Wayne hated that attack. That attack was why Wayne was currently lying on the ground, yelling, “Dodge! Dodge!” into her mike.
Blackstatic wasn’t a one-hit, but it could be close. Getting stuck in it would knock Sigmund on his perky blonde ass, taking off a good third of his health and leaving him with a paralysis effect that would make further dodging almost impossible. That was what had happened to Wayne, one of those, followed by two stacks of the Faerunner’s follow-up, Bad Dreams. That one bled health. Together with the static, they were why every Dark Assiah player hated traveling the rose-thorn and steel tangle that was Tiferet.
Above her, Sigmund gave one final twirl, leaping upward with a roar and landing straight on the Faerunner’s head. The thing screamed, clawing at its face as gouts of thick, black blood began to leak from its limbs, gradually fading into bright blue geometric code that sucked its artificial life right out of the withered husk of its body.
A body that, when it hit the ground, was little more than a badly carved doll of burnt wood and rusting wire.
“I hate those things.” Wayne huffed, watching Sigmund crouch over her, hands waving in the air, summoning together the gold-lit code that would jolt Wayne back to life.
“Aw, they’re not so bad.”
“Well, not to you. You’ve got interrupts. And a shield.” Sig was a Protectorate, a tank class. He didn’t go down easy, despite his tiny frame.
Wayne would be lying to say that didn’t bother her a bit. The fact that Sigmund always made his avatars into the sort of pale, blonde waif-fu girls that would make Joss Whedon cry.
Then again, Wayne was playing a four-foot anthropomorphic cat with pink fur, so maybe she shouldn’t judge.
Thirty seconds for the res, and they were off again, Wayne trying to stay behind Sigmund’s tiny, ax-wielding frame. They’d been playing DA all night, just the two of them, Em off on a date with some guy she’d met playing Dota2. Em was the Cybermage, the healer, and her absence meant no big boss fights for just the two of them. So they were out grinding in the PvE, mining Briarwood and Faestones for their Keep instead. Wayne wanted new crafting tables; Em said they needed to upgrade the ballistas before the next shadowsiege came through. This way, they could gather stuff for both.
Even if it did mean dealing with the Faerunners.
Another pack of two loomed ahead, this time standing right on top of a tangle of thorny wood, just right for mining. Sigmund targeted the guy on the left, then leaped in, ax raised, the gold light of his shield flickering to life. Wayne gave him a second, then followed, vanishing in a cloud of darkness, reappearing behind the Faerunner with a pistol shot to the face and a dagger to the heart.
The second Faerunner shouted as it picked up the aggro, turning on Wayne. Sigmund hit it with a slam of his shield, sending it tumbling in a cascade of golden sparks. Meanwhile, the first one started giving off the telltale crackle of Blackstatic.
This time, both Sigmund and Wayne made the dodge.
Then another dagger to the heart, plus a pullback for the head shot. The first Faerunner went down just as the second raised its arms in front of its face, giving the inhale for Bad Dreams. Wayne teleported back in for Weakspot, a nice euphemism for the kick-’em-in-the-crotch move that would stagger the Faerunner and stop its attack, but she was half a second too slow, and Sigmund got caught in the scream of bile and nightmares.
“Shit!”
Annoying, but not enough to send him down. And a Cleave and a Heartbreaker later, the Faerunner joined its double on the ground.
They weren’t carrying anything interesting, just some vendor junk. So Wayne got to mining while Sigmund stood guard, waiting for respawns. She’d cut maybe two feet into the briar when she heard him say:
“So I asked Lain to DnD today.”
“Like…on a date?” Wayne had heard about Lain. Ooh, boy, had she ever, both from Sigmund and from Em. He was pretty much all the former had talked about since New Year’s.
“Uh. Yeah.” Wayne heard the echoing creak as Sigmund shifted in his chair. “Like on a date.”
“To DnD?”
“Yeah.”
“You are such a dork.”
That earned her both a chuckle and a /rude. “Yeah. But he said yes, so he can’t think I’m that hopeless.”
“I guess this means I finally get to meet him, huh?” That’d be something. Meeting the King of the Hipsters. “Did you tell Em?”
