I let out a breath I thought was going to be my last and looked past the blade at Aveena’s mom. Her muscular frame was literally shaking from exertion, which made her loose titty bounce appealingly. Her face was screwed up in concentration, anger, and a healthy dose of fear. That’s when I felt the thrum in the air. I’d felt it before; like the universe had hit a tuning fork. The last time this happened, it was followed by pain and a gaping hole in the UN HQ.
As if the universe was waiting for me to acknowledge that fact, pain hit me hard enough that the lightning strike felt like a love tap in comparison. Then I felt nothing . . . absolutely nothing, and I was sure I was dead. The problem was, I was still perceiving everything. That was a bit of a head scratcher.
The closest thing I could think of was astral projection; that I was having an out-of-body experience. There was so much pain, that my body said fuck it and shut down.
“So, why am I still conscious?” my mind played devil’s advocate.
“Who the fuck cares. You’re alive. That’s all that matters!” I shouted back. Since it was never a healthy thing to be arguing with yourself, I shut up and took a look at my surroundings.
The courtiers had skittered back like cockroaches caught in sunlight. Aveena was still off to the side where momma’s bitch slap had tossed her, and the guards rushed toward the Lady of Winter. The Lady had let go of her axe, and taken several steps back. The axe stayed where it was, but no one was looking at me. Their eyes were locked on the kaleidoscope of color rapidly growing from a pinpoint to a man-sized hole in reality.
I’d missed it last time because Aveena had just knocked my ass out, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice a rift between realms. The rift stopped somewhere between man-sized and giant-sized, and the Fae court took a collective intake a breath. For a moment, nothing happened, and a few people let that breath out. Then . . . an armored foot appeared. It was followed by a leg, torso, and head of a humanoid creature; if that creature was nine feet tall, and looked like a twenty-eighth-century knight of the future octagon table – because round tables just didn’t cut it anymore.
I’d seen the crusader-knight look before. Aveena had decked herself out in the glamour armor when she’d squared off against Lilith another lifetime ago. This wasn’t that. This armor was sleek, lightweight, and what I imagined future Navy SEALs would be sporting when they became Space Force SEALs; although, this armor was a brilliant-gold color with runic script etched into every inch of it. I had no idea what the writing said, but power had a language all its own; and this stuff was thermonuclear-level magic.
The armor allowed the creature to move effortlessly, but unlike human armor, the only break was a thin slit around where the eyes would be. It wasn’t enough space to see out of, but the creature didn’t seem to mind. It did a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin to take in its surroundings, and despite the full facial covering, I could practically see the smile on the thing’s face.
“Here’s Johnny!” a clearly masculine voice boomed, and the palace gave a shake; like the voice was a violation. Even the sentient, marble floor had flowed away from the man. Just like when the Lady of Winter was about to execute me. It sensed danger.
The man put his hands on his hips and surveyed the gathered crowd. “Really . . . nothing?” he asked, his tone dripping with disappointment. “Steven King . . . The Shinning . . . don’t tell me we’re the only ones watching the mortal realm’s pop culture. It is, hands down, the best thing humanity has going for them,” he took a step toward the Lady of Winter.
She took a step back and slammed her foot twice into the floor. The sentient marble reacted with a ripple like a miniature tidal wave. It rushed toward her, coalesced, and rose upward in the form of a staff taller than the member of The Nine. At the tip, a dazzling blue diamond sprang into existence. When it did, it was like someone turned down the temperature in the room.
“Ahh, the Coldstone,” the man squared himself off against the Lady of Winter. “It’s been a few epoch’s since I saw that, Jötunn.”
The name seemed to strike a nerve with Aveena’s mom, because she hissed like a coiled snake. “You are not welcome here, Aesir. Your kind was banished eons ago. Leave this place, or suffer my wrath.” Her little speech was filled with enough power than everyone in her court was knocked down onto one knee. Some of the least powerful were literally smashed flat by her words. Multicolor blood splashed against the walls and floor as the weak met their fate.
