 
Hammers

of

Thor

1st Edition

by

Gabriel Walker Land

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Copyright © 2020 by Gabriel Walker Land

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. 
Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

Praise for Gabriel Walker Land's Writing

1. Valhalla of Nine Realms

2. In the Mist of the Moss

3. Earth Mother Sky Father

4. Wayward Youth

5. Further Delay

6. Losing Them

7. Passage to Slow Rain

8. Quake Shelter

9. Passing Through

10. Visitation

11. Given Pause

12. Stranger in a Stranger Land

13. Peer Review

14. Word Travels

15. First Contact

16. The Myths That Warn

17. Street of Chaos

18. Event on Mortal Eyes

19. A Wind Swept Classroom

20. On Sight

21. Thrash Metal

22. Street TV

23. Late Call

24. Guest of Wind

25. Breaking Fast

26. These Mortal Customs

27. Word Of Skins

28. Apt Tutor

29. Old Digs

30. Amazonian Embrace

31. A Desperate Call

32. The Pillars of Alexandria

33. Come On, Let's Have a Look at You

34. We're Sending Someone

35. Micro-cycles of the Night

36. Their Beloved Super-Man

37. Universal School of Washing

38. Even Police Don't Enter

39. Universal City District

40. Lanes of Park Tent City

41. Far as I Go

42. Valhalla Invoked

43. Power of Lightning

44. Remember Yet, Giants of Yore

45. No One is Invincible Forever

46. The Dark, Cold Ravine

47. Another Sting

48. Carried from the North, Eons Past

49. Stormblood

50. Thrashing Creek

51. Out of Chaos

52. Lo and Behold

53. Seattle's Most Wanted

54. Paranoia Wave

55. Earth Realm Rife

56. Undue Process

57. On Her Every Whim

58. They've Seen Everything

59. When's the Software Update?

60. Should Have Screamed

61. It's a Long Story

62. Highest Tech in the World

63. Raven Leads

64. With Each Step

65. Can't go Back Into the Night

66. Time Travel or Black Holes or Whatever

67. And There They Tumbled

68. A Galaxy Far, Far Away

69. The Portal Is Still Open

70. How Could She Breathe?

71. Smitten With a Mortal Girl

72. Human Like an Ant

73. Brothers in God-combat

74. This Eventuality

75. Where Gods Walk

76. All She Could do was Fall

Gabriel Walker Land is a screenwriter and novelist currently splitting his time

between California and Bangkok, Thailand.

His specialties include unique characters, dynamic action, passionate romance and crackling dialogue. He always takes care to tip his hat to comedic relief and a sense of the absurd.

Although Gabriel writes genre fiction, he likes to pepper his works with deep characterization as well as sociopolitical and metaphysical themes more commonly found in literary fiction. One of his short stories called "Brand Protection Services" was recently published in the cyberpunk magazine Write Ahead The Future Looms.

More Work By Gabriel Walker Land

Excerpt from PATTAYA HEAT
Praise for Gabriel Walker Land's Writing

"Packed with suspense and action, this jam-packed journey through Thailand's underbelly offers a heady mix."

~ Amazon Reviewer Happy Shopper

"A refreshing young voice in the hard-boiled detective genre. Land's main sleuth is different...he's a former actor, and this allows him to slide in and out of various characters to get him, in the end, what he requires: information."

~ Martin Fossum, author of _Ildarim's Arrow_

"I really enjoyed reading this book. It was full of colorful characters and kept my mind intrigued following Rich Sky solving his case. I've been to Thailand and even Pattaya. The writer did a good job capturing the local culture."

_~_ Mariam Arthur, radio host and former editor of Khmer Times
1. Valhalla of Nine Realms

Thor's personal chamber was located at the end of a long hall far into the depths of Asgard. The chamber was fixed with a viewing portal so he could pass time in study of Earth customs and environments.

The problem was the blasted portal rarely transposed a clear image. No surprise there, considering multiple galaxies lay between the portal and its focal point in the galaxy Midgard.

Still, the inconsistent connection challenged Thor's patience. All he could perceive through it were clouded holographic approximations and sound collages: occasional faces, indecipherable languages, and what looked like buildings, trees and strange carriages - hardly enough detail to make Earth seem any less alien.

After doing his best to study for what seemed like a mega-cycle, Thor heard familiar footsteps outside his chamber and knew it had to be Týr, protector of Valhalla, sentry bound to the maze of Asgard's halls and destined to patrol them for eternity.

Týr had surely come to retrieve Thor to Valhalla's grand central hall, to meet with Thor's parents and the cast of other elder gods. Týr was always kind to Thor. For Týr too was confined by the functions of gods more powerful than himself, namely Thor's parents Joro and Odin.

This had better be the occasion, Thor thought. If the dark matter portal is not yet in working order the suspense may bring me to my knees.

Thor couldn't fault his elder gods for the delay, as they had not been themselves as of late. In fact nearly everyone in Asgard seemed to be losing their minds, doubtless due to the increasing intensity of disruptions in the Chaos/Order Axis.

There was but one solution: it would fall on Thor to restore balance, by descending to Earth within Midgard and finding a suitable mortal bride. Though Thor embraced it as an adventure, the task would carry great risk.

It took a shocking amount of energy tapped from the dark matter spectrum to initiate a portal link with another galaxy, most especially a link large and sustained enough for a god to pass through.

The process also required a shocking amount of time. Thus Thor expected everyone in the grand hall to be drunk on celestial ale by the time he followed Týr through the hall's entrance.

The more powerful the gods, the more glaring their imperfections. Waiting with patience, waiting without consuming vast quantities of ale, these numbered not among the gods' strengths.

Three claps sounded outside, a signal of greeting from Týr in the hallway. Thor rose and exited his chamber, passing by his friend on the way out.

"Greetings, young one," Týr said, with Thor grumbling a half-response.

Thor knew where they were going, but not why his parents insisted on having him chaperoned. They could just as easily have summoned him by voice through a localized sonic portal.

Regardless, if anyone were going to shadow him around the passageways of Asgard, there was no better lower god to do so than Týr, whom Thor trusted as a brother.

"What say you of the central hall?" Thor asked as they walked. "Does it run slick with the overflow of toppled kegs?"

Týr grunted an affirmative.

"Aye, friend, as usual."

Thor shook his head. With every passing cycle it had gotten worse. His pantheon now responded to the danger it was in by intensifying the rate at which it feasted and imbibed. Orgies lasted eons - sobriety mere moments.

Thor himself surely enjoyed the occasional celebratory feasting. When repeated as if routine however, cosmic cycle after cycle, it grew more than tiresome. It became a chore, an obligation.

No doubt about it, Thor looked forward to his grand arrival on Earth. It would be something different, something new.

For the life of a god was not what planet-bound Midgardians might imagine, as they looked up at the night sky from the surface of their speck of a rock orbiting a tiny star.

Thor had about had his fill of his duties in Asgard, and was very much anticipating the experience of what it was like to be almost mortal.
2. In the Mist on the Moss

The streets of Seattle were a mean place for Raven. But she needed to be there, to escape her parents, who could be even meaner when they wanted to.

Raven preferred to run the risks of life as a homeless youth than go back to the decrepit house on the hill above Lake City, where her adopted parents and sister too had tormented her emotionally and sometimes physically.

Raven didn't know why they hated her. Maybe they saw something in her eyes, in her face, that reminded them of their own ugliness on the inside. She had left because she wanted to forgive them, and staying in their clutches would have only caused her to lose sleep. That or dream horrible dreams about getting revenge.

She didn't want to give herself a reason to hate like they did. She knew there were good parents out there and she didn't want to believe all adults were like the ones in her life. So one day she just layered up and stepped out into the cool Pacific Northwest drizzle, wearing a hooded sweatshirt underneath a rain jacket and carrying a backpack full of supplies.

She hopped the 72 bus south from Lake City to University Avenue, locally called "the Ave," which was as good a place as any to try and blend in. It was where a lot of homeless youth went because there were so many social services there, like free meals and shelters for people Raven's age.

That had been a week ago already. Now she found herself on a corner on 45th Street, below the awning of an empty shop, begging for change from well-off university students who passed by.

"Spare any change?" she asked, over and over. Close by sat her backpack, containing a blanket, a toothbrush, extra layers, clean socks, and a few bags of chips from the food bank. Raven hadn't returned to the homeless shelter in a few nights; she hadn't even tried. Half the time it was full.

Instead she had lucked out, after scouting around. She had found a good safe squat up on the side of Capitol Hill, an abandoned building to camp in that no one else knew about.

"Spare any change for food?"

The group of sorority sisters, obviously, ignored her. Usual for their type. Raven found that the most generous people were men of varying ages and middle-aged women.

The men often sized her up, eyeing her body through her layers of clothes like they had superhuman X-ray vision.

The middle-aged women tended to lecture Raven about turning her life around. But since they probably had zero experience being on the streets, any advice they gave was pretty much useless. Only someone who had gotten off the streets knew how best to get off the streets.

"Be careful out here," the women would say. "There's lots of creepy men in this city."

No shit, lady, I just got handed a fiver from one who matches that description exactly.

Raven, unlike most of the other homeless girls on the Ave, had never had a boyfriend and hardly ever kissed a guy. She had just never gotten around to it. She was a late bloomer, hitting puberty in the 8th grade, and teenage boys being teenage boys they tended to pay the most attention to the girls with the biggest knockers.

Even during the only year of high school that she finished before dropping out, Raven hadn't gotten much attention from the opposite sex. While she had developed a curvy body by then, she was too distracted, never even thinking about dressing in suggestive clothing. Her nose was always in the latest young adult novel to hit the bestseller lists. She preferred supernatural stories about nonhuman entities like vampires, werewolves and ghosts. She longed for escape, never imagining that escape would be to a place like the Ave.

"Spare any change, sir?"

This time the man passing by stopped. He was tall and had on a business suit that looked like it needed to go to the dry cleaner's. He stood there looking at Raven for a moment, before taking out a few quarters and handing them over.

"You know the cops around here like to check ID's," he said, still holding her eyes. He seemed kind and genuinely concerned that she might get picked up by the authorities.

Raven shrugged.

"How do you know I need to worry about that?" she asked.

The man smiled.

"I put you at about sixteen or seventeen, though like many of the kids out here you have your wits about you in ways most sheltered adults never will."

Raven raised her eyebrows. "Poetic."

"Look," the man said, reaching for his wallet, "I have to get to class, but here's my card."

He held out a business card and she took it from him. He was verging on creep factor but hadn't quite crossed the line. He seemed real.

"Call if you have any kind of emergency you need help with. And don't worry about me. I'm just a genuinely nice guy who helps out the kids around here sometimes, especially the ones who seem to want to help themselves."

"Okay dude."

The man nodded and turned to leave.

"Hey!" Raven called after him.

He paused and looked back.

"You're going to a class?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm a professor of mythology at UW. You take care of yourself and stay dry out here, okay? There's nothing worse than wet socks."

After he left Raven realized that he hadn't even asked her name, which she liked. Names didn't matter much to her. In addition to what her parents called her, she had her street name, Raven, which was what she told all the other homeless youth to call her. Neither name felt like it fit, though, even though she did really like ravens.

Raven had an appreciation for mystery, for randomness. Names needed time to simmer, to grow in meaning. Like many social exchanges, starting with trading names right off the bat always baffled her.

She looked at the card the professor had handed her. It read:

Professor James Redding

Associate Scholar

University of Washington School of Literature: Mythology

(656) 333-0909

James.Q.Redding@UW.edu

Well, so much for that, Raven thought. He'd just given her his name and more: everything short of his social security number. That was unfair - he should know her name too.

"Spare any change?" she blurted, looking up from the card in time to see another potential resource hurrying by in the drizzle.
3. Earth Mother, Sky Father

As they approached Valhalla through Asgard's long passages, Thor and Týr heard the echoes of an all-too-familiar clamor: shouting, crashes, laughter and general merriment. Loud merriment - too loud for Thor's blood.

He preferred silent, reflective meditation as he gazed out over the galaxies, and enjoyed the sound of a comet-harp softly strummed by a fair Norse maiden. Revelry was not his preferred means to wile away mega-cycles. For during revelry, which had been constant as of late, grand Valhalla was total chaos.

"Thor, my boy!" Odin's voice boomed in Thor's direction as Týr led him through the huge double doors into Valhalla.

The floor was sticky beneath Thor's feet. He didn't know if it was celestial ale or god-vomit. It smelled like both.

"Yes, father," Thor said after a sigh. "I'm here. Again."

The lengthy feasting table at the center of the hall was crafted from ancient, worn meteorstone and surrounded by the same old cast of characters, all gods of course. Sitting farthest away from Odin and at the opposite end was Joro, Thor's mother. She didn't look amused, to no surprise.

Separating the royal couple was the usual crowd: Bragi, god of poetry, music and the harp; Hoenir, the silent god who just sat and drank ale all day; Fulla, Frigg's handmaid (where Frigg was no one knew; he had gone missing during the last mega-cycle), and many others.

"Joro!" Odin boomed again. His beard was long and voluminous, so that it cascaded in curls from his chin onto the meteorstone. Crumbs from a feast that had continued for eons littered his beard.

On the table were platters and scraps of myriad creatures. Raptor from the Jurassic Earth period, Velsuvian moon swine harvested out of the Jegda system, and thinly sliced fangwhale speared from the depths of the oceanic planet Kinfsnu (a pungent delicacy if kneaded to peak fermentation). Missing was vegetable matter, which the Norse pantheon eschewed.

Joro glanced at her husband for only a moment before rolling her eyes and averting them. She was a beautiful goddess, if rather stockily built and thick-boned. Her fury was infamous among all deities from all pantheons. She could skirmish as mightily as almost any god.

Odin was rumored to be carrying on a divine affair with Iounn, the goddess of youth. Luckily Iounn was not present, or she would have certainly faced the wrath of Joro, and Thor had no wish to witness that. Joro had given birth to him and nursed him on her galactic milk. He had no desire to see her commit an act of divine carnage.

"We have summoned you, my son," Joro said, between off-tempo strums from Bragi's comet-harp, "because the dark matter portal to Midgard now harnesses enough energy to deliver you unto Earth through space-time."

Thor nodded with eagerness, elated to hear such news.

"I must caution though," she continued, "that you will find mortal customs alien to our own, even beyond your imagination. Have you studied Earth through the viewing portal we had installed in your chambers?"

"Aye mother, I have, though it presents only a fragmented, hazy depiction of terrestrial life."

"Embrace the value of that hindrance," Joro replied. "Your mission would be no adventure at all without the imposition of great challenges. I urge you to err on the side of subtlety as you seek out the Midgardian virgin. If you reveal your divine identity too soon you may risk causing strife on Earth and losing the trail of the chosen one. Gravitated mortals are quite prone to dramatics and spectacle."

Thor readily believed that, based not only on rumor but on what he had seen though the viewing portal. Gods were flawed, no doubt. But they benefited from a relative lack of consequences. They were immortals and could get away with almost anything in the divine pantheonic realms, while humans seemed to keep bashing their fragile heads into metaphorical masonry despite prior knowledge of the ensuing results.

"Enough anxious caution and logistical details!" Odin yelled, raising his freshly filled alehorn. "Come my son, sit at my side to eat and drink for a spell before your anticipated descent!"

Joro glared at her husband again as Thor strode 'round the table of boisterous revelers to sit beside his father.

"Father," Thor said, taking a seat. "Have you not considered a respite from the ceaseless feasting?"

Odin laughed. "Should you fail on your mission, I would prefer to face the end of space-time with a belly full of raptor and ale."

But Thor knew the truth. While the elder gods feasted, such behavior was only a compensation for the deep fear they suffered that the axis would not get restored.

Thinking of this, Thor's elation that the portal had been opened was dampened by his awareness of his cosmic responsibility and the task he would face on Earth. 
4. Wayward Youth

Later that night, Raven drifted to the teen feed at a church a few blocks from the corner where she had spanged (spare-changed) most of the day.

The feed was for homeless youth, and the cut-off was eighteen, which gave Raven a few months until she would have to lie to the volunteers who signed people in. They would believe her; she could pass for younger than she was.

At the dining tables inside the fellowship hall, she saw a bunch of familiar faces, many of them kind and welcoming. They called themselves "the street-family" and they looked after one-another as best as they could.

Raven was new, however, and careful. She didn't tell any of them about the abandoned building she had found off of Eastlake. Squat locations were held secret by all, and among the street-family such information was usually shared only among smaller, tighter groups, groups who often shared other things too like drugs and needles.

After Raven stood in line for her plate of spaghetti and garlic bread, she found a chair at a table next to a guy called Puppet. He was one of the older members of the family, having spent more then a decade on the Ave. Puppet had taken a liking to Raven, saying she was cute and sweet and that if anyone messed with her he would unleash the fury of the family upon them.

"You know why this city is so crazy?" he said to everyone at the table, between mouthfuls of noodles and meat sauce.

"Because there's no sun here?" someone suggested from nearby.

"Ha, well yeah, there's that," Puppet said. "But there's a whole bunch of other reasons too. For one thing, this place is new. Like, newer than other parts of the country. Only a few generations ago the people who came here, the white people at least, were outcasts. Loggers, miners, sailors and the hookers to keep them company. Real salt of the earth. We inherited their edge."

Raven smiled. Indeed there seemed to be a lot of lunatics in Seattle.

Puppet's voice lowered. The look on his thin, pale, acne-scarred face got more serious.

"It's also the crystals in the mountains, guys," he said. "We're boxed in here, surrounded by mountains. You got the Olympics and the Cascades. We're living in a puddle and surrounded by highly volatile, conductive walls of magic magnetic minerals."

Some of the kids nearby laughed. Some just ate. Most were used to hearing such random rants from someone high on speed, as Puppet most often was.

"But there's more dark shit going on here, guys. I'm serious now."

"Please eat, you need it, Puppet," one of his friends said.

Puppet ignored the advice, and left cooling his plate of food.

"Because of the shamanic curses. This city is built on ancient Native burial grounds. And the spirits are not happy with us."

"You seeing spirits again, Puppet?" asked the same friend.

A few others laughed.

"Yeah, I see the shadow people all the time," Puppet replied. "You don't? What's the matter with you? You should have an eye doctor over at UW medical center look at that."

More laughs from those listening in.

Raven grinned. She liked it here, with the family, between the walls of crystal and among the ancient spirits of her ancestral natives. The streets had been good to her, so far. 
5. Further Delay

Thor stayed on, for part of the feast that would go on and on. He listened to more of Odin's pontification, Joro's planning, Bragi's harp and Hoenir's slurps. His godly mind wandered to thoughts of Earth and how green the grass would be there, how it would feel to smell it with mortal nostrils, along with the dirt and the manure and the imperfections of a world full of danger and risk, a world on the persistent verge of apocalypse.

In Valhalla, as in greater Asgard and his pantheon's entire sector of the multiverse, Thor was nearly untouchable. Only in rare circumstances could he be harmed, such as during sanctioned god-combat or pantheonic skirmishes.

After micro-cycles Odin stood, and his great beard slid off the table to the floor. His mat of tufted facial hair was of such volume that it hid the supreme god's entire physical stature. He was just beard and eyes and arms which protruded to his sides, as if he were wrapped in a cape. He might as well have been the god of scruff.

"My pantheon," he said, "I would like to propose a final toast. At least a final one before Thor departs, as I am sure we will continue to feast during his descent."

All around, everyone at the table who was sober enough cheered as Odin raised his alehorn.

"I understand that we have let ourselves go a bit as of late, that we have allowed this feast to go on far too long. And who wouldn't? When faced with the possibility of oblivion, pour more ale I say!"

More cheers. All drank deeply, including Thor, and the ale slaked his thirst well.

"Come, my son. Come, my wife," Odin said, setting the horn down on the table and gesturing to Thor and Joro. "Let us traipse through the long hall to the amoebous dark matter portal that awaits. Let us waste not another micro-cycle, for the fragile base of the Chaos/Order Axis remains under strain."

Thor sighed, again, and shook his head. They had wasted ample precious time already.
6. Losing Them

Professor James Redding walked into the small classroom in Denny Hall, the oldest structure on the UW campus, and stood in front of his students. There were five of them. Redding was late. To his left an antiquated heater creaked and clacked, distracting him.

The students watched as he took out his course materials. A few of them looked damp from the rain. Redding was too.

"Mythology, folks," he said, holding up a copy of the textbook he had helped author: Convergence of Memes: The Remnant Fixtures of Norse Pagan Mythology in Christian Europe. "It pays no one's bills anymore."

The students chuckled. Three of them were there as science majors, Redding knew. They were sitting in their seats to check off the few obligatory humanities electives necessary for their degrees. Probably because their first, second and third choices had already been full.

The other two were actual humanities students, one pursuing a master's in history and the other a grad student in English literature. Yes, such rare individuals still existed. No one could explain how or why, but they did.

"Did everyone read the course syllabus?" Redding inquired, eyeing them.

A few murmured.

"Didn't think so."

The professor flicked on the digital projector. The white screen on the wall behind him lit up with an image of what appeared to be some kind of inscribed tombstone, taller than a man and leaning over in a slight curve at the top, as if the rock had partially melted at some point.

"This is the Rök Runestone," he said. "Which is something of a tautology, because the stone is named after the village Rök, which is itself named after the stone. Go figure."

He tapped a button on his laptop and changed the image to one of a copper brooch, for fastening garments and cloaks.

"This is the Nordendorf fibulae," he said. "Its surface contains brief runic inscriptions which mention one of the most well-known names in all mythology, Donar."

The students' puzzled look made Redding smile.

"I know, I know. Raise your hand if you had a donar chicken wrap for lunch."

They laughed. Redding's easygoing demeanor was starting to win them over, though he was far from finished.

"Donar, spelled with an ar at the end, is the high-German form of what we now know as the modernized name Thor. Both Donar and Thor come from an older, common Germanic word for thunder."

The young people looked interested. No surprise there, as storms always had a way of winning people over. There was no arguing with thunder and lightning.

"The brooch on the screen behind me looks a lot like a hammer to my eyes, but that's just speculation on my part," Redding added.

One of the students raised her hand, pleasantly surprising him.

"Thank you for contributing to the discussion..., " said Redding while looking at his roster to find her name. "Jennifer." He nodded to her.

"Well, that looks a lot like something else besides a hammer," she said, smirking.

Redding was confused by her comment at first. She was staring right into his eyes, as if he should have known even before she spoke what she was about to allude to.

Then it registered. "Oh," he said.

More laughter from the other four in the audience.

"Well, that very well might be, Jennifer. Thor is often mentioned in various sources as particularly virile and well-endowed. And funny you should mention it...," he said, clicking back to the image of the Rök Runestone.

"Because the runestone mentions an individual named Sibbi, probably some historic royal figure whom we cannot place. But before doing so, the stone carver invokes the name of Thor, then proceeds to speak of how Sibbi, at the age of ninety, fathered a child. The inscription seems quite intent on highlighting the potency associated with the deity in question, as if Sibbi were akin to Thor."

And that was it. Redding could tell he was losing them again. He'd recited a paragraph exceeding the number of characters allowed in a Tweet.

This would require evasive action, so he clicked twice and brought up another image. Text and verbal media, it seemed, had lost their ability to capture imagination in this day and age. The youth demanded pictures, and pictures they would have.

Redding made a mental note to start an Instagram account for his curriculum. That might boost attendance. 
7. Passage to Slow Rain

After prolonged delay, Thor, Joro and Odin made it to the portal chamber. They were alone, just the three of them, standing on a translucent particle-wave platform with seas of galaxies beneath their feet.

Before them was a sphere that swirled with collected dark matter, the sphere Thor would soon step into for transportation to Earth. Intact, he hoped. Passing through dark matter portals had been known on rare occasions to reconfigure even the physics-defying constitution of gods.

The mood was somber, even that of Odin, who seemed to have left his rowdy drunkenness behind when they exited Valhalla.

"I cannot emphasize enough to you, my son," the supreme god said. "Walk with care upon the terrestrial plane."

Thor nodded.

"While your powers will be superhuman there," Odin continued, "you will lack the strength gods wield amidst the cosmic realm. Should you encounter a giant creature of the sea that resembles Jörmungandr, you had best not skirmish with it. It would most certainly destroy you."

"Fear not, Father. I will not be upon the sea. For we know that the virgin I seek inhabits a colony between two vast mountain ranges, under the persistent showers of slow rain."

Jörmungandr was the great serpent that Thor had once vanquished, severing it at its midsection as it surrounded the entire circumference of the galaxy Midgard, where Earth was located. Thor's victory had saved Midgard, but his efforts would never be fathomed by the mortals whose doom he had prevented. Their minds could not grasp such grand scale.

"Tis true," Joro said. "However your father was merely using Jörmungandr as an example. Due to the laws of transference and localized gravitation, on Earth your powers will be above that of a mortal's but not by leagues. Should you encounter the opposition of an overwhelming force, you very well might perish, or fail to return with the virgin at the very least."

Thor understood. On Earth, he would be half-mortal, which was mortal enough to be vanquished in open combat. He would be subject to the laws of Earth and to the laws of man, the latter of which were sure to be much more arbitrary than gravity's decree.

Nevertheless the prospect of such risk excited him. Life in Asgard was more or less the same from mega-cycle to mega-cycle. Real change, just like real risk, was rare. No god it seemed ever died or even experienced minor cuts or bruising.

The cosmic portal, that amoebous soup of dark matter that churned as would a witch's cauldron, was ready, as evidenced by its deep, loud belches and gurgles.

"I won't hesitate a moment longer," Thor said, stepping towards it.

As he moved forward both his parents put their hands on his back, encouraging him, almost pushing him.

"Remember, Thor," Odin said, "the fate of the Norse pantheon, and indeed the greater multiverse itself, rests in your hands. We will watch through viewing portals and remain in suspense. Once you find the virginal maiden, we will reopen the cosmic gate and retrieve you both through the portal to Asgard for ceremonial melding."

Thor wasn't exactly looking forward to that, flesh-melding with an inexperienced maiden in full view of his parents as part of an age-old pantheonic ritual. The thought repulsed him.

"Our study has revealed that you must seek out a giant rock, carried from Earth's frozen North and deposited in a ravine by living ice that gouged the ground," Joro reminded him. "A mega-cycle of careful study through viewing portals has given us reason to believe your path will converge with that of the virgin at such a stone, under circumstances of duress."

Thor thought about that, how the depiction given by viewing portals could skip around both space and time. He wondered if what he had seen through his own faulty portal was similar to what he would experience with his feet on the ground, or if he had actually watched events, cultures and customs from a different terrestrial era entirely.

Nodding acknowledgement, Thor stepped into the cosmic passage.

Once he'd set one foot inside, it sucked the rest of him through with such ferocity that he screamed, the agonizing pain an approximation of being torn limb from limb, atom from atom. Gods were powerful indeed, but the chaotic nature of dark matter was something else entirely.

"Take care!" he heard his mother's distant voice somewhere behind him. "Do not spill the limited essence from your life-hammer before you can find the proper vessel!"

Then her voice was gone, and all Thor could hear was the crackle of solar flares and the sound of his own pain-filled cries. 
8. Quake Shelter

Raven left the church and walked back to the Ave to spange until after the bars closed. The drizzle had stopped but the skies were still overcast, as they always seemed to be except for a couple of months a year.

The hours crawled by, and eventually she made it to her goal of twenty dollars, enough to buy a gram of pot so she could take some tokes before crashing at her squat. But she stayed on, so she could get some munchies too. Tough trying to sleep on an empty stomach.

At 2 a.m. the bars closed and drunk students staggered out onto the sidewalks, yelling and making themselves easy marks. Raven worked them, knowing exactly how to deal with such a crowd. She threw in a few winks, the good old-fashioned smile, and a little desperation in her voice when she asked, over and over, if they could spare some change.

$24 total.

She was on a roll.

$27.

_Wow, good night._ Friday nights always were.

$30.

Tonight she would be able to afford something more than just the bean burritos she usually carried back to the squat with her.

$31.

And that was that. The sidewalks were almost empty now. Everyone was in their warm dorms and safe beds. They usually liked Raven, UW students. She was a likable person.

She felt comfortable with her situation; she felt free. The streets could be mean, no doubt, but she had not yet seen just how mean they could get. She had only heard the horror stories.

Raven was willing to push the envelope though, because no place in her mind was meaner than her family's isolated prison in the suburbs, with a cruel warden and guards to monitor her every move.

After stocking up on grub, Raven hopped the night-owl bus down Eastlake, with Lake Union on the right, Capitol Hill to the left. She sat and gazed out the window for the short ten-minute trip. At a stop on the other side of the University Bridge, a young man got on wearing a gray jumpsuit splattered with paint. He sat up towards the front and chatted with the driver. He said that he was a boat painter who worked at night because he preferred the peace.

Raven knew what the young man really was. He was a graffiti artist. The University District was crawling with them in the early hours of the morning. The identity of a boat painter was a disguise that fit in with the story of the regular world, the day world. It was little things like this that Raven never would have noticed had she not learned to hop mass transit. On a bus, she learned to observe. Being in a car gave people tunnel vision.

Minutes later Raven got off near the I-5 freeway overpass and walked the final four blocks to her destination, a two-floor wood house ready for demolition. It was boarded up, dark and creepy. Before she walked around to the back to wedge her way through a basement window, she reached into her backpack for the appropriate gear.

Red LED flashlight?

Check. Red light was dimmer and attracted less attention than white or yellow.

Pepper spray?

Check.

That was all Raven needed from the bag for now. One tool in each hand, ready for battle with the darkness and whatever might be hiding in it.

Her adrenaline was high as she went around the house, her shoes getting wet as she walked through the tall, damp grass. It was especially dark back here, because the pine trees lining the yard filtered out light spillover from the neighboring property, which wasn't abandoned. That and there was no moonlight to help. There rarely was in Seattle because of the cloud cover.

In the back yard Raven squatted by a small basement window and flicked on the red LED, shining it through the clouded glass to make sure there wasn't anything inside that hadn't been there the previous night.

Looks safe. No signs of intrusion.

Confident the coast was clear, she lifted the window open.

As usual the whole process, with wood scraping wood, made too much noise for Raven's comfort. Once the small window was as open as it could get, she froze for a minute to make sure she had not alerted the neighbors. Then, after her pulse began to go back down again, she put the light in her teeth to free up her hands and got on her knees in the grass to crawl through.

It was a tight squeeze but she made it, her feet landing on the concrete floor inside. There she took the light from her mouth and shined it around the interior.

She was in a short hall. At the one end was the boarded-up door that had at one point opened to the outside. At the other end a second door looked like it led upstairs. It too was reinforced and blocked with plywood. Raven had not even tried to break through it. She was happy just staying in the basement.

In the middle of the hallway close to where she stood was a third door, which was ajar. Through it was a room that had probably once been used for storage or as a spare bedroom.

Before heading into the room, Raven went about closing and barricading the small window she had just entered through. She wedged part of a wooden pallet in the gap and leaned an old sheet of soiled drywall against that. If anyone tried to shove their way in, this barricade would fall to the concrete and wake her up, Raven hoped.

Satisfied with her handiwork, she went through the door into the room. In the middle of the floor there she'd left a half-burnt candle and an extra blanket. She sat on the blanket and lit the candle with a lighter she fished from her pocket, then switched off the flashlight.

Before lying down she smoked a small bowl of weed. Within an hour she was fast asleep, cozy in her safe, hidden nest.

Hours later, a thundering clap awoke Raven. She bolted upright, her heart pounding in her ears and her body on alert, waiting for any more sounds of an intrusion into her squat.

But then the deluge came. Driving rain hit the side of the house, and she realized that a storm raged out there in the night.

Wow, Seattle never gets thunderstorms.

As wind punished the building, she tossed off her blanket and grabbed her pepper spray, then pushed herself to her feet to creep out into the hall and check on her barricade.

It was still operational. Through the cracks in the pallet she could see the flash of lightning.

Raven smiled. She always slept well when she could hear rain.
9. Passing Through

Thor tumbled through space-time, his newly forming human flesh crawling with prickles and burning sensations as gravity and light tore at it from every direction. He cried out.

Thor saw himself upon a gargantuan wheel peeling back mega-cycles, carrying him to a distant corner of the universe. He knew he would place his feet upon a ground with new rules, new sights, sounds and smells. As all around him roared his god-thunder, atomic forces carried him across the surface of the wheel that spun like a top on the astral plane. Finally, Thor sensed initial breaths of Earth wind in his pink lungs.

Then he found himself sailing in great winds over a sea of clouds. Within them was a lightning storm into which he fell, unable to thwart or slow his descent.

He pierced the cloud cover and below it was pouring rain. As the rain descended so did Thor, over vast and prominent mountain ranges. In the distance, beyond innumerable peaks, he could see an ocean.

As he fell, he began to see lights from a million torches, all clustered at the edge of a long lake. The forces that propelled him oriented his descent to the direction of those torches, torches that did not flicker but rather emitted constant, artificial glow. The sea-colony grew closer and closer until Thor could see the citadels and shacks from which the torches emanated.

Closer still, Thor realized the sea-colony that was to be his landing site was of incredible size, beyond anything he had imagined, beyond anything he had seen through the viewing portal which granted only brief glimpses of Midgard's reality.

There was another flash all around him, and his descent seemed accelerated to such speed that he could only witness his passage in a blur. Then it was quiet again, and Thor found himself shivering under a large rusted-iron lattice bridge. Over the sides of the bridge cascaded rain that pelted the muddled soil with force.

As was to be expected, Thor had arrived carried by his totem elements: sky floods and lightning bolts. In every direction loomed dark evergreen trees, their branches swaying in the wind.

Thor looked at the skin of his arm, puzzled as he watched it quiver in the chill night air. Never before had he experienced the sensation of the weaknesses to which gravitated mortals were so accustomed. He marveled at the possibility that the wind and the chill could harm him, most especially should he fail to secure garments to adorn his person much as a Nordic wolf donned winter fur.

"What the fuck?" someone said.

Thor looked around to see who it was but his eyes were stunned and he lacked focus.

"Awww shit, is he one of those neo-Nazis that've been coming up from the Ave?" asked someone else.

Then Thor saw them there, to the side, also under the bridge. There stood two mangy mortals, surely peasants, with grease-stained faces and ragged clothes on their slight frames. One was gaunt and thin, the other had a funny-looking bulge of a stomach but was no less sickly in appearance.

"Another one?" asked the bigger fellow, staring at Thor. "Wow. Dude's ripped. Looks like a male model who lost his shit and went AWOL from the runway. Whoa. What's with those tree tattoos?"

