Mjolnir

by B. C. James

  Thor dashed straight ahead for the pedestal, which was closer to Odin’s side of the field. To ensure that there was no interference from his dad’s little army of lowlifes, Thor sent a blast of lightning in their direction that incinerated or scattered everything not born in Asgard.

  He got a few steps away from the stand where the hammer was waiting, but he wasn’t alone. Loki appeared in front of him and put his hand on the Mjölnir’s hilt.

  Surprised, Thor let out with a, “Whuuuuuu?”

  “Sparkling conversation has always been one of the best things about you, big guy,” chided Loki. He was a bit out of breath as he spoke to Thor.

  There was a green hue to Loki’s skin that slowly receded as he was speaking with Thor. “By the way,” he started, in an effort to address Thor’s confusion, as well as buy himself a few quick moments to catch his breath, “Did you know that a basilisk lizard can reach speeds of almost forty-five miles per hour during a sprint? At least that’s what the internet told me. Of course, they also told me Bigfoot was real and NASA faked the moon landing. Either way, that’s faster than your average Prius or Thunder God can move.”

  Thor didn’t say anything in return. Loki interpreted his silence as confusion. “Yup, that’s a fast lizard. Can you imagine any reason why I might be telling you this?”

  Thor continued to look at him blankly.

  “Oh, screw it,” Loki said, “I turned myself into a basilisk so that I could outrace you to Mjölnir. You were throwing so much lightning and wind around, I figured becoming an animal that was low to the ground would let me run right under your gusty little assault. And then when you got here, I popped up, back to my normal form. I was tempted to yell ‘Boo,’ but I thought I would allow you to retain some dignity. Soooo…wasn’t that brilliant of me? C’mon, admit it. That was brilliant.”

  “Oh, I got that part.” Thor continued to stare at Loki in a perplexed manner. “In fact, I figured it out a few seconds after you suddenly appeared and your skin was still scaly and green. You’re not the only one who watches Animal Planet, Loki. What I am confused about is why your face looks exactly like mine?”

  When Thor looked into Loki’s face, he saw the mirror image of himself staring back. The face was not the only thing that resembled the Thunder God’s. Loki’s body had grown as well. His swimmer’s build had ballooned up into something that Vince McMahon would offer a long-term contract to. His muscles bulged and tested the elasticity of the best gabardine fabric that Ralph Lauren could muster. The stitching of his clothing dramatically failed. The effect was not unlike that of a milquetoast Bill Bixby transforming into body building sensation, Lou Ferrigno, during an old episode of The Hulk.

  “I’ve turned into you before, Thor. In fact, the transformation was so successful that it got me into bed with Sif.”

  “She told me about that. She also told me how she kicked your ass from one end of the house to the other. If I remember correctly, you had a couple of shiners and a shattered coccyx the next day. I also remember you making up some lame story about being injured while hunting trolls. Even Idun didn’t believe you when you came to her for apples. Heh, you getting beaten silly by my wife was the biggest joke in Asgard for weeks.”

  Thor saw hate reflected in the eyes of his doppelganger. He had never had the ability to see the rage in his own face from this perspective. If this was truly how he looked when he was mad, it was time to admit that the friends who wanted him to seek professional help might have had a point.

  Thor just smirked at Loki as the God of Lies reached for the hammer. “Sif said you fooled her at first, but when she kissed you, you tasted all wrong. You were far too sour. She knew you were playing a game with her.” Thor watched Loki’s fingers curl around the Mjölnir’s grip. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing right now. You may look like me, but that is nothing more than the window dressing of a sad little wannabe. Underneath the Thunder God cosplay, you’re still just Loki…a second stringer. Mjölnir is going to pick up on that same sour taste that Sif did. So, go ahead, attack me with it. Let’s see how that works out for you.”

  Loki let out a yell as he slammed the iron head of the hammer into Thor’s abdomen. The power of the blow sent the Thunder God flying into the sky. He fell back to earth like a pale, red-headed meteor and slammed into one of the Ford E-Series trucks that Odin had used to bring men and material to the site. The van collapsed around Thor.

