by Matt Larkin
His gut heaved, feeling ready to liquify itself. Blood—had to be, it was too hot—had begun to dribble down his nose, his ears. It caked his throat. His eyes burned, though he still couldn’t see aught.
Gasping, Thor brought Mjölnir down on Jörmungandr’s tongue. Nigh blinding bolts of lightning leapt around the serpent’s mouth. For an instant, the crackles cast that cavernous maw in stark relief, revealing fangs the size of trees, dripping with venom.
A forked tongue Thor could scarce keep a hold on.
An abyss of darkness down to the linnorm’s innards.
Thor tried to bellow a battle cry but managed only a gasping wheeze while he pounded his hammer again and again, sending great bolts of lightning coursing through the serpent. Acidic blood splattered him.
But then, it now spurted from his own mouth as well. Gobs of it.
His heart seized up. Missed a beat. His organs felt aflame. Melting! He was fucking melting.
Desperate to escape the maw, Thor dropped, let himself fall down and grab hold of the serpent’s gums. Then—too tired to manage another war cry—slammed Mjölnir into the tooth. The fang splintered like shattering rock, sending the serpent into wild, flailing heaves.
Its sudden movement hurled Thor up, weightless, to collide with the roof of its mouth. Then slapping down onto its tongue once more. The rough muscle convulsed, trying to hurl Thor down into its gullet.
Managing a bloody scream, Thor caught his arm around a smaller fang, clinging on for all he was worth. Desperate not to fall, for surely, down that void, there’d be no return. Even if he could have fought his way to the serpent’s heart, what vile acids and toxins must lay in its guts?
Something in Thor’s head broke. What had been a dribble of blood became a flood, pouring from his nose, his ears, his eyes.
Everything inside breaking down.
He was going to die.
The thought, it came to him with stark clarity, breaking through the haze of pain and terror that clouded all other thoughts. It cut through the rage. Even through the hammer’s terrible lust for souls, driving him, not after glory, as he preferred to think of it, but rather, to murder everything, anyone that had a strong soul. Mjölnir hungered and its hunger was a void as deep as Jörmungandr’s. They deserved each other in their fathomless cravings.
The hammer, his beloved hammer, it had driven him to his own destruction, forced him to engage with a foe no man—not even an Ás immortal—could have slain.
He was going to die.
The poisons coursed through him, turning his insides to mush.
The pain should have ended him already, yes, but if there was one thing Thor could do better than any other man, he could take pain. He could take oceans of it, and keep on fighting. He’d taken pain fighting Narfi. Taken it before that, fighting Thrivaldi.
He ought to have lost there, too, but he’d released Mjölnir’s pent-up souls in the form of a blast of lightning unlike aught he’d ever seen.
Thor’s arms had begun to convulse. His muscles were being torn apart by those same poisons. Acids eating away at him.
Jörmungandr was a weapon that could consume the world before it went to sleep again.
If Thor let that happen.
Madness had brought him here. Madness would see it through.
Because … he had to … help those … left.
Which meant, one more time, he had to release all the pent-up power inside Mjölnir. The screaming, writhing souls of jotunnar and draugar and dragons and hundreds of men, all caught in a maelstrom of suffering. All so very eager to share their torment with others. Or with one … other.
His arm was slipping from the fang.
Whole body was giving out.
Father, forgive him for his failures … He’d never been worthy of Father’s …
Sucking in a breath—hard over the flow of blood pouring down his face—Thor released the fang. Grasped Mjölnir with both hands as he fell. And into that hammer, he poured all his rage, all his pain. For he had taken more pain than most men could dream of. The pain of innumerable wounds. The pain of lost loved ones.
Those he drove into his blow.
And the souls of all trapped within Mjölnir. The hammer crashed down with a blast of sound and light that obliterated all senses.
Lightning erupted in a sphere that fed into itself, crashing among that horrible maw, bouncing off fangs. Flesh exploded all around Thor. Venom and blood evaporated into sizzling mist.
