Achilles POV
That was one big fucker.
How many times would I have to stab him to take him down? He didn't feel like the strongest thing I've ever stood before, but yeah…that's something I would have to go all out to fight. Probably have to use my Shield to really take him down cause I wouldn't have enough power otherwise.
"We greet you, King of the Highest Branch." Sis always was better at this stuff than I was. Kinda funny considering she grew up in the wild.
The Giant Eagle seemed to nod at her atleast. "I require…..an explanation."
Well, not immediately attacking, that's a good thing I supposed.
The little deer that came with us started jumping around and making more noise infront of the giant bird. Frankly, I had no idea what was going on there, but Big Bird seemed to be listening intently.
"Is this true?" The large Bird asked. He swept his gaze around when no one answered.
I raised my hand. "Uh, we don't speak…..that language." Almost said something I probably shouldn't have.
The large bird narrowed his eyes. "This Child of Duneyrr speaks in your defense. She says that my own had attacked without warning and attempted to harm herself and you both."
"That is correct." Sis said firmly.
"My king!"
"Your orders –"
"Intruders – "
The Large bird threw up one of its wings, silencing them. "Go back, we will discuss your actions later."
The other large eagles, well, comparatively smaller…..the arrows sis hit them with didn't do any real harm aside from their pride. They looked hurt, at best. But they removed them and were able to get back up in the air and flew away to who knows where.
"You did not kill any of my people even under their foolishness, thus you have my favor. You have a child of Duneyrr with you, thus you have my attention. And for the mistake of my subordinates, I will give you a proper response. I did not order them to kill anyone who approaches, but it seems that my order was taken out of context. The child speaks of you favorably, now I will hear what you have to say as an extension of an apology."
Well, made sense I guess.
"Great King, we arrived here with a request for aid from the All-Father, Odin." Atalanta bowed her head. "Ragnarök has started, your might is needed to defend all living beings of the Nine Realms. All around you, the enemies of – "
"I am aware." He interrupted.
"Then you will answer…?"
"Report back to Odin that he and his can settle their own matters." The Large bird swung its wing dismissively.
"You can't be serious…." I replied.
Sis looked at me with annoyance, but I couldn't help it.
"Silence." The winds around us whipped about. "I knew what you were here to ask already. I only allowed this audience due to my subordinate's folly. We do not concern ourselves with what happens below. If any dare approach, they will suffer my wrath." He swept his wings, producing a near hurricane of winds that both Sis and I had to brace ourselves against.
"Please reconsider, we – "
"I have given my response, return to the ground."
Sis looked at me and let out a sigh.
"So you're just going to bury your head in the sound? Should I call you an Ostrich rather than an Eagle?" I snorted.
The look she gave me told me that it was my turn. Sometimes being nice and polite works, sometimes you gotta provoke them.
I'm good at one, Sis was good at the other.
The Massive Bird stopped its wings flapping and its eyes bore down on me. "My good will has run its course. Return from whence you came, tell Odin that he can fight and lose his battles on his own."
"So you know that he's going to lose, so you're just waiting for your own deaths, huh?" I threw my hands up behind my head. "I get it, you know you're fucked either way, so you may as well watch from a good spot, eh? Like that coward below, you're just waiting for your death to come all the same."
"Your attempts at angering me into action are futile." He snorted. "You are not worth my time nor attention."
Well shit.
I thought a big guy like that would have an equally large ego to match. If I ran my mouth to one of our Gods…..
"Alright, then let's make a bet." Plan B then.
The large Bird looked at me for awhile then laughed, flapping its wings, and rising up into the air. "Return while your antics still amuse me. There is nothing you could offer and nothing you could 'compete' with me in to become worthy of my notice."
It didn't even give me time to respond before it shot off into the distance.
I looked at sis, and she looked back at me.
She let out a sigh. "My way failed, handle it how you see fit. If we fail, we fail."
That's all I needed to hear.
I did a few leg stretches back to back, then took a runner's stance. "Don't worry, I know exactly what I'm doing."
"That's what I'm worried about." She said dryly.
No faith.
I shot off after Big Bird.
He was fast, very fast. I can say that as the Fastest Hero alive, he was impressive. However, I am Achilles.
It took me a few moments to catch up, how far I ran, I don't really know. But the look on the Bird's face when I caught up, that was something special.
I summoned my shield, and threw it.
The massive bird got smacked right in the face, the satisfying clang of it was music to my ears. And it knocked the thing right out of the sky.
