Chaos God 8, page 2
part #8 of Chaos God Series
“I would like to bring Gorn along with us,” Elora said.
I thought about the brown-haired dwarf and his broadsword. He was a good fighter and had a quiet personality. I saw no reason not to include him.
“Alright.” I nodded.
“Also, Vidar will not be coming with us,” Sylmarie said with a small, apologetic grimace.
Vidar instantly looked her way with a stunned and already brooding expression on his godly face.
“What?” Shalanna asked in surprise.
“Why not?” Ayen asked.
“But he will be an asset to our quest,” Elora insisted.
“He would,” Sylmarie conceded. “However, we need him on this side of the rainbow bridge.”
“Um…” I hummed. “Why?”
“The rainbow bridges we will create for this smaller army can be fueled and stabilized by the energy of the dark elves and the power within you, my love,” Sylmarie explained. “But when the time comes to bring the core strength of our warriors across to the realm of the final battle, we will need both you and Vidar on opposing sides of the bridge to anchor it.”
“Okaaay…?” I droned with confusion.
“You and Vidar share a bond,” Sylmarie explained. “A bond of both blood and power. Both of you are Aesir, and we will use that connection between you to strengthen the rainbow bridge to allow a great number of fighters to cross it.”
“Huh,” I breathed. “Alright.”
I glanced at Vidar and saw a frown of frustration deepening between his eyebrows. His thin lips were pressed so tightly together they had completely disappeared.
“My brother will have all the fun it seems,” Vidar said, and though his voice was salty, there was humor in his blue eyes. “You must promise to save some fun for me at the end, Brother.”
“I promise,” I chuckled. “Besides, that’s when all the fun is going to happen, right?”
“This is a fine point…” Vidar brightened slightly at that. “Very well. You warm up the enemy, and I will come in to save the day.”
I laughed at the subtly teasing tone in my brother’s voice, and the others in the room seemed to relax at the break in tension.
Then we discussed the possibility of bringing a few other warriors with us, and in the end, we decided to bring the black-haired young elf, Elion, along with us. Freesia also requested the company of Astrid, and I debated the wisdom of bringing the young human girl with us into battle.
“She has become an apprentice of sorts,” Freesia explained. “This will be a great learning experience for her, and I will need the extra set of hands should we encounter serious danger.”
“Alright,” I said. “But that means Arlindra and Azariah will definitely insist on coming, too. I can’t imagine them agreeing to let their little sister travel across the realms without them.”
The two older warrior sisters had been intensely protective of their youngest sister ever since I’d freed her from the Demon Lord’s clutches during my first days here on Asgard. They’d thought she was long dead, and when she’d returned to them, they’d been overjoyed with relief. I couldn’t blame them, either.
“They are fine fighters,” Ayen pointed out. “We would not suffer to have them along.”
“I agree,” I said. “Alright, is there anyone else we want to bring with us?”
I glanced around the room.
My lovers looked between one another and nodded in agreement that they were satisfied with our list.
Finnern, Nae, and Emneth also shared a glance before the former dwarf king shrugged. I took that to mean they were equally pleased with our list, and I glanced at my fully-grown newborn twins.
Ari and Ker were beautiful in an entirely alien way, and the black fog they’d been born in continued to waft around them like a constant aura of power. They stood silently side by side and stared at me as they seemed to communicate telepathically for a moment.
“We are content, Father,” the twins said in perfect unison.
If I hadn’t watched them grow inside Sylmarie and be born in a burst of intense magic, I might have been entirely creeped out by them. Ari and Ker were unlike anything else I’d experienced on this planet, and according to Sylmarie, they were pretty unique even in the long history of the Aesir. Apparently only a few children had even been born from the union of a god and a Völva, so our twins were quite rare.
They somehow stood apart from the rest of the world, and they rarely smiled or showed much emotion at all. They stood like ever-present vigils of loyalty and strength to my reign as the new Allfather. There was a quality about them that made them seem like living statues.
And yet, I loved them as completely as I loved Milo and each of my ladies.
Odd as Ari and Ker appeared, they were just as much a part of my family as the others.
I smiled lovingly at the dark pair before I turned to look at Vidar.
My half-brother gave me an annoyed look at being left behind, but he nodded in agreement with our collective decision.
“Don’t worry, Brother,” I chuckled at his sour expression. “You’ll get to join us for the final battle.”
“Yes,” Vidar said with a little smirk. “And I will not have expended all the energy you will by chasing the primordial giant. I will be quite refreshed and invigorated. You will struggle to keep up with me.”
“I’ll do my best,” I laughed.
Vidar gave me a brotherly smile, and he wrapped his arm around Nenna’s shoulders.
“I am simply glad you will not be leaving me here unattended,” the green-eyed huldra said.
Innay rolled her eyes at her sister, and I stifled a grin at the beautiful, brown-eyed woman. They’d been gone from their home of Huldraina for days now, and yet the crown of delicate purple flowers that rested around her golden head hadn’t wilted at all. They still looked as vivid and bright as if they were still growing from the ground.
