Legends, Mythos, & Shards 1 (Scion RPG/Worm) (Patreon)

The pieces of slate, etched with runes, clattered across the ground. My eyes danced over the runes, seeing the threads that had guided them. Raising an eyebrow, I let out the breath I had been holding in. An auspicious meeting, a fight, and the birth of a defining relationship.

“Probably a Fatebind,” I muttered, picking up the etched pieces of slate and sliding them into a belt pouch. Standing up, I stretched my back, feeling a single, solitary crack. Letting out a disappointed sigh, I picked up Giantsbane and made my way out of the alleyway I’d found myself in.

I had a suspicion for how I got here, what with the Terra Incognita shattering kaboom that happened when I shot Vic’s ritual artifact mid-sacrifice. K-Shard was in place, so it, thankfully, hadn’t been destroyed in the explosion. From what Tyrone had said, the destruction of the ritual was causing the Terra Incognita to collapse, the ritual having progressed too far. So our merry band of six Scions did what had become their go to plan: run like Mother was on our heels.

Most of the Band got through the Doorway just fine, I was in the rear making sure that Ting Feng and Matewa, as the slowest runners, didn’t get left behind. I admit, I may have had a little more fun chucking that bureaucratic weeb through the portal than was strictly necessary. Matewa, upon seeing that, had run faster than I’d ever seen the gangly kid run before. It was funny, admittedly, but the end result was the fact that I didn’t reach the Doorway quite in time.

So, here I was, in a town that looked like a run down American city. East coast, from the side of town that the bay was on, and there was what looked like an oil rig with a mini-Bifrost connecting it to the shore along with a dozen half sunken wrecks further out. I wasn’t exactly well read when it came to geography, sure, I could handle myself and a few others in a survival situation just fine, but I couldn’t tell you the names of places just from looking around, that had always been Esmerelda’s thing.

Either way, I had some cash on me so I’d get some food and figure things out from there. Whistling under my breath, I slung Giantsbane over my shoulder, the strap cinching in place on its own. There’d be some place where I could get some grub around here, right?

That plan lasted all of five minutes, when I came across a bunch of shits with more tattoos than a chunky cartoon polynesian harassing a young woman. A quick sniff confirmed that they were mortal, so I rolled my neck and strolled on up to them.

“Is there a problem here?” I asked pointedly, using my stupidly tall height to my advantage.

The seven idiots who thought they were hot shit turned around, their heads slowly turning up and up to look at me. My arms were folded over my chest, the muscles I’d gotten while serving in the Army on full display under my faded green shirt. The young woman they were harassing looked to be latina with a rather prodigious chest, but I ignored that bit for a moment and instead refocused on the shitheels.

“This is none of your business,” the apparent leader said, his hand sliding down to his belt, where I noted a submachine gun tucked into his pockets.

Right, if he was going to pull out a gun, then I was going to move first. Giantsbane was too large and cumbersome for a fight in such close quarters. In the blink of an eye, my own hand flew to my belt, drawing K-Shard and bringing it up to slash along the chest of the leader, his clothes parting like air and the skin around the cut turning black and frostbitten.

The leader let out a scream, before it was cut off as my knee came up and caught him in the diaphragm. He went flying back, over the young woman, and the rest rushed up to attack me, drawing knives, pipes, and lengths of chain. I let the breath flow out of me, as I moved around and between the wild, frenzied strikes, keeping an eye on both the gangsters immediately surrounding me as well as the one I’d sent flying.

He wasn’t moving, so I refocused on the mooks around me. K-Shard lashed out, cutting the throats of four, as I spun around their bodies and drove my elbow into the temple of a fifth. The leader was standing up, pulling out his gun.

Figuring it a safe guess what he had planned, I shouted to the woman, “Get down!”

She did so, moments before he started to yell and unleashed a torrent of automatic fire. I braced myself, throwing a forearm over her head as she ducked down, the rounds tearing past us and ripping up the sidewalk. A couple of rounds hit me, burning through my jacket and searing my flesh. I didn’t let anything show on my face, though, as I held out, using my ichor infused body as a shield.

When his clip ran dry, I took a quick look back, seeing that all he’d managed was ruining my jacket and killing the last two of his goons. As he frantically worked his gun to reload, I gripped K-Shard by the tip and threw it. The blade, not metal but ice from the coldest glaciers of Helheim, easily sank into his shoulder. I flexed my hand, and it disappeared from his body, reappearing in my hand. Standing up, I walked over to the crying man and picked him up by the front of his shirt, lifting him up into the air.

“I have a message for you and your superiors,” I told him as I sheathed K-Shard.

When I saw I had his attention, I turned, throwing him like a shot put into the nearby bay. He screamed as he flew through the air, and I followed him, stepping onto the surface of the water nonchalantly. The water froze, just before my feet would touch it, forming a bridge that supported my weight.

