Even with the darkest one of all briefly absent it was a place of constant danger. Limitless numbers of hate filled minions lurked, more detectable from their emanations of savage evil than their hidden physical presences. The threat of imminent attack was constant.
There was no light here as we understand it, though a god could see, after a fashion, using other methods.
Odin and Thors gambit had initial success. The anti-God withdrew from all the realities in which it was engaged choosing to confront Thor in its entirety. In part Dark Father was angered at the unprecedented intrusion. More than this though, the slaying of the son of its greatest enemy was worthy of its undivided attention.
“You are more than foolhardy to have come little godling” boomed the darkest one of all “even your father cannot help you here” “You have come simply to die, and horribly at that.”
With that Dark Father almost disdainfully raised his hand and with a slight rotation of his wrist gestured towards a corner of this reality. From it came a host of enemies from Thors past: Surtur, Ymir, Dormammu, Perrikus of the Dark Gods, Thanos, Mangog and others.
All these entities were evil in their own right but here in this place every single one of them seemed more brutal more evil even than Thor remembered. They rushed on mass at Thor tearing at each other to be first to get at the Thunder God.
Dark Father watched on with what appeared to be genuine interest as to how Thor might deal with such seemingly overwhelming force.
He did not have to wait long. The son of Odin held on to his hammers thong as he spun about with it at near infinite speed. Then he called upon his own life force to be as one with the hammer supreme. The force field created by Thors spinning motion was replaced by an ever expanding sphere of godly energies. Outside of the expanding sphere of godblast energies lightning of a voltage hitherto unknown and anti-force energies crackled and raged. It was such an impressive sight that it gave even Dormammu pause. In this form Thor spun directly into the path of his past enemies, or Dark Fathers facsimile creations as seemed more likely. All of them perished in the onslaught.
If the Dark Lord was surprised at the speed and decisiveness of Thors victory against such an assemblage he showed no sign of it.
“As you are essentially a being much disposed to the physical” said Dark father “I will momentarily indulge you in this” With that the most powerful single entity in all the realities moved to engage the mighty Thor in close quarter combat.
As the two grappled Dark Father sought to incinerate Thor while holding him in its unbreakable grip. In truth the Odinson felt his own force field protection fail, he felt his clothing and armour burn from him. Mjolnir became pitted and cracked and he felt even his Asgardian flesh beginning to burn and fall away from his body. Some of his bones were showing. Despite this the god of thunder felt he was still very much in the fight. He felt that Dark Father was operating more against his mind than his body.
Time seemed to be elapsing differently in this reality. Thor felt that even if he held his ground against Dark Father for an eternity, in the realities beyond insufficient time would elapse for the great powers to execute Odin’s plan.
Feeling himself starting to lapse into unconsciousness Thor allowed himself to enter the briefest moment of controlled warriors madness. Gathering every muscle in his body Thor struck with the full force of the Thor blow.
For the first time in all eternity Dark Father cried out in pain and also for the first time in eternity his unbreakable grip was broken. At that point the Odin like form, the elaborate pretence, that Dark Father had adopted for so long began to dissipate and became one with the reality. At that moment the horrible truth that even Odin had not fully realized became apparent to Thor. The entire Dark Father reality was a single sentient being – the true Dark Father or anti-God.
The mighty Thor, hammer in hand. readied himself as he came under attack from the entire living reality that was the true Dark Father.
Moments into the battle though, numerous converging realities came crashing into the Dark Father reality.
Led by Odin and the Living Tribunal, and with Dark Father otherwise occupied, the great powers of the surviving realities had sought to halt the continuing convergence of the realities. Although unable to accomplish this, they had been able to remove some of the central realities from the convergence process. Also they had altered the entire axis of convergence such that the remaining realities were all converging on the Dark Father reality.
The anti-God, totally occupied by its battle with Thor, had not perceived this until it was too late. It was caught in a moment of indecision. Whether a part of it should flee from the destruction or whether to go down fighting destroying as many other realities as it could in the process.
With the mighty Thor so close and other great powers blocking all avenues of partial escape the entire living reality that was Dark Father ceased to be. Totally crushed under the weight of the other realities converging upon it.
Odin, Eternity, Infinity, and the Living Tribunal looked down upon the cauldron of destruction from one of the surviving high realities. Acting in unison they sought to retrieve the architect of victory from the annihilation. Their actions were not necessary.
Thor, Odinson already moved quietly among them.
End
The Dark Lightning
There seemed to be nothing to alleviate the darkness in this place. Even the energy discharges from the unending storms were dark. Evil of an intensity unknown elsewhere permeated every single aspect of existence here. Surely in all of the myriad alternate realities there was not a darker or more cheerless place.
It must have been all the more surprising then for the mighty Thor, as he stood atop the highest elevation in this world, to know that this reality was his father’s creation.
