For Odin, for Thor, for Asgard

by Scholes, David

Heimdall’s earlier warning had alerted all of Asgard to the threat. The warriors three and Lady Sif had allowed their life forces to enter the Destroyer construct and they sallied forth holding the personal sword of Odin itself. Meanwhile the bulk of Asgardians including even the women and children formed up into the rarely used single warrior entity known as “The All Asgard Warrior.” It was so huge as to rival the Celestial in size. Heimdall’s consciousness directed the Warrior into battle. Including the women and children was not a cowardly act but rather a precaution. Ultimately they were better protected as part of the All Asgard Warrior than left in the houses and farmlets of Asgard. In any event the Asgardians were a warrior race.

  Whatever force now powered the Celestial it had not expected such resistance from an Asgard with both Odin and Thor absent.

  The behemoth still struggling internally found itself beset by physical attack from the All Asgard Warrior aggregation, mystical attack from Asgard’s second and third most powerful sorcerers, the Destroyer construct through its disintegration beam and the Balder/Sun’s irritating light attack.

  Then suddenly the situation changed. Looking directly into what seemed to be the Celestials eyes the Balder/ Sun sensed that whatever inner turmoil had been troubling the Colossus, it had now been resolved and not to the benefit of Asgard...

  The Exitar size Celestial now only a proxy for a still greater power released its hold on the world ash. It rose to its full height and thrust the All Asgard Warrior aggregation aside. From its eyes two bolts of force that were definitely not of Celestial origin extinguished the Balder/Star reducing it to a small blackened lightless mass. It then vaporized the Destroyer construct, though the noble life forces therein escaped to their nearby physical bodies. Loki and Karnilla appeared to escape via interdimensional teleportation but a single bolt of energy for each of them struck them down seemingly lifeless in a vastly distant dimension. Although all of this took valuable time.

  The Celestial then turned its attention to the great world ash. The entire huge trunk/central axis of the world tree shuddered as did all of the near infinite elements of the branch system. It seemed that all living things in all parts of the nine worlds felt the upheaval. Yet Yggdrasil did not move at all and unbelieving the titan redoubled its efforts still with no affect. Then it saw why. Located lower down the huge trunk at Midgard the mighty Thor held on firmly to the massive girth. No one really knows the true limits of the strength of the Thunder god because mostly those limits have never really been tested. Possibly this day was an exception.

  As the behemoth strained still further so did Asgard’s strongest god. It is true that the Celestial had to overcome the inertia of Yggdrasil and whatever else that living entity might do to assist the mighty Thor. It was equally clear that Thor faced something stronger and more powerful still than even an Exitar class Celestial. Eventually the contestation was resolved as the upper parts of Yggdrasil that the Celestial embraced broke away under the intense strain. The Celestial or whatever else it was stumbled away, at that moment no more above Newton’s law of inertia than the rest of us. As it staggered back the entity realized that momentarily it could not sense the whereabouts of the Odinpower.

  And at that precise moment of his enemy’s instability and uncertainty Odin struck. With mystically much enhanced size and strength the Allfather appeared seemingly from nowhere and struck the entity with the full force of the seldom used “Odinblow.” This blow utilizes controlled warriors madness in a short and not immediately repeatable paroxysm of physical power.

  As Odin struck the blow to end all blows the Celestial’s head snapped back and almost came off its torso as the Colossus hurtled into the skies of Asgard and far beyond. Celestial energies mixed with energies that were decidedly not of Celestial origin spewed forth. The latter seeming to predominate. This gave Odin his first real indication as to the true identity of the usurper.

  In the time it took the Celestial to return Thor teleported Loki and Karnilla back to Asgard for the ministrations of Asgard’s physicians and Odin restored the noble Balder to good health.

  The Celestial returned though it seemed to take a while. When it did it was obvious that it was now a Celestial in appearance only. Energies roiled within it that even the monstrous Celestial frame struggled to contain. Nor did the controlling entity seem to care much whether those vast energies were contained or not.

  “Let us strip the trappings of pretense about our enemy” Odin cried to his son “let us lay it bare for all to see.” With that came the very highest order godblasts from three different directions, from Odin, Thor and the All Asgard Warrior.

  Concentrating totally on the Celestial the unparalleled and unprecedented stream of energies began continuously vaporizing the entire armoured frame of the hulking Celestial. In response the controlling entity began continuously regenerating the Celestial armour. For a time an impasse of sorts was reached.

  But as Odin, Thor and all Asgard continued the attack their enemy seemed to relent and the vaporizing Celestial armour was not regenerated. At that moment some of the surrounding space and matter was warped into the manifestation of a semi-humanoid form.

  “You do not need to do that evil one” boomed Odin “we are all too aware who and what you are.”

  Before Odin, Thor and the All Asgard Warrior stood an abstract entity that represented a composite of the evil aspects of Eternity and Infinity. It had now become an offshoot of those two great abstract powers and an independent entity virtually as powerful as its source.

