SHADOW OF DEATH
Chapter 47: Unbound
Shuri blinked her eyes in rapid succession against the bright sunlight overhead. Her mask blinked with readings and an orange "error" message blared in one corner of her vision. She struggled to pull in one breath and then another and she couldn't for the life of her remember how she ended up on this side of the battlefield.
What happened?
She remembered fighting. Around her, she heard the clanging of swords and spears, the cries of battle, and the discharge of whatever those flying aliens above her used to rain down on the troops below. It did not seem that they cared whether they hit allies or enemies, as long as they made someone explode below. The Aesir force rode horses with wings like pigeons and they attempted to shoot the Chitauri down with bows and arrows, of all things. The contrast between creatures of myth and archaic weapons against aliens in airships shooting laser guns would have been enough to fill a bad science fiction movie and keep her in stitches for hours…if it wasn't happening around her in real life.
She had to shake herself out of her morbid fascination more than once as an entire legion of towering blue soldiers turned living skeletons into wriggling ice sculptors and a woman with horns that rivalled a kudu produced knives out of thin air and moved with a speed and strength that made even the Black Panther appear as slow and clumsy as a tortoise. This was unlike anything her training with the Dora Milaje had prepared her for and she fought with all her strength just to stay alive.
Shuri applauded herself for her foresight in bringing her twin blasters along. She knew T'Challa preferred to rely on his vibranium claws and his weaponized suit, but Shuri would rather keep her opponents so far away that her claws remained unnecessary. It helped that she had adjusted the range of her blasters to the point where they could bring down Chitauri fighters overhead and so she stayed hidden behind an outcropping of rocks, shooting bursts of energy into the sky and keeping a count of how many she saw topple down to the ground after a well-aimed hit.
Okoye, predictably, stationed herself in front of Shuri's position for as long as she could and drew off any attackers who came too close. Sergeant Barnes took cover behind a boulder just behind her and he filled the air with a volley of bullets, reminding her of just why he was a trained assassin. His aim was impeccable and he rarely missed. He also proved to have just as deadly an aim with a spear or knife as with a rifle and Shuri wondered just how many different weapons he had been trained to use. Then, she decided she would rather not know the answer.
With an expression of grim determination, he emptied round after round into the sky until the threat posed by their nonliving opponents overweighed those of the living Chitauri. His bullets proved much less effective against reanimated skeletons. He soon abandoned his hiding place in favor of charging straight towards the undead army and bashing them into fragments with his metal arm. This proved much more effective and the bits that remained of his victims were entirely incapacitated.
When it became clear that full bodily decomposition was not a requirement for this army of the undead, the battle became exceedingly more gruesome. Shuri had not understood what was happening… until she saw Okoye charge at Jane with deadly intent. Okoye's vacant eyes did not register recognition and her hands did not stop to remove the sword protruding from her chest. She fought with completely dispassionate ferocity until Jane was forced to end her. Shuri couldn't watch and she didn't know how Jane managed it.
"What the hell?" Sergeant Barnes said, from behind her. He had stopped fighting when he saw the flash of light and Okoye's subsequent dismemberment. "Did she just…"
"The General was already dead… now she is more dead," Shuri said, her voice hitching when she forced the words out. She could feel the tears pooling beneath her mask and she struggled to remind herself to focus on the battle around her and not on the emotions threatening to paralyze her in place.
Bucky whistled under his breath and then stationed himself in front of Shuri, taking over the position that Okoye had once held. Shuri continued to shower bursts of energy at anyone who came near them, fighting within herself not to hesitate when the invaders were wearing flesh rather than bone. It had been easier when she could distinguish allies from enemies by the presence or lack of skin. It was all the more terrible now that the severed limbs of the mutilated corpses continued to move and wiggle, but now with blood and ligaments and muscles still present rather than only dry bone.
Bucky kicked a writhing human hand away from himself and across the field like it was an angry rooster rather than a dismembered limb. It bounced against the ground and continued to creep and crawl like a living thing after it fell and tried to come right back to where Bucky now fought what had once been a Jotun.
Shuri was so focused on the resurrected blue giant coming towards Bucky that she had not noticed the dead Aesir creeping behind her. The man rushed her with his sword drawn, despite the fact that he was missing an arm and an arrow protruded from his eye socket. While the power of the Black Panther made her nearly impervious to human attackers, this man was not human. The defensive shock capabilities of her suit were entirely useless on a man whose heart had already stopped beating. His uru sword could not penetrate the vibranium weave of her armor, but it could incapacitate her blasters. He sliced through them both and she lashed at him with her claws, hoping to remove his other arm.
