He gritted his teeth and let his eyes dart toward Ziegler’s knife in his hand. By now the oily mass had coalesced around the length of his arm and wrist. Konrad closed his eyes and summoned the strength to move his arm. The black mass reacted by wrapping itself around his throat. But Konrad urged his tired, broken body to fight back against the suffocating mass.
Eventually his arm snapped free from the black prison. His shoulders were next to be freed, then his neck and his chest. A new found strength flowed from him and into the blade. The weapon was now an extension of this focussed and unbridled will to attack. He swung the knife and stabbed the precious orb with all his might.
A terrible look of anguish crossed the creature’s face as a fountain of plasma violently vomited from the breeched sphere. Desperately, Über-Stahl tried to pull its hand away, but the limb remained immobile as if all its strength, all its power, had drained away with the escaping plasma.
Konrad dropped to the floor as his black prison crumbled away. He curled up on the floor to protect himself from the fizzing light, but when he saw the impotent hand hanging motionless above him, a strange bloodlust then took hold. It consumed Konrad as he stood and relentlessly stabbed what remained of the orb. The glassy surface of Über-Stahl’s hand shattered under the flurry of blows from the knife. Between each of these blows, Konrad glanced at the immobile giant’s face. Pain and anguish dominated, but Konrad felt no pity, his hatred for the monster saw to that. Soon the blue light faded from the evil eyes, until all that remained were two lifeless sockets.
Exhausted, Konrad dropped the smoking dagger which still brimmed with tiny coils of energy. An abrupt, all encompassing silence now cleansed the spire of all the violence and horror. This silence signalled that it was over. Über-Stahl and the spire, their destinies so entwined, their sinister goals and desires so linked together, were both dead, and it was all thanks to an unremarkable prisoner who stood shivering in the gloom.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Konrad sat upon the spire’s terrace with Elsa’s body in his arms, watching the threatening clouds that bubbled around the sunset like a pack of wolves closing upon their prey. In the aftermath of the battle, Konrad was drawn back inside the spire’s devastated inner sanctum. Logic dictated that Elsa’s body would be lost to the debris which littered the interior. Jagged fingers of rock pierced the flooring, while entire sections of the high walls had broken away to expose the hall to the outside, and the great shafts of light which pierced the shattered structure seemed to soften the previously stark and intimidating building. The spire was now like a church that had been consecrated again following a terrible tragedy, and in the ethereal daylight, Elsa’s body lay undisturbed. It was only at this point, at the sight of his lover, that Konrad realised how hollow his victory over Stahl really was.
He turned away from the sunset and breathed deeply. The wound in his side was as numb as the rest of his body, but it was of no consequence to him now. He knew the end was near. The air he drew into his lungs was now tinged with a faint trace of the planet’s original lethal atmosphere. Its noxious touch grew with each breath. The planet was reverting back to its state before the arrival of the Nazis. It was as if the planet was purging itself of this unwanted piece of its history. The members of many a propaganda ministry would have been proud of Vanaheim’s efforts as the process would be complete and totally irreversible. Perhaps the planet preferred the darkness and loneliness, and as such the spring that had briefly blossomed may have been as alien and uncomfortable to it as the human visitors. But Konrad was convinced that he sensed a note of regret in the breeze that played across his face and across the landscape that faded into darkness before him.
He glanced down at Elsa one final time, and watched as her beautiful features melted away into the gathering gloom.
The colourful butterfly led Konrad down the grassy path towards the shimmering lake below. Once again he stood below the lush mountainside and its azure sky. Like the wrecked spire, there were no hints of the malicious force that had previously lay hidden within the idyllic landscape, instead, only a sense of satisfaction and contentment existed. Konrad followed the dancing insect further down the alpine hill until he reached the mirror-like waters. At this point, the butterfly swung away and continued its dance amongst the wild grass and flowers that decorated the shore. His reflection in the lake showed how he too had changed. The prison tunic was gone, as was the harsh shaven head and his emaciated features. Now, Konrad looked healthy and young. It was the reflection of the man before his arrest.
Another reflection silently joined Konrad’s – Elsa.
Like Konrad, she too had been transformed and rejuvenated. Lush brown hair cascaded over her shoulders and her face was lit by a beautiful smile. She beckoned Konrad forward and opened her arms.
EPILOGUE
January 3033
Dust swirled in the spacecraft’s powerful floodlights as they materialised in the noxious atmosphere. The galleon-like craft hung in the inky storm, its myriad running-lights twinkling in the gloom. The floodlights swept back and forth across the land until their intelligent beams settled upon a particular piece of ground. They then suddenly grew to a blinding intensity before fading away to leave two human figures on the black soil. These astronauts, whose pressure-suits glittered and shimmered like Arthurian knights, stared out through their gold-tinted helmets at the alien landscape of Vanaheim. It had only been a week since they left Earth, their space-galleon riding the directed burst of energy from the Sun to this god-forsaken spot in the galaxy.
The elegant astronauts effortlessly pushed their way through the unending storm towards the battered remains of the Odin’s command module. Banks of soil had buried the wreckage, softening its artificial shapes into almost organic lines. The female astronaut ran her gloves over the decaying metal as if simply touching the vehicle would imbue her with the knowledge of its origins and adventures upon the planet’s surface all those years before.
As the female astronaut examined the wreck, her male companion moved on silently, his steps slow and deliberate. Several angular boulders, obviously sections of the spire, lay strewn up the earthen bank. He looked ahead and saw the spire’s unending wall before him. He followed the wall’s contours and found the structure’s escarpments were shattered and broken. The spire that had for so long dominated Vanaheim had been razed to the ground.
Intrigued by the ruin, the male floated up the bank like a ghost for a closer look. The eerie figure paused at the bank’s summit. Something had caught the attention of his iridescent eyes. Lying in the dust at the astronaut’s feet was a body.
To be more exact, Konrad’s body.
The striped uniform was torn and tattered by years of exposure to the harsh winds, and beneath the gaping holes, mummified flesh clung grimly to his skeletal remains in whose arms lay Elsa’s corpse.
The male astronaut turned his head slightly. This simple gesture acted as an intuitive signal to his companion because at that instant she materialised magically next to him. Like the male, her interest was piqued by the two corpses. She reached down and gently touched Konrad’s ancient corpse. In response, his body slumped over Elsa’s remains as if it was protecting her from the crude fumbles of the futuristic astronauts, and as the body fell forward, an object as equally strange and alien to the explorers, dropped from Konrad’s uniform.
The male astronaut stooped down and picked the object up. It was the gold Nazi badge that Konrad had found in the wreckage of the Odin. The badge gleamed hypnotically between the explorer’s fingers. ‘Do you recognise this symbol?’ he asked his companion.