“Out of range,” she told Tori.
“Let it go,” Tori replied as the All-Father finally managed to untangle himself from the ruins of the chariot.
Odin shoved the broken wood and metal aside and stared hard at Tori. He had a thick white beard which featured two braids and long, unkempt hair. A dark black hole existed where his right eye should’ve been, and his left was an icy blue, which looked unnaturally bright to her. He wore giant grey wolf furs for a cloak and had golden armor on top of black leather. In one hand he carried a giant spear roughly the size of a small pine tree. In the other, he held a shield.
“He looks pretty intimidating,” Shane chimed in. “I dig the cloak, though.”
Odin suddenly let out a mighty laugh which shook the ground and caused the trees to sway. Loose snow fell from the branches and covered the ground. He motioned toward the sky, then pointed the large spear directly at Tori. Above them the clouds were gathering as the wind increased its intensity. His lone blue eye gleamed at the oncoming ferocious storm.
“Fool! My ravens see all, and I knew of your allegiance with the Trickster from the moment it occurred,” he mocked them. “A weak group of mortals and a god who is afraid to face me in combat? Bah! I’ve had larger challenges when I squat in the woods to relieve myself!”
“Okay, that’s so gross,” Tori complained. “I’m going to complain to Leo Hel needs to be rewritten.”
“I thought it was kinda funny,” Shane admitted. “Y’all say what you want, but some toilet humor needs to be added when you deal with Norse and Greek mythology.”
“So what you’re saying is I should be thankful I never set foot in Elysian?” Tori asked.
“Probably,” Shane acknowledged. “Zeus is, uh, kinda crude. Pan can be far worse though.”
“Good to know.”
“Guys!” Stacey snapped at them. “If I have to tell you both one more time about arguing while we’re in the middle of a fight, so help me…”
“You mortals are strange,” Odin shook his giant head. He hefted the great lance onto his shoulder and looked at Tori’s group. “You dither, mortal children. Are we going to stand around arguing all day, or are we going to fight?”
No more words were spoken. Each member of her team knew what to do. Tori had picked this team in the beginning because it was the best and most experienced. They’d battled together in the past before they’d become Moderators or moved on in the game. She knew they had the proper teamwork to accomplish anything. It was simply a matter of execution.
Michael and Tyler charged forward simultaneously, yelling blood-curdling cries which shocked even Tori in their ferociousness. Odin waited patiently for the duo to come within range as he set his shield. The brothers switched sides and sped up their charge. Tyler swung high while Michael went low. Odin masterfully blocked both of their attacks and countered swiftly, his lance spinning effortlessly in his skilled hands as he blocked strike after strike. The brothers danced about in a ballet of carnage and, against any other foe, they’d have easily bested their opponent.
Odin wasn’t any other foe.
The All-Father defended for many moments as he studied the duo before he suddenly stabbed Tyler in the leg and flung him aside with godly strength. The younger brother cried out as he slammed into a large pine tree and knocked the snow off the branches. He pulled himself up to his feet and narrowly managed to dodge a boulder Odin had knocked at him. A normal staff could whack a small stone at a high rate, but Odin’s had sent a missile the size of a small car at Tyler with relative ease. It was one more needless reminder that not only were they fighting a god, they were fighting the big dog of the Norse mythological pantheon.
Michael managed to get behind Odin and strike, but from out of nowhere he was attacked by Odin’s remaining raven. It’d remained above the battlefield, serving as another pair of eyes for Odin, but when it’d seen the All-Father was at a disadvantage, it attacked, distracting Michael long enough to let Odin bring his guard around and strike Michael across the chest with the haft of the spear.
The large man skipped across the snowy ground and came to a halt next to a large snow drift. The raven pursued, squawking in outrage the entire time. Michael quickly stood up and managed to lop its head off when it flew too close to him. He pointed his blade directly at Odin and grinned. “You’re next.”
