Tales From Olympus: Gods Reunited
By Erik Schubach
Copyright © 2018 by Erik Schubach
Self publishing
P.O. Box 523
Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026
Cover Photo © 2018 ZemlerZ / Depositphotos.com license
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-9993740-5-4
Prologue
You would think I would be used to seeing this, having lived with my pseudo-sister for so many centuries, but Inatra the Singing Rain, First Valkyrie of Ragnarok was a spectacular sight to see. The only Valkyrie from Asgard who came close to matching the might and fury of Kara, the Wild One herself.
Our return to Olympus was a long time coming, and I was afraid I wouldn't know the way home this time, after spending so long away. I had been sent to witness the fall of yet another civilization, the Vanger of Folkvangr, to the Frost Giants of Jotunheim so that they would not be forgotten to the sands of time. I was to document their people and culture before they were but a distant memory.
Who would have ever believed that I, Artemis of Olympus, would instead witness the return of the Gods of Asgard, as they defied the Jotunn? They were not only able to strike down a Star Killer vessel for the first time in the history of time itself but they also dispatched their leader, Ymir and the other nine Frost Giants of his flagship, the Ginnungagap, to the beyond.
For the first time, the many races in the galaxy had the most potent weapon ever known... they had hope. Hope that maybe with our races combined, we may survive the wrath of the Frost Giants and the Titans who wish to eradicate all life in this realm and start over again in their battle against each other for supremacy.
Maybe now, the might of Valhalla and Olympus combined can help the other races not only survive, but prosper under the umbrella of peace that the Asgard are spreading throughout the known worlds.
We had long thought the Gods of Asgard were a fable, as tales of them spread through the terran world, Earth, like wildfire, but we could never locate them. We believed the only Gods were the Frost Giants and the Titans.
The people of Valhalla showed me that the two races of Jotunn were false gods, and that the Asgard were no Gods either. Just another failed experiment by the Frost Giants, like us Olympians. Their technology had just advanced past ours to the point they could stand against the false gods.
Once the planets of Folkvangr and Ragnarok were freed of the threat of the Frost Giants and Titans, and many of my brethren who had been enslaved by the insidious powers of the Titans were returned to us, we had planned our return home... to Olympus.
At first, I believed there to be some planetary drift in eons of my absence from home, when our first spacial fold landed us in the middle of the wilderness, the Citadel nowhere to be seen. There were no signs of our cloaked civilization.
I had at first thought that after all our countless millennia hiding from the Frost Giants in plain sight on their dumping planet for their failed experiments, that Mount Olympus had finally fallen. But there was no debris to mark the fall of my people. I realized that the citadel had just moved. I tried raising them on our coded stealth whisper frequency but received only static in return.
I wasn't supposed to be gone this long for so many millennia, my mission was to be just a few weeks, and they likely thought me dead and had changed frequencies for security reasons. Everything my people did, they did to keep us concealed... hidden away from the galaxy which we merely exist in, watching as others fight and die, and never joining in the fight. That needed to change.
We moved Mount Olympus every few centuries to random locations to keep ourselves hidden from the Jotunn. It has kept us undetected here for eons.
My heads up display, fed to me from my Reactionary Cloak, had shown the coordinates to be correct, and I had located one of our hidden caches of quantum phase inversion packs. Batteries, as Kate, my adoptive sister in Valhalla would say.
As my brother, Eros and the other rescued Olympian men set up camp, I had used the batteries to make the second fold using my jump pack. I had brought over the second group, including the Asgard expedition from Valhalla.
I looked upon all of them as my extended family, having lived with them the last few millennia. And what an interesting mix they were.
Inatra the Singing Rain, First Valkyrie of Ragnarok. Who would have thought that the warlike race who once attempted to attack Olympus to their own folly, would become staunch allies against the greater threat? I loved my Ragnarok sister.
Her mate and possibly the sweetest person I know, Arina the Whispering Breeze, First Valkyriefrior of Valhalla. She is a Valkyrie who will do no harm and will not commit violence. The first Valkyrie of Peace.
The Three Embers, the children of Kate, Kara, Arina, and Inatra. Samantha and Essa being Kate and Kara's children, and Brunhilde being Arina and Inatra's daughter.
I had to smile at the huge and ruggedly handsome seven foot tall Ragnarok warrior, Intark, Essa's husband. He was possibly the only – charming – Ragnarok I have ever met... and he laughs. It was humorous that such a tiny and gentle woman had tamed such a huge warrior who was capable of such violence.
Then there was the fierce Talia, Spear of Freya, Second Valkfela, and First Valkyrie of Folkvangr. The girl had no fear. And she is the mate of Brunhilde. The tallest of the Three Embers, being half Ragnarok and half Asgard, the combination creating a stunning beauty who had stolen Talia's heart upon their first meeting.
