CHAPTER 42: “SWEET SUPPRESSION" “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”

BY WILLIAM WARNER

CHAPTER 42: “SWEET SUPPRESSION" “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”

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The battlefields of Cybrawl were still being cleaned when Emily, Droid L-84, and I descended into one of the most silent places on the artificial world—the vast data archives buried beneath the capital. The deeper we traveled, the more the sounds of reconstruction faded behind us. Above, millions of Shark People corpses were still being dissolved in hydrofluoric tanks while droids labored across miles of ruined terrain. Down here, however, there was only the quiet hum of machines and the endless glow of information.

Cybrawl’s data center stretched farther than any library I had ever seen.

Towering columns of crystalline data towers rose from the floor like forests of illuminated glass, each one filled with rotating drives and shifting holographic directories that contained the entire recorded history of Vikingnar’s civilization. The air was cool and sterile, faintly blue from the glow of the processing arrays. Thin beams of light moved between towers like silent couriers carrying information from one memory cluster to another.

Emily stood at the central console platform, her armored hands moving across the interface as she sifted through thousands of encrypted records. The light from the screens illuminated her visor while Droid L-84 stood nearby, silently scanning the same systems with internal algorithms far more efficient than any human search.

After several minutes of searching, Emily finally spoke. “The only odd file I found on the Rus.”

She opened it immediately.

Across the chamber, one of the sealed data lockers unlocked with a mechanical hiss. A small metallic hard drive levitated upward from the locker’s containment slot and floated across the room toward us, carried by a gentle tractor beam from the console. It drifted through the sterile air like a slow-moving satellite until it reached my hands.

The moment I touched it, the device activated. A holographic projection flared to life above the console. The figure of Peterson Thornton appeared before us, his recorded likeness standing within the blue glow of the archive chamber.

Peterson began speaking immediately. “Well it appears that the Rus are only interested in sending their prisoners here into our timeline. They're not in cahoots with the Templar Empire, and I am not sure if they're influence is what got humanity to advance so quickly... That first crashed spacecraft that my great grandfather reversed engineered, makes me believe that our technology might be of Rus origin. My great grandfather also passed down a story of how he was able to sneak into a portal where the Rus Vikings reside. He described it as a pocket dimension where the Rus had vast numbers of weaponry, and prisoners they would send into our timeline. Rus called our timeline "Valhalla". And most of the prisoners sent here to be picked up by Templars, a worse case scenario or end up in our intergalactic civilization of Vikingnar. Most of these people had families, didn't resemble any outlaw, and their memories were sometimes whipped, never recalling their crimes or witnessing the Rus... Luckily as a confirmation, my great grandfather kept a data base that he built under Cybrawl’s data center of all the lost folk who showed up in this universe, misplaced on several planets across the Vikingnar & Templar sectors.”

The hologram flickered and faded. The archive chamber returned to silence. I walked slowly toward Emily at the console, the implications of what we had just heard settling heavily in my mind.

“I guess all the Rus cared about was sending their prisoners here. That stolen wreckage is how people of medieval earth were able to obtain & reverse engineer their tech. Which is why we’re in intergalactic wars now. The only question is, why are the Rus so interested in this alternate timeline?”

Emily remained focused on the file structure hovering above the console. “I have no idea but I see that this file has a code.”

Something about that immediately caught my attention.

“tap on it, please.” Emily complied.

The moment she did, a subtle shift occurred in the architecture of the archive chamber. Droid L-84 turned toward the far end of the hall where the towering data stacks parted slightly, revealing a narrow corridor that had previously been concealed between the server arrays.

“The truth is this way sir,” said Droid L-84. The three of us followed him down the hidden corridor.

The sterile blue glow of the data center faded as we walked deeper. The architecture began to change. Instead of smooth metal walls and polished data towers, the corridor opened into a much older chamber carved from stone. Rough walls surrounded the room, their surfaces etched with ancient geometric patterns that seemed completely out of place beneath Cybrawl’s advanced infrastructure.

In the center of the chamber stood a large touchscreen table. The contrast between the ancient stone room and the modern interface was jarring. It was as if two civilizations—one primitive, one futuristic—had been forced together in secret.

Droid L-84 activated the table. Immediately, a staggering amount of information appeared above the screen. Holographic records expanded outward in endless layers. Names. Images. Timelines.

