– 5 –

Fenris snaps up a handful of students. It claws down a building. It is only a few blocks away from the magnet.

It can see the boot. It is descending, in flames.

Cheryl rips the hammer shaft out of her side. It squelches. It is a hammer as she pulls it around and grips it in two hands.

Her eyesocket burns with black fire. The hammer head does too.

She is floating free of the floor of Tom’s upside-down Vault of Forbidden Things. She is reorienting. She left the world as a girl who couldn’t even save a snake — er, kill. A girl who couldn’t even kill —

She isn’t sure what she left the world as a girl unable to do what to a paper snake is.

Tom’s infinitive splitter slams down on that sentence, once, twice, and then gives up.

She left the world as a human; she is coming down again as a god.

The sea shakes with the gravity of the boot. Waves of power are coming off of it; they stir up the sea, make it sea-wroth, and the foam of the sea is beginning to fold itself into a snake.

The wolf doesn’t want to be here.

The wolf whines, deep in its throat.

The scissors are focused on their enemy. They glide past Peter. They ignore him. They come down after the boot in a great and metal rain.

The magnet shudders under the burden of prophecy. It shatters. It denatures. It ceases, quite suddenly, to pull.

Fenris staggers.

The wolf lurches up to its feet. It glances skywards. It scrambles forward, but there is no scrambling forward.

It moves, but there is no time left for moving

Listen. You have to understand this.

If you’ve ever been a giant boot in space that’s got to stomp down onto a secondary school, and half a wolf, I’m sure you remember what it feels like. If you haven’t, well —

Vidar’s Boot slams down, hard, onto the school.

It’s the best.

<< – 4 –

– 6 – >>