"How did you do that?" it asks.
"I don't know. I just sliced his wing."
"With what? He's died the final death. Look, already he shrivels."
It's true: The creature was a tomato-red steroidal horror straight out of the nightmares of medieval humans, but now it is dissolving and bubbling into a puddle of black tar. I look down at the ice knife and see that it is different: colder, giving off steam while still remaining frozen solid, and the thin crimson glow along the top of the blade extends all the way to the point and pulses with energy.
"I think this knife may have drunk its soul. Do demons have souls?"
"Some do. He certainly did. Where did you get that knife?"
"Never mind that," I snap at it. "Just get me out of here before something else comes along."
"Of course."
I did not pay close enough attention to this weapon when I stole it. How did the yetis learn such magic? And why, if they possess such secrets, did they share them with Granuaile MacTiernan, the gullible Druid? I must admit I underestimated her. She managed to put an axe in my back and stole the white horse of Swietowit from me, giving him to some witches in Poland with very strong wards around their property. My shoulder still aches as a reminder of how arrogant I was. These Druids are dangerous if given a chance to act, and deserve more respect than I've given them to this point. Perhaps the yetis know better than I. Perhaps I should persuade the yetis to make more of these knives before Ragnarok begins. But I have found the lost arrows of Vayu, which never miss their target. I have this soul-drinking blade. And I have many allies and surprises besides. The world is bigger than when the Norns first prophesied Ragnarok. Happily, my plans have grown to meet this new world, and I think we are ready. Or at least as ready as we will ever be. Assessing where Lucifer stands was the last errand to run.
"How much farther do we have to go?" I ask my guide.
"Some distance, unfortunately. At least an hour of subjective time."
It was not an hour's walk to reach Lucifer. "You're trying to make sure I never leave, aren't you?"
"No! I am positive Lucifer wishes you to remain alive. He is interested in your project, even if he doesn't wish to participate."
"My project? You are calling Ragnarok a mere project?"
"Please forgive my poor choice of words. I have no proper appreciation for the scale of things and do not even know what Ragnarok is. In any case, regarding the greater demon you just slew, you did precisely as you should have. Let us continue and remain vigilant."
"Where will this put me on Earth?"
"This particular maw of hell we are using will empty into what the humans call New Jersey."
"Hmm. I have heard of it. By all reports, more hellish than other places on the human plane. But a significant distance from Kansas, if I am not mistaken." I have been studying maps of the modern world in recent days. "More than a mere hour's walk."
"The space here is fluid, as you have no doubt seen."
Yes, I've seen that. Even as the demon dog speaks, the horizon melts and wobbles in my vision and resolves into a slightly different hellscape with red peaks shifted and plumes of ash and lava billowing elsewhere than they did mere seconds ago, yet the path we follow remains. I maintain my giant form but add spid
er eyes to my head, which always gives me a headache from interpreting so much visual information, but as it will provide me with views of the sky and my trail, I cannot afford to remain limited by human vision.
Lucifer let me go far too easily, and this demon escort is far too placating: I am being set up for slaughter. Probably being led into a trap--it's not paranoia, because someone really did try to kill me. And there will be more attempts, I have no doubt. Lucifer has absolved himself of responsibility by claiming that they are rogues, but it is beyond belief that visiting gods in his realm can be attacked without his approval. If he were truly concerned for my welfare, he would escort me out himself.
Off to my right, in a hollow between low mesas baked to a blood-orange crisp, a shadow flickers, then moves. It is in fact many shadows, cast by a boiling army of imps lurching in my direction. These cannot all be silly homicidal rogues out to cause some mischief in my general area. Someone ordered them to froth and foam my way. And I will need more than two arms to defeat them. More than two weapons, in fact. And thank the giants of Muspellheim for teaching me to always have them on hand. Or, rather, have them stowed safely.
A fantastic benefit of being able to change one's shape is the ability to repurpose one's orifices for weapon storage. My flesh is both mutable and elastic, and thus my colon contains all kinds of shit. Actual shit, of course, but also other things that I can pull out of there when needed. And I need everything if I am going to meet a small army of hellions by myself. I also need a shape that can handle it.
