The spear Gungnir was heading straight towards Augusta; she was already exhausted from her last attack, unable to dodge.
In truth, she couldn't dodge even if she had the strength.
Because as soon as the spear was thrown by its master's command, a principle of the universe was rewritten.
Space was no longer a suggestion. It became a straight line with the All-Father at one end and Augusta's heart at the other. Distance, obstacles, even the concept of 'dodging' were merely quaint ideas that Gungnir politely ignored.
Under the effect of 'never misses its target', 'pierce any defense', and 'fly true',
time seemed to dilate for Augusta. She could see the spear coming, every detail etched in her mind. The swirling runes along its shaft, the brutal sharpness of its tip, the way it seemed to absorb the very light around it. She saw her death, not as an outcome, but as a process already in motion.
"So... this is it."
She closed her single red eye; she didn't even have the strength to feel any regret.
But the spear never found her heart.
"Huh?" Augusta opened her eye when she felt a warm and soft embrace.
Morgana.
Standing between her and the spear.
"What are you—" Augusta started to say, but she quickly swallowed her words when she noticed a big hole in Morgana's stomach.
The spear went through her.
"Cough!... Fuck, that hurts like hell!" Morgana grunted, looking down at the hole in her stomach, which was big enough to fill a horse cock.
In order to save her former fire goddess, Morgana used a combination of divinity, Mask of Silence, blood magic, transformation, and the living armor to craft a heart that mimicked Augusta's own. She then placed that false heart within her own stomach, at the exact trajectory where the spear was aimed.
The result? A goddess who now had a hole through her midsection and was bleeding all over the dead world.
"YOU IDIOT!" Augusta roared, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten. "WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT!"
"Hehe... can't let my future baby mama die now, can I?" Morgana said with a weak grin, her face pale from blood loss.
Gungnir's power wasn't just physical. It was a divine authority that negated regeneration, a law of 'wound'. The living armor, Hunger, writhed around the edges of the hole, trying to seal it, but it was like trying to patch a dam with tissue paper.
Odin rose from the crater, his arm already regenerating at an alarming rate, the cracked flesh knitting back together with a bluish light. He looked at Morgana, a flicker of something—respect? Surprise?—in his single eye.
"To sacrifice yourself for another... A foolish, yet... honorable act."
Morgana couldn't keep standing and was forced to her knees; the hole in her stomach kept getting worse and worse. She knew that she couldn't die, but it still hurt like hell. The pain was immense, and she could feel her divine essence being drained away.
"Heheheh... honor... doesn't rust," she said, quoting a forgotten motto with a bloody smirk. "But it seems I'm the one who's rusting away here..."
Augusta's face turned grim. She knelt beside Morgana, her hands glowing with a faint red light, trying to stop the bleeding by using her own divine flame to cauterize the wound.
But it was useless. Gungnir's authority was too strong.
"Damn it..." she cursed, her hands trembling with rage and helplessness.
"..."
Morgana kept staring at the red-haired goddess, a small smile on her face. "Hehe... don't worry... I'll be fine."
"You... you stupid, stubborn bitch!" Augusta yelled, her tears mixing with the blood on the ground. "You're not fine! You're dying!"
"Death is just a... a nap for me," Morgana said, her voice getting weaker and weaker. "I'll wake up... with a new body... and a new hole... maybe you can... help me... break it in..."
Augusta couldn't help but let out a small, choked laugh through her tears.
"Even at death's door, you're still thinking about sex... You really are a goddess of breeding."
"Of course..." Morgana's vision started to blur, the world around her fading into a sea of colors. "I'm the goddess of breeding... and... and I still have a goal... to achieve..."
She wasn't dying; her body was shutting down in order to save the divine energy necessary to start the healing process.
"P-Please... you have to go..." Morgana whispered, her hand weakly grabbing Augusta's wrist. "The old man is not going to let us leave... and I can't fight... You have to go... save yourself..."
"And leave you here?!" Augusta's eyes widened in disbelief. "No! I'm not leaving you!"
"You have to..." Morgana insisted, her grip tightening for a second before going limp. "Don't worry about me... I have a surprise... for him..."
Before Augusta could say or do anything, Morgana silently sent a command to the blood seal inside Augusta's soul.
The command was simple yet absolute.
'Leave this world.'
This was the final fail-safe she put inside Augusta's soul, the last resort she prepared in case of an emergency like this.
She didn't want the fire goddess to be present here and die because what she was going to unleash next was not going to be pretty.
"WHAT!!" Augusta's eyes widened in horror when her right hand flew toward the collector bracelet she wore. "NO! NO! I'M NOT LEAVING YOU!"
It was too late.
Her finger tapped the bracelet, and a portal opened behind her, pulling her in with irresistible force.
