Chapter 1
Conner Redgate had just returned from a weeklong adventure in the region of southern Germany better known as Bavaria. His intention was to get absolutely obliterated at Oktoberfest, as is the desire of most American’s traveling to Germany during the Oktoberfest season. Secondary plans included fornicating with as many German lasses as possible, and exploring the region his mother emigrated from. While Connor succeeded at many of his drinking goals, the goals he had for sex were foiled by A) just how drunk he got, and B) his own damnable shyness. It’s not that Connor is a bad looking individual, but since the destruction of his previous relationship Connor has been gun shy about meeting women. To satisfy his sexual needs in-between relationships, Connor has visited MANY a professional… well, in layman’s terms, Connor has had sex with a lot of prostitutes. Sure, there are nicer things to call them, such as escorts, but we’re calling the kettle black here.
To make up for falling short of his goal of interacting in a meaningful conversation with someone who WASN’T a professional sex worker, Connor made it a point to cross off as many sites from the sight seeing list his mother, Louisa, gave him. A secondary motive for visiting all these sites, including the legendary Neuschwanstein castle in Füssen, was to try to lengthen the time between his binge drinking. Connor, if anything, embraced alcohol as his second closest friend behind Amelia Greene, but we’ll meet her later on in this chapter.
With the exception of having a meaningful conversation with a woman whilst sober who didn’t sell her companionship (and the sex, lets not forget the sex with said woman), Connor did everything he intended to do. The last day he was in Germany, he made it up to Berlin to spend the night. And that’s where things started to get weird as fuck for our hero.
For you see, Connor ended up doing one final night of super drinking whilst checking out some of the many erotic clubs that he read Berlin had to offer. The excessive libations, coupled with Connor’s quick and easy susceptibility in being drawn into erotic situations at the exchange of money, Connor very nearly missed his flight back to America. For starters, he woke up with about an hour to get to the airport, so he went without his morning routine of proper hygiene to frantically get all his shit stuffed into his baggage. Then he actually had to GET across town to the airport. After getting through customs, he had about 10 minutes to book it across the airport to make it to his flight. With 3 minutes to spare Connor had to fight with the lady who would let him board. And with 30 seconds before take off, Connor sat his ass in his seat.
All in all, Connor was convinced that ordeal took at least 5 years off of his life. But his developing hangover, and frantic attempts to recall just about ANYTHING from the previous night after being talked into going to a swingers party, all this and more made the flight more of an unbearable nightmare than it usually is for any traveler (especially on a 6 hour flight). By the time Connor touched down, his headache had slightly lessened, he could barely stay awake, he stank up customs, he was having flashes of some of the crap he did in Berlin that well… made him start to wonder about his sexuality, and it took him an hour and a half to hail a cab back to his apartment in Midtown Manhattan. By the time he got home (which ended up being close to 9PM due to traffic after touching down at 5PM), all Connor wanted to do was have a night of uninterrupted sleep (after he cleaned his rank ass of all the stank from the night before).
Connor texted his mom and Amelia that he had returned home and that he didn’t want to be interrupted until the next morning. Finally, at about 10:30 in the evening, Connor laid down in bed expecting a night of proper sleep. Unfortunately, as you probably guessed, that wasn’t going to happen.
He was rudely awoken by two very distinct, and fiercely irritating sounds. As he lived in New York City, he lived in an apartment complex. And as any apartment dweller would know, his apartment came equipped with a GOD AWFUL buzzer sound that alerted him to the fact that a guest was at the front of his building wanting to be let in. The second sound was that of his phone. He had an iPhone, and never switched the factory set text tone to something a little more… original? Judging by the sound of his phone going off intermingled with the spastic intensity of the buzzer being rung, he was receiving about ten texts a minute, give or take 10 seconds for every 6 door buzzer tones.
Looking down at his phone, he saw that his friend Amelia (remember, the human friend who was just above alcohol on Conner’s list of friends?) was the one who was texting him since… three hours ago?! But judging by the tone of her last text (which read: ANSWER THE FUCKING DOOR JACKASS!), Conner figured Amelia was in some kind of dire situation. And since Amelia was his best human friend since pre school, and yards ahead of alcohol on his list of friends, he stumbled out of bed to the intercom as fast as he could to hobble.
