H₂S (The Five Rings Mashup)

Rob Klinkhammer goes where he’s needed.

He gets the first call from Hockey Canada early, and they’re frank about why they want him. “We obviously can’t call on any of the NHL witches,” Burke says. He sounds tired. Being the GM responsible for putting together this ragtag team must be tough when he can’t call up Sidney Crosby and Carey Price and ask them how they would feel about playing for Canada at the Olympics.

Rob never was any good at the intricacies of NHL politics even when he was part of the league, and now that he’s in the KHL, part of a cross-cultural witches exchange, he has a whole other boatload of politics to worry about. “Is there something specific you need me for?” he asks. He picks at a hangnail. Bad habit. Bleeding witch blood can cause all sorts of problems if you’re not careful.

“It’s mostly a precautionary measure,” Burke says. “From what I’ve been led to believe, it’s not enough time for anything particularly nasty to take hold, but I think it would put us all at ease if you were around. Just in case.”

Maybe Rob should feel like this is no big deal, like it’s just another assignment after a life filled with assignments, but it’s the Olympics. It’s playing for Canada when he never thought he’d have the chance. “Yes,” he says, to a question that hasn’t even officially been asked.

Burke lets out a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he says. “With any luck, all you’ll have to do is play some hockey.”

“Yeah, if we’re lucky,” Rob says, but over the length of his career, he’s learned not to believe in luck.

---

Rob has had a lifetime of bouncing from place to place, assignment to assignment, stepping into new locker rooms, learning the ins and outs of new clubs, new teams. His usual M.O. is to keep his head down and his mouth shut. But when you’re thrown together like this, no established team, and more importantly, no established team dynamics, there’s a lot of odd pauses, lots of sideways glances. Everyone feeling out their place, including Rob himself.

No one seems to be dragging around any residual magic with them, and that means Rob’s job can just be hockey. He can focus on playing hard and physical. It’s a good group of guys, the kind of guys that have been bounced around between teams and places over the years, like Rob himself. He gets along great with Dells and Lappy, his linemates. Neither of them have any magic to speak of, but they can throw some mean hits and are willing to drop the gloves for any of their teammates.

Rob likes the assignments where he can feel challenged, feel useful, but he also likes the assignments like this, where his expertise isn’t needed at all.

---

The Olympic Village is a riot of competing magics. It’s protected by powerful wards, government grade, set up by the Koreans. The wards taste like Asian magic, like incense and fruit offerings, and Rob can only recognize them because he’s spent the last eight months in this hemisphere.

The individual teams, the individual athletes, have their own safeguards in place, too. Beads wrapped around their wrists. Herbs woven into hair.

The only magic Rob had been called upon to do for this assignment has been some rudimentary protection spells. Since the team didn’t exist before this tournament, he’s had to build up all of the charms and sigils from scratch, but it’s nothing more complicated than the magic he’s been doing since grade school. It’s none of the deeply rooted magic that the NHL teams rely on, tied to the deep foundations of arenas and training facilities and equipment. The kind of magic that has to last a whole season or longer.

It’s straightforward work. Rob inspects the team quarters first thing in the mornings, checking to make sure the sigils are still strong. He goes through the equipment room after practice to refresh the wards. He does his best to keep Royzer’s pre-game ritual of spitting water on the ground in the locker room doesn’t undo the protections that Rob spent hours weaving in the first place. Simple stuff, as far as Rob’s work goes.

The rest of the time, Rob can focus on enjoying the experience of being at the Olympics. The good-natured and less-good-natured chirping from opposing teams. The pomp and circumstance of the opening ceremonies. The national camaraderie with the other Canadians competing in other events.

And, most importantly, the free McDonald’s.

---

Rob doesn’t notice it until the Germany vs. Sweden game. It’s a subtle thing, constructed skillfully enough to fly underneath the radar. The Germans score first, and then they score again thirty seconds later. Rob’s been on the other side of it often enough to know that usually it’s just hockey when that happens. The first goal shakes you up enough that the second goal isn’t even much of a surprise. But before Landy scores his third goal, Rob notices one of the fans in the crowd, white-haired and bearded, head bowed over his jersey, one hand fiddling with the beads of the bracelet around his wrist as his mouth moves. Nothing too obvious, but Rob is an expert. He knows what he’s looking at.

It’s not dark magic. It doesn’t have the same acrid dead-animal smell or leave him with an ugly, throbbing headache. The entire arena isn’t filled with an unsettling wrongness that will linger for days.

But Rob thinks he can see how it tilts the direction of the game. Sends a shot wide. Gives up an advantageous breakaway. Even when Sweden manages to tie things up at 3-3, Rob still feels uneasy. And when Germany scores the final goal in OT, he’s pretty much convinced.

---

He tries talking to Lacasse about his concerns, maybe get a chance to do some witch-to-witch bonding with his women’s team counterpart, but she’s too busy dispelling the hexes from angry USA fans to really care about his concerns about the German team.

“Are you sure you’re not just being worried about your game against them next?” she asks, chewing on a french fry and giving him an inscrutable goalie look.

Rob grimaces into his Diet Coke. The men’s team only just managed to claw their way into the semi-finals against Finland, pulling out a 1-0 win by the skin of their teeth. “I don’t think so?” he says.