"NOOOO!" she screamed, her hands reaching out for Morgana.
The last thing she saw before the portal closed was Morgana's smiling face, and then... nothing.
Augusta was gone.
"..."
Odin watched the whole thing unfold, a thoughtful expression on his face. He wasn't surprised by Augusta's sudden departure; he was the one who sealed this realm, so any portal that opened would be by his will or by a power that he could not control.
Fortunately, the Nexus's collector's authority wasn't something that any god could seal away.
The command Morgana sent to Augusta's soul was something that not even Odin could foresee, but he didn't show any signs of anger or frustration. Instead, he looked at Morgana, a curious glint in his single eye.
"Interesting..." he said, his voice calm and composed. "You sacrificed your own life to save hers. A truly... selfless act. I am impressed."
Morgana didn't answer. She kept staring at him as he slowly approached.
"So, what's your whole purpose here, little goddess?" Odin asked, stopping a few feet away from her, his spear still lying on the ground. "What's the reason behind all this?"
"Hehe... a... girl... needs to... have... her... secrets," Morgana said with a weak grin, her vision almost completely black now. She was on the verge of passing out.
Odin sighed, then he slowly picked up his spear, Gungnir.
"You have earned my respect, little goddess," he said, raising the spear. "And for that, I will grant you a swift and painless death. Your story ends here."
"..."
Morgana closed her eyes; she wasn't scared; she was ready.
But as Odin was about to deliver the final blow, he suddenly froze; his single eye widened in shock. Even Heimdall, who stood far away, took a step forward, his golden eyes wide with disbelief.
Rumble!
The whole world trembled.
The dead, barren ground began to crack and split open, and from the fissures, a dark, ominous energy started to rise. It wasn't divine energy, nor was it demonic. It was something else, something older, something more... terrifying.
The Unspoken Realm's Miasma.
The 'surprise' Morgana was talking about.
Using her left arm as a medium, she summoned a huge amount of Miasma from the Unspoken Realm, a feat that she was unable to do before due to the risk of it corrupting her own world and body.
But now?
With her body on the verge of death, with her divine essence almost completely drained, she had nothing left to lose.
"..."
She was going to take the whole world with her.
She was going to drag the All-Father into the abyss.
"Impossible!" Odin roared, his single eye blazing with fury and disbelief. "This... this energy... it can't be!"
He recognized it; how could he not?
When he was forced to bend the knee to the High Queen of the Unspoken Realm, he felt the same miasma.
It was the power of a being that even the gods feared.
"Heimdall! Take us out of here!" Odin roared, not daring to waste a second.
Heimdall raised his hands, and the Bifrost appeared again, ready to take them back to Asgard.
But what Odin failed to sense was that Morgana's living armor, Hunger, had transformed into a thin tentacle and wrapped itself around Odin's ankle.
He didn't notice it; it was too thin, too insignificant for a god like him to even feel.
The Bifrost did manage to pull him and Heimdall out of the world.
But it also pulled the tentacle of Hunger along with them.
And the tentacle was still connected to Morgana, who was now the epicenter of the Miasma eruption.
"I'm coming with you, old man."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
Odin's horrified scream echoed across the realms as he saw that Morgana was also being pulled along with them.
The Bifrost, which was supposed to be a safe passage for the gods, became a bridge for the Miasma to pour into Asgard.
"HEIMDALL!!!" Odin's roar was one of pure, unadulterated terror. If Morgana's plan worked, she would not only corrupt Asgard, but also drag the rest of the nine realms with it.
Heimdall's golden eyes widened in shock; he never expected this. He never expected that Morgana would have a connection to the Unspoken Realm.
He tried to sever the connection, to cut the Bifrost, but it was too late. The Miasma had already seeped into the bridge, corrupting it from the inside.
Without a choice, the Watcher of the Gods slammed the end of his gleaming sword into the Bifrost itself; the act wasn't an attack but a desperate command, an override of the bridge's very fabric.
"Sever!"
The Bifrost shattered.
Not in a graceful, shimmering cascade of light, but with a deafening, crystalline shriek that echoed through the spaces between worlds. It fractured into a billion glittering shards of pure cosmic energy, scattering like dropped stars.
The force of the disconnection was violent.
Odin and Heimdall were thrown clear, tumbling through the void before crashing onto the golden cobblestones of Asgard, the bridge's endpoint. They were safe. They were home.
Fortunately for them, Morgana didn't make it, though.
She was sent in a random direction in the void by the violent shattering of the Bifrost.
However, she did manage to get into the Norse pantheon's 'territory,' but not into Asgard itself.
"Heheh... In time," a chillingly beautiful woman's voice echoed, "even the mightiest tree falls to a persistent rot."