Sun glinted off steel and sticky-sweet humidity choked the visor of Liam's helmet as he looked through sweat and thin metal bars at his enemy. The day had been a long, punishing one, and he carried bruises and aches from earlier clashes. The sword in his grasp felt heavier than it had any right to. He lifted the point up, then stood in a higher stance. The flat of the blade pressed to his shoulder and he watched and waited to see if his enemy shifted.
He did.
The other man stepped forward – hand on the middle of his longsword – and tried a quick jab at Liam's gut. Liam stepped to the side and turned to present a thinner target to the enemy. He brought his own sword swinging down – aiming for the joint of helmet and shoulder. The enemy lifted his sword, palm bracing it on hilt and at the halfway mark. The two swords clacked together. Liam put his whole weight into a forward step and shoulder check. The other guy went clattering to the dew-flecked grass. Liam – holding his blade two-handed – brought the tip down to press to the other man's throat.
“Match!”
The referee stepped out from the copse of trees that shadowed the people waiting for their next bout. The steel bleachers filled with cheers as Liam grabbed his plastic and metal helmet and tugged it off. What felt like a gallon of sweat dropped down his back as the other guy sat up and laughed.
“That was fookin' great,” he said, his accent a thick English burr. He was one of the many actual Europeans who had flown across the big pond to come to the Atlanta chapter of the Historical European Martial Arts Society for their yearly competition. This year's prize had been something remarkable and part of the HEMA-S attempt to catch more attention in a year of skyrocketing prominence of social media: a popular YouTube show had handcrafted a historically accurate, battle-tested longsword.
Yes, buying said sword would have cost only a tiny fraction more than the plane tickets and hotel bookings. But, as Liam had said to his mom, that wouldn't be very sportsmanlike, now would it?
The referee helped the man Liam had knocked out up and the two of them retreated off the field as another pair of fighters stepped out. One of them had opted for a shield and an arming sword – the sword that most people thought of as a 'longsword'. The actual terminology was a bit confused by centuries of slowly shifting European naming conventions and decades of Dungeons & Dragons manuals written with more eagerness than factual research. Most people in HEMA didn't get too bent out of shape if a layperson called a longsword a two-handed sword or a claymore or whatever.
No, Liam thought. We save that for people who try and tell us how great katanas are.
When he got under the shade, the temperature dropped from ungodly to merely unpleasant and he was joined by his friend Greg. Greg had gotten into HEMA at the same time Liam had, but for far different reasons. A childhood spent struggling with a genetic predisposition to be overweight and a personality predisposed to overindulge had left Greg facing a point blank, double barreled ultimatum from his pediatrician: Lose weight or start buying insulin in bulk. Liam – blessed with the infuriating kind of metabolism that turned sugars and sweets into endless energy without a single gain in poundage – had been drawn to HEMA thanks to a half-remembered youth with a dead father. Before the fire, Dad had taken a wide eyed Liam into the garage built smithy. He had shown him the thundering pounding of the hydraulic hammers, the searing plasma-bright flare of the furnace. The sizzle of the computer-driven laser cutter.
Born with a silver spoon in his ass, Dad had been able to play with toys like that and indulge in his fascination with the crafting of swords from the past – and from places that had never been. The entire school had been gobsmacked by Liam's Halloween outfit: Sora from Kingdom Hearts with an actual keyblade made of metal so heavy and sturdy that the Principal had called his parents up to ask them – politely but firmly – what the ever-loving-fuck was wrong with them.
So, when the fire had consumed both his home and all future memories of his father, Liam had found solace in one thing: taking wooden boken and replica longswords and beating the ever loving shit out of an uncaring cosmos, one body bag and sparring partner at a time. With Greg to support him through the first grueling months and with Liam to support Greg through the horrifying third and fifth months where the training regimes had pushed them both to new and more painful plateaus of skill, the two teens had stuck to HEMA into college. Now, Greg would never be skinny, but he wore his weight well and grew his hair and his beard long enough to conceal the curves that his cheeks still had and Liam had gotten a pretty hefty string of girls who had, at the very least, gone out on at least one date.
Too bad that the second date never seemed to come up.
“You kicked his ass, dude,” Greg said, slapping Liam's shoulder.
“Ah, he had kind of shitty fundamentals,” Liam said, rolling his shoulder under the slight ache that Greg had left him.
