{A/N: I reached the stupid word limit with this chapter, so I'm splitting it in two}
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This work is a piece of fiction. While inspired by real events, cultures, and practices in human history, the story blends factual history with fictional characters, dramatizations, and creative interpretation.
It is not intended to promote, glorify, or encourage any illegal activities, substance use, or harmful behavior. All depictions of sensitive topics are included solely for narrative and historical context.
For the effects of the story, all characters are to be considered above the majority age.
Reader discretion is advised.
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╔═══━━━─── • ───━━━═══╗
Earth-5H1N3, 2001.
It was here! Christmas, my birthday, bar mitzvah, confirmation, graduation, and even jubilation present, the one gift that will top it all!
The No-more-squids-and-fuck-you spell! The anti-Hydra directive! The Order 66. Hahahaha! No more will I have to bear with the pleasant smile of Vicki, my Hydra secretary.
Rumlow's 'needed' appropriation of funds for 'my' STRIKE team will end.
All the 'inexplicable' red tape I 'coincidentally' encountered when investigating certain cases will end!
And Pierce, Alexander Asshole Hydra Commander Pierce, fucking Pierce! Will get one of my .50 cal through his asshole! No! Maybe that's too lenient of me, especially after all the suffering he caused me... I just need to take a quick look at my missing afro to know that a simple bullet through the ass is not enough.
'Your thoughts are spiraling out of control,' Aragorn speaks in my head.
"I hate that shit!" I spat, annoyed that Insanity Incarnated interrupted my wet dreams.
"It's not Master's fault you projected your mental image of a bullet flying straight up Pierce's asshole," the pyro maid said. "How do you even know how that would look internally down to such detail?"
"Hey, you become the director of this haunted house long enough, and you'll see things you wish you never did," I said in my defense.
"Have you thought about how you'll deal with them?" Aragorn asked.
"What do you mean?" I questioned. "I thought I was clear enough. I'll have a few of them die by bullet-down-the-ass, and the rest will cease and desist from life, simple, no?"
"Won't that destabilize society?" Aragorn asked.
"... More than it already has?" I retorted.
I understood what he meant. These squids were so deeply part of society that killing them all at once was not an option; that's what stopped Aragorn from exerting draconic judgment on them.
But now, after society has been undone three times? Things are different.
"After the Green Door event, I took advantage of the chaos to replace some of their pawns with mine," I recounted. This was not news to this dragon, but I guess he was not fooling around when he said he couldn't currently form complicated thought streams.
"We replaced a large number after the Goblin Force clash," Irina reminded Aragon.
"Is this something I knew?" Aragorn asked. It was interesting how I could see his confusion even in his featureless flaming face.
"Mhmm," I nodded.
"... I should address the damage to my mindscape next," he said, nonchalantly.
Had my mindscape been affected, I would be a drooling mess right now. This further proves I was right in treating Aragorn as his own category of existence, instead of lumping him with the other terrors.
"Master, can't you let some remote parts of Reality collapse a little and focus on your healing?" Irina asked.
See? This is why Haloans, or Therions—as they call themselves now—are a menace. I'm sure that pyro rabbit's definition of a little is: as much as my dearest master needs it to be. Pyro and a psycho, batshit craz—
"You're thinking rudely." Dark, beastly blue eyes locked me in place, and I could only think of that gaze my momma gave me when she caught me taking a sip of my father's brandy.
"I don't know what you imagined," I lied with the truth, technically, I don't know what prowls in her imagination, "I've been thinking of the spell to grant my most coveted desire." Also, the truth; I've been thinking this for a long time.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"... Your half-truths will be accepted this time," she shared her verdict. Since when is this maid so sharp?
"About that spell?" I asked. I must change topics now, my instincts honed through life or death warned me.
"Irina will cast it for you. You can make use of it afterward," Aragorn said.
Dayum! If he can't even cast... What is the real extent of the damage?
"Eh?" The blue rabbit tilted her head. "I don't know it, Master."
Shit! Will my present be delayed in delivery?
"Seraph uploaded it to the Grand Repository," he said.
"Oh, okay. I can fish it from there," Irina tapped her P-Link, and a long listing was projected.
I got a glance at a few of the spells listed: Hardening, harrowing winds, Herculean boost, Herrscher—what is that?—hiatus denial—what type of hiatus?—homo negation (No-homo), homo inducement (Gae)—what the fuck kind of spells was this dragon creating?—humus... That's a dish. What is a dish doing in a listing of spells?
For the sake of my sanity... what I have left of it, I decided to look away. At the corner of my eye, almost imperceptible, I could have sworn I caught the ends of a smirk in that bastard's smug, flaming face!
"Hydra Counter Force, is it this one?" Irina asked.
"It had a complicated name, but this one was more intuitive," Aragorn commented.
"How does it work?" I asked. Not that I cared, so long as it ended Hydra and didn't fuck up my world.
"Summons a task force from the great beyonds to deal with the targets marked by the spell, is what it says," Irina read the description.
"... What great beyonds?" I asked, my instincts warning me.
I could surmise the targeting part, Aragorn had said, before going, the complicated part of the spell was to determine where Hydra started and ended, but that great beyonds part is ringing all my warning bells.
"Abeyance, the Chakra Dimension, Heaven, and Hell," Aragorn said in a tone so relaxed I almost went along with the bullshit and nodded in approval.
