A King's Treasure, A Fool's Welcome

[Ebivoulya]

Roared words full of hatred rose from the steam as the winged beast-man shot up towards the calmly floating demon, who looked down with displeasure on what few injuries had befallen its foe. A blade was pulled from the back of the advancing warrior, and the moment crimson eyes met with the ethereal weapon an overwhelming sensation engulfed the demon's mind. Be it fear, excitement, or simple madness, the millenia old soul Malnmre found a twisted malice and strength that matched; no, possibly even surpassed its own. The struggle not to give in to the alluring pain and insanity that reminded it so much of its mortal death was maddening, enraging, distracting. The blade, so fierce and so fast, ripped through the base elements suspended mere feet from the demon's own head, igniting them instantly upon contact. No breaths were drawn, no eyes blinked; as fire engulfed the mortal flesh of Malnmre a portal opened directly behind it, an instinctual creation wrought from a deep uncertainty about this newly drawn weapon. The portal had not been strong enough.

As its body was pulled into the wormhole, the same, gruesome weapon rent through the right arm of the demon, cleaving it clean from its body as the rest disappeared into the blackness of the void, along with the portal. Several hundred feet away Malnmre reappeared, spewed upon the stone of one of the last rooftops before the cavern opened up into nothing but a gigantic river and a far-off waterfall. Landing unceremoniously, and with the unnerving image of that demon blade still fresh in its mind, a roar of pain and frustration leapt from its lungs while blood still gushed from its severed arm and burnt face. The entire right side of the demon's head was but blackened bone and muscle tissue, and a deep, deep hatred brewed while blue arcs of energy engulfed and regenerated its muscle and skin. Turning its attention towards its arm now, the same blue light ensconced it, slowly restructuring bone, tendon, muscle and flesh. Malnmre disapprovingly rose the new arm, stretching its naked digits. Because of the nature of its bond with its host, they shared some personality traits, and it was rather fond of that steel-plated leather gauntlet.

It was now extremely clear that this fight very possibly could kill them both, and it was no longer the time to play with its foe. A brilliant azure aura surrounded the body of the demon, and pure carbon was rent from the atmosphere to form diamond scales as thick as leather which became bonded to the very skin of the half-mortal. Infinitely small arcs of alpha energy met each molecule and freed it from its bonds, before spreading through every other nearby molecule exponentially. The carbon was fused to every inch of skin, extending even under its bloodied leather vest, and brown cloth pants. Every muscle in the demon's mortal body was strengthened threefold, its bones absorbing some of the carbon to create a diamond coating, which also protected the tendon and muscle attachments while allowing full mobility. The veins and arteries were strengthened and widened, and unnecessary body systems such as digestion were temporarily shut down to maximize energy efficiency. Throughout all this its lungs breathed deeply, and quickly, hoping only to lessen the energy lost from such a transformation.

The adrenal gland of the demon's host body was augmented to double the output, and hardwired to allow direct stimulus and activation of it at any moment. The hand which was without a gauntlet grew black diamond claws and a smooth blade extending three feet up and out of the elbow, both filled with oxygen pressurized to such a point it solidified and became red, exhibiting even higher explosiveness than the liquid form of the element. Veins of this same red oxygen, only this time visible underneath thin layers of clear carbon scales, grew to cover almost every outer inch of the blackened armor, branching from thicker veins nearer the center of the body. Each of these was designed with enough shielding in between the mortal flesh of Malnmre and the oxygen to direct the blasts outward should something break the thinner outer scales covering them, and sections were blocked off to prevent them all igniting at once. The rest of the excess oxygen created from splitting the carbon dioxide molecules, along with pure oxygen drawn in from the air, was also solidified under pressure induced by a globe of voids surrounding the assembled element, and sent directly to the Void itself both to avoid another mistake, and to maintain its solidified state. Finally, the crackling blue arcs of Alpha receded, leaving the regenerated and armored demon standing atop the edge of a dark blue oblivion.

Both arms raised to grasp the hilts of each sword on Malnmre's back, and the blades sang their gratitude as they flew from their respective sheaths and collided, handle to handle, in front of the demon. Its deep red eyes closed as lips covered in black diamond scales uttered ancient words of amalgamation. Light burned from every angle as the two enchanted swords fused, their blades curving in either direction and serrated edges forming on the inside edge of each. The hilt of the double-bladed sword grew blackened fingers at each end, which twisted up and away from the edges. Veins of crimson, which pulsed in time with the demon's heart crawled up each blade, and as the light subsided an ethereal, white flame engulfed the weapon held in its master's gloved hand, though no harm would've been done to its owner even without the protection of blackened scales. The other hand opened its claws, violently drawing carbon dioxide towards it with powerful vacuums as it created a chain whip at least thirty paces long, with familiar veins of crimson oxygen crawling along every link, though that was merely a last resort. The true advantage of the chain lie in its ability to create a connection, if even momentarily, which might allow the demon to deconstruct a weapon of its opponent, and maybe even its opponent directly. The physical distance from the chain itself in which the deconstruction was effective was up to three feet. Malnmre boldly stood, defiant in the face of another power such as itself, and willing to push its host body to the absolute limit to destroy this unwelcome intruder. It even grinned, blood red eyes pulsing brighter in time with the exposed veins on the blades of its swords in their strongest state: Ashyrn.

