Adventures of John: Death of Magic

Chapter 1: The Slaughter of Asgard

I caught the blade of the battle-axe on a magical barrier, shattering the crude steel and sending the hairy warrior flying backwards. "Einherjar," I muttered scornfully. "Just as brutish and idiotic in death as they were in life." Those ageless Asgardian warriors had once been Vikings, given an eternity in Valhalla as reward for their valiant deaths in battle. Which usually meant that they got themselves killed in incredibly stupid situations that any sane person could have thought their way out of. In this case I was glad for it, as it made them all the easier to kill.

I ran the warrior through, swinging around to slice the heads off a pair that had attempted to strike me from behind. I laughed as the savage warriors continued to come at me in waves, their primitive minds unable to comprehend the impossibility of their situation. Of course, their determination was understandable. After all, from their perspective they were fighting for their gods. There was no way for them to lose. Except of course that I had already killed one of their gods, and I planned to kill the rest before the day was through. I snapped my fingers and their necks spun around with blinding speed, snapping violently.

"Godslayer!" a voice proclaimed. Turning around, I saw a pale-skinned man with a short brown beard wielding a spear. He wore a horned helmet and a suit of chainmail, with a fur pelt overlaying it. He didn't look particularly special or powerful, other than the deadly glint in his eye, and his missing hand. "I am Tyr, god of war, law and honor, and I declare you an honorless scoundrel! Your slaying of Thor was without honor! Will you face me in honorable combat or defeat me in the same honorless manner you did my brother?"

"Thor was the one without honor. When given the chance for honorable combat he chose instead to ambush me with help from four other gods. And if I really was an honorless scoundrel then I don't think I would be capable of honorable combat," I replied. "Besides, I didn't come here to duel you or anyone else. I came here to exterminate you and burn this realm to ashes." Tyr's face turned to a snarl and he charged towards me, eliciting a grin from me. I raised my hand toward him and a column of white-hot fire erupted from before me, engulfing the would-be god in flames.

"One more down." I strode over his charred bones casually, making my way deeper into the "Realm Eternal". An interesting name, seeing as it wouldn't be around for much longer. I summoned my Godslayer blade and slowly slid it through the pile of ash and bone, grinning as I watched the blade consume his essence. Another god dead, another massive amount of power added my already unstoppable weapon.

Turning back to the fields before me, I saw an immense army of Einherjar charging in a horde, axes and swords and spears shining brilliantly in the sunlight. I grinned at this, laughing as I saw the determination on their faces. It was strange really. Incredibly peculiar. They were so determined… to die.

I leapt into the sky, falling back down with my blade outstretched, like an angel of death preparing for the harvest. I landed in a gargantuan explosion of golden light, light which disintegrated everything it touched. Hundreds of Asgard's warriors died in those first few seconds, and they were far from the last. I stood up and fire engulfed the land around me, Einherjar screams cut short as the flames consumed their oh-so flammable flesh. I swept through them, moving at blinding speed, lightning crackling at my fingertips.

. . . . .

"The gods have deserted us." The Einherjar were the bravest warriors in the eternities. All of them had already faced death with a smile on their face. They had fought warriors from a dozen civilizations and even monsters of myth without fear. But this… this was different. The being was everywhere. Its flames consumed hundreds of his comrades. Its blade took the lives of a hundred more. It seemed like only a moment had passed, and already their ranks were more composed of corpses then of men. This was no man, no beast, no god. This was the end. This was Ragnarok, given shape and form. They were already dead.

This wasn't what was supposed to happen. Where is Loki, where is Fenrir, where is the Midgard Serpent, Jörmungandr? Where are the gods in all their glory? This wasn't how Ragnarok was foretold. Yet here it is, and we can do nothing to stop it. We have failed. Oh, merciful gods, we have failed.

We have failed.

That was the warrior's last thought as lighting stuck him, illuminating him for a single moment before leaving him a charred husk.

. . . . .

I felt a surge of dark energy above me and looked up from my slaughter to see dozens of women in full battle armor riding on winged steeds. They drew in the air, and where they drew glowing runes appeared. These were the Valkyrie, choosers of the slain. The fools think to mark me for death, I realized. Funny. I vanished and suddenly there were hundreds of duplicates exactly like me, scattered throughout the remains of the Einherjar force, each copy adorned in the same golden armor and wielding the same deadly blade. My duplicates attacked without mercy, slaughtering what remained of the army.

