A billion Trynaught replicas, armed with Ogun-forged portable plasma cannons, flew toward a massive pearl-covered gate adrift in the void. The opalescent pearls layering the gate, however, were not merely decorative. Each pearl contained a generator that powered an energy shield.

     The Trynaught replicas, wearing powered armor, fired their weapons, pounding the gate with an unremitting tide of directed plasma. The gate glowed bright as a star beneath the battering, but refused to give way.

Amateratsu and Huitzilopochtli harnessed the power of the sun and blazed enough of energy at the gate to detonate a world.

     Zeus added his lightning bolts to the bombardment. Thor hurled Mjolnir at the gate repeatedly. The hammer’s deafening impacts reverberated across the realm. Yet, the gate continued to hold.

     Thor looked behind him to see Ogun and Trynaught floating in the distance, observing the attack. Irately, he shouted: “Feel free to participate at anytime!”

     Ogun ignored the Thunder God. His dark eyes narrowed in deep thought. “We are going about this wrong. A direct assault is not working.”

“Evidently,” said Trynaught flippantly.

     After a moment, Ogun converted his sword to a launcher and jetted toward the gate at blinding speed. Trynaught followed, barely keeping pace with the iron god’s velocity. 

     Ogun shot past gods and replicas, whereby he took aim with the launcher and triggered it. A crimson cylinder blasted from the launch chute, streaking toward the gate. Instead of hitting the gate itself, the cylinder impacted a seemingly empty patch of space several feet above the structure. The space in which the projectile struck rippled as does water struck by a pebble. Seconds later, the gate fractured as the barrage finally took its toll.

     A series of lightning bolts delivered by Zeus impaled the suddenly weakened gate, shattering it to millions of glistening shards.

“What kind of missile did you use?” Trynaught queried Ogun, impressed.

“A basic anti-matter device, calibrated to disrupt subspace, which is where the gate drew its invulnerability.” Ogun shrugged as if the matter were elementary.

“If you’re finished harping on your luck, we have a battle to finish!” Thor cajoled.

“Yes, you’re right, Thunder Wielder” Ogun retorted with a cocky grin. “I should be on hand to teach you a thing or two about combat. Watch and learn!”

     Ogun and Thor joined their fellow gods and replicas as they surged through a glowing tear in the void where the gate existed but seconds ago.

****

     So this was Heaven, the Realm of Jehov. Trynaught beheld a natural landscape, blending seamlessly into a city of glistening multicolored towers. A polished, turquoise sky sprawled above. The skyline stretched and wound like a metallic river for as far as his eye could travel, flanked by a rainbow carpet of fauna. A part of him decried the destruction about to befall this place of beauty and tranquility.

     Ogun fired off an anti-matter missile. Instantly, a vast sweep of cityscape disappeared in an expanding brew of light.

     Huitzilopochtli followed up with stellar energy bursts. Buildings ignited like torches from the touch of his celestial flame.

     Thor took pleasure in smashing buildings with his hammer and watching them collapse to their foundations.

     A shadow fell over the sky.

     Amateratsu looked up. “Storm clouds?”

“No,” Zeus said calmly, lightning bolts crackling in his hands. “The enemy’s approach. Now, the real battle begins!”

     Angels too numerous to tally soared toward the besieged city. Armed with crossbows, swords and bludgeons, their golden wings were studded with black spikes made of an unbreakable composite alloy. They wore black face-covering helmets and gray plate armor that covered torsos and legs, but left their toned, tattoo-layered arms exposed.

     Several angels blew into long, curved trumpets, releasing a blast of sound that shook the farthest corners of Heaven. A collective battle cry ripped from the defenders’ throats.

     An opposing force would have been struck dumb with fright. Ordinarily.

     Ogun and Thor led the charge into the angels’ ranks, yelling battle cries of their own. Trynaught replicas fell in behind them, cannons pulsing plasma bursts.

     Amatertsu floated in place, shooting gleaming stellar energy from her hands, scorching thousands of angels. To her dismay, the gaps she blew in the angel mass replenished as quickly as she made them.

