"So that's the monster that murdered my friends!" Sprite gritted her teeth in rage.
Mobius nodded. "He looks pretty despicable, alright." He noticed her seething. "Hey, remember, you don't have your powers, so we'd better just leave this fight to Loki and the Asgardians, okay?" Her angered expression remained, but she knew he was right.
"So, who are you, and why are you butchering gods?" Loki interrogated.
The hooded figure tilted his head. "And what would you care of my truth, god of lies?"
"Because I'm a detective, here to stop you. And I'm not, nor have I ever been, the 'god of lies.' I am Loki, god of mischief."
Brunhilde intervened. "Stay out of this, lackey. It's my duty to protect my people, and like it or not, you included!"
"I'm no one's lackey, certainly not yours, booze-hag, and I wouldn't take orders from you even if I myself from the future made you king!" Loki drew his sword. "I'm still a son of Odin, and I'm not about to stand by while this murderer butchers my people!"
"Loki no, we do not want to fight him: we want to live!" Grievance cautioned from his mind.
"Of course, I'm obviously going to have a talk with him first: I'm not an uncivilized giant!"
"Cease your meaningless quarreling!" The butcher ordered. "I couldn't care less about your title: all gods must die."
"And why is that?"
"They are selfish. They are useless. They do nothing but fight amongst each other over insignificant matters while the people who worship them suffer. I am here to pay back that suffering: I am their death."
Loki shook his head. "No, not all gods are like that!"
"You are. Wager of wars across realms, everywhere you go, death and destruction following like a shadow." He continued as Loki rolled his eyes. "It's the legacy of your twisted family, to kill and oppress in the name of false honor and self-righteousness, without giving a thought to the protection of your subjects, thinking yourselves powerful enough to escape punishment. But you will not escape this time."
"Believe me, I haven't escaped punishment. I've been tortured, beaten, imprisoned, mocked, mistrusted, betrayed… I've lost my family, my friends, my home, my entire universe, at times my mind, I've been humbled in every sort of way imaginable! And through all that I've lost, I've gained a far better appreciation of what I have, and I am no longer the Loki you've heard tell about: I've changed. I've been helping a lot of people since I started the Time Detectives. Yes, gods have power and authority, and that's made a lot of us arrogant and complacent, but that doesn't make us immune to changing for the better. Trust me, I know what it's like to be driven by bitterness and revenge to the point of genocide, and it won't solve your problems."
"Your silver tongue will not save you today, god of lies. You will all die." He turned to Sprite. "Sprite, the storyteller, another trickster, master of illusion: you and the other Eternals may have protected these people at times, but you have yet to tell the stories of how many planets full of innocents you've sacrificed, all to give birth to new Celestials who would one day oppress new generations of innocents."
"We didn't know! Besides, Arishem commanded us not to interfere in humanity except for when the deviants threatened them, but he was erasing our memories for who knows how many millennia, and when we found out what he was making us do for him, we stopped the last Celestial from emerging and saved this planet! We're good people, my friends didn't deserve to die, and you're going to pay for it!"
"And the last Valkyrie, handed the responsibility of ruling over her fellow gods, right after she finished her previous job of disabling and trafficking countless lost innocents into slavery, forcing them to fight to the death for money and your amusement. Charged with protecting these, yet you were helpless to protect your own sisters from the goddess of death. Selfish and useless: you are a prime example of what I stand against, so I will make a prime example of you before I butcher your subjects."
At that, the Valkyrie warrior and her opponent lunged at each other, his weapon blocking hers. Loki tried with all his might to push him back telekinetically, but he stood in place as if it were only a gentle breeze. He quickly pushed Brunhilde away flying, sending an array of blades after her. Loki countered by firing a volley of green energy blasts, slowing their momentum enough for the Valkyrie to flip to the ground and dodge them.
