CHAPTER 9: “ESCAPE PART TWO” “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”

BY WILLIAM WARNER

CHAPTER 9: “ESCAPE PART TWO” “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”

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The freighter-style boat glided silently along the River of Souls, its metallic hull reflecting faint glimmers of cosmic light as it drifted through the Wraith’s most sacred and surreal expanse. The steady churn of its engine was the only mechanical sound—a low hum swallowed by the infinite quiet of this otherworldly realm.

Here, in this strange corridor between dimensions, the air was thick with energies that couldn’t be measured—only felt. The orange skies, so familiar in other parts of the Wraith, were gone. Above us, a vast galactic canvas stretched out across the heavens. Stars shimmered like ancient memories, pulsing with unknowable rhythms, arranged in impossible geometries. Some constellations seemed to move when not observed directly. Others hovered in place like symbols from forgotten languages.

The veil between this place and the higher dimensions was thin—so thin that one could feel their skin buzzing, their mind flickering with stray thoughts and impressions that didn’t belong to them. It was as if ghosts whispered just inches from the ears, yet said nothing that could be understood with language. Just emotion. Just memory. Just… weight.

The boat rocked slightly as the current shifted, the river thickening with streams of glowing silver—souls, flowing in all directions like migrating stardust. These weren’t mere apparitions. They had form and substance, faint outlines of the people they once were. Some huddled in groups. Others floated serenely, eyes closed, faces relaxed as if dreaming for the first time in eons.

Ahead, a whirlpool began to form.

It wasn’t made of water, but of concentrated soul-energy, spiraling upward like a cosmic funnel. At its apex was a glowing wormhole, a shimmering hole in the sky that twisted space and color like a wound in reality. As the boat approached this convergence, Beelzebub ordered Deathskull to guide the vessel carefully to the left, avoiding the gravitational pull of the vortex. Deathskull’s skeletal hands gripped the controls, adjusting the rudder as the boat carved a slow arc around the whirlpool’s perimeter.

Honey, the dog, padded forward cautiously and poked her head over the railing, ears perked, nose twitching. Beside her, the Proboscis monkey stood on his toes, long fingers curled around the edge of the ship as he gazed into the radiant spiral. The two animals, usually full of playful movement, were still—utterly captivated.

And so were we.

None of us spoke. We didn’t need to.

Before us, we witnessed the uncanny procession of souls. They were rising from the whirlpool, drifting upward through the open sky, toward the wormhole. The movement was gentle and solemn, like an underwater ballet choreographed by divine intelligence. Each soul retained the clothing they wore in death—a soldier in torn armor, a nurse in a faded gown, a child in pajamas smeared with ash. Some had wounds. Burns. Lacerations. Gaping holes in their torsos.

But as they ascended… they began to heal.

Wounds mended. Flesh regenerated. Broken bones realigned, and charred skin slowly restored to smooth perfection. The dead were not just rising—they were transforming, becoming whole again before our very eyes. It wasn’t grotesque. It was beautiful in a way that defied earthly comprehension. Like watching a shattered mosaic reassemble itself into something even more intricate and profound.

Above, the wormhole pulsed in time with the ascension. It wasn’t just a hole in space—it was alive, responding to the spiritual passage. Its edge rippled with fractal flames, gold and indigo intertwining like dancing serpents. A current of pure intention seemed to flow upward from the river into the opening, guiding the souls like a cosmic current.

We stood, transfixed.

Even Beelzebub, who had witnessed eons of strange phenomena, seemed humbled. He watched with unblinking eyes, his cloak fluttering softly in the spectral wind. Though no words passed between us, I could sense the unspoken reverence in everyone—each of us struck by the sheer sacredness of the moment.

Beelzebub’s voice eventually came, low and solemn, like a scripture spoken from memory.

“These souls have chosen to make a safe passage… from the physical realm into the higher dimensions. They are not escaping. They are returning. They did not cling to dogma, nor to the false light of deities. Such as myself. They found something greater. A spiritual sovereignty immune to corruption. Even here… the Wraith cannot touch them.”

The boat drifted quietly around the whirlpool, the edges of the vessel occasionally catching trails of soul light as it passed. These souls didn’t acknowledge us—they had no need to. Their path was clear. Unburdened. Free.

