Women around him were screaming as the God of Disease advanced, but Masaaki knew better than to take his attention from his opponent with Blóðvefr. That’s Pestilence, Masaaki thought. I’m a mere yatagarasu and I’m about to fight a god…

Pestilence, for his part, seemed amused that Masaaki was in a ready stance, the sword still in its nondescript form. “And just what do you think you’re going to do to me with a sword, little birdie?” he laughed.

Masaaki raised Ra’s Favor high and thought a prayer to his ancestors. Immediately, the weapon took on the full glow of the sun, blinding in its intensity. Seeing that, Pestilence hesitated, the blood draining from his face. “What—”

Masaaki lunged forward and cut into the arm Pestilence was using to hold Freyja’s Blóðvefr. Immediately, the dagger fell to the ground in a burst of locusts as Pestilence took a startled step backwards.

“Get the dagger!” the cat-woman—Freyja—screamed from the roof overhead.

Surprised she was still around, Masaaki glanced up at the goddess where she hid between the lightning-damaged peaks of the vampires’ house.

“The dagger, Masaaki!” she cried, gesturing at the ground in front of him. “Don’t let him pick it back up!”

But before Masaaki could get to the blade, Pestilence had already reformed around it, lifting it from the ground in a surge of insects.

“How did you get that sword?!” Pestilence snarled, taking a step backwards, his hand fisted on Blóðvefr. There was real fear in his eyes, now.

“Don’t let him escape with that dagger, Champion!” Freyja screamed from the rooftop. “You get it from him right now!”

For a split second, Pestilence’s startled gaze found the filthy goddess crouched on the roof and his brown eyes widened minutely, then hastily returned to Masaaki. Masaaki saw uncertainty there, and decided to press his advantage. As directed, he went after the dagger arm again, this time repeatedly, and after a couple tries, again managed to cut the arm from the god’s body. This time, however, Pestilence’s entire form burst into a swarm of insects that surrounded Masaaki before the dagger even hit the ground, flitting around him, harrying him, diving into his mouth, eyes, ears, burrowing under his clothes, chewing on his skin…

The ones that took mouthfuls of his skin exploded in little bursts of light as the sword flared to match. Masaaki dove into the heart of the bugs, swinging Ra’s sword, trying desperately to find the athame at their center. For a moment, his fingers connected with something hard and a strong wash of bone-chilling, icy seiðr trickled up his arm, numbing it. Blind and deaf, he groped for it, desperate to get his hand around it…

The insects pulled away from him en masse, yanking Blóðvefr away in a cloud as they took to the sky. For a moment, they re-formed into a gigantic Egyptian head as Pestilence scowled down at him, then they dispersed again, swarming upwards and away.

“No, no no!” the goddess on the roof cried, jumping down to land beside Masaaki. At the departing haze of bugs, she screamed, “Come back here, you cantankerous insect!”

A moment later, the dread unicorn’s horn slammed into her as it lunged for Masaaki.

The woman grunted, glanced down at the horn that was now piercing her side, then at the beast. “Oh, fu—” she started, then was hefted off the ground and thrown over the beast’s back like a sack of rice, leaving Masaaki to face the unicorn alone. He fell into another crouch and brandished his sword at the beast, who was even then pawing its cloven ebony hooves against the trampled ground and putrescence-soaked grasses.

“Don’t let the horn touch you!” the woman cried from the ground. “Not even Ra will be able to protect you from the horn!”

But even as she shouted her warning, the animal was changing, the color of its horn flickering from white to black where it was covered in the woman’s blood, its eyes similarly going from pristine cerulean blue to black-streaked to blue again.

“It’s been blood-bound!” Freyja cried, lunging to her feet. “That’s not a real dread! Hit it with your sword!”

Seeing the puddles of corruption that had once been human, Masaaki swallowed hard at the idea of putting himself within range of the corrupted horn as the unicorn flung its head this way and that, stomping and thrashing. At the memory of his father fighting the Nightlander beast in the Shogun’s court, however, Masaaki straightened. I am samurai, and this is what I was made to do.

When the head was on the opposite end of its swing, he lunged in and hit the unicorn with a full cut upon its massive shoulder.

The unicorn’s entire body flashed pearlescent white, the golden feet lunging away from Masaaki even as Masaaki yanked his sword free. Blood spilling down his chest, the blue-eyed beast blinked at him in bewilderment and fear.

So much fear… Masaaki was startled when their eyes met. It has no idea what’s happening, Masaaki thought, his heart reaching out to it.

“Hit it again!” Freyja cried. “That wasn’t enough! You gotta hit it wherever it was blood-bound. The back, Masaaki! Sever its spine if you have to!” Already, the blackness was flickering back, and the wound was at war with the corruption and shadows. The unicorn, who had jerked to look at Freyja, pranced backwards away from her, shaking its head and panting in an obvious inner struggle, stumbling, as the wave of black shimmered over the white, then retreated again.

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Masaaki readied himself to make a cut at the animals’ back. The unicorn’s eyes met his again, for a heartbeat clear and blue and afraid, and, in that moment, bleeding, realizing what he was about to do, the animal spun and bolted.

“Go after it!” Freyja snapped, rushing towards them frantically. “Take out a leg! Don’t let it get away!”

Masaaki lunged to make a cut at a back leg, but whereas Masaaki was the flitting of sun upon the leaves, the unicorn was like an ephemeral wisp of thought. One moment, it was there, the next, it was a blur in the distance, hurtling up the beach away from him, heading north.

