At least Martin was predictable. I got Father Will to position himself opposite the school gates.

I wasn’t sure I even needed to give a description, but I did anyway. Of course, I couldn’t change my behavior. I studiously ignored him, which seemed to have more of an effect than engaging in banter.

Even if the banter was more fun. I wondered about the crossover between pantheons. Were Ragnarok and Armageddon ultimately the same thing?

I suspected so. Did that make Surtur Satan? No. It was all true and it overlapped and flowed across each other, but all that could matter to me was my own “side,” as it were.

Still, I headed out into the city. I didn’t go home, not right now. That thought had made me uneasy.

It had made me question my sanity, for a moment. It had made me question my own reality or level of reality. Next time I saw him, I was going to ask Loki. Oddly, I thought I’d get a more comprehensible answer from him than from Thruor.

It couldn’t be the old D&D explanation, that we existed because people believed in us. That seemed too trite and it didn’t explain the power still held by gods that only a tiny percentage still honored.

Or maybe that was all it took. I shook my head, feeling very isolated. I was real in all the ways that mattered. There was no arguing that I was not a person with thoughts and feelings and struggles and difficulties.

At that level, it didn’t matter where I came from or what I was made of, I supposed. At least I wasn’t a vampire.

I almost felt pity for them, mingled with the disgust. Thruor had said that the transformation eventually led to insanity, that most of them were tricked by the newly-turned who seemed “cool,” but they all ended up like the nest we had wiped out in the end.

And that I gave them indigestion. I still felt pity. But also disgust, and I remembered what Loki had said.

Frigga broke the rules.

Even the Gods couldn’t break the rules of death. Well, we couldn’t. I thought of the story of a goddess…I didn’t remember which one…springing from Zeus’ head after his skull was split. The Olympians, apparently, didn’t follow the rules.

But we did, and we had our own way of enforcing them. Some day, I would die. But I could put that day off for a while.

Haunting thoughts and eventually I ducked into a coffee shop to try and chase them away with hot chocolate. This particular shop sold hot chocolate with orange syrup in it – which I hadn’t tried before, but which I swear was invented by some god or other.

Which made me wonder how Loki liked chocolate so much. It was, after all, a New World plant.