I had to slide to a quick stop at the earthquake that rumbled out as it hit the ground.
The Bird was no worse of wear, but I didn't expect much, I just wanted its attention.
My shield came flying back into my hand, and I slammed it into the ground, making the entirety of the High Branches shake. "My name is Achilles, son of the Goddess Thetis, son of the Hero Peleus!" I smacked my chest. "The fastest Hero ever. Do you dare to take my challenge, King of the Highest Branch?"
The bird looked at me differently. "What are your terms?"
"We race, if I win, you and yours fight with Odin. If you win…." I looked down at my shield. "This is yours."
The Bird looked down at my Shield with a certain greed in its eyes. Yeah, my Shield was a treasure that anyone would want.
"Very well, I will accept this challenge."
"Achilles." Atalanta hissed, clearly seeing the end of our little wager. That little deer of hers was running at her side "What're you doing!? You're wagering your Noble Phantasm, are you crazy!?"
"What's wrong?"
"What do you mean, what's wrong? We barely have anything to do with these people, why are you going so far?"
"Really, isn't it obvious?"
"Then explain it to me!"
"How many people are gonna die down below?"
She was silent, and I didn't really expect an honest answer there, because frankly, I didn't know myself.
"You forgot something important, Sis."
"What's that?"
"I'm a Hero." I smiled.
"Idiot…." She whispered. "Do what you want." She grumbled.
"If you're done squabbling, I will prepare our stage." The bird lifted its head up and let out a thunderous cry. As if a hurricane was created and swept to every corner of the earth.
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Birds blanketed the skies a its called. Some of them were ordinary, some of them were bigger than horses, and some of them were bigger than houses.
"My subjects, your King has been challenged!" He cried, and the ensuing cries from all the other Birds was loud. Big bird swept his wings, and the hurricane-like wings gathered, condensed into a long path that seemed to extend into the starry sky.
I walked onto the path he created, it was made of wind, but it was solid. I kicked it a few times to get a feel for it.
I took my spot at the starting line.
The Big Bird himself flapped his wings, and visibly shrunk in size, just about matching my size as it landed next to me.
Well, let the best Hero win.
[***]
Wilhelm POV
My eyes fluttered open, and I found myself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. My immediate instinct was to grab my weapon at the foreign surroundings, but….the aching on my side stopped me dead in my tracks.
I looked down to see my clothes were off, mostly. But my stomach was wrapped up tight with blood having seeped through some of the wrappings.
My Aura was still there and working, but closing my eyes, I could feel the wound I got. It was on a level more than something physical.
{Be at ease, you are not in danger.} Musū Tengai's voice rang out in my head.
It was reassuring to hear, and I let my body fall back down onto the bed I was stationed on.
My head hurt something fierce as well.
Using the Shikai ability of Musū Tengai in such a blunt way in that situation met with a large backlash. It was stupid, but it was a decision I couldn't give me thought of at the time.
I took this moment to look around the room I was in, it was small, a bed, a wooden table with a bunch of books and what looked like a primitive Alchemy station set up and a couple of wooden chairs.
"Should I be happy that I'm alive atleast?"
[Don't be melodramatic.] Ddraig grunted. [You did good for fighting two opponents that you would have a hard time winning against a single one. And besides, you won.]
Right….we won.
As in, we stopped their plans, whatever those were.
The Box – Pandora's Box, was inside my Ring.
It felt utterly disgusting and I wanted nothing to do with it. If it weren't such a volatile thing, I'd have tossed it away already.
I wonder if Mama Pandora would want it?
I hadn't seen her in a while, I needed to stop by.
Or would that be offensive if I gave it to her…?
I didn't have time to ponder that question, because the thin fabric that acted like a door was swept to the side and someone walked inside.
It was a man…if going by human standards, someone who just entered their later years. Wrinkles showing up on their face, hair shifting to white form blonde, a weathered look about them, even if they still appeared to be in pretty good shape.
But that was by human standards.
This person had long pointy Ears.
"Please don't tell me I landed in the Fae Realms after some convoluted Bullshit." I groaned, despite the pain at doing such.
"I find that offensive." The Older man said dryly. "We don't like to be talked in the same breath with our…..cousins." His lips thinned.
"Sorry, you're right, that was rude of me to do."
He nodded with a small smile. "It's fortunate to see that you're awake."
"Was I in that bad of shape?" My eyes widened at the insinuation.