While spending time with Jormungandr, the world serpent, I learned of many creatures of the sea one can combine to form powerful chimeras. I shifted only above the waist to a mantis shrimp--not really a mantis or a shrimp at all, but it looks similar to both--except that I grow tentacles out to the sides to brandish all the weapons I pull out of my nether regions. Including the two I already had, I now set myself up with four blades total, and these fascinating chitinous limbs that work on a locking-latch principle that delivers tremendous kinetic force when released. I can punch anything, basically, that gets close to my face, shattering it without harming myself in the process. My hope is that nothing will get that near.
The imps are a motley collection of shapes, bipedal but otherwise sporting a varied number of limbs, heads, and teeth. Some of them carry hatchets, some have swords, and a couple are very pleased to have found scythes, judging by the number of rotting teeth they show me. Their skin is painted in any of four different pigments, but I don't know if the red, green, blue, and black signify any sort of impish hierarchy. They do not approach in any ranks, but rather in a rabid horde--a small horde of thirty or forty, I'm guessing, allied against one, since I notice my escort is scuttling away to keep out of it.
I get to feel confident and superior for all of five seconds, as my lengthened arms take out the vanguard and then the next few as well. But the imps keep barreling forward, counting on their numbers to overwhelm me, and it's a fine reckoning. I stab as fast as I can, black ichor spilling from them and unholy screeches tearing the air, but it's only a second more and their weapons are biting into my chitin, hollow thunks that sting but fail to penetrate to my vitals. The weapons get lodged there, and while the imps try to pull them free I stab them and they fall away. I backpedal as fast as I can, attempting to give my arms more room to dispatch them at a distance, but it's not as effective as I had hoped. They're already too close and they leap at me. One vaults over the others with a hatchet aimed at the space between my eyes, and I let the chitin shrimp hammers fly at him. He crunches without time to squawk, his skull and ribs shattered as he flies back into the press of his fellows, but I don't get to enjoy it for more than a fraction of a second before one of my tentacles is lopped off by a scythe and a bolt of pain lances through my body. The tentacle's nerves fire on the ground, and it writhes with one of the shit-covered swords in its grip, and while there are no bones inside, it's a pound or two of flesh I'm going to miss.
The ice knife is no more effective than a regular knife against these creatures. They have no souls, apparently, so I must stab into something necessary, not merely prick them with the tip. I discover this when one of them recovers from a stab to the gut to make a screaming charge and hack at my thigh with a hatchet. I fall onto the blistered, scalloped rocks and the imps follow me there, determined to end me. I fear they might be successful.
I lash out again with the shrimp fists, and that launches three crushed bodies into the air, but there are more doing their best to penetrate my chitin, and more piling on top of them. I won't be getting up on that leg with an axe buried in it. Time to change tactics by changing shape.
Choosing yet another form I learned from Jormungandr, I become a small sphere of protected organs surrounded on all sides by long spines, something called a sea urchin--except far larger than the real ones you find in the ocean. I won't be able to maintain it for long, but I don't need to; it impales every single imp covering me, and when I shift again, the spines slide out of them and their bodies provide me some cover from the remaining attackers, who are not sure what happened to their target. I launch myself out of the pile of dead reconstituted as a spider monkey, one of the most acrobatic creatures I've ever seen. I retrieve the ice knife and a sword with my long arms, balancing on them and my one good leg, and proceed to dance among the ten or so remaining imps, chest heaving from oxygen debt and enervated by the shifts and blood loss, hyperaware that I have no natural armor in this form. Metal slices through flesh with slithering noises, and howls rise into the fuckfurnace of hell as I spin, slash, and stab through opponents too surprised by my shift to understand what's happening. And when the last one collapses, I fall onto my ass, exhausted and unable to get a breath of clean air, it being actual hell. The imps' bodies bubble and hiss as they melt into sludge, and I see my bug-dog guide skitter forward to congratulate me.