The whirring, purr-hum of the chariot's engines chirruped its keening rhythm even into the void of space. We punched through Earth's atmosphere, out into the gaping chasm of emptiness that was space. I hadn't seen it this clearly in a while, not since the Unicorn I'd ridden into battle against the forces of Chronos. The vast nothing was a humbling reminder of just how small and insignificant I was in comparison to the universe I lived in.
Which, I suppose, was probably why the Goa'uld didn't design ships with prominent windows.
The ship skimmed across the void, dancing around man made satellites and leftover debris from our attempts to pierce the stars. I resisted the brief, but powerful, urge to buzz the international space station. There were already going to be enough conspiracy theories about what I'd done this week without needing to add any flames to the fire.
It bothered me that that line of thinking seemed to satisfy the brief spike of irritation my mantle felt at not indulging in the prank.
As we approached the moon, I flew low to its surface, taking advantage of the natural crevasses and craters. I knew that the chariot's countermeasures were good enough to fool Soviet made radar, but I wasn't going to gamble on Buyan having similarly limited detection. I flew low, but not so low as to agitate up the clouds of basaltic and anorthic rock that seemed likely to burst up at any second without gravity to inhibit them.
I needn't have bothered.
On the dark side of the moon, cloaked in a disruptive corona of frost and billowing moon dust, the flying city of Buyan loomed above the moon's surface. It stood at the heart of the Moon's shadow, perched atop a beam of orange-white light that it was using to bore into the moon's surface and anchor itself into place. The seismic forces of its disruptive energy were tossing rocks and debris into the air as errant bolts of orange lightning danced across the solid barrier of energy protecting Buyan from the mayhem it was causing.
As the rest of us were intently focused on the flying city Kincaid leaned over my chair, his eyes half-focused into the distant nothing as he looked at something I couldn't see.
I grunted in English, annoyed at the sudden intrusion into my personal space "You mind?"
"No." Kincaid replied, making no attempt to move from where he'd planted himself as he looked far to the left of our eventual destination, the moon. He raised his hand, pointing out into the void. "Can you get a better look at… whatever that thing is?"
The Chariot, ever eager to please, cut off my sarcastic reply before I had a chance to properly form one, displaying a ship loitering in the far distance. Ammit hissed in surprise, idly rumbling in the Goa'uld language before reverting into her mangled English. "You saw an Asgard battleship with your bare eyes? At this distance?"
The Hellhound grunted in the affirmative but provided no context as to how he'd managed that particular trick. The Hellhound wasn't human in the strictest sense, but other than knowing that he didn't exactly fit the mold for a bog-standard human – I had only my teacher's implications to go on to tell me what he actually was.
At the moment though, there were more pressing questions to ask. We still had a decent trek to get to the moon and I couldn't afford any more delays between Ivy and I.
"Will it interfere?" I inquired, nervous at its presence. I'd done research into the Asgard after my first encounter with Thor. Individual ships in the Asgard fleet were more than a match for the combined navies many Goa'uld factions.
"If Loki planned on killing us he would have done it in the … Blood of Apep." Ammit swore as the hologram zoomed out and revealed a sudden disruption of matter and energy as another Battleship appeared from hyperspace… and another. Five ships shimmered into view in as many seconds, "That's… that's an entire Asgard war party."
Apparently, Winter's Eden Son wasn't any more popular with the Norse gods than he was with mother dearest. The Asgard warships bore down on Earth's moon with clinical precision, firing prismatic beams of multicolored light in murderous technicolor. The dark side of the moon turned into a literal laser light show, Asgardian weapons of war scourging against the shields of Buyan.
The city of Buyan returned the assault in kind, unleashing it's own brilliant torrent of golden motes at the Asgard. The hellish fairy-lights swarmed out of Buyan like a swarm of angry insects, howling angrily through the air towards the Asgard warships.
I blinked in confusion as I realized that I hadn't imagined that last part. A cursory glance at the other occupants of the ship confirmed that I wasn't the only one who thought they were going insane. "You can hear that too?"