  He’d never been struck by his own hammer before. In his life, he had been hit by a lot of things: dragons, giants, trolls, running backs, fullbacks, offensive lineman, more than a few vehicles, and a wide assortment of optimistic bouncers, but the feeling of being struck by Mjölnir was unlike anything that had ever happened to him before. The impact itself was beyond description. Had he been a normal human he would have been nothing more than a lumpy puddle soaking into the sand. As it was, Thor coughed up a mouthful of blood.

  As unpleasant as being hit by Mjölnir was, the physical damage the hammer did was but one aspect of the harm the weapon was capable of. As the business end of the weapon found its mark in his stomach, Thor could feel the hammer almost reaching out to his soul. It was trying to suck his life essence into the iron head like sponge.

  In the old days, Thor had been considered a god. So, he didn’t give his soul much thought. After the death of Sif, he became an atheist. Not only did he deny the possibility that he might have a soul but got angry at those who believed otherwise. Now that he had his own signature weapon try to suck his soul into itself, he not only became very interested in keeping that part of himself intact but there was also some curiosity about who put it there in the first place.

  Thor peeled the Pennsylvania steel from the E-Series away from his body and emerged from the wreckage. He observed his twin standing in front of him. His thoughts of the great unknown would have to wait for later. Loki had taken him by surprise. There was no way he should have been able to use Mjölnir.

  Loki was casually swinging the hammer from the leather lanyard that was attached to the weapons handle.

  “Apparently this hammer likes the way I taste.” He could not keep the smug, self-satisfaction out of his voice. In truth, he wasn’t trying very hard to hide it.

  “This shouldn’t be possible. You using Mjölnir is like R. Kelley trying to pull Excalibur from the boulder.” The flippant remark made Thor sound far more confident then he really was. While he was desperately anxious to find out how Loki managed overcome the hammer’s pig-headed loyalty to Thor, his real goal was to get Loki talking before he swung it again. That would buy him some time to figure out a next move. Historically, an insult was the quickest way to get Loki’s mouth moving.

  “Thor, I’ve seen enough movies to know what you’re doing. You want me to start yammering with a long monologue, giving away the deep dark secret about how I’m kicking your ass with your own weapon. Well, I have news for you buster…it worked! I’ll tell you! It’s so damn cool! You have to know about it!” Loki’s excitement over his accomplishment was overwhelming. He couldn’t stop himself from talking about it.

  “After Odin had his fun with you, I had good old Benedict Arnold Simmons, take some of your blood. Your dad’s been treating this guy like one of those Tucks medicated pads for a while now, so he was easy to turn, but I tell you, this is a guy with issues. I know you think I’m a candidate for rubber walls and soft food, but you do NOT want to know what gets this guy’s motor running. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Simmons had taken your blood. After I had the dragon venom filtered out, along with a pesky lipid issue, I transfused it into me! By the way, if you somehow survive the night, you really ought to see someone about that. But I digress.” Loki took a deep breath and assumed another regal pose before continuing.

  “Now, normally, I can change my shape to look and behave like anything that strikes my fancy, but way deep down, I’m still me. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Most people would cough up their duodenum to be me. But to l
ift your hammer, the transformation had to go beyond Thunder God window dressing. I had to actually become you. I have been experimenting with mimicking things at a genetic level and I’m doing a hell of job. You should have been there the weekend I spent as ‘crabs!’ That was a hoot. Anyway, once I had your blood in me, I used it as a genetic road map to mimic your DNA. For all practical purposes, I don’t just look like you, I am you—obviously a more interesting version of you, but still you. Mjölnir picked up on this and recognized me as its master. And now I’m beating you silly with it. Neat, huh?”

  Since Loki was convinced that Thor was ultimately doomed, he didn’t worry about explaining all his secrets for success. He did so with all the enthusiasm of someone selling a juicer to a 4 am QVC Shopping Network audience. In this moment of self-imposed glory, he hadn’t noticed that Belle and Katheryn had crept in and were listening. Belle looked around nervously.

