Aphelia wanted to break out of the ring, heart fluttering like a trapped sparrow, but everyone was going all-out. She’d barely muzzled her own power to avoid friendly fire. When she finally tried to slip free, the currents of force snagged her like a riptide and wouldn’t let go.
Huff...
In that pressure, she shut her eyes, letting darkness bloom like ink. She reached back to the forest, where smoke threaded the trees and her breath tasted of ash.
Back then, to crush the giants while bleeding and broken, she’d merged with the Crimson Flame, becoming one with the fire as a spark joins a blaze. If she could call that act back now, she might slip the strangling coil like a fish through reeds.
Remember. What mood did you cradle as you sunk into the Crimson Fire? That anger like a blade. That despair like a black sea.
“Huh... what happened?!”
Heat licked from behind like desert wind. The white figure halted mid-strike and turned, eyes cold as frost.
Within Uroboros’s constricting serpent ring, Aphelia’s form was gone. In her place, scarlet poured across the sky like spilled blood, and a mist-like silhouette floated in that dyed vault, watching him with a still gaze.
The shadow born of the Crimson Flame didn’t hesitate. It surged at the white silhouette standing before Odin, like a hawk stooping through smoke.
“Hmph!”
His snort rasped like a skeleton’s scream, and heavy ice-dust bloomed across the sky, a winter veil rising to challenge Aphelia, now one with the Scarlet Inferno.
His staff lifted high like a frozen spire, and an immense ice storm tore up from the ground. Even the other skeletons had to dive back into their silver coffins, like fish fleeing a net, or be shredded by friendly frost.
He used the world’s raw strength to hard-block an Aether-like blaze.
The last fools to try that were two giants with god-forged weapons. Their end was ash on the wind, scattered in this scarlet fireland.
Aphelia—or rather, the shade of the Crimson Flame—laughed, a crooked sound like sparks snapping in resin. She sank back into the fire domain, and the endless fire-sea that stained the heavens vanished in a blink, like a curtain pulled from a stage.
The massive ice storm barreled into the spot—too late. It struck only where the flame-figure had been, the way a wave slams a rock already dragged away by the tide.
Seeing his foe vanish, the white figure slammed his staff. Air rang like crystal. All of Niflheim seemed to answer, and space itself trembled like a drum-skin.
Odin and Uroboros had to throw up Aether, bracing themselves like sailors in a squall, or get swept by the warped currents and hurled out of Niflheim. Even with the spatial quake rippling like thunderheads, Aphelia did not reappear.
“Guardian! Don’t push it!”
Azure Aether fell again, like rain over steel.
“Push it?”
The white figure called Guardian turned slowly, like ice grinding on ice.
Before Odin could move, countless ice pillars shot from all directions, a hail of spears meant to pin him to this sky in one stroke.
“Hmph! You’re not the only one with tricks!”
Azure Aether condensed into raging Thunder, a storm of the world’s very concept of lightning biting outward. It chewed those ice pillars to powder, a winter castle collapsed to snow.
But he stopped there, voice cold as iron in frost. “Guardian, I’m here to see RhineFairy, not you, dead one.”
“See RhineFairy? How does an Aesir traitor even say that with a straight face?!”
The white figure’s voice cracked like a mixed chorus of man and woman, a rage-fused bell that scraped the ear. Veins rose on the hand clenching the staff, fury bulging like cords in a bow drawn too far.
Before he could vent it, a mocking laugh brushed his ear, sly as smoke.
“Traitor or not—what’s it to you?”
The sound wailed like a hell-wraith’s cry, and his back chilled like a pond in shadow. Instinct flared. He whipped the staff behind him and smashed down.
The blow cut the crimson figure clean in two, sure as a cleaver through silk. But that eerie smile hung on the split face like a painted mask, and unease crawled beneath his skin.
From the severed crimson shape, an endless fire-sea surged out, a flood bursting a dam and rushing his chest. Flame swallowed his vision like a red tide.