“Uh…”
“You didn’t?” Chop, chop, chop. Another foot of briar down, another stack of supplies for the Keep.
“I got distracted!”
“You are so dead.”
“Why? She has premades, right?”
Which, of course, was exactly not the point. Because Sigmund was, quite possibly, the most clueless of all clueless males on the planet. Which is how he’d managed to go nearly a decade without realizing his best friend would totally have jumped his bones, if only Sigmund had ever displayed a single ounce of interest.
Wayne sighed. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” She’d been sworn to secrecy on the Sigmund Crush Issue for years. No point starting something now.
Wayne made a note on her phone to buy Em extra wine and ice cream.
“So is Lain, like, your boyfriend?”
“I dunno. Maybe?”
Gods. Sigmund, clueless. So much. Wayne rolled her eyes, glad Sigmund couldn’t see it, and asked, “Have you Googled him?”
“What?”
Point proven. “Google. Jeez, dooder. Get with the twenty-first century. You always have to Google someone before dating them in case they’re, like, a serial killer or something. He’s got a weird last name, right? So he should be easy to find.”
“Wayne! That’s like, invasion of privacy.” Except Wayne could totally hear mouse clicks coming through the speakers. “Besides,” Sigmund added. “I think he’s been lying about his name.” And Sigmund would know. What with his Thing. With the lies and all. The one Wayne believed in, and Em most definitely didn’t.
“All the more reason to do it, then.”
Down the wire, Wayne heard the clatter of too-loud mechanical keys. Then silence, then:
“Oh…wow.”
“What?”
A weird crackling down the headset, like…lip licking, maybe? “Lain’s last name is Laufeyjarson,” Sigmund said, then spelled it out. Catching the hint, Wayne alt tabbed to the second monitor, bringing up the browser and typing out letters she wouldn’t have guessed from the pronunciation alone.
Google delivered a page of results, and Wayne picked up the theme straight away. “It’s the last name of Loki,” she said. “Douchebag god of the north. So? I’m sure normal people are called that, too.” Probably. Somewhere.
“Google Lokabrenna,” Sigmund said. “As in the company, but don’t look at those. Find the Wiki page that says where the name’s from.”
Wayne did as instructed, winding up on the Wiki entry for the star Sirius. Also known, according to the text, as Lokabrenna, literal translation “Loki’s torch.”
Wayne’s phone, a Pyre Flame, was sitting on the desk between her monitor and keyboard. She gave it the side-eye as she read. LB really was keen on giving its products ridiculous fire-themed names. Go figure.
“So?” came Sigmund’s voice.
Wayne tabbed back into game, where her character had run out of reachable briar. She inched forward a few steps and resumed the task. “So…what?” she said. “You think Lain—or whoever he is—is like some corporate spy?”
“No.” The answer came out in a staticky huff that Wayne knew really meant yes. Sigmund added, “It’s just…it’s a bit of a coincidence, right?”
Wayne leaned back in her chair, legs folding up underneath her. “Well…” She twirled a candy pink dreadlock around her finger. “You met Hale, right? Mr. Bigshot CEO?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Wayne grinned. “And you said he was kinda cool, so…maybe he thinks you’re cool, too, and he’s sent dow
n some guy to keep tabs on you.” Because Sigmund was a dork who’d managed to not recognize the world’s third richest man, and now they had teasing fodder until they died.
“Wayne!” Sigmund laughed, self-conscious and forced. “No.”
“Oh!” Except Wayne was warming up to her idea. “But the guy fell for you first—”
“Wayne…”
“—and now it’s going to be the dodgy corporate spy with the heart of gold versus the world’s third richest man, vying for the most eligible bachelor in third-level support.”
“Wayne, seriously. I’m pretty sure things like that don’t happen in the Really Real World.”
“Why not?” Wayne asked. “Rich people have to da— Oh! Oh, I’ve got an even better one.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Wayne could hear Sigmund shifting in his chair, the creaking echoing down the wire.
“How about,” she started, “Lain is Travis. It kinda makes sense, what with the whole fiery Norse mythology obsession and all that. Maybe it’s easier for him to, like, date if he pretends to be a nobody?”
