Chapter - 26 Styggs. The Bastered Son of Loki.
The fog has been cleared, and the pond and surroundings have become clear to view.
Dhira looked up at the floating mass of water above the pond. Now that the fog was gone, he could finally see it clearly. The water was not moving randomly as he thought. It was forming symbols. One after another, glowing shapes appeared within the hovering stream before dissolving and reforming again. Dhira narrowed his eyes. They were Norse runes. The same runes carved into the monoliths surrounding the pond.
He glanced around. The twenty-four monoliths had changed. The broken stone pillars were standing once more, but this time they glowed with a faint green light. Thin streams of energy moved through the carved runes like veins.
Dhira walked toward the nearest one and swung his wooden mace. The pillar shattered. Before the fragments even touched the ground, the stone began rebuilding itself. Pieces flew back together faster than before.
At the same time, four murky water creatures burst from the pond. Dhira immediately noticed the difference. Their bodies glowed faintly green. Their movements were faster. More aggressive. One lunged for his throat. Dhira stepped aside and smashed it apart. Another came from behind. He spun and shattered it with a backhand swing. The remaining two lasted only a few seconds longer. Water splashed across the ground. The glowing remains flowed back toward the pond.
Dhira ignored them. Instead, he focused on the floating runes above. The symbols were repeating. A pattern. A sequence. Dhira looked from the water to the monoliths and back again. Then he began moving. Instead of destroying the pillars randomly, he struck them in the exact order shown above the pond. First. Second. Third. Each monolith exploded beneath his mace. This time something changed. The destroyed pillars remained destroyed. They did not rebuild.
A small grin appeared on Dhira's face. "So that's the trick." He continued. The floating runes shifted. Dhira followed. More glowing water creatures emerged to stop him, but they only slowed him down for moments. He smashed through them and continued the sequence. One wrong pillar would have reset everything, but years of battle had sharpened his instincts. He kept the pattern in his mind and moved from stone to stone.
Soon the final rune appeared above the pond. Dhira destroyed the matching monolith. Silence followed. The floating water stopped moving. The runes vanished. Then the entire mass of water froze into a single symbol hanging above the pond. A mark of unsealing. The green glow beneath the water intensified. The pond began bubbling violently. Then something rose from the depths. A much larger monolith emerged from the center. Unlike the others, this one was ancient. Dark stone covered its surface. Deep cracks ran through it.
A strange green light leaked from inside those cracks. The moment it fully surfaced, ancient runes across its face began glowing.
Dhira stepped closer. He could not read the writing. But somehow he understood it. The meaning appeared directly in his mind. Here lies the abandoned son of Loki. Below it, another line burned with an eerie green light. A name. Styggs. Dhira stared at the monument for exactly two seconds. Then shrugged. "Good for him." Without another thought, he grabbed the wooden mace and hurled it directly at the monolith. The branch spun through the air. CRACK. The stone monument shattered into dozens of pieces.
For a brief moment Dhira instinctively stretched out his hand.
"Come back." Nothing happened. He blinked. Then remembered. The weapon he had thrown was a random tree branch, not Lord Hanuman's divine mace. Dhira stood there awkwardly for a second.
"…Right." Then he simply walked forward to pick it up when something shifted.
Dhira felt it immediately. The air grew heavier with every passing second. His skin prickled. The damp earth beneath his feet trembled in small, uneven pulses. The murky water that had flooded the clearing moments ago was now retreating from the pond, flowing backward through the grass and roots as though trying to escape something.
The center of the pond bubbled, and something or someone started to rise.
It was a creature, monstrous is size.
Dhira watched it in calm readiness, as the creature continued rising. Slowly. Deliberately.
Green murky water cascaded from its body like waterfalls pouring from a cliff face. Thick moss hung from its shoulders and ribs. Branches, roots, bones, and flesh seemed woven together into something that should never have existed.
The twisted creation of nature and God slowly raised its head.
In his reindeer-like face, two glowing yellow eyes stared forward without blinking. The hollow cavity where its mouth should have been remained dark and endless.
