by Matt Larkin
“I don’t want to think!” He wanted to smash some jotunn skulls, and he’d scarce been allowed to do that for centuries. Just the ones who passed across the Midgard Wall without permission.
And Father had now given them all fucking permission!
Oh, Hel. Spots began swimming before his eyes. Already the headaches were coming. Jotunn-sized headaches, in fact. Coincidence? Thor didn’t fucking think so.
“Need to pummel something,” he grumbled.
“Thor—”
Whatever Mother would’ve said got caught off when Father entered the great hall, walking stick clanking off the stones. The old man ought to use the apple’s power all the damn time and save himself the pain. When he wanted, he could move like a northern breeze—Thor’d seen it plenty of times. But Father, he just trudged along like an aged mortal, knees creaking so bad they seemed apt to just pop right off. How an Ás immortal got so old, Thor didn’t know. When he’d asked, Father had just gone into some unmanly nonsense about the Art.
Hel, it was bad enough that his mother had to go meddling with that Otherworldly business. But his father doing it … anyone but the king would get … uh … what was that damn word? Exiled! Exiled for that sort of thing.
Father nodded at Mother, and she returned the gesture. Barely. Not that Thor could blame her. The old man didn’t even bother to hide that he’d taken that Vanr bitch as a lover. These days, he all but treated Freyja like she was the queen.
Thor’d had more than a few words with Father about that, too. The old man listened to no one, though. Not since he’d imprisoned Loki. Probably should have killed him, for that matter.
“Well?” Thor demanded. Father cocked his head as if to ask what Thor was on about. “Oh, don’t give me that trollshit. You know what I’m going to say before I even think it, don’t you? Hel, you knew what was going to happen here before I got out of bed. So why don’t you just out with it and tell me what I want to know?”
Father pursed his lips in a tight smile, looking even older than normal for a moment. Weary as if he hadn’t slept in a century. And had taken a beating as oft as he took a shit.
“What?” Thor spread his hands. “Vanr woman keeping you up all night?”
“Thor,” Mother said. Oh, damn it. Mother could make her tone as hard as a dverg’s arse when she wanted.
Father cleared his throat. “Speak plainly, boy. I’ve no time for games.”
Thor folded his arms. Fine. Sure. “We lost a lot of lives beating down the jotunnar. Breaking first Thrym, then Narfi, then Skadi, and a bunch of other trollfuckers whose names I wouldn’t trade a steaming pile of shit to know. Dead Aesir, dead mortals. So we let Narfi keep them under control all this time.” Thor shrugged. Had to show them he didn’t care so much about that. “Whatever. But now, you’ve gone and let them back into Midgard and invited them over for the night meal. Maybe we ought to build some fucking houses for them? Let them drink all the mead. Ask them if they’d like to borrow our women? Maybe offer them massages?”
Now Father just looked at him, almost expressionless. Or if he had an expression, Thor figured it said something like, ‘shut up, you imbecile.’ Bastard could say a lot with one damn eye. Finally, the man sighed. “Thor, it might be too late to stop Ragnarok. I can’t say that for certain. But if the battle comes and the jotunnar are not on our side, they’re like to fight against us.”
That sounded fine to Thor. He liked cracking jotunn skulls. Especially the man-eating ones. They had big, thick skulls that were so satisfying to crunch. “I’d kill them.”
Father stared hard at him. “We need every ally we can arrange. Like it or not, we share the Mortal Realm with the jotunnar. The Vanir tried to divide the world between Midgard and Utgard, and I am no longer convinced they made the right choice.”
Oh, what the fuck was this? “Are you seriously suggesting the whole Midgard Wall was a bad idea? What, like we should just let the jotunnar tromp around wherever they damn well please, never mind if they want to eat a farmer here or there? Hel, instead of hanging criminals, why not just—”
“Do not mention her name. As for the rest, do you have any control over the words coming out of your mouth, boy?”
Thor grimaced. Of course he did. He didn’t say a fucking thing without meaning to. Most of the time.