As they floated upward, the final remnants of their earthly pain dissolved. They left behind not just bodies, but identities, fears, regrets. And yet… there was no erasure. Only integration. As if everything they had been, everything they had suffered, was now part of a greater wholeness—absorbed into the tapestry of higher existence.

The higher dimensions welcomed them not with gates or angels, but with resonance. A harmony that echoed across space and soul alike.

And then they were gone.

The wormhole shimmered, pulsed one final time, and dimmed ever so slightly, as if exhaling. The vortex below it slowed, no longer summoning, just spinning gently like a memory.

The boat continued forward, the river bending toward some unseen destination.

And though no one spoke, I felt something stir in my chest—a strange ache, not of sadness, but of remembrance. Of something I had forgotten I was missing. Something I hoped to one day earn.

The Wraith still loomed around us, and danger was far from over.

But for a moment, on that river, beneath a star-lit sky, we had witnessed something beyond fear.

Hope.

Beelzebub reached beneath his tattered cloak and retrieved a Dragon Stone—a relic older than most civilizations, humming with ancient resonance. It was carved from black crystal, shot through with red veins that pulsed like molten arteries. The second he removed it from his robes, the air shifted. Time seemed to slow. Even the gentle current of the River of Souls took on a deliberate stillness, as if all things were momentarily held in anticipation.

He stepped forward to the pulpit of the ship—a jagged prow that jutted forward like the bow of a cathedral set adrift—and carefully affixed the Dragon Stone to the slot carved into the altar-like structure. As soon as the stone met the socket, a low, thunderous hum surged through the vessel. The entire hull shivered with it, like a beast waking up from a deep sleep.

Then the sky changed.

Above us, the serene cosmic canopy dimmed, folding away like a dying flame. Orange light flooded back into the world, washing the sky in the familiar hue of the Wraith realm. Burnt amber and molten crimson bled into each other, painting a heavy, unreal atmosphere. We had left the threshold between worlds and entered back into the dangerous domain of the damned.

But we were not alone.

With a guttural roar that tore through the firmament, a massive dragon descended from the upper thermals of the sky. Its wings spanned the breadth of small mountains, scales rippling with a living sheen of crimson and obsidian. Every beat of its wings stirred the clouds and sent down tremors of wind that rocked our freighter-style boat. Eyes like molten gold locked onto us with the kind of judgment reserved for titans and gods.

The Dragon of Ascension, guardian of the soul’s final journey.

It spiraled overhead, eclipsing the light, but then its course subtly adjusted. Its snarl ceased. Its stance softened. The Dragon Stone had done its work.

The dragon recognized the signal—we were not intruders.

Our request for safe passage had been acknowledged.

Far above us, the sky was not empty. Demonic riders on lesser drakes had tried to stalk the skies, perhaps unaware of the Dragon of Ascension’s proximity. They wore jagged armor, wielding spears brimming with soul-sickening energy, and their creatures were malformed—a mockery of the true dragons that once guarded the afterlife.

The guardian responded without mercy.

With a single beat of its wings, it surged upward like a missile, slicing through the clouds. Flames spewed from its throat, engulfing the demon riders in cones of incinerating fire. There was no battle, no resistance—just obliteration. One by one, the drakes and their riders became streaks of blackened ash falling like rain into the river below.

The dragon’s movements were balletic—an ancient, lethal choreography of domination. With every strike, it reaffirmed the natural order. There was no defiance in the Wraith sky tonight. Only judgment.

And yet, despite the destruction around us, we remained untouched.

Our vessel glided forward, low and steady, beneath the blazing theater above. It was a surreal juxtaposition—the calm of our mission, the stillness of the river, with chaos unraveling overhead like a celestial war. The guardian dragon gave us distance, as if honoring our purpose.

Our crew remained silent. No one dared to move. The Proboscis monkey had curled itself into a ball near a cargo crate, its eyes darting between the flames and the stone affixed to the pulpit. Honey, the loyal dog, sat rigid by the helm, ears alert but not fearful. It was as if even the animals knew we were under the protection of something ancient and incomprehensible.

