Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Riley
“What the hell happened?” Imani asks.
“What tongue does this woman speak?” the man asks in his language.
“English.”
“The sound of it… is quite grating on my ears. Teach her our tongue.”
“I’m using magic to talk to you. Everyone here speaks English.”
“I will banish this language and insist that anyone who doesn’t speak Shaarunen will be sacrificed on the spot.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say, turning to head for the subway station until Imani stops me because my pain is her pleasure.
“Why didn’t you tell us what was happening?” she asks.
“I’m sorry, at what point was I supposed to stop and let you know? Was it when I was dragged out here by a ridiculously strong man or when I was flung halfway across the field?”
The man, who can’t seem to understand us, leans in. “Is this woman the queen?”
“Yes. This is Queen Imani, pester her.”
“The way your words are filled with sass tells me that she is not the queen and you are trying to pass me off to a strange woman. I’ve never in my life encountered a person willing to stand up to me like this. I don’t know if I should have you executed or praise you.”
His dark brown eyes scrutinize me as though my expression will help him decide my fate.
“He wants to speak to our queen and is currently deciding if I will be executed,” I explain.
Imani appears concerned. “I’m sure he’s joking.”
I turn to the man. “Queen Imani believes you are hilarious.”
He beams. “Thank you. I am. I have decided I will keep you for now. At least until we tackle this pesky language problem.”
“Ask him the questions,” Imani prompts.
“Right, don’t forget the dating profile questions,” Vinny says.
I nod before addressing the man. “Where do you like to take long walks?”
“Across the battlefield among the bodies of my enemies,” he responds, which I then relay to Imani.
She looks a bit flustered. “Stop with the weird questions. His name. Do you even know his name yet?”
“I don’t care to know his name. Look at the man. He needs to be locked up, and I need to get home,” I say. “He’s over here declaring himself to be a god.”
Imani freezes. “He’s a god?”
She seems to be concerned by that for some reason. I turn back to the man. “What’s your name?”
“I am Torin, son of Kaides and Rena, God of War and Love. And yours, peasant?”
“Riley.”
He stares at me like he’s waiting for more, but oddly enough, I don’t generally introduce myself by claiming whose spawn I am. Or where I reside.
I pass on his ramblings to Imani, who looks more than a little shocked. “Do you really think he’s a god?”
“He looks like a god,” Vinny says as he watches the man who is doing some odd pose, like he wants to terrorize a person or two. Based on how almost everyone but Imani and Vinny back away, I think it’s working.
Imani opens her mouth to say something more when her phone rings. “Hold on. Hello?”
“Peasant, why is that one talking to herself? Is she a witch?”
“Do you guys burn witches where you come from?” I ask in his language.
“I’ve definitely killed a witch or two but never burned one. Are they flammable? Have I been doing it wrong all my life?”
I ignore that as Imani lowers her phone, looking rather concerned.
“We… we need to go. Riley, you need to stay with him. Please? You said you owed me one, and I’m finally cashing in on that.”
“I want to go home.”
“Then take him home. Please. Something’s happened, and I need to know that someone who can communicate with him is watching that man.”
I stare at her in disbelief while they rush off, leaving me alone with Torin the God of Something or Other from Something or Other.
“Did you say something to offend them?” Torin asks. “Or was it merely the look on your face that did it?”
“No, they had an emergency. And…” I grit my teeth, despising the fact that I really do owe Imani.
Like… couldn’t she have been a pal and forgotten that?
I really think that would have been best, and now here I stand, coated in blood, with some dude who thinks he’s a god, and I find myself wishing that I hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning.
“Are you aware there is vermin on your shoulder?”
I reach for Kit and set my hand on her back. “She is not vermin.”
“Or is it dinner?”
I stare at this man in disbelief and decide that I will simply leave him here. Anyone who calls Kit a bad name is a monster.
Storming back inside, I head to Vinny’s empty office and hunt around for some clothes I can borrow while Torin the Great and Annoying God of Something or Other trails after me, head on a swivel.
“The things in this building are very strange.”
“Not as strange as you are,” I inform him as I open a cupboard and find Vinny’s spare clothes. “Wait here. I’m going to go change my clothes because you had to kill the creature on top of me.”
“You should be praising me for saving your life.”
“Uh… huh.”
