Chapter 76: Final Chapter of Godslaying

Chapter 76: Final Chapter of Godslaying

The altar was sinking.

The entire foundation had been hollowed out from below by lava, and the obsidian floor was tilting downward at a visible rate.

Cole stood at the center of the altar. The chaos corruption on his right arm had mostly healed.

Odin stood across from him.

The chaos monster no longer looked human. His spine had been pushed outward by chaos energy, forming a row of exoskeletal ridges along his back, with two thick bone spikes jutting out where his shoulder blades used to be.

The wolf-head mark on his chest was pulsing violently. With each pulse, more chaos energy flooded into his body, pressing down what little human consciousness he had left, layer by layer.

"Your father is dead. Your mother is dead..." Odin snarled. "And now you're going to die here too!"

Cole said nothing.

He crossed his twin blades in front of his chest, stepped his left foot forward half a pace, and bent his knees slightly.

The next second.

He pushed off with his right foot and launched himself forward, slashing down at Odin.

Odin's right claw came up to meet him.

They collided in midair. The golden war blade struck the center of the wolf claw's palm.

Cole used the recoil to flip himself in the air, rolling over Odin's head. He reversed his broken blade in his left hand and chopped down at the back of Odin's neck.

Odin let out a shriek and arched his back sharply. The bone spikes scraped across Cole's cheek, slicing it open. Blood ran down along his cheekbone.

Cole yanked the broken blade free and jumped back. He raised his hand and wiped the blood from his face.

Odin turned around. The crimson eyes in that wolf face locked onto Cole.

He opened his mouth. Chaos energy began to gather inside, forming a dark purple energy sphere.

The sphere spun at high speed between his jaws, warping the air around it.

He fired it straight at Cole.

Cole dodged sideways. The sphere grazed past him and slammed into a runic obelisk behind him, blasting off the upper half.

At that same moment, Cole burst through a wave of splashing lava, both blades forward, driving straight for the wolf-head mark on Odin's chest.

Odin raised both claws to block. Blade edge met claw edge.

Odin was stronger now than before. He had pushed every last bit of chaos energy into his muscles and bones, holding nothing back.

Cole's blades were slowly being forced back. He clenched his jaw. His crystal core rumbled steadily inside his chest, but he was losing the contest of raw strength.

Cole gave up the struggle, pulled his blades back sharply, and retreated. He swung around to Odin's side and drove the golden war blade toward his armpit.

Odin struck back fast. He snarled and swung his left claw in a counter, slamming it into Cole's left chest.

The impact sent Cole flying. He hit the ground, rolled, and pushed himself back up, using both blades as props to hold himself steady.

He used the wolf god's essence to forcibly cauterize the blood vessels at the wound's edges, but the injury to his lung he had no time to deal with.

Odin braced himself with his remaining left claw and hauled himself upright. His right arm hung limp at his side. He rasped between heavy breaths:

"You're almost done too. Your crystal core is starting to crack, isn't it? Keep fighting for a few more minutes and you'll end up just like your father. Core shattered. Organs failing."

Cole looked down at the wound on his chest, still seeping blood. He knew Odin was right. If this dragged on, he would be the one to go down first.

So he made a decision.

He deliberately left himself open.

Odin spotted the gap and moved in immediately. He raised his left claw. Chaos energy gathered at the tips, compressed into a single needle-thin spike, aimed straight at Cole's heart.

Both of them charged forward at the same time.

Odin's claw drove toward Cole's heart.

Cole didn't move out of the way.

Because in the instant before the claw pierced him, he twisted his upper body sideways, adjusting the angle just slightly. The claw tip entered two inches to the left of his left chest, grazed along the outer wall of his heart, and punched out through his back.

Searing pain exploded from the wound and shot straight up his spine to the back of his skull.

But Cole didn't stop.

He used his pierced left side to trap Odin's only functioning arm, using his own body as a lock, pinning Odin's claw inside him.

Odin froze for a moment.

He tried to pull his claw back. It wouldn't move. It was stuck fast.

In that instant, Cole raised the golden war blade in his right hand and poured everything left in his crystal core into the blade.

The war blade turned a blazing white.

"This one..." Cole said, his voice rough and low, "is for Kyle. For Leah. For Old Eric. For everyone you killed."

He drove the blade into the wolf-head mark on Odin's chest.

The moment it pierced through, every last bit of energy in the blade poured into the mark.

Odin's mouth fell open. He tried to make a sound. Nothing came out.

His body began to come apart. Gold-white light poured out through the cracks. The chaos was completely out of control.

"Impossible..." Odin watched his own body collapse in front of him. "I was supposed to... become a god..."

Cole pulled the war blade from his chest.

Odin's face was the last thing to go. The face that had been twisted by the wolf god's malice briefly returned to something human as the chaos energy faded — an old man with white-streaked hair, deep lines around his mouth, and sunken eyes.

His body collapsed in an instant into a pile of ash.

Then a bolt of black lightning shot out from the pile.

The wolf god's will.

It hadn't dissolved with Odin's body. It had been living inside Odin for too long. Now that its host was gone, it needed a new one.

So it drove straight for Cole's heart.

Cole could barely stay on his feet. Odin's broken claw was still lodged in his left chest. The malevolent will seized the opening, burrowed into the wound, and began spreading along his nerves toward the deepest part of his brain.

"Even if I die!" Odin's last curse rang out. "It will find the next host. Chaos never disappears. Never!"

Cole dropped to one knee. His consciousness pushed back against the wolf god's will as it tried to force its way in.

The wolf god's essence inside him activated on its own. Molten gold and silver-white wove together into a net, spreading from the crystal core outward through his whole body, meeting the malevolent will head-on.

Two forces collided inside him.

The malevolent will wanted to take over his mind. The essence will wanted to burn it out.

His entire body was the battlefield.

He curled forward in agony and fell to his knees. His forehead hit the broken stone. His fingers clawed into the cracks in the ground. Every nail split open. Blood dripped into the lava and hissed.

Something was screaming inside his head. The dying curse of the first high priest. The malice Odin had spent over sixty years feeding and growing.

Then a golden light appeared.

A faint, blurred shape took form in his mind.

Kyle.

The last fragment of Kyle's soul.

"My boy." Kyle's voice came from within the shape. "This is my last gift to you."

Kyle's soul fragment burned away every last bit of its existence.

The malevolent will was swallowed whole in the column of light.

The chaos core that Odin had spent his entire life nurturing was burned to nothing by father and son together.

The last trace of Odin's consciousness faded with it.

The god-making ritual was over.

The fortress's self-destruct sequence stopped automatically, but the volcano had already been set in motion. Lava was still rising. The ground was still collapsing.

Cole opened his eyes, drove his blade into the ground, and forced his upper body upright.