Chapter 27: The Hours Before The End Of The World, Part 2

"He ATE her?"

The Avengers who had gone back to GAMA with Isis to work with Zoë on a serum against the final were almost done with the final touches when the others came in. GAMA was cleaning up the damages at the National Mall and Union Station but everyone was still alarmed by the sight of Jotun blood on Humberto's mouth. Even Humberto was shaking and cuddling himself as if he had gotten a cold while it was 72 degrees inside the GAMA room they were all in. Loki and Kory made sure they were distant enough from him, especially after seeing how he had no problem devouring a semi-Frost giantess with his own teeth.

"Somebody get this taste off me…" Humberto begged.

"Don't worry, GAMA has dealt with cannibalistic INs in the past." Zoë opened a cabinet bearing numerous canisters that held colorful pills reminding some of Starbursts candies. "I can quickly make an advanced protein substance that you'll have to consume once a week to calm down your bloodthirst. What do the bloods of human and Jotun taste like to you?"

Banner and Scott actually had to cover their mouths to refrain themselves from throwing up.

"Human blood is red, juicy, and with tiny chewiness… It's like eating steak with fries…" Humberto began drooling.

"SNAP OUT OF IT!" Falcon slapped him to help the boy get back on his senses.

"Sorry..."

"And the Jotun blood?" Zoë asked.

"Rather disgusting. It was like… a burrito with Brussel sprouts instead of beans and the whole thing was dunked in a pot of dulce de leche ice cream… I don't know… The first time is always revolting until the next times make it more delicious…" Falcon slapped Humberto again.

"The next times?" Tony got angry while Zoë selected the red and blue pills needed to create the medicine. "Just how many fucking people have you eaten while you went all Barney?"

"OK, don't call me Barney. I hated that show as a kid, and you think I keep track? Ask my friends Bruno and Kamala, they actually saw me chopping some heads off when they first heard of my powers! But I don't know how to explain any of it!"

"I can." Vision handed a towel for Humberto to wipe himself; the teenager nodded in gratitude and wiped the blood off his mouth. "I managed to analyze you when you were fighting Kali in the Javits Center. The thing that fuels you matches the power level of my gem, only yours revolves around reality and is only a mere fragment. It enhances your prehistoric metamorphosis, duplicates and multiplies the intellectual capacities like turning into one pack, but because things need balance, it also enforces the reality of what you transform into. In your case, whenever you attempt to transform into a carnivorous beast, your fuel seeks to make you as authentic as possible, thus the bloodthirst and the threat of bystanders becoming buffets. If you had to imagine 20 different times you probably had to fight as a dinosaur, how many of those cases would you say that you preferred resorting to using carnivorous features than those of a vegetarian to defend yourself?"

"Uh, 18 out of 20?" Humberto guessed. "I just resort to Tyrannosaurus Rex or Velociraptor when I need to get aggressive. Mosasaurus, I only use it when I need to go swimming, and frankly, I use an Ankylosaurus tail just to throw things off. There is also this one thing that I can do when I can turn into a dino-hybrid, but I stopped using it ever since my friends saw me eating the heads of 12 people…"

"We don't wanna know." Zoë twirled a tube of magenta-colored liquid in her hands. She applied it to a syringe and immediately poked the boy's neck with it without warning.

"Ow! Ow! Oh… Hey, this actually helps!" Humberto grinned. "What's in it?"

"Protein. And in three hours, you'll find out why Hercules needed a river to clean the stables. I'll send the medicine to your parents with my recommendations." While Zoë took care of that, the doors opened and GAMA agents came in carrying at least 8 carts of food full of drinks, protein bars, dried fruits, and cartons of ice cream. The agents made room for Bonnie and Tiresias to walk through before leaving.

"Such turmoil in one day…" Tiresias shook his head.

"Very perceptive for the blindest of prophets," Hera grimaced. "I suppose this is the part where you tell us that you, being the prophet you are, saw this whole thing coming and you knew Seth was going to kidnap Anubis and Marion?"

The blind man let out a smug grin that not even his own agents ever got to witness. "I have no reason to confirm anything whatsoever. Things unfold as they were meant to be."

"Do we lose?" Captain America asked.

"I think that there's a better question that needs to be asked."