The Valkyrie cast their death curses down and the duplicates that were struck were shattered by the deathly energy. However, each shattered sliver formed into a separate duplicate, and soon I had thousands of duplicates. With the Einherjar slain they cast themselves into the air, striking at the Valkyrie forces with fire and lightning. The poor ladies never stood a chance. With the bothersome death-slingers dealt with I continued on my way, preparing myself for my next challenge.

Hearing footsteps behind me I stopped, smiling cruelly. "You failed Heimdall. Your eternal watch is over. I came into Asgard without your knowing. When you finally realized I was here you blew your horn and the armies of Asgard came to meet me. Now they lay dead at my feet. Are you ready to meet the same fate?"

"Gjallarhorn did indeed blow, but Asgard's armies are far larger than you suppose," he replied sternly. "What you faced was merely a vanguard. The rest will come, and the rest of the Aesir will come with them. And do not presume. I will not die this day, or the next. I will not die until Ragnarok, when I shall fall in battle slaying the traitor Loki."

I turned around and bared my teeth in a savage grin. "Is that so? What of Thor, what of Tyr? Did they not also have a part to play in this Ragnarok of yours? Face the facts Heimdall. I broke Ragnarok. Your apocalypse cannot come to pass. Your entire mythology has become obsolete. Today Asgard will burn and its gods will fall."

He looked at me thoughtfully, pulling at his snowy white beard. All his hair was the same color as the beard, a spotless white that matched his pale skin. Even his eyes were white, white irises staring into my golden ones. I find it somewhat humorous that Marvel cast a black actor for a guy that looked like he could have camouflaged himself within a snow bank.

"If that is so," he mused, "then my ageless watch has been for nothing." He shook his head determinately. "No. It is you who dies today, Godslayer."

"So be it then," I sighed. The sky was suddenly lit as flames burst from the ground and enveloped the guardian of the Bifrost. After a moment the flames dissipated and Heimdall still stood there, obviously shaken and looking slightly sick, but other than that completely unharmed by the torrential flames.

"My enemy in Ragnarok was to be Loki," he laughed weakly. "Do you really think I would not have a defense against such magics?"

"Of course. Well, there is one magic that no 'god' can defend against." I dashed forward and struck out with my Godslayer blade, an attack that Heimdall blocked with ease.

"I am the guardian of the Bifrost. Do you really think Odin would have a weakling defend the entrance to his kingdom?"

"No, but I killed the god of war," I reminded him. "I think I can take you." I teleported behind him and he blocked my attack, and thus began our dance. I teleported behind, to the left, to the right, above, and below, and each attack was met with Heimdall's blade. His preternatural senses were obviously the reason for this. Without them he would have died in the first five seconds. But he did have them, so our battle continued to grow in speed and fervor.

I teleported behind him and he turned to block, only for my blade to piercer his spine as he did. He stared up at me in confusion as he looked between the blade stick out of his chest and the blade in my hand. I pushed him to the ground, and his dying eyes saw two of me standing side-by-side above him. "You call yourselves gods," both of me told him, crouching down, "but your powers are so limited. There is so little you can actually do. Me, on the other hand," the two mes came back together into my usual self, "anything I can imagine, I can do." I impaled his skull with the Godslayer Blade, and once it had finished absorbing his essence I incinerated his corpse. "And I can imagine quite a lot."

I left his ashes where they lay, walking up to a nearby cliff, dropping down to more of Asgard below. Below me Asgard's armies gathered, hundreds of thousands of Einherjar and tens of thousands of Valkyrie all gathered to destroy me, led by their gods. I closed my eyes and focused on the earth below them, then opened my eyes and watched as the ground beneath their feet opened up to swallow them before closing again with a sickening crunch that I could hear all the way on my hilltop. I looked up at the sky and storm clouds gathered, unleashing lightning that fried the Valkyrie in the air. In a matter of minutes Asgard's armies were reduced to a few shocked Einherjar and a collection of horrified gods.

"Gods of Asgard!" I proclaimed, my voice booming across the expanse. "Your time is over! This world no longer has need of you. You gave up your souls in exchange for power, and this is where that choice has led you. Your champions are dead, your prophecies broken. You can either accept the end peacefully, or die screaming." I shot a stream of golden fire into the sky to punctuate my statement, setting the sky alight.

Suddenly the flames died and an aged figure rode out to the forefront of the gathered Asgardians. His long grey beard dangled over his ancient armor, his one remaining eye staring at me as he brandished his spear above his eight-legged steed. "And I have a counter-offer!" he exclaimed. "Abandon this fool's quest now, and I, Odin Allfather, will ensure that your death is swift and painless."

