Page 39 of The Goddess is Fierce
“Blacksmithing is dirty work. I’m filthy and I probably stink.”
“And I care about that why? I need to do laundry anyway and I take a lot of showers,” she said, pouncing on me and hugging me.
“Dude, she can’t smell you like I can, but gods must stink differently than the rest of us because you smell amazing,” West said.
“Bro, you can’t say shit like that and insist you’re straight,” Ren said.
I just chuckled.
“I haven’t known West very long, but he strikes me as the type of guy who is very secure with himself and doesn’t have a toxic bone in his body. He gives compliments and does the things he does because he knows they are true, recognizes it might brighten someone’s day when he does or says something, and he doesn’t really care what people may think about it becauseheknows who he is,” I said.
“I think you just totally summed up West,” Oscar said.
West put his hand over his heart and pretended to swoon.
“My dude, only a few people have gotten me on that level before. If Iwasbisexual, I’d be totally into you because you may actually be hotter than me.”
I threw back my head and laughed. I’d never done the group thing before. According to my father, I’d married really young to the girl I’d lost my virginity to. No one really liked her and thought she was bad for me. I’d also been pretty young when I died. I’d been back with no memories or magic longer than I was alive as a god. Supernaturals weren’t exactly lining up to recruit me and humans hadn’t really caught up on the whole polyamory thing. It was still illegal.
But if I was going to do a polyamorous thing with George for the first time in my life, I really liked these guys. Oscar and Ren had accepted me when I was just Sol in maintenance bringing them their luggage. West and Church were sure I wasn’t a murderer long before I was.
“What are you all doing out here?” I asked.
George filled me in on their speakeasy mission. I had a token. The ghosts never spoke to me or told me the truth about who I was. They never visited me or tried to ease my burden about what happened during my blackouts, even though I knew they knew. They left me a note and a mission the very first time I got a job here and the token worked every time I got rehired. The ghosts might not havehelpedme, but they never ratted me out either.
I told everyone about my token and how hard it was to unlock the note without magic. The quest they gave me was completely unmagical, but getting texts written by ghosts to show itself required some finesse and me stealing some things from the potions lab.
“What was your mission?” Church asked.
“I had to find a certain library book and go talk to the campus blacksmith. That used to be a job here, and the stadium usedto be where everyone kept their horses and carriages until cars were everywhere and they made a parking lot on the other side of campus. Fuck! The library book was on Norse gods and it had the story of Loki killing me in it. It didn’t make sense at the time, so I thought they were fucking with me.”
I really was pissed at the time because I was operating under the theory that a god was trying to make something, fucked up, and ended up with me. A lot of gods didn’t want to be responsible for an entire magical race and didn’t create any. Up until very recently, I didn’t think any of the Norse gods tried their hand at creation, but I found out I was wrong and one did. I was still a little mad because they could have given me so much more than a library book with no context.
“The forge is also important,” Oscar said. “We know the arrow is important, too, and Gabriel thinks all these weapons associated with gods were made by blacksmiths who knew how to infuse metal and magic. What happened when you went to talk to the blacksmith?”
Fuck.Talking to the blacksmith revealedsomething,but it also kicked open the door to about a million more questions.
“The blacksmith was a completely nonjudgmental werewolf. He didn’t give a shit about my lack of magic because there were people that treated him like garbage for being a blacksmith instead of some fancier job. We just sat and talked while he worked. Honestly, it was nice not having someone talk down to me when I was among supernaturals.
“That was when I realized something. I didn’t knowhowI knew and honestly, I still don’t, but I knew nearly every step of what he was doing on the forge. This was back before I knew I couldn’t age or die, so I thought it was just regular amnesia and told him. He let me help him out on the forge to see if it would help trigger some memories. It didn’t, but I really like working with my hands, so I still do it. I can’t always make fun thingslike Hydra signs for the dodgeball team, but it’s still nice fixing things.”
“Fuck, all those pieces are going to be a sign for the dodgeball team? Now I’m wishing I was bisexual. You might notplaydodgeball, but making the mascot is still sexy.”
“West,” George laughed. “My dad was right then. He said you either learned it to survive after you came back or you befriended the dwarves on Asgard and they taught you. There’s no magic coming off this forge, so I don’t think the killer was forcing you to forge those arrows during your blackouts. That was another theory.
“The dwarves might have taught you to forge magical weapons, but you don’t have magic. And I don’t thinkanyonecould forge a weapon with someone’s essence in it except Azren and even they say that arrow doesn’t make sense. The arrow is important, but I don’t think it’s like Thor’s hammer or Poseidon’s trident.”
“Don’t quote me on this because honestly, if I made a god weapon, I don’t remember it. I’m going by menowand not me then. If I was making a weapon and I wanted it attuned to a certain person, I’d add their blood to my process. If I have to fix something or clean it when a class is in progress, I always pay attention to the lecture.Everysupernatural race uses blood in some aspect. Even if the killerhadfigured out how to rip a piece of their essence out without Azren, why would they do that when they could just prick their finger?”
“That makes sense,” Church said. “I’m an energy vampire, but I also get a boost if I drink blood. Most of my classes this semester have been about blood since I’m the only energy vampire here. Vampires aren’t feeding off blood per se. It’s the magicinthe blood that sustains us.
“My dad tried to get me to use my energy vampire powers to convince a witch to sic a revenant on a rival he wanted gone,but not traced back to him. I got way more information on necromancy than a ten-year-old vampire probably needed. You can’t raise the dead without blood. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and create a revenant, but if you don’t have good magic in your blood, it’s guaranteed. None of this makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Oscar said. “Blood is important in my magic, too. It’s not nearly as crucial in some of the other supernaturals, but they all have a few rituals that use it.”
“Kitsunes aren’t into the bloodletting and we get a lot of magic with each new tail, but even we have a blood spell. It’s kind of an urban legend. Some people swear it works and some people say it’s horse shit. There’s supposed to be these potions we can drink with a drop of our blood that’s supposed to give you a new tail and let you pick which power it gives you. My family said even if it actually worked, it was cheating. My cousin tried it anyway and ended up with diarrhea for a month so it’s probably just a myth.”
“I remember that!” Oscar laughed. “My Abuela was cooking for everyone and he ran out of her house and drove all the way home because he could never shit at anyone else’s house. Your mom yelled to our whole neighborhood that he deserved to pee out his butt for being stupid.”
