David awoke to the sharp smell of fragrant wood, and by fragrant I mean that it smelled like the time he shoved thirteen pencils up his nose in his freshman year of high school. He felt a hard wooden surface pressing against his face, and he could see a wooden wall across from him, flickering with the warm light of a nearby candle. As he pushed himself off the table, he stopped mid-push. He broke his hip didn’t he? More than that, his hip was absolutely powdered from the repeated abuse it had suffered. So, then… Why wasn’t he in any pain?

Slowly and carefully sitting up, David noticed no pain from his pelvis area. He looked down and saw no cast, there were no signs of needles having been in his skin, and his own fist smashing into his thigh confirmed that he wasn’t paralyzed, though he couldn’t move it for some reason. Through the effort of trying to lift his left leg, he felt like it was encased in something solid and hard, but his legs were completely unburdened, with the exception of his filthy pair of shorts.

“What the…?” David muttered, searching his lower form for any sign of injury.

“Do you need a minute?” A female voice asked impatiently.

David jolted up like a cornered deer. Sitting before him were two figures, their faces illuminated by candlelight. Sitting on David’s right was the person in the Chinese armor, though they had removed their helmet, revealing an extremely androgynous face and a mop of dark hair tightened into a bun. On his left was very clearly a woman, with long dark hair that flowed freely. Her bangs were cut short, covering her forehead, and her nose was slightly larger than normal. She wore a sleeveless blue dress, which didn’t make her look weak, but rather made her armored friend look childish and paranoid. It was hard to see in the light, but she looked like she was from the middle-east. Both people exuded… something that David couldn’t put into words. Like ambient dust or static in your hair, David could feel something, but he just didn’t know what.

Whatever the energy was, it drew attention to the skin of his arms being exposed to the air. David quickly hugged himself as he pulled his arms down. He always was just as uncomfortable showing his skin as he was within it.

The armored one leaned forward, the sound of metal and leather filled the silent room. Their colleague stifled a laugh, which earned her a glare.

“He’s done. Who are you?” The armored one asked David. The candlelight casting deep shadows into their eye sockets.

“D-David. Who are you?” he stuttered.

The armored one turned to the woman.

“Is there an Asgardian named David?” She was asked

“How am I supposed to know?” The woman laughed, “By procedure, we are supposed to ask the-“

The woman looked up and met the armored one’s eyes.

“Isis.” The armored one warned

“Not to my knowledge, no. But you know how Odin gets when he’s paranoid.” Isis responded

Before David could get a word in edgewise, the armored one turned to him and started talking over him.

“Parents?” they asked

“I’m… sorry?” David asked

“Who. Are. Your. Parents.” They seethed

“My-my foster father’s name is Edmund West, now who are-“

“Foster father?” they asked Isis, to which she shrugged. They turned back to David. “Explain.”

“Uhm…” David said, confused. Who doesn’t know what a foster parent is? “A parent who didn’t create their child?”

“You mean adopted.”

“Yes, sort of, now who-“ David said

“Is he Asgardian?” this time, they didn’t take their eyes off David.

“I don’t know what that even means.”

“Is. He. From. Asgard.”

“He’s from Missouri. Who are you?!” David asked, almost pleading

“Guardians. Who did you think we were?” they said

David met their words with a confused and pitiful look on his face. The woman called Isis took notice.

“The Guardian Legion?” Isis asked, “The first and only cooperation between gods of multiple pantheons… ever? You don’t know it?”

She said the last bit with a helping heap of suspicion directed at David’s still-confused form. The armored one then turned to her.

“Did you perform the spell incorrectly?” they asked.

“I’ve cast thousands of truth spells,” Isis glared, “and I have never once performed it incorrectly.”

The armored one nodded, then turned back to David.

“What do you remember? About Thor’s attack.” They said

David relayed back through everything he had seen, from the stampede in the streets to nearly getting trampled by Thor. Through most of his report, he noticed that Isis and her… friend? Boss? Significant other? Were quickly losing interest in the interview. It was only when he mentioned the weird glowing symbols did his interrogators perk up.

“You accessed the enchantment?” Isis asked, “You said that you had never been to Asgard, how could you manipulate a source like Mjolnir?”

David gave another signature blank stare. “Huh?”

Isis drew in breath to speak, but the armored one waved her down.

“The glowing symbols, what happened to them?” They asked

“I… don’t know, the ones I touched disappeared.”

The armored one’s eyes widened slightly, and Isis put her face in her hands.

“How many of the symbols did you… Disappear?” Isis mumbled through her hands.

“Well, I thought it was a trap of some kind so…” David said

“What kind of trap would have components disappear at contact? Did you even think?” The armored one said, hand going to their brow.

At the same time, Isis leaned forwards.

“So you destroyed enough of the enchantment to make a hole to get out of the matrix?” She asked

“I… guess so?” David said

David’s words hung in the air, slowly giving way to the absolute silence as the armored one stared at him with unblinking eyes. David awkwardly tried to stare back, but the instant his eyes met those opposite him, terror seized him, and he turned away. His thought process at this point was a mantra

Don’t kill me.

Don’t kill me.

Don’t kill me.

Don’t-

“You’re an idiot,” The armored one said, shattering the silence, “but you’re not a saboteur. Isis?”

“He’s definitely messed up in the head,” Isis said with a smidge of concern in her voice. “but he is telling the truth. How do you want to handle it?”

The armored one shifted her gaze slightly upwards, their eyes boring a hole in David’s forehead.

“His memories may have been altered.”  they pondered, “Put him with Thor, see if he recognizes him.”

“And if the thunderer tries to kill him?” Isis asks, again with concern in her voice.

“Thor’s in the ankh chamber. Would take him a lot more energy than what he has at full might to kill something there. That is, if you enchanted it correctly.” The armored one dismissed Isis.

And with that, the one clad in black pushed themself off the table, and made their way to the door in the back. As the door slammed shut behind them, Isis grabbed David’s thin arm and touched the point where the forearm meets the greater arm. Then, with the tip of her forefinger she drew a series of glowing hieroglyphs on David’s skin. Suddenly, a pressure that David hadn’t even noticed lifted from around his legs, like his skin had suddenly become lighter. David tested his leg, bouncing it a bit before looking up to see Isis with an apologetic smile on her face.

“Feeling better?” She asked, “I’m sorry about having to do that, but the last time we had someone in interrogation that wasn’t under a restraining curse was problematic.”

“Uh…” David said

“Fire. There was a lot of fire. Almost burned the ship down.”

David glanced around, there was some clear burn marks on the rim of the ceiling and several dark streaks along the caramel-brown color of the wall.

“That’s-” David began.

“It was quite disgusting, really. Ogou, I think his name was. We picked him up on the continent to the north, thankfully he was just outside the border. The whole time we spoke with him, he was complaining about how his testicles were cold, which was very fun when we were trying to figure out what he was doing. That was his answer. Every question, he responded with ‘My balls are cold’.”

“Can I-” David tried

“Where were you going? My balls are cold. What was your motivation in leaving your pantheon? My balls are cold. Do you want some food? My balls are cold. Why are your balls cold? My balls are cold. Eventually I just gave up, like any god would, and left him to… deal with his cold balls. Next thing I know, everything’s in chaos, the General’s yelling at me, and the man is naked from the waist down, and squatting over an open flame. Do you have something like that in Asgard?” She asked

David just stared at her in horror.

What the hell? He thought

 

After David had… processed what Isis had said, or maybe even a little before he had, Isis led him out of the room into a just as atrociously-smelling hallway. His footsteps clomped noisily behind her softer footsteps. David only made it a few steps into the corridor before he felt the room list, and he placed his right hand on a perfectly smooth wall to keep himself from falling over. He grunted in exasperation. Isis turned around to face him.

