The Fires of Muspelheim

by Matt Larkin

  Odin raised his hands before himself, pacing sideways around her, waiting. Hel wielded powers he could not understand. He needed an opening. A chance to close in and land a blow that might stagger her. So … wait …

  A half dozen tendrils of mist launched themselves at Odin. He leapt over one, twisting in midair to avoid the others. One slapped against his leg, filling him with an icy numbness that sent him tumbling back down to the ground. And then Hel was flying at him, a descending cloud of mist. Odin rolled to the side an instant before claws gouged the stone where he’d been. Shards of ice exploded from the ground, bursting through Odin’s shin, his hips, and his shoulder.

  It was all he could do to pull free and scramble away, and then Hel was surging at him again, mist tendrils whipping about her like lashes. Odin leapt backward, desperate to gain his balance, but the lashes kept him ever scrambling, driving him closer and closer to the edge.

  Her mad cackles tore through his mind like tiny daggers. A woman given over completely to the darkness and the cold. A woman driven beyond the brink.

  Snarling, she lunged, a lance of ice jutting from her wrist and blasting through Odin’s chest. Its icy bite spread numbness through him like a flood. It rushed into him, devouring light and life and soul and hope.

  Unmaking him.

  And all Odin could have and should have done came undone.

  Odin knew their destination, for Yggdrasil rose up from the valley ahead with glory beyond aught he had ever seen or dreamed. Every step down the path only intensified the tingle on his skin. The ground beneath his feet pulsed with energy so pure, so vital, it left him euphoric. His very soul screamed at him to grab Freyja and kiss her for hours. To slip inside her and never ever leave.

  The Vanr woman glanced back at him, a twinkle in her eye that bespoke knowledge of exactly what he felt. That she felt it, too. How could she not? Stories claimed life itself rose from Yggdrasil, and Odin could no longer doubt those tales. He knew his breath had become irregular, but he didn’t bother trying to conceal it nor control it. Why should such petty things matter?

  Freyja slipped her fingers into his hand, her soft touch sending fresh jolts of sensation shooting up his arm.

  “Is … is it always like this?” he murmured.

  “Yes … but not quite this … Mundilfari had a theory … he claimed Yggdrasil laid bare the connections between souls. Those meant to be together, soul mates, would be unable to deny their feelings in its presence. It was … just a theory.”

  Odin’s body tried to break apart. To come undone and give in to the darkness that consumed. But she was there, had always been there, his beacon. And existence was, in a sense, a choice.

  Self-image.

  The will to exist. And that, alone, unmade not Odin, but the shard of ice freezing him. Reasserting his sense of self, for it existed, not isolation, as a refraction of all the other souls he touched in the great web.

  Thoughts … memories … binding them all.

  “You change the subject as if I might somehow be misdirected from the significant detail that Hel called you Father.”

  Loki shut his eyes a moment before staring at Odin. “My daughter died long eras back … and had she not touched the Art maybe … maybe that would have been the end of it. Instead, she endured in Niflheim. And there, in time, she usurped the power of the first goddess of mist.”

  The image of strangling Loki flashed through Odin’s mind again. Now, at last, it began to make a terrible and irrevocable sense. For how could the father of his greatest enemy truly be his ally? Odin, a father, knew well what lengths a man would go to for his own children. No matter what else might befall them, some part of Loki would never let go of Hel. For that, Odin could not blame him, but then, neither could he ever again endow the man with his full trust.

  The avalanche of urd continued.

  It tore from him his greatest ally. It stole from him his family, those of birth and those of choice. Until, at last, it would leave him alone to face the final battle.

  It was the first time Odin had known Hel was Loki’s daughter.

  Hel was a madwoman. But still a woman … still caught in the same web of souls that bound them all.

  And she gaped at him now, as if unbelieving he could reform his soul and continued to defy her in her own place of power.

  “Where is your father?” Odin growled at her. “Does he join us in death?”