"I can… it's impossible, but I can hear those things screaming through the void." Vallarin agreed. "I don't know how but I definitely can."
The first cloud of glowing projectiles met the nearest of the Asgard warships, swimming through the shields and armored prow of the aircraft. They burrowed through it, swarming in and out of it like a school of flying-fish cresting a wave. The Norse warship collapsed in on itself, imploding in a burst of blue light that sucked the swarm into a sudden implosion of extreme gravity. Apparently even when they died the Asgard did so tactically.
The implosion was only marginally effective. The swarm of projectiles ripped their way back out of the extreme pocket of gravity, ripping through the laws of physics with a casual disregard for causality and a shower of viscous ectoplasm.
"Hell's Bells." I groaned, switching to Goa'uld to address Ammit. "Then those are a magical weapon? Something with a spiritual component?"
"Warden – they're Gate Builder weapons." The Deamoness gestured vaguely at the Chariot's systems. "The Builders never quite got around to figuring out why there should be a difference between ritual magics, binding spells, and mundane tools."
As a second Asgard ship ruptured it pitched forward, using the momentum from it's explosion to fling it's armored prow towards the city of Buyan. The spear tip of it disrupted the shield briefly, allowing the ship to fire a multicolored beam through one of the city's dagger-spires before the ship exploded. The ship tossed armor and flaming liquid in all directions, spreading out into the city as its shields sliced through the armored hull of the ship.
"How in the hell do we get through those shields Ammit?" I screamed, rolling the gate-builder craft to the right as an Asgard battleship fell from the sky to the moon's surface. It disappeared into a sudden cloud of moon-dust as the piranha-like swarm devoured it, dissolving it into a green wave of nuclear flames.
"I didn't plan on the Asgard, Warden." Ammit replied. "The Archive wasn't dealing with a city at war when she snuck out of it."
"Why are they attacking him?" The Chariot rocked to the right as we were caught in the shock-wave of sheer kinetic force from another exploding Asgard craft. We spun hard and fast, but I was able to correct us with minimal effort from the chariot. I didn't want to imagine how bad that would have been if we'd been in Earth's gravity instead of the moon. "Other than him just being his normal, friendly self."
"Odin probably." Ammit braced herself against another violent shake as I dodged an armored fin falling from an Asgard craft. "He has multiple treaties with Mab to protect her from her brother. The last leader of the Asgard failed to protect Mab's predecessor from Koschei – he regards it as a personal failure."
"Yeah… I'm getting that vibe." I replied in reverent horror as another ten Asgard warships appeared, even larger and more heavily armored than the first craft. The beam that had been emanating from Buyan into the moon's surface ceased, brilliant light cutting off entirely as the flying city raised from the ground as billowing shadows emerged from where it had been directing its weapon. The shadows bubbled up from the moon's crust, cloying and hungering out from the moon's heart like a bleeding wound.
The shadows plumed up, festering across the open void as things swam through it. Pale, squat, toad-like creatures crested the waves of shadow mounted atop strange sailing galleys. They fired arbalest tipped with blue-green spears of crystal at the Asgard ships, thousands upon thousands of flaming-jade spears peppering the hulls of the Asgardian warships. Tiny, arrow-dart fighter craft disgorged from the bellies of the larger Asgard warships, firing blue flames at the inhuman moon-beasts to dissolve them into ectoplasm.
The shields of Buyan parted slightly, opening up to allow one of the barges to enter the city. I swore angrily as I saw my chance. Pitching my chariot into the deepest pocket of shadow. As the wave of shadow consumed our craft, I felt the disruptive wrongness of the shadow wash over it. A greasy feeling of unease subsumed me as the warning flashed on my readout "cloaking disabled."
"Damn it." I groaned as the spears of jade started to come towards us as well as towards the Asgard. A jagged shot of blazing jade arbalest shot pierced the cockpit, venting atmosphere. "Doesn't this thing have any weapons?"
Apparently, it did.