“What’s wrong? Is it the spell? Do you have an allergy? Are you allergic to wood? Can you be allergic to wood?” She asked in rapid-fire questions.

David pushed himself off the wall and found his balance on the listing floor, but his face turned a slight shade of green. He tried to speak, but the only thing that came up was the sound of him gagging on his own bile.

“Oh.” Isis said, “I remember those, give me a few seconds.”

She then placed a hand on David’s head and as he tried not to puke on her, she began to write in the air, forming glowing violet hieroglyphs. Once the sequence was complete, Isis pressed against the hieroglyphs with her palm, and the characters disappeared. Instantly, the nausea plaguing David was lifted, and he found himself able to stand. Once again, confused thoughts echoed throughout his head.

“Thank you.” He said with a tentative voice, not quite sure whether the relief was real or just a trick of his mind.

“Not an issue, wish I had that spell when I first came aboard. Took me weeks to design it, but it is rather simple to cast. I have never heard about a Norseman who had trouble with ships before, though.” She said

“I…” he said, mentally feeling his way through his body, feeling a strange emptiness where his nausea had vanished. “I don’t like boats.”

Isis gave him a strange look. “Are you sure that you’re Asgardian?”

“I don’t know what an Asgardian is.” David said, completely exhausted

Isis looked at him strangely for a minute, then spoke, for the first time, slowly and clearly.

“Asgardian is the broad term we use for a god or similar creature born in the Norse Pantheon. That’s the northern-most pantheon bordering the smaller of the two great oceans. Atlantic, I think?” She explained, “Above the Greek and Celtic Pantheons, if I remember correctly.”

David looked at her like she was speaking gibberish (in his mind she was). “You had me until you said God.”

“Yes, god.” Isis repeated, “Or I guess you would be rather known as Aesir? Or Vanir?”

“I’m not God.” David insisted

Isis looked at him with a slight smile on his face.

“I have dealt with enough of my kind to know one when I meet them. Trust me, you are a god.”

“Look… Isis I-I know that you think that I am a god, but I’m telling you that I can’t be. And did you say your kind?” David asked skeptically

Isis’ smile broadened.

“Yes, my, or rather, our kind.” She said bemused, “I haven’t introduced myself, have I? My name is Isis, goddess of magics and order from the Egyptian Pantheon. Some people call me Aset, but I prefer not to be associated with my brother, so please just call me Isis.”

“Okay… Isis.” David said, skepticism growing ever stronger, “You don’t seem like God.”

“Nobody that I know only calls themselves God. It is a kind of person, not an individual. Though I have heard of some mortals who worship one god. You were raised by mortals like that? They really call their deity God? You’d think they would come up with a more creative name for the core of their religion, don’t you agree?”

Before David could get a word in edgewise, Isis continued. “I have a friend who is much better at explaining this than I am, but the term ‘god’ is not some kind of expression of our divinity or our perfection, but more just something we have heard mortals- sorry, humans- call us for thousands of years. Over time, we started calling ourselves that too. ”

David, mildly insulted at the casual critique of the Christian faith- his faith- asked in a rather blunt tone before he could stop himself: “Then what are you, exactly?”

“Again, my friend is much better at explaining these things, she has a great deal of experience with human terms. We’re… we’re not divinity, but a different kind of people. Not in the way two civilizations are divided, but in a literal, absolute manner, we are separate from humanity. Does that make sense?” She said carefully.

As she finished, she placed a hand on David’s back, ushering him along further down the corridor. Soon, the clamping of boots echoed down the hallway, rivaled in volume only by the conversation of these two strange beings.

“Different kind of- oh,” David said, his shoulders relaxing slightly, “You mean that you’re a separate species from humanity.”

“Yes! That’s the word!” Isis put a hand to her head in some mixture of frustration and amusement.

David cracked a small smile. Isis’ awkwardness and talkative nature reminded him of a friend from college, who had thankfully been absent from the annihilation on Haiti.

“So…” David said tentatively, “Are you… Immortal? And what was that stuff you did to me? Magic?”

“Yes! Well, actually…” Isis looked up, eyes darting from different parts on the ceiling as she walked. “We’re not immortal by mortal definitions, really. We live for millenia if left on our own, but we can be killed, and some of us feel the effects of age similar to how the mortals do.”

“And as for what I did… yes, that was magic.” Isis continued, “A spell designed to suppress nausea caused by the movements of a boat on the ocean. Though if I’m right, you won’t need need me to cast the spell on you for too long.”

“What do you mean?” David asked

“This way,” Isis said, pointing down a hallway as she turns, “When you touched the hammer, you saw symbols, correct?”

“Yeah… glowing blue ones.”

“Well, the General described the hammer’s behavior towards the end as erratic, which could be caused if someone, an Asgardian, changed the weapon’s enchantment.” Isis continued.

“Enchantment?” David asked.

“Like the spells I use, except the commands are linked to an object in a specific structure. When used properly, the object would be capable of completing a magical action in direct accordance to those commands.  If the enchantment is changed, the object won’t work the way it is supposed to. Given how much of the hammer’s enchantment you destroyed, I am shocked the weapon did not explode as soon as Thor threw it. Speaking of which, we are here!” Isis said, stopping in front of a blank section of wall marked only by a series of characters David did not recognise.

Isis then placed her hand on the characters and from her palm, a wave of violet light illuminated the strange letters. Then the light faded, and the wall began to sink into itself, bending and warping until there was a second, thirty-foot long hallway, at the end of which was an iron door. Isis walked down the hallway and motioned for David to follow her, which he initially did, then tried to turn back after ten feet. Unfortunately, when he turned to walk back down the hallway, he saw that the wall had closed up behind him-right behind him. He knew that he had traveled some distance, and yet the wall’s edge was only a half a foot behind him. As he examined the wall, he noticed that the wall was bowed away from him, and he noticed that it was perfectly smooth as he ran his hand over it. David testingly took a step backwards. The wall before him grew forward so quickly, it appeared from his perspective that he didn’t move at all.

“Uhh… Isis?!” David shouted behind him, “Why are we trapped in?”

Down the hall, Isis turned her head and shouted back to him.

“Security protocol, don’t worry about it!”

David turned back and started to speed-walk down the hallway, trying to outrun the wall carefully following behind him to no avail. He caught up with Isis quickly, and promptly slammed into the solid iron door. The door, David estimated, was at least a full inch thick based on the lack of vibration in the aftermath of their collision. And, of course, how much it hurt. David fell flat on his rear, his nose bloody and his pride wounded. Isis rolled her eyes as she pressed her hand on the door, which made a hiss as it opened. She then reached out to take David’s arm, and before he could even get a decent grip on her’s, she literally lifted him several feet off the ground. Like a toddler he got back onto his feet, giving a pained apologetic smile to Isis as he wiped the blood dribbling from his nose.

“Are you always this…?” Isis asked, gesturing to David’s form

“Only when I’m on my feet.” David nervously joked.

Isis smiled and grasped the handle of the door, pulling it outwards to reveal that the door wasn’t an inch or two thick, no. It was several feet thick.

“How- wait, magic, nevermind” David said, “So what’s all this security for? Is this a panic room or something?”

Isis gave him a strange look. “Do-Does this look like someplace for a goat man to scream his lungs out? I mean, I suppose if it can hold that Peter fellow, it would probably be able to keep most of the sound out, but-but still…” She said, straining slightly against the weight of the door.

“No, I just meant- woah” David said, finding that behind the previous three-foot thick door, there was yet another Iron door. “Are these doors meant to protect us? Is this why we’re here? To keep the crazy gods out?”

Isis pressed her hand against the second metal door. There was a sharp hissing sound, but it sounded more wet than the previous door’s, and the smell of sweat suddenly stabbed David’s nostrils.