Kneeling on the sheet of ice, I grabbed him by the neck and started carrying him back to shore, speaking as I walked, “The message is this: if I find anyone preying on the common person, I will protect them. I do not care what laws, rules, or agreements are in place. I am a Guardian, it is my calling. I can no more ignore it than Zeus can ignore a warm hole.”

By this point, I’d reached the shore and I hopped up onto their pier, dropping him on solid ground. I was about to walk away, only to pause, looking down at him and saying, “You’ll want to get those looked at.”

[hr][/hr]

Penelope Cruz stared gobsmacked at the giant hunk of a man who’d saved her ass from a probable gangrape and possible death. Sweet Virgin Mary, he had to have like two and a half feet on her, at least as tall as Manpower from what her little brother had said, and looked like he was carved from granite!

Her imelda would disapprove, but if Penelope had any say in it, then tonight she was going to have a lot of fun with this gringo. He wasn’t dressed like a cape, so maybe she could get a bit more than a pump and dump, but even if that was all tonight turned out to be, she was happy with that.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” the hunky giant asked as he helped her to her feet.

Her knees quivered, his voice sounded like dry whiskey, and sent a jolt through her. His facial features weren’t particularly good looking, but those muscles combined with that voice and his earlier rescue? Oh yeah, she was going to climb that tree and ride him all night if she could talk him into it.

“I’m okay,” she said after a moment, swallowing nervously. How the fuck was she going to get him to come home with her? “Do you have a place to stay?”

He looked surprised by the question, before answering, “I'm sure I can find a hotel or something.”

Penelope shook her head, “Not this late, not in this city. I've got some extra room and blankets in my apartment, you can spend the night. I'm Penelope, by the way.”

He smiled, "Dorian, last name's either Greyson or Helsson depending on who's doing the asking. Mind if I ask some questions? I'm pretty sure I'm not in Kansas anymore.”

She took his hand, giving him a curious look as she led him towards the apartment building she lived in, "Well to start, Brockton Bay's in...”

Answering the questions he asked, and reading between the lines, Penelope concluded that he was probably from a different Earth, like Earth Aleph but different. From the sounds of it, parahumans had been around for a lot longer on his Earth, long enough that they inspired myths and legends. It was certainly surprising, especially when he talked about fighting cultists that worshiped his world's version of Endbringers. Although, something about the lead cultist, and what Dorian said he claimed to have been empowered by... it sounded like something pulled out of one of her neighbor's stories, the drunken scot who always wore hawaiian shirts over a wife beater.

Hopefully he wouldn't be in, she didn't want to have to hear a story about his garden gnomes again. Pushing that thought aside, Penelope let Dorian into her apartment, taking a deep breath as she prepared herself for what she was about to offer him. She'd never really done anything like this before, not with someone she barely knew.

“May I use your bathroom?” Dorian’s question jolted her out of her thoughts, and she nodded, leading him to the bathroom.

“Feel free to use the shower,” she told him. “I can run your clothes through the laundry, I don’t think I have anything near your size, unfortunately.”

He chuckled, his voice sounding like rumbling rocks. Stupid sexy Dorian, she thought as he answered, “If you have a beach towel, I can use it as a kilt.”

Penelope’s brain stalled, picturing him standing in front of her, shirtless, still wet from his shower…

Dios mio, she thought, fighting the urge to drool.

Dorian chuckled, “Only half.”

Oh, she’d said it out loud. Stupid sexy Dorian.

[hr][/hr]

I admit, I may have had a little too much fun in teasing Penelope, but she was cute when she blushed. Plus, well, despite being half a corpse, my mother was still a jotun, and those guys knew how to party. I wasn’t much of a party animal, but I recognized the signs of interest that the shortstack latina was giving out. If nothing came of it, then nothing came of it. But if she was interested, I wouldn’t be opposed.

Shutting the door to the bathroom behind me, I took off my jacket and inspected the holes from where the bullets had hit it. Letting out an annoyed huff, I set the jacket aside and pulled my shirt out from where it was tucked into my pants. A few quiet pings told me that the bullets had hit the floor. Picking them up, I scratched the welts forming where they’d hit.

Bullets weren’t lethal to me anymore, but they still hurt. I set K-Shard and Giantsbane next to the shower in easy reach and finished stripping down for a shower. If a titanspawn or mythos cultist showed up, I wanted Giantsbane in easy reach. It wouldn’t be fun fighting while naked, but I’d suffered worse indignities.

As I stepped into the shower and turned it on, setting the water to cold, I idly wondered if the gangster had managed to pass on the message to his superiors.

[hr][/hr]

“Not right, not right, not right,” the Empire goon, strapped down to a table, rambled as Amy walked into the room.

“Do I have your permission to heal you?” she asked, utterly bored.

“It’s not right, someone that big shouldn’t move that fast, no knife should burn like that, no one should walk on water like that,” he continued rambling, catching Amy’s attention.

Putting her hand against his bare arm, her eyebrows rose in surprise. Well, that was unexpected. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d dealt with frostbite, and he mentioned something about a knife? The wound in his shoulder was roughly knife shaped… someone with cryokinetic powers, maybe?