Fallen Máni: Elk-Sedge

Manuel breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. 

Again did he try to tap into the power of his true self. As before, his mind felt overwhelmed by his cosmic nature, but with each attempt his emotional strings wove a tapestry. A net of consciousness, encompassing the fibers of his being, strengthening his divine power.

Around him, chaos reigned. The wolf gods had shattered most of his town, hills broken and their soil defaced, flayed under the sunless but bright expanse of the heavens. Týr matched every move with a hammer punch, and their blood flooded into the stagnant sea, dragging away debris.

Hjúki helped those caught in the crossfire, mats of elk-sedge fishing from the blood torrents those that his swan form could not carry. Healing spells beat death away, calming enchantments soothed the panicked and terrified minds. An hour into the battle, helicopters arrived from the air, carrying them away to a temporary haven, a plateau further north.

Silvia and Jonathan had stayed, however. They and Manuel stayed in the remnants of their house, protecting him as he hurried the process of becoming the Moon again. Silvia researched for spells on her phone and drew several runes on the walls, while Jonathan stood at Manuel's side, holding his hand.

Hjúki had shot Dagr in the shoulder, a momentary distraction before Bil dragged him outside. She struck at him several times, but he quickly lost interest and blasted her with a wave of searing light, almost killing her. He ascended to the sky and began shaping light into impossibly bright patterns, a whiteness that seemed to be burning existence itself.

He casted a massive rune composed of two joint triangles. At the center of it, light began to condensate into a Sun, and another rune, four meandering strikes, began to shape itself from golden light.

Bil shouted and screamed, and soon her brother joined her. 

He shot arrows, all burning upon reaching the rune. She crafted a massive spear from the iron in the blood torrents, taller than the highest redwood tree, and it lodged itself on Dagr, like a toothpick on an elephant's skin. He looked bemused, and shattered it into a rain of spikes, which bounced off Manuel's shattered house as if blown by an invisible wind.

Bil and Hjúki looked at each other. They were hesitant to strike Dagr directly, but could not let him devour the Sun. Wordlessly, they decided to help Týr, hoping to finish the wolves as soon as possible.

Hjúki shot at Hati, now a mindless mass of maws and hatred, burning fire emanating from pores in his pelt like geysers, as if his flesh was coating a Sun of its own. He responded by lunging towards Hjúki, allowing Týr to gouge out several burning eyes.

Sköll lunged at him from the shapeless void, a malicious ripple in the air birthing cloud-coloured wolf heads as if a hand pressing against plastic, but Bil struck at him in turn, ribbons of rune-carved grass hooking him and dragging him into Midgard. 

He bit them off, but he was fished in deep enough for Hjúki to punch him and stab him with his bow, the sharp edges drawing wispy cloud-like blood from the Jötnar, carried into the air and dropped as red streams as it made contact with the gods' clothes and skin.

As the chaos of war raged on, Manuel focused again, his form now pitch black as shadows enveloped him. The winds rotated around him, and he felt the pulse of the sea, waters fighting back against the blood currents.

Another pulse, and for the first time in 15 years the oceans currents were restored completely.

 Waved lapped at the broken shores, edging closer and closer, until finally they began to flood, dispersing the wolf blood and reaching Týr's knees. Hjúki and Bil roared with delight, and they and Týr renewed their efforts, matched by Hati's intense hatred and Sköll's frustrated malice. Dagr continued his work, aloof to these events.

Jonathan held Manuel's hand. It wouldn't take much longer until his beloved became what he was truly meant to be. Doubt once again rushed through him, uncertainty towards what the future held. Manuel rippled, as if shadows were now his skin and clothes, and Jonathan could tell he would need to to purge that worry aside.

Silvia checked her phone. Her mother was safe among the refugees, and she blocked her, leaving only a message for her to not worry about her and Manuel. She had explained the stakes at hand, and did not feel like seeing her worry.

So much had changed in the last couple of hours, and she felt exhausted by it all. Still, adrenaline pumped through her veins, fear and wonder so perfectly wedded that she couldn't help but be excited about being part of this adventure. 

She grabbed a coke from the still intact fridge, and researched more spells. Now that she knew magic worked, she felt like she had a world of possibilities laid before her. Materials were running short, however, and she was getting tired from reciting incantations.

Initially, she worried about running out of power, but she drew runes on her phone, the fridge, her tablet and the tv and tapped into the ambient, constant daylight. It overpowered the tv and melted her tablet, but the fridge and phone remained intact, though the latter became prone to overheating and had to be turned off every ten minutes.

She wished her tablet had survived.

***

Ravens gathered on Yggdrasil's branches. They dared not land on Midgard, but they watched Sköll bleed and pecked at his wounds. The wolf, exhausted and on the verge of crying, killed a thousand birds each time they approached, but they were relentless.

Their master wanted knowledge, flesh and power, and he would torment the wolf until he had all three. Above them, the eagle and hawk hissed, and below the serpent lapped the wolf's blood as it run down to the roots.

 All of them were wary. They knew something had to happen, yet their instincts failed to prepare them for this. 