"And I find you stupid." Aaricia, who had been wolfing her way through the vanilla ice cream pot she had grabbed. "You, the Norns, and who knows who else leads the other divine organizations… In the end, it's not really about keeping mortals oblivious of the truth or protecting immortals from persecutions. Leaders like you who happen to see the future, how should any of us know if helping immortals adapt and mortals to accept is only a front for the big chessboard you have established to make sure that 'fates' are accomplished?"

"That's a good authentic reason." Tiresias nodded. "What gave it away?"

"If the Norns were really desperate about having me face Jormugand and either slay or get slayed, they could have just used their powers to drive me back to NU, not send agents to lose their pulses or act all neutral during the Nairobi conference. And even know, after I sent Jormugand to the Bermuda Triangle, they've done nothing, probably acting as if nothing happened. So what's the real endgame?"

"That is an even better question, but not the right one. What you should be asking… is the real reason why you left NU."

This was the kind of question everybody was certain to know the answer, but somehow, they couldn't resist turning their heads to Kory, who had just finished drinking a bottle of tequila. She stared at them as if they had all grown beards overnight.

"It was in November, wasn't it, Aaricia? When you both quit NU? A few days ago, you thought you had your answer, but is there a possibility that your mischievous sister could hide something else? When you think about it, is it a surprise that you both quit NU the day before Odin died and hours after he stopped by your house?" The blind man gave them all a cold smile as he exited the room, but most of them were too busy keeping an eye on Kory, who emptied her tequila just to have it followed up by vodka.

"Kory…" Bacchus spoke up.

"I have nothing to say." She kept drinking until Aaricia snatched her vodka bottle and smashed it on the table, staining the fancy wood. Kory didn't even flinch.

"You know, you generally had every right to ground me for whenever I stepped out of line, but I can easily smash a bottle on your iron-solid head every time you drink until you stop lying to me," Aaricia said calmly.

"Save it for somebody who's getting hitched," Kory retorted back calmly as well. "Even for you, I wouldn't babble everything that goes on in my life."

"Of course not, everybody has privacy. But not when people publically display these like some humanoid Rainbow Dash!" Aaricia fidgeted her fingers, revealing the tiny sparks of rainbow lighting.

"No." Kory responded flatly.

"We don't have time for your tantrums, Ikolson!" Iron Man snapped. "Do you know something that we ought to know?"

"Or else what? You're going to throw a tantrum in your armor and whine about losing your friends?" Kory snorted. "Your mortal immaturity doesn't work on me."

"Neither does yours." Before Kory could even blink, Loki petrified her with one grasp on her shoulder. While he held on to his daughter, his spare hand created a glowing sphere displaying visuals flashing like a computer infected by a virus. "Wow. Her memories are so chaotic and cluttered."

"With her MPD and her decades-long mistrust towards you, of course her mind is chaotic and cluttered." Aaricia rolled her eyes. "Since when can you see people's memories?"

"Last time I did it, Valkyrie had me knocked out and chained. What am I looking for? She doesn't even organize things chronologically!"

"Just grab whatever you can find on Odin in November 2017."

Loki fidgeted his fingers around until he paused on some memory of November 2017 representing Kory with some gothic teenager at a coffeehouse in what seemed to be a Californian neighborhood. Based on the presence of three empty mugs, Kory must have drunk a lot of caffeine.

"Odin's dead?" The gothic teenager asked.

"A dissolved dust of sand that went in the breeze…" Kory held back her hiccups. "Thor's hammer destroyed, and my father being the jackass he is led the three of them into the Bifrost…"

"So… how exactly did your dad and uncle just happen to fail to notice you watching the whole thing while they were fighting Lady Gaga's evil clone?"

Kory laughed at the gothic teen's nickname for Hela. "My divine family is ridiculously dense."

"And the purpose behind your visit? No offense, but I refuse to take part in anything that revolves around saving the world. I already got my problems with PRIDE, my friends…"

"And your status as a teen with familial problems who also happens to have magic. Why do you think I called you, Nico?" Kory cracked her knuckles and sat properly on the leather lounge chair. "Odin gave me a valid reason for me and Aaricia to leave NU, but you gotta understand as somebody who lost a sister herself, I CANNOT choose between either losing Aaricia at the hands of my giant snake half-brother or losing her to a bunch of self-entitled immortals!"

Nico chuckled to herself something that sounded like 'And I thought Karolina had it bad' before speaking up to Kory: "Then don't choose. Just pull out some lies, give her reasons to believe that you were actually sick of life and NU, and, you know, just avoid anything like saving the world or the Avengers or your sick family so by the time her next b-day comes…" Nico made the black nail polished hand gesture of brushing something away. "No concerns."