"No, I'm just happy to have my bed back tonight."
"….oh."
He chuckled, finding the wooden chair and plopping down. He let out a tired breath, leaning back. "Do you remember how you arrived?"
"It's mostly a haze after Ratatoskr…." I muttered.
"Mmm, that darn Squirrel is going to be the death of me, I just know it." He grumbled. "I found him some five hundred years ago, he'd mouthed off to something he shouldn't and got pummeled for it, rightfully so." He harumphed. "But I couldn't let him just be, so I nursed him back to health. Now, it seems like I'm his personal healer whenever he needs."
{Don't let his tone fool you, he put in a lot of effort to treat you as best as he could.} Musū Tengai replied.
"Thank you for your help, Elder." I bowed my head and offered my heartfelt thanks. "Honestly, after getting saved by Ratatoskr, I don't recall much, I felt in a daze and things went fuzzy."
"You got a nasty cut on you." He pointed at my bandages. "And your soul took quite the shock. I'm not surprised you went out cold as soon as the adrenaline went away. Unfortunately, I could only heal you physically."
"Which means….?"
"Hmm…" He rubbed his chin. "I had to use some magics to analyze the state of your soul, and based on what I found, you lost about 700 years of your lifespan. The residual energy on that cut seems to devour vitality. It took me awhile to clean that away."
{Don't worry, I did not allow him to dig too deeply. But he speaks the truth, that attack by Kronos was with a very condensed application of his Authority over Time. You lost 719 years of your lifespan.} Musū Tengai stated. {The shock of that happening all at once, combined with your Aura taking a significant blow, you went into....I do not know what to call it except the equivalent of a soul-based Heart Attack and you passed out.}
That….
700 years? Just gone like that?
I knew I was going to live a very long time, but that was still….significant, and it was hard to wrap my mind around.
{Was it worth it?} Musū Tengai asked.
Was what worth what?
{Sacrificing 700 years for people you don't even know? For a cause that you have no stake, and for something you had no business being involved with.}
...I didn't know how to answer that because I felt something in my heart waver at his words.
"I came with someone else, is he…?"
"Odin is already up and about." The Elf stood up, stretching his back. "He's outside." He walked over, pulling the curtain open so I could see a bit of sunlight.
With a long breath, I moved over to let my legs fall off the side of the bed and then pushed myself up off the bed.
Definitely sore, but it was far from the worst I've had.
I nodded politely to the Elf and walked outside to see Odin not far away sitting on a tree stump.
I admired what he was looking at, a small stream, as if untouched by civilization, some of the most pure water I've ever seen in my life.
Odin himself…..he wasn't looking good.
He was wrapped in far more bandages than I was, and even then, he looked bad.
"Don't stare at me like that, I'm not going to shatter like glass." He harumphed.
"I'm sorry I couldn't grab your spear in time." I noticed his particular lack of walking stick.
Odin merely grunted in response. "Did you get the box?"
"Yeah, I got it. I'm kind of scared taking It out, so just believe me for now."
He nodded. "We won, that's good."
"Good is fairly subjective at the moment. You're not in good shape."
"Hah, you should have seen the other guy!"
I gave him a dry look. "I was there."
His smile gradually faded into something melancholic. "To be honest, I didn't expect to live."
"I didn't say anything before, but you were getting weaker as the fight went on." Because the All-Father should have been able to bring much more strength to bare than that.
"Ah, you noticed." He merely said. "When I said that mutt was suppressing me, I meant it literally. We're connected by fate. When we're close to one another, fate will conspire for us to fight, and it will lean everything into the Wolf's favor. My strength waned because I was supposed to die."
"That's bullshit."
"You think I want to be a feeble old man when I finally kick it!?" He grumbled. "But I didn't retreat, and I survived, I should thank you. I also said that I had a sliver of hope to overturn fate, it increased a bit because I survived our first encounter."
"Why not just kill it earlier?" I probably knew the answer, but it was better to double check.
"Brat, I would have loved nothing more than to grab my sons and jump it while it was chained up and beat it to death. But there is a price for so blatantly messing with Prophecy and Fate, it was very likely that a worse situation would have occurred. So, I did the most logical thing and tied it up so it couldn't escape."
"We walked into a bad situation. Not just the Wolf, Kronos, and Hyperion, they were prepared for me. Not like they were expecting me there and then, but the way they fought."