The duo eyed Thor as they hastily gathered up what looked like felt bed rolls and stuffed them into satchels.

"Pack it up, let's head for the Hill. This guy's sketchy as hell," said the smaller one.

Thor did not understand half the words they spoke, despite his careful study of New English. As his tutors had warned him, nothing could prepare a god for the day-to-day low speech of a peasant culture.

"Yeah, he looks dangerous. Those eyes! Shit I'm out of here."

The skinny one ran from under the bridge into the rain, up a trail nearby and out of sight, leaving the other to finish gathering his bedroll on his own.

"Dude! Don't just ditch me here!" the bigger peasant called out.

Thor wondered, why had the second mortal not also fled, and why had neither bowed in reverence? The now-half-god forgot for a moment that he appeared to them as one of them, as a fellow Midgardian and Earthling.

"Hey, man, you will freeze out here," the remaining peasant said to Thor. "Shit, I'm surprised you haven't already despite them steroids you gotta been bulking up with."

Thor looked down and realized he had his own arms wrapped around his torso, and that the shivering of his flesh body had intensified.

"Here, take this trench coat," the peasant said, removing his dirty cloak and setting it on the rocky ground at his feet.

As he lifted his satchel to his shoulder, the peasant continued, "But you're gonna have to find something to wear underneath it ASAP, or you might get busted for indecent exposure."

Indecent? Nothing could be indecent about the perfect rendition of a god within the context of a mortal Earth-body, Thor thought.

"You look skeptical. Check it, big guy, I have your interests in mind, believe me. Very few cats out here would give you a rain jacket off their back," the peasant said, looking out into the torrential downpour. "Most especially during heavy weather."

He shrugged and added, "I'll just have to find a garbage bag to wear until me and my bro can make it to the squat."

Then he too turned and hiked away, up the dirt hillside towards the thoroughfares above, presumably to find his departed affiliate.

Thor watched him leave, then noticed a peculiar sensation in his nostrils. It seemed as if he was about to expunge some demon from his skull. An overwhelming urge came over him, an urge to force out a mass of pestering energy.

Then he sneezed.
10. Visitation

Raven woke up to another loud clap. This time she was not as surprised as before, but she rubbed her eyes and shook off her dreams anyway.

Then she realized that the storm outside had stopped. It still sounded like it was raining but only a little, so she reached for her pepper spray and LED and then hopped to her feet. If the clap wasn't thunder, it might have been the drywall alarm she set up on her way in.

Before she could turn on her light, Raven heard another sound down the hall. It sounded like someone was shoving their way through the small window.

"Shit, looks like someone already mobbed up into this place," she heard a guy's voice say.

A light flicked on outside the door to the room Raven was in, a regular white LED that shined around in the hall.

"Relax. I scoped it last night on my way to cop on the Hill. It's quiet. Hey, help me through," said a different guy.

More jostling and grunts.

"Fat ass," the first one said.

Raven grabbed her pack and stood in front of it, to guard it. By then the guys were coming down the hall already, so she went for her pepper spray.

"I'm soaked. I hope there's a blanket in here," one said.

Raven didn't know what to do. There was nowhere to hide except a small closet, which was full of rolled-up carpet padding. The intruders seemed pretty harmless...

"I have candles!" she shouted before anyone appeared at the door. "And an extra blanket!"

The intruders stopped, quiet for a moment.

Then the white LED turned the corner of the doorframe, aiming inside the room and right at Raven's face.

"Hey! Don't blind me!" she said.

"Sorry."

The light aimed back down at the floor.

"Here," she said, "Red's better. It won't make your eyes keep adjusting like white light."

She flicked on her red flashlight and looked at the face of whoever just broke into her squat.

The guy was thin and had a few piercings and long hair. After scoping him out Raven aimed the light up at her own face so he also could see who he was dealing with.

"I have pepper spray in my hand," she said.

Another, larger guy walked through the doorway into the room.

"Well, I'll be damned, someone beat us to it," he said, holding up his arms.

"First you lure us in with candles and blankets, then you threaten us with an eyeful of spice?" the smaller one asked. "Typical."

Raven shrugged.

"What am I supposed to do? Play dead?"

He chuckled. "Look girly, we're just a couple of dopeheads looking for a place to fix and snooze. And if you know anything about the game, a candle is right up our alley."

After they'd settled in and sorted themselves out, the two junkies proceeded to do what was most important to any of their kind: fixing up their drugs. Raven had lit two candles for them, which they used to cook their brown tar down into thick liquid, drawing it up into clean syringes from the needle exchange. While they worked, Raven sat back on her bedding and watched the whole process.

As they prepared their fixes, the guys introduced themselves. The thinner one with long hair was named Drab. He was from Tacoma, he said as he found his vein, and he had been strung out for more than a decade.

The second, bigger guy had just gotten out of jail, where they buzzed his hair off because of lice. He had kicked the dope habit in County, "the worst place in the world to come off of heroin," he said. His street name was Tubz, because of his beer gut that never went away no matter how long he went without food.

Tubz drew up a much smaller amount of the ugly drug than Drab, and aimed it for his wrist. "I'm relishing this first week of easy highs. By next month I'll be back up to a gram a day." And in it went.

By then Drab was already kicked back on a roll of carpet padding, deep into his opium daze. As his pupils glazed over, Tubz eyed Raven.

"Never shot up before, have you?" he asked.

Raven shook her head.

"You even watched someone shoot up?"

She shook her head again.

Tubz nodded, his eyes barely open. "Well do yourself a favor and just don't go there, ever," he said.

In under a minute he too was passed out.

The guys woke up at dawn, one by one. Raven was awake already, and had been unable to get in more than a few hours of dozing. She was still a bit spooked by the arrival of two new guests at her squat.

She had toyed around with the idea of inviting others to stay in the basement, thinking it might be safer than being alone there. But the more people, the more activity, drugs and noise. And that meant more attention from neighbors, which meant more attention from cops. So she'd kept the location to herself, which obviously hadn't made much of a difference because now she had roommates anyway.

Once up, the two guys barely spoke to her at first. Their main focus was going over their drug supply and making sure they had enough to get high again before they left to go hustle.

"We have about a half gram piece," Drab said.

"That's not enough," said Tubz.

"No, definitely not. When is it ever enough?"

After they fixed again they gabbed with Raven while smoking their morning cigarettes.

"You know, these are some mean streets out here," Drab said. "If skinheads or crack-dealing pimps don't get to you, the cops will. Especially the cops, they're all bastards."

Tubz shook his head. "Naw, not all cops are bastards. One saved me once when I was getting beat down by a group of frat boys on the Ave. I might have brain damage if it wasn't for that cop."

Drab dragged off his cigarette and shrugged. "One incident. One. Any other examples you can think of?" he asked.

But Tubz didn't volunteer an answer. "Exactly," continued Drab. "In my experience cops are only there to arrest you, wake you up and kick you out into the rain. That or take all your money and drugs. They're bastards."

Tubz looked away from Drab to Raven. "You shouldn't trust anyone really," he said. "But your best bet is to find a decent boyfriend if you can to keep you warm and safe at night. I'm not volunteering or anything."

Drab nodded. "Yeah, it's a liability, having to look after a young, pretty girlfriend. Plus we're both in love with Madame Opium and she doesn't like it when we cheat."

Tubz laughed at his friend's joke, and they both started to gather their things to leave.

"Please don't tell anyone else about this squat," Raven pleaded.

"Your secret is safe with us," Tubz said, smiling.

Before they went for the window, Drab stopped and looked back at her through the doorway.

"Hey," he said, "watch out for this crazy Aryan punk dude who's romping around town. He kicked us out from under the bridge last night. Looks real spooky like a Viking berserker. Seems like the type of person who doesn't ask permission. For anything."

Raven nodded.

Viking berserker, huh? Now that sounded sketchy. 
11. Given Pause

The morning after the mega storm that had thrashed Seattle, Redding went early to his office on campus to grade papers and get in some quiet study for a few hours before his first lecture. There he sat, looking out the window at the mist and pines as the sun rose, distracted from his tasks by thoughts of the abrupt inclement weather that had beat down on Seattle the previous night.

His curiosity piqued, he reached for his laptop and pulled up a basic search on local thunderstorm frequency.

Zero to ten per year, said the almighty lord Google.

That's unusual.

Redding felt thankful that this year at least the number had gone above zero. Inclement weather boosted his productivity and creative inspiration. It also improved his sleep and motivated him to exercise more.

Zero to ten was too infrequent. Not that Redding would have traded the varied topography of the West Coast for tenure in a place like Boston, where weather patterns were more impressive but the mountains left much to be desired.

Redding started thinking about how the influence of weather on ancient mythology rivaled the influence of landscape. Wherever a sea or a mountain deity existed, so did a rain or a storm deity.

The professor let his thoughts drift on. Another way to look at it was from a simplistic elemental perspective. Seattle and the greater Northwest were blessed with the natural pillars of high mountain ranges, of the earth, and abundant water elements, but rather lacked in the departments of wind and fire, as the area rarely experienced impressive storms and lightning. That and Seattle often got little sunshine due to overcast skies.

Still, Redding realized, one might want to consider the "ring of fire" which the entire West Coast sat on, sometimes resulting in eruptions of lava. Ten of the sixteen most dangerous volcanic mountains in the world existed near the Pacific Ocean, one of which was Mount Rainier, visible on a rare clear day from UW campus. Sure, the Atlantic had volcanoes too, but they were all on a ridge in the middle of the ocean rather than on the coasts of continents.

The most recent volcanic event local to the Pacific Northwest had been the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, allegedly taking 57 lives and most definitively clearing trees away for miles around. Taking that into account, it seemed that while Seattle demonstrated as much only occasionally, the place was still endowed with the element of fire. More so than most other places in the world by some standards, despite the lack of solar exposure.

Redding shut his laptop, determined not to allow meandering Internet searches to deplete what was left of his precious coffee buzz. He had a bad habit of seeing connections everywhere, of following dubious academic sources and diagonal tangents.

Instead he picked up a book from his desk that pertained somewhat to the topic at hand. It was a reprinted version of an early study covering Pacific Northwest Native American mythology, an overview by a fellow named Walter Shelley Phillips.

Grading papers be damned! Redding wanted to brush up on the various deities that resided on mountaintops surrounding his rainswept hometown.
12. Stranger in a Stranger Land

Barefoot, and covered only by the cloak the peasant gave him under the bridge, Thor traipsed the thoroughfares of the sea-colony.

The young god's eyes were agape at the sights of his new environs. Debris lined the walkways. Random scraps of refuse were strewn about, as well as tipped-over cylindrical barrels that had apparently once contained them. Thor smiled at the masterwork of his arrival-storm, the display of godly strength that had rendered human foibles but skipping stones on the surface of an impartial universe with infinite depth.

He still sensed the chill in his body however, the thin cloak only a slight barrier against the wind. Indeed, as the kindly peasant had noted, Thor would need to find additional garb.

The light of a new sun glowed into low clouds above as he passed by silent merchants' stalls protected only by panes of polished sand glass. Inside the stalls were displayed the myriad confections of Earth culture. Shiny pots and pans, colorful tomes and artwork, and the very clothes that the half-mortal god needed to insulate himself before continuing his mission.

He stopped in front of one stall that showed behind its panes the uniforms of soldiers from Earth wars: fine green felt trousers and collared tunics. He surmised that a merchant had left them there to lure potential hagglers who passed, but was too lazy to carry the garments back into stowage once trading hours ceased.

Humans must trust one another so, he thought. For they secure their wares of commerce only behind brittle glass.

Looking back and forth on the empty street to see if any Midgardians watched, Thor saw none. So he turned back to the storefront and bashed the sand glass window with his fist, easily shattering it to pieces. The flaked shards scattered onto his arms and down upon his bare cold feet, leaving a few superficial cuts on his toes and cascading about on the concrete.

Immediately after his grand entrance, an incessant artificial whine began to sound from inside the stall, so loud that it would most certainly alert anyone within the vicinity. The whine had such a shrill tone that it hurt Thor's ears, the experience of pain and weakness surprising him yet again, so foreign and strange.

He climbed through the window and snatched the trousers and tunic that had caught his eye, also going for a hat that looked like it would fit his cranium. Meanwhile the sound continued to berate him, throttling his head as would a harpy with its toxic, high-pitched tone. He needed to escape the premises, posthaste.

With the loot in his arms, Thor hopped back down onto the street and promptly cut the bottoms of his feet on the shattered glass. Pushing pain aside, he broke off into a sprint at full gait, ignoring the sting of the shards he carried embedded in the flesh of his soles. 
13. Peer Review

"It was a hell of a storm, James," Redding's friend Viktoria Kraven said as they sat at the University Inn pub over a few pints in the early evening. "Once in a century, with any luck."

Viktoria lived in the same condo building as Redding, right above the University Inn. They often met like this.

"Shit, James," continued Vik. "That was about as rare as witnessing the passing of Halley's Comet."

Viktoria was a scientist, the type of person Redding usually preferred to avoid socializing with as much as possible. Scientists didn't often make very good conversation. They predictably came up with statistics and measurements. Their discourse was monotone and dull, particularly among the younger ones recently out of graduate school, enamored with rote facts and faith in their own disruptive genius.

It wasn't that Redding loathed science per se, it was just that he was utterly convinced favoring science over the humanities would achieve the inevitable result of turning humanity into robots.

In this regard Viktoria had achieved some semblance of balance in her career. She had chaired the board of the ICHM, the International Commission on the History of Meteorology, so she was also a historian of sorts. The commission studied the social and cultural aspects of meteorological research.

Additionally she was a scholar of philosophy of science, a field not entirely without its merits, Redding felt. It asked the tough questions that many hard-core materialists took for granted as having already been answered.

Still, Viktoria was a scientist at heart. One who taught in the UW Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, so she had access to some of the latest gadgetry for measuring weather patterns. And apparently, as she described it, the storm the previous night had indeed been once in a lifetime, for Seattle at least.

"It reached an altitude of fifty-thousand feet. That's rare for anywhere in the States. Usually I get excited to see one that gets to twenty," she said, taking a gulp of microbrewed India pale ale before launching back into her giddy excitement.

"I can't believe it! I barely ate all day, I was just glued to the meters and scopes, running numbers to verify it wasn't some sort of surreal dream."

"So why are you telling me about it?" Redding teased. "Don't you have some climate research comrades to high five?"

Viktoria looked at the floor as if she might find some hope there.

"You should have seen it. I've witnessed more enthusiasm and awe from a dot-matrix printer. This latest group I'm working with especially, they can't get excited about anything."

Redding glanced left and right. He felt a little self-conscious, as if a group of freshman Alpha Gammas might be listening in and giggling at the duo's stereotypical "cranky professor" routine.

"Just like I tell you, Vik. That's what the hard sciences do, they obliterate the sublime. They intoxicate the human mind with illusions of grandeur, convincing us the universe in its entirety has an end, and that eventually we will reach its finality. A utopia of total, fascistic knowledge."

Vik frowned and nodded in agreement. "I see it in the undergrads especially," she said. "Kids raised on touch screens. They come into atmospherics because they can make a ton of money on contract for some offshore methane hydrate extraction company, working with engineers to ensure that infrastructure and logistics won't sustain storm damage. But meteorology is not engineering. It's so much more. That's why meteorologists still get it wrong. It's beyond us, always will be. All we can do is study and measure it. We can never fully harness it."

Redding finished off his beer. He and his colleague had been over all of this before, more or less, and they saw eye to eye despite coming from such different academic fields.

He patted Vik on the shoulder.

"Well thanks for stopping by. You know what's funny, Vik?" he said, standing and looking down at his friend.

She looked up at him and shrugged.

"The natives of the Northwest didn't have a storm god, none that I know of. They had mountain deities, deities from the ocean depths, and certainly angry volcano spirits. I bet that's because of how rare weather like last night's is around here."

Vik nodded. "Yeah, and the Norse didn't even make it through the polar ice over to this side, as far as we know."

Redding laughed. "You know me, Vik. I have a lot of crackpot theories."
14. Word Travels

Raven kept hearing more rumors about what Drab had called a Viking berserker. Other Ave Rats said they'd seen him downtown or on First Hill, though he hadn't been spotted in the University District yet.

No one said that he attacked or threatened them, but everyone said that they were frightened he would, mainly because of how he looked and the way he talked.

Stories of similar experiences were passed around over the tables at teen feed, on the street corners, on buses, everywhere. He was tall, had long hair, a short beard, and he was tattooed all over his body with "tree patterns." Oh yeah, and he was dressed in a trench coat and army clothes.

Pretty much everyone assumed the guy was a skinhead from some pagan death metal branch of the Aryan brotherhood, one who had taken too much speed (and steroids) and lost his shit. Now he wandered around half-naked, and when he talked to people he did so in some strange broken English with the tones in all the wrong places as if he was speaking backwards.

All of this made Raven curious. Tattoos of tree patterns seemed to disagree with the skinhead story. That sounded more like a hippie. But also he wore army clothes, like skinheads. But also he was barefoot. Skinheads always wore thick boots.

Raven headed up to Capitol Hill. She'd heard there was some protest going on at Seattle Central Community College and wanted to be there for it. Too young to have been at the legendary World Trade Organization protest in '99, she didn't want to miss out again on such an awesome street party like that. Not that she expected as much action as had happened at the WTO. She just wanted to experience the resistance to authority that Seattle and the Northwest in general were famous for.

Plus she wondered if she would get her own sighting of the new Viking guy in town, because most of the rumors she heard said he was up on Capitol Hill.

When Raven arrived on the scene, she realized that this could be a good one. The crowd carried huge colorful banners and giant puppets which each took three people to operate. Community leaders took turns yelling through megaphones. Drumbeats and pot smoke filled the air above the open red brick square at the south end of the college campus on Pine Street.

"We are prepared!" shouted someone on a megaphone. "Should the authorities escalate, we have street medics and representatives of the National Lawyers Guild on hand!"

Nearby, on Broadway, armored bike cops were parked in a line, ready for action.

"Remember 1999! Remember May Day!" shouted the crowd.

The local resistance had grown every year. But it also had to deal with anarchists who liked to break windows and throw things at the armored storm troopers. Word was that some of those anarchists were actually undercover agents working for the government to fire up the protest and make the resistance appear violent.

Raven didn't know what to think. She didn't even know what "anarchist" meant really, but she did know that she didn't trust authority in general.

"I urge everyone to seek out peaceful resistance today!" a megaphone rang out. "Because if we submit to the lure of chaos, our message will be disregarded by the national media and we will be labeled fanatics!"

Someone passed Raven a joint, which she toked from, twice. She needed to take the edge off, because the electric vibe of the protest had hit her like a quadruple espresso mixed with Red Bull.

"Pass it on! Don't bogart it!" someone nearby barked at her as she gulped down her second lungful.

She did as told, and coughed. "Thank you," she said to whoever had passed it her way.

Without pot, there was just no way Raven could cope with the stress of homelessness. At least she didn't mess with the heavy stuff. She knew of no one on the streets who didn't self-medicate with something. It was a given. Homeless? You did drugs or alcohol, to some extent. Might not help in the long term but in the short term it certainly made things more comfortable.

"Hey, Raven right?" a guy said.

He jostled up next to her through the crowd, and Raven saw that it was Drab, from the squat a few nights before.

"Oh hi," she said, a little surprised.

"Come up from the Ave?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Another one of these. I dig it," he said, looking around at the crowd. "They shut down the needle exchange in Fremont just last week, the bastards."

Who were "they," wondered Raven Then she realized: anyone with authority, basically.

"We never went back to your squat," said Drab. "Found another one that still has the power turned on. Couldn't believe it. You can crash there if you want, remind me to write down the address later."

Raven nodded again. She was stoned. The weed was strong.

The crowd was getting bigger by the second, with people jamming into the square from every direction. The megaphones began to get drowned out by shouts from people nearby as the energy of the event intensified.

"Damn, looks like this one is going to be another party. I don't really have an agenda, you know?" Drab said. "You take away one power structure, you put another in its place. Sometimes I think the only real solution is a giant asteroid or something."

Raven could hear only bits of what the closest person on a megaphone was saying. "Do not give in to the lure of chaos... "

"After a certain point, it's all the same anyway," Drab continued.

And then there was a final call to begin the protest march.

"Let's go, people!" sounded a megaphone. "Raise those banners high!"

The crowd began to move out of the square and onto Pine Street, heading towards Westlake Center in the middle of downtown Seattle.

"Let's stick together," Raven said to Drab, tugging on his arm. "Where's Tubz?"

Drab shook his head and shrugged.

"No idea. We're not attached at the hip. Alive I hope."
15. First Contact

Thor huddled in a sheltered gateway to a hovel alongside a thoroughfare, on the side of a hill that seemed to be a popular locale for Midgardians. There he made an attempt to rest, after wandering about for many micro-cycles trying to map out the sea-colony in his mind's eye.

Kindly, random mortals had handed him things to eat as they went about their futile business of illusory importance. Terrestrial fare was not agreeing with Thor's stomach however, and already that morning he had twice expunged its contents down onto his bare feet. This frustrated him, as did almost everything about being Earthbound. He thought he'd escaped the stench of god-vomit when he turned his back on Valhalla.

Two days had passed since Thor set his feet down in such strong gravity, and he had made no progress in finding the virgin. None. Apparently she was dark in hair and skin and comely, but that was all he had to lead his way. No name, no clue as to her precise whereabouts.

He could understand no one who passed him by on the thoroughfares and neither could he convey to them his intent with clarity. The gods, despite their vast power, could not comprehend the natural day-to-day lilt of the Earthbound. The power of language, or lack thereof, superseded even the power of a god to create and destroy.

This virgin was to be a unique individual, one with special properties and traits. Such a person does not go unnoticed and, thankfully, the colony where Thor had to search was not as vast as it could be. They called it Sea-attle, that much he had gleaned. Vexingly, when he tried to speak its name he stammered. He practiced, but he could not approximate the tones and grew frustrated with this weakness of tongue.

As he sat cross-legged in the gateway and waited for a sign, Thor ran his fingertips over the soles of his feet. They were healed already from the sand glass he'd stomped on after freeing his clothes from the unfortified shack in which merchants had stowed them.

Carriages passed by, loud and rumbling. Thor was accustomed to their growl by now. At first he had been puzzled by their sound and appearance, for they had bizarre ornaments and did not rely on horses or oxen to draw them.

After some time a different kind of carriage sped up the street, a blue one that rolled faster than the others. It had loud, high-pitched bugles on its roof that squealed like pigs, as well as flashing blue and red lights. Thor put his fingers to his ears as it passed by, and wondered what destination it sought. Then came another, and another.

The young god stood and stepped out of the covered gateway. The light rain had abated. He walked out into the street to survey the scene. Not many humans roamed about, and once the squealing carriages disappeared over the hill the calls of crows overtook the sonic realm again.

"Show me your hands," spoke a voice behind him.

Thor turned to see who had emitted the strange command with such harsh manner, and saw that it was a blue-clad uniformed guardsman who stood before a carriage much like those that had passed, except this one was idle and did not squeal.

"Surprises me it does, palace sentry, that you hath not alerted my sound senses to your approach," Thor said, though the colonial guard did not seem to understand.

"Sir, I need to detain you and run your name. Please don't make me draw my weapon."

Thor chuckled under his breath.

"I have yet to fully gain comprehension of your dialects. Yet am I to understand you wish to enshackle the god of the storm that hath descended upon your colony twice night previous?"

The blue guard looked much puzzled. Thor reasoned that the very sound of his own divine voice struck mortal ears with an amalgamation of both fear and awe.

The guardsman spoke into a small black device on his shoulder in a peculiar manner. Thor thought he must be subject to the lunacy so common among his kind and pitied him. The life of a madman must be akin to walking an endless corridor in which the walls crawled with nagging demons.

The device on the guardsman's shoulder spoke back to him in a harsh, hissing tone, and then the madman sighed.

"Copy that," the guardsman said, not to Thor but back into his shoulder again. Then he straightened his head and addressed the god before him.

"Next time I see you, I'm going to need to ask some questions. For now, between the damage of the storm and the protest up the street, where you obtained those army fatigues you're wearing will be determined later."

Blast the vernacular speech of these gravitated mortals. It's almost as if they speak backwards. Thor just couldn't grasp it.

The guardsman ignored the storm god and returned to his automated carriage. This time, after he boarded, he made it squeal, both from the bugles on its rooftop and the spinning black wax wheels it rolled on.

Thor watched and shook his head as the carriage ascended the thoroughfare up the hill on which he stood. The weakness of the mostly mortal body he was trapped in troubled him, and he resolved to pay more attention to his surroundings so no blue guardsman could sneak up on him again.
16. The Myths That Warn

"Everyone prepared?" Redding asked his class. "Because it's about to get super over-analytical in this joint."

There were a few, slight chuckles. Enunciating "super" probably did the trick, that and using the vernacular phrasing, thought Redding.

"Academics tend to do that, dontcha know," he added in his best Minnesotan accent.

Nothing on that second one, not a sarcastic heckle or charity giggle among them.

"Bear with me. Looking back in time, say, five or ten millennia more or less, what has survived to tell us about past civilizations?"

The professor didn't wait for anyone to volunteer answers. Instead he just tapped on his laptop to project an image of a Sumerian cuneiform tablet onto the white screen behind him.

Dazzle them with images, Redding. It's your only hope.

"The most prevalent and easily observed testaments to the history of humankind," said the professor, "are either constructed with or inscribed upon rock, such as the pyramid of Giza or a cave painting. We have stone and we have words. Nothing has outlasted those two artifacts of human culture."

The students, all three of them, seemed at least half-interested. Redding figured that the two students who were absent didn't attend because of all the events that had occurred in Seattle the past few days. First the storm, and now the growing protests that had bogged down traffic on Capitol Hill where many students lived.

He tapped the laptop again, and an image of fossilized dinosaur bones appeared.

"Geology provides an enduring and almost immortal template for recording history, whether by human hands or natural forces."

He clicked again, this time pulling up an image of cave paintings.

"As surely you already know, our myths, and the words we use to transmit them, be they spoken or written, are more easily altered than rocks. By word of mouth and print forgery, by flame and deceit, we filter our myths. But they likewise get filtered through time, as a stone arrowhead gets filtered through cycles of weather."

He clicked yet again, this time bringing up a picture of Mount Rainier.

"The interesting thing is, our myths often seem to coincide with our facts, and I would even argue presage them. Take for instance the warning of Sluisin, a local native guide to white explorers who planned to climb Rainier. Sluisin told them not to go there, for an angry chief lived at the top of the mountain in a lake of fire."

Click.

An image of Mount St. Helens erupting popped up.

"Most people think of Mount St. Helens when they think of local volcanoes. But Rainier has erupted multiple times throughout history. This oral tradition of an angry chief in a lake of fire was most likely not purely imaginative storytelling on the part of Sluisin. It was knowledge of history passed down to him over a multitude of preceding generations."

Redding was losing them, he could tell. He had to think quickly, of some sound bite, some cynical Tweet-length quip to wake them back up again.

"Show of hands, how many in here slept through the storm?"

Time to make it personal. Time to engage them.

No one even raised an eyebrow.

"I did," he continued. "I always sleep better during inclement weather."

Nothing. Why am I here? All his bluster, that typical academic, self-inflated importance - in the end it meant nothing.

Redding wanted to ask himself some tough questions. Like why do I even try and is there any future for the humanities. But he caught himself and tried to force his thought trajectory into a sharp U-turn. If he were going to melt down under the threat of a full-blown existential crisis, he absolutely refused to do so while on stage in front of three students who were probably texting each other from a few seats apart.

There's always tension between generations, he reminded himself. _Maybe I just need to cultivate a little trust. I need to have faith in the over-arching narrative, to let it do its thing. The more I try to control my environment, the more it needs to be controlled._

With an inward sigh, Redding realized once again that when he passed, whether from a car wreck that evening or from old age in too few years, he might not leave behind anything etched in stone. No one would really remember him, certainly not these students. He would leave behind his academic book, sure, published by the university press. But paper decays, and it would not stay on shelves forever. Besides, the print run had been only a few thousand.

The professor came to. He decided to change tack and talk about sex. That was almost guaranteed to get the kids' attention, though it was risky.

"Now I'm going to talk about virginity."

Okay, all three looked up from their devices, their interest piqued.

He smiled."That usually does the trick."

He clicked through a sequence of images and arrived at one of the Virgin Mary.

"The mother goddess, here depicted as the Virgin Mary, provides a mythological archetype for nature, motherhood, fertility and the bounty of the earth. The historical emphasis on sexual purity, particularly female purity, may have represented the purity of nature, which industrial technology alters and refines."

The students were all ears on this attempt, but Redding knew he was pressing his luck by speaking in such long paragraphs.

"I veer into conjecture here. I just wanted to demonstrate how many possible connections there are. Between cultures, between histories and mythologies. But also, as I mentioned earlier, between branches of study that many would have you believe are at odds with one another. The Egyptians engineered those pyramids, but they also wrote on and in them. The structure was vessel for the word."

Redding's job was to get students excited about stories. And, on a rare day, he succeeded. Unfortunately, that was quickly becoming Redding's only duty: somehow, through self-sacrifice if necessary, to get young people excited about studying culture. Plant seeds of interest in them, seeds that might not pay off until long after the students floated through his classes on their way to degrees in computational engineering.

"I also want to emphasize," concluded Redding, "that myths do not necessarily equate with untruths. The legends we weave are often based on at least some kernel of truth, some initial fact-based source of inspiration.

"Like Sluisin and his warning. The explorers summited Rainier and returned to camp successfully. They may have laughed their native guide off as delusional, but he wasn't. He was telling a true story, only filtered through a different perspective."
17. Streets of Chaos

There were protests and there were protests against the protests. It was total chaos, which kept Raven on her toes and aware of what was going on around her. The crowd pushed and shoved and flowed like a river.

Raven felt like she was now part of something big, like an ant or a single molecule of a big, living thing. Her own needs meant less. She was now in the movement, whatever that was.

Drab stuck by her, as she asked. He didn't know why he was there either. Suspicious of it all, he was still happy to smoke free weed and maybe even witness "street TV" - the general term for the random crazy shit that could happen at any given time when out in the elements rather than locked up in the safety of a secure home situation.

One thing Raven had learned quick from the streets was to not take everything at face value. She didn't know the people who were passing megaphones around and neither did Drab. Those people were probably from a totally different background, she surmised, so they couldn't offer a lot of good answers to the special problems people like Raven and Drab faced day to day. In fact Raven didn't even take Drab at face value. He seemed chill but she would never loan him money or anything.

The march continued on down the hill. News teams followed them and anarchists mouthed off at the cameras.

"Wake up! You're part of the problem with your corporate content!" one said angrily, leaping in front of the lens, wide-eyed and flipping the bird.

Raven didn't know a lot about the anarchists, except that they looked pretty punk rock in their black shaggy clothes with bandannas on their faces. She didn't really understand what they wanted. They certainly seemed like cop magnets.

"The thing is, I bet one or two of them is a snitch or vice," Drab said, walking along next to Raven. "This whole scene is one big mindfuck. And then the riot cops start spitting venom. I've been here before on May Day. I know what it's like to get peppered."

As it approached the freeway overpass, the crowd kept getting bigger and louder. A few rocks got thrown through some windows, and most people cheered.

"Should we bail?" Raven shouted to Drab, who was separated from her by now.

Drab held up his arms.

"What could go wrong, right?" he asked.
18. Event from Mortal Eyes

Thor sat in the abandoned gateway he had returned to and meditated, pondering the task at hand. How lost he was, how he wished he could reach out across the cosmos to seek guidance from his mother and father!

That was impossible. He was alone among the Midgardians, while his brethren in Asgard no doubt caught glimpses of his progress, or lack thereof, through the haze of viewing portals, likely cringing at every mistake he made. These glum thoughts churned in Thor's mind, around and around, like the wheel of space-time he'd traveled to Earth on.

A clamor from far away broke through his nagging doubts. Crashes and thuds. Shouts and orders. The sounds of glass breaking.

As the clamor grew louder Thor stood and looked up the hill on the street where the blue guardsman had accosted him before.

Hasten yourself not, young god, Thor remembered his mother saying. For, beyond the scope of our reach, machinate forces which none shall understand. She had told him, once, that all gods had more gods above them - that none can know all and none can be all-powerful. Arrive on a storm, my son. Then allow the motion your landing initiates to cascade without haste.

The clamor grew ever louder as it approached, a commotion as made by throngs of revolting peasants. Thor saw and smelled smoke, reminding him of battlefields, of victories and defeats. His pulse quickened and every moment slowed as he breathed.

There were more squeals like the ones from the blue carriages. Then he saw the throngs. The troop of the blue guard was outnumbered, but carried better armaments.

Thor waited as the mob closed in, chanting, invoking, throwing rocks and ale bottles. Some among the ragged band lashed out at idle carriages of all colors that lined the streets. Blue colonial sentries tackled some of the peasants to the ground and placed shining silver shackles on them.

Thor clenched his jaw, drawn to join the fray in aid of the ragged, the fallen. The masses demonstrated a common bond, an intoxicating and authentic passion, while Thor saw the guardsmen as mercenaries acting in pursuit of coin rather than cause.

As the crowd passed, he stepped into it to march along with them. More scuffles broke out at the fringes, while Thor was central among the throng and sheltered as he calculated the field of battle.

Suddenly the colonial guard mounted a piercing offensive, in an attempt to separate the insurgents from the middle and disperse them, to divide before conquering. As the guardsmen rushed through the crowd towards Thor, he recognized by sight sense, through the clear visor of a newly donned helmet, the face of the one from before. It was the stealthy guard who had dared to condescend to a man-god.

Their gaze met, and the sentry recognized Thor in turn. Ignoring all the peasants, the guard raised his battle club. He pointed it right at Thor's face and pushed his way toward him.

Thor wasted no time in removing his tunic, for it was too small for his wide shoulders and would only stifle his reach and agility. The garment dropped to the masonry thoroughfare at Thor's bare feet as he readied his stance for the purification of combat. 
19. A Windswept Classroom

After class ended, the five students bolted as if a wind swept through the classroom. Scratch that, thought Redding. _More like a combined tornado and flash flood. They can't get back to their news feeds and status updates fast enough._

Redding was having trouble keeping himself from falling into a counterproductive us-versus-them mentality. The generational divide between him and his students, as well as the academic divide between his field of study and the hard sciences, both seemed insurmountable.