"..." I took a deep breath; otherwise, I risked a heart attack. "Can you explain further?"
"Let me read you what it says," Irina continued. She was tracing Script in the air, laying the foundations of the spell while reading the description.
"It summons a multitude of incorporeal souls from the repository of souls of the Drachantheon Therion. The tasked souls receive good karma for assisting in the riddance of the selected targets.
Targeting conditions:
1- Direct or indirect association with Hydra.
2- Negative karma.
3- Conscious accordance with acting under Hydra.
4- Being alive, or in a near-death state.
5- Preprogrammed psionic, chemical, or psychological behaviors.
Risks to the caster:
1- Mana and/or chakra depletion.
2- Abrupt karmic fluctuations on account of the many eliminated targets.
3- Loss of mortal vessel to one of the summoned souls due to lack of willpower.
4- Getting touched by the beyonds.
5- Death.
6- Catching the attention of hidden experts.
Risks to the surroundings:
1- Collateral damage.
2- Hypersensitive mortals and others may witness the summoned task force.
3- The Astral Realm might shake with the influx of psionic inputs.
4- Your local Celestial Seed might awake if the influx of souls provides the needed remaining thought energy for the emergence.
5- Death.
6- Temporary environmental changes.
*The creator of this spell, The Shine Dragon, Overlord of Fluff, Stylist of Tails, Progenitor of the Kaiju Spiders, Guardian Beast of the Fulgebunt Draconis Imperium, Devil and Angel of Void-chan's conscience, is not responsible for unexpected results in the matrix of causality, aka, the Butterfly Effect."
"... That's a shitload to process," is all I could say after the bunny finished.
"I'm proud of this spell," Insanity Incarnate preened.
"I'm guessing, most summoned souls will be those in need of good karma, right, Master?" Irina asked. She was now holding a triangular pyramid of white, green, red, and blue light.
"Naturally," Aragorn affirmed. "There are parameters to summoning Hydra-related souls, as well. Hence, there's a poetic effect of using their deceased victims and supporters to end them."
"And heaven? Why involve them?" She continued her questionnaire.
"Some of the squids might be capable of redemption. I left it to the good souls to judge that," Aragorn added.
What the heck kind of monstrosity is this spell? Maybe it isn't worth it. The dead should not be disturbed, Master (Yao) always taught that.
"The targeting system is almost conceptual," Aragorn added, turning to me, as if he was sensing my hesitation, which maybe he was. "It means you can think of a target and shoot at one of the faces of the polyhedron, and the desired target would b—"
"Say no more!" I exclaimed. I made a grasping motion and pulled my trusty 50 BMG out of storage. "Are we ready?" I asked, hoisting my monster up and aiming at the pyramid in the bunny's hands.
"..."
"..."
"... I guess so," Irina nodded and floated the pyramid away from them. I followed it with my aim.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
Hydra Bunker.
Hydra, they were a special brand of nutjobs. When Kubos' presence was grinding on their souls' gears and twisting causality, they were team Aragorn all the way.
They were just as blind to the outside conflict as humanity was after the Sat-Net fell, when Doom killed Frigga. However, contrary to Humanity, who depended on the willingness of Aragorn or Stark to reconnect the Sat-Net after Jean wished it back, they had their own satellite network.
So, upon seeing the return of Earth to its 'pristine' status, they celebrated as if their team had won the World Cup. Now, it was then that their special brand of craziness began to resurface.
Aragorn was so out of it that when he returned to Earth, he failed to control his energy, and it spiked in Hydra's satellite scans. So, a few seconds after his return, Hydra's High Command was tracking and analysing him from every angle the canopy of the Arbor Mundi allowed.
It was almost praiseworthy. Frankly off-putting; one moment they were cheering like the rest of whom they considered lower lifeforms, then they were like hyenas circling exhausted prey.
Within the first hour, after they saw Fury and Bast come and go, they already had a preliminary understanding.
"The barrier is not coming up," Baron Wolfgang von Strucker voiced the miracle that everyone was too afraid to call out in fear of waking up from the dream.
Alexander Pierce, after a pause, followed with, "... Odin weakened him."
"I-I can sense him!" Madame Hydra, with a magic circle between her palms, said ecstatically.
Aragorn had such fine control of his energy, presence, and aura that no one could sense him if he didn't allow it. Hence, for Elisa Sinclair, being able to perceive him with one of her spells was nothing short of the most miraculous event.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
Even after confirming this... So, what? Were they under the illusion that they could march to him and butcher him like a pig? No. For all of their delusions, they had not reached where they stood by being wishful thinkers.
The short arrival of Yelena and Irina was proof of concept to their critical thinking; had they recklessly gone to confront him, they would have been boiling or freezing by now.
"We should attack," Daniel Whitehall broke the silence after hours of observation of Argaorn 'meditating' while resting against the flaming rabbit.
"Kraken is not wrong," Arnim Zola added.
The pensive eyes of the other cult members turned to the robot.
Zola cast what he was analyzing to the main screen, and everyone saw a feed of the Sat-Net offline. "I can confirm that the annoying thing is currently offline. I also can't locate his monster daughter on the net. This is the least surveillance we've ever seen on him since he appeared four years ago. I don't think we'll have another chance like this."
Hydra was not new to targeting Aragorn. It was such a common happenstance that there were online betting sites for the number of times on a day someone would attempt on his 'life'.