“Wayne, they don’t even look the same.”
“Don’t they?”
“No!” His voice was nearly a squark, and Wayne couldn’t help but grin at his discomfort. Em would be proud. “They are not the same person,” Sigmund continued. “Lain’s a redhead. Hale is like, I dunno. Egyptian or Turkish or something.”
“Suuuure.” With a name like Travis Cameron Hale. Yeah, right. That was almost as likely as—
(oh! perfect)
Wayne grinned a wicked grin and said, “So maybe they’re both Loki, asshole god of Pandemonium. He’s a shapeshifter, right?”
“No. Just. Stop, now. You’re giving me a headache.” Sigmund’s voice was muffled, mike giving off a bunch of dull thuds as if something kept bumping into it. Something like a hand, rubbing over a brow.
Wayne was laughing, but decided Sig had had enough. He got headaches a lot, that was a serious thing. Like, not Buffy-level brain cancer serious. But Wayne didn’t want him to be in pain.
“Well,” she said. “You know what this means, right?”
“What?”
“Either Lain is, like, a, the hottest guy on the floor; b, a bazillionaire in disguise; or c, a god…and you invited him on a Dungeons and Dragons date.”
Silence for a moment, then one long, low groan. “Oh my god. It’s true.” Then a crack, as if Sigmund’s head had just slammed into something solid. The spacebar, judging by the way his avatar jumped. “Biggest. Dork—”
“In the universe,” Wayne finished, just as the Faerunners respawned.
—
Meanwhile, across the other side of town, hidden in the darkness just beyond a young man’s bedroom, something was listening. Not for much longer. Not when, after scouring every Realm and back, it’d finally—finally—found what it was looking for. What its boss had sent it to find.
The kid had been the tip-off. The sort of Wyrdtouched brat that could’ve gone his entire life without anyone noticing what he was. If only he hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time, lost in the Járnviðr. Something had happened in the forest; Munin wasn’t sure what, only that it’d woken something up. That one brief, bright flash, as cold and endless as a glacier, and they’d all felt it. The boss included, which is why Munin was here, perched in a tree, eavesdropping on mortals.
All it’d taken was a name, the sound of something that should be dead and wasn’t. Then everything had fallen into place, connecting the dots between old memories and dead gods. The boss was gonna kick himself when Munin delivered the news, since it wasn’t like his killer had kept a low profile in Miðgarðr. But delivering bad news was half the fun, wasn’t it? And fun had certainly been thin on the ground lately, especially after what happened to Hugin.
Poor Hugin.
Munin waited until the boy’s soft bed sounds had quieted down and he was sound asleep. Then the huge raven shook itself down, opened its wings, and took to the sky.
It had a message to deliver.
NINE
Friday.
Sigmund’s dad answered the door, which was about the worst possible way to start the evening. Sigmund could hear murmured introductions as he pulled on his shoes and hopped down the stairs half-in, half-out of his jacket, but by the time he reached the door he was pretty sure words like boyfriend and date hadn’t been uttered and—thank gods—Lain wasn’t carrying flowers or something equally humiliating.
(does that mean this isn’t a date?)
“—st go get, oh here he is.”
“Hey, Lain.” Lain gave a knowing grin and a nod, and Sigmund turned back to his dad. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay, Dad?”
David nodded. “You take care, boys,” he said, because apparently not even twenty-two was old enough for a parent to think of his son as anything other than a boy. It was kinda nice, Sigmund supposed, even if maybe a bit embarrassing in front of Lain. His boyfriend. Or something.
David closed the door behind them with a little wave, and Sigmund noticed Lain was trying hard not to laugh.
“What?”
“ ‘See you tomorrow’? I’m not sure what kind of boy you think I am, Sigmund Sussman.”
And, oh jeez. Sigmund was pretty sure his blush could be seen from space. “I, uh. Usually spend the night at Em and Wayne’s,” he said. Lain’s grin and raised eyebrow gave him the impression this wasn’t exactly the exonerating statement it’d sounded in his head. “Oh my god! I’ve known them since I was like…Holy shit, is that your car?”