He sat for a few minutes at his desk, seeking a meditative state of mind. The world had changed, and he was obsolete. He was older, and he was a scholar in a subject that was as old as mankind. No one cared anymore. The university was pivoting to stem cells and STEM subjects. Funding for the humanities was dropping each semester while robotics and biotech got all the attention.

Lost in thought, Redding's mind wandered back a few months to an event at the Microsoft campus in Redmond which he'd attended as Viktoria's guest. She'd needed an escort, so he obliged, but the experience proved awkward.

The programmers and engineers he mingled with seemed incapable of in-depth conversation. They spoke like androids about smartphone features and coding. When they did veer off those work-related subjects it was to reference the geekology of popular culture and Marvel superheroes, while never mentioning the classics. At the time Redding had imagined he was drifting through a crowd of people falling somewhere along the autistic spectrum. Some might not even have known Shakespeare's first name.

They were agreeable; it wasn't that Redding didn't like them. They were honest people who were just making a living doing what the world demanded of them, working in tech fields.

Still, the humanities were called humanities for a reason. The trend of educational institutions to eschew all but the bare minimum of nonscientific subjects as prerequisites for a degree deeply troubled him. Humans were losing what made them human. At some point people stopped using technology and technology started using people.

Instead of a meditative state, Redding found his mind wallowing in sentimental self-pity. Luckily however, a knock at the classroom door interrupted him before he was carried any further down a spiral into the depths of despair.

Who could that be? He checked his watch. No, no meetings scheduled.

Before he could get up to walk over, the door opened and in walked two men in black suits. They had on sunglasses, which seemed strange as they were inside and there was no sunshine outside.

"Can I help you?" Redding called out, swiveling in his chair to face them more squarely. They looked like government types. Probably homeland security, which had been combing through campus as of late because of a few recent bomb threats.

"Perhaps you can, Professor," the closer one said while the other one shut the door. Redding's pulse quickened a bit. Was he in trouble?

They walked up and stood close to the desk. Redding didn't think to rise to his feet or offer his hand. He was a bit shocked. These two appeared to embody some crackpot conspiracy theory.

"You gentlemen have credentials?" Redding asked. "Or names are good, to start with."

The two men exchanged a glance. "We're with intelligence," the closer one said, returning his gaze to Redding. "And we came to request that you assist us on a local investigation, as a consultant of sorts."

Redding shook his head.

"There's a process for that, gentlemen. You need to speak with the head of my department first. If you want, I can give you his phone number or point you in the direction of his office."

The closer one nodded.

"As you say. We will be in contact with you soon, sir. Please remember that DC helps fund state universities. We have close contacts at the Department of Education. Your failure to cooperate would not bode well."

They turned and walked out, closing the door behind them.

Department of Education contacts? What the hell? America is a democracy not an assemblage of deep state mafias or feudalistic political factions.

Redding shook his head. Must have been some sort of prank. "Men in black" were just a Hollywood trope.
20. First Sight

Raven and Drab were now completely separated in the chaos of the protest. She called his name but realized that was a waste of her breath. She could barely hear her own voice in all the noise.

It was obvious that she was in way over her head. She kicked herself for joining in this event. Desperate, she looked for an escape route but realized she was surrounded by lines of police on all sides as they closed in and tried to split the crowd down the middle.

The troopers walked among them, squirting people directly in the eyes with pepper spray and clutching clubs and shields, ready to bash. All around Raven people screamed and ran, but only in circles.

There was no way out. They were all trapped.

Suddenly she saw farther down the hill a couple of cops running away from something. Some protesters were screaming and running too, in the same direction, from the same direction.

Raven couldn't see what exactly was going on. It looked like a big event though, as more riot cops turned and rushed in that direction.

Off to the side, she saw a new opening in the wall of shields, a way out where police had abandoned their line. Could she make it? It was a good way off, but it was her only option. In the other direction the line was still strong.

She was deciding whether to ditch her heavy pack before running, when she heard more screams and looked down Pine again at the center of the action. Three riot cops ran over and jumped onto a pile, trying to weigh someone down. Then they got tossed back, tumbling across the concrete, taking other cops down like bowling pins.

From beneath them a guy stood up, a man in military pants who looked like a crazed Viking, and immediately Raven knew who it was. He was the crazy, scary dude who talked to himself in what sounded like backwards English. He was the one she had heard so many rumors about the past week, the same person Drab and Tubz had run into under the bridge.

More cops jumped on the Viking. So Raven jumped on the opportunity to get the hell out of there.

She threw her heavy pack down and booked in the direction of the opening in the police line. Zigzagging through the crowd, her heart beat fast in her chest. She glanced back again, trying to get one last look at the Viking, but couldn't see him.

As soon as Raven looked forward again she saw that she was only inches from the back of a riot cop. There was no time to stop or change direction. She was running as fast as she could. All she could think to do was hold her hands out in front of her to brace for impact. 
21. Thrash Metal

His vision fogged by spray that smelled and stung of capsicum, Thor heaved forward to clash with his armed opponents. The blue guardsman from earlier used his shield to try and ram Thor back and to the ground. In return the young half-god just punched craters in the shield with his fist, as he lacked armament of his own, having arrived on Earth without his war-hammer.

The guardsman fell flat on his back as if struck by a bolt of lightning. Thor stood over the man and saw that the he spoke into his shoulder again, as all his kind incessantly did, likely begging beneath his clear helmet for some god of his own to come to his aid.

Thor did not strike down on the fallen guardsman though, as the young god always gave ample quarter. The guardsman stopped speaking into his shoulder and merely pushed himself away from Thor's legs, then got up and ran in the opposite direction.

Now with a lull in the melee, Thor gazed about, keen to anticipate a fresh wave of potential threats. Through the capsicum haze and panicked throngs he saw another blue guardsman get tackled from behind by a much smaller peasant girl, which Thor found most impressive. The girl had run at him in full sprint and the guardsman had not braced. She took down the man with admirable conviction.

Thor smiled.

Then the guardsman jumped back to his feet while the girl cowered below him. He raised his battle club to beat upon her, and Thor wasted not a micro-cycle fraction before launching himself towards the attacker.

Thor was upon the guardsman before he could strike the girl, who was coughing and screaming for mercy. Thor kicked the guardsman away with ease, sending him tumbling to the masonry thoroughfare much stunned.

The girl still cowered on her knees, her arms covering her head. Thor reached down and patted her on the back. Still coughing, she peeked up at him.

All Thor could see were her eyes, and they pierced his like arrows. Her dark stare belied such power and dimension. Thor was taken aback, for a moment caught.

Then shouts interrupted his reflection. He broke his gaze away to see a fresh wave of colonial guard fast approaching from the periphery.

"The one in military fatigues! The one with tree tattoos!" one of them shouted. "Focus on him! He's highly dangerous and might be armed!"

Thor looked back down at the peasant he had rescued and saw she was already pushing herself to her feet. He didn't interrupt her, and she didn't look at him again as she ran away from the oncoming wave. Thor watched her go for a few seconds before turning back to defend himself.

He realized, however, that he'd had his fill of the melee. It was fine merriment, and he was much impressed by the festivities these humans were capable of, but something had stirred a change within him. He needed to seek meditative solace and return to his initial cause, in order to make best use of his limited time in Midgard.

As the attacking wave neared, he ran towards the guard in kind - one final charge to break their ranks and aid the peasants who still revolted there on the side of the hill.

Thor sprinted and screamed a battle cry in the old language. As he ran through they struck him with all the force their feeble strength could muster, with their clubs and shields and venomous capsicum spray. Their blows fell to the side though, no match for his galloping momentum.

None followed as Thor broke through into the colony beyond, the waning skirmish at his back. None could. His fleet legs bolted nearly as fast as the shiny carriages privileged humans piloted along thoroughfares.

As he ran and ran, Thor thought of his duty and of the eyes he had seen, eyes that had impacted him with more force than any blue guard's battle club. His mind was aswim with contradictory thoughts, and he needed to take solace in a secluded spot to ruminate on his station once again. 
22. Street TV

Redding got a little drunk that evening, at a bar on the Ave called Flowers, a hipster place with vintage décor and expensive drinks. Though unaccompanied, he was not alone. Plenty of other customers were there too.

Redding didn't carry a mobile device. He didn't need to, because his job was not time-dependent. For a tenured academic, there was no being on call. No emergencies, no crises to troubleshoot, nothing that couldn't wait for email.

Somehow Redding had managed to avoid all that, the corporate urgency, the New York minutes that devour life while appearing to intensify it. He didn't know whether to feel gratitude or angst that he could just slowly decay at the fringes, with no real purpose and no one close enough to him to object.

So, without a smartphone or social network updates, and because Flowers was blessedly without TVs adorning the walls, Redding was unaware of the intense riots on Capitol Hill as they were happening. Such events had become fairly common in Cascadia by then anyway, so that word of mouth tended not to carry urgent and expedited news of them.

He finished his pint and paid the tab, then walked out onto the Ave. Even though there was no precipitation the streets glistened with the sheen of moisture, as they seemed to nine months a year.

Redding walked towards his condo slowly, so as to take in the pulse of the neighborhood. With all the tumultuous events of late and the crisp air of autumn there were fewer people about than usual during first quarter, a time when groups of freshmen typically explored the layout of the area where they were to spend the next four years.

On the way, Redding stopped at storefronts and window-shopped and paused to people-watch. He took his time, not making it home for another forty-five minutes.

Around eight, he stumbled into his small condo. It was quiet and cozy, though a bit cool, with the familiar smell of old books in the air. He kicked on a space heater to jack up the temperature and dry out the place as much as possible. The Pacific Northwest was especially conducive to mold, as were books, requiring preemption.

He sat down on his couch and turned on the flat screen TV to check the local news, and immediately saw it was rife with video of the anti-capitalist protests. Things had gotten out of hand, as usual - tear gas, rubber bullets, clubs, and property destruction. Redding squinted his eyes, jogged from his tipsy daze by the brutality of what was shown.

On screen, a line of cops marched and slammed into demonstrators. Then, off camera, there was a loud scream, louder than the crowd. That scream did not sound like it was in English.

Redding did a mental double-take. He thought for a second that he could recognize the strange words, that he understood the archaic language that scream was in. But he wasn't sure; maybe his ears were playing tricks on him.

Then the camera panned fast to the left, and there rushing towards the line of riot police was a tall bearded man, barefoot and shirtless. The camera followed him as he clashed head-on with the police.

This man must have been very strong. For when the cops struck him with their clubs and shields, they fell to the sides and he went on uninjured.

"Til Valhall!" Redding believed the man had screamed off camera. To Valhalla.

No, no, it couldn't be. Maybe a hundred scholars in the entire world could reliably speak ancient Norse. Even people from Norway wouldn't be able to understand much of it.

The barefoot man disappeared through the line of police and into the distance while the news cut to different footage of the protest, footage which didn't feature the same strange individual.

Redding watched for another fifteen minutes waiting to see the same clip again. It didn't get replayed. Instead the news switched to another topic entirely, surveying the aftermath of the recent record-breaking storm which had felled trees and damaged buildings.

Redding turned off the TV and rose to his feet, then walked over to his faculty-issue laptop, waking it from its slumber.

The barefoot guy in military clothes had to be from Scandinavia, pondered Redding. Probably some anarchist out of Denmark or somewhere else, one well-read in Norwegian history.

The professor's feverish fingers punched in a series of YouTube searches for the footage in question so he could view it again. Meanwhile he tried to reassure himself that there had to be a plausible explanation.
23. Late Call

Raven was scared. She needed to avoid the squat that night. She had never seen anything like that street battle before, nothing so brutal with so many people and especially that weird Viking guy. Had he saved her from the cop? He had looked so crazy and kind of threatening the way he stared at her.

She felt the same sort of stress she knew well from long before the streets, from when her parents and sister used to hurt her. For years, they had pinched her and threatened her and scared the living shit out of her a lot.

Had she made the right choice in leaving though? Now Raven wasn't so sure. Life at home was small pain spread out over a long time. But there, she had some safety. She could lock herself in her room, knowing that as soon as those demons got drunk enough, they wouldn't even think of her.

But in that crowd back on Pine Street she had felt trapped again, like she could never get away. The fear had choked her and made her legs feel heavy. She had had to force herself to run away instead of just balling up and wishing it would all stop.

The rain started again, and Raven was already damp from the last round. Her feet were cold. She needed help. She knew where a nearby phone was that she could use for free, at the Harborview Medical Center E.R.

So she walked there, just a short distance up on First Hill. Blocks away she could still hear the crowd behind her, the megaphones and the chaos. She shivered a little. Thankfully she still had the card the professor had given her.

In the warmth of the Harborview reception area, Raven lifted the phone and dialed. After three rings, he answered.

"Hello?" The professor sounded tired.

"Uh, sorry," Raven sputtered. "I think I have the wrong number." She kept the phone to her ear though. She didn't want to hang up.

"Wait! Raven right? From the Ave?" James asked, more awake now.

Raven hesitated. She just didn't know if she could trust him.

"Are you okay? Is this an emergency?"

Raven bit her lip. "Yes," she said a few seconds later.

"Well, I'm not surprised. What the hell is going on in Seattle lately?"

Raven shrugged. "I don't know. No one does."

"If you need a place to crash, you should get over here before I pass out. Where are you?"

"First Hill."

"What? Shit, were you at that protest I just saw on the news?"

Raven took a deep breath. The smell of pepper spray was still fresh on her clothes. "Yeah."

"And you're okay?"

She needed another gulp of air before answering.

"I'm okay. But I lost all my stuff, and I don't have anywhere to go this late."

"Okay, well I'm right on the Ave just before 50th, above the vintage clothing store called Valley of Roses across from the 7-Eleven. You know the place?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, hop a bus. I don't have a car or I'd come get you. I'll wait up. Buzz number 21 when you're out front."

Raven nodded. "Thank you," she said, then hung up.

She was scared of James too. He came off as too nice, and she had heard many horror stories of girls who went to older men's houses where bad things happened, horrible things.

He'd given her his card though, so she knew where he worked. And he lived right above the Ave where if she screamed people could hear her. So she decided to take the risk, to go crash on his couch.

Her house, her backpack, the shell on her back was gone. She was damp and cold. She had no blanket, no extra layers, no pepper spray or LED, and no choice. 
24. Guest of Wind

James made himself a cup of coffee so he could be somewhat lucid when Raven showed up. An hour after that she did, ringing the bell just when he was beginning to think she'd changed her mind.

"It's me," her voice said through the intercom.

He buzzed the door and waited. This was a precarious situation, an underage girl in his condo. She could accuse him of things. She could steal from him.

Regardless, he had offered his help in case of an emergency and he needed to follow through. He liked to help the homeless when and however he could. He also wanted to find out more about the riot up on Capitol Hill and the strange Scandinavian schizophrenic who seemed to be at the epicenter of it all.

"You look cold," he said upon opening the door and letting her in. And indeed she was shivering.

Before he closed the door, Redding poked his head out and looked both ways down the hallway. He had felt strangely paranoid since the meeting with the spooky duo in black suits and sunglasses back in his office on campus.

"Cool," Raven said, glancing at all the bookshelves and art prints on the walls.

Redding walked by her, over to the window to make sure the blinds were shut as tightly as possible.

"I've been here two decades," he said, pulling on the cords. "Staying in one place that long tends to turn one's living arrangement into a museum of clutter."

She might not know much about that, he thought. She might never have had the luxury of a stable, secure, personal living space.

"I have some old sweats that will fit you," he said. "You can shower. I'll warm you up a can of soup and some toast."

She looked back at him as if that was too much, too fast.

"I can do that, after the shower."

Redding was puzzled by the statement.

"I mean, I'd prefer to open the soup myself," she added.

Then he understood. She thought he might drug her.

"Sure, no problem," he said. "Let me go get you a towel."

After the shower, wearing baggy old sweats, Raven didn't speak as she fumbled in the small kitchen. Redding sat on the couch in the living room and kept glancing through the doorway at her, wondering whether he should offer any help.

She managed okay. The microwave dinged and a minute later she brought in a steaming bowl of soup, sitting down at the breakfast table by the window. Then she proceeded to inhale it, making a bit of a mess.

Again, Redding tried not to watch, to avoid making her feel uncomfortable.

"I was wondering about that riot earlier," he said. But she didn't stop eating long enough to speak.

Once finished, she picked up a book on the table, Redding's copy of Haida Myths And Texts, a reprint of a text from the 1920s.

"You know about native culture?" she asked, opening it.

Redding nodded. "Yeah. I'm interested in all mythology, from all over the world. I was born and raised here though, so local indigenous myths interest me in particular."

She flipped the pages. "I'm Tlingit," she stated, without looking up at him.

"Interesting. Did you grow up on a reservation?"

She shook her head. "I was adopted."

Redding put two and two together, and assumed that her adopted parents were not very nurturing.

"They probably envied you, Raven."

She looked up at him for a moment, then shot her dark eyes back down to the book.

"It can't be easy being beautiful," Redding added. "With everyone either wanting something from you or wanting to be you."

She bit her lip and didn't say anything. That definitely had made her uncomfortable.

"Look, you're safe here. No strings attached, you can stay the night. I'm not a shelter. I'm not social services. I'm just a friend. Just one night."

She looked up again.

"Thank you."

He smiled and pointed to the book.

"Do you know much about the Haida?"

She shrugged.

"From Canada, right?"

"Yeah. They were good boat builders and pretty warlike. Some scholars like to compare Vikings with them, because the Haida often raided the settlements of other tribes, including your own."

"Why do you study myths from different places?" she asked.

Redding took a deep breath. Because to answer that question properly he needed it.

"Well, I guess I have this habit of seeing connections where other people don't. I'm very much from an older school of mythological study, what's called comparativism, where I seek to identify underlying cultural similarities. The newer scholars tend to be what we call particularists. They attribute similarities in myths among disparate cultures as stemming from inherent human psychology, rather than being inspired by... something else."

Raven closed the book gently, then reached for her damp sweatshirt, taking from its large front pocket a clear plastic baggie with a little pot in it, along with a soda can she had molded and punctured into a makeshift pipe.

Redding almost laughed.

"Mind if I smoke?" she asked.

He waved at her.

"Sure, no problem. I like the smell of weed. Just don't spark a cigarette."

"Got a lighter?" she asked.

Redding reached over and grabbed from the coffee table a book of matches that he used to light candles, then tossed them over to her.

"Thanks."

She struck a match and took a toke, then offered the can up to Redding. He shook his head. He could tell she was already feeling more comfortable.

"No thanks. Makes me too paranoid," he said.

"So you think there are major connections," she asked, surprising Redding by returning to the same topic.

"I do. I see connections everywhere in my studies. It makes me think there's something at work in the universe that will always be far beyond human understanding."

She toked again, still appearing to be listening, so he continued. He was glad to have someone who seemed at least half-interested in his musings, unlike most of his students.

"Take the flood myth as an example. It's common across cultures around the world, and was probably inspired by a real ancient cataclysm. And other myths, of deities and sky gods for instance, are also very common. It begs the question, did something tangible and very real inspire them as well, or are they just creative storytelling?"

She toked a third time.

"Good question," she said, blowing out plumes of smoke into the living room.

"I think there are forces at work beyond the scope of our minds. I think those who created our myths, who spoke them or chiseled them into stone, may have been inspired by what we could call gods."

Smiling, she looked back at him again.

"If this is you sober, I wonder what you're like stoned," she said.

He laughed.

"Sorry. I tend to babble like that."

She shook her head.

"No worries. You may use words I don't know, but what you talk about is pretty interesting. Most people I know only talk about drugs."

There was a pause. They were both tired.

"Raven, I'd like to ask you about the riot on Capitol Hill. I'm sure you're pretty shaken up by it, but I'm really curious."

She set the can down and looked at it.

"Okay," she said.

"On the news, I saw footage of a crazy guy with wild hair in army fatigues fighting the police. Did you see him?"

She paused, then nodded.

"Yeah, I saw that dude. I think he actually might have helped me get away."

"Helped you get away from the riot?"

She shrugged.

"Yeah, this asshole cop was going to beat on me just because I accidentally shoved him. And then the Viking kicked the cop off me or something. But I don't know for sure. The Viking guy looked so crazy. He's been around for about a week. My friends ran into him under a bridge and even talked to him before."

"Really? Which bridge?"

"I don't remember. There's lots of bridges in this city. They said he didn't understand them though. One of my friends gave him a trench coat because he was totally naked."

Now that was just bizarre, Redding realized. Totally naked? At this time of year? That should have resulted in hypothermia.

"Strange," he said out loud. "Anything else, any other details?"

"I heard lots of stories about the guy. A lot of people think he's a Nazi who went crazy. Everyone's pretty much scared of him. He did look pretty messed up in the head, like he didn't know where he was. Why do you want to know about him?"

Redding thought for a moment.

"It's the most perplexing thing," he said. "When I saw him on the news, I think he spoke in an ancient language, a dialect no one uses anymore."

"Huh."

"But I'd have to talk to him in person to know for sure."

Raven struck another match and picked up the soda can again.

"Well, don't look at me dude. I can't arrange a meeting," she said before taking another toke.

Redding chuckled. Raven was pretty good company. 
25. Breaking Fast

The next morning James awoke first, and the sounds he made in the kitchen eventually woke Raven up too. She yawned and stretched on the couch, and just lay there for a while listening to him do whatever he was doing.

When she smelled bacon, she realized he was cooking breakfast. And that motivated her to get up and go check more closely on the kitchen action.

James smiled over his shoulder at Raven as she walked into the small kitchen.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

"Great, thanks."

He glanced down at her body, then turned back to the stove, nervous.

"You can keep the sweats," he said. "I don't have a washer here or I would have offered to let you do your laundry."

Raven shook her head.

"Forget it, no worries. Just share the bacon and we're cool."

James laughed.

"Speaking of, I'm going to get baked before I eat," Raven said, turning back to the couch.

She went over, sat down, and felt through her sweatshirt pockets for the last of her herb.

"This is probably where I'm supposed to lecture you on excessive drug use," James called out from the kitchen. "But living on the streets, I'd probably be reaching for more than just a few hits of pot in the morning. I'd probably wake up and down a bottle of malt liquor."

He opened the cabinet to take out plates.

"Herb makes me patient," Raven said as she dropped bits of bud onto the soda can pipe. "Without it no way could I stand on a street corner all day. I'd have too much energy."

A moment later James walked out into the living room with two plates of bacon and eggs.

"That makes sense," he said, setting one down on the coffee table in front of Raven and then walking over to the breakfast table by the window.

Raven lit a match and toked, then set the can down and dove into the food. James didn't eat yet, but watched her for a minute.

"As I've said, I'm not a social worker. I feel kind of powerless," he said. "I have no idea how to help you."

Raven shrugged.

"Forget it," she said in between bites. "This is enough."

"All right. But I do have one favor to ask. If you see the crazy guy with tree tattoos again, please call me. There's something very peculiar about him and I'd like to ask him a few questions."

"Sure, no problem. He is pretty interesting, huh?"

James nodded. "You plan to go to the shelter tonight, right?" he asked.

Raven could tell the professor was really stressing about her. She nodded, though she kind of wished she could just move in with him.

"Yeah, I promise."

He smiled. "Good. I'm glad."

There was some silence. Raven finished her food.

"I wish I could let you stay here longer, but... " James began.

She waved a hand his way. "Forget it. I really appreciate just the couch for one night, and the bacon is great."

James laughed again. She smiled and took her plate into the kitchen. 
26. These Mortal Customs

Two Earth solar cycles passed while Thor remained powerless to take action on behalf of his plight. During this time he made what best attempt he could to blend in better, thus avoiding another clash with the colonial palace guard.

The small battle on the side of the hill remained clear in his mind's eye, most especially the piercing stare of the girl he had rescued. He entertained the remote possibility that she could somehow be the virgin bride he was seeking.

As his elders had said however, he needed to reach the gouge in the ground and the large boulder carried there by ancient glacial ice. Until then all clues were also potential distractions. Only when Thor reached that boulder would his path gain clarity.

Except that Thor had no idea where to begin.

As he traipsed the thoroughfares Thor realized that the sea-colony, and the civilization it belonged to, were decaying. He also deduced that the colonial guard would likely not prioritize his capture, as they had many barbarians at the gates. Their obnoxious carriages blared past him many times, to and fro, but none halted to subdue the young half-god.

Thor mimicked the ragged, whom he observed sifting through the ample refuse of the nobles who kept themselves locked in tall towers. In stinking metal bins he found many things. Civilian garments near-fresh woven and absent excessive stench. He found food and even scissors, which he used to cut his hair and beard shorter, staring at himself in the reflection of a merchant's glass display, seeing his face nearly bare for the first time since he was a boy.

With his grease-streaked hair newly short, Thor hoped that no witnesses to him would alert the colonial authorities of his presence. For despite his possession of strength beyond that of Midgardians, he knew he could not stave off an army should they decide to hunt him.

Later in the day, Thor took shelter from the rain by standing alongside busy footpaths in the part of the colony with the tallest citadels. He took great care to observe mortal behavior, but more importantly he listened. He followed with his sound sense their every utterance as they spoke to one another, whoever they were, ragged or adorned with fine garments and gleaming jewelry. In an attempt to decipher their perplexing tongue, he hung onto every word he heard the denizens speak,.

As day turned to night, Thor came to understand that some of their words were similar to the language spoken in Valhalla. Sky, gap and band were all only slightly modified. Many words indicating action such as lift, run, die and cut were likewise familiar to the ear.

Thor practiced to himself, speaking to no one in particular, much as the blue guardsmen spoke into their shoulders, or akin to the many ragged lunatics who seemed to address their own shadows. Thor practiced dropping the "a" sound from lyfta, runna, døyia, kuta and søma.

However mostly he just listened, as an infant listens and watches, passive, in awe of an environment so very foreign and strange. In such way, through observation and mimicry, he began to apprehend the stark basics of Midgardian speech.

Thor continued this practice into the next day, gaining verbal confidence and nearing readiness. When the time was right he would begin to ask many questions as children did, to gather information on a world so strange and new.

One thing was certain. Thor could not rely on his strength of body and will alone. He needed the help of language if he was to find the deep ravine that was carved up by a slow glacier, when giants walked the wild Earth. 
27. Word Of Skins

Right after staying at the professor's condo, Raven went back to her daily routine of spanging and scoring. It was as if, even with all the craziness of the past week, nothing had changed in her life.

Raven's day was just business as usual on the Ave, just another day with new students wandering around and groups of homeless youth tapping into the overflow of resources.

At 6:30 in the evening, satisfied with the amount of cash she had scrounged, Raven split for teen feed. She would get there early, but she could linger out front and chat a bit before the church opened its doors.

A small group was there already when she arrived, sitting on the concrete steps out front. Puppet was there too, always the ringleader, always at the center of a group's attention.

With almost a decade and a half of experience as an Ave Rat, Puppet was a certified "OG" - an old gangster, someone who's been around. This time he was high as usual, bobbing and weaving, shadowboxing with his hallucinations, but still aware enough to tell a hell of a story.

"So I get to the house," he said to his audience. "And I tell them I want a half. They were like, no that's not enough, we only sell grams. I said can you front me. They said hell no."

Raven knew the place he was talking about. It had to be one of the many houses up on 65th, all owned by the same guy who most people called Sizzly. Though he was old, rumor had it that Sizzly still liked young girls. Thankfully Raven had never verified that.

"I told them," Puppet continued, "I told them I had a diamond engagement ring I dumpster-dived. I didn't want to trade it until I got a quote from the pawn shop, but I really wanted some of the powder these guys had."

As Raven watched Puppet speak, she could barely keep up with the story. Not because he spoke too quickly for her, though he did sputter his words being so damn high. More because she was so caught up in his animated body language.

It was as if every word, every letter, had its own movement - like Puppet was almost doing sign language or something. Except he had no control over it. It was like he was translating a language from another place.

Ah, realized Raven. That's why they call him Puppet.

"I don't like dealing with those guys," a girl chimed in from the side.

Puppet looked over at her.

"No shit! Who does? And that fucking doberman, it's like a ghost dog," he said, pointing to his eyebrows. "Extra pair of eyes! Fucking freaks are stuck in World War Two. But the product, wow. They got the best chode in town."

Chode was another word for glass which was a word for crystal which was a word for meth. But the cops didn't know about chode, as Puppet had told Raven once. Chode was the safest word to use for crystal in conversation without potentially alerting the authorities. Glass meant that the drugs were pure, uncut. Dirty speed was called crank.

"What was the dog's name?" someone else asked.

Puppet looked over and answered immediately.

"Blondi," he said. "Named after Hitler's fuckin' pet German Shepard."
28. Apt Tutor

Thor slept only in short bouts. He didn't need long rests like the Midgardian mortals who hibernated through the night.

When Thor got tired, he would doze in a doorway for only a short time. Then he would awaken again, lucid as day, ready to continue his mission.

Earth however didn't work on such a schedule. At night most humans holed themselves up in bastions high above the thoroughfares, almost until the morning light returned through low-hanging cloud cover.

The city slept quietly and for a long time. But not all of it. A population of night-walkers kept Thor company. Almost all of them were peasants, and most did not react with great fear when they put their eyes on the descended god.

Thor ventured out, when the sea-colony slept, and wandered the paths. He observed many of these night-walkers tippling ample amounts of ale and wine, and saw them smoke from strange pipes that emitted an herbaceous, fragrant-smelling scent.

The peasants lurked in doorways too, and under overhanging roofs, staving off the persistent damp. They were diverse in culture, many of them Mongols, Moors and Spaniards, not just Nordic and Germanic tribesmen.

All save for the most ragged among them carried glowing pocket mechanisms that they spoke into or glared at, a common practice Thor realized most mortals shared be they peasant or noble. Lunatic night-walkers by contrast also talked to their hands, except they had no mechanisms. Thor wondered if these pocket mechanisms were similar to the ones the colonial guard carried attached to their shoulders.

At one point late into the night Thor passed a comely Amazonian warrioress who smiled at him, so he decided to try a few words of the local dialect he had been laboring to improve upon.

She walked in a most peculiar manner, her hips asway to and fro, her tunic open to just above her pelvic girdle with much of her ample bosom displayed and her lips painted red as blood. She had on what looked like the skin of a great cat and her hair was voluminous. She was quite desirable and drew the god's own virgin eyes.

"Ho there," Thor called out to her, at which point she looked back at him. "Have you knowledge of giant ice which gouged a ravine from the ground eons past?"

The woman sized him up and smiled again. She had strange paint not only on her lips but on her cheeks and around her large sparkling eyes as well.

"Honey, I have knowledge of just about any damn thing you can think of. And for you?" She licked her crimson lips. "For you I would only charge twenty."

Thor understood less than half of her statement, but he was glad she had not ignored him as so many mortals did, or looked away upon assessing his disheveled appearance.

He bowed his head.

"I express gratitude, for your ample generosity."

The woman laughed.

"Come on, get your fine ass up to my room and take a shower. Your army duds ain't too shabby but you still smell like you need to get doused."

She gestured for him to follow. Seeing that he would, she turned and walked down the path to the side of the thoroughfare. Thor didn't know where they were going, but this was proving to be the most promising interaction with a Midgardian he had experienced so far.

As the Amazon walked in front of him, Thor's eyes again fell upon her fine shape. The thin leopard skin was pulled so taut around her rotund rump that he could see her deep crevice.

He hesitated, worried that he might risk spilling his divine seed, faltering in his quest for the chosen virgin with whom he would unify the Earth with the heavens. Nevertheless he followed the welcoming warrioress.
29. Old Digs

After two nights staying in the homeless youth shelter, Raven had had enough. She wanted the freedom to stay out late panhandling on the Ave, but the shelter closed its doors at nine and locked the street kids inside.

The volunteers from the church didn't insist on praying or anything; it wasn't like a cult. But they did have a tone of superiority in the way they spoke with Raven and the others there.

She looked at the staff almost like parents, which messed with her head. The more she thought about it like that, the more childish the other youths staying there seemed. Some of them were her friends, and she didn't like thinking about her friends in that way.

So Raven decided to go back to the squat again despite the risks. Maybe she would find Drab and Tubz there. She liked them, even though they were burned-out old junkies. They were always nice to her and looked out for her safety, not that they could do much to protect her on the streets.

Back out on her corner it was the same old same. She spanged again and got enough for what she needed: something to munch on and something to give her the munchies. Day-to-day living, that was the street game.

Before getting on the bus down Eastlake to the squat, she stopped in Taco Bell and bought a couple of bean burritos. As she ate them, stoned out of her mind, she looked at the mural that always tripped her out.

The colorful painting on the wall showed a bunch of kids playing sports. They were wearing what looked like Doc Martens, except that instead of "Air-Ware," the tabs on the backs of the boots said "aware."

Raven thought about what Professor Redding had said when she crashed at his place: that he believed there was always something beyond one's awareness that influenced reality, that there was always a mystery. She also wondered who had painted that mural.

A few hours later Raven got off the night-owl bus on Eastlake and walked up the hill to the squat. Everything seemed chill. The neighbors had gone to sleep, the area was quiet. No barking dogs and minimal street lighting, same as before. So she went on in, removing the old tarp she had used to disguise the exposed basement window and pushing herself through.

Inside she had to use a lighter she'd picked up because she'd lost her LED with her pack at the protest and hadn't yet spanged enough for a new one. She flicked the lighter on and the flame's glow danced off the rotten walls as she walked carefully down the hallway to the interior door, which she shoved open.

It smelled like shit inside. That was one thing the shelter had going for it. The environment was clean, and everyone was required to shower. You got to sacrifice one freedom to get at another, Raven thought. She wondered if it was all even worth it. What was the point of life, if every time you gained something, you also lost something? It was meaningless day-to-day living.

She stood in the pitch darkness and let the lighter cool for a bit before flicking it on again to look around for the spare blanket she'd left there. When she aimed the flame near the wall beside her she saw something that made her heart jump.

Someone had painted a huge swastika on it, in what looked like red paint. Or blood.

Raven froze stiff. She started to see movement in the darkness around her as fear took over her mind. She heard nothing, but her eyes filled in the blanks with threats in all directions, paranoid tricks her mind was playing on her. She fought the fear, and finally broke through it enough to make a move.

She kicked her way out the door into the hallway and sprinted three long steps to the small window. There she dove up into the opening, clawing at the soft moist ground outside to drag herself through.

Once outside and to her feet she continued running, out of the yard, onto the dimly lit street and down a hill under a freeway overpass.

Arriving a minute later at the long stairs that led up to Capitol Hill, she took them two at a time until her legs and lungs burned. Going slower, she felt no less scared.