"You make it sound so easy." Kory shook her head.

"A, like it or not, lying and covering secrets run in your family. And B, of course it's easy. My mother and her friends within PRIDE managed to hide for our entire lives that they were using their wealth and connections to perform teenage human sacrifices…"

"No, that's way too late. Go back a bit more." Aaricia's suggestion made Loki pause the memory and rewind, only to land on some scene where the demigods and Aaricia (obviously a few years younger in the memory), where having some sort of party on a roofdeck in the Oslo neighborhood where the Nine Realms Club was located. Fireworks were booming in the sky while most of the party members were either dancing or falling on cold floor drunk. In the memory, Kory and Aaricia were exchanging cheers with champagne and root beer while admiring the fireworks by the roofdeck railing.

"Best New Year's Eve of my life!" Aaricia gleefully exclaimed as she raised her can in the air. "God, I still can't believe you guys let me come to my first New Year's Eve rager! Even when it's illegal!"

"You're already dead, the mortal age of getting wasted doesn't apply to you!" Kory hiccupped with a ridiculous smile. "But hey, restrict you to non-alcoholic drinks for now and you actually get to enjoy what makes demigod end-of-year parties so hectic! The drinks, the dancing, the final 365 minutes worth of insulting the gods… God, I don't even know what I want for my 2017 resolution!"

"NO! Stop that! Way too early!" Aaricia panicked. "I don't want to see what happened next!"

"What happened next?" Humberto asked curiously.

"NO!" Bacchus and Maui exclaimed.

"Dude, don't ask about what happened… Just keep rewinding!" Aaricia insisted. Loki continued, unfortunately landing in what seemed to be a memory of a grey-scale building interior. In the memory, Kory was by some front desk with a dark-skinned woman in a uniform, watching in horror as two NU agents dragged in the body of a child. Her ragged clothes gave away the burning and bleeding areas while her blonde disheveled head moved like an unconscious bobble head figure.

"May Frey have mercy on her…" The dark-skinned woman pulled out a handkerchief to wipe out the tears. "I usually deal with miniscule treatments before the initiates are introduced to the program, but this is the first time I witness the Nimrod agents actually dragging a child."

"Friday… w… what am I even seeing?" Kory choked.

"The Norns' latest addition. An American child, somewhere around eight, a bit too young compared to the ten-year-olds that suffered staged deaths. And judging by the spectacular incident they created…"

"What incident was it?"

"Train catastrophe. Wagons plummeted into the abyss," Friday shook her head. "She could have escaped with her parents… but the Norns knew that the small child couldn't resist saving somebody's lost puppy… That blasted animal has no idea that she died a noble death."

"This is revolting."

"You think?" Friday exclaimed. "NU is like a butchery for human flesh! Any child with blood ties associated with the Nine Realms gets the bloody privilege of becoming an einherjar without any possibility of going to Valhalla, forced to continue their lives as undead warriors, and if the Norns will wish it, they'll die permanently to fulfill those hags' ambitions for the Divine Renaissance! If I had to bet how many children got dragged here just to meet gruesome fates, I'd be richer than Tony Stark!"

"Divine Renaissance?" Kory scoffed. "Asgard is currently on its happy little cloud with my pathetic excuse of a father and that womanizing, self-entitled uncle of mine. It's not like Ragnarok is next door."

"The Norns know things we don't. If Asgard falls to Ragnarok and the Asgardians finally decrease in might and dignity, the Norns will be ecstatic to find their replacements."

"Woah, hold on." Bacchus got Loki to pause. Kory was still in a petrified mode, shedding some tears in her eyes. "Kory told us that the Norns wanted the descendants of the gods to succeed in game-changing quests so the survivors could restart the Valkyries. She never said anything about… replacing the gods."

"Not all the gods… Just Asgardians… I think… Loki, keep rewinding forward until you find a memory of Odin in Tønsberg in November 2017," Thor said.

"I think I found it…" Loki finally found it. The memory of a raining night in Norway, only last year. Aaricia had fallen deeply asleep and Kory was about to turn the last light off when the doorbell led her to open the door and see Odin, as humble as, well, never.

"Let me guess, Loki committed something bad and you're going to arrest me?" Kory asked drily.