Tori watched the interplay and grimaced. With his extensive knowledge of Norse mythology, she figured Michael knew what he was doing, but she really wished he wouldn’t annoy the most powerful deity in the realm. She knew the god’s pride would be hurt, and if he was anything like the Greek gods, there would be a steep price to pay for Michael’s cockiness.
Shane moved in as Odin was staring at Michael, and, for a moment, Tori thought they had him. Shane whirled his massive war hammer and attacked Odin’s unprotected neck. The large spiked hammer glanced off Odin’s shoulder armor, though, and skipped away. Enraged and surprised, Odin backhanded Shane and knocked him to the ground. Odin raised his spear, but before he could gut Tori’s friend, Stacey tagged him in the thigh with an arrow.
Odin roared, yanked the arrow out by the shaft, and threw it at Stacey. She dove to the side, and the broken arrow sailed harmlessly away. Odin laughed at her and used the distraction to advance on her. He raised his spear for the killing blow and drove it downward at her chest, but before he could drive the point home, the shaft of the spear was knocked aside by the flat of a sword blade. Odin’s one eye looked up and saw a determined Tyler standing before him. Odin scowled and shoved the young man away.
“Not yet,” Tyler said in a firm voice. Odin grunted but said nothing more. Michael slowly limped back over to the fight and Shane moved to flank the god. Stacey scrambled to her feet and pulled out a fresh arrow. She moved further away from the melee and began to lace her arrows with destructive codes for better results.
All three men charged Odin simultaneously. Tori could do nothing but heal their wounds as the fight continued, and she stayed just out of spear range as the battle raged. Shane, Michael, and Tyler kept Odin busy in close combat while Stacey continued to take shots at the god with her bow whenever the opportunity arose. His reflexes were far too quick for her arrows, though, and they whistled harmlessly into the distance beyond.
It was dismaying for all to watch as Odin countered every single action they took. The All-Father of the Norse pantheon seemed to be nearly invulnerable and quite strong; his battle prowess was far superior to their own. Tori could see Stacey was growing frustrated with the constant misses and beginning to rush her shots. She winced as one of Stacey’s coveted arrows plunked Tyler in the ankle.
“Ow! Hey, what the hell are—” his complaint was cut off as the staff of Odin’s spear smacked him in the face. The force of the blow sent the young gamer flying across the landscape and headlong into a tree. The trunk shattered, and Tyler crashed to the snow-covered ground. The tree fell atop him, and he disappeared beneath the branches of the ruined tree.
Michael let out a strangled cry of rage and grief, and launched himself at the god, his weapon slashing too quickly for the eye to see. Blow after blow rained down upon Odin, but still he was too fast. He laughed at the man’s pathetic attempts at harming him and countered every single swing of Michael’s sword.
“Swing harder, mortal, and you may yet scratch my armor!” Odin mocked him.
Michael suddenly slipped on a patch of ice which had been partially obscured by the snow, and dropped to a knee. Recognizing the vulnerability of the warrior before him, Odin jabbed Michael in the stomach with the end of the staff. The man doubled over in pain and Odin brought the other end up, landing a solid blow on Michael’s chin. His helm flew off as the attack lifted him off of his knee and sent him into the air. Quicker than a cat was Odin’s next blow, which came downward and struck Michael’s chest. The armor cracked under the force of impact, and he was slammed to the ground, dazed. One more strike to his now-unprotected head and the older sibling was ren
dered unconscious.
Odin pointed the end of his staff at Tori. “Next.”
Tori swallowed nervously. She’d defeated terrorists, Moderators, and all sorts of opponents over the years, including some personal demons, yet never before had she actually fought a god. There was little in her inventory which could harm him. Her codes were of little use, since they were tailored for the other realms within The Warp. In Hel she was little more than a cleric, and not an especially powerful one at that.