  “This isn’t good at all. He’s going to kill Thor.” Belle whispered. Her hard eyes took in the sight of two Thunder gods. One handled the coveted battle hammer with the casual disregard of a baby with a Smith and Wesson product, while the other looked like a man who was completely baffled, and worse, out of ideas.

  Katheryn saw the concern in Belle’s face. “I thought you didn’t care if Thor got killed. Actually, more than once, you have talked about how you would like to end him yourself.”

  “This isn’t about Thor. There are bigger things going on here than the life of the Thunder God.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying things like that, but you don’t seem to be letting me in on what these ‘bigger things’ are. I’m going to be honest with you; it’s starting to tick some of the girls off, especially after Brittany got killed when you let Odin send her and Nidhogg after Thor, Freya, and Baldr. I don’t want to say that we’ve become unhappy with your leadership, but…hmmm…I really don’t know how to end that sentence without lying.”

  To be honest, Katheryn was not that upset about the death of Brittany. She was her rival for the second spot behind Belle. Her death put Katheryn one heartbeat away from leading the whole group.

  “Young lady, someday you’ll learn that one of the benefits of leadership is that you don’t have to explain yourself. Now, I want you to do something for me. Throw Thor your sword.”

  “What? No way! Throw him yours. Mine is staying right here with me.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you about this, THROW HIM YOUR SWORD!”

  Katheryn soundlessly removed her sword from its scabbard and hesitated before throwing it to Thor. Her nose was out of joint about a couple of things.

  First of all, despite the fact that she was currently one of Belle’s worker bees, most of her life was not spent as an anonymous link in a chain of command. Before becoming a Valkyrie, she was the one that people looked to for leadership in her little circles. The mantle of responsibility was thrust on her early, as part of a large family. Growing up, she often found herself in the role of babysitter and occasionally stand-in parent, even when she, herself, was little more than a child.

  This trend continued in school where she generally ran with the “cool” kids. Even in the Cuisinart politics of high school popularity, she was looked to as a leader. Adult life led her to the minefield of stardom in Nashville. Even in a band of equals, where decisions were made in a democratic fashion, she found that the outcome was often influenced by the strength of her personality. Nothing in her personal history said that she was a woman comfortable with following someone else’s lead.

  Autonomy, or rather the lack of it, was another issue for her. Before being pressed into service as a Valkyrie, she tended to come and go as she pleased, freely traveling the globe and indulging her wanderlust without the restriction of having to ask the opinion or permission of anyone. This conflicted with Belle’s style of governance. Belle believed in an iron fist rule where freedom was the enemy of structure; and without structure everything would collapse. This simply didn’t mesh with Katheryn, who was not at all cut out to be a lackey.

  If Katheryn found being under the thumb of somebody else to be about as comfortable as a toothache, then giving up her beloved sword was like a root canal without the laughing gas.

  This wasn’t just another sharpened piece of common metal; this sword was special. She found it on vacation while hiking through the forests of Alberta. It was sticking out of a large rock much like the mythical sword, Excalibur, before a young King Arthur pulled it from the stone. It was such a silly scene that she believed somebody was pulling a prank on her. Her fascination with all things England was well known and Katheryn thought one of her more creative friends was exploiting that quirk in her personality for the sake of comedy.

  When she pulled at the sword, she expected that it would be comically glued into place or perhaps even explode into a bouquet of flowers. In fact, she would not have been shocked if removing it from the stone had left a fountain of Harps Lager pouring out from the hole; her friends were not above disguising a keg as a boulder.

  To her surprise the sword was just that, a sword. The odd part was that it had almost no weight. It didn’t even feel like there was anything in her hand. Out of curiosity she struck it against the rock; it did nothing. She struck it against a tree; again, it did nothing. She swore at the weapon and saw her words appear in runes across the blade. After getting over the surprise that she could somehow read the ancient writing, she got an idea. She whispered the word “destroy” to the blade and struck the rock again. The boulder was cleaved in half with almost no effort on her part.