Beelzebub stood with one hand still resting on the pulpit, his eyes fixed on the guardian in the sky. Deathskull didn’t flinch; his skeletal frame remained statuesque behind the wheel. And I… I felt something stir in my bones. A sense of smallness, but not despair. More like standing before a mountain that had chosen not to crush you.

Respect.

That was what this was. Not peace. Not safe.

But mutual recognition between forces trying to preserve order in a place defined by entropy.

The dragon eventually veered away, disappearing into a glowing rift in the sky. The flames from the battle slowly ebbed out, curling into strange wisps that vanished before they reached the river. In its wake, the orange light dimmed slightly—no longer oppressive, just strange, alien, and charged.

We resumed our journey.

The freighter creaked and churned forward once more, sailing into deeper layers of the Wraith. Around us, strange black monoliths began to rise from the river’s edge—ruins of an ancient civilization that once believed they could harvest the souls of others for power. Their remnants jutted from the fog like broken fingers, haunted and skeletal, reminders of the cost of hubris.

And so we continued—guided by stone, shadow, and fire.

The mission was far from over.

But the river had acknowledged us.

And for now, at least, the heavens above had chosen to let us pass.

The freighter groaned as it approached the cracked stone pier, its hull scraping softly against rusted mooring pylons half-swallowed by the soul-touched waters. The city loomed before us—twisted iron skeletons, collapsed skyscrapers, and alleyways cloaked in fog that seemed to breathe with a life of its own. Above the wreckage, like a titan asleep in a throne of ash, stood the enormous mech, its silhouette etched against the orange and purple haze of the Wraith sky.

“There,” Deathskull said, pointing a skeletal digit toward it. “That mech has a core wormhole system—buried tech. If it’s still intact, it can open a safe corridor.”

“Let’s hope no one beats us to it,” Beelzebub muttered, stepping onto the cracked pavement.

We disembarked in silence. Honey’s paws clicked softly across the stone while the monkey clung to my shoulder, its eyes darting nervously at flickering shadows between the buildings.

The streets were warped—pipes protruding from the ground like veins, flickering lights still blinking in broken windows. Signs in dead languages swung in the wind. At every turn, we passed reminders of a lost era: rusted rail cars on bent tracks, vending machines filled with fossilized rations, a toppled statue of some forgotten industrial deity.

Beelzebub sniffed the air. “Demonic residue. Not fresh, but… something’s been here.”

I nodded and kept moving, my hand resting on the grip of my chain sword.

The mech was growing closer now. It stood with one arm outstretched toward the sky, as if trying to reach something that never came. Its surface was covered in grime and moss, but here and there, its lights still blinked. Something inside was still alive.

“Almost there,” Deathskull said, his voice low. “Let’s hope its mind hasn’t gone rogue.”

The sky deepened into a bruised shade of crimson as we pressed forward, the ruined skyline of the Wraith city shuddering with unnatural groans and metallic sighs. Just as we crossed a shattered plaza choked with skeletal trees and twisted steel, the ground trembled—a dull, rhythmic thud echoing through the veins of the earth like a prelude to something ancient and cruel.

Then they emerged.

From beyond a charred overpass, a wave of demonic foot soldiers spilled into view—slithering, crawling, sprinting, shrieking in a dozen dialects of madness. Their bodies were half-cloaked in black flame, their weapons fused with bone and tar. The air grew dense and sulfuric, as if we were inhaling the very breath of decay.

Beelzebub moved fast. His hands weaved ancient sigils through the air, glowing white-hot against the dark. Glyphs hovered like embers around his fingertips before exploding outward in arcs of brilliant light. A wall of raw energy ignited, sweeping across the city’s threshold and freezing the oncoming horde like statues mid-charge. Limbs contorted, eyes bulged, and in moments the snarling swarm was suspended—locked in time.

But the momentary silence that followed was not relief.

High above us, perched on the skeletal remains of an observation tower, stood Maladrie—draped in flowing obsidian silk that flickered with illusory shimmer. Her silhouette shimmered with shifting beauty, impossible geometry, and dark suggestion. Her long, silver-black hair waved in the Wraith wind, and her eyes—twin stars of envy—burned with obsession.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

Instead, she raised her arms—and tore reality open.

From the rift exploded two colossal beasts.

