Baldur groaned as he began to stand up from the hard ground. He had just been violently thrown back by a devastating kick from Zelos that landed squarely on his torso.
Zelos had been momentarily watching his father and Atreus handle the Twin Gods of Vengeance without much problem. Seeing that Kratos and Atreus had the situation completely under control, Zelos slowly turned his undivided attention back towards the fallen Aesir.
Baldur was currently looking over his entire body in sheer disbelief. The impenetrable magic that he had viewed as a suffocating curse for over a century finally started leaving his flesh, evaporating into the cold air.
While this monumental shift occurred, Zelos meticulously recorded everything that happened with his magical perception.
He knew that observing the breaking of a Vanir curse of this magnitude would greatly help with his advanced research progress in the future.
"Now that you finally have exactly what you wanted, perhaps you should consider stopping this pointless fight right now," Zelos said to Baldur.
His tone was a sharp mixture of mocking confidence and absolute truthfulness. "I am rather fond of your mother, and I do not think she would want to meet with me ever again if I killed her only son. You are the one person that she treasured the most, so much so that she willingly made herself a target of your eternal hatred just to protect you from a prophesied death."
Zelos had already resolved to kill Baldur, but he wanted to see if he could maybe stave off the arrival of Ragnarok for a little bit longer by offering a verbal way out.
However, those fleeting hopes died down immediately. Suddenly, Zelos heard a dark laughter echoing from the Aesir god.
At first, it was just a low, guttural chuckling, but slowly, it turned into a full blown, maniacal laughter that shook the surrounding air.
"I will leave you alive just long enough to kill that wretched woman right in front of your eyes," Baldur said, his voice dripping with pure, unadulterated fury.
"Then, I will take her severed head and bind it to your own head forever. That woman took absolutely everything from me. She took my ability to feel the wind, to taste food, to feel the warmth of a fire. But now, thanks to you, I finally have a real chance to take everything from her in return. Though I suppose I must genuinely thank you for giving me this glorious chance to feel her blood on my hands."
It was painfully apparent that Baldur was incredibly angry towards his own mother for removing any physical sensation from his body over the years, a torment that had successfully driven Baldur completely mad.
"You should really think carefully before you talk so boldly," Zelos replied calmly.
"You have not even managed to injure me over the short duration of our fight. You have far less of a chance now, especially since you do not have your magical invulnerability to hide behind anymore."
As he spoke, Zelos slowly reached out his right hand into the empty space beside him. He channeled his dense mana and summoned one of his first five primary weapons.
"You should feel incredibly proud. You will be the very first of many gods to die by the blade of Voltan," Zelos announced.
As he grabbed the hilt, intense lightning ripples immediately came out of his newly formed sword, scorching the earth beneath his feet.
Voltan is one of his five primordial demons that possessed the unique ability to transform into an artifact, and there was a very specific reason why Zelos wanted to use Voltan for this exact execution.
Zelos then moved with blinding speed. He and Baldur began to clash with each other once again in the center of the pocket realm.
This time, however, Zelos did not pull his strikes anymore. He swung a devastating horizontal slash directly towards Baldur.
The Aesir god just barely managed to dodge the lethal strike, bending backwards as his heightened danger perception flared brighter than it ever had in his entire life.
When the strike that missed Baldur cleanly swung through the empty air, the sheer power of the blade reacted with the environment.
The entire spatial fabric of the perfect cube realm situated right behind Baldur physically split and separated, revealing a void of nothingness.
This is one of the main, terrifying abilities of Voltan. The primordial blade could cut through absolutely anything in existence, so long as the user could thoroughly and clearly visualize cutting it.
It functioned quite similarly to a specific spell that exists in the Frieren universe, but it operated on a much higher, divine tier, as it could literally cut through abstract concepts so long as the wielder possessed enough magical power to enforce their will upon reality.
Zelos swung Voltan once again without giving his opponent a moment to breathe.
This time, Baldur chose to meet the incoming strike head on with his bare hands. He quickly covered his fists with his innate elemental powers of pure light and dense Bifrost energy.
By offering the normally untouchable and highly volatile nature of these two elements, Baldur desperately wanted to see if he could physically touch and overpower Zelos.
But what Baldur did not expect was the absolute superiority of the demonic weapon. As his glowing hands met the edge of Voltan, the sword effortlessly sliced through his entire right arm without any physical resistance.
Baldur's blue eyes widened in pure horror as the physical sensation of his right arm completely disappeared. It did not just fall off to the ground; it vanished as if it was never there to begin with.
Voltan had successfully cut through the very fabric of time and space to sever Baldur's right arm conceptually, rewriting reality to make it seem that Baldur did not have a right arm ever since the very beginning of his existence.
"AARGHHHHHHHH!" Zelos heard Baldur yell in absolute, agonizing pain.
The forced erasure of a physical concept, even if it was just the concept of his right arm, is an incredibly painful ordeal that shocks the soul itself.
