by Matt Larkin
Loki, though his hair and skin were slightly darker now, closer to those possessed by Odin’s captors.
“Lord Prometheus,” one of them said. “We found this man approaching the village.”
Odin glanced around this highest tier. Outside of the roof, a balcony rimmed it, offering a tremendous view over the entire island—for it was clearly an island, he could see now—and the sea beyond, where it looked like other islands dotted the waters.
“Loki,” Odin said, turning back to his blood brother.
The man opened his eyes—still crystal blue, even in his slightly altered guise. “Leave me with him.”
“But, my lord, we don’t know if the king sent him. He could be a titan.”
Loki—Prometheus, whatever—smiled his cryptic, once-disarming smile. “He’s not a titan.”
When the others had left, Loki rose and stalked over to Odin, pausing several feet away. “Who are you? Why do you call me that name?”
Now, Odin fell back a step, cocking his head. This … this didn’t make sense. When he’d met Loki in the past, well before his birth, Loki had already known him. As Loptr, he knew who Odin was. As Prometheus … “This is the first time we’ve met … for you.”
Now, the man glanced past Odin, as if trying to make sure they were truly alone. “You used the box?”
Odin groaned. “I have no idea what that means.” Here, he’d dared to hope Loki might finally be answering his questions, not the other way around. “Titans … you’re at war with them. Jotunnar?”
“We’re not at war.” Ah, but the ‘yet’ remained unspoken in his tone.
“They called you the Firebringer.” Odin shook his head. It felt apt to burst once more. “You gave them the Art of Fire. Is this … the first time?”
Loki’s crystal blue eyes kept searching, so deeply Odin could almost see him putting puzzle pieces together. “I’m called Prometheus, and yes, I gave the Art of Fire to man to offer them a bulwark against the titans and against other, darker forces.”
Odin nodded. What did it matter, anyway? “I’m Odin. And …” It mattered naught, that’s what. “One day, we shall be blood brothers. Until you finally betray me.”
Now, Prometheus flinched, almost seemed to suppress a shudder. “It’s you, isn’t it? Yes, of course it is.” Not quite so collected as the man would be later, was he? “I thought it would need to become a cycle. That … that you would get drawn into it. I … for whatever it’s worth … I’m sorry it has to be you, over and over. I didn’t have the strength to do this myself …”
Odin moved up to Prometheus and seized his tunic. “So you did create the eschaton cycle. Why? Why have you done this?”
Prometheus’s gaze darted to Odin’s hands and for a bare instant, he seemed about to knock Odin away. “I … I don’t know how much I can safely tell you. Not only for your sake, but because speaking it aloud might draw the attention of forces we need to avoid as much as possible.”
“You mean the Norns.”
“I assume that’s just another name for the Moirae, but they’re not the only powers we need concern ourselves with … Odin. They serve a function, holding together the timeline with their web of fate. But the greater threat comes from powers darker still, consumptive forces that feed upon souls and, if not sated, might burst forth and bring down the foundations of reality. Thus, the only solution, terrible though it was, seemed to be to initiate a cataclysmic struggle to overcome the rising tide of darkness. It ended the world, but at least allowed a new world to rise from the ashes like a phoenix.”
“A what?”
Prometheus waved that away. “The point is, the Moirae agreed, perhaps so wholeheartedly that the process became a cycle. It is a means of propitiating the darkness, Odin. A bad solution, yes, but still the only one available to us.”
Did he mean … Nidhogg? The darkness consuming the root of reality. And every eschaton, the dragon must gorge itself on the hundreds of thousands of corpses sent down there.
Odin wanted to retch. That suffering should so abound simply to keep this thing sated, it left his gut churning and his mind reeling.
“You did this … because you couldn’t otherwise hold creation together?”
Prometheus’s eyes held all the answer Odin needed.
A truth, at long last. A terrible, soul-devouring truth, that Loki had kept from him for so very long, not out of spite, but out of a desire to allow Odin to truly live. To be freed from the horror that knowledge of the nature of reality must force upon him.
Finally, shaking, Odin sank to his knees, and Prometheus knelt beside him, hands on his shoulders, saying naught, just looking deep into his eyes.
For there was naught to be said.
Because … if Prometheus was right … If all the cosmos might otherwise come crashing down, then Odin would have to go back, play his role. Destroy the world so that it could be created once more.
There was never any stopping it.
Ragnarok had to unfold.
Epilogue
The tremors had intensified until the entire cavern shook over and over. Stalactites cracked and plummeted, crashing down into the underground lake. One landed so close it sent a rushing wave washing over Loki’s chest, drenching him with chilled waters.
Growling with effort, he strained against the orichalcum chains binding him inside the stalagmite. The fetters prevented him from channeling pneuma and thus manifesting the strength necessary to snap the rock binding him.
Far above, a massive crack shot through the cavern’s ceiling, resounding like a thunderclap. A chunk of rock the size of a horse dropped out, pitching into the lake and sending another wave rushing over him. More and more debris fell from above.
Loki could no longer suppress the bitter laugh that bubbled up from his chest. Though he had no mood for irony at present, he could not help but note the potential for it, were he to drown or find himself crushed underground. So many millennia he had served his purpose.