“I like you,” Isis said, “You ask a lot of questions.”

Isis then leaned forward and pushed the second door open, revealing a room about the size of an average bedroom. The air inside was so humid, the fog prevented David from viewing the wall furthest from him. The temperature inside felt close to what he had felt on muggy Florida days in the middle of July. The smell of sweat only intensified as David tried to mask the scent by breathing through his mouth. The air was so thick with it, he actually started to taste the disgustingly salty fluid as it condensed onto his tongue. David tried to curse, to express his deep and sincere disgust at the crime against nature that was the smell but when he tried to speak, the only sounds that left his mouth were tiny, pained wheezes. David doubled over, eyes watering from the fragrance emanating from the room, accidentally putting his right hand on the floor inside the room. THAT was a mistake.

At first, David felt something soft, like a sort of fuzzy carpet under his hands. But as he put more and more weight on that right arm, he noticed that the floor was… squishy, almost gelatinous in nature. Before he even had time to shift his weight away, his hand had pushed through the fuzzy layer, encased itself in a layer of semifluid substance that could only be described as like snot, and came into contact with a hard surface that might be the floor. As David recoiled his hand, he noticed that the entire room was covered in a green, moss-like carpet. Floors, walls, ceiling, even the two beds were embraced by the neon-colored carpet. But, when David looked back down, he not only confirmed that the substance coating

his hand was extremely similar to mucus. Between that and the smell, he had a hard time keeping the contents of his stomach in place. David tried taking deep breaths to calm down, but that only intensified the accumulation of sweat on his tongue, turning his entire mouth into a salty, B.O. infused nightmare.

Eventually, David managed to get his breathing under control, though he wished that he was wearing a mask. He looked up and saw an incredibly bemused Isis, trying her hardest- and failing- to not laugh. David got back to his feet, shaking his arm free of the mucus.

“What the hell is that room?” David asked, “And why does the air taste like the floor of a high school locker room?”

Isis stifled another laugh. “Sorry, I really shouldn’t be laughing, I know the smell can be a bit nauseating. This is one of the Anhks, our healing and containment centers.”

“Containment?” David asked, mortified at the thought of being imprisoned in the sweat-room of death. “Please tell me I don’t have to go in there. I’m begging you.”

“It will only be for a few minutes, come on!” Isis said, grabbing David’s hand in an iron grip, pulling him with her into the Ankh.

As he was being dragged in, he took one desperate gasp of air before plunging into the sweaty moss room. Once inside the room, David could make out two blurry figures, both distinctly not covered in moss. Blinking away tears, he saw one of them laying on a literal bed of moss, and the other standing over them with a hand on their shoulder. Wanting to know who exactly these people were, he squinted closer at the one lying down. That was a mistake.

The person laying on the bed was large in every sense of the word. His arms were freakishly long and ripped with muscle, looking more at home on a bodybuilding gorilla than a human being. His legs were slightly shorter, but somehow had even more muscle than the arms. Both his feet and hands were huge and calloused, similar to a mountain-climber (though given the man’s size and definition, David would say it was more likely that he was throwing mountains instead of climbing them). His head was covered in a shroud of dark red hair, which had a slight curl to it as it came down his neck in tumbles. Now, you might be thinking: wow, this sounds like an incredibly attractive man, how could looking at him possibly be a mistake? Is David going to be all repulsed because it’s a man that’s so unbelievably hot?

Let’s continue with the hair. Upon closer inspection, the dark red rockin’ locks were not, in fact, clean. Bits of gravel, leaves, and what looked to be bird bones were all caught in the vast, tangled web which was his hair, In addition, there was enough dandruff in the man’s hair to make it look a few dozen shades lighter than it actually was. The man’s stomach protrude a good 3 ½, 4 feet from where his back lay. David remembered that he had seen an actor wear a rather ridiculous fat suit for a big blockbuster a few summers back. It looked like this man had eaten the actor, his fat suit, and all his co-leads. And even going beyond that, every visible part of his skin aside from his face was completely covered in tattoos, including several dozen of naked women. David did not need nor want to see that much of someone called “Sif”. All of this, David managed to notice on his first few looks. Then, he got a bit too curious about what the big man was wearing that somehow managed to cover his shoulders, his boulder of a belly, and the entirety of his legs.

And while he was leaning ever closer to the mystery fabric, he wondered to himself: Why is it so much darker in the crotch area? Then he saw it. And then he almost threw up, he was so mortified. To put it simply, the man on the table was not, in fact, wearing any sort of clothing. His hair grew in a thick, abandoned-lawn-in-the-suburbs manner across his chest, stomach, legs, and feet, leaving a smaller dusting on his arms, forearms, and hands. Fortunately for the people in the room, the… foliage around his crotch area was thick enough to hide his “equipment” at a distance. Unfortunately for David, it stopped working at close range. The hair in his armpits splayed out from him like a patch of weeds, looming high over the man’s tree-trunk like biceps. In addition, the hair on his body seemed to have a similar concentration of dandruff as the locks on his head, as well as a layer of what was either some kind of gel, or more likely, crystalized sweat. And the hair on sprouting from his armpits weren’t a dark red, but instead an extremely pale white, like it had been bleached. Then the man shifted his arm. It was just a little, he couldn’t have spread it more than an inch. The wave of stink quite literally knocked David on his ass. Oh, I’m sorry, were you eating? Because after that display, David certainly wasn’t.

David suddenly realized- that form, that hair, that person, he’d seen it all before. On the other end of a hammer, his face frothing and eyes shining with raw power. David was mentally frozen, even as his body backed away from the sleeping form of Thor. Thor, the one who laid ruin to an entire city. Thor, who had tried to kill him. Thor, who had probably killed his only friends.

“Dear Ra, Healer, I thought you would be done already!” Isis said to the second figure.

“Isis.” The other figure said with a thick African accent. “Do you realize how long it took me just to get him in here?”

The second figure hobbled over to the duo, limping and leaning on some kind of staff that borrowed heavily from the more modern crutch design, with a shorter rod protruding from the midpoint of the staff. He was significantly better dressed than his friend on the table, wearing a spotless dark gray and black robe with a matching gray hat on his head. The spot around where the hat sat was balding, but he somehow pulled it off. His skin was the color of dark chocolate, and his hair was bright white peppered with light gray. His face was characterized by deep, furrowing lines which always seemed to keep half his face in shadow. His eyes were a hard, leafy green. And they were glaring at Isis.

“Where have you been for the past half hour?” he demanded, scaring David a little.

“I was dealing with this one,” Isis replied, gesturing in David’s direction with her head, “What happened to Gilgamesh? I thought he was supposed to help you.”

“The General needed him to pilot, and I wasn’t about to argue with her. Besides, the whole time he was supposed to be ‘helping’ me, he was playing with this one’s muscles.” Healer said with disgust.

“Oh, forgot about that, I will let the General know next I see her.” Isis said

The Healer gave her a skeptical look. “Right. What’s this one? Greek?” he said, squinting at David in a very uncomfortable manner.

David tried to say something- or rather, stutter something- but he choked on condensed sweat.

“We are actually thinking that he is an Asgardian, but we would like to get a confirmation from a fellow resident.” Isis said, gesturing to the man in the bed, which David had just then realized was an unconscious Thor.

Horrified, David tried to back up and get away from the peacefully sleeping mass murderer. Isis, either oblivious to or completely ignoring it, rapped her knuckles on Thor’s forehead. Thor didn’t even twitch. Isis looked over at the one named healer.

“How many of my spells did you use on him?” She asked

“Are you kidding?” Healer said exasperated, “He’s been unconscious for a lot longer than I’ve been looking at him. Probably a combination of the sheer volume of alcohol he drank and the blow to his head sent him into a very deep sleep. Pretty sure he could sleep through a banshee giving birth in a graveyard.”