The serpent convulsed.
And a roar of thunder annihilated all.
23
A galvanic blast shot up into the sky, so bright it cast the night in cerulean relief. Out in the bay, lightning poured from the serpent’s open maw in a column that seemed intent to burn down the heavens. It coruscated along Jörmungandr’s scales, down its neck, until, unable to contain the mercurial energies, those scales blasted outward in all directions in a cascade that began at its head and ran all the way down into the sea below. A macabre explosion of flesh and blood and, beneath those, escaping beams of light as lightning tore new orifices into the monstrous serpent.
Odin’s heart seized up in his chest then. For only one thing could have caused such a catastrophic chain of lightning. One thing, that must surely now lay within the serpent itself.
Jörmungandr thrashed once more, and its head erupted, flinging a dark glob of something like a missile, one that slammed through trees in what remained of Asgard’s rainforest. The head itself listed to the side and then, with gut-wrenching slowness, began to plummet.
Falling … falling …
Prescient insight told Odin exactly what that bloody missile had been. He’d seen this moment before, ever denied the details, even as the aftermath had haunted his dreams and waking hours for centuries.
Run!
Run, like he had never run before. Casting aside even Gungnir. Flooding more pneuma into his legs than they ought to have held. Charred jotunn corpses littered the beaches, and twice Odin stumbled over them, growling in fury. In utter desperation. He raced forward, not even hearing whatever Freyja shouted from behind him.
The serpent’s head slammed down onto the beach so hard it sent shock waves rippling through the land, waves so strong they hurled Odin into the air in a cloud of wet sand. He landed hard on one knee, then pushed himself up. Running again, even as a second shock wave rippled through the ground.
Run!
He ran, nigh flew over the beaches.
There, stumbling from the wood, wobbling, managing a handful of steps. Fingers reaching out for Odin.
Almost there. His son! His last child!
Odin reached for him, ran faster still. His fingertips brushed Thor’s. And his son collapsed onto the beach. Odin fell to his knees beside Thor, clutching his hand. Blood streamed from every orifice on his face.
“We never stopped Ragnarok …” No. No. No! This wasn’t happening! “I tried …”
Thor’s hand was cold, mushy. His face so pale. So weak …
Odin’s mouth wouldn’t work. This couldn’t happen. He refused to allow this to unfold. His son!
Thor convulsed, once, and retched up a glob of blood and pulped guts turned black.
Then he fell utterly still.
No.
No.
Odin squeezed his son’s hand. Shook him, though it knew it would avail naught.
A dam broke in him and Odin roared in wordless, fathomless rage. A torrent of anger in a maelstrom of grief, such that the two emotions became one. A flood of utter despair.
All the foresight available to him did not in any way abate the crushing loss when it at last came to pass. Rather, foreknowledge only served to drive home the implacability of urd, to transform an already soul-devouring bereavement into one of complete impotence, stripping away not only the illusion of fairness in life, but of the meaning of his own will.
This, he had seen, oh so long ago, and naught he had done had changed a moment of it.
Ye
s … The jaws of fate close now …
In a fit of self-loathing, Odin allowed the walls of his mind to come down, welcoming in the tide of visions in the hopes of drowning himself. But no future unfurled before him. Rather, a clairvoyant flicker of images that he instinctively knew represented the dying now across the world. The march of the fire jotunnar, their wrath unfurling across the plains, turning men and horses to ash. Cities, swept away into cinder. Burning winds that carried embers for hundreds of miles.
These things, he’d seen long ago, and allowed himself to believe he might change them.
“Then show me!” He almost choked on his own words, a pathetic mix of screaming and weeping that would have shamed his son, had Thor been able to see it.
Freyja’s hand fell on his shoulder, but Odin could not bear to look at her.
In his despair, he desperately plumbed the depths of the future, seeking some answer. For surely this all meant something. And, if the Wheel of Life were so very true, then he would see Thor again, as with all the others. But naught came to him. He could not touch the future.
