Stormbringer by Alis Franklin Read Free Book Online Page A

said. “Okay. I get it. No more moping. Fuck…” But he was laughing.
    It was a start.
    —
    At twelve thirty-six, he got a text from Em:
    › Where are you bro?
    Then, before Sigmund had even started typing his reply:
    › Meet us at Wayne’s in 10.
    Sigmund’s best friends, Em and Wayne, former valkyries and current goths. Wayne was over six feet tall, made of muscle and cleavage and clothes that would make a postapocalyptic Disney princess weep. Em was about Sigmund’s height and weight, and wore the kind of pants that clinked when she walked. She also, between the hours of eight a.m. and four p.m., worked across the floor from Sigmund. Wayne, meanwhile, worked shifts at a comic store in between studying.
    Both Em and Wayne had been to Hel and back for Sigmund. Literally. Twice. Which meant he wasn’t going to ignore Em’s order to meet up for lunch.
    So he ditched Boots with a, “Sorry man, gotta go!” Then made his way out of the office.
    Wayne’s comic shop wasn’t far, across the road and through the park. Down Torr Row and into Diamond Square. Metaverse Book and Comic [sic], wide and open and brightly lit, filled with neat shelves of trades and neat boxes of back issues, decorated by T-shirts and action figures.
    Sigmund had been fourteen the first time he’d stepped into a comic store, trailing along behind a determined Em. Back in those days, the place had been a dingy hole-in-the-wall filled with dust and cobwebs. Sometime between then and now, comics had gone mainstream.
    “Sig! Over here!”
    Wayne, her dark-skinned face grinning beneath an explosion of pink synthetic dreadlocks. She was gesturing to the back of the shop, through the staff door, so Sigmund followed her. Out into a chaos of books and boxes, and Em, sitting on a milk crate and scowling.
    “Where were you?” she asked.
    “Playing video games in Travis’s office,” Sigmund replied. Partly because lies made his teeth hurt but mostly because it was Em and Wayne.
    “Where is he?”
    “He went back to Asgard last night.” Sigmund took up residence against a filing cabinet. Wayne, meanwhile, had perched herself on a desk, huge boots swinging even as her hands clutched an oversized sketchbook.
    Em made a noncommittal noise. “That’ll end badly,” she said. Em and optimism were only the most casual of acquaintances, but, more important, she also knew more Norse mythology than anyone else Sigmund knew, Lain included. So he didn’t think she was wrong so much as he was hoping for her predicted damage to be done in degrees. Small ones.
    “So why the secret meet-ups in the comic shop?” he asked instead. Whatever trouble Lain was getting into, Sigmund couldn’t do much about it.
    Em looked up. “We have a proposal for you,” she said, “and want to hear your thoughts.”
    (uh-oh)
    “What are my thoughts?”
    “You love it, but we’ll get to that part in a minute. It’s about
Gangleri
—”
    “Saga,”
said Wayne.
    “—whatever. It’s about the game. You know the Spark goes obsolete in a few weeks, so we don’t think there’s much point continuing with the dev. We’ve got a better idea instead.”
    Sometimes, less and less frequently as the years rolled by, Sigmund cut code for a video game of his very own. Em did the writing, Wayne the art, and the three of them had been pecking at it for years.
    Probably still would be, if not for the fact the console they’d developed it for was about to be replaced.
    “Show me your better idea,” Sigmund said, hangover scratching behind his eyeballs.
    “Promise you won’t freak out,” said Wayne, fingers tight around her sketchbook.
    “Uh…” Sigmund said.
    Wayne turned the book around.
    Sigmund blinked.
    Then blinked again.
    “Well?” said Wayne.
    “That’s me,” Sigmund managed, when Wayne’s wide, pink, anxious gaze got too much.
    “Girl you,” Em corrected. “Rule 63.”
    Except Rule 63 Sigmund already existed. Or, rather, Sigmund was already Sigyn’s Rule