David, who had backed himself up against a far wall, sighed with relief, not even concerning himself with what a banshee was.

“Any idea on how to wake him up, then?” Isis asked.

“Try something that gradually increases in intensity over time.” Healer then put his hand to his chin, “What about the young one who came in here a while back, torched the interrogation room?”

“Are you serious?” Isis asked, “This is not Asgard, doing that sort of thing to him here could cause permanent scars, and could lead to mountains of paperwork and-”

But even as Isis said those words, a tiny smile spread across her face and a mischief crept into her eyes. She stared very, very hard at Thor’s crotch area, surveying the absolute jungle that was his hair. The tiny smile grew into a grin, equal parts contagious and menacing. Wearing that smile, she began to finger-write glowing violet hieroglyphs once again. The spell she cast was much shorter that the one she had used on David, but she took a greater amount of time to write it, savoring each miniscule detail in the symbols.

Then, with a wink to David (who was frantically trying to tell her to not wake Thor, but his voice was interrupted by his gagging), she gently pressed her forefinger and middle finger against the symbols. The symbols condensed into a single, white point on the tip of her finger, which turned into a small stream of white-hot fire creating a perfectly straight line to Thor’s crotch. The hair took several seconds to light, possibly due to the nature of the crystalized sweat on the follicles, but soon enough, there was a small flame, burning like a candle in the untamed bush. It was at this point which David turned around and started banging on the wall where the door was supposed to be, mutely begging to be let out.

Needless to say, the fire spread. And as the flames grew, they also burned further down their “wicks”. Thor began to notice. He idly swatted at his crotch, then he mumbles something playfully in a language David couldn’t recognise. It was only when flames had completely engulfed his crotch and started making their way onto his leg hair that his eyes flew open and he began to frantically swat at the bonfire. With his big, meaty hands, the fire was transformed from an active blaze to a smoking bit of hair in a matter of seconds.

David was on the ground, crying with fear and trying to curl himself into as small a ball as humanly possible to evade Thor’s gaze and inevitable wrath. But instead of leaping to his feet and screaming bloody murder, Thor remained on the moss-ridden bed for a few moments, staring at his slightly singed crotch, He then glanced over to Isis, whose efforts to keep herself from laughing were successful, but her effort to stop smiling was not. Then, almost invisible to those in the room, the hair below Thor’s nose curled slightly, his cheekbones raised themselves to crinkle his eyes. Deep in his chest, David felt something like a deep bass played on a stadium speaker. And he only knew what that felt like because his archeology friends dragged him to a football game, which he mostly hated because of the noise. That dull thrum quickly became thunderous as anything and everything that was loose in the room started to shake. Then, Thor opened his mouth, and the thunder became a pulsating roar. He clenched his stomach and fell back on the bed, still roaring his head off as tears streamed from his eyes.

David’s ears, freshly recovered from his last session with extreme sound, now felt like they were being ruptured from the inside out.

What is he doing? David asked internally, Is he in pain? Did Isis put a spell on him? is that why hasn’t he hurt anyone yet?  The pulsating roars continued, and Thor rolled onto his side, still clutching his obscenely large gullet. David caught a glimpse of the man’s face, the raised eyebrows and cheeks, the scrunched eyes and the quivering beard. It was then that it hit David-

Thor wasn’t under a spell, or in any pain or anything. He wasn’t screaming bloody murder.

He was laughing.

After a good minute of laughing Thor sat up again, waves of jiggling flesh and fur echoed his movements. He wiped tears out of the corners of his crinkled eyes, the last laughs escaping his mouth. He wagged a fat finger in Isis’ direction, and with a smile peeking through his beard, he said something to her in a language David did not recognise. Isis smiled and spoke with him in return. A few minutes into their conversation, Isis dropped the smile and lowered her voice. Again, David didn’t understand what they were saying exactly, but he noticed that Isis slightly tilted her head in David’s direction. Thor looked at him and shook his head, then he leaned forward towards David and spoke to him in a much louder voice, looking straight at him. His eyes were like saturated storm clouds on a misty day. His iris were not a true gray but more a blue-gray. The “whites” of his eyes were more of a stony gray than actual white, like he accidentally put some pencil graphite in there. His pupils, however, were not how David remembered them. Instead of the angry white-blue of an exploding star, there was a deep darkness, like a normal human eye. Thor stared at David for a few moments, and when he didn’t get a response, he repeated himself in a yell. This didn’t help David understand him better, but it did make him need to use the bathroom.

“Wh-What’s he saying?” David asked, his voice cracking like a middle schooler singing an opera.

“You don’t understand him?” Isis said, “That doesn’t… even if you had lost your memories, you would still retain skills and abilities… are you lying? Because it’ll be much more difficult if you’re lying.”

David tried to speak, but Thor talked over him, this time directed at Isis. If the puzzled look on his face meant anything, it meant that he was just as confused as David felt.

As soon as Thor was done, David spoke up, looking straight at him.

“Could you speak English, please? Like you did in the city?”

Thor looked to Isis, who spoke to him in his language. He then grunted and scratched the back of his head, looking almost… embarrassed as he mumbled something to Isis. She gave him a slightly skeptical look, but couldn’t hold back her smile.

“Well, uh…” Isis said, scratching her forehead, a tiny smile conquering her face “Thor has a… problem speaking anything other than Asgardian. He can only speak another language if he is drunk.”

“Can you, uh, translate for us? I don’t know Asvardian.” David said nervously

“Asgardian. And I can do a lot better than translate.”

Isis drew a flat clay tablet from an invisible pocket in her dress. The tablet was completely covered in hieroglyphs, so small and densely packed together that they looked like pixels. The only blank section on the bottom right corner, a tiny, flat stretch of unmarked tan-white clay. As Isis moved her finger in the air, new hieroglyphs appeared in the blank space, appearing in sequence from right to left, and glowing with her characteristic bright violet. Once the last hieroglyph was complete, all the text on the tablet flashed purple. The tablet then shattered in her hands, facturing and snapping with a sound like store-bought firecrackers. In a few seconds, the tablet had been reduced to dust in Isis’ flawless hand. The dust then began to radiate with her power, and it lifted itself up. The radioactive-looking dust flew towards both the men (Healer was off sitting in a moss-filled corner whittling something on his staff, so he was excluded from the potential radiation poisoning), and condensed around their mouths.

“Um…” David said, “What was that supposed to do?”

Isis just smiled, but Thor immediately sat up straight like a soldier called to attention.

“Hey!” Thor shouted, breaking into another smile, “I know what you’re saying! You’re speaking Asgardian!”

“What…” David said, looking at Isis.

“Temporary mind link,” Isis said, “a spell that I learned from Thoth. Your minds provide the meaning of the words you speak, and connects that meaning with the mind of the other, allowing them to instantly connect the word you spoke to the meaning behind it. Because of this instantaneous connection, your brains process the words you hear as your own language. Of course, it only works with words that have direct English-to-Asgardian translation. For those outside that particular relationship, the understanding fails, and explanation will be needed. Also takes a very long time to prepare outside of my pantheon, so please, for the love of Ra, learn Asgardian.”

“Great!” Thor shouted, then turned towards David with his forefinger extended, “Now who are you?”

David put his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “M-my name is David. I- uh, I kinda- uh… I’m from Florida. Isis said I was a…?” David couldn’t bring himself to say the word god. “I still have no clue what’s going on.”

“Florida… That’s north of here, yes? The swamps?” Thor asked, his face scrunched up. David nodded a yes, and Thor turned his gaze to Isis. “Then why’d you bring him to me? I thought I couldn’t meet people from other pantheons except for Guardians.”

“He’s not actually from Florida, Thor.” Isis said, “He’s one of your people, Norse. Do you recognise him?”