“Banished is a strong word,” the man didn’t even quiver before the powerful Fae. “Maeve shut the door for good, but you aren’t her, Ymira, Queen of Jotunheim. In fact,” he sniffed the air like a hunting dog, “you are far below your maker.”
“Silence, Trickster,” she leveled her staff at the man. “Or I will cut out your silver tongue and mount it to my throne.”
“And it would certainly improve the décor,” the man waved off her threat, and focused his eyes on me. At least, I thought it was his eyes. The only thing shining through his visor slit was an unearthly glow. The sense of astral projection abruptly vanished, and my consciousness slammed back down into my body. I groaned as a full-body ache reminded me of what I’d been missing.
Under that gaze, I added a nugget of shit to the puddle of piss surrounding me. I currently gave zero fucks I was wallowing in my own filth. I was pretty sure the guy could incinerate me just by looking at me. Ymira’s axe clattered to the ground next to me, and made me jump.
“So why is he still looking at me,” I cringed, but couldn’t look away.
“Baby bro, thanks for being a big, flashing neon sign for me. I wouldn’t have been able to crash this party without you; and, of course, you two,” he pointed at Aveena, and her mom. As he did, his golden armor undulated and flowed like water into his open palms; before hardening back into twin, curved scimitars. “Your acknowledgement of what little Cameron was allowed me to hone in on this little shindig. You know what they say, be careful what you wish for,” he laughed, and the room rumbled like the palace had been hit by an earthquake.
Then, he split, and I’m not talking about getting the hell out of dodge. The Trickster literally blurred, and then there were two of him. He blurred again, and there was four, then eight, sixteen.
“Kill him!” the Lady of Winter screamed. “And kill the boy, he’s the anchor.”
“Fuck,” I stared wide-eyed at the room full of giants with murder in their eyes, but I wasn’t alone. I felt a spark of joy ignite in my gut. “He called me little bro,” it would have been the revelation of my life if Aveena wasn’t already moving toward me, with her glamour blade ready to succeed where her mother failed.
“Catch,” one of the man’s doubles shouted, and tossed me one of his swords. “Brace yourself,” he laughed, and although it didn’t make the throne room shake, it still made me feel like a toddler among men.
As the blade arced toward me, pommel first, one of the giant guards reached one of the golden doubles. The guard was a male, and they were nearly the same height. The guard thrust with his spear, missing the double by inches. The double pirouetted like a prima ballerina, batted the pole out of the way with one armored gauntlet, and cut the guard from crotch to armpit in an upward slash. For a moment, the guard was splayed open like the T-1000 in Terminator 2 before toppling over very, very dead.
Then . . . I caught the sword. Fire and lightning flashed through my veins as power surged through me. This wasn’t my Fae gifts, or even my precognition; although, my sight did flash a warning. It was whatever power Lark had refused to tell me about, and the siren call of the power was echoed in the doubles spreading out all around the room. It was the shot of adrenaline my aching body desperately needed to stay alive. My sight told me when and where Aveena’s strike was going to land, but more importantly, I knew with every fiber of my being that I could fight her.
Silver, glamour sword met golden, whatchamacallit blade with a clang that was lost in the throng of battle. Aveena’s strike didn’t drive me in
to the ground, break every bone in my body, or cut me in two; and from her expression, that’s what she expected. A wicked grin flashed across my face as I swept her blade away from me and lashed out. My speed caught us both by surprise, but she was still a noble Fae. She jumped back, and a slash that would have taken her leg off at the knee became a shallow cut. A cut that dripped silver, Fae blood onto the floor.
“First blood!”
I laughed like a madman, drunk on the power flooding my muscles and mind. The golden doubles echoed my glee, and all the resonating noises sounded super creepy; especially when mixed in with the screams of the dying. Fae and doubles were falling left and right. As I rolled away from Aveena’s next offensive, I saw a double take a pair of giant spears in the gut. It took one of the guards with it before falling still and dissolving into motes of golden light that vanished into nothing. The dead guard didn’t vanish. He voided his bowels and continued to bleed all over the floor.