Some of the time.
“What do you want from me?” Thor demanded.
“I want you to try to be a little more like your brother,” Father snapped.
“What?” Thor asked. “Dead?”
Mother flinched at that, and Father’s face grew darker than ever. Thor threw up his hands and stormed out of the throne room. Old man didn’t listen to anyone! Thor didn’t even know why he bothered trying to talk to him. No, he’d sent Tyr to go welcome in the jotunnar. Next thing any of them knew, some frost jotunn’s teeth would be lodged onto Thor’s arse. He didn’t need any of that … what was the word? Prescience. Didn’t need prescience to know this would end about as well as throwing a feast in the middle of Muspelheim.
Beyond the great hall, Thor came within a hair of blundering into a slave carrying a decanter of something. Thor snatched the pitcher from the slave and shoved him aside, taking a long swig.
Ugh. Wine.
Wine was for people who didn’t know how to make mead or ale. Growling, Thor flung the half-full decanter at the wall. It shattered gloriously, and the slave flinched, arms half covering his head like he expected Thor to take a swing at him.
Which made Thor snort. As if hiding behind his arms would have done the man a damn bit of good had Thor intended him harm.
Well, maybe he had to stay positive about all this. Thanks to Father, Thor would no doubt get the chance a crack a bunch more skulls. Maybe all the skulls in Jotunheim.
6
For days, Hermod had ridden in the tumultuous shadow lands of the Astral Roil. He’d dared not sleep, though he’d dozed in the saddle, trusting to Sleipnir to stay alert. Other times, he’d dismounted and allowed Sleipnir to rest.
Much of the Roil seemed composed of frozen waves of obsidian. Or half-frozen, given that they moved, albeit in slow gyrations. Other places, though, the land fell away into an expanse of stormy starlight, as if Hermod rode along a coastline.
Apt …
Keuthos’s voice in his head had him cringing. The wraith—he felt fair certain Keuthos was a wraith—did not speak oft, and when it did, the suddenness of it gave him a horrific start.
He followed the coastline—a precipice, really—gazing out at the storm clouds that swirled below, crackling with purple lightning. Out there, in the gaping void, islands of jagged rock floated, held aloft by forces Hermod could not comprehend. Amongst some, eruptions of fire scorched the sky for brief instants. From others issued icy mists like those that drowned the Mortal Realm.
“What is this madness?” he finally asked.
The Roil draws its name from its shifting nature … Here, the cosmos shape and unshape in patterns the moral mind cannot fathom … Here, we brush the edge of even the Roil … into the dark beyond …
“What’s beyond?”
Hermod felt his gaze craned, almost against his will, to the side where, among other clouds and a shifting swirl of cold colors, there gleamed too bright stars. Crystal spheres that represented the spirit worlds, larger, and brighter than they usually seemed.
Sleipnir must have sensed his distress, for the horse slowed his pace.
“We’re nigh to the edge of the Spirit Realm.”
Yes … Or, were you to pass the great shifting chaos and weather the cosmic storms … you might delve yet deeper into the Astral Realm …
He was almost afraid to ask what he’d find.
Oblivion …
Of course, the wraith seemed able to hear his thoughts.
Not wanting to linger, Hermod urged Sleipnir forward.
He’d lost any sense of time, as always happened if he spent too long in the Astral Realm. Nor could he guess how much time had passed in the Mo
rtal Realm. Less than had here, yes, but how much?
The shadows, the darkness, and the clouds did not allow him to see but so far ahead. Yet, it looked like … in the distance … an obelisk?
A watchtower …
Hermod swallowed, unable to quite wrap his mind around that. Someone had built something here, in this place of seething chaos? How could anyone find materials with which to build? How could they hold back the writhing of the land itself in order to stabilize a foundation?
Was it built …?
What would the alternative be? That … that the tower had always existed here on the Roil’s edge? That seemed madness. Structures were created by sentient minds, not nature itself.
Where, precisely, do you behold nature … as you mean it … in this realm?
