Episode 192: Jormungandr
Despite the lack of any apparent hostility either in their actions or their faint traces of reiatsu, Sunset felt a distinct sensation of ill-ease as she gazed upon the wafting forms of the Blanks. Her eyes shifted to Wallflower, or ‘Hel’, whichever she was at the moment. “What are these Blanks supposed to be? And you said Glory named them?”
Wallflower’s face had gone pale enough that her gray tones had turned into something more like the fog around them, and she forced herself to stand on trembling legs as her eyes darting around like an animal seeking an escape route, “Yes, Glory felt it appropriate to describe the wretched souls who have had so much scrubbed from them that only the traces of lingering memory and the core shell of reishi remained.”
“These are... people’s souls?” Cadence whispered, watching with morbid uncertainty as the Blanks continued to hover around them like a school of lazy, disturbing fish.
Hel turned her eyes towards Cadence, and then Shining Armor, frowning at the sight of their Quincy bows. “I thought the metal shell Fenrir wears was mere alchemy, but that reishi manipulation you mortals are using... it is akin to the Consort’s power.” She groaned suddenly, clutching her head once more, “Ugh, no... so many memories within... Why this girl? So weak, yet she keeps clawing at my mind!”
“Wallflower!?” Sunset grimaced. She would have loved to get more answers about these Blanks, but she had to help Wallflower get her identity back in order, no matter what. All of this was Sunset’s fault, and she had to figure out how to fix it. She gripped Hel’s shoulder, ignoring the painful, chilling drain of the deathly energies seeping from the woman’s body, “Wallflower if you can hear me in there, I promise I’m going to find a way to help you! Just hang in there!”
Hel pushed her back, shaking her head, “You’re speaking to nothing! A ghost! A fantasy! An empty shell in the shape of a human girl! There is no ‘Wallflower’ beyond a handful of meaningless memories and emotions stitched together during my own dormancy, but I am Hel and no one else! My memories might be fractured, but I know myself, and I shall not let you or anyone else use me again. Glory... Jormungandr... both of them can rot with their schemes!”
She looked ready to start fighting again, or running away, dependent entirely on chance, her eyes casting left and right as she clearly understood how outnumbered she was. Applejack’s voice cut through the tension, sharp as a knife slicing an apple, “Look sugarcube, we ain’t yer enemy, much as ya seem dead set on causin’ a fuss. Before ya start flinging about more o’ that necro juice, take a breath an’ maybe ya can tell us why these here Blank fellas would show up here outta nowhere?”
The question clearly struck Hel hard as she looked back at the Blanks, which had grown in number, and her eyes slowly widened, “They are empty, but can be manipulated by others. Or drawn to sources of intense memory like graveyards or battlefields. Jormungandr’s Ragnarok Cult... they mastered a technique to convert Blanks into forms, like Mother’s Consort could manipulate reishi to create weapons...”
She looked up at the sky suddenly, visibly gulping, “So many would not gather unless it was by the hand of another.”
It was then that Sunset Shimmer felt it, a blossoming of multiple spiritual pressures appearing across the sky above the small woods. Taking up Hokori no Hikari, she nodded to Rainbow Dash and Applejack, “We’ve got incoming, girls. Spike, can you keep an eye on Hel?”
From within the Gunwolf, Spike waved a sharp metal paw, “I can do more than that. I’ve got enough ranged weapons on this puppy to provide plenty of long distance support.”
“And I hope you haven’t forgotten you’re on Quincy property,” Shining Armor said, raising his bow skyward, “If there’s an enemy coming our way, we’ll help you deal with it.”
Cadence gave him a dry chuckle, “You could just admit you want to help them because they’re friends with Twilight, Shining.”
His face twitched slightly and his white features heated, “Fine, I want to help them because of Twilight. Also, I’m still a bit miffed that I wasn’t able to help back when they had to go to Hueco Mundo. Time to make up for that, at least a little.”
A flash of a bright smile lit Sunset’s features, “Glad to have the help. Cadence, do you mind backing up Spike in case whoever is coming gets past us? I’m sensing a lot of them, whoever they are.”
She honestly had to admit she had no real sure idea who was coming, as the sensations of reiatsu didn’t match anything she’d ever felt from a Hollow, a Quincy, or a Soul Reaper. Even the subtly different reiatsu she’d sensed from that witch group that Bon Bon was a part of didn’t line up with this. Given what Hel had just said about Jormungandr’s people making use of Blanks as some kind of weapons, then the only thing that made sense would be that these inbounds were Dragons or some other group of creatures from the Beast Realm. It wasn’t too surprising they could appear here so suddenly. After all, a bunch of monsters had appeared in Everfree from a number of portals someone had opened up. Seemed like the same thing was happening here.
There was no objection from Cadence, who gave a swift nod and readied her arm mounted reishi crossbow, “I’ll make sure the girl is kept safe. Spike, I’ll be counting on your help.”
From inside the Gunwolf, Spike’s voice said, “Yeah, yeah, I know you’re all helpless without me.”
With that, Sunset Shimmer, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Shining Armor all took to the sky, leaping up upon particles of reishi to swiftly reach a point several hundred meters high. The fog that Rainbow Dash had conjured now remained as a thick blanket beneath them, and Sunset was glad of that since it would keep any onlookers from the manor estates below from seeing anything going on in the sky. Looking up into the dark overcast clouds, Sunset saw the faint flashes of sanguine light appear in multiple places across the clouds. She caught glimpses of radiating circles of bleeding red light, portals quite different from Garganta or Senkaimon Gates, and not only giving off a sense of spiritual pressure... but magic.