     Zeus sent a succession of lightning bolts dancing amidst the angels, disintegrating them in droves.

     The angels released volleys of silver bolts from their crossbows before coming to grips with the invaders.  Faster-than-light bolts exploded upon striking the replica Trynaughts. Pieces of replica bodies rained from the sky in a bloody drizzle.

     Thor shrugged off the bolts. Most he blocked with Mjolnir. Others struck his body to no effect. Like a shark he waded through the angel tide, bashing winged adversaries to pulp with his hammer. Angels attempted to parry his blows, only to see their swords smashed to splinters when they made contact with Mjolnir. Thor summoned the power of lightning into Mjolnir and redirected its wrath in a wide, fiery arc. Angels caught in the hammer-delivered maelstrom died instantly, their bodies charred to indistinguishable lumps.

     Ogun was a lethal whirlwind, his iron sword slicing effortlessly through enemy flesh and bone like a blood hungering beast. An angel grabbed the iron god from behind, enveloping him in wings more durable than the hardest substance known to mortals. Ogun’s strength tore through those wings as if they were made of egg shells.

     He swung his sword, hacking off the arm of the mutilated angel in a single stroke. A wall of angels formed around him, targeting him with crossbow fire. Bolts exploded against his body, but barely slowed him down. Ogun produced a second sword and knifed into his foes, slashing and thrusting through a packed mass of flesh until he saw daylight.

     As angels dead and dying spiraled to ground, more continued to attack. When Ogun grew bored with hand-to-hand combat, he morphed his swords into a gatling weapon and filled the sky with lead. Countless more angels perished as rapid-fire rounds shredded their bodies to ribbons.

     Huitzilopochtli was master of the sun and he relished his ability to embody its immense energies, which he channeled through his eagle staff as death-dealing fire bolts. But every so often, he craved the delicious thrill of dispatching an opponent with his own hand.

     After immolating a cluster of angels, the sun god, zeroed in on a half burnt survivor. He thrust his hand through the angel’s slagged armor, penetrating the chest. The angel’s agonized scream caressed  Huitzilopochtli’s ears like a soothing melody. The Sun God gripped his victim’s warm, inviting heart and tore it from its chest. As the angel fell away, the Sun God spared a second to admire his still-beating trophy, before discarding it and plunging back into the fray.

     An angel sliced off the head of a Trynaught replica. Another replica jerked spastically when crossbow bolts fired by a half dozen angels riddled his body. The bolts exploded seconds later. It might have been a small mercy that the replica was already dead when multiple blasts tore him apart.

     Trynaught observed the deaths of those replicas as he witnessed the demise of so many others. Replica deaths touched him in a way he could only describe as traumatizing. Perhaps he was affected so personally because the replicas were his own creations, his flesh and blood…his family. Was this what it was like to feel for another? An aching need to avenge his replicas accompanied that insurmountable feeling of loss…

“Trynaught! Focus!”

     Amateratsu glared at Trynaught as she fended off tides of attacking angels with a vicious break wall of stellar energy.

     Motivated by the sun goddess’s admonishment, Trynaught doubled his efforts to expand his mind. He probed the city below, searching for the presence of Jehov.

“Anything?” Amateratsu demanded.

“I sense wisps of his essence,” Trynaught replied, straining to mentally grasp onto something too immaterial to hold. “But…it is too diffuse. I cannot pinpoint a location.”

“Try harder!” the Sun Goddess urged, before striking down more than a hundred angels with a lash of the sun.

     His senses told him that Jehov was near, but as Trynaught combed the buildings below he picked up no traces of a physical presence. Suddenly it occurred to him. “Underground! He’s beneath the surface!”

     Amateratsu nodded and at Trynaught’s direction, she launched a sunbolt blasting a massive hole in the ground. The energy beam drilled far below the surface.

     The Sun Goddess called out to her comrades to follow her as she soared toward the fuming hole, disappearing into its stygian depths.

****

To be continued....     Go to Part 1     Go to Part 2

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