Someone had been in her squat. And they had left their mark. 
30. Amazonian Embrace

Thor followed the Amazon clad in leopard skin up a flight of creaking wooden steps to her lair in one of the older hovels that lined the street. With each step the woman's hindquarters rippled, an aesthetic balance of soft flesh and firm muscle, and Thor could feel his life-hammer strengthen into stone as his wandering eyes followed her contours.

He broke his gaze from her to look about and take stock of the hovel. He was curious about the details, as this was his first time inside one of the many structures that seemed to stretch for leagues in the vast sea-colony. This one was shorter than the citadels that gleamed high into the mist. And much more aged.

"Come on honey, don't be afraid. I won't bite ya," said the Amazon, looking back down at him. "Unless that's your thing."

She opened another door at the top of the staircase and waved him in.

"Come on! Stop looking at my ass and get on inside so you can scrub up and put your hands on it."

Thor wondered where the ass was that the Amazon spoke of, and how it could fit into such small living quarters. He hoped the ass had not left manure that he might tread on, especially since his feet were unshod.

The Amazon closed the door behind him after he entered, then brushed past him, dragging her nearly bare bosom across his chest and winking.

"Down boy. We almost there," she said, a glint in her eye.

Thor was now ensnared in this Amazon's seduction, and this was a precarious situation. He needed to glean information from this receptive mortal, and he could use a night of shelter too.

However he also fretted that should he remain in her presence he very well might squander his divine essence on her, a non-virgin. The situation verged on dire, as Thor had reached such strength that he sensed he might erupt just by allowing his gaze to linger upon her figure.

Now Thor found himself inside her personal chambers which were adorned with scarves and satins, very much in gesture to the deity of eros he presumed.

"I have a towel, honey. A clean one," she called over her shoulder as she entered what looked like a bathing chamber. "Come on out of those nasty army slacks and let's get you cleaned up."

Thor watched from outside the bathing chamber as she opened up a spring that cascaded steaming hot water forth into an ivory basin. He did wish for a bath, so he readily removed his garments. The Amazon glanced in his direction and grinned, almost as if she had never taken company with a naked man before, though Thor was most certain that she had many times.

He walked forward and stood in the doorway. She had her hand in the water, testing it for temperature.

"It's perfect, honey. Come on in."

Thor entered the bathing chamber, free from his garb and in the open air. He knew he should have been more cautious, that this kindly and receptive woman desired to receive his godseed, but he couldn't resist her charms and the lure of clean, warm spring water.

Thor felt very mortal, very bound to the gravitational tug of carnal desires.

He stepped into the wash basin, and indeed the spring felt glorious on his cold and sodden feet. As he eased all the way in, the Amazon knelt on the floor aside the basin and lifted a sponge.

"You ever been bathed, baby?" she asked, her smile so healthy, her teeth so white. Thor almost laughed, thinking he had understood her correctly. Thor had been bathed by the finest maidens in Asgard. He had been hand-bathed with utmost care by naked goddesses since he was an infant.

She took the sponge to Thor's chest, as befitting a king. Whilst doing so she spoke minimally, but breathed deep, her breasts exposed to him. He gripped the sides of the bathing tub as she reached down into the frothing water and scrubbed his nether regions. Thankfully, she merely glanced over his life-hammer, so he managed to withold his starseed.

"I need to find the fabled ravine, dug by glacial efforts in a bygone age," Thor stammered.

The Amazon laughed, then pushed him forward in the water and worked to polish his back with the sponge.

"Damn boy, you a poet or something?" she asked. "You have a way with words but it sounds like you're trying to ask me something in Dutch."

She did not seem to understand all that Thor spoke. And he in turn did not fully comprehend her meaning, which frustrated him.

Satisfied with her gracious labor, she stood above him and looked down, her leopard skin still draped around her waist. Thor stared intently at the shape of her loins and the folds of her garb over her curves and crevices.

"You like to use your tongue?" she asked.

Thor looked up, his brow wrinkled in confusion.

"My kitty cat. You want to lick her?"

"I am of hunger, yes." Thor said. "Might you, kind matron, cook some leopard-flesh for us to feast on and satiate our stomachs?"

She didn't answer, but reached down instead. She lifted her flimsy skirt of leopard skin, unsheathing her body from what little garb remained, revealing the well she harbored between her legs. Upon it was a trimmed patch, a strip of lush curled hair.

The warrioress lifted one leg onto the edge of the washing tub, giving Thor vantage of her crevices. Initially he did not respond nor act, enjoying the passivity bestowed upon him by such an accommodating hostess.

With her hand she grasped the back of his head and guided his face towards her honeypot, inviting him to taste her mortal nectar. He was unaccustomed to such assertiveness on the part of a maiden. But he relinquished volition to the Amazon, and allowed her to have her way with the open mouth of a thunder god.
31. A Desperate Call

It would take Raven half an hour more to get to Broadway up on the hill. There she could blend in, because even late at night a lot of people hung out and walked the sidewalks in the neighborhood.

Broadway was still a long way off though. Until she got there she had to walk through residential neighborhoods, with only a few people around. Each person she passed she regarded as a potential enemy, someone who might be out to get her. Her squat got messed with and whoever did it might know who she was. They could be spying on her or following her.

Raven paused in the shadows every couple of blocks, to catch her breath and try to slow her heartbeat, and to check her trail to make sure no one followed. She'd never been so scared in her life. During the riot just a few days earlier, she'd been in shock. Now she was 100% creeped the hell out.

Her thoughts raced the whole way. She thought about Tubz and Drab, and wondered how they could do this to her, how they could tell the Nazis about her squat, if that was what had happened.

Or maybe the Nazis had found it themselves. Raven wanted to keep believing Tubz and Drab were her friends. When they first found her squat they could've been mean to her and told her to leave. Or they could have done something worse, but they hadn't.

Finally Raven made it to Broadway. As expected, she found more people there and so she felt safer. She walked towards the only working pay phone she knew of, passing groups of street youth who lingered on corners and under awnings, most of them a bit older than Ave Rats. None greeted Raven, but a few looked at her as she went by.

Arriving at the phone, she lifted the receiver and looked around before making her call, to be sure no one was watching her. Satisfied she was safe, she dropped in a few quarters, and then punched in James' number.

It rang and rang, but Raven wouldn't give up.

"Hello?" the professor's voice answered, finally. He sounded really tired and Raven felt bad for calling so late.

"James, I need help."

"Raven? What's wrong? You sound frightened."

"I went to my squat... "

"Again? I thought you agreed to go to the shelter from now on."

"Yeah, well, I fucked up and I didn't. I went to my squat and someone else was there."

"Shit, did they do anything to you?"

"No, they were there before me. But they painted a Nazi sign on the wall."

"Damn. That's freaky."

"Yeah, can I come over, please? I won't do this every week I promise. I'll go to the shelter tomorrow. I never want to go back to that squat again."

James didn't answer right away, so Raven just let him think on it for a minute.

"You know, this is not very appropriate. I could get in trouble," he finally said.

"For giving someone a place to crash? Why?"

Another pause.

"Okay, just come on over. One more night."

"Thanks. I'll be there in an hour."

She hung up, before he could change his mind.

Why would he get in trouble? Oh, because I'm an underage runaway.

Only a few more weeks and that wouldn't be an issue. Only a few more weeks and Raven would turn eighteen.

She dug in her pockets, finding that she had enough for the bus, luckily. But then she heard someone growl at her.

"You're gonna come with us, girly," a man said.

She turned to see who it was, and all she saw before everything went fuzzy was a pale skinhead with a taser. 
32. The Pillars of Alexandria

The Amazon's body was incredible, among the finest Thor had set his sight sense upon since his storm arrival.

She let him explore her crevices at will, first in the bath chamber, then in her bedchamber. This was Thor's first experience of Midgardian fertility rites, the first such sensations the young god knew with his half-mortal skin.

His hands and lips roamed about her hills and valleys while the two of them writhed atop her bedding. Over and over Thor had to squeeze with all his might to avoid spilling his essence.

Repeatedly she tried to grasp his life-hammer but he swatted her hands away, shaking his head and telling her no. She seemed puzzled at this, but smiled again and reclined herself in the same passivity with which she had welcomed him in the bath.

She's not the one, Thor reminded himself as his palms gripped her and he clenched his teeth. She was not a virgin, not the virgin.

At the moment he wished not to care. Maybe he wouldn't ever be able to find the chosen one. And if such pleasure were what mortality had to offer, he wanted to explore the myriad possibilities of Earth, his mission be damned. Thor imagined he might accompany the Amazon to the camp where her sisters also gathered, to service their entire legion with his might.

His hands caressed her strong legs and rotund rump, pinching, stroking, slapping and shaking them. She absorbed his strength and showed no signs of breaking, her frame stout with vigor. When he caused her good pain, she only exclaimed with pleasure and urged him with enthusiasm to continue.

The warrioress moved her hips with great lust, and Thor knew she was soon to reach her ecstatic crescendo. There was ample liquid from her wellspring, running over the god's face and fingers, into his mouth and down her inner pillars. He growled at her, his half-mortal flesh ignited with passion.

After micro-cycle fractions she screamed and then broke from him, her pillars quivering, her hunger satiated. Sitting upright upon her bedding, she gazed into the depths of Thor's eyes.

"Damn, boy, you must be about to burst. Why won't you let me show you some gratitude?" she asked, reaching for his life-hammer again.

Her feet kicked the bedding off down to the floor. She angled to assert herself, indicating that it was Thor's turn to recline passively. Her hand plunged, and he allowed it. Just once, he promised himself. Just once.

When she seized him, he fretted that he would erupt on contact. All the weight of grand cosmic schemes and sworn divine oaths flashed through his mind.

Thoughts of the responsibility with which he was entrusted awoke Thor from his stupor. Again he was reminded to save himself for a mortal virgin or risk galactic-scale destruction. The Chaos/Order Axis was fragile, as had been drummed into him. It needed sacrifice, it needed an ancient, divine fertility ritual.

Frightened by the pull of his own carnal desires, Thor shoved the Amazon off of him with such force that her back thudded into the plank wall beside her bed. There she knelt, frozen, with great fright and shock depicted upon her flushed face.

Thor rose from the bed and looked back at her in his nakedness, his mind still on her as with his eyes.

"You... you going to kill me?" she stammered, laboring to retrieve the wind Thor's strength had jostled from her lungs.

Thor shook his head. "There is a ravine, not far from the center of this sea-colony, a ravine carved from the soft surface of this doused land by a great glacial chisel, eons past. I must navigate to this ravine, and I request that you assist my plight."

The Amazon swallowed some air before she spoke again.

"Okay, honey. I don't understand everything you just said, but if you need information, we can find it all on the Internet."

Thor didn't know what it was that she spoke of, this intra-net. But he assumed she was going to accompany him to a vast library, one akin to that destroyed by inferno in Alexandria only a couple of millennia before his descent. 
33. Come On, Let's Have a Look at You

The smell of mildew. That was what Raven first noticed about the room when she woke up.

At first she thought it was her squat. Same size. Similar hard concrete floor with burned, torn carpet on top. Her face was down against that dirty, stinking carpet and her hands were cuffed behind her back.

She feared what might've happened to her while she was passed out, after the skinhead had zapped her. She didn't feel any pain though, only a stomachache. So she could hope she was okay, that no one had hurt her. Yet.

She tried to look around, knowing that she was somewhere new, not at her squat. The walls didn't have a swastika painted on them. No rolls of flaking carpet padding were stacked nearby. They had taken her somewhere else, whoever they were.

She was not gagged, so she almost screamed for help.

Then she stopped herself. Rather than calling attention, it was better to stay calm and have a look around, to see if she couldn't just escape. Whoever left her there alone was probably not afraid of getting caught, for whatever reason. Maybe they could care less if she just ran. Maybe they'd already forgotten about her.

With a lot of effort she wormed her way across the carpet over to a wall and up against it. Her wrists burned where the cuffs cut into them. Her arms were going numb. She might have been like this for hours already.

"Knock, knock," said a man outside the nearby door. The voice sounded familiar, but for a second Raven could not match it with a memory.

When he walked in, it dawned on her that she could be in a lot of trouble. Again.

"You can scream if you want to. We don't mind the sound of that," said the same skinhead who'd taken the taser to her on Broadway. "Not that it will make a difference. My uncle owns every property on the whole block, and the ones across the street too. None of the tenants would even think of snitching."

The guy had on combat boots, tight jeans and a leather jacket. Typical of his crowd.

"We're not going to hurt you, just ask a few questions," he said as he stepped closer and leaned down to her. "Come on, get up. Time to meet him."

The basement room Raven had been stashed in was one of many, so the house above had to be bigger than her squat. The skinhead led her down a long hall and into another room, this one better lit but still pretty mangy.

Inside, a fat hairy guy in a bathrobe, boxers and slippers relaxed in an old easy chair. The air was warm. A big space heater blazed nearby.

Against the walls, two younger men sat on sagging couches. Raven could tell they were tweakers just by looking at them. One had sunglasses on. The other was passed out. Neither looked like skinheads but not everyone advertised who they were in life.

"Come on in. Let's have a look at you," the robed fat guy said between wheezing breaths. He grinned and gestured for Raven and the skinhead, who kept his hand on her arm, to enter.

"Do you know who I am?" the fat guy asked as the skinhead pulled Raven forward.

She shook her head.

"Interesting. You must be pretty new to the Ave then."

Raven searched her brain for who this weirdo could be. Then a bell went off when she remembered Puppet's story back at teen teed.

"Sizzly?" she asked.

The big man laughed. So did the skinhead.

"Bingo," said Sizzly. "My operatives reported to me recently that the Viking protected you at the riot on Capitol Hill."

Raven knew exactly what he was talking about. It was all so fresh in her mind, even though getting kidnapped was way more of a shock than being stuck in the street battle.

"We had some agents up there, mixing with the anarchists," Sizzly said. "We had eyes on the field. What those eyes witnessed was... superhuman."

Raven sighed. Sizzly seemed obsessed, like the Viking was a celebrity or religious leader or something.

"What's with everyone being interested in this Viking lately?" she asked, thinking about James' questions.

"Everyone?" Sizzly asked, raising his eyebrows. "Like everyone who?"

Raven paused, but not long enough to look like she was lying.

"Well, you and like, every cop in Seattle."

Sizzly nodded.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

He looked her up and down, in a way that made Raven feel nervous. Then he motioned to the skinhead, who tugged on her arm, bringing her even closer, within reach of his boss.

Sizzly licked his lips when his gaze met hers.

"You're a native, right?"

Raven nodded slowly, acknowledging her Tlingit heritage.

"Our principles forbid us from... fraternizing with the impure, at risk of polluting our genetic lineage." He tapped on his large beer gut. "Not that I have much initiative in my old age anyway. But you do have a nice young body. I would well enjoy giving you a thorough massage."

A fondler, Raven thought. Shit, he's one of those.

"However, I have other business to attend to. As you may be aware, I run an empire, as the largest stakeholder in the Ravenna district. I also sell very good drugs. All product that goes down the hatch anywhere on the North Side gets screened by me."

Sizzly snapped his fingers. The tweaker in sunglasses stood up and brought over a glass pipe. Raven looked at it. It was definitely not a pipe for smoking weed with.

"Try the glass, little Indian girl," Sizzly said as the tweaker held out the pipe and a lighter towards her.

Raven shook her head. "Please don't make me do that."

Sizzly looked at her and raised his eyebrows."You don't get high?"

She shook her head again.

Looking at the skinhead, Sizzly said, "Get a load of that, nephew. An Ave Rat that doesn't get high."

The skinhead shook his head in disbelief. "If she don't tweak, we can't trust her."

Sizzly laughed loudly. "And if she did, we could?"

"No, but we could control her. I say we get her started, make her do a big blast. She'll talk once she's spun."

Sizzly thought on that for a moment. Raven's heart was racing. She didn't like hard drugs. It would floor her if they insisted.

"Found this in her pocket, boss," the nephew said, holding up James' business card. "Maybe he knows something."

That was a relief. Raven hadn't even realized she still had the card on her. Then she wondered when the nephew had gone into her pockets, and the thought of him touching her brought the stomachache back in force.

Sizzly tossed his nephew a cell phone.

"Call him up," Sizzly said, pointing at Raven. "You can talk to him."
34. We're Sending Someone

When Raven failed to show up, Redding didn't know if he should be worried about her or not. Maybe she'd just run into some friends and ended up at a party somewhere. It wasn't like she had a cell phone. She couldn't text him to cancel.

The swastika story might even have been made up. Redding, despite being charmed by the girl, had to keep reminding himself who he was dealing with: a desperate, hopeless young woman who lived life by the day and needed drugs to numb herself. People in situations like that developed an array of survival mechanisms.

Redding was a rational man. He could talk himself out of pointless thought patterns with reliable consistency. And being drawn to Raven, for whatever subconscious reason, had already become a burden that disrupted his equilibrium.

In an effort to snap out of it, he went to the couch with a copy of one of his favorite dissertations: A Neocomparative Examination of the Orpheus Myth As Found in the Native American and European Traditions.

One of Redding's main areas of interest, besides comparative mythology, was geomythology: how geographic, oceanic and climatic features and events may have inspired ancient myths.

Certainly not all myths fell into this category. Some myths were inspired by particular aspects of human culture. The myth of Orpheus, for example, venerated as the greatest of all poets and musicians.

One Sophist (Ha! Like you can trust Sophists!) even attributed to Orpheus the invention of writing. Another, agriculture. Redding enjoyed jazz and poetry as much as anyone. However he remained more of a naturalist at heart: the natural world inspired in him a level of awe orders of magnitude above and beyond art or architecture or language and whatever else humans could create.

In diverse permutations of the Orpheus myth, Redding found much to delight his intellect and his imagination.

The phone rang, but the professor ignored it. He needed to shelve his worries. There was nothing he could do. He couldn't save Raven, he couldn't clean her up, and he certainly couldn't adopt her, unofficially or officially.

To take her in might cause him a lot of trouble. Trouble with the state, but more importantly with the university, which was Redding's life, his identity, everything he had worked towards for the prior three decades. Not to mention the source of his pension, insurance and 401k.

The phone stopped ringing and he returned his mind to the dissertation he held. One section delved into how one of the most prominent myths shared across ancient cultures the world over was that of the sky father and Earth mother. Variations were common, but most of them alluded to a male deity from the sky who came to Earth to mate with a feminine, fertile deity. One notable exception came from late Egyptian mythology, which attributed the sky to a mother and the Earth to a father.

You can't win 'em all, Redding thought.

Over the next few minutes, he managed to coax his mind into the zone, that perfect state of study where distractions blurred into the background, where his attention flowed with ease from one paragraph to the next, further and further along a spiraling train of thought. There he didn't need anything or anyone, just solitude and reflective silence.

Then the phone rang again and didn't stop.

Redding bolted off the couch, the bound stack of dissertation papers dropping to the floor.

It must be her. She's in trouble again.

He made it across the room to the table and grabbed the receiver.

"Raven?" he sputtered.

No one answered. All Redding could hear was someone breathing into the microphone. The breath sounded sickly, diseased.

"Who is this?" Redding asked.

"So you do know her," a man said.

"Raven? Yeah, I know her. Is she there?"

"Yes."

Redding paused, while the man breathed some more. Redding thought he could smell the stench of that breath through the connection.

"Have you... hurt her?" Redding asked.

"What is this, twenty questions?"

"Let me speak with her."

More breathing.

"I said let me speak with her, you piece of shit!"

"Whoa! She has really gotten under your skin, hasn't she? I can see why. Pretty little native girl."

Redding's stomach churned with an empty feeling of despair.

"Please, just let me speak to her."

"Okay," the man said. "Since you asked so nicely."

Redding sighed in relief, and then Raven was on the phone.

"I'm okay," she said.

"Who the hell was that?" Redding asked.

"Just a fucking pervert that's all," she said.

"What? Did he... "

Someone loudly struck her and she winced, but she remained on the line.

"Raven!" Redding pleaded.

The notion of some creep violating Raven tore through Redding's mind. All of a sudden he felt like he was a crazed silverback gorilla wanting to rip out someone's throat.

"What do they want, Raven? Talk to me."

"I'm okay," she finally said. "Motherfucker just slapped me, but I'm okay."

"Did they do anything to you?"

"They haven't touched me," she said, cutting him off like she could read his mind. "Don't worry."

Redding's pulse was through the roof. He wished he had a gun in the house, or any sort of projectile weapon. Then he wished he could calm the fuck down.

"They want to meet with you," said Raven. "They want to know about the Viking."

"The Viking?"

"Oh yeah. They're big-time Nazis and apparently they believe he is some sort of superhero or something."

And with that she yelped as someone snatched the phone out of her hand.

"Raven!" Redding shouted into the phone.

"Listen up, nerd." It was the man again. "We're sending someone for you. What's your address?"

"No, no," James said. "I can come to you. I'll get there fast, no problem. Please. And please don't hurt her."

There was another pause, and more breathing.

"Fine," the voice said. "I didn't feel like sending my boys out to fetch you anyways, too many cops up the Ave. Pay attention, here's where you can meet us."

Redding fumbled for a piece of paper so he could jot down the address. 
35. Micro-cycles of the Night

The Amazon remained frightened of Thor, even after he told her that he had no intention of killing her.

Eventually though she relaxed, as did Thor. The god's star-seed was thus safe from overflow for the time being, and his mission remained unthwarted.

They moved out into her main quarters, adjoined to the cookhouse. There, in a small box that made much heat and beeped when its machinations had ceased, she prepared victuals.

The Amazon brought out fragrant, steaming decoctions in clay vessels and handed one to Thor, who took it gratefully and sipped its liquid heat. They ate and, while Thor failed to recognize any of the dishes she had prepared, he relished the food nevertheless.

Further into the night he and the Amazon made various attempts at communication, with increasing success.

Thor relayed his intentions, in a smattering of modern English and Old Norse, and she in turn came back at him with her vernacular speech.

The Amazon translated into phonetic text some of what Thor said, tapping it into a small, rectangular glowing Antikythera mechanism of the same variety that every mortal seemed to carry, except for the most ragged of peasants.

Then the Amazon retranslated what she read from the mechanism back to Thor. Through this volley of words, his mission gained gradual and welcome clarity.

"So a glacier is a big hunk of ice," the Amazon said, sitting on a chair, her gaze hypnotized by the glow of her pocket mechanism. "A hunk of ice that came down out of Canada a long time ago."

Thor nodded with giddy excitement, enamored by the seer powers this wondrous device granted mortals.

"Yes, yes," he said. "Fourteen Earth cycles previous, by mortal standards."

The Amazon stopped and glared up from her device at Thor, as if he had made affront.

"May I continue?" she asked.

Thor bowed his head.

"My humblest apologies, Amazon."

"Thanks." She looked back at the glowing mechanism. "Now, it says here on this geological website from the university that this happened a whopping fourteen thousand years ago."

"Yes," Thor said, interrupting her once again. "As I said, fourteen cycles... "

He stopped. She had trained her stare on him once again, cold as any primordial ice.

"You keep up this act and I'm gonna have to jump your bones, you sexy fool."

Thor bowed his head in gesture of apology, not understanding exactly what she was implying while also not wanting to incur her Amazonian wrath. He indeed believed that she could jump quite well.

Thor valued this Amazon's assistance and much enjoyed her company, most especially now that he'd managed to distract himself from the carnal urges of his mortal flesh.

"Again, I apologize," he stammered. "I only seek with great urge the place where a vast wedge of ice carved up this land many cycles previous, leaving behind debris of boulders and rivers that gouged deep ravines into the firmament."

"That's interesting," the Amazon said, ignoring him as she continued to fiddle with her pocket seer mechanism.

"What say you?" Thor asked.

"Well, it says here that all of Puget Sound, which is that part of the sea we have here by the city, was dug out by a 3,000-foot-thick glacier."

"Yes, yes, Amazonian," Thor said. "But what of the specific boulder in the ravine?"

She tapped and dragged her finger across the rectangular glow again, her eyes scanning it.

"You're probably talking about Ravenna Park, where there's this big stone called a _gran-o-diorite_ erratic. I heard of this famous rock but sure didn't know how to spell it. Here's a photo," she said, showing him her marvelous pocket device.

On the glowing screen appeared a large boulder, sitting in a small creek and surrounded by lush foliage.

"Where might I find this park?" Thor asked, excited.

"It's in the U District. By the University of Washington. You know where that is, don't you?" she asked.

Thor gazed down at the seer mechanism, hoping for some clue or map that its magic might generate. No, he did not know the location of this laundry school the Amazon had named. He had no idea and he doubted the Amazon would guide him there.

His eyes on the device in her hands, he did not notice at first that her own gaze was now intently seeking his.

"I wish you would dig me out like that mighty glacier done dug out Puget Sound," she said.

Thor, despite lacking an acute grasp of the woman's vernacular allusion, still managed to decipher what she meant by the manner of her stare.

His felt himself drawn to her again. So standing quickly rather than relenting to ravish her, he made for the door with haste to escape into the night.

The Amazon called after him in desperation. But Thor, despite not wanting to seem ingrateful, did not reply or even look back as he exited her quarters and descended the steps towards the door that exited into the sea-colony.

Thor's congress with her had proven informative, yet duty called.

With the help of the Amazon, he had gleaned promising clues to work upon. However, Thor realized that should he have remained within range of her charms for a moment longer, he surely would have endangered his supreme purpose.
36. Their Beloved Super-Man

Raven listened carefully as Sizzly told James to show up at a location in Ravenna Park, not far from Sizzly's property. The conversation ended soon after.

Raven hoped Redding wouldn't screw this up. He didn't seem like he had a lot of street smarts.

"It's better that we meet in Ravenna," Sizzly said to his nephew. "Cops don't go into Tent City, but they knock on my door all the time."

Sizzly then had Raven sit on his lap and he put his hand on her thigh and squeezed. Not hard, not that that made it okay. But she was scared so she let him even though it grossed her out.

"You're a virgin, aren't you?" he said, practically slobbering on her with his foul, wet, hot breath.

But, as promised, he didn't go further. He was just too damn fat and unhealthy. His nephew watched though, and it was he that Raven was more afraid of. Even though Sizzly had said that Aryans were never allowed to have sex with nonwhites, shit could happen. Better to just let the fat boss have his fondly fun, rather than risk getting caught alone for too long with the younger one.

"In my early years, I would have already turned you out. I would have gotten you spun on tweak and you would never be the same," Sizzly said, his hand on her stomach. "But now I am older and wiser. I know better than to waste pure product on the impure."

Raven didn't know what disgusted her more. This guy's hands on her body or his bullshit ideas about race.

"Now," he said, "tell me everything you know about the Viking, beginning at the beginning."

Scared shitless, Raven did just that. She would do just about anything to buy time until they left to meet James. Anything to distract them from her.

She started with Drab and Tubz, telling Sizzly about how they'd showed up at her squat after running into the Viking under the bridge, about how that was the first she'd heard of the guy.

She made up more than that though, to make the story more interesting and longer to kill time. She said the Viking had appeared out of nowhere, like a character on Star Trek or something. She said he carried a hammer like Thor from comic books, and that he must have lost the hammer in the street battle with the riot cops and that's why he was punching them.

She talked a lot about that battle, where she had seen the Viking in person for the first time. She told them about how she saw the Viking jump ten feet in the air and toss off cops like they were toys, like a Terminator robot or something.

Raven really got into it, and so did Sizzly. It probably helped that her audience was super-high on strong drugs, making them easily distracted by her stories. They sat in a trance, at full attention as she told them about their beloved super-man.

At one point she paused, and Sizzly took a deep, sick-sounding breath.

"Nephew, if what this Indian says is true, I am not sure what we should search for, the Viking or his hammer," he said.

The nephew didn't look convinced. "I think she's full of shit," he said. "Let's get rid of her and move on. The Viking is probably just some Swede anarchist who's come to Seattle to help with this anti-capitalist bullshit."

Sizzly shook his head and looked at his nephew.

"We are the closest we have gotten yet to categorical proof that the race of super-men exists, and you want to gag our star witness?" Sizzly asked.

His nephew looked at the floor before answering.

"We can expand the local empire with our own forces," he said, looking back up at Sizzly. "Don't you trust my advice? After all I've done for the cause?"

Sizzly turned back to Raven.

"No," he said. "We need the Viking and this girl has something to do with the whole affair. I'm almost sure of it."

He brought his hand to Raven's hair and ran his fat fingers through it like a comb. "I can see why. She sure is a cute little Indian."
37. The Universal School of Washing

"You," Thor said to someone on a busy lane, a bespectacled man who looked young enough to be a pupil. "Where can I find the Universal School of Washing?"

The guy made an abrupt turn and walked into the street, braving the loud and fast automated carriage traffic to avoid facing the descended one.

Why, oh why, do these gravitated mortals look upon me as if I have lost my wits?

"You!" Thor said, pointing to another young person who traipsed down the masonry path beside the thoroughfare, a woman this time. He had to focus on youths of studious age, mortals who might know of this bizarre Universal School that taught the finer points of laundering.

She stopped and looked at him with less dread than the young man he'd driven into the street, but with equal skepticism.

"I don't have all day, big guy. What do you want?"

This mortal was courageous. Thor liked that.

"The Universal School of Washing. Can you direct me to its opulent campus?"

The woman appeared as puzzled as any other by the young god's elocution, yet did not retreat from his presence, to his surprise.

"Look, wingnut, if you want to insist on accosting people on the sidewalk with tweaked jabber, you should do it with some manners. How about an excuse me?"

Thor understood her, he believed. She had the gall to lecture him on pleasantries, implying that he should address mere gravitated mortals as if they too were half-gods. He laughed at this, and in reaction the pupil only turned to remove herself from his congress.

"Halt!" he shouted. But she continued to make distance. So he relented and added "Please!"

She ceased departure and looked back at him.

"That's more like it," she said, walking back to where he stood. "Now, you're looking for the campus? The university?"

Thor shrugged. That sounded somewhat correct.

"Yes, tis true. The Universal City School of Washing."

The woman snickered. "University of Washington. That's got to be the place."

She pointed to the side, at a small structure with only three walls and a flat roof, under which a half-dozen people could shelter themselves from the nagging pour of precipitation. Beside the structure was a sign that stood above head level, a sign with numbers on it.

"You're in the right place. Catch the seven bus. It'll take you down to the U District, right past campus. Keep an eye out for the university on your right as the bus goes up 15th Street."

Thor looked up at the sign with its vertical row of numerals, perplexed by them.

"Thank you," he said, though he had not understood her every word. When he looked back to the mortal he saw that she had already left and was beyond the reach of more pleasantries.

So now he knew how to make his way to the Universal City Laundry School. Only that was a waypoint, not his destination. More questions needed asking, and by employing this new technique of pleasant manner, Thor was confident the mortals would be more welcoming to his inquiries.

He needed to find the ravine, not far from the school grounds, the deep but narrow gouge in the ground, with a conspicuous large boulder resting at midpoint along a trail that ran its length. 
38. Even Police Don't Enter

Redding had yet to venture into the tent city that had sprung up in what was once the muddy sports field at the mouth of Ravenna Park. It was all over the news though, which reported the worst aspects of it.

Rampant drug abuse, sanitation issues, frequent assaults and other issues plagued the tent city. Even the police didn't enter its confines too often, though it was not among the largest of such sites in the region.

Vancouver had a much bigger one, a bona fide mecca of homelessness that individuals would cross the border illegally to access. Certainly the skid row area of Los Angeles was larger and more infamous, as it had long since closed to vehicular traffic because tents and impromptu structures made from salvaged material spilled off the sidewalks and into the streets.

Yes, Redding was afraid even to go near such places. As of late he only entered the long, wooded ravine that was Ravenna Park from the other end, the Cowen Park side, where neighborhood watch vigilantes patrolled to "keep local families safe."

Such armed groups of vigilantes contained the tent city, preventing it from spreading down into the ravine and east towards the "civilized" half of the park where ball fields and playgrounds were. The class and social dynamics of the place troubled Redding enough that he usually avoided thinking about it, much less actually going there.

But now he needed to go there, for Raven. He had agreed to meet the Nazis, at their recruitment tent, where they likely brainwashed vulnerable and desperate minds to suit their myopic supremacist agenda.

During the walk down 15th from his condo to the park, adrenaline pumped through Redding's veins at maximum pressure. He didn't want to die under these circumstances, though when he thought about it he was more afraid for Raven than he was for himself.

Minutes later, Redding found himself standing at the park's entrance on Ravenna Boulevard. A stone gateway, with a plaque on it detailing who had donated the land to the city a century earlier, marked the park's entrance.

Redding paused there to gather his courage before passing through and onto the trail that led to the tent city.

He really wanted to turn back, worried that he would stick out like a sore thumb in his tweed jacket and corduroy slacks. He wished he had dressed down, maybe into the ragged clothes he kept on hand to paint in, when inspiration struck.

After a couple of deep breaths, the professor walked forward onto the gravel path that wound around the upper side of the park beneath a line of trees.

A few steps later he could see and smell the encampment below, which was down a short hill nearby. It was a mess, with mud everywhere and what must have been a hundred decrepit tents and makeshift shanties in a haze of smoke from barbecues.

This is for her, Redding thought. I have to stand for something, and she deserves to rely on someone.

He stepped onto the grassy slope of the hill. Seconds later he would pass beyond a boundary enforced by daily police sweeps and into the free-for-all that was Seattle's Ravenna Park Tent City. 
39. Universal City District

Thor waited for micro-cycles with a few silent mortals by the marker the kindly woman had directed him to. Soon enough a tall and elongated growling carriage in two parts connected in the middle arrived. Thor had seen many such passenger carriages around the city. Never before had he considered joining the mortals in boarding one.

The carriage stopped and its front side-doors spread open. The peasants Thor had waited with mounted the steps and went inside.

Thor followed them up, and there a coachman sat in the driver's seat while the passengers fed sea-colony coin into a strange mechanism. Sadly, Thor had neither coin nor ticket.

"I have no coin, but I seek passage to the Universe City, to find the ravine not far from the Universal School of Washing Tons," Thor said to the coachman, who had the gall to roll his eyes at the half-god.

"Park Tent City right?" the coachman asked, though Thor had no idea what he meant. "Okay, guy, this ride's free. At least you don't stink too bad."

Thor did not know how to react, so he just turned from the man and walked to the back of the carriage to look for an empty seat.

He chose to walk all the way to the rear, where he felt more relaxed without the possibility of other passengers staring at the back of his head. There he joined miscellaneous ragged peasants, which helped him to blend in.

