“Wulfgard!” Hogun called out, and the brown-haired spearman rose to take his place, shield in his other hand.

“Shield up!” Dynamo called, as she pulled another, longer weapon out of nowhere, and the spearman settled into his stance. “Note this hum.” She clicked the weapon on, and the warriors all tilted their ears. “Feel the bending of the magnetic fields here. If you can’t, you need to learn how.

“This is a very standard model of a ‘railgun’. It shoots a wedge of metal very, very fast. If you don’t learn to recognize it, it will pop your head from a thousand paces away or more.”

She leveled it and shot once.

The shot blew through Wulfgard’s shield of Asgardian steel, through his ring mail, the bone of his shoulder, out the far side, and with a loud crack slammed into a thick concrete wall two hundred yards behind him, making a nice hole in it.

“Ahg!” Wulfgard cried out despite himself, his shield arm dropping helplessly as he clutched at the hole punched explosively through him.

“You’re done!” Hogun declared grimly, and Wulfgard didn’t bother to contest it. He clapped his hand to his shoulder, clearly not crippled, and doubtless he could use his spear... but the bone was shattered and he could not lift his shield up.

If it had been his head, he knew he would be dead!

---

“Krinothian flechette launcher.” The streaming swarm of fast explosive darts punched into Cogwurth, and blew the swordsman off his feet.

---

“Heavy particle beamer.” There was a crack and snap, and Hogvin was blasted over backwards, his armor melting and spraying in every direction as he fell from the lashing crackle of blue energy, like a harnessed lightning bolt.

---

“Gravimetric razordisk shooter.” The monomolecular edges sliced through Angwol’s flesh like it was air, and shredded through his armor, sticking in it and him as they did so, covering him in bloody injuries that could easily tear open his throat, sever tendons, and cripple him.

---

Heavy laser beam.

Explosive stub-gun.

Bolter rounds exploding against them.

Monofilament grenades.

Saber beamers.

Sonic screamers.

Neural disruptors.

Disintegration beams.

Cannon rounds.

Mortar rounds.

Fusion grenades.

Acidic sprays.

Poison mists.

Fusion throwers.

Mines of various sorts, and their lethal shrapnel.

When the broad weapon categories were done, she introduced them to the melee weapons of various sorts and species.

Energy swords.

Power weapons with energy fields around them.

Vibroblades.

Monomolecular-edged weapons. Particularly unwelcome when they were the six sword-pincers of an insectile lifeform.

Psionic-charged weapons.

Fractal blades.

Dimensional cutters.

Phasing weapons.

---

From there, it was on to demonstrations of mortal materials, armors, vehicles, and weapons. Energized metals of various types, molecularly-hardened armor plate, adamantium, vibranium, force fields of varying strengths, and assorted other kinds of defensive adaptations were explored, including many different kinds of carapace shells and stony or pseudo-metallic bodies of various alien races and cyber-boosted warriors.

By the time Dynamo was done, there were a lot of shattered Asgardian weapons, armor pieces, and shields littering the ground, mangled and savaged by the technology of the mortal races, and they had a good idea of just what it was going to take to hack through and take down some of their opponents.

Then she demonstrated some of the area-effect weapons in illusions, from simplest bomb-bursts to fuel-air bombs, virus dispensers, acidic poison gases, nuclear explosions, terminal velocity weapons, fusion eruptions, antimatter reactions, and the like.

Planet-crackers, mantle rippers, singularity bombs, Sun Breakers, and the other high-end stuff all got their own showcases, too.

By the time she was done, even the warriors of divine Asgard were impressed by the devastation mortals could bring upon their own realm. It was certainly a far cry from catapults, bows, javelins, spears, and melee weapons, and strapping on forged armor and carrying a shield to do battle with an enemy.

Briggs brought out several models of power armor to show to them, from the light Sickle armor that the elite but normal infantry wore, to the Red Star suits, the elite Crimson Guard suits, the Titanium Heavy Suits, and the Scarlet Shield mek-suits. Normal and hover-tanks, Atomic Steeds, and even demonstrations of heavy mechs were covered, noting that giants didn’t have the kind of explosive power mounted on these kind of things, and many of the alien species out there mounted cyberware or actually had propellant devices of certain sorts.

The last thing they showed the Asgardians were the Swarms.

Even the doughty warriors were unnerved by seeing a square mile of bio-drones that could chew through steel and devour an entire army of mortals who couldn’t keep them off. Then they saw images of hundreds of square miles of such creatures, flying, scuttling, slithering, burrowing, swimming...

--------

Briggs sat down on a stump, facing the serious and hard-thinking Asgardian warriors of the Vanaheim Volunteers.

“So, my brave Vanir,” he said to them grimly, “that is what we are going up against. You have the experience to see where you are weak, what you will be able to fight, and what you will not.