Thor looked David up and down again, his right eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

“No… definitely not. He’s Asgardian? Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. He used Norse magic last night during your little party with Samedi.”

“Party..?” Thor’s eyes went distant for a moment, before they shot open, pupils contracting to near-pinpoints. “No… not again. How many were hurt?”

Isis looked down and took a deep breath. “We don’t know. When we got to you, a good portion of the city was destroyed. It would have been much worse, if he hadn’t gotten the hammer away from you.” She said, gesturing towards David.

“Wait… He did that?” Thor asked, something creeping back into his beard. “How?”

Isis then explained how David had managed to access and manipulate the hammer’s enchantment, causing it to malfunction when Thor threw it. David frantically massaged his hands through the entire explanation, desperately wishing for something to hold, to take apart or to build. Anything to keep his mind off the extremely painful death that was to come.

When Isis finished the story, Thor slowly got out of bed. His enormous bare feet made contact with the moss-ridden wood floor with the force of a magnitude 7 earthquake, sinking a good distance into the wood itself. He advanced on David, hunched under the ceiling like a basketball player in an indoor play structure. David tried to get away, slipping on the slime and filth, but nothing could save him from Thor’s grasp. The thunder god then wrapped his arms around him and hoisted him into the air, squeezing him like he was a trying to make human lemonade. David felt the familiar pain of his bones snapping in an unfamiliar place. Thor’s squeezing quickly shattered his entire ribcage, and fractured his sternum in four different places. David wanted to cry out in pain, but with Thor crushing his lungs, he couldn’t even breathe, much less scream.

Thankfully, Isis was paying attention and noticed David’s flushed face and pleading look in his eyes. She walked over and tapped Thor’s shoulder.

“Thor? He can’t speak.” She said, as if David speaking was more important than his breathing.

“Oh, sorry.” Thor said, dumping David back onto the ground.

In the space of time it took for David to land on his rear, the pain in his chest intensified, then abruptly vanished. Underneath his skin, broken ribs shifted around and merged with each other, the fractures in his sternum vanished. When he stood up again, his ribcage was the exact way it was before Thor’s abrupt constriction.

David didn’t even have time to question his instantaneous recovery from a life-ending injury before Thor gently placed a hand on his shoulder. This time Thor was at least trying to be gentle, so the impact of his hand on David’s shoulder wasn’t harmful in any way. However, Thor’s hand was roughly the same size as a baseball mitt, so the added weight on David’s shoulder made the following conversation even more uncomfortable.

“Thank you!” Thor said, the words escaping his mouth like a held breath.

“You’re welcome.” David said, an automatic response which preceded thinking, “For uhh… for what?”

Thor grips David’s shoulder a bit tighter before removing his hand and taking a few steps back.

“For stopping me!” Thor said, waving his arms, “I never want to kill humans- I just thought I could handle Samedi. Sigh. Why couldn’t he have dropped me in Jotunheim?”

“You- You’re happy that I broke your hammer?” David asked, dumbstruck look on his face.

Thor waved him off, “Eh, it’s hardly the first time someone’s messed with that thing. I’ve broken that thing’s enchantment so many times, I know those dwarves’ wives by name. All fourty-seven of them. So don’t worry about it, breaking Mjolnir was the best thing you could’ve done.”

David blinked rapidly, like his mind had suddenly overloaded. He had been thanked for doing his foster sister’s homework. He had been thanked for fixing his friend’s car after they’d ignored the check engine light for three months straight. He had even been thanked for hacking into the school network that one time in sixth grade to get his best (and only) friend out of gym class. But he had never in his life been thanked for breaking something. He opened his mouth to explain to Thor that it was an accident, that he really had no idea what he was doing, when he noticed a gust of fresh air come through behind him, and he heard the sound of boots squelching against moist moss. He turned around, and before him stood the other person-sorry, god, from his interrogation, still clad in their black armor with their hair in a bun. But here, outside the close candlelight, David saw something even more disturbing with this person. Their eyes were normal for the most part, but their iris were the color of dark blood, like a major vein had been emptied into the outer layer of their eyes.

The person’s gaze shifted from David’s meek to Thor’s mountainous form, which they analyzed with a cold glare.  Thor, his face and posture so jolly before, suddenly became tense, every muscle in his body tightening as he slowly took a step backwards. Their eyes met Thor’s, and a shudder went through his flesh.

“Who is he?” They asked.

“I-” Thor started, fear in his eyes, “I don’t know. Never seen him before today. Except for yesterday with the whole… you know.” Thor said, miming himself throwing his hammer.

The armored one sighed in exasperation.

“Then this was a colossal waste of time.” They said, glaring at David like it was his fault.

“Not necessarily.” Isis said, pointing a finger up. “Thor, how many people do you know in the Asgardian realms?”

“Uh… Well, I think I’ve partied with most of them. And the rest, I know I fought.” Thor said.

The armored one shook their head. “So the only people you know in Asgard you were either drunk or pissed off at. Good to know.” They then turned to Isis. “How does this help?”

Isis put her finger up again, signaling one moment to her comrade.

“How many of the people in the nine realms have you partied or fought with?” She asked.

“Everyone.” Thor said immediately, without hesitation or elaboration. Isis smirked triumphantly in the direction of her friends. In the back corner, Healer rolled his eyes not in disbelief, but in frustration. Even the armored one didn’t look surprised, though a twinkle of realization crept into their slanted eyes.

“And you remember all of their faces and names?” The armored one asked.

“Of course. My father tends to forget those sorts of things, so I remember in case he forgets.” Thor said.

The armored one huffed. “All-father of Asgard, can’t even be bothered to remember his own subjects. I should expect this from barbarians.” They then turned their gaze back to Thor. “And you’re sure you haven’t seen this one? Or heard the name David? Or even missed him somehow, he is rather small for your kind.”

“If-if I was in his pretense, I would have been warned to watch myself. I insist that people always tell me if there are any children or…” Thor looked at David “Small people in my presence. I don’t want to hurt them by accident. And I’ve never heard the name David.”

Isis looked at the armored one. “Which leaves only one explanation, he’s a-”

“Reject.” The armored one finished, a scowl contorting their face as their breathing grew heavier.

David wasn’t sure it was possible, but they looked even more scary now than before as she stared at Thor. The terrified thunder god took four rapid steps backwards, smashing through the bed behind him.

Isis examined her friend with a look of apprehension. She then straightened herself in an almost-military like posture.

“What’s the plan, General?” She asked like a well trained soldier.

The General’s gaze shifted from Thor to Isis, and almost instantly, their breathing slowed. Over the next few moments, their scowl shallowed, jaw unclenched, and their eyes softened from eldritch-abomination levels of terrifying to just unnervingly scary.

“We follow protocol. We retrieve this idiot’s weapon.” They said, gesturing to Thor, “And then we take him to Ordo.” Gesturing to David. “The Head can discuss his fate with Odin.”

“T-terribly sorry to interrupt,” David stuttered, “but couldn’t you just… let me go? Please?”

The instant the words left his mouth, people stared at him like he had just said that the sun was bright. Even Thor, who regularly mangled his words and didn’t understand the need for a comb, looked at him like he had grown a third eye.

The General looked over at Isis.

“I’ll break the news to him, General.” Isis said.

The General nodded in approval, then pressed their hand against the wall they had entered through. The symbols ignited, and a hole in the wood appeared. David saw his chance, he scrambled over to the entryway, hands and feet splashing through the moss. His instinct to run had overridden his common sense, a byproduct of spending the past few hours in the company of extremely powerful and terrifying individuals. David leapt through the entryway, but in so doing only exposed his neck to be grabbed by the General, who had seen the whole thing.