Trillions. Trillions of people. Each record represented someone who had been exiled from their own timeline and sent into this universe. My eyes scanned the data rapidly. Then one name caught my attention. Kyle Kulinski.

I leaned forward and pointed at the file. “tap on that video of the fat ass. Let's see what Kyle Cuckawimpy has to say!”

Emily glanced sideways at me with mild disbelief. “wow you hate him.”

I didn’t hesitate. “He hates us.”

Emily tapped the file. The holographic screen changed instantly. Kyle appeared in the recording, standing in front of a crowd somewhere far removed from our reality.

His voice played across the stone chamber. “well after we won the civil war, we rounded up every voter that voted for Trump and are now going to be sent off to Valhalla to be murdered by medieval Knights, Vikings, or the plague. That's what happens when you're a traitor to democracy.”

The video ended abruptly.

Emily’s reaction was immediate. “So these people didn't do anything! That's not democracy to send people with different ideals to be exiled!”

She turned toward me with sudden realization. “That means you're innocent as well?”

I shook my head slowly, still trying to piece together the contradictions in the data. “This doesn't explain why I'm here! I wasn't old enough to vote before I left.”

I continued scanning the endless database. Another file appeared. Donald Trump.

I stared at the entry in disbelief. “Seriously, they sent the US president of my timeline into Valhalla? It says there was no evidence that he sexually assaulted minors on a private island. It's written in his file, and the leftists wanted an excuse to start a revolution, take over America to conquer the globe under the Rus regime.”

Emily looked at the data with growing anger. “so the Rus were always evil in their own way. If they send innocent people here, then what does that make of the Rus?”

I answered without hesitation. “that makes them a mob of criminals, and they have no right to be here.”

Droid L-84 spoke calmly from behind us. “Judging by this shocking revelation, I'd say these people were innocent, and Peterson Thornton was no liar either. He was an honest man, William.”

The three of us stood silently in the stone chamber as the endless holographic records hovered above the table.

Millions of exiles. Millions of stolen lives. All of them were dumped into this universe and labeled Valhalla by the Rus. The truth had finally surfaced. And it was far darker than any of us had expected.

The command room within Cybrawl’s capital pyramid was unlike any chamber I had stood in before. The pyramid itself towered above the city like an artificial mountain, its outer structure gleaming beneath the synthetic sky, but inside it was a labyrinth of command decks, war rooms, and data chambers built to coordinate an interstellar civilization. The room we gathered in rested near the top of the structure, a circular command center surrounded by massive transparent walls that looked out across the capital region. From that vantage point we could see the remnants of the battlefield stretching across the horizon—repair crews moving through the ruined districts, defensive towers still humming with energy, and the distant glow of hydrofluoric waste tanks dissolving the last traces of the Shark People invasion.

A large holographic war table dominated the center of the room. It projected rotating star maps, battlefield overlays, and fragments of intelligence gathered from Cybrawl’s vast surveillance systems. Around that table stood the people who now carried the burden of deciding what came next.

Anisia stood quietly near Serenity, the two of them close together as if the village still clung to them even here inside the cold geometry of the capital pyramid. Borghilda and Olvir had taken positions near the far side of the chamber, both watching the holographic map with the focused expressions of warriors who had not yet allowed themselves to rest. Cole leaned slightly against the edge of the command console while Hanna, Mathew, Elizabeth, Rick, Jimmy, and Pete formed a loose semicircle around the war table. Beelzebub remained slightly apart from the others, his dragon Spark perched nearby like a silent guardian. Droid L-84 stood at my right side, his optics glowing steadily. Emily stood on my left.

All of them were waiting for someone to speak first.

I looked around the room, feeling the weight of every decision pressing against my thoughts. The truth we had uncovered in the archives still burned in my mind: the Rus timeline, the prison system they called Valhalla, the invasion force waiting in their pocket dimension.

I finally spoke. “the Rus are planning on invading us, and we should stop them.”

My words settled over the command room like a stone dropped into still water. The holographic map above the war table rotated slowly, projecting the coordinates of Cybrawl, Verdant, and the dimensional anomaly that connected our universe to theirs.

Droid L-84 responded first. “How? There's millions of them in that pocket dimension, and we can't spread our forces thin.”