Huh. Well, perhaps Keuthos had a point. Naught about the Astral Realm seemed natural.
As they rode closer, the tower grew larger. So tall, in fact, that its upper reaches disappeared into the churning storm clouds above, preventing Hermod from even harboring a guess as to its height.
Hundreds of feet, without a doubt. A wider baser tapered along a slow arc to the narrower central spire. Though cut from stone, the watchtower showed no indication of separate blocks, as if it had been hewed out of a single mountain. The stone itself did not resemble any he knew from Midgard, though perhaps if he drew closer he could—
You do not wish to draw close …
Eh. Well, perhaps not. “What lives inside?”
“Watchers.”
He scoffed at that. So watchers dwelt in watchtowers. It seemed Keuthos actually had a sense of humor.
He’d expected a response, but the wraith said naught else.
Thunder and lightning rumbled and flashed among the upper spire, while mist seemed to seep out of openings around the base, concealing any entrance that may have existed. And yes, it terrified him, but still, he could not deny the curiosity that pulled him to this place.
Even so, Hermod guided Sleipnir wide around the edge of the tower, trusting that if even a wraith feared what lay within, he ought to avoid it entirely. He had not come here to explore the maddening depths of this realm.
And they were maddening, threatening ever to consume his mind.
The landscape nearby seemed desolate, inhabited by only the rarest of shades, ones which seemed to wander in torment, more shadow than man. These entities, too, Hermod gave a wide berth.
Experience had shown that worse things than ghosts dwelt out here. His experience with the living bog-thing still haunted his dreams. But since he could not guess where such an entity might dwell—and could only hope Keuthos would guide him around them—the best he could do was avoid running afoul of other shades.
Still, the loneliness of this desolation had him.
Maybe it was just the isolation, or his fatigue, but he almost felt like he was losing bits and pieces of himself the longer he dwelt here. Was it the Lethe, or was that merely his fear? It would steal his memories, he knew. This place fed on them.
Yes …
How strange, that his solitude should feel so complete that even the hateful, hollow voice of a wraith was almost a comfort.
It eats you … The further you travel from the realms of men … the closer you get …
“To what?”
Truth … We are all damned … Even the one you seek …
Hel?
Yes … Even she is prey to the fell gyrations of fate … She is the periphery of terror, that eclipses your view of the greater expanse …
Hermod shuddered, hardly knowing how to respond. Of course Hel was damned. She ruled the damned. But if Keuthos meant more than that, he was not certain he truly wished to even know.
Wise …
What was worse? To dwell forever in ignorance and yet find some measure of peace, or to begin to uncover the secrets of the cosmos, even if they were terrifying and would forever haunt his dreams? Perhaps every sorcerer struggled with that question, until finally they tipped over the precipice and lost themselves in the darkness that consumed minds and souls. Odin had said something to that effect, long ago, though Hermod could not remember the specifics of the conversation.
Indeed, so many conversations now seemed muddied, their flavors diluted, their words swallowed by ennui.
If such unfathomable horrors surrounded the world of men, how had mankind ever arisen in the first place? How had they survived?
If Keuthos had an answer, the wraith did not offer it.
Exhaustion finally forced Hermod to dismount and allow both the horse and himself a proper rest, even if for only a few hours. How many more days had passed now? A total of seven, he thought, though he was starting to lose track.
Settling down onto dusty ground, back against a boulder, he riffled through a saddlebag until he found an apple Odin had packed for him. While the apples of Yggdrasil were precious beyond measure, the Aesir prized even the ordinary apples they could grow in the few orchards of Asgard. Some common folk were lucky if they could taste a few such apples a year.
Odin had packed three for Hermod, and this was the last of them, so he supposed he had better savor it. He bit down, letting the juices soothe his dry mouth and aching throat.
Even the pleasure of eating was dimmed by the effect of the Astral Realm, as if everything vibrant, even flavors, could not survive the graven chill that so pervaded this existence. Still, a sweet apple—even one with diminished taste—was a blessing after at least a day without food.