[Shadowed]

And in the hour of reckless disgrace
The time of wolves on a throne of fallen aspirations
Lead us not unto the shattered halls of fate
But unto the bright fields of day
For unto this eve shall we kneel
Supplication of one unto honor
A sacrifice of blood and a song of glory
Even unto the bitter taste of death
Onward we gaze, unto the morn

The prayer echoed through his mind, an unbidden remnant of his long-deceased childhood, brought to recollection through his pondering of the forsaken beast he hunted. The devil had vanished in the cloud of flame, though the preternatural warrior caused lingering echoes to resound through the steel of his blade. The weapon, which had been bathed in the blood of demon, giant, and a single fallen god alike, was awash in eager hatred, anxious to kiss the flesh of its brother once more.

Shaela’manre alidka ne dolcre
Shaela’irkr Malnmre filahn sh’aode’ke
Duriske tr’ael’a minre

Awoken is he who slumbered
Rising from sleep, Malnmre calls
His soul is of ancient flame

The blade whispered into Honuse Relaiyent’s mind, piercing it with customary suddenness. So the beast was named Malnmre; one could never curse a demon to destruction without first learning its name, and as such, his blade had found the connection that allowed it to discern such information.

T’rael’a shin’o ashalah faeln
T’rael’a chalahn obian chahl

The demon is being made anew
The demon beckons in hunger

Crimson flame covered Alsvid, the film so thin that it was nothing but a vague aura, projecting the heat of menace into the chill confines of the mountain. Deep within the steel, the image of Hel began to boil, eliciting tortured moans from the souls cast within the blood as they stirred. Electricity sparked along the spine, shooting bright arcs outward, to fade in the open air. Distant shadows roiled along the walls, dancing in haunted movement by the shifting brightness, creating smoky movement everywhere the Lawmaker gazed.

His sight did not extend far enough to see the reappearance of his adversary, though the stillness of the cave carried the noise of his passage as though it were mere inches away, rather than hundreds of feet. Moving as swift as the lightning Thor had introduced to his body, the former abomination swept through the air, his wings bearing him rapidly in the direction of his foe. Sweat continued to pour freely below his leather vestments, doing little to cool his body from its exertions, as the beating of his wings shook it free through the recently opened slits in his armor.

He arrived beneath the level of the rooftop Malnmre was resting upon, apparently unseen by the devil. Considering the continued whisperings of Alsvid, Honuse Relaiyent did not yet raise his blade to strike; instead, he plunged it deep into the side of the building, a dozen paces below the lip. His grip released when he rose several feet higher, alighting on the weapon in a precarious stance, his wings fluttering to support him as he rested gently upon the hilt, while he focused his attention on Alsvid.

She’lokte nombre, hamalen de’shi’noth
Shaela’manre telkinoth belahamen
Ke shinombel’ar ken’t’ro habinam

Shaela’irkren Ashyrn

The flesh is of blackened diamonds
Awoken is the blade of cruelty
As is the tendril of life

Ashyrn is risen

While Honuse Relaiyent had been unwilling to press the advantage against such a worthy foe, preferring to test his mettle upon the unrelenting strength of his adversaries, the quavering of Alsvid’s presence spoke of the uncertainty, bordering on fear, that it felt for this augmented opponent above. Extending one arm out towards the side of the building, he slid the opposing armblade across his flesh, slicing open the veins. They sprayed blood across the rock face, until a minor exertion closed the wound, and forced his body to produce more blood to replace that which he lost.

Touching a gloved finger to the edge of the stain, he changed the molecular structure, first letting it spread through the myriad cracks of the building, then changing further to a composition that would rapidly expand when the proper stimulus was introduced. A wave of electricity proved to work nicely in that regard. The blood turned explosively gaseous, blowing one side of the roof upwards and outward toward Malnmre in a hail of rocks, as Honuse Relaiyent dropped below his blade, reaching out to grasp it once more as he flew into the air.

His lips peeled back in a feral grimace, while white fire shot from his flesh, surrounding his armored form in an impenetrable shield of tangible power. Sharp protrusions rose out from his knees, elbows, shoulders, and heels, which hung limply without any muscle tissue to support movement. Appearing as an oversized human form wrought of pure energy, he rose above the lip of the building, a comet flying through the darkness of the abyss.