Always eager to please, the Chariot interpreted my intent in an instant – targeting several of the moon-thing's ships and firing a few of the glowing yellow projectile weapons in quick succession. The galley I was following burst into flames as I rocketed past the wreckage, just barely flying in through Buyan's shields as the city angrily smashed closed its defenses – shutting off the remaining galleys from the city proper. Three of them smashed against the city shields before the rest of them broke off, riding the tendrils of shadow out towards the Asgardian warships.
I noted that eyes had opened along the shadowy tendrils, wide slitted orbs of red and yellow that cast out purple bursts of lightning at the Asgardian craft. The grey men grabbed onto that lightning, riding it up and into the open sores along the hulls of the Asgardian warships.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I was so distracted by the display that I didn't see the window until it was too late.
The chariot's mass shattered through the glass wall of a dangling skyscraper, motion arresting abruptly as the front end of the chariot met the front of a large water feature at the center of a large library. The crash damaged whatever device or ritual had been preventing forward inertia from being felt within the chariot, driving my head into metallic surface of the control devices. Absent a safety harness I cracked my head against it with enough force to pulp my skull.
I pulled away from the control panel, blinded by pain and sudden absence of eyes. I staggered, grabbing hold of Kincaid's harness as my face reformed. As my sight restored, I was greeted by the horrified expressions of the Russian soldiers – apparently watching my head re-form had been as gruesome to watch as it had been painful to feel.
My compatriots had faired better in the crash than I had. Kincaid apparently had the good sense to lash himself to the wall and ceiling with paracord laced though his combat webbing, giving him sufficient leverage to grab Muminah and hold her in a bear hug to keep her safe. Ammit's bulk allowed her to grab hold of the ceiling and use her mass to arrest the forward momentum of the Russian soldiers, blocking them against an immovable wall of scales.
"Ok, all you happy people." I snarled through a jaw that was half-formed and vocal chords that were more Goa'uld reverberation than human speech at the moment – my words echoing in Russian, English, and Goa'uld simultaneously, though damned if I knew how. "All ashore who are going ashore."
As my words became more coherent, I realized that my linguistic simulcast was a result of my mouth not yet having unified into a single piece. The bloody shadows that had been reforming into my face manipulated my shattered teeth and broken bits of jaw into three separate mouths, each grinning with malformed fragments of bone. I twisted my neck and inhaled the billowing mess of starlight that was carrying my broken bits back into my face, massaging my newly reformed jaw as I walked towards the back of the broken chariot. I blasted out the bent in rear hatch with a wave of force from my staff and entered the library.
As libraries went, it was a good one. Floor to ceiling book shelves, clear signage, potted plants and pretty water features next to the reading nooks, and hurricane Dresden had driven the short-bus straight through the horticulture section. It was all covered in dust and cobwebs, but it was one of the largest collections I'd ever seen. I picked up the nearest book from the floor and had a moment of utter shame as it practically dissolved in my fingers. A combination of extreme age and exposure to water turned it to pulpy mush. "Ammit… do I want to know how old these books are?"
"Best guess?" Ammit replied, handing me a small brick she'd pulled from the chariot's wall. "Over five thousand years old."
"Over?" I tip-toed over another pile of ruined books, hoping against hope that when they dried there might be something salvageable left over.
"Well – they're from before Koschei coming back to Earth." Ammit gestured to the multitude of texts. "Koschei isn't the bookish type. He wasn't writing this. He certainly hasn't been down here to read it. Look at the dust."
She was right, outside the stream of liquid coming from the broken water feature the tile floor was utterly covered in millennia of dust. The river pouring out the broken window seemed less like a clean floor and more like a window into a previous epoch. She pointed at the brick. "Come on Warden. Find where the jackass is so we can get out of this place before the Asgard actually manage to win this battle."
"They weren't doing a great job of that when last I saw." I pointed at a flaming hulk of alien metal as it careened down to the moon's surface and exploded in a plume of nuclear fire that subsequently imploded into nothingness.
"The Asgard keep their oldest and most incapable craft on their borders." Ammit shrugged. "The Bilskirnir were in service back in their first war against us. They've modernized them, but it is far from their most capable hull type in service. We have not merited the use of their actually capable ships since the Folly. Once the Asgard decide this merits more than a token use of force, it will end poorly for Koschei."