That thought gave her pause. She wasn’t just a gamer, she recalled as she stepped away from Odin as Stacey continued to pepper him with arrows. She was a Moderator now, and Mods typically had all the codes they’d ever written at their disposal to use across all the realms. All she needed to do was to tailor them specifically to the realm, and the Chaos code should allow it.
“Keep him busy!” Tori shouted as she brought up her virtual coding simulator. She saw, to her delight, what she sought was still there.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Stacey screamed as she managed to sidestep a strike from Odin’s staff. The All-Father laughed uproariously as Stacey struggled to nock another arrow, then spun suddenly, slamming his spear shaft onto Shane’s head.
The strike Shane had planned failed as the hammer fell from his senseless fingers, and he collapsed to the ground.
Odin turned back, a smile on his face. Only Stacey remained.
Knowing her time was limited, Tori altered the code, bringing it in line with what her character was in this the realm, as well as with her patron. With her knowledge of the Chaos code and how things worked within The Warp itself, Tori was able to change the rules of the code and convert it. She ran a quick simulation and frowned. It was almost too powerful, she initially thought.
“There’s no such thing as overkill,” she muttered to herself and closed the program. She concentrated and sent out a prayer to Skadi, her patron goddess and deity in Hel. “Please, please let this work.”
She activated the code.
* * *
Within the bowels of the servers which governed Hel, the Chaos code activated as something new and random appeared. If it’d been human, it would’ve clapped its hands and laughed with delight at the mere idea of what the Moderator was attempting. After fourteen nanoseconds—a lifetime to the Chaos code—it decided to allow it. No core rules were violated, so it allowed the code to expand. The random number generator within the Chaos code then rolled to see what would happen.
Maniacal laughter would’ve erupted next if the Chaos code had the ability to do such a thing. Instead it moved on as more pressing queries and codes popped up within The Warp. It was only a game, after all, and the Chaos code didn’t determine the physics within. That was for the game designers. Unfortunately, none of the designers had ever anticipated the use of this particular code within Hel or a perfect roll of the random number generator.
Neither issue mattered after the fact, merely the results. It was all up to the game now to handle the massive amount of destruction coming its way.
* * *
Tori had coined the code ‘Hand of God’ a long time ago. Overly powerful and more than a little scary, the code was a massive nuclear explosion which was contained in a small radius around the target. There was no fallout from the blast nor any residual radiation, simply the effects of the initial flash and the subsequent heat wave from it. It took time to arm, however, and as she focused on the creation of the small sun in her hands she became acutely aware Stacey had been felled by the powerful Norse god.
She concentrated on the code as it lifted into the air and chortled in glee. She hadn’t been certain it’d work in this realm, since the last time she’d used it was when she’d been in Crisis. The glowing ball of light hovered in the air as she continued to allow it to draw more power from her reserves. It condensed into itself and became a small, self-sustaining miniature star which burned brighter than the sun itself. She turned away as it became too much for her to look at directly. She instead focused her gaze upon Odin.
The All-Father was looking at the man-made sun as well, transfixed as it continued to grow in the sky. She felt her control slip slightly as the miniature sun’s atoms began to grow agitated at a coding level. It wrapped around her fingers and threatened to dislodge itself from her command. Desperate, she began to scream at the top of her lungs, hoping against hope the Chaos code would allow what she was about to do.
“Skadi! I call for your assistance in smiting this god! Help your faithful servant win and allow me to honor you in Valhalla!”
Tori had made her character for this realm a priestess of Skadi long before, when she’d been interested in a high body count and massive wars. The name had sounded cool and she’d loved the idea of being a powerful supporter of a lesser-known goddess. It’d only been later, after she’d done some research, that the realization had come to her that while Skadi was a goddess of the hunt, she was better known for being the goddess of the sky.
Silence was her only reply.
“Damn it,” she hissed before the sky suddenly erupted.
