Transmigration by SMS: Earth 199999

Chapter 107: Chapter 107 - Applied Barbarism

Lucius entered the palace through a breach where half the wall had become rubble, and the other half was considering it. The corridor beyond had not fared much better. Asgardian warriors fought Dark Elves between cracked pillars while bursts of red energy scorched the stone behind them. Yet for every soldier using a ranged weapon, four more had chosen swords, spears, or knives.

Lucius slowed without stopping. An Elf fired at an Asgardian from less than twenty feet away, missed, dropped the weapon, and drew a blade. The Asgardian met him with a sword instead of taking one step back and shooting him.

There had to be a reason for it. Perhaps thousands of years of superior technology had convinced both sides that killing from a safe distance lacked character. Perhaps getting an enemy’s blood on one’s boots counted as a cultural achievement. He had spent most of his life regarding violence as work best performed by telekinesis, lightning, or someone conditioned to enjoy orders. It kept the hands clean and the shirts reusable.

Still, he had tried enough alien engineering for one morning. It would be narrow-minded to condemn a method without testing it.

A Dark Elf charged him with a curved sword. Lucius caught the warrior by the throat from twelve feet away, lifted him, and drove him headfirst into the floor. The helmet folded. That had been effective, but it had also been telekinesis, which rather defeated the experiment.

"Fine. We do it the stupid way."

He considered a rapier and discarded the idea. With his new seven-foot-three-inch frame, a rapier would look about as useful as Sif’s shield had looked in Thor’s hand during the Destroyer fight. The blond fool had taken shelter behind a shield barely larger than Sif’s knickers and somehow made it heroic. Lucius suspected that achievement had depended more on the blond hair than the shield.

The thought of Sif’s knickers tried to remain. He pushed it aside with the sort of discipline he usually reserved for not murdering government officials during meetings.

The Reality Stone answered his call.

Crimson spread from his palms and hardened into two enormous axes. Each haft was thick enough for an Asgardian to need both hands, but Lucius’s fingers closed around them comfortably. Their heads curved into hooked, brutal beards, with jagged backs made to catch shields and tear them aside. Skull shapes rose from the dark surfaces, their empty eye sockets holding a low red glow. The axes looked heavy enough to frighten the floor before they touched it.

Lucius turned one in his hand. Reality had obeyed the image without argument. After all the effort he had spent stea- working diligently to collect powers, studying machinery, and correcting other people’s work, producing two mean-looking weapons by wanting them felt offensively convenient.

"Oh, I am going to abuse this."

Three Dark Elves rushed him before he could admire the possibilities. Lucius ran to meet them.

The first thrust a spear toward his chest. Lucius leaned aside until the point passed within an inch of his coat, then hooked the spear beneath an axe beard and tore it from the Elf’s grip. His other axe crossed low. The warrior’s armoured legs separated at the knees, and his body struck the floor a moment after them.

The second Elf swung for Lucius’s neck. He bent backwards, letting the blade travel over his face, and held himself at an angle that gravity would have rejected from anyone else. Telekinesis supported his spine. The Elf stared down at him for the single confused moment Lucius had wanted, then received a boot between the legs.

Armour protected the important parts. It did not protect the owner from being launched into the ceiling.

Lucius slowed the ascent just before impact. The Dark Elf hung above them with both hands between his thighs, his dignity arrested several feet below. Lucius straightened, watched him descend at the pace of a falling feather, and struck him sideways with the flat of an axe. The warrior crossed the corridor and buried himself in a damaged pillar.

The third Elf hesitated.

"That was your opportunity to run."

The Elf raised his sword.

"Natural selection remains undefeated."

Lucius stepped through the cut, caught the sword arm beneath one haft, and drove the other axe into the warrior’s chest. The blade passed through armour, bone, and the stone floor beneath him. Lucius planted a boot on the corpse to pull the weapon free. Reality had made the edge exactly as unreasonable as requested.

