{"sf1_id":1721656,"sf2_id":"B1QKGomj","title":"Ragnarok - XXIV","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1993,"posted_at":"2021-05-24T18:07:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1721656-ragnarok-xxiv","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/B1QKGomj","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/00/24/0024df4c-57b0-4953-a478-894012bc90f5","description":"#25 of Ragnarok\n\nVarr and the Old Man weather the Sulfur Carrier's attack, as elsewhere Shane hurries to return.","content":"It grinned. It ripped a fist of mangling claws\n\nDown like a meteor. It gouged the stairs,\n\nWhere Varr and the Old Man had stood away\n\nAs could a spoon through cold whipped butter-cream,\n\nBut they had ducked, had rolled under its palm\n\nAs it passed just above, just near enough,\n\nTo raise a hand and touch, and lose it, scorched.\n\nThey raised instead a black sword, an oak spear\n\nAnd scored the molten wrist. The Old Man rolled\n\nOne way, Varr rolled the other. From the cliff\n\nThe stairs had been crushed to they skittered down.\n\nThe Sulfur Carrier upturned its arm,\n\nRegarded for a moment the thin well\n\nOf liquid brimstone boiling into smog\n\nThat fizzed along the cut. And then it grinned.\n\nIt shot an arm out, like orangutans\n\nWould snatch to swat a beetle, but the spear\n\nWas thrust against its palm, and the Old Man\n\nWas pushed back deep into a crevice where\n\nThe claws were too gigantic to reach him.\n\nVarr squinted at the scorch, and with both hands\n\nHewed at its ankles, but it heeded not.\n\nIt grinned. It with a sickle-like finger\n\nFished in the crack. The point of the oak spear\n\nDeflected off the questing claw as if\n\nIt had struck at obsidian. Varr drove\n\nThe black sword in as deep as it would go\n\nInto the ankle, shrugging off the burst\n\nOf sulfur gushing forth around the tang,\n\nClambered and kicked his way onto its foot,\n\nHe yanked until the sword ground free, then like\n\nA lumberjack against an ancient pine\n\nSo thick that if it were hollow, he could\n\nWith ease make in the stock a home, he hewed\n\nSteadily, rhythmically, tirelessly\n\nTo hack the noisome foot off of the leg.\n\nThe Sulfur Carrier was only bent\n\nUpon the crack where the Old Man was pinned.\n\nIt grinned, and slashed across the crevice walls.\n\nAs down around his ears the pebbles rained\n\nThe Old Man shook his oaken spear, and laughed,\n\n\"You cannot triumph, dark corrupting flame!\n\nAll Valhalla has stood against you! None,\n\nNay, none can triumph against Valhalla:\n\nNo matter how many, or few, or one,\n\nWe stand, and if we stand yet you are doomed!\n\nFor all Valhalla stands against you still!\"\n\nThe Sulfur Carrier only grinned the more\n\nAnd in the molten bubbling faintly Varr\n\nCould hear thick mocking laughter, rising with\n\nThe acrid smoke that smothered up the stars.\n\nSo somewhere there was darkness. Somewhere else-\n\n-The darkness greyed, and faded into light\n\nOf some slow-soaring dawn, before the sun\n\nClimbs through the mountains. Here were no mountains\n\nBut higher peaks of dormant thunderheads.\n\nHere were no hills, only cumulus bluffs.\n\nAnd here the valley of the sunless dawn\n\nWas walled with towering wreaths of cloud, and floored\n\nWith fathoms of clear air. No earth beneath\n\nWas to be glimpsed even from eagle's wings,\n\nOnly eternal depths of weightless sky.\n\nThe air was cold, and smelt of frozen dew.\n\nThe cloud leviathans were edged with gold.\n\nAll was stillness, and changeless light, and peace.\n\nThen from the cloudface burst a running man\n\nLike diver from a cliff, like firefighter\n\nThe windowpane kicked in. He plummeted\n\nBetween the cloud cliff faces. Frosty air\n\nBuffeted at his face, roared round his ears,\n\nAnd plastered back with dew his short red hair\n\nAs though it were a rushing cataract\n\nThat he stood underneath. Although he fell\n\nNo 'down' could he discern. The clouds were all\n\nThe lonely feature in that trembling sky.