"I wanted to see my descendants… before I die in two days." Odin's calm sentence shocked Kory. Still not certain why the Allfather would be dying or even coming to her house in the middle of the night in the first place, Kory let Odin in. He casually admired the modest household as she led him to the kitchen.

"Tea?" Kory offered. "I'd offer you some Asgardian mead, but I save it for my depression, which you're probably aware of, given that you're the Allfather."

"I'm not the Allfather. Just your grandfather." Odin gave a small smile. "And yes, tea would be nice."

Kory kept frowning at him. She snapped her fingers and her pot floated towards the sink for water to fill it up and towards the stove as flames casually popped up. "I have been alive for nearly a century and this is the first time you have the audacity of coming to my house as my grandfather. So if you're here with a fake story about dying just to get on my good side, it's not working. Loki may be the bane of my existence, but you are the catalyst."

"I know." Odin nodded. "I failed many things towards my family. I couldn't tell Loki about his parentage, I had to banish Thor to properly raise him, I couldn't save my wife, I hid my dark lies behind a sheet of benevolence, and because I'm dying outside of Asgard, the return of Hela will really provoke Ragnarok… And I never accepted you in the family when I could have."

"Still a century late." Mugs floated onto the counter and Kory stuck some chamomile tea bags in them.

"I don't know why I didn't. Perhaps it was my own arrogance and principles as king. I could have always told Loki that if a god willingly offered divine food to a mortal, then the mortal would become immortal. I could have allowed Loki to make Evangeline Ikolson become an Asgardian and his consort, but I didn't."

"I'm aware." Kory poured hot water in the mugs and coldly gave Odin a mug.

"I could have allowed Loki to just stay with you and your mother."

"Cut it short on your list of things you blame yourself about." Kory interrupted him. "This chamomile tea could get cold in a matter of ten minutes, so tell what you want to tell before I finish my tea and shove you outside."

Odin chuckled, not of amusement but what seemed to be strange fondness. "It's very touching how you have your father's insecure sense of keeping your relatives at a distance… and that you both have twisted affections for your siblings. Loki's daughter… who adopts the last of Thor's descendants."

The last words caused Kory to accidentally cough on her tea. It took her minutes to recover. "You cannot be serious! Aaricia can't be of Thor's blood!"

"Yes, my son's stubbornness and occasional arrogance doesn't seem to have passed on." Odin's smile faded into a sad expression. "For thousands of years, I neglected to pay attention to the generations of bastards born from Thor's previous womanizing antics and did nothing to stop them from suffering ghastly deaths from the fangs of your half-brother to the persecutions instigated by mortals. I definitely recall hearing that you actually witnessed Jormugand killing one of Thor's blood but I never imagined you adopting Thor's last descendant without knowing her heritage."

"She can't be Thor's descendant." Kory shook her head. "Besides, her parents still live. She can't be the last."

"Did the Norns honestly have you believe that they'd leave Aaricia's parents be after her death was staged? I know you associate with Anubis and his host, who happens to be from the same land as Aaricia. Don't you think Marion Romanson would have told you if Aaricia's parents were still alive in the hometown?" Odin asked quietly.

"They can't… they couldn't…" Kory refused to believe that the Norns would do such a thing, especially after already ripping Aaricia from her birth family. "What do you want?"

"Thanks to Loki's tricks, four years on Midgard have caused me to lose my powers and my life force will expire in two days. Fortunately, my visions of what awaits are all I have left."

"And?"

"I saw myself with my sons before I die and my first child Hela was released. I saw my sons lose everything as they forced Ragnarok to come destroy Asgard in order to save it from Hela. I saw a titan come from the stars to wipe half of all life. I see many people losing those that meant the most…" Odin looked at Kory sadly. "I saw that when the titan succeeds, years of despair nearly would destroy you because among the many lives that formed the price, your father and your sister were among them."

Kory couldn't even hold herself. Her mug crumbled on the floor and she dropped on her knees, sobbing. "There's more…" Odin gently patted her head.

"How can there be more?" Kory cried. "You practically told me that I was going to lose everything."

"For a brief period of time." Odin sat down on the floor next to Kory. "But then a solution will be found. Lives will be returned while some will be sacrificed. The universe will face new obstacles. Loki will revive, but not as you know currently know him. Thor will eventually choose to abandon his crown for good. And when he did that in my vision, I saw the most wonderful vision ever. The resurrection of Asgard, led by a new King of Asgard. A Valkyrie. The Valkyrie who survived the massacre against Hela will be the first to rule, but my vision ended with the sight of her worthy successor on the new throne of Asgard. The one being worthy enough of a new order of Valkyries and her heritage as an Odinson, or in this case, a Thorsdottir."