Finding Niflheim was proving even more difficult than reaching Svartalfheim had. Perhaps he should have sought a nether river and found a ferryman or ferrywoman to carry him to the World of Mist.
Hold on to your soul … if you can … naught is more precious …
Hermod swallowed his bite. Was that what happened to Keuthos? He had lost too much of his soul?
The Art …
The Art? “You were a sorcerer?”
The wraith did not answer further. But what he had said … did he imply that the Art had done this to him? Or … that it did this to all sorcerers? Was practicing sorcery enough to damn one to this lifeless existence for eternity?
If so, did Odin know it? Hermod’s mentor avoided the Art when he could, but he had certainly cast his share of spells using it.
Hermod blew out a long breath before taking another bite.
Somehow, the apple had lost even more of its taste.
The path before Hermod stretched twenty feet wide and spread out over an endless, rumbling void beyond which lay some reality—or lack thereof—he did not truly wish to contemplate. Nor did he much wish to dwell on the road itself beneath Sleipnir’s hooves, which looked rather like a fleshy tendon stretched out over the abyss. The horse’s steps didn’t clack as they had on the obsidian that composed so much of the Roil, but rather thumped like blows on solid muscle.
The tendon joined with a convoluted mess of others like it, forming a web that spread out at all angles, a maze of horror that set Hermod’s gut churning to even give consideration to for more than a moment.
Far below all this, eruptions of fire and cold crashed together and flung up curtains of steam that concealed the depths of … a creature? He seemed to tread upon a living being, but how, he didn’t dare imagine. For naught could survive having bits of itself stretched out into such extremes. Indeed, his mind wanted to reject the sight utterly.
Madness in the dark …
Yes. How could a man look onto this cosmic void where life itself seemed unbound by the laws that ought to have governed it, and not thus find his mind broken by the sight? It defied reason—it devoured sense.
So sheltered … your world … thinks itself … hidden from the greater cosmos … from darkness eternal …
Keuthos’s voice so rarely proved a comfort. Besides, Hermod had begun to suspect not even the wraith truly knew what lay out here. Rather, the ghost itself was caught in currents of primal horror, writhing in eternal fear, but trying to bury it
s terror beneath its rage. For the vaettr dwelt on the fringes of this utter insanity and knew instinctively that not even one such as it could survive long by passing this threshold.
As you mean to do …
Hermod meant but to find the river Gjöll and pass into Niflheim. The World of Mist no doubt held its own terrors, but at least he could dare to hope some semblance of logic must govern its existence.
Hope is a lie …
So spoke a ghost that—unless Hermod missed his guess—had damned itself to this hateful existence by its use of the Art. Oh, he pitied Keuthos, yes, but he could not forget that the wraith had wrought its own urd.
Perhaps you do not understand … fate …
Perhaps not.
A long time more, Hermod rode on, reaching another twisted, obsidian plain, before he caught the sound of blades clinking together. A battle? Out here?
But no, as he rode closer, beneath the sounds of clinking blades he heard the murmur of a swift river.
Was this it? Did he draw night to Gjöll?
Yes … We had an accord …
So Keuthos had truly guided him to the edge of Niflheim. This nether river would form the boundary?
The thought both offered comfort—to think he might actually reach his goal—and terror at the thought of truly coming before Hel herself.
Sleipnir broke into a swift trot, perhaps as eager as Hermod, or, at least, sensing his desperation. The horse drew up short as they reached the river, though. Water surged past in relentless rapids, and the river stretched so far he could scarcely make out the far side through the darkness, though … yes. It did look like mist over there. But beneath the water’s surface surged thousands upon thousands of frozen blades, clanking together, bouncing apart, and—as the rapids hit—breaking the surface for a heartbeat before crashing back down. A cacophony of death that would tear Sleipnir’s hooves to shreds if he tried to ride across this.
The river Gjöll … Beyond here lies the world of Hel …
So at long last, after nine days of riding, he had reached the boundary of Niflheim.