The last of the Asgard contingent being the strangest team. Kitty the Efficient, the first Valklopt, Valkyrie of the Sky, Second to Pegasus, one of the most amazing pieces of technology that the Asgard have ever created. Pegasus is one of the Sky, a race of sentient artificial intelligences, in the form of a sleek flying vessel... and a personal friend of mine. The two of them are as Kate puts it, “Thick as thieves.” I find it ironic that Kitty's name is also Kate, named after my adoptive sister.
Where I could not detect where the cloaked citadel of Mount Olympus had relocated to, the peace envoy from Asgard had technology beyond ours, which rivaled the Jotunn themselves. The Frost Giants could not understand the Asgard's ability to harness magnetic force as energy. And with their tools and a little tinkering on them by Arina, they were able to detect the stealth-band broadcasts from our hidden city seventy grids to the east.
Arina would amaze Hephaestus, our chief scientist, and weaponsmith. I've only ever met one person more intelligent than Arina, and that is Loki of Asgard, though Loki is not quite right in the head.
My brethren, except Eros, started to panic when one of the discarded Jotunn weapons, a prehistoric beast with mechanized implants stumbled upon our party. The trees fell before it in its bellowing charge. But instead of running for cover as many of our men did, the women of Asgard charged back without hesitation, even with being dwarfed by the mammoth beast which possessed three great horns protruding from its bony skull.
They formed up behind Inatra, who was taki
ng the blasts from the beam weapon mounted on the beast which destroyed all biological matter it struck, her nano-lattice flaring as it absorbed the energy.
Through my heads-up display, I could actually see the background radiation bending around the magnetic force her nanites were channeling into her when she seemed to sink slightly into the ground as she anchored herself like a tree taking root.
I drew back on a bow I had found in one of our hidden weapons caches. It wasn't the same quality or power of the one I had left behind in Valhalla, a gift of thanks to Kara. I could feel the microscopic point singularity pulling on the world around me from the photons that made up the bowstring as I waited to loose an arrow when Inatra turned the beast. Something we had done endless times, reclaiming the world of Ragnarok from Jotunn beasts such as this.
It roared out in its endless pain and anger again, shaking the valley around us, causing birds and flying lizards to explode from the trees in fear and surprise. Inatra just hissed like a Terran cat in response. I shook my head and smiled at her as the monster bore down upon her. Even for a Ragnarok woman, she was small. They usually stood six foot nine or ten, she was barely six foot. But don't ever let that fool you, especially when she can do this...
Just before she would have been trampled by it, Inatra screamed out the battle cry I have heard so many times from her, and her fist blurred forward, impacting the bony protective skull of the charging monster. There was a deafening crack, and the front legs slipped out from under the animal as it was stopped in mid-charge by the force of the blow, Inatra not budging an inch. A creature weighing in at over three tons, diverted by a single punch.
It stumbled back to its feet, stunned, and thrashed its head to shake off the blow, taking down the trees that were unlucky enough to be in the way on either side, creating shrapnel storms of splinters and bark. I took that moment to let my arrow fly when I saw the barest glimpse of the controller implanted on its neck behind that bony plate.
I was off, the interface between the data flowing into me via the heads up display wasn't synching well to this inferior bow. I had missed my mark by at least three millimeters. True, that didn't matter as that was more than close enough to where I wished to strike, but I was used to precision down to the micron.
Heedless of my disappointment in my shot, the controller exploded into a shower of sparks as my arrow sliced cleanly through it, the arrowhead vibrating at the molecular level. The shot liberated the poor animal from its painful electronic control, leaving it free of the compulsion to attack any life it came across.
The confused animal looked around. Fear in its big dark eyes – but Arina was there. With loving compassion in her eyes, she shushed the poor creature, her sweet voice calling out to it as she placed a hand on its muzzle, “It's ok now girl. You are free of your captivity.” She laid her forehead against it's flaring nostril as she gently stroked its tough hide.
The beast's brain was no bigger than a bean, yet it seemed to understand the beautiful Valkyriefrior. It closed its eyes and seemed to bask in the contact of her hand on its nose, then it turned slowly and started to lumber away at her gentle prompting, toward some sweet grass we could see in a clearing in the distance.
I looked around at the Asgard in our midst in wonder and shared a smile with them. This was what their race could bring to bear, the extremes of violence and compassion that will someday free our galaxy of the fear of the spawn of Jotunheim.
Just then Kitty's voice came in over coms, the sound of rushing wind around her, “Come in AE1, this is Scout Alpha. We have contact, I repeat, we have located Mount Olympus! They are in hot pursuit, firing phased ion cannons. But they cannot keep up with Pegasus. Yeeeetaaaa! Cloaking now.”
I shook my head as a cheer went up around us as I recalled her to our location. I could picture the situation in my head. Kitty preferred to stand on top of the wind riders she called family instead of riding inside of them. I can see the perimeter strike-forces thinking them another failed Jotunn experiment and trying to take them down before the Citadel was discovered.
But of course the brash, but endlessly entertaining Kitty turned to run just to cause more excitement among my people than needed. Our phase cannons cannot penetrate Asgard lattice, she could have just hailed them and told them that Artemis rides in her wake.