  She stood with the blade in her hand and the bisected boulder at her feet, looking for signs that explained the existence of this weapon or how it came to be lodged in a rock. There was no visible clue that even hinted to the origin of this sword or explained its presence in the forests of northern Canada.

  What she did know for sure was that it responded to words. When Katheryn got it back to her room, she started experimenting with it. She whispered the word “ice” to the blade and hit a bottle of water with it. The liquid was immediately frozen solid. She repeated the test with the word “fire” and the icy bottle of water burst into flames. Giving the sword the word “latte” and touching the coffee maker did nothing. However, when she spoke the phrase “self-absorbed pompous ass” and hit the channel changer the television turned to Hannity.

  Like words themselves, the sword seemed to have almost no physical substance, but still contained an extraordinary amount power. This was truly a handy weapon for somebody who prided themselves on their skill with prose and verse.

  Loki had finished talking and was raising the hammer to finish Thor off. Thor had called down lightning, but it was having no effect on Loki or Mjölnir. At this point, Loki was as much a Thunder God as Thor was. This made him immune to the danger of lightning.

  Before she could talk herself out of complying, Katheryn grudgingly gave in to Belle’s request. In the end it made more sense to have Thor bloody up Loki than to let the God of Lies emerge unscathed. He was wildly unpredictable and who knew what he would do next. Katheryn prepared the weapon as best she could by whispering the word “rage” to the blade. It appeared in red runes on the metal. She stood up and threw the sword hard in Thor’s direction.

  Thor caught the glint of the sword out of the corner of his eye as it flew through the air and stuck in the ground less than a yard from his foot. As Loki brought Mjölnir down, Thor grabbed the sword and deflected the strike. He expected the hammer to shatter the light weapon, but instead the blade held. In fact, it did better than just hold. Loki fell backwards partly from surprise and partly from a noticeable feedback that came from the strange sword.

  As Thor held this new blade, he saw the runic word that the Valkyrie had spoken into the blade. He almost instinctively knew what this sword was doing. As long as those words were there, his anger would actually feed the weapon. An almost evil smile made its way across his face. If it was rage that truly made this sword
work, he had plenty of fuel to feed it.

  Thor went on the attack and began to drive Loki backwards. He had an advantage against the God of Lies. Loki had spent only the last few minutes being the Thunder God. Thor had spent his entire life learning the ins and outs of his own skin. Loki’s awkward, off- balance movements made it obvious that he had not yet gotten the hang of the larger, more powerful body.

  It was a myth that size and strength alone were enough to win a fight. For a being who shared a BMI rating with King Kong, to fight effectively it took a certain knack and a lot of practice. Loki didn’t have it. Thor did. Even so, Thor knew his advantage would only last a short time. The hammer was an equalizer.

  Loki was trying to use Mjölnir like he was Bobby Flay applying a meat mallet to a flank steak. He hadn’t yet realized the true relationship between the hammer and the god wielding it. When the hammer was in Thor’s hands, he would focus his strength, energy, and abilities through the weapon. All of these would be amplified by Mjölnir.

  That wasn’t the beginning and the end of it, though. The life force of everything that had been killed by the hammer would flow from the weapon back into Thor, making him stronger. He would then channel this increased power back through Mjölnir where they would become intensified.

  On a good day, with Mjölnir in his hand, Thor could sink most of Asia with one blow or call up a massive storm that would make the perpetual hurricane on Jupiter look like a light, summer shower.

  It wouldn’t be long before Loki either figured out how the hammer worked, or accidently stumbled across it. No matter how good the sword Thor was holding turned out to be, a god using Mjölnir to its full capacity could turn almost anyone or anything, into a distant memory. This included the hammer’s original owner. There was also something very Rod Serling-esque about having his soul trapped in his own signature weapon. The very thought of it gave him the heebie jeebies.