It was despairing for Hydra.
They had to move assets every single day, and the worst part was not the coordination that took to keep everything out of the public eye. The worst part was that Aragorn, or whoever was tasked with protecting him, would return an attack of equal magnitude to the origin of the strike.
They had even emplaced launch sites within civilian centers, hoping to dirty Aragorn's hands with blood, yet nothing worked! He was not playing by the rules! They bemoaned like petulant children.
So, it was not strange to find so much hesitation in them when confronted with such a perfect chance.
However, humans were, if nothing else, persistent.
"I agree," Alexander Pierce rallied behind Zola and Kraken.
"We took down that serpent deity. We can nuke this monster down, too!" Helmut Zemo's voice carried dreams and hopes.
"We'd lose nothing else besides a nuke," Struker tried to rationalize.
"Let's give it a shot," Sinclair added.
For a moment, in this association of the most irredeemable scum in humanity, something beautiful was born: camaraderie.
They shared looks, muttered to each other, 'Yeah, this time this will work,' and with wishful looks that betrayed their rotten nature, they followed the live feed as the intercontinental ballistic missile flew through the skies clear of all manner of aircraft.
The tension built up, Pierce saw Fury appear near Aragorn and said, "What a shame. Farewell, old friend."
And then, the obvious outcome broke through the mirage their hopeful delusions cast over their cynical eyes.
Someone sighed, or maybe they all did, and with reluctant acceptance, they gathered their selves back from the abyss of despair.
Yeah, this is how it is. What were we thinking? They thought.
The despair Odin's parting revelation cast on them returned. Alduin was Aragorn, Aragorn was beyond the level of a deity, and Aragorn was their enemy.
In the somber aura of collective despair, when they all thought things could not be worse, when they didn't even know if it was safe to surface or stay within the roots of the tree of Aragorn's creation, chaos erupted.
"WHAT?!" Zola was the first to notice.
The temperature of all solid matter dropped to the freezing point, yet the air boiled like the melting air above a lava pit; however, this was not what alerted Zola, it was what he saw through the feed of one of the many bases where Hydra had hunkered down.
A loyal, brainwashed to kingdom come and beyond, Hydra slave, reached for his sidearm and shot at all his squad-mates before killing himself.
"NO! THIS CAN'T BE!!!" The next to notice was Sinclair. Her harmony with the mystic energies allowed her to see the intruders who materialized by magic inside the room.
But then, all at once, because Aragorn was afraid of giving Hydra time to start doomsday protocols, the rest of Hydra experienced the joys of being possessed by a swarm of vengeful, corrupt souls all at once.
Some started a localized massacre immediately, and others ran towards terminals and deactivated dead-man switches before killing themselves. A few, those with higher clearance, moved to locations only they knew about and manually deactivated doomsday devices they had prepared for the unlikely fall of their organization.
This was the beauty of having sentient souls possess them. A kill-all-Hydra spell, no matter how carefully created, could never account for the many unmanned protocols Hydra set in advance; souls, however, could take full control of the possessed and read through their lives as if reading a book, then, considering the intent of the caster, act on the discovered information.
Globally, even in the civilian shelters, the possesed ensured no Hydra goons remained on sight before ending themselves. Some thought it was mass hysteria, others surmised they had lost their minds after experiencing what they all felt under Kubos' presence, a few believed it was the continuation of the apocalypse, the next wave.
A few unlucky ones, those who, 'coincidentally' formed part of Fury's close circle, experienced something either far terrible or far merciful. With a bang, followed by a squelch of fluids, they crumbled to the ground with their hips and bottoms exploded.
And while Fury wreaked havoc in Hydra, Death was walking through an Astral Path with the newly released Hela beside her.
"This mortal, quite the interesting one if I say so, dropped a rod enchanted by my hubby on Frigga," Death recounted as if it were a children's tale. "Splat, she went and then~Hihihihih!" Her malevolent chuckles interrupt her storytelling. "He went AAAAAAAAHHHH-HAhahahahahah!" It hurt her belly so much, so much laughter.
And Hela, hearing the recount of her captors' death, "Hehe~Haha." Her chuckles began like broken giggles, but, slowly, broke into a full-blown laughter, not unlike Death's.
Amidst her laughter, sobs and tears broke through, her emotions in utter disarray.
"Can you tell me more about him, My Lady?" Hela asked after getting a semblance of calm.
"Mmmmmm, are you interested in him because he'll be your new head of pantheon?" Death asked, a look of intrigue directed at her ex-host.
"I hope I'm not being presumptuous, My Lady," Hela voiced out, asking for permission.
"Go ahead," Death granted her approval.
"I believed those like us would never find love," Hela said. "... I, foolishly, believed I could, maybe, nurture something similar to it in a young soul... Eventually, they all fear us."
"Oh, unlucky child," Death replied. "While almost all of them would fear us, there are the crazy ones who will torment us with their attention. I have had the displeasure of knowing so by experience."
A certain purple head came to her mind.
"Don't give up just yet," Death continued. "I bet you'll find your One in my small but growing family. They are not... standard individuals."
"... Is that so, My Lady?" Hela slowed her pace for a moment and asked. "How are they?"
"Uhmmmm, they are hard to describe, but if I were to generalize them, I would say they are the crazy but good, or neutral, kind, not the evil sort you're used to dealing with. They care more about family and their hobbies than the reality outside; maybe calling them homey isn't wrong," Death said.
