In Loki's Honor

We walked up and down tunnels and caverns for a week. The floor and some downward tunnels were filled with rubble, signals of the Böggdra Bögvar's passing.

The Vikings had to bring a whole supply train with them. Two levitating sleds full of spare weapons, shields, and supplies. Four drivers and eight porters took care of moving stuff back and forth.

I didn't offer to keep his supplies in my dimensional storage. Though the storage was infinite, Meinar argued that if the Böggdra Bögvar took me out, they were all dead. It could attack one of the sleds but then they would defend the other.

My job was to cast detection spells into the rock to find the massive worm-bear. So far, I had no such luck. Myrkheim's mana was thick and it interfered with my divination spells. At the rate it penetrated the rock, we would only have two minutes of advance warning before the monster breached the tunnel we were walking through.

During breaks, I trained on how to deploy and put away the trap with four Viking warriors Meinar selected for this task. They doubted the trap would work as intended or even that it would hold the monster but I was confident.

One day at the beginning of the second week, I sensed our mark. Now that I knew it, the Böggdra Bögvar was unmistakable.

"Incoming, thirty degrees down from the zenith, fifteen degrees clockwise from the west," I shouted.

"Deploy trap!" Meinar shouted. "To arms, my honored Vikings!"

The four trappers took the giant rings of azure metal and pulled the two apart, revealing a mesh of adamantite wire. Shapeshifting into my pixie form, I flew inside the deploying mesh while pouring Mana out to create an aura the Böggdra Bögvar could sense.

Yes, I was the Böggdra Bögvar's bait.

The trap stretched the hundred feet it could, the adamantite wire mesh forming a taut cylinder that dug into the jagged rock, stalactites, and stalagmites like they rock was made out of Styrofoam. If the Vikings rotated the solid rings the mesh was attached to, we could carve a perfectly curved tunnel.

I focused my Mana emission on a cone toward the Böggdra Bögvar. My heart was pounding faster than my buzzing wings. The trap had to work or I would live one of my shortest lives, the dozen or so baby me massacred by the church of Bundeus notwithstanding.

"Ready javelins!" Meinar ordered.

"Nine," I started to count down like a rocket launch. "Two, one,"

The zero was drowned by the roar of rocks bursting down. Böggdra Bögvar appeared in all its toothy glory, ready to swallow me like a screaming motorcycle pilot swallowed bugs while riding at a hundred kilometers per hour.

The Böggdra Bögvar had the segmented body of an earthworm covered in thick and dirty brown fur like that of a bear. Its front was a circular maw full of grinding teeth for the first ten to fifteen feet. Nothing going into that hole would come out whole.

Then it crashed into the mesh. Bear legs jutted from every which direction out of the monster's segmented body and the hundreds of legs still inside the tunnel pushed the body toward the mesh. The wires pulled the rings together while the Vikings braced to keep it in place.

If we had more time or I had the foresight, we'd have anchored the rings. Only now that the thousands of metric tons of the Böggdra Bögvar's body surpassed the Herculean strength of the Vikings did I think about that.

But the same pressure pushed the creature's body against the indestructible wire. The razor-sharp thin wire. I heard the slick and haunting sound of meat being sliced and ground. Like gruesome playdough pushed through an extrusion toy, the Böggdra Bögvar's own strength was cutting its own body into diamond-shaped slabs of meat. Bug juices and a surprisingly red blood poured down like a waterfall on top of me. Böggdra Bögvar screeched but the monster was inexorable in its drive to move forward. Soon, its throat was too cut by the mesh.

Close to panicking, I surrounded myself with the toughest Force sphere I could summon, trying to lock myself in space before I would be forced to bathe in worm blood. The monster's sliced meat and blood rained down around me and then smothered the sphere, making everything go dark except for the glow of my wings.

Then, the whole tunnel shook and exploded. I could barely hear and sense as the Böggdra Bögvar decided to give up on the flesh that was already sliced and fled with the remaining segments of its body.

I recalled the Vikings telling me about this property. That's how the monster reproduced, after all. it would shed some segments, then the two halves would undergo a metamorphosis, creating a new mouth and anus as necessary.

Silence. Then the sound of meat being cut, transmitted through vibrations on the pile of worm flesh and fur. I heard the wires twang and clash, resembling the strings of an unplugged electric guitar being abused.

Then it hit me. The Vikings were moving the mesh to cut the chunks of meat into smaller pieces. That was bad. If one of these adamantite wires touched my bubble, it would collapse.

Racking my brain to find a solution, one came once I stopped freaking out. Arista's Pierce the Veil allowed me to slide into the Ethereal space. The coterminous dimension welcomed me as usual but what I saw surprised me.

*

*

The Myrkheim version of the Ethereal dimension was different than the Yznarian version. The magic here had hundreds of thousands or even millions of years to seep into the rock and force it to have an impression on the material world. I flew up to touch the wall and found it solid. I couldn't go through the rock even if I tried. It was no shadow of the real world like in Yznarian.

I could see the tunnel the Böggdra Bögvar came in from. If I wanted, I could chase the fleeing monster. But no. I moved all the way back, behind the supply train and returned to reality.