When she arrived, I was half tempted to have all the gear and supplies for building a Bifrost portal here on the planet Olympus unloaded from the wind rider and fly as many of us as possible to the Citadel, and have out people send transports out to lead the others and retrieve the gear.
But I would leave none behind in my impatience to see home again, and with all the biological and mechanized weapons that roamed the wilds, I would not chance the gear being damaged. It would be on foot that we would journey to the Citadel. In a matter of a week or two, we would be reunited.
Chapter 1
Jungle
I could wait patiently and watch and record civilizations fall before the enemy, hiding in the shadows... weeks, months, and sometimes years at a time. But after our second day of working our way steadily toward the Citadel, I became impatient. My people – my home was just a twenty-minute flight by Pegasus away, or an hour by wind-spider.
All in the Asgard Expedition had one of those grav discs strapped to their armor on their backs. We didn't have any for our people as we thought I would be space folding us back into the Citadel with my jump pack, not the middle of the krothing jungle.
Heh. I had to smile at how comfortable I had become with Asgardian cursing. A side effect of hanging around with Kara and Inatra I'm afraid.
I took a moment to look at the familiar greenish sky and inhaled the scent of fresh air and jungle. It stirred something inside of me. That instinctive recognition of home, the relief and melancholy feel of it.
Sighing with a wistful feeling, I leaned back on a rock to relax, but then stiffened and jabbed backward with one of the four arrows we had found in the weapons cache. There was the sound of chitin splitting and the squeal of death.
The Asgard were quickly on guard, Inatra was crouching, her nano-lattice flaring. I chuckled as I drew the arrow forward, with the log-skitter dangling from it. It had been sneaking up on me to try to immobilize me with its stinger, so that it could bind me with the slimy adhesive it excretes, then stuff me in one of the hollow logs the giant insects live in to eat later.
I prompted in amused explanation, “Log-skitter. The Frost Giants bred them for their neuro-toxins, which unfortunately weren't powerful enough to affect the Titans, so they were discarded on Olympus. They infest the wetter parts of the jungle, only active during the hottest part of the day. Nasty things, but good eating.”
I flicked my arrow, and the dog-sized insectoid, which was half warm-blooded mammal, was flung through the air. Eros caught it deftly and twisted its tail, breaking the stinger off and tossing it with the nasty poison sack attached into the underbrush, then eyed the prize. Two or three more and we could make a good meal of it for our group. Better than those damn ration packs in the crate inside Pegasus, I swear they put them in there because the humans of Earth are trying to get rid of them.
The Three Embers traded their patented “Eww,” looks, Arina looked dubious, but Inatra and Intark looked intrigued at trying the meat. I think there is something about Ragnarok physiology that makes them partial to meats over any other foods.
Talia looked over to where the stinger had been discarded and prompted, “Neuro-toxin? Is it deadly?”
Eros answered as he expertly cracked the shell of the beastie with the vibrating dagger he took from the weapons cache, stripping out the tasty bits and discarding the carcass, “No, it is designed to immobilize. Feels like every cell in your body is on fire as you seize up, not even able to scream. Lasts for days if you don't have the anti-toxin. Gives the log-skitter plenty of time to eat you at its leisure.”
I chuckled. “You would know.”
He lifted a hand and curled his fingers
in except his index and pinky and made a biting motion. It was all I could do to keep from laughing at the archaic insult. It was much akin to how the humans flipped each other off. It sort of fell out of use among us Olympians eons ago.
I felt a sudden pang of sorrow which washed away my amusement, realizing that none of these men with us knew that. Being enslaved by the Titans for all these millennia by their weaponized pheromones, forcing them to love them unconditionally. Being used to breed the Halflings, and as slave labor.
They all describe it as being in some sort of unending fugue state, a living dream they could not wake up from. Their will not their own. They weren't even aware of how long they had served their Titan masters.
I pushed away the unpleasant thoughts, knowing that now, with the Asgard antidote, no Olympian male would ever fall sway to those pheromones again. And when we rescue the other men from the other Titan vessels that were scattered around the galaxy, our society would finally be restored.
I pointed the arrow at him and squinted one eye with a smirk on my face as I shared with everyone. “It was on the training planet of Asphodel before we fled in the Citadel into space to hide on Olympus, where the Jotunn would not think to look, that Eros and I were scouting the jungle that was not unlike this one, around the Citadel to help secure a perimeter.”
He held up a hand. “They do not need to know this.”
Talia was all smiles as she assured him, “Oh, I'm pretty sure we must know, cha?”
I tried to keep the chuckle out of my tone as I continued, “We had been briefed about the creatures that would be used against us, mechanized and biological that others had encountered so were forewarned about what to be on guard for. The great Eros, who could do no wrong in Zeus' eyes, had to... relieve himself during the patrol.”
My brother growled a warning as he cut the meat into strips. Heedless to that, I forged ahead. “So the lout stepped behind a fallen tree.”
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