Sköll shook off another wave of harassers. As he did so, he could make out bleeding etches on Yggdrasil's branches, golden and green sap pouring out. Weevils gathered around these wounds, lapping at the sap with their insectile snouts.

The etchings, shaping themselves into the branched arrays of magic staves, slowly spread like lichen. For now, they were just small hints of light in the tree, but they promised to become far spreading.

Sköll hesitated for a moment, but another wave of ravens pecking and bursting out his left eye blinded his mind and soul. Another mouthful of dead birds, and he dove back into Midgard.

***

There would no no eclipse, now that the Sun was gone. Still, the Moon moved into its destined place, pulled by a tide from its own soul. The void rippled like water, black pulses forming waves in the waterless sea.

On the bright sky, the rippling waves of darkness made it as if it was a stone skimming a lake's surface, its fast but skipping motions only making this semblance stronger. The waves washed all in subtle pulses, drawing all eyes into this eldritch approach.

Soon, the Moon was directly above Manuel.

Jonathan wanted to say some reassuring quip, like This is it, uh? or Yay, you're finally a god again and we can have our happily ever after, but he was possessed by a sense of awe, of how vast the universe was, of how vast Manuel truly was. He could only watch, holding his beloved's hand.

Manuel raised his free hand to the sky, blackened by darkness that only became dimmer and dimmer, until even the night herself seemed like brightest day. His eyes were gone, aside from an odd white sheen, like two small reflections of the Moon. 

Silvia, who was frozen in the couch, saw the reaching hand as grasping the Moon. And though it did not seem to get any bigger, its fingers sunk into it. Manuel's body, now a shadow, flowed forth like ink, leaving behind Jonathan's pleading hand and covering the moon like ink.

Hati lunged, but Týr struck his front legs, plunging him into the ground with a thunderous shockwave, that broke mountains and hills alike. Hjúki dove in to take Jonathan and Silvia into the air, while Bil fought another of Sköll's sneaky attacks, piercing his jaw with a silver hook, holding his struggling body as it tried to leave for Yggdrasil again.

Dagr paused his work, staring at the Moon's resurrection, before hastily concluding his work. The four stroked rune began to dissipate, the sun's bright golden light infused into the joint triangles. Once only it shone with new light, Dagr tuck it unto himself, burning forth with blinding sunlight.

The sky was thus divided: on the eastern quarter, a new Sun shone, tinging it with a burning yellow and white. On the western quarter, the sky was pitch black, the Moon now as if full of ink.

The seas roarer, high waves reaching as high as possible. Terns dotted the black corner of the sky, pinpricks of silver and white like avian stars. Soon, they were joint by a dim glow on the Moon's surface, a reflection of the Sun, that grew brighter and brighter until it was the colour of ivory.

The glow shone forth, and a silver figure manifested in a strange unlight, the paradoxical brightness and darkness of metal made manifest. 

His features were still those of Manuel, but his hair waved slowly as if underwater and his skin was now of this metallic tone. His eyes welled with the blackness between the stars, and their own glimmer piercing this void. 

Around his body was an armour, almost indistinguishable from his own skin, if such distinction did exist. He rode a chariot pulled by strange metallic horses, their features shifting and turning like quicksilver, granting them unequine appendages.

All waves lapped at the shore with glee. All terns cried a cacophonous yet artful screech. All shadows reached out, like Manuel's hand had done to the Moon. All minds were set aflame with intense mania, and an urge to dream.

The Moon had returned.

How dramatic. Do you remember?

"Yes" Máni said, his voice piercing mind and ears alike with darkness.

Good.

Dagr shone his light at Hati, healing him and imbuing him with renewed strength. Týr tried to hold him down but he bit off his entire arm, throwing it away to the distant west before lunging himself at the sky again, teeth bore in a murderous bite.

Almost instinctively, Máni evaded with a smaller form. He became a small, winged mammal, his fur silver and black and with pulsing dark crescents flagging his wings, a white bridge and a ringed tail being the last things all saw before he left Midgard.

Hati roared in frustration, and lunged at the bleeding Týr. Before the god could defend himself, his guts were pulverised and his bones became shrapnel that pierced the land and sea.

Barely managing to evade, Bil and Hjúki departed as well, the latter taking Silvia and Jonathan with him. 

All felt a visceral pain, the death of a god filling them with a forced grief. But to Bil, this was especially nauseous. Her wings stopped, and she dove into the depths of Yggdrasil's roots.

In the Moon's departure, the sky became of a blinding white, and night had no power over Midgard anymore. Dagr stood to watch in satisfaction, before noticing the wounded Sköll.

"What are you smiling about?" Sköll sneered, "The Moon returned and now all the gods know what you're up to."

The Sun, however, is no more. Your brother will soon make sure Máni stays dead as well. In either case, fate has been uplifted, wyrd has been defeated, and soon the world will know eternal peace.

Dagr healed Sköll's wounds with a blinding light, and kept watching, bemused. Soon, they both heard Hati's murderous howl, before the golden wolf jumped off Midgard to pursue his prey elsewhere.

Sköll stared at Dagr one last time, and joined his brother in the hunt.