21. The End of the World #3
He held on to the portal despite my efforts until it completely sealed, and only then did he rip his hand back out, completely dislodging multiple of my rib bones from the action.
The bones, cracked and broken, hit the ground below us, and made the Gods below us cry out when they saw my opened chest cavity.
I collapsed onto my knees and wheezed horrifically, trying to catch my bearings, but Death’s scythe came barreling down and against my spine.
The blow was so intense that it knocked me out of my Grim form.
As I shot towards the ground, my destroyed bone body receded, and my Elemental form returned to me.
My ribs were not broken, but heavily bruised, as was the rest of my body.
I slammed into the ground like a comet hitting Earth, and laid there for a brief moment, as I could not feel anything from the neck down.
Death howled in victory from making me change out of my Grim form, and went to stomp me to death, but Claude and Jackson grabbed my arms and tugged me to freedom just in time.
We rolled across the blood-soaked ground from the blast and came to a stop when I hit one of Calypso’s stone walls.
“Nick, buddy, can you hear me? Nick? Nick!” Jackson begged as he shook my shoulders.
Blood spilled down my nose and ears from the force of the attack, but I was able to squint through swollen eyes at him. “I’m… not out, yet…”
“Where the fuck are Magnus and Geneva? We can’t do this much longer!” Alice cried as Stark rapidly ran his hands over my injuries to try and heal what he could.
“I don’t know, but someone needs to go find them!”
“I’ll go!” Bexley declared as she sprung up. “You guys can still use all the elements if I’m gone, so it won’t cripple the team!”
“WATCH OUT!” Death broke our huddle by reaching down to grab my leg and drag me backwards through the field.
My Shadows screamed out and raced after me, flashing through the dry air to free me.
Akira grew tired of Death beating my ass and changed into his most spectacular mythological beast yet.
He became Jormungandr, the serpent of Norse mythology, who was rumored to have a bite so venomous it could kill the Gods.
It was his grand attempt to stop Death, and though we knew the consequences of a God being struck by such a beast, it was better than letting him eviscerate us all.
As this massive serpent, he scaled the legs of Death rapidly and sunk his teeth into his bone neck, injecting him with the deadly venom to try and stop him in any way possible.
Death flinched slightly from the pain of the bite, then paused dragging me to drop me like a bag of sand.
He reached up and grabbed Akira by the neck, then whipped him around his hand.
Akira screeched and wriggled to free himself, as even in this monstrous form, he was still like a garden snake to Death.
Death chuckled lovingly and grabbed Akira by the head, dangling him before him.
“Did you really think you could kill me? I am Death. I never lived, nor will never die. You cannot kill the unkillable, tick.”
“AKIRA!” I screamed bloody murder when Death took hold of his tail and, very quickly, ripped Akira right in half.
Akira let out a bloodcurdling scream from the agony, both ends of him whipping and wriggling as they fought to reconnect.
Death flicked the ends across the field, where they whistled through the air before smashing into a devastated building.
“Gods, no, Akira! AKIRA!” I scrambled to my feet to try and go after him, but Death sent his scythe flying down towards me.
The blade nearly sawed me in half, and had I not rolled out of the way, Akira and I would be in a similar state.
“I got Akira! Focus on Death!” Stark exclaimed before flashing as a beam of light towards where Akira had landed.
“Alice, go help him! Try to cauterize the wound!”
“Will do!”
I clawed for my scythe, which laid on the ground a few feet away, but before I had the chance to collect it, Death picked it up and examined the weapon in the palm of his hand.
“Such a tiny little thing. This is the weapon of the greatest Elemental to live?” he snickered to himself.
He spoke as if he were a being who had never met me before, who knew nothing of me beyond who I was meant to become.
I was confused by this but had other concerns at the moment.
I huffed horrified breaths as he tightened his grip and snapped the weapon in half, making it shriek an ungodly sound as a thousands-year-old relic was destroyed.
If he could destroy my unbreakable scythe, what the fuck could he do to me?
Death was growing tired with the lack of Human life to destroy.
He wanted to continue killing everything in his path, and my feeble attempts to stop him were nothing but aggravating.
He threw the pieces of my scythe at me before summoning a massive portal to what looked like the streets of New York, where many people were already experiencing the effects of Famine and Pestilence from before.
I wobbled fiercely as I attempted to stand, pointing a broken finger at him. The finger was at almost a ninety-degree angle, but it got my point across. “You are not going to take any more lives, not today! I don’t need my scythe to eviscerate you!”
He turned to leer down at me. “What can you do, puny little God-to-be?”
“What can I do…?” I breathed to myself.
Before I had the chance to think, his bony hand came down after me.
I gasped and rolled out of the way before bolting forward, letting my legs carry me as far away as possible.
Death stormed after me, howling ungodly cries of frustration.
He used his scythe like a weed whacker to try and decapitate me.
Claude and May raced alongside me. “Ok kid, we need to think, fast. What can we do to stall for time?”
“A lot of my spells use my scythe to cast, so we’re shit out of luck on a lot of our arsenal. We only need to keep him together long enough for Magnus and Gene-…”