But, despite his willingness to help his closest, oldest, and dearest friend (and top human friend. I really can’t stress this fact enough. Connor REALLY likes booze) in the world, Conner wasn’t happy about this situation one fucking bit. Easily he was more upset than he should have been. For you see, Connor is easily enraged when he’s this exhausted. And when Conner gets this tired and enraged, he gets extra super cranky. Separately, when Connor is hungry (and he was REALLY hungry right now. The last substantial meal was 6:30PM in Berlin the final night he was in Germany), he gets even crankier. And when he texted Amelia after he landed that he didn’t want to be bothered tonight so he could get a full nights sleep, and asked her not to bother him under any circumstance, only to be woken up by said friend at three in the morning, all of these crankiness factors convinced Connor that he should be sure to let his friend know just how SUPER PISSED OFF he actually was.
“Amelia, it’s three o’clock in the FUCKING morning! What in the name of Jesus Christ’s monkey scrotum are you…”
“Conner,” Amelia interrupted, “Just let me in! I’m in serious trouble! I’m with someone who’s badly hurt and you’re the only one close by who can help!”
Bullshit! thought Conner. You’re a fucking E.R. nurse and the hospital you work at is three blocks from here! Why not go there, bitch! Of course this was all in his head, as one knows you never take this tone of voice OR ATTITUDE with a woman EVER, EVER, EVER! NO MATTER WHAT! So, he decided to rephrase his internal monologue he just had to something a little bit more civil. “Why don’t you just take her to the fucking E.R.? You know the hospital is only…”
“JUST LET US IN DIPSHIT! WE REALLY ARE IN TROUBLE OUT HERE!”
Not only had Amelia never taken this tone of voice with Conner EVER (even after Conner made several insensitive dead mother jokes shortly after the passing of Amelia’s mother from ALS), Conner had never heard his friend sound so desperate, exasperated, and frightened before. Even though he was pissed off that he didn’t exactly get his way like he had wanted to, if his friend was seriously in trouble and felt that he was the only person that could help her, he manned up, let her in, and began to get to work.
What did Connor have to work on? Well readying his apartment for the patient, of course. If someone were badly hurt, the best possible place to tend to the persons injuries would be on the couch. And as Connor’s favorite possession in his apartment right now was his couch (a really nice leather couch mind you). He had some work to do to make sure the couch was available for the patient, and that it wouldn’t get ruined. Picking up the clothes he stripped off of himself as he walked through the front door, Connor moved some of his smaller bits of furniture (coffee table, chairs, and what have you) out of the way so Amelia wouldn’t bump this injured person into anything en route to the couch. Then, he moved his luggage off the couch, into a back room, and brought out some bedding, blankets and pillows. No way in hell he was going to let Amelia leave tonight, but most of this shit was for the patient. Then, he ran back to the kitchen to get some garbage backs to drape over his prized couch. Just as he was finishing his personal chore, Amelia burst through the door with a bizarrely dressed, and (as Conner thought) unfairly attractive young woman.
“I thought Comic Con was last week?” he quipped. The garb of the woman Amelia was dragging over to the couch was that of a Cosplayer easily. And as this evening was not far removed from NYC Comic Con, there was still some relevancy to the joke.
“Shut up and go get the first aid kit I gave you for Christmas last year,” was Amelia’s response. “And get some warm damp cloths. Or anything that can retain warm water so I can start cleaning out this woman’s wounds!”
As Conner was fishing out the first aid kit from above the sink, he thought he’d bring up the point he was trying to make earlier. “I really don’t understand why you just didn’t bring her to the E.R. It’s not that far from here and you could’ve…”
“Conner,” Amelia interrupted, “when you get back in here… turn on the lights. You’ll understand why I can’t bring her to the E.R.”
So, after fishing out the first aid kit, and bringing Amelia many damp wash cloths/paper towels, Conner proceeded to walk over the hall and turn on the light. After letting his eyes adjust to the light, Connor looked back at the couch. What he saw, well, it was just what his friend was talking about. And he kind of understood why they couldn’t go straight to the ER.
“What the hell are you two covered in?!?!” Conner had to muffle himself as he was ready to scream at the top of his voice. What he saw were two women covered in green and black residue. “Is this a paintball fight gone wrong?!?!”
“It’s blood, Conner. It’s two different types of blood.”
“You have black blood?!?!”
