“Spooky,” said Jack after a long while.
No one said it, but they all feared what had happened here.
After a while, they spied an empty landing pad, and Jack took Quetzalcoatl down. They got out of the ship and looked around in the dim light. “I think this is the research station,” said Daniel. “That’s exactly where we want to be.”
“There’s someone there,” Zeke said. He pointed. They all saw a man sitting in a rocking chair by a building.
Not moving.
“One of the locals?” asked Jack nervously.
“Maybe he knows what happened.”
Zeke approached cautiously. The man did not seem to notice them. The chair did not rock. “Sir?” He gently grabbed the man’s shoulder, but immediately withdrew his hand. “Cold as ice. He’s been dead for a while.”
The subtle movement disturbed the chair. It began to rock, and the man’s body slid forward, landing face down on the metal.
His head had been bashed in from behind.
Zeke jumped back in horror, away from the bloody, frozen mess. The others rushed to join him.
“Something bad happened here,” Daniel commented.
Malak.
There was a small door nearby. They opened it slowly. It swung easily. Unlocked. Unlatched. Light from the ship bled into the room. Inside was dark.
Daniel pulled out his own flashlight and scanned the room. It was small. Closets and shelves lined the walls. Just a storage room. “Not even security lights. The back-up generators must have died.”
“Among other things,” said Jack quietly.
“I’m going to go look for it. See if I can start it up again.” Daniel left the others alone in the storage room.
Zeke began rummaging through the shelves. “You lose something?” Jack asked.
“No, but we might as well look around while we’re here.” He opened one of the closet doors.
“What is it?” Jack asked, aiming his flashlight over Zeke’s shoulder.
Tents. Packs. Rifles. “Looks like field equipment. Nothing special.”
“Any food? I’m starving.” Suddenly, the lights flickered on. The corners of the room were littered with bloody corpses. “Well. Ask and you shall receive,” Jack said flatly. “I guess I can wait until dinner.”
Daniel rushed in. “I found the . . . shit. What the hell happened here?” He stared at the bodies.
“I think they might know,” Zeke said, nodding at the corpses. “Why don’t you ask them?”
“I guess we’re not going to learn much from the research staff. We might as well look around.”
The search didn’t take long. The door on the far end of the storage room led to a hallway. They followed the hallway to the largest door, and beyond that was the primary workroom.
Frozen corpses lay strewn about on the floor. Some of them sat in chairs, and a few stretched out their hands to their computers. Typing even in death.
The attack had been swift.
“Remember, look for anything you can find about the gate.” Zeke collected loose papers. Daniel went to a computer and started it up. Jack went to the walls and began looking through shelves and compartments.
“If you can find any indication of what happened here, we could use that information too,” suggested Daniel.
“I guarantee it was a malak attack,” Zeke said. What he didn’t know was why. Was this the harvest of souls needed for the resurrection? Or was this the purge of the universe’s imperfections?
“I think our brains aren’t quite so frozen that we hadn’t figured that out yet,” said Jack, “but I, for one, would like to know if they’re gone or if any decided to set up shop and wait for a second course.”
“Fine,” said Zeke. “But remember our first priority is the gate.”
Jack opened a cabinet. A large weight fell out and pinned him against the floor.
A body.
“Get him off! Get him off!” he said, flailing his arms uselessly, trying to free himself. Zeke and Daniel rushed over and pulled the body off Jack. It was a man. Thin. Hurt, but too cold to bleed much. His clothes suggested he was a scientist.
He took a shallow breath.
“Oh my god,” said Daniel. “He’s alive.”
Several hours later, they had successfully pulled the man out of the advanced stages of hypothermia. He sat on a table as Zeke changed his bandages, while Daniel brought him a cup of hot tea.
“You’re lucky,” Zeke explained. “Your arms and legs were pretty torn up, but the hypothermia kept the blood out of your limbs. If it were any warmer, you would have bled to death.”
“Thank you,” said the man, still shaking. “They came out of nowhere. I’ve never seen so many malak in one place before. They killed everyone. Nasty looking one with fangs and horns got me. Must have thought I was dead. Then before I knew it, they were all gone. As if they were never here.”
“The same thing happened in Nifelheim,” said Daniel.
The scientist looked up with concern. “Nifelheim is destroyed?”
“Mostly. Luckily we managed to evacuate much of the population.”
Some of the population.
Jack paced around them, nervously. “Why would they suddenly group together and attack like that?”
“They’re trying to wipe us out,” Zeke said quietly. Everyone stared at him in horror. “We’re imperfect. It’s their job to purge us.”
They were quiet. After a while, Daniel asked, “But why only two cities?”
“Did anyone think of contacting another city?”
Daniel froze. Nifelheim had been too concerned with survival to check on anyone else. They had only assumed they were the only ones attacked. If Panama had been attacked at the same time, then any number of cities might have been destroyed. He turned to Jack. “Try to link to the Muselheim. Have Dumah relay the message to any survivors—prepare for a malak attack.”
“I’m on it,” he said, darting to a communications terminal.