The first, The Seven Headed Sin, emerged like a living monument to forbidden genetics and ancient punishment. Four hundred feet tall, it loomed like a mountain. Seven grotesque heads—each with bat-like wings protruding from their temples and curved horns like molten steel—gnashed and screamed in different octaves. Its torso rippled with eyes that blinked without rhythm, giving it sight from every angle. Veins pulsed beneath its black skin, which steamed in the cold air like a furnace struggling to contain its wrath.

The second creature stormed from the flames behind it—an ancient war elephant, towering at two hundred feet, its hide a patchwork of demonic plating and fossilized bone. Its tusks were blades, sharpened to scythe through concrete, steel, and flesh alike. Its scream was a trumpet of extinction—a raw, primal blast that shattered the glass of every ruined building for miles. Its steps cracked the foundation of the world beneath it, and it ran like a juggernaut determined to crush history itself.

They were titans. Maladrie had summoned monsters meant for the apocalypse.

Beelzebub shouted for us to move.

“Go to the Mech, I’ll stay behind!”

There was no time for strategy. No time to fight. Not yet.

We ran.

Honey barked in terror, and the monkey clung to my back as we sprinted toward the towering silhouette of the mech. The air became a storm of debris and screams, buildings collapsing behind us, black fire licking the edges of the sky as the beasts gave chase. Their roars chased us like shadows with teeth.

The mech stood at the edge of a crater, its armored frame partially buried in rubble, like a fallen god waiting to be awakened. It was ancient, but it hummed—its systems still alive beneath centuries of dust and corrosion. Runes lit up along its legs as we approached, as if it sensed our desperation.

We reached the base.

Deathskull peeled away panels with cybernetic strength while I punched the emergency activation codes. The entrance hissed open, revealing a vertical shaft bathed in pale green light. We dove inside, the bulkhead sealing shut just as a wave of collapsing buildings swallowed the ground behind us.

Inside the cockpit, the mech felt like a cathedral built for war—enormous, ritualistic, with a pilot’s chair that looked more like a throne of thorns and cables. I climbed in. The harness clamped around my torso, wrists, and skull. Wires pierced the suit. A sharp pain entered my spine.

“This mech,” Deathskull said, his voice echoing through the chamber, “is more than a weapon. It's sentient. It speaks in your blood. Piloting it… it will change you.”

I felt it.

Like molten data flooding my veins.

The machine whispered secrets. It spoke to my brainstem in a tongue older than civilization, and I welcomed it. My body jerked. My mind expanded. I saw blueprints of stars, kill-counts, limb trajectories, psychic pressure zones. I saw through its eyes.

I didn’t care about my chemistry. I didn’t care about the warnings.

Because outside, two monsters wanted to turn us to ash.

And this mech?

This was our answer.

As the cockpit sealed shut, hydraulic locks clamped into place with a hiss of ancient steam. Deathskull and the animals were secured into the passenger restraint system behind me, encased in a reinforced cradle of shock-absorbing armor. I stood on a circular platform that lifted me into position, where coiling cables and neuro-fiber links fastened to my limbs, spine, and temples.

The machine’s neural interface surged to life.

A domed visor descended over my eyes, flickering with glyphs and loading symbols that bled away into seamless clarity. Instantly, I was no longer in the cockpit—I was in the mech. Every movement of my arms, legs, hands, and feet translated into the immense, calibrated motions of the towering war machine. When I turned my head, the horizon shifted. When I clenched my fists, the mech’s massive hands responded with impossible strength.

The sensation was intoxicating.

I felt the weight of mountains beneath my feet. I could sense gravity differently, like it bowed to my presence. My vision stretched for miles, enhanced by multi-spectrum targeting and heat detection. The wind rumbled against my chest like distant thunder. At that moment, I was a 400-foot titan.

And the monsters were waiting.

The mech roared to life as I surged forward, the massive chain sword gripped in the machine’s plated hands sparking with divine fury. Each step thundered through the crumbling streets, flattening abandoned vehicles and splitting the earth with my momentum. Chunks of pavement burst beneath the mech’s heels as I stormed toward the twin nightmares looming on the horizon.