No oracle can see past his own death, Valravn reminded him.
Oh. And Odin’s death drew perilously nigh. Almost, he felt he would welcome it now.
Yes … we are all dead … Fate shall have its way with you …
“Od … I’m so sorry.”
She was there, trying so hard to comfort him, but he could not, would not look to her face. Because he sought no comfort. Caught within the snares of despondency, a man fell prey to its most insidious venom—the knowledge that despair was warranted, and that any attempt to crawl from it invited more pain. And thus, in the throes of such grief, all a man wished for was to wallow in it.
And if there truly was no future left, then where was an oracle to turn, but in the opposite direction?
Arms cradling his own head, Odin willed in the flow of tides, the current that would sweep him away. Welcomed it, as the temporal eddies ripped him apart and plunged him beneath their waters.
He welcomed drowning in the sea, in the hopes he would never again rise.
The sun was so bright, glaring down on him. No more eclipse. When he looked up, the beach had changed too. Freyja was gone, and Thor, and Jörmungandr. Indeed, the whole island was different. The sand, the trees, everything altered. He’d moved. Still on a tropical island, yes, but not Asgard.
Above him, away from the coast, rose up the most vibrant green mountains he’d ever seen, cast against a startlingly blue sky and equally blue waters. A paradise, not so different than Odin’s home, complete with palm trees and multihued flowers … These, though … hibiscus … he knew those from some other lifetime, the memories struggling to push through the haze that clouded all the times of his distant past.
Already, a heavy sweat made his clothes cling to him, so Odin tossed aside his hat and moved to sit beside the shore, letting the waves lap against his feet. He’d wanted to drown … and his mind had brought him here, to an island surrounded by the sea.
The sun reflected off the seemingly endless waters, leaving him blinking, watching the depths.
A moment, quiet. Almost quiet enough to deny the maelstrom of grief swirling inside him. The sun had silenced Audr, and Valravn, too, slept. Those Odin knew and cared for—the few who remained—were far from here. Perhaps not even born yet, depending on when he was.
Certainly not in his own era, for he saw no sign of the hateful mists of Niflheim.
Of a sudden, he realized locals had gathered, some few of them, watching him, and he turned to them, saying naught. The people had deep, wheatish skin tones, like those sometimes found in the south of Utgard, and jet black hair. Had he come to the Skyfall Isles? No. He had enough memories of Naresh’s life that he thought he’d have recognized those islands, though the people had similarities in appearance.
They spoke to one another softly, in a language he couldn’t quite place, though he knew he’d heard it.
None of them approached him, the fear in their eyes unmistakable. Because he did not look like them? Some other reason?
Whatever it was, Odin wasn’t sure he much cared anymore. He turned back to the sea, despondent, and wanting naught more than to have it swallow him whole and never again let himself up.
Finally, he rose, doffed his cloak, and strode into the waters. They were warmer than he’d expected, and a strong current pulled at his shins. Now he tugged his tunic over his head and tossed that on the beach too. Let the waters take him.
Slowly, he trudged forward.
And then, some distance away, a man’s torso popped up above the waves. He dove beneath them again, for an instant exposing a fish tail. A mer.
Odin faltered.
The mer rose above the waters once more, closer, and then a profound nausea seized Odin’s guts and had him almost doubling over. The mer, too, suddenly hesitated, his face a grimace that exposed a row of shark-like teeth.
Odin took a halting step deeper in, and the discomfort compounded on itself. Like his insides were convulsing. Like every organ in his body wanted to flee in separate directions. The very air seemed to shimmer, as with heat, warping and writhing.
The mer at once dove beneath the waves again, and, a moment later, the nausea faded.
Drawing in a shaky breath, Odin stumbled back to the shore. What in the world? What would cause that?