As she recalled from the brief encounters Applejack and Rainbow Dash described from fighting the creatures at Everfree, the residents of the Beast Realm had both spiritual energy and a form of magic ingrained in them. Whatever was coming, it would be a new kind of threat, and she was not about to underestimate it. There was a soft peal of sound like thunder, but it wasn’t long before Sunset realized it wasn’t thunder at all, but the sound of massive wing beats and deep, throaty roars.
“Oh wow, I’m kinda sad Fluttershy ain’t here,” said Rainbow Dash, “She’d totally get a kick out of seeing something like this.”
What Rainbow Dash was referring to was the sight of an entire flight of Dragons that was soaring forth from the clouds, emerging one after another from the line of scarlet portals. In a wave of scales and wings, the great beasts flew down in a formation of dozens, their wings generating rumbling gusts of wind as they began to circle downward. They came in a wide assortment of shapes and sizes, but even the smallest among them would still dwarf a freight container. Some bore the image of classical dragons of western mythology, with four long, scaled limbs to join their two wings, and horns of all configurations sweeping from tapered snouts bearing glinting fangs. Others were long, serpentine, coated in fur or eel-like tendrils, coiling through the air not on wings, but seeming glinting sparks of reishi, and resembling the beasts of eastern mythological depiction. Yet more still bore no resemblance to any “dragon” mentioned in myth or legend, and instead were darkly amorphous amalgamations of many different blends of beast, like chimeras that only roughly took some small semblance of draconic inspiration but otherwise were monsters all their own.
Sunset couldn’t quite count them all, but at a rough estimate she figured they were facing around fifty or sixty of the beasts, who had formed something akin to a great descending circle that filled the air with roars as they got closer.
“Ya know, Fluttershy might’ve liked the sight o’ so many facinatin’ critters, but pretty sure she wouldn’t be able ta talk ‘em down if they’re set ta brawl with us,” said Applejack, small jets of energy from her armor keeping her aloft as she readied her drill lance, “Should we start tryin’ ta knock ‘em outta the sky?”
Shining Armor had his bow out and read, his eyes giving the area a keen look, “First thing I’ll do is generate a barrier to enclose the civilian area below us. I don’t want stray shots hitting anything or anyone.”
“Good call, my dude,” said Rainbow Dash, twirling her sizzling double-spear of writhing electrical energies, “If we start dropping these overgrown iguanas, last thing we want is anyone getting crushed by falling bodies.”
“Hold on...” Sunset Shimmer said, her eyes scanning the sky and the flight of dragons, “Something’s off. They’re not attacking yet.”
It’d seemed a fair assumption that the sudden appearance of a force of Dragons, right where Wallflower was, when they knew the Dragons serving Jormungandr were after her, meant that they were here to fight and take Wallflower by force. That might have very well been the case, but Sunset was noticing now that the formation of dragons had descended to around a hundred or so feet above them, but now had leveled out and were just... circling. There were dozens of pairs of less than friendly draconic eyes watching Sunset and her allies, certainly, but not a single one of the dragons had begun to attack.
“Huh, yeah, you’re right,” Rainbow Dash said, frowning, “What gives? Ain’t they here for Wallflower?”
“Maybe they don’t know exactly where she’s at, an’ they’re just holdin’ off ‘till they can pinpoint her?” Applejack suggested, shrugging, “I mean, figure someone must’ve sensed her energy or some such fer all these scaly folk ta show up here... unless we’re leapin’ ta conclusions?”
“Well whatever they’re here for, this is still my family’s territory, and sudden guests aren’t welcome,” Shining Armor said firmly, then took a deep breath before calling out loudly, “Dragons of the Beast Realm, I am Shining Armor, Sternritter B of the Quincy Vandenreich! You are trespassing in our airspace with an excessive force of numbers! State your business here, or leave! Failure to do either will result in the use of force to remove you from the premises!”
Rainbow Dash gave him a deadpan look, “Geeze, man, could you sound more stiff necked? I’d have just said ‘Hey jerkwads, either get talking, or get scramming, otherwise I’ll kick your butts’! See? Way more breezy.”
“Look, when an army of Dragons drops in on your house, you can handle them however you want,” Shining Armor shot back, “Kinda not in the mood for this crap right now. Especially not with Cadence... being in the condition she’s in.”
Sunset’s eyes widened a bit. Oh. That explained why Shining Armor suddenly was acting like a nettled papa bear. The man just had the stakes of any kind of disturbance or fight taking place here skyrocket tenfold. No doubt Shining Armor was ready to do anything it took to protect his fiancé, especially if she was carrying his child. That also meant he had every reason to want to avoid a fight here, if he could.
“Say no more,” Sunset told him, nodding in understanding, “We’ll do everything we can to keep this from spiraling out of control.”
He gave her a brief look of gratitude, then cast his hard gaze back up at the Dragons, “Well!? Answer me! Why are you here?”
From behind them spoke a voice, a rich masculine tone that vibrated through the air with a mixture of refined politeness... and unmistakable threat.
“Apologies, they are merely waiting for their High Chieftain to speak, for it is by my will they gather to me, hence it is my right to answer your challenge, Midgardian.”
Sunset Shimmer and the others all turned around. Standing in the air a few dozen feet away was... a human man? No, his spiritual pressure was utterly unlike a human’s, and it was only now that Sunset was even sensing it. The man had skin the color of ocean at dusk, a blue so dark it was almost black, but still distinctly in the spectrum of blue. This stood in stark contrast to his hair, which was a vibrantly bright shade of silver that was too luminous to be natural, and hung down his back in a wildly untamed mane. He didn’t appear to be wearing clothing so much as what covered his broad framed body was an organic growth of finely layered scales that took the shape of a breastplate with large pauldrons, each one bearing a set of white claws, and a set of waist plates that covered his hips and groin. All else was just bare naked muscle with hints of scales within the flesh. Other clear signs of his non-human nature were shown by the claws upon his hands and feet, and the slit pupils set in his purple shaded eyes.
