As the energies began to gather atop the Destroyers visor Magni threw mjolnor coruscating with electrical energies directly at the Destroyer visor. Thus pitting one of Asgard’s great weapons against another.
Magni was the strongest god of Asgard past or present. His throw at least as hard and straight and true as any his father might have made when the great hammer was Thors. Many of Asgard’s enemies would have fallen before it, but alas not this version of the Destroyer. The hammer struck against the Destroyers force fields, which flared clearly registering the mighty blow, and then it returned to its master. As if the near indestructible durability of the Destroyers armour were not enough Lord Thor in more recent times had added more powerful force screens to protect that which seemed hardly to be in need of protection.
The Loki Destroyer high above Asgard was unmoved but the energies gathering atop the visor began to diminish – had the schemer experienced a change of heart? Not at all as the Destroyer struck wildly at nearby Thor. Loki had decided that rather than simply incinerate Thor under the Destroyers disintegration weapon he would prefer to first humiliate him with a physical beating the like of which he had never known. Besides it just felt good. The Lord of Earth and Asgard seemed prepared to oblige.
Using the shield of Odin Thor blocked the Destroyers blow although the noise from its fist striking the shield was deafening across all of Asgard and was even heard upon the Earth. Thor struck at the Destroyer using the edge of the Odin shield putting it off balance. For a moment it seemed as if the Destroyer might fall to Asgard below and Thor teleported them both to an uninhabited part of Asgard.
There the battle continued. Leaving the enlarged gungir aside Thor with his strength still mystically augmented wielded the Odin shield with both hands. Blocking blow after blow from the Destroyer and again unbalancing it with well placed and timed thrusts with the shield. It was a display of “shieldmanship” that would have made an old and now long dead friend justly proud. At the same time Magni reined blow on blow against the Destroy, without any apparent affect. Ay one stage Magni was swatted miles away as if he was no more than an irritant.
However the warrior in Thor soon tired of this semi-defensive approach. Sensing that Loki was having difficulty controlling the Destroyer Thor threw the enlarged Odin shield at fantastic speed at the Destroyer causing it to lose its footing. Thor then waded in pummelling the Destroyer with fists moving faster than any known pistons. By now Loki was even having difficulty controlling the Destroyer’s size as it grew immensely. Thor mystically increased his own size to compensate.
Meanwhile together with Balder and Sif, Thialfi finally located Loki’s body. It was in Asgard in the place that is not a place. Where as a child Loki had been able to hide from Thor and even from Odin. He did not know even now, that Thor had also uncovered this place in his youth. Still it seemed that if Loki’s body was to be discovered he would rather it be by his own kind than the Thanos spawn.
As the trio looked down at Loki’s inert body Balder was struck from behind and rendered unconscious. Sif turned and confronted Deathos impudently here in Asgard itself. Thialfi launched himself at maximum speed but was held firm by Deathos. Lady Sif struck with her sword but with his third hand Deathos grabbed the sword and easily broke it in two. The Asgardian trio appeared overmatched but just at the moment that Deathos prepared to make good his escape with Loki’s body he was struck directly in the face by the mace of Hogun. Now if there is anything worse than being struck in the face by Hogun’s mace it is being struck twice in the face by that weapon as Deathos will attest.
Normally even a blow from the grim one ought not to trouble one such as Deathos but somehow the fiercest of the warriors three had retained vestiges of the Odinpower bestowed upon him during his brief but recent custodianship of Asgard. Hogun the Grim is not given to smiling very often but as he prepared to strike Deathos again he was grinning from ear to ear. Deathos did not return the smile and deciding that discretion was the better part of valour he departed on the instant for his foul smelling habitat.
At 2,000 feet tall and still growing the Destroyer paused clearly in some difficulties. At this point Magni grabbed it at the base of an ankle and physically lifted it and threw it into a nearby mountain. It was a prodigious feat of strength by any standards. The Destroyer still seemed confused and was slow to recover. By the time it did re-enter the battle Loki’s life force was compelled to depart it for his threatened physical body.
The colossus came to a grinding halt much to the relief of Thor and Magni. Thor sensed the inner turmoil within the titan and a struggle amongst vastly different intelligences to take control. The Lord of Asgard and Earth sensed also that the integrity of the Destroyer armour was being threatened by the sheer power and volume of the life forces contained therein.
Whatever battle had raged within the Destroyer was over. The giant moved coldly forward energies again gathering atop its disintegration visor as bludgeoning waves of Asgardian and other energies were directed from its hands against Thor and Magni. Between them Thor using Gungir and Magni using mjolnor were able to absorb much of the initial energy assault.
Still sensing weakness in the Destroyer armour Thor threw Gungir with all his might, the weapon defeating the Destroyer’s energy shields and lodging in the Destroyers chest cavity. Before the Destroyer could pull it loose Thor grabbed it pushing it further in and wrenching it at the same time using it as a conduit to convey his own vast energies. Magni assisted the process with a controlled but nonetheless powerful godblast right at the breach in the Destroyer armour. It was enough, the Destroyer armour was rent asunder and the countless life forces therein drifted helplessly away into the Asgardian atmosphere. The souls were clearly in torment and screams even to numb the minds of gods could be heard across all Asgard and (laws of physics notwithstanding) across the dimensional barrier to Earth.
