Stronger Together chapter 242

Despite what we expected we weren't thrown into pitched battle as  soon as we stepped into the territory of the ritual, with Loki's army  falling back to allow enough room for a few of us to approach but not  all. Naturally the girls and I went first because we were the strongest,  though Vikram came along as well, the demigod being one of our heavy  hitters, and Ebenezar followed along, though he left Joe to babysit the  little wizards. The Draugr were fearsome as hell, but they weren't  alone, with pockets of other species dotted throughout, most led by  powerful looking champions.

Loki  strolled out of the crowd, grinning maniacally. "Well look at this, the  little half breed brought a bunch of friends to try to help him beat up  the bullies. How scary." He turned to the Draugr. "Well, looks like we  should just give up lads. We can't possibly win right?" There were some  scattered chuckles and agreements but mostly nothing and Loki scowled.  "Damned Draugr, none of them can take a cue. Fine, I'll skip the  showboating. You aren't passing us, and the ritual is almost finished.  Once it ends you're all going to die, so sorry to waste your time."

I  grimaced at the confidence. Some of it was probably just arrogance, but  he must have really believed we had no shot at winning this if he was  this confident. Before I could speak though, the cracks in the air  inside the circle began to widen. Loki grinned with expectation. "Oh  look, it's almost time to welcome our guests, I suppose you-" He didn't  finish his sentence because I had smashed his fucking face in with my  godsteel hand cranking my force and lightning aspects at full blast in  my tenth form of klurkor. I downshifted myself to the seventh after the  blow landed, enough to be overwhelming still at a low enough intensity I  wouldn't turn to metal for a few minutes.

He  turned back to me in a rage, his lips leaking golden blood and teeth  bared. Which gave me a perfect place to plant my cestus enhance fist.  The olympian bronze was even harder than godsteel at the current density  and I knocked him reeling as I followed up with a flurry of punches. My  girls and allies went off on the enemy forces, tearing swathes through  the Draugr as Loki took his beating, seeming floored that I'd actually  attacked before he finished gloating. It shocked me how over the top  this asshole was, he basically told us once the outsiders arrived we  would be overwhelmed, so why wouldn't we wipe out as many of his troops  as possible before that happened.

He  hurled a blast of fire at me as I poured energy from my klurkor state  into the archangel armor, boosting me to monstrous levels as I hurled  myself at him. He was snarling at me uncontrollably. "VERMIN! YOU DARE?  Once our allies arrive they'll show you meaning of suff- STOP THAT!" He  was backpedaling and honestly kind of panicking and it made me smile,  this fuck absolutely bought his own press, and he screeched with rage as  I tanked his fire with my armor. This entire battle was insane, and I  could see my girls and my allies ass deep in Draugr and reaping them  like wheat as we tried to get them thinned out before the ritual broke.

We  were moving inward too, trying to shut down the magic, but the amount  of Draugr between us and the circle seemed to be increasing rather than  decreasing and I saw Hel in the background mass summoning the Draugr,  presumably using the death energy from our mass murdering of her  soldiers to bring new ones, which just didn't seem fair. I turned my  focus back to Loki with a laugh. "Sorry to tell you man, but you were  going to do that anyway. Did you really think we would just let you  monologue at us until the portal opened. Fuck that noise, we're going to  kill as many of you assholes as we can, then when the portal opens  we'll kill as many of them as we can too."

I  was in the zone. Klurkor was burning through me, changing and  empowering me, but I was pouring out so much of it that I actually  wasn't metalizing right now. The influx of energy couldn't grow the   godsteel in my body because I was using it too fast. I was moving  through my combat forms as I fought, supplementing with magic as I went.  Force blasts, lances of flame, bursts of wind, I was throwing it all at  Loki as fast and hard as I could and the bastard was on the back foot.  The crazy thing was I could tell he was strong, but I'd caught him off  guard and was pounding the stuffing out of him so relentlessly he  couldn't get his balance back.

We  started making progress towards the circle as we fought, my forces  tearing through the Draugr, but we weren't moving fast enough. We had to  treat this like a marathon not a sprint, it wouldn't do use any good to  get in range of the ritual and be too drained to actually stop it. Then  the tides shifted. The Draugr started getting stronger, older, and I  knew these were Hel's elite, her real heavy hitters as the larger and  more ferocious corpses poured over my allies trying to drive us back.  We'd been doing alright until that point, just mopping up trash, but  sadly, when the stronger Draugr joined up we started losing people.

