The mountains, water, rocks, snow, and the silhouettes of those Asgardian warriors all came together in front of the Balrog into a slightly three-dimensional figure painting.
Bella understood painting. She'd studied it in school. She combined Eastern talisman techniques, Kamar-Taj's Mirror art, and her own psionic magic. Over the Christmas holiday she'd folded a full month's worth of mind magic and Suggestion spells into a single mind-scroll.
This mind-scroll was a one-time tool. She'd been planning to use it for the dragon. Spending it on the Balrog wasn't a waste either.
Drawn line by line with psionic energy, woven from the natural scenery around it, the painting showed the back of an old man. He wore golden armor and a great red cloak. Through the gaps in the cloak, white hair was visible.
Tall. Standing alone on a mountain peak, his back to the Balrog. In his right hand, a golden spear.
The Balrog felt his legs lock. He wouldn't take another step forward. He recognized this old man. This was the King of the Gods, the conqueror and ruler of the Nine Realms. The Allfather, Odin.
This was a hidden bonus of taking the Ancient One as her teacher. The Ancient One had a portrait of Odin in her possession. He wasn't an unviewable, unspeakable existence. As a properly inducted disciple, Bella had every right to copy it for practice. And the central figure in this mind-scroll of hers was Odin himself.
"Impossible! How—how could that be here?!" The Balrog plunged into massive self-doubt. Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? The questions piled up. The pressure Odin radiated was simply too much.
Worse: the Odin in the painting—who had started with his back to him—was slowly turning around. An incomparable terror tore through the Balrog's mental defenses. Vast amounts of Suggestion magic and mind magic surged in through the gap, detonating in his mind, ravaging it, dismantling every thought and notion that propped up a sentient creature's basic sense of self.
The Balrog had no idea his mental world was being invaded. He was still standing there muttering stupidly.
"Impossible!"
"Impossible!"
"Fake! It's all fake! You can't trick me!"
The instant the Odin in the painting turned fully and his single eye fixed on the Balrog, the Suggestion's effect peaked. Every drop of mind magic Bella had been hoarding for a month detonated at once.
A scorching flash of fire erupted from the Balrog's chest. Muscles tougher than rock blew open from the inside out, leaving a bloody crater. The brutal psionic surge and mental shockwave overwhelmed one of his three hearts—it ruptured outright under the pressure.
This savage creature had a lifetime of combat experience. Through the searing pain in his chest he forced himself awake. That hadn't been Odin! If the real Odin were here, one finger would have crushed him.
"Fake. All of it fake!"
He drew out a long whip of flame. Crack-crack-crack—the whip cut through the air. Every Asgardian warrior figure and every piece of the winter scenery around him went flickering and ghostly under its strikes.
The Balrog was nearly insane with rage. He hadn't done anything yet, and one of his hearts was already gone. His total combat power had dropped a tier in a single moment. Regenerating that heart would take at least a thousand years of dormancy.
He roared, "Little mage, is that what you were counting on? Whatever else you've got, bring it!"
A pale blue beam of light answered him.
The iron-cased laser rifle let Bella score a clean hit on the Balrog from two thousand meters out.
A shame, though. The thing's energy resistance was extremely high. He'd seen Asgardians use weapons like this before. Reflex took over. He straightened up, and the laser shot Bella had aimed at his eye burned into his lower jaw instead.
Bella wasn't surprised by the laser rifle's results. If killing enemies had been that easy, the Asgardians would have given up melee long ago and gone all in on tech weapons.
You only needed to look at Thor and Loki on Sakaar, fighting the Grandmaster's troops with laser weapons. They could use them just fine. They used them well, even. The reason they didn't usually was that close-quarters weapons let them apply their real strength.
A hammer would let Thor dish out a hundred points of damage. A gun? It would only do the gun's own ten points. For Thor, hammer was better.
Bella didn't have that kind of strength yet. Guns were still her good friend.
She stayed in cover and fired round after round at the lantern-bright eyes of the Balrog.
The laser pulses were fast. Against the snow and ice, the blue light didn't show clearly. The Balrog took shot after shot.
He had to dodge. He couldn't be killed by them, but they still hurt!
Same logic Thorin had used pouring molten gold over Smaug. That had been a bad move—Smaug's fire-dragon body was completely immune to refined heat. Not afraid didn't mean immune. Smaug had still howled in agony.
The same applied here. Laser weapons couldn't kill the Balrog. But just standing there taking hit after hit without retaliation? A hundred-plus shots and even he wouldn't hold up.
The Balrog brought his wings forward across his front, shielding his face, and pushed forward in long strides.
Hm? As he walked, the winter world abruptly disappeared. Steamed off by his own flames, perhaps? Pathetic human mage!
His thoughts overflowed with contempt. The terrain around him had reverted to the dim, pillared dwarven underground kingdom.
The ice and snow had only vaporized into thick mist. The Balrog's visual system worked very differently from a human's. Night vision, magic vision—he had it all natively. But the interference here was significant. Everything was a little blurred. He took a few more strides forward.
A stone bridge appeared in front of him. Just wide enough for one. An old man in a grey robe stood at the far end.
"This is the help you called in? Doesn't look like much."The Balrog tried to make out the figure. The mist was too thick. He could only see a rough outline.
That human female mage was annoying. This grouchy old man was even more annoying!
He couldn't quite say why, but his head felt agitated. The aftermath of all that Suggestion and mind magic was still skewing his judgment. He just hadn't realized it.
"You shall not pass!" The voice of the grey-robed old man came booming out, full of authority. The Balrog only wanted to laugh. That human female mage scrounged up some rotten old man to stop him?
Dream on!
He strode forward, planning to crush the old man under one foot. A bridge a person wide didn't bother him. He extended fire along both sides of the bridge to widen and reinforce it.
His foot came down toward the old man. The motion looked vicious, but he knew Bella was good at illusions. The stomp was at most three-tenths of his force. Even if he stomped through nothing, it wouldn't matter.