An Asgardian shield wall ahead buckled when a Dark Elf energy blast struck its centre. Two warriors fell, opening a gap for six Elves. Lucius crossed the distance before they could exploit it. He threw one axe.

It turned once and struck the leading Elf below the shoulder. The blade continued through him, caught the warrior behind him, and carried both into the wall. Lucius closed his empty hand. Telekinesis ripped the axe free and returned it haft-first.

One of the Asgardians glanced at him instead of the enemy. That lapse nearly earned the man a blade in the throat. Lucius seized the attacking Elf’s wrist from across the gap, stopped the knife, and twisted until the arm broke.

"Watch the murderous invaders first. Admire me after."

The Asgardian recovered and drove his shield into the Elf’s face. Lucius approved of the correction and entered the opening the shield had created.

The narrow corridor prevented the Dark Elves from surrounding him properly. He made the restriction worse by pulling the nearest four into a line. The first swung high, so Lucius lowered one shoulder and drove an axe beneath his ribs. Momentum lifted the Elf from the floor. Lucius kept turning, used the body as a barrier against the second warrior’s blade, then flung the corpse into the third.

The fourth tried to retreat. Lucius caught him by the ankle with telekinesis and dragged him backwards. The warrior clawed grooves into the stone before an axe ended the argument.

More Dark Elves came through the smoke. Lucius met them with a grin.

He had expected the weapons to feel clumsy. Instead, his enlarged frame, dense muscles, and telekinesis made their weight useful. The axes did not need to stop when they met armour. He could add force through the arc, arrest a blade before it overextended, or change direction in the middle of a swing. Every limitation of the fighting style became another handle for his power.

He caught an Elven sword between the axes and snapped it. The owner stared at the broken weapon. Lucius headbutted the helmet hard enough to crush its brow, then kicked the body into two approaching warriors. He slowed all three in the air, walked beneath them, and struck each one as they floated past.

An Asgardian laughed.

The sound spread along the line as the pressure on them broke. Warriors who had been fighting for their lives a minute earlier found room to breathe because every Elf near Lucius had turned toward the larger problem. The Asgardians reformed their shield wall, but several leaned around it to watch.

Lucius noticed and decided that an audience deserved effort.

He drew the next group closer, slowed their movements by a fraction, and left his own speed untouched. To the watchers, the first sword crawled toward his chest while he stepped around it, rested an axe haft on the attacker’s shoulder, and used the support to vault over a second blade. He came down behind the pair and swept both legs from beneath them.

One Elf managed to turn before Lucius struck. The warrior lifted a shield. Lucius hooked its rim, pulled the defence down, and buried his other axe between helmet and shoulder. A twist separated the Elf from the weapon and several immediate concerns.

Two more attacked together. Lucius stepped between them, caught both wrists with telekinesis, and redirected their blades. Each warrior stabbed the other beneath the arm. They stared at one another in betrayal.

"Do not blame yourselves. You were equally disappointing."

He knocked their helmets together and let them fall.

By then, even the Dark Elves at the far end of the corridor had stopped advancing. One lowered his blade. Another took a cautious step back. Their retreat created a quiet pocket in the battle, and the Asgardians lowered their shields enough to see what their enemy had found so interesting.

Lucius spun both axes. The red light in their skulls drew circles through the smoke. He could have ended the corridor with a thought, but the first few minutes had burned away the irritation left by alarms, broken architecture, and people attacking a city while he was trying to steal their technology. The exercise was not efficient. It was, however, satisfying in a primitive and slightly barbaric way.

A Dark Elf broke from the group and charged with a roar.

Lucius waited until the last step, shifted aside, and helped the warrior continue with a telekinetic shove. The Elf flew past him. Lucius slowed the flight, turned him in the air, and held him horizontal at waist height.

"Presentation matters."

One axe came down, and two halves of the poor elf continued their gentle journey in different directions.

The Asgardians erupted. Blades struck shields while warriors shouted approval. Lucius raised both axes to accept the entirely justified praise.