\n\nHe could have thought himself in outer space,\n\nBut Shane spared not a moment to think but\n\nTo will himself faster, harder, further\n\nIn the direction that the bittersweet\n\nClamped in his jaws pulled him: darkward, and down.\n\nThough the sun was invisible, the clouds\n\nAround him billowed, dazzlingly white\n\nAlmost too bright to look at. Underneath\n\nThe shadows were deep blue, and soft, and cool.\n\nThough he glanced at them not, beneath the rolls\n\nOf twisting cloud, reforming, remelting,\n\nLoomed huge shapes motionless. As when a car\n\nIs rushing down the highway with the wind,\n\nAnd speed and unfamiliarity\n\nSo bleed all the surroundings to a blur\n\nThat all outside the windows--other cars,\n\nRoads, houses, signs, the swoop of power lines,\n\nForests and fields and flow of flashing sea--\n\nIs unintelligible, suddenly\n\nThere flashes past some landmark, some place known\n\nOf old, and like a cipher-key the sense\n\nOf place returns, and now the world comes clear\n\nBy being left behind as you come home,\n\nSo through a rift Shane might have seen a brow,\n\nOr through the next, two eyes sealed as in sleep,\n\nOr through the next, a mouth expressionless.\n\nBut not until he turned shoulder to stretch\n\nHis neck, did Shane see suddenly the face\n\nWithin the clouds, enormous and serene\n\nSculpted from cloudstuff as if from marble.\n\nAnd at that moment, cold arose the wind\n\nFrom under Shane's bare chest, so that he slowed\n\nAs would a paper plane before it fell.\n\nIt scooped up and it scattered off the clouds.\n\nThe cloudmass caught him like a wave, and washed\n\nThe sky away in morning-scented grey\n\nThat whitened suddenly to honeyed cream,\n\nBefore it broke, and then the sun burst through.\n\nAs even and as straight as pillars stood\n\nStatues gigantic formed of cloud, more than\n\nA thousand upon either hand, as if\n\nTo buttress the long aisle of morning air\n\nBetween cloud walls. The young sun shone on them\n\nBut their eyes did not stir. Their faces were\n\nSerene and silent, and their eyes were sealed,\n\nTheir bodies at attention, like a guard\n\nOf honor at a wedding or funeral.\n\nShane turned to look, as he began to pass\n\nBetween the solemn rows, tumbling in his\n\nFree-fall. Cold wind and warm sun slid across\n\nHis skin like night and day. He remembered--\n\nGrim satisfaction was it that he could--\n\nSeeing just such a look as they all wore\n\nUpon the still, settled face at a wake.\n\nStill awestruck at their size--his whole height would\n\nBe just enough to span a fingernail--\n\nShane heard a voice that said \"You were not taught\n\nTo read the wind. Listen to it instead.\n\nAnd when you hear, do not question, but go.\"\n\nAnother voice echoed bodilessly,\n\n\"We are your brothers, Champion, who fell\n\nOur victory incomplete, our glory paused.\n\nIt falls to you to triumph for us while\n\nOne less death you have died.\" Another said\n\n\"For there are deeper deaths than this to die\n\nAnd higher valhalas to win onto.\n\nAnd in these clouds is room yet for one more\n\nChampion. Do not come to it too soon.\"\n\nA higher voice rang out \"If you defeat\n\nThe Sulfur Carrier, we shall begone,\n\nOur honor full avenged, to higher worlds\n\nWith harsher fights to win, trebled glory.\"\n\nA somber voice replied \"If you should fall\n\nThen with us shall you wait through eons long\n\nUntil the Sulfur Carrier's unchecked hate,\n\nConsuming world by world, leads it to this.\n\nThen, one among us, you face it again\n\nTo avenge your own death and all the worlds.\"\n\nShane drifted like a leaf on a slow font.\n\nHe slowly turned onto his back to see\n\nThe cloud heads motionless above him with\n\nThe gold sun splintering round their silver heads.\n\nHe tried to speak, but dared not move his mouth\n\nFor fear the bittersweet would fall. \"No need,\"\n\nAnother voice echoed, \"We know what you\n\nWould ask. You are a warrior, as we were.\n\nYou think as we would think, ask as would we.\n\nWhat one of us would not ask, in your place?\n\nWhat one of us does not yearn to be in\n\nYour place, though pain and fire you must pass through!\"\n\nA grim voice echoed, \"Champion, beware!