"Wait your turn, spellcaster!" All-Black shot out blades around him, not piercing him, but forming a mighty black cage around the trickster. He tested the bars with his sword, and when he found it was safe to touch, he grabbed onto them and continued watching the fight from the inside.
"I told you to stay out of my fight!" Brunhilde repeated.
Loki shrugged. "Fine, suit yourself."
Brunhilde sighed. "He's right about one thing: I was too weak, too cowardly to protect my people before. Someone I loved died protecting me long ago: let me do something right for a change and give my life for these people!"
Loki hesitantly nodded. He spoke in thought next. "Grievance, do all Symbiotes share your weakness to fire, or is that unique to you?"
"All-Black is weak to fire, like the rest of us. But would you just TemPad us away while he is busy killing that royal pain?"
"No! I already told you, I'm not leaving my people to die! Her? Well…probably not her either. But you're right about her being a worthy distraction for us…" Loki watched closely as they continued to clash, noticing her struggling to keep up with her foe. As she moved to dodge All-Black's strike, it cut through her shoulder. It retracted and aimed for her abdomen next, and through she just barely managed to block the strike, the Dragonfang cracked and snapped in two, the dark sword stabbing her once more. "Ooh, that looks painful!" Loki spoke out loud.
"We don't need your smartass commentary either." Brunhilde grunted in pain.
"I'm not allowed to fight, not allowed to speak, what is this, communist Jotunheim?" Loki snarked, tapping his fingers in a bored manner.
"Come on, Valkyrie, you go girl!" Korg encouraged.
The god butcher tried to remove his weapon from his opponent again, but she gripped it tightly, and the momentum pulled her and her broken remains of a blade forward, aimed at his neck. However, before her blade could connect, black oozed around him, protecting him like armor. She repeatedly jabbed at him, but his symbiotic protection proved far too fast for her. Brunhilde gaped in shock as she wasn't able to get one clean hit in.
"Arrogant." As he prepared to stab her again, a white winged horse swooped down and carried her into the air. Gorr flew after them with his own black, demonic wings, and they took the battle to the skies. Fortunately, the Valkyrie's horse, Aragorn, was faster and nimbler in flight than his rider was on the ground, avoiding each of All-Blacks's strikes. Aragorn flew closer, stamping the god-hater with his hooves while Brunhilde stabbed at him with her shattered weapon, finally getting a clean hit in, but it didn't cut deep enough to fatally wound him. He grabbed Aragorn by the mane and extended his sword once more, and he and his rider fell to the ground.
Gorr descended to meet the fallen warrior. As he prepared to finish her off, Loki saw his opportunity and teleported behind him, and with a quick touch, he took a look inside the butcher's mind.
"Awaken, my creation; together, I shall utilize your power to destroy every Celestial and deity and spread darkness across this universe. You will be my ultimate weapon of darkness, my Necrosword! So says Knull, god of the abyss: I shall call you All-Black!"
"Mommy, I'm hungry. Can we please eat the last apple?" A pale, crippled child wondered.
"Not this one, my son. It's an offering for the sky gods. When they receive our offering, they will take care of our needs."
"But no gods ate our last offering, and it went bad. Why do we worship invisible gods? How do we know they're even real if nobody's seen them before?"
"Gorr, they protect us from harm in return for our devotion and praise. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they don't exist. Like my love for you, my precious boy!" She cooed as she kissed him on the forehead.
"But- but why didn't they save Daddy from the sun fever?"
"Your father lived a full life, Son, it was just his time. You'll understand someday- when you're older."
"Wow, their bond is so strong, both of their memories are playing at the same time!" Grievance remarked.
"Gorr, run!" His mother cried as the pale child was hunted by two ferocious tiger-like beasts, his crippled leg slowing him down. She ran in their path as he escaped, proclaiming her last words before she disappeared from his sight forever. "May the gods watch over you, my son, just as they have watched over me."