The Lady of Winter sure as shit wasn’t sitting this one out. Titty still hanging out, she advanced into the fray. A half dozen doubles rushed her from one side. The Coldstone blazed with ethereal, blue light as she swung it toward them. All the doubles were flash frozen in place, and with the bulk of her staff, she smashed them into a million little pieces. She continued forward, kicking her own guards out of the way to get to the Trickster.
Unlike his doubles, he blazed with golden light. He danced around, the perfect mix of grace and power; cutting down guards and courtiers left and right. A small contingent of his less-luminous doubles followed him; protecting his blindside, and proving more than a match to the Lady of Winter’s personal guards. Despite their effectiveness, the Trickster was Ymira’s target, and I had other problems.
“Look at what you’ve done to me . . . again!” Aveena shrieked, using her sword more like a cudgel than blade. “All you had to do was kneel there and die. Why won’t you just die?”
I had a flashback to the trial by combat before my sight flared a warning. Half a dozen glamour daggers appeared in her hand as she chucked them at me. That left me in a pickle. I couldn’t use more than one power at once according to Lark, and now wasn’t the time to see if that had changed. I could switch off my current uber-boost for my Fae gifts, and conjure a shield, but there was no guarantee my troll-sized power could stand up to Aveena. The other option was to keep on fighting in my current state, but that left me with only the sword and my own speed to avoid the daggers.
I chose option two. I channeled the lightning in my veins into speed and agility. To my surprise, it worked. I dipped, dived, ducked, and dodged around blades that were suddenly moving a lot slower than they should. I was good; hell, I was great, but great wasn’t perfect. Burning pain spread through my left quad as I failed to completely dodge one of the daggers. I faltered, and another, deeper, pain radiated from my left bicep.
I howled in pain, but at least it wasn’t my sword-holding arm. Red blood joined the multicolored Fae gore coating the throne room, and Aveena smiled. Any injury in a fight of endurance could prove fatal. Of course, I took the moment to attack. People didn’t expect you to come at them when you were bleeding all over the place.
I unleashed a ferocious combination that had her backpedaling to keep me out of range. She was still twice my height, and I had to get inside her guard to even do any damage. Great new power or not, that put me at a disadvantage.
“Why won’t you get it through your thick skull, you fucking blueberry,” I pressed her nearly into the wall before she circled away. That put her back between me and someone who might put a knife in mine. “None of this is my fault. You’ve been a royal bitch with a giant-sized stick up your ass from day one. If you’d accepted my peace offerings; Chloe and Ser Frederick would still be alive, you wouldn’t be hip deep in shit, and your mom might not hate your guts so much. Just admit, for one second, that this is more than a little your fault.”
She answered me by screaming like a banshee. Her counter caught me off balance, and she lashed out; not with her sword like I expected, but with her foot. Even with my sight’s split-second warning, I wasn’t fast enough to dodge.
“You have more than one weapon,” Xamira’s advice came back to me about the time Aveena’s foot made contact with my sternum.
The kick, on top of making me puke my guts out, picked me up and tossed me across the room. I clipped the edge of the throne, spiraled out of control, and landed in a heap thirty feet away. I lost my sword in the process, and with it, whatever extra oomph the Trickster’s double had given me. Now, I was just a battered, broken, and bleeding dude in the middle of a melee I had no chance of surviving. Thankfully, self-preservation activated my Fae gifts before I turned into a popsicle. I was still pretty sure I caught hypothermia from the Coldstone across the room.
Across the battlefield, the Lady of Winter was pressing Golden Boy hard. He was down to a handful of doubles watching his back, and his armor was marred with dents and other people’s blood. The bottom of Ymira’s staff got past his guard and scraped against the armor. Power flared as the runic script fought against the brute force of the frost giant. Brute force won, and it dug a groove into the armor and spun him away. He contorted in a way that would have snapped my human bones, to avoid a quartet of spears that would have pinned him in place for Ymira to finish the job. Instead, a wide swing of his sword broke the spears midway up their lengths, and his remaining doubles set upon the suddenly weaponless guards like a school of piranha.