\n\nFor by this time the foe will have wrapped round\n\nThe world you strive to reach and to defend\n\nWith its all-caustic soul. Though you came through\n\nBefore opposed by only one small spell,\n\nNow must you push through the innermost depths\n\nOf the Sulfur Carrier and its hate.\"\n\n\"You must break through the heart of what it is.\n\nAnd that is nothing. Know that above all.\"\n\n\"Remember all that you have seen, from the\n\nFirst moment your eyes opened on the leaves\n\nSettling toward you on the autumn air.\"\n\n\"Do not go in with strategies. Trust to\n\nThe moment to provide. What it provides,\n\nTake it with thanks, and do with all your might.\"\n\nShane felt the wind behind his back freshen\n\nGrow more insistent, and ahead he glimpsed\n\nA darkness deeper than mere cloud's shadow,\n\nRather a place where light did not venture.\n\nA hole of darker blackness in the black\n\nOf outer space. And felt it grin at him.\n\n\"Before you go to seize your destiny,\"\n\nSaid a low voice. The sun vanished behind\n\nA bank of higher cloud. The light grew dim,\n\nAnd all the cloud statues grew grey and stern.\n\nFar underneath the voices Shane could hear\n\nA distant roll of beckoning thunder,\n\nAnd felt an invisible spray of rain.\n\n\"Take you a message, from one honored dead\n\nTo one I stood with, who is not yet here.\"\n\nShane looked up, and he saw built out of clouds\n\nA man holding a mighty spear, \"I was\n\nGuz the Leveler, brother in arms to\n\nThy blood-brother, Varr Last-to-Flee. Well did\n\nWhatever elder baptized him foresee.\n\nBehold, we all are left the battlefield,\n\nAnd he alone remains. Tell him that it\n\nWas not by fault of his that we were slain.\"\n\n\"Tell him,\" another said, higher and harsh.\n\nShane turned to see a man with broken swords\n\nAnd bare feet, outlined in a distant flash\n\nOf nearing lightning. \"That we count ourselves\n\nAvenged in full. He has no debt to us.\n\nAnd say if Luke the Barefoot yet could fight\n\nVarr would not fight alone. Go in my place,\n\nAnd spit for me at that sulfur bastard.\"\n\n\"Go tell my father,\" said a voice that rose\n\nWithin the rising wind, and Shane beheld\n\nA young man in a cloak, \"That I give you\n\nAll freedoms and inheritance that were\n\nPromised to me, his only son. I have\n\nNo need of them, and if they add the least\n\nStrength to your arms, or swiftness to your legs\n\nThen you have need of them. Go with\n\nThe blessing of my people upon you.\"\n\n\"A blessing that you need, Shane Champion,\"\n\nA voice familiar echoed. Thunder growled\n\nAnd chill was the thin rain that swirled down toward\n\nThe nearing dark below. And on his right\n\nHand stood the form of Klau, his face serene\n\nAs never had it been in life. \"I left,\"\n\nHis voice said, and the far-off thunder groaned,\n\n\"My sword with Varr. The prophecy must not\n\nBe made a lie. My sword must strike the blow\n\nThat slays the Sulfur Carrier, saves our land,\n\nAnd slakes my thirst for vengeance. Hurry, Shane.\n\nCome not too late. And if you come too late\n\nTake up the sword, and strike the heaviest blow\n\nThat ever you have struck. Remember me\n\nAs you strike, and I count myself avenged.\"\n\nIf there was more, Shane did not hear it. A\n\nGreat shaft of lightning clove the sky not three\n\nPaces before his face. The thunder roared.\n\nAnd blind and deaf for a few heartbeats Shane\n\nFelt gravity return. No longer he\n\nWas flying forward, but now falling down\n\nInto the waiting darkness. Once he blinked\n\nOver his shoulder, but the clouds were rent\n\nAnd tattered scattered over the white forms\n\nOf fallen warriors watching in the sky.\n\nNothing there was behind him but the storm\n\nThat pushed behind him, like a stallion drunk\n\nOn trumpets lifts the lancer toward the red\n\nAnd roiling smell of battle. Shane gritted\n\nThe tiny twig, wooden and faintly sour,\n\nAnd slick with sap upon his tongue. His fists\n\nClenched in his gloves as he pulled his arms close\n\nAnd dove into the nothingness below.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1721265-ragnarok-xxiii.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722065-ragnarok-xxv.json"}}