  A slight hesitation, a faltering in her assault that allowed him to dodge to the side and avoid the pit.

  “He will join you soon enough.” Hel charged at him.

  Odin dodged forward this time, ducking under the lashes and coming up to land a blow to her gut. The woman stumbled backward, then slashed at him with a claw. Odin caught her forearm on his own and pummeled her with two uppercuts to the face. “Even through his shame at what you’ve become, still he has not given up on his love for you. Still, he somehow hopes to see you again.”

  Hel snarled. “He was with me!”

  “Then where is he now?”

  She shrieked, hysterical, lunging at Odin with tendrils of mist slapping all around in wild fury. Odin ducked, twisted, and dodged. And still caught a lash across the side of his head. It hit him like a jotunn’s club, spinning him around and sending him crashing to the ground face-first.

  Snarling, Hel leapt atop him, digging the claws of both hands into Odin’s shoulders. Pain shot through him, as if she rent his very soul. Gouging deeper and deeper, scraping over bone.

  Odin roared in pain.

  Hel hefted him up like that, then hurled him free, to land tumbling along the platform once more.

  “You shall suffer eternity in Nidhogg’s vile sea!”

  Gasping in agony, Odin struggled to reassert his self-image again. The injuries would’ve killed a living man, but he was dead. Naught save a soul. And yet … Hel’s claws seemed to have carved out pieces of that soul. He managed his knees and grit his teeth, forcing down the pain.

  He had endured more terrible injuries in his thousand lifetimes. Even as Odin, he had endured, and continued to suffer the pain of having his throat and spine torn out. His shredded back meant naught.

  Hel stalked closer, face a twisted mix of rage and lasciviousness, as if aroused by torturing Odin. But rage … that would cloud her judgment. Already, it had stopped her from killing him when she probably had the opportunity. She wanted him to suffer.

  “You blame me … but you are the architect of your own damnation. No one forced you to delve so deeply into the Art. Even so, your father would’ve done aught imaginable to save you. To spare you from your self-inflicted torment. But you are addicted to the power of your throne.”

  “Shut up!” she roared. “You know naught of him!”

  Blood pooled in his mouth and he wondered, briefly, if that was a manifestation of his mind, of his self-image made flesh. “I know … Prometheus … Loki … I know he would … thank me. I was wrong. I don’t need to destroy you. I need to save you.” Odin closed his hands into fists and raised them once more.

  It was all his self-image. All his wounds, all his pain, were his mind projecting his suffering physically. But he could control his self-image, at least for a little while.

  “Your father … he wanted a Destroyer to stand against darkness. Right or wrong … his actions over the eons brought me here, to save his daughter from the throes of damnation. And I’m going to. Because while you lingered in the torment of death for all these ages, I have lived. Over and over, I have lived and loved and died and risen again.”

  “Shut. Up!” she shrieked. And then she was racing at him again, a blurred, icy whirlwind of rage and torment. The very pinnacle of damnation, caught in her own trap.

  It shifted within Odin, then. All his fury at all she’d done. How could he hold on to wrath, when it had begun to transform into pity? They were, all of them—himself, Loki, even Hel—caught in this web and drawn together. Suffering, together. And suffering more, because they thought th
emselves alone.

  Her whirlwind fell into the mire, his perception of it slowing as he embraced the instincts of all those warriors. Her rage and pain clouded her thoughts, but Odin’s mind was finally, finally free. He ducked, dodged, and bobbed around her tendrils and claws as if she were a flailing child.

  His hook caught her in the ribs.

  Hel bellowed in icy fury. Lances of cold shot from her like a hail of arrows, forcing Odin to give ground, twisting out of the way of one after another. The so-called goddess unleashed a barrage of mist-fueled blades.

  Odin’s foot brushed the platform’s edge. With no more ground to give, he dove into a roll and came up beside her. Her blades gouged his shoulder even as he did so, and he immediately retreated once more.

