The Day of Wrath (1/4)
-The Present-
Just when Das was starting to think he could defeat Freyya in her true body, something suddenly changes, and she blows apart most of his defenses – the only survivors being Das, Haalfrin, and a few others.
Freyya then flies directly towards the inner part of the palace, where Haalfrin presumably is.
After she breaks through much of Das's palace, she arrives at a room safely tucked out of the way.
'Well… this next part of the Mantling is probably going to make me look crazy…,' Freyya looks down and blushes in embarrassment.
Due to her being unable to remember her trip with Nomad across the Realm of Nowhere, she doesn't exactly know what event this next step is supposed to mantle.
All she knows is that she has to find something related to her missing husband… and act devastated, even though her husband is still safe. (Sure, this is supposed to simulate Drakavar finding the children's Soul Stones, but Freyya doesn't know that.)
So, Freyya rips her way into a random room and starts poking around.
Almost immediately the Crow goddess zones in on a cabinet, and some instinct inside her urges her to take a look inside. Maybe it's because the cabinet is locked up tightly? Her notes DID say that she has to find a secure vault of some sort.
Freyya steps up, rips the cabinet door inside, and finds that the thing is full of a bunch of harmless comics.
The goddess's eyes twitch briefly as she thinks, 'I know that I have to drop to my knees, cry, then get really angry. But… can I really do that to a bunch of random comics? Won't I look silly?'
Out of a brief moment of curiosity, she picks up one of the books… and her mouth drops open when she sees the cover.
"He's into gay stories!?" Freyya lets out a shocked squeal.
On the cover of the book is a picture of two men kissing on the front cover; one of the men is Haalfrin, and the other is a younger version of Das. The cover itself is pink all over and has several red hearts in the corners.
The goddess drops the comic out of shock, and she steps back in a horrified silence. 'My husband…'
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Freyya knows the conclusions she's about to leap to are completely wrong, but it's like some powerful force of Destiny is addling her brain.
Suddenly, Freyya's temper explodes, and she shouts, "NO DAS! YOU CAN'T LIKE HIM THAT WAY! GRR! I'LL KILL YOU!"
If Haalfrin's wife had been paying attention, she'd have seen that the owner of this room was a servant – and a girl at that, judging by the dresses stockpiled neatly in the wardrobe just across the room, as well as the drab furnishings.
In reality, this comic belongs to a young, teenage girl who fancies these kinds of stories. If Freyya had known this, she wouldn't have been nearly as angry.
Freyya looks out the window and sees that Das and his soldiers are fleeing in the distance. Some irrational part of her is thinking, 'That man dares covet my husband!? How dare he run away!?'
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Despite knowing how powerful Freyya is compared to him right now, Das isn't scared for his life. However, he IS scared for Haalfrin's.
If that boy dies here…
Realizing the gravity of what's at stake here, Das starts running away with the plan to recuperate his powers and intercept the other Reaper before she can get away from this world with Haalfrin's soul.
However, in almost the same moment he turns around, a silver streak cuts through the air and pierces the old Reaper's leg – pinning him to the floor.
With his gold and purple colored divinity (his god-king divinity, not his Reaper divinity) leaking out of his wound, he doesn't even have the strength to pull her spear out and free himself.
However, the moment before Das bleeds to death, he suddenly feels the silver spear yanked out of his leg, and through his blurry eyes, he seems Haalfrin swinging him over his shoulder and carrying him to safety.
"W-why?" Das mumbles in a soft, weak voice.
However, Haalfrin is flying away with him so fast that the wind drowned out Das's voice.
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As Haalfrin and Das are making their escape from the palace, Das's palace abruptly explodes. None of the exploding debris hits them (since the explosion completely evaporated the palace), though the shockwave knocks them out of the air.
Haalfrin wraps his arms around the frail, dying god, and he uses his magic to protect both their lives as they smash into the ground.
The Arkin general quickly gets back to his feet, picks Das up again, and starts running again.
"I thought you said she was weakened by the black scale!?" Haalfrin yells at Das as they get back into the air. Haalfrin can tell through his mana sense that there was more power in that explosion than there was when the Threshold exploded.
"She IS weaker," Das grumbles.