His logic was precise, as always. The Rus forces we had glimpsed through the portal numbered in the millions. Even after defeating the Shark People and stabilizing Verdant, Vikingnar simply did not have the manpower to fight a full-scale invasion on multiple fronts.

I turned back toward the holographic map and zoomed in on the dimensional coordinates that connected the two timelines.

“That's why we are going to open up a black hole and destroy their private dimensional domicile.”

The words caused several heads around the table to lift sharply. Even in a universe that had already seen dragons, hive minds, and interdimensional warfare, the idea of deploying a black hole as a weapon carried a certain gravity—both literal and figurative.

Droid L-84 processed the proposal instantly. “That sounds brilliant sir, but we should consider bringing sound blasting weapons, and maybe enlist some droids to wield those weapons?”

I turned toward him with narrowed eyes. “you know I have a hard time trusting bots, and why do we need those weapons?”

Droid L-84’s optics flickered slightly as he explained his reasoning. “We could use weapons that push our foe into the black hole. Plus we could use extra help with accuracy... Have you noticed that all of the Rus are missing?”

That detail struck me immediately. I had been so focused on the invasion threat that I had not fully processed the absence.

I turned toward Beelzebub. “Have you seen any Rus after our battles on Verdant?”

Beelzebub answered calmly, his insectoid voice carrying an unsettling steadiness. “They all left Stavanger & Aalborg, and I take it, they didn't show up here?”

The room fell silent for a moment. Serenity spoke next. “I haven't seen any Rus warriors here yet.”

The realization landed heavily in my chest. Every Rus soldier who had been present during the battles on Verdant had vanished without explanation.

I rubbed my forehead and exhaled slowly. “Well that's fabulous,”

I lowered my hand and turned toward the Droid L-84 again. “ok, I'll allow the aid from metal heads, and I don't want them to interfere with orders.”

Droid L-84 gave a short nod of acknowledgment. “you won't regret it.”

Around the command table, the rest of the room remained quiet as the implications of the plan began to settle in. Outside the transparent walls of the pyramid, Cybrawl’s artificial sky glowed faintly while the city continued rebuilding itself from the scars of battle.

Somewhere beyond that sky, in a pocket dimension hidden between timelines, millions of Rus soldiers were preparing for war. And now we had made our decision on how to stop them.

Far from the war-scarred skies of Cybrawl, beyond the carefully engineered atmosphere and the rebuilding capital pyramid, the hidden pocket dimension continued to exist in uneasy stillness. It was a place that seemed suspended between worlds, neither fully part of the Rus homeland nor entirely separate from it. The vast hangar stretched endlessly beneath an artificial sky that had no sun, only a pale illumination that glowed faintly across miles of metallic platforms and weapon storage arrays. Massive columns of Rus Viking weaponry rose in towering stacks—rifles, energy cannons, armored vehicles, and troop carriers arranged with the brutal efficiency of a civilization that had long prepared for war.

Thousands upon thousands of Rus soldiers moved through the facility like disciplined machinery, their armor stamped with symbols of their regime. Their voices echoed faintly across the enormous chamber as technicians prepared launch vehicles and engineers calibrated weapons systems. The entire place felt like a staging ground for something massive, something inevitable. A war waiting to be unleashed.

Near the far end of the hangar stood one of the dimensional portals—its surface shimmering like liquid glass, the same strange gateway that connected their timeline to ours. The portal’s glow cast soft ripples of light across the surrounding equipment and the dark metallic floor.

Samuel stood near that portal, preparing himself.

He moved with quiet focus as he checked his armor plates and secured his weapons. The metal of his gauntlets clicked softly each time he adjusted a strap or tested a blade’s position. The mission ahead of him—to travel to the world of Vondrakka and locate Valrra—was dangerous even by the standards of Vikingnar scouts.

Vondrakka was the homeworld of the vampires, a place whose reputation had traveled across galaxies as a land of ancient predators and shadowed cities.

Samuel appeared calm as he worked, but the stillness in his movements suggested he understood the risks.

Before he could finish securing the last piece of equipment, another figure approached from behind.

Alexandria. She stepped across the hangar floor toward him with her usual determined stride, her armor reflecting the pale glow of the portal behind him. Her expression carried the same calm intelligence that always accompanied her when she had made up her mind about something.