While the reiatsu she sensed from him wasn’t as crushing or overwhelming as Tirek’s, it still stood above any of the Dragons circling above, and made it readily apparent who this likely was. But Sunset wanted to confirm things, all the same, and she stepped forward, not quite raising Hokori, but keeping her grip on her Zanpaktou’s hilt firm.
“Going to stab a guess that you’re Jormungandr?”
The man flashed a wide and pleased grin, showing his mouth sported prominent fangs. His eyes fixated upon Sunset Shimmer in a manner that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable, but she met the look with a solid stare of her own. When he spoke, it was with a light, almost joking tone.
“I’m surprised you’d make such a guess, Midgardian lass. I thought all your kind’s stories of me were of the great ‘World Serpent’ who’s size engulfs the world. I thought I kept this form of mine fairly humble by comparison.”
“So you are him...” Sunset took a step forward, keeping her aggression in check but unable to keep her voice unheated, “Why are you after Wallflower? Or Hel. You’ve sent your Dragons here before.”
“Do I require a reason to wish my kin returned to me?” Jormungandr responded with a coy smirk, but then his face dropped any pretense of cordiality and became a hardened visage of long held fury, “She was stolen from me, and I’ve had to waste too many years in search of her. She has work to finish, a role to play, and I have no patience for the arrogance of mortal Midgardians interfering in my family’s affairs. Already you and your ilk have been irritants between my claws. The witches of Wing Bind have slain my servants, and will get their due recompense, and as for you... well, Ormir spoke highly of the golden and blue lasses over there...” he nodded towards Rainbow Dash and Applejack, “I know no common mortal could best a Jarl. So unlike Wing Bind, you have genuine power at your command. Power I can respect, but only to a degree.”
He held out a clawed hand towards Sunset, “Give Hel to me. She is nothing to you, while she is quite important to me. Do this, and you need not be concerned with either I or even what you call the Beast Realm.”
Sunset Shimmer’s hands clenched around the handles of her blade and shield. What was Hel to her? Technically speaking, hardly anything. Even Wallflower was a girl she’d met only recently. But for Sunset that was more than enough. Wallflower had ended up where she was because Sunset had interfered with her life. There was no way of knowing if things would have turned out better or worse if Sunset had just left Wallflower alone or otherwise kept her at a distance, but the fact was that Sunset had chosen to involve herself and as a result Wallflower’s very consciousness was at risk of being lost to the memories of one of Earth’s ancient spirit beings.
The bottom line was that Sunset Shimmer wasn’t the kind of person who could walk away from someone in need of help, and doubly so if she was part of the reason that person needed help in the first place.
She raised her Zanpaktou, now that she knew there was going to be every reason to use it, and pointed the blade at Jormungandr.
“Not happening.”
His eyes of midnight purple flashed with indignant anger, even as his lips curled in a smirk of faint respect, “As I’ve heard you Midgardians are fond of saying... it's your funeral. This may be our first meeting, Sunset Shimmer, but I am not ignorant of you or your companions’ exploits. Or of the fact that you must hold a grudge against the Zero Division that approaches half of the extent to which I despise them. Our paths need not be at cross purposes.”
Sunset Shimmer did not falter in her focus, sensing the hostility and danger radiating off of him, but she did cast a slight glance back at Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Shining Armor. The Quincy looked ready to attack even without any direct provocation, but he kept his jaw firmly shut, letting Sunset take the lead on this. Rainbow Dash and Applejack equally looked ready to fight, although both gained equal glances of hesitance at Jormungandr’s words.
“You’re going to have to give more details than that,” Sunset said simply, not lowering her Zanpaktou, “Hel, she sounds terrified of you, and that’s with her memories being all over the place. All I know about you is that those folks from Wing Bind said you’re trying to start up this whole ‘Ragnarok’ thing. What even is that?”
A sardonic and sarcastic smirk curled his lips, voice rippling with ancient amusement, “What, you haven’t read a book in the last few centuries? I thought that mortal media loved portraying it as one of their favorite end times stories.”
“I know the basics, sure. Some big war between Norse gods, the whole World Serpent coiling around the world, getting taken down by Thor. Pretty sure if my present experiences are anything to go by, the mythology and the reality only barely resemble each other,” Sunset said, and Jormungandr crossed his arms with a nod. He wasn’t quite as beefy as Tirek, but it was hard not to note the muscle tone.
“Then it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that your ‘friends’ from Wing Bind only know bits and pieces of the truth. My Tribe, the Tribe of the Sea, and the so-called ‘Cult’ that follow my teachings of Ragnarok have long sought to bring about the natural death of the world. Mortals like those in Wing Bind who have opposed our... work in the lands across your Atlantic ocean have failed to grasp the true meaning of that goal. They believe our goal is the world’s destruction. However as a Soul Reaper you must grasp that ‘death’ and ‘destruction’ are not the same thing.”
His words didn’t quite land in any manner that made sense in Sunset’s head. She frowned and tried to gaze into his eyes with greater security, trying to read him better. It was confusing. Jormungandr all but vibrated with barely contained hostility and violence, but at the same time she didn’t think his manner of politeness or professed interest in avoiding battle was fake. And the way he spoke of Ragnarok... it was with reverence, not malice. Yet despite that, she did sense an inherent malicious violence hiding somewhere in his eyes, bordering on something like madness. She didn’t trust him at all. Every instinct she felt told her this ‘man’ who was no man was exceedingly dangerous. Not in the same way Tirek’s raw power made him dangerous, or in the manner Grogar’s amoral obsessions made him dangerous, or Chrysalis’ unrestrained hedonism made her dangerous, or Glory’s self-absorbed god complex made her dangerous.