Knull experimented with his new Necrosword in the dark of the void he inhabited, until it created a suit of armor around himself that resembled Loki's first nightmare of his own Symbiote. He eventually formed a planet from the darkness surrounding him to serve as his kingdom.
An adult Gorr entered a cave, where a pregnant woman of his species sat. "Arra, we have to leave this place! There is nothing to eat or drink in the cave besides the occasional worm and the dew that drips from the walls. The children already go to bed hungry, and with the next boy on the way… we can't survive like this much longer!"
"Have faith, Gorr, the sky gods will provide for us." She reassured him. "You just need to put your doubts and fears aside and believe in them, as the rest of us do." Gorr shook his head and left the cave, seeking out a better life for his family.
On his way back, a violent earthquake shook the surrounding area, and as he ran back, he found the cave collapsed in a pile of rubble, his children standing around the outside. "Arra?! ARRA!" He dug through the rubble, finding her crushed body. "No, why? Why?!" He wailed, yet he was too dehydrated for tears to even form.
"No wonder he hates gods so much." Loki said, empathizing with his grief and feeling of helplessness, but it only got worse as the memories played on.
"Daddy, how much longer? I don't think I can stay awake anymore." The child mumbled as Gorr carried him in his arms, leading him and the rest of his tribe on their journey to more plentiful lands.
"Soon, Agar, soon. Just hold on a little longer. In the distance, I've seen a forest of plenty, where we won't go hungry anymore. We must reach our destination, survive for your siblings who couldn't, taken from us by that cursed sun fever."
"Daddy, I'm so tired and hungry, I gotta sleep. I gotta…" His eyes slowly closed, and his head fell limp.
"Agar!" He put a hand on his son's head, but starvation had taken its toll, and the boy was dead. "NO!-"
"And you thought your early life was sad and pathetic." Grievance told Loki. Loki shook his head, momentarily at a loss for words.
"What are you doing!?" A leader of his tribe asked as he buried his last son, not long after they reached the forest. "You must hang his body from the trees as is tradition! Do you want his soul hidden from the gods when they come to take him?"
Gorr gave the man a piercing glare. "The gods have taken far too much from me already, if they even exist! No, if they did, they would have saved my family! There are no gods!"
"Blasphemy! If you don't believe in our gods, you have no place among us. You are exiled from our tribe. The gods must have crippled you, knowing you were an unbelieving heathen from birth. Go, and never return!" And Gorr went away, leaving his remaining people in the distance.
Knull murdered Celestial after Celestial with his dark weapon, until a deity in golden armor stood in his way. "This has to stop, Knull. Your killing all these gods is causing havoc across the universe!"
"You say that as if it isn't a desirable outcome." They began to clash, this new god finally proving a match for Knull and All-Black's combined forces. As the two fought viciously, they were each impaled by the other's blade, and they fell from the sky, crash landing on an unknown world. A native from the planet witnessed the scene, hobbling closer to the two fallen deities.
"They… they do exist!" Gorr gasped. He clenched his fists. "All this time… all this time, you were real, and you've done nothing but fight amongst each other!?"
The golden god gazed weakly at him, the other one unmoving. "Please… help me…"
"Help you?! HELP YOU?! After you did nothing to help my mother from being torn apart and devoured by wild beasts?! After you did nothing to help my father and children as they died of fever?! After you did nothing to stop the earthquake from swallowing up my wife, or provide my son enough food to live another day?! My family, who revered and worshipped you like dogs, saying over and over you would protect them!" A little blob leapt from All-Black towards Gorr, responding to his fury and forming a black spearhead in his hand. "I'll give you the same help you gave them." Gorr struck the wounded deity, and as his first god was slain, he took the Necrosword from Knull's body into his possession, which formed armor and attached a pair of dark wings to him. "So, those were gods. I wonder if there are more?" He flew away from his home world, a new search beginning.
Heads up, readers, starting next chapter, things are going to get more violent, a bit… Gorr-ey, as the flashback ends. Stay tuned…