  But still, it was slow. She was slowed. Predictable despite her rage.

  More wild assaults that should have brought down any man in its twister of rage. Tendrils freezing and tearing up the platform where they fought. Odin leapt over them, flipped around in the air, his foot catching her chin. Sending her staggering. He twisted around her, and his elbow slammed between her shoulder blades.

  Then Hel was the one teetering on the platform’s edge, flailing helplessly as she pitched forward. Toward the pit. Toward eternal suffering in the dark dragon’s hateful sea. Once, Odin would have cast her down there, considered the punishment of eternal damnation well fitting for the eternity of her crimes.

  But maybe they had all suffered enough.

  And she was his brother’s daughter.

  Odin wrapped his hand in her white hair and caught her the instant before she would have fallen into the abyss. He yanked her back onto the platform, then kicked out her the back of her knee, driving her down.

  “I’m going to give you a gift. The most precious of all gifts. I’m going to give you the chance … to start over.”

  His other fist slammed into the back of her neck, crunching her spine. A sputtering wheeze escaped Hel and she collapsed, limp in his arms.

  Odin eased her down and knelt above her. “Return now … return to the Wheel of Life. That you will one day see your father again … in sunlight.”

  He crushed her skull. Squeezed, until that abominable red gleam went out of her eyes. Until, at long last, her essence dissolved, fleeing in ephemeral wisps toward the roots. And seeping into them, drawn back to the World Tree, and within it, the ever-spinning Wheel of Life.

  There was a question, lingering, of what would become of Niflheim without Hel. An answer plagued Odin as he climbed the roots back up to where the last of his einherjar awaited his return. Hel’s defeat had broken what remained of the fighting, and her minions had fled, leaving Odin’s kin to stare at him in silent apprehension, unable to even give voice to the question of what happened next.

  The answer, of course, was that he would return to her fortress and claim her throne. He, the dead god, who had gathered the einherjar must become the god of the dead. And perhaps, in time, despite the cold, he might make of this place what he had made of Valhalla. A place of hope even for those who had fallen.

  He might rule here, for all time, and make it better.

  Freyja was there, on her knees, watching him as he climbed free. So many were gathered, though so many more were gone. Fallen and, Odin dared to hope, returned to the Wheel of Life and granted another chance. A chance to see their loved ones.

  And maybe that chance was all that mattered.

  So … who was he to claim this place? Hel’s arrogance in doing so had twisted her into something unrecognizable. Had she, at the first, been driven wholly by lust for power, or had she harbored some desire to do right here? But no vaettr could sustain itself forever without consuming souls.

  Not Odin, and not those he loved who remained.

  Thor, his precious son, was not among those yet standing here. Nor Freyja’s brother. Nor so very many others. Fallen, so that he could end Hel’s madness and return her to the Wheel of Life.

  Did any of them deserve any more or less than that? Did he?

  Odin gained his feet and made his way to Freyja’s side, then took her hand and pulled her to stand beside him. They were all looking at him, but he saw only her eyes. A whirling pool of fear and loss and love and hope. Urd had ever torn them apart, given them not half the chances they should have had together.

  How very tempting it was to hold her here, in Niflheim, and try to stretch their time to eternity. But this cursed, lonely existence would devour them, as it had devoured Hel.

  And he knew the truth.

  Odin stroked her cheek. “It’s time. We must all return to the Wheel of Life.”

  Freyja’s jaw trembled and Odin thought she might argue. Instead, she nodded. “We can … try again?”

  “Wash away the pain,” he said. “Wash away the loss and start fresh.”

  Hermod’s hand fell on his shoulder. “I have to do something.”

  Odin looked at his apprentice in sudden understanding. “You still intend to break the seals and free Achlys.”

  “Hel is gone. Someone must rule this place, yes? And I made an oath.”

  Odin drew the man into an embrace, briefly. Then, he watched as Hermod plodded away, pitying him. Was it a mistake? Would he lose himself along the way?