The General lifted him up by the scruff of his neck like a misbehaving puppy. David expected them to look at him with their signature scolding eyes that make mountain-crushers like Thor wet their pants, or their pubic hair at least. But he was not expecting the look of sheer bewilderment dominating their face, with a slight lift in the corner of their mouth betraying their amusement.

“What was that?” They asked, trying- and failing- to contain their smile.

“T-t-to, Um, “ David stuttered, his mind drawing a complete blank. “Bathroom?”

The General tossed David back to where he was before his escape attempt, left hand covering their forehead and eyes. As David splashed back onto the floor, he saw Isis with her right hand covering her mouth, looking slightly embarrassed. Thor, on the other hand, was sitting down in the muck with his face away from David, his shoulders bobbing up and down in time with subtle vibrations in the floor. If David would have to guess, he would say that Thor, the mighty thunder-god of Asgard, was suffering from a severe case of the giggles. The General approached where David sat, shaking their head in disappointment with an unsuppressed smile on their face.

“Did you seriously think that would work?” They asked, “Who, exactly do you think I am to let a barely-mobile, constantly tripping, novice of a god to get away? Dionysis? Sun Wukong? Ame-No-Uzume?”

The General chuckled a bit at their joke, and then proceeded towards the exit. But like before, David’s mind couldn’t help but make connections to that one time in his childhood, watching the only Disney film his foster father approved, and then another time in his middle school, listening to a teacher who spoke passionately about a story her Chinese parents told her from their homeland, one of a soldier who infamously masked their gender to fight in battle.

“Mulan?” David whispered.

The General stopped. “What did you call me?” They asked. They had heard him. And recognized the name.

Realization dawned on David’s face and flooded his mind with pride. He was right! After all of those whats and huhs, he finally got something right! For a moment, his confidence exploded, and before he could stop himself, he began to rant.

“You’re the woman who defied her culture’s prejudice, became a soldier and through your feats in battle, was given the rank of General. The whole time, you kept your gender hidden, it was only discovered by your comrades years after you had retired… which doesn’t seem like it was permanent. You are one of the most powerful women in Chinese history, and apparently one of the few gods I can actually recognize. Am I right, General Mulan?” David said, heart pounding in his chest. He said way too much.

The General stared at him for some time, shifting their head but never taking their eyes off David’s face. Then, almost begrudgingly, she nodded.

“Seems you’re not quite as big of an idiot as I presumed.” Mulan said, taking David’s hand and lifting him out of the muck. As soon as David was on his feet, she yanked on his arm and whispered in his ear, “If you call me anything other than General or Sir in public, you will be my new body for archery practice. Do we understand each other?”

His confidence abruptly evaporated, David nodded, then at Mulan’s glare, he stuttered: “Y-yes, sir-uh, General?”

Mulan rolled her eyes as she let go of him. “Just General will do, thank you.”

As she walked to the entrance, she was followed by a very bug-eyed Isis, who followed her down the hallway.

As the entryway closed up, David could hear Isis shout “MULAN?!”, and faintly hear Mulan grumble.

Once the hole completely closed, Healer made and audible humph and walked over to David, grabbed him by the shoulder and led him over to the bed which wasn’t completely destroyed. David understood what he wanted and carefully sat down on the mossy bed, his legs dangling over the edge as Healer looked him over. It was just like the doctor’s appointments he attended as a kid- there were no words, no instruction, just the expectation that David do what wasn’t asked of him (except for bad things, like recalibrating a scale while the doctor’s back was turned so it actually read the correct weight of a person). But for this doctor’s exam, David didn’t even need a gown. Healer just ran a hand along David’s forearm, glowing a slight green where their skin made contact, and then looked at him like one would at a cute puppy trapped in a storm drain. After a moment, he checked himself and pulled out a small clay tablet and stylus.

“You don’t have any current injuries, you can thank the Ankh room for that.” Healer said, writing on his tablet, “I was surprised you didn’t pass out from Thor’s enthusiasm, again probably the Ankh. Seems you’re in perfect health, for the moment anyways.”

As he said the last few words, Healer glared in Thor’s direction, who was awkwardly trying to put his bed back together. David was tempted to laugh at the extremely huge fat man playing with pieces of wood clenched in his pudgy hands, trying to put them back together only for them to break more in his grip. Then he’d get a bit flustered and try to pick up the newly broken pieces, and the whole scenario repeated itself.

Focusing back on Healer, David managed to stutter a question.

“So, uh, can you or somebody explain the whole ‘I can’t go home’ thing? If that’s ok?”

“Calm down, you’ll get your answers. Thor!” Healer said, turning his head slightly, “Care to explain why our dear friend cannot return to the only home he’s known?”

Thor looked up at the sound of his name, but looked so confused at what Healer had asked him. Like a child asked to explain calculus. Healer rolled his eyes.

“Asgardians.” Healer mumbled under his breath, then shifted his gaze back towards David. “This’ll be a long explanation. Are you comfortable? Good.” he said, not waiting for David to answer.

David processed what Healer said. “Ok, but isn’t Mulan’s Chinese? And I thought Isis said she was Egyptian.”

“And I’m Yoruban.” Healer continued, “We all come from different pantheons, volunteers to help maintain the world as it is. We are the only exceptions to the treaties that restrict us to our pantheons, and that in of itself is a motive to join for some gods.”

“Which is why we need to get you out of here, your presence here could be seen as evidence of Asgardian expansion, which the other Pantheons would not take kindly to. I’m honestly surprised you weren’t discovered sooner.”

“I thought of joining up once, you know!” Thor said, waving his hand in the air, “Sounded fun, meeting new people, going to new places. But my father needs me back home to keep order, especially with the Jotnar problem.”

Healer looked at Thor skeptically, “Sure. And it didn’t have anything to do with the sobriety requirement?”

Thor either didn’t hear him or he chose to ignore him, because there was no response from the thunder god.

“Why do Isis and Mulan call you Healer?” David asked.

“Because that’s my name, or at least the name the General gave me. She didn’t want to advertise our identities, something about bias or efficiency or whatnot. Either way, the minute we were all assigned here, she gave us our codenames.”

David thought for a moment, “She called Isis by her real name.”

Healer cracked a smile, “Yes, because Isis would just ignore the codename Magician, said it was a terrible name.”

“That makes sense. So, I know you, Isis, Mulan, Thor, and that weird guy with the top hat. Each of you are from a different pantheon? Just how many pantheons are there?” David asked, feeling like an idiot.

“How many human cultures have stories about encounters with gods or mythical figures?” Healer asked in response “The vast majority of stories about encounters with the ‘Divine’ that have made their way to human culture today are about us, partially due to some cultures’ writing systems, but mostly due to us. The rulers of the pantheons really don’t like to be forgotten. The ones that have a say in the matter, anyways.”

“So the guy with the top hat and the cane, the one Thor was fighting,” David said, pieces snapping together in his head, “He’s from Haiti’s Pantheon?”

“It’s called the Vodou Pantheon, but yes.” Healer said, “The god Thor fought was Baron Samedi, the mischievous of the death god of Vodou.”

“What will happen to him?” David asked

“What do you mean?” Healer rebutted

“He brought someone into their Parthenon and turned a city to rubble, isn’t that enough to, I don’t know, put him in jail? Or turn him into a frog or something? I mean, you’re gods, aren’t you?” David reasoned

Healer sighed softly, “The Guardians were created for a single purpose- to keep the Pantheons separate and maintain their borders. Charging people for their crimes both within and outside of their Pantheon is a responsibility for their ruling god. And given Samedi’s influence over the other Loa, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was congratulated for annihilating a pesky human city.”

David stared at him like he had just stabbed a puppy through the stomach and drank its blood. Before his eyes flashed the friends he had visited Haiti with- the ones he would never know survived or died in Thor’s reign of drunken terror. Healer noticed David’s change, and the muscles in his face relaxed in realization.