She stopped beside Samuel and spoke directly. “I think I should go with you Sam.”

Samuel paused for a moment, considering the request. The presence of another skilled warrior would make the mission safer, especially in a world as unpredictable as Vondrakka.

He gave a simple nod.“ok.”

The exchange might have ended there, quiet and practical, if another presence had not been lurking nearby.

Kyle had overheard the entire conversation. He stood several meters away near a cluster of weapon crates, and the moment Samuel agreed, something about Kyle’s posture shifted. His movements became strange—jerky, erratic, almost mechanical. The expression on his face carried an unsettling mixture of forced enthusiasm and something far darker beneath it. His appearance alone was disturbing enough; the man looked like an unnatural mash-up of Adolf Hitler and Guy Fieri, as if two completely incompatible personalities had been fused into one unstable form.

Kyle began walking toward them. His steps were uneven, his head tilting slightly as if his thoughts struggled to remain aligned.

“I. I. I. I don't recall, calculate, or send our Alexandria away?”

His voice came out in broken fragments as he reached Alexandria’s side. Without invitation, he tried to place his arm around her shoulder in a gesture that felt less like affection and more like ownership.

Alexandria reacted instantly. She sidestepped away from him with visible discomfort, placing herself closer to Samuel instead.

“Actually Kyle, you can stay here with Krystal. Samuel isn't one hundred percent familiar with Vondrakka's layout.”

Kyle froze where he stood. For several seconds he simply stared at the floor, his head lowered as if some invisible mechanism inside him was struggling to process the situation. When he finally spoke again, his voice sounded distant and hollow.

“I... Guess it's fine. We are family. Duh, duh, duh, duh!”

The words carried an eerie emptiness that made Alexandria visibly uneasy. She had known Kyle for a long time, but whatever stood before them now did not seem entirely like the man she remembered.

Without saying anything else, Alexandria reached for Samuel’s arm. Together they turned toward the portal.

The gateway’s surface rippled softly as they approached, its glowing liquid texture reflecting the light of the surrounding hangar. The moment they stepped into it, the portal reacted like disturbed water.

Their forms passed through the glowing surface. And in the next instant, they vanished completely.

The portal returned to stillness, leaving the vast pocket dimension exactly as it had been before—an army waiting in silence, unaware that two infiltrators had just entered another world.

The armory beneath Cybrawl’s capital pyramid had been transformed into something far more than a storage hall for weapons. After the battles against the Shark People and the revelations about the Rus, the room had become a forge of preparation—a place where warriors reshaped themselves for the next war that was already approaching. Massive workstations lined the chamber, each one illuminated by bright industrial lights that reflected across polished metal tables and racks of weapons waiting to be reforged or recalibrated. The air smelled faintly of heated alloys and energized circuitry, the scent of preparation rather than destruction.

Everywhere I looked, warriors were working.

Emily stood beside me at one of the primary armor stations while Droid L-84 monitored the structural readouts of several armor pieces suspended within magnetic assembly fields. Mechanical arms extended from the ceiling and rotated slowly around us, welding, cutting, and reinforcing the plates that would soon become our next generation of Vikingnar armor. The room buzzed with activity as sparks flickered in controlled bursts and energy tools hummed like distant thunder.

But this time we were not simply repairing damage. We were evolving.

I had insisted that our armor not only grow stronger technologically but also embrace the cultural identity that had begun to define our civilization. The armor plating was being reshaped into overlapping scale segments that flowed across the chest, shoulders, and legs like the hide of some ancient mythical beast. Each scale was forged from graphene alloys reinforced with the same energy channels that powered our weapons, creating armor that looked ancient while containing technology centuries ahead of anything medieval Vikings could have imagined.

My helmet lay on the worktable in front of me while the last adjustments were completed. When I lifted it, I noticed the horns had been slightly lengthened—subtle enough not to hinder combat movement, yet pronounced enough to reinforce the fierce silhouette that Vikingnar warriors carried into battle.

Across the room, the others received similar modifications. Then came the symbol.

Every warrior in the room was given a newly forged emblem to wear on their chest. The symbol had been cut from graphene metal and polished to a cold blue-gray sheen. The design depicted a dragon gripping a sword pointed downward, its wings spread wide in a powerful T-shape. The dragon’s single glowing eye marked the location of the armor’s central power source beneath the plating. The emblem itself seemed alive when light struck it, reflecting faint pulses of energy through the metal like a beating heart.