Zeke finished wrapping the bandage and taped it in place. “Looks like you’ll be fine. Just get some rest and find something to eat.” He stood up straight. His tone changed dramatically. “Now listen, this is very important. Your research station reported an anomaly in the former United States. I need to know everything about it. What is it? What does it do? Where did it come from? Anything you can tell me.”
The scientist pulled a blanket over his shoulders and sipped the tea. “The anomaly is, quite simply, the most bizarre thing I have seen in my life.” He spoke with a child-like enthusiasm. “We observed it as best we could, but it’s hard to get close to something when malak are swarming around it.”
“The report said malak activity had ceased on the continent,” interrupted Daniel.
“On most of the continent, yes. But when we managed to send in a photographic probe, we realized there was a huge concentration of malak by the anomaly. And what’s more, they seemed to be traveling in and out of it.”
“Like a gate,” said Zeke.
“Precisely,” said the scientist. His enthusiasm was growing. “And there’s more. We measured an unusual wave energy being emitted from this gate.”
The scientist hopped down from the table, but immediately collapsed, clutching his bandaged legs. Zeke caught him before he hit the ground. The man weakly reached towards a distant table. “Over there. In the black folder, please.”
Daniel followed the man’s finger to a messy table and began searching for the folder he wanted. Zeke helped the scientist into a chair. “Radiation?” he asked.
“Pardon?”
“The unusual energy. Was it radiation?”
“That’s what we were afraid of at first, but we measured it against the entire spectrum of light, and it didn’t seem to match. They’re not microwaves, but they’re not gamma rays either. It’s as if they don’t have any consistent frequency at all. We mapped it out for further study, and that’s when Dr. Harding, my superior, recognized the pattern.”
&n
bsp; Daniel returned with the folder and the scientist pulled out a folded sheet. He unfolded it to reveal a graph. A map of a wave, spiking erratically.
“I know this probably doesn’t make any sense,” he continued. “But it looks like brainwaves. Particularly the kind measured during REM sleep. It’s as though whatever is inside this gate is dreaming.”
The ethereal plane. The world of dreams.
Zeke had his confirmation.
Daniel, Jack, and the recovering scientist slept under piles of blankets.
Zeke, however, was wide awake. He stood in the dark for a long time, watching them. He wondered if it were the last time he might see them.
It would have to be. He couldn’t risk their lives. He must finish this alone.
After summoning his resolve, he retreated quietly into the storage room. He went straight for the field equipment he found earlier. He shoved a tent into a pack, dropping a few supplies in after it. Next he went to the kitchen. He raked his arms across the shelves, dropping the food into the pack. His journey would be long. He needed as much as he could take. When he was done in the kitchen, he pulled on a thick coat and left the research station.
An hour later, he stood on the earth, facing southwest over the frozen canal. Samael glowed on the horizon, but didn’t provide much light. Instead, Zeke held a small flashlight.
He exhaled slowly. A cloud of fog formed in the dim light. He stepped onto the smooth ice and began to walk.
After a day’s journey, he found himself in the Costa Rican wilderness. The jungle, once teeming with life, was now still. Dead. Frozen leaves cracked beneath his feet.
A huge iced-over log blocked his path. He stepped over this, leaning against a tree for support. The thin tree cracked and fell. It hit the hard ground, shattering on impact. Shards of ice and wood scattered across the jungle floor.
Zeke stumbled, but did not fall.
He kept walking.
His journey took him into the mountains of Central America. Here, it was difficult to sleep. The air was very cold. There was little fuel for a fire. And the unnatural light from the Destroyer kept him tossing and turning all night.
The ruins of Mexico City provided a safer haven for rest, although still not comfortable. The ancient city, unused for centuries, had been reduced to a mound of rubble. In that rubble, Zeke found a small alcove of rock. He piled blankets on top of himself and went to sleep.
Beyond the ruined city was a vast expanse of desert. It was easier in passing than the mountains, the jungles, or the cities. The frozen sand was hard and flat. There was no wind. It was easy to cross. Sometimes, Zeke could even scrape up enough dry fuel for a fire. When he could, he would warm up his food so it was soft enough to chew comfortably. It never tasted good, but it was a welcome break from chipping off frozen bits and warming them in his mouth. His meals were meager and unpleasant, but they were all he had. The only food pushing him forward, to his final goal.
The ethereal plane waited, just ahead.
After several weeks, Zeke found himself walking up a gently sloping hill.
Cracking sounds echoed over the top of the hill, breaking the silence of Zeke’s journey. When he got closer, he could see sparks of energy arcing through the air. The electrical cracking grew louder.
At the top, he saw what had become of the area.
He was standing at the top of a massive crater. Below him stretched a vast wasteland. In one direction, it spread far to the ocean, where the terrain changed to ice. In the other direction, it stretched to the mountainous edge on the other side of the crater. Sharp, gothic rocks jutted out of the ground, high into the sky.
And in front of those mountains was the gate.
It stood in the distance, cracking dark lightning bolts. Zeke’s destination. A massive, dark and ominous sphere, floating a short distance above the earth. The door to another world.
Zeke threw his pack to the ground. Then he unzipped his coat and did the same. Next, he picked up his sword, drew the blade, then slid the sheath into his belt.