“I’m… sorry, I forgot you were raised by humans. I’m quite fond of them too, and you’ll find most gods do their best to avoid hurting them. It’s just that when a few of them have little regard for human life, they tend to kill a lot of them. Did you have anyone there? Friends? Family?” Healer said in a sorrowful tone, constantly stealing glares at Thor’s hair-obscured back.

David’s mind flashed through three faces- two men and a woman, each with smiles that, in David’s memory, turned blue and sad. These three were his friends from the university, it was at their insistence that he came with them on their archeological dig near Cap-Haitien. In spite of the fact that he was an engineering student and decidedly not an archeologist, he resolved to go with them and have a good time. David wished he could have done something- anything- to help them. Not just his friends, but the city as a whole.

But if I’m a god, he reasoned with himself, barely even humoring the thought that must mean something. I… I could have fought. Or I could have taunted Thor. Or I-

TAKE. IT. BACK.

David slipped out of his self-induced trance and realized he hadn’t answered the question. “I visited the city with a group of friends, we were in a bar when it started. The roof collapsed, and I was the first to flee. I have no idea what happened to anyone else in my group. I would ask if I could look for them, but I’m guessing that’s against procedure?”

Healer bowed his head. “I’m sorry. If they stayed off the streets, they should be fine.”

It was then that Thor felt the need to chime in, “Yeah, I would never hit a bar with Mjolnir, especially when I’m drunk.”

Not feeling in the mood for any more conversation, all three men stopped talking.

 

And so the three of them sat in the room for what felt like hours, and realistically it was probably longer than that. David felt bad about how he spoke to Healer and tried to apologize, but the old-looking man just put an understanding hand up. Either that, or he was just telling David to shut up. Both were appropriate, he reasoned with himself as the rhythmic listing of the boat became the dominant sound in the room. As time went on, David noticed something odd- he wasn’t hungry. Sure, he was naturally a light eater, but to his knowledge, he hadn’t eaten since the bar the night before, all of which he lost during the chaos. Even more odd was the extreme medium that he felt. it was as if his stomach was balanced exactly being hungry and being full, perfectly “normal”, which naturally makes it abnormal. In fact, everything about his body felt normal, even his hands, which normally get wrinkled the instant even a single droplet of water touches them, were covered in weird plant-goo, and yet had no wrinkles.

What had Isis called this place? The Ankh room? David pondered. Ankh… is that a person? A symbol? I remember Mel was talking about it, was it… Egyptian? I really don’t want to ask what it me-

“Ankh room, named after the Egyptian Pantheon’s symbol of life.” Healer said, interrupting David’s train of thought, “The room’s enchantment hastens the healing process and keeps every living thing within its border alive as long as it can. So long as you are in this room and nobody is actively trying to kill you, you won’t die.”

“Thank you.” David said, his throat dry and voice hoarse. That explains the moss.I wonder how it works exactly, holding cellular mitosis in stasis until there is some sort of injury? Then, I guess it would stimulate rapid cellular reproduction to repair the injuries. But then what would happen to the virus or bacteria? They would obviously reproduce on their own, but if they infected someone, wouldn’t that put them in a state of constant illness? And if they’re constantly reproducing, wouldn’t that cause mutated strains to thrive?

          Realizing the dangers of the room he now touched, sat and breathed in, David stood up and took tiny breaths, trying not to show his panic.

          “What are you doing?” Healer asked bluntly.

          David looked from side to side, trying to come up with a believable answer that he could communicate without actually speaking. He was just about to mime a non-existent need to use the bathroom when Healer gave him a knowing look.

          “I’m impressed.” Healer said with a note of appreciation, “not many gods know that illness is caused by living things, and even fewer connect them to the Ankh rooms. Don’t worry, we purge them every couple of years in remote areas. There isn’t anything in here yet that would be deadly even to a human.”

          David took a deep breath. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

          “Please, for my sake, stop saying that word. Do not insult me by apologizing for your intelligence.” Healer snarled

          “What?” David said, confused.

          “I paid you a compliment, a well-deserved one, I might add. By saying that you’re ‘sorry’ for reaching a conclusion I praised you for is throwing that praise back in my face. Don’t do it again.”

          “I’m- I didn’t mean to-“ David stopped himself, wincing as if in pain “Thank you.”

The silence in the room returned, but was quickly interrupted by a rather sudden jolt sending David carrining out of his bed and face-first onto the floor.

“Thank Olodumare, we’re here.” Healer said with an equal parts exhausted and grateful tone. “Come on, you two.”

Healer walked over to the door-wall and pressed his hand against it to prompt it to open. Once the door was large enough, the trio entered with David sandwiched uncomfortably between the (slightly) cranky old dude with a cane and the enormous toddler-horror movie monster hybrid that was Thor, who almost had to be on his hands and knees to get through the bubble-shaped passage. As the steel doors to the Ankh room closed, the sick taste-smell abated, and David found himself no longer struggling for breath. That said, the lack of constant assault on his nostrils allowed to appreciate just how bad Thor smelled. David tried to close the distance between himself and Healer, but Thor maintained his own distance from David (clearly, he didn’t understand social cues). And he was… Sniffing David?

David didn’t want to say anything, but since he had closed the distance between himself and Healer, the audible sniffing sound reached the Yoruban god’s ears.

Still walking forward, he tilted his head at Thor. “What are you doing?”

“Uh… Smelling.” Thor said, eyes wide like a deer in headlights

“No!” Healer said, voice dripping with sarcasm “I thought you were whistling!”

Thor, clearly uninitiated in the arts of sarcasm, smiled at the perceived compliment, revealing that he was missing several of his front teeth, one from his upper mouth and two others from his lower jaw.

“Thanks!” He said, his voice shaking the floor beneath him.

Healer rolled his eyes. “Why were you smelling him.” He said in an impatient tone.

“Oh, well when I hugged him, I thought I smelled something… weird about him.” Thor explained, “And since we left the room, I’ve been smelling it more. He definitely smells Asgardian, but at the same time, he doesn’t. I’ve smelled it before, but I can’t remember where.”

David’s mind raced with questions. What is it with these people and their sense of smell? Is it seriously how they differentiate the different gods? How would that even work? Distinct pheromones for the different… Parthe- no, Pantheons? I don’t think I smell like Thor, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s something subtle, like an underlying chemical compound that humans don’t smell, but gods can? Am I seriously trying to explain gods and myth with biology? Just smile and nod, David, smile and nod.

When they finally reached the main hallway, they found both Isis, Mulan and one other waiting for them. Isis was still in her sleeveless blue dress, but she carried with her a sort of tote bag, which bulges and looked heavy with something… rocks, maybe. Not that Isis seemed to be strained in the slightest, her shoulders were perfectly horizontal, like she wasn’t even holding the bag at all. In addition, David noticed that the strap of the bag didn’t seem to make an impact on the shoulder, not even a slight whitening. David experimentally tried to lift the bag, to which Isis smirked at. If David’s sense of scale was to be trusted, the bag and all of its contents must have weighed at least fifty pounds.

Which must have been half the weight of the armor Mulan wore, as she was now fully back in her black-and-red armor, complete with the haunting helmet and mask. Strapped on her back were her bow and quiver, both painted in reds and black, along with her double-edged sword, resting comfortably in its sheath. In short, she cut the visage of an unbeatable black knight from medieval fantasy.