After the carriage recommenced its journey, Thor sat marveling at the interior of the vehicle while it rumbled towards the Universal City District. He gazed up at the pictures of people on the walls above the glass panes, along with inscriptions in the local version of runic script.

No one in the seats nearby paid him heed; everyone simply kept to themselves. One peasant dozed, with a loud sound exiting his nostrils to join the growl of the carriage. Most other passengers kept their heads bowed over seer mechanisms, lost in the glow and unaware of their surroundings.

Thor reasoned that all were tired, for what little sunlight struck the windswept sea-colony had already dimmed as night fell. The citizens were likely venturing home after a day of toil in the tallest of the colony's citadels, where Thor could only imagine the strange varieties of labor they conducted.

He turned his gaze out the glass pane beside him, concentrating instead on the lanes and masonry paths the carriage journeyed. He resolved himself to conduct a mental survey of the sea-colony, one that might help him eventually pinpoint the location of the ravine he so desperately sought.

He regretted his deficit of time to explore the vicinity more, as the gravitated realm had grown on him and ignited his fascinations. Midgard begged him to unlock more of its secrets and sensations.

Thor shook off that thought. For he knew that once he achieved success, once he had arrived at the large boulder and found the virgin, the dark matter portal would open up again to drag him and his new bride's every particle back to his home galaxy, back to Asgard. It was the only way.

On these matters he meditated for the duration of the carriage journey. None of the other passengers interrupted him, as they likely had cosmic questions of their own. Surely the warmth of their home fireplaces and vessels of comforting ale beckoned, for outside the dark rain had begun anew, causing Thor's breath to mist the interior panes he viewed the passing colony through.

After some micro-cycle fractions, he looked up and along the line of images above the steamed panes. There he noticed something strange.

As his gaze ran the length of them it landed on a curious artificial eye. The gleaming eyeball mechanism returned his gaze in kind almost like a mirror of record, and this triggered in the half-god a mounting unease.

It was as if someone somewhere in a dimension he knew not of observed his every motion. Twas as if the god were not only being watched by his elders through viewing portals. Twas as if he were being watched by another contingent entirely.
40. Lanes of Park Tent City

Once Raven arrived at Ravenna Park along with Sizzly and his nephew, one of Sizzly's local thugs met up with the group. He was dressed pretty much the same as the nephew: crew cut, tight jeans and a bomber jacket. He escorted the three through Park Tent City to what Sizzly had called "the recruiting tent."

As they walked across the wooden pallet walkways that kept their feet out of the mud, the tent city denizens reacted in different ways to Sizzly's crew. Some begged him for jobs or drugs. Some swore at him, which he just shrugged off. At one point someone threw a tomato at him and the thug ran off to smack the offender, who yelped in pain.

For the most part the people who lived there just went about their business; cooking, sorting recyclables and smoking pot. The smell of weed was everywhere which made Raven feel a little calmer. Those who lived in Park Tent City seemed like regular folks, just an older crowd than Raven was used to on the Ave and Broadway. They were regular people who just needed a place to be.

The tent city was not extremely large; it took only a few minutes to get to the center where Sizzly's spot was located. His tent was much bigger and nicer than all the neighbors'. It was unmarked, and tall enough inside that the group could stand up when they entered. There was furniture and it was warm.

"Have a seat," Sizzly said to Raven, pointing at a ragged couch. "This is where we barter."

He waddled to a chair behind a small desk, then pointed to the thug who had escorted them to the tent.

"Update me on current affairs. I haven't been here in a week and you idiots can't bother to send regular messages over to central," Sizzly said as he took a seat.

"Well," said the thug, "we had an incursion two days ago. Some gang bangers from the Ave tried to sell crack to the tenants so we ousted them."

Sizzly nodded.

"Good. We can't have this place turning into a junky village. And the general population? Still majority white?"

The thug shrugged. "We have some Mexicans who moved in and one Black guy who's shacked up with a White in a tent over by the hill. You want us to get rid of 'em?"

Sizzly shook his head.

"No, that's not an alarming level of miscegenation, not enough to necessitate heavy-handed tactics. We need the hearts and minds of this encampment to accept us as part of the landscape. Even the Fuhrer had some brown-eyed allies from the global south."

Raven almost laughed. Who were these morons kidding?, she wondered. They actually seem to believe what they're saying. It must be some whack-ass meth they're on, to take these batshit ideas seriously.

"It's important work we do here, men," Sizzly said to his nephew and the thug. "Your loyalty will not be overlooked when we stand at the gates of Valhalla. The armies of darkness cannot overcome us, so long as we heed the call of our crusading forebears."

Okay, this was starting to get repetitious, thought Raven. Where was James? Listening to such bullshit was almost worse than the fat man's hands on her thighs. She had to think of something, anything to shut them up.

At the moment the Nazis seemed pretty harmless. Desperate really, like they couldn't even get their shit together if they tried. So Raven decided to intervene.

"I forgot something, about the Viking," she blurted out.

The tent fell silent. All eyes were on her. Raven knew they would expect a more intense story, the second time around.

"This could take a while. Let me try to find the words to describe just how awesome he is," she said. "You know what would really help with that process? A good toke of weed."
41. Far As I Go

What the fuck was Redding doing at this place?, he berated himself. Tent city? Nazis? He was a scholar goddamnit. Tenured, and with a PhD in front of his name, the most renowned professor of mythology on the West Coast.

Yet here he was, walking over soggy wooden pallets, mud threatening his shined penny loafers, on his way to "negotiate" with deluded, brain-damaged white supremacists.

"Ferry you to your destination, sir?" asked someone to the side, interrupting Redding's thoughts.

Redding looked over. He had been keeping his eyes down, watching where he walked to avoid stepping through the cracks or stepping into god-knows-what.

The person who'd spoken was a skinny old man standing between two tents. He was wearing a garbage bag as a raincoat, and held in his hands another bag full of cans and bottles.

"Sure, thank you. Do you happen to know where Sizzly's tent is?" Redding asked him.

"Yeah, not too far from here," said the old man. "The city's small, maybe ten acres, but it's still easy to take a wrong turn and end up in a bad place."

Was that a veiled threat? Or just an appeal to be employed as a guide?

Either way, Redding realized that he would have to pay. Of course, given his appearance - his clothes gave him away. This was not his place.

Again he kicked himself for not thinking to don a disguise. In fact what he was wearing suddenly seemed like a foreign concept even to him. Like it wasn't really him but more an act, part and parcel of the image he projected. I'm the studious one. I'm a scholar, a reliable "authoritative" source of knowledge.

"Five dollars if you take me to Sizzly's tent," Redding said to the man, who returned an eager grin.

"My good sir, you don't look like the type to meet with that bloated bastard. But if you pay me five dollars, I'm not one to ask your purpose. Right this way."

The man beckoned and Redding followed him down a lane and around a few corners. Along the way they had to step high over gaps in rotten pallets. The drizzle continued. Most of those who lived in the tent city were either not at home or zipped into their tarp-covered shelters to take refuge from the elements.

"Right there," the man said as he stopped and pointed. "This is as far as I go, because if I see the fucker I'm liable to shank him."

Redding looked to where his guide pointed, towards a tent taller than the others nearby. While not brand-new it was in better shape than average for the encampment.

"He's not good for this place, if you ask me," continued the old man. "You know how the news is. They latch on to anything negative. No one wants to hear about the families that live here, about the people who are just trying to get a leg back up in life."

Redding scrutinized his guide. The man didn't appear sober. And, on closer inspection, he seemed like a fifty-year-old in an eighty-year-old body.

"Don't forget about the fiver," the man said, eyeing Redding in turn.

The professor took out his wallet and handed over the cash. His guide took it and nodded, then trudged away without saying a word.

Redding looked back at the tall tent, hoping that when he got to it he would find Raven inside and unharmed.

Then he would have to get them both out of here. One way or another. 
42. Valhalla Invoked

Raven was about at the end of ideas for the myth she was creating.

So she went over everything again, adding word of another Viking sighting. She made up some bullshit story about how her friend had watched the super-dude roll a flipped car over to save a very desperate white-skinned woman and child trapped inside.

The skinheads and Sizzly listened like they were in love with the idea of this guy, like their prayers had been answered and all they needed was to see him with their own eyes. Raven imagined she was almost like some sort of priest directing followers of an ancient cult. Never in her life had she talked so long without anyone interrupting her or losing attention. It was kind of fun and made her feel powerful.

Then James showed up and made his presence known.

"Hello?" he called out. "This is Professor James Redding outside the tent. Please do not harm myself or my friend Raven inside."

Raven was kind of annoyed. She hoped James didn't fuck this up because she was doing just fine on her own, so far at least.

Sizzly nodded to the thug, who opened the tent and slipped outside. Raven could hear him pat James down to make sure the professor wasn't carrying a weapon. Then the tent flap opened back up and both men came in.

The first thing James did before looking around at the inside of the tent was to lock eyes with Raven.

"You okay?" he asked. He seemed surprised that she was not only okay but also wasn't tied up or anything.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just telling these guys about the super Viking."

Sizzly chuckled. "Yes, this girl here has a pretty active imagination, wouldn't you agree professor?" he asked.

It sounded to Raven like Sizzly was onto her hustle, like he might side with his nephew. But he only glanced at Raven and winked, which came across as extra creepy but still somehow safe-ish.

"You guys run a pretty loose operation here for an organized crime syndicate," James said, seeming more relaxed for some reason.

Sizzly nodded. "The only real competitors we have are cops, locally at least. You didn't bring any cops with you, now, did you Mr. Professor?"

The nephew and skinhead thug were scowling at James, two young goons ready to attack someone, anyone.

"Are you kidding?" James asked. "With all the news lately? I wouldn't even call the police if someone broke into my condo. They're all but useless."

Sizzly laughed. His troops didn't.

"That's good, that's good," he said. "I think many citizens of this great tent city would agree. Come, have a seat."

He gestured to a chair, and James walked over and sat down. Raven couldn't tell if the professor was acting or if he and Sizzly really were hitting it off well.

"So you're a professor of Norse mythology?" Sizzly asked.

"Comparative mythology, though I did my dissertation on the Norse pantheon."

"That's great. I don't really know what a dissertation is exactly but that's great. And you speak Norse?"

James sighed. "Somewhat. Yes, I too saw video of the guy in question at the riot on Capitol Hill. We all did. He invoked Valhalla. He spoke in a perfect Old Norse dialect. What's your obsession with him?"

Sizzly patted his belly and looked to his nephew.

"My boy, go fetch me a snack. My blood sugar is getting low."

The nephew hesitated, obviously not wanting to miss out on any of what was to come.

"Go on, be a good boy. My blood sugar is important. Without it our empire would crumble. Go to the corner mart and bring back some ice cream, vanilla only. And make sure those Koreans don't shoot your face off! We all know they're armed."

The nephew sulked to the flap and exited. Sizzly turned back to James.

"From what I hear you're pretty obsessed yourself," Sizzly said. "Which makes the Viking even more interesting."

James looked at Raven. She shrugged.

"Sorry, James," she said. "I had to tell them something. They were about to make me do some hard drugs."

James made a disgusted face.

"Look bookworm," said Sizzly, "we will find this Aryan ubermensch. And when we do, we need you on hand to translate what he says in detail."

He nodded and the thug nearby took from his jacket a pistol and aimed it at James.

"So until we can sort this out," continued Sizzly, "the both of you will accompany us to a safe-house I have set aside."

"This wasn't part of the deal... " James said, eyeing the gun and looking like he was further out of his league than he had been already.

"I make all the deals in this place!" yelled Sizzly.

James stayed silent and looked at the floor of the tent. Sizzly took a few deep breaths, working to get some air back into his system.

"Now, as soon as my nephew gets back here with my snacks, we will all go lay low while my boys search out the descended one. If you resist, we'll shoot you. And don't think we can't get away with that. Like you said, no one calls the cops anymore."
43. The Power of Lightning

Thor stood at the edge of a peasant encampment, on a hill overlooking it.

"You're going to Park Tent City, right?" Thor remembered the coachman asking. The only words Thor had understood of that were you and park. So he'd nodded, grasping that the ravine he sought was also some sort of communal grounds where citizens of the sea-colony could mingle in recreation.

The trip had taken micro-cycles. All along the way Thor had kept gazing into the unsettling eye contraption that looked back at him from the ceiling of the carriage. Eventually the coachman's voice emitted through the walls announcing they had arrived at Ravenna Park and that it was time for Thor to disembark.

Though not accustomed to being jostled about through his day like this, ordered here and there, Thor yet was learning. He understood that, to blend in, he would have to feign subservience, even to mere coachmen. Perhaps that was much of what cemented the sea-colony together, a chain of command like a military, with the blue colonial guard serving the highest nobles of all.

So here he stood, nearer yet to his destination, with the carriage rumbling into the distance behind him. Somewhere beyond all the huts and campfires before his line of sight lay the deep and ancient ravine he sought.

The grounds stank and putrid smoke wisped up into the sky. The settlement was confined, dense with shanties and canvas hovels erected close together. Thor did not understand why the peasants hadn't spread out their numbers, as there was more open ground nearby where homesteaders could stake claim.

Beyond the field he saw a dense forest which he presumed to be the mouth of the ravine. A trail led down into it, with trees thick and darkness within. No one walked in or out, and the underbrush was somewhat overgrown while the trail appeared passable.

To approach the mouth of the ravine and follow that trail Thor would have to go near the encampment. It dawned on him that peasants might see and recognize him from the melee he had joined on the hill solar cycles previous.

This was no insurmountable obstacle between him and success however. Perhaps he could even enlist the guidance of one who might know where within the ravine the boulder rested, the boulder carried in eons past by magnificent glacial ice.

Thor descended the hillside, slipping a little on the sodden embankment. Mud oozed between his bare toes as he dug in and regained his footing.

When he reached the bottom of the steep bank, Thor stopped and turned back, for he heard a sudden and familiar clamor behind him. Screeches, lurches, and an incessant, high-pitched whine.

Upon pivoting in the direction he had just come from, he saw familiar lights too, red and blue flashing glares seemingly designed with the express purpose of hindering a half-god on a divine mission.

A voice boomed at him, magnified by the echoing contraption he had heard during the melee, like a bugle that barked only words.

"You without the shoes! Freeze and put your hands in the air. This is the SPD!"

To Thor's back, among the canvas shelters, shouts began to ring out.

"A sweep? Not again!"

"Fourth time this week!"

"Who they after now?"

"Hopefully Sizzly!"

Only Thor was unshod however, and the word-bugle sounded for him. The lights came from the thoroughfare where the passenger carriage had so recently dropped him, up the embankment through the foliage.

The colonial guard had come for him, somehow aware of his travel across the sea-colony. They were surely there to thwart him before he neared success on his cosmic mission.

"You have nowhere to go! We have the tent city surrounded!" the bugle blared.

As uniformed sentries emerged through the foliage, Thor stood fast and faced them. There were many, two dozen at least.

They had similar armaments as in the prior skirmish, both shields and clubs. They stood strong and the closest ones had what looked like small sling contraptions in their hands, trained on Thor's chest.

Thor growled as anger seethed through him. He hated himself for allowing the colonial palace guard to track him so, to pursue him without his knowledge. He hoped that his elder brethren in distant Valhalla could not glimpse fragments of this through the viewing portal. Surely they would wince at not having trained the young god better before sending him through the cosmic gate.

He's not ready, Thor could almost hear his father Odin say. He's just a boy. How foolish it was of us to entrust him to restore the chaos/order balance.

What appeared to be a rank officer stepped forward from the guardsman line, not ten micro-lengths away. He too held one of the small sling contraptions.

"You're under arrest for property destruction and assaulting police officers at the Capitol Hill riot last week. On the count of three, if you do not lie face down on the ground, we will use force to render you compliant."

The rank officer spoke too fast for Thor to follow all the modern English he was using, so Thor only understood you, down, on and ground. Still that was enough to know they wanted him to kneel onto the cold sod beneath his bare feet, as a harsh master would belittle a hobbled, stricken slave.

Such a thought was entirely unconscionable to the half-god. Rather than listen to such drivel any longer, he bolted up the steep embankment towards the guards, his toes dug in, his body leaning forward in full sprint.

They unleashed flames from their little slings, with the power of lightning emanating from long strings of current. The lightning darts stuck to Thor's body and stung him, slowing but not stopping his momentum as he clashed with their line.
44. Remember Yet, the Giants of Yore

"We told you, no cops!" the skinhead thug shouted.

He held Redding close and dug the gun into his neck.

Through the tent, they could all hear the sirens and a megaphone in the distance. Shouts of alarm sounded among the tent city's residents. Apparently the police had arrived at Ravenna Park right after Redding did.

Redding realized that he would be blamed for bringing them along.

The thug looked at Sizzly. "Let's just shoot this geek through his face. We don't need him."

Sizzly held up his hand. "No! We do need him, you expendable simpleton. If you pull that trigger, I will have you disowned from the brotherhood."

Redding looked at Raven who sat on the couch. She was staring at the gun the thug held. Her lip quivered and her hands gripped the cushion beneath her.

She glanced at Redding and gently shook her head, as if she couldn't come up with any way out of this either.

Redding tried to breathe, to remain calm. He'd read about situations like this. As he understood it, panicking was the worst possible course of action.

Suddenly, out of instinct Redding blurted out a translation from something in Old Norse, while sirens blared in the distance and the shouts outside the tent grew louder.

"I remember yet, the giants of yore," he began, and at once the other three in the tent focused their eyes and ears on him. "Who gave me bread, in the days of old. Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree, with mighty roots, beneath the mold."

Sizzly, although he had surely not understood a word, seemed to respect authenticity when he heard it. Redding's recital of a verse from the Norse Poetic Edda seemed to have worked some real magic on the boss, so he pointed at the thug.

"Turn that gun away from the scholar now," Sizzly said. "Or I will have the S.S. tattoos lasered off your razor-burned head at the Northern Reunion next month."

The skinhead relaxed his grip on Redding's collar and lowered the gun to his side. He was still sneering though. He looked like he wanted to kill.

"I know a Jew when I smell one," he growled into Redding's ear. "You can only buy your time for so long before the boss's nephew and me finish what the supreme patriarch started back in 1939."

Redding would have laughed if he weren't so frightened. Began in 1939? No one had informed this neo-Nazi that Hitler had been very active in the National Socialist Party years before that?

Besides, Redding was not even a fraction Jewish, not to his own knowledge at least. Not that the make-up of his own DNA made the anti-Semitism any less abhorrent to the professor.

"Come on," Sizzly said. The big guy rose to his feet with some effort and took Raven by the hand. "Forget my nephew and my snacks. We leave now." He yanked her to her feet.

"Hey!" Raven said.

Sizzly slapped her on the back of the head, which shut her up fast. Then he lifted a stun gun to her neck.

"Cop an attitude again and you get an electroshock treatment free of charge. We need you alive but you can still be crispy," he hissed. Then he nodded at the thug, who had Redding firm in his clutches. "Let's move."

Out of the tent they all scurried, the young skinhead and Redding first, Sizzly wheezing with Raven after them.

The lanes of Park Tent City were busy. People ran by, sirens screamed louder and closer than before, and there was yelling all through the camp. Many stood in the mud, pointing and trying to glimpse the action on the hillside to the east.

The thug and Redding stopped and turned to see what was going on, and Sizzly and Raven followed suit. There were a few distant pops of gunfire.

"What the fuck? They never bring out the firepower when they sweep through," the thug said.

At the edge of the field below the hillside, a policeman flew up into the pine trees, as if he had bounced off a trampoline.

"Keep moving!" shouted Sizzly.

He wrenched Raven and turned away from the action, stomping across the pallets that sagged under his weight.

The skinhead and Redding followed. As the group made its way through the camp away from the riot, people all around them hurried the other way, towards it.

"They probably want to flush us out and sell the field to a developer!" a passing woman said.

"Naw, it's just an exercise, using us as punching bags to test their chops after they got their asses handed to them on the Hill last week," said a guy running by, hopping from plank to pallet to plank.

"No, they came for someone special, serving a warrant most likely," said someone else.

"To the ravine," Sizzly said to his thug. "The cops aren't after us."

The skinhead nodded.

Raven glanced back at Redding. Their eyes met but he said nothing as his captor jammed him hard with the pistol and growled "Move!"

Quickly they were at the edge of the camp. The sirens were farther off but still blaring. There was probably a full-on battle going on between the homeless and the cops, but Redding could not know for sure.

They were almost alone now as they rapidly left the crowd behind. The clamor of chaos dwindled into silence with each step as they crossed an invisible boundary into the natural environment of the park, towards a trail that led down into the forested ravine. 
45. No One is Invincible Forever

The guardsmen swarmed around Thor from all directions, spilling over the edge of the embankment and rushing down at him with shields raised and ready to ram. The small lighting was everywhere, and a thousand little stings nagged at his strong skin as the men at arms unleashed fire upon him.

Thor screamed the cry of Valhöll as colonial shield-bearers leapt into attack. When they clashed, he battered at their armor with his balled fists, sending the guards flying to the ground or against the hillside, stunned by his power.

Another wave arrived as soon as he'd fended off the first. Pain surged through him as more lightning projections diminished his defenses. With their war clubs they struck him - on his head, his neck, his knees, his hands. Likely in awe of his vigor, a few ran when they saw that he would not yield.

"Keep at him!" yelled one from the crest above, perhaps their rank officer. "No one is invincible forever!"

Thor laughed inside, even as the pain made him wince. No one is invincible forever. However the words spoken were true. Should he fail to part their throngs and make way, he knew he would fall to their mercy, likely to be dragged before the king of their sea-colony and tried by inquisition as a sorcerer.

More and more piled onto him, as before when he'd met them in the clash on the hill. Then the lightning hiss abated as their club attacks cut off the lines of their sling-dart fire.

This brief respite granted Thor an increase in strength so that he could renew a fierce defense. He grabbed guards by their collars and wrists or anything at hand and wrenched at their weight to break ranks. He threw them back onto the hill they'd descended, or in the other direction, into the field.

He seized one with two hands and hurled him up to the sky, seeing the horror in the hurled guard's eyes as he flew over a peasant's shelter nearby and landed in boot-churned sodden soil.

Their third wave thinned but still a few beat on Thor. One broke a club on his skull, dazing the half-god momentarily before he kicked the foot soldier's shield and sent him reeling. More attacked, but even more retreated in search of safety.

Fortune, for the moment, smiled upon the young god. However yet another line appeared behind the broken one, this new one double in number, shields tight side by side as if mimicking a Greek phalanx.

Thor shuddered at the sight. Could he best such a force, even with his relentless endurance and divine strength?

As he considered the option of retreat, peasants emerged from the periphery and fell in all around him, ragged folk of all varieties: the infirm; Moors, Germanic tribesmen and Mongols; the old and the young; men and women. As their forces combined they commenced to rout the wave of fresh colonial guardsmen.

Thor's demeanor elevated to sublimity. Never before, not even in pantheonic battle among the Nine Realms had he experienced such a spontaneous response, such a orgiastic crescendo of operatic rebellion.

"Keep them out of Park Tent!" screamed a man, pushing himself up the hill with a metal cane and swinging it at the line of shields pressing downwards.

"This is our place!" shouted a woman to Thor's left, lifting a piece of wood and using it to shield herself against oncoming clubs.

Thor rushed up the hill with his supporting force and slammed his body into the shield wall, breaking the phalanx and opening the colonial line.

Half a dozen fierce peasant warriors ran past him through the rupture in the foe's ranks, where they commenced to skirmish with utmost dedication to their cause.

Thor paused to let the impassioned peasants fight on, watching them with pride. He breathed deep the spirit of victory, recuperating from the intense effort expended while facing the guard as a lone agent.

He remembered the boulder and his divine mission, and turned back down the hill towards the encampment. Now was his opportunity to slip away as the skirmish grew in fervor behind him.

He walked down between the tents onto the walkways of wooden planked platforms above the mud, glancing right to left, left to right, for any clue as to where nearby a giant stone might sit nestled into the ground.

Surely if I were near it, a local would know.

Thor seized the wrist of a peasant who ran by to join the fray and take up arms with his brethren. Halted, the man stared back at the young half-god with eyes wide in surprise, much as all mortals who'd felt Thor's strength.

"I seek a boulder near twice my height, its base bathed in a small ravine creek," Thor said.

The mortal gulped air but did not respond at first. Thor remembered the chiding woman upon the hill who advised him on how to board a carriage bound for the Universal City District.

"Please," he implored, taking care to put the frightened mortal at ease with pleasantry. "Help direct me towards the large rock."

The mortal hesitated again, but nodded as if he knew.

"You need to walk down into the park to find the big rock," he said, pointing in the direction of the thick stand of trees to the west. "It's not far from here, take you only ten, fifteen minutes. Just walk down the steep trail over there. It's a shortcut."

Thor held fast, debating whether or not to intern the mortal into service as a guide.

"I would help you find it, but it's real dangerous," the mortal said. "Packs of thieves and bloodthirsty vigilantes roam it at night. They could rob or kill you."

Thor did not understand all that the man spoke. But Thor did deduce the boulder was only a short ramble from where they stood, and that brigands roamed the ravine past twilight.

As per usual he almost laughed at the thought, that any mortal would think a half-god susceptible to attack from petty thieves. Most especially after Thor had demonstrated his might against a veritable legion of colonial palace guards.

Confident that he could navigate his own way into and along the ravine, Thor let the mortal depart to join his friends in the melee. The man ran off without another word and Thor turned towards the trees and the darkness. 
46. The Dark, Cold Ravine

The trail through the park was so dark Raven couldn't see anything except for what was lit by the light from Sizzly's cell phone and the stronger light of the thug's LED flashlight. She kept tripping over rocks and so did Sizzly.

After a few minutes, between deep breaths, Sizzly barked "Wait!" He stopped and stood on the trail. There was only silence. They couldn't hear any sirens or shouting anymore. They were deep into the park already.

The thug and James stopped in front, and the thug shined the LED light back into Raven's and Sizzley's faces.

"The ground, you fool! Shine the light on the ground!" Sizzly snapped, holding his arm up to shield his eyes.

"Sorry," the skinhead said, aiming the beam down at the trail.

"Let me call the nephew again," Sizzly said, holding his phone to his ear. After a few seconds he cursed. "Damn it, it's going straight to voice mail!"

"Let's just hike through to the other side. No way the cops are sweeping the whole park. We can climb up past the rock, under the second bridge," the thug suggested.

Sizzly shook his head.

"I can't make it that far like this. The second bridge is a mile from the safe-house and I'm already beat. Break out your stash and do me up a hit of the good stuff."

Raven couldn't see too well but it looked like the skinhead shook his head in the dark.

"No way, sir. Remember your heart condition."

Sizzly lost it. He almost threw his cell phone to the ground but then just stomped in rage.

"You follow orders boy!" he wheezed. "Without a boost no way I make it to the rock, no way I can get out of this blasted ravine. Do me up a hit now!"

Raven kept looking at James through all this. In the darkness she could see him well enough to know that he was looking back at her too.

James was probably even more scared than she was. He'd never seen a circus sideshow of true tweakers in action up close and personal, though he must have sensed that these guys could flip their lids and get trigger-happy any time.

The thug let go of Redding and stepped forward, handing the LED to his boss.

"Alright then, shine this on me sir," he said.

Sizzly took the light, one hand still on Raven's arm.

"Try to run and I will hunt you like I was on a ninja safari," the thug said over his shoulder, back at James, before taking a ziplock bag from his jacket pocket.

The thug proceeded to unpack his kit: a bag of powder, a small mirror and a straw for snorting. Nothing new to Raven. She'd seen all kinds of drug use, most recently at the squat where she had watched Drab and Tubz use heroin.

But a heroin user was different from a tweaker. Drab and Tubz were peaceful druggies who just wanted to find a cozy place to nod off, all warm and fuzzy. Tweakers were a whole different animal. They were top-level predators in the drug world, capable of anything. At least in their own amped-up minds.

The skinhead dumped the powder onto the mirror and chopped it up with a Seattle Public Library card. Raven's heart raced. She hoped this line of drugs would put the fat man down with a heart attack, out of everyone's misery. But that would leave her and James alone with the skinhead thug, which spelled trouble with a capital T. Shit, make that TROUBLE in all caps.

"That's a good boy. Crush and chop it fine. Wouldn't want to burn any more holes in what's left of my sinuses. This glass will give me the night vision I need to guide us into the master white light."

Sizzly took the straw from the skinhead and bent down to toot from the mirror, snorting the drugs up into his nostrils and groaning after every last bit had disappeared from the surface.

Raven could tell when the drugs hit by the strength of Sizzly's grip on her with his free hand. It went from strong to superhuman in an instant, like the drug had taken years off the man's age and put them back on his body as pure muscle.

"Yes, my precious. It has been too long," Sizzly said as he gently swayed on his feet. "Goddamn we have the best dope in the world!"

The job was done. And so far, no heart attack. Raven didn't know whether or not to be relieved.

"You ready to walk, sir?" asked the thug as he zipped the bag back up and stashed it.

"Not yet," Sizzly replied.

Thankfully, he let Raven go, and started fishing through his pockets with both hands.

"Before we continue I'm going to take a couple aspirin so my left ventricle doesn't explode," he said. 
47. Another Sting

Thor could see the faint, dark outlines of arboreal appendages as he descended a steep hill into the ravine. The trees looked like silent Midgardians standing guard over the worn path. Despite the excellent night vision his divine eyes granted him, the lack of sunlight's clarity still toyed with the young half-god's mind.

He slid a bit, but placed his feet carefully and made way in as much silence as possible.

After more progress he heard something and stopped, then came under the suspicion that he shared the hillside with another, a mortal rather than a beast. Louder than he, and clumsy. Yes, a mortal with thick boots rather than the soft paws of an animal well adapted to life in the wild.

Thor looked to his right, to his left, and then behind, back up the hill which he had just descended. And it was in that direction that he spied a small light, like a candle that darted to and fro, flickering through the trees.

He watched it, to see the direction it would take, thinking to follow it and solicit further information on where to seek out the great boulder by utilizing his new skills of pleasantry and persuasion. Then he realized that the mortal was following the scant trail Thor himself was on.

Was the candle carried by a potential ally and friend, or foe? Thor almost laughed at himself. He was a god, not anxious prey marked as a target. There existed few existential threats to him in the Earth realm, save for that of a well-armed battalion.

The candle flickered nearer, and Thor's curiosity was aroused. He wanted to meet as many of these mortals as possible before re-entering the portal and tracing his steps back along the cosmic wheel to Valhalla.

Within feet now, Thor realized that the bright light was some sort of lantern rather than a candle. It shone into his eyes with such a blinding glare that he could not sight the face of who carried it.

"It's you!" a man said.

Thor knew not the identity of the voice behind the light, but whoever it was seemed to know the half-god's identity. No surprise, for rumor of his arrival had clearly spread across the sea-colony.

"We don't need you. We can restore purity without your help," the voice said. "You should go back."

Back? To Asgard? This man knows of my origin galaxy?

Then there was a loud, sharp sound like lightning and a sting in Thor's chest, akin to the thrust of a giant beaked bird trying to eat out his heart, a deeper sting than the colonial guard's swarm of lightning darts.

Thor went down to his knee on the hillside, clutching at a slender tree beside him. Then came another crack. And another. Both times the ferocious sting again, in his clavicle and his abdomen.

The half-god fell forward and slid down the slope on his belly. The cold mud worked its way into his tunic against his chest and mixed with what must have been his own blood.

"You shouldn't have come here," the voice said from the shadows above. "We don't need your help."

Then everything went black. Blacker even than the moonless night Thor had roamed through before these stings of ambush brought him down.
48. Carried from the North, Eons Past

The group of four made it to the huge boulder on the path that ran along the narrow ravine floor. Sizzly led them, a newfound spring in his step. It had only taken ten minutes once they got going.

Watching the rotund man inhale the meth had horrified Redding's sheltered eyes. He had no idea what a chokehold substance abuse had on the world, that people spent their entire adult lives addicted to alluring intoxicants that eventually killed them.

Redding's own such experiences were limited to coffee mornings and wine evenings, intermittent regretted tokes of cannabis at faculty parties, and faint memories of an occasional line of cocaine back when he had been a student finding himself.

At their destination Sizzly pocketed the phone that he'd been using as a flashlight. Now only the thug's LED flashlight lit the area. Sizzly let go of Raven and rubbed his hands together.

"This rock arrived here from the holy North," he said between deep gasps, reaching out to stroke the stone. It sat in a creek next to the low wooden bridge Sizzly stood on, above trickling water. The boulder was probably four or five meters in circumference. On the surface was spray-painted graffiti including a telltale swastika, a territorial mark of Sizzly's band no doubt.

Raven climbed up onto the boulder past Sizzly and sat on one of its dimples, above everyone else. The thug didn't stop her. Everyone seemed weary from the harried hike.

"Any word from your nephew?" the thug asked his boss.

Sizzly took out his phone, flipped it open and dialed, then held it to his ear.

"We're at the glacial boulder. Where are you?" he asked after someone answered on the other end.

Pause.

"Okay, see you soon."

He put away the phone.

"The boy said he ran into someone on the trail and had to boot-stomp them. Should be here soon," Sizzly said.

"Good," said the skinhead, looking over his shoulder. "We could use the backup."

Redding leaned against the boulder next to Sizzly.

"Would you mind telling me what you hope to accomplish with all this?" Redding asked.

Sizzly looked at him. "Survival."

"Survival?"

"Yes, survival," Sizzly said, breathing heavy. "This is about so much more than genetic purity. This is about culture. Our Anglo-Saxon Protestant work ethic is waning. That means the death of everything we have built until now, whole societies, traditions and customs. All because we don't breed like rabbits like Catholics or Muslims. We deserve better than that. You deserve better than that, assuming Redding is your real name and you're not hiding a Judaic heritage."

Raven giggled a little.

"Watch it!" the thug shouted, pointing up at her.

"It's just that he's spun on drugs and babbling," she said from atop the rock nearby.

The thug raised his hand and stepped forward, as if he was going to punch her. Raven didn't say another word.

"Please!" Redding shouted, trying to draw attention away from her. "I'm just trying to understand your reasoning."

Redding would never defend white supremacists but Raven was putting both of them at risk by mouthing off. The situation called for diplomacy not inflammatory remarks.

It dawned on Redding that Sizzly was intoxicated. His dialogue didn't seem to follow any kind of logic. He clumped his ideas together in poorly delivered abstractions.

