WOLVERINE'S WORLD - THE DESTROYER
While immobile, the Destroyer seemed to be a crude and blunt thing. After the Destroyer awoke, it at first seemed slow and bulky, albeit ominously powerful. But it became increasingly faster and more agile as it continued to reanimate. Within seconds, its movements acquired a startling fluidity. And the aura of power that exuded from it that was as awesome as it was frightening.
Of all the potential targets surrounding it, the Destroyer fixed upon Sigmund and bounded after him with frightening speed and sureness.
"Laufey!" Sigmund screamed desperately to his son.
"I'm tired of your orders, old man," Laufey replied almost conversationally. His narrow face was cold and uncaring.
Meanwhile, Rahne and I were sprinting for the trees.
It was over in just a moment. Sigmund tried to fight, but the Destroyer smashed through the old man's best attempts to defend himself with casual ease. Within seconds the old man was brutally and efficiently dead. The shattering of his bones was an extended series of dull crunching sounds. The splitting of his skull was a surprisingly sharp pop. Laufey watched the death of his father with detached curiosity, his eyes strangely calm and serene. It was as if Laufey was observing a sporting event in which he was only mildly interested.
Ingrid screamed helplessly as her father was ruthlessly ground to a pulp. She had been racing forward in an effort to intervene, but it was far too late. Sobbing in horror, Ingrid fell to her knees next to her father's corpse. Above her, the Destroyer loomed, but didn't attack. It seemed to be waiting for something.
"Leave her be," I heard Laufey order. His voice was quiet and self-satisfied. "Kill the two Blood."
The Destroyer was after us.
Rahne and I ran through the trees. Our kind is sure-footed in the forest and we can move very quickly in that environment. Indeed, when we're in trouble, we have a natural tendency to search out the deep woods.
Behind us, the Destroyer simply hammered its way through any obstacle. Stealing a look behind me, I saw a whirling storm of leaves, bark, tree branches, and dirt. Trees were toppling away from the path of the monster's advance. Some were even being thrown into the air.
The Destroyer was catching up to us. We couldn't outrun it.
With one hand, I grabbed a young sapling and used my momentum to spin around and face our pursuer. I didn't yell a warning of my intent to Rahne. It was too much to hope that she would keep running, but if I faced our pursuer, her natural instinct would be to attack from the flank or rear. She wouldn't be facing that damned monstrosity directly.
And then the Destroyer was on me, its massive metal arms reaching out...
I ducked low and dashed past the Destroyer, my metal claws raking against its armored hide. I was hoping I could find a weak spot in between the banding of its armor.
Sparks flew, but otherwise my claws did nothing.
A glancing, back-handed, blow from the Destroyer caught me on the shoulder and whipped me around. I heard and felt something break as I was thrown away. A blaze of pain cascaded through my shoulder.
I landed in a stand of young pines. My left arm was useless. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet.
The Destroyer was already almost on me. I dodged away as best I could.
Then there was a blur of motion as Rahne hit the Destroyer from behind. She impacted into it with her feet and hand claws - slashing savagely - but then bounced away. The Destroyer was unharmed.
Rahne and I were on either side of the Destroyer. It half-pivoted so neither of us was directly behind it.
Ignoring the pain, I lunged forward... and then stopped.
The Destroyer reacted to my move and leaped towards me. But thanks to my feint, it misjudged my final position. It landed short of me by about two yards.
Rahne hit it again from behind. This time, she threw all of her ninety pounds of weight against the back of the Destroyer's knees. Her claws skittered and scratched as they tried to find something to dig into.
To my amazement, the Destroyer was unbalanced. It staggered forward a half-step, trying not to fall.
With my good hand, I grabbed a tree branch that was just over my head. Yanking hard, I lifted myself off the ground and swung my booted feet up into the Destroyer's head - catching it just under the chin.
Like any pack hunters, Rahne and I were trying to take our opponent down to the ground. What we were going to do after that was a good question, but perhaps that didn't matter. We were Blood. We were of the same pack. There may have been no future for us, but there was a now. And we would keep fighting until we could fight no more.
Under our combined assault, the Destroyer fell - a small victory. Then Rahne and I swarmed over it, our claws searching for a point of vulnerability that just didn't seem to exist.
The Destroyer climbed to its feet, throwing us away as it rose.
"Run!" I screamed at Rahne as she scrambled backwards. I advanced. If I could keep the Destroyer busy long enough...
Rahne paused, the expression on her face torn and uncertain.
Then a lightning bolt slammed into the Destroyer and blew it away from us.
It was Olivia.
I had only met her once before, back at the Point. She was a priestess of Lady Ororo and a member of the Storm Hammers - the Lady's most ferocious order of warrior-priestesses. She wore scale armor and a winged helm, and was wielding a vicious, hammer-headed, polearm. However, her true weapon was the ultimate gift of Lady Ororo. She commanded the skies.