Amelia took a second to give Connor the nastiest “Come ON you jackass!” look she could muster. For her friend being such an intelligent person, he really could say some dumb shit from time to time. “No! She has green blood. The black blood was from the guys who were trying to attack her.”
“Attack her?” Connor gasped. “What? Was she being raped?! Seriously though, if she has green blood you should…”
“I don’t know if she was being raped! Just get over here! I need help getting her undressed so I can properly take a look at her wounds!” The woman was wearing many different layers, but the most complicated article of clothing the woman wore was this sort of sweater thing. It was almost leather, but not really, as it looked to be knitted with string that felt like leather but looked more like steel. Amelia had just gotten off of working a double at the hospital as well as covering half a shift for another nurse. So she had nearly worked 24 hours straight, was a little delirious and didn’t have the mental capacity to process what this woman was wearing, but took some very detailed mental notes. She just hoped she remembered them the next morning.
The shirt/coat thing was fastened by knots that were seriously slicked over with blood. Amelia was having a difficult time trying to undo the knots without damaging the woman’s clothes as both Amelia’s hands and the knots were covered in enough blood to make even pulling a shoelace to untie the knock difficult. Conner’s instincts told him to clean off some of the blood before he began unfastening the knots. Rushing back to the kitchen, he pulled out oil of some kind, splashed it on a paper towel, came back, and successfully got enough blood off of the knots to undo each of them with ease.
“What was she using to defend herself? A stick?” Conner asked as he helped Amelia remove the outer layer of clothing.
“No, she had something a hell of a lot better than a stick, she…” Amelia trailed off after catching her friend in a rather shameless act. While the clothing the woman was wearing dumbfounded both Amelia and Connor, she was wearing very little underneath her clothes. And as a result of this, this strange woman’s breasts were just laying there exposed, with like a leather binding just on the underside of them. Amelia was used to removing peoples clothing in the E.R. so she could properly see and tend to wounds, and was used to seeing things like random peoples defining sex organs. So, turning her back on her friend for a moment to properly store this woman’s clothing somewhere close by and safe, she was disappointed to see her friend BLATANTLY staring at this woman’s mostly exposed breasts.
“They’re fucking BOOBS Conner!” she exclaimed. “Has it been THAT long since you’ve been laid that you’re gonna stare at some random woman’s boobs AFTER she was physically assaulted?”
“Huh?” Conner responded, snapping back to reality. “What? No! It wasn’t her boobs! It was…”
“Just hold these down here and here,” instructed Amelia. She was having Conner apply pressure to the obviously deepest and most severe looking injuries. The wounds looked like they had began to close up, but it was better safe than sorry.
“Amelia,” started Conner, “I SWEAR I wasn’t looking at her boobs! I have a helluvalot more respect for women than to do that kind of bullshit. I was looking at…”
“Whatever Conner,” said Amelia, “Just, okay, you can let go. And take a look at the chair. I brought you something to check out.”
“What’s over on the chair?”
“Wait, come back! Just a quick second more.” Amelia was able to work fast with the first aid kit and closed the wound that was closest to the strange woman’s right kidney first. Even after having to redo the stitching, the wounds looked like they were a hell of a lot deeper than they actually were, which floored Amelia. She could’ve sworn the swords that the assailants had went clean through this woman. Whatever, she wasn’t going to question it just yet.
“O.k.,” said Amelia as she relieved Conner of keeping pressure on the wound. “I got it from here. Over there on the chair there is what she used to defend herself. It’s that big fucking sword.”
“Oh yea right!” said Conner, as he nonetheless got up to go investigate the chair Amelia pointed towards. He was carrying the woman’s coat/vest thing with him. Something was stitched into the clothing that Connor thought looked familiar. This same pattern was formed into a metal pendant that the woman wore around her neck. THAT’S what he was staring at. “Some random ass woman is in mid town Manhattan, being raped by, how many guys?”
“At least two” said Amelia, never looking up from her work. “It looked like they all had swords. And again, I don’t know if they were trying to rape her.”
“Come on Amelia!” Connor exclaimed. “Do you know how you sound?! A woman is battling two guys who WE ASSUME are trying to rape her, in midtown Manhattan, on a Friday… HOLY SHIT IT REALLY IS A SWORD!”
