Chapter 17 - Penalties
"Oh no!" he said, and lifted her to his back. "ODIN!" Chase heard from below. "CHASE, PEACH!" another familiar voice shouted. Chase turned to the floor, spying Zeus and Thor at the door, "UP HERE!" he called out, "Odin's at the top, Shiva trapped him in a pod, and I think Peach is hurt!"
Thor spun his hammer, while Zeus clapped his hands. With a mighty throw, Thor lifted into the air, and Zeus pulled from his hand, a large bolt of lightning. He held it in his hand as if it were a spear, and pulled it back over his shoulder. Shiva turned, jumping towards the two kits, rage in his eyes as he soared through the air.
Zeus let loose his thunderbolt, striking the Azure in the chest and knocking him out o f the air.
Thor came swopping down, his father in his arms as he watched Chase make his way down to the ground with his pained sister. "What has happened to your sister young Chase?" he asked. "I suggest we talk outside of Yggdrasil, it is not safe here with the tree in pain!" Zeus said as he returned from grabbing the Azure, a lightning bolt wrapped around all four of his wrists like a chain.
The six of them ran, exiting into the councilor's chamber before making a bee line to the front gate, the walls of Yggdrasil warping and swaying as they tried to close in on each other.
Chase and Peach made it first, his jaw quickly dropping as he looked out to the battle field; Thor, Odin, Zeus and Shiva closely behind him. "What?" he asked. The surviving Einherjar each raised their hands in victory, cheering as they made it out, the remains of the Frost Giants scattered around their feet and the dead lined up to be remembered. "We have won!" Thor said as they stood still. Zeus smiled, "Of course they have, they are the Einherjar!" he said and pushed Shiva out front. "You shall be punished for your crimes Shiva!" the bearded god said.
Chase heard a grunt from his back, a small silent cringe as his sister held her throat in pain, "Wait, what about Peach?" he asked, and let her slide to the ground.
Zeus quickly forgot about the traitor, and reached down, lifting the small kit in his hands, "She is so tiny!" he commented, "Tiny and fragile! We can only do what we can to repay you!" Thor nodded, and turned to the kit, "How has this injury been wrought upon her?" he asked. "She yelled, she was never supposed to yell! The vet said that she'd barely be able to talk after the accident!" Chase began in a frantic as Zeus moved away from them, taking Peach to someone that could heal her. "Easy little one, take it slow and tell me what happened!" Thor said as he lifted his hands.
Crash let the last drop in the moss fall, dripping on the head of the last statue the gorgons brought to him, "That's the last of it!" he said, and jumped down, one of the little children catching him in their arms. The child giggled as he caught the kit, and was quickly surrounded by other children, each wanting to pet their savior. "Ok, not what I had in mind!" Crash said as his sister giggled at his little trouble. Bolt stretched out his limbs, removing as much of the left over muscle tension as he could, "I hate to break up the cuddle!" he grunted as he, his wife and his best friend removed the last of the stiffness, "But it's time we made it back to Chase and Peach and made our way home!" the children each let out their disappointment as Crash jumped to the ground, "Sorry! But if we stay much longer, I'm afraid something bad is gonna happen!"
The five of them were lead to the town entrance, each of the Gorgons throwing flower pedals and cheering for them as they departed. Bolt decided to turn around and wave to them, Crash and Crystal doing the same as Mittens and Rhino smiled.
Inside the cave, Medusa stood there, still turned to stone as she watched a figure walk up to her, a figure she knew quite well, "It's a shame about you!" Beowulf said as he moved around her, "Your own powers turned against you, and yet those eyes!" He dared not look into her pupils, he knew they still worked, "Those eyes still hold the power of stone!" he said, and pushed on his front legs. His body shifted, the muscles in this arms and legs rearranging themselves as he changed from a wolf, to a wolfman. "And since you're not going to use that power for a while…" he said, and took one swipe with his paw, ripping the head from the statue, "…I think I'll try it out on someone!" He quickly slid a bag around the stone head, hiding its eyes form the world as he slipped away, almost like he had never been there in the first place.
"She sacrificed her voice to save you!" Thor told the kit. "She shouldn't have had to!" Chase responded, "I should have been paying more attention! I should have known Shiva would try that!"
"You are both right and wrong!" Thor responded, and narrowed his eyes in anger, "If you had opened your mind to the world around you, if you had stopped trying to prove everything with one simple and incomplete way of thinking, then you might have heard her speaking to you mind, she warned you twice before!"
"But, I never…" Chase said, his ears finding themselves against the back of his head. "I warned you in the forge, her voice can only be heard by those who have opened their mind. Yours is a sealed vault, you are so satisfied, so contempt with how your world works, how your world is, that there is no room for change, and change is to be dismissed instead of embraced." Thor told him, "You and your arrogance have done this to your sister, it is you who is to be blamed for further injuring her. YOU have taken what was left of her voice!" Chase curled up as Thor scolded him, tears beginning to run down his eyes as what the giant man said began to sink in. "Thor!" they both heard Odin say, "It is no one's fault, no one is to blame, and no one is to pass blame." The look he gave his son told the young god all he needed, "Yes father!" Thor said, and turned away, "What shall we do with him?"
"There is nothing you can do!" Shiva said as they all turned to him. Einherjar each held his arms out, keeping him from moving, "No matter what you do, MY father will free me, any prison you send me to, he will destroy. I will be free by one earth month's time!" he said, and felt the Einherjar release him. "Ah!" he said as he began walking, "I see you have come to your senses!" and was quickly snatched up by Scylla. Each head holding tightly onto his arms and legs so that he faced the three wolf heads on her pelt. "Even you cannot hold me!" Shiva said with a smile.
Everyone backed up when the cracking noise began. Scylla's back slowly opened up, a single human woman's hand reaching out. Then, another hand each gripping the sides of the new opening and with a pull, a head emerged. The human continued to exit, the long black hair draping across her, a beautiful and perfect face hidden beneath the drape of strands. She kept pushing, emerging from the back of Scylla, only to stop at her hips. She hissed, and the six heads brought Shiva close to her.
"That is Scylla's true form!" Odin whispered to the Chase as he began to shake, "She is her most ferocious like this, for this head alone holds the mind and anger of what she once was!"
"I may not be able to hold you, or devour you without consequence…" Scylla's true body said as she gently brushed her fingertips across the Azure's chin, "But I know of a prison even your father dare not go! And with the charges against you, I doubt he'll try to begin a war!"
"A prison my father wouldn't…no! You don't mean…" Shiva began as he fearfully put the pieces of Shiva's words together. "Oh, yes I do!" she said with a groan, and reached her six heads out, stretching them to their fullest as they held onto the four armed traitor, "Oh Charybdis!" she called out. The ground above Shiva churned, funneling into what became an open mouth of a creature large enough to swallow a ship whole. "NO!" Shiva said as he turned back from Charybdis to Scylla, "I'll do anything you ask, just please not the belly of Charybdis."
"I'll think about it!" Scylla said gently, and her heads all let go of the Azure, letting him fall into the waiting maw of the unseen monster. "GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…" called the broken scream of Shiva, cut off only when Charybdis closed its mouth and vanished, leaving only a sunken pit where it used to be. Scylla simply smiled, and walked off, finding her way back to her post as her true form sank back into the body of the creature.
The End