The locals had begun shouting now, calling for a kahuna. Yes, Odin knew that language! They summoned a priest because of how the mer had reacted to him. As if he’d scared the vaettr.
Still thigh-high in the waters, Odin sank to his knees, letting the waves splash over his face. He had no desire to see a kahuna or anyone else. He’d come here for respite, for the chance to escape from the peril of time and its merciless, implacable predations.
And, as if answering his call, the temporal tides seized him, yanked him free.
He was in the mist again, watching, amid ruined temples this time. Temples that had once risen up in the Skyfall Isles, in honor of gods Odin doubted deserved the veneration. But these temples had melted.
Amid them, Hel climbed from a molten bowl.
Hel … Rangda.
Across the way, Naresh stood, staring at the goddess of mist.
“Using it takes a toll, even on you,” Naresh said.
“I’m going to devour your soul. It should prove quite invigorating.” She advanced on Naresh, her steps growing steadier. The red light of her eyes intensified. Half her face was nothing but a skull, and the other half had turned icy blue.
“Would you like to kneel and worship me now? Feel free. I’ll kill you after you’re done.”
Naresh sneered. “You should have stayed in the underworld.”
The Queen of Mist circled him, disappearing in and out of the mist. Naresh began to do the same, and as they walked, the distance between them slowly decreased. “How does it feel to watch your world end?” she asked.
“I’ve seen the end of one era already. The world recovered and gave rise once again to the brilliant flourishing of life. To thousands of years of glory and love and hope. To redemption. As it will when you are gone, spirit. You have no place in the Mortal Realm.”
He’d seen it?
Naresh …
Was Odin …
His head was blasting apart.
And he was seeing through the man’s eyes. He had lived this.
The foreigner stepped into the hall some distance from Naresh. Surprise flashed over his green eyes, but only for a moment before they became resigned.
“What are you doing here?” Naresh said. Or Odin said … through him?
“You do not wish to be here. Turn and leave now.” The man’s voice was soft, almost emotionless. He spoke the tongue of the Isles with a slight accent.
Naresh advanced, hand on his keris. “Not likely. I asked you what you’re doing here.”
The man held up a hand as Naresh approached. The air seemed to tremble. A bout of dizziness washed over Na
resh. The foreigner fell back a step and the feeling began to fade.
Odin’s mind shredded. The sea of time crashed over him and tugged him under again and again, but it wasn’t the mindless reprieve he’d sought. Rather, he kept falling, seeing other men. Other lives.
That distortion he’d felt with the mer … The same when Naresh had encountered that man …
What was it?
Fluted marble columns rose up to either side of him, supporting a great stone roof in some strange temple, the architecture like the wonders Odin had seen when he came to Prometheus.
Now, the distortion wracked him, and for a moment he was both outside and inside the man he was, writhing, dizzy.
Someone caught his arm. A woman, her face soft. “Are you well, Herakles?”
Herakles … A warrior … His name survived in the Straits by Asgard. And Odin had been him.
Had been Naresh.
Had been … the mer?
And the woman looking into his eyes was Freyja. Not her face, not her eyes, but behind them, her soul. Pure. Warm. A connection Odin could not deny.
Even as the tides jerked his mind out of Herakles’s body.
The maelstrom intensified, flinging him into the lives of so many men. Matsya, the mer. Naresh. Herakles. Suiren. Anhur. Ninurta. And so, so many others. His mind flitted from one to the next, allowing only heartbeats.
Or lifetimes.
A compounding of experiences flooding through him.
So many lives lived. So much loss.
So much … love …
A thousand lifetimes.
A thousand chances to love and be loved and embrace wives and children and friends.
And lose them all, over and over.
But they were there, all this time. Behind the eyes of those he knew. He saw Thor. And Tyr. And Baldr. Freyja. Everyone, drawn together in lifetime after lifetime, their souls wrapped up in a web as strong as the web of urd. A web of souls, where the deepest of emotions might transcend time and space and forge bonds that were, themselves, unbounded.