Life at Oxfordshire Manor had been quite pleasant. The City of Immortals was operating on its own according to Salomon's plans, making intensive preparations for war. The Arcanist delegated work to those who should have been responsible for it in the first place. Though less efficient, this allowed them to adapt to the limits of their own capabilities.
In recent days, nothing had troubled Salomon. The only time he left the manor and opened a portal to the United States was to drag little Lorna and her friends out of a party—American teenage parties were utterly awful. Cheap tequila, a wide variety of drugs obtained from God knew where, and numerous occupied rooms upstairs all proved that Salomon had good reason to look down on American parties. Whether teenage parties or adult ones—especially Tony Stark's—they thoroughly demonstrated the importance of taste. After receiving a call from his adoptive mother, he went to the garage, grabbed a .50-caliber bolter automatic rifle and a longsword, then drove his American-plated pickup truck through a portal and straight into the place where little Lorna's party was being held.
What followed was quite satisfying to watch.
He dragged little Lorna out of the party. He fired only a few shots, damaging nothing more than a marble kitchen counter, the ceiling, and a small amount of glass. Aside from the panicked screams of a group of teenagers, a bottle of OxyContin, a bag of marijuana cigarettes, and several grams of white powder, there were no casualties. "I don't care what American law says. As far as I'm concerned, anything containing psychoactive substances is a drug," he told the sullen little Lorna in the passenger seat. Clearly, the girl entering adolescence thought Salomon was far too strict, like some hopelessly old-fashioned conservative parent—yet in Athena's eyes, Salomon