Chaos God 6, page 22
part #6 of Chaos God Series
“Oh, my gods!” Elora gasped loud enough that her voice echoed throughout the chasm for several seconds.
I only barely heard Ayen’s commands to the archers that were shortly followed by Elora’s strict orders to the other warriors as I stared at a hundred pairs of my own blue eyes.
Suspicion blazed through my chest as the identical Levis stared at me with the same look of confusion I felt on my own face. My only thought was that Jörmungandr must have some kind of illusionary magic, and he was trying to confuse me into making a critically fatal mistake.
But as I glanced down at the world serpent, his slitted green eyes went wide with astonishment as he gazed back at me.
The most shocking thing was that the hundred pairs of identical faces followed my movements exactly as I stared at Jörmungandr, and my heart sped up as I glanced around the circle of my faces. Each of the eyes moved in perfect synchronization with me as I glanced around, and even their mouths fell open with the same shock I felt.
I studied the extraordinarily identical faces, and I noticed even the feathered wings moved to the exact same rhythm as we all hovered in the air.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, and every single one of my doppelgangers repeated the same thing at the same time. “They’re me.”
“It matters not how many of you there are, Forelder!” Jörmungandr roared, and he started to slam his tail like a baseball bat through the copies of me.
I braced for the impact out of instinct, but the giant snake’s tail slashed right through two of my copies with zero resistance. The images of my copies shimmered slightly like desert mirages as the tail passed through, but other than that, there was no signs that Jörmungandr had touched the other Levis at all.
“Aaaaahhh!” Jörmungandr roared with rising anger, and he slashed his tail out wildly at the various copies of myself. “What is this illusion?”
“I don’t know,” I said to myself as a slightly mischievous grin hitched on my mouth, along with all of the Levis. “But I’m going to see what it can do.”
Jörmungandr was smashing his way through the circular line of my illusion duplicates, and I knew I had to move before he figured out which one was the real me. I stretched my wings out and banked away from the world serpent’s heavy tail, and my copies followed precisely. I soared around in circles above the huge snake’s head to buy myself a little time to figure out this new magic.
The imagery was fucking insane to witness, but the cyclone of Levis was admittedly the most badass thing I’d seen since arriving on Asgard.
Meanwhile, my warriors continued to slash and chop at Jörmungandr’s heavily-scaled body, and more and more blood poured out onto the ground. The wounds were shallow in most places due to the sheer length of the creature’s body, but one or two spots dug nearly a quarter of the way to his spine.
I figured the doppelganger Levis were just an extension of myself, so I tried to sense them like I would with new wings. My mind reached out along the empty air between me and the nearest copy, and I could sense a tiny bit of wispy threads between myself and my other self.
With some focused thought, I found I was able to directly command the nearest doppelganger to move out of perfect sync with the rest of my copies.
I also spotted Cedoric and Hezzig on a higher ledge with their axes raised, and they were waiting for an opportunity to cut into the serpent’s body again. My eyes darted down the length of Jörmungandr’s diamond-patterned body, and I spotted one of the deeper wounds. The deep gash was streaming blood still, and I saw it was a reasonable distance from where my broad-shouldered axe-wielders waited.
I turned back to the doppelganger I’d managed to isolate, and I kept it in sync with the rest of me to get the serpent’s wound in position.
Then I made my move.
The other ninety-nine versions of myself continued to soar in harmonized circles above Jörmungandr’s head, and the one I’d selected veered off on its own.
“There you are!” Jörmungandr hissed, and he slashed out at the doppelganger I’d sent out of formation.
I smirked as his tail slammed right through the illusion and landed just below Cedoric and Hezzig’s ledge. They made me proud by not missing a single beat as they launched themselves from the ledge.
Their axes cut heavily into the injured scales, and the wound was suddenly three times the width it had been a moment before. I couldn’t remember which of the dwarves also had demon blood-fueled weapons, but the evidence of the acid-spitters’ blood was clear in the festering wounds dotted among the more normal-looking ones.
“Aaaaaahhhhh!” Jörmungandr screamed in pain.
During the snake’s momentary distraction from the calculated attack, I focused on gaining control over a few more of my doppelgangers. It was tricky at first to control more than one of my doubles, and it reminded me of the occasion when I tried to learn to juggle. The main difference between juggling balls and jugging doppelgangers was they felt like extensions of myself rather than separate, inanimate objects.
Once I had a stable enough grip on four different copies of myself, I sent them in different directions, and I continued to move within the coordinated group of the other ninety-six Levis.
Jörmungandr continued to scream and slash out at each of my moving doubles, and he became more and more enraged with each failed attempt to smash me into pudding.
Now that Jörmungandr was heavily occupied with my doppelgangers, he slithered in long, twisting circles through the chasm. His body coiled up and over and around himself in a massively tangled pile, and I was better able to observe the movements of my warriors below.
Emneth’s forehead was slick with sweat, and she was breathing heavily as she produced yet another crushing blow from her bone staff. It was difficult to see at first, but after a second, I was able to pick out dozens of bruised scales all along the length of Jörmungandr’s body. It looked like the red-eyed elf’s light beam attacks were acting as the first assault against the world serpent’s outermost defenses.
