The Soulmate Initiative: Book 2

29. A horse!?

LOCATION: ASGARD

Tasia leaps down from the balcony, aiming for the bridge, electricity trails after her. As she approaches her landing, undead soldiers ready themselves to fight her, but they don't last long as she smites them. She fights soldiers, her whole body electrified and whenever she touches something, the electricity spreads. Bruliel exits the ship and fights soldiers from the other side. In between the pair, the others continue to fight. In the water below, Fenris and Hulk fight. Skurge watches everything around him, realising he has made a terrible mistake and is now on the losing side. He disguises himself as a civilian and boards the ship with them, many of whom are still trying to get inside. Hulk manages to toss Fenris over the waterfall off the edge of Asgard and almost goes over herself, barely managing to grab onto a rock.

All the soldiers who were on the bridge, have now been defeated. Tasia, no longer electrified, approaches her friends and sister, she looks to Lavina "You're late." "You're missing an eye." Lady Sif points out "This isn't over." They all turn to see Herlan slowly making his way down the bridge, they all stand side by side. Tasia tries to catch her breath "I think we should disband the Revengers." Lavina makes a suggestion "Hit him with a lightning blast." "I just hit him with the biggest lightning blast in the history of lightning. It did nothing." Bruliel says "We just need to hold him off until everyone's on board." "It won't end there." "The longer Herlan's on Asgard, the more powerful he grows. He'll hunt us down. We need to stop him here and now." "So what do we do?" Lavina looks at Tasia "I'm not doing 'get help'." Tasia takes a step towards Herlan, a sword in each hand, she watches him a moment and he continues to slowly approach, he appears to be in no rush. Tasia looks back at the ship, to see the Sakaar prisoners are still loading everyone on "Asgard's not a place, it's a people. Lavina, this was never about stopping Ragnarok. This was about causing Ragnarok. Surtur's crown, the vault. It's the only way." "Bold move, sister. Even for me." Lavina looks to Lady Sif "Sif, will you help me?" She nods and the pair head to Bruliel's ship.

Tasia looks to Bruliel "Shall we?" "After you." Tasia lights herself back up with electricity and attacks Herlan, the pair take it in turns to attack him. As Lavina flies the ship over the bridge, she sees the fight below "This is madness." As the last person is on the large ship, Tasia calls out to Heimdall "Go! Go now!" So he gets in and the ship powers up, but Herlan uses his powers to send a piece of rock up from under the water, it hits the ship and anchors it down. As Lavina and Lady Sif land at the Palace, Lavina gives instructions "I need you to go to the stables and grab a horse-" Lady Sif looks furious "I could be helping out there, but you wanted me to grab a horse! Are you mad!?" "Not just any horse. Sleipnir. You won't miss him. Grey, adolescent… 8 legs." Lady Sif raises an eyebrow "Please. Get him to the ship. I can't leave without him, he's my son." "I am not even going to ask." She runs off in the direction of the stables, while Lavina heads for the vault. Once in the vault, Lavina grabs the crown of Surtur and a small red box box a golden apple painted on top of it, but as she's passing by, she sees the tesseract and can't resist taking it with her. 

The undead soldiers, who are alive once again and have crawled out of the water below, have made their way onto the bridge and are crawling up the rock to the ship. The prisoners fight back, but there are too many of them. Skurge realises this is his moment, he throws off his disguise and starts shooting them "For Asgard." He destroys the rock, letting the ship free and jumps down onto the bridge, where he continues to shoot as the ship starts flying away "Herlan!" He starts fighting his way towards Herlan, but Herlan just throws a blade at him, killing him. 

Lavina places the crown into the eternal flame "With the eternal flame you are reborn." As soon as it starts to work, she runs and the Palace starts crumbling around her. As she has the ship in her sights, she sees Lady Sif running in, a horse weighing 8x her own weight in her arms, but she's managing. When full grown this horse will be 2500 pounds, 2.10m tall and stronger than any other horse "I thought I was looking for a lighter horse!" As they both run into the ship, Lavina responds "She has lots more growing to do." As Lavina starts flying them away, Lady Sif catches her breath "When did this happen anyway? How did I not know?" "Not many knew." She then thinks of how long ago at was "About 30 years ago. But since he is of my blood, he is ageing slower than he otherwise would be."