The  first one to go down that I saw was a white court vampire who had been  fighting alongside Sam and Morgan. She was a tiny redhead with freckles,  and a Draugr tore her in half at the middle. Sam and Morgan were  enraged and the ripped it to shreds afterward but the damage was done.  Next was a Satyr Lily had brought with her, and then a Troll was buried  under hordes of undead. The wizards were shocked an appalled as they saw  allies being cut down, and Joe had to deflect more than a few attacks  before they hit a shaking Chandler, though the englishman adapted pretty  quickly after that.

It  took a few minutes, but we got our equilibrium back and started making  progress, little bits at a time. Meanwhile I was holding off Loki,  pouring abuse into the old god, and I even cranked up my klurkor form to  nine because the expenditure was that crazy. Eleven was my current  limit but I could feel my body adapting, changing, even though there  wasn't enough energy for my godsteel to grow I could feel my flesh  refining. I'd hit the perfect ratio of input and output. I pushed even  harder, trying to overbalance the ratio so I was burning more than I was  using but I couldn't push myself to ramp up fast enough.

Becoming  half angel had really been a tipping point, I knew I couldn't have done  this before no matter how much energy I burned, but now my half divine  flesh could resist for the split second I needed to use up the energy  before it mutated me. Loki was fighting back now, shaking off his shock  and only the shift up to my ninth form made fighting him even possible.  His combat style, fire aside was almost entirely feints and misdirects,  showing how the god of mischief could use his domain even in battle.  Only my speed and durability let me work around it and take the hits he  landed as the tables slowly turned on me.

This  was hands down the most irritating fight I'd ever been in and I don't  think I'd ever wanted to kill someone more than I did right now. Every  other blow landed on thin air or glanced off a deflecting limb and the  attacks he was landing on me were starting to add up as his feints  slipped through my guard. Some landed on my armor but some got my face  and neck and even the gap between my cestus and the lorica. The longer  this dragged on the more frustrated I got, and I couldn't push to the  tenth form yet though I was getting closer. The ritual kept trucking  along, building power in the background as we struggled to try to stop  it.

I  could see my people around me as I fought, the mobile nature of my  combat with Loki revealing the situations they were in. Kara was tearing  through masses of Draugr, but the stronger variant seemed to be mostly  immune to heat visions and durable enough to slow her down ash she tore  them limb from limb. She seemed to be saving up her shots with the bow  for the outsiders, but luckily Cinder was backing her up and was  joyfully hurling a flame imbued apple into crowds killing the nearest  with an explosion as the others died in a chaotic mess of accidental  stabbings and tramplings. Barb was nowhere to be seen, probably killing  them off invisibly in the background or trying to get to Cowl.

Raven  and Yang had teamed up and Raven was holding them down for my berserker  as she shield bashed them into meat paste. I wanted to help them but  Loki blocked my path again. He'd drawn a pair of daggers at some point  and was trying to fucking gut me with them, though he seemed almost as  irritated as I was that it didn't work. As we fought though the earth  began to tremble, and Loki grinned maliciously at me before darting back  to make some space. "Rejoice Mongrel, your pathetic life comes to an  end now." He gestured up at the ritual as the lines widened, the power  shaking open the air itself.

Shards  of reality began to fall, raining down and revealing the sickening  gaping wounds in the fabric of the world. I had been wrong, I  discovered, this wasn't a portal, portals were stable open conduits  between places. This was a hole ripped between a place and somewhere  that was not a place, a wound in the skin of the world and it was the  most disgusting thing I had ever witnessed in my life. I glared at Loki  as he laughed manically. "What the fuck man? How can you possibly think  THAT is a good idea." I gestured harshly to the wound in the air. "You  have to know this is going to be fucking agony for you too. The  outsiders don't care whose side you're on."

Loki's  cackle didn't even dip in intensity. "Agony? You know nothing of agony  half breed. Agony is my constant friend and companion. Agony is my  brother and my father and my dearest love. Agony is with me always and  the threat of it's increase is nothing before the promise of surcease  from the pain." He gestured to his ruined face. "I ceased to fear agony  so very long ago boy, in fact, I welcome it." He threw his arms wide  with and insane giggle. "Now everyone can enjoy my pain along with me!  At least for their brief moments remaining on this earth. I do hope my  father enjoys his taste before the end finally claims him."

I  winced, so the crazy wasn't an affectation then, I'd been pretty sure  he was nuts but not THIS nuts. In the background the horrible  unfathomable muck of nothingness behind the empty spaces in the sky  began to stir, and something like liquid wrongness began to pour out  from the gaps, merging together into some kind of nightmarish  amalgamation of flesh and darkness and rot, spilling over into more and  more until finally an army of disgusting THINGS took shape, pouring  across the ground towards us. Loki cackled in glee as I stared at the  outsiders we'd come here to fight, literally trampling and consuming the  Draugr in their rush to get to us. This was going to be a bad night.