Jormungandr was a different beast, and she wasn’t yet sure where he fell on the threat spectrum... only that she felt certain that he was yet another enemy she was going to have to contend with.
“Yeah, sure, but you got to admit that saying your plan is to seek the death of the world, that sounds pretty bad. Crazy, even, I’d venture to say. So you want to elaborate? Especially on why you need Hel? Because right now I’m still pretty much leaning towards kicking your ass right out of Canterlot City along with your scaled buddies.”
His lips curled not in a smile, but a deep barring of fangs, his violet eyes literally now glowing with an inner light of fury, “I owe you no answers. It is only out of understanding we share a mutual hatred for Glory that I proffer any words to you at all, rather than eating your throat out. Hel is my half-sister, by blood of our so-called ‘father’, Loki. She is my kin, and I have use of her, after she was stolen from me by a supposed ally. You need not know more than that. As for Ragnarok, regardless of Glory’s struggles or your own, it is what will be. All things die so they may be reborn, including the world itself. All who believe otherwise, including my foolish fellow High Chieftains, are merely delaying what must be. Now...”
She felt the air tremble and heard the rumble of tremendous pressure building up. His reiatsu sharpened into focus around his body, along with the distinct buzzing sensation of magic flowing off of him. Jormungandr’s body lit up with a flickering gleam of violet energies, and he raised his clawed arms to his sides. In the air beside him what appeared to spectral scales started to appear, dozens, then hundreds, all floating like sharp arrow-heads that then began to interlock with one another. In mere moments what looked like gigantic dragon claws formed of the merged violet scales took shape, eight of them, each over a hundred feet long, and four to either side of him. They hummed with power, and to Sunset’s senses felt like extensions of Jormungandr’s magic and reiatsu forged into physical form; the Anima power that Rainbow Dash and Applejack had described the hydra, Ormir, using.
“...give me Hel, or be crushed between my claws, Midgardian.”
“Give you hell, you say...?” Sunset said, and felt herself give a light chuckle as flames blossomed along Hokori’s edge, “Man did you pick the wrong phrasing.”
In a burst of fiery Flash Step she crossed the distance to appear behind Jormungandr and sent a backhanded swing of her flaming blade at his back. He bent almost like a contortionist, silver hair glinting in a wave as he turned his left arm around and used the claws of his hand to bat aside her Zanpaktou. However on contact, Sunset let the flames geyser outward and explode over him in a focused and intense fireball that shook the air.
He leaped out of the flames, barely singed and grinning a fanged expression of mixed fury and mad joy, “Then battle it is! A part of me hoped for such! Even if this body is a mere projection, my ancient heart wakes from slumber at the scent of blood and flame! Come, my Thanes, my loyal followers of Ragnarok! Let the clarion call of the coming war sing true!”
He threw his head back and an inhuman sound came from his throat and deeper in his chest. It was a roar, but like no roar Sunset Shimmer had ever heard uttered by a thing of flesh and blood. It was like a ripping quake of pure force and unrestrained fury that tore every molecule in the air. The overcast sky itself trembled and parted, as if a great clawed hand simply scooped away the clouds. Every dragon of the circling flight opened their jaws and added their roaring voices to Jormungandr’s chorus. It took a concentrated effort on Sunset’s part not to let go of her Zanpaktou and put her hands over her ears, and she hardened her reiatsu against the wash of force as the roars gradually subsided.
She had no time to focus beyond that, for the moment he lowered his head from the roar, Jormungandr’s eyes locked on hers with a glint of bloodlust like a mad animal, and he was in her face, slashing with his clawed hands in tearing motions that shattered the sound barrier. She was more than fast enough to match him, however, and got Hikari up just in time to take the blows in a flow of sparks. She was shoved back, feet grinding in the air, and she saw Jormungandr moving his arms in a pattern like some harsh, violent dance. She sensed the reiatsu of his Anima before she even saw the claws of spectral scales incoming. All eight slashed at her in a tempest of air shattering motions, and she twisted left and right with Hikari and Hokori both spinning around her to block and parry the rush of attacks.
Meanwhile the flight of dragons had all dived together towards Sunset’s allies. Jaws opened and within dozens of maws baleful lights of different colored energies took form. Waves of flame, streams of acid, flickers of forked lightning, streams of sharp ice, slicing jets of water, and even simple beams of raw force and energy all careened down in an elemental torrent towards Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Shining Armor.
Their response was as fast as it was potent.
Rainbow Dash’s wings of prismatic light flared brightly and she slashed with her spear, and with her motion a titanic gust of air beyond hurricane force billowed up and across like a mountainous scythe of pure wind force. This washed away over half of the lines of destructive, draconic breath weapons coming down at them, but Applejack and Shining Armor weren’t to be outdone. Spinning up the two drill portions on her lance, Applejack charged the weapon with an intense glow of golden energy and aimed it upward as the tip opened up in three sections. At the same time ports opened up along her form fitting gold armor, nozzles within blazing with power.
With a loud shout, Applejack fired from both the drill lance and from the ports across her armor, sending out a staggering storm of golden blasts and beams that sheared into the oncoming breath attacks and the dragons beyond alike, causing a chorus of pained roars as several dragons were blasted back like massive rag dolls by the farm girl’s powerful barrage.
Not to be outdone, but simultaneously keeping his priorities straight, Shining Armor took his bow and spun his body in a graceful circle. The shield-shaped covering on the middle of the bow flashed with bright motes of blue reishi as he drew back and unleashed two glittering arrows of power, one up, and one down. The arrow that flew down shattered and spread out a curtain of protective reishi that rapidly spread to create a barrier around at least several kilometers of area beneath where the battle was taking place, a thick and reinforced dome formed by the Bastion to protect all beneath it.
