Read Mythos for Free Online Page B

I?
    “A whisper in his ear and his bonds looking tight, I’m sure,” answered Odin. “But I’d rather his bonds were tight instead of just looking that way. Now, what do you think I should do with you?”
    “With me?” asked Loki, sounding completely innocent. “Whatever for?” What Odin almost certainly couldn’t see from his vantage was the way Loki’s left hand had slipped into his back pocket, pulling forth a single shiny bit of scale. “I’ve done nothing outside my purview.”
    “Perhaps not,” replied Odin. “Perhaps freeing the very soul of demonic hunger is entirely within your job description. If that’s so, then my job description certainly involves punishing you when you do things so detrimental to me and mine.”
    “You know what, old man—not only are you ham-handed; you’re also a bloody-minded tyrant and a monopolist to boot, always trying to grind the honest competition under your heel. That poor creature had done nothing to you. He never has. You imprisoned him for what he might someday do, nothing more. Is that justice?”
    As he spoke, Loki stomped over to the gate through which the poodle had vanished, putting him on the far side of the older god.
    “Are you done yet?” asked Odin.
    “One last thing,” said Loki and now he looked over his glasses at Odin. “Good-bye!”
    The scale flashed, and Loki leaped. Halfway through an arc that dropped him into the stream that doubled for the Thames in this Tower replica, he turned into a huge red salmon with chaos in its eyes. Just before he went into the water, he winked in Odin’s direction.
    “Damn!” I said, then threw myself flat as Odin turned his head our way.
    Before I’d dropped below the level of the crenellations, I got my second eye-surprise in as many seconds. The first was that, without the lenses of his glasses between us, Loki’s eyes were orbs of the local version of the Primal Chaos—very like my friend Eris. The second was that Odin possessed only one orb, confirming my vague memories from class.
    Something pulled on my ankle then, and I glanced down the length of my body to see Ahllan. She didn’t look particularly happy as she jerked her chin toward the stairhead and started crawling that way. Raising myself onto fingers and toes, I followed after her. We moved quickly, and luck or something was with us, because Odin didn’t pop up to have a word with us before we got out of sight.
    As we approached the outlet at the bottom of the stairs a rat briefly challenged us, and I couldn’t help but note that it seemed much smaller than it should have, given our resizing for the cathedral. Ahllan bared her fangs and growled before I had time to decide between drawing Occam or my automatic—the Burkett CQB version of the classic 1911 model .45. In response the rat departed for parts elsewhere at speed. I couldn’t blame it. Ahllan looks like she could tear me in two by grabbing one ankle in each hand and pulling, and she probably could despite my greater-than-human strength. Of course, she’s also a vegetarian, a healer, and one of the gentlest souls I know, but nobody had explained that to the rat.
    “Why was it so small?” I asked after it scampered away.
    “Wait one minute more,” replied the troll, taking my hand in her own.
    I nodded and made sure I had a good grip on Melchior as Ahllan whistled the spell that would take us elsewhere. A split second later, we arrived back at York Miniature—as I was starting to think of it. From the back of the cathedral, she led us along the north wall to the transept and from there to the chapter house, an octagonal subbuilding that stood at the cathedral’s northeast corner.
    Inside an area the size of a small circus tent—at least in relation to our current scale—Ahllan had set up housekeeping. She pointed Melchior and me at a circular arrangement of chairs not too far from her little kitchen. Beyond, a curtained-off area held a small futon platform-bed and a battered