Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) (42 page)

What I couldn’t do was replace the blood he had lost. That would take time. But as I finished repairing his wounds, I sensed he would live.

I moved him to a corner of the cave where he could rest undisturbed. I knelt beside this man that I loved, kissed him tenderly, and then walked back to the crystal pillar.

It was time to free Verenix.

I picked up Odin’s spear and Thor’s hammer with binding tendrils. I held out my arm and sliced it with the tip of the spear.

Blood gushed from my arm, coating the pillar and seeping inside. The bright red of my blood began swirling around the inside of the pillar, mixing with the black dust that had already been there.

A line of cracks began to form on the pillar, with bright light streaming out. The cracks spread throughout the crystal until it appeared to be nothing but cracks.

With a sound like shattering glass, only a hundred times louder, the crystal pillar exploded upwards, blowing a hole through the top of the mountain.

Black smoke poured out the hole and into the sky. The smoke gushed out of the pillar in a seemingly endless supply, billowing up through the hole in the mountain making the whole thing look like an erupting volcano – except there was no lava spewing out, just a world-destroying dragon in smoke form.

I ran out of the cave, no sooner thinking about it then finding myself outside and halfway up the mountain. I still had Odin’s spear and Thor’s hammer, and I switched the hammer from my snare tendril to actually holding it in my hand.

The smoke stopped billowing out of the mountain and swirled together into a single mass larger than the mountain itself. Pretty impressive that the tiny crystal column could hold that much smoke.

The darkness began to coalesce and solidify. I watched as it changed shape and elongated, forming the dragon shape I had seen in my visions.

Verenix.

Nidhogg.

It didn’t matter what name you used, this was a beast that had the power to destroy the entire world.

My world.

I liked my world. Sure it had its flaws and share of people who didn’t really deserve to be on it, but I wasn’t going to let Verenix or anything else destroy it.

Besides, it’s where I keep all my stuff. 

Verenix was so large it was hard to compare him to anything. He was even bigger than in my visions. If he coiled himself up, he would be roughly the size of the mountain. He was like a sky scraper, laying on its side, and several miles long.

This was the being that was too powerful for five Norse gods to stop. There had never been another creature so large in the entire history of the earth. 

Verenix opened his impossibly huge mouth and roared, celebrating being free for the first time in thousands upon thousands of years. The sound was horrendous, a cross between a lion’s roar, and nails on a blackboard – turned up to a volume audible for hundreds of miles.

I jumped up, lifted on hundreds of snares. I rose several thousand feet into the air and propelled myself towards him.

With all the strength I could muster, I threw Thor’s hammer directly at Verenix’s face. It sailed through the air, the head turning red hot as it flew straight and true.

I had been aiming for his eye, but Verenix twisted away at the last minute and the hammer struck him on a bony ridge just above his cheek.

The hammer hit with a thunderous boom, and then flew back towards me. Verenix reared back in anger and roared again. I was pretty sure a hit like that would have turned a truck into shrapnel, but it seemed to only annoy Verenix, not actually damage him.

I caught the hammer on its return flight. A handy feature to always have it return after it was thrown. I spent the next several minutes using my snares to maneuver around Verenix and repeatedly throw the hammer.

Each time the hammer hit with a boom, but it wasn’t causing enough damage. The next time it came back to me, I held the hammer above my head and called down lighting from the sky.

Hundreds of bolts of lightning arced down, striking Verenix over and over along the length of his body. Bolt after bolt hit its mark, but as far as I could tell, did little to actually damage him.

Time for a different tactic.

I moved in closer to Verenix and leaped onto his back. I stood on his head and raised Thor’s hammer high, bringing it down will all the strength of six Aesir.

Much better.

Verenix roared in pain, and collapsed to the ground, destroying trees and leaving a huge dent in the earth. His head bounced on the ground and for a moment was still.

Had I killed him? Surely it couldn’t be that easy.

It wasn’t.