She could hear Bucky's shout and the sound of his vibranium arm crashing into her attacker from behind, but by then, it was too late. Three more skeletal warriors descended on them. She felt one skeletal hand tear off her mask while the others held down her hands and feet, leaving her easy prey to the blade of a sword. Metal sliced against her throat and she could taste of her own blood between gurgled gasps for breath.
"No, no, no, Shuri!" came Jane's ragged voice – very far and very faint. Warm hands cradled her head and prodded at her wounds. "Come on, Shuri. Hold on. I can fix this."
She could feel a hum of power and barely sense the flash of blue light around her, but then she closed her eyes and it all grew quiet. She no longer heard the roar of the battle or even Jane's voice. It all evaporated into nothingness and she was alone.
Or, at least, she thought she was alone.
She opened her eyes again and no longer saw the forest of deciduous trees or the grassy field of Asgard. Instead, she saw the much more familiar sight of the shallow sky over the savanna.
A light breeze rustled through the sweet grasses and she caught the scent of rich earth, freshly watered by an afternoon rain. She could not see any stars, though there was just enough light to make out the silhouettes around her. There were hills a far way off and a handful of acacia trees – their branches stretching horizontally rather than upwards and their sparse foliage barely visible in the dwindling light.
The eyes of great cats flashed in the darkness and she could feel them watching her. It was only then that she realized that she was standing on all fours and that a tail curled around behind her. She sat on her haunches and lifted what had once been her hand. Now it was a paw – large and thickly padded. Her eyes flew back to the other dark shapes in the tree, anxiously seeking for someone familiar.
"Baba," she whispered.
A shadow leapt from the tree and began to silently pad toward her. Before it reached her, she was enveloped in a rush of purple light. The sun burst over the savanna, illuminating the red earth below and the yellow bark of the trees. The dark cats resting in the trees leapt to the ground, each staring at the rising dawn. Then, one by one, they vanished in a cloud of violet.
Shuri gasped again and she ran her hands (they were hands now, no longer paws) over her sides. She could breathe. She was upright by her own strength, though she was kneeling on the ground. She held a sword instead of her blasters and she was halfway across the battlefield. The sensors of her suit continued to blare at her and she realized just what messages they were giving.
Her vitals screamed at her across the screen and in incessant beeps in her mask.
She had died.
Her hands trembled so much that she nearly dropped the sword. She opened her mask so she could suck in a mouthful of fresh air. This didn't help. The field was drenched with spilled blood and smoke and discharged weapons and it was nothing like the languid grassland she had just left.
She looked around and realized that she was not the only one unsteady on her feet. For as far as she could see, there was not a single skeleton remaining. Instead, the field was populated with more living soldiers than they had even started the battle with… and what a variety of types of peoples! Beyond the Aesir and Jotuns, there were peoples of so many shapes and sizes and types of armor that she could only gape and wonder just where they had materialized from.
It was then that she realized there were no longer any corpses littering the ground. Where there had once been mountains of dismembered soldiers, now there were living, breathing, entirely whole beings. Each was kneeling on the ground in a posture that mirrored Shuri's. They, also, gaped at the scene around them and clung to their weapons uncomfortably, appearing just as confused and out-of-place as Shuri felt.
It was then that she heard a scream. It curdled her blood and made the hair raise on the back of her neck. She didn't think she could ever forget the timbre of that scream, not in a thousand years, though she knew she would always try. It was a terrible sound that seemed to shake the very courage inside her.
Shuri swung her head around, searching for the source until she found it. There, on a hill in the center of the field of battle, Walumbe stood. The so-called "Goddess of Death" held a glowing stone in one hand and a sword in the other. A black cloak fell over her shoulders like cobwebs and her horned helmet tilted backwards with the arch of her furious head. Yet that was not anywhere near as unsettling as the wave of something that rushed from Hela and Loki and across the field. With another gasp, Shuri felt that something force its way into her own heart and she felt for certain that part of Hela now resided in her…or that part of her had once resided in Hela and that something pushed expelled what remained from her body.
