It took about ten hours to reach the island chain Njord was heading towards. There was one abbreviated fight on the way, when some sea trolls saw the longship slicing through the waves and decided it was time to have a fight with Njord.

The sea god didn’t even have to pick up his trident. The amount of lightning that promptly started falling and raking the area made it clear to the trolls that they were annoying someone who probably shouldn’t be annoyed. Susan slammed and sent flying any of them that actually reached the ship itself, and of course the ship was basically immune to any attacks from below.

Njord wasn’t concerned even without our help, but he was definitely smiling and bellowing out an Asgardian sea shanty as the skies opened up for Ororo, and I strafed everything visible without any restraint. Asgardian scrags could take a metric arseload of punishment, so slamming 30d6 down on their recalcitrant heads was a polite way of telling them to go the Musphelheim away, or we might get rough.

Of course, seeing a ten-foot scaly green monstrosity get swatted through the air like a gnat was just part and parcel of divine combat.

Dr. Richards even got into it, winding up a punch with a fist bigger than his wife on an arm twenty feet long. When he snapped it forwards like a catapult, the crunch of the impact was definitely worth some divine muscle, so basically none of us were letting down the reputation of the Asgardians. The troll went flying a good hundred feet, big arms windmilling, and we all applauded the hit politely as the creature splashed back into the running seas.

They were not happy when Ororo and I took to the air and really started hammering them unless they dove for cover. Eventually the ones not paralyzed by lightning got the hint that it might not be wise to keep fighting us, especially when sea serpents a couple hundred feet long showed up, attracted by the commotion. They seemed to know Njord and avoided him after he picked up his trident, not wanting to become the centerpiece of a feast, but those trolls floating around dazedly behind us looked like lunch.

Our ambushers soon had a lot more excitement than they’d planned on their hands, and we sailed away.

------

Njord brought us smoothly around a spur of rock jutting out of the sea, and threw a rope around a pillar of stone. The currents in the air were pretty intense, and just looking at the circling clouds above and hearing the howling of the winds, it was plain that this was a pretty dangerous place.

“The trolls won’t come here, fearing being caught in the maelstrom beyond,” he declared, Allspeech Voice carrying over the howl of the wind beyond, muted somewhat by Sue keeping an arc of force in front of us all.

The sea was receding away from us, around and down to who knew where.

A maelstrom, at least five miles across. The winds swirled around with it, and the wind and water magic gathered here was so thick it was almost viscous.

“Wow!” Dr. Richards, Sue, and Ororo blurted out together, inhaling. Njord smiled broadly, seeing their reactions.

“Will this do, Dyna?” Dr. Richards asked, turning to glance at me, spread over his wife yet. Their Rings were glowing cerulean and aquamarine, respectively, at the magic here.

“Oh, I think so,” I smiled back. “Pull out your Disk and let Ororo find the place to float. I think you’re going to be here a while.” The aforementioned hovering tool deCompressed from their belt, and they hopped aboard it. Ororo touched it, and rose into the air as the winds took her. They waved at Njord and me as they shot quickly into the distance through the roaring, circling winds celebrating the meeting of wind and waves.

My Bite hissed and scribed a Seal into the dark stone of the column we were tied to as Njord watched silently, arms crossed. “If I need to return here in the future quickly,” I told him, and he just nodded.

This was a magical ship, so it had actually extended a Lived-Line for me. We had come hundreds of leagues in remarkably little time, but I could find my way back here unerringly.

“How long are ye thinking they be out there?” Njord asked curiously. “I hath never done a deed quite alike this afore...”

“Three months is my minimum estimation, up to twice that.” The trick would be getting started. Once it did, then time would fly past. “They’ve got something on them to alert us if there’s a problem, so let us hope they are not disturbed.” And invisibility from the Ring and Ororo’s mists wasn’t going to hurt, either. The only way anything was going to find them was flying right into the heart of the place and basically bumping into them.

Which in comic-verse was basically guaranteed to happen, it was just a matter of how long it could be deferred.

----

The trip back was nigh as fast as the trip out there, for all that it turned to night. My Bite could send solid air instead of force bumps out to fill the sail, much like Susan had been doing, and I could totally do it without using up all my voltage, in case there was trouble.

When we moved through the scrag area from earlier, I stood up in front, crackling with lightning, Fists seething and ready to split some skulls, and looked at the dark shadows in the water that were as obvious as blots of ink on paper to me with a little Watersight and Devasight going.

I glared at them with eyes burning white with voltage, daring them to try something. Njord’s ship cut past them, and was left untouched as he sang an easy shanty, unperturbed, and we swept on and by.

==========

I was a bit surprised to be invited to a feast when we arrived back at shore. One of the rasher sea serpents who didn’t know about Njord did decide to attack us on the way back, meaning that he didn’t have to go fishing with his magical net on the way. I helped him haul it up to Odin’s palace, generating much good will and expectations for the feast to come.