I knew that was due to the huldra’s powerful connection with nature, and I wondered if it happened involuntarily, or if she put constant effort into keeping the flowers fresh.
My wondering was quickly interrupted by a horribly familiar sensation of a million fire ants crawling inside my veins. The itching, burning sensation raced through my body in a flash, and I knew exactly what it meant.
“Shit,” I hissed as I heard the first of a thousand raven cries outside.
Chapter 2
“Levi?” Elora asked with concern.
“The ravens are coming,” I said as I stood up and raced to the window.
A few thousand large black ravens flew straight at Castle Levi, and they began to circle around it like vultures over a fresh kill. The creeping, fiery feeling the ravens’ proximity brought to my nervous system intensified, and I felt like I wanted to peel every inch of my flesh away to make it stop.
Shouts and screams of shock and terror came from the grounds of the castle as the ravens began dive-bombing toward the ground.
“They’re attacking!” I shouted. “Come on!”
I bolted into the entrance hall, grabbed my flesh-rending sword and rot-dagger from their places, and felt a surge of battle readiness flood through my body. I held off on a shift, though, until I had a better idea of what we were going up against, and I heard my companions’ footsteps moving quickly behind me.
Elora and Shalanna appeared to my left in my peripheral vision as Finnern and Ayen caught up on my right.
The ravens were diving down at my people as they rushed inside the castle, and I started to shout orders without hesitation.
“Everyone, get inside!” I ordered. “Send out any fighters who are ready! Then close the doors and cover the windows!”
Goren, our youngest resident and Ingrid’s son, raced forward with his arms over his curly brown hair.
“Slaughter them, Levi Allfather!” he shouted as he darted past me.
I heard the telltale sound of stomping boots coming up from behind me, and I knew my other fighters were on the move to defend our home. There was no time to look back to see who had joined us so far as one of the massive ravens swooped toward my head.
As I shifted my arms into long appendages with long talons up the outer edges of what had been my forearms, I took a second to assess the size of these beasts.
The ravens were enormous compared to Earth’s version of the shiny black birds, and I realized I’d never been close enough to them to see just how massive they really were. The ravens were at least three feet tall with a wingspan of close to six feet, and their seven-inch-long talons reached out for me from all sides.
I swung my right arm up and slashed across the nearest bird’s chest, and the beast shrieked with surprise and pain.
Blood spewed out across my face and chest as the bird’s skin ripped away from the wound, and bloody black feathers exploded everywhere. The beast was dead in a matter of seconds, and its body burst like an overinflated balloon.
Quickly, I moved onto the next target, and within a minute, I had cut down at least a dozen ravens from the sky. My body was covered in their blood, and black feathers were floating down to the ground all over the place.
As I slashed my flesh-rending and rot weapons through the beasts, I considered the implications of their arrival at Castle Levi, and I saw only one reason for such a massive flock of Surtr’s minions to attack my home.
They had to still be relaying information to the primordial giant somehow.
I had no idea how they might be doing that, or what Surtr hoped to gain from it since he’d fled the planet. Though I could probably assume he was watching to see what I might do next. If he was hoping this army of birds was going to be a serious enough threat to me that he could return to Asgard, he was sorely mistaken.
Whatever the giant’s reasoning was, I couldn’t risk any of these birds escaping with information.
“Kill them all!” I shouted to whoever was still outside. “Every last one of them!”
Then I returned to the task with a vigor I hadn’t felt in days, and I sliced my rot-dagger arm through two ravens that circled over my head. Their bodies quickly succumbed to the rapid decay caused by the demon blood-quenched weapon, and their carcasses dropped to the ground with a sickening splat.
The ground became slick and sticky at the same time with the combined viscous ooze of blood and rotting flesh, and I wasn’t cutting through ravens as fast as I wanted. I decided it was time to take to the sky, and I stretched my large leathery wings out from my shoulders.
The second they were fully formed, I launched myself into the air, and the ravens seemed shocked that I had joined them on their turf.
“Turf,” I laughed to myself as I chopped the head clean off one of the black birds.
Its flesh tore away from its severed head like a slingshot, and a huge puff of feathers wafted gently to the ground. The combination of gallons of blood, buckets of rotting flesh, and enough shiny black feathers to stuff fifty king-sized pillows was a strange sight to behold.
I was much faster in the air, and I had the benefit of being able to catch glimpses of my warriors on the ground beneath me. I didn’t even bother making sure I dealt death blows to the ravens because once they were on the ground my warriors finished them off.
Ayen had taken point on the top of the outer stone wall of the castle, and he was taking out any ravens that decided to flee rather than fight. There weren’t many of them, and thanks to my big blond friend, none of them got very far.
Ari aided Ayen’s long-distance attacks with the throwing weapons she created from the blue-black mist that continuously hovered around her body. The ethereal fog that wafted all around my daughter’s body still amazed me, and she flung the mist outward like daggers into various targets. The best part was, she seemed to have infinite ammo, and the mist never dissipated. Ari shot mist-daggers out in groups of three and four and eliminated ravens rapidly.
Ayen’s eyebrows furrowed as he noticed my daughter’s speed, and he started to nock and release arrows as rapidly as he could manage.