By the time Freyja made it to his side, panting, the unicorn was already out of sight in the distance through the trees, moving faster than any animal or machine should. “It’s going to hit Anchorage in a couple minutes,” she said, cursing. “That’s just what Pestilence wants. A distraction to lure out some more Champions.” She cursed. She glanced at Thunderbird, who was writhing on the ground in the brush a dozen feet away, clutching his chest, groaning. Raising her voice to Thunderbird, she shouted, “Do you believe me now, Brad?!” She held out the fresh rip in her shirt for his inspection.

Indeed, where the unicorn’s horn had taken her in the side, the only indication she had been wounded was a rip in her shirt, whereas the great Lord of Thunder was groaning and shuddering and sweating.

It took them both a moment to realize that Thunderbird was in some sort of fever dream, lightning coruscating over his body as he thrashed, his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“May the wildcats of a hundred mountains piss on Pestilence and his ill-begotten progeny,” the woman snarled, showing fangs. Her eyes started to glow a soft blue with her rage. “Brad! Snap out of it.” She walked over to the great God of Rain and kicked him.

Masaaki’s eyes widened at that and he quickly dropped to a dogeza on his knees, with his forehead to the bloody grasses.

The kick seemed to help the great Lord of the Sky, however, because he groaned and shuddered even as lightning started to roll up her leg from the contact.

Freyja brushed the lightning aside and squatted beside the great Thunderbird and slapped him hard on his sweaty face. “Wake up!” As Brad groaned and his eyes flickered, with more lightning rolling up her body, she grabbed him by the eyelids and forced them open. Into his face, she said, “Stay awake or it’s gonna have an easier time overwhelming you, numbskull. Just keep your eyes open for the next ten minutes while some of the magic neutralizes. It wasn’t a real dread. You’ve got a chance because it wasn’t a real dread.”

Then Masaaki realized what she was saying. If the great Lord Thunderbird only had a chance of surviving…

He thought again of how she had taken the full horn and had brushed it off, with nary a wound. It confirmed his earlier suspicions, and he kept his head firmly against the ground.

She continued nursing Thunderbird back from the brink—mainly with violence—until the great God of Rain opened his eyes and they cleared under his sweaty, shaking brow.

“Better!” she snapped, standing as soon as Thunderbird’s brown eyes focused on her with something akin to cognizance. “Now get us to this Theo. I need an öndkar if I’m going to start unweaving this mess.”

Brad continued to shiver, feverish. “I…can’t…feel…”

“That’s normal,” she said. “It’ll probably last a couple weeks. Get me to Theo.”

“No…feeling…” Brad managed.

She squinted at him. “Are you trying to tell me you can’t pinpoint where he is anymore?”

Very slowly, Brad nodded, moaning.

She cocked his head at him. “Meaning you can no longer portal us to his location?”

He nodded. “I can see my ribs,” Brad whined.

Freyja’s eyes narrowed. Then, with two big strides, walked up and kicked him in the stomach, making him curl on himself with a groan. “That’s for fucking us. You utterly dumb avian spawn of incest.” She twisted to face Masaaki, eyes glowing again with commanding businesslike intensity. “Where’s Theo? What town? Maybe we can catch a taxi that takes payment in historical artifacts.”

Masaaki hesitated, biting his lip.

“And get off the ground,” she snapped. “You’re the guy with the sword. Act like it.”

Masaaki quickly lunged to his feet. “Apologies, megami.” Then, with an unhappy look at Thunderbird, he said, “I don’t know what town. Somewhere in the forest. He was going to take me there after we freed the women…”

The women that were, even then, mostly scattered in rotten, stinking bony piles across the yard.

“Well, that’s just great,” Freyja snapped. “Totally worth it, wouldn’t you say, guys?” she said, gesturing at the field of bodies and unicorn-trampled undergrowth. “I mean, freeing those girls was such a wise decision, when we were clearly time-strapped and I said as much.”

“You don’t…have to be…a bitch,” Thunderbird managed, still shuddering and sweating as he propped himself up, breathing heavily.

Masaaki’s eyes widened and he took a subconscious step backwards even as Freyja spun on Thunderbird, grabbed him by his sweaty ears with both hands, and yanked his head up until their faces were inches apart. “I have been bound for eight hundred years while a doppelganger poses as me in the Third Lands and my patience for addlebrained, goat-fucking, fish-smelling morons is running rather thin.” She shook him, her voice raising to a shout. “We had the advantage and we lost it because of you. We could already be on our path to unbinding this mess, but you had to strut around like the prolapsed anus of a feral hog. You might as well be working for Pestilence, you arrogant windbag!”

Thunderbird groaned and his eyes rolled into the back of his head again and he went into convulsions. Narrowing her eyes, Freyja released his head and grabbed him by the shirt with one hand, then slapped him again with the other.

Thunderbird groaned and his eyes flickered open again, eyes searching for something to hold onto.

“Stay awake,” she muttered, deflated. “His magic is stronger if you’re not awake to fight it.”

Shuddering, Thunderbird nodded, but his eyes started to wander again. The goddess snapped her fingers in front of his eyes, refocusing him. “Just stay conscious,” she insisted, her tone more gentle. “As much of an asshole as you are, I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Masaaki blinked at the raw emotion in Freyja’s voice. He realized, stunned, that her words were strained with fear.

Fear…because despite who she was, she was essentially powerless, at the mercy of two incompetents who had almost already gotten them all killed out of benevolent urges better suited to women. Masaaki felt a wave of shame for having already failed in such an important task, using his heart instead of his mind.