Conner was a specialist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His specialty was preserving and maintaining the ancient weaponry that was on display, and his specialty was the swords. He was always fascinated and marveled over the design and the various styles of a swords construction. Whenever he saw a new sword, he would have to take some time to just soak in the, as he called it, essence of the blade. He had always been this way and Amelia felt like his obsession with swords bordered on the erotic, which really weirded her out. But as long as her friend was happy, what could she do?
After not speaking for several minutes Amelia decided to bring her friend back to reality because she knew EXACTLY where his mind went. “There’s some runes all over the sword, do you think you can make sense of them?” Conner, as Amelia knew, was Linguistics minor when they were in college. Well, half of a minor, as a lot of what Conner was interested in was just the study and development of written languages. Even now, years after graduation, he’ll still take an occasional class learning a new language. Speaking was never his strength, but he could read and write in just about every language that he took a class on. So hopefully, these runes were right in her friend’s wheelhouse.
“Well, I’m seeing an inscription on the guard, but where else could they,” he then unsheathed the sword, “Ah, I see. More on the blade.” (Amelia gave a disgruntled sigh, because what the hell else could she had possibly meant by “There are runes all over the sword”.) After a few more moments of silent study, Conner started with, “I think I’ve seen something like this before.” He then runs off to his bedroom with the sword leaving Amelia alone with the woman.
Amelia was surprisingly pleased with herself. As she continued working on patching this woman up (most of her injuries were now just a matter of sanitation, and proper bandaging), she reflected back on what came across as a pretty lame Christmas present for Conner, but knew it would come in handy some day. And today, she felt validated. Conner, for the LONGEST time, didn’t have a first aid kit in his apartment. So, last year, Amelia made him a first aid kit with EVERYTHING she had in hers at home. Seeing as how handy this gift was this evening, Amelia felt she should just make some more things for Conner that she knew everyone should have in the home that Conner still didn’t have.
“I’m not super great with a lot of the Germanic languages,” said Conner as he re-entered the room sifting through one of two books, “but I remember reading a while ago that there were some runes discovered on the outskirts of Galma Uppsala in Sweden, back in the 19th century that serve as almost an end all be all for Norse inscriptions.” After skipping over half of the thicker of the two books, Conner landed on a page filled with depictions of ancient runes that Amelia could make neither hide nor hair over.
“Norse?” she asked, trying to sound like she had something to contribute to the conversation. “You mean like the Vikings?”
“Exactly like the Vikings. Some people speculate that Galma Uppsala would have been were Odin, the king of Viking Gods, resided. Take a look Amelia.”
“Kind of busy at the moment Conner.” And she was. The amount of lesser wounds this woman still had was too numerous for Amelia to break her concentration. She didn’t want to have to make the mistake of doing the same wound twice, or missing a wound. They had been out on the street and this woman had collapsed in a pile of garbage. Who knew just how many bacteria cultures were swimming around this woman’s body from the open wounds. Also, she was going through her memory for ANY recorded documentation about people with green blood as it was now EVERYWHERE on Connor’s couch.
“Seriously Amelia, when you’re done with that wound, you HAVE to look.”
So when she was done with the wound, Conner (after forcibly pulling Amelia’s hands away from the first aid kit) pointed out the different inscriptions. “The runes running the length of the blade are in fact Nordic. You can see a few of them matching up precisely here in the book. The guard, though, that inscription is in Arabic.” The smaller of the two books was a workbook Conner had to use last summer when he studied Arabic at an extension course offered through the museum.
“Alright,” said Amelia as she returned to work on her patient. She couldn’t be certain on the woman’s age, but she couldn’t be more than 25 years old. “So we have a terrorist from Sweden. What’s the big…”
“Amelia!” interjected Conner. “She’s not a terrorist because she has something written in Arabic on something she happens to have.”
“Alright FINE! So we have some lunatic who happens to be into Norse mythology and Arabic script. Can you make anything from either inscription?”
“I haven’t delved to far into ancient or extinct languages and text. This book doesn’t really have a cipher from what I can tell for the alphabet that was used by the Vikings all those years ago. I have a pretty good guess on what the Arabic says on the guard, but I would have to definitely brush up a bit from last summer to be certain.”
“How long will that take?”
“For the Arabic, a few hours when it’s light out. But that’s not the most interesting thing about this sword.”