"They're losing because they don't take Koschei seriously?" I cringed. "That's a lot of death to learn that he's serious."
"It's the Asgard." Ammit rolled her eyes. "If those ships are even manned it is only a single mind controlling the fleet, and likely not the only copy of that mind. No captain, no crew – no risk."
"How do you have a ship without a crew?" I blinked in confusion. Goa'uld technology always required at least some interface between machine and man.
"How should I know? If I were as clever as an Asgard I wouldn't have lost a war to keep a single planet." She tapped the brick with a claw. "Use the device."
I looked at it and realized that I was looking at a wire frame map of the city we were standing in, a skeletal image of room we stood inside of that when manipulated with my fingers showed more or less of the city. As I twisted buttons and knobs it panned up and down the city, allowing me to maneuver through Buyan. Glowing motes of light shown to greater or lesser degrees based off of the creature in question. Humans showed up as white, Kincaid showed up as a shimmering grey, Ammit as a glowing green, and I appeared as golden triangle icon rather than the circular images for the rest.
The bright orange inverted triangles that seemed to be pouring out of every nook and cranny of Buyan and bee lining their way down to the library seemed to bode poorly, judging by that iconography of a tiny skull marked on each triangle. I pointed my staff at the door and shouted "Incoming" as the first of the orange triangles came into plain view.
It was an ugly, misshapen thing with only a passing illusion of humanity to it. Unnaturally wide jaws, jagged shark-like teeth, wide shoulders, sharp talons, and a persistent scent of carrion and decay, there are few creatures as ugly or loathsome as a ghoul. They're tough, mean, and damn difficult to kill.
I felt a wave of manic, murderous glee from my mantle at the edge of my mind my eye twitched reflexively – mirroring the uncontrollably wide grin on my face as a wave of adrenaline ran through my system. I realized that I was laughing like a lunatic as I clutched my face with my talon tipped gauntlet, runnels of blue-green fire pouring from my mouth and eyes to pool on the ground beneath my feet. "Ghouls Ammit – he has a city full of ghouls."
"Yes, Warden." Ammit spoke cautiously, holding up her hand to stop Muminah as she moved to approach me. "But we can take them. They're not impossible – "
"They're perfect!" I cackled, drunk in the madness of my mantle. It's intoxicating power flowing through me as it and I agreed entirely upon the necessary course of action to take.
The poor bastard never had a chance.
Magic is something you have to believe to make it work. The more you feel that something ought to be true, the more you are able to tap into the fundamental forces of the universe to impose that reality upon the world around you. And there are few things I feel quite so firmly as that the only good ghoul is a dead ghoul. I dislike Vampires. I disagree with Warlocks. I discourage Necromancers. I hate ghouls. There is a special place in my heart full of utter contempt for ghouls that only Moloch seemed to have pierced thus far.
Ghouls like inflicting pain. They'll feed on a victim while that person is still alive, as though the screams just add flavor to their meal. They're the low rent scum of the supernatural world, willing to kill anyone for damn near any reason. I'd nearly been eaten by a ghoul more than once – and seen too many of their victims to ever tolerate one in my presence.
So when I tapped into the well of power from my mantle and bellowed "Fulminos," the angry predator who'd entered the room didn't even have a chance to hear the clap of thunder that accompanied the burst of heat and light that vaporized the flesh from his bones and left behind a pile of confused charnel for his compatriots to trip over as I blasted them away with force from my palm foci.
I charged ahead with mad glee, burning my way through the terrified second wave of ghouls as they cautiously approached the pile of bodies – cackling out of control as I purged the loathsome creatures. City of the Ancient Gate Builders or not – Ghouls hadn't been much of a threat to me even when I'd been just a mere Wizard. I was vaguely aware of my compatriots mopping up after me as I ripped and tore my way through the streets of Buyan, cutting bloody burning swathes through the army of ghouls inhabiting it.
I lost count of how many I'd killed at some point. Hundreds – maybe thousands, every single room of this damn city seemed to have a ghoul in it. Some died to fire. Some died to frost. Some just died from my talons raking across their throats and ripping out their windpipe. A particularly unfortunate ghoul made the mistake of trying to sneak past me and go for the disrobed priestess.