The Seven Headed Sin let out a discordant wail—seven demonic screams layered over one another like a corrupted symphony, vibrating the atmosphere with sickening force. Its malformed heads writhed like serpents, each one snarling with rows of jagged, blade-like teeth. Its eyes, hundreds of them, blinked in chaotic unison. Beside it, the tusked elephant-like behemoth bellowed and scraped its massive tusks against the street, cleaving concrete towers like paper as it barreled forward.

I raised the chain sword high.

The engine within its spine shrieked as the blade ignited, teeth spinning in rapid succession, carving through the very air with burning trails. I brought it down hard across the elephant monster’s flank. Sparks erupted. Hide like volcanic armor cracked under the force, ichor spewing into the air in bursts of sulfurous steam. The beast howled and swung its massive head, knocking me back with a thunderous blow.

I crashed into a line of derelict skyscrapers. Steel and glass crumbled around me. Alarms wailed briefly before they were silenced by the settling dust. I tried to stand—my limbs moved slow, sensors blinking red. Damage alerts flared inside the visor. The elephant advanced again, tusks aimed to impale.

Then the sky caught fire.

From above, the great dragon of the River of Souls descended—wings stretched wide like curtains of flame and shadow. Its eyes glowed with celestial gold, ancient wisdom and unbridled fury burning within them. It curled in midair and spat a jet of fire that coiled like a living serpent, striking the Seven Headed Sin square in the torso. The creature screamed, clutching at its burning limbs as flames traced through the network of eyes along its chest and arms.

The dragon twisted, landing with a quake beside me.

Its scales glistened with astral energy, and each beat of its wings sent shockwaves rippling across the ruined battlefield. The elephant charged again, but the dragon intercepted, biting into its armored head and slamming it against a broken tower, toppling the monolith like a toy block.

I rose.

I grabbed my sword again, reboot systems chirping as they restored function to my limbs. I lunged toward the Seven Headed Sin, this time sidestepping the rain of corrupted fists. My blade found purchase in its torso, carving upwards as severed heads screamed and dropped like rotten fruit. The creature retaliated, clawing and shrieking, but I stood my ground. Each movement I made resonated with purpose, the mech’s fury aligning with my own.

The dragon and I fought as one—organic and machine, spirit and steel.

Together, we held the line against these unholy colossi, shaking the very foundation of the Wraith with every blow.

The earth trembled beneath our clash—mech and dragon against the twin leviathans of Maladrie’s conjuring. Smoke and spectral ash churned through the broken skyline, forming oily clouds that coiled around the skeletal remains of the city. The sky flashed with deep hues of orange and violet, casting eerie light over the battlefield as if the heavens themselves watched in apprehension.

The Seven Headed Sin, though wounded, rose taller than before, its remaining heads howling in chaotic harmony. A pulse of shadow erupted from its chest, a wave of dark energy that shattered windows, bent iron, and sent my mech sliding backwards across the cracked pavement. Sparks exploded from the joints in my legs as I dug in, stabilizers screaming against the force. I responded with a burst of hydraulic power, lunging forward and plunging my chain sword into its hip, grinding through twisted flesh and ichor-coated bone.

The creature shrieked, three of its heads vomiting streams of corrupted light that struck my torso in staccato bursts, melting armor plating and exposing inner servos. My HUD is filled with warnings. Damage thresholds breached. Cooling systems compromised. Still, I pushed forward, driving the blade deeper until the beast flung me away with a clawed fist.

I tumbled across the cityscape, leveling what remained of a transport station and crashing through a support column that once held a maglev rail. Rubble buried my mech halfway, sensors spinning with interference. My breathing was heavy inside the neural harness. The feedback from the machine surged through my nerves like adrenaline on fire.

Meanwhile, the dragon continued its duel with the tusked monstrosity. The elephant-beast reared, slamming its obsidian tusks into a crumbling high-rise, toppling the structure onto the dragon’s wing. The mighty creature screeched, twisting away as debris scraped its scaled hide. Flames burst from its maw in retaliation, but the behemoth was relentless. With a thunderous bellow, it charged again, goring the dragon along the side and pinning it into a ruptured power silo. The resulting explosion rocked the skyline.