It had been a time long before Odin’s and Gaea’s productive union. A time when even Odin was yet young. In not his greatest moment the Lord of Asgard created an entire alternate reality intended as a permanent prison for the most profoundly evil entities and forces that sought the destruction of the Asgardian way of life. The prison was built not just with the traditional enemies of Asgard in mind but any others who might seek to challenge existence.
Utilizing his knowledge of the natural forces that bind all realities and with judicious use of the Odinforce, the Allfather bound the new reality in such a way that no power placed within it should ever be able to escape its fate.
The motivating force for the creation of this reality was hatred – a hatred of evil and a desire to contain it. It was perhaps not surprising therefore that hatred was one of the primordial forces in the evolution of this reality.
Not long after the creation of the new reality, Asgard, indeed all of the nine worlds were beset by a series of crises. Odin’s mind was on things other than his new creation.
Afterwards there was a long period of calm and the new creation slipped even further from the Allfathers mind.
At a later time still Odin began to utilize the limbo between dimensions as a prison for some that sought Asgard’s destruction. His earlier creation, a prison that was an entire reality, seemingly all but forgotten.
Elemental building blocks were present in Odin’s creation and they grew unsupervised. Dark intelligences fuelled by hatred evolved and, in the absence of Odin’s intervention, they inevitably took control.
From time to time the powers that evolved in and had taken control of this reality sought to breach Odin’s barriers. That they might flood out into other realities. In this they were unsuccessful though thy learned from each attempt. They had no access whatsoever to any of the other myriad realities. In a sense the only knowledge from beyond were small elements from Odin’s mind that had filtered through during the act of creation. Nothing more than snippets really.
Thus it would not have been surprising to Odin had he ever troubled to come this way again that some aspects of this reality were modelled on Asgard and others of the n
ine worlds. Albeit in the darkest and most perverted way.
Atop the elevated place the mighty Thor now Lord of all Asgard looked across the darkness to a massive scarred fortress perched high atop a sheer cliff of tens of thousands of feet. It looked like a perversion of something from the Surtur wars. As a skyfather and one of the great powers of the Multiverse, Thor did not of course need light in order to see in this place.
Thor could sense that the real power in this reality emanated from the massive fortress. It must be aware of him but had not moved against him – yet.
“The very first thing I must do here,” thought Thor “is cast some physical light upon this reality.” Requiring more effort than he would have thought possible Thor called a halt to the endless discharges of black lightning about him and then called forth his own version of lightning.
In the intense brightness all manner of disgusting and revolting creatures scurried about looking for anywhere amid the rocky landscape where they might seek relief from the blinding light. Then the black lightning came again and struggled for supremacy with Thor’s white lightning. At the same time a single figure emerged from the huge fortress.
Thor gasped.
As discharges of dark and white lightning competed for supremacy the figure emerging from the massive fortress could almost have been ______ Odin.
Well perhaps not exactly. It was clearly modelled on Odin. Bigger and younger but uglier more brutal, more savage, and with hatred etched into every inch of its face. As if somehow it had never wanted to be created. In some ways perhaps only a perverted caricature of the Allfather.
This need not have surprised the mighty Thor. Would it be so unthinkable for the greatest power in this alternate reality to have modelled itself (even if loosely) on the creator of its reality?
On his deathbed Odin had told Thor of this reality. He had asked his son to investigate it.
The manner in which Odin had bounded the alternate reality prison was such that possibly not even the mighty Thor could have entered it by direct inter reality travel. However at the time of it’s creation Odin had included a “key” to the alternate reality. A circuitous path through other alternate realities that led to a “back door” entry. Of course Odin had created it initially for his own use.
Levitating across the chasm between them the Dark Odin, or even Anti-Odin if such it could be called, moved toward Thor. About half way across it raised its right hand and energies swirled about the hand that were darker even than anything else in this reality. A random discharge of white lightning struck the swirling dark energies and was absorbed by them.
Then the dark mystical energy stream was directed across the remainder of the chasm at the mighty Thor. Thor absorbed the dark energies in his great hammer mjolnir and then hurled them back at the Anti-Odin amplified many fold and transformed into lighter energies.
The returned energies struck the Dark Odin on his wrist and dissipated immediately. They seemed to trouble him not at all. He then raised his right arm again and with the most casual gesture the entire monstrous mountain that Thor stood atop was transformed into a moving fluid mass of small rock, debris and dust. The Dark Odin directed it to smother the mighty Thor as billions of tons of it fell upon him. But what is that to one who controls the real Odinforce? With his vast matter manipulation capabilities Thor remained levitated in exactly the same position and simply returned the fluid mountain to its original non fluid form.
Thor then twirled mighty mjolnir at indescribable speed but saw that he could not by this method generate the heat here that might be possible in other realities. Instead he allowed the lightning and Asgardian energies to gather about the hammer then threw it at near instantaneous speed directly at his adversaries face.
Dark Odin was unmoved. It grabbed the head of mjolnir in one huge hand, then, clasping it by the handle in its other hand, triumphantly raised it high. By some means it had discerned the importance of the hammer to Thor, the bond twixt the two.
