Mickey Reichert - Godslayer

"I don't know. College, I think. What about you?"

Jeffer's started toward center field. "I'm joining the army. Going to Vietnam to become a war hero:"

Larson's memory broke with jarring abruptness. He felt his consciousness jolted to the path of a different recollection. It was the summer after his high school graduation. Seeking spending money for college, he found a job working as a day camp counselor. The pay was comparatively high for employment of its type, and the benefits undeniable. Camp Collinswood had two pools, four athletic fields, sixteen tennis courts, and fifty wooded acres. Yet despite the many facilities, the boys in Larson's group preferred a game which required no special equipment.

Standing with his assistant before a dozen rowdy seven- and eight-year-old boys, Larson heard himself ask. "What do you guys want to do now?"

"Kill the counselor!" they chanted, nearly in unison. A wave of small bodies converged on Larson and his assistant. Resigned to the punches and prods of children too young to inflict significant pain, Larson alternated between feigned defense- lessness and throws which sprawled the campers in giggling heaps. He passed off wrestling moves as karate throws, or tricks from his days of "alligator tussling" and "dinosaur hunting."

"Al's got a girlfriend. Al's got a girlfriend," one of the youngsters chanted teasingly. Larson rose, dumping two boys from his back. Terry Jeffers stood several feet from the game. Her drab-colored dress was rumpled, and her hands knotted together at her waist. As he drew closer, Larson noticed her eyes, red and swollen, hollowed by anguish.

"Terry:? " he started uncertainly.

"Al." Her voice was a tenuous quaver. "It's:"

The scene shattered with Loki's muttered curse. Larson's thoughts jumped to his prom with the disquieting transition of a scratched record.

Terry wore a gown of blue satin. Dark hair haloed her face in burnished waves. Eye shadow and mascara focused attention on the sapphire depths of her eyes. Breathless, Larson stared. But his thoughts drifted back toward the unfinished sentence of his previous memory. Somehow, Larson knew Terry's message was extremely important.

Loki's presence nudged Larson back toward his vision of Terry Jeffers before the prom. Each line in the petals of her corsage blossomed into vivid focus. Satin swirled about her slender hips:

Damn you, Trickster! Vidarr shoved Larson's memories askew as the gods circled the flawed and tangled circuitry of his mind with the caution of dancers on a bed of needles. : Terry's dress went black as death; her head buried in her hands.

Loki snarled. Larson felt sanity slide beneath a wash of terror. : He danced to a slow ballad. Terry's head rested against his shoulder. His sweating palms left marks in the fine, blue satin of her dress: : But the feeling was all wrong. The music muted to the heavy toll of bells, chilling harmony to the anguished sobs of Mrs. Jeffers. Terry stared at a closed coffin. And Larson remembered. T.J. died in Vietnam!

Rationality broke beyond control of the sparring gods. Thoughts merged in a disharmonic orchestra of memory. Lights flashed as one: the cold yellow of porchlight, the glaring red-orange of mortars, the multi-hued explosions of sorceries. Larson felt alternately hot as fire and cold as death. Grief and hatred, sorrow and vengeance, self-pity and empathy swirled to a numbing, incomprehensible mix of emotion which tore screams from his throat.

Larson froze, listening to the echoes of his own pained cries. Gradually, sanity drew his crumbled thoughts together like pieces of a puzzle. It was all a lie, a world of men who sought honesty in falsehoods and war in the name of peace. They preached "turn the other cheek" and practiced "kill or be killed." We believed in death for freedom, and honor, yet dismembered the dead without respect. I've seen too much fear and not enough glory, a single God who promised forgiveness and banished his children to hellish tortures for their doubts and uncertainties. My country trained its babies to kill, then condemned them as murderers.

"Larson!" Loki's plea jerked Larson back to the present. Gaelinar stood watching, his eyes dark with concern. Again, Larson raised Valvitnir, its steel a dull, gray shadow in the mist. His arm rose and fell. The blade sheared through Loki's back, the god's death justified by the lives of the innocent, the unborn casualties of future wars. And Larson wept for the other casualties, men and women whose existence became nothing more substantial than his memories of them. His own existence became a paradox, a life from a future which was no longer reality.

Vidarr's mental presence whispered softer than wind. I'm sorry.

The words struck Larson like a physical blow. He stared at the sword in his fist; fresh blood trickled from its haft to stain his fingers scarlet. It was all another lie. Despite the utter destruction Larson wreaked upon his own world, Vidarr remained imprisoned in the sword.

"Damn your evil heart!" Larson jumped to his feet and hurled Valvitnir. The sword flipped end over end, glittering as it passed beneath tears in the clouds. "Damn all gods and men! You forced my hand against everyone I loved in both worlds." Turning his back on the sword which had served as his companion for weeks in a strange land, Larson staggered several paces. He collapsed at Silme's side. Her flesh was cold to his touch. Her lids remained closed, as if in sleep. Tears poured from Larson's eyes like a miniature replica of Hvergelmir's falls.

Larson watched Gaelinar move through a grief-inspired haze which gave all reality the consistency of dream. Respectfully, the Kensei averted his eyes from Larson's tears. He trotted forward and seized the blooded Helsword which still lay beside Bra-min's soulless body.

"You stand for everything I despise and against everything I believe." Gaelinar's voice sounded strangely solid in the lingering silence which followed Larson's mental battle. Several seconds passed before Larson realized his teacher addressed the sword.

Larson heard no reply, but the sword shimmered in Gaelinar's hand and its form blurred. Numbly, he watched the Kensei carry the blade to Hvergelmir's chasm and set it, point first, at the edge of the falls.

Sound rose from the warped swordshape, scarcely loud enough to rise above the water's roar. "Back, mortal fool. You've no right to challenge gods."

The shifting mists before Gaelinar revealed a vague man form. Shock weakened Larson's grasp, and Silme's body slipped to the ground. Kensei Gaelinar cleared his throat. "God or man, Helblindi, you've no right to take glory from a warrior's battles. You're a tool of chaos and evil, a being with no reason to live."

Helblindi's figure sharpened to clarity. Though golden-haired and fair-skinned as Loki, Helblindi displayed none of his brother's beauty. "Men, not gods, are tools, mortal. Your weaknesses shall become my strengths. You're a toy, swordsman. I'll crush you with your own flaws."

The bitterness and power in the god's voice made Larson flinch. But Gaelinar stood steady as the land itself. "I have no flaws. Ask Allerum." Gaelinar's foot lanced toward the god, faster than thought. The blow crashed into Helblindi's gut. Off-balanced, the god fell, twisting and screaming, into the cascade. Gaelinar completed his statement in a triumphant whisper. "I'm no hero."

Awe nearly deafened Larson to a noise from behind. Even as he whirled, he knew what he would find. The spell which had imprisoned Helblindi in a sword was the same which held Vidarr. As promised by the Fates, Loki's death did break his enchantments; they just took time to fade. Larson recognized Vidarr from mental images and the broken reality of Vietnam. Though freed, the god still addressed him telepathically, but now Vidarr's actual presence was undetectable in his mind. / owe you, Allerum. Ask what you wish. If it is within my power, it is yours.