Ymira’s next attack went wide, and he nicked her across the ribcage as she overextended. It was just a flesh wound, but it showed me that even gods bled. The frost giant roared, and twirled with a quickness something her size should never be capable of, spun away to get some distance and leveled her staff at him.
“Uh oh,” the Trickster groaned as he realized he’d become distracted with taking out the guards, and that had allowed everyone to clear her field of fire. A blast of blue light hit him like a freight train that had jumped the tracks.
It didn’t flash freeze him like his doubles, but his armor’s runes blazed brilliantly as he flew through the air. For a moment, he was a shooting star across the night sky before he crashed to the floor not far from me. He skipped once, twice, and then found his footing. He spun, braced his heel into the ground to stop his forward momentum, and dug a shallow trench through the throne room. He ground to a halt in a crouch, looking like a superhero in a Marvel movie, before standing up. Aveena, who’d been sneaking over to finish me off, stopped in her tracks.
The Trickster and I looked out on a throne room full of the dead and dying. What remained of the guards brought down the last of the doubles. Blood and gore covered the floor. A few inches deep in some places. Bodies were littered everywhere, some not even close to where the fighting had been. If I knew the Fae, and I think I did after all of this, some of the courtiers had taken the opportunity to settle some old scores. Still, the majority of the corpses were Golden Boy’s work. Everyone who was still standing, and there were dozens of them, formed a half circle around me and the Trickster.
“Well, this has been fun,” the man’s golden glow hadn’t diminished in the slightest; and he didn’t sound at all like someone who was concerned he was about to die. He lent a hand, and easily pulled me to my feet.
“Not exactly how I thought it was going to end,” I countered, but it was better than dying on my knees as a prisoner.
“Nonsense,” he scoffed. “Neither of us will die here today. There is still so much more adventure in store for you, Cameron . . . or do you prefer Cam?”
“Cam,” I answered, but kept my eyes on Aveena. I could feel her conjuring more daggers to throw at me.
“Have you had your fun, Trickster?” the Lady of Winter pushed herself to the front of the gathered mob.
“What is life without a little fun, a little mischief?” he countered, and I could feel his shit-eating grin through the light of his visor slit.
Ymira looked around a
t the destruction, then down at her own body; slick with blood from multiple closed wounds, and then back to her foe. “I’m going to enjoy killing you.”
“Then I’m sorry to disappoint,” he replied, and a great ripping sensation filled the room.
My ears popped painfully, and I felt wetness leaking down the side of my face. “Sure, I could go for some burst eardrums about now.” As far as injuries went, it was the least of my problems.
I turned my head to look at Aveena, and saw she was howling in pure rage. None of the sound reached me, in fact, everything not within a few feet of me looked frozen.
“A little time dilation so we can have a heart-to-heart,” the Trickster looked down at me, but I had the impression he was sweating from the exertion of doing whatever he was doing. “First off, you’re fortunate it was me who caught wind of this whole thing. You already ate up your one get-out-of-jail-free card with dad in that stupid troll incident. My older brother thinks you’re a complete pussy, and you don’t want any of your half-sisters coming to the rescue,” he actually shivered, something the Coldstone had failed to accomplish.
“So, my sage wisdom to you is man the fuck up. Sure, you’re still half human, but your other half is Aesir. People quake in their boots at the mere mention of our name. You saw her royal frigidness; she practically shat her panties when she learned what you were. It’s time to start acting like a badass, Cam; or next time we meet up, you aren’t going to like the reunion.”
I had so many questions. What’s an Aesir? Why do people shit their pants at the very mention of their name? Who’s my dad? How did you find me? Why are you leaving me to die? I could go on and on.
Instead, I only got out two, heartfelt words, “Thank you.”
The Trickster nodded his armored helm at me, and then, whatever time dilation spell he’d worked ended. Aveena’s scream passed over me with the power of hurricane force winds. Ymira was leveling the Coldstone to turn me into a puddle of frozen gelato, and all the other Fae were launching themselves at me with fangs, claws, and glamour weapons ready to bite, tear, and rip me to shreds.
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