Beneath the symbol, each suit of armor bore an engraving that declared the name of our civilization in elegant carved lettering: “Vikingnar.”

The moment we attached those symbols, the room seemed to change. The armor no longer looked like equipment. It looked like an identity.

When the upgrades were finished, most of the others moved on to recalibrating rifles, plasma launchers, and shields. I stepped away quietly toward a more secluded workstation in the armory.

There was one weapon I still needed to repair.

I materialized my chainsword into existence and laid it carefully on the table before me. Even in its damaged state, the weapon carried the presence of countless battles. The blade had been partially destroyed by the corrosive acid of the Shark People during our fight with the Stethacanthus bioform earlier. It was still functional in spirit—but physically compromised.

I opened a small case and removed a metal tube filled with softly buzzing graphene nanos. The microscopic machines inside glowed faintly as they shifted against the transparent container walls.

Emily approached from behind me, curious. “what are you doing?”

I held the tube up so the buzzing nanos shimmered under the armory lights. “I have a theory that if I combine materials from the physical realm and fuse them with my ethereal weapon, it can be repaired. It should hold off the Shark People's acid attacks.”

She watched closely as I began dismantling the weapon. I carefully removed the pummel and the original hand guard from the chainsword’s hilt. The broken blade came free from its housing with a metallic whisper, revealing the fractures that had been burned into its structure by the alien acid.

I placed the damaged blade into the nano-quench basin. The moment it touched the liquid graphene suspension, the nanos reacted.

A faint electric hum filled the air as billions of microscopic machines began their work. The blade vibrated slightly while the nanos flowed across its surface like living metal. They rebuilt the damaged sections atom by atom, reinforcing the entire structure with graphene particles that fused seamlessly with the weapon’s ethereal core.

The process was strangely mesmerizing.

While the nanos repaired the blade, I moved on to improving the hilt assembly. I reshaped the hand guard into a wider T-shape, giving it better defensive capability in close combat. The pummel was reforged from denser graphene metal to improve the weapon’s balance during heavy strikes.

When the blade finally emerged from the nano bath, it gleamed darker than before—dark silver with a flowing damascus pattern that rippled across the metal like waves frozen in time.

I activated a precision laser cutter and etched a single word along the blade’s length. “Slayer.”

The final step was the handle. I wrapped it in a new grip made from black leather, thick and textured for a secure hold even in the chaos of battle.

When I lifted the restored chainsword, it felt perfect. Balanced. Alive.

I turned back toward Emily and the others who had gathered nearby. “you should consider upgrading your melee weapons.”

To demonstrate the improvement, I stepped toward a stone test block mounted at the edge of the armory. Without hesitation I swung the chainsword downward.

The blade passed through the stone with almost no resistance. The block split cleanly into two halves that slid apart and struck the floor with a heavy thud. The room fell briefly silent as everyone absorbed what they had just seen. The war ahead was going to demand more than courage. It was going to demand better weapons. And now we had them.

The moment we materialized inside the pocket dimension, I felt the same unnatural stillness that had unsettled me the first time we viewed this place through Droid L-84’s spy drone. The hangar stretched endlessly in every direction, its massive ceiling supported by steel arches that disappeared into shadow. Rows of abandoned cargo crates and weapon racks formed long corridors across the floor like the bones of a forgotten army. Industrial lights flickered weakly overhead, casting dull reflections across the metal surfaces. The place felt hollow—too hollow for what we had seen before.

Emily stood beside me in her upgraded Red Valkyrie armor, the crimson plates gleaming sharply under the artificial lights. Around us, our force of Viking warriors materialized in disciplined formation, spreading outward across the hangar floor until the entire chamber was surrounded. Behind them stood the skeletal golden droids that Droid L-84 had brought with us, each one gripping its unusual sonic weapon shaped like an electric guitar. Their instruments hummed softly with stored energy, the sound vibrating faintly through the metallic floor.

At the center of the hangar sat two figures on top of a stack of cargo crates.

Kyle. Krystal. Or at least they looked like them. The strange thing was the emptiness around them. No Rus soldiers. No armored vehicles. No massive army waiting for invasion. Just the two figures sitting quietly in a hangar that was far too large for only two occupants.