"I... can't help but feel expectations in meeting them," Hela said, somewhat timid, somewhat afraid.
"You'll see, they are not ones to mirror Odin's undesirable qualities," Death commented as the end of the Astral Path came into view and they came to the base of the Arbor Mundi.
There, they found Fury cackling madly with a .50 BMG rapid-firing into a triangular pyramid. Irina, with an evilly pleased smirk, enjoyed the scenes of multiple massacres occurring all at once. Aragorn, his eyes shifting through a happy gold and an irate red, nodded approvingly at the scenes shown through the magical projections.
A tornado of evil souls flew frantically around them, with the blackened souls escaping in random directions with purpose.
It was, through and through, a scene of evil.
"Noona," Aragorn called, dispersing all delusions Hela was forming that, maybe, they had ended in the wrong place.
↓Part 1.5━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 1.5↓
Hela was not alright, mentally, spiritually, and even physically speaking. Before being blinded by the power of the Cosmic Cube, before the looming threat of Aragorn's existence cornered him, before despair undid whatever acceptable limits he had, Odin was not a cruel jailer.
Sure, he imprisoned his firstborn daughter, sure he banished her and rewrote history to make every Asgardian—and anyone who cared for her—forget her, without a doubt he placed his honor and kingdom before the life of his newborn, and certainly he forced the world into certain doom, but Hela's imprisonment was not utter agony.
And given how resilient Asgardians' minds were, maybe, with a ginormous effort into whitewashing the facts, Hela's banishment and subsequent sealing was considered a mercy... maybe.
However, the truth of the matter is that Hela, those last hours when she tasted hope, only for Odin to shred it to pieces at the last moment, broke something in her that was barely holding on by a nanometric thread.
The suffering of having her bones charred, muscles boiled, and skin broiled didn't help. Add that the eons of imprisonment piled on top of each other, and... yes.
So, when even after her sealing had been undone, yet she didn't attempt to exit Helheim, and Death reappeared like a ray of deathly hope back into her life, Hela imprinted(?) on Death.
This was not the imprint of a baby duckling on its mother; if anything, this was an imprint comparable to when Aragorn first met Death and began to see a life together after a few interactions. Not unlike Death, who decided to groom him right during their first exchange.
It was not love.
This was not that obsessive monstrousity those two shared and called love, a form of love maybe only they and the Abstract of Love could understand.
No, this was a form of possessive affection that made even yandere across the multiverse shiver.
So, logic went out through the dimensional window, and Hela, without conscious thought, decided Death needed protection from the evil in front of them.
Necrotic swords of Death Divinity projected around Death like a Roman testudo, and, eyes lost in her madness, Hela launched towards Fury, the weak link.
"Eh?" Aragorn muttered.
"Ah!" Death exclaimed.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Fury laughed. Do you think he would care about someone attacking him in the presence of Aragorn? He gave not a single fuck, even though he sensed her hostility approaching.
Nothing was going to ruin Fury's 'unwrapping' of his long-awaited gift, not even a crazy Goddess of Death.
"AGHHHH!" Hela roared with madness. Even her roar came out broken like she was. It was clear to all present.
In response to this, Aragorn said, "Irina, I choose you!"
There was an explosion, a shockwave, a heatwave, a necrowave, and even then, Fury remained focused on his gift. He even made sure to reload through spatial switching, changing drum magazines instantly. And Aragorn, even as hurt as he was, feared not Hela.
Death approached Aragorn, grew in size, and sat behind Aragorn with her arms, legs, and tail wrapped around his flames. She little-spooned him.
"I'm pleased with your recovery speed, My Love," Death said, resting her head atop Aragorn's, his two horns framing her face.
"Irina has been helping me, and Firebird and Pietro did something outside [Time] that reduced my burden. Also, the extra energy Boss Tribunal mentioned has been trickling in helpfully, so I may recover faster than I calculated," Aragorn explained.
In the distance, above the Gaea-blessed lake surrounding the Arbor Mundi, a car-sized flaming bunny faced off against a broken Death Goddess.
Irina was vicious, like all Therions; she only knew how to fight dirty. It took her a second to understand who Hela was and get a general idea of her current state of mind. She projected solid psionic illusions of Odin all around them, harming Death by using different methods. She would have loved to be able to project these illusions directly to Hela's mind, but Hela's mind was too twisted, too old, and too well-protected for Irina to infiltrate amidst a fight.
Also, her divinity of fire allowed her to sense the remnants of something that had been burning Hela not long ago, and Irina, being the Therion she was, hesitated not to stimulate the burning sensation on Hela.
"How nasty," Death pointed out.
For the sake of their moment, Aragorn had used his telekinesis to break the soundwaves of Fury's maddened laughter and machine gun from reaching them, but he was still shooting nonstop at the pyramid.
"Noona, have you ever read stories where a character is undying and that twists them?" Aragorn asked.
"Uhmm, Love, was your mind affected?" Death asked. She placed a concerned hand on his head and tried to enter his mindscape, but Aragorn barred her entry. She opened her eyes wide at him.
She looked at him with confusion, worry, and a hint of hurt.
"My memories of The Void are currently exposed," Aragorn explained.
"Ah," Death nodded, her face switching back to her usual lovestruckness. "You had already asked me this before."