“Unfortunately, we do not have the liberty of picking and choosing our foes. Their numbers are vast, ten thousand worlds and more of fanatic, savage creatures that are fleeing death and extinction. They have nowhere to run to; they can only fight and claim their own world, or die.

“I do not expect any of you to back down from this fight, of course. You would not be here if merely fighting new and unknown foes would deter you. However, I will not waste your lives. If you fight for me, you are my soldiers, and I will value your lives and your capabilities accordingly.

“I will say that I will not tolerate it if you insist on clinging to conventional arms and armor.” His pale violet eyes scanned them all, and many sighs broke out from the warriors, at least those who still had such things after so many had been obliterated by mortal weaponry. “You are stepping out from the divine world into the mortal and cosmic worlds. The creatures and beasts of the gods and their myths you can fight with the weapons of gods.

“If you wish to fight in this war, there will be need for more. We do not have time to teach you everything... but we have time to teach you more. A demonstration.” He lifted his gauntleted hand. “Lady Sif, there.” He pointed, and she glided smoothly into position. The sharp-eyed warriors easily noticed that she was covering at least twice the distance of her strides with every step. “Warriors Three, there.” He pointed opposite her, and Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun stepped up opposite her.

“Warriors Three, your goal is to beat Lady Sif down.” His tone indicated he did not think they could do it, surprising everyone watching. “Lady Sif.” He merely waved his hand.

She only smiled slightly as she drew her Sword, and Dagsbrun glowed with the light of a new day.

---

The warriors there all knew the prowess of Lady Sif. Yes, she was stronger than most of them. Yes, she was very skilled with a blade.

No, she should not have been able to beat the Warriors Three, by any stretch of the imagination, let alone as one-sided a fight as it was.

When the cut-up, palm-struck, pummeled, kicked, and slammed Warriors Three finally called ‘Yield!’, nobody doubted that Lady Sif had entered a new level. From ripping all three men off their feet from sixty feet away to hitting the voluminous Volstagg hard enough to send him flying with a power kick, and literally running rings around them as she had despite their teamwork, it was clear they were not her match.

She had also taken hits square in her breastplate without flinching from both Fandral’s Sword and Hogun’s Mace, and the metal was unmarked, using the opportunity of their shock to disarm both of them and send their weapons flying to the Great Bear’s feet.

Briggs flicked the Weapons of the two heroes back to them with the haft of Endure as Sif withdrew. “This is not a display of Sif’s prowess,” he informed all the Asgardians watching, somewhat to their disbelief. “It is a demonstration that even gods can learn new things, and become more than they were. The Warriors Three have all spent time on the Colosseum of Champion. They all learned new skills and new techniques there, as have the others of you who fought there against champions and warriors from across the universe.” He waited for those warriors to nod as well. “You have brought this knowledge home, and trained your brothers in it. But... they are minor things. Mortal knowledge, mortal ways. It does not touch the spirit of battle, and the essence of what it means to be more than mortal.

“You are not mortals. You have power inside you that you have not tapped. Perhaps it is because you lacked a teacher. Perhaps it is because you lacked focus, or belief, or trust, or simply there was no need for it.

“I will tell you this.” Briggs pointed at Lady Sif. “Lady Sif fights like an average warrior of the Rodnov now.”

Perrun and Tchernobog had been standing to the side, watching all this with arms crossed, saying nothing. None of the sharp-eyed warriors missed them both nodding.

Briggs surveyed them once again, and as the Sun of his Source Aura washed across them, even the fabled warriors of Asgard realized that they were in the presence of a King Among Men!

“If you wish to join this war, noble Vanir, you will have to upgrade your weapons, your hearts, and your minds. When these invaders from outside the Nine Realms come, things that have long slain their own gods in their greed and fear, you will show them that you are gods that they have never seen before, and it is they who will tremble to see you arrayed before them!”

The thunderous war cry that arose from their throats was all the proof Briggs needed that fighting spirit was one thing the Asgardians would never be lacking in. If that meant that they must become even greater warriors than before, who were they to fight such a thing?

------

The forging was underway with literally divine speed. If they were not smiths, even the casual knowledge the warriors of Asgard had would have qualified them as masters by any human standards. As godly warriors born, even the least of them absorbed knowledge of things related to combat with breathtaking speed, and that included rapidly mastering modern mortal technology, and almost inhaling the basic skills of Artificing.

Their teachers were the Dovnar and the best of mortal Artificers working under Briggs. New arms and armaments were proposed, made, revised, remade, and innovated under the steady hands of the divine and the cleverness of mortals.

In addition, Sif was there, with the aid of mortal telepaths, to show them the first steps on harnessing their own Divine power within, and helping it grow...