He raised both hands by reflex, trying to block the oncoming blaze. Yet the moment it wrapped him, no heat touched his skin. The fire felt like light without warmth.
“Damn it—mocking me?!”
He took the crimson fire-sea for a mirage. He didn’t know how those two giants really died in this sea, bones turned to ash under waves of flame.
He lifted his staff to smash the illusion, planning to shake space and sweep it clean—an easy gesture, a stone cast into a pond.
From the slant, a claw shot out of the crimson sea, lunging for his chest, the air screaming like torn silk. He moved to block, staff flipping to guard, and ice-blue Runes lit before him like frost flowers.
“Another illusion?!”
The ice-forged wall cut off the claw, clean as a glass pane stopping a blade. And in that instant, the claw dissolved back into empty air. Even the whistle faded, like a dream forgetting its sound.
Relief burned away restraint. He struck the air with his staff, and a choir of ice-blue Runes spun around him like a halo. The temperature plunged to the bone; breath smoked like ghosts.
“Heh, heh, heh...”
The crimson fire-sea chuckled, a guttering sound like coals whispering. In his vision, countless crimson claws unfurled from every side, closing on him like a thornbush growing fast.
Outside the fire-sea, Odin and Uroboros moved as one. Weapons forged from folded Aether gleamed like moonlit steel as they tangled with the skeleton ranks, bone clacking like wind-chimes in a storm.
An azure lightning spear carved a clean sanctum in midair, forcing back a ring of skeletons like a wave shoving driftwood.
“Tch, they’re a pain. What even are these things?!”
A black snake-whip hissed through the air, blocking blows like a coiling shadow. Back to back, Uroboros shouted, breath fast as a hunted beast.
They’d smashed this skeleton crowd once already. But as bone fell, the silver-white coffins spilled them again, weapons varied as snowflakes, and their next assault came harder, like a storm finding its teeth.
“They’re... they’re Niflheim’s guards!”
Azure Aether roared down as Thunder, a bolt that outpaced sight, and blew a ring of skeletons apart, bone dust drifting like ash. Odin drew a deep breath, chest aching like hammered metal, and answered.
“They were dead to begin with. Those silver coffins are like portals. When they die, they crawl back out and revive.”
Uroboros froze for a blink, eyes narrowing like a cat in shadow. “Why does that sound so familiar...”
She couldn’t chase the thought. The skeletons surged again, a tide climbing stones. This time, they’d have to pour in more power just to break the line.
Uroboros didn’t dare imagine the next step if these bones kept growing stronger. Already, beating them down ate strength like fire eats oil. After this? Just push them back?
And after that?
If Aphelia’s duel in the crimson fire-sea dragged on without a victor, Odin’s and her own positions would sour like milk in sun.
No. Not like this.
Her eyes hardened like obsidian. Black power slid from her like ink spreading in water, creeping to erode the nearby life. The creatures she forged from her darkness wouldn’t be a shade weaker than these clacking frames.
Back in the crimson fire-sea, the white figure struggled the same as they did. His pride burned like paper; shame crawled like ants.
Moments ago, he’d thought he could finish Aphelia with ease, hunter and prey as clear as knife and fruit. Even with illusions, he was the unblinking hawk, and she the bird in a cage, one more squeeze and done. In mere minutes, the board flipped like a table in a tavern.
Using the crimson fire-sea’s illusions, Aphelia toyed with him like a doll on strings, without mercy and without hurry.
Endless visions mixed truth and lies. Every strike hurt but didn’t kill, leaving cuts and burns like a map of failure across his skin.
He had no answer. Each time he tried to flee, the oncoming illusions became real in a heartbeat, carving flesh like chisels and pinning him in place. Then came the next round, the same grind—the wheel turning, the millstone biting.
“Coward! Face me! Are all Aesir nothing but gutless fools?!”
He tried to bait them out with words that rattled like stones in a can. To Aphelia, it was wind through ruins. She was no Aesir, and in this state her mind was a single ember of vengeance—stubborn, dark, and bright. Provocation? Nothing but a laugh tossed into the flames.