The next bout was between two of the people from the NorCal HEMA-S chapter. The man with the shield and the arming sword faced off against a woman with the same kind of longsword that Liam preferred. These bouts were held in full practice armor, with the refs calling it as if it was unarmored. The reason was simple: unarmored combat with even blunted weapons was too dangerous to play as a sport, and judging who won in an armored bout by who keeled over first was considered too dull for the onlookers. There's also the fact that any bout that goes that long in this weather will kill us. By drowning if nothing else, Liam thought, holding up his hand as some of the sun broke through the willow strands to smack him in the face.
The two fighters smashed together. Shield hit chest and the girl staggered backwards. She swung her blade – it clattered off the shield. But a shield could be a downside as well as an advantage – not often, but sometimes. Say, for instance, when someone uses their smaller size to shoulder into your guard and smash their pommel into your chest. It wasn't the most elegant take-down, but the ref rewarded the girl the win.
“If she'd been slower,” Greg said, then made an exaggerated gurgling noise – drawing a gloved thumb across his throat.
The girl tugged her helmet off as she walked back to the shade, panting. She was gorgeous – chocolate brown skin with freckles highlighting a pair of hazel eyes, which danced with the delight of victory. She grinned broadly as one of her friends tossed her a disposable water bottle, which she splashed over her face, then into her mouth.
“Nicely done,” Liam said.
“That sword is going over my mantlepiece, dude,” she said – her Californian drawl as thick as the syrupy accents of the people that Liam had met in Georgia.
“I was planning to stick it into a rock, myself,” Liam said. “Then see if anyone in my neighborhood can get it out. Figure it'd be a more sane way to pick a HOA community manager than the way we've got going in Beverly Hills.”
“You're from Beverly Hills?” the girl asked.
“That's us,” Greg said, pressing his thumb to his chest. “Water-sucking vampires.”
“So-Cal for life,” Liam said, nodding.
The girl frowned at the two boys. Then, reaching up, she grabbed onto the edge of the willow branch that was providing shade and tugged it aside. Greg just laughed, but Liam threw himself to the ground, hissing and clutching at his face. “Augh, no!”
The girl grinned. “That's, like, for the drought, dude.”
Liam laughed.
***
The day ground its way forward as people were removed from the bouts. Liam fought twice more – once against the girl (Chelsea was her name). He beat her by remembering her aggressive style and playing defensive. A few minutes of batting her sword aside then bringing down a perfectly timed stroke and she was disqualified. She retreated to hang with Greg – who had been taken out earlier that day by a trip and throat stroke – and cheered Liam on. Liam tried to remain calm, but that got harder and harder as he climbed up the ranks until late in the afternoon.
The sky was painted in the colors of autumn – orange and red and white streaks of cloud – and the sun had vanished behind the nearby trees and distant skyscrapers. The temperature had finally reached 'bearable' and the cicadas started to screech from the surrounding countryside. Lights were brought out by the HEMA-S teamsters and the YouTube webcameras and the local news stations started to set up for the final bout. Liam suddenly realized that what had started off as a lark was becoming far more serious.
He hadn't really thought he'd get this far. But just by sticking with what he had learned, what he had drilled in since he had been thirteen, and by remembering what he saw in the other bouts, he had gotten here, to the last fight of the day.
And things were shifted.
“Our views are skyrocketing,” a nervous looking man named Steven Merkle said, adjusting the collar on his official HEMA-S tee with one finger. “And those guys from Armmaster are ecstatic. They've pulled down a few dozen extra commissions just from this. So, we were thinking of changing the bout up a bit.”
Liam looked at his opponent. Samiya El-Amin was dressed in a white polo tee that had become streaked with sweat through the day. He was the kind of fantastically beautiful men that always left Liam – himself slightly too skinny and sharply featured to be considered classically attractive – feeling as if he shouldn't be jealous...but he was. I mean, Liam thought. I'm thin, I'm fit, I don't have a hairlip. I should feel fine. But then someone like Sami shows up and he reminds you that in a world of popstars, you're just college radio.
But more than just being a fantastically beautiful Pakistani immigrant, Sami was also a stone cold badass. He pushed at the very edge of what was acceptable under HEMA – it was historical European martial arts, after all. Including styles and moves from, say, Kendo was frowned on – but when you reached the level that Sami (and, Liam supposed, himself) were at, you had to start inventing your own spins on the style.