"I see," Aragorn said. That was why Death worried for his mindscape; Aragorn doesn't forget, not even when Death conceptually killed everything that was him.
"Back then, I told you I hadn't, but that it was common knowledge for me the consequences of those who lose my blessing," Death replied, thinking of certain Elders of the Universe who ended warped beyond recognition after the first billion years of undying life. "Then you wrote a few stories for me, so that I could understand what you were talking about."
Aragorn nodded, pleased with the actions he had taken before. "I failed to account for how the usual lawless sparring matches would affect their minds," he said while pointedly staring at Irina.
Hela, leaving aside her current debuff after the torture Odin made her experience and how she was just coming out of her imprisonment, was factually stronger than Irina.
Frigga was dead, Thor was knocked out somewhere inside the Arbor Mundi's roots, Loki had no claim to the realm, Heimdall was too loyal to take the throne, and, in this Reality, there were no other heirs to the throne—Angela aside—so, instead of being weakened, Hela was currently enjoying the privileges of the Odinforce, or Deathforce, as she was referring to it in her mind.
Hela was already a monster Odin struggled to deal with before her sealing. Heck, he had to resort to treachery to seal her! And now, that tiger was given wings, a flaming breath skill, and was equipped with an automatic aiming blaster over its striped back.
Just in combat experience, Hela had many more years than Irina had lived, but Irina was fighting so nastily that Hela was struggling to deal any significant damage to the bunny.
Irina was faster than Hela—a typical advantage of a quadruped over a biped. She was taking advantage of the momentary lapses Hela suffered under the sheer disrespect Irina called psychological warfare—AKA, Odin's illusions—to plant causality mines.
Years ago, Wanda had created a series of spells that tapped into cause and effect. She named them curses, and she had sold Aragorn this cursed series. As he usually does, Aragorn improved the spells and made eldritch monsters out of the regular monsters these spells already were.
For Hela to miss one of these mines, all it took was to plant the mine out of natural sight.
So, while Hela was trying to pursue Irina and engage her in close-quarter armed combat, the field she realized she excelled over Irina, she would have to deal with the occasional casualty detonation.
One moment, she was an instant away from piercing the bunny's throat, and then she realized that instead of taking a step forward and piercing through, she stabbed her own right thigh.
It was not that her arm stabbed her own thigh; it was that the effect of spearing through Irina's throat had been replaced with stabbing herself. That's how nasty this spell was.
Well, what else could be expected from a spell powered by void energy?
Still, Hela was the monster of her pantheon.
She fought differently from the Hela from Earth-199999. She included not only her trait necrosword-dance, but also spells of her own design in her repertoire. And she didn't just summon swords from herself as the point of origin.
Swords came and went from all possible directions, even from outside the Material Plane, and other dimensions, and hexes, that were sure to board someone on the express highway to Hel should they hit, intertwined with the swords' strikes.
She was also a soulmancer like no other, so, taking advantage of the storm of condemned souls Irina had summoned for Fury's gift, she appropriated a few thousand and fed them with her divinity, creating body-like shells of energy for the souls to wield, each armed with her death swords.
So, a few tens of seconds into the fight, when Hela didn't even know why she was fighting anymore, when Irina stopped caring about the reason that sparked the fight, an army of damned souls and a Death Goddess were facing a nasty Goddess of Fire.
With things so stacked against her, it was no surprise that Irina couldn't beat Hela, and her head rolled to Hela's blade.
Only then did Hela come to her senses and slowly, like a rusty machine, turned towards her Lady and Aragorn, who, contrary to the tragic scene, were staring at her, amused by the show.
Hela couldn't understand what was going on or what led to this; however, her confusion didn't last.
A delicate flaming hand emerged from her chest, and she turned back in horror to catch a glance of Irina's headless body stabbing her from behind.
"Therions' weak point isn't our heads," Irina's voice came from all around Hela.
Irina pulled her hand out, beating heart in hand, and crushed it.
Hela faltered and had to lean on her sword like a cane. Slowly, her Deathforce began to regenerate her.
In her mind, thoughts about how maybe the enemy's weak point was not their head, but it certainly was her, and how now they could take this chance to decapitate her ran wild through her panicked mind.
That last strike never came.
"You're annoying to fight," Irina commented nonchalantly while floating her head to her severed neck. "Not as annoying as Kitty, nothing is as annoying as that sweet, obnoxious cat. Still annoying though."
Under the confused gaze of the Goddess of Death, Irina looked around at the embodied damned souls and glared icily. "Go! You were brought here for a reason... Or, do you want me to tell Wanda of your rebellion?"
The damned souls, in a synchronicity that belied their assorted walks of life, shook their heads frantically and flew away to their designated targets.
"Can you not release those divine shells—bodies? Whatever you call them!—until the spell is over?" Irina asked and hoisted Hela up with her telekinesis.
Hela, still dumbfounded, only stared at Irirna with her cold, crazy, maniacal eyes unblinking.
"... Is your Allspeak not working? I'm sure my Logosense works just fine, though," Irina asked, tilting her head, her long ears following with the movement.
"You're not mad I attacked you," Hela pointed out in disbelief.
"No?" Irina questioned with a confused expression. "Why would I? Aren't you Hela? You're basically part of my Pantheon since its founding. The Madame has been safeguarding your seat since before we ascended."
