Wrath of Aten

by S. A. Ashdown

  And Theo was collecting their debts – the sparks of electricity Ava had flown through clashed with Akhen’s army, magnetising their souls and tearing the magic out, lightning bolts that snapped back into the original storm cloud.

  Espen watched it happen, and the ex-Gatekeeper understood. He signalled for the trumpets and Ava didn’t have to be psychic to know the blaring horns called for a vicious attack on every quarter. The Golden Knives were crippled and defenceless.

  Strike now, Theo.

  He hacked Istapp through Akhen’s half-disintegrated limbs. Ava cringed against the impact as she experienced it through Theo’s body.

  But Freyr’s sword alone wasn’t designed to slaughter the Midgard Serpent. Istapp’s true foe – Brann – had been removed from the picture. Ava hissed as Akhen reformed, a scar of ice zigzagging down his torso and his face.

  Theo, you’re going to kill him yourself. For your mother, for your father, for me.

  Get rid of the sword.

  54

  Time Crystal

  Time.

  The Gatekeeper spoke to me between heartbeats, between Ava’s instructions. Before this universe, it whispered, there was another one, and one before that. We have whispered this message countless times in languages you cannot comprehend. A book of apocalypses flipped through my mind, landing on a single blank page at the end – my page. Yggdrasil rising and falling, Ragnarök a cyclical death and rebirth from which it was doomed to repeat. The fighters are different, but the end is always the same.

  Akhen represented the destructive power of the Orlog’s angry child, Aten. I was fighting a force greater than my human form. As the prior universes died and rose Phoenix-like out of the ashes, so had the Gatekeepers of old perished. This was a war that none of my kind had ever won.

  And when Akhen reformed, his scarred face contorting his superior smile – reflected into my mind by Ava – I felt myself lurch over the precipice. I breathed in entropy and chaos, clutching onto the hope that the Dark Energy – the Gatekeeper’s shadow self – that powered the expanding universe, could change space and time again and twist the end around the beginning, just like the ouroboros. It struck me how the symbol of the tail-eating serpent assailed me everywhere, from the chosen form of my enemy to the tattoo around Ava’s wrist. The answer had been staring me in the face since the beginning and it was here at the end.

  Ava, do you see what I see? The only way to win this is to kill us both, just as Ragnarök predicts.

  Theo–-

  It’s okay, Ava. This is good news. We’ll be together again. Akhen and I shall restart the failing heart of Yggdrasil, whether he likes it or not.

  I didn’t wait for her response, or rather, her response couldn’t keep up with my quickening thoughts. This had to be done. It was the only way.

  I tore the crystal from Istapp’s hilt. If anything could help me slip through the net of landvættirs threaded around the earth, and ensure they were willing to protect it, it would be something belonging to the King of Sprites himself.

  Akhen’s expression fell, confused. ‘What are you doing, Syphon?’

  I tossed Freyr’s bare sword to the ground. ‘You think you’re the centre of the universe,’ I said, smiling. ‘So do I.’

  His eyes widened a little. Around us, his Golden Knives were swarmed and butchered. Did he realise? Did his blindsight reveal to him the truths the Gatekeeper had shared with me?

  Did he realise he was about to die?

  He tried to melt away, to retreat into the protective halo of Aten.

  But I was already there, already had my arms around him. And Aten was too far away to interfere now.

  The Gatekeeper exploded into space, tearing a hole in the veil between Asgard and Midgard, one that opened like a gaping mouth beneath me and Akhen. We fell, he struggled and fought to reassemble, and then I was holding the serpent’s slippery scales. The Gatekeeper found us again and acted as a shield while we shot through the atmosphere and tumbled to the ground.

  And smashed into the earth’s crust.

  I could hear the sprites screaming. Freyr’s crystal detonated, leaving a single fragment in my hand, the sprites absorbing the impact. Odin, Thor, and Freyr, let that be enough to stop the shockwaves from destroying the world.

  We travelled deep into Earth’s mantle, both of us somewhere between materialised and atomic, our semi-state and the magic we inhabited the only things preventing us from going the way of Freyr’s crystal. And then we slipped into a land of liquid metal. The place where diamonds were born.