For Sami, it was embracing a broad, sweeping, cutting style that befitted sabers and cutlasses, as well as footwork that was distinctly different from what Liam was used too – he had seen trips and throws that seemed almost like eastern martial arts mixed in there. But he hadn't been quite sure. He wasn't versed in Akido or Ju Jitsu or whatever it was that Sami was using.
“Well,” Sami said. “How do you want to change the bout?”
God, even his accent is cooler than mine! Liam thought.
“Simple. We want to judge this as if you were wearing the armor – you can pick what you want to wear. That means you don't go down until you decide to go down.”
So, instead of losing because of points, I'll lose because he beat my brains out, Liam thought. He looked at Sami. Sami was looking at him – and those dark, perfect eyes looked as if they were trying to judge Liam. And Liam reacted, like all nineteen year old men do when they faced other nineteen year old men and the question hung in the air: Are you chicken?
“I'm down,” he said, before thinking
“Me too,” Sami said, at the same time.
“All right then,” Merkle said.
Liam nodded his head to Sami, then turned and walked over to the trailers that contained the extra armor and weapons for people who hadn't been able to bring their own gear. There, he met a boisterous and bubbly girl named Jenny, who showed him all the armor that they had brought purely for filming purposes – “Ya see, Ell, we're tryin' ta get us some ratin's, see?” she slapped a chain cuirass. “Looks great on ta cameras!”
Liam, in the end, chose to not go full plate. The last thing he wanted to do was having Sami trip him, flip him, and stick a dagger in his hands. He stuck with gauntlets so he could half-sword if he wanted, a chain surcoat, and some guards for his shoulders and thighs. He picked up his trusty padded longsword and looked at Jenny – who gave him a huge thumbs up and a gap toothed smile.
“Knock em dead, slugga!”
By now, the night had fallen. The people who had been removed from the tournament no longer lounged in the copse of trees off the arena. Instead, they were sitting in the bleachers. Greg, Chelsea, the Scot (not English, he had furiously told Liam, not English at all) he had defeated earlier, all of them were sitting on the third row. Greg cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted loud enough that Liam could hear it over his pounding heartbeat.
“Get him a body bag, Johnny! Yeahhhhh!”
“Sweep the leg!” Chelsea shouted.
“Fook 'im up, ya mad bastard!” The Scot chimed in – less pop culture references, but certainly a lot more language that was causing the news coverage teams to look pained. Liam hoped they had been on a five second delay. Bright light shone down from tall poles and cast the night surrounding the tournament area into even starker darkness, blotting out the stars. It was a shame – Liam loved the stars. He looked up to them, then closed his eyes.
God, he thought. I know that the clashing of swords means very little to you. I mean, shit, I doubt you're even going to glance up from your job. But please, grant me the grace to not be a sore ass loser. I really want to accept this with grace. Like, a lot.
He touched his throat – his armor covered his crucifix. It wasn't just a symbol of Jesus and his sacrifice.
It was a reminder of Dad.
It had been the last thing he had sculpted – with tungsten and lasers. There was something delightful about that melange of things. Materials that literally couldn't have been imagined centuries ago, tools that had been pure science fiction years ago, all to create a symbol of a device that had transcended its original use as Iron Age execution tool to become an icon of hope and salvation and goodness to more than a billion people.
If that didn't represent the world as it should be, then Liam didn't know what would.
Well, a schematic for perfect cold fusion? A time machine pre-loaded with the coordinates of Hitler's house when he was a little kid complete with child psychologist? A functioning Galaxy class starship captained by Geordi LaForge? Liam's brain suggested the beats off – nervously, jittery. Like his knees, it quivered as Sami emerged from his trailer. The other warrior had also gone for chain.
And in the end, that turned out to make the entire combat infinitely duller than anyone had any right to hope.
Sami fought hard and well – but he had made the mistake the instant he had chosen his style of slashing sword. It was highly effective in bouts that were judged by points – by the blows landed and their effectiveness against an imaginary unarmored or lightly armored enemy. In fact, the curved cavalry saber had been the standard for centuries because the armies of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries had worn progressively less and less armor as armor technology lagged ever farther behind the technologies of cannon and gunpowder.
When your foe didn't wear armor, you wanted huge, cutting wounds.
When your foe did wear armor, you wanted something that could actually be felt beneath the chain. Liam and Sami exchanged a few blows – then both realized the same thing at the same time. Their chain stopped cutting blows dead.
So, Liam casually switched his longsword to a reverse grip and beat Sami senseless with the cross guard.