The stench of blood, viscera and feces struck me. Under the light of the levitating wagons' headlights, the Vikings were singing some war song while turning around and churning the adamantite ring on our side of the trap. Rivulets of blood ran down the tunnel and chunks of meat splashes everywhere as the mesh wires moved through the monster's tough hide and sinew like it wasn't there.

I spotted Meinar drenched in blood, the red Viking cackling like a berserker drunk on the fermented spinal fluid of their enemies.

Something didn't sit well. Were they thinking we defeated the monster?

Startled, I cast my detection spell again. Fuck.

"Inco—"

The Böggdra Bögvar burst out of the tunnel right on top of three Viking women right between Meinar and the carts. The monster chomped one of them while bear legs raked at the other two.

My reaction was to cast the M.I.R.V. javelin swarm. In less than a second, the interlocking ritual circles glowed into existence in front of me and I let it fly loose. The Force spears split a handful of times in the second it took for them to form and strike the furry worm. To my dismay, they sunk only inches in its tough hide.

I screamed at it; my fairy pitch so high it was almost inaudible for normal humans. My wings buzzed behind me as I darted toward the monster who was already burrowing down into the tunnel floor. Shapeshifting into Lakerta, I drew my Adamantite Thinblade from storage while I took the Tail Fortress stance, becoming an unmovable bulwark right next to the Böggdra Bögvar .

The azure blade, incredibly sharp and five feet long carved deep into the monster's side, buried to the hilt. As the creature inexorably moved into the tunnel it was carving, dragging the hapless Viking warrior into her doom, a cut a third of the monster's body diameter was carved all along to the tail.

Bear claws raked at my tail but my hardened scales, empowered by Titan Body and my stance endured. Only thin white lines were left behind. A river of red blood gurgled out of the Böggdra Bögvar 's body, drenching me and gurgling down into the tunnel the creature carved.

But the adamantite not only cut a humongous gash on the side of the Böggdra Bögvar but also drained around a fourth of the mana in the creature's body.

Then, it was gone. The monster moved at a hurried pace away from us. Debris from the tunnel above fell down, sealing the downward tunnel behind the Böggdra Bögvar. A secretion from the creature's butt worked like fast-drying concrete, solidifying the way behind the creature.

I glanced above. The same was true of the tunnel above. Aside from the first twenty feet, the blockage looked like mortared cobblestone. A quick dive into the Ethereal confirmed that I couldn't follow the Böggdra Bögvar through its tunnel. Whatever bonding agent the creature secreted; it also sealed the way.

I popped back in Haru's shape. Meinar and the Vikings were lamenting and mourning the deaths of their mauled sisters, and the complete loss of a third.

"Will it come back for a third pass?" I asked Meinar.

"I don't think so. It lost a lot of biomass and blood. Most likely, it will retreat somewhere safe and heal its wounds."

The Viking leader stood up. "But with Haru's help, we dealt the Böggdra Bögvar a grievous wound. Look around. More than half of its body is nothing more than mincemeat."

The women cheered but one could feel the pain in their voices. In this battle of attrition, the Böggdra Bögvar lost half of its body while they had lost almost a third. But the beast could regrow its segments while the dead Vikings were lost forever.

I conjured water to wash the blood and gore off of the Viking women. They went to the supply sleds, leaving me alone in the tunnel. Meinar had offered to post guards around me but I dismissed her worries.

First, I stored my adamantite trap. The wires worked as intended and even though they were thinner than a baby's hair, I couldn't sense any strain in them. Next, I scooped all the blood and gore in massive stone barrels. I was certain I could learn more about the Böggdra Bögvar by studying its remains. I extended my senses into the chunks of worm meat and bear legs.

I felt a soul lingering around the meat. Didn't Meinar mention that the Böggdra Bögvar reproduced by splitting its body? Did it really happen? The monster detached its rear half and by doing it, created another Böggdra Bögvar, resigned to its doom. Or it could be an automated body response. Most likely the latter.

I could work with that. Dragging the Böggdra Bögvar soul next to me, I engaged in a battle of wills with the spectral monster. Minutes passed and my neophyte status worked against me. Controlling this soul was an Herculean feat of willpower and though I was stronger than even the Viking champions in this department, my willpower was still beneath this task. The ancient monster prevailed and resisted my attempt at domination, forcing me to attack and slice the soul with the adamantite blade. Then, I blasted and peeled away most of it, causing the soul to dissipate and pass on.

Resurrecting the Böggdra Bögvar as my pet would be nice but for the current me, it was impossible. And yet, I was not out of options. I wanted my own Böggdra Bögvar to chase after the escapee. If I couldn't have the real thing, I would just copy it.

Nethe's Origami Eidolon Perk activated and paper folded out of my arms. The thick paper folded onto itself thousands of times and expanded like an accordion. The buckets of gore went into my item storage while the Origami Böggdra Bögvar folded itself along the tunnel.

"Hey, Meinar!" I called. Once I knew I had her attention, I continued. "How long until your warriors are ready to chase after the Böggdra Bögvar?"

Meinar looked at the origami creature behind me and gasped. "What is that?"

"My own Böggdra Bögvar," I said. "And yes, it's made out of paper! It can dig after the one who stole your sisters from you."

Bloodlust and rage coursed through the Vikings bodies. Meinar shouted. "Grab your axes and shields, sisters. Today, we march toward glory!"