"Huh?" Thor squinting as they neared the structure.
Up close, the so-called altar towered even more ominously.
It wasn't just a single column piercing the sky, it was surrounded by layers of bizarre, low-built structures, almost like giant petrified mushrooms or hunched beasts frozen mid-prowl.
Every surface was etched with runes that twisted and shimmered if you looked too long.
Soren slowed, his brows furrowed.
Around the tower, the land was dead quiet, no shifting dark mist, no distant roars. Just the stone, and the unsettling hum in the air.
They circled the massive tower once.
Twice.
Thor kicked at a loose stone, frustration building.
"There's nothing here but rock and creepiness."
"Solid all the way through. No seams, no doors." Soren added.
"Where's this 'good thing' you promised?"
Thor scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
"Well, it looked promising in the old drawings..."
"Looked promising." Soren repeated flatly.
Thor gave a nervous laugh, then brightened as he spotted something.
"Hey, what about that?" he said, jogging over to a massive stone monument standing a few paces away from the base of the tower.
"Maybe the stone's the key!"
"…"
The stele was ancient, covered in deep, flowing script neither of them could read. It pulsed faintly under layers of dust.
Without hesitation… and with all the recklessness of someone who definitely should hesitate~
Thor slapped his hand against the stone.
"Come on, reveal your secrets!"
BOOM!
A web of fiery symbols burst to life across the stone, crawling up and outward like veins of molten light.
The air tasted like metallic and heavy.
Thor yelped and stumbled backward, flapping his hand like it had been burned.
"That burns!"
Soren instinctively dropped into a guarded stance.
The aura pouring off the stone was alive.
A guttural, beastly roar split the silence.
The monument shuddered.
Soren's eyes darted to the base of the stone just in time to see the black mist surge outward, a fast, vicious spear of darkness aimed straight at Thor.
"Move!"
Thor barely managed a hop backward, as the black aura sliced through the space where he'd stood.
The mist recoiled, snarling like a wounded animal, and immediately began swirling again.
More and more of it poured from the cracks in the stone, gathering mass, forming vague shapes that twitched and flexed.
Thor shook his hand and stared at the growing storm of black energy.
"Uh... Soren?" He said, voice climbing an octave. "That... that felt cursed."
Soren didn't answer immediately. His eyes were locked on the mass of dark magic.
"It's not just cursed."
The black mist pulsed once, a heartbeat.
Thor edged closer to Soren.
"If it starts chanting in Latin, I'm out."
"Since when do you know Latin?" Soren muttered without looking at him.
"I don't! That's the problem!" Thor hissed.
The mist coalesced further, a jagged, malformed silhouette beginning to rise from it.
"Get ready."
The black mist twisted violently in front of them, writhing like a wounded animal. Then, with a shuddering snap, it pulled itself into a shape.
And what a shape it was.
The thing towered over them, a nightmare stitched together from thorns, sinew, and blackened fangs.
Thick ropes of dark drool hung from its jaws, sizzling into the ground below and burning out smoking pits.
"What the Hel is that?" Thor breathed, raising Mjolnir.
Soren's eyes weighed the creature with a look.
"Doesn't matter."
"You fall back. This one's mine."
Thor grunted in protest but didn't argue.
One glance at Soren's sharp tone, and the monster's suffocating aura told him this wasn't a fight he could win on bravado alone.
Mjolnir crackled in his hands as he backed off, gathering his strength, waiting for a chance to strike.
The creature let out a low, rumbling snarl. Black breath fumed from its nostrils.
With a horrifying screech, it vanished.
Thor cursed and swung wildly through empty air.
Soren was already moving.
With a blur of motion, he flickered out of the monster's strike zone just as a claw the size of a trunk raked through the spot he'd been standing.
"Slow." Soren muttered to himself.
The beast lunged again, but Soren met it head-on.
His Adamantium-forged blade sang through the air.
It plunged deep toward the monster's snarling head.
CLANG!
The monster's massive claw caught the blade mid-swing.
The ground beneath them bounced from the force of their collision.
Soren flipped backwards, landing low and skidding through dirt and broken stone.
The monster, meanwhile, used its claw to gouge deep furrows as it skidded back, but otherwise completely unharmed.
Thor whistled low under his breath from a distance.
"Remind me never to fight that thing hand-to-hand."
The beast let out a furious bellow, tearing its claw free of the ground, flinging rocks and mud like cannon fire.
There wasn't a scratch on it.
Soren stared it down, he was already recalculating.
His Adamantium blade, fueled by insane strength, could cleave through nearly any metal known, yet the beast had shrugged it off.
"Good." Soren said under his breath.
"Something worth using real power on."
He sheathed his blade with a slow, motion and stretched out both hands.
Energy rushed through him.
The monster growled, and lowered its spiked head like a bull preparing to charge.
Above them, the sky began to tear.
Symbols blazed into existence, massive, intricate rings of power, spinning slowly, grinding against the firmament like colossal gears.
The air turned suffocated.
Hot.
The clouds above split apart as if punched through from the heavens.
Something massive and burning blazed into view~
A meteorite wrapped in fire, dragging the sun itself in its wake.
"You are something ancient." Soren said, voice low, almost pitying.
"Now burn for me."
The creature didn't wait.
It lunged again.
But Soren only pointed upward, his voice a whip crack through the battlefield:
"Sunset... melts gold!"
The meteorite dropped.
A comet of molten fury, its fire no longer red but white-gold, so bright it seared the ground before it even struck.
The temperature spiked, rocks cracked, the air shimmered, and bled heat.
It can melt anything!
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
Check out the new story: Garfield Across the Multiverse
PhantomDream