The sun she’d created split open and became two, flames and heat blasting the countryside as everything went nuclear. The force of the separation knocked everyone off their feet. Trees within the small radius were flattened, and the clouds above were scattered as the shockwave reached them. Everything in the immediate vicinity should’ve died in a fiery nuclear blast, their ashes scattered across the entirety of Hel, with nothing left to say there had been people in the vicinity mere moments before.
It would’ve, too, had she not remained in control of the dual explosions.
She’d used the code only once before, while in Crisis during her fight with Gavrie. It’d devastated roughly six city blocks and allowed her to knock him out long enough to capture him. It was the proverbial overpowered code she swore she wouldn’t ever use on another gamer again. It was too powerful for any one person. Even WarpSoft had eventually banned the sale of it as well as any uploads of the code. Only those select few who had it pre-ban were allowed to keep it. Tori had been one of the lucky ones.
Even though she hadn’t gone into The Warp since the Crisis incident, she’d kept coding and tweaking some codes for other gamers. One of the things she’d tweaked had been the Hand of God code. While she appreciated its power and destructiveness, she was naturally curious and had played with the code offline. It’d taken her months to switch it from a single, massive nuclear explosion into two smaller, very powerful blasts. Small suns, as it were, orbiting one another before they exploded, and mostly under the teen’s control.
While she was able to control the outward expansion of the burst, she could do nothing for anything—or anyone—trapped within the growing fireballs. This included the Norse God, Odin.
A maelstrom of fire and flame swirled around the god, who howled and screeched in panic and pain as the twin nuclear blasts hammered at him. His armor glowed white-hot and his spear turned to ash, while his helm caused his bushy white hair to catch on fire. His computer-assisted immortality attempted to keep him upright and “alive”, but Tori’s code was simply too much.
As quickly as the nuclear Armageddon had appeared, it left, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Odin staggered on his feet, his charred body no longer alive but his brain unable to comprehend this. He stumbled and tripped on his own armor, which had begun to fall off his damaged body piece by piece. With a final, pitiful cry, Odin fell to the ground with a mighty crash. She stared at the fallen god for a long time before she looked back at Loki, who was beaming.
“Well done, tiny mortal!” Loki exclaimed. His features were twisted into merriment and insanity, an odd combination. “Well done indeed! I had no idea you knew of my wife! You must teach me that spell sometime!”
“Only if we truly want the world to end for good,” Stacey grumbled as she picked herself up off the ground. Tori nodded in silent agreement.
* * *
Gargoyle had
left the legendary Norse hero Siegfried where he’d destroyed him, alone in the woods above the small village he watched being plundered by gamers. He was almost finished, and the plans were perfect and in place. All he needed to do now was to communicate with the outside world, and then his mission would be complete. Phase Three would then begin.
The forest was crowded with animals and beasts of myth and lore running from the destruction of the village. He really couldn’t blame them. They were just constructs, codes designed to participate in the world but not to interact with the gamers. Background programs, in other words. They did as their main programming told them to do and responded to the end of the world as anything else would—with fear.
He stopped suddenly as another group burst from the trees, running from the apparent destruction behind them as well. They spotted him and halted, confusion etched across their faces. He looked them over closely and realized they had their Moderator status on. He knew what they were, and what he had to do. He’d show them no mercy nor give them any time to warn others.
“Hey...” one of the men, a short, dwarfish looking man with an immense, muscular build began to say before Gargoyle darted in close. Thousands of different attack codes flooded his mind as his brain accessed every code ever written and uploaded into The Warp. He categorized them in less than the blink of an eye, opened one, and jumped suddenly, his body rocketing skyward as the group of Moderators bounded back, uncertain. He casually flipped in midair as he hovered high above and accessed the next code he had planned, his brain working faster than a computer ever could. He activated the code and watched.
Light formed on his fingertips as he aimed at the group. Two of them had already realized what was happening and tried to get out of the way. The others, though, remained blissfully ignorant as they watched him. He laughed as the small laser bolts erupted and lanced downward into the group.
Devastator Page 20