  I’d suffered agonies and died plenty since my twenty-first birthday, but only this death was worthy of the Gatekeeper. The searing heat melted skin and flesh from bone, the Gatekeeper and the Midgard Serpent unified at last into a soup of blood and magic.

  Her Craven spun out of control as Theo ripped the fabric of Yggdrasil apart, sucking everyone near the tear into Midgard. Golden capes fluttered down to Earth, burning up like meteors.

  Ava had almost been taken too. She stroked the Craven’s feathered neck. ‘Thank you,’ she said, glad she was riding such a quick-thinking bird. Her relief was short-lived as she switched back to Theo’s perspective, watching sea and sky spinning around him, her bones vibrating as he was buried by the earth.

  Panic seized her. Her future with Theo sputtered and disappeared, her foresight replaced by nothing but darkness, nothing but heartbreak. She was lying there with him in the mantle, entangled in an effervescent, crystalline beehive of atoms. As her fiancé fizzled away, so did her future.

  And then the beehive began to pulse, and in her mind, she was once again on the pinnacle of Yggdrasil, gazing down at the Nine Realms. The hairs stood up on her neck, prickled her arms, as from the core of Yggdrasil – from Midgard – a coil of electromagnetic energy spun outwards, seeping into the veins of the World Tree and extending into infinity as the branches stretched out again.

  Points of light. Ava watched, mesmerised, as for a moment the unseen structure of the universe became known to her, the repeating pattern of quantum particles touching their opposite pairs, creating an instantaneous link between them, as Theo and Ava were connected, despite the distance.

  ‘Quantum entanglement using a giant diamond. What a great idea.’

  ‘Odin.’ Ava turned her mind to face the All Father. ‘I can feel what Theo has done,’ she said, ‘but I don’t understand it.’

  ‘He has broken the symmetry of physics, and therefore ensured perfect symmetry.’

  ‘Don’t speak to me in riddles now,’ Ava shouted, her temper and her strength failing. ‘I’ve just lost him!’

  Odin rumbled, echoing the storm inside of her. ‘The Great Timepiece was slowing down – I showed you that before,’ he said. ‘Not only has Theo re-infused it, he has disrupted the natural loss of energy by closing the system that is the universe.’

  Huh?

  Odin pointed to the throbbing points of light. ‘Theo and Akhen’s combined Essence created a web of entangled particles that react to the effects of the energy jolt before a normal atom would react, keeping the pendulum in perpetual motion. Ava, do you realise? He has fulfilled the prophecy of the Norns and saved us all. Yggdrasil is no longer destined to weaken and die now it’s a cosmic time-crystal. The future of the Nine Realms is assured. We won.’

  He held out his arms. She fell into his embrace, her sobs chiming with Persephone’s. He stroked her hair. ‘You almost had me fooled for a minute,’ he whispered, ‘with that make-up. It’s a good job my pure white robes are only an illusion, otherwise they’d be ruined.’

  Ava choked out a laugh through a film of pain. ‘Your sacrifice won’t be forgotten, Ava.’ He tilted her chin so that she gazed into his star-filled eye. ‘I was thinking, you know, about the Anchor.’

  ‘Raphael?’ Ava asked. ‘Or Freyr?’

  Odin shrugged. ‘He’s lost the Gatekeeper, the other half of his sacred purpose. And the Nine Realms lost his beloved sister. I think you’d fill that void
well, little rainbow.’

  Ava swallowed. ‘No,’ the tears slipped down her cheeks. ‘Theo thought I was dead, that was why he was so willing to die. So I cannot leave him waiting for me beyond the veil he fixed.’

  Odin shook his head. ‘Daughter, Theo’s essence is within every atom you breathe, as is the Gatekeeper’s. He is formless. There is no man to find and no sense in your death.’

  ‘Are you telling me I’m never going to see him again? I can’t believe that.’ She struggled to escape his grasp but he held her spirit fast. ‘I won’t believe it!’

