Sparks flew off the barrier, metal and magic colliding with an ominous clang. The impact reverberated up my arms and through my bones. I may as well have attacked a block of stone. I struck again, crying out and regretting the second blow immediately. Arcs of lightning flashed where the blade met the barrier. I thought I saw the shield waver, but nothing had changed.
But I had to keep trying. Mundane means weren’t going to take Olivia’s defenses down. I raised the sword again, gritting my teeth as I readied myself for the futility of a third attack. I shouted as I brought the blade down, a kiai for the ages. This time the clearing filled with white lightning. The barrier felt like it was giving, bending inwards, weakened. This time, Olivia flinched. Her eyes flew open, meeting mine with disbelief. Then they trailed a few inches to my right, and then I realized why the shield was beginning to show signs of cracking.
Someone else had joined in on my attack. There were two of us now, bashing away at the barrier with two magical weapons. Where mine was a sword, his was a hammer. What I found interesting was how our weapons of choice were shrouded in similar enchantments. His hammer was electrified, too.
I glowered at Roth, grateful for his help, but more suspicious of his motives than ever. He wore something similar as he did the previous night, just jeans and flannel, his blond hair left to hang in loose curls against his collar. In his hand was a common carpenter’s hammer, its metal head crackling with electricity.
“What the fuck are you doing out here?”
He shrugged. “I was out for another walk. You’d think you’d be more grateful for the help. Should we try again?”
No sense turning down his offer. I prepared my sword for a fourth slash. He raised his hammer. The light shifted, the sparks on its head fizzling brightly enough for just the fraction of a second. When the electricity cleared, its shape had changed. It wasn’t just your average hammer anymore, not the thing you used to pound nails into a wall.
This thing was huge, and heavy, an instrument of war. In the right hands, it was a weapon of mass destruction, an actual force of nature. An artifact of legend.
“Mjollnir,” I muttered.
32
This time I was sorely tempted to turn my sword on Roth instead. Roth. What a stupid alias. All he’d done was rearrange the letters.
“Are you fucking with me right now?” I said, my sword hand jittery, itching. “You were Thor all along?”
He grinned at me, shrugging and raising his hands. “Guilty. I’ve been Thor for as long as I can remember.”
A cackling imp made a break for my face, beating its drum, ready to throw it at my head like a tiny grenade. I swatted it aside with the back of my hand, relishing its little scream as it zigged through the woods and slammed into a tree trunk. The impact exploded its stupid drum. The imp shrieked, dying in a blaze of its own hellfire.
“You lied to me,” I said. “All this time you’ve been pretending.”
He tossed his hammer in his hand, frowning, then pointed a finger in my face. “Hey, man. I never lied to you. Not once. I said that I wasn’t from around here, didn’t I? That I moved here to help my dad set things up for himself?”
I smacked myself in the forehead. “The All-father. You helped Odin set up the Twilight Tavern.” I wrenched at my hair when another realization hit. “That’s why you could handle my sword without frying yourself.”
He tapped the side of his nose. “I know the guy who gave you the sword, too.”
Of course. The gods of storm and thunder were all buddies. “Then this means you knew who and what we were from the beginning.”
He put on the smarmiest smile and shrugged.
“And the electricity back at the cabin. That’s why it came back so fast. You repaired it by magicking it, and that’s why you brought your hammer, because you don’t actually know jack shit about being an electrician.”
Thor grunted, smashing his hammer against the barrier in frustration. Olivia jumped, but kept on chanting.
“I’ll have you know that I am a goddamn authority on electricity. How dare you accuse me of knowing nothing about the subject?”
I brought my sword against the barrier in a horizontal slash. The cylinder quivered. Olivia shook her fist at me.
“Fine. If you know so much: what is a watt? What is an ampere?” Like I knew shit about the answer myself. I was only confident about confronting him because I knew that he’d be even dumber.
“I – well, a watt is. You know what, fuck this. Neither the time nor the place for you to be quizzing me about such obvious shit.”
“Aha! So you don’t know. I was right. You’re a brat and a papa’s boy.”
Thor ducked as an imp flew past his head, tooting on its stupid fucking flute, nearly burning off the ends of his hair. I speared the little bastard in the stomach, cutting it open in a single strike. It screamed in a tiny mewling voice, unable to decide whether to keep blowing on its flute or use its grubby hands to hold its insides together.
Awfully dramatic behavior, really, from a tiny asshole demon that was only going to reconstitute its physical form back in its home hell after its death. That was the most annoying thing about imps, see? About all demons, actually. Unless killed under very specific and very painful conditions, they always, always came back.
“Very hurtful,” Thor said. “I don’t see why you’re so pissed off about this, anyway.”