Something was wrong. Emily and I stepped forward together while the rest of our forces held position behind us. Our footsteps echoed across the steel floor as we approached the crates where the two figures sat watching us. Neither of them moved, and their expressions carried a strange calm that felt rehearsed.

I stopped several paces away and addressed the one pretending to be Kyle. “It's over Kyle. Just because it took me this long to find out you're in cahoots with the Rus... Doesn't mean I'm going to let a takeover occur under our noses.”

The figure tilted his head slightly, his eyes twitching in a way that felt deeply unnatural. “Tell yourself something you don't know.”

His voice carried a mocking edge that immediately irritated me. “what?”

Kyle’s grin widened into something grotesque as he leaned forward. “you forgot to turn on your endothermic scanner.”

The moment the words left his mouth, realization hit me. I activated the scanner. Instantly my visor display lit up with thermal signatures—and the truth became obvious. The figures sitting on the crates were far too cold to be human.

They were Shark People wearing stolen flesh. Kyle suddenly stood on top of the crate and let out a sharp whistle that echoed through the hangar. Two more figures stepped forward from the darkness behind the cargo stacks.

One resembled Peterson Thornton. The other resembled Donald Trump. But the scanner confirmed what my instincts had already guessed. More mimics.

The imposter Kyle spread his arms theatrically. “I can't believe you fell for those fake files.”

Behind me, Droid L-84 spoke calmly. “I had a feeling they were bullocks.”

Anger surged through me as I stared at the grotesque imitation standing on the crate. “Where do you Shark People come from anyway? You go to great lengths to lie, replicate other lifeforms by stealing their bio matter, and even make a fake fucking Trump!”

The creature wearing Kyle’s face laughed quietly. “Relax, the reason you're mad, is because you want to know why you were sent here. I'm going to make sure you never do. I sent Alexandria to kill Valrra, and Samuel of course. He's useless.”

While the creature rambled, I leaned slightly toward Droid L-84 without taking my eyes off the imposters. “get our formation ready. Give the signal at the right moment.”

Behind us, Viking warriors quietly shifted into combat positions. The hangar shadows began to move.

At first it looked like Rus soldiers stepping forward from hiding places among the cargo stacks. But as they advanced, their bodies began to distort. Armor split apart as skeletal talons tore through metal plating. Some of the figures collapsed entirely as the Shark People hidden inside their hosts ripped free from the decaying bodies.

Within seconds the entire hangar erupted with movement. A full frenzy of Shark People surged from the darkness. I raised my rifle and shouted the command. “Now!”

My plasma rifle fired instantly. Four rapid bursts tore through the heads of the imposters on the crates—Kyle, Krystal, Peterson Thornton, and Donald Trump. Their stolen faces exploded into vapor as their true shark forms collapsed to the ground.

The battle began immediately. Plasma fire erupted from the Viking lines, filling the hangar with streaks of brilliant blue energy. The golden droids unleashed devastating sonic blasts from their guitar-shaped weapons, the sound waves slamming into clusters of Shark People and hurling them across the chamber like rag dolls.

I drew my chainsword. Slayer roared to life in my hands. The blade cut through the first wave of Shark People with brutal efficiency. Emily fought beside me like a crimson storm, her magic weaving through the battlefield as jagged silver crystals erupted from the floor to impale enemies while her sword carved through the survivors.

Around us my immortal peers fought with equal ferocity, but even with our strength the Frenzy seemed endless. Shark People poured from every shadow in the hangar, their claws scraping across metal as they lunged toward our lines.

I glanced toward Droid L-84 as the battle intensified. “We need the black hole, now!”

Without hesitation the droid sprinted across the battlefield carrying the compact singularity device. He reached my position and immediately began assembling it while Emily raised her hands and summoned golden crystals from the floor. The crystals erupted around us, forming a defensive barrier that shielded the device from the incoming swarm.

Then a massive shape emerged from the Frenzy. Another Great White Tyrant. The enormous monster unleashed a blast of electrified acid that struck my armor with explosive force. The venomous discharge crackled across my plating as I staggered back. But rage burned away the pain. I charged forward.