The Destroyer was rising yet again - although it did seem to be moving slower. In the wake of Olivia's bolt, strange blue and white arcs of light emanated from the Destroyer and bit into the ground around it. Meanwhile, pinpoints of ball lightning in every color of the spectrum raced in wild orbits around its body.
Rahne and I staggered away, half-blinded and deafened by Olivia's assault.
Olivia perhaps yelled something, but I couldn't clearly make it out. Then she pointed the hammer-head of her pole-arm at the Destroyer and unleashed another bolt of lightning.
This time, the Destroyer was ready. It leaned forward into the blast and was not knocked away.
Rahne staggered over to me, her hands over her ears and blinking rapidly. I pulled her close to me and looked around for some avenue of escape.
There was an opening through the trees. Through that gap, I could see water.
The Destroyer took a step towards Olivia. And then another one. It seemed to be slowly, but steadily, recovering from her attacks. Olivia froze in obvious amazement. I imagine she hadn't experienced too many opponents who could resist one of her lightning bolts, let alone two.
That strange "U"-shaped metal flange on the Destroyer's brow flipped down over its "face". Some kind of energy began to build up around it.
I waved frantically at Olivia with my good arm. Then I pointed at the gap in the trees.
Because of her helm, I couldn't clearly see Olivia's face, but her body language showed me that she understood.
She made a broad gesture with her weapon - a sweep that encompassed Rahne and I.
A great wind, stinging and cutting us with bits of debris, swept through the trees and over us. We were blown completely off our feet and lifted up into the sky.
A split-second after that, there was a titanic roar as the Destroyer fired some sort of bolt of incandescent energy from the device on its head - like a fire-breathing dragon from some ancient legend. He tried to track us with his beam of energy as we tumbled through the sky, but Olivia manifested a semi-hemispherical shield of lightning between the Destroyer and us. The Destroyer's beam smashed into and through Olivia's shield, but I think the monster lost sight of us amongst the bright flare of Olivia's lightning.
In mid-air, Rahne screamed and grabbed me with both arms and legs. We impacted into the water together. Olivia landed a few yards away.
Rahne got to her feet first - the water was shallow. Then she helped me up. Splashing over to Olivia we pulled her to her feet as well. Her helmet and much of her armor was gone and she had all manner of cuts, bruises, and burns. However, she was still stubbornly carrying her pole-arm.
I looked around us, trying to get orientated. We were in a semi-stagnant offshoot of the main river channel.
I could see a disturbance from the trees. The Destroyer was still after us.
Staggering and slipping, I dragged Olivia and Rahne towards the actual river. They immediately understood what I had in mind. There was a lot of debris piled up on the shore. We found a likely-looking uprooted tree that was snagged in some rocks and cut it loose. Then Olivia, Rahne, and I dove into the river and grabbed hold the now free-floating tree - putting its bulk between us and the shore.
The current caught us and we began sedately drifting downstream. We became just another piece of river waste.
My broken bones were regenerating, but I still only had one good arm. Olivia was having problems - the remnants of her scale armor was encumbering her. I jammed the back-hook of her pole-arm into the trunk so she could use it as a handle to hold onto the tree, and then wrapped my legs around hers to hold her steady. Rahne cut what was left of Olivia's armor loose and let it fall away into the depths of the river.
"What was that thing?" Olivia finally gasped out in obvious amazement.
"It's called the Destroyer," I replied tiredly.
Olivia looked at me. Her white mohawk was plastered down the side of her solid, squarish, face. There was amazement in her blue eyes.
"That... that can't be..." she said to me in slow consternation.
I hadn't really expected her to recognize what I'd said.
"I wish that were true," was all I could say in response.
Rahne could swim like an otter. As we continued drifting downstream, she occasionally dove underneath the log and checked the river-shore on the other side for signs of pursuit.
Rahne popped to the surface again, right next to us. "Still nothing," she said.
Then she looked at Olivia, her eyes filled with gratitude. "You saved us. Thank you!"
Olivia let out a soft bark of exasperated laughter. Then she took Rahne's mop of red hair in a strong hand, pulled her close, and gave her a firm kiss on the forehead.
"Priestess Dare sent word that I should watch out for you two. She said you were trouble waiting to happen, but I don't think she has any idea just how much trouble you can really be."
After an hour or so of drifting in the river, Olivia's teeth were chattering. Also, she obviously wasn't going to heal from her injuries as quickly as Rahne and I. We had to get her out of the water and into some kind of shelter.
We kicked and paddled our makeshift raft to the other side of the river. Then we waited until the tree drifted near a sandbar that had been stable for so long that it was overgrown with vegetation. Rahne and I towed Olivia ashore. Once we had solid ground under our feet, the three of us kept low - crawling when necessary - and moved through brush and tall grass until we found a dense copse of trees. We hid there.