The third person was the man who had fought Thor with Mulan down in Haiti. He was also the one with the least amount of his body covered. And that included Thor, who was still naked (Thank god for Asgardian body hair). The man had long, curly black hair both peeking out from under his helmet and sprouting from his chin. His skin was lighter in tone than Isis, but was still much darker than David’s. If he had to guess, David would say that he was from someplace in the middle-east? His eyes were normal with the exception of his iris, which was a chocolate brown mixed with flakes of gold, which projected equal parts hunger and appreciation, especially when gazing upon Thor. He wore a golden egg-shaped helmet and cloak, a short white skirt, and simple sandals on his feet. And nothing else. His chest hair was trimmed, but not shaved, his arms toned with muscle and unlike his chest, his legs were completely shaved. David decided it would be best to stay close to Isis and Mulan.

Isis reached into her tote-bag and pulled out a massive bundle of clothing, which she then tossed to Thor as Mulan led the group down the hallway. Thor was just finishing getting dressed when David decided to ask Isis:

“What are we doing?”

Isis looked like she was about to respond when Mulan abruptly spoke up.

“We are here to retrieve Thor’s hammer from the ocean god of this realm, Agwe.” Mulan said, her voice distorted through her mask, “As for what you are doing here, if the hammer is too dangerous to move, we need someone who can remove the energy of the enchantment. And if you couldn’t do that, we wouldn’t have found you in the first place.”

David processed this information. “So, this… Agwe… he’ll let us come and go, no problem?”

“No.” Mulan said in a punctual, factual tone. “Most sea gods are a bit temperamental by nature, and Agwe is a bit of a collector. No, that’s not right. Hoarder. He thinks everything that makes its way into the ocean is his own personal property. His entire palace is made of that junk, so he’s likely going to try and keep the hammer as a sculpture or a chair or something. He won’t let it go without a fight.”

“And you’re taking me into the warzone?” David asked with pleading eyes.

Isis put a hand on David’s shoulder. “Relax, you’re with a master warrior, a woman who quite literally wrote the book on spellcasting, a natural healer who can chew out primordial chaos, the man who can literally burp thunder, and King.” She said as she aimed her thumb over her shoulder, where the man with the weird hat was inching his fingers towards Thor’s biceps. “He doesn’t have much going for him.”

“And we need to get the hammer back to Asgard regardless, which would be why Thor isn’t in isolation right now.” David couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like Mulan was scowling under her helmet. “He’s the only one who can lift it with any consistency, and even if we all combined strength, the ship isn’t designed to contain something that heavy. It’ll just rip through the hull and fall back into the ocean.”

David stopped for a moment. “If the hammer’s so heavy, what are we doing in a boat? You’d need a submarine or a-” Fear flashed in his eyes, “A deep-sea diving mechanism. Please tell me you aren’t going to put me in one of those diving bells.”

Isis looked at him, shaking her head. “I don’t know what those are, but we definitely don’t use them.”

“Then how-” David started to ask,

“We’re here.” Mulan said, ascending the stairway and throwing open the hatch above her.

Isis followed her, and David continued the trend, trying not to notice that Thor was still smelling him. Water dripped down the stairs as he stepped onto the deck- splat in a puddle. Careful to maintain his balance, David looked at his surroundings in sheer awe. The deck he stood on belonged to a boat which must have been the size of an aircraft carrier, but instead of steel and concrete, this monstrosity was made from an entire redwood forest’s worth of wood. The design of the ship reminded him of pirate movies he had seen clips of on the internet, only widened so much that it looked like someone had flattened the boat. The masts were immensely thick, and from where David stood, around the height of small skyscrapers. The sails, white and spotless, were bunched up so high they looked like wispy clouds. The deck itself looked like it had been through a hurricane, more puddle than wood, reflecting the strange sky above them.

The first thing David noticed about his immediate surroundings was just how quiet it was. A single drop of water falling in a puddle was so loud in the silence, it was as if it had been projected through a loudspeaker. And as David listened, he could hear that normally tiny drop echo throughout the entire space. He looked up to where the sky should be to see a bright light- the sun- rippling high above the ship. It was bright, David noted, but it wasn’t as bright as he remembered it. And was it… shimmering. And that was when he looked around at the other sides of the cavern. Next to the ship, which was bobbing gently on the water, was a sandy cliff which acted as some sort of natural dock. Beyond the dock was a half-circle of dry land, a decent enough size for a massive manor to be built in its center. And along the edge of the semicircle- and surrounding the starboard side of the ship- was a dome of swirling water, midnight blue along the ground’s border.

Great, David thought sarcastically with a twinge of dread, I’m in an episode of Spongebob!

David followed Mulan and Isis down the wooden plank which bridged the gap between the ship and the natural dock. Looking down, he noticed that the boat itself was actually several stories tall, which meant that as he crossed the plank, he was facing a potential several-story fall into water. Like hitting concrete, if he remembered physics correctly. David nearly screamed when Thor reached the midpoint of the plank and it started to crackle. But somehow, every person managed to make it across, though Healer looked like he wanted to chuck Thor into the water.

The amazement and wonder of the place abated in David’s mind, and he began again:

“I still don’t under-”

“It’s a vodou enchantment on the stones along the borders of this bubble.” Isis interrupted, “Ocean gods can breathe air and water, but they largely prefer air. In addition, it makes it easier to host non-water breathers, and prevents their personal residence from being attacked. The enchantment on the stones pushes the majority of the water back and provides the air for this place. And yes, the boat can sail underwater.”

“Okay,” David said, mind sorting through the information he had been barraged with, “I was actually wondering: Why do you need to retrieve the hammer? You’re gods, couldn’t you just replace it?”

In the back Healer chuckled, “Why don’t we just replace Thor while we’re at it? That would certainly make life easier.”

Isis laughed at that too, and though David couldn’t see him, he heard the one called King fail to suppress a giggle. Mulan turned to David, red eyes peeking out from the sockets in her mask.

“Do you seriously not know?” She asked, faint amusement in her warbled voice.

“Um… no.” David said

Mulan looked over to her companion. “Isis?”

Isis grinned and began, “When a god leaves their native Pantheon, they lose a good percentage of their power. Without their native energies surrounding them, they become weaker, more vulnerable, and significantly easier to kill. This was long before there were any Guardians, and since most gods didn’t want to lose power whenever they felt the urge to annihilate a foreign city or lose a hand when wrestling with some exotic creature, they experimented with ways to bring a Pantheon’s energy with a god. Eventually they discovered that with an enchantment tailored to a single god, about a cup full of said god’s blood, and the right materials, passed through the hands of their mother, it was possible to create objects that kept a god’s power in foreign lands. We call these objects “Sources of Power”, or simply sources, and they were highly effective. Not only could they grant gods a freedom they hadn’t known before, but they were also nearly indestructible and insanely powerful, even in one’s own Pantheon. But with that comes another problem: They are annoyingly difficult to make. Even in optimal conditions, to even attempt the creation of a source is a long and difficult process, and the more powerful the god, the harder it is to create a stable source. The hammer Thor lost, Mjolnir, is his only source. And from what I’ve heard, it almost wasn’t made at all. Do you understand now?”

David hesitated, choosing his next words carefully. “Sort of. I understand that the hammer is important, but why are we going back for it? If it’s something designed to make the wanton destruction of other Pantheons possible, then shouldn’t we just leave it here? Or even just destroy it? Also… why am I here?”

David heard Healer take a sharp inhale behind him. It wasn’t one of surprise, but it wasn’t anger either. David turned around to see a small grin on the old man’s face, and he gave a small nod in David’s direction.

Isis was about to say something when Mulan interrupted her, “If it was a pinecone on a stick, or someone’s favorite sword, then yes, we would leave it or destroy it. But the hammer is a unique case, as it belongs to a god from one of the higher Pantheons, and even more so because it is used to push back the forces of evil in their realms. If we left it here, Asgard would go to war with the Vodou to get it back, which would destroy the Vodou Pantheon as well as lead to Asgard’s destruction, and we would be blamed for it. That is why we are here. You are here in case the hammer’s energy is unstable. Your ability to destroy the enchantment would neutralize it.”