Through Irina's warped mind, multiple instances of her sisters and brothers decapitating her flashed through, then multiple images of her decapitating her Therions followed. It was, to her, illogical that she would be truly mad at Hela.
Something... 'strange' stirred in Hela's heart.
"I told you they were homey," Death's voice reached her despite the distance, and, like a broken doll, she turned to her, Aragorn, and the absolutely loony mortal who had not stopped shooting at some type of summoning spell. Even throughout the brief but deadly battle, Fury had not stopped. At his feet lay countless empty drum magazines.
"By the way," Aragorn said. His voice made her pay attention to him, and finally, she noticed he was the source of that despairing aura she felt three times in recent years.
Before fear could take hold of her, Aragorn continued, "This is yours." He waved a hand, and a root broke through the now-calm watersurface, and it almost literally spat Thor and Loki, both unconscious.
Like how a Hell Lord could spot their demons in a realm full of demonic spawns, Hela immediately understood these were deities from her pantheon, Asgard. Although Loki felt strange.
"Also, we are technically at war with the Aesir," Aragorn added. "And even if you currently hold the Realmforce of Asgard, I don't think they'll, without their memories of you, accept you as their Skymother, so..." Aragorn's face became confused for a moment before he continued, "sorry, that's as far as my thought stream went. You figure out the rest."
Too many things were happening for Hela to understand, so she simply nodded and slowly made way to her island, Death. She, carefully not to disturb Aragorn, giving Fury a confused glance, staring a second too long at the spell, sat exhausted next to Death and Aragorn. As if their couple-energy was not worth mentioning to her.
She leaned on the trunk of the Arbor Mundi, decided to ignore why she was feeling a buttload of primordial divinity coursing through the tree, and fell asleep. Peaceful, for the first time in eons.
Irina stared at her for a moment before she said, "She will fit right in. I bet Yelena will love her. Kitty will probably infuriate her, though."
"Perfect addition, no?" Death asked.
"Mhmm," Aragorn and Irina nodded, pleased.
↓Part 2━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━Part 2↓
The world was crazy. This was a fact. Few would doubt its veracity, and only those either utterly twisted or impossibly naive would question its factuality.
Humans were not meant to be without struggle. The 1%, those twisted by their cravings, rotting in abundance, might as well represent the empirical proof of the statement.
Hence, the 'normal' humans would know that the world was crazy...
At least that was part of what we were discussing in our Applied Philosophy classes the day before I was drafted.
Not to look down on the military, they can be considered part of the backbone of our country, but I never imagined I would be drafted and found myself in the middle of a vessel in the Pacific amidst humanity's first Nuclear War.
Maybe, to us, common folk, the thought of a third World War exploding seemed distant, because of nuclear winters and the end of the world and all of that. Turns out, the gift Lord Alduin and Goddess Gaea bestowed upon the world was temptation enough to light the spark that blew it all.
It didn't help that said gift thrived in radiation and waste. Some of the most idiotic propaganda even claimed that the war was for the benefit of all, since 'We are fertilizing the World Tree!' Such bullshit.
The world is crazy like that...
The fall of Santiago should have opened our eyes and made this fact clear. The capital of a country entirely gone in a snap, that's the type of craziness that I used to read in fictional reality stories.
Witches, deities, mutants—was it metahumans they call themselves now?—dragons, devils, divine trees as tall as Everest, Aliens?—I think someone leaked some files about Abner making some extraterrestrial contact in his Halo—and now... What the fuck is going on now?
Something was wrong.
How did I know that?
The ship's constant nuking came to a halt, and now we're moving faster than I thought this vessel could.
Maybe it could have been considered a hunch, a projection from my pent-up stress, a play of my psyche, or even paranoia. But when I saw the Japanese vessel racing us towards Hawaii, the closest port, I knew something was wrong.
Japan was not on our side, yet no call to our stations was issued.
"Could it be the work of a telepath, like Abner?" I asked Alexander, my only acquaintance on this ship, from back home.
"The ship is packed with psionic disruptors, as is the norm since Abner came out as an omega-level psychic," Alexander replied with his usual composure, showing a crack of confusion.
He was right. We were taught this during the rushed boot camp. Not only that, we all carried personal Psy-Disruptors. I only had to glance down at the device hanging next to my dog tag to know that my mind was still protected.
Additionally, we were all required to pass the evaluation for mind fortification.
I heard the original syllabus on mind fortification came from some old-money telepath.
Still, this was strange.
"Do you think something happened?" Alexander asked. I could sense in him the same uncertainty that was rising in the pit of my stomach.
That sensation when you're almost certain that something dreadful you suspect is a foregone conclusion, but you're too afraid to verify. That's what I've been feeling.
"You don't think..." I couldn't finish my question. I didn't want to finish.
"No... It's not possible... right?" Alexander questioned.
We didn't need to ponder this long; a panicked cry burst through the comms.
"PURPLE ALERT!!! CELESTIAL INCOMING EVENT!!!"
It was undoubtedly some despairing soul who mutinied. I could tell since there was no reason to inform us of such despair-inducing truth.
We didn't have access to our smartphones, EMCON wouldn't allow it, so we would never find out the world was ending until we died to whatever this celestial event was. And it wasn't like knowing this, we could do something to help; the ship was already breaking waves as fast as it could.
""...""
Alexander and I didn't panic.
I was a realist, and Alexander was a cynic.
