Part XIII - A Cold Day in Hell, or, In Which I Get the Shit Beat out of Me and Get Very, VERY, Upset and Try to Kill Someone Who's Been Pissing Me Off for a Long Time
We were in the waystation, back from our Chinese adventure, when Sakell (remember him) showed up. He hadn't been around for a while, but was back, and with a fuckload of equipment. He had been sent out by Chappell with unlimited credit to get gear for an arctic expedition. He had all the latest in cold weather clothes, knives, 9mm pistols, a shotgun, an AK-47, and an HK-95. We had lots of food, flashlights, headset com gear, snowmobiles, and other stuff I forget at the moment.
We suited up, and hopped on the snowmobiles, and headed through the latest gate, into one hell of a blizzard. My watch pegged on -60F. After some trouble with driving, we went off through the snow, following Chappell. We encountered a tall man dressed in furs and skins, who didn't like Chappell much, (gee, another member of the "We Wish Fabio Would Die a Slow and Lingering Death Club", we didn't get to ask how to join though) and we went onward. I should also mention that the item of interest for this little jaunt was some great instrument of communication.
A banquet hall, like those described in Norse myth, or Herot in Beowulf appeared out of the snow, and it was decided to spend the night there. No one answered the door, so we went in, taking all the gear. We checked out the back, and found a large viking woman, a large viking man, and a small brown guy. I was beginning to feel at home, what with my Norskie heritage and justifiable predjudice for all things Scandinavian. The woman was glad to have visitors, and said how bad things were, but wouldn't elaborate. She made dinner for us, with massive quantities of food and booze. The man joined us, and told us his name was Thor, named after the great god Thor (he forgot his thaddle).
It turned out, as I expected, that the time of Ragnarok was at hand, with the gods and giants preparing for the battle to come. He told us of the death of Baldur, the lord of the place, which was like the story in myth about Loki using mistletoe to kill the guy. We told him some of our adventures, he especially liked the story of how we killed the giant, but felt that Alexander was a putz for coming in to steal our glory. We assured him that our feelings weren't hurt by this though.
We bedded down for the night in our -100 sleeping bags, and a rotating watch. This is where I'm going to have to stop for the night, as I've been staying up to write in my journal, to catch up on the previous travels that I hadn't written up. I'm now up to date, and will write more as it develops.
Well, it's been an interesting few days. I'm not entirely sure what all has happened, as I nearly died. I'll try to tell it chronologically, piecing it together from what the others told me. I'm also going to take a little more care in writing everything down, as I don't know when I'll be having the chance to in the future. Anyway.
At some point in the middle of the night, Chappell woke me, and said there was trouble. I grabbed the AK and my 9mm and followed. He led me out the back, saying that Jon had gone outside, against his advice, and was in trouble. We went through several rooms, and got to the door to the outside, which I stepped through. The last coherent thought I can remember, was that at the very instant I put my foot outside, was that Fabio had set me up.
Before I could even turn around, he hit me from behind, and I nearly blacked out from the blow, but I knew that if I went down, I was dead. Somehow I turned around (with the help of my berzerker heritage, I think), and started firing into him from point blank range. He hit me at least once more with some glowing blue staff, then turned into a black bird and flew away.
At this point, I was sure I was as good as dead, but somehow I remember staggering back in to where the others were. I saw the Elf there, and started firing at him. I now realize that I was being somewhat foolish, as if I'd been thinking clearly, I would have know that he wasn't the same guy who had attacked me. However, as I said, I was in berzerker mode, and just wanted him dead. I just fired and fired at him. I was sure I'd hit him, and then I blacked out. I thought I was dead, but then Chappell appeared to me and said that he'd kill me when I least expected it. A little later he showed up again, saying that it was actually Loki that attacked me. I still wasn't too receptive to this, and tried to kill him in the dream, but I couldn't.
The next thing I knew, I woke up in a spider web, healed, with all the others around, and a giant spider that was the elf's latest form. He told us that we were set to go on a trip to get the last item on his list, the torch with the olympic flame. There was a bit of debate on this point, as we already had the torch, but even in my slightly still bashed up state, I pointed out that we had the torch now, but when Joe was in ancient Greece, he had the torch then, and we had to make sure that the Joe then made it to be the Joe now to have the torch with us in the here and now.
Anyway, I'm sure you, the loyal listener is extremely eager to hear how our Ragnarok adventure turned out. I mentioned that I entered, shot Fabio, and passed out. This caused a flurry of activity, with people waking up, running around, trying to tackle me, etc. Once everyone was up, next, while people were trying to figure out why I'd shot elf-boy, besides the obvious reason that I'd been plotting his death since day one, things got stranger.
They tell me that next, Fabio looked at me, and cast a fireball that burst right next to my head. I suspect that this was when whoever was trying to kill me was talking to me in my dream, having shifted into a small or invisible form (either that, or Fabio was trying to kill me, and was just as bad a shot as usual). Then Gegi started to cast a spell, so Jay shot her foot off, effectively slowing her down for a bit. Then two Jays appeared, seeming to grow out of the one.
The Jays spread apart, with one Jay attempting an exorcism on Gegi, along with Jon and his bible, while the other Jay started shooting the first. The Jay doing the exorcism didn't fight back, but just kept trying to get the demon out of Gegi. These actions prompted David Sakell and Jon to try to determine which Jay was which. They asked several stupid questions in the manner of people in a bad fantasy story, then Jon stabbed the shooting Jay in the back with the spear (the one intelligent thing anyone did regardless of which Jay it was). Jon later claimed that he acted against his will, with one Jay using mental powers to make Jon act. Then Sakell finally did something, pointing a gun at the shooting Jay, and telling him he'd get shot if he didn't stop.
Thanks to Sakell's stupidity, the Jay who'd been getting shot, who was in really bad shape and nearly dead, turned into an insect and was trying to get away. Jon actually shot the very small, flying insect, driving it into the wall. Fabio went over, pulled a termite out of the wall, addressed it as Loki, squeezed it, and told it to go get him the horn of something or other. He then pulled off part of the bug's body as deposit, and it left. Then they got lucky with an the exorcism, and drove a demon or something out of Gegi (that she picked up in the little dark ritual in New York), that then floated off through the ceiling.
Supposedly, it was this demon that was trying to cast spells and interfere with us, Jay claims that he sensed it earlier when doing a mental scan on Gegi, and that's why he shot her. The evil (well, that's still vauge, call him false) Jay was trying to exorcise the demon so that he could get its help.
Later on (I was still severely unconscious), a dire wolf arrived at the hall, towing a large horn (like in Eric the Viking). It said some nasty things to the elf, and was missing a leg. Fabio took the horn, got everyone together, and they left. They felt themselves falling through nothing, until they landed on a glowing spiderweb with several cocoons there. A big spider approached, and Jon and Sakell shot it, until it asked them to stop (yes, this was the elf-spider I mentioned). It said that the cocoons were the unconscious people (like me) and the equipment.
And that's where things wrapped up for the time being (with me still unaware of everything that happened since I got trashed.)