There was…a thing in the driveway. It was huge and black and glimmered under the streetlights. The soft top was up against the light evening rain, and through the tinted windows Sigmund could just about make out a flash of red velvet and mirror-finished chrome.
“Uh, yes?” Lain almost sounded embarrassed. “It’s totally roadworthy,” he added, as if this was Sigmund’s main concern.
“I’m not sure I’m badass enough to be allowed to touch this car.” The hood ornament was a tiny chrome horse’s skull, but other than that it had no obvious maker’s badging. “Where on earth did you get this thing?”
Lain just shrugged. “I kinda inherited it,” he said and, oddly, this was exactly the truth.
Sigmund popped the door open. The inside was done entirely in bloodred velvet, black leather, and chrome. A skull motif dominated, and a tassel of black feathers hung from the rearview mirror.
It was, Sigmund thought, possibly the gothest car in the entire universe. Em and Wayne would die if they saw it.
Lain climbed into the driver’s seat, and the engine rumbled to life. He hadn’t used a key. Come to think of it, he hadn’t used one to open the doors, either.
The radio started pounding out OK Go as they left Sigmund’s driveway. He was just about to comment when Lain started driving like he meant it and talking was no longer Sigmund’s highest priority.
There were seven stoplights between Sigmund’s house and the mall. Not a single one was red tonight, which Sigmund knew only because he’d cracked his eyes open in terror, checking to make sure they weren’t just running them. He didn’t even dare to look at Lain. Was it bad manners to leap out of his date’s car in mortal fear? If his hands hadn’t been clamped around the edge of his seat, Sigmund might even have pulled out his phone and looked it up.
“We’re going into town, right?” Lain shouted above the music.
It took effort to answer “Yeah” and not Drive slower, you maniac, but somehow Sigmund managed it.
Fortunately, the Torr Mall parking lot slowed Lain down enough for Sigmund to uncurl his fingers and calm his breathing, as they got out of the car.
(right, okay. GTA driving. not a problem. do it all the time…in GTA. would it be rude to get a lift back with Wayne?)
Lain was grinning, though, and when he fell in step with Sigmund their hands brushed against each other.
“Do you mind?” Lain asked as he twined their fingers.
&n
bsp; Sigmund did not, in fact, mind, but coming right on the tail end of the Car Ride from Hell, didn’t quite trust his voice enough to say so. So he just shook his head and hoped it looked coy and flirtatious instead of, like, terrified.
He’d never held hands with anyone before. Not since he’d been a kid, anyway, and he was pretty sure it didn’t count when it was your dad. This was nice. Better than nice, actually.
Sigmund took them up the escalators, through the mall, and across the street, all the while desperately trying to think of something to say. Anything. Preferably something witty and charming and, oh, god, he was the biggest loser in the entire universe. Also, holy crap, he was holding hands with another man in public.
No one seemed to notice. Sigmund wasn’t an expert or anything, but he got the impression that wasn’t exactly normal.
Friday night DnD was held upstairs in a store that was called Minotaur but which they all referred to as the Nerd Shop, due to both its stock and its clientele. It was outside the mall proper, fronting onto Diamond Square and located two doors down from Wayne’s comic store.
Owner Guy Paul greeted them as they walked in, sizing Lain up in a glance. “New blood, hey?” he said.
Sigmund gave a noncommittal answer as they passed. Lain was dressed more for lattes and Instagram than for DnD, but that was just Lain. Sigmund figured embarrassing his date in front of the shop guy for his choice of clothing wasn’t a good first-date strategy.
Minotaur wasn’t huge, with a ground floor dominated by normal-people stuff like board games and executive puzzles. Sigmund took them past all that to where a narrow set of steps ascended to the second level.
Here was where they hid the nerds; walls lined with RPG books, Magic cards and Warhammer figurines, the center of the room dominated by four rows of tightly packed tables. The whole place smelled like sweat and awkwardness.
Em waved at them from the farthest table. Despite Lain’s creative approach to driving, they were late. The rest of the group looked up as they approached.
Liesmith Page 7