The Tyrant swung one of its massive claws downward, but I parried the strike and leapt onto its back. The creature roared violently as I drove Slayer through its spine. With one brutal motion I cut the monster cleanly in half. The two halves crashed to the floor with a thunderous impact. I did not slow. The Frenzy surged toward me, but my strikes became faster than anything the mortal warriors around me could follow. Slayer flashed through the air again and again as Shark People collapsed in piles at my feet.

Soon the remaining creatures began to retreat. Emily noticed it first. “Why are they backing off?”

I barely looked toward them. “That doesn't matter.” I turned back toward the Droid L-84.

Before I could ask, the droid answered. “It's ready!”

I raised my voice across the battlefield. “Alright everyone, back into the portal! Back to Cybrawl!”

The Viking warriors immediately began retreating toward the dimensional gateway. Emily and I leapt over the golden crystal barrier while Droid L-84 followed with the device primed for detonation.

The moment the last warrior crossed through the portal, the black hole device activated. Reality itself collapsed inward.

A swirling gravitational singularity tore open inside the pocket dimension, dragging everything toward its center. The massive hangar twisted and folded like paper as Shark People, cargo crates, and shattered machinery were sucked screaming into the void.

The entire Rus staging ground collapsed in on itself. And then the pocket dimension was gone.

The armory of Cybrawl had grown quieter since our return. The great chamber that had once buzzed with the noise of welding tools, rotating mechanical arms, and armor upgrades now carried a calmer rhythm. Work lights still burned above the weapon stations, casting long reflections across racks of plasma rifles, reinforced shields, and newly forged Vikingnar armor. The smell of metal dust and heated graphene lingered faintly in the air, but the tension that had filled the room earlier had softened into something more reflective.

Word of what had happened in the pocket dimension had spread quickly among the warriors stationed throughout the pyramid. Many of them had witnessed our retreat through the portal, and others had seen the dimensional distortion collapse behind us when the black hole device detonated. Now the armory had become a place where warriors gathered not to prepare for immediate battle, but to process the sheer scale of what had just occurred.

My peers stood scattered around the chamber, some leaning against work tables, others examining their upgraded armor or sharpening weapons in quiet thought. The new Vikingnar symbols on their chests reflected the overhead lights with a subdued blue-gray glow, the dragon emblem now marking every warrior in the room as part of something larger than any single battle.

Emily stood a few steps away from me, turning her gauntleted hands slowly as if still trying to understand what had happened during the fight. The crimson plating of her Red Valkyrie armor contrasted sharply with the golden energy lines that had appeared along the edges of her magical crystals earlier. Her voice finally broke the silence that had settled over the room.

“I can't believe Willy held those slugs off, and I can't believe my silver turned into gold?”

Her words carried equal parts disbelief and wonder. What we had witnessed in the pocket dimension had been far beyond the tactics and weapons we had prepared. Something had shifted in the way our powers worked, something neither of us fully understood yet.

I stepped closer, resting Slayer’s blade lightly against the workbench as I looked across the room at the warriors who had fought beside us. "Don't celebrate early, we must go to Vondrakka, and rescue Valrra. She will sort everything out.”

The reminder settled over the armory like a cold wind. The battle with the Shark People and the destruction of the Rus staging ground had been victories, but they were not the end of the story. Alexandria and Samuel had already gone through the portal toward Vondrakka. Whatever awaited them there—vampires, secrets, or something even stranger—would determine the next step for Vikingnar.

Emily looked up at me then, her dark green hazel eyes reflecting the bright armory lights. For a moment the weight of the war seemed to fade from her expression, replaced by something quieter and more human.

Without saying anything further, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.

Her armor pressed against mine with a soft metallic clink as she held the embrace for a brief moment, a silent acknowledgment of everything we had survived together—and everything still waiting for us beyond the stars.

The armory remained quiet around us, but the path ahead was already clear. Vondrakka awaited.

Far beyond Cybrawl and Verdant, in the distant and mysterious world of Vondrakka, the land itself seemed to exist in a constant twilight. The sky above the planet was perpetually pale, a ghostly gray veil that allowed only the faintest strands of sunlight to bleed through the thick cloud cover. The result was a dim, silvery light that washed across the forests and valleys like an endless dusk. Shadows stretched long and thin beneath the towering alien trees, their branches twisting into intricate shapes that resembled skeletal hands reaching upward toward the muted heavens.