  When it originally separated from Eternity/Infinity the new entity had sought time to think to be away from interference from the other abstracts. In Leandarr the wandering Celestial it had found the perfect host. A powerful host that no one would be likely to bother and that might potentially roam anywhere in the Multiverse. It had dwelled within the great Celestial thinking its dark thoughts and slowly influencing and eventually dominating the space god.

  It’s subsequent decision to destroy Asgard either by preventing its being created or in the present day was not an arbitrary one. Odin represented one of the great powers for good in the Multiverse. To retrospectively deny him existence would be a great victory for those inclined to darkness. Even more it would be a signal sending fear down the metaphysical spines of all abstract and near abstract entities

  But the entity realized its mistake.

  “Odin and Thor” telepathed the entity “you are both more powerful than even the legends that surround you.” “You are more powerful than the memory I retain of your past contestation with that from which part of me came, namely Infinity. By your actions you have earned the right to exist”

  The composite abstract entity was on the verge of departing.

  Odin could not allow that.

  At Odin’s instigation Thor raise his great hammer ready to strike. Coruscating with all manner of Asgardian energies the greatest weapon ever made struck the warped manifestation at the same moment as Odin’s mystical spell. The warped semi-humanoid manifestation fell completely apart.

  Odin knew from past experience that even abstract entities are sometimes vulnerable to vastly powerful extra-dimensional forces. And ultimately were he and Thor themselves not of this category?

  The Allfather then proceeded to warp space, time and reality to create a cocooning prison about his enemy.

  In time the great abstract entities Eternity, Infinity, Death, and Oblivion came and with them the great Galactus all to take their charge into custody. They knew that if ever it came this way again Odin would not be so merciful.

  Odin is not omnipotent. Never think that. He may be challenged and he can be beaten but a wise adversary chooses his ground. Even among the great powers it is said that only a fool would challenge Odin in Asgard. At the very centre of his power. All the more so when he is backed by the power of the greatest warrior of all, his son Thor the mighty and all else Asgard has to offer.

  Let the future enemies of Asgard take note.
r />   End

  The Battle At Time’s End

  A few moments before Time’s End

  Time’s Guardian looked out upon the bleak, barren, rocky landscape. There were no stars any more and the small Celestial body that he now stood upon was the last planet.

  It should have been totally dark but a few mystical fires still burned on various parts of the planetoid, the last remnants of the final battle. There was no strength in the fires and they would soon die.

  Time’s Guardian’s ancient adversary, Fate, looked at him silently from across the planetoid. The final facet of a struggle nearly as old as time itself had played out. There was nothing left to say.

  Ultimately this struggle had transcended even that between good and evil.

  Fate was a component of the original forces of creation. An entity with a strong pre-conception as to exactly how events should play out. Time’s Guardian had been a creation of all of the contemporary great powers and civilisations when the Multiverse was yet very young. A powerful counterweight to Fate.

  Still, the end time was nigh upon them, and far, far sooner than it might have been.

  The great Guardian of Time thought to himself that there was no bleaker, no more hopeless, no lonelier place than here on this barren rock watching the very last flows of time. Soon now even the small planetoid would disintegrate and even Time’s Guardian himself would cease to exist.

  Fate itself prepared to dissipate into the nothingness of end time. Yet even now Time’s Guardian readied for one last throw of the dice. A totally unexpected final gambit.

  Husbanding his final reserves of energy, the great protector of the time stream had just enough in reserve to summon forth one of the great powers of the past.

  Yet which ally to call forth? who to summon against Fate itself?

  Time’s Guardian reviewed the history of the Multiverse, considered all of its great powers.

  He who was called forth from the past would need to be strength and power personified. Yet strength and power alone would not be enough. Courage would need to be his middle name. More he would need to intimately understand the nature of time and the role that Fate and Time’s Guardian had played in that. More still the entity called forth would need to have been warned at some time in the past of just this contingency.

  One name stood out among them all. The mighty Thor, God of Thunder, Son of Odin, one time liege lord of all of mighty Asgard. The only other question? At which point, in his immensely long lifetime, to seek out the great Asgardian? Not as a callow and inexperienced youth, nor as a headstrong young adult. Nor at the other end of Thors life as an ageing, venerable adviser to the mighty Magnison. It would have to be at the very zenith of his great life.

  So it came to pass that as his final act, the great Guardian of Time brought forth from the past the inconceivably powerful entity known as Thor of Asgard.

  Millions of years ago, in the great hall of Asgard, Time’s Guardian had met with the mighty Thor, and spoken to him, warned him of this very moment. As the Guardian had also done with certain other great powers.

  Thus the mighty Thor was not at all surprised by this turn of events.

  Thor knew well the nature of Fate and had long ago fought alongside Time’s Guardian in the last two of the inconclusive intertemporal wars. Thor even had his own personal triumph of sorts over the lesser though still formidable Asgardian fates.

  As the mighty Thor looked across the planetoid at the physical form assumed by Fate, the great Time’s Guardian, his last reserves gone, dissipated into the nothingness of end time.

  As Thor strode towards Fate, the realisation dawned on him. In the whole history of our Multiverse had any entity faced a more daunting, more impossible task than that now confronting him?