  ‘Calm yourself.’ Odin paused. ‘I have lost half my sight, child. I do not always see everything. Perhaps you will. Quantum particles have a funny way of communicating. But for now, your purpose is renewed. Do you recognise this?’

  Odin pulled a golden heart out of his robe. ‘It’s taken me a while to find all the pieces.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Freyja’s magic,’ he said, a sadness in his voice that spoke of a father’s grief. ‘I was going to wait until your wedding. I think she’d want you to have it.’

  He shoved it into her chest.

  Stars scattered across her vision.

  She awoke just as she was thrown off the Craven, flying backwards above Earth, swaddled in the light of the rainbow bridge. The bough broke, and the cradle fell, and Ava landed feet first inside the ramparts surrounding Asgard.

  As her vision cleared, the first face she saw was Menelaus’s.

  ‘Ava? Ava!’ He encircled her waist and squeezed her tight. She threw her arms around his neck and blinked out the last of her burning tears. ‘Something’s different. Theo, he did it.’

  Ava nodded, noticing the crowd gathering around them. She must have looked a state, her face smeared in the kohl of a pharaoh’s wife. ‘Ava,’ Menelaus said, putting her down, ‘why are you wearing Freyja’s cloak?’

  Ava felt the falcon feathers. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed as she’d just been stroking the Craven’s coat – who had now landed on the ramparts. Staring at her like everyone else. ‘And why are you wearing that crown?’

  She touched her wig, except that too had vanished, replaced by the golden band nestled in her own, rainbow hair.

  What the heck is going on?

  She waited for Persephone to reply and realised she was gone.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Dear girl,’ Persephone said with a smile, ‘it appears that a body can only hold one goddess at a time.’

  ‘What do you—’

  ‘Dear, isn’t it obvious? You’re Freyja now – for all intents and purposes.’

  Ava’s jaw slackened. She couldn’t process this. Asgard was celebrating but it was all wrong, everything was twisted. She looked around at the streets. Who had lined them with garlands and bunting? Why was everyone dressed in bright colours? Wasn’t the world ending?

  No, only my world.

  Menelaus was gazing at her, his expression soft. ‘Ava, you’re radiant…the perfect bride.’

  Oh my god. This is meant to be a wedding.

  Her bottom lip betrayed her. ‘You don’t understand,’ she cried, ‘Theo is dead! Theo died for all of us. He obliterated his Essence and sent it across the Nine Realms!’

  Menelaus’s face fell.

  The crowd parted. Lorenzo and Freyr were running towards her.

  Running to meet a truth nobody wanted to accept.

  Ava sank to her knees and buried her face into the cobblestones, her heart cracking like an egg. She closed her eyes and saw nothing.

  END OF PART THREE

  Interlude

  Theo

  The hinge creaks as the wooden door swings open, but the noise is my thoughts and the door is a link to my other self. I have billions, trillions of other selves, each one whole, like marbles scattered to the four winds. I am Odin’s missing eye.

  I walk through the door and see Hades slumped on his throne, weeping, and I am also his tears. They run in rivers off his face, and now I am swimming in the Styx, and then I am watching that me from somewhere else, a formless entity perceiving nothing but another formless entity, a fragmented but complete particle of consciousness.

  Ava. I am the cobblestone pressing against her cheek.

  Another door. I walk through, and Hellingstead Hall, suspended in shadow, appears forlorn in the delicate morning sunrise. There’s movement within and it’s not as empty as I expected.

  I approach the front door and see myself entering, confronted by Toby and Jenny in the threshold. For a moment the creaking hinge in my mind is so loud it almost deafens me; Toby is caressing his pregnant wife, for I see she wears a ring and vows have been exchanged. The bitterness, that it isn’t me and Ava standing there happy, almost rips away my hold on sanity.

  Then I am Jenny’s baby, I am the womb, and my heart is beating, beating with Mum’s. She is talking, her voice lulling us.

  But another part of me remains inside the planet, and something down there is beating as surely as this baby’s heart. It calls to me.

  Who do those voices belong to?

  I am in the womb of Earth, a hot, metal liquid of atoms and Theo. I can feel the vibrations from the surface; I can hear the earth moving, turning on its axis. The voices grow louder.