"So..." Alexander said, our eyes fixed on the Japanese ship racing us to port. "Is there a reason to rush to port?"
"... It depends on what a celestial event is," I replied with calm born from powerlessness. "Did you know, the burst of light that fried the plants was supposed to have originated from a GRB?"
"Makes you wonder, no?" Alexander asked.
"About how we are still alive? A GRB is one of the most violent ejections of energy, so long as whatever is coming ranks lower in the scale of apocalypses, we should survive, no?" I said.
"I meant about Grey, Jean Grey. If she could somewhat stop that, then what else could she do?" Alexander asked, as if unconcerned about the flashes of light we are starting to see on the horizon.
Then we were no more...
No, it was strange. I think something pulled(?) me before the flash... I don't know.
But then I knew, I felt this understanding flooding my mind, these images, sounds, and sensations so alien I thought for a second I had truly died, then I was in Re-Nazca.
How did I know? The shadow of the canopy above the clouds gave it away.
I lay over a course, humid and cold surface. I could hear water trickling not far from me. Light beamed like a golden spray, an effect documented as the result of the optics of the Arbor Mundi's glassy leaves.
I raised my head, taking a quick glance at the trunk of the Arbor Mundi, and found that Lord Alduin was missing.
"So it's true?" I heard Alexander's voice behind me. I turned sharply, still seated over what I now knew was a root of the World Tree, and found Alexander equally stunned behind me.
No, there was something else aside from shock to him; he was... mourning.
"He merged his consciousness with Abner and left some of his power to Grey to fix what the deities broke," I snarled out.
I felt a revulsion, almost biological, to the idea of those deities opposing the Drachantheon Therion, Lord Alduin's home.
"What did we ever do to them?" Alexander gnashed out. "All because Goddess Gaea carried Lord Alduin's egg?"
I had seen it, Lord Alduin, Abner, Grey, Stark, Doom, Queen Shuri, Krakoa, Goddess Bastet, Lady Danvers, Lord Maximoff, and plenty of others mounting a defense against the evil gods! The betrayers of Earth!
The world was ravaged, the universe destroyed, and it was all undone by the sacrifice of our Dragonlord.
"W-We died," I stammered out.
"Odin killed us," Alexander corrected.
Yes, Alexander was right. We didn't die. Odin deliberately targeted us to get to Lady Danvers, the Dimensional Lord of Light. Goddess Gaea, even while pregnant, protected more than seven-eighths of humanity. Lord Maximoff fought that trash god to allow Abner and Lord Alduin's fusion to deal the killing blow.
Doom, Latveria's Ruler, and the Fantastic Four ended Hades and vanished Odin once.
The images, sounds, sensations, and understandings all came and went. It wasn't like watching a movie; it was like living a movie, a story. I didn't even know I was capable of this much wrath.
Alexander helped me stand up, and we got a clear picture of our surroundings.
The root we stood atop sneaked its way just above the surface of the Blessed Lake, in the shadow of the Arbor Mundi. We were by no means close to the base of the three; we were so far away that I only knew where to go because the upper part of the trunk was visible at a corner of the horizon.
Still, we knew that the underground dome city of Re-Nazca was in that direction, and that there were some towns built atop these roots.
So we marched that way, trying to get back to civilization.
Ever since the fall of Santiago, and after the domed city was built, Re-Nazca has been migrating its towns, cities, and other settlements underground, or atop the root system of the Arbor Mundi.
It only took them one apocalypse to realize that this crazy world was dangerous. I don't know if it was insider information by Abner—Lord Alduin's Spokesman—or if the blessed waters of the Arbor Mundi's Lake made the Chileans smarter, or was it Re-Nazcans now?
We encountered survivors along the way, all who died like us, mostly military personnel, and soon, we had become a crowd that marched over the root system.
We encountered civilization not long after, just as a massive cocoon of roots bloomed to release a town.
The release of humanity meant only one thing: we had survived; the apocalypse had passed.
The language barrier was breached, thanks to the translation app of the Chileans' N-Tek smartphones, and we wasted no time getting on the mission Grey had entrusted us with: the spread of the truth. Humanity needed to know.
━━━━━━━ ● ━━━━━━━
"I've released them," Gaea informed. "The shelters were unsealed, too."
"The revived should be spreading our truth by now, if Red and the Kid did their work right," Fury commented.
"Oh?" Irina turned to Fury with a raised eyebrow and a teasing smirk.
"Oh, what?" Fury asked.
"Out of bullets? Or assholes to shoot? Literally," Aragorn asked.
"... Bullets." Fury looked away in shame.
"I thought he was crazy. Why is he acting ashamed?" Hela asked. Based on her experience, the crazy felt no shame.
"Excuse you, Odinsdottir?" Fury glared with his good eye.
Was Fury the type of daredevil who would sass a Goddess of Death? Certainly not, he had better instincts than that, but—not that he would ever admit it—in Aragorn's presence, he felt reassured and bold.
"Blame yourself," Death said matter-of-factually.
"It was a yucky sight," Irina asked.
"I expected no less," Aragorn added.
With a twitching eyebrow, Fury made a swiping motion with his cane and walked away with his image intact through a portal.
Irina, Gaea, and Death chuckled at that.
Hela eyed her mistress with a measured look of curiosity and interest. She was certain that if it were the Death she met in her dreams before, she would have killed the insolent mortal with no questions asked, or made his life unlivable. This Death, however, was chuckling at the mortal who chose to escape her teasing.
