Chapter 14 – The Great War (Part II: 1917–1918)
The world had already drowned in mud and blood by 1917, but the storm refused to pass. Europe gasped under the weight of war, millions dead, millions more broken, yet the guns thundered on.
Ivar had seen wars drag themselves far past their purpose before, but never like this. The Great War was not a flame that consumed quickly — it was a slow strangling, a continent choking on its own pride.
And still, he endured.
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Winter in the Trenches
The winter of 1917 froze the Western Front into silence. Snow crusted over the mud, filling shell holes like wounds bandaged in white. Soldiers huddled in trenches, frostbitten, coughing, eyes hollow from too many months of the same gray sky.
Ivar stayed among them, indistinguishable from the rest save for the fire in his eyes. He helped patch uniforms with scraps of cloth, shared cigarettes though he never smoked, carried wounded men through frozen muck when stretchers broke.
They whispered about him more now.
"He doesn't get sick."
"His wounds close faster than ours."
"I saw him cut through three Germans in a blink."
Some called him demon. Others angel. Ivar never corrected them. He only laughed softly, as if the truth were less important than their hope.
And at night, when the guns fell silent and the cold chewed deeper than any bayonet, he whispered gratitude into the darkness. Every survival is theirs, gods. Every step is yours.
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America Arrives
In April 1917, America entered the war. Fresh troops poured into France — young, eager, unscarred by years of mud and gas. They marched with songs on their lips, believing they had come to save Europe.
Ivar fought beside them, though he felt centuries older than the boys in their clean uniforms. They called him "Storm" after hearing tales from the French.
"Storm," one American private asked him near the Aisne. "How long you been fighting this war?"
"Longer than you can imagine," Ivar answered, and the boy laughed, thinking it a joke.
But when the shells fell, when gas slithered across the field, when the first charge turned into slaughter, that boy looked at Ivar again and saw something older than time itself.
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Tanks and Planes
1917 brought new monsters.
Tanks crawled across the battlefield, iron beasts crushing barbed wire, spitting shells. Airplanes clawed the skies, their engines snarling as they dropped death from above. The face of war was no longer men in lines — it was machines grinding flesh into mud.
Ivar adapted. He always adapted.
He climbed onto tanks under fire, his twin blades cutting German infantry that tried to swarm them. He dragged wounded pilots from wreckage, shielding them from enemy fire until help arrived. He learned the rhythm of machines, how to move around them, how to use their chaos as cover.
But even he felt the shift. This was no longer the war of warriors. This was the war of industry. Men were fodder, machines the new gods of death.
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The Russian Collapse
News reached the trenches like a rumor at first: Russia had fallen into revolution. The Tsar abdicated. Lenin had risen. The Eastern Front dissolved.
For the soldiers in France, it meant the Germans could throw everything west. For Ivar, it was a reminder that no empire lasted forever. He had seen Rome crumble, France rise and burn, kings beheaded, emperors exiled. Russia was just the latest.
When a French officer cursed the betrayal, Ivar only said, "This is what happens when a nation forgets its people. The gods will not save kings who rule without honor."
The officer stared at him strangely, as if Ivar's eyes carried too much history for one man.
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Passchendaele
In late 1917 came Passchendaele — a battle drowned in rain and mud. The fields turned into swamps. Men and horses sank into muck and never surfaced. Shellfire churned the ground until it swallowed soldiers whole.
Ivar waded through it, dragging men out with inhuman strength, refusing to let the mud claim them. His blades flashed when Germans attacked, but most of the time the true enemy was the earth itself.
One night, after pulling a boy from the muck only to watch him die coughing in his arms, Ivar sat alone at the trench edge. His hair was plastered with filth, his hands black with soil and blood.
"Why do you keep going?" a medic asked quietly, lighting a cigarette.
Ivar wiped mud from his eyes. "Because if I stop, who remembers them? Who carries them forward?"
The medic stared, then nodded, too tired to question further.
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1918 – The Last Push
The war's final year was the most brutal. Germany, desperate after America's arrival, launched one last offensive in the spring of 1918. Storm after storm of soldiers poured into Allied lines, shells shaking the earth, machine guns cutting fields into graveyards.
Ivar fought through it all. He cut German troops down in forests, trenches, villages reduced to rubble. He led counterattacks when officers froze, carried messages under fire, held collapsing lines with nothing but his swords and the will to endure.
At the Marne once again, he fought as the tide turned. The Allies, bolstered by American strength, pushed the Germans back. Village by village, field by field, they clawed their way forward.
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The Hundred Days
From August to November, the Allies unleashed their final offensive — the Hundred Days. Ivar marched with them, a shadow among millions, blades gleaming in the smoke.
He fought in the breaking of the Hindenburg Line, where German defenses crumbled under artillery and tank assaults. He stormed trenches, his swords cutting faster than bullets, his eyes burning with unending fire. Soldiers who fought beside him whispered his legend louder now. The Immortal Storm.
But for every yard gained, hundreds died. He carried their memories in silence. Gratitude was his only prayer.
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Armistice
November 11, 1918. The guns fell silent.
The war ended not with victory, but with exhaustion. Nations collapsed under the weight of the dead. Soldiers wept in trenches, unsure if they were alive or dreaming.
Ivar stood among them, blades sheathed, eyes fixed on the gray sky. He bowed his head.
"Thank you, gods," he whispered. "For survival. For endurance. For letting me carry their memory."
He did not celebrate. He did not mourn. He simply walked, as he always had, into the uncertain peace.
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The Aftermath
The world was broken. Towns flattened, families shattered, millions buried in unmarked graves. Nations redrew borders as if lines could heal wounds.
Ivar wandered the ruins of France and Belgium, helping rebuild, carrying bricks, hauling wood, teaching children how to smile again. He moved through Germany, watching bitterness fester. He saw soldiers returning home with empty eyes, men crippled, nations humiliated. He knew what it meant.
"This war isn't over," he muttered once, standing at a train station as veterans begged for bread. "It's only sleeping."
And he was right.
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The Perfect Demigod in the Great War
Through it all, Ivar never cursed the gods.
Ares saw his ferocity in the trenches.
Athena admired his strategies among mud and wire.
Hermes laughed at his tricks, his survival where death was certain.
Artemis respected his care for the broken, the forgotten, the innocent.
Even Hera acknowledged him, for he had endured without bitterness.
They saw him as their perfect demigod. The one who gave thanks for survival, who carried scars as offerings, who never demanded, never cursed, only endured.
And in their silence, he knew they approved.
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Epilogue to the Great War
When the decade turned and the world tried to call itself new, Ivar carried forward the same truth he had always known.
Empires rise. Empires fall. Men fight. Men die. The gods endure. And so does he.
The Great War had been the bloodiest storm yet. But he knew — he could feel it in his bones, in the way nations whispered, in the way bitterness grew in Germany, in the way machines grew deadlier by the day — that another storm was coming.
Worse than this.
And when it came, Ivar would be there.
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Would you like me to roll straight into Chapter 15 – World War II (Part I: 1939–1942) next, or would you prefer a short interlude showing Ivar's life in the 1920s and 1930s — Prohibition, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism — to set the stage before WWII?