Once Lord Thunderbird had stabilized, Freyja stood and glanced at Masaaki, looking a bit more subdued. “You two are the first unbound I’ve run into since this nightmare started,” she said, more measuredly. “Forgive me for losing my calm. You represent the first chance I’ve had to reverse Pestilence’s magics in eight centuries, and I was feeling it slip through my fingers. You didn’t understand what was at stake—I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

Thinking of the ensorcelled cage, Masaaki nodded. “Just tell me what you need me to do, megami,” he said, bowing with a hand on his blade. “My sword is yours.”

That seemed to steady her a bit, and she swiped at her face with her sleeve. “Does this Theo carry a portable phone?” she demanded. “Maybe we can call him.”

Masaaki grimaced, remembering how he had abandoned the phone in the forest. “No, megami. I dropped it in the forest when under the sway of the Nótt Lagsmaðr.”

She squinted at him. “Did you.” She cocked her head. “Which lord?”

Masaaki swallowed hard. “Theo, megami. I was panicking because I couldn’t find him.”

Freyja groaned and glanced at the sky much too long to have been looking at clouds. She took a deep breath, let it out between her teeth, then said, “So this Theo has you bound by vampire magics?”

Masaaki said yes.

“What does a grunt mean?” she demanded.

“Yes, megami,” Masaaki said, immediately falling into another deep dogeza.

“From now on, no more bowing,” she said. “It wastes time.”

Thinking of the time he had wasted freeing the women who were now dead in the grasses around him, Masaaki quickly got to his feet, shame-faced.

“Brad!” the woman cried, kicking the mumbling and feverish Thunderbird again. “What direction was Theo, last you recall?”

“Can’t…feel…my legs…”

“You’re gonna feel them a lot less when my Valkyrie starts ripping them off because you let me get captured again,” the woman snapped. “Where is she?!”

“Northeast,” Thunderbird managed.

“Good. Get up. We’re grabbing a car and heading northeast. Can you drive?”

Thunderbird, trembling, shook his head.

“Ugh. Okay. I’ll try to figure it out. Let’s go.” She gestured at Masaaki. “Help me get him on his feet.”

Masaaki did, and as they walked the complaining God of Rain to the car the vampires had left in the parking lot at the end of the long driveway, he stepped over a single black feather from a Three-Legged-Crow. He grimaced, looking up at the sky. Had the sanzuwu escaped? The feather had been far from the destruction of the unicorn’s rampage…

“We need to get him somewhere safe so he can wait it out,” she said. “Shouldn’t be more than two weeks.” She frowned as she saw Thunderbird’s head lolling against his chest as he hung between the two of them. “Less, if he stops falling asleep.” She slapped him again.

“My daimyō has an apartment in Eagle River,” Masaaki offered. “If we…” He took an unsteady breath on the rush of Nótt Lagsmaðr, “…can’t find Theo, she might be able to help us find Theo.”

Only after the goddess stared at him, squinty-eyed, did Masaaki realize what he had said. He flushed.

“How long have you been without your lord?” she asked, her voice filled with commiseration.

Masaaki wasn’t sure—the time had passed so quickly, and yet so slow, and he had been screaming and running more than he’d been paying attention to the passing of the sun, the moon, the stars. To say the time had been a blur was putting it lightly. “Maybe…three days?”

She winced. “It’s going to get a lot worse.”

“So I’m told,” Masaaki said, already planning to cut himself from the cloth if he couldn’t find either his daimyō or Theo.

“I know that look,” Freyja warned. “You crusty old swordsmen are all the same—manly men right until the moment you stub a little toe and you can’t walk straight. You’re just like Odinsons—all about your pride and not your purpose.” She squinted at him. “And your purpose, yatagarasu, is to stop Pestilence from destroying the Five Realms.”

Hearing that, from those lips, Masaaki couldn’t help but stand straighter. He made a respectful affirmative.