"Any other race would do the same thing," Sizzly continued, "Blacks, the Hispanics. They would take steps to preserve their culture. They would fight."

Redding understood the reasoning behind cultural preservation, but not Sizzly's version. In the professor's mind economic class united demographics more than culture and heritage. A poor white had more in common with a poor Black than a poor white had in common with a wealthy white.

Sizzly's ethnic chauvinism, as with that of any other extremist group preaching exclusion, was severely misguided and only harmed the plight of those in need. Not to mention that it overlooked history. After all, thought the professor, Europeans had committed atrocious acts of genocide. Now that white dominance was on the wane, people like Sizzly wanted to complain about oppression?

"You know, there are cultures that have it even worse," Redding said, looking towards Raven. "Cultures that our white ancestors almost eradicated through more aggressive means than simply having big families."
49. Stormblood

Thor regained consciousness as the utter darkness of near-death reconstituted into shadows and outlines of the forest hill he had tumbled down. He could not move a muscle. He was overwhelmed by a sense of unfamiliar and utter weakness and his extremities were lodged in lush foliage.

After micro-cycle fractions he gained the wherewithal to unpin his arm from beneath a log. After doing so he drew his hand up to his torso to inspect his wounds.

The wounds bled. I, a god, am bleeding. In that moment Thor was so sapped of power he couldn't stand on his own two feet. It was a humbling state of existence, a state in which the mortal half of him had soundly put the god half in its place. It reminded Thor that in the Earth realm, despite retaining certain divine traits, he had no choice but to abide by local, gravitational rule of law.

He fought to redeem his god half nevertheless. Even so weak, he slithered and then crawled down the slope and onto a rocky trail below. There he battled his way to his feet, a trail of his blood left to mix with the soil.

Once upright though wavering, Thor leaned on a great pine tree, wondering for how long he had lost his wits, how long he had been in the clutches of the darker darkness of mortal death.

In the foreground he spied the same lantern flickering between trees, this time growing more distant rather than nearer. He mustered every iota of what little strength he had to follow it, to hunt the mortal who so brazenly had hunted him.

With each step the next grew easier as Thor propelled himself into a forward, rhythmic momentum, shuffling his feet as silently as he could towards a reckoning with the mortal foe who somehow knew of the half-god's celestial, extra-dimensional origin. 
50. Thrashing Creek

From atop the rock Raven saw a light moving through the trees. It grew closer as someone approached on the same trail that the group had followed.

She didn't say anything; she didn't want to warn Sizzly. Maybe whoever it was would help her and James out of the mess they were in. Or maybe it was Sizzly's sadistic nephew.

Sizzly and the skinhead eventually noticed the light too.

"Nephew!" Sizzly shouted into the darkness, his voice cracking. "Tell me it's you!"

The light bobbed as whoever carried it navigated the rough gravel trail, but there was no response to Sizzly's call. The thug lifted his gun, ready to shoot on sight.

"Nephew!" shouted Sizzly again, the shout echoing into the night until it was swallowed up by the forest.

"Sir, I know you're excited, but it's probably best not to call too much attention to ourselves. I'm sure it's him," the skinhead advised.

Raven and James eyed each other, too scared to trade words.

Then there was a shout, a cry for help coming from the direction of the bobbing light, and it vanished.

"Nephew!" Sizzly yelled.

Then there was the sound of someone choking. It was loud. It sounded like death.

Shots rang out near where the lone bobbing light had vanished, and flashes from a gun's muzzle strobed in the distance. Redding, Sizzly and the thug all flinched with each shot and went to their knees on the plank bridge. Raven slid down off the rock and took cover, hugging its cold base. When the gunfire stopped the foursome was frozen in silence, listening close for what might happen next.

But nothing happened. After a few minutes the thug got to his feet, gun trained in the distance.

"What the fuck?" he said, cocking his pistol.

"My god, someone attacked him," Sizzly said, pushing himself up and taking a few steps towards the end of the bridge. "I will kill whoever dared accost us."

"Wait sir!" yelled the thug, grabbing his boss's bathrobe. "Whoever it is out there is dangerous."

Sizzly looked at him. "Then you go. Save him before it's too late."

The thug looked into the night, hesitating. Sizzly on the other hand was ready to run to hell and back.

"Coward," he said, spitting the word. "If you don't go, I will. Give me the gun."

The thug looked down at his weapon, then back up at the boss like no way.

"I can't believe this. You dare go against my orders?" Sizzly said.

Sizzly's hand holding the taser twitched a little, as if he was about to draw it on his rebellious bodyguard. But before anything else could happen, something yanked the skinhead thug's feet right out from under him and he was slammed down on the bridge, then dragged off of it into the creek a few feet below.

"What the hell?" James shouted.

In the water below Raven could hear wrestling. Sizzly lifted his smartphone and turned its light on, then shined it down off the bridge.

"You!" he said, both taser and light aimed into the water.

Raven got up to go have a look too.

"Raven, let's get out of here!" James hissed.

"Wait," she said, going to the edge of the bridge beside Sizzly to get a look at the action.

In the dark creek Raven could see that it was the Viking! He was on his back, holding the thug in a headlock. The Viking was choking the thug out.

"Why are you attacking us?" Sizzly shouted. "You're our savior, sent from the heavens to guide our cause."

The thug stopped thrashing around. The Viking said something in what sounded like backwards English.

Sizzly turned to point his stun gun at James.

"What did he say? You're a professor of mythology. Tell me what he said!"

James held up his hands. "Don't shoot!" he pleaded.

Raven stepped back and drove a hard front kick into Sizzly's stomach, knocking him off the bridge into the creek beside the Viking and the motionless skinhead thug. Sizzly's smartphone and taser landed in the mud nearby.

The Viking said something else in his weird gibberish as Redding and Raven looked over the edge of the bridge.

Sizzly was thrashing around in the shallow water, screaming bloody murder and trying to sit up. But he was too exhausted, too high on his own drug - and probably too surprised that Raven had booted him - to get off his back.

He looked like an upside-down turtle.

"Help me! Help me or I'll drown!" he pleaded.

But no one went down to pull him out. The water wasn't even a foot deep.

The still-prone Viking pushed the thug, who was out cold or maybe even dead, off of him into the shallow water. Then Redding said something in the same strange language the Viking had used.

"He's hurt," James said after the Viking replied. "He says he got shot with what roughly translates to a swarm of little arrows.'"

Raven wanted to help the Viking, because he seemed to be having as much trouble as Sizzly, but was whining a lot less about it.

"Should we help him get out of there?" she asked.

"Yes, we should."

The professor and Raven stepped off the small bridge into mud while he and the Viking kept up a conversation in whatever language it was.

They still ignored Sizzly, who kept whining, as they pulled the limp thug away from the Viking. James said the young man was dead, which creeped Raven out a lot. It was the first time she had ever seen a dead body in real life and the first time she had seen someone killed.

As the Viking stood with their help, his clothes ripped and blood-stained, Sizzly dragged himself out of the water inch by inch.

He begged them not to leave him there. He said he might freeze to death. But Raven was confident that he could walk out of the park if he put his mind to it. Unlike the dirty bastard's nephew and bodyguard, Sizzly would probably live to spread the word of hate another day.

As they walked off, the Viking's muscular arms around James and Raven's shoulders, Sizzly stopped begging and sobbed. He had lost two of his closest, plus he never did get the snacks he'd wanted to boost his blood sugar.

Struggling under the weight of the man she knew as the Viking, practically carrying him along the trail, Raven asked, "Who is this guy and what language is he speaking?"

Redding grunted.

"Old Norse," he said. "I don't know who he is but it must be some sort of miracle that he's still breathing after getting shot multiple times."
51. Out of Chaos

There were three or four ways to get out of the deep ravine in Ravenna Park, but most required a steep hike, no easy task carrying someone who was injured.

Redding and Raven had no choice though, because both the east and west ends of the park, where the wooded ravine ended at ball fields and playgrounds, were likely swarming with police. They had to find a minor trail up either hillside and escape into the residential neighborhoods lining the ravine.

They continued with care. The Viking was in pain and kept groaning. Redding talked in rusty Old Norse to the injured man. Basic conversation like How bad are you hurt, and Can you walk?

The time was not right to pry information from this stranger who seemed to have stepped out of a time machine. Redding planned to save that for later. He hadn't even asked for a name yet.

"Should we take him to a hospital?" Raven asked as they struggled over tree roots and ruts up a shortcut trail. She was breathing hard. The heavy Viking seemed like he was built of solid muscle.

Redding knew they should try to get him to a hospital. But he also knew that the powers that be were already in pursuit of the guy, for whatever variety of reasons.

"As long as he's lucid and can move around, it's probably better to try get him to an ER ourselves rather than dial 911, at least until the police activity dies down. I'm pretty sure that party back at the tent city was thrown in his honor."

There was no way to know how bad the Viking's injuries were. He had said a swarm of stinging darts hit him, which didn't sound good at all. Raven and Redding agreed it had sounded like Thor had been shot numerous times. So that meant the darts had been bullets.

The young man didn't seem like he was about to die though. There was plenty of blood on his clothes, but some of it could have come from one of the two neo-Nazis he'd recently dispatched.

When they reached the end of the hillside trail at a dead-end residential street at the top of the ravine, Raven and Redding helped the Viking sit down on a patch of grass. Then Redding took out his cell phone and dialed the only person he knew who had a car and would be willing to pick them up so late at night: fellow UW faculty member and climatology professor Viktoria Kraven.

"Hey, it's James."

"No shit, that's what my caller ID said," his snarkish old friend answered. "What's up?"

"Long story. But I need you to come pick me up."

"Where?"

"On 62nd Street, one of the residential streets on the north side of Ravenna Park.Your best bet is to drive down 15th, then up 25th, left on 62nd."

"I can do that. You're not alone are you?"

Redding paused. "How'd you guess?"

"If it was just you, you'd walk it. I know how you hate cars. Be there in a few. I'm anxious to find out what kind of trouble you've gotten yourself into."

Redding hung up and the trio waited in silence.

The houses across the silent street were dark, almost lifeless. This was the Pacific Northwest. Everyone was inside, out of the gray wet weather and sheltered from the chaos of places like Park Tent City. The citizens were minding their own business, thankfully, all wrapped in the familiar cocoons of their private lives. 
52. Lo and Behold

After painful delay, a small automatic carriage growled to a halt near Thor and his two new aides. The gravitated mortal woman who piloted it stared at the half-god through her door's glass pane, surely enthralled by the sight of him.

"Come, please enter the vehicle," the man at Thor's arm said in passable yet broken Norse, beckoning towards the rear of the carriage. "This is my trusted friend, Viktoria."

The beautiful young girl from the melee on the hill opened a door and smiled, then gestured for Thor to enter first. She was the one, he suspected, he hoped. Comely, with dark, intense eyes. She was the perfect one to wed with Thor, thus seeding the Chaos/Order Axis and tempering its careening momentum.

Of course! For when he had seen her in the ravine, before dispatching the second bald mercenary, she was embracing the great boulder which Thor's elder gods had instructed him to seek.

But what threw the young god off was that he had expected to first glimpse her at the boulder. Yet he had earlier crossed paths with her amidst the chaos of the initial battle with the colonial guard. That was not as his elders had predicted based upon their careful study through viewing portals.

A strange feeling surged in Thor's gut as he ducked under the carriage roof and settled into the soft seat in its rear. He wanted to speak to the girl, but how? He felt almost intimidated by her! He who had recently thwarted small armies without the aid of his war-hammer! Preposterous!

"We lack time," said the portly Norse-speaking man, before walking around the outside of the carriage and entering its front to sit next to the lady conductor. The dark girl sat in the rear, next to Thor, and shut the door.

As the carriage rattled forward to navigate the lanes of the sea-colony, the lady conductor did not seem keen on Thor's presence.

"Here I am thinking you need a chauffeur because you and one of your girlfriends got lost and cold walking around the park at night," she sputtered in New English.

As she steered the wheel at her chest, the lady kept glancing back at Thor through the reflection of a small sneaky mirror above her head.

"But lo and behold, you're not only with the lunatic that's been all over the news lately, but you also took in an underage runaway."

Lo and behold. Now that Thor comprehended, certain that the mortal female had exclaimed it out of awe at the presence of a descended deity such as himself.

The man shook his head. "It's not what it seems, Vik."

"Really? Good. Because right now it seems so goddamn random and nonsensical that it feels like I'm either high or dreaming."

Thor gave up trying to follow their persistent babble. He turned his attention elsewhere, because he was alone in the carriage rear with the young lady who was most certainly the object of his mission and candidate for his affection.

"What name?" Thor turned his head to ask her, practicing the limited New English he had picked up thus far.

The young lady seemed puzzled, but caught on.

"Oh... what's my name?"

Thor nodded.

She smiled. "Raven."

"Ray-vehn?"

"Yeah, what's your name?"

"Thor."

"Thor?"

All of a sudden the discussion in the front of the carriage ceased. The scholarly man looked back at them. The female continued to drive but squinted her eyes again into the small mirror, also looking back.

"What did you say?" the man asked in Old Norse.

Thor stared at him, then brought his fist to his chest in a gesture of forthright proclamation.

"I Thor," he said in New English, proud of his improving language skills. Then he pointed up, to the roof of the carriage and the sky beyond it. "Of storm."

The carriage continued along in total silence except for its low growl. No one spoke for some micro-cycle fractions.

Then the girl next to Thor spoke first, with her soft yet crisp voice.

"Someone want to explain to me what this dude's talking about?" she asked.
53. Seattle's Most Wanted

In the car everyone looked to James for answers, because when the Viking tried to speak English he sounded like a six-year-old, or like a caveman from the movies. Me Thor, you good. Something like that.

Not only that, but he was hurt, which likely made it difficult for him to complete sentences.

Both Raven and Viktoria started in on James, pestering him with questions as they pulled up to the curb in front of his condo building on the Ave.

"He's got to be out of his mind," Viktoria said.

"Thor like from the comics?" Raven asked.

James shook his head.

"No, absolutely not. This is not the Thor from the comics," he said.

"What did he mean about the storm? Is he talking about the storm from last week?" Viktoria asked.

The car was now parked and James put his head in his hands.

"Give me a second to think about this," he said.

Thor just sat and listened, pressing his hand into his bloody clothes on his chest. He seemed good at listening, like he was very interested in everything going on around him. But he also looked kind of pale to Raven, even beneath the dirt on his face.

"Well, I don't have a minute," Viktoria said, checking her watch. "If I don't get back to the house, muy pronto, my husband is going to accuse me of philandering with a grad student. I'm on probation."

James looked at his friend.

"Well, thanks for the ride, Vik. This is serious. If it wasn't for you we'd all be arrested."

Viktoria looked over her shoulder, back at Raven and Thor, then at James again.

"No kidding. You have one of Seattle's most wanted and a Lolita under your supervision. I won't be surprised if you do get arrested."

James opened the door to get out, so Raven followed his lead and opened her door too.

Before she exited, she noticed Thor fumbling with the latch on the door next to him, so she reached over his lap to help.

"Here," she said, pulling the lever to open the door. "It's an old car. They're not easy to figure out. You were trying to roll down the window."

Thor pushed the door all the way open, and James was there to help him get out into the rain.

As Raven stepped out onto the street she thanked Viktoria, who ignored her. Vik just sat in the front seat staring ahead through the windshield, her hands on the steering wheel, ready to get the hell out of there.

"I hope she doesn't hate us," Raven said to James as they hoisted Thor's arms onto their shoulders and watched the car drive off.

James shook his head. "Are you kidding? That was the closest thing Vik's had to an adventure since the aforementioned liaison with a grad student."

Raven didn't really understand that. Thor probably didn't either. James, as always, liked to make everyday conversation more complicated than it needed to be by using big words.

"Here," James said, removing Thor's arm from his shoulder. "Help this guy over to the door. I've got to find my keys."

The professor turned and crossed the sidewalk to his building. After digging through his pockets, he finally found his key chain and unlocked the front door, waving them in to climb the narrow stairs to his condo.

"Come on, you guys, we'll be safe here for a while at least."

They went in, with Thor leaning his weight on Raven and James following them.

As Raven helped Thor climb the stairs one at a time, Thor looked around, inspecting everything: the walls, the ceiling, the carpet. Raven smiled. He really did seem childlike.

She tapped his arm and pointed to the handrail.

"Grab that to help, you're heavy," she said, and he obeyed, reaching for a hold and stepping up the creaking stairs.

James wasn't following them up, so Raven looked back to see what was up. He was distracted by something outside, looking out the half-open door at something on the street.

"What is it?" she asked him.

He looked up at her and shook his head.

"Nothing," he said, walking towards the stairs, "I thought I saw a familiar van but it's probably nothing."
54. Paranoia Wave

Inside the condo, Redding and Raven helped Thor to the couch. Redding asked him in Old Norse how badly hurt he was. Thor replied that the injuries to his body were deep but healing had already begun.

The half-god still looked like shit though. His clothes were muddy, and bloody. And his breath was labored, as if he had fluid in his lungs. Maybe blood.

Really, thought Redding, this guy should be dead already. He got shot for crying out loud. Multiple times. And the bullets are still inside him.

"You look like you shouldn't be able to walk," Redding said to him.

Thor looked up and smiled.

"I am no mere mortal," he replied on his ancient language. "It would take an army to destroy me."

Redding got the gist but didn't know how to respond. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the nature of the stranger's true identity.

Sure, the man claimed to be a god, but that was impossible, right? Myths were myths for a reason. They never crossed over into human reality. Ever. Because of physics. Because humans knew the laws of the universe. Einstein, Newton, those guys had already established the fundamentals of the cosmos with empirical, sensory data.

What we see is what we get, and there is no such thing as faster-than-light travel.

On that thought, Redding went into the kitchen to boil some water. Forget the bullets lodged in him, Redding realized. At least clean the wounds.

He filled the biggest pan he had with tap water and put it on a gas burner on high. Then he threw in some clean wash rags to sterilize them and walked back into the living room.

Raven was sitting on the couch, her eyes on Thor.

"Raven, help me get his shirt off. We need to look at his injuries."

After some struggle, they got the blood- and mud-soaked shirt off. And it was then that Redding finally realized that this stranger might very well have been either the god of lightning or at the very least a time-traveler.

This because his arms and torso were completely covered with tattoos of trees, exactly how the Arabic diplomat Ahmad Ibn Fadlan had described the tattoos of the Kievan Rus in his historical documentation of the cultural practices of Viking peoples.

Not only that, but Thor was muscular and fit almost beyond belief. The dude looked like he'd been on steroids since birth. And though his chest and abdomen were covered with multiple bullet wounds, they bled only slightly.

He should be dead. He must be a super-man.

"Yeah, we really need to get him cleaned up," Redding said, when he could get his boggled mind to work again. "I'd hate to save his life only for him to succumb to a case of gangrene."

Raven just stood there gaping at their patient. Thor looked like he was resting, his eyes closed, his head sunk to his chest. He was still breathing though.

"I don't know how he survived this, how he's not in a coma. I don't know how he was able to walk," Redding said.

Raven couldn't take her eyes off of Thor, and Redding couldn't blame her. The young man was one hell of a specimen.

If I were a lot younger, thought Redding, I might feel a twinge of jealousy.

Redding shook off that silly idea. First order of business was to make sure Thor or whoever the guy was wasn't going to die on them. Second order of business was to sit down and ask some really tough questions.

Redding wanted to know if the man was familiar with the Norse pantheon, if he knew all the names, all the locations, all the mythological narratives. Then, and only then, could Redding even begin to accept that somehow, in some way, gods could walk the Earth.

All of a sudden Redding remembered the van, the one he'd seen just before they entered the building. Shit. His paranoia returned in a sudden wave and he walked over to the window to peek out.

It was still there. An unobtrusive black van across the street on the Ave. It looked like some sort of surveillance vehicle, especially to someone like Redding who had seen more than a few cop movies.

"What is it?" Raven asked.

Redding looked back at her. "We could get in a lot of trouble," he said.

Raven stared at him for a few seconds. "We can't call the cops," she said.

Redding nodded and looked back out the window.

"Yeah, I know. But I'm afraid they might call us."

In the kitchen the water was boiling so Redding went to fetch the rags. He realized they needed alcohol too, to sterilize the wounds. _But like an idiot, I never got around to stocking my medicine cabinet with first-aid supplies._

Carrying the pan of water with rags in it, Redding came back into the living room.

"You ever cleaned up someone's wounds?" he asked Raven. She shook her head.

"Me neither. You ever seen it done on TV?"

This time she nodded.

"Same here. It can't be that difficult."

Redding set the pan down on his worn coffee table and stood looking at the rising steam. Thor awoke for a moment and lifted his head, also staring at the water and rags.

"I have to go out to find supplies to clean and bind your wounds," Redding told him in Old Norse.

In English, Redding said to Raven, "Go ahead and start getting this guy cleaned up. And be careful not to reopen the wounds. I'm going to Emerald Drugs to get rubbing alcohol and gauze."
55. Earth Realm Rife

At last the scholar had left Thor and the maiden alone together.

Not that Thor didn't care for the man. He was a good guide and translator and his services were valued. Yet Thor needed to gain more information about this Ray-vehn before the dark matter portal was reopened and they were both yanked back to Asgard.

He needed her to swear by oath that she was a virgin. First though he needed to overcome his fear of scaring her away.

The injuries, while commencing to heal, had nonetheless sapped Thor of his godly powers. And as the scholar said, the little darts remained lodged inside. As Thor's body gradually worked them back out, they cut into him even more, causing crippling pain.

The situation was of a precarious nature, leaving the young half-god vulnerable and too weak to protect Ray-Vehn from foes such as the hairless ones in the ravine or the colonial guard.

Thor looked into the lady's eyes deeply as she went about her duty and daubed his war wounds with a hot wet rag.

"You're making me nervous," she said to him, which he did not understand. Nervous... nervous.

"Nerve-ous," Thor repeated to her, lifting his hand and placing it on her bare arm.

Raven swallowed, looking at where he was touching her skin.

"Very," she said, reaching over and squeezing out the rag into the water. It ran red.

Thor understood that he would have to be careful, though such was against his nature. Unions in Asgard happened with wild, rampant abandon. Female gods made themselves available to the male gods, and to other female gods as well for that matter, at any moment, anywhere. In the passages of the great hall. On the peaks of Ragnarok. Soaring above the rose-hued vapor clouds of the Nine Realms, their loins wrapped together in uninhibited embrace.

In contrast the Earth realm was rife with rules and stipulations. Thor had deduced this almost upon impact. Even if he could speak the native New English with fluency, he would not be able to convey exactly what he thought. Gravitated mortals it seemed were experts at saying one thing while intending a different meaning.

"I find you comely," Thor said in half New English, half Old Norse. "We shall entangle ourselves in the throes of passion when the proper time arrives."

He saw Raven's chest rise and fall, her pulse likely elevated.

"I wish we could understand each other," she replied, wiping off his chest. "But what you say doesn't make a lot of sense right now."

Thor felt his life-hammer rise and wondered if she would notice. The young lady was so inexperienced, so naive.

If this would in fact be her first time, what better partner than a half-god? What better hands to have upon her loins than those of divine incarnation? Her rare virginity would fulfill his mission.

Raven glanced down at the bulge in his trousers then quickly pulled her hand away from his chest and averted her gaze.

"Okay, now I'm really freaked," she said, returning her eyes to his.

Her cheeks were flush and pink. She was so young, yet he could see that in many ways those eyes of hers had gazed upon sights beyond the scope of the average Earth mortal. Beyond even what a learned scholar like Red-ding could comprehend.

"We wait," Thor said, reminding himself that the cosmic ceremony must be enacted within the chambers of Valhalla, and witnessed by the elder supreme gods. _Blast these rules!_

Raven stood and looked down at him. His eyes were right in line with her trim torso and he too breathed heavily. His hammer was now at full strength, protruding from his pelvis beneath thin fabric.

"Can you stand?" she asked. "Can you walk to the shower? You could get cleaned up better there."
56. Undue Process

The same black van Redding had spied outside his condo only minutes earlier now followed him as he walked through the rain to the store. He looked back as he crossed the street and saw it turn the corner behind him, knowing then that no, he wasn't just being paranoid as he had hoped. It was only a matter of time before things would take a sharp turn, for the worse.

Despite this sense of impending doom Redding decided to try to go about his business, to see if they would just let him be. Maybe they didn't know he was harboring a very peculiar and otherworldly individual in his condo along with an underage runaway. Maybe they just wanted to gather surveillance. And who were they anyway?

Redding made it to his destination. Looming above it were the familiar bright green letters, the sign for Emerald Drugs. It was like a gateway to Oz, which would have made more sense than the reality Redding was walking through right now.

As he went in, the professor passed two homeless beggars sitting on the sidewalk outside the entrance.

"Spare any change, man?" the larger, conscious one asked.

The other one had nodded off, leaning against a fire hydrant and drooling on himself. Redding ignored them. No time for charity.

"Thanks anyway, mister," the guy said as Redding passed through the automatic doors.

Inside the neon lights struck him as harsh and artificial as he roamed the aisles in search of first-aid supplies. Elevator music strummed softly on the sound system. Redding felt like he had stepped into a different dimension, off the raw streets and into corporate illusion.

The store was almost empty of customers and no employees asked if he needed assistance. He wondered if there was a way out the back, perhaps through a fire escape. But that would just prolong what was most likely the inevitable, because Redding was pretty sure the black van was waiting for him out by the beggars.

After he found gauze and rubbing alcohol, the professor walked back to the front of the store and set the items down at the only open checkout stand. An older woman who looked like she should have retired already stared at him across the counter as if he were buying ingredients for manufacturing meth or making a bomb.

A name tag pinned to her blue vest said "Sandra: Here To Help."

Redding paid with cash because he was feeling paranoid and didn't want to leave a paper trail. He took the bag in hand, and at the exit he paused to look through the windows.

To his surprise he didn't see the black van outside.

Before leaving, he looked back to the checkout stand. Sandra was just standing there staring at him. She looked like she needed help, her facial expression pleading for him to liberate her from her wage-slave drudgery.

Calling out to the clerk, Redding said, "I'm sorry."

Sandra didn't respond. Redding wondered if he might be hallucinating from the stress and lack of sleep. He had just gotten caught in a riot and seen someone get shot. He'd recently had guns aimed at him and his life threatened.

Outside, Redding passed the beggars again and that's when he saw them. Two men in black suits stood beside the van, across the street and down the block a little: the same guys who'd paid a visit to his classroom the previous week.

They stood facing him, arms at their sides. They were wearing sunglasses at night, embracing the cinematic cliché they embodied. Their imposing vehicle gleamed under the streetlights.

Redding realized it would be futile to put up a fight. So when they came walking towards him he remained frozen. Nothing could prevent his capture, not due process, not the rule of law, not his constitutional rights as an American citizen. Total security had arrived to keep watch over the homeland.

"We need to ask you a few questions, Professor Redding," one of them said as they clasped his arms above the elbows.

Redding didn't know exactly why they wanted him, but guessed that it was the extra-dimensional being bleeding on the couch in his condo. He knew he was about to find out for sure though.

As they escorted Redding towards the van, the conscious beggar outside the store called after them, saying "Whatever they ask, tell them you want to speak to a public defender first, dude."

Good one, Redding thought. 
57. On Her Every Whim

Raven helped Thor stand and cross the living room to the bathroom, his heavy warm arm wrapped around her shoulders.

She felt an attraction to him in her stomach. She'd felt butterflies before, but not like this. She realized she wanted to lose herself with this stranger, this crazy guy who claimed to be a god. He had given her all the signs that that's what he wanted, too, but seemed hesitant like she was.

She pointed to the toilet which had the lid down.

"Sit here," she said, "I'll get the water hot."

She helped him down onto the seat and he watched as she reached for the shower knob.

This was new to Raven, a guy who was persistent yet not too aggressive. Most of the guys she'd met on the streets and in school had demanded attention from her without any kind of respect to balance it out.

Thor was different. He was making it clear that he wanted her, with his looks and body language, but he was also giving her room to breathe and think this through. Kind of like a gentleman who wasn't too gentle.

Was she ready? Why not, she was almost eighteen after all. Did it matter whether she waited or jumped in? One part of her thought that no, it didn't matter, that virginity was not a big deal. Another part told her to hold on to it for a special time.

But what time could be more special? This guy was like a god, if not for sure a real god. And he was beautiful. One of the most handsome guys she'd ever seen.

Raven turned on the water, getting it to just the right temperature. Now she felt cold. She felt like she wanted to get under the water with him.

As she was leaning over to check the temperature, Thor lifted his hand to the small of her back. She was starting to have a lot of strange feelings. Her mind was on overdrive.

She turned to face him and, as she did, he pulled his hand away. Then he got to his feet using the sink to help himself.

"My loins burn for you, new-lady," he said. "I am at our attention, on your every whim. But we must await my superiors, for at any moment they will retrieve us back to Valhalla across the cosmic wheel."

Raven understood the first part of what he said, the second part not so much. Retrieved back? He was going to take her somewhere?

All of a sudden Raven got scared again. Either Thor was totally insane or he was some sort of alien. 
58. They've Seen Everything

The men in suits ushered Redding into the back of the black van and made him sit on a gurney. They strapped his wrists and ankles to it.

The professor just let it happen. Fighting with them would have only made the situation worse. Why they had a van equipped with a gurney was not a question he wanted to ask. The answer, he realized, might have been too much for his mind to handle.

"You're going to tell us everything you know about the descendant," said the agent sitting in the back next to Redding.

The other was up front. Redding couldn't tell the two apart because they looked so much alike. Not only were they dressed the same but neither had removed his sunglasses, even inside the van.

Three monitor screens mounted on the van's interior walls glowed with surveillance images and video. One screen displayed a recording of the front of Redding's condo building.

The second showed a loop of recorded footage that Redding had seen on the news, footage of Thor duking it out with riot police on Capitol Hill. A photo of Raven, apparently taken with a telephoto lens through the blinds into Redding's second-floor window, was frozen on the third screen.

Creepy.

"We've seen everything," the agent beside the gurney said.

"I can tell," Redding replied.

He felt calm for some strange reason, like there was nothing he could do. He was now fully swept up in events far beyond his control and comprehension.

"Could you turn on a light in here? It's dark," Redding asked, but the request went ignored.

"Give us details. How strong is he? Has his healing commenced from the gunshot wounds?"

Redding started to fill in some blanks. These guys were probably interested in Thor for nefarious purposes. Weaponization of some sort. They wanted to run tests on him, turn him into some kind of super-soldier and clone him.

Although these notions sounded crazy, Redding was beginning to believe the hype. Maybe Thor really was some kind of deity.

"Yeah," Redding said. "He's strong as shit and you're going to need more than a SWAT team to extricate him and the girl from my condo."

Well, that was a little snide. Probably the overwhelming effects of shock and trauma.

"Details," the agent said. "We need all the details. From the beginning."

So Redding dove in headfirst, divulging some of the details these two wanted, whoever they were. He began the story when he first saw Thor on television and continued until when he left him alone in the condo with Raven. Naturally, Redding embellished, because that's what being human was about. To be human was to be pan narrans: the "storytelling ape."

Redding also wanted to bide some time for the sake of his two new friends. Maybe Raven and Thor would notice his lengthy absence and realize they should leave immediately. Maybe it didn't matter though, because there could be another van with more men in black. The agents seemed like they had their shit together.

Redding peppered his account with some far-fetched "details." Thor had a weapon: a hammer that transferred thunderous kinetic energy into anything it struck. The harder it hit, the more damage it did.

The men in sunglasses listened without emotion. Redding couldn't tell whether they were buying his routine or not. He told them that, after Thor got shot, his body spit the bullets back out immediately, which though not quite true sounded impressive. The big guy, elaborated the professor, was still breathing and walking but it was too early to tell if he would need a surgeon or not.

Then Redding added a little about Raven. She was telepathic and could read minds. She knew about Thor's arrival before it happened and was at the boulder in Ravenna Park to greet them on purpose.

When Redding finished, the two pairs of sunglasses looked at each other and nodded in unison. Then the agent next to him reached down to the side of the gurney and fetched something.

"What is that?" Redding asked.

There was no answer. The agent just brought the object up to Redding's face: it was a gag. Big Brother was going to silence him so he couldn't scream. Either that or they wanted to make him stop regaling them with a helluva tale. 
59. When's the Software Update?

Raven decided that now wasn't the time, so she left the Viking or Thor or whoever he was in the bathroom to shower alone. She wasn't ready. She was the type of person who never liked feeling pressured, and she was starting to feel very stressed out.

Thor wasn't pressuring her for sex; his approach was smooth. He was warm but persistent. No, it was the situation. They had all almost died getting away from Sizzly and out of Ravenna Park. Now James hadn't returned. Almost half an hour had gone by already since the professor had gone out to get some band-aids.

And now Thor was taking a long time in the shower.

Raven thought about smoking up and wished she had a stash of weed. Then she thought no, that wouldn't help anyway. She needed to be as clearheaded as possible and weed just made her think she was more clearheaded.

So she just sat there on the couch. How long would the guy stay in the damn shower? He had already been under longer than most girls.

Just as she was about to go check on him, Raven heard the water cut off and the sound of the bathroom door opening.

Thor walked into the living room. He had his army pants on again but no shirt. Raven was amazed to see that what had been holes in the guy's chest were now only small clean scars.

He stood there and wiped himself with a towel.

"Where be the scholar?" he asked.

"I'm worried," Raven said. "We should go check on him."

The Viking shook his head.

"I have found you already, my cosmic mate. If the scholar no longer wishes to assist my plight tis his volition."

Raven didn't understand every word but it sounded like Thor was being a real bitch.

"Are you fucking kidding me, dude?" she said. "He just saved our asses. He just led us out of the park. His friend just drove us to this nice condo so you could take a long hot shower. And now he might be getting his ass kicked by Nazis in front of Emerald Drugs and you want to punk out on him?"

The Viking tossed the towel to the side. It landed on a bookshelf and hung there. He looked back at Raven as if he didn't understand her very well either.

Jeez, she thought. How long until this guy updates his software?

"You can-not fathom the importance of my purposes in Midgard, new-lady," he said.

Raven stood.

"I don't know exactly what you just said, but it seems like you really like me, new-dude. And if you really like me, you will follow me and help me. And now I'm going to go look for James, so you should put a shirt on."
60. Should Have Screamed

The gag was now secured over Redding's mouth. There was no going back.

The agent in back with him started rummaging through a bag. Up front the other one was distracted with his smartphone, texting like mad and likely dashing off messages.

This was quickly descending into a horrific nightmare.