"…"
Before they can do anything else or flee any further, another explosion goes off right in front of them, and this time, the two of them are knocked clear out of the sky – their burning bodies can be seen hurling to the earth like falling angels.
Das – being the weaker one at this point after having lost most of his powers, is caught by Haalfrin and princess-carried down to the ground.
Right after their feet touch the ground, Freyya lands with a bang right next to them, and they're knocked to the side again.
Haalfrin and Das are both on the ground, struggling to get up. To them, this moment could be their last, so they have to put in their best fight.
Freyya, however, is only walking towards them slowly. It's like she wants to savor their suffering.
Since the woman is taking her sweet time to walk over to them, Haalfrin gets a clear look at her face…Most particularly, he looks into her eyes.
The lost, unfocused sense of madness there seems… too real. 'Didn't her notes say that she has to ACT insane? Did she actually go insane?'
"Freyya," he calls to his wife, "You've gone far enough. I know you don't like Das right now, but-"
Hearing her own name called only seems to agitate her more. Growling in anger, Freyya summons her silver spear again, and she starts speedwalking towards them instead. She lifts her spear up and prepares for a stab.
Just barely in time, Das lifts up his silver shield to block her blow. This shield was a gift from the Death King's chief artificer, so not even Das's Reaper Divinity can break the thing.
With this in mind, the shield protects them from the angry goddess's blow.
Even still, neither Haalfrin nor Das have the strength to anchor themselves to the ground against her powerful blow, so they're sent flying into the distance again.
Haalfrin briefly looks behind him, only to see a crazed Freyya frothing at the mouth and charging towards them.
Yup. She's not acting. She's completely lost her mind.
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-The Far Future-
As Drakavar assumes her dragon form, she explodes into such a large size that the city starts starts to buckle and break.
As Emperor Imho'Reeth and the rest of the gods are fleeing the castle, all of the remaining gods who couldn't get out in time are immediately crushed to death when the entire castle falls apart around them.
Even from the far side of the horizon, any onlookers would be able to see a pair of titanic, black wings rising from the ground and stretching higher than the sky – the tips of the wings reaching far into outer space.
The serpent's neck is so long that the base of her skull and the top of her shoulders is nearly the length of an entire continent. Her tail is so long that she can wrap it around an entire world, and the tip would touch her nose. Her body is so dense and heavy that her gravity starts to pull everything towards her – even ripping billions of tons of rock out of the earth in the process.
Many of the gods, of course, are able to fly fast enough that they've gotten out of biting distance from her – including Emperor Imho'Reeth.
The Goddess of Power – the Empress of all Dragons, fixes her golden gaze on the fleeing god emperor, and she lunges for him first.
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-The Present-
Haalfrin doesn't even bother trying to swing his sword at Freyya, since he knows he'll fail immediately. She's a goddess in her true body, after all.
'Well, I'd love to fight to my hearts content with my dear wife,' Haalfrin thinks, 'but I need to get away from here first. He looks at the nearby city, which had partially been destroyed when Freyya blew up Das's palace. 'I can't let any other civilians get caught up in the aftermath.
In between dodging Freyya's attacks and slowly getting further away from any settlements, Haalfrin starts using his Far-Speak medallions to talk to his Arkin.
"We're going to need to stall out Freyya as long as possible!" Haalfrin orders his captains. "Get over here and help out!"
"We're on our way!" Captain Fisco answers first, "We're still held down by her army in Lar City, but I've already sent as many men as I could spare in your direction!"
Haalfrin ducks his head to the side and dodges a silver spear stab. "HOW LONG!?" Haalfrin shouts urgenly. "I-" *he dodges again* "-can't hold her off much longer!"
'About 10 minutes!' Fisco promptly answers back.
"When you get here, split your forces up and engage her in smaller groups," Haalfrin gives one last order.
As Haalfrin lets his medallion fall back beneath his shirt, he thinks, 'Honestly, I didn't know before this fight what Freyya was truly capable of or what she had up her sleeve…'
Indeed, Freyya had been very purposeful in keeping the truth of her strength from Haalfrin. If her husband had been too familiar with her strength, then that would've been a major detail that differed from the future, and it could've affected the Mantling.
After all, nobody really knows (even now) what Drakavar is capable of. All they know is that she's very strong.