“Well you better be sure before you start messing with another team’s magic,” she says, “especially here.” The because you sure as hell don’t want to start an international witching incident goes unsaid, but Rob hears it loud and clear.

---

He sends an e-mail to the mailing list next, because the tight Olympic schedule doesn’t give him much time to do a deep dive into what’s going on the way he would over the long grind of an NHL season. He tries to keep it vague and non-accusatory, because he doesn’t have any hard evidence either way, and there’s plenty of non-Canadians on the list.

The responses he gets back are less than helpful. PK sends back a half-joking accusatory e-mail about how disappointed his is in how Rob has been protecting ‘his’ team. There’s a few people asking Rob if he can run a few tests to gather more information, even though he said that he was going to be too busy to do any deeper digging into it in his original e-mail. No one has any useful suggestions or any of their own suspicions, so Rob assumes that it’s just the stress of the tournament getting to him. He rubs at his forehead and takes a deep breath as he shuts the lid of his laptop.

He’ll go over the wards and sigils and charms in the morning.

---

The game against Germany goes south almost immediately. Their shots are ugly. They can’t capitalize on a power play. They give up a 5-on-3, and Germany gets first blood.

Rob tries to pull double duty of paying attention to both the game and the currents of magic threading through the hockey center, but there’s nothing obviously wrong, and he’s never been good at multitasking. His focus needs to be on what he’s doing on the ice.

It’s not enough. Germany keeps putting up goals. 2-0, 3-0.

A good shot on the powerplay puts Canada back in the game, but Delly gets careless, giving up a hooking minor, and the Germans manage to capitalize in it, leaving the game at 4-1.

“What the hell was that?” Rob hisses at him once he gets out of the box.

Delly grimaces, shaking his head, frustration written on every line of his face. “It just-- I fucked up, okay? I know I did.”

Rob gives him a pat on his helmet, because now is not the time or place to chew him out. “We’ll get them next time,” he says and whispers a blessing for Delly right afterwards. It helps. Delly draws two penalties, and Royzer even manages to score on one of them, getting them to 4-3.

It’s not enough, though, and even with an empty net, Canada can’t get any pucks past the German goalie. The game ends with a whimper and not a bang.

---

Rob would like to say that there isn’t any crying afterwards, that they all get their shit together and get ready to play the bronze medal game afterwards, but there’s definitely crying. And drinking. And a lot of commiserating. So it’s excusable that he doesn’t see the e-mail until hours afterwards.

It’s from a now-familiar e-mail address, and Rob almost dreads finding out what it says when he opens it. Maybe some sort of detailed list of all the things he missed, all of the magic he could have used if only had more time or more energy.

But the e-mail just says, It was a powerful blessing, but we are handling it. It’s signed Ф, as always.

---

It shouldn’t be a surprise when the OAR manages to overcome a 3-2 deficit and then win the game in overtime.

And yet, somehow, it is.

---

Rob doubles down on the wards for the bronze medal game. He sprinkles fresh water onto their helmets, chalks in new and more powerful sigils in their locker room. There’s no curses to clean out, so he doesn’t have anything specific to target with his own magic.

They manage to clobber the Czech Republic 6-3. Rob plays as hard as he can, leaving every bit of himself on the ice.

Winning bronze isn’t as good as gold would have been, but the victory tastes sweet all the same.

---

Right after the medal ceremony, one of the Russians Rob hasn’t met before pulls Rob aside. “Thank you for help,” he says. “Would not have found soon enough if you not send e-mail.”

There’s something bittersweet about hearing it this way. Dealing with magical hockey interference is Rob’s job, after all, and even if he did manage to figure it out in the end, it was too little, too late for his country. But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered in the end. Maybe they would have lost the game even without the blessing given to the German team. “You’re welcome,” he says.

The Russian lifts his necklace from where it’s tucked underneath his shirt, presses a kiss to the ash tree pendant hanging from its heavy gold chain. Rob kisses his ash tree pendant in return, and the Russian gives him a toothy, awkward-looking smile.

Rob will probably see him again over the course of the KHL season. They’ll nod at each other across the ice and not speak a word to one another. They’re alike, the two of them, but he succeeded where Rob failed. Rob could hold onto his bitterness over that, but life is too short.

He nods at the Russian.

The Russian nods back.

---

Rob walks through the closing ceremonies along with the rest of Team Canada, his bronze medal hanging around his neck. As a mixture of copper and tin, it lacks the purity of gold or silver, but there’s power in it, still. He can carry it back with him to Canada, back to where most of his family is waiting for him in Alberta.

He looks up at the lights, the crowd, the swirling eddies of energy that permeate the space, conjured up by the Korean government’s witches. Once, he thought that there would be nothing more amazing than playing in an NHL game, to skate over that ice, wearing one of those jerseys.

This, he thinks, might be better.

After his KHL assignment is up, he probably won’t be able to find another one in pro-hockey. He’ll go back to Canada and pick up a coaching gig, teaching the next generation of witches the ins and outs of hockey magic.

But for now, he has this. The medal around his neck. The Team Canada jersey he has shoved into a duffel bag. His teammates laughing beside him. The taste of all this beautiful, beautiful magic.

His next assignment can wait.