  On the very cusp of Time’s End, the Asgardian god had become the de facto protector of what little remained of time. The new Time’s Guardian and the only still living entity capable of challenging Fate’s now nearly complete designs.

  The origins of Fate were known to the mighty Thor. At times dawn during the original act of creation of the very first Universes the creator split into its component parts, good, evil and fate. It was not an equal split nor was it an entirely clean split but these elements of the force of creation were never again reunited.

  This close to End Time, no Celestial means existed by which time might be measured. Nor would any instrumentation work here. Further Thor knew that the normal laws of time travel and time measurement did not apply here.

  Yet for Thor a measure still existed. The beat of his Asgardian heart. Even End Time could not distort that.

  Fate did not need to kill the mighty Thor, he had only to delay the Thunder God for a few hundreds of heartbeats and the End Time would come.

  The only thing in Thors favour was that he had known that this time would come and had been able to prepare for it.

  Raising his mighty hammer, Thor invoked the most ancient and powerful of all the rune spells at his command. A spell now embedded within his mighty hammer. A spell that others had enhanced in preparation for this time. Most importantly of all Time’s Guardian had reinforced the spell during his visit to Asgard long ago. The effect of the spell was to slow down the time flow on the approach to end time. To seek to delay the inevitable. There might yet be time.

  “You, you ___” taunted Fate “did you not learn the futility of confronting me during the time wars.” “You may be the greatest warrior who ever drew breath, but I am one of the original forces of creation.” “I am synonymous with inevitability, what I determine becomes fact, I am Fate and none may gainsay me.”

  But the time for words, of any kind, was well past and Fate knew this.

  Fate itself took the offensive attacking Thor on all conceivable levels.

  Thor twirled mighty mjolnir at a speed defying description, creating a multi-layered force screen that initially held against all the levels of Fate’s attack, except one. The attack on the skyfathers mind.

  *

  The son of Odin found himself as a boy playing with his step brother Loki at the base of his father’s throne. For one so young Loki’s face looked grotesque. All the jealousy and hatred that would become more obvious in later years were evident in the boy. Already Loki had some small knowledge of the mystic arts and leering he unsheathed an enchanted dagger. Suddenly the boy Thor was desperately fighting for his life. Allfather Odin, deep in thought on his throne, seemed not to notice.

  Thor knew it was Fates doing. A manipulation of his mind. Yet for all that it seemed very, very real in a physical sense.

  Just barely Thor defeated his brother knocking him semi-conscious and hurling the dagger away.

  Afterwards Thor found himself ageing and being confronted by different enemies of his past. He was being taken through his entire life span facing those relatively few enemies which had, at some time or other, defeated him.

  Thor could sense that the only immediate danger to him was this attack on his mind. That otherwise mighty mjolnir’s force shields were holding. Fate itself at bay. Somehow though he knew that if he was to survive he would have to win each and every one of these battles with which he was now being confronted. To defeat everyone who had ever beaten him in the past.

  Thor’s main link with reality was the beat of his heart and his ability to detect it. It was beating only very slowly leading him to believe that the “nightmare fights” were taking place very quickly or at least being processed very quickly by his mind.

  The fights went on and on and on. Each time his maturing physical body seemed to be replenished but not the accumulating battle strain.

  Eventually (and Thor knew from his own heartbeat that it had not been long) the nightmare battles drew to a close. Every single one of Thors enemies had been humbled.

  In a sense each of the entities that Thor had been forced to fight in his mind had been a champion chosen by Fate. As almost all of them had defeated Thor at some time in his life Fate had reasoned
that it was a trial that Thor could never complete. That the son of Odin would never emerge from this attack on his mind. In this respect, even Fate itself, had underestimated Thor.

  Still, as he had intended, Fate had occupied Thor’s mind for long enough.

  The reinforced rune spell that had been delaying Time’s End had been shattered as had the artefact in which it had been embedded. Thor could feel the actual temporal pull of End Time as he saw the shattered pieces of his hammer, the greatest weapon ever made, slowly fading into non existence.

  Thor, Odinson, the de facto Guardian of Time had by his own reckoning no more than a few heartbeats left.

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  It was not without good reason that he was known as the Lord of Storms. Whether that be upon Earth, in Asgard, on another world, or deep in interstellar space. That power over storms extended to those of the cosmic and even intertemporal variety.

  Among his very greatest power was to summon a time storm. He had rarely done so as the consequences would have been too grave to contemplate. Almost always, with the exception of the time wars, Thor had held back.

  Now, on the cusp of Time’s End, was not such a time.

  Thor would have preferred to have mighty Mjolnir, with which to channel the power of the time storm. But Mjolnir had been shattered into pieces and even now was beginning to disappear in the temporal pull of Time’s End.

  Thor wasn’t even sure if, so close to End Time, his power over storms would work here, but of course he had to try.

  Also he was suffering intense mental battle fatigue from Fate’s attack on his mind. In his mind he had fought and defeated all those enemies and a few others who had defeated him in times past. More in doing so the battle strain from each encounter had been cumulative and was now almost unbearable. As no doubt Fate had intended.