Also, I had an Asgardian boar damn near the size of an elephant to arrange for Dealer’s contribution to the Shi’ar Imperial Coronation, which was coming up soon.

The Asgardians were a warrior race through and through, so it was plenty obvious that I was being invited there as a result of what had happened on the Colosseum. I Wrecker’d up, because that was how they expected to see me, and Fandral was totally happy to escort me there. So I had Hogun accompany me, and Fandral got to escort some other noble ladies there instead.

The feast was robust, loud, and quite merry in its own manner, lowbrow and highbrow at the same time. The traditions were timeless and refreshingly simple in many ways, but the quality level of everything was literally at 30+ on everything, and 40+ on anything that mattered. This was a realm of gods, and simple wooden chairs were still QL 30 stuff. The least cook would be a 5-star chef on Earth, and simple beef stew and ale became transcendental eats.

The music and dancing were in old styles, but executed to standards that surpassed professional human dancers, even if it looked like oafish warriors in furs and beards whirling around with their ladies in the court. Even Hogun the Grim, who had basically no interest in women on a social level, was a smooth and skilled dancer when called on, and I naturally wasn’t going to pester him about such stuff. The warriors of Asgard all wanted to dance with the lovely mortal who could beat them senseless.

There was also a LOT of social stuff going on, being executed at subtle levels with looks, inflections, ignoring and acknowledging, compliments and cutting insults, interruptions and quiet listening. There was a hierarchy of strength going on around me that most people wouldn’t catch, and even experienced politicians might only glom onto the fact it was happening, but it was most definitely being played.

This was the Royal Court of Asgard, and it was all being done under Odin’s all-seeing eye.

His Odinpower was omnipresent and impossible for me to ignore, only acknowledge and try to resist. I was sure it was the same for the rest of the warriors, as the oldest of them all, All-Father Odin, watched over them, took their measure, and could determine their fates and futures with the slightest word or nod.

He was a Skyfather, an Emperor among the gods, of gods, with a people who were all born demigods, and had embraced their roles and nature unchanged since a time before humanity.

Talking to a mortal was normally below him, but he was studying me in his own way, and I was pretty damn sure he was amused by my Astral Ward IX+1. The simple fact that it didn’t disperse under his gaze probably got his interest straight off, as a mortal he couldn’t see through would be a rare thing.

He could definitely feel the magic of Asgard responding to me, however, so there was no hiding the fact I was a Caster from him, if of no Tradition he was familiar with. Underweb Sorcerers were definitely not common.

I was also not using any magic whatsoever that wasn’t tied to Items, save for minor tricks that had the Asgardians roaring with appreciation for how useful they were.

Soon enough (meaning, over several hours of feasting and drinking and singing and dancing and enjoying the music and tales), the focus turned around and came to me. Lesser attendees slumped over in drunken sleep and were carried off, and the careful games of who stood above who among the rote attendees ceased.

Nobles of Asgard were in attendance now. One-eyed Tyr had arrived to many grim greetings, while Uller the Hunter had brought back a great stag with his arrival. Balder the beloved was center of his own circle of admirers, and of course Thor and the Warriors Three had their own throngs and circles. Odin’s wife Frigga was naturally dominating the circles of the non-warrior women, while Sif and Brunhilda were definitely leaders of the women warriors and Valkyries in attendance, and fully capable of drifting back and forth between such camps.

I’d been firmly dumped among the warriors, given what I’d done, and so there was constant fluid pressure on me to exert my dominance in the face of their strength. Understanding that was simply the way it was, and demonstrations of such strength were expected, I only had to expediently knock a few of them cold before the rest got the hint that I might be mortal, but I wasn’t a weak human, and the things they’d seen and heard about the Colosseum were most likely quite real.

But now they were waiting for Odin to say something, and determine the true tenor of the feast. After all, congratulating a mortal was a fine thing, and perhaps I’d even deserved it... but there had to be more involved.

“Lady Dynamo.” The voice was mild, but it was unmistakable who it belonged to, and it carried. All conversations, songs, drinking, and other things died away into the silence.

“All-Father Odin,” I replied, instantly standing and bowing to the Skyfather. Politeness with gods and stuff.

“We saw thy duel with the Elder called Champion. Tell Us what thou did measure of him.”

Interesting phrasing. It was an order, not a question. So, act like an advisor.

I looked up, took a deep breath, head racing ahead of my mouth to gather my thoughts, and I replied, “He was a probe by the other Elders who also arrived, the transparency of his purpose disguising the deeper game they were playing. The Collector is seeking new toys to add to his collection. The Grandmaster... is always playing a game, and the ones he plays with the lives of others are the most famous.

“The Champion is aware of this, but they are his brothers, so he minds them not and goes along with them. As long as it doesn’t interfere with his purpose, he is willing to be used.”

There were murmurs at my reply, which had veered sharply from an assessment of Champion’s personal abilities, which was what they were expecting.

Odin’s eye glittered. He hadn’t been expecting that reply, either. “Interesting, Lady Dynamo. Thou doth dismiss his personal capabilities?”