Samuel and Alexandria moved cautiously through that forest, their boots pressing softly against a thick layer of silver-gray moss that covered the ground like a living carpet. The air was cold and still, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and ancient bark. Strange vines hung from the trees, swaying gently despite the complete absence of wind, and clusters of pale fungi glowed faintly at the bases of tree trunks, casting a dim bioluminescent light that added to the eerie atmosphere.

Though the forest was alien, there was something oddly familiar about it. The shape of the terrain, the way the trees clustered together, even the faint hum of distant wildlife—it all felt reminiscent of forests from Earth, as though this world had grown from the same forgotten blueprint of nature but had been twisted by centuries of isolation.

Samuel finally broke the silence that had stretched between them for nearly an hour. “Why do you think Kyle was acting strange?”

Alexandria slowed her pace slightly, glancing toward the dark canopy above them as she considered the question. The memory of Kyle’s behavior still lingered uneasily in her mind. “I don't know, he's never been creepy before.”

They continued walking deeper into the forest, the silence returning for a few moments before Alexandria suddenly stopped.

She tilted her head slightly, listening. Her voice lowered. “Did you hear that?”

Samuel instinctively reached toward the hilt of his weapon. For a moment, nothing moved. Then the nearby bushes rustled. Two figures emerged slowly from the tangled undergrowth. Kyle. Krystal. But they did not look the way Samuel remembered them.

Kyle’s body was battered and dirt-streaked, his armor torn and scorched in several places. Most shocking of all, his left arm was gone entirely, the empty sleeve hanging loosely against his side. Krystal stood beside him, equally exhausted, a long scar running across the side of her neck that had clearly not yet fully healed.

The sight of them stopped Samuel in his tracks. “What the fuck? You were supposed to be back in the hot pocket?”

Kyle blinked in confusion, still breathing heavily as though he had been running for a long time. “What?”

Alexandria stepped forward quickly, her voice rising with frustration. “We literally were sent by you to look for Valrra! What is going on?”

Kyle’s eyes darkened as he finally understood what she was describing. “Those Shark People cloned us, using the bio matter they ate from our precious meat suits.” The explanation sent a chill through the pale forest.

Alexandria frowned, trying to piece together the timeline of events. “And when did this happen Kyle?”

Kyle exhaled slowly, his breathing still strained. “That happened during our capture.”

Krystal glanced nervously into the forest around them, clearly on edge. “but there's no time to explain, we're being hunted.”

Before either Samuel or Alexandria could ask anything else, Kyle and Krystal turned and began running deeper into the forest.

Samuel and Alexandria exchanged a brief look before sprinting after them. “Wait!”

Alexandria called out as they pushed through the thick undergrowth.

The four of them ran for several minutes before Kyle finally veered off the main path and dropped into a narrow grassy wash that cut through the forest floor like a shallow trench. The tall grass there was thick enough to conceal them from sight, and the small depression provided a temporary shelter from whatever threat had been chasing them.

They crouched low, catching their breath. For a moment it seemed like they might have escaped. Then the air suddenly crackled.

A streak of plasma fire tore through the trees overhead and slammed into the trunk of a nearby tree with explosive force. The bark vaporized instantly, leaving a glowing scar across the wood.

It had been a warning shot. The forest fell silent again.

Then a calm voice spoke from somewhere behind them. “Kyle, Krystal, and your friends... Show yourselves. It's for the benefit of everyone, that you surrender yourselves. And perhaps captivity would be temporary.”

Samuel slowly turned his head. Shapes were emerging from the forest. Dozens of them. Tall figures with pale skin and elegant armor stepped out from the shadows between the trees. Their movements were silent and deliberate, their glowing eyes reflecting the dim light of Vondrakka’s sky. Each of them carried advanced plasma weapons that hummed softly with contained energy.

At their center stood a single figure whose presence commanded the others effortlessly. Vafri. The leader of the vampires.

Samuel, Alexandria, Kyle, and Krystal exchanged uneasy glances. Surrounded and outnumbered, there was little choice left to them. Slowly, cautiously, they stood up from the grassy wash and revealed themselves. The forest of Vondrakka watched silently as the four travelers surrendered themselves to the vampires.

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CHAPTER 42: “SWEET SUPPRESSION" “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”