Then, the scream finally stopped. Loki stood mere feet from her, the golden rod outstretched in his hand, and a smug grin on his face. The teeth of the queen gnashed together and her glowing eyes turned on Loki with an expression of such pure hatred that Shuri sucked in a breath.
Then, in a movement so swift Shuri could barely recognize it happening, Hela knocked the scepter from Loki's hand and grasped him around his throat. She held him aloft, her red lips pulled back in a snarl, and she began to squeeze. It was only then that Shuri realized just how tall she was. She stood even taller than Loki and she easily held him aloft so that his feet dangled in the air and his eyes began to bulge as he grasped for air. Shuri did not miss how much slower Hela now moved or how she struggled to hold Loki with one arm. While she was still formidable, at least some of her power had been stripped away, leaving her more vulnerable than she had yet been during the battle.
With her other hand, Hela brought the glowing orb holding the Power Stone to his temple and it flashed in a ground-shaking light. The wave of power could be felt from one side of the battlefield to the other and Shuri's suit shorted out from the overload and began to reboot itself. She cursed and waited for her system to start over.
Then, the entire resurrected army seemed to wake at once and they began to march as one toward the queen, their weapons aimed straight for her. Rather than bracing herself for battle or showing any inklings of fear, Hela only laughed and held the Power Stone aloft.
She was entirely outnumbered. There must have been thousands upon thousands of soldiers now, all marching towards Hela. Yet, the closer they came, the more waves of power flowed from the Stone in Hela's hands. Rather than incinerating her targets, each flash of light served only to slay them. Once dead, they immediately transformed them back into their previous form as undead soldiers. Hela drank in the departing souls like an elephant in the dry season and each fallen soldier only served to increase her strength. Attack after attack failed to even come close to the queen and only multiplied her allies and her strength.
"This is not the way," came Okoye's voice through her kimoyo beads. "We might as well slit our own throats as charge her like unmanned rhinoceroses."
"General, it's good to have you back," Shuri said, momentarily relieved with the knowledge that Okoye was no longer in pieces on the ground.
Okoye grumbled under her breath and then began to shout out orders. Shuri could hear Bucky and Jane answer, though she could not see where they were now positioned.
"What do you suggest, General?" Shuri asked.
"We must get that Stone out of her hands."
Oooooo
Loki's vision was flooded with light – a light so tangible it felt like kneaded clay. He gasped in a breath and blinked against it while his eyes tried to adjust to the sudden change and the world around him hung in suspended motion.
He could see it all as if he were soaring above the battlefield and not one among many warriors fighting with his feet solidly planted on the field of Idavollr. They were all there. Armies of beings he had only ever heard of in legends… the most valiant of warriors from across the Nine and beyond. Their bones were covered in flesh, their lungs filled with breath, and their hearts pumped blood through their veins. He could see each plate of armor, each bead of sweat, each glint of steel and blade.
The Soul Stone was a curious entity. She spoke her wishes in whispers rather than roars and yet her voice carried like sound across a glacier. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first Stone he had come across which had not been harnessed by another. Perhaps this was the first Stone who was simply allowed to speak her own will rather than forced to bend to that of another. Or perhaps it was her own nature which set her apart. The means of obtaining her was entirely distinct as was the unobtrusive nature of her power. He held her in his own hand without harm coming to his person and that alone made her an anomaly among her sisters.
From her place in Gungnir, she nearly sang out with her own quiet melody of joys and tears. She was acutely aware of each breath of life around her – from the smallest of insect to the winged horses overhead. She knew them all… and that sense of knowing transcended time. Loki felt sure that the Soul Stone did not only recognize the creatures around her in their present form, but that she could see them from the moment of conception to the moment of death. She not only knew them, but she delighted in them and thrived on their continued existence. She despised the warfare and destruction occurring around. Each crushed flower and wounded soldier she felt as a strike against herself.
Loki wondered how she ended up on Vormir. How would a singularity so engrossed with life find herself trapped on a dead planet and guarded by a nearly dead guardian? Was that part of containing her power? The power to resurrect the dead and live forever was formidable for sure, as was the ability to summon the souls of those who were yet to come. Loki could see how in past generations, past epochs now lost to the memories of those who still clung to life in the present, that peoples would have sought to contain and twist her gifts and make them their own- the same as each of her sisters had experienced.