***
“To the longsword!” Greg said, lifting up a glass of rootbeer.
“To the longsword!” Everyone else at the table – a bruised, battered, but all around happy-to-be there Sami, Chelsea, Jenny and the Scott – lifted their drinks and Liam ducked his head forward. His cheeks felt incandescent, but he was having a hard time containing his huge smile. The longsword was cradled in his lap, sheathed in a scabbard of hard leather with a beautiful dragon detail that coiled around the edges and added a wonderful golden decoration to the black body. It felt lighter than Liam's practice or dueling sword, which didn't make sense – but Liam figured that the day was allowed to not make sense. He had won an international HEMA-S championship.
Him.
Like, he wasn't that good of a swordsman, it still felt like any moment now, the walls would fall away and he'd be standing naked before his math class with Professor Martinez snidely telling him that if he wanted to show off, he might as well have the good graces to be hung like Ron Jeremy. Life persisted in not being a dream as the celebratory meal was laid out – everyone had agreed to split the check as the wait staff of the restaurant acted like they weren't entirely sure how they should handle several heavily armed and armored people.
Yes, the weapons were out of date – and fake – but still, they had swords.
“So, I say,” Sami said, “That we all agree never to play to the knockout again.”
“Agreed,” Liam said. “Of course, I am never ever going to fight in a tournament again. I want to go down on record as being completely undefeated.”
Greg cupped his mouth and booed – quietly.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Liam stuck his finger out, pointing at his friend. “Do you know why Admiral Thrawn is considered the greatest leader in galactic history?”
“Because he's blue space Belisarius?” Greg asked.
“Thrawn?” Sami asked. The Scot looked equally as baffled.
“Because Thrawn never fought a battle he knew he couldn't win,” Liam said, seriously. “Except for that last time with the clone of Palpatine.”
“Wait, Star Wars?” Chelsea asked. “Wasn't Palpatine the Emperor? Didn't he die?”
“Yeah, that's why he was cloned,” Liam said.
“I thought that his name was Snoak or something,” Chelsea said.
“God, that is an awful name for a Star Wars villain,” Greg said, putting his head in his hands.
“I liked it,” Chelsea spoke into her glass as she tipped it backwards and drank from it. She, unlike everyone else at the table (and observable universe as far as Liam could tell) abstained from using a straw, a fact that the wait staff hadn't seemed to grasp as evidenced by the increasing pile of unused straws stacked on the napkin beside her plate.
Sami, though, waved his hand – trying to banish this talk of the space-future. “There is one thing we need to decide on before we head out: what are you going to call her?”
Chelsea leaned slowly forward – catching Sami's eye. “Her?”
“I am sorry. It is the tradition: ships, swords and very large guns are named her.” Sami nodded seriously – as he wasn't the designated driver, he had been quietly knocking down a few of the very fruity, slightly alcoholic drinks that the restaurant served. He did check an iPod app that looked like it was designed to calculate the duration of a drunk every other sip, though. The end result was that he was beginning to pronounce everything with the seriousness and earnest focus of the slightly drunk. “And all proper swords are named.”
“Foebiter,” Greg said.
“Excalibur,” Chelsea pitched in.
“Colada,” the Scot said, nodding. “And Tizona.”
“Fine!” Liam said, holding up his hands. “Fine, I need to name the sword. Just give me a bit of time, okay?”
“If you don't have it before we hit the museum tomorrow,” Greg said, leaning forward. “I will kill you.”
Everyone but Liam looked at Greg nervously – the large man had pronounced this with utter seriousness. Liam pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
“Don't worry,” he said. “Greg considers casual murder to be an effective carrot.”
“It got you through trig, didn't it?”
***
The carpeted hallways of the Hilton sucked up sound as effectively as a sponge. Liam hated it. He liked houses that creaked and groaned and were alive. This kind of near perfect soundproofing reminded him too much of morgues and sensory isolation chambers and recording rooms – the kind of places where the mind started making up noises just to be doing something. Fortunately, the company he was keeping made it easier to ignore his own dislike of the place. Chelsea walked with him, her shoulders shaking. “He didn't,” she said, her hand covering her mouth.
“He did,” Liam said, pausing at the door leading to his room. Greg had gone with Sami and the Scot to the gym in the Hilton. Apparently, there was a full sized pool-table tucked somewhere in there, and they were going to enjoy hitting balls with sticks. Liam's slightly sleepy brain tried to find a good pun to make but couldn't come up with anything. He leaned against the door and smiled at Chelsea. “And that is why, when Greg says that he will bring the firepower, you believe him.”