“Grunting again,” the goddess sighed. “I’ll never get used to that. In Guðrhöll, a warrior says yes by shouting and slamming down a mug of mead, maybe slapping someone on the shoulder and belching a little. Even the Odinsons know how to properly say the word ‘yes’.”

“I’ll work on it, megami,” Masaaki babbled.

She made a dismissive gesture. “You’re a Firstlander. You’re allowed to be a little…” She looked him up and down, then made a face, “Meek.” She paused at the car. “You still got the keys?”

Masaaki quickly dug into the belt of his kimono and handed them to her.

“Help me get the invalid into the backseat. I’m gonna try to get us to Theo, or at least as close as we can get on the road system. If that fails, we’ll try to find an inn to board us.”

Masaaki helped her get the nearly-unconscious god into the back seat of the sedan, as requested, and didn’t think anything of it as she sat down in the driver’s seat and yanked the door shut behind her. She didn’t, however, strap herself in as Bonnie had instructed, time and time again, and though Masaaki felt a little thrill of rebellious disobedience over that, when she had trouble figuring out how to turn the car on, he began to suspect perhaps the goddess was not as proficient with chariots-of-steel as her confidence led one to believe.

“Here, megami,” Masaaki said, showing her how to turn the key and put the car into drive.

They immediately rolled forward, into the dirt-filled half-barrel planter that marked the edge of the driveway.

“Sorry!” Masaaki cried, bowing as best he could. “It needs to be in reverse!”

“What’s reverse?”

“The R, megami.”

The goddess cursed and, squinting down at the middle console, slid the lever to the R. She was about to stomp on the gas when a tap on the window stopped them.

Peering in at them was a wiry, yet muscular, young man with a blond hair and beard, dressed in a black Alaska Grown hoodie, blue jeans, and wearing the ubiquitous fishermen’s Xtratuf rubber boots.

Freyja blinked up at him.

The man grinned and made a gesture for her to roll down the window.

“He wants you to roll down the window, megami.”

“How?” She scrabbled at the door. “This damned thing locked me inside!”

Seeing the man frown through the glass at them, Masaaki said a little prayer to his ancestors for breaking taboos and leaned across Freyja’s lap to roll down the window for her.

“Hey,” the fisherman in the hoodie said, leaning in to look at Thunderbird, who was rolling and groaning on the back seat, “I heard screaming—is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine, Dave,” Freyja said.

Dave hesitated with a moment of confusion, then his face cleared and he said, “So the guys who live her must’ve told you about me. I’m the neighbor right over there.” He gestured behind him through the trees with a thumb, then held out his hand. “Dave Porter.”

“Sýrja,” Freyja said, taking his hand and shaking it powerfully. “Can you drive a motor vehicle, Dave Porter?”

The man hesitated a moment, an eyebrow raised above gray eyes slightly wide with confusion. Then he shook himself. “Yeah, I can drive.”

“Good, get in.” Freyja started climbing out the window.

“No, megami, you don’t…” Masaaki grimaced and caught himself, knowing that the goddess knew what she was doing.

Freyja, surprisingly, stopped and looked at him. “Don’t what?”

Masaaki leaned over her again, fervently apologizing to his ancestors for touching her, and pulled the latch to open her door. As it popped open, the goddess got a delighted look on her face. “So that’s how it works! So much more convenient!” She shoved the door open and stepped out.

Dave Porter, who had been watching Freyja’s actions with the car door, seemed to shake himself. “You guys…uh…from the Bush or something?”

“Yes, exactly,” Freyja said, grabbing Dave and steering him towards the driver’s seat. “Take us northeast. As far as we can get.”

Dave awkwardly settled into the driver’s seat somewhat stiffly, more pushed there than sitting willingly, and his eyes caught on the sweating and shivering Thunderbird, whose colorful spandex was still covered with his own blood. “You mean you wanna go to a hospital?”

“Is that northeast?” Freyja asked, lifting Dave’s legs individually and placing them into the footwell, then slamming the door on him.

“Uh, not exactly,” Dave said, through the open window.

