A fog rolled in around Abaddon’s feet.
When it touched him, he felt a feeling of deep revulsion that turned his skin mostly red. The stars beneath his flesh beca black holes.
Nyarlathotep’s laughter echoed closer and closer as he drew near, and Abaddon imdiately took a defensive stance.
...Only for Eris to pull him by his hair and attempt to stop him.
"We can’t fight him now..!" She hissed. "We need to find cover sowhere until we have a better grasp of ourselves here."
Abaddon was imdiately bewildered. "You want to run?"
"I know you aren’t keen on it, but I truly do not believe we have a choice here... We should go now while we have the chance."
In most instances, Abaddon would have listened to Eris without much of a fight. She tended to always have their family’s best interests at heart, and her ability for foresight was often greater than his.
But when it ca to this occasion, he was unable to just go along with her wishes as she would have liked.
Perhaps it was because by this point, he had spent so long at the pinnacle of existence. He hadn’t had to run from anyone, for any reason.
Except for Odessa, when she was trying to hug him with snot running down her nose.
Abaddon didn’t know if his pride would allow him to turn tail and hide. Least of all from soone he had already defeated before.
He was better than other dragons when it ca to not letting his pride affect his decisions. But he wasn’t perfect yet.
"...I can’t, love. If I run, I’ll feel like a coward. A man needs to be able to look his wife in the eye, no?"
Eris huffed and clutched her head with one hand.
"Girls?" She glanced over her shoulder at the other wives.
Seras, Sif, and Bekka seed like they were also considering doing sothing that they shouldn’t. The others, at least, were content not to stop him.
Lailah folded her arms and stared at their husband calculatively. "We can’t kill anything here, you know..? How are you planning on dealing with Nyarlathotep..?"
Abaddon’s eyes indicated that he was smiling.
"Oh, you know... Just going to try so stuff and see what works."
None of the eyes on Lailah’s tail looked amused.
"DOWN!"
In her divine state, Sif was a seventeen-foot giantess with deep, cerulean blue skin and a single mouth.
She used her massive body to shield her loved ones from a blast of incoming energy that ca from out of nowhere.
"Sif!" Audrina cried.
The giantess smiled innocently as she winced. "I’m fine. Barely felt a thing."
Seras placed her palm on her cheek for a fleeting mont before turning her gaze outward.
"Worry not.. I will exact revenge for you in every manner I am able."
In stride, Seras and Abaddon stepped beyond the range of Sif’s protection.
They turned their gaze towards the sky and glared at the scene above.
Storm clouds, dark, red, and ominous, with a slew of differently colored eyes staring down at them.
At the sight of them, the ’storm’ developed a slew of toothy smiles.
"Gatekeeper. Welco!"
"You can keep your welco." Abaddon grew in size until he was over sixty ters tall. "I won’t be here long enough for it to be worth the effort."
The stars within Abaddon’s body shone impossibly bright.
Suddenly, they fired beams of prismatic light from every corner of his body and tore through the sky.
But other than a few breaks in the clouds, there was no visible damage. Nyarlathotep’s smile widened even further.
"You may be here longer than you think. It seems you aren’t fully... ’comfortable’ yet. Here, let help you get settled in."
The ’ground’ underneath Abaddon’s feet broke apart and flipped upside down.
In the ti it took Abaddon to blink, he was plumting through the air and had no way to stop himself.
From below, Nyarlathotep fashioned his body into sharp pillars and used himself to pierce Abaddon’s form.
"A hug for a cousin that’s been gone too long..!"
Abaddon ignored the pain coursing through his being. Nyarlathotep noticed the obstinacy in his eyes and glared at him.
"You still aren’t understanding your situation, I see."
Abaddon’s cheeks were turned up in a smiling manner. "I’m just confirming what I’ve been aware of this entire ti. You still aren’t my better. I’m just having an off day."
"And what makes you think that?"
"If things were different, your power would have been mine by now."
Nyarlathotep had no idea what Abaddon was talking about, and he would never learn.
While impaled, Abaddon’s body started ballooning in size again.
What’s more, a familiar glossy black exoskeleton ford over the length of his body.
His arms broke and elongated, becoming large, bladed forceps that were over half the length of his body.
Ten tails sprouted from bis lower body. Each of them bearing the face of a red-eyed dragon.