I head over to the restroom where there’s a shower.
I make it quick, not wanting to spend more time here than I have to or someone will force me to do something else horrible.
I bag up the bloody clothes, put on the loose but clean ones, and hurry to Imani’s office where I leave the bag on her desk as a present for her.
Then I step into the hallway and see a man I don’t know well, but I am aware that he’s a low-level mage.
I purposely bump into him and feel magic tingling up my arms.
Honestly, I simply want to test whether or not I can still understand Torin if I switch to a new magic.
Some knowledge-based magic doesn’t leave since I technically “gained” the knowledge while using it, even once the magic is gone.
So did the woman’s magic make it so I’ll continue to possess that knowledge?
Or is it a type of magic I can only use after borrowing it?
A crash makes me hurry up, so I rush over to Vinny’s office where I narrowly dodge the desk phone being flung through the open doorway. Since I tilted my head to the side, it whips past me and slams into the wall out in the hallway.
“I have slain that annoyance. You are welcome.”
“You’ve slain the desk phone?” Sadly, I can still understand the man, telling me that the magic I’d momentarily borrowed is a permanent fixture… guess I can’t complain too much about that. Being able to understand other languages could come in handy… besides right now.
Because not dealing with this man would be most desirable.
“I regret everything,” I declare.
“That’s the spirit,” Torin says as he charges off without me. When he realizes I’m not coming, he claps his hands like I’m a dog, and I grudgingly follow him.
When we step outside the building, he looks to the left and then to the right. Then his head cranks back while he looks up at a skyscraper a bit of a distance from us.
“Who erected such a large structure?”
“I didn’t ask.”
His eyes narrow as he takes it all in. “Why is everything so tall?”
“So we can cram more buildings next to each other.”
“This is very suspicious. I feel like you are compensating for something if you need your building to be that tall.”
“That’s definitely it.”
He nods approvingly while he looks around some more as though everything he’s seeing is magical, and we’re not even close to the main part of the city.
“Where are the horses?”
“We don’t have horses.”
“Where are the mounts?”
“We’re taking the subway.”
“What a stupid name for a horse. Then again, your lover’s name is Mozzarella.”
I decide that I’ll let him believe whatever he wants to believe as I start down the sidewalk toward the subway station.
This area is pretty dead, so thankfully we don’t pass any pedestrians while he gazes this way and that, taking it all in.
If I were a curious man, I would realize that he’s likely not from these parts—or even this realm—and possibly ask him where the hell he came from.
But I am not. I’m a hungry man who missed lunch and am close to missing dinner at this point.
A hungry man who is suddenly being forcefully thrown into the gutter where Torin uses my body as a shield when a car flies on by.
“I have saved your life twice now. You will be my servant until you die from old age.”
Saved my life? From what?! “It was a car… a car.”
“You are most welcome, human. What was your name again? I will rename you. Hugh Man. Your name will be Hugh Man. Ha. I am hilarious.”
I watch as another car comes and he proceeds to hook an arm around my chest and pin my entire body against his, feet lifted off the ground while he uses me like a shield, prepared to battle the vehicle.
And I’m just… a part of this and I have no damn idea why.
Kit tries to comfort me by wrapping her tail around my neck.
Eyeing the car, Torin declares, “That monster has eaten a human. We should extract the body and have a proper send-off.”
“Those things? Those are our mounts,” I explain because I feel confident that if I don’t explain it soon, he’s going to start a brawl with the next car that comes cruising by.
And for some reason, I’m pretty sure the car isn’t going to win.
He sets me down, seemingly satisfied that the car has moved on.
“I see… they have eaten their owners. We should execute them all.”
“You ride inside them.”
“How morbid.”
“Yep. That’s us. Morbid.” I hurry off… which would have worked better if he wasn’t still holding on to me. I try to disentangle myself, but it’s difficult to do so since he clings on tight while warily staring at every vehicle that passes by.
This should have forewarned me how the subway was going to go.
Instead, I naively charge down the stairs, smack my card against the card reader twice, and proceed to watch Torin battle the old turnstiles that this station still uses.
He kicks it, which just makes it spin once, and then suddenly his leg is caught in it and he’s tumbling through it while I simply observe…
and enjoy, until he kicks it so hard the metal is now bent in the completely wrong direction.