Oh, please, I thought. Loyalty, honour, truth, good faith – all those things belong to Order. The children of Chaos neither need nor fully understand them.

But somehow the Old Man had read my mind. ‘I’m not going to ask for your word,’ he said. ‘But all the same, I’ll need something. A mark of allegiance, if you like.’

I shrugged. ‘What kind of a mark?’ I said.

‘This,’ said Odin, and suddenly, I felt a searing sensation in my arm. At the same time, something hit me so hard that I fell onto my back in the snow. Colours blazed around me. Later, I learnt that this was called pain. I already knew I wasn’t a fan.

‘What in Pandaemonium was that?’

Of course, in my fiery Aspect I’d never experienced physical pain. In some ways, I was still very innocent. But I did recognize some kind of attack, and leapt back into my primary form, ready to rejoin Pandaemonium.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said Odin, seeing my intention. ‘My mark is on you now. My glam. We’re brothers, whether you like it or not.’

I jumped back into physical form, and – dammit – I found I was naked again. ‘No way am I your brother,’ I said.

‘We’re brothers in blood,’ said Odin. ‘Or brothers in glam, if you prefer.’

I touched my arm. It still hurt. But now, on the new pink flesh, there was a mark, a kind of tattoo, which gleamed a soft violet against my skin. The sting was fading but the mark, the shape of a broken twig, endured.

‘What’s that? What did you do to me?’

Odin sat down on a rock. Whatever he had done to me had taken a great deal of glam from him. His colours had faded considerably, and his face was almost colourless.

‘Call it a badge of loyalty,’ he said. ‘All my people have one now. The Vanir taught us their names and their use; yours is Kaen, Wildfire. Quite appropriate, I thought, given your demonic nature.’

‘But I don’t need a badge,’ I said. ‘These runes of yours’ – I indicated the violet mark – ‘they’re just some of the letters that make up the language of Chaos. I don’t need runes to do what I do. I can tap Chaos at the source.’

‘Not in this World, or this body, you can’t. Your Aspect determines what you can do.’

‘Oh.’ I should have thought of that. Of course, glam in its purest form exists only in the realms of Chaos and Dream. Here, I’d have to work for it. Work. Like pain, I sensed that this was an experience I would want to avoid as often as possible.