from those who can see how important your lifeline will be to the rest of the world.
The weather is calming down to a typical larger than life storm as Jeff staggers out from the used bookstore, out into the street where he sees that main street Gatlinburg is a sight of overturned cars, trees scattered all over the place, and more than a few trucks inside stores.
Bad Mother Nature parking there.
Not a storefront with its windows intact, not an inch without the image of devastation. People talk about how after a tornado or hurricane you have tons of destruction but spotted places here or there are totally untouched?
Well, that doesn’t apply here.
Not even in the slightest.
Jeff sat down on a metal bench that somehow had gotten itself cut in half with its other half nowhere in sight. Or maybe it wasn’t a metal bench but actually the top off a car? He brain couldn’t decide so he went with half bench.
During this conversation between his brain and eyes is when he saw a large man who looks like he’s been in a big fight dressed in a very old looking worn suit of armor walking through the destruction from the storm appearing as if he was looking for something.
Something important.
He walked in and out of half brought down buildings cursing the names of just about every God Jeff had heard of. He kicked over bodies, threw around rocks, and seemingly getting more and more angry as his search went on.
Balsam grabbed a rather large SUV with both hands and flipped it up and over the side of a bridge into an over flooded creek. When it exploded he screamed at the flames, ‘Fuck you too!’
That little ordinary bit of anger made Jeff smile a little, a very ordinary thing to do. Very human from someone who is beyond ordinary humans.
Jeff saw him pick up a very nasty looking long ax that had been under the wreckage with a childlike glee at holding it once again in his hands.
Balsam placed the ax head against his forehead and to Jeff seemed to be saying a prayer to himself.
Balsam snapped out of his prayer like state when it seemed he had heard something. He placed the long ax on his back and flew up into the sky with a glance of his eye upward as if he commanding gravity to not believe in itself.
Jeff sighed at the sight of this, stood once again to his feet and started to walk in the direction he thought the hotel should be. Though seeing as to the fact that he could barely see he could end up walking back to Florida without even knowing he had passed through a couple more states.
For some reason this extra bit of strange thinking gave him some energy.
Balsam finds Cades in a cave on a mountain top. The Smokey Mountains has some rather nice mountain tops. He was lead to this precise one. Cades isn’t the only one with a connection to Mother Nature. And it seems like the tide of support is changing and not so slowly.
He enters the cave to see his adversary trying to conjure up more strength through a ritual of sacrifice. The smell of deer brought back memories for him from a time when his father taught him to hunt when he was a boy.
He hates things that bring back memories from those times.
‘The Mother Nature will not answer your call again Cades. She cares only so much about any one opinion. Even Gods can be ignored by those more powerful. But then again, you’re no God are you.’
Cades stood and walked through his fire of sacrifice and Balsam could see with the light from the fire the damage he had done to his enemy when they first fought.
He was standing a few feet from Balsam when Cades picked up a tree limb and it turned into a staff of iron, ‘The Gods turned their eyes away from my people, away from our lands when the invaders came. We were told to offer up peace. We did and got blood. We were told to offer up brotherhood. We did and got more ripped flesh. We were told to offer up friendship. We did and got nothing but death in return. I have no place or need for Gods.’
‘Then we have something in common.’
‘Then this is the last leg of our encounter.’
‘You throwing my ax away was a good gambit of distraction but now as you said- this encounter ends.’
Cades readies himself for violence.
Balsam retrieves his ax from its holster.
These two powerful beings swing their weapons at each other with iron staff and long ax striking with all the force either of them could muster.
The impact energy of the connecting blows was massive and the recoil threw both of them out of the cave.
Think of it as if both of them were bullets in a gun barrel and the energy the fire and gun powder.
I really suck at the being apt thing.
Neither of them had any control of their final destination as both landed hard on a road cracking the pavement miles away from the cave.
For a second Mother Nature flinched at their pain as both are so connected to her. The flinch created a freak lightning storm in Oakland.
