I paced back and forth impatiently on my large flying carriage, which flew above the face of the planet below. I grew more antsy with every passing minute, a battle awaited for my comrades and I below, but we could not initiate unless we had the consent of the people below. I curse Raghoth for bestowing such laws upon our society.
“Agh! What is taking Ohden so long? He should have given the word by now.” I received shocked looks from my comrades.
Two of my friends face grew red from embarrassment, the ones who fought wolverines and bears for me to attend this battle. However, my captain Erida did not hold back in displaying her disapproval, her face even mildly shook in frustration.
“Anastasia,” She started with pause, she always paused like that to build up tension. Why did she do that? I would probably never know, but it served its purpose in annoying me.
Erida sighed, “Never mind, there is no point in arguing with you.”
I grinned from my little victory, Erida knew very well anything she would have had said would be next to zero value to me. So I continued with my restless pacing, but was interrupted when Merida stopped me and pulled me to the side of the carriage.
She was silent for a short while which was always annoying to me, but since she was my best friend I stood beside her in silence. She stared in awe at the sunset, the way how the rays of light gave varying hues of color.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Merida remarked.
“The sun or rays of light?” I asked innocently.
“Both.”
After having contemplated on the horizon for a moment, even I had to admit that it was a remarkable sight to lay eyes upon.
Merida gave me comforting shrug, “I like to think of you as a sun.”
I felt offended; even though we were friends, I thought she would be a bit more encouraging, “You mean hot headed and snappy.”
She gave a humored giggle, “No silly. You are reliable and dependable, like the sun. A beacon of light and a source of contagious life.”
I smiled with pride, “Well, I guess I am dependable.”
“Although, you are little bit of a hot head and snappy.”
I laughed, “Yeah, I guess I am that too.”
A powerful goat-horn bellowed from the land below. Finally, the signal to go. The three of us ran at the same time towards the back of our flying boat-shaped carriage, freefalling three-thousand feet into battle.
My two friends and I crashed onto the ground with an earth-shattering explosion, sending debris flying everywhere. Erida appeared from thin air besides us using her self summoning magic, proceeding to chant a spell that empowered us further. I felt the magic coursing through my veins, the way they pulsed power into every one of my fibers. The feeling was exhilarating, but now was not the time for me to be smashed from the power.
I drew magic and manifested it into my hands, giving it a solid form of dual-axes. My right ax was imbued in elemental fire, while my left was elemental earth. The fire was for the offense and the earth was either initiative or defensive, so that way I could take up almost any role in battle while giving up little on any facet.
“Convene assault formation, spread out!” Erida commanded us.
Asgardian battle formations is simplistic in retrospect, but extremely effective in action. Teams are almost always composed of two members, and formations are what all the teams set out to achieve. For example, my partner is Merida is a Hunter Valkerie just like me, however her weapon selection was a mystical bow. So she was much more supportive in battle, while I had more capabilities in fighting the front.
I initiate dby jumping to a horde of a bunch of ugly looking dark shadowy looking beings, unable to tell if they were clones or not. Their look of surprise as I jumped at them was priceless, but it only lasted for a moment as I smashed my fire-axe onto the ground. A giant wall of fire blew up high into the sky and then spread out in a menacing ball of fire, obliterating all of the invading species in my wake.
“Remember, the Tovens are not far from here! We don’t want to hurt them Taia!” Merida warned me.
I grunted in frustration, but Merida was right. Of course, the fire attack was a lot stronger than usual because of the support magic that Erida enchanted, so I underestimated how powerful my attack was going to be.
A small bar of a glowing blue light missed my face by inches from behind, I knew it came from Merida and that she was signaling where to strike next. The Frost Arrow struck a horde that was running towards my location, freezing almost everyone in place. I struck my earth-axe onto the ground, shattering the earth around the invaders; A huge group of the ugly things was sucked underground and crushed. Small frozen pieces of them blew in the air.
I then heard a warning cry from Erida, “Eyes on your dafts!”
I looked all around me and saw that we were being cut off from Erida and Toya, as well as being surrounded of a horde that spread as far as the horizon from all directions.
“Regroup!” Merida ordered me.
I smashed the ground with my right axe before leaping far back, sending a massive shockwave before a giant wall rose from the ground in front of me. I thought the wall would have held them back for a while, but I quickly saw that I was wrong when they scaled the wall in moments. I continuously smacked the ground in retreating steps, forming mile deep fissures between I and the creatures that are starting to overwhelm me. And again, I saw it was futile when they simply leapt the expanse, almost as if they were flying over it.
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“There seems to be no limit to their numbers!” I hollered back at Merida.
Worried from the lack of a reply from her, I momentarily turned to see how she was doing. I could now see our situation was much more dire, they were closing in on her much faster than I had anticipated. So I ran to aid her much more directly, smacking and burning several of the creatures into ashes along the way. The instant I got in front of her and whacked away the creatures that were on top of her, she summoned a low grade magic barrier.
My heart raced as the barrier was completely enveloped from top to bottom of the creatures, they were relentless and simply brute-like in their attacks. Regardless of how ineffective they were in a one on one, their staggering numbers were like nothing I had ever seen before. The magic barrier would give away in just a few moments. If it were a higher grade barrier, then they would have been held back for a few minutes.
“Merida, you should have summoned a higher grade barrier.” I commented.
Again, she did not give me a reply, this time I saw she was in deep concentration and summoning a familiar magic to me, removing any little anxiety I had.