Verenix was just stunned. He quickly recovered and whipped his head back, flinging me off and into the air. I threw out more snare tendrils and used them to push off the ground and grab trees on the mountain to hold myself steady in the air. It required precise timing and balance, but with my new powers I could manage it with hardly a thought.

I tried to get in close again and hit Verenix with the hammer, but he had learned his lesson from my first attempt and blocked me each time I approached.

I was forced to resort to throwing the hammer, which was less accurate and had a decidedly weaker effect than when I was able to actually stand and hit him.

We battled back and forth, each trying to attack and defend against the other. I attacked with the hammer and Verenix snapped at me with jaws the size of an apartment building. Each tooth was the size of a bus. And there were a lot of teeth in that mouth.

I wasn’t sure what would happen if he managed to bite me, but I had to imagine that if it didn’t kill me, it had to hurt enough to make me wish it had.

I began to grow frustrated with the fight. We were basically at a stalemate, neither of us gaining an advantage over the other.

Then the pain hit.

Something hit me hard enough to send me flying though the air for several miles. I hit the ground and my body dug a huge trench half a mile long before finally stopping. Had I been a normal human, or even a normal Berserker, I might not have survived. But I was more than a normal Berserker. I had the power of the Aesir flowing through me. I wasn’t going down easily.

Once I recovered enough to see straight, I realized what had happened. I had been so focused on avoiding Verenix’s head and jaws, that I hadn’t noticed him bring his tail around the other side of the mountain and attack me from behind.

Apparently I wasn’t quite able to see everything all at once. But in all fairness, it wasn’t often I had to fight something big enough to wrap itself completely around a mountain.

Two could play at that game.

Instead of attacking his head, I used my snares to pull me the opposite direction and follow his tail. While on the other side of the mountain, I was out of his direct line of sight and took the chance to attack one of his legs with the hammer.

I used my snares to lash myself onto Verenix’s body, right at the joint where a back leg connected to his body.

Then I brought the hammer down.

The hammer smashed into the dragon with all the force I could deliver. Lightning flew out in all directions from the hammer’s impact. On the opposite side of the mountain Verninix roared in pain and his leg went limp. It could no longer hold the massive weight and the part of Verenix’s body supported by that leg crashed to the ground.

Before Verenix could retaliate, I moved to the other side of his body and smashed the second leg as well. Now his entire tail and hindquarters were collapsed to the ground, unable to move.

From over the top of the mountain, the front half of Verenix came racing down. His jaws were open wide and his massive eyes were filled with pain and anger.

I leaped out of the way as he drove his snout into the ground where I had been, digging a massive channel in the ground. I may have disabled his back legs, but he was still so long that his other legs could maneuver him around for miles.

I thought about luring him away from the mountain and forcing him to stretch out. That would limit his striking ability somewhat. But it would also destroy more of the land and put more people in danger.

I needed a way to end this. According to Odin I had the answer, I just needed to trust my instincts.

What did my instincts tell me?

They told me there was no way I was going to be able to kill Verenix. Even with the powers of six Norse gods combined, Verenix was too big, too powerful. He was a force of nature, a natural part of the world. Not this world, but he belonged at the World Tree.

Then I knew what to do.

I had been going about this all wrong. I couldn’t kill him. That had been Loki who first gave me that idea. The only reason Verenix had to be bound was because he would destroy earth. But he had existed for millennia before in his home with the World Tree.

I couldn’t kill him, but I had the power to send him back.

I switched the hammer from my hand to a snare tendril and grabbed Odin’s spear in both hands. I lifted it aloft and proceeded to rip through reality.

Wherever I dragged the tip of the spear, a tear appeared in the air. It rippled and shimmered with a golden light. I ran in a wide circle holding the spear out, cutting through reality until I came back to where I had started. Once the spear closed the loop, the inside of the circle began to glow and then slowly changed to show another world. The World Tree was clearly visible through the portal. I could also see the pond nearby with the giant swans gliding across the surface.