“Then no.” Freyja yanked open the back seat and, shoving an incoherent Thunderbird out of the way, sat down beside him. “Drive us northeast. Before Pestilence comes back and kills or binds our Champion.” It was the click of her door thumping shut that seemed to break the fisherman out of his paralysis. He gave each of them each a nervous look, then chuckled—more a nervous giggle—and looked over at Masaaki. “That’s…uh…some getup you got there, buddy. You a taekwondo master or something?”

“No, I am but a white-belt in taekwondo,” Masaaki grunted. “My test for yellow-belt should have been yesterday, as far as I can tell. The teacher is unfortunately a hardass who won’t let anyone skip belts or test early. Bonnie says it’s so he can bilk people out of the membership fee.”

“Uh…huh. Okayyy.” Their new driver glanced up and adjusted the mirror so he could see Thunderbird slumped over against the far window, sweating and moaning. “What’s wrong with that dude?”

“He got stabbed by a dread—” Freyja began.

“Food poisoning,” Masaaki interrupted. “He has food poisoning. Please drive us northeast.”

“Okay.” The man considered that, watching Thunderbird. “You okay there, dude?”

Thunderbird shook his head, groaning.

“You wanna go to a hospital?”

Thunderbird nodded.

“Yeah, okay.” The man put the car into reverse. “We’ll just get you to a—”

Freyja leaned forward and firmly grabbed the steering wheel. “Northeast,” she said. “Ignore the peacock. He’s fine.”

“Not…fine,” Thunderbird moaned. “I feel like I was stabbed by a unicorn.”

Masaaki winced and glanced at the human, but at the same time, Dave’s face seemed to clear. “Oh, I got it now. You guys are LARPing.”

“What is—” Freyja began with a frown.

But Masaaki, who had discussed the pointlessness of ‘LARPing’ with Bonnie at least three times when she had tried to get him to go join a Dungeons & Dragons group so he could ‘bash at someone other than her with a wooden sword’ quickly interjected, “LARPing, yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Now please take us northeast. We’re hunting a vampire.”

“Do you really want to tell him what we’re—” Freyja started.

“That’s awesome,” Dave blurted. “Oh man, I haven’t been able to LARP since I left Washington to fish on my uncle’s skiener this May. I’m so excited—there’s literally no one interested in LARPing in Alaska. They’re all shotgun-wielding Get Off My Lawn crotchety no-teeth types. Okay, so he was stabbed in a fight with a unicorn, he’s the samurai, and…” he twisted the mirror to face Freyja, “…you’re the feral shapeshifter they just rescued after spending the last twenty years imprisoned in a filthy cell in the bottom of the vampire’s basement. Nice hair, by the way. Seriously looks legit.”

Freyja blinked at him.

“Nice,” the guy said, nodding. “Okay, so what am I?”

“A…human?” Freyja asked, squinting.

The man snorted. “Hell no. You guys get to be samurai and shapeshifters and vampires—I wanna be an orc.”

Freyja stared at him. “You can’t be an orc. Orcs are huge, stinking, disgusting creatures that like to steal women and rape them to death. We kill as many as we can.”

“Whatever, I’m a good orc.”

“You can’t be a—”

“That’s sounds great, Dave!” Masaaki said quickly, talking over Freyja. “You’re an orc who learned how to drive from the DMV.”

Dave frowned. “How about we just pretend this is a chariot or something? Like with warhorses?”

Freyja’s brow was darkening further. “This isn’t a—”

“Perfect!” Masaaki said. “My orc friend, as a fellow Champion, it is our duty to find this vampire in order to save the Realm. He’s to the northeast.”

“Okay great!” Dave cried. “Let’s talk stats real quick. What level are you guys? Like five? Six?”

“I am a godd—”

“I’m level seven,” Masaaki said, again talking over Freyja. “She’s level twenty-five.”

Dave wrinkled his nose. “That’s a big gap. Who’s doing the DMing?”

“Um,” Masaaki said, thinking of Bonnie, “we left her in Eagle River.”