He paused.
Changing his mind, he pulled the sheath out and threw it to the ground beside his pack and coat.
He spent a few minutes stretching, sword in hand. Then he turned and faced the gate.
“I thought I’d find you here,” came a voice from behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Ragnarok
Zeke was incensed. “I told you I have to do this alone.”
Daniel stepped closer, resting his shotgun over his shoulder. “It won’t be easy. There’s no shame in asking for help.”
Black lightning bolts cracked behind them.
“Well thank you, but it doesn’t matter. You can’t fight Metatron. No one can but me. You can’t even exist in the ethereal plane unless you’re dead or dreaming. Either way, you wouldn’t be much help.”
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
There was a pause. Energy cracked.
Then more energy cracked. The two men turned, worried. The storm around the gate grew more violent. The dark sphere expanded. Before, it had hovered several meters above the ground. Now it seemed to expand deep below the surface. It grew hundreds of meters in every direction.
A hoard of draugr flooded out of the gate. Monster after monster fell out of the sphere, pushing, tripping and falling over each other in attempt to find solid ground to stand on. When the pile of draugr evened out, the wasteland was half-filled with ten thousand monsters.
Zeke stared at the field, hesitating. “Yes. I’m sure.”
Daniel pumped his shotgun, chambering a round. “Then, at the very least, I will see you safely to the gate.”
“I appreciate your confidence, but this might not be so easy.” His eyes never left the hoard of monsters.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Daniel answered, smiling mischievously. “What kind of Raven would I be if I wasn’t prepared?” He pulled a radio out of his coat.
“What are you saying?”
“We’re ready. Move in,” he said into the radio. Then he looked up. “I’m saying you’re not the only one here who was taught by the great Micah Frostbane.” He smiled.
A breeze formed in the stagnant air. Tremors ran through the ground. Something was coming.
Dumah stood at the bridge of the Muselheim. Today he was not a governor. Today, he was not retreating. Today he was a general. The man leading the world’s united military forces.
He was the warrior-king, defending his subjects from annihilation.
The fleet were prepared for battle. Thousands of fighters stood ready in the hangar. Gunners tuned the Dragon’s Breath photon cannons.
Far below him, the Nifelheim defense militia followed the air fleet. Some rode the military transports, now outfitted for battle. Most of them marched. Soldiers not just from Nifelheim, but from all the surviving cities in the world.
And Dumah was on the bridge of the flagship, ready to coordinate the attack.
He stared out the front window at the small speck on the horizon. “Valor such as yours is rare, Mr. Branderlief, but this fight is not yours alone.”
Dumah was not the only one with words for Zeke.
More than a kilometer out to sea, a pirate ship unloaded its cargo. The ice was thick here. Strong enough to support the weight of the Roman attack vehicles. Joel took his place at the head of his army as they unloaded the last of them.
I arrived too late for the assassination, but I’m glad to be saving the world at your side.
He gave out a loud cry and legions of pirates and Romans began to advance across the ice. At the head of the Roman army, Lord Gabriel rode atop a freshly outfitted attack vehicle. “You’ve covered our backs before,” he shouted across the ice. “It’s high time we repaid the favor. We’ll fight for everyone’s home today.”
He rode on. Muriel followed behind him, along with thousands of their own soldiers, each as loyal to Zeke as to their own king.
Throughout the fleet of airships, hundreds of p
ilots waited in hangers. They strapped themselves into cockpits, while engineers prepared their jets for take-off. All the while, they listened to their leader’s voice as he briefed them from the bridge.
“Our job,” Dumah instructed, “is to bomb out a path between Branderlief and the gate.”
The fighters listened carefully.
Just off shore, an army of pirates and wild men advanced. Their leaders also delivered orders.
Muriel rode atop an attack vehicle. She rested a hand on its grenade launcher as she called back to her soldiers. “When the explosions subside, we will flank him, protecting him from retaliation.”
The wild men nodded gravely.
Nearby, Joel also briefed his pirates. “Our objective is simple: protect him at all costs. Above all else, we must ensure he reaches that gate.”
“Do not hold back,” he instructed the pirates. “If he does not reach the gate, it’s all over. Our homes, our lives, and our planet will be lost. We must not fail.”
They reached the shore and began to march up the battlefield, toward the monsters.
The Muselheim’s P.A. blasted Dumah’s voice across the battlefield. “On my word.” He took his hand off the transmitter and waited for the signal from Daniel.
Tension crept across the battlefield. Not a soul on the continent was content to wait. The mission was simple, but difficult. And not only their lives, but the entire future rode on its success.
Everyone was frightened, but eager for the battle to begin.
Dumah paused in the pre-battle silence. “My friend, I’m truly sorry that you must be the one to atone for our sins, but you are a good man for doing so. Thank you.”
Zeke looked around him in awe at the approaching armies. “This might not be so difficult after all.”
“Disappointed?” Daniel stepped past him and readied his shotgun, aiming it across the hoard of draugr, toward the gate. The dark sphere had now retracted back to its original size, floating meters above the earth. “You ready?”
Ragnarok: The Fate of Gods Page 32