[Ebivoulya]

Solemnly stood the sole figure perched at the edge of an ocean of stone, which was composed of steel-reinforced waves and windows of glass. Its mind had not been idle in the critical moments when it was regenerating its body and preparing for a deadly battle, so no surprise came from the flying figure as he landed on the side of the same building to begin another attack. The strange misshapen man perched atop his blade, setting to work immediately it seemed. At first the nature of this assault was unknown to the demon, but a slight shift in the molecular makeup of the building upon which it stood provided a hint. Just as it assessed the explosive nature of this foreign substance, and the various weaknesses in the stone it exploited, the entire lip of the roof in front of the augmented amalgamation exploded upwards in a hail of concrete and steel. Its surprise was quite obvious, and the creature mouthed a single curse as it crouched to the shifting stone beneath it. The clawed grip of its right hand tightened around its chain whip, and its legs bulged under the pressure.

A powerful jump flung the figure away from the giant shrapnel, and to eliminate the largest threats Malnmre slung its right arm around, rendering several boulders nothing but dust. The glowing chain ate through the stone before it touched the surface, concrete and steel wrapping around its path as the material caught within its reach disintegrated. The momentary flash of its ascending foe brought another idea to its twisted mind, and it extended its still gloved hand, clenched in which the mighty blade Ashyrn trembled excitedly. A dense collection of voids appearing as a single, tiny sphere flickered into existence in the thickest concentration of airborne chunks of stone. All surrounding shrapnel jerked towards this ball, but it dissipated just before the stone reached it, and several pieces shattered into smaller shards upon impact. Sharp glances from crimson eyes assessed the situation around it before it proceeded with the next part of its attack.

A large disk of crackling black formed in front of the defending demon, and an explosive wind carried the shrapnel up and towards the flying beast of a man above. Tiny stabilizing voids guided the stones to within a hundred paces of the being before closing and leaving the attack to its own momentum. While the effectiveness of combining such an assault with a wave of energy from its blade was very obvious, the demon didn't want to lay its entire strategy bare, nor waste any more of its energy on this exceedingly agile foe. Instead, it honed in on the presence of its enemy within the permeating net of the Void, and prepared a portal to carry its blade closer to the creature it sought. There was a minute disturbance in its control over the mind of its mortal host, but the creature merely ignored the sign and sank into the blackness which appeared behind it. The exit portal ripped open just a few feet on the other side of this malicious soul's enemy, matching its speed and direction to that of its prey, while a wave of stone roared up at both of them from the below.

Within an imagined trap of realistic threat the half-elven swordsman flew to his doom, cursing the gods, the winds, and every other damn thing he could think of. His normally calculating mind had been put into overdrive, and despite his many attempts at a solution to this problem, his continuing inability to connect with the Void seemed to spell his doom. The one thing that continued to nag at his mind was the apparent endlessness of his fall. Having continually quantified the time he had left since he began falling, the fact that he had yet to hit the bottom of what should have been maybe a thousand foot drop troubled him. That very seed of doubt started his mind on a way out of this bind not exclusive to his physical predicament. He could very well be fighting and dying somewhere while his consciousness was stuck in this endless doom, and that he could not allow.

[Shadowed]

In the glistening artificial twilight of the cavern, the deepening shadows took upon the shapes of the lesser gods, the self-proclaimed lords of the dark places. Their laughter echoed silently in the flickering of their own amalgamation; the abyss of their forms huddled as one upon the distant rock face, watching eagerly as the combatants circled about. With a deft flick of its wrist, the half-demon disintegrated the remains of the masonry, before redirecting it into a spread-pattern launched at the giant.

Stretching his electrical field into the stone pieces, Honuse Relaiyent sought the fragments of iron still trapped within their granite casings; the metal, slowed by the magnetic repulsion, seemed to float in the air before the giant for a heartbeat, before falling to the ground. Recognizing the potential use for the same shrapnel that had nearly perforated the Lawmaker, he reversed the polarity of his magnetic field, attracting the stone to cling to his body, a second layer of armor atop the leather.

A flicker motion caught his attention, as it was followed by the unmistakable sound of a body moving swiftly through the air. Turning, he thrust Alsvid about, a strike intended to intercept the demon on its flight to striking range. However, the blade instead struck the chain, the end of which wrapped around the tip of the demonic sword. With a fierce pull, the betrayer forced Honuse Relaiyent closer, swinging Ashyrn about to intercept the former abomination’s sudden movement. Releasing his right hand, the Lawmaker intercepted with an armblade; the weapons came together with a mighty crash, throwing sparks high into the air.

Shaela’manloth dethril a’e’laen.

The waking corruption entices.