A human face embedded in its stomach twisted. Screamed. It Cried. It laughed. All at the same time. Four human hands jutted out from its torso, one pair looked like it belonged to a male and another to a female. The sounds echoed through the forest from every direction. Not from the creature. From the world itself.
The monster raised both of its elongated arms toward the heavens. Higher. Higher. Until they stood perfectly straight. The screaming face stretched wider. And then the forest answered.
The trees began to groan. Not from wind. There was no wind. Their trunks twisted. Branches bent. Leaves blackened. The very roots beneath the ground shifted. The forest itself seemed afraid. The creature's presence felt wrong. Not powerful. Wrong. Like a word written incorrectly in the middle of a sacred scripture. Like a crack running through reality itself.
Dhira remained still. A warrior knew many things. One of them was patience. He watched. Waited. Studied. The creature was enormous. Monstrous even. If anyone sees it, they probably run first, its presence might just fill the human with fear. The glowing eyes never left him. Neither did the screaming face.
Then something happened. The murky water rushing away suddenly stopped. Every drop froze. The entire clearing became silent. No insects. No birds. No water. No wind. The forest regressed back to what it was before. And the silence lasted only a heartbeat. Then the creature lowered its arms. And the forest exploded.
Hundreds of roots burst from the ground. Trees tore themselves free from the earth. The pond erupted upward in a massive column of green water. Dhira moved instantly. His body reacted before thought. Be swung his fist, A root thicker than a man's torso shattered apart. He stepped sideways. Another root crashed where he had stood.
The creature did not move. It simply stood in the center of the pond while the entire forest attacked for it. Dhira's eyes narrowed. "Ah." He finally understood. The monster wasn't the weapon. The forest was.
The screaming face let out another agonized cry. The ground shook. More roots erupted around him. More trees bent toward him. The creature's glowing eyes burned brighter. And for the first time since it emerged from the pond, it took a step forward. The sound was like a mountain shifting.
Dhira did not hesitate. The moment the creature stepped forward, he exploded into motion. The ground beneath his feet shattered as he launched himself at the monster with enough force to leave a crater behind. Ever since drinking the Soma, his body had become absurdly powerful. His strength had returned, greater than before. As long as he could land a solid blow, very few things in existence could withstand it.
His fist crashed straight into the creature's chest. Impact thundered across the clearing. The bipedal monster staggered. Dhira's arm punched completely through its torso. His fist emerged from its back. For a brief moment everything became still. The screaming face in its stomach fell silent. The yellow eyes slowly lowered toward the arm buried inside its body.
Dhira frowned. There was no blood. No flesh. No organs. Only mud. Cold wet mud. From the corner of his eye he saw one of the creature's human arms reaching toward him. Instinct screamed at him not to stay there. He immediately pulled his arm free, ripping away a massive chunk of the monster's chest in the process.
Dhira jumped backward. The creature remained standing. Its entire chest cavity was gone. Green murky sludge dripped from the wound. Then, before his eyes, the missing section began rebuilding itself. The mud flowed. Twisted. Reformed, The chunk still clinging to Dhira's hand suddenly wriggled like a living thing and slipped from his fingers, crawling through the air back toward its owner. Within seconds the creature stood whole again. Not a scratch remained.
The bipedal monster was now fully back to his prime condition, and the face in its stomach opened its mouth and screamed an ear piercing scream. The black maw of the reindeer skull started to glow green, and a beam of energy headed toward him.
Dhira dodged, and saw the green beam making an arc toward the jungle, rotting everything in its way.
Dhira decided he wasn't going to be hit by it. He increased his speed and ran circles around the creature. The green beam followed him. Dhira looked back then ahead. He saw the branch that he used as a mace lying near the corner of the pond. He ran toward it and grabbed it. He blocked the green beam with his mace, and rushed toward the bipedal monster and then hit him with the mace straight into his maw, breaking it in the process.
His maw and upper body were destroyed, and like the previous time, it started to come back. The bipedal monster's head that was almost gone started to come back. Its horns stayed there. Its maw's bits and pieces started to flow back into place, and once again it launched that same green beam toward him.