Then my warriors who were armed with bladed weapons launched themselves from the upper ledges of the chasm walls and used the force of their body weight combined with gravity to break through the injured scales.
It seemed like the rot-weapons didn’t have much of an effect on the serpent’s scales, but once they’d cut through to the bastard’s underbelly, the festering began. Soon the chilled air of the chasm was starting to reek of rotting meat, and it made me want to hurl.
It took at least two strikes like this to really make a good slash through the snake’s scaly flesh and get to the softer meat beneath, and it took even longer for my warriors to climb up to the ledges that were high enough to give them the advantage. Cedoric, Hezzig, Vulmar, Sontar, Ginen, and Grorec leapfrogged over one another so there was almost always at least one blade cutting into Jörmungandr.
Lyrie stood on a ledge as well, and she seemed to be working on tearing open each wound a bit more as they passed by in front of her. Her white eyebrows drew together with the effort as she clawed at the air before her, and twenty feet across the chasm, a three-foot-long gash in Jörmungandr’s body widened to twice its original size. Her shoulders sagged as she released her grip, and the huge snake’s body slithered along. Then Lyrie did it again to the next injury that came her way.
But there was still so much of the serpent’s body that was uninjured, and despite the river of blood that flowed downhill to the western end of the chasm, the beast didn’t appear to be bleeding out anytime soon.
This bastard was simply so large that even our best efforts were like mosquito bites to an elephant, and I glanced around at my companions’ faces.
Every single one of them was squarely focused on the task at hand, and despite the strain on their faces, they continued to push themselves to attack the world serpent.
I knew that the second I started to attack Jörmungandr, the majority of my doppelgangers would as well, and it would give away my position in the illusion crowd. But I couldn’t act as a distraction while everybody else did the heavy lifting.
I waited until I was around behind Jörmungandr’s head, and then I dive-bombed onto the top of his scaly skull. Claws extended out from my feet, and I gripped them into the bastard. Then, with every ounce of strength I had, I prepared to drive my morning star-claws through his scaled flesh and into his skull.
If I could get a hard enough strike with the super-crushing weapon, maybe I could stab my rot-dagger directly into his brain for a quick kill.
“Ah, there you are,” Jörmungandr hissed the second my clawed toes jammed into the top of his head.
I lifted my left arm over my head.
“I knew you, too, would betray me, Father!” Jörmungandr hissed.
Chapter 16
My whole world shifted on its axis as the serpent’s last word careened around inside my brain.
He’d called me father, there was no way around that, and I shuddered at the astonishing familiarity of the title.
“What did he say?” Ayen shouted in a stunned voice that was so loud that we could all hear it over the sounds of battle.
From on top of the serpent’s head, I could see all the shocked and disbelieving expressions on my companions’ faces. All the dark elf archers had lowered their bows, and the warriors wielding bladed weapons stopped dead in their tracks. Even Elora and Lyrie stared up at me in bewilderment, and the only fighter who seemed to retain a grip on herself was Emneth.
The red-eyed elf blasted another forceful beam of light into the place I would have identified as the serpent’s throat, and Jörmungandr folded over from the sudden impact.
“Ooph!” Jörmungandr’s breath rushed out of his mouth in a huge burst of air.
I wanted to dissolve into disbelief right alongside my companions, but now was not the time. We were close to having an upper hand in this battle, and I wouldn’t have put it past Jörmungandr to call me father as a deceitful tactic to shock us into making a fatal mistake.
And being overcome by shock was a mistake that would certainly prove fatal.
“Stay focused, everyone!” I commanded in my most forbidding voice. “Don’t let your guards down!”
Elora and Ayen snapped back into focus first, and they urged their respective teams back into the battle. In two seconds, the air was filled with another volley of dark wood arrows. The smaller group of swordsmen and axemen returned to their tasks of jumping down from the ice walls to slice through Jörmungandr’s thick scales.
The whole thing looked a bit like clockwork, and everyone was doing their parts to keep the gears of our war machine moving against the enemy.
I caged the overwhelming shock and confusion that threatened to consume me into a little box at the back of my brain. The expanding pressure I’d been feeling for the last several days resisted, and I tried to shove that back, too.
But it wouldn’t be buried.
The green light returned to the edges of my vision, and the pressure soaked into my muscles like a shot of liquid strength. The surge of energy and strength reminded me a bit of Popeye when he chugged a full can of spinach, and I reveled in the power that was mine.
I started to swing my morning star-claws down at the crown of Jörmungandr’s skull, but just a split second before my strike landed, the enormous snake reared back like a bucking stallion.
My toes dug into the scales on the top of his head with all that extra strength, but I was thrown off with brutal force.
I tumbled head over heels through the air, and I tried to right myself as several of my doppelgangers blinked out of existence. My feathered wings stretched out instinctively to right my body in the air, and I managed to slow the majority of my momentum.
It wasn’t quite enough to keep me from slamming into the chasm wall.
“Ugh!” I grunted as all the air was knocked right out of me.