There are proper places for the souls of all living beings and they are under the custody of a far greater force even than Thor of Asgard and Earth. Knowing this to be so and exercising all of his formidable power Thor helped the tormented souls along their way assisting them in their long journey to the place of final rest. Magni looked on pride swelling in his heart as at the end of the long process his father offered up the last few souls still adrift in the skies above Asgard.
Back in his own body and with Thor distracted at the time Loki was able to escape his captors. But not for long. In truth where could he go that the mighty Thor would not find him? In the end with his teleportation powers already taken from him they found him in a pile of dung transmogrified into a dung beetle. In all truth he looked relieved to have been caught as it cannot have been that much of an existence.
As to the Thanos spawn Deathos and Thaove, they will not be paid for their services to Loki. Even if Loki wanted to repay them he is in no position to do so.
End
Final Revenge
The landscape was as bleak, and barren, as any he had experienced. Not a single strand of vegetation and just a small dilapated cottage located on the broadest part of the isthmus.
At least it had the shape of an isthmus. A long narrow neck and bulbous head. Yet there was nothing behind the isthmus or ahead of it, or above or below it. Not even the stars.
It just sat there in a sea of nothingness.
If the mighty Thor had encountered a more miserable place, in all of his vast travels, he could not recall it. The cottage reminded him of a disused crofter’s residence in the islands of the Outer Hebrides of a world he had once protected.
A woman form, in rags, with long unkempt hair, and suffering etched in her face came out of the cottage. She was frail and slightly bent over. An equally ragged looking, boy child followed her out.
“Who are you stranger? and what are you doing here?” she mouthed in an unusual form of communication that was a mixture of audible sound and telepathy. “No one comes here,” she continued, unable to disguise her surprise, “no one can come here.”<
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“You seem like a sort of, well a ___, a sort of a man.” she finished. Then fell silent.
Though she thought to herself “It could have sent him, or just possibly a random teleportation between the realities went seriously wrong.”
“Neither of those things” came the response “I am Thor of Asgard and I have come here deliberately.”
The woman form was silent for a moment. “I have heard of you mighty one, who, either before, in, or after time has not heard of the son of Allfather Odin?”
As she finished, a storm not of Thor’s own making, began to gather in the nothingness that surrounded the small isthmus. The small cottage looked inconceivably frail beside it.
The woman form looked not at all surprised. “The storm is part of a cycle of torment to which we are subjected here,” she explained.
“For all of Eternity,” replied Thor knowingly.
“We are beyond Eternity here,” came the woman form’s response etched in inconceivable bitterness “beyond time, beyond any and all of the realities.”
“I know that,” said Thor.
Yet the storm did not gather with the intensity that it always had. Something held it in check.
The woman form pointed to what appeared to be a deep well at the very edge of the isthmus. The god of Thunder had not noticed it earlier. “It is a limitless reservoir of mystical anti-energy,” she said “and will just go on fuelling the storm, giving it however much power is needed to overcome you. Best to the let the storm come now, if you persist, you will alert It and it will come here.”
“It is my intent to persist,” said Thor.
The son of Odin stepped closer to the woman form and boy child touching them both at the same time. With the merest caress he took from them all the pain, all the fear, all the infirmity, all the hopelessness, all of the endless agony they had endured. The woman form stood to her full height. Thor saw that unshackled from the pain, and fear she was beautiful beyond even his experience. The boy child too now seemed less of a boy and more of a young man.
“It will come now,” she said “you have done the unthinkable.”
“Let It come,” said Thor and she saw that he meant this
“I am known as Childuvgod,” said the woman. “All that you see here is a construct designed to imprison and torment me, us,” she corrected herself. “My father was It’s greatest enemy. My father’s demise was not enough for It. Its desire for revenge is without limitation.”
“The boy child?” enquired Thor. “The boy is Its child,” she replied “A part of It’s revenge.” She was pleased though at Thor’s question which revealed he was not entirely omniscient. That there were at least some things he did not know.
“It destroyed even Asgard,” she whispered in her strange form of communication. “The ancient histories say your father fought magnificently, coming close to defeating It”
“Asgard lives on through me,” said Thor. “Ever since its destruction I have sought It out. In the end, I came here, where I knew It could no longer avoid me.”
“You are just one Asgardian god,” said Childuvgod though not unkindly “while It destroyed your entire race.” Oddly, unexpectedly to Thor, Childuvgod started to cry, the boy child, now man boy coming to her side.
“The power of Asgard can never be truly destroyed,” said Thor “though it may take different forms. When I said that my race lives on through me, I meant exactly that.
All of Asgard’s great power, including my father’s power is at my disposal.”
Childuvgod stopped crying and looked up at Thor. The storm started again this time with far greater intensity. It had come.