When both of them got to their feet Balsam spun around swinging his ax holding it by the end of the handle for the most reach. Something his father always warned him about. The bad form allowed Cades an advantage because when he ducked the blow Balsam lost his balance and Cades was able to get in a blow to the back of his legs with the staff knocking him head over heels with a landing of face first on the damaged pavement.
Cades focused and his staff transformed into a spear with a golden blade and he flipped it over and tried to drive it down into Balsam’s back but his foe rolled to the side of the road and got to his feet really quick.
‘We are matched. You are of the breast milk of Mother Nature and so am I.’ Cades said with a smile on his face.
‘The difference is you are of vengeance while I am the blood that defends.’
‘Some defender you are. You think the lands haven’t told me about you? You have become a worker bee in humanities hive. A lost little sad piece of a God. What would your father think of that Blood of Thor?’
Wrong time to play the family card Cades.
Balsam swings his ax and it impacts at the feet of Cades and at first Cades was stunned at the wild madness mood of the warrior God but soon he would know it wasn’t madness when up from under and from above him lightning strikes hit him sending him to his knees.
The strikes took a lot out of Balsam to compose them up and deliver so he thought he had to act fast and he did so by implanting his ax into Cades skull.
A stunned look came over Cades face. Stunned that it hurt that much.
But that itself may have been a mistake by the son of Thor. But it’s not like you have some sort of hand book for this sort of thing. Even someone as old and experienced in battle as Balsam can make a mistake.
And the effect from that mistake is coming out from Cades head, between the cracks in his skull came some of what his true form is. At first it looked to be black blood but that substance formed into small crows the size of a pill bottle that grew in size as they flew around Balsam attacking him. Within minutes they were the size of a human child and with the same level of viciousness.
Balsam fought his way through the crow attacks and reached his ax and pulled it from Cades skull. He shortened up his grip this time and began swinging at the mass of crows. Murder after murder of crows attacking with a number that seemed endless to him.
He could not even see Cades anymore because there were so many crows all around him so he did not see Cades lunging forward with his spear but sure felt it as it went through the shoulder plate of his armor and out from his back. And felt it even more when he pulled it out.
Balsam had no choice now. He really hadn’t liked using his bloodline in combat. It really pissed him off in so many ways to depend on it to finish a fight. He would rather go knuckle to face or ax to spear but this wasn’t a bar full of assholes or even a beyond human drunk on a power trip.
He had no choice so he called down more lightning and more lightning and more lightning. There was cloud to ground, there was positive, and there was dry and rocket.
An
d even cloud to cloud for a bit of showmanship.
The first barrage destroyed all of the crows. Not hitting them one by one but a single strike that hit one and then seemed to dance from one to the next leaving each with an explosion of feather and bone.
The second barrage shattered Cades spear and directed the supernatural pieces all the way to Florida.
Gainesville to be precise.
I’m sure that will turn up in a future Tin Universe story.
Unless I forget about it.
And the third barrage of lightning hit Cades himself. It cut all the way down from one shoulder to the point of making contact with his ribs.
Balsam fell to his knees almost on empty. He opened his eyes from the barrages he had unleashed to see the last one had fused Cades right arm to the rest of his body. But the smell of burnt flesh wasn’t in the air. It was the smell of burnt leather that was.
This odd to the circumstances occurrence of smell didn’t enter Balsam’s mind though as Cades had grabbed him by the throat with his left hand by the time the odor had reached his nose.
‘Which one has the last lungful to win?’ Cades screamed as he tightened his grip around Balsam’s neck, ‘Who wins this day!’
Balsam in response grabs Cades wrist with both hands and snaps it. He was surprised that he had the strength to do that from how strong he had seen Cades to be. But it snapped and he twisted it making the bones grind and pop like trying to pull a leg off a cooked chicken.
Cades staggered back screaming in pain. He gave another wicked smile thinking Balsam