Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) (40 page)

Only these were like no other Azarks I had seen. They seemed to be made of the same stuff, but were completely different in shape and size. Instead of being roughly canine and walking on six legs, these were shaped more like the birds Thuanar had sent after me in Mexico. They had wings, beaks full of saw-like teeth, and four sets of killing talons. Not only could they fly, but they were also each twice the size of a standard Azark.

They were the perfect creatures to kill a Berserker.

But I wasn’t an average Berserker.

Not by a long shot.

I pulled out my varé and faced Loki. To my side, I saw Rhys move to stand next to me, his varé in the ready position. He gave me a tight smile.

“This is where you have to leave me,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. There are thousands and thousands of flying Azarks in that black cloud.”

Not being a binder, Rhys hadn’t been able to see them. He considered what I told him. “Not an option,” he finally said. No doubt. No wavering.

“You promised,” I countered. “No jumping on grenades.”

“This isn’t jumping on a grenade,” he said. “It’s not abandoning you to fight an evil god by yourself. Very different.”

I saw the look of determination in his eyes. There was no way I was going to get him to voluntarily leave. I would either have to physically remove him myself, or put a haze on him and order him to leave.

I couldn’t bring myself to do either.

“Do you promise to not get yourself killed?” I asked. It was a joke, but the sentiment was real. I had lost him once, I couldn’t stand to lose him again.

He smiled and leaned over to kiss me. His lips felt warm on my cheek. A fire in the cold. “I’ll do my best.”

There was no time to reply. At that moment, a dozen of Loki’s Azarks broke off from the main group and flew straight toward us.

I tried to use my varé, but quickly discovered the futility of that. Despite their strange bird shape, these truly were Azarks and my varé took too long to hack them apart.

I cast a snare and sent out two huge tendrils, as thick as trees. Even I was surprised by how thick they now were. Clearly having all the other powers combined in me was increasing my strength. I used the tendrils like massive whips and quickly dispatched the flying Azarks.

Loki growled and the wind around him grew even stronger. A hundred of the creatures flew down at me. I divided my snare into more pieces flailing the tendrils around and slicing the Azarks in half, or slicing off wings so they fell to the ground.

Rhys went after the ones on the ground, hacking blindly where he saw the impact. He couldn’t see the Azarks, but he could see the dent they made when they landed.

Loki continued to send more and more of the Azarks after us. I had to split my concentration into several hundred snares to keep up and fight them off. Loki let out a shout of frustration.

“What kind of trick is this?” he shouted at me. “How can you fight my Azarks?”

He obviously didn’t fully understand what I could do with the powers of the Berserkers and Binders. I ignored him since my consciousness was too fragmented to give him a coherent reply. I needed all my focus just to keep the Azarks at bay.

A grunt and a shout from Rhys came from my right. An Azark had been less wounded than Rhys had expected and had sliced his arm with its talons, cutting ribbons of flesh from it. Rhys lay unconscious on the ground with large chunks of exposed bone all along his shoulder and bicep.

I screamed and raced towards him.

Chapter 24

Origins

Loki took advantage of the moment and used the wind he was generating to lift Rhys into the air and pull him away from me.

Something in me snapped.

Hot anger flowed over me, around me, and finally through me. It seeped into my veins and bones, becoming a part of me.

Loki had hurt Rhys.

My Rhys! 

The world slowed down, and everything around me became even more clear and focused. My consciousness shattered into thousands of fragments and my snares split to accommodate the increased mental capacity.

I let out a howl of anger – a challenge. I was not going to let Loki have Rhys.

With a hundred tentacles, I reached out and grabbed Rhys. I pulled him to me and wrapped up his arm with a snare. It would stop the bleeding for now. I used more tendrils to secure him to the ground and keep Loki from taking him.

Loki countered by increasing the wind around us, trying to lift me up into the air and pull me away from him. I used a dozen snares to anchor myself to the ground and then commenced the work of death among his Azarks.

There were thousands upon thousands of them, but I hardly registered that. I was focused on one thing – killing them all. My snares flew through the air, slicing all around me, shredding any Azark that came close to us.