The dragon roared, wings flaring with blazing defiance. With one titanic sweep, it batted the elephant away, sending it rolling across the ground like a meteor. The behemoth crashed into a fuel plant, detonating silos in sequence, fire pillars erupting into the sky as black oil and glowing embers bathed the area in light.

But neither side relented.

From the ground, I forced the mech to rise. Actuators groaned, gears whined, and sparks bled from my shoulder mount as I hefted the chain sword once more. The Seven Headed Sin turned to me again, its eyes leaking molten corruption, its severed necks writhing like snakes desperate to regenerate. Around its arms, tendrils of shadow formed new weapons—living whips made of compressed dark energy, lashing the air like serpents with razor tongues.

I blocked the first strike, but the second coiled around my mech’s leg, dragging me forward across concrete and steel. I twisted my torso and activated the shoulder cannon—one of the only ranged options left. With a metallic whomp, the cannon fired a streak of blue plasma that exploded against the beast’s midsection, shearing away armor and igniting a fire within its ribcage.

But the beast did not fall. It howled and retaliated with renewed fury.

The battle raged on.

The sky above burned like a sunken furnace, an endless sea of molten orange that shimmered and swirled with impossible winds. I could barely breathe, every breath inside the cockpit felt thinner than the last as the mech soared higher and higher—no longer under my control. The Seven Headed Sin had wrapped itself around the mech like a parasite, its sudden wings thundering against the atmosphere as it pulled us into the higher reaches of the Wraith’s stratosphere.

The weight of it crushed down on my mech’s shoulders. I could hear the groan of metal and the pained shriek of servos trying to hold firm under the monster’s mass. My HUD glitched with static, the temperature rising within the cockpit, warning lights flashing across my vision like red stars. The air tasted of metal and panic. I reached for the chain sword, but it was gone—torn from the mech’s hand during the struggle.

But I wasn’t helpless.

On instinct, I forced the mech’s right arm to flex, engaging the embedded gauntlet blade. The steel hissed forward, humming with kinetic energy. I raised the arm despite the weight of the creature on my back, sensors screaming at the torque. With a single, savage motion, I drove the gauntlet blade backward.

The blade plunged through the beast’s spine—if it had one—slicing flesh, nerves, and twisted sinew. The Seven Headed Sin released an otherworldly screech, all its heads wailing in disharmony as dark ichor sprayed across the orange sky like ink in firelight. The wings beat wildly, losing rhythm, then tore into shreds of shadow. The creature spasmed, detached, and fell apart mid-air in a rain of corrupted meat and disintegrating bone.

But victory came at a cost.

With the beast no longer holding us aloft, the mech plummeted like a meteor through the Wraith’s orange sky. My sensors went black for a moment, then surged back on with a critical systems warning. Wind howled through the reinforced seams of the cockpit. The descent was steep, fast, furious. I could see the ruins below—twisted metal towers, jagged remains of bridges, and the scorched craters where entire blocks had been erased from existence. We were going to hit hard.

From the ground, the dragon—its body streaked with blood and smoke from its own battle—lifted into the sky. It ascended like a crimson comet, wings outstretched, trailing fire in its wake. Its eyes locked onto us, burning with intelligent focus. It surged upward, pushing faster and faster, trying to match our velocity, talons outstretched.

We were falling too fast.

It reached for us.

Claws nearly grazed the mech’s leg.

But it wasn’t enough.

The impact came like the fist of a god.

The mech slammed into the ground on its left side, demolishing the remains of a shattered highway and sending shockwaves that rippled through the surrounding buildings. Steel buckled. Glass vaporized. A crater opened beneath us, swallowing what was left of the road. The cockpit screamed with alerts. I was thrown forward, my harness straining to hold me in place. Pain exploded through my body as my left arm seized with agony.

The feedback systems had shortened. The neural harness had backfired.

Something inside the piloting interface ignited.

White-hot pain spread from my shoulder down to my hand. I looked through the haze and saw the device on my left arm melting, fused into my flesh. A hole had been burned straight through the tissue, cauterized by the tech’s overload. My breath hitched, my vision swam, and the agony pulsed like thunder beneath my skin.

The dragon landed beside us with the gentleness of a mountain descending from the sky. Its wings folded as it knelt, nudging the ruined mech with its snout, testing to see if we had survived.