The arrow he shot upwards took advantage of the confusion among the draconic flight caused by Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s attacks, breaking apart in a shine of light that formed a vertical sheet of barrier energy that split the formation into two disjointed halves. “We’ll keep them split up and take them down one at a time!”
His shout was interrupted by him having to evade some of the breath weapons that still reached them, flame and acid nearly scorching his side as he skidded aside in a burst of motion, and instantly retaliated with a swift burst of multiple arrows that pierced into the hide of the closest dragon. Many of the beasts were still oncoming, howling their rage and quite willing to ignore pain and injury to get at the tree of them. Rainbow Dash had to bolt, quite literally, ina flicker of lightning speed to get around the snatching claws of several monstrously sized beasts that came at her. She chuckled, feeling confident in her ability to dodge with her incredible speed. At least until two of the larger dragons started to glow with thick auras, bringing forth their Animas, which in one case created a spectral bog of translucent brown sludge that formed around her instantly, catching her like a bug on a fly trap.
“The hell!? Ew! Gross!” She pulled against the sludge, which shimmered like some kind of spectral ectoplasm. It was stickier than tar and a hundred times more gripping. Even so, she was powerful enough to start tearing free of the floating ghost bog, but that did slow her down long enough for the other dragon’s Anima to form, taking the shape of a pair of glowing emerald wings that overlapped their own, and from runic circles of magic that grew upon their length they discharged a slicing barrage of disc-shaped wind blades.
Rainbow made a swift ‘Tch!’ and coiled electric power and surging wind around herself, her body becoming incandescent with an azure surge of might as massive pillars of lightning raced out of her and pierced both sky and ground, nearly breaking Shining Armor’s barrier. “You jerks want to try and match me wind to wind!? Bring it on!”
The electricity sizzled through the spectral tar bog and she rushed towards the barrage of wind blades, bringing with her a tornado cyclone of swirling power as she spun her body and sliced with her dual lightning spear. The dragon’s wind blades were broken apart and Rainbow Dash streaked right past the offending pair of Anima using dragons, long arcs of lightning from her spear hammering both of them in bursts of power.
Applejack had been watching out of the corner of her eye, figuring Dash had things under control on her end. She instead focused on the dragons coming after her, at least half a dozen that were trying to flank her on either side. One came in with a ear splitting roar and furnace blast of what looked to be a jetting cloud of steam. Compared to some attacks she’d endured, the steam didn’t do much other than feel uncomfortably toasty, although she imagined normal people or those with weaker reiatsu would’ve genuinely been scalded. She wasn’t an idiot, however, and figured the dragon must’ve known that and the steam breath was just to obscure her vision while his buddies prepared something nasty.
She flew up on instinct, and just in time, for as she cleared the steam cloud she saw that, interestingly enough, the other five dragons were all breathing flames together, but not at her. Instead they streamed their flaming breaths together into one growing sphere that one of them was then controlling with what Applejack assumed was another example of an Anima. This lead dragon’s body gleamed with blue light, and tendrils like cobalt vines appeared from its body and coiled around the concentrated sphere of its companion’s joined flames. It then used the vines to enclose it, creating essentially a giant bomb that it then hurled at Applejack.
“Fine, I’m up fer a bit o’ volleyball!” she said, shouldering her drill-lance and with jets of gold power erupting from her shoulder armor she flew down to meet the explosive bomb of flame and coiled vines. She used her left hand to pull back and with jet assisted power venting from her elbow, she slapped down with a hard spike, nailing the bomb.
She could tell it was set to blow practically on contact, but she doubted the dragons were accounting for her speed and power, because she effectively launched the construct right back at the dragons too quickly for it to explode on her and instead it ended up detonating when it was nearly back at the starting point. The dragons roared in a mixture of indignation and pain as they had to scatter from the blast, and Applejack took advantage of the confusion to fly down at high speed, zipping right on top of the dragon that had used Anima. She’d judged so far that only a handful of these beasts were actually able to use this power, as the larger majority seemed to be relying solely on physical strength and their breaths.
Landing on this one’s back, she slammed her drill lance down, cracking it into his shoulder blade as she revved the drills up and pierced scale and muscle alike. This dragon was pretty tough, however, and didn’t immediately drop, instead turning his head towards her and giving her a blasting roar as his Anima glowed across his body and a set of razor sharp, translucent blue vines shot from his mouth and tried to engulf her. Applejack kicked off just in time, her armor taking a few nasty scrapes, but she managed to avoid the worst of it.
Still, the dragon didn’t immediately pursue her after that, flying lower and sagging in the air, the wound Applejack had given it dripping blood as the dragon’s shoulder hung limp.
As her friends kept the flying horde at bay, Sunset Shimmer was locked toe-to-toe with Jormungandr, or his ‘projection’, if what he claimed was true. Sunset was willing to believe it. He was the only Dragon here sporting a human-like form, and the more she clashed with him, she more she noticed his spiritual pressure not only didn’t feel as sharp or complete as she was used to feeling from other opponents she’d fought, but she also sensed a small string of power running from his body all the way back towards one of the portals in the sky. This thing she was fighting was more like a puppet, formed of Jormungandr's power. Which was certainly concerning, given the ‘puppet’ was fighting on par with her with her Shikai.
He seemed to be able to readily read into her thoughts and as his claws batted aside a fresh wave of flame she’d sent his way, he ducked low and came at her with a sudden snap kick with his right leg, catching a bit of her hair and severing a few locks with the sharp talons on his foot.