I shook my head at my best friend’s competitive nature and took a moment to check on Ari’s twin.
Ker’s ever-present dark mist was tinged with green, and unlike his sister, his weapons remained connected to his body. He extended long curved blades on chain-like tethers of the green-black mist, and he swung them around like a master fire spinner. It reminded me heavily of the weapons Kratos used in God of War I, II, and III, except they were much more badass.
Vidar had joined us on the battlefield, and he used the large boot he was most famous for to stomp the life out of any ravens that continued to writhe on the ground. Occasionally, he would slice a raven out of the air with a precise swing of his sword.
Emneth seemed to struggle a bit more than the others with targets that were significantly smaller than the last several battles. She’d apparently become used to taking on enormous monsters, and the ravens evaded her blasts for a few moments. The dark elf quickly adjusted, though, and soon she was punting the ravens out of the sky with precise blasts from her bone staff.
On the other hand, Lyrie was having a fucking field day with the relatively small beasts. The sexy dark elf ripped the black birds to pieces like an overly excited Great Dane with a brand-new plush chew toy. Each of Lyrie’s targets made a disgusting pop sound when they exploded with the reverse black hole power she wielded, and shiny feathers fluttered down around her like huge black snowflakes.
I shook my head at the insane sight, and I turned my attention back to the beasts swarming through the air over Castle Levi. Nae and Elora had both launched themselves into the air at some point, as well, and the three of us were dropping the ravens like flies.
Shalanna seemed to be in her glory, and I realized this was the first fight she’d been a part of in months. She must have missed the thrill of battle because there was a grin glued in place on her beautiful face.
My black-haired warrior chopped the ravens into pieces with her matched axes. She really impressed me when she hurled her left axe through the air and directly into the face of a raven ten feet away.
“Aaaahh!” Shalanna roared as she darted forward.
She chopped through the wing joint of another raven with her right axe as she lunged toward the dead bird on the ground. Shalanna stomped on the bird’s wings as she ripped her left axe free of its skull, and in the next second, she slashed them diagonally across the belly of a third raven that swooped at her.
“Aaah,” Shalanna sighed aggressively with pleasure.
“Good to be back?” I shouted to my human lover.
Shalanna grinned at me for a split second before she pivoted around and moved onto the next bird.
“Fuck, I love her,” I chuckled to myself.
I pushed myself higher above the swarm to get an idea of how many ravens there were, and I was disgusted to see there were still at least another thousand of the birds soaring through the air. Several of them had taken to trying to fling themselves through the castle’s windows, and I saw my people fighting them off with whatever they could use.
The sour-faced woman, Ylva, wielded a heavy iron frying pan as she smashed a three-foot-tall raven out of the open healing hall window. The pretty blonde dwarf, Clara, fought off another raven with one of the garden shovels, and I briefly wondered how it had ended up inside the castle.
Sylmarie stood on the top of the front steps, and she batted a raven away from the door with her Yggdrasil staff. She swung the heavy wooden staff like a baseball bat and slammed it right into the skull of the bird. The strike made a shattering cracking sound, and the bird wavered in the air for a few seconds as it struggled to survive the impact.
But my seeress lover’s second strike was too strong to withstand, and the bird slammed into the castle walls before it slid along the stones. A long smudge of blood was left on the stone as the carcass plopped onto the ground.
“Ayen!” I shouted as I swooped over to his location, and I pointed at the windows. “Man the windows!”
My big blond friend pivoted on a dime, and his midnight-blue eyes went wide with sudden terror as he zeroed in on one of the second-story windows.
“Sassa!” Ayen shouted with fear.
I followed his gaze and spotted the scarred face of his lover constricted with determination as she fended off another raven with the wooden handle of a broom. In the next second, one of Ayen’s arrows pierced cleanly through the raven’s chest and the bird dropped out of the sky.
“Defend the castle windows!” I shouted to all of my warriors.
An enormous tangle of green vines climbed rapidly up the castle’s stone walls, and bright purple flowers bloomed all over them as they reached away from the walls to ensnare the ravens.
My mouth dropped open at the incredible sight, and I looked around for the source.
Innay’s beautiful face was locked in a frown of focus as her hands hovered in the air, and the vines obeyed her silent commands like a snake charmer’s boa constrictor. The brightly colored vines tangled around a dozen ravens at once, and they dragged the birds out of the sky. Some of the huldra’s targets were delivered handily to Vidar and the other warriors on the ground as several more were strangled to death by the vines themselves.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed at the incredible sight.
I knew the huldra could make plants grow, I’d seen their leader, Ester, do it firsthand. The sisters had also moved the hedges of Huldraina’s labyrinth out of the way as we’d made our return journey here. But I had no idea they were so powerful, or that they could be used as a weapon.
I couldn’t stop myself from thinking back to the time my companions and I had been caught unawares in the aggressive forest to the east of the castle. The vines had moved like this but of their own accord, and they’d attacked us. Shalanna had nearly been eaten alive by one of the vicious plants. I wondered if Innay could have placated those plants or ripped them to shreds with their own stalks and vines.