Her eyes lit brightly as she held her hands over her chest after having finished the summon, “Asgard’s Gust!”
I closed my eyes from what was coming, her body was already covered in a layer of light. Two more pulses of light enveloped her, then I caught the slightest glimpse of her stretching her arms out. Suddenly a powerful wave of gale winds surged from her, and at that same instant the barrier was destroyed and the creatures came falling in like a torrent. However, they were all tossed back far and high before they could lay a finger on us.
The enchantment that Erida had bestowed on us ebbed, we were at our limit and our magic was waning. I noticed something, some had turned to dust. Mostly those her were closer to her, which was the proximity of fatality. Seemed to me that when they become incapacitated they turned into their basic building blocks, in this case dust.
To test this theory out, I ran up to the closest one and did a swift blow to cut off one of the limbs. I heard the creature shriek but quickly stopped, seemed to be that my theory was accurate.
“We don’t have to kill them to stop them! Tear a hole in their flesh, they break and ashen!” I informed my comrades in a clear voice.
“It doesn’t matter if that it is all it takes to rid one of them, they’d simply overwhelm us.” Cried back Erida, in her pessimistic but realistic attitude as always.
We all turned to Merida as she beckoned us all, “Seems like we don’t have to do anything, look!” She pointed towards the sun.
At first I could not tell what was it she was pointing at, but a small dot coming from the center of the light grew larger into the shape of a man. I let out a gasp, a sight to remember, a story everyone irks to lay ears on in the halls of Valhalla. Ohden had come to our aid!
“Father Ohden! We can handle this.” Cried Erida. Her pride had been trodden all over, she would not admit defeat even to the Mighty Allfather Ohden.
“That matters not Erida, time has come to our favor and so we will take it.” Boomed his voice. He never spoke forcefully, but his voice was naturally powerful and awe striking. Every aspect about him was inspiring and fear striking.
He lifted his Halberd and spun around before striking the ground, a powerful thunder echoing across the entire planet. My blood ran still for a moment, I swore that my heart skipped a beat. Even the invading species stopped in their tracks. Did they realize that they faced their demise? I may never know, but at least they would be gone forever now.
Ohden lifted his head, “Fourth Seal of the Heavens Judgment, release!” A similar aura to that of Merida enveloped Ohden, only this one glowed yellow.
Lighting exploded from the clouds over him and thunder boomed everywhere. Then a powerful whistle rose from the pressure that Ohden built around him, compressing the magic and preparing to release it. Then one final powerful thunder had boomed its boom, following a shockwave that blew past all of us and annihilating them monsters from the entire face of the planet.
My friends and I were completely unaffected by it,;after all, it was Asgardian magic. Asgard magic does not affect a fellow Asgardian as it does foreign species.
The battle field was completely different from what it was engulfed in just minutes ago, I saw that it was no more than a wasted land. From the distance though, I could see the natives of this planet coming out from their refuges. It is not long that they were all running out, cheering and hooting happily towards us, all hoping to touch us as if we would pass them some good luck in doing so. They all settled down and stepped aside to let an elderly man clothed in royal robes through, he limped to Ohden with his branch looking walking stick. He bowed his head in respect to Ohden, and Ohden did the same in return as it was habit to give the same formalities as the foreign species.
These were a peculiar species, with their long pointy ears that spread upwards as if they were little antennas. Skinny body forms disguised their actual fit conditions, but the oddest thing was their blue hair that came in all sorts of shades. Never had I seen pointy ears or blue hair, until today and now. I never had known how they looked like until Ohden himself had requested me to aid in this noteworthy battle.
Ohden spoke with the elder Toven, who I assumed was the leader to their species, “Are your people saved?”
His nodded gracefully but then drooped sadly, “Yes, however we had lost some thousand souls. I regret for not heeding your counsel sooner, you have my sincerest apologies and gratitude. We are in your debt.”
He knelt humbly to Ohden, at which everyone had followed in doing. Ohden lifted him by the shoulder and shook his head sadly.
“The apologies are mine, for failing in providing truth to my frail words. The honest truth is that we are in your debt. We merely wish to offer our protection so you may prosper at peace.”
There was a glint of pride restored in the Toven’s eyes, “I fail to word my emotions. All I can say is this, thank you.”
Ohden then smiled and waved his hand, signaling us to group up. We convened and awaited our flying carriage to come down to our location. Everyone looked in awe as they saw our horseless flying carriage fly down, coming to an easing stop before our feet. We climbed out from behind the carriage, and Ohden who was the last to walk in was stopped as the elder Toven grabbed his garment.
“How would we call upon your aid if we are to be invaded again?”
He grinned, “We will know, you can trust in our pact unlike those Birr’s.”
“How about seeing you before then? In a more peaceful and cheerful of conditions.”
Ohden laughed out loud, clearly amused of how childish he was behaving, “Very well then, we shalt have festival to emphasize in our alliance. Say in a weeks time, is that good to you Ovaar?”
Ovaar nodded in agreement, “In a weeks time at the eve then.”
They held each other by the shoulder, showing their trust in each other in public. There was a loud cheering that chorused from the crowd, as they hooted cheerfully from this much more beneficial alliance that had been formed.
We all rode our carriage that flew straight up, riding the waves of applause and cries of joy. This is my life and I was proud of it, every last moment was a worthwhile memory. Including the stomach aching streaks of lights that ran past us, we were now heading back home. To Asgard.