Like Jane had said after her introduction to the Mind Stone, he could hear the voices of the other Stones, each joining in with its own melody, its own distinct being. The Stones who had already been destroyed were still awake. They were scattered across the cosmos and glints and glimmers of their attributes now inhabited the realms and hosts they had once called their own. He could hear echoes of the Mind Stone from Jane's spirit. Within himself, as Hela had said, he could taste shards of the Space Stone, still vibrant and alive and sewing the fabric of the universe together through invisible seams in space time. There were others. Amongst the resurrected army, it was not only Loki and Jane who had been chosen by an Infinity Gem and he could still hear the resonance of their voices throughout.
The contrast with the Power Stone in Hela's hand could not be more jarring. The illicit hum of the Power Stone reverberated through his very bones and sent a spicy allure of promise from its heart. The Power Stone sang out like a hurricane – all unstoppable force and destructive glory. He wondered if the Power Stone's nature was corrupted due to the one who currently wielded it or due to the unpredictable nature of power itself. In the same way Mjolnir amplified and focused the innate gifts of its wielder, perhaps the Power Stone intensified the desires of its bearer. How often did access to unrestricted power do anything other than corrupt the heart and poison the soul?
Even now, he could hear the Power Stone cry out. She decried her long captivity and desired to join her unbound sisters. She was the birth of a star, the collision of galaxies, the burst of a sun's flare. She was fierce in her beauty, but like her sisters, she was a wild creature and never meant to be tamed.
As the voices of the Stones sang out to him, everything else faded away. A quiet expanse of motionless infinity crashed over him and it was as if time itself spun backwards. He could see galaxy after galaxy shift and morph and change before his eyes. He saw the first foundations of Asgard and its very end. He saw Odin's father's father as a babe and then he saw Odin's descendants, a thousand generations into the future. So fast it might have been a thousand years or a day, his own life began to flow past him with all the turbulence of a cataract and it was as if he was seeing his life for the first time.
He looked into the eyes of the mother he had never known and saw the birth of the babe unlike any that had ever been born. He saw the clash of steel and ice, the rise and fall of kings and queens and kingdoms. He saw a little dark-haired boy chasing his golden-haired brother through the marble halls of the colonnade. From his first scratched knee to the first time he conjured a flame, he lived it all again, but it was not as it had been before. It was as if he was seeing it all for the first time. The lies he had grown up believing were peeled back to reveal naught but the biting edge of truth, sharper than a well-honed blade and twice as piercing.
Odin's attempts at erasing history only buried his rule and family in an ever-tightening noose of lies that now hung both the realm and his children on the gallows' tree. His well-intentioned desire to right his errors was accomplished through sowing untruths which now had to be pulled out like ivy overtaking a garden if any of the fruit would survive to harvest.
Loki had believed those lies. Completely. Without question. He had never once considered there might have been another way. He never once considered that he might be wrong or that the stories he had told were untrue. Loki nearly tried to look away when his eyes fell upon the field of Jotnar, dead by his hand and his alone. For the first time, he was forced to look into the eyes of his victims and hear their screams as the Bifrost fell upon them. In that moment of eternity, he knew each of their names, as intimately as the Soul Stone did, and he wept.
The mistakes were many, but so were the joys and these he could pluck from the expanse of memories like grapes from a vine and revel in the life-giving taste of their goodness all over again. His bitterness had served as a blindfold, robbing him from the ability to see anything but the wrongs that had been committed against him and now that he was thrust into the burning light, he could see clearly again for the first time. It was not anywhere near as barren as he had come to believe.
He was never meant to become fully Aesir anymore than he was meant to be fully Jotun or Midgardian. He was a little of each and none of a single one. He thought of the beautiful chaos of Midgard, its warring cacophony of voices and colors and constant change and he knew. His ability to shift and change and sow chaos came from the Midgardian part of his blood. He would not allow stagnation.
He was never meant to dam the Nile. He was meant to let it flow.
When the flood of memories began to recede into a gentle lapping of waves against his ankles, he was able to look back again at his own reflection. Perhaps the ones who wielded Thunder and Lightning, War and Water, would always be sought, admired, and worshipped, but it was the one who wielded chaos that kept power in balance and kept life thriving. The explosions of molten rock from the heart of the earth flooded the soils with fertility and laid foundations for new lands, new mountains, new rivers.