Dhira dodged and threw the mace directly toward the maw, breaking it again. He didn't waste time. He rushed forward, grabbed the bipedal monster by the leg, and tossed him out of the shallow pond. He jumped, clasped both of his hands, and hit him with a downward force, knocking him back to the ground. The bipedal monster hit the ground heavily, landed beside his fallen wooden mace. Dhira grabbed it. He looked at his hand and saw that the mud that came from the monster was going back to the bipedal monster, indicating it wasn't dead.
Dhira tightened his grip around the patched wooden mace and burst forward again. He jumped high above the clearing, a grin spreading across his face despite the situation.
The moment he descended, the mace crashed into the bipedal monster's chest. The impact shook the earth. He struck again. And again. And again. Each blow landed with enough force to crack mountains and send shockwaves through the surrounding forest. Trees shed leaves. Mud and water exploded outward. The creature's body collapsed deeper into the crater with every strike, its ribs, arms, and torso breaking apart into sludge.
Dhira did not stop until he had delivered more than a dozen crushing blows. Breathing heavily, he paused and looked down. The mud was still moving. Small streams of it wriggled across the crater floor, flowing toward one another like living worms. The creature was rebuilding itself again. "You're annoying," Dhira muttered, rolling his shoulders once, the motion revealing the faint tension still lingering in his muscles.
Before he could move away, something seized his calf. His eyes dropped. One of the creature's unnaturally long arms had emerged from the sludge. A moment later he was airborne. The monster swung him through the air and hurled him into the forest. Dhira crashed through tree after tree. Thick trunks exploded around him as his body carved a straight path through the dense woods. He rolled across the muddy ground before finally stopping. Branches and leaves rained down around him. He spat dirt from his mouth, stood up, and wiped water from his face with the back of his hand and slowly stood up.
Ahead of him on the edge of the path he made stood the creature. Its torso had almost completely regenerated. Its deer-like skull tilted slightly. Its glowing yellow eyes stared at him through the fog. For a second neither moved. Then both did. Dhira rushed forward. The creature raised its elongated arms toward the sky and released another horrible screech. The sound rolled through the forest like a curse. Immediately the fog thickened. Water sloshed beneath the earth. Murky shapes emerged from both sides.
The water spirits charged. Dhira swung his mace in controlled arcs. One shattered apart. Another lost its head. A third exploded into muddy water before it could reach him. He ignored them. His eyes remained fixed on the two glowing yellow lights ahead of him. Closer. Closer. Almost there. He lifted the mace for a killing strike. And the world changed. The monster vanished.
Dhira stopped abruptly. Standing before him was not the creature. It was the wooden statue of Thor. He was back in the ruined market square somehow . The realization made him frown. The fog was thicker than ever. It swallowed the houses. It swallowed the roads. It swallowed the forest beyond. Only the area immediately surrounding Thor's statue remained visible.
Then he noticed them. Pairs of glowing green eyes. One. Three. Ten. Twenty. Dozens. Water spirits stood hidden within the mist surrounding the square. Their eyes floated in the darkness like lanterns. None of them attacked. They simply watched. Ancient Norse chanting began echoing through the fog. Low. Rhythmic. Endless to extreme. The words seemed to come from every direction at once.
Dhira slowly turned. Something enormous stood behind the statue. Far larger than before. The creature had changed. Its frame had become taller and broader. Its body looked less like flesh and more like a walking swamp. Moss hung from it like rotting cloaks. Water poured continuously from its limbs. The screaming human face in its stomach had grown larger, its features twisted by agony. Above it all rose massive deer-like antlers stretching into the fog like dead trees reaching toward the heavens.
To most people the sight would have inspired terror. To others' disgust. Dhira felt neither. He simply stood there. Calm. Silent. The wooden mace rested comfortably in his hand. His eyes studied the creature. The creature studied him back. And somewhere within the fog, the chanting grew louder.
Something big is about to happen.