The sun was low on the horizon. Also the weather was shifting. It was getting colder. Olivia was barely able to move and obviously needed food and rest. Rahne looked at me inquiringly and held up a dry branch of dead wood. I shook my head. We didn't know what kind of senses the Destroyer possessed. A fire might give us away.
Both Rahne and I had lost our packs. Olivia also didn't have any gear. Our clothes were shredded. I had my pants and boots, but my shirt was a torn rag. Rahne's dress - she'd been so proud of it - was now exposing more of her than it concealed. Olivia only had the padded cotton vest and trews that she'd worn under her armor, and they were torn and scorched. Both she and Rahne were barefoot.
My staff was gone. That bothered me more than it should have, but I'd carried it for decades. It had become a part of me.
In just a matter of seconds, Olivia fell asleep. I hand-wove an improvised blanket for her out of some flat reeds. It wouldn't last very long, but in my experience it could be surprisingly warm. And it was better than nothing.
While I did that, Rahne scouted around. She eventually returned with a half-dozen gutted and skinned bullfrogs, some raspberries wrapped in a bundle of cloth torn from her skirt, and half of a cracked ceramic pot that she'd found and filled with clean rainwater from a hollow log.
I woke Olivia. She eagerly drank the water and ate the berries. Rahne and I drank river water - it was no threat to us - and dined on raw frog. Olivia tried a frog-leg and managed to get it down, but she ate no more than that.
Rahne sat between Olivia and I as we ate. She was huddled up, with her knees under her chin. Olivia leaned over and wrapped the reed blanket around Rahne's shoulders. Rahne accepted the kindness with a smile.
I examined Olivia while we ate. She looked better already, and that was a remarkable recovery for someone not of the Blood. Without her formal helmet and armor, she was considerably less regal than the first time I'd seen her, but she was still a striking woman. Her white-dyed mohawk - common among the priestesses of her order - was remarkable. In addition, she was broadly built and had scars on her hands and arms that were a silent testament to a violent life. Her face was square and plain and she had a particularly large scar that ran from her forehead down to her cheek, bisecting her eyebrow. She'd just barely avoided death from that wound. She was also lucky not to have lost an eye.
I remembered how Olivia saved our lives, unhesitatingly taken on the Destroyer and throwing everything she had into an awesome attack. Perhaps the fates had not decreed that Olivia would be a beautiful woman, but they had definitely made her into someone that you wanted on your side.
"What brought you up-river?" I asked Olivia once we were done.
"I was scouting for signs of other-worldly influence," Olivia said as she cast the bones from her frog leg far into the grass that surrounded our position. "Obviously I found it - lucky me. What happened to the rest of your companions?"
"We split up just before Rahne and I encountered the Destroyer. They're heading back to the Point, carrying word that the dark-elves have returned."
"Dark-elves?" Olivia repeated as she automatically put a hand on her weapon.
"They have a fair-sized scouting force in the area," I told her. "We saw a camp with about a hundred of them, but there are more. Perhaps as much as a legion. We tangled with the dark-elves and then began retreating back to the Point. On the way, we stumbled across the Destroyer. It had wrecked an abandoned mining camp, but then it apparently walked away and went inactive. I have no idea where it came from or how it arrived on our world. A family of half-Asgardians were trying to retrieve the Destroyer when we found it. I think one of them - a young man named Laufey - can somehow command it. He used it to kill his father, and then he sent it after us. You know the rest."
Olivia considered my words before speaking. "Do you think the dark-elves are looking for the Destroyer?"
I shrugged. "It's the only thing that makes sense. If they could turn it to their will, it would be a remarkable weapon."
"How do you know about the Destroyer?" Olivia asked me curiously.
I think I smiled. "Odd. I was going to ask you the same thing."
"The servants of Lady Ororo know more about Asgard than many realize," Olivia responded without hesitation. That wasn't exactly a detailed answer, but I felt that Olivia was being frank with me. Given how many lies and half-truths I'd lately been told by priestesses, that was something of an experience.
Rahne's eyes narrowed as she stared at Olivia.
"And for my part," I said. "I have lived long and heard many strange tales. Including many about Asgard."
"You said that this Laufey fellow can command the Destroyer?" Olivia asked.
I nodded.
"Do you know where the name Laufey comes from?" Olivia continued, her blue eyes staring into mine as she leaned forward to catch my response.
I nodded again.
"What are you talking about?" Rahne blurted out suddenly.
I glanced at her. "Laufey was the name of the Frost giant who was Loki's true father."
Rahne's eyes went wide.
"As I understand it, Loki had a history of magically seizing control of the Destroyer," I continued. "He usually sent it after his brother Thor."
"So... you think that the blood-line of Loki himself is walking our world?" Olivia asked hesitantly.
I nodded.