In Loki's Honor

Despite their leader's rallying cry, the women didn't all rush into a hole in the ground. One, there was no hole in the ground to rush into. Two, I could see the Vikings were holding their laughter. I was amazed at their resilience. Though they had lost three of their fellow warriors, they still found mirth within themselves.

"It's made out of paper!" One of them sniggered.

I was unfazed. "Perhaps you want to spar with it, to test how resilient it is. I'll blunt its claws and teeth."

The rude barbarian scoffed at me. I had the Origami Eidolon dig into the rock. It mimicked the Böggdra Bögvar and dove in like a hawk after a hare.

"It can dig, I grant you this much," she said with a derisive tone.

"Prepare yourself, Okylvar Bjorndotter!" Meinar shouted but made no move other than to raise a hand to stop the other women from joining the fool.

The ground underneath Okylvar blew up with a rain of rocks and pebbles as the Origami Böggdra Bögvar came out of the tunnel with its maw already clamping around the Viking's waist. I had the Eidolon shut the mouth earlier to leave Okylvar's arms free. I wanted to give her a fighting chance.

Okylvar didn't have her weapons drawn, though. Two of the axes on her waist became pinned by the Böggdra Bögvar's teeth, forcing her to draw a dagger to defend herself with.

Instead of moving through and dragging the woman into a tunnel, I had the Böggdra Bögvar twist its body and slam the Viking's back on the cavern floor. Okylvar shouted in equal parts, pain, surprise, and outrage. The blunted teeth gnashed at her legs and waist, shredding her armored skirt and boots but stopping short from breaking her skin or bones.

She stabbed at the Origami Eidolon, finding out that such tiny punctures did nothing to ruin the structural integrity of the well-folded paper. The Böggdra Bögvar slammed her a few more times, then the dagger went flying, vanishing in the darkness.

Okylvar didn't let go. She shoved her fingers in the holes she'd punched into the Böggdra Bögvar and pulled, ripping the paper. When she did, her whole body went read as the veins and muscles over her body bulged and increased in size and girth by more than a fourth. With a mighty war cry, she finally formed a rip in the Origami summon and tore a gash twenty feet long along its segmented body.

That caused the Origami Eidolon to lose strength and slack its jaw. Okylvar kept screaming like a maddened beast as she tore into the creature with her now freed axes.

I glanced at the other Vikings. They were looking at Okylvar with gaping disbelief.

"That fool," Meinar mumbled under her breath.

The Origami Eidolon soon became a pile of inert cardboard. Huffing, Okylvar lost the red tint to her skin, deflated, and then collapsed on her back. The Vikings finally rushed to help her sister.

*

*

Later, while we sat around a campfire, I asked Meinar why she was so upset. The Viking leader roared her answer.

"She blew a week-long cooldown during a spar! That stupid wench! I should deny her rations and let her eat her own pride!"

Okylvar flinched as if each word was a haymaker straight to her chin. As I watched the Vikings haze Okylvar and give each other words of encouragement, I pondered. The woman was far from the weakest Viking here. The Origami Böggdra Bögvar was quite powerful if he gave the Viking such trouble.

"Are you confident we can dig after the real Böggdra Bögvar using my Origami Eidolon?' I asked Meinar, so she would shift her anger toward something more productive.

"Yes. That's what we'll do after we take a brief rest," Meinar decided. "Set up camp and sleep. In five hours, we go after our quarry!"

"I can keep guard," I said.

"Much appreciated, Haru," Meinar said.

Minutes later, all the seven remaining warriors and half of the support crew fell asleep on their bedrolls. I was awestruck at their mental discipline. It was not easy to just turn off their conscious minds like that. They must've trained long and hard to achieve such a feat.

I sat on my braided tails in the Lotus position and extended my senses. Nothing happened until the Vikings woke up, five hours later. They broke camp and sent the support crew back to Nidavellir with the corpses of the two dead Vikings. From now on, the sleds wouldn't fit in the tunnels.

*

*

We rode inside the Origami Eidolon as it dug after the Böggdra Bögvar. The folded paper was resilient enough to give the summoned creature integrity without internal support beams or anything.

