Free Stormbringer by Alis Franklin Page B

supply of zero-weight, zero-size slingshots?
    Sigmund had a hoodie and a cell phone. Both of which, he had to admit, had turned out pretty useful the last he’d done this sort of thing. So what the hey.
    The plan was to meet Hel on the LB rooftop, just after sunset. Em and Wayne were waiting for Sigmund in the foyer when he arrived back at the building, Em dressed in full-tilt black and spikes, Wayne wearing her most combat-appropriate bustier. They both looked incredibly badass. Sigmund made a vow that if he was going to be doing more of this sort of thing in future, he needed his own [Adventuring Threads of the Hero] to bring along. Preferably featuring a long leather coat of some kind. Lain knew about stuff like that, about looking cool and fashionable and badass. Sigmund would find some way to ask about it later.
    Right now, he asked, “Ready?”
    “Born for it, dooder,” said Wayne, grinning and giving a brofist to Em. The pair turned their heads away as they mimed the resulting brosplosion.
    Sigmund was convinced the elevator took them to the penthouse powered by Wayne’s excitement alone. Em, meanwhile, was more subdued.
    “Nervous?” Sigmund asked her, getting a thin-lipped smirk in response.
    “Yeah, man,” she said. “Of course. It’s an awesome opportunity, I can’t
not
help.”
But it’s scary,
she didn’t add.
    Sigmund nodded anyway. “Yeah,” he said. They were just mortals, after all. Kids, really. Old souls could get them only so far.
    “Maybe I’ll get to fight an einherwhatsit,” Wayne said. “That’d be
so cool.
”
    Em and Sigmund shared a grin.
    They stepped out of the elevator inside the penthouse, a sort of hotel-suite-in-waiting, situated above the executive offices for when one of the VPs had to do an all-nighter. Sigmund had spent the night sleeping in the bathtub once, which wasn’t one of his proudest memories.
    Hel was waiting for them when they arrived, as evidenced by the peeling paint and strange, fleshy stalagmites that were growing from the carpet. She was standing out on the balcony, looking over the city, her silhouette tall and thin and obscured by a layer of frost that had, for whatever reason, built up on the balcony doors.
    When Sigmund opened them, he was glad he’d packed a hoodie. The air outside felt like midwinter, not early autumn.
    The reason became obvious fairly quickly.
    “Holy shit, is that a
dragon
?”
    It was huge. Enormous, even. Perched behind Hel on the edge of the LB building, claws cracking through the concrete, the feathers of its wings leaving behind glittering trails of frost whenever it moved.
    “This is the
dreki,
Hrímgrímnir,” Hel said. “He will take us to where we are heading.”
    The dragon—
dreki
—was curled around something that looked a little like a Viking boat and a little more like a basket. When Hel walked toward it, Sigmund realized it was their transport, a sort of cable-car gondola designed to be held in giant claws.
    “Dooder,” Wayne was saying to Em. “We picked the team with
dragons.
”
    “Eee!” was all Em said in reply. The girls were gripping on to each other, grins huge in the evening light.
    “Hi there!” Wayne called, waving upward. “I’m Wayne; this is Em and Sig. Thank you for flying us! This is
so cool.
” Wayne paused, looking around at the rime sloughing off Hrímgrímnir’s ice-green skin. “Literally!” Wayne added. “Are you, like…an ice dragon?”
    Hrímgrímnir’s eyes were the size of bicycle wheels, glacially blue, and definitely rolled in Wayne’s direction. Then the creature moved, the muscles in its throat working as it made a sound partway between a growl and a purr and a chirp. It wasn’t an aggressive sound, exactly, bar the fact that it was being made from a thing as big as an airplane. Not to mention the accompanying blast of frozen air.
    There was something under the sound, too. Sigmund had a sudden flash of…black feathers? Of the clash of swords and the cry of