A thousand. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand. I was a blur, a weapon in constant motion. I was a perfectly honed killing machine – deadly and unstoppable.

Loki continued to send Azarks in waves, but each wave met my thrashing wall of snare tendrils whipping through the air and was instantly shredded into unrecognizable bits that dropped to the ground like wet, black, hailstones. 

After a while, Loki grew frustrated at his inability to kill me and stopped sending Azarks at me.

So I went to him.

I used my snares as giant legs to lift me into the air. I rose a thousand feet into the sky and continued my slaughter of the remaining Azarks.

My snares were thicker and longer than I had ever made them before. Even split into the thousands they were still huge cables capable of lifting, grasping, and most importantly, slicing.

The Azarks didn’t stand a chance.

I cleared out the last of the Azarks and turned my attention to Loki. He had gone pale and his face was a mixture of anger and fear. He glared at me with hatred, his expression a twisted snarl, turning his eyes from mischievous to cruel. He had waited for thousands upon thousands of years to take the powers of the other gods, and here I was a teenage girl denying him his heart’s desire.

It felt good to see him squirm.

Loki conjured a flaming sword and flew towards me. I hadn’t imagined the growth, Loki was now easily ten feet tall. His sword was at least six feet long and looked like it could slice a bus in half. I pulled out my varé and held my ground. I smiled inside as he rushed towards me. Did he really think I was going to fight him one-on-one?

Not a chance.

As he approached, I brought my snare tentacles in closer, but not within range of his sword. I had learned my lesson when I had fought Josiah and Arthur in the Shangi tunnels. Getting a snare sliced off was painful.

When he was close enough, I brought up my tentacles up from behind. I wrapped them around his sword arm, pinning it to his side. I then grasped his fingers with snare cables and pried each of them off. His sword fell from his grasp and disintegrated into a shower of sparks before it could even hit the ground.

Loki cursed and struggled to get free, but my snares were coming at him from a thousand directions at once with the power of five gods.

And I wasn’t in the mood to play fair.

I trapped his head and pulled it back as far as I could, securing it to his ankles, so he was bent awkwardly backward like some freaky contortionist doing a back bend. He wasn’t flexible enough to get him completely bent backwards, but I made sure to get every inch of bend I could. I had learned a lot about position and leverage from Rhys. With his body contorted in such an awkward position, he had no leverage.

I added snare upon snare to his bonds until the only piece of him that was still uncovered was his mouth. I didn’t think he needed it to breath, but I had my reasons for leaving that uncovered.

Slowly, I descended to the ground, pulling Loki behind me. Rhys was still unconscious, but there was nothing I could do for him at the moment. My snares were keeping him from bleeding to death from his wounds, but I had to eliminate Loki before I would be able to do much else.

Once on the ground, I pulled out the Sarolt stone. The sixth stone. The one that didn’t have any god’s powers in it.

I had finally put some of the pieces together. For a reason I still didn’t understand, Loki had brought Verenix to Earth from the World Tree. The other gods had teamed together and used the stones to give up their individual powers and bind Verenix. But that binding came at a price. It somehow changed them into the Havocs. So, yes, they had been monsters who did horrible things, but they had become those monsters in order to save the world from destruction by Verenix.

They had made six stones, but only five of the gods had used them. I had a feeling I knew who the sixth stone had been meant for.

I shoved the Sarolt stone into Loki’s mouth. He tried to resist, but I used my snares to keep his jaws open. Once the stone was in, I forced his mouth closed and took a step back.

Loki began to glow with a bright light that emanated from within him. The light grew brighter and brighter, completely encompassing him. I had to drop my snares as the light coming from inside him began to burn them. As my snares released him, I saw Loki for a brief moment – his eyes wide with fear and his mouth open in a soundless scream. Soon the light had grown so bright it was impossible to see him any longer.

The light then gathered together in his chest until it was a bright ball of energy, and then shot out of Loki into the sky. The light traveled straight into the air and disappeared from sight. When it was over, Loki collapsed to the ground. He coughed and the Sarolt stone fell from his mouth and rolled onto the hard ground. His body convulsed for several seconds, and then was completely still.