A couple of hours later, I sensed an empty space in the earth below. it was another cavern. Redirecting the Origami Eidolon there, I focused my detection on a cone and finally located our quarry.

"Prepare for battle," I told the Vikings. "I'm going to split the Origami Eidolon in the middle for you in five minutes."

Our prey didn't stand still. The Böggdra Bögvar sensed a rival approaching and bellowed and hissed a challenge. As our ride broke through the top of its lair, the Böggdra Bögvar launched itself at the Eidolon. The impact rocked us as the massive worm latched onto the side of the Origami summons. Its teeth shredded my Eidolon as if it was made out of... paper.

The Eidolon dropped down to the ground, bringing the Böggdra Bögvar and us crashing down. My summons discarded the ring where the flesh monster had latched onto, making an opening for the Vikings and reforming both ends into new, smaller, and faster Böggdra Bögvars. While the Vikings formed their battle line, I ordered my creatures to return the favor and bite into the Böggdra Bögvar's sides, on different segments.

I tossed some quick-cast Light spells to illuminate the whole cavern. The wound I carved on its side was almost fully healed. When I took the time to assess my surroundings, I almost retched. The air was heavy and rarefied of oxygen.

All around us, thousands of corpses, carcasses, bones, and rotting flesh formed macabre piles of refuse. The Böggdra Bögvar brought all its victims down here to be devoured. The cavern had no communication with the outside world as the Böggdra Bögvar had sealed all exits.

This was bad. The Vikings needed more oxygen than me but even I would soon succumb to asphyxiation down here. Fortunately, bad air was common enough in the Yznarian Labyrinth that I had picked a few purifiers along the way. Checking my infinite storage cluttered with all the junk I collected over thousands of years, I found that "a few" actually meant "a few thousand."

I dropped the purifiers far away. They were resilient, an air-aligned crystal set in a runic array enclosed in a steel frame resembling a lantern. Winds whooshed in the cavern as the purifiers circulated the air while gigantic struggling furred bear-worms created winds of their own.

"Charge!" Meinar shouted, and her six companions answered. The Vikings roared as they raced over bones, discarded and ruined equipment, and whatever that puddle of sticky brown goo was. I focused on controlling my Eidolons so they could coordinate with the Vikings, turning them into assets and not liabilities.

The Böggdra Bögvar was unwilling or perhaps unable to split. With the two Origami monsters holding it down on separate segments, I assumed it didn't have a spot where it could split and get rid of the paper creatures holding it down and not lose most of its biomass.

Meinar and her warriors reached the creature and started to hack away at the joints of the bear legs, ignoring the furry worm body. I saw their plan. If they disabled enough of those powerful muscular legs, the Böggdra Bögvar would lose most of its mobility. The Vikings darted in and out of combat, timing their attacks to deal the most damage they could while remaining safe.

This was a battle of attrition, a marathon, not a dragster race. Since each segment could become its own creature, the Böggdra Bögvar had no vital spot to strike at. Blood loss was a minor inconvenience, only massive damage could kill such a monster.

But it was an intelligent monster. It soon realized it was, for the first time in its life, outnumbered and outclassed in a fight. The gigantic worm started to squeal and thrash, a keening wail that rang in my sensitive ears. The segments where my Origami Eidolons latched on to started to split away from the main body as the Böggdra Bögvar split into five new creatures.

I drew a magical circle and let the spell wash over the cavern floor. A rugged wall of force, texturized as to give the Vikings' feet something to stand on kept the Böggdra Bögvar away from the ground, its escape venue denied.

The Origami Eidolon slurped the segments they were holding on, killing those small Böggdra Bögvar. Only the front, the tail, and the middle parts remained, forming new mouths and anuses. These had forty, twenty-five, and thirty feet each.

But without the massive length of hundreds of feet, Physics-Chan reared her bespectacled head and told the Böggdra Bögvar that it no longer had leverage or the muscular potency to move its body as it wanted. The thick segments, with dozens of wounded legs, flopped and squirmed on the horizontal Wall of Force.

