Ragnarok

Chapter 5 - Storm and Fury

Rei looked at Micah's obsession with the game Valhalla with somewhat detached amusement, though she understood why the game appealed so much to him.  He was a young human male, mid-20s, creative and vigorous in his passions, and had an abundance of free time, after all.  If he didn't have another world to escape into, the stark reality of life on the Moon might have driven him insane long ago.   And that was one eventuality that Rei had been designed to prevent, so she encouraged and played along with him.

Rei had only simulated emotions, but she had to admit she also found the game quite stimulating from an intellectual standpoint.  They were heroes in a world that had never existed, based upon the mythologies of the same Earth that had cast them out to the cold of space.   The human fascination with gods and hero-deities were a fascinating aspect of her human progenitors, even if it was one she could not fully understand.

Rei also had to admit she enjoyed being able to take control of a fully simulated human form, so she could feel the rush of glands and fluids and irrationality that so marked her parent species.   As Avril, the Storm Empress, her long blonde hair whipped against her face in the torrent of wind that tried to tear her out of the sky, to strangle her with her blue cloak, to cast her off of her blue dragon steed and drown her in the depths below.  None of its efforts succeeded, and she laughed with scorn at the attempt.

"This wind is nothing!" Avril shouted.  She brandished Straumgard in her right hand, the blue sword crackling with barely-contained electricity, and she dove downwards towards the sphere that Lady Hydra's avatar struggled to escape.  Right behind her she could hear Selif, whooping in delight as Draco and Skye raced each other to get to the force sphere first.  The dragons bellowed, causing the guards defending their circle of mages to look up, first in fear and then with mad grins of triumph.  They shouted instructions to their counterparts, and slowly the overlapping spells began to rotate in gyroscopic fashion, opening a hole barely large enough for Tyrion to squeeze through.

The massive warrior leapt through first, crashing through the surging waves with a great splash and disappearing into the surf.  Right behind him was Selif, who leaped off of Draco and dove for the water as well, her robes and smooth brown skin seeming to melt around her as magic filled her blood with verdant power.   She disappeared under the seething waters, and immediately afterwards, the long, serpentine neck of a plesiosaur emerged.  The tiny head bellowed up at the remaining two heroes and their Reaper protectors, as if to tell them to hurry.  Hiro shot through at speed, pulling up about halfway in to hover using his metallic wings, followed by the skeletal Reapers.  Avril was the last one through, her lithe body slipping through the hole even as it was sliding back shut.

Avril remained hovering near the top, maintaining position through sheer force of will, as the Water Prophet some twenty feet below peered up at her.  He was an ugly bastard; his once-human skin was now hairless, bleached grey, and covered in bursts of black veins and thick patches of fish-like scales.  The right arm that Lilith had cut off with her massive greatsword had been replaced with a monstrosity cobbled together from metal plates, chitin and what looked like the claw of a gigantic crustacean.  Gripped in that claw so firmly that it might have become fused to it was the sinister black trident named Deluge, one of four weapons created by the Prophets of the High Elementals to act as catalysts for their return to Midgard.

Three of the weapons had already been destroyed by herself, Thorin and their companions; this was the last one.  None of the other Prophets had been able to make it this far, however; even the Fire Prophet had been interrupted before she had been able to complete her ritual to bring forth her master.  While they had been dealing with her, however, Gar had been able to complete his own summoning, and now Lady Hydra had emerged halfway through the portal that still glowed near the bottom of the force sphere.   That sphere was the only thing holding back the Princess of Water from covering all of the mortal lands under a drowning curtain of sea.   If they failed to stop her and reverse the portal, Midgard was doomed.