So much anguish.
He’d welcome the end, if it would have him.
Sigyn.
Sigyn.
No …
He roared, yanking impotently on the chains.
No mere physical torment, not even having his liver repeatedly devoured, might compare to the agony of loss. The knowledge that, no matter how long he lived, no matter what he achieved, still he would never hold her again. Torments of the body were transitory, ephemeral things compared to that. The certainty of eternal loss.
A gaping wound that had already begun to fester, until he’d have willingly risked paradox, an unravelling of the timeline, would it have restored to him that which was gone forever.
He knew this pain. This, he had so long dreaded. Because he had known it so many times.
And Loki was tired. So weary of it. So, he must do what he always did—the only thing that allowed him to survive that festering wound—bury it with rage, at least for a little while.
Another chunk of rock crashed down, this time a few dozen feet from him. Loki roared at it, letting his wrath suffuse his being. Straining, until it felt his arms would rip from their sockets.
Roots of Yggdrasil now poked down from the gaps left by the falling rocks, roots that slowly writhed in their own twisting agony. The World Tree itself suffered, as the world died again.
These petty Aesir thought to repay death for death until the world drowned in a sea of blood. Well, then Loki would do the same. He would visit his vengeance upon the one who had taken her from him.
“You know I’ll be liberated sooner or later!” he shouted into the darkened cavern. Maybe the Norns listened. Maybe they didn’t. It hardly mattered.
A stronger quake seized the cavern, driving Loki to his knees. So much debris fell from above that, for a moment, he’d have sworn he truly might spend the next era buried under a mountain of earth, begging his masters for death that would not come.
And then the stalagmite holding his chains split down the center. R
ock ground over the orichalcum links, and one of them snapped. As it broke, a rush of energy surged into Loki, a sudden release of his pent-up pneuma. He allowed the power to flood into his limbs and took off at a dead sprint, dodging around falling rocks, leaping over chasms now rent into the cavern floor, and dashing like mad for the tunnels out of this place.
Total darkness greeted him, along with the continuing crash of rock and earth from all sides.
With no other choice, he pushed on, stumbling over unseen debris, but always scrambling forward. He had memorized the way out when Odin had led him down here. All he could do now was hope that no cave-in had closed off that path.
Finally, choking on dust and weary, he stumbled out into the light of the setting sun.
All around him, Asgard smoldered.
Ashes carried on the breeze. Great clouds of the stuff, mixed with incandescent embers. In some valleys, the treetops still blazed, while a thick layer of dust now covered most else. Several mountains had split down the middle, and one had collapsed into itself, leaving an enormous crater where the sea had rushed in to create a new lagoon.
Rubbing his eyes, Loki made his way around the mountainside, seeking a means of egress from the smoldering ruin. On the far side, though, he had to stop and gape at the World Tree.
A crack now split up the trunk, widening the hollow inside. The rent had severed one of the boughs, pitching it and all the branches into a flooded valley, one laying just beyond the chasm the Tree spanned. What would have happened to those souls? Had tens of thousands of people across Midgard simply dropped dead all at once, with no explanation?
Shaking his head, Loki focused on the hollow at Yggdrasil’s base. It grew wider every time. How many more such eschatons could it survive? Not so many, he had to imagine. If the Tree finally broke apart, the Wheel of Life would falter, and humanity would at last find itself utterly consumed by the darkness that had given rise to it.
Loki pressed a palm into his brow, wanting so desperately to care. After all, he had dedicated eons to this.
But all he could see before him was a haze of red. It demanded he return Sigyn’s fate in kind.
From the dawn of time, he had served as a benefactor to man. He had endured suffering most could never imagine.
And now … now he would give them reason to fear his rage.
Author’s Note
So … the penultimate book in the Gods of the Ragnarok Era series. We’re drawing close to the end which means more of the inevitable, awful events myth demands are coming to pass.
In the Poetic Edda there’s a poem called the Lokasenna which basically means “Loki’s insults.” And that kind of tells you how the poem unfolds, with Loki insulting each and every Ás and Vanr in turn. And in a way not at all in keeping with the character we’ve seen throughout the series.
The answer? The insults are issued by Loki’s petulant son, Narfi, of course! Actually, Loki gets blamed for plenty of things he may not have directly done in this series, like shearing Sif’s hair.
Speaking of Loki, while previous books have hinted at his nature, called him Firebringer or the like, this is the first time we really start to get the full picture. And that nature ties into other mythologies beyond the Norse.
The Eschaton Cycle exists as part of a cycle of eras drawn from many different cultures. Within the Ragnarok Era, I have a particular focus on Norse, Germanic, and Finnish myth (with a few others), but other eras and myths have been referenced in passing. And now, in more than passing!
I’m sure others have associated Loki and Prometheus. Both are trickster gods who may have been involved in humanity’s creation. Both have associations with fire. In Loki’s case, this is partly because Wagner used Loge (a demigod of fire) in place of Loki in his opera cycle, which was one of the sources of my work. Earlier in the Ragnarok Era, my Loki even used the alias Loge (also seen in this book).