The impact would have crushed my ribcage and spine if I hadn’t managed to slow my speed down drastically with my wings, but I knew I wasn’t fatally injured. My head spun from the brief lack of oxygen and the impact of my body on the wall that was as hard as concrete. I slid halfway down the icy wall until a narrow ledge caught me, and I rested long enough to unlock the constrictions in my ribcage. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and I had to force my lungs to expand and suck in refreshingly cold air.
Everything in my body ached, like someone was stabbing me in both of my sides with a hundred Exacto knives. Sparkling points of rainbow-colored light in a field of black swam around my vision for a long second before that bright green light returned and blasted the darkness away.
Rage burned alongside the green light, and it felt like a nuclear bomb was about to explode from the center of my chest.
“I had hoped you would not be so foolish, Father,” Jörmungandr hissed. “Though Odin said you had made one too many mistakes.”
Jörmungandr flicked his forked tongue out at me as he studied me with his slitted pupils. Then, without a hint of warning, he lunged forward at me with his fanged mouth wide open, and I tried to force my body to move.
But the ache in my muscles was still so great that it felt like trying to swim through five feet of heavy, wet snow. Panic reigned in the back of my brain, and I felt the same rush of adrenaline and survival instinct that had led to my very first shift flood through me.
The nuclear bomb in my chest reached critical mass, and everything slowed down around me.
“Yaaaaahhhh!” The scream ripped from my throat as if it had a life entirely of its own.
At the same instant, a massive magical shockwave exploded out from the center of my chest, and it collided with Jörmungandr’s fangs. The world serpent’s sharp teeth shattered like pottery, and the shockwave slammed into the back of his throat with so much force that the snake made a horrible choking sound.
A yellowish liquid that I had to assume was Jörmungandr’s venom sprayed out in a complete spherical pattern. Tiny drops of the yellowish liquid splattered on my face, and they burned for a moment before the pain faded away to nothing.
The brutality of the magical shockwave delayed the bastard just long enough that I was able to force my muscles to work through the pain, and I pushed myself off the ledge with every bit of strength I had left.
As I bolted across the very short distance that remained between me and Jörmungandr’s open maw, I pushed all my shifting power into my right arm, and I extended my sword-powered appendage straight into the roof of the world serpent’s mouth.
“Gah!” Jörmungandr’s bright green eyes went wide with horror and fear.
My flesh-rending sword’s power spread outward from my shifted arm, and the soft tissue of the snake’s palate snapped and exploded off the inside of his skull like a bubble of chewing gum bursting.
A split second later, the scaled skin on the top of Jörmungandr’s skull split down the center, and I saw that the very end of my strange knife-like appendage had pierced right out of the crown of his head.
Blood sprayed out in every direction, and the black and green diamond-patterned scales shattered like broken mosaic tiles as his flesh exploded away from the fatal wound.
I yanked my sword arm free of the world serpent’s mouth. Then, for good measure, I swung my other arm into the side of his face.
The reptile’s entire right eye socket caved in beneath the tremendous power of my demon blood-fueled morning star, and his eye was crushed like a grape. What remained of the soft tissue leaked down the side of Jörmungandr’s face, along with all the blood that was now free to escape from the lack of flesh.
“Get back!” Elora’s voice hollered from somewhere that sounded very far away.
The sounds of dozens of feet scurrying over blood-slick ice followed, but I barely registered any of it as I stared into Jörmungandr’s one remaining eye.
“Eeeaaahhh,” the world serpent hissed a sound that was impossible to describe as the light faded from behind his eye, but he continued to stare back at me with a series of intense emotions.
There was horror, fear, regret, anger, and even something that looked terrifyingly like love, and then he was gone.
The world serpent’s one green eye rolled back in his skull, and his long muscular body swayed dangerously to the left for a second before it collapsed onto the chasm floor.
Suddenly, an assault of déjà vu screamed through my brain, and a series of images and voices was all I could hear or see. They flashed before my eyes like an epic movie montage, and I was their prisoner. Every one of them was framed with that same green light, but the background of each was fuzzy or missing completely as if only half the memories were available for me to experience.
In the memories, I held a small snake with black and green scales in a diamond pattern in my arms, and my heart swelled with love and fear for the infantile creature. Hope for the future and a worry about the way this child would be accepted warred within me for a moment. Hope and happiness won out, and I felt confident that I would face any dangers for this small creature.
Then the green light swirled into the center of my mind and pushed the memory of the infantile snake away. A rush of dizziness overcame me for a second as the green light circled around me like every Sci-Fi show’s interpretation of a black hole or time warp.
Then another memory came into focus behind my eyes.
I held the snake close to my chest as indistinct voices searched for us from somewhere too close for comfort. The need to protect the child in any way I could was strong in my chest, and I felt a sense of direction leading me away from the dark and fearful place of this memory.
The green light swirled across the memory again, and the next came into focus.
The young snake lay at my feet as I chanted nonsensical words under the light of the full moon. The sand was loose under my feet, and I could hear the choppy crashing of ocean waves nearby. A strong wind whipped my black hair around my face, and the snake curled up closer around my ankles for comfort and protection. My eyes were locked on the bright surface of the moon, but I could see angry storm clouds rolling in on the edges of my vision.
