KotLC: Eclipse (KotLC X Magnus Chase)

Chapter 17

Telepathy

Sophie's POV

The wind whipped through my hair as Ember's wings beat the air, pushing us forward. We soared above the armies of einherjar, above the other dragons, and up into the sky.

"This is pretty cool," I heard Alex admit behind me, her voice casual despite the chaos below, "Even if I can fly whenever I want."

"You can?"

"Yeah. Perk of being able to shapeshift." Alex answered.

Before I could answer, Ember suddenly folded her wings and dived, plummeting towards the ground at a frightening speed like a meteor.
We may or may not have screamed.
I instinctively felt that familiar stretching, like a rubber band, and a jagged tear to the Void opened in front of us, causing Ember to barrel straight into it.

The battlefield disappeared.

"Where are we?" Alex asked.

"Nowhere." I muttered, scrambling to take us back to the battlefield in Valhalla.
"There we go." Another tear opened in front of us, and we were returned.

Below us, everyone had temporarily stopped fighting when they heard the mighty crack of thunder when we teleported to stare up to the sky. Even the other dragons had stopped slaughtering people.

Nothing moved.

Then, a war cry ripped apart the silence and someone charged, letting loose an arrow.
"Well, that's not ideal," Alex quipped as the rest of the army decided that we were supposed to die first. Because, you know, priorities.

I spotted Magnus and the other floor 19 residents(apart from Halfborn, who was still slaughtering people left, right, and centre) standing on a hill watching us with weapons lowered. He had been waving his arms, presumably to get our attention. He was now making hand gestures which I wasn't sure whether their purpose was to communicate with us or not.

"What's Magnus doing?"

Alex followed my line of sight and then replied with some more hand gestures, causing Magnus to put his hands down and shake his head, "He's asking if we're crazy. I answered yes."

"Sign language?"

"Yeah. You should learn. It's very helpful around here."

Ember chose that moment to decide that she didn't want to be a passive observer anymore. She swooped down, burning more than a few einherji down to charred ashes and grabbing some more before biting their heads clean off their bodies. She then tossed their lifeless bodies aside like broken toys.

"Did she just -" I felt like spewing my breakfast.

"She did." Alex sounded way too nonchalant for the situation. "They'll be fine by dinner. They might even compliment you on this kill."

"What?" My answer was one of incredulity.

"Einherjar here tend to be good sports when it comes to killing others. Even when they die."
I was surprised that I had seen several people be killed right in front of me, some partially my fault, and still hadn't broken.

Maybe going to Valhalla strengthened my mind against violence? It did make sense. You can't just have someone who would go insane at just the sight of people dying fighting in Doomsday.

"Why do you just not seem to care that people are dying?"

"Simply put, we do still care about people dying, we just treat it like a sport here because it's easier to process and cope with it than to think that we're constantly killing a person."

That's when I spotted an arrow about to hit Alex directly in the face. "Watch out!" I shouted at Alex and harnessed some of my core energy into some phantom 'hands' that stopped the arrow in its tracks. Alex turned around, and I hurriedly stopped holding the projectile, letting it fall into the crowds of 'dead' people. I hoped I didn't accidentally brain someone with it...

"What was that?"

"I - uhh - thought that arrow was about to hit you." I thought that I delivered that lie pretty well, and Alex wasn't an Empath, like someone I know (Keefe).

There was suddenly a deep BOOM! and a massive rock, the size of a small house crashed into the army, crushing approximately one hundred einherjar and one Halfborn Gunderson, who had still somehow kept fighting, even though he had somehow lost both his arms and a leg.

"I didn't sign up for this!" Alex exclaimed.

"You jumped onto Ember. You didn't have to come." I reminded her.

I caught sight of another massive boulder flying through the sky

Left!

I spoke telepathically to Ember, not caring if Alex noticed.
Ember didn't immediately react, letting the rock sail a few hundred feet closer.

"There's a rock coming towards us, by the way." Alex said this, stating the obvious.

"Thanks." I gritted my teeth.

LEFT!
GO LEFT!
ROTATE TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DEGREES RIGHT!
PLEASE!

As soon as I transmitted 'please', Ember tilted dangerously far left and beat her wings, forcing me to grip the spiked ridge with as much force as I could muster to prevent me slipping off her back.

We were too late to dodge the boulder, and, with a crunch, I died for the second time, everything going black.

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843 words

Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

I'm not completely happy with this one, so I'll probably edit it a bit over the weekend. I'll probably improve some imagery and stuff.

If you find any SPaG errors, please let me know.

I've also started two other stories, one that expands on some of the lore in these fanfics and a KotLC X PJO fanfic that will contain some of the lore as well.

-lore expansion - 'The Forgotten Pantheon'

- KotLC X PJO - 'KotLC: Fracture'.

I've finished planning this story, so I shouldn't run into any major problems with the story.

Bye 👋
-ManicMohawk