The remaining Dark Elves looked from the separated corpse to the cheering defenders. As one, they stepped back.

Lucius let the axes rest against his shoulders. "I confess, the adrenaline is pleasant. I can almost understand why you people insist on doing this up close."

An Asgardian with blood running from his temple lifted his sword in salute.

Lucius looked toward the surviving Elves. There were eleven. They had ranged weapons among them, a defensible junction behind them, and enough sense to fear him, but not enough sense to surrender. The experiment had already supplied its result.

"It is still a terribly ineffective fighting style."

He snapped his fingers.

Eleven necks broke at once. The Dark Elves dropped where they stood.

"That is better."

The cheering stopped. The Asgardian warriors stared at the bodies, then at Lucius, then at the huge axes still balanced on his shoulders. Several expressions moved through the group before settling on professional caution.

Lucius dismissed the weapons. Crimson consumed the skulls, blades, and hafts until nothing remained in his hands. That drew another silence, quieter than the first.

"The Queen’s chamber?"

The wounded Asgardian pointed down the eastern passage.

Lucius continued without waiting for an escort. Behind him, no one resumed cheering until he had turned the corner.

-

Earlier, beneath the palace, the first explosion shook dust from the ceiling of Loki’s cell.

He looked up from the book in his hands, waited for the tremor to pass, and returned to the same line. The Queen, his mother, had brought the volume during her last visit. It had not improved through repetition, but it remained preferable to counting the flaws in the opposite wall.

Another detonation rolled through the dungeon. The energy barrier rippled. Shouts followed from the passage outside, first guards giving orders, then prisoners answering with the enthusiasm of men who had not been consulted about their confinement.

Loki marked his place with one finger and watched.

The masked prisoner Lucius, whom he had found so interesting, entered the passage. Loki doubted he needed the mask anymore. The figure had grown into something enormous, black ridges armouring a body built for the sole purpose of walking through resistance. Two guards attempted to provide some. One struck the wall, and the other did not rise after the creature passed.

The giant reached the nearest cell and shattered its barrier with one blow. Energy burst across the corridor. The prisoner inside stared for half a heartbeat, then ran. The next barrier broke, followed by the next. Captives poured into the passage, seized fallen weapons, and spread toward every sound that suggested an exit or an Asgardian.

The creature reached Loki’s cell.

Loki closed the book over his finger.

The dark head turned toward him. The giant sniffed once, a contemptuous little sound made absurd by the size of the chest producing it. His gaze passed over Loki, over the untouched barrier, and toward the next cell.

Then he moved on.

The next barrier shattered.

Loki watched the growing riot through gold light. Lucius had predicted that an opportunity would come. He had also suggested that Loki might wish to befriend the masked figure. At the time, it had sounded like the sort of joke Lucius made when he knew more than he intended to share.

Now, every prisoner in the dungeon was being released except him.

Loki’s mouth curved without warmth as he watched the giant go. "A charming fellow with obvious taste, and I see the appeal now."

Was Lucius aware of the attack? The question scarcely deserved consideration. The man had noticed the infiltrator before the guards. Entered cells without opening them, and even if he had not known the exact hour of this disaster, he had known enough to wait for it.

That left the more useful question of whether this counted as the opportunity Lucius had promised to help him exploit.

An explosion answered from somewhere above. The floor shifted beneath Loki’s feet, and the barrier flickered without failing. Prisoners ran past in both directions. None stopped to test the one cell their liberator had declined to open.

Loki inhaled slowly. He could shout, threaten, bargain, or attempt to instruct men already busy enjoying their first moments of freedom. Each choice would advertise a need. Need was expensive, especially in a prison.

He opened the book again.

Finding the marked line took longer than it should have. The words remained in place while distant blasts, running feet, and the scrape of stolen weapons competed for his attention. He read the sentence once and retained none of it. He read it again with the same result.

There was nothing else to do, at least for now.

Loki tilted his head, listened to another barrier die, and forced his eyes back to the page. On the third attempt, he managed to reach the end of the sentence.

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