"No…"

"I assure you that my visions are reality."

"But do you understand how it is FOLLY to me? Aaricia can't kill anyone! I don't want to lose my sister to Jormugand, but to lose my entire family and witness my sister die and revive AGAIN just so she can continue your bloodline? YOU'VE EXTENDED YOUR STAY! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Kory managed to regain her senses, grab Loki by the arm, and toss him through the wall. The Avengers tried to intervene but she blocked them with ice in order to run out of the room in tears.

"Kory, wait!" Aaricia ran desperately after her sister.

"I don't believe it…" Iron Man was irritated.

"Believe me, I'm upset that Kory lied to us," Maui pointed out, "but after what we just saw, all her reasons were valid."

"Man, after this family mess we just witnessed, let's just hope that Anubis and Marion are handling it better with Seth." Banner shook his head.

Meanwhile, in Seth's lair

An insane asylum or even a GAMA cell would be more appealing to Marion and Anubis than being around Seth. The god was already deranged with using his own wife as a final plague and he wasted at least one precious hour just to prattle about his plans to celebrate the ultimate victory, the ideal forced wedding ceremony, and his creepy dreams about the modern apocalyptic family. Anubis kept pacing around his bedroom, trying to think of a solution, while Marion struggled to rip off the cuffs on her ankles. After breaking a fireplace poker by accident, she angrily threw it away. "What's the use? We have no way to tell the others what Seth has in store or to get these things off me!"

"I wonder." Anubis walked up to Marion and bent down to gently hold her right foot in his hand. He tried to summon the energy he had coming from the Eye of Ra, but despite his effort and the glowing effects, the cuffs still didn't budge.

"Well at least you eased down the pain," Marion shrugged.

"Dang it!" Anubis let her go and went on to summon his ankh spear just for the sake of smashing a vase. "The Eye of Ra won't let me do anything, and by tomorrow, I'll be forced to work with Seth into unlocking the final plague! I should just get rid of the Eye, but I would perish on the spot! And I don't know how long it would be until Seth could wear it himself!"

"OK, let's try to think…" Marion fidgeted her fingers until an idea came to her. "You did say that before the whole 'let the Eye of Ra choose its guardian', Ra was the first one to yield it?"

"Yeah, he was given the Soul Stone to guard it, he turned it into this fancy jewel, and create the Rapharions."

"And last time I checked, he was currently under an eternal sleep. What if there was a way that we could wake him up, have him untether you from the Eye of Ra so that you can finish Seth once and for all?"

"Marion, that's genius!" Anubis went to check the walls by the fireplace and moved his hands around until he found the right hieroglyphic to push on. A secret compartment popped open and he pulled up a rolled up scroll. "OK…" He went on to read the written text. "Summoning Ra includes a complicated summoning spell that will only work at sundown AND if the spell is said perfectly. This spell is actually a last resort spell that should only be used if trouble related to the Eye of Ra has been caused."

"And this happened to be in your room?"

"After Seth murdered Osiris to get his hands on the Eye the first time, we had to be prepared in case I went rogue and the Eye of Ra needed to be removed." Anubis rolled up the scroll again. "Seth wants Nephtys to kill off all the firstborns by sundown tomorrow. That means that we'll only have one hour and ten minutes or one hour and forty minutes to summon Ra."

"Then we'd better practice our enunciation." Marion got off her seat and stretched. "No offense, but I really want to break your dad's neck for making me try out those ridiculous ancient Egyptian wedding dresses!"

"Yeah, white and red aren't good dress colors for you. Clashes too much with your hair." Anubis noticed something shining under the bed. He cautiously bent down and grabbed the thing he had spotted. It was nothing more than a giant bronze tooth the size of his hand.

"Wow. You stash your baby teeth under your bed than under your pillow?" Marion whistled.

"It can't be…" Anubis shook his head. "Her tooth… Oh no…"

"Anubis?" Marion asked.

When the door opened and Quetzalcoatl popped his head out to see how they were doing, Anubis immediately pulled him in only to force the serpent god onto the ground and threaten his neck with his ankh scepter.

"Where is she?" Anubis growled. "Where's Ammit?"