"Brat, how old do you think they are? They have more experience than you could imagine, you're twenty something years old to their thousands."
"That's not what I meant. I can admit that played a role in it, but it was more. They knew more about me, they fought in a way that didn't let me make use of my abilities to their fullest. Kronos never utilized his Authority except in modest and constrained ways so I couldn't use my own to turn the tide by sealing or overturning his. And they never opened themselves up for a situation where I could gain the advantage with my Zanpakutō. It felt like they studied me for awhile." Frankly, my fight with Indra showed off a lot of my cards…
"Is this the first time you've fought someone that knew all your tricks?" Odin looked at me.
"I…..I think when you say it like that, it's a yes." Granted, I had one or two things still up my sleeve, but they weren't applicable in that situation. "I've always had something to surprise my opponents with. Susanoo, Indra, etc. They didn't expect me to wield an Authority of my Zanpakutō and had no context for it. I think I was relying on that too much."
"It's a good learning experience."
"Yeah, it's good to realize that now." I admitted as well. "Thanks for finishing my spell too, I was having trouble altering the Spell sequence properly, and now it's completed."
He waived it off. "It's a good spell. You called it Vanaheim?"
"Mmm, I have a set of spells correlating to the Nine Realms and Yggdrasil. I have a feeling you'll be seeing them soon."
He nodded. "I have this for you." He reached into his pocket and took out a vial. "The Elf scraped this out of my wounds, it's saliva from the mutt. Figured you might have some use for it."
"This is very valuable to me, thank you." One more thing to add to my newest Sword. I need to make a plan first, because it can't absorb something like this right away or it'll probably break. It needed some time to build up to something this strong. "Wait….the Elf fixed you up, relatively speaking, Fenrir's anti-Divine, Anti-Magic saliva and all. He fixed me up, citing that he removed Kronos's residual power. Who the hell is he?"
"Hmm? Oh, that's Folen."
"Thanks, that answers everything." I deadpanned.
"He's the former Elf King."
There it is.
"Probably one of the best healers in the Nine Realms too." Odin nodded to himself.
Alrighty then, putting that aside. "Where's Ratatoskr?"
"The Elf said he left before I woke up. I wasn't faring any better when we arrived." Odin let out a sigh. "I'll need to apologize to the rodent; I owe him big time."
"What, are you going to give him two pairs of Freya's panties?" I rolled my eyes.
"Hey, don't knock it. Do you have any idea how rare those are?"
"What, are you going to tell me they're circulated like some kind of currency?" If so, I was going to lose a lot of respect for Asgard.
"No, I meant they're rare because she barely wears any!" He slapped his knee, laughing.
Well, it's good he's in a mood like this. Looking through my ring, I took out the vial from back in Skyrim. The one that contained the last two drops from the Peach of Immortality, and I handed them over to the All-Father. "Drink up."
Odin looked at it and me for a long moment. "Fine, I won't hold back." He took it and downed it quickly.
"Are you going to be back up to full strength?" And I wasn't talking about his wounds.
"Full? Probably not. But give me a little bit and I'll be back up into fighting shape. But as long as that Wolf is still alive and while Ragnarök is going on, I'm not going to recover to my peak."
Annoying, but better than I anticipated.
"So, what's the plan?" I finally asked. "I don't think we'll survive a plan I make at this point."
Odin snorted. "It's time to head to Asgard. We stopped Loki's scheme, but it's unlikely this is his only winning card. That Titan bastard gave away a lot, so we know that Loki didn't expect us there, and he expected us at Asgard right away. I say, let's go pay him a visit."
"Well, I hope the others are having better luck than us. Where are we anyways?" I think that was a pertinent question.
"You are in Alfheim. Atleast at the very edge of it." A certain Elf strode over.
Odin looked at him with eyes narrowed. "You have your Bow, what's wrong?"
The Old Elf did in fact have a bow strapped to his back. "The Nearby village was attacked, you're going to help me."
"Uppity Elf." Odin snorted but he stood up and didn't reject it. "Forcing an old wounded man into war."
The Old Elf rolled his eyes. "You're fine enough to wave around a spear. Just don't over do it."
"Bah, get me a spear first."
"I got you." I took out Gae Bolg, handing it over. "This should serve you well."
"Oh?" Odin happily took it, spinning it around a few times. "Yes, this will work perfectly.
Well, no rest for the wicked.
[***]
A/N
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Yggdrasil ARc just ended over here, and we're getting a PHO chapter next!