"I think not."

He sighed sagely. "So be it." He hurled his spear at me, the enchanted weapon flying through the air directly towards my face. It stopped in the air, my hands having collided together against the tip, halting its deadly advance. I laughed and held the spear aloft.

"You are obsolete, Allfather. The time of heathen gods has ended. You have not been worshipped for centuries. Your power is failing. You call yourselves gods, yet you can't even retain your youth without eating those blasted apples of yours. Humanity has discarded you, just as you once discarded your own humanity." The air around me shook with power, electricity crackling dangerously. "And today you die." I snapped his spear over my leg, shards of wood flying into the air. I directed the shards to their targets, two ravens circling above the battlefield. Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory. They died, and with their death Odin fell to the ground, his mind gone.

Before the assembled deities could react to the disaster I was among them, slashing with my Godslayer Blade. The power in Odin's spear was gone, absorbed into the blade, just as the essences of these Asgardians were about to be. When the slaughter was over I stood over the collective corpses of the Norse gods, the religion of an ancient culture lying dead at my feet.

I closed my eyes and the earth shook, the sky thundered, and the very air trembled at the power I was about to unleash. The ground fell apart beneath my feet, mountains crumbling to dust. The homes and palaces of the Asgardians fell, disintegrating into ash. Fires erupted from the earth and the landscape shifted and changed, becoming jagged and broken. There was no more Asgard. There was nothing left but fire and ruin.

. . . . .

Hel, daughter of Loki and goddess of death, screamed as the Godslayer Blade drank her essence. Loki's other children, the wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent, fell likewise. I wielded the power of a thousand dead gods, and not even the greatest of beasts could withstand such might. Finally, after all the Norse deities were dead but one, I approached the last of them. The trickster god Loki, bound by the entrails of his son. A giant, much larger than the comics would have you believe, Loki was a massive being. He strained against his bonds, his eyes blinded by the venom of the snake above him. The bowl holding the venom was nearly full, and there was no one left to empty it. Soon it would overflow, and more than his eyes would feel the touch of venom.

"Who's there?!" he cried. "I know you are there! I can hear your breath!"

"My name is John," I told him, crouching down. "I am known by some as the Godslayer. Asgard is gone Loki. I have destroyed it. Thor, Odin, Heimdall, all are dead. But so are your children, Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent. Ragnarok has been broken. Now there is only one thing remaining."

"You are here to kill me," he stated simply.

"Indeed." I sighed, pulling out my blade. "For the record, I never wanted this. Your fellow gods brought forced me into this. They had every chance to leave well enough alone. Now it is too late for them, and too late for you." He breathed his last breath and the Godslayer blade consumed the essence of the last of the Norse gods.

. . . . .

"Another pantheon eliminated," a sinister voice commented from behind me. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

I sighed and turned around to see the Trickster, displaying his disturbing jagged-toothed grin. "Nothing about this slaughter is good," I replied. "It's necessary. The time of men worshipping false gods is over. Their time has expired."

"Oh, but don't you enjoy the thrill? The surge of power as you consume the power of another god? So many pantheons dead now, all at your hand. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Polynesians, the Aztecs, the Slavs, the Canaanites… was it just me, or did the Canaanite gods look a bit sickly to you? I wonder how long it has been since anyone worshipped them…"

"How many times do I have to kill you before you finally leave me alone?"

He laughed at that. "Sorry, but that's not going to happen anytime soon Johnny Boy. I'm not a god, so that fancy toy of yours wouldn't work on me. I'll always come back for more. I'm unique."

"Unique? What about your relatives that kidnapped my wife back in Arendelle?"

"Relatives?" he laughed. "I'm afraid you've been misled Adventurer. You see, I'm from this universe. They were from that universe." He gestured exaggeratedly as he spoke, pointing and waving all over the place. "Completely different realities. So sorry, no relation." He mused for a moment, his shadowy form temporarily losing its humanoid shape and becoming amorphous. "Even though you still can't always tell when you're being lied to, you've come quite a long way from that curious boy I met in the Faerie Forest all those years ago. Now you're the savior of the universe and slayer of gods. So much has changed, and all of it because of you."

"I don't have time to reminisce with you Trickster," I told him, my fist beginning to glow. "I have somewhere to be."

"Ah yes, wouldn't want to disappoint the misses. Give her my love!" He vanished just before my lance of light could strike him, his maddening laugh echoing in the air.