In all of his vast travels, through the Multiverse and through time, Thor of Asgard had never encountered such a storm. Even he and Odin combining together had not produced anything as fearsome as this. He wondered if here in this place beyond time he could control it.
It remained within the bowels of the storm that had preceded It. Even Thor could not yet perceive It’s chosen form.
“You have no place here little god!” came the mind shattering message using the same method of communication as Childuvgod. Thor had analyzed it. Part sound, part telepathic, part reaching to the soul itself.
“Where else was I to find you?” came the steely response from the Odinson “at every turn you have avoided the inevitable.” “Slinking away up time, or to some obscure dimension, or reality. I thought” continued Thor “that you would at least stay to confront me in the Dark Galaxies, where I undid so much of your handiwork. Even when I fully restored the great race of the Tolden, doing for them what I could not do for my own race, still you would not confront me.”
It emerged from the centre of the storm. Though It could assume any form that chosen at this moment was the form that had most commonly been used by God. Humanities God.
“You take my fathers form!” screamed Childuvgod
“He has no need of it” It replied.
It turned it’s attention to Thor and there was great anger upon It. “This is the most sacred place imaginable, where my lover and child live, and where, on occasion, I visit. No one, nothing may come this way, to disturb them here.”
“A place of imprisonment, of endless fear, pain and humiliation,” responded Thor, “a living monument to a desire for revenge that has transcended even time itself.”
“There need not be conflict between us, little god,” said It, It’s anger seeming to subside “leave us now, pursue me no further, return to time and live.”
Thor’s mind raced. He remembered so long ago returning to an Asgard not merely destroyed but physically totally obliterated. Though even then he saw the his father’s power reforming in the swirling debris. Thor remembered traveling far up time. Of discovering the then deep mystery of the disappearance of all humanity. Humanity that had spread among myriad galaxies and even into other dimensions. Humanity in all its wonderful and varied forms that seemed to have been totally expunged. He saw too that God himself had been killed. An essential prerequisite to sealing humanities fate. Realizations that had ultimately led Thor here.
It had been God who looked over far flung humanity that It had viewed as It’s greatest enemy. In the It had resorted to lies, trickery and deceit to achieve victory, since a more direct approach would have failed.
“Let me see if I have this right,” came Thor’s unfaltering communication “You killed God, you removed all of humanity from the upper regions of time, consolidating them into a single entity, namely Childuvgod, which you then raped. Childuvgod had a child by you and to sustain your insatiable desire for revenge, you consigned both her and the child to imprisonment, fear, pain, humiliation, and suffering in this construct beyond time. Not to mention that you killed my father and destroyed Asgard, and you would like me to walk away from all of this?”
“The time for communication then is past” was all It/Him said.
Thor looked over at Childuvgod and the boy child, now man boy. He knew they were both inconceivably powerful entities in their own right. Only virtual omnipotence had kept them as they had been. In a conflict he knew who Childuvgod would side with. But what of the man boy? , the product of the forced rape of residual humanity by its greatest enemy. Would the boy child, now man boy have any allegiance to his father?
The battle between It, the embodiment of all the evil that ever was and the mighty Thor custodian of all the power of the greatest race of pantheon gods that ever strode the Multiverse, commenced on a purely physical level. But it could not long be contained as such.
Locked in an unbreakable embrace, alternating variously between physical and energy and other forms the two omnipotents traversed all known dimensions as their struggle took them down through all of time and to the time before time itself. They shone like two exploding super Galaxies. Neither showed any apparent weakness or loss of power. Then the struggle continued back up through time and beyond it, back to Childuvgod and the man boy and the little isthmus in no
thingness where it had started
Only then did they pull apart from one another.
During all of this and whether he needed it or not Thor knew that Childuvgod and the man boy had supported him. Their souls had been with him bathing his own in their supporting energies. If perhaps he had momentary doubts, they had been there to support him. Their own vast strengths galvanized by what they had endured. The boy child, become man boy, had clearly made his choice. And yes, he had a soul.
“We have accomplished nothing by this,” said It “All is as it was.”
“Not quite,” smiled Thor, holding out his hand to Childuvgod. “It is time for you to return to your origins.”
“What of my son?” she asked.
“There is a place for him too,” replied Thor.
It that represents the embodiment of all the evil that has ever been, did nothing to prevent their departure.
Thor turned to It. “The power of Asgard, not least among that my father’s power can never be truly destroyed, though it may take different forms. A fact that you no more understood than any other of our enemies.”
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As has ever been and will ever be, It will continue to seek to turn events to It’s favor. As, ultimately, do we all.
Yet if you are ever traveling far, far up time you will find the Multiverse replete with humankind in all its wonderful forms.
You will also find it under the stewardship of two mighty guardians.
One of them is Thor the Mighty, warrior god, Lord of thunder, and the son of great Odin.
The other, no longer a boy child, or even man boy, is the full grown son of humanity.
For Odin, for Thor, for Asgard Page 15