His face was that of a great monstrosity. So parts reptilian, and others insectoid.
He flexed his body, and the pillars impaling him shattered like broken glass.
In a flash, he traded places with a much smaller, but equally monstrous figure.
Seras’ body burned as white hot as the midday sun. In her left arm, she held a naginata almost as tall as her, with the faces of the tortured damned screaming from within the tal blade.
She lit up the sky with dark red fla.. The embers were fueled by the potent negative energy in the air.
She gathered the flas at the tip of her blade and concentrated them into one infinitesimally small point.
For the first ti, Nyarlathotep saw shades of the ones who had imprisoned them before.
"Disappear."
-
Bashenga sat on top of Earth’s moon all by himself.
In his hand, he held the soul of Loki’s wife.
He would occasionally squeeze it aggressively and inflicted a brief torture upon it.
Through the ethereal golden wisp, he saw visions. Flashes of images and scenes that his victim had seen before he had arrived.
He couldn’t tell exactly where, but Sigyn had been summoned as well. Though she had gone willingly.
The only thing she saw was a basent before her eyes were covered. But he could hear the echoes of a conversation between her and another man.
However, his voice was... altered. As if he’d been speaking to her through so sort of computer program.
Bashenga almost crushed her soul out of frustration. Soone had taken far too many precautions.
"...Bash?"
Bashenga felt a familiar presence at his back. But he didn’t look away from the soul in his hand.
"Whatcha doin, buddy...? Everyone says you’re off your rocker a bit."
Mira walked around so that she could co face to face with her brother. Her hands were hidden behind her back innocently as she teetered about like a child.
Bashenga could tell by her body language that she was trying to show she ant no harm. It was just his dopey, playful big sister co to chat.
It almost worked.
"Move, Mira."
Mira didn’t move.
"That’s Sigyn’s soul, isn’t it..? You planning to let her have it back?"
"No." Bashenga started to crush the woman’s soul.
"Wait, wait." Mira touched his wrist gently. "Let’s talk about what happened first. Start from the beginning."
Bashenga’s brow wrinkled.
"She... she was summoned to earth. Soone offered her a way to break Loki free if she handed over an item in his possession." He said breathlessly.
"An item..?"
"The lock of hair that Loki cut off our sister as a ’prank’. He had kept it all this ti."
Mira had forgotten all about that incident. In this tiline, Thea and Thrudd used to spend so of their ti together in Asgard.
But so of the locals liked to talk about their appearances and avoided them out of fear. Then one day, Loki decided to play a prank on Thea and snipped off so of her hair.
Belloc and Thrudd found out, and they nearly burned Asgard to the ground.
"So... that’s how she got summoned..." Mira sighed. "But still, it doesn’t tell us what they have that’s capable of holding her."
Bashenga put the soul away. "It matters not. I’ll destroy it and everything else when I go and get my sister back."
"Our sister." Mira smiled at him gently. "And earth isn’t the kind of place we can run wild on... I know you miss her, but we have to stop and think for a mont-"
"I believe I’ve thought enough!" Bash hissed. "I’ve thought about how Thea’s wives need her, how her children need their mother! And next to that, nothing else matters! I’m getting her back, and I will decimate EVERYONE who aided in her kidnapping!"
Bashenga ripped his hand away from his sister. Right before her eyes, he crushed Sigyn’s soul into nothingness.
Mira placed both of her hands on Bashenga’s shoulders and held them firm when he tried to move her away.
"Please, Bash... You know Thea’s not the kind of person who would want you to behave like this. You set Yggdrasil on fire. You ripped out Odin’s eye. What part of that sounds like sothing our sister would want...?"
Bash bit his lip so hard that blood flowed. His eyes were watery.
Mira reached to wipe away the blood running down his chin, but he caught her by the wrist to stop her and did it himself.
"I’m not deluded. I know she wouldn’t like it... But she can scold , think little of , or be disappointed in all she likes when she is back ho. I don’t care about anything else."
Mira was too heartbroken to put into words.
She had never talked to Bash as much as the others, but it didn’t an she didn’t love him. But without a proper pre-existing connection, she had no way to pull him from the war path he was on.
"You’ve done what you can, Mira. Leave it to now." A new voice said.
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