Chelsea smiled at him, her hands on the curve of her cheek. Liam paused – uncertain about how to say goodnight.
So, instead, he said: “Want to come in?”
The door opened behind him and Liam felt his skin tingle with an excitement more intense and more focused than that he had felt when he had faced off across the field from Sami. Gooseflesh rose along his forearms as Chelsea put her fingers against her skin and stepped into the room after him. The entrance hall to the room was tighter and closer than the rest of the room – and they both stayed there, taking advantage of the closeness. For the life of him, Liam had no idea who went for the first kiss – it was like, one moment, they were close. The next, their tongues were locked as they pressed against one another. Her dark hands grabbed at his ass and she squeezed and Liam heard a quiet, cat-like growl at the base of her throat.
And his knees almost melted.
She thinks I'm sexy, he thought, his eyes closed tight as Chelsea pressed him – back first – against the wall. The wall wasn't a wall, it was the sliding door of a closet and Liam felt it give under him weight and pressure ever so slightly. His hands grabbed her hips and shoved her back as he came up for breath. Pant. Pant. Pant.
“S-So, uh, sock?” she murmured.
“Sock?” he asked, dazed.
“Y-You know, like, on the door?”
“Sock!” His eyes widened. He blinked. “C-Chelsea, I, uh, w-wait, are-”
“We're not going to see each other again tomorrow, and Jesus Christ, you are fucking hot,” Chelsea whispered in his ear. Her hands slipped from his ass to the crotch of his jeans. A single, warm, coffee-brown palm cupped his cock and Liam groaned under his breath. “Let's have fun before real life comes back.”
Liam gulped. “Condom?”
“In my wallet,” she murmured. Then, seeing his look, she smirked. “You, like, going to get judgmental or something?”
“No! Christ, no!” he grinned at her. “Besides, uh, never really was down with St. Augustine.”
“Hmm?” Chelsea asked, lifting up one foot and tugging off her sneaker. She wriggled her pink sock off a moment later, opening the door and tugging it over the knob. Once she had it shut, she kicked off her other shoe.
“Uh, obscure theological argument about free love and it's relation to the immortal souuuuuuuuahhhhhh!” Liam's breathless tirade turned into a yelp as Chelsea grabbed his hand and dragged him to the closer of the twin beds in the room. They both landed – Chelsa on her side, Liam on his back. Before he could sit up, the NorCal girl slung one hip over his and then straddled him. She leaned back and for a moment, he couldn't see her face thanks to the back lightning from the ceiling lamp.
Then he couldn't see her face because her shirt covered it.
Then she sat there, bright white sports bra against cream dark skin and Liam breathed slowly out.
Is this really happening? He thought.
Her bra hit his chest.
Yes, yes, this is really happening. W-Well, don't just lay there like an idiot. Do all those things boys are supposed to do! His brain had the sharp voice of his first swords-trainer, Mr. Ro.
The first thing Liam did was lean up and cup her breasts in his hands. They were firm and yet soft – her skin silky smooth. His fingers found her nipples and he gently teased them as he kissed her neck. Chelsea made a sound somewhere between a groan, a moan, and the word 'fuck' and kissed the top of his head. His fingers slipped under her breasts, then to her back as he kissed at the tips of one breast, then the other. He sucked on her nipple as his hands gripped her ass. Then, experimentally, he slapped her jean-clad cheek.
Chelsea squeaked – then, after a single heart-stopping moment, laughed.
Emboldened, Liam rolled her onto her back – and now the light provided a perfect view of her body rather than shrouding it. Her skin gleamed faintly with sweat even in the air conditioned hotel room, and her nipples were dark, almost black nubs that drew his eye and made his mouth water. But the freckles on her cheek extended along her shoulders and down her arms, like the spotting on a fawn. She spread her arms, writhing sensually. Her muscles were finely defined – she definitely worked for a living.
“Like what you see, Mr. Vanderbilt?” she asked, coyly.
“Mmmmhmmm,” Liam said, tugging his own shirt off.