I didn't kill him – not immediately. I ripped off his arms and legs with blasts of magical force then tossed his screaming body off the side of the city. His screams echoed down till he landed on the city's shields and slow cooked from the constant stream of energy protecting it. His mangled body bouncing down the inverted dome of energy till an explosion against the shield finally dropped him to the moon's surface. His body inflated in the vacuum of space bursting into a bubble of fetid flesh and bone to hover in near zero gravity.
I was vaguely aware of my compatriots mopping up after me as we went, mercy killings for the ghouls who I'd simply maimed rather than killing outright. I don't know what it is exactly about ghouls, but I just don't ever feel guilty about hurting them. I can inflict impossible, horrific amounts of violence on them and never once question the validity of that action.
That unity of purpose bound to the rage of god? It is a prescription for some awesome magic in the traditional sense of the word. On instinct I just kept heading towards the largest concentrations of the toughest Ghouls, wagering that Koschei's inner sanctum was going to be the most heavily guarded spot at the center of the six spokes of the iron snowflake.
Apparently even an army of Ghouls has its breaking point. When one of them finally managed to break through my defenses and bash my head in, only for me to grab the axe, rip it out of my own skull, and chop the ghoul in half with the blade burning in the twilight fire of my own blood – the ghoul army seemed to get the message.
Terrified ghouls trampled and fought each other in an effort to retreat, those who'd managed to get in line of sight of the violence I could inflict doing their best to battle their way to safety. The terrified, scrambling warriors bit, clawed and hacked at each other – successfully managing to only injure each other and create more concentrated clusters of inhuman monsters for me to char to cinders. The halls of Buyan became a crematorium, confined spaces littered with ash and horribly warped bone that shattered beneath my armored boots.
When we finally reached the doors of the inner sanctum and came face to face with a quartet of massive, eight-foot-tall ghouls covered in sharp protrusions of bone and hard carapace beneath their flesh I was wreathed in a billowing cloud of the fallen. Lightning coruscated across my body, rumbling thunder echoing through as I hummed the tune to "Ring around the Rosy." The prehistoric looking ghouls gave each other a side-long glance from beneath their protruding brow ridges. Recessed eyes flashing with intelligence but not understanding, they frowned at me with tusk filled mouths. Their primitive minds were apparently able to recognize the danger in front of them but unable to allow themselves to bow to a threat physically smaller than they were.
"Move." I snarled. "Move and you live. Stay and you die."
Either they were unable to speak Goa'uld or just too damn stubborn to believe that they could die the way the smaller ghouls had. I cackled as their bodies attempted to reform, bodily fluids and vivisected limbs flowing back together like mercury flowing in reverse, but I just continued to pour my will into the fires consuming them. They were ripped apart by inches in the flickering silver torrent of flames that poured out from my staff. Actual hands and fingers shaped like my own gauntlet covered ones dragged the screaming bodies of the ghouls back into the blaze as they impotently tried to crawl to safety. I crooned as they immolated, "Ashes – ashes you all fall down!"
As the last bubbling pile of molten mercury turned to immolated ash, I blasted through the now molten hot bulkhead of Koschei's inner sanctum. The thick metal door bowed inward like wet paper, flinging molten motes across a wide arboretum. They smoldered in the deep pond, sending smoke into the air to combine with the charnel cloud of bone dust that accompanied my arrival as I looked on a huge, hale, green oak tree.
I looked back at my companions, all of whom were covered in dust, blood, and other fluids I didn't want to consider. They were all looking at me with a mixed bag of confusion, fear, reverence, and astonishment to varying degrees. Even Kincaid looked suitably wary.
"Everyone picks part of the ground around the tree." I intoned, kneeling down to the pool to splash water on my face. The cool water felt blissfully against the caked in layer of corpse dust. "We've got a chest to find."
It wasn't until after I'd issued the command that I realized that I wasn't sure what language I'd been speaking when they'd all just leapt to obeying it without question.