“I’d fight you with my real body, but even I can’t break ancient pacts that prohibit the leaders of the Beast Tribes from entering Midgard or Asgard in our true forms. Not until the conditions of Ragnarok are met, at any rate.”
He slashed down, not only trying to claw her face with his hand, but bringing down four of this giant, flying Anima claws that rocketed down at her one after another in a series of consecutive slashes, each one creating ripples of force around them. She stepped back from his first claw swipe, turning her body to roll with the momentum of the first Anima talon as she slammed Hikari into it and deflected it into the second one, knocking it off course. This still forced her to use Hokori to fend off the other two, slashing left and right so fast with burning flames so bright that it looked like she created a single arc of fire as she slammed back both talons. She noticed her fire seemed to be able to burn the scales these Anima constructs were made of, which gave her some encouragement, but at the same time saw this she also spotted Jormungandr grinning and dozens of scales spark with power.
That was all the warning she had before scales launched off of the claws like ticked off, hyper-velocity blades, stabbing at her in a wild shotgun blast of sharp, piercing projectiles. She Flash Stepped, body vanishing and reappearing a dozen yards back. She winced, having evaded most of the barrage, but feeling a wet warmth on her left side and right forearm, where the soft burn of fresh cuts could be felt.
Still, she was far from done, and not even feeling the need to bump this up to Bankai yet, especially now that she knew her flames could burn these Anima constructs. Admittedly there was a lot she didn’t know about how this seemingly exclusive Beast Realm power functioned, but just from what she’d seen so far it reminded her a lot of how her friend’s Fullbrings worked as a set of distinctive powers manifesting from an extension of the user’s spirit energy and magic, but she also felt it might be dangerous to make too many assumptions based on that superficial similarity. So far all she knew was that Jorumgandr could apparently generate these scales and form them into claws to attack with, and break them apart to strike with the scales individually, but it’d be a swift ticket to painsville if she assumed that’s all he could do.
Deciding to turn up the heat and test out a few things, Sunset held Hokori aloft and intensified the flames coiling around the broadsword’s edge. Blocking so many attacks with Hikari had built up plenty of power in her Zanpaktou, and the red cloth dangling from the hilt practically blazed hot orange. Leaping high with a Flash Step, she went flying behind one of the draconic, spectral claws and charged down its length, slashing as she went. Melting flames burned outward from her sword in a long stream as she sliced, cutting through the translucent purple scales of the giant claw as she put her back and the power of her flames into the slice.
She saw her flames burst out the other side, having melted through as she cut the claw in half. However a moment later, despite having scorched what must have been hundreds of interlocking scales, more appeared and stitched the two halves of the claw back together almost instantly.
“Checking to see if you can destroy my Anima?” Jormungandr asked with entirely too casual a tone as he appeared behind her, his motions hardly matching his voice as he threw a haymaker punch at Sunset that had the force of a bullet train behind it.
She turned swiftly, catching his fist on Hikari’s shield, and her arm strained only a little to hold him there as she built up more flames upon her blade, “Wondering if there was a limit to how many of these you can make, or if damage to them drains your reiatsu at all. It can’t be cheap, energy-wise, to project all of this stuff into this world from the Beast Realm.”
His fist strained against her shield and she felt more and more power fill his limb, almost managing to push her back. It was odd. He could easily be attacking her with his summoned claws right now, but it was almost as if he was enjoying just testing her strength. For all his savagery, there was a playfulness to his smirk, “You’re right. This form is terribly inefficient and burns up a lot of power, and I can’t even manifest my full Anima. Strictly speaking, you technically have the advantage in terms of stamina right now.”
“Then why do you look so damn smug about it? Aoihi Senko!” Sunset shouted, reversing her grip on Hokori and slashing up in an inverted slice as she pushed his arm to the side. A focused, intense column of brilliant blue flames exploded outward from her slice, hammering Jormungandr’s body dead on and actually sending him flying backwards.
She flew right after him, leaping across the air in a blurringly fast Flash Step as she followed his flaming back and spun around, slashing down now with Hokori. She saw his body was burned, the dark blue tint of his skin turned to char in some places, and his armored chest armor flaked with ash, yet even as she sliced down, Jormungandr looked at her with his violet eyes and flashed a smile as he spun in the opposite direction she had and kicked with both feet. In a brilliant display of martial arts prowess he deflected her Zanpaktou with one foot while hammering her in the stomach with the other, knocking the air from Sunset’s lungs as she was sent reeling back.
Then, before she had time to recover, he clapped his hands together and two of his giant, flying Anima claws came slamming in at her from the left and right. She managed to respond just in time, bracing Hikari and letting the shield gleam white with power as the shield formed a wider barrier. This absorbed the blow from the claw on her left, while she aimed Hokori to her right and unleashed another jet of wide blue flame, the Aoihi Senko burning straight through the second claw even as she pushed off and away from the first one.
Jormungandr was still smiling, although it had a certain violent shine to it, “Smug? I’m deigning to engage in battle with a mere slip of a girl who’s barely had her powers for a handful of months, doing so only out of overwhelming respect for her accomplishments in that short time frame, and she thinks I’m the smug one? Midgardians, I swear.”
He spun his arms in another of those strangely entrancing and graceful maneuvers akin to a dance, and the seven remaining spectral Anima claws mimicked his motions and began spinning around Sunset at varying distances and trajectories. She didn’t have trouble following their movements, and instantly noticed how each claw was now open with its palm facing her. She could readily guess what was coming, even before the rather unpleasant image of a mouth of draconic fangs pushing itself out from the palm of each massive claw, the scales reforming to take this strange shape.