The tiny gasp that escaped Chelsea's mouth at the sight of him was extremely gratifying. Nothing like impressing a gorgeous girl to make a boy feel ten feet tall and capable of breaking Darth Vader over one knee while punching out the entire Borg Collective with his free hand at the same time. Then all thoughts beyond the practical physicality of the moment escaped him as her strong, lithe fingers hooked under the hem of his jeans and his shorts and tugged desperately, too desperate to even undo the button. His fingers did that job – and with the release of the button and the pressure keeping the jeans on his pants, his cock sprang free.
He had never been harder in his life.
Chelsea's hand closed around his cock and she cooed.
Okay, no, correction now was when he had never been harder before.
“Fuck, I can't wait,” Chelsea murmured. She was fishing in her wallet one handed. “I want this in me.”
“Uh, don't we need more, uh, foreplay?” Liam asked.
“I've been revved all day,” Chelsea said, her voice the model of practicality. “Fighting rubs my button, Ell. I need cock.”
Part of Liam felt...oddly uncertain.
Then Chelsea put the condom into her mouth and leaned forward. Her lips caressed Liam's cock – a warm, soft, enfolding sensation that contrasted with the slick, hot, tight feeling of the condom as she pushed herself forward and forward and forward and in a single, smooth motion, deepthroated him. Her tongue – almost dainty in its movements – pressed the base down and then she smoothly slid back with a faint glug noise. Coughing, she grinned at him.
“I had to, like, practice to get that right, dude,” she said. “I hope you are impressed.”
“Wow,” Liam whispered.
Part of Liam still felt oddly uncertain.
The rest of Liam was already frantically unbuttoning Chelsea's pants. They slipped off – revealing her wild tuft of pubic hair – and she rolled onto her back and then thrust her ass into the air. She grinned over her shoulder and spread her knees wide. Liam grabbed his cock, his brow furrowing as he focused on the pure physicality of the moment. His crucifix bounced against his chest as he reared backwards. His sheathed cock slipped up, then down, then pressed forward. She groaned into a pillow, arching her back to make it easier.
And Liam pressed into her.
Her sex squeezed him – tight and fierce – and Chelsea threw her head back, leaving a damp mark where she had bitten down on the pillow. She pushed back against him and Liam grabbed her hips. His hands slid to her shoulders, then squeezed as he started to find a natural, casual rhythm. Chelsea gasped and moaned and then said: “Ah...you can reach around, you know!” She grinned. “Find, ah, fuck, that cute little clitty of -nnh- mine and rub it good.”
“Right!” Liam shifted a bit, putting more of his weight on his right hand. His shoulders tensed and he reached around. Fortunately, Chelsea's vocalizations remained as frank and practical as ever.
“Left, right, up a bit – thaaaaaar it is!” She gasped. “Ah yes! Ah yes! H-Harder, it won't fucking break, oh Jesus, oh fuck yes!”
Liam ducked his head forward and saw his crucifix jounce and bounce around his neck as he drove into her faster and faster – and tried to ignore the vestigial guilt that the Gnostic had snuck into the early Christian church. He could hear the distant voice of St. Augustine of Hippo – sounding weirdly like the old grandfather in some sitcom.
How dare you enjoy the physical world, boy! It is sin!
Shut up, St. Augustine.
“Oh Godddddddd!” Chelsea groaned happily and Liam felt her sex constrict around him – tightening and drawing a jolt of pleasure through him. Before he even realized it, he was cumming and cumming hard. He felt the burst of heat and tightness around the condom that contained his dick. Then he felt like a cut guitar string – suddenly loose and noodley. He leaned forward, his head ducking forward. He panted, hearing Chelsea breath.
“Man,” she whispered. “That was, like, exactly the fuck I needed. Thanks, Ell.”
“Any time.”
Chelsea wriggled under him. She sighed. “I'd normally enjoy the feeling of your dick in me for a few more,” she said, squirming and slipping under his cock pulled out of her. “But that sock isn't a guarantee to keep that six foot tall ogre of your friend out.” She flashed a grin at him. “So, sorry to fuck and run, but-”
“No, no, it makes sense,” Liam said, smiling at her. “Besides. Just for fun, right?”
Chelsea cupped his cheek, then leaned in. The kiss caught a flicker of the earlier feeling of the night – a feeling of tingling excitement that had become washed out by the practicality and the realities of the moment. Then, in what felt like a few short heartbeats, she was gone. Liam knew that she had said things - things like “sleep tight” and “that was, like, fucking great” and “see you tomorrow morning” - but they had felt transitory.
Liam lay in bed, still naked, still sweating, and blinked.
