finger, he pressed it against the wood, and sure enough a small click sounded. Inside the top drawer, a false bottom gave way. But the only thing inside seemed to be a fang of some sort, wrapped with leather around the root, as if it had once been worn as a charm. He doubted it would help him find a way to fix his brother’s starseed, but… again… compulsion drew him to take the fang and tie the loose end of the string of leather to his belt, and then tucked it between the belt and himself so it wouldn’t be jostled loose.