Sunset was already dodging even before the newly grown maws opened wide and malicious purple light formed within. She rocketed upwards, getting quite high above in an instant, while the Anima claws flew after her, and discharged blazing spheres of dark purple flame that roared up after her at speeds matching her own. With a deep breath, she let her body become coated in white flame, and started generating clones of herself formed of the bright white fire. Almost like a jet releasing chaff against incoming missiles, she sent her fire clones streaking into the purple balls of fire coming after her, and upon impact they detonated in a concussive flash of intermixed white and violet heat. The heat was so intense that even as she flew away from the line of explosions, she could feel the moisture evaporate from the air. Those fireballs of Jormungandr’s had clearly packed a punch.
Pausing to collect and reorient herself, her eyes scanned for both the Anima claws and their controller... and she blinked as she saw that Jormungandr wasn’t standing where he’d been before. In fact, she felt his spiritual pressure descending, not ascending towards her. In a moment of frustrated ire, Sunset realized the bastard had chased her upwards only to buy himself time to head straight down towards where Spike, Cadence, and Hel were!
----------
It was irritating for Spike to not really have a clear view of what was happening up there. The Gunwolf had really good sensors and fed him accurate information in terms of a detailed radar display, but it wasn’t as if it could see through trees, so he was stuck doing a lot of guesswork based on what he was seeing on his radar display and what little he could parse out in terms of his still fledgling level of spiritual sensing. Twilight had been teaching him when she had time, but it was still hard to suss out just what was what in terms of all this “reiatsu this” or “spiritual pressure that”. Didn’t help that he had to keep half an eye on Wallflower, who was huddling on the ground hugging herself and looking around like a caged animal ready to bolt.
“You still Hel?” he asked, “Or is Wallflower home upstairs right now?”
The girl gave him a flat look that for a moment showed the seemingly casual glare he’d come to associate with Hel, but it was heavily mitigated by a tremble of fear and a similar look of uncertainty, “I wish you all would stop using that name! It’s like my mind creaks every time you say it. And what does it matter right now, Fenrir!? Jormungandr is here, and he’s likely to deal with us both as soon as he is finished with those Midgardians!”
“Heh, yeah right,” Spike said, “I might not be seeing everything happening up there, but pretty sure the green dots are still my pals kicking butt, and all the red dots blinking out one at a time suggests they’re doing just fine. And seriously, what’s with this Fenrir business? My name is Spike.”
Hel looked at him with more of that lip twitching uncertainty, her eyes growing distant as faint stars, “I forgot... your death. It was so painful, so easy to put into the stone... along with all the other memories I hate. If my brother is dead, then you are one of his fragments. But so large, so pure, I can feel you, Fenrir. Even if it’s just a piece of you in that shell...”
To say that her words were making Spike uneasy was a vast understatement. It wasn’t that what she was saying sounded crazy. His standards of “crazy” had gone through radical changes since his best friend became a mystical bow-wielding super warrior in a multi-dimensional ghost war. He was literally piloting a giant mecha shaped like a freakin’ wolf that was powered by magic and soul energy.
So no, the idea that what Hel was saying was nuts wasn’t what bothered him. It was the notion that not only was what she said was entirely plausible, but some part of him... some deeply rooted sensation in his soul, told him she was telling the truth. And if that was the case, what did any of this mean? For all of his natural desire to take things in stride and keep a level head, a skill cultivated over long years of caring for Twilight’s tendency towards panic, this was a moment when Spike truly wished he had her here just for the calming effect her presence had on him.
“Listen lady, even if you’re right, I really got no memory of being anybody other than me. Doesn’t matter right now, anyway. All I got to do is keep you safe and from running off, until either Sunset or Twilight work out how to unscrew this screwy situation.”
“Although I’ll admit I’ve got quite a few questions for you, myself,” said Cadence to Hel, her rose red and pink arm mounted crossbow partially aimed up, ready to fire if it proved necessary while she maintained a rather relaxed stance for the fact that a pitched fight was taking place so close by. “His Majesty may well want to know what it is you know about Glory and her plans.”
Hel twitched at the mention of Glory’s name, hands bending almost like claws as she shuddered, “Her plan or my brother’s, between the two I preferred hers, but the price...”
Before she could speak further there was a shattering noise from above, and they all looked up to see a circular portion of Shining Armor’s barrier had been pierced through like a window being broken by a high-speed fastball. A bare moment later someone slammed into the ground nearby, scattering trees, and a few of the Blanks that continued to float around the area like drifting leaves.
Spike found himself instinctively growling deep in his throat as he moved between Hel, Cadence, and this newcomer. The man that stood before them wasn’t quite human, not with that scaled, organic armor, and clawed hands and feet. A long mane of silver hair and violet eyes somehow sparked familiarity in Spike’s mind as he saw the man stand from the crouching position he landed in. The man held out his right hand, and suddenly the Blanks around him all halted, and quivered like jelly. In a swirl, the dozens and dozens of Blanks floating around the area all coiled and swirled towards the man, coiling into his hand like liquid. Fusing together, they then took the shape of a sword in his hand, although it was a bizarrely shaped one, consisting of two intertwining coils of silver metal that twisted together until they ended in twin points like the forked tongue of a snake.
The man looked right at the Gunwolf, as if he could see through it to Spike, and gave a deeply satisfied smirk, his voice a rich, resonant noise of amusement, “Hello, brother. Fancy meeting you here. Was me killing you once not enough? You’re going to make me do it again?”
As Spike faced the man, he heard Hel made a ragged sound of rapid breathing as dark streams of necromantic energy billowed from her hands and she stared at the man with eyes almost glazed with feral fear and hate, “Jormungandr! Get away from me!”