The Böggdra Bögvar segments couldn't even bend to push a mouth against the floor. They were just hideous meat loaves covered in bloody fur flopping and rolling around.

All the while, the Vikings' assault kept the pressure, hacking at the few bear legs that could still twitch, severing tendons, muscle, and moving on to the next one. My Origami Eidolons moved to the longest segments to chomp down and rake at the now crippled monsters.

The mop-up after the unfortunate (for the Böggdra Bögvar) split still took the best part of an hour.

But the monster and its spawn were dead for good.

*

*

While the Vikings rested and congratulated each other, holding a purifier so they could breathe fresh air, I swept the cavern sending all the debris and remains to my item box. When I was done, the stench in the cave vanished in the next half-hour, due to the purifiers I set around.

With everything from debris to corpses to Böggdra Bögvar steaks inside my infinite storage, I searched for the mortal remains of the one Viking that was dragged down and eaten and brought her back. It was... no longer even recognizable as a human corpse but my storage Perk wasn't mistaken. I wove a Living Silk cocoon shaped like a sarcophagus and arranged the remains inside, sealing it. At least this way, she could be buried or cremated with dignity.

Next, I cut a section of the cavern floor and placed a bathhouse from my storage down. Conjured water filled the reservoir while Fire spells heated it to perfection.

The Vikings stared at the steaming bathhouse in disbelief.

"Hey, boss, can we keep the fox goddess as our mascot?" Signyi joked.

"She has duties in the Great Library," Meinar replied. "It's best if we accept our boons graciously and endure our banes stalwartly."

"LAST VIKING IN THE BATH IS A STINKY TROLL!" Okylvar shouted as she ran to the bathhouse, armor pieces clattering behind as she undressed on the run.

The other women soon followed. The warriors had earned their respite.

*

*

Back in Nidavellir, the Vikings paraded as they carried the least-damaged piece of bear-worm we could find. The Dvergar filled the sidewalks, staring at the victorious warriors. Some gaped in disbelief, others cheered. Our destination was the temple of Odin. There, human and Dvergar priests rushed out to greet the Vikings. I stayed behind, watching the scene unfold from the sidelines.

A significant amount of divine energy was afloat around the temple. Due to my perks, that energy would be sucked and sent to Loki if I came into contact with it. Better to avoid angering Odin himself and stay away from it all, despite my desire to take my rightful place and celebrate victory with my new friends.

Meinar presented the trophy as proof of completion and a sacrifice in Odin's honor. The priests cheered and soon the dead worm laid on a pyre of boulder-size coal chunks. The temple priests brought out tables and set up a feast. When everything was ready, Meinar chanted a prayer to Odin, dedicated the sacrifice, and set fire to the worm.

All of the coal ignited at the same time. A tornado of flames formed around the worm, spiraling up until it reached the cavern roof hundreds of yards above. The fire was unnatural as it formed a perfect cylinder, uniform from top to bottom.

"Odin has accepted the sacrifice!" The head priest shouted. The devout followers of the All-Father cheered and toasted with their horns.

Less than a minute from ignition, the flames vanished, the spirals climbing up heavenward. Not even ashes remained from the coal chunks or the Böggdra Bögvar. As the cavern gloom returned to the streets of Nidavellir, a golden glow enveloped the Viking warriors.

My Sense Divinity Perk flared as I noticed three translucid winged blonde women float down. The Valkyries were clad in sparkling golden armor and wielding ornate spears. They escorted a familiar soul each. They phased through stone and brick, metal and glass, entering the temple through the roof. Nobody else seemed to have noticed them. Moments later, the three departed without their wards.

"Meinar!" The three dead Vikings walked out of the temple, clad in simple linen tunics. "You won't get rid of us so easily!"

The reunion was touching. These hardened warriors finally let the tough mask down to revel in the reunion with their (formerly) dead companions.

As for me, I slipped away and went back to the library. Meinar and her warband's duties in Nidavellir had ended, but mine had just begun.

May their Battle Through the Nine Realms be a fruitful one.

Life 36 - Chapter 8 - The One in Which We Pay Tribute.