That single thought was the last to fill his mind, as a flash brighter than a thousand suns lit the cavern, etching shadows into the very rock, a still image of the final moments of conscious thought to grace the Elect of the Gods. Formless shapes flashed before his vision, sounds with no discernable meaning assaulted his ears; waves of icy pinpricks, followed by the searing embrace of flame, rolled across his body, manifesting itself as beings of incredible fury, intent upon escaping through his skin. Time lost all relevant meaning in this interminable period of death; for what could this be, save the eternities of mental and physical anguish that a man was subjected to as he was carried to the cruel embrace of Hel?

Outside of his mind, in the cave once again lit by nothing save the glare of electrical energy coalescing about the leather-shrouded man, giant and demon were locked in combat, their bodies unable to move, held in midair by an unknowing force of will that bound themselves to basic functional survival in this treacherous affair. The face of the Lawmaker was caught in a furious snarl, while the visage of the demon seemed confident, yet bordering on confusion, as if a deep uncertainty was rising in its mind. The tendril of life, still wrapped around Alsvid, was pulsing in time with the furious emanations of rage coming from the sword.

The haze surrounding Honuse Relaiyent’s mind suddenly lifted, finding him still locked in the struggle; yet this was not his physical body that he possessed, but rather an apparition brought to bear upon some mental conflict, on a plane of existence attached to, yet still outside, his own. There existed no directions, no scenery, no floor nor ceiling nor walls; they were within the void, the space between spaces, unable to gain advantage upon each other in a place where all power is of equal strength in relevance and effect.

Shinombel’ar ken’t’ro habinam dulcre
Shaembela’kero aelivaan minre

The tendril of life seeks
Grasping in hands of flame

The chain, which had the power to deconstruct the natural and forged things of the earth, had attempted to force its will upon Alsvid; yet the blade, being of many souls, only one of which from the earth, resisted, throwing the wielder of both chain and blade outside of their own existence, locked into their eternal struggle in the barren expanse of the void.

With a voice low in menace, the defiler spoke, his words filling the empty spaces with malice. Through it, Alsvid whispered into the former abomination’s mind, translating the words almost before they were uttered.

Telamaenori shalvenr kirnil’aen faellahn shinimorae

The ages have embraced that which speaks the corrupted tongue

Honuse Relaiyent would have spat, had he been able to. “The language stolen and twisted from those that birthed Yggdrasil is not one that I would utter, defiler. Though Alsvid, bearing the immortal blood of your kind, is one to pass the intent upon my mind.”

Shevjinla, faellah’kron, theshbahn ke saeil fielnema ko’ ro’eul’kre ahlanm’re. Dreiln keil’bo’rok vrelnmrt ko’ro’vanwe hrael mrewl’k’ro, shinaeminl era’faht’askle shi’neir’to baelekor qret’lk. Hraestvelm shi’naer’trema, Ferlk’chro ko Asgt’kro!

Defiler, corruptor, he who taints the earth of which he is borne. Though a line be gilded in silver to your eyes, it would vanish after a time through such torment as I have taken. Consumed by the Black, Hound of Asgard!

The Lawmaker’s face tightened in rage, even as he snarled incomprehensibly at the demon. He pressed harder, seeking to gain any sort of leverage in this vast emptiness. “Speak no more of such foul perversions, Malnmre. I own your name, yet to you, I am the Lawmaker, Hand of Odin and weapon of his vengeance. It is your soul, mighty in its corrupted state, that I am here to secure, a fitting prize to offer She who Thirsts. Release us from this existence, that I might throw your carcass upon the mountain, where no less than a score of valkyries will scour the land for your remnants.”

Geilkr’no fvreltinh wrilv kae’l’nre ahv se’kliro, fraelt’kri’nomre drelt’greiv k’rle sh’nerl, haelw’rent’kre cre’lt shvreal’q wrielh. Ken’rokto’borhn fvel shreadn, Vrekt ko’r Xcreal, Vhikt ko Odirnk g’ras’tvel fe’lkr’tem xiel’n’rol kha’ch’al vrtensh. Shaelw’resl’tanke odst gninv’kre, ke’rn shieralenv q’r’t veilnomr, t’re shalnim alh’earan, Ferlk’chro.

The cycle of moons will pass beneath their gaze, for this is a land not of gods, but one of my own which defies pursuit. You amuse me yet, Maker of Fool’s Laws, Hand of Odin which he would sacrifice to whim upon the thought of a single burden. Victory may be yours in the song of blades, but I will live to force your hunt through the eternities, Hound

“I have hunted through many such lifetimes, son of Loki, yet your face shall be the fairest reflected upon my blade. For in your blood is the will of a god, and to slay that which disdains the will of mortals is to affirm power beyond that of my kin; Thor will commend me upon the telling of your end, and all the host of Valhalla will sing my name; such I have been promised, and such I will do.”