章 30: Chapter Thirty.

~~~Loki Odinson, Asgard~~~

~~~July 1942~~~

"The war did not end until the last enemy of our future reign ended up dead, their lands proved barren, their livestock slaughtered and their idols and leaders beheaded, no child, woman man ended up alive, for anyone who refused the rise of Asgard, would only have death, and how fortunate that I was their goddess."

I was sitting in front of a table with an ancient tome in my hands, looking out the window of my room, which overlooked the training yard, where my brother was training with his friends. Oblivious to all the glorious past that our king... My father hid from us.

But I couldn't get angry, they were just reckless fools with no sense of responsibility, blind even, they all were, and my brother's dear friends were even more stupid to go along with my brother's crazy desires to create glorious battles whenever he had the chance, as he called it.

And then, there was me, someone who didn't get carried away by impulses, who thought everything through with a cool head and looked for easy ways out of difficult situations, no matter if I had to devise complicated actions.

While my brother was just punches and fists, on the other hand, I was the mind of the plans, I knew he would need a right hand, a brain to help him keep the peace when he just wanted to have a war, someone to advise him and tell him what he had to hear, not what he wanted to hear.

Something his friends did to be on his good side, damn hypocrites, all of them, and my idiot brother, with only two brain cells that served when they wanted to, did not let him see reality. My father thought it was a good idea to leave the throne in Thor's hands, but he did not see the sad reality, and that was that he was not ready yet, he was not, and neither was I, but in contrast to him, I sought to improve every day.

And so, I immersed myself in the books, in the history, in the culture of our people that both Thor and his group liked so much to ignore, to be of great help in the foreseeable future, but great was my surprise when all my effort went down the drain, my struggle, my fervor, my desire to serve a glorious future of Asgard was tarnished with just a simple tantrum.

Thor did not see my eagerness to help him, to advise him, to guide him as our mother did several times with my father, what I would do with Thor as the brothers we are, instead, he saw a competition, a frivolous competition in which he embarked on to leave me in the dark.

Never caring how others would see me, how others would treat me, how it would leave me in their shadow. However, I did not give up, I continued to train in magic, guided by our mother, while Thor was trained by the soldiers, separating our paths more and more.

And at last, all that effort of wanting to be of use to my brother, to Asgard, to the nine realms, came to an end the moment I discovered the truth. A cursed truth that had been erased from history thousands of years ago. And by the hands of our father, which made it worse.

Hela.

The goddess of death, the spear of Asgard, Odin's firstborn.

Everything had been erased, Hela's history had been hidden under the sands of time, her wars won that served as pillars to turn Asgard into what it was now, an eternal realm, a glorious one and one that none dared to face, but that in the end, resulted in all that vision of an infinite Asgard vanishing, only because of the cowardice of a man and the fear of a father in not accepting his daughter, just as he was doing with me.

And that explained everything, even the last of her story. The book I held, told the whole story of my sister, her rise to power, her paths of victory and conquest, and how she was indispensable to expanding Asgard into what are now the nine realms. In how the enemies feared us, fainted at the mere mention of my people's name, my sister's name, and what her calling meant.

The truth, the truth was in front of me, a sad truth in which my sister was sealed and banished by my father to Hell, only because she was afraid of the being she helped create. That same father only used her as a weapon, and when he got what he wanted, he threw her away.

So determined to learn more, I began to search for a way to get my sister out of that place, even if it took me years to do so because I knew she was indispensable to the rebirth of what Asgard formerly meant. For as much as my father ignored it, Asgard was no longer as it once was.

"Knock, knock!"

Suddenly, a knock on my bedroom door brought me out of my thoughts, and hurriedly, I hid the tome in a drawer undercover. "Who is it!?" I shouted angrily at being interrupted, but the voice behind the door made my anger fade instantly.

"It's me, son, I need to talk to you," Mother needed me, so checking to make sure nothing was compromising, I got up and went to the door. "Hello Mother," I greeted her, smiling at her, but not quite opening the door.

"Is everything okay?" She asked, she had always been intuitive, something I thought I was acquiring as well. "Yes, why?"

"No... It's nothing, your father has called your brother and his friends, he's sending them on an assignment to Midgard, I'll inform you in case you want to go with them," assignment of the course, if they didn't screw it up before they even got there, "no mother, I'm busy, I'll let them have their fun." That way it would give me more time to find a way to free her, and with her, we would make Asgard resurge.

~~~Royal Forest, Xandar~~~

What had begun as the rebellion of a power-hungry woman, ended as an encounter between two opposing forces, two different races, going so far as to start a possible war between Asgard and another realm. One that was not of this universe, but still, the same universe protected.

Odin, with a cold countenance and a murderous look, spurred his horse so that it approached where Azrael was, at no time took his eye off both Endoxes and the Ancient One, but within himself, his mind worked a thousand to explain how a celestial dragon had decided to leave The Kingdom of Ta Lo, and how it had resulted on Earth, a weak planet. And worse, that it was in the service of a human.

Standing face to face at last, Odin was silent, analyzing Azrael on Endoxes' back, who had so far stopped his luminescence, and appeared calm for the moment.

It was not until a few seconds later that Odin decided to speak; "In all my years of existence, at no time did it cross my mind to think that a group of mortals would decide to wage war against Asgard, and all because of a woman who is not even part of your people."

"In that you are wrong, she is a foreigner, just like you and all your offspring, and I am not waging all this because of her, because she is right now my prisoner, but all this, everything you see, came about because of their arrogance, and their disrespect for my people, my people, the same people your soldiers killed when you sent them for the witch Amora," Azrael replied, as Endoxes roared, causing Odin to tense up and grip his spear tighter, Azrael might as well have delivered Amora when the berserkers arrived.

But that was not what he wanted, and in part, his pride was playing with him all this time, he wanted to continue to feel the greatest, the one everyone feared and revered, and he was not willing to lose that, not even when Asgard showed up.

But now, that no longer mattered, everything was at a stalemate, with the invasion of Asgard in full swing and the death of the berserker, Hogun, and several other Asgardian soldiers, which no doubt created a rift between Midgard and Asgard.

"Still, it does not take away from the fact that they murdered Asgardians, their crime must be prosecuted," Odin said, as the tip of his spear glowed dimly.

At this, Azrael only smiled, as he uttered words that made the situation even more critical: "And what will you do, try to kill me? Or will you take some relative of mine to welcome into your realm?"

Immediately, Odin spoke no answer but instead hurled his spear towards Azrael at full speed. With a force and speed fueled by Odinforce and the rage of the Father of All at being provoked.

Azrael, being very close to Odin, did not have time to dodge the spear, and even Endoxes was not fast enough to cover Azrael from the blow, but what was expected did not happen, instead, an orange shield with thousands of symbols and pictograms appeared in front of him, interposing in front of Gungnir, at the same time that from behind, several small portals appeared and from them came out thousands of whips of cosmic energy.

The shield managed to stop Gungnir long enough for the thousands of whips to grab the spear from several sides and hold it, thus slowing its momentum and stopping Odin's attack.

"Ancient One, don't interfere with this!" Odin shouted furiously, his one good eye glowing, the sky darkening, and the earth near him cracking.