Zelos stood tall in front of the screaming Baldur with his hands gripping the hilt of Voltan so tightly, preparing his stance as he was about to deliver the final, finishing blow to the neck.
"ZELOS!" Kratos's booming words suddenly cut through the chaotic battlefield.
Kratos yelled towards his eldest son, immediately stopping any lethal actions that Zelos was about to do.
Zelos paused and looked over to see that his father was currently locked in a tense physical stalemate with Vidar.
Meanwhile, both Atreus and Vali had arrows knocked on their respective bows, aiming squarely at one another.
It was clear that they were all fiercely fighting against each other just moments ago, but the entire battle was abruptly stopped by the guttural, horrifying scream coming from Baldur.
"Why do you call for me, Father? Is there something wrong over there? I am merely finishing my fight with this intruder," Zelos asked with a feigned tone of innocence, lowering his blade just slightly.
However, Zelos already knew exactly what this sudden interruption would mean.
"Enough, boy. STAND DOWN," Kratos then yelled with absolute, unquestionable authority.
The Spartan then forced Vidar to back off by using a massive surge of his godly strength to shove the Norse god away. Kratos backed off as well, moving defensively towards Atreus.
The young boy's eyes were still staring widely at the two gods of vengeance, who were now wearing highly confused and wary looks on their faces as they watched their supposedly immortal leader screaming on the ground.
"I DO NOT NEED YOUR PATHETIC MERCY," Baldur yelled with viciousness dripping from his voice.
He was still writhing on the ground, clutching the empty space where his arm used to be, utterly refusing to be shown any form of pity by his enemy.
"You should go back to Asgard with your brothers right now. This endless path of vengeance that you seek will not allow you to retain what was stolen from you. That applies to you two as well. It will bring you no peace, no matter how many corpses fall upon your feet," Kratos said to the three Aesir gods.
He spoke with a surprisingly gentle and weary tone, displaying a depth of emotional maturity that Zelos had not heard much during all their time together.
"I am not satisfied with that outcome, Father," Zelos said coldly, his eyes narrowing at the writhing god on the ground.
Without any further hesitation or warning, he violently swung his primordial sword directly towards the body of Baldur.
As Voltan swung and made contact with Baldur's chest, a blindingly bright light suddenly erupted out of Baldur's physical body.
Another guttural, deafening scream was heard by everyone present. Baldur began thrashing around wildly on the stone floor, a clear testament to the intense, soul tearing pain that he was feeling.
The divine light that was coming out of him became more and more concentrated until an entire pillar of intense, blinding illumination burst out of Baldur, reaching toward the sky of the pocket dimension.
Finally unable to handle the extraction process, Baldur's eyes rolled back, and he completely lost consciousness.
"What did you do, boy?" Kratos demanded. He walked angrily and purposefully towards his son, heavily gripping his axe.
He called Zelos boy for the very first time, a clear sign of his immense disappointment and rising anger regarding the disobedience.
"I killed the God of Light," Zelos said simply towards Kratos.
Zelos then commanded his magic and transformed Voltan back into its natural, resting form.
It did not shift into a dragon or serpentine form, but rather into a glowing, beating demonic heart.
Zelos guided the extracted, pure Essence of the God of Light into this heart.
He then unsummoned Voltan completely and absorbed the artifact back into his own body.
By doing this, Zelos directly absorbed the Essence of the God of Light into his own soul, effectively becoming the new God of Light himself in the Norse Pantheon.
This brutal process simultaneously transformed Baldur into just a normal Asgardian man. Baldur would still retain his baseline physical strength, but he would no longer have any access to the World Tree magic, like the Bifrost.
Most importantly, Zelos had completely severed any remaining godhood from Baldur's soul, permanently rendering the son of Odin practically mortal.
"Banishment," Zelos then chanted softly as he summoned a massive, glowing magic circle beneath the three intruders.
He forcefully banished the three defeated Aesir from his perfect pocket cube, making them teleport violently back to the snowy peaks of Midgard.
But before they vanished completely, Zelos layered a powerful bewitchment spell upon their minds.
It was functionally similar to the curse that was given towards Mimir by Freya, effectively binding their tongues to never speak of what they all knew about Jotunheim or the portal.
Zelos locked the complex spell so deeply into their spiritual cores to the point where even Odin himself would not be able to dispel it, ensuring their absolute silence.
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A/N: Hello! First, let me say thank you to those who continue to support me on Ko-fi. I feel like I haven't earned it lately because I haven't been able to maintain my upload schedule, yet you still choose to back my work. For that, I am truly grateful.
Secondly, I want to apologize for the anticlimactic conclusion to this fight. I spent the week drafting several different versions of the battle, but I ended up deleting them all because they just didn't feel right. After reading through the comments, I came across a suggestion to make Baldur mortal. I really loved that premise. Originally, I envisioned his situation as a curse similar to his mother's, the one she couldn't fight even to protect herself, which resulted in her being confined to Midgard. However, I think the concept of mortality is far more interesting for the story.
Thank you once again for everything!