Just as Loki had used a portal to bring him here, I would use a portal to send him back. The glowing portal stayed anchored to the ground but the top rose into the air as the hole became large and larger. I maneuvered out of its way, not sure what would happen to me if I accidentally went through it.

Verenix saw the world tree and let out a hiss of anger. It turned away from the portal and began to run away.

The flaw in my plan was now very clear – Verenix didn’t want to go back. He wanted to be here. He had been pulled into our world through the portal Loki had made, but when faced with the possibility of going back, he ran away from my portal.

To make matters worse, Verenix’s back legs were no longer visible. Whatever damage Thor’s hammer had done must have been temporary and they were now strong enough to walk again.

I pushed up with my snares, leaping over the mountain and following Verenix. I couldn’t let him get away. I had to somehow force him into the portal.

How do you shove an unwilling dragon the size of a mountain through a portal?

The answer – you didn’t.

You dragged him through.

I reached deep within me and drew on the power there. I let it engulf me and surround me.

Then I pushed it out toward Verenix with every last ounce I had. A thousand snares each the width of a giant redwood tree burst out of me and flew toward Verenix.

The snares wrapped around him, squeezing and holding him tight. He continued running until his legs had been tangled and he collapsed to the ground, thrashing in anger.

I had him. I had stopped him! I tried to pull him, but I had the strength of six Aesir, not the mass of a world-devouring dragon. As I pulled, I drove myself deeper and deeper into the earth. Soon, I was in a hole, up to my waist. It was useless, I needed something to anchor myself to so I could use my strength to pull him.

My instincts told me there was really only one choice. I dropped the spear and hammer and ran to the portal, keeping the snares tight on Verenix and jumped in.

The feeling of euphoria I felt when I entered that world was beyond description. This was the world I belonged in. Everything about it felt right. I could breathe deeper, stand taller, and joy flooded through me.

It would be so easy to just stay here and let go of everything else. Why should I care about earth? That was the place of mortals. I was no longer mortal. I was Aesir. The most powerful of the Aesir. And I was finally home.

“But what about Rhys?” said a voice in my head. “Do you want to live here without him? Do you want to let Verenix destroy earth and kill him in the process?”

At that moment, Rhys and the rest of Earth seemed so far – literally a world away from me. I wanted to let the peacefulness of this world surround me and keep this feeling forever.

But what about Mom and Dad? What about Amy and even Ginger? Josh? All the friends and people I knew. All the billions of people on the earth I never did know but who would be killed by my choice.

Did I really want to be responsible for the deaths of every living person on the earth and destroying the planet so that no more could be born? Sure, I wouldn’t have been the one to kill them directly, but I would be responsible just the same.

I couldn’t stay here. As good and right as it felt, I had a duty to the world and all the people on it. I had a flashback to my lunch time conversations with Rhys and Eric about this same issue.

True duty trumped personal comfort or happiness. Sometimes you had to do things you don’t want to simply because there was no one else to do them and they needed to be done.

That was the situation I was in now. I wanted nothing more than to stay here and let myself bask in the euphoria of this place.

But my duty was to Earth.

I reached out and wrapped as many more snares as I could muster around the world tree. I even had to remove some from Verenix to make sure the tendrils around the tree would hold.

Once I felt the snares were securely in place, I began to pull Verenix in. Using the World Tree as an anchor, I was able to slowly drag Verenix towards the portal.

I somehow knew that the World Tree was more than just a big tree. It was an immovable object. If anything would be strong enough to not break under the strain, it would be the tree.

I just hoped
I
would be strong enough. The strain was horrific, more physically and mentally taxing than anything I had ever done before. I was in a tug-of-war with a planet destroying dragon.

And I was somehow winning.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, I pulled Verenix toward the portal. He fought the entire way, digging huge trenches with his claws as he struggled to pull away from the portal.