The Stones, when given free reign, carefully chose their hosts. It was no accident that the Mind Stone chose Jane anymore than it was the Space Stone which spoke to Erik Selvig. The Reality Stone wanted to be destroyed- why else would it have possessed an Aesir farmer and so delivered herself straight into Odin's hands? It was the Stones themselves who forced themselves into Loki's path, again and again and again. They chose him.
The Stone Loki now wielded had been bought by the blood sacrifice of Odin… of his father. She knew the cost of that sacrifice… and she gave him back his brother. Of all the souls in the universe, she gifted him the one he most longed for and she knew it.
The fighting would never end. He could feel it. He could see it. There was no army who could ever overturn Hela because they all played by her rules. She gained her power through their warfare, through their weapons, through their blood. The more they sought to fell her, the stronger she grew. Like the serpent biting its own tail, they were caught in an endless cycle of life and death and could continue resurrecting soldiers only to have them fall again and again until the universe itself faded into twilight.
Let me free, whispered the Soul Stone. Will you? Will you?
Loki closed his eyes and let go.
Oooooo
Loki rose from the ground from where Hela had dropped him. He stood tall, cape torn off behind his shoulders and falling in ragged flutters behind him. His helmet had long since been knocked onto the ground and he carried no weapon other than Gungnir. The strangest of all were his eyes. They glowed with a fey violet light that could be seen from all edges of the field of battle and he walked towards Hela with the scepter outstretched before him. Hela widened her stance when she saw him and conjured a blade in her free hand. She let it fly, straight and true, into his chest. His steps did not falter. Hela's lips pulled into a sneer and she let dagger after dagger fly straight into the chest of the King of Asgard.
Blood now streamed from his lips and onto the white of his tunic and still he came. Then, rather than charge her with the scepter or conjure weapons of his own, he knelt before her with his head bowed. In his hands, the Soul Stone glowed, now removed from its harness and free of all obstructions.
"Fool, what are you doing?" Hela hissed. She conjured a broad sword now rather than a dagger and this she used to run the king through the heart. Then she released her sword, took the Stone from his hand, and let him fall to the ground at her feet. Then, she threw back her head and laughed.
Her laughter was cut short by the sudden flare of the stone in her hand. It flashed brighter than lightning and engulfed the queen where she stood. The ground beneath their feet shook with the burst of power that rolled over the field from edge to edge. When the light diminished, Hela lay prone on the ground beside the Asgardian king. She clawed and grasped at her throat, as if she could not breath. Then, her appearance then began to shift and morph. It was as if she withered away before them, disintegrating into the form of a corpse herself. Soon, it was only the face of a skull stared out into the sky overhead, though her eyes still glowed with an unearthly light. Her horned helmet fell loosely around her fleshless head and every one of her ribs beneath her cloak could be easily seen.
She did not remain this way for long. In the next moment, a rosy flush began to crawl across her exposed limbs like mold on a petri dish. The barren bones grew round and soft. The gaping cavities in her face were covered by fleshy tissue of a nose and lips. Her cheeks shown with life and health and no longer shared the pallor of a corpse or the drawn flesh of a captive. Hela's chest heaved with the gentle hum of breath.
When Hela stood to her feet, she was nearly unrecognizable from the queen who had stood there only a few moments before. A crown of flowers grew around her ebony hair in place of the horned helmet. They trailed down the back of the lavender dress which emerged over her armor. The Soul Stone hung around her neck in a pendant made of a living vine and its glow matched the sheen of her eyes.
She stared down at her hands as if she had never seen them before. Then, she extended one palm out before her. Rather than conjuring a blade, a circle of ruddy oak leaves appeared. She cast it onto the ground, as if it were a flame and not a branch, and where it fell, a tree sprouted up and grew till it towered over her. Her eyes grew wide and she took one unsteady step back. She placed her hands against the bark of the tree and then leaned her head against it, as if listening to its heartbeat.
Then she knelt down on the grass so she could place her hands on the soil beneath her feet, her palms outstretched on the trodden plants. The grass immediately responded. It grew upright and tall to her knees and then burst with flowers. Next, a pile of earth began to bubble and grow and when it was nearly as tall as Hela's crouched form, the soil fell away and revealed a bundle of grey fur. Then the fur moved on its own accord. It shook off the remaining dirt, revealing the unmistakable form of a wolf pup. It gave a wide, toothy yawn, then whined. Then, the wolf pup shot off around the field, frolicking and rolling in the grass, and licking the feet of whoever it came across.