“Alright, what is it then? Is it the ancient Viking runes?”
“No! It’s that this sword doesn’t make one bit of fucking sense, now that I’m looking at it properly!”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s just, shit the design.” And he left it at that. As Conner was prone to doing on occasion, he simply left his argument at “the design” and trailed off into his own little fantasy world, looking the sword over more finely.
Frustrated (more so because of the fact that Amelia still hadn’t even began tending to the wounds on the lower half of this woman’s body and couldn’t afford to have Conner zone out as she needed her complete concentration to tend to her patient) Amelia half shouted at Conner “The design what?!?!”
“What we have here, from what I can tell, are three weapons that historically and functionally have no business being attached to one another. Hell, even this inscription (from what I can make of it so far) doesn’t make a damn iota of sense. The blade itself is Nordic in design. The blade is a broadsword. So one would need to, no, HAVE to assume that the grip and guard would be a similar design, a lot more meat and potatoes. But the guard for this sword is utterly useless. The guard is Italian Renaissance for more of a dueling saber than a broad sword. And the grip is a traditional Japanese katana.”
“Conner, for once assume that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I mean, look at this goddamned sword! It’s a mix of a traditional broadsword for the blade, the grip of a Japanese Katana, and the guard is just… it’s Italian Renaissance! And the Arabian inscription on the guard, absolutely nothing about this blade makes sense! You said this woman was DEFENDING herself with this sword?!”
“Yes,” said Amelia, just not wanting to put up with Conner’s shit right now. She herself was very tired, but she saw what she saw! This woman was wielding this thing like a fucking badass mofo!
“It’s impossible! This sword should not be able to work in hand to hand combat!”
“And why can’t this sword work in hand to hand combat!?”
“It just can’t! Historically, all of these swords existed at…” at that moment, Conner let out a big yawn. “Fuck, I gotta go back to bed.”
“But Conner!” protested Amelia. But it would be to no avail. Conner had sheathed the weapon and was headed back to his room.
“Amelia, for fuck’s sake, it’s nearly 4 in the fucking morning. I’m jet lagged to hell and had a really rough night my last night in Germany. I maybe had 2-3 hours of sleep before I got to the airport in Berlin. I could barely get any rest on the plane, so I gotta go back to bed. If you want me to be able to solve half of this shit tomorrow, I’m gonna need at least 4 more hours of sleep. I assume you remember where the guest bedroom is.”
Before Amelia could get a retort out over why Conner should stay up and help her out, Conner was wandering off to bed. Luckily, the woman sustained no real serious injuries to her lower extremities. And that was a bigger relief to Amelia than it should’ve been. The only thing Amelia was concerned about was… oh! Somehow she missed the fact that Conner had dropped off a ton of pillows and blankets near the chair she had dropped the woman’s sword on. How could she have missed that? She practically had to step over all of that bedding, right as she was bringing this woman inside! Eventually, she let out a big yawn and realized that Conner had a point. How the hell were they gonna make any real headway over this woman Amelia saved from being mugged running on so little sleep.
So she draped the blanket over the woman who had most of the pillows from the couch already underneath her. The rest she took herself off to the guest bedroom. As much as she wanted to get some answers about who this woman was and where she came form, she really just wanted Conner to stay up a little while longer so they could do some research about this woman. And so they could talk a little bit. She wanted to hear all about his trip to Germany for Oktoberfest, and exploring Bavaria, and he apparently brought her some of the greatest chocolates in the world! So she’ll get up early-ish (about 8AM), help Conner figure out some things, get this woman home, and take Conner out to dinner. Just like she insisted they’d do before he left. She really needed to talk to him too, about something else. But, it would have to wait.
Little did she know, Conner stayed up well past when he went back to his room. He knew he had his alarm set for 8AM and was going to stick to it. But there was something eating at him. The top that the woman was wearing, and the necklace she had on, it had this pattern on it. The pattern looked like something he saw on his trip, when he was exploring the castles of Bavaria. He spent the next hour and a half sifting through his pictures from his trip, seeing if it was there. But by 5AM, he had not enough energy left to give a damn. Maybe this woman would be able to answer some of his questions tomorrow. That is, if she spoke any English.
When Conner awoke next morning at 8, he would find out that his second guest did not know a word of English. Amelia however, slept till 11AM soundly and peacefully.