Redding tugged at the reclined gurney he was buckled into, as if that would do any good. He started to hyperventilate. The man in back shut the bag and turned to reveal something new in his hand.

A syringe.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Redding wished he'd screamed and run, after leaving the drugstore and seeing these two spooks across the street. The police might have helped him, or someone might have gotten the whole scenario on video and released it to the media. Something would have happened.

But no, he had to acquiesce to authority.

That's all he knew how to do, he realized. He did it all the time when dealing with the university. In Redding's sheltered academic world, being a rebel meant publishing a paper that called scholarly consensus into question. Breaking the rules for him was having an affair with a grad student. Breaking the law was smoking pot. Nothing more risqué, certainly nothing felonious.

Now, here he was - an outlaw in any sense of the word. He harbored information that some very powerful people wanted, people within the government or maybe even above it. Redding had been witness to events that could change the course of history, and the powers-that-be wanted details.

The agent in back held up the syringe and said, "It's too strong. I need to mix in some saline."

Jesus, Redding thought. What does "too strong" mean? Like "kill an elephant" too strong?
61. It's a Long Story

Thor took his time putting on his shirt, and as Ray-vehn led him out the door he dragged his bare feet a little.

It was still not easy, getting accustomed to having mortals dictate his actions. He had only recently learned the pleasantries necessary for successful communication with them, the "pleases" and the "thanks."

And now this young woman, the one destined to be his cosmic mate, was ordering him around as if she were herself a higher, elder god.

"Come on!" Ray-vehn barked at him from the landing of the staircase leading to the ground level. "Stop dragging ass!"

Why, oh why, hadn't Thor's elders managed to reopen the portal to retrieve him back to Asgard? He understood that it demanded a tremendous amount of energy, the harnessing of multiple solar storms and more, to open up a gate and maintain the connection. Yet this delay was killing the young god with suspense. Would he ever return to his distant home and escape the grime, the pain and the suffering of Midgardian foibles?

But, then, did he really want to?

Thor followed Ray-vehn out onto the street.

"The store is only two blocks," the new-lady said. "Can you try to walk faster? And don't pretend like you're still hurt. I saw how those bullet holes are healed up."

With every sentence she spoke, Thor understood more of her New English dialect. Speaking it back to her however was a different matter, though that was becoming easier too.

"I know not why we bother to seek the scholarly one," he said. "Still if you insist, I cannot risk losing you."

She didn't reply. They made it across the street and Thor followed her through an open space in which there were parked multiple carriages. There were few other Midgardian mortals about. It must have been late into their time of nightly slumber.

The couple continued past another building and across another street towards a storefront brightly illuminated with large green New English script. Out front sat two ragged mortals. Thor recognized them, though not before Ray-vehn did.

"Holy shit! Tubz!" she exclaimed.

She knew them? Ray-vehn also knew the first Midgardians Thor had met under the bridge after emerging from the dark matter portal?

The rotund one she called Tubz stood and opened his arms to Ray-vehn, smiling at her. The narrower one who had given his cloak to Thor during the storm slumbered on the masonry pathway, slouched against what looked like a strange, short, red metal statue.

"I heard about the battle over at Tent City and I was worried about you," the rotund one said as Ray-vehn embraced him tightly.

"What are you guys doing in the U District instead of Broadway?" Ray-vehn asked after she and the man parted.

Before the peasant apparently named Tubz could answer, he recognized Thor in turn.

"Holy shit, you're hanging out with him?" asked Tubz, staring at the young half-god.

Thor sighed. The diddling pleasantries and small talk of Midgardian life amounted to a staggered series of tediums.

"Yeah, it's a long story," Ray-vehn said, glancing back at Thor then turning to Tubz again. "Hey, did an older guy dressed in frumpy vintage clothes walk into Emerald's?" she asked.

Tubz nodded, still eyeing Thor.

"Yeah, he ignored me when I spanged him. Seemed zoned out."

"Did he come back out?" she pressed.

"He did. And then he promptly got arrested by some strange-looking cops. Musta been undercover vice. I didn't think much of it. People get arrested around here constantly."

"Shit!" Ray-vehn said. Thor did not yet know what that word meant but she seemed to use it often.

She turned back to Thor again.

"We have to go find the professor!" she said.

"They're in that van down the block," Tubz said, pointing down the thoroughfare.

Ray-vehn and Thor both looked over. Only micro-lengths away sat a large black carriage.

"They snatched your friend and dragged him into that black van."
62. Highest Tech in the World

"You have come into contact with something far beyond your understanding, Professor," the man in black sitting next to Redding said.

Then he squirted a little of whatever was in the syringe out onto the floor.

"We will continue to observe the being, for now. We don't know his purpose here. While we await the right time to make contact, you need to be quarantined."

Quarantined. Shit. That didn't sound like a good time. That sounded like Redding losing his tenure at UW because he'd departed on a trip of extraordinary rendition. That sounded like something even worse, like getting poked and prodded and scanned by the highest tech in the world.

The agent brought the needle up to the exposed crotch of Redding's elbow.

"I have something on cam," the man in front said. "Over by the drugstore."

The agent with the needle hesitated.

"Is it them?"

"It is. We don't want the being aware of our presence until we can gather more data. I'm moving the vehicle."

He reached for the ignition.

As soon the engine started, the van began to rock back and forth, as if a group of protesters were tipping it from outside.

"The being is exterior to the vehicle," the driver said.

Great, Redding thought. Maybe he wouldn't have to face the wrath of the authorities that evening.

The van rocked again then tipped all the way up on its side, on two wheels. As everything went diagonal, the agent in back dropped the syringe and unholstered a pistol from under his arm.

Though the van's interior was well soundproofed, Redding thought he could hear Raven shouting outside.

"Open up assholes!" her muffled voice seemed to yell. "Let him go!"

The van came back down again onto all four wheels.

"Our sidearms won't do much good," the agent with the gun said.

Redding nodded emphatically, as he knew from first-hand experience that no, their sidearms wouldn't do much good at all. They needed a Gatling gun or a goddamned bazooka to stop a Norse deity.

The driver shifted into gear but was already too late. The van tipped again.

"Do it!" Redding thought he heard Raven's voice shout.

The agents braced themselves. Redding couldn't. He was already buckled in and secure, albeit against his will.

The van crashed down onto its side and the agents tumbled over.

The one next to Redding landed on the surveillance screens and looked like he'd been knocked unconscious. The driver fell to the passenger-side door.

Redding didn't go anywhere though his perspective changed. The floor of the van was now located where a wall had been seconds earlier. Since the gurney he was strapped to was anchored down, Redding was now defying gravity and lying stretched out along a side of the van.

A fist punched down through the window of the driver's-side door and the shattered safety glass cascaded onto the upended driver.

Thor heaved open the door, almost ripping it off its hinges, then reached through and seized the arm of the stunned agent below, yanking him up and out of the van.

Redding tried to scream, to let Raven know he was in the van, but the gag put the kibosh on that.

The agent beside Redding began to stir. There was a shout outside, then a loud yelp.

Redding hoped Thor hadn't killed the other agent. _Murder of a federal agent would not help our situation at all._

Everything went silent for a few ticks. Redding began sweating. And was that a siren in the distance?

Shit.

After a moment someone tore open the back door of the van. Redding wished he weren't strapped down facing the other way.

"Damn, what did they do to you, James?" It was Raven's voice. Redding couldn't see his rescuers but he sighed with relief.

"Can you get in there and free him?" continued Raven. "Let's go! The cops are coming."

Redding saw Thor lean into the cargo area next to him.

"By the thunder of Asgardian solar storms, these nefarious agents have muffled the scholar's vocal capacities," he said.

"Just get him free and let's go before the cops get here!" Raven yelled.

Thor reached for the restraints and yanked at them. They broke free and Redding fell down on top of the stunned agent.

"Come on!" Raven yelled again as Thor lifted Redding, with ease, and pulled him out of the toppled van.

Within seconds the trio was running through the parking lot across from Emerald's. A small crowd of random spectators had formed near the van, but no one followed them.

"This way! We can lose the cops on campus," Raven shouted, heading towards the Ave.

Yes, get to the UW campus - good idea, Redding thought between breaths. He couldn't say as much though, because he still hadn't gotten the damn gag contraption off his face and out of his mouth. 
63. Raven Leads

The Viking who claimed he was Thor could run fast, that was a no-brainer. What surprised Raven was that he could run so fast so soon after getting shot in the park.

Maybe even more surprising than that was that James could run too, even with his mouth gagged.

Finally James did manage to get the gag off his face and toss it to the side. He didn't say anything though; he just kept on running as they all did. They didn't look back. By the time the trio made it to 15th, which ran parallel to the Ave a block away, the cops would probably have arrived at the wrecked van.

Raven was in the lead, not because she was especially quick on her feet but because Thor was lost, as if in fact he was in a new world and didn't know where the hell to go. It all began to add up that he wasn't just crazy, there was more to it than that. Maybe he really was who he said he was.

Raven led them through some shortcuts known by most Ave Rats, between frat and sorority houses, across alleys and lawns. Before they reached Ravenna Boulevard she cut south down an alley towards campus, which would be quiet at this time.

Cops patrolled the UW campus but there were lots of places to hide there. She hoped they could continue their escape through it into a neighborhood that wasn't as busy as the U District.

In the alley she stopped under a car park to catch her breath, between two beat-up old cars that looked like they were rusted to the ground. Thor and James joined her in the shadows. Thor wasn't out of breath at all. Both Raven and James needed the break.

"This is ridiculous," James wheezed. "I need to talk to a lawyer."

"It's after midnight. I don't think any will answer the phone," Raven said.

Thor looked out into the alleyway, right and left. There were still police sirens in the distance.

"Blast," Thor said.

Raven looked at him.

"What?"

"I cannot believe my elder gods have not reopened the cosmic gate yet. They have stranded me here, perhaps watching through a viewing portal laughing at my misadventures. They've gone mad. I fret that they no longer possess the capacity to harness dark matter."

"Holy shit, your English has gotten a lot better," James said.

"Is this guy for real?" Raven asked. "I mean, you should know, right James? You know all about gods and stuff."

James shook his head.

"He's using a lot of terms I'm not familiar with. This is way beyond my field of research."

James took a key ring from his pocket. "I grabbed my keys from the van before we bolted. Let's get to the observatory on campus. My colleagues in the astronomy department gave me a key so I could go there to write."

Raven shrugged. "Works for me."

They all took off and ran down the alley, this time with James in the lead. 
64. With Each Step

With each step, Thor's heart fell further into anguish.

Despite his physical powers, healed wounds and fast feet the young half-god was all but powerless. The mortal virgin and aging scholar were his guides on this journey. He was cut off from his home, abandoned by those who had promised to retrieve him and return him to Asgard.

The trio emerged from the small thoroughfare onto a larger one. A few carriages passed by, neither of the colonial guard sort that emitted shrill calls like harping sirens. No, those calls sang far into the night, back where Thor had turned over the black carriage by the green storefront.

"Okay, it's clear," the scholar said, stepping into the thoroughfare. "Let's go."

Thor understood them both now, having become ever more acclimated to the New English language. Perhaps he would soon even learn to employ the vernacular words they used so often, like "shit" and "fuck." That would be a valuable skill, as it looked like Thor was destined to be on Earth for longer than he had anticipated.

They made it across the thoroughfare and into the welcoming shadows of some trees. The scholar kept the lead, moving quickly along a footpath to his suggested destination.

Thor could have sprinted faster than the rate they were going, even while carrying both Ray-vehn and the scholar over his shoulders. He said nothing though. These Midgardian mortals were a headstrong bunch, prone to pride and eager for adulation.

"This way," the scholar said, turning left at a branch in the footpath.

They emerged from the trees and bushes into an open space where a few carriages sat idle. Lamps high above illuminated the otherwise empty space. The coast was clear.

Next they crossed a boulevard bisected by grass and tall trees then headed towards a stone-brick structure with a short bulbous tower protuding above.

"What is this small castle we now approach?" Thor asked, not having understood the scholar's earlier description of their intended destination.

Neither the scholar nor Ray-vehn answered however, as both were laboring for each breath that steamed into the cool night air. 
65. Can't Go Back into the Night

There were CCTV cameras everywhere on campus, the area around the Jacobsen Observatory included.

Nothing to be done about that, Redding surmised as he fumbled with his key chain. He hoped that inside the observatory there weren't any surveillance devices - not for spying on humans at least. It was as good a place as any to hide, until the Seattle Police sorted out their information with whatever federal agency was chasing the being who called himself Thor.

The door into the second-oldest building on the UW campus creaked open and Redding waved his two comrades inside, then walked in after them and closed it.

There they were, inside the quiet, musky space where Redding had spent many evenings gazing at Saturn's rings over glasses of wine with colleagues and friends from the astronomy department.

"They got lights in here?" Raven asked.

"Hold on," Redding said. "Still have that lighter I gave you before?"

"Hell no, that was forever ago."

In the pitch dark Thor took Redding by the arm.

"I have superior visual acuity, Scholar. What sort of lever do I seek to ignite the lamps in this miniature castle?"

If this "Thor" can see in such darkness, he is definitely some sort of god, Redding thought. Yet doubt still nagged at him, mainly doubts of his own sanity for even entertaining such a notion.

"It's on the wall somewhere, a small switch."

Thor let go of him. There were footsteps and the flick of a switch, then the interior of the building lit up.

"Let's hope they don't have motion sensors in here," Raven said to Redding.

He shrugged. "Damned if I know."

Thor looked around at the interior space.

"What manner of hovel is this?" he asked.

"No way, buddy," Redding replied. "It's our turn to ask questions. Where do you come from and who the hell are you?"

Thor sighed.

"I told you mortals already. I am Thor, god of thunder from Asgard. I arrived through a dark matter portal but now the gate is shut and I cannot return with her." He gestured to Raven. "I need to unite my flesh with this virgin in cosmic ceremony to assuage the Chaos/Order Axis."

Redding looked at Raven, who was staring with very wide eyes at Thor.

"Wait, what?" Raven asked.

"You must be my cosmic bride, fair Ray-vehn. You are the chosen one I seek, a virgin representing a pantheon foreign to my own."

This was too much, so Redding stepped forward.

"Hold on there, stallion. Setting aside for a moment your claim that you will return to... Asgard, which sounds like the height of lunacy, you can't just decide to bed whichever maiden you are keen on. That's not how we operate here, in what I guess you call Midgard."

Thor broke his gaze away from Raven.

"Whatever are you on about, Scholar? I have chosen, the gods of my pantheon have spoken, and we have settled on Ray-vehn. She possesses all the necessary traits for a successful union ceremony. Should I fail in my quest to return with her, the fabric of space-time will come under threat of rupture."

Redding shook his head. Even if this were for real, if everything Thor said was true, he was talking about some pagan shit that might have served some purpose in Dark Ages Europe, but not anymore.

"You can't just go clubbing ladies over the head and dragging them back to a cave like back in the day," Redding said, glancing at Raven. "Especially seventeen-year-olds. That's illegal here."

Thor cocked his head to the side.

"Ill eagle?" he said, butchering the word. "What of a sickly bird pertains to our current diatribe?"

"Illegal," Redding said. "As in against Earth law and customs, at least in our country."

Thor paused for a moment, then laughed out loud, turning the interior of the observatory into an echo chamber.

"Tis the most absurd notion I have ever made attempt to comprehend," he said. "Mean you to claim a woman aged seventeen Earth solar cycles is not yet a woman at all? Your kind are truly absurd creatures who in your terrestrial ignorance enact finite laws of arbitrary nature."

Raven raised her hand towards Thor to shush him.

"Both of you guys are not making enough sense to me, talking like a couple of geeks using big words," she said. "But I think I understand what's going on here, Thor dude, and I'm not going anywhere to participate in anything. You must be totally batshit crazy. I'm outta here."

She turned to the door but Thor seized her by the arm before she could reach it. Raven yelped.

"You shall not leave my side, new-lady," he said. "You are part of a process far beyond the scope of your finite mortal sensibilities."

Redding's pulse was now racing. If Thor decided to turn on them, he certainly had the strength to see his desires through. While there was no sign of a "cosmic gate" which could take Thor back to Asgard, if he wanted to he could still slap Redding unconscious then kidnap Raven and run off with her.

"Whoa," Redding said, holding his hands up, palms facing Thor in a show of submission and a plea for peace. "Hold on, Big Guy. We need to work this out. Because if any of us goes back out into the night we may be facing the wrath of the U.S. Government, an armed entity even more powerful than you are, on Earth at least."

Thor looked at Redding, then back at Raven, who had her eyes on the Norseman. She appeared scared.

"We need to talk this out," Redding continued. "Just let Raven and me have a talk. You can listen. You have to understand, your arrival here, on our planet and in our lives, is quite a shock to our finite sensibilities."

Thor appeared puzzled but he nodded and let go of Raven.

"Very well," Thor said. "We remain sheltered here, for the time being." Then he nodded at Raven. "All of us."
66. Time Travel or Black Holes or Whatever

Freed from Thor's strong grip, Raven walked to a corner where she and Redding could have a little discussion. She assumed the professor would follow her and he did.

It wasn't like Thor wouldn't be able to hear them here; she just wanted to get out of his reach. All the things he said had made her very nervous. The guy had literally just decided he wanted her and didn't even ask.

Crazier than that was what he was saying about time travel or black holes or whatever. He wanted to take her someplace very far away apparently - whether she agreed to go or not.

Raven sat down in a wooden chair as Redding approached. Thor watched them from across the room.

"This is turning out to be one hell of a week," Redding said quietly.

"What does all this have to do with me?" asked Raven.

The professor pulled up another chair and sat down facing her.

"I'm at a loss myself. Until we actually see more proof of what this guy is talking about, until we see this portal he mentioned, let's just consider him some kind of mutant super-soldier or something. Government spies are after him and we got caught up in their web. Now we have to find a way out."

Raven looked across the room at Thor and hoped he couldn't understand everything they were saying. She didn't like it that he was so powerful, in so many ways. It scared the shit out of her.

"So what do we do?" she asked.

Redding shrugged. "I guess I could call Viktoria again, the woman who picked us up from the park. She could pull the car up outside and we could hop in. It's our only chance of escape, if we have a vehicle."

Raven sighed.

"Got a cell phone?"

"No, I do not. Good point," Redding said, shaking his head.

"The cops know you and the big guy better than me. I should go alone to try and borrow a phone from someone."

Redding nodded in Thor's direction.

"He's going to insist on accompanying you though."

Raven thought for a second, then stood from her chair and crossed the room to Thor.

"Listen up, bub," she said. "Our only chance out of this place, other than your time tunnel thingy which hasn't shown up, is if I can get to a phone. Alone. Because the spooks have you in their crosshairs."

Thor shook his head.

"I shall follow you wherever you trod, new-lady," he said.

Raven sighed again. Really, she wished she could just ditch these two and get back to her squat, hopefully to smoke a bowl and chill the fuck out.

But she couldn't. She was stuck with them. Plus she felt like she owed James and Thor both. They'd both already saved the day, and Raven would much rather be with them than with the skinheads, even though Thor thought he could be her first boyfriend without even asking.

"If you go out there with me, that might get us all killed, even you," she said, addressing the half-god. "Just give me twenty minutes. Understand? Short time. If I don't come back you can come find me."

Thor didn't say anything as he thought this over. Raven looked back at Redding, who was slouched in the chair looking tired as shit. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Very well," Thor said. "I allot you micro-cycle fractions to obtain a voice portal mechanism, which we will use to contact the maiden scholar who met us at the ravine in a carriage."

Raven nodded.

"Something like that," she said. "We really don't have a lot of time."

She walked across the room to the door. When she reached it Thor stepped after her and took her arm again in his strong grip.

Raven glared at him.

"Your instincts know the sea-colony thoroughfares well, Ray-vehn one," he said. "I entrust you not only to return but to preserve your own safety."

Raven tried to pull away, and he let her go.

"You were a hero back in the park," she said. "And I hope you're not as much of a creep as Sizzly and his gang. But I'll be back to find out."

Raven turned away from Thor and reached for the door.

When she turned the lock and shoved the heavy door open, all she could see outside was bright flashing lights.
67. And There They Tumbled

The bright lights outside the small castle came from a large troop of the colonial guard, a force greater than Thor had encountered at the peasant encampment by the ravine. He could see dozens of them, despite the intense glare of their lanterns.

"We have the observatory surrounded!" one announced, in a booming and mechanized voice. "Let the hostages go!"

Thor lunged forward to catch Ray-vehn by the arm again before they could take her.

As he pulled her back into the doorway, a stupendous light and intense heat erupted behind Thor. The brilliant flash overcame the young god's piercing vision so that he had to fight through its glare to grip Ray-vehn.

The familiar gravitational pull of a targeted disruption in space-time washed over Thor. He recognized it just by the way it crawled at his skin and immersed his senses.

"Thor!" Ray-vehn called out, fear in her voice.

He could not see her; all he could see was lightning. He could feel her arm in his hand though, and her hand on his wrist in turn, clutching him.

The trip they were about to take was to be harrowing for Thor, a god who had already crossed the cosmic wheel. He couldn't imagine how the experience would impact the myopic vision of a mortal.

The lightning cleared and they tumbled together, on and on across a gargantuan turning wheel, the spinning top of space and time.

Thor caught glimpses of Ray-vehn. She was screaming as if giving birth - or being born.

For a moment Thor regretted getting her caught her up in the grand scheme of the cosmos. But well he knew the age-old law: without ceremonial unions pantheons could become ruptured. Galaxies could spin off axis. Dark matter could swallow the multiverse whole.

Ray-vehn's screams dwindled as Thor pulled her close to him. Her face was pale with blueish skin.

He realized she was freezing and couldn't breathe.

He wrapped his arms around her in tight embrace and brought his lips close to hers until they met. He breathed the warmth and life force of his breath into her throat, so that the severance of her umbilical connection to Earth would not destroy her.

In his arms, her body heaved - still alive, still breathing. Thor gazed aloft and saw Asgard on the horizon of the great wheel, veering closer.

His home galaxy. A place he was not certain he really missed anymore.

Ray-vehn screamed again, and Thor's eyes met hers. She would make it. An atmosphere not unlike that of Earth was waiting for her.

"Just hold fast!" Thor shouted to her.

The last push was upon them. Ray-vehn's face distorted as everything bent to the will of the dark matter portal. Thor could see the exit gate as they tumbled towards it.

"We have almost arrived!" he yelled.

There was lightning again, a galactic storm with the combined forces of a dozen suns. Electric bolts cascaded across the couple as they were pulled through the other end into a world apart. 
68. A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Raven opened her eyes and tried not to puke.

She was kneeling on an invisible floor. Beneath her were a hell of a lot of stars. More stars than she had ever seen on the clearest nights, like when she had gone on rare camping trips far away from the city.

She breathed.

The air was different. But it was air, at least. Or so she thought. If it kept her alive, it had to be air, right? What had just happened? It was such a blur. Somehow she'd lived through it.

Someone stood above Raven. She looked up. It was a... god? A god that looked kind of like Thor. Except in armor, and with a longer beard and holding a staff with an axe on one end.

"Greetings, Virgin," he said. "I am Týr, chief guardian of Asgard, here to accompany you to the great Valhalla, grand hall and site of your ceremonial union with Thor. My elders and I have been studying New English in anticipation of your arrival."

Raven heard someone stir behind her and looked back.

It was Thor, slumped against a wall, if one could call it that. It was not clear like the floor, but it wasn't solid either; the wall looked like smoke but was dense enough to lean against.

To their side, in the middle of the room, was a hole circled by electric currents and constantly changing shape. Through it Raven could see in the distance familiar images like the surface of a giant turning wheel with galaxies on it.

She couldn't have described clearly what her eyes were seeing if someone had paid her to. Yet this young mortal understood that she had just traveled through or across those images, somehow, to a place very far away from Earth.

"By the rings of Saturn, Týr," Thor said with a weak voice. "The return was more strenuous than the trip down."

Raven looked up at Týr again. He smiled and reached his hand down to help her to her feet.

"Short cycles on Midgard mean grand cycles in Asgard, friend Thor," Týr said. "I wager you would rather have suffered the passage in either direction than sit idle and passive as we have, peering through viewing portals at fragmented transmissions."

Thor struggled to his feet. "Memories of the adventures I have experienced are worth their weight in the most precious minerals the universe has to offer."

Týr laughed.

"Come, both of you," he said as Raven grasped his warm hand and he pulled her up. "The feasting in Valhalla tis at feverish intensity in anticipation of your return."

"When isn't the feasting feverish?" Thor asked.

Týr laughed again. "I don't enjoy seeing it any more than you. Fortunately my duty keeps me wandering these long empty halls rather than getting elbowed at the table."

Raven couldn't believe it was true. Thor was a god and he had brought her to space or the heavens or wherever.

She realized that her own galaxy was far, far away. And yet, somehow she felt safe with Thor.

Raven followed the two young gods through a weird door into a long hallway. There Thor stopped and looked back at what they called the cosmic gate.

It was still there, still open, a sphere swirling with images and electrical zaps. Raven's way back home was not sealed off forever. Not yet.

"The cosmic gate takes time to open and close," Thor said, putting his hand on Raven's shoulder. "Let us not stand and spectate as its size shrinks by increment."

"Will I ever get to go home?" she asked him, still looking at the sphere.

Týr was waiting for them, farther down what looked like an endless hallway.

Thor gently squeezed her shoulder.

"Why would you want to? You are with gods now, Ray-vehn. Here, bathed in cosmic energies, you too will stay strong and immortal."

Raven felt all of a sudden sad and lonely.

"Come," Thor said. "Delay has lasted long enough. I must introduce you to my elders. Remember, the fate of the universe remains dependent on our ensuing embrace."

Sure, the things Raven was seeing were amazing beyond what anyone back on Earth would ever believe. But her amazement was starting to fade, pushed aside by a growing sense of panic.

These gods expected her to do something she was not comfortable with, and that would need to be discussed.

Thor and she had arrived only a few minutes ago. There was a lot more ahead of her. 
69. The Portal Is Still Open

Nothing had changed.

It was as if Thor had left the feast and returned only micro-cycles later, even though grand Asgardian mega-cycles had passed. The whole familiar lot was still there, going mad gorging themselves on platters of victuals and a steady supply of ale, just as before.

Thor had expected a grander welcome, more maidens and comet-harps and fresher food on the meteorstone table instead of residual scraps.

Everyone rose to their feet, the identical cast of character flaws that never aged and rarely died, frozen in space-time forever, unaccountable for their incessant foibles, responsible for nothing.

"Thor, my son!" Odin shouted, his lips covered over entirely by the overgrowth of his great beard. "You brought her back!"

He gestured to Joro at the other end of the table.

"Joro, my wife! Look, young Thor has brought back the mortal virgin."

He winked at his son. "But she will remain neither mortal nor virgin for much longer, we'll see to that!"

Thor had his hand on Ray-vehn's shoulder and he could feel her shiver, likely as scared as a mouse in a pen with cattle.

"Father," Thor said, memories of being stranded and pursued by a well-equipped legion still fresh in his mind. "I waited what seemed like eons for the cosmic gate to reopen to fetch me."

Joro shook her head.

"We did what we could, my son, believe me. Summoning the forces of a thousand solar storms is no small task, even for beings who wield galactic power such as those in our pantheon."

"Yet you managed to summon enough energy to watch me through viewing portals, as I stumbled over myself trying to learn the ways of the Midgardians," Thor accused, put off by the thought of being observed throughout his tribulations as if he had served as a common, contorting jester.

Someone at the table snickered.

Thor knew them too well - they had all laughed at him, no doubt. Their minds were clouded by disruptions in the chaos/order balance. The fate of the universe depended on his success, yet his own pantheon had garnered entertainment from his travails.

"Viewing portals require fractions of the dark matter necessary for travel across space-time, you know that, my dear boy," Joro said.

Thor let go of Ray-vehn's shoulder.

"I don't trust you anymore," he said, gesturing to all of his elder gods. "You have all grown lazy and fat in your fear of oblivion. Did you wager on my success or failure? Come then, who of you deviants placed bets? Who here gambled on my return? My demise?"

Joro shook her head but said nothing.

"We have no time for this, my rebellious boy," Odin said. "We must enter the ceremonial chamber and commence with the union." He looked at Ray-vehn. "She's a pretty girl indeed. A fine specimen of a mortal. Why, if I wasn't forbidden I would prefer to be in your place, my son."

"Enough!" Thor shouted.

Shocked into silence, everyone stared at him.

Ray-vehn stepped forward, to Thor's side.

"You people are all batshit fucking crazy," she said.

Thor looked down at her. He probably should have shushed her.

"Are you smitten with this foul-mouthed girl, my son?" Joro asked. "Because youthful, gravitated romance can only impede your godly duties."

"Lady," Ray-vehn said to the big woman. "I don't know you. You must be Thor's mother, which is cool and all. It's epic. But don't be a bitch."

"I know not precisely what you say," Joro said. "However your tone is hostile. Do you comprehend the power we wield, mortal virgin? How dare you accost us verbally?"

"She's delirious, from the trip through space-time," Odin said. "Yet soon to be more so, once my fine young son is finished with her!"

Odin laughed, and so did the other gods at the table.

Thor stared at his father. It was as if he didn't even know him; his own sire seemed a stranger.

"I want to go home," Ray-vehn said, falling to her knees. "Please make this all be some horrible nightmare."

She buried her face in her hands as she knelt there.

All of a sudden Thor wanted to go back too. He wanted to make more friends, with the peasants and the scholars. He wanted to be closer to Ray-vehn in her world, not his.

"The amoebous portal is still open," Thor said, carefully, staring at Odin. "Any god here who stands in my way will face my wrath."

Odin's eyes went wide.

"No!" Joro shouted. "You would risk disrupting the Chaos/Order Axis!"

Thor looked at her.

"How know I what you speak is truth, Mother?" he asked. "I hear one thing, then another. The fabric of space-time. The Chaos/Order Axis.

"Yet I return here to find my own family has spied on me during my mission as if I were a bard, a thespian or circus performer providing amusement for your entertainment. How know I that you will not also watch my union with the mortal virgin with lust for spectacle in your eyes? Even you, my own mother who gave birth to me?"

Odin slammed his fist onto the meteorstone table and roared with all the might of his rotund belly, which despite great girth was completely shrouded by the elder god's voluminous beard.

"You will obey me, boy!"

Thor seized the bearded one's gaze with his own and stared him down.

"What's going on, Thor?" Ray-vehn asked as she rose from the floor by the young god's side.

"I will face each and every one of you in god-combat before I force myself upon the young mortal by my side. Fools - the lot of you! The rupture in space-time has rendered you fools!" Thor shouted.

The room went silent.

Everyone present knew by now just how serious the young god was. Deadly serious. The dark matter portal was closing and he was now determined to return to Midgard.

Thor could not stomach the thought of endless cosmic cycles stuck in Valhalla with this same ship of oblivious dunces.

"You do not have to do this, my son," Odin said, somber now. "We love you, we cherish you. You do not have to rebel from obligations to your home galaxy and our pantheonic traditions."

Thor shook his head. "You have left me with no choice. I no longer serve Asgard and the Norse pantheon."

Joro's eyes welled with tears.

"If you return, not only do you risk disrupting the Chaos/Order Axis. In Midgard you will gradually lose your powers, your immortality," she said, her voice soft.

"You will become... one of them," she added, glancing at Ray-vehn.

"I want to become one of them," Thor said, resolute. "They live, they die, they love, they bleed. Their lives are far richer than the repetition of immortal cycles that is on offer to a supreme god."

Joro's tears flowed freely now. Thor knew her love was genuine, as should be a mother's. Her fault was not in neglect or disregard. Joro's fault was in wanting to control her son, to protect him for eternity.

"There is a way," Odin said, looking to Joro across the length of the table, then returning his gaze to Thor.

"You must face your half-brother, Týr, in trial by god-combat. If you vanquish him, his immortality will be sacrificed to the Chaos/Order Axis and you can return to Midgard to live with the mortals of the planet Earth."

Thor looked over at Týr.

"So you are the product of father's illegitimate liaisons," Thor said. "I take not warrant from that to vanquish you. Tis our father's own deceit that has severed our friendship to reveal our brotherhood."

Standing by the meteorstone table, Odin snorted.

"Heavens, Thor! As if your illoyal mother Joro has not frolicked with other gods behind my back in kind!"
70. How Could She Breathe?

Raven had no idea what was going on at this point. Sure, she could understand most of what Thor was saying, and a lot of what the other Viking gods in the strange room said too. And yet she felt more confused than ever.

Thor's argument with the others reminded Raven of arguments she'd had with her adopted parents, before she ran away to live on the streets. Now that seemed like forever ago.

Where was Raven again? Another dimension? "Asgard"? Where the hell was that anyway? A few miles past Pluto and to the left?

Raven wondered about Redding. Was he okay? He was probably cuffed by now, thrown in a jail cell. Poor guy.

Raven didn't want to have sex with Thor. Not now anyway; she had already decided she wasn't ready. Not that she wasn't mature enough. In some ways, especially back on Earth, Thor seemed less mature than she was. He was like a lost little kid, whether he was a virgin himself or not.

That's why Raven had been forced to take the lead in rescuing Redding. And damn, Raven really hoped he was okay and not getting water-boarded by the CIA or whoever.

Raven's mind was racing, repeating worried thoughts.

Thor put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her to the side, just as she and Redding had stepped to the side in the observatory.

The gods at the huge table watched from the other side of the cavernous dining hall they were in. At one end of the table, the one who was all beard and a pair of eyes. At the other end, the menacing woman. All along the sides of the table, the others, with their their hungry stares.

The walls of the room were clear one second, cloudy the next. It seemed like Raven was there with the gods under some kind of dome, like in an enormous stadium.

"I don't know if I trust them," Thor said, glancing back over his shoulder. His face was close to Raven's. He spoke in a hushed tone.

"You don't trust them?" whispered Raven. "Shit, buddy, I don't even know who the hell these people are."

"My pantheon," Thor said.

"What the hell's a pantheon?"

"My league of gods, my elders. They birthed me much as your Earth was birthed by cosmic impregnation."

"You just compared yourself to an entire planet," Raven said.

Then she looked down at the floor. She could see what appeared to be moon craters beneath her feet, yet the surface she stood on was as smooth as a basketball court. It was like being in two places at once.

"Please don't force me to have sex with you," Raven said, looking back at Thor again and gesturing with her chin to the other gods. "I don't want to do it now and especially not in front of them. That is so not romantic."