  Either way, it was not Odin’s choice to make.

  As for the rest … Odin took in their faces and offered what he hoped was a comforting nod. Then he made his way back to the glacial wall, where a root of Yggdrasil poked free from the ice.

  A root of the World Tree. It connected all the worlds of the cosmos, flowing through the Realms, through time.

  “Place your hand upon the root,” he said, beckoning the first of the einherjar. “Touch the root and let go. Let go of everything and let yourself fall in. Your long struggle has ended.”

  For now.

  Most of them might come to this once more. Not this very place, of course, but to the struggle. Odin did not fool himself into thinking the eschaton cycle would break with Hel’s end. Only … that maybe he would have made things a little bit better for the next time. And that he would have restored something precious beyond words to Loki.

  Tyr came first. Brave and, from the look of it, weary enough to welcome the reprieve. Odin clasped the man’s arm.

  Then Tyr pulled away and placed his hand on the root. His etheric body shimmered a moment, then began to dissolve into flecks of light that seeped into the root with a faint hum, almost like music.

  In the end, the last that was left of him was light and sound.

  One by one, each of the einherjar vanished, giving up their ghostly reality for another chance at a living one.

  Each became light.

  The core of their souls.

  Until, finally, only he and Freyja remained, clutching each other’s hands.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Odin placed his forehead against her own. “A love beyond words. Beyond time. Beyond fate.” Beyond life itself. A love of souls.

  She squeezed his hand.

  Then, fingers laced together, they placed their hands on Yggdrasil’s root. And Odin let go, like a pressure uncoiling from his chest. A relief poured from him, and everything was music, a hum, joining in with Freyja’s own sound to form a harmony, seeping into the root.

  And in the end, he could breathe again.

  Cleansed and … hopeful.

  Because history, and fate, and life, and souls were but facets of a singular whole, the crux of reality, perceived as separate only when one drew too close. And if this was so, then maybe it did not matter that it had all come from darkness and that darkness sought ever to reclaim it.

  For every soul was surely born of light, and surely, that meant a kernel of hope must always endure.

  Epilogue

  Billowing clouds of black smoke stretched out as far across the horizon as the eye could see, rumbling, and occasionally releasing showers of ash that swept across the world in a choking storm. In peaks and valleys where
once greenery had struggled for survival, now one found only dying embers amid the ashes.

  The cinders crunched under Loki’s bare feet. His boots were gone. His clothes hung in burned tatters. None of that mattered, for, even had he been given to modesty, there was no one left to observe his nudity.

  Only unending miles of desolation.

  No insects buzzed. No animals chittered and cried. Nor had he seen sign of a single living plant.

  The only sound came from the howling wind, fiercer than any beast, angered, it seemed, by the desolation of this barren world.

  Shivers wracked Loki, as he plodded through the ash, though not from the cold nor from the burns—those had already healed. No, rather, the isolation ate away at him already.

  Perhaps, somewhere, some small pockets of life endured. If so, he supposed he would find them eventually, and, given the soul-crushing silence of the world, he almost longed for it.

  Almost.

  Between his hands, he cradled a seed the size of a human heart. Rough, textured, and almost seeming to pulse with life. Or the potential of it.

  Loki moaned. Why should he not indulge in self pity, left alone again, in a vacant world?

  He didn’t even know where he was headed.

  He’d just been walking for so very long.

  Walking, but it seemed little else was left to do.

  This time had been worse than most of the others. The destruction even more complete. The devastation utter and, he almost wished to believe, irrevocable.

  “Let me die …” His words, vanished into the storm winds.

  No answer forthcoming.

  And just opening his mouth had allowed choking ash inside, sending him into a fit of coughing that had him stumbling until he at last surrendered and sank to his knees.

  Still cradling that precious, hateful, all powerful seed of the World Tree. Between his hands he held the future of humanity. The genesis of another era, another incarnation of human life to begin the cycle once more.