I cautiously stepped forward and picked up the stone, keeping one eye on Loki the entire time. I wasn’t sure if it were really safe to get the stone, or if Loki was somehow pretending to be unconscious to get me close enough to attack by surprise.

Once I had the stone in hand, I stepped away from Loki. As I did, the substance began to drain from his body until he was insubstantial and colorless. Then, with no warning, his body burst apart in a shower of dust that exploded outwards and dissipated in the wind.

I didn’t fully understand what had happened, but one thing was clear – Loki was no more. That was not feigned or pretend. That was a Norse god ceasing to exist.

Five haggard-looking former gods stood up and made their way slowly to me. Now that Loki was dead, his imprisonment of the gods had broken. When they reached me, they all knelt on one knee and bowed their heads.

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do or say. Were they waiting for me to do something? If so, I had no idea what it was.

“Uh, hi,” I finally said. Which was almost certainly the lamest thing anyone could have possibly said in this situation.

But, lame or not, it seemed to do the trick. The five of them stood back up and the man with one eye stepped forward.

“I am Odin,” he said. Despite his now frail form, his voice was powerful and deep. It held the weight of wisdom and authority. “Ruler of Asgard and High King over all the Aesir.”

Well, not much of a possibility of topping that. “I’m Madison,” I said. “I’m a Berserker. And a Binder.”

Odin bowed gracefully before me. “Indeed you are, Madison.” He gestured at the woman with long blond hair. She stepped forward and slowly curtsied. Her movements were awkward and stiff. It looked as if it pained her to move, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and young. 

“I am Frigg. Queen of Asgard and Odin’s wife.”

Next to step forward was the red haired man with the hammer.

“I am Thor, god of thunder, breaker of the Jotunn, and guardian of Asgard.”

Well, with the exception of the hammer, the comics had gotten him completely wrong. There was no long blonde hair or winged helmet. He was barrel-chested and stocky. Despite the toll that being a Havoc and losing his powers had taken on him, he still looked strong.

The other two identical looking men were Hoenir and Lodur, Odin’s brothers. Each of them bowed respectfully and then stepped behind Odin. Clearly he was the take-charge brother in the family.

A motion by my feet caught my attention. I looked down and saw Rhys starting to stir. I dropped to my knees and held his good hand. My snare still bound his wounded arm, but he would need treatment soon. Who knew what kind of gross bacteria were in those nasty birds’ claws?

“Madison?” His voice was weak and hoarse.

“I’m here,” I said. “It’s over. Loki is dead.”

“It is true Loki is dead,” said Odin. “But I am afraid it is far from over.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There is still much to be done,” he said. “Loki lies about many things, but he also wraps that lie around the root of truth to disguise it. He was not lying about the bindings corrupting. No binding can last forever. It is an eternal truth of the mortal world that for every beginning there must be an end. Even this world will come to an end one day.”

“So then what’s left?” I asked.

“You must send Nidhogg back to Yggdrasill.”

I stared at him blankly. I had no idea what that even meant.

Rhys pushed himself into a sitting position with his good arm. “He means send Verenix back to the World Tree.”

Odin nodded.

Rhys struggled to his feet. He looked at his wounded arm and then at me. “Are you using a snare to bandage it?”

“It’s pretty bad. I didn’t want you to bleed to death while I killed monsters.”

Rhys smiled. “Thank-you,” he said. “I thought I was going to die. I’m glad I didn’t.”

He turned to face Odin. “What will happen if she walks away right now?”

Odin’s face was impassive. “We will die in a few short hours. Then the last threads holding Nidhogg’s binding will break and the world as you know it will cease to exist.”

“How will it be destroyed?” I asked.

“If the binding breaks, the release of power will destroy most living things on the earth,” Odin said. “Once Nidhogg is free, it will feed on the remainder of the earth growing larger and more powerful with each passing hour. It will not stop until it has finished destroying every living thing. Then it will burrow into the core of the earth and break it apart from the inside. When there is nothing else left to destroy, Nidhogg will turn upon itself and complete the total annihilation it craves.”