It did not matter to Thor that he was now a skyfather level being. Odin had had his mace and his spear gungir, so Thor had mighty mjolnir – some things do not change.
The alternate Odin had no time gloat because the son of the real Odin was upon him seeking to wrest the hammer from his grasp. Distracted the two great beings fell the thousands of feet to the chasm floor below. There the battle continued in a more purely physical way. Such was its intensity though that the entire mountainous topography about them began to collapse. Mountain ranges buckled, colossal earthquakes began, and valleys rose up from the floor.
In a sense the battle had only just begun in earnest, as the two entities had only been testing each other out, merely prodding and probing, so far.
Thor wondered if this entity had any way of knowing that he was the son of the creator of this entire reality. Since the being made no attempt to communicate with him Thor could not be sure. He had unsuccessfully attempted to mentally probe the creature and was sure he had not been probed by it.
As Thor and the alternate Odin struggled so to did the dark and white lightning. Though originally directed by their masters the Lightnings took on a separate life of their own. They seemed to duel throughout the length and breadth of this reality. Gradually though this reality grew ever darker a sign that the dark lightning was beginning to prevail.
Thor knew that he was not merely facing some sort of evolutionary accident that had simply taken his fathers likeness. No - somehow trace elements of the Odinforce had been retained in this reality after its creation. The elements had been too small and became too dissipated to form a coherent single force and went undiscovered for some time. Eventually though forces aborning in this reality discovered the trace elements and succeeded in synthesizing the Odinforce. The ultimate result of that action was a parallel dark Odinforce wielded by the Dark Odin.
As the battle between Thor and the alternate reality Odin grew in intensity it threatened to unbalance that reality and to break the imprisoning barriers created by Odin himself so long ago.
Thor saw also that other significant powers in this reality were working on the barriers. Applying dark energies against perceived weaknesses and at the same time following aspects of the mighty Thors energy trail as a possible indicator of a back door entry to other realities. Among these others were what had to be a dark cold-heat version of Surtur carrying not a sword but a monstrous axe. Also a black ice version of Ymir, colder by far, Thor could sense, than even the Asgardian elemental. There were others too such gross caricatures of certain Asgardian entities as to be all but unrecognizable.
Seizing the moment, Thor hurled the Dark Odin many kilometres through a super dense buckling mountain range. Though the creature teleported back almost within the instant the son of the real Odin had just time to prepare a skyfather level godblast – with a difference.
As the mighty Thor allowed his god essence to become one with the hammer supreme he also allowed those energies to burst forth purely in the form of the most brilliant light. That light filled up this entire reality and surely was an act that bore comparison with the original creation of Thor’s own reality.
With the barriers surrounding this reality about to give way it was the best attack Thor could think of to give immediate pause to all within this reality. Yet, with all. it was not enough.
The brightness of Thors godblast released only as intense light/heat energy was, in physical luminosity, beyond anything heretofore experienced in any reality. Here in this darkest and coldest of all the realities its effect was staggering.
There was no place in this reality to escape the intense brightness and many of this realities scurrying demon like minions perished under a bombardment of light and heat anathema to them and entirely outside their experience.
Though it briefly halted the attempts to breach Odin’s imprisoning barriers on this reality, Thors controlled godblast did no permanent damage to its great powers.
Amid the mountainous topography still buckling
and heaving from their earlier battle the Dark Odin moved again toward Thor. Unlike the creator of its reality, that it was modelled on, it carried no obviously overt weapons or channelling conduits such as a sword, mace, or spear. Except that is for some form of highly energized and grotesquely shaped mystical pounders on its fists.
Thor sensed something behind him. Moving faster than the speed of thought he moved just in time to avoid the swing of the Dark Surtur’s monstrous axe. The entity was even larger than the Asgardian elemental upon which it was modelled. The fires also burned within it but they were cold fires, combustion taking place at temperatures high for this reality but too low to support combustion for even mystical fires in many other realities.
Not yet seeing the need to alter his own size Lord Thor struck the Dark Surtur’s axe hand with such reverberating power that the monstrosity released its grip on the axe crying out in presumably a guttural expression of pain. Indeed this was the first utterance of any kind Thor had heard from any of the non communicative great powers of this reality.
The Dark Odin watched on with an ugly smile on its face. It seemed content to see how the Dark Surtur fared against the intruder. Thor felt that compared to the original majestic template, Dark Odin was little more than a primordial brute.
Dark Surtur motioned slightly and the axe rose up from the depths below returning toward him much as mjolnir would to Thor. Of a vicious sharpness it seemed to be sheathed in an energy envelope that could both protect and enhance it but could also disappear when merely metallic ultra sharpness was required.
Thor hurled mjolnir at the huge axe smashing it sideways and driving it into Dark Odin’s massive fortress which had already sunk somewhat as the sheer cliff under it had buckled with the earlier fighting. While mjolnir's return to its masters hand was near instantaneous Dark Surtur’s axe was less responsive, only slowly returning to its master.
For Odin, for Thor, for Asgard Page 19