The characters of Loki and Prometheus are, in my opinion, among the most interesting figures in their respective mythology traditions.
Of course, the greater part of this book revolves around Hermod’s ride to the titular Gates of Hel, a tale from the Prose Edda. Obviously, given everything that’s gone before and the nature of this universe, it turned out to be a horrific, harrowing journey.
One culminating in him learning of Sigyn’s long-hidden crime and overcome with rage over it. Even knowing it was coming from a long way off, that was a difficult thing to write. Sigyn was one of my favorite characters in the series.
(And yes, I know nobody really gets a happy ending in Norse myth, but still.)
Rather than ramble on too long, I will just touch on Odin’s own journey, a temporal one. Time travel, like prescience, serves as a natural means of examining the question of fate and free will, a prevailing theme throughout this series and the Eschaton Cycle as a whole.
It also profoundly affects Odin, forcing him to reconsider his convictions. And to prepare himself for the final end.
Thanks to my wife for helping me bring this story to life. Also, special thanks to my cover designer and to my Arch Skalds (in no particular order): Al, Tanya, Jackie, Dale, Missy, Bill, Rachel, Bob, Kaye, Mike, Scott, and Regina.
Thank you for reading,
Matt
P.S. Now that you’ve read The Gates of Hel, I would really appreciate it if you’d leave a review! Reviews help new readers find my work, so they’re very helpful. Thank you in advance for helping me build and grow my author career!
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The Fires of Muspelheim
Part I
Year 400, Age of the Aesir
Winter
1
An eagle cried, circling over the small boat Odin shared with Loki—Prometheus, rather. The other man guided them between numerous islands scattered around this warm sea, aimless, it almost seemed, though Odin knew better. Rather, he suspected Prometheus simply wished to have these conversations away from his followers at the Aviary, men and women who simply could not understand the burden laid upon two oracles.
Now, with his consciousness flitting about through time, Odin found himself in the distant past, before Prometheus had done many of the things Odin would blame him for. Before, in fact, the man had even sired Hel, and a part of Odin had wrestled with how to tell Prometheus about his future daughter. Another part of him had struggled with whether to simply kill the man now.
Once, long ago—or a long time from now—he had, and would, love this man as a brother. But Prometheus, enslaved to the Norns or Ananke or whatever, had also wrought such terrible chaos unto the world. It was a comforting self-delusion to imagine that, if Odin killed him in the past, the future might improve.
Save for what Prometheus had told him, in elusive hints. The implication that something fed upon the Wheel of Life, that the cyclical destruction of the world served a purpose of maintaining a balance in the cosmos. That, had Prometheus not started this process—and Odin was fair certain that, for him, now, it had only happened once before—a yet worse eventuality would have unfolded. That, perhaps the world would have still ended—or at least become a place so terrible everyone would have wished it would—but, unless Odin perpetuated the cycle, that end would have become a final one.
Where did that leave him? Buying time for man? Forestalling the inevitable?
Prometheus, for his part, attended to the oars, drinking in sunlight and leaving Odin to his musings. This man was Loki, yes, and yet … he was at once both more haunted and somehow more hopeful. Loki, many millennia later, having seen the world end a good many times more, had become resigned to the trap of history.
Some distance away, a pod of dolphins leapt up, chittering and splashing. Reveling, even. Happy in their ignorance of the horrors and death and destruction that must ravage the world over and over in an unbroken cycle.
Odin groaned, shaking his head, as the animals disappeared back beneath the sea. “I find mysel
f on the brink of utter despondency. At least when I could focus my wrath upon you, it served to abate the melancholy. Now am I bereft, and finding it hard to muster the will to continue this fight. Any fight.”
Prometheus gave one more good heave on the oars, then released them with a sigh, leaning back against the bow. “I imagine that’s why I didn’t tell you sooner the things you now understand.”
Oh, yes, Odin had already surmised as much. He tossed his hat onto the bottom of the boat and mopped his sweaty hair from his brow. In such a warm land, he envied Prometheus his loose, light clothing. Just not quite enough to ask for such clothes for himself. After all, he might not have much more time here.
“Well,” Odin finally said. “You knew me when I met you early in my own era because you met me now. You knew who I was and what would become of our bond the first day I met you.”
Prometheus held up a forestalling hand. “I don’t want to know any more than I already do. Prescience is a complex burden, and to know too much about the future would only increase the burden placed upon my future self.”
“What if, by telling you what will happen, I gave you a way to avert the worst of it?”
“Do you truly believe that would work? Have your experiences, thrust back and forth through time, truly given you reason to believe the timeline might so easily be altered, or more, that it should be? I have a delicate balance to walk as the guardian of history. Whatever end I might wish for, I cannot allow my personal desires to risk unraveling the threads of time. The web is all that holds reality together, and if you were to sever the wrong strand, we could never predict the outcome.”
“So, because of you and the dísir and the Norns, the future becomes immutable.”
“After a fashion, but the truth is more complicated than that. Time is … an aspect of the universe and the universe already exists. Prescience accounts for itself, and even your sojourns within time were always a part of this timeline. The web reaches in all directions, not just forward or backward.”