Hela collapsed back onto her haunches and let her feet fall out in front of her. Her eyes were alight with that purple glow and she threw back her head and laughed in delight. She began to grasp fistfuls of earth from beneath her. These, she molded with her hands, threw into the air, or piled into little mountains beside her, like a small child in a garden. Each time she released her hands, a living creature emerged. Colorful birds and butterflies, crawling rodents and a serpent as thick as her trunk scattered from her hands and fled into the field of battle.
Hela showed no desire to stop her new game and she did not even notice the teeming throng of motionless warriors around her, each watching her every movement in wary discomfort and shock. Uncertain glances and whispers were tossed between companies and each wondered whether the attack should continue and just what manner of trick they were observing.
It was Thor who first broke ranks and dared to approach her. He held no weapon and he knelt onto the ground, curiously running his hand over the scale of the serpent she had just conjured. It was a beautiful creature of silver and emerald scales. It slithered over his legs and curled around his arms, but it made no move to harm him.
Then, Thon whispered something none could hear. Hela nodded her head in response and allowed Thor to place each of his massive hands along the sides of her temples and over her flower crown. His lips whispered a flood of words that none but Hela could hear and the longer he spoke, the more her shoulders slumped and tears began to fall down her cheeks. Where her tears fell, a spring began to bubble up from the ground beneath her, soaking both her and Thor with its growing rivulets of clear water.
When Thor stopped, he held out his hand to help Hela to her feet. Rather than turning back to the army, he threw an arm over her shoulder and led her down into the forest beyond the army.
"General, what do we do now?" Shuri asked into her kimoyo beads.
"Get that other Stone before she comes back," Okoye said.
Sure enough, the Power Stone lay abandoned on the ground, still wrapped in the metallic orb which housed it.
"Jane, can you bring your hammer down on it?" Shuri called. When she did not receive an answer, she began to frantically search the field for any sight of Jane. "Do any of you see Jane?"
"I do not," Okoye said. "We will find her. First, secure the Stone."
Shuri tried to push her way through the throngs of soldiers to get to the knoll where Hela had once stood. As if a spell had been broken over the warriors, entire companies of soldiers began to throw down their weapons and collapse onto the ground with cheers and whispers and a murmur of voices.
There were fallen Chitauri everywhere from where they had fallen when their mother ship was destroyed. The soldiers who had been so unfortunate as to die a second time at Hela's hands did not rise. Their bones no longer shivered and moved but they lay still on the grass in piles of their own blood. Still, only a few hundred suffered such a fate. The other tens of thousands gaped around at each other in wonderment and confusion.
"I found her," Bucky called. "She's with Loki."
Sure enough, Shuri could see Jane's back, now lacking any armor, hunched over the grass. Beneath her, the king lay in a heap where Hela had thrown him. Jane rolled him over and placed her head on his chest. She withdrew sword after sword from his chest and threw then into the ground behind her with such force that they implanted themselves up to the hilt in the soft soil. She drew Mjolnir to her and began to systematically heal each and every wound she could find. His torn and blood-stained clothes told the tale of his wounds long after his flesh became entirely unblemished again. Still, he did not stir.
The sensors in Shuri's suit told her a story she did not like.
The mgeni's body had no heartbeat. No pulse. No sign of life.
She slowly approached Jane and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"I can fix this," Jane said. "Somehow."
When her ability to knit flesh back together failed to wake him, she began to try CPR, over and over again until she grew faint from the effort. Then she laid her head on his chest and began to weep.
When she lifted her head next, she left behind her a puddle of tears. Then, in single-minded determination, she picked up Mjolnir, pulled the Power Stone from Shuri's pocket, and placed it on the ground at her feet. Then, she swung the hammer at the Stone with all her strength.
Author's Notes: First off, I have been rewriting swathes of this story and so if you have been flooded with updates, it's because I'm trying to improve earlier parts of this story. Sections have been rearranged and entire new parts added. It's still in process. In the meantime, let's finish up this ending. As much as I said I could do it in a chapter or two, I don't think that would do justice to all the hanging threads of plot that remain. There will be however many final chapters needed to wrap up this story and answer any lingering questions. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see happen or questions you'd like answered and I'll try to incorporate it.
Thanks for reading!