The Last Great Obstacle
Tuuri, Onni and Reynir huddled behind Sigrun and Emil, the solid bulk of Mikkel at their backs. The blank, featureless plain before them was filled with giants, mostly agglomerated beasts of all shapes and sizes, and every one of them was making for their little knot.
Lalli flashed into being right in front of them, and a voice erupted into speech, both voice and speech harsh and hideous.
“So, the Seven are assembled
Ready now to meet the Monster
So behold the Rash Incarnate
Think you now to overthrow me?
Better foes than you have all failed!
Come and strike! Your doom awaits you!”
As the speech went on, giant after giant stepped into a central pile and merged, blending together into an immense obscenity of gross, gross, gross-grossling beyond description. Once it had finished, it and its comparatively minuscule followers moved towards the seven once more.
Lalli stepped forward, his reed-thin frame ludicrously small against the obscenities approaching them. “Emil, Sigrun,” he said quietly, “I need for you to keep the little ones away from us. Don’t bother with the big one.” His eyes were shining with blue light. Sigrun nodded briskly and turned back to the oncoming horrors; Emil looked troubled briefly, but shrugged and also turned away.
“Reynir,” Onni said quietly, “shut your eyes and recite with us.”
His eyes wide, Reynir stammered, “B-b-but how will I know what to say?”
Onni looked deep into Reynir’s eyes. “You will know. Trust me.”
Lalli began to chant, Onni joining on the second line, Reynir on the third, and even Tuuri on the fourth:
“Captive souls by Rash corrupted
Quicken once again to action
Rise now at this call to vengeance
Turn upon your Rash tormentor
Break its bonds and take your freedom
Seek out your eternal respite
Striking back at your oppressor
Now in concert we implore thee
Overcome the foe’s enthralling
And avenge yourselves upon it!”
Blue energy like a great wave flowed out from the little knot, swerving this way and that until it found the Rash Embodied, and began to suffuse it, illuminating the various individuals the Rash had forced into merging to form its being. As each was illuminated, they began to struggle, some more successfully than others, until the whole huge form was dissolving into a mass of individual people trying to escape that which had kept them enslaved to it for so long. A few, a very few even broke away completely, and began trying to help the others or attacking the still enslaved.
The other Rash bits were joining the main one now, trying to reestablish its/their dominance over the rebelling slaves by throwing ever more numbers at them, but this only allowed their own components to join the uprising. Soon, nothing was left standing but the seven, the freed souls leaping from their plague-riddled bodies as the power of the Rash simply ceased to be.
For a moment, no one moved, until Emil decided that the motionless heaps before them would look better if they were aflame. And he was quite right...