  Streaks of blue. They dance and swirl, unhindered by rock. What is it they carry?

  Fragments. Fragments of Freyr’s crystal. Fragments of me. They are welding the pieces back together. The noise that they make, the sound that splits human minds, is the sound of creation itself, the primal force behind a mother giving birth and of Jörð herself.

  Jörð, I pray, Mother, let me rise again.

  I am Freyr’s crystal, and his sprites carry me away through a boiling ocean.

  Someone is singing. A pitch only a goddess could hold.

  The sea pushes me onto the hot sand. I’ve been here before. I look up and see Freyja’s sandals.

  ‘Good morning, Theo,’ she says, and I stand up, unable to fathom how I have legs again. ‘Your other self is yet to arrive.’ She hands me an opened coconut and I drink the milk.

  ‘What self?’

  ‘The one who arrives before the battle and after his trouble in Utgard.’

  I stare blankly. ‘Wait, are we in the past?’

  ‘Yes, and no. We are in the eye of the storm, the eternal now.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  She unhooks her necklace of trinkets that had once held the amulet, and removes the sapphire rings from each end. ‘A gift from my dear brother, eons ago. They are more use to you now.’ She places them in my palm. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘they are a perfect fit. Tell Freyr my love for him is eternal as, well, you, Gatekeeper. He can always find me on the wind.’

  Pain explodes in my chest as she punches my heart. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

  And then I am sitting on the marble steps of Freyja’s temple in the middle of Asgard, watching the spectacular light show as the electromagnetic field, which my other self is creating, shoots out its tendrils from Midgard. Time speeds up around me and the Asgardian sun has risen out of Aten’s pulverised ashes. The inhabitants of the Windy City line the streets and the temple with decorations galore, and yet nobody sees me.

  Ava appears in a flash. Menelaus is holding her. Where did Persephone come from?

  I stand, realising for the first time that I am wearing a cloak as opal as my eyes.

  Ava falls to her knees.

  Time lurches, restored to its normal pace.

  ‘This won’t do!’ I call, cupping my hands around my mouth. ‘No bride of mine cries on her wedding day!’

  IV

  End of the Line

  Ava | Lorenzo | Theo

  55

  Merrily on High

  The chatter of the crowd faded. Ava wiped the dirt from her face and turned around.

  She couldn’t believe it. This must be some illusion fuelled by grief. Odin said—

  Odin said he didn’t
see everything. How could he, otherwise he would’ve known how to defeat Akhen in the first place?

  ‘Theo?’ she croaked.

  Menelaus helped her up. Her legs threatened to buckle as the apparition strode, in his glittering cloak, down the steps of Freyja’s temple like he’d been waiting there all along, his usually wild hair tamed and pinned at the back of his head, his brilliant eyes as infinite as Odin’s.

  As he came towards her, the gates of Asgard opened up and the remainder of Espen and Isobel’s army marched through the streets. ‘Just in time to hear my announcement,’ Theo called. His voice seemed to carry in all directions as if he spoke from everywhere at once. ‘That is officially the last time I’m dying.’ He halted a few feet away from Ava. ‘You look like a goddess,’ he said simply.

  Ava suddenly became self-conscious about her smeared make-up. As if Persephone was still in her head, she popped into view, waved her hand over Ava, and retreated, leaving her fresh as a hillside after a storm – and with a bouquet of beautiful, white roses. When had the Queen of the Underworld become her Maid of Honour?

  Grace was going to kick her for missing this.

  She rushed into Theo’s arms, cherishing the solidity of him. ‘Well, technically I am,’ she said, lifting her chin.

  ‘I thought you were Nefertiti.’

  ‘Nope. Freyja, or the equivalent.’

  ‘Looks like I have another official announcement then,’ Theo said. ‘You’re not dying either.’

  Menelaus cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to be added to that list, please.’

  ‘Ditto,’ Lorenzo chimed as the coven – headed by Nikolaj and Ullr – and Theo’s parents caught up. ‘’Ere, how in the Nine Realms did you get back? And when did you visit hair and wardrobe?’