Shortly after Fury's departure, the pyramid that was sustaining the spell fizzled out and dimmed into oblivion.
"Hydra is gone," Aragorn declared as if he were pointing out the weather.
Truth be told, he was going to miss them. It was an asinine reason, to Aragorn, a Marvel without Hydra was not Marvel, hence, deep down, he was going to notice their absence.
"I don't think that spell was as pervasive as you think, Love," Gaea commented. She had witnessed the rise and fall of Hydra throughout the centuries, and she knew how unkillable those cockroaches were.
"What's left is not Hydra, and whatever is born from them will never be Hydra," Aragorn declared. "Not the real Hydra."
Some fell outside the targeting of the spell, but, as he had declared, whatever institution they try to build, whatever organization they try to assemble, it would never be Hydra. Even if it were, there's nothing stopping Aragorn from casting the spell again.
In a way, if Aragorn truly hated Hydra, he could go from Reality to Reality, spamming the Hydra Counter Force spell, and the only thing limiting him would be the number of souls willing to respond to the spell's summoning.
"Master, I was informed of some experimental subjects, prisoners, and civilians needing extraction," Irina said.
As the caster, she related the counter force's findings.
"You can leave the mutants to Krakoa, unless Doom and Fury have other plans," Aragorn said.
"What about what was not destroyed? Facilities, labs, tech, material assets, and such?" Irina asked.
"..." Aragorn stared dazedly for a moment before he shrugged. "I don't know. Fury and Doom can handle it."
Irina's P-Link blinked in confirmation of having received a command, and the information she recollected was conveyed to the superspy and king.
Gaea returned to her new realm. She had only come out due to the eye-catching activity of the countless souls summoned; she still had countless arrangements to make in her new home.
Obviously, the Triassic Planet had to be the first of the Mesozoic Era, as it was the natural transition! She could not believe Aragorn and Death arranged the planets based on the level of how tasty their eggs or meat were.
No, she was not ungrateful. The gesture deeply touched her; it had been a passing mention when she spoke about how she liked the eras before complex minds the most, and those had gone above and beyond to build a realm for her. She was on cloud nine; she could now understand why her fallen siblings had chosen to become Dimensional Lords on top of being Elder Deities.
But still... What type of taxonomical classification is based on the taste of the specimen's produce?
So, yeah, Gaea had things to do, planets to rearrange, worlds to bless, and a new power source she needed to get used to.
Death, for her part, needed her full concentration on her Abstract Self, so she hugged and kissed Aragorn, pecked Irina between the ears, and patted Hela's head before retiring to Halo for hibernation. She was going to put her draconic body to sleep while she dealt with her Abstract responsibilities.
With nothing better to do and to get Hela up to speed, Irina began sharing with her a superficial understanding of the Drachantheon Therion, the Fulgebunt Draconis Imperium, and the cosmological political weather of the past eons of her absence.
"So Odin and the other godheads decided to oppose the Celestials?" Hela asked, incredulous. "Didn't you say they had a hard time opposing just one Celestial, and with the help of a Phoenix Force host?"
"Master used to say that Odin had far more renown due to the messes he caused than his moments of enlightenment," Irina said, deadpanned.
"... Okay," Hela nodded. During her time, Odin's reputation was spotless, or more like whoever claimed otherwise didn't live long enough to become trending.
"At some point after that, because he and Frigga were on a pseudo-break due to the strain your imprisonment placed on their relationship, Odin, Goddess Gaea, and Frigga somehow managed to conceive that brute over there," Irina pointed at the unconscious Thor with her right ear.
"... How?" Hela asked.
"I don't know, Goddess Gaea never told us how, and Master doesn't know how Frigga could possibly be his mother," Irina shrugged.
Hela turned to Aragorn, but the dragon in question was working in his mindscape, resealing his 'joyful' memories of the time spent in Void-chan's embrace, so he didn't pay attention to the two non-hostile elements.
"But it gets weirder, there's a reason Master calls him Thor Kurosaki, The Tribrid, Thor Mikelson, Thor Toujou," Irina recounted with an amused chuckle.
"I don't follow," Hela said without shame.
"Well, you'll get those references later on, I'm certain of it." Irina looked at Hela with half-dead, half-serious eyes. "Continuing with the story, that one's father," another ear pointed at Loki, "killed Thor, and Firehair brought him back to life. Goddess Gaea then declared her his third mother. Messy, right?"
Hela turned from Irina to the unconscious blonde Asgardian, and her confusion only grew. "But he is young," she argued.
"Apparently, he stayed in stasis a long time after his revival," Irina explained.
"..." Hela, still not convinced, observed with intensity at her 'brothers'. One was adopted and had no blood relation to her, except that his divinity was undoubtedly from the Aesir; she figured her father, who was cold enough to give up on his newborn daughter and banish his firstborn, had somehow felt the need to reassure his son, pet? She couldn't even figure out how Odin saw Loki; the Odin of Irina's recount was so foreign to her.
Then there was Thor. Odin's grandfather was Buri, previously known as Tiwaz, one of Gaea's surviving siblings, which made one of Thor's mothers his great-grandaunt.
That level of consanguinity meant nothing to the divine, but still, Thor could be considered her half-blood brother, because of Odin, but it would be strange if, with that bloodline, Thor even held half of Odin's life code in his.