Thor nodded. "I shall retrieve us, both of us, back to Midgard," he said. "I desire not to spend an eternity in their presence."

"Okay, so let's go back to that tunnel portal. It's still open, right?"

Thor nodded again.

"Aye but not for long. My pantheon won't let me leave unless I vanquish my own half-brother in open god-combat."

Raven sighed. "Okay, I think I understand. You have to fight. Please do whatever you have to do. This place really sucks and I want to go home. I'm scared, Thor. I need you."

Thor locked his eyes with hers, then opened his arms.

She hugged him tight. He was warm and strong and she knew then that she could trust him. 
71. Smitten with a Mortal Girl

"Very well, Father and Mother," Thor said, turning away from Ray-vehn and stepping out into the center of the large hall. "You wish to see me engage my own brother in god-combat for your petty entertainment. Very well, if it will release your grip of control over my destiny."

"If you lack trust in our word that this ceremony is necessary to maintain balance of the Chaos/Order Axis, I cannot sway the paranoid machinations of your mind," replied Joro.

"Feeble words, Mother. Mere words. I know not about the nature of the Chaos/Order Axis. I only know the surface of the time-space wheel upon which I traveled to Earth in the galaxy of Midgard, a realm with a much wider variety of scents on offer than ale and god-vomit."

"Enough!" yelled Odin, his fist appearing through his parted beard and slamming onto the meteorstone in front of him.

Addressing the entire assemblage, Thor's father then proclaimed, "We will initiate preparations of the chamber for god-combat. I have cast the order of expansion to Valhalla's walls."

Joro looked as if she were about to cry. Almost.

"Dear silly son, you've allowed yourself to fall far in love with the mortal girl," she said as Odin steamed in silence, his face red from rage and excess ale. "A surprise to me. I had it in mind that you were a resolute and impartial god. Not one prone to pedestrian mortal emotions."

"Pan your gander around the table," Thor said, his eyes piercing his mother's. "And then make attempt anew at lecturing me on pedestrian foibles."

Thor tore his gaze away and looked to Týr, who stood at the periphery.

"Time is of essence," Thor continued. "I lack it in surplus. The dark matter portal closes a fraction with each Asgardian micro-cycle. Brother, let us clash to settle the matter in god-combat posthaste."

"I would not want this, Thor," Týr said, even as he gripped his pole-axe with visible anticipation. "If you had not coveted Midgard over the adorned chambers of Valhalla we would spar as friends and brethren, not as foes."

Thor thrust his hand in the air, calling upon his inherited weapon: the cometstone war-hammer with which his deity was associated.

The war-hammer materialized in his hand.

Týr was already armed with his pole-axe. Both weapons could be lethal, even to a god, should those wielding them so desire.

"Come then, other son of Odin," Thor said to Týr, spinning the war-hammer in his hand, feeling its perfect balance and heft.

"Attempt to make your name among all pantheons as the minor god who subdued Thor of thunderous storms."

Týr roared a battle cry from his guts.

At once Thor knew that his half-brother had harbored secret anticipation for this opportunity. His camaraderie had been a ruse. Gods, it seemed, were only more powerful than humans. Not at all more virtuous or impervious to character flaws.

The two gods rushed one another and clashed, pole-axe to war-hammer, siblings in rivalry, while their parents looked on with great intent. 
72. Human Like an Ant

At this point Raven was totally lost. A freaking huge square hammer had just appeared in Thor's hand out of nowhere and now he and the one named Týr rushed at each other.

The dome-shaped roof they were under, with stars and constellations far above, seemed to expand and open up. All of a sudden Thor and Týr were far away and the table where all the older gods sat was even farther away, at the other end of an enormous space.

It was like they were now on a giant playing field, except there were only two players in this match.

Raven had eaten magic mushrooms once. This was that times a thousand. This couldn't be happening.

The hammer in Thor's hand became electrified with what looked like lightning.

Týr's weapon, a staff with a sword on top, was glowing a neon green.

Raven was blinded by light and her ears rang with an overpowering wall of sound. She dropped to her knees, her hands cupped over her ears and her jaw clenched. It hurt like hell.

She looked up to see who was winning as Thor and Týr bashed at each other with their weapons of glowing fire and lightning. They appeared so far away, that Raven felt like she was high up in the bleachers of a stadium watching a football game.

She could barely see the elder gods at the table. She knew she couldn't find her way out of this place if she wanted to. All she could do was watch, helpless.

Týr hit hard with his long staff and Thor got launched backwards into the air. As he flew to the far end of the vast arena, his body lit up from the neon green glow of Týr's weapon.

When he landed, Thor tumbled over and over, his hammer rolling off in another direction. He appeared to be severely injured.

Raven suddenly realized that if Thor lost this battle she would never return home. She would be gone forever.

And if he were killed, what would they do to her then? Týr might take Thor's place as the young prince god. Would that mean Raven would become his?

All the craziness in Ravenna Park seemed so long ago now. This was much scarier than dealing with skinhead tweakers.

Thor fought his way to his feet. In the distance there was clapping from the gods at the table, their applause echoing across to where Raven was, still on her knees.

"I am trained for this as guardian of Asgard's chambers," Týr's voice boomed. "You are a spoiled brat more accustomed to relaxing and listening to maidens strumming comet-harps."

Thor reached out his hand and in an instant his hammer appeared, as if it had been beamed or teleported there like they could do in the Star Trek movies.

Týr began to hover off the ground, glowing greener than ever. Thor joined him in the air, and at the same instant they threw their weapons at each other.

Thor's hammer skidded on a path of lightning. Týr's spear left behind it a neon green trail connecting it to its master.

Raven blinked and rubbed her eyes, not believing what she was seeing. She thought she had to be hallucinating.

The lightning and green glow collided. It looked as if Thor and Týr had lost human form. They were like shooting stars, crashing planets or asteroids exploding in the sky.

With a terrific booming sound the fighters parted again, flying in opposite directions. There was another loud cheer, reminding Raven that in the distance gods sitting at a table were acting just like regular human beings getting wasted watching a football game.

That's all it was, a game. She finally understood this. The gods were so powerful, so beyond time that humans on Earth were like ants they could play with. 
73. Brothers in God-Combat

Thor directed every iota of his energy into his war-hammer. Still, it wasn't enough to dispel the charge of Týr's pole-axe.

Týr in turn lacked overwhelming force, and their strikes repelled one another far across the expanding arena.

Thor sailed for what seemed like micro-cycles. The arena's walls continued to expand to make way for the atomic discharges of each young god's war weapon.

As he was repelled ever backwards, Thor could see to his right the table where his elders sat, deep into the horizon. Far to his left he sighted Raven, still on her knees,.

At last Thor struck the expanding wall of the arena dome.

As he remained caught in the wall's field, he looked up in time to see Týr's green glowing pole-axe flying directly at him. His half-brother must have redirected the weapon into another attack even as he had been repelled towards the opposite side of the arena.

Twas a surprise to Thor.

The blade of the pole-axe pierced his shoulder and pinned him to the wall. The axe's glowing green atomic charge spread from the wound to every part of Thor's body, and it was most painful.

Thor decided to use a similarly duplicitous god-combat tactic.

Týr was now free from the atomic pull of the wall on the other side of the expanding arena, and he landed on the floor just as Thor sighted him.

Thor, despite his weakened state, hurled his war-hammer. Only war-hammers don't fly, Thor's wasn't designed for that. Instead it dematerialized the moment Thor let go of it.

Micro-cycles later it rematerialized in front of Týr in the distance and continued its trajectory.

Týr did;t have time to react and the hammer impacted him directly in the chest. He crumpled to the floor and screamed in pain, his exclamation affirming the hit and echoing throughout the chamber.

From the meteorstone table rose a smattering of cautious applause, which peeved Thor as he tried to pull the pole-axe from his shoulder, fighting the atomic charge of Týr's weapon. It seemed that his parents were rooting for his half-brother.

And why not?, realized Thor. Týr was loyal to the pantheon. Týr, not Thor, wanted to spend eternity in Valhalla, looking down upon Midgardians and dozens of other mortal species from the vantage point and position of power that beings of the galaxy Asgard retained.

Thor wanted no such vantage. He yearned to blend in, to disappear, with a partner like Raven at his side. Or alone, barring that. Thor was simply bored by repetitious godhood.

Týr, though severely wounded, now sprinted across the arena towards Thor, closing in at rapid pace.

The pole-axe came free. Still engulfed in green atomic plasma spewing from the gaping wound in his shoulder, Thor tossed the pole-axe to the side and slid down the dome wall to the floor.

As Thor stood and faced his rushing attacker, the pole-axe rose from the floor and loyal to its master flew to Týr.

Closer now, Týr was swift on his feet, covering leagues in each bound. Thor did not waver but stood fast and faced his half-brother.

Remorseless, commanding, Týr gathered energy from the atmosphere of the arena as he neared.

At the last moment, feeling the heat of his attacker's approach, Thor reached out his hand. In an instant, his war-hammer - charged with mega-lightning - appeared in his grip.

Thor could not know if his hammer had enough power stored in its ancient crevices to challenge the energy gathered by Týr. There was only one way to find out, so the young god swung with all his might. 
74. This Eventuality

Raven closed her eyes and pressed her palms tight to her ears. That still didn't keep out the light and sound of what could have passed for a nuclear explosion.

Behind her eyelids she could see and feel a blast of orange heat. She went from her knees all the down to the cloudy floor, hugging it, for what protection it might provide.

She gasped and coughed. What filled her lungs might have been smoke. It didn't smell like smoke though. It smelled like burning hair, maybe flesh, maybe something else.

The ringing in her ears started to fade, but Raven could tell it wouldn't go away totally, not anytime soon. No, this was like the sound of permanent hearing damage.

Even though she was deep in space, somewhere astronauts hadn't come close to exploring, Raven understood that she was not only a witness of what the gods could do. She understood that she could get hurt and die in ways they couldn't.

"Thor!" she screamed, or tried to.

The scream turned into another coughing fit. What the hell was burning anyway?

"Thor, where are you?"

Applause rang in the distance, where the table of older gods must have been - not that Raven could see them.

As the smoke began to clear, she saw that the walls of the huge room were shrinking, the arena was returning to its original size.

"God-combat has ceased!" shouted the one called Odin, the father of Thor. "We have a victor."

Raven rubbed her eyes. She was still on her stomach on the floor, looking left and right as the area continued to shrink.

The table of older gods was closer now.

She saw Thor there, maybe thirty feet in front of her. He stood above Týr, who was on his stomach much like Raven was, except that he looked kind of dead. His green glow was fading. He didn't look like he was breathing.

Did he need to? Raven didn't know if gods had to breathe in the heavens or not.

With a sad look on his face, Thor looked down at his brother.

"I strove not for this eventuality," Odin said from the distance.

He and Joro approached their sons on the floor and Raven got a better look at Thor's parents. Odin looked like he was only whiskers. His beard and long hair flowed all over the floor. He was just a mass of hair and two glowing eyes that seemed to float along as he walked.

Joro looked strong and wide, a powerful woman, more beefy than most of the scrawny guys Raven knew back on Earth. She looked like she could kick some serious ass herself, while Odin looked like he would get tangled in his own beard if he tried to fight.

Raven knew this was not the case though. These were powerful beings, all of them.

Thor looked from Týr to his parents.

"I must leave now, Father, Mother," he said. "Will you heal the wounds my war-hammer inflicted upon him?"

Odin and Joro looked down at their other son but didn't answer.

So Thor spoke again. "Did you enjoy that, Father?" he asked. "You seemed desirous of such spectacle. Even more so than Týr, who demonstrated eagerness for this day of reckoning."

Thor bowed his head and closed his eyes before continuing.

"I never suspected that my own brother gazed upon me as would my envious shadow."

"We will utilize all the atomic convergence at our disposal to reinvigorate his immortal force," Joro said.

Thor said no more. He turned his back on his parents and walked over to Raven, holding out his hand.

"Come, Ray-vehn," he said. "The amoebous portal to Midgard will close posthaste and we must together venture through it."

Raven took his hand, understanding every word he said as he lifted her to her feet.
75. Where Gods Walk

Ray-vehn couldn't keep up with Thor as they moved through the hallways of Asgard, despite the urgent need for haste.

"Move!" Thor shouted, to no avail.

She was at a loss for wind. She stumbled and coughed, surely in shock and awe, her eyes having witnessed events unfathomable to any mortal of her kind.

Thor seized her, lifting her and tossing her over his shoulder before breaking into a full sprint down the seemingly endless passages.

Gods didn't utilize transportation devices, ones like the overabundant mechanical carriages Thor had seen on Earth, which he suspected made mortals lazy. The only way gods traveled the lengthy halls throughout Asgard was by walking.

Yet now one god ran, with a mortal virgin slung over his shoulder.

There was no time to waste.

Tense micro-cycles passed before they arrived at the dark matter portal.

Thor set Ray-vehn on her feet outside the chamber and entered ahead of her, lest there be random spikes of atomic vapor that endangered mortal anatomy.

Inside he saw that indeed the dark matter portal was much smaller now, while still passable. The facility was safe, so he gestured for Ray-vehn to follow.

"Holy shit, can we fit through that?" she asked as she stepped inside the portal chamber, her eyes fixed on the shrinking amoebous gate.

Thor ignored her question and issued a command instead.

"Breathe deep and hold fast to your wind," he said, reaching for her.

Ray-vehn screamed as he hefted her under her arm and inner thigh, then tossed her sideways through the narrowing gateway.

Through she went, her screams of protest fading fast onto the wheel of space-time.

Thor followed immediately, his shoulders and arms scraping the closing borders of the gate as he squeezed himself through.

It was to the great wheel again, to the agony of descent from Asgard to the lower galaxy of Midgard. It was a journey no god, man or woman could ever grow accustomed to. It was a journey through and beyond heaven and hell.
76. All She Could Do Was Fall

This again, Raven thought as she got rolled out like pizza dough.

She fell over and over herself, aching to her bones, once again looking across a huge wheel turning under her.

Raven couldn't remember how she'd got here. All she could do was scream as her heart tried to beat its way out of her chest so it could get a breath of its own. All she could do was fall.

There was lightning everywhere like that of Thor's hammer. There was a green glow like Týr's spear weapon. There were shapes, sounds, screams that were not her own. There were voices of gods and all the dreams, all the nightmares of life.

The experience was familiar one second, the next totally different and new, stranger than anything Raven had seen in Valhalla.

"I'm here."

It was Thor's voice, but she couldn't see him.

"The second pass through a space-time tunnel causes more fright than the first," he said.

Where was he?

Raven screamed again.

"On this surface I am not your superior. Tis a void beyond godhood and mortality," Thor said. "Beyond suffering. Beyond death and rebirth."

Where was he?

Raven screamed again for him. She needed him desperately, she could not stand to be alone one second longer, on this huge turning wheel with moving shapes and electrical zaps.

Then she felt his arms around her, his hands on her, holding her close. She remembered everything: him, the battle, Earth, home.

Raven opened her eyes.

Water was falling on all sides. Rain and chill air enveloped her skin. She breathed in and shivered.

Air. Oxygen. Earth.

Thor hugged her tight. They were huddled together and it was cold. They were sitting under a bridge, in Ravenna Park again, and her teeth were chattering.

"What did you mean?" she asked, looking into his eyes.

He pulled her closer, and she could feel his concern for her.

"What say you?" he replied.

"What did you mean, when we were on the time wheel and you said it was a void beyond godhood? I don't understand that."

Thor's warm breath caressed her cheek.

"I know not to what you refer," he said. "We have not spoken since the portal chamber, before I hurled you through the cosmic gate."

Raven shivered again. She was sure it had been Thor's voice, up there, out there on that giant turning wheel.

"My lady," Thor said. "I still have immortal powers but your constitution wavers under threat of chill. We must deliver you to a haven of warmth."

Raven nodded, understanding most of what he said.

"We need to find James," she said, hoping that the professor was okay, and that he could somehow make sense of what she had just experienced in Valhalla and beyond.

"Yes, we need to find the scholar," said Thor.

Raven wasn't sure that anything she had seen was real. Maybe it had been a hallucination. She wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Either way, she was going to find out. And she knew without a doubt that Thor was going to help her.

END
About the Author

### Gabriel Walker Land is a screenwriter and novelist currently splitting his time

### between California and Bangkok, Thailand. He regularly sends out an email newsletter primarily focused on the art and craft of writing, while also adding in some travel journalism.

###

### His specialties include unique characters, dynamic action, passionate romance and crackling dialogue. He always takes care to tip his hat to comedic relief and a sense of the absurd.

###

### Although Gabriel writes genre fiction, he likes to pepper his works with deep characterization as well as sociopolitical and metaphysical themes more commonly found in literary fiction. One of his short stories called "Brand Protection Services" was recently published in the cyberpunk magazine Write Ahead The Future Looms.

In addition to writing novels and short stories, Gabriel experiments with low-budget film making and screenwriting. His YouTube channel and IMDB credits give details on his film-related work. "The Powder," his first feature-length screenplay, remains unproduced and he is shopping it around.

Occasionally Gabriel works as a freelance writer. In 2014, while living in Thailand, he wrote blog posts for the prestigious Bangkok shop Tailor on Ten. His posts delved into topics such as Bangkok's canals and Lumpini Park. He has also blogged for Thailand's premier prioduction company, Mbrella Films, on topics such as Thailand's Best Beaches and Bangkok's Best Filming Locations.

Follow Gabriel at twitter.com/landgabriel.

Don't forget to sign up for his email newsletter too!

Excerpt from

PATTAYA

HEAT

by

Gabriel Walker Land

1. Death Gets Diverse in the Tropics

Some say there are worse places to die than in Thailand, some say there are better. In my mind, dying is the same anywhere, so I've never listened to either demographic.

Besides, at the time of this story I was the youngest in a crowd of aging expats. I hadn't yet reached the age where I read the obituaries.

Those expats I shared tables with wouldn't stop talking about crime and death. We read about it often in the Post, and on more than a few mornings a still-warm chair would turn up empty at the local pub. There were jumpers, road accidents, shootings, overdoses, drownings, a few box jellyfish stings, slashings. You name it and someone got bit by it in Thailand. A little imagination isn't enough. Death diversifies in the tropics.

I'll go ahead and kick this yarn off by filling in some of the blanks, but not all. I'll leave the identity of the murderer for the end, I promise. Best to cut a few corners and keep it short, so on behalf of creative license and clarity, I'll allow myself some speculation. Some of the names, times and places I can't remember well anyway.

Jim Younger died fast, if not how he anticipated. To kill himself, he took a tuktuk from Bangkok to Bang Saen, a small beach and college town halfway to Pattaya. He had been drinking like the fish that were about to start nibbling on his corpse.

Bang Saen was sleepier back then, especially on the evenings that weren't also weekends or holidays. The time of the event was half past three in the morning on a Tuesday, a Tuesday that wasn't a holiday. On account of that there was no one much around at that peaceful hour.

Jim drank all the way south through Chonburi Province in the back of that tuktuk he hired, the warm night air blasting his face as he liked it. I imagine he thought, like me, that taxis were too enclosed and suffocating. The best way to take in Thailand's beauty was and is from the back seat of a tuktuk, without doors and windows to block off the wind of the world.

Jim drank before getting into that tuktuk as well, back at the Matador bar in Patpong, Bangkok's oldest red light district. He had a lot to kill himself for. Lord knows he had enough blood on his hands to haunt his dreams and probably his afterlife as well. The man carried demons with him, more than most.

The best explanation for why he set himself on Bang Saen was that it was the closest sandy shore to Bangkok, short of an hour away without traffic. The lovelier white sands of Hua Hin were further in the opposite direction, and Pattaya City was Pattaya, so scratch that off the bucket list. If dying was on the agenda, a beach like Bang Saen's was near as good a place as any.

Everyone would have forgotten about a man like Jim except the people he wished would, so I figure he figured it was just time to move on. That blood on his hands was too old to wash off. It dated all the way back to the Vietnam War and the spooks that shed it might have nagged at him, beckoning him to join them in purgatory.

After the tuktuk dropped him off, and the driver thanked him profusely in quick Thai for the generous tip, Jim kicked off his shoes and headed down onto the beach. At seventy-four he was spry, especially when drunk. More so barefoot. Decades in the tropics cures anyone of excess clothing and confined footwear.

In Jim's hand was a half-full bottle of home-brewed laokhao, courtesy of the tuktuk driver. The potent rice whiskey burned in his stomach and probably through it. That didn't matter. If alcohol poisoning didn't get him, the Thai Gulf that lapped at his toes would soon enough.

Jim waded in, emptying the bottle down his numb throat and staring across the water. Far to the west was Koh Samui island, Krabi Province, and Phuket further yet on the Andaman coast. Thailand was a diverse and rich country, one that despite any drawbacks had grown on Jim over the decades. He would miss it.

Up to his waist now, he tossed the bottle as far into the gulf as he could. It landed and floated. Jim intended on going to fetch it, knowing full well it would take on water and sink by the time he got to a depth he couldn't stand in.

Before he could get much past his knees though he heard the familiar sound of a gun cocking back on the sand. For a moment Jim paused, debating whether or not to look and see who it was. Figuring to hell with it, he slowly turned in the gentle surf. His would-be assailant waited without explanation. If a dying man's wish was to see who killed him, whoever it was seemed willing to honor it.

Right as Jim Younger's eyes met a face he may or may not have recognized, he also matched his gaze with the trajectory of an oncoming bullet. Then it all went dark not long before he had planned.

To this day I have some unanswered questions about Jim Younger's death. That goes with the territory though.

I was just a two-bit high-school dropout floundering in a foreign country, an economic refugee who'd played the class clown card for too long. It comes as no surprise that I eventually closed the book on my first real murder case with more empty pages than when I had opened it.

2. All I Need Is a Photo

Things were picking up on Walking Street, as I walked through its arched gates where it met Beach Road. The time was 11:00 pm and this was before I'd heard about Jim Younger.

It was the tail end of the hot season, and soon the rains would come to cool everything off and keep all but the most dedicated of tourists at bay. Those rains couldn't arrive soon enough; they were almost as good as acetone at washing away memories.

Tonight I was after my typical quarry: a bargirl, this one by the nickname of Gift.

I didn't particularly enjoy being a paid stalker. It's just that life has a way of making people good at things they don't enjoy. I'd always had a fly-on-the-wall, voyeur streak anyway. My circumstances put it to use.

All I needed was a photo, which might prove easier said than done. Still, sometimes a lot more work was required to obtain concrete proof of extracurricular activities. Sometimes I had to lure a bargirl into a more elaborate trap, to get her at least half-naked in a short-time hotel room. No part of me was proud of what I did, and some parts were revolted.

Sometimes the bargirls were elusive. They were mobile chameleons who switched venues almost as often as they switched boyfriends. Sometimes they switched cities. Sometimes they quit the game entirely, retiring to the north after having brought their entire family up and out of poverty.

Minutes after entering Walking Street and weaving through its throngs, I passed through the doors into the Lucifer club, aptly named. That was where my client said Gift could be found, right in the clutches of the devil. I'd have believed that, though I wasn't among the most religious of men at the time.

The Lucifer was a Thai mafia-run disco, a popular place among freelance bargirls, many of whom who were too independently minded to operate under the micromanagement of mamasans at go-go's and beer bars. Freelancers were unpredictable, often criminally minded. They didn't have as much of a reputation to uphold because they weren't accountable to a brand.

I had my work cut out for me. The management at the Lucifer knew who I was and what I did, for worse not better. Their interests were in stark contrast to mine and they would eject me on sight. The club was their turf, their hell. No pictures allowed, not without a bribe that was beyond my means.

Folishly, or perhaps out of laziness, I'd skipped over attempting to don some absurd disguise to avoid attention. Instead I hoped to blend in with what I assumed would be a dense crowd. There were multiple high seasons in Pattaya, and this time was one of them. I had safety in numbers in my favor.

I was glad to see the floor was indeed packed, with all booths full of Americans. It was the same every spring.

Since the 80s the U.S. Navy had been conducting an annual joint exercise called Cobra Gold with their Thai counterparts. Some years an aircraft carrier spilled its guts onto Pattaya's streets for a week. Other years it was a whole battle group of multiple ships.

Due to circumstances this was one of those occasions when there wouldn't be enough working girls in all of the city. Competition among ladies of the night for punters would be fierce. Catfights weren't unheard of, and sometimes they were gambled upon.

Once inside I scanned the premises as I had done so many times before. My client had told me everything I needed to know. He met her here. She had a dragon tattoo on her back that she liked to show off, one that spanned shoulder to shoulder. She could dance well and smiled profusely. Her name was Gift.

I weaved around the perimeter of the floor, swiping by all the booths. It didn't take long to spy my quarry.

She had her back oriented my direction, and she was grinding herself into the lap of a farang, the Thai word for westerner or outsider than can be either harmless or derogatory. This particular example looked like he was one of the cadets in town. It was Gift for sure. She was the only bargirl at the table and she looked to be basking in that status.

To get a good picture of Gift, I needed to get close, because the lights were so dim. I also needed to use the flash. My remote client in the distant Netherlands would want to recognize Gift's face, in the digital photo I was going to send him, if he was going to pay me the remainder of my fee.

I brushed by the table on one pass, just to get a closer look. Planning the shot out carefully, I choreographed the movement of it in my mind.

A lone farang snapping pictures of strangers in a club almost always attracted attention. Sometimes the reaction was hostile. If attacked by Thai bouncers, I couldn't fight back. Not only was the club their turf but Thailand was their country.

As ready as I'd ever be, I U-turned on the other side of the crowded floor and weaved back past the table a second time. On this pass I lifted my phone, aimed it right at Gift's writhing back, and hit the button, hoping the flash would be perceived as just another part of the strobing light show.

It wasn't. The naval cadet underneath Gift saw my move, as did a few of his brothers at the table. The one Gift was on lifted her off him and stood. He was tall enough to be taller than me and a lot more drunk. I was never a great fighter. Still, against a drunk I was more confident.

"Motherfucker!" the cadet said, his buddies rising behind him to back him up. "Give me that phone, you prick!"

I could understand the reaction. In the age of social media, the Navy didn't appreciate any kind of bad publicity. Nor did loyal service wives waiting for their husbands to return to San Diego.

I turned and did my best to blend into the crowd again. Lucky for me there was a heck of a crowd to disappear into, so doing my best was good enough. I made it out the front door and back onto Walking Street before facing the wrath of the world's greatest naval power. From there I scurried all the way back out the Walking Street gates to Beach Road, then hopped a motorcycle taxi to my old shophouse on Soi Buakhao.

Sooner rather than later I would have to find another gig, to keep from drowning in a pool of my own sweat during the tail end of Thailand's hot season. Sooner rather than later I'd have to move on, leaving freelance PI work behind me, and get a real job. Maybe I could go back to film work or teaching English, illegally due to my lack of a college degree.

When I got home, I opened my laptop to send my client the photo. Once that was done, I saw that another potential client had pinged me, so I responded, mentioning that I'd just successfully finished a case and that my services were available.

Rarely did cases roll in so quickly, so I wondered if I'd hit upon a streak of good luck. I wondered wrong.

3. One of Them Might Jump

The email was from a German named Rudiger and he said he was in Pattaya looking for help finding a missing bargirl. I arranged to meet him at Carl's Jr., on the top level of the Central Festival mall on Beach Road. The balcony there had seating and a view of the ocean that matched almost any luxury restaurant or rooftop bar in town, so it was a favorite haunt of mine.

I arrived fifteen minutes late, so I could get a look at the German before making contact. Sure enough he was sitting at a table on the balcony. I spied him through the glass door and recognized him from his LINE chat app profile picture. He was small and fragile, sickly looking. His depression looked airborne and contagious.

I went on out onto the balcony, walked up to the table and offered my hand.

"Rudiger, right? Hello. I'm Rich Sky."

The German looked up at me, then shook my hand. I sat and took out my pen and notepad.

"I got the pictures of her. Thanks, those will help," I said. "Her name's Chailai, right?"

Rudiger nodded. "I called her Chaice. She asked me to."

I began taking my notes, in a shorthand that might have been indecipherable to anyone else.

"Then I'll call her Chaice too," I said. "So you want me to check on her, to see if she's still in Pattaya?"

"Yes. She told me she was leaving, but that might have been a lie. She blocked me on LINE and Facebook after I saw her last."

"The first place to check will be the bar where you met her."

"The Living Dolls go-go. I asked there already, just last night. She stopped working there. The management doesn't know where she went."

I sighed.

"Bad move," I said. "Those girls might warn Chaice you're back in town and looking for her. I wish you wouldn't have done that."

Turnover at the bars was frequent and Chaice could be long gone by then. Still I would have to go back to the Dolls, certain I could do a better job questioning the staff there than Rudiger. There was a snag though: the mamasan at Dolls, the older retired bargirl who managed the talent, knew me and what I did. I avoided mentioning this to Rudiger.

"You met Chaice your first time in Pattaya?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And your second time?"

"Yes."

"And this is your third time here."

Rudiger nodded and looked out at the view. He seemed like he was in a bad place. He hailed from a cold country where many of the women were frigid and bitter, like he was. He had moved in fast and fallen for the wrong sort within hours of stepping off an inbound flight.

I thought to reconsider meeting prospective clients on the balcony. One of them might jump, and if it happened I would have to act surprised.

"Where did she tell you she was from?" I asked, thinking it would be Isaan, Thailand's poverty stricken northern region.

"Chonburi."

"She could be affiliated with mafias then. Chonburi is crawling with them, more than any other province. How much did she take you for?"

"A watch."

About then was when the nature of the game started to change, though I couldn't have known it yet. Never being a watch guy, that was no surprise. Before cell phones were ubiquitous, I always walked around with a cheap Casio in my pocket, rather than on my wrist.

I avoided watches figuring it was best not to advertise wealth, not that I'd ever had any to advertise. Regardless, I never felt the need to puff out my tail feathers with jewelry and expensive clothes. Since I'd skated through life primarily on my good looks, I didn't have much to compensate for anyway. Dressed in rags I would still get called handsome on occasion at 40, albeit by bargirls mostly.

"Huh, a watch. Interesting," I said, trying to sound like I wasn't lying. "Bargirls usually play the long con if they're smart. This one went right for your watch though."

"Chaice is smart, I promise you that, Mr. Sky. She took my Rolex Reference 4113 Split Seconds Chronograph. Do you know it?"

"No. Maybe Chaice is smarter than me."

"It's an antique and a family heirloom. One of the rarest timepieces in Germany. One of the rarest in the world."

The majority of nice watches in Pattaya were cheap knockoffs, so either Chaice just nabbed what was within her reach or she knew watches. A bargirl that knew watches was a different breed of bargirl entirely.

"You wore this rare watch out to a bar in Pattaya?"

Rudiger looked away, shaking his head in some sort of shame.

"It was the anniversary of my uncle's death that night I met her. I thought no one would know what it was. The glass was cracked, I never had it restored but kept it in original condition. Even the band was old and worn."

I took in a deep breath, knowing already this job would turn out to be no typical snap and bag.

"Before we continue let's discuss my fee," I said. "I usually just obtain proof. Pictures, recordings. To retrieve a stolen item will take more time."

Rudiger waved at me.

"Whatever you need, within reason."

"Working in bars costs money. I could use a per diem of 3,000 baht, paid by the week."

Rudiger nodded his agreement.

"If I return the watch, I'd like a reward of 100,000 baht. If I can only get evidence it was sold or it left the country, half that. In addition to my per diem, I'd like 25,000 up front, nonrefundable."

Again Rudiger nodded without hesitation. I immediately regretted not asking for more, having forgotten that Germans weren't used to bargaining.

"Do you think the watch is still in Pattaya?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'll have to research it. I heard there's some antique auctions here."

"Okay."

"If I can't find the watch, I'll find Chaice and make her tell me what she did with it. That's the least I can do."

Rudiger looked disappointed, as if he was expecting me to fail.

"I have a high success rate," I assured him. "Higher than industry average. Please, tell me a few things. What did you do with Chaice during the day?"

"We went shopping, mostly."

"I'm sure. Anything else she liked to do?"

"We took walks on the beach to watch the sunrise, because I was jet-lagged. Also we went to the gun range a few times."

"Which one?" I asked.

"The Shooting Club. She liked it. She took a lot of pictures."

I would have to use my fake Facebook and LINE accounts to try and get to Chaice there. If she was half as smart as Rudiger made her out to be, she would have strong privacy settings.

"I'll need her social media screen names. Please send me everything. You only sent a dozen pictures. If you have more, I'd like them."

Rudiger nodded.

"Did Chaice have any other men in her life that you knew of?"

Rudiger looked back at me, wounded, and shook his head.

"She promised me I was the only one. She did mention she had a boyfriend before, but she didn't like him anymore because he was rough with her. I believed her."

I nodded. "Of course you did. Anything else about this guy, his name, what he looked like?"

Rudiger shook his head.

"No, just that he had a lot of money and drove an expensive car. But she said it didn't matter, she still didn't love him."

That was a heck of a cold play on Chaice's part, calculated to make her seem like money meant less to her than old-fashioned romance. No doubt that wasn't the case, not that I could blame her or anyone like her. Everyone has their price, unless they're some sort of messiah.

"Now, walk me through the last night you were together, Rudiger. When was the last time you saw the watch?"

"When we went to a bar on Beach Road."

"Which one?"

"Hooters," he said.

"And then what happened?"

"I took my watch off and put it in my pocket because it was raining and we were about to leave. When the taxi dropped me at my hotel, Chaice called someone and spoke in Thai. When she finished, she told me she needed to go see her aunt and left right away. When I got upstairs alone, I noticed the watch was gone. I never heard from her again."

"So you're not sure she took it."

"Mr. Sky, I don't know what else could have happened. She was so close to me in the taxi. No one else ever got so close to me."

After answering some more questions Rudiger thanked me and paid my per diem for the first week, plus twenty-five grand down. Then we stood to go our separate ways.

Rudiger would be in Bangkok, he said. He couldn't stand Pattaya anymore, and I couldn't blame him.

"I understand," I said. "Just keep an eye on your phone, I'm sure I'll come up with some more questions soon. Remember, no guarantees."

"How did you become an investigator in Thailand?" Rudiger asked, before I could excuse myself.

It was a common question. To an outsider's perspective I might have appeared to be living the dream, as if my life was a movie, or at least a TV series that aired late at night, after prime-time.

I tried not to let myself sigh at an audible level before scooting my chair back and rising to my feet.

"That's a long story," I said. "Trust me, my work is not all it's cracked up to be."

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