Inside, I leaned back against the scorched padding, my left arm useless, my body trembling from the residual neural shock. My blood, sweat, and the coolant from the cockpit mingled into a bitter cocktail of survival.

But we weren’t defeated. Or dead. We won.

But we were far from whole.

And above, far beyond the dragon’s protective wings, the sky was shifting.

It wasn’t over.

Not even close.

The cockpit hissed with dying energy, its warning lights dimming as I scrambled through the pain to deactivate the neural piloting system. My scorched left arm throbbed violently with each breath I took. The smell of burnt plastic and singed flesh lingered thick in the air. I gritted my teeth, fumbling at the release latches around my wrist and spine. Sparks danced as I disconnected myself from the system.

“Deathskull!” I growled through clenched teeth, bracing myself against the wall of the cockpit. “Activate the damn portal—now!”

Deathskull spun in his seat, alarm in his eyes, even beneath the dark skeletal mask that concealed half his face. His fingers hovered uncertainty over the console.

“You’re injured,” he said, voice taut with concern. “We need to stabilize you before—”

“No time,” I snapped. “She’ll send more. We both know what Maladrie is capable of. We won’t survive a second wave.”

Deathskull hesitated, then nodded grimly. He pulled a small lever from the side of the dashboard and turned to me. “You’ve got to pump this lever—seven times. Then press the red button. It'll breach the veil.”

I stumbled toward the mechanism, clutching my wounded arm. The lever was stiff, rusted from heat damage. Every pump sent new jolts of pain through my side, but I didn’t stop. One… two… three… by the sixth, my vision blurred. On the seventh, I slammed my good hand onto the red button.

The ship trembled. The walls groaned. Outside the mech’s viewport, space began to twist and ripple. Like an oil slick tearing in reverse, a rift opened up just above the ruined cityscape. Vortices of purple and black energy coiled into a circular aperture, its edges lined with fractal lightning.

Deathskull turned to his console, inputting coordinates at lightning speed. Ancient glyphs flickered across the screen, mixing with digital star charts. The mech’s systems hummed, rerouting the last of its power into the portal stabilizer.

Outside, I could see Beelzebub standing atop a scorched tower near the ruins of the River of Souls. His dark cloak fluttered in the smoky wind, the gleam of the dragon stone still on his chest. He raised a hand, his expression solemn, eyes like black mirrors of fire.

“Thank you,” his voice echoed through the comms, quiet but resolute. “The souls will be safe now. But your war is just beginning.”

Then he turned, his figure swallowed by the storm clouds forming over the horizon as more demonic legions began to emerge in the distance. He stayed behind, a sentinel of the river, while we made our escape.

The portal yawned wide, gravity pulling us forward. The mech’s legs trembled as the systems fired one last sequence, lifting us just enough to carry our weight through the rift.

Deathskull held onto the command chair, the animals—Honey and the proboscis monkey—strapped beside him in a panic.

I clutched the safety rail, shielding my left arm, as the mech pushed through the dimensional tear.

And then—silence.

The whirling chaos of the Wraith realm dissolved. Light shifted. Gravity adjusted. A burst of white overtook us.

When the light faded, the world was green again. Familiar. Still.

Trees rustled in a late summer breeze. Crickets chirped somewhere nearby. The sound of bees humming over the gentle ripple of a creek. The mech’s feet sank into soft earth, and I recognized the small grassy clearing bordered by thick woods and rocky banks.

Money Creek.

Bloomington, Illinois.

We were back.

The portal shrank behind us, folding in on itself with a low moan, before snapping shut with a flicker of lightning.

I slumped back in the pilot’s seat, the pain in my arm blurring the edge of my vision. The HUD flickered with a single word:

STANDBY.

Deathskull looked over at me, the relief in his voice unspoken, but visible in the way his shoulders dropped.

The animals, startled but unharmed, wriggled against their restraints.

I let my head fall back, watching as the wind bent the trees and the sun broke through the clouds. It almost felt like it had all been a dream—until I glanced down at my arm. The blackened metal had fused into my flesh. There was nothing dreamlike about it.

We were back.

But we hadn’t returned unchanged.

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CHAPTER 9: “ESCAPE PART TWO” “VIKINGS WAR IN VALHALLA”