Battle for Midgard

He jumped to the ground from the portal, appearing between some trees in an empty park. The morning weather was still crisp, and since it was late summer the sun not fully risen. He turned to watch the lightning flickered behind him, and see that final bit of home before it faded away completely. Nothing left of the portal, but the faint smell of ozone.

Trapped. He swallowed the thought, ignoring the fact that he didn't have a means to return home unless They willed it. A trained soldier, he ran lightly through the paths, coming upon other joggers and blending in. When he left the park and the safety of the trees and rosebushes, buildings towered over him. He marveled at the lives pulsing inside them. Their energy pulsed along his skin, and he wanted to open the door to his masters now, but that was not the way. They had sent him as a spy first. The pent up energy in the Earth threatened to turn the ground to the waves of an ocean of rocks, to knock down these buildings. He'd been warned of the human cities. They'd warned him the city lay on a fault line where the Earth would shake.  What fools they were to build in such a place. What fools they were to grow such numbers when it would only draw the Old Gods hunger to them.

After ten minutes of pretending to be a jogger, he turned the corner and jogged toward the cheap motel. The dirty, red tiled roof looked almost brown in the light of the rising sun. The doors were painted a garish red. A rough white stucco sprayed the sites. It was a Wednesday morning by this world's calendar, and most of the rooms were empty. He took the stairs two at a time, like someone who was young and fit and used to running for sport. He was young and fit, though he didn't run for sport, but for military purposes.

He found room 259 easily enough by walking quickly at the second level of stairs. He prayed to the Old Gods, while running his empty palm over the card-reader. Something inside the mechanism whirred and a light turned green. That meant he should turn the handle. The door opened and to the left were to two crisply made white beds, both far larger than any one person had a right to demand. The floor was hard concrete, painted a dingy orange. He let the door shut behind him. Someone, one of his people he supposed or perhaps those from this world who had determined to worship the old gods, had booked the room and stocked it for him. Then they'd left in the dark of night so that he could arrive in the morning. They couldn't risk the portal behing detected inside his hotel room.

To the right, stood a desk. A blue rucksack–backpack he corrected himself–stood open atop the desk, beside it sat a metallic rectangle about a hand and a half long and just over a handspan wide. Though, this body was tall and he forced himself to use their inches and feet not to give himself away. Perhaps 13 inches long. The laptop. On top of that sat a dark rectangle, a cell phone. If it had been taken to his world and returned here, it would not work with the network here. And it would hold a residue of his world, which would have led that medler's agents straight to him.

He picked it up, the screen lighting as he did. The heft felt unfamiliar even though he'd practiced with a few of these at home. The blue plastic case had an ugly drawing of a green bird on it that appealed to the teenagers of this world. He'd watched a few episodes of the show as training so that he could pretend he watched it as well. Everything for the mission. Everything for the Old Gods. This one had been set up for him with a passcode that had been drilled into him before he took the mission. He keyed in the code, arranged for a car to pick him up and drive him to the college. He had thirty minutes. He moved toward the back of the room and stepped into the bathroom. He showered and changed into the clothes that had been laid out for him. Underpants, covered by short pants, and a shirt that in most times and climates would have been called an undershirt. Solid colored at least. He slid the laptop into the backpack. Grabbed the wallet from the small pocket and moved it into the zippered pocket of his pants.

He stepped out of the room, headed downstairs and dropped the keycard from his wallet into the bin outside the motel lobby. He waved to the clerk inside who waved back. The night clerk and the day clerk were different, and they had no way of knowing that he was not the same person who had checked in to the room late last night. After a few minutes, his car appeared and he made small talk with the driver. Inane talk about how it had been cheaper to fly in on a Tuesday even though the dorms opened on Wednesday and how excited he was to start college. When they arrived at the dorms, he'd had to present his ID to collect the keycard and they gave him directions to the suite where he would live alongside his marks. The girls who had stolen the Old God's gifts would arrive shortly. If their intelligence was right, Violet Valentine and Elizabeth Lara had stolen the abilities to resist harm and to control the winds. He would keep his own gifts secret from them and the others of their world, while doing everything in his power to befriend them. Any information that he earned would go to his handler on the other side of the darkness between the worlds. This world promised a bountiful feast to the Old Gods. He and his people just had to prepare. When the time came, he and his compatriots would open the doors.