“That's one way to lose your virginity,” he said. “I, uh, kinda expected more fanfare.”
Instead, all he heard was the faint squeak of the ceiling fan.
***
The Atlanta History Center – locked in one of the nicer parts of the Buckhead District in Atlanta – was a delightful place if you wanted to learn about the deadliest war in American history. But that wasn't why Liam, Sami, Chelsea – who acted exactly the same as she had yesterday, which for Liam was honestly a relief – Greg and the Scot had come there. No, the reason they had come was only going to be present for another month and a half. The fact that next to no one had actually come to check it out just made it better for the lot of them.
The Early Christian History exhibit was filled with the relics and history of a part of Christian history that was lost and ignored by modern Americans. Liam knew a few bits here and there – mostly stuff picked up by researching the history of Rome and Byzantium. He recognized names that popped up here and there – names like Monophysite, and Gnostic, and Apollinarians and others. But the details were a mass of ecumenical councils and debates that had long since been settled (or, at the very least, tucked into a corner and labeled with “do not open, will cause holy war.”)
The center of the exhibit, though, were some ancient relics of the early Church. These were objects on loan from the museums of Istanbul in a Turkey/America BFF gesture that was part of the myriad of subtle connections that wedded the NATO nations together into a tight, comforting blanket of nuclear deterrence.
“So, did you come up with a name?” Sami asked.
“What?” Liam asked, his backpack and his scabbard bouncing against his back as he walked with his friends through the corridors of the museum.
“For your sword?” Sami grinned.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Liam said, coughing slightly. His hand went back to the hilt of his sword, wrapped in leather and cloth. He closed his eyes, steeled himself, and said: “Delenn.”
“Who?” Sami asked.
“That bone-headed chick from Babylon 5?” Greg asked.
Liam scowled at Greg. “She's beautiful, a mixture of old and new, and can kick immense amount of ass if she needs too!”
“That, honestly, sounds like a really good name for a sword,” Chelsea said.
“What is that?” Greg asked, his voice sounding shocked as he looked away from the group and pointed.
They had walked past a few early paintings of Church leaders and were into the actual artifacts themselves – some examples of early worry beads and other religious paraphernalia that hadn't made it to the western branches of Christianity.
“I have no idea,” Liam said.
Together, the lot of them walked up to the central exhibit. It was hard to describe. Just looking at it made Liam want to rub his nose and blink a lot. It looked like a box made of solid iron, with crossbars that connected to one another, forming a perfect cube. There was nothing inside, and yet the angles of the structure all conspired to make the interior seem smaller than it could possibly be. Despite there being absolutely nothing odd about the center, looking into it made Liam feel queasy. The rest of his friends all looked uncertain too.
“It says,” Sami said, reading carefully off the placard set out before the box, “The Manichean Solution. Found in 1989 in a secret chamber in the Hagia Sophia by archeologist Amir Hussain, it was found with a scroll dating to the year 300 CE. Described as being a blasphemous tool used by the Manichean heresy, this box was said to be used to spread their creed into Europe and China.” He humphed. “What is a Manichean?”
Liam already had his iPod out, grinning as he checked the battery. Still ninety eight percent. “Manichean,” he read. “A major religious movement founded by Iranian prophet – Mani – in the year 216.” He nodded. “Blah blah blah, dualistic cosmology. Oh.” He shook his head. “They're one of those people who think the spiritual world is all good and the material world is all bad.” He frowned slightly. “I wonder what they used it for?”
“Creeping people out?” Chelsea asked.
“Maybe it was like those old temples to Zeus, where the priests used illusions and tricks to seem impressive?” Liam asked. “Like, you stick your arm through and the perspective makes-”
He put his arm forward, sticking his hand and his iPod through the box.
The resulting release of energy – caused by feedback and physical processes unknown to modern Earth – caused an explosion that shattered the box and the wall behind it into rubble. The others were, fortunately, protected from the blast by the directional nature of the energy release. The bigger danger was from the shrapnel that blew outwards. If Greg had been half an inch taller, he'd have stopped a chunk of metal the size of his thumb with his forehead, rather than earning a nasty scar. If Chelsea hadn't been leaning forward to watch Liam's demonstration, she'd have taken the chunk of concrete in the throat rather than her shoulder.
As it was, she still spent a month in the hospital so she had time to dwell on many questions.
If it was a terror attack, why hit an almost abandoned chunk of the museum?
And if Liam was dead, where the fuck was his body?