She slashed with her arms, her hands like claws slashing at the air as she sent thin crescents of focused necrotic power flying at the man. Jormungandr swung his newly formed blade shaped from the Blanks and sliced through the oncoming onslaught of black energy crescents like someone batting away tennis balls. “Please, sister. You’re so reduced from what you were that this display is only embarrassing you. Even when you were at your full measure, before Glory stole most of what you were to fuel her disgusting project, you still would have struggled against me. Now, you’re a clawless kitten scratching at not just a Dragon, but the Dragon. Be sensible, and return to me. Only by my side will this shell you’ve become still serve any meaningful purpose.”
As he spoke, there was a phantom of white motion behind him. Cadence, wearing a ruthlessly calm and cold expression, appeared at Jormungandr’s back and fired a streaking pink arrow from her crossbow. It struck him square in the back, and a flicker of pink power coursed over him as Cadence narrowed her eyes and activated the power of her Schrift in an attempt to affect him with the Lust, which should have incited enough primal emotion for her to control him to force obedience.
Yet when his shoulders slumped, it wasn’t in the manner of one succumbing to blind love for her to listen to her commands, but instead the deep rumbling chuckling of a man utterly mirthful. “Hahaha, oh, so you’re one of the Consort’s little toy soldiers? Sorry, but this body is just a flicker of my real form. Tricks like this won’t work.”
He moved in a freakishly fast motion, slicing with his twisted sword in an upward cleaving slice that would rip the ground for hundreds of meters and sever the trees of the forest like tiny twigs. Cadence felt a burst of pain across her face, blood coating one of her eyes as a deep wound tore across her chin and up her cheek to her temple... but it was a lot better than being bisected, which is what likely would have happened if she hadn’t been bowled aside by Spike’s Gunwolf, which had moved just moments before Jormungandr did to move her out of the way.
The Gunwolf itself took a long, sparking gash on it’s left side, but Twilight had invested a lot of time ensuring the mech’s armor was reinforced by advanced Quincy alchemy and her and Midnight’s own combined efforts to interweave protective magic wards. It wasn’t a stretch to say the Gunwolf’s durability matched or surpassed many Arrancar Hierros, probably only beaten out by those like Torch who specialized in that power.
Standing protectively over Cadence, Spike aimed the Gunwolf at Jormungandr and its gun-tipped tail snapped forward, Spike charging up its intense blue reishi cannon to full power. This wasn’t going to be the non-lethal blast he’d used on Hel, but a focused beam at maximum output without utilizing the Gunwolf’s trump card system. The only reason he wasn’t using said trump card system was because Twilight had specifically warned him not to because it wasn’t technically finished. He recalled the specific words she and Midnight both used were “catastrophic atomic degeneration to everything in a kilometer radius” in the event something went wrong. And since they knew Spike so well, they had put a lock on the system he couldn’t deactivate on his own, anyway. Because he definitely would’ve pushed the shiny red button in this situation if they hadn’t. And probably blown up.
Even so, the beam that sliced forth from the Gunwolf’s tail was several magnitudes brighter and more intense than what he’d hit Hel with, and Jormungandr raised his sword and braced it with both hands as he used it to intercept the beam. While the beam wasn’t able to pierce through the blade, it also was able to keep Jormungandr briefly rooted in place, and Spike kept his paw on the trigger, the beam no slacking off as it drained the Gunwolf’s M-Cells bit by bit.
“Cadence, can you still move?” he asked, and the Quincy nodded, half of her face covered in blood.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, clearly not fine.
“Then grab Hel and get out of here! I’ll keep him busy!”
“Hah, always with the forced nobility, eh, Fenrir?” Jormungandr said, shaking his head of silver hair, “One would think being reincarnated into such a diminutive body would’ve inflicted some level of humility on you. Or at least common sense. Where do you think Hel can be taken that I would not find her? Sister, do you truly wish to watch me kill our brother again? Cease this foolishness and come back with me. Our work is not finished.”
Hel had scrambled away from him, looking fearfully between Jormungandr, Cadence, and Spike, naked fear in her eyes. “I... won’t go back.”
She closed her eyes and gave off a loud shout, spreading a thick mist of life-draining, oily dark energy to fly towards Jormungandr, who was still busy blocking the Gunwolf’s beam and hence could neither dodge nor readily smoke the mist away with raw power. Even so, the thick mist of darkness only seemed to discomfort him more than seriously harm him. Cadence still took the moment to move and grab Hel by the arm, somehow looking more fearsome with so much of her face blood soaked from her wound.
“Come on, we need to get to Discord’s shop.”
Spike imagined that was as good a move as they could make. If Cadence could get Hel there, then he doubted Jormungandr, no matter how strong he was, wouldn’t be able to readily assault a place guarded by the likes of Discord and Ditzy Doo. Hel must have had some level of Wallflower’s knowledge as well, because she clearly recognized the name and with a gulp, nodded and took Cadence’s hand and got up to run with the Quincy.
However at that point Jormungandr sighed and said in a deep rumble that somehow got louder with each word, “I have given none of you permission to leave.”
The ground shook like an earthquake, and Spike heard rock and dirt tear, and trees buckle, as a massive fissure began to form across the forest. The ground split in a wide, circular area, and suddenly hundreds of spectral scales of dark purple shade flew up from the fissure. Spike wasn’t sure where these scales came from, but his sensors told him that the energy matched Jormungandr’s. The scales locked together, swarming into concentrated forms that became a quartet of giant... tails? They looked like the long, massive form of thick, draconic tails, fitted with car-sized scales and covered in concentric rows of curved ridges. It was hard to gauge their lengths, but Spike had seen kaiju flicks and these humongous tails of translucent purple energy were akin in size to those cinematic beasts.
Before either he, Cadence, or Hel could react, the four colossal dragon tails whipped across the forest landscape, smashing everything in their path.