by Matt Larkin
As if his every attack melded into a defense, a move that somehow took him out of the line of danger. A dance, almost.
Grimly, she shook her head. How little she could contribute here. Oh, with the eclipse overhead, she could have tried to call up shadows and use them to slow or befuddle the jotunnar, but drawing on such powers might only expedite Volund’s search for her.
Instead, she wended among the fallen, making sure those who fell were truly dead and not able to once again raise weapons against her allies. She could not deny the perverse pleasure that came in slitting throats. In watching the last light dim from jotunn eyes. A delicious cruelty that would have churned her stomach when she was yet human.
And then, with startling suddenness, the fight was ended. No more jotunnar came charging across the bridge. No others rose up to defend the precious Tree—though from what Idunn could tell, the jotunnar had already plucked it clean of apples.
Odin jammed Gungnir into a corpse and spun on Idunn, rushed at her so quickly instinct demanded she raise her dagger in defense, though before she even could, he had swept her up in an embrace and was planting a kiss atop her head.
Because … because he truly believed he was Grandpa Naresh. Not just a manifestation of the Destroyer, but that the Destroyer was a singular soul, cast by forces unknown into such an urd. That the Wheel of Life, as Grandmother had called it, had actually spun Naresh out again. As Odin.
The blade slipped from her hand and clattered onto the stones below, and Idunn wrapped her arms around Odin.
Then Freyja was there, too, holding the both of them close.
The warmth of their embraces, of their feelings, it made Idunn shudder. And wonder, if only for a moment, if she might yet feel something without the need of pain as a stimulus.
Odin had set to fiddling with a strange orrery now built inside the hollow within Yggdrasil. One, Freyja claimed, that allowed him to create a bridge between the Mortal Realm and any world in the Spirit Realm. It was both madness and brilliance, and terrifyingly similar to a device Grandmother had described as having bridged the Earth to Niflheim, ending the last era.
But Odin was resolved in his course, determined that he would make a bridge to Muspelheim and thus bring balance back to the Spheres of Creation. And it was not Idunn’s place to stop him. Even if she could have dissuaded him, and of that, she knew better.
“I don’t want to die,” Freyja said, breaking the silence that had settled upon the two of them for several moments.
While Odin tinkered, Idunn and Freyja had sat on the bridge, watching leaves fall from Yggdrasil’s boughs with alarming regularity. Oh, leaves had always fallen. People were always dying. Sometimes in great clusters when men warred. But now, the leaves fell in droves, an almost continuous stream of them, as if all the whole world were now at war.
From what Freyja had said, that seemed not so far from the case. All Midgard—perhaps Utgard too—caught in a final struggle. Or a thousand of them. And no one, no man, woman, or child, would come out unscathed. Everyone fought now, from the sound of it, and Idunn could not help but brood on her part in the matter.
She had brought Gungnir to the Wodan tribe during what they called the Great March of Vingethor. It was a token, then, a gesture she had not imagined would later pass into the hands of the Destroyer. Or, in truth, she had actually imagined Vingethor, Odin’s ancestor, might be the one she thought. But he wasn’t, and the spear had already come to Odin, years later, before Idunn suspected the truth about him.
Idunn had urged Odin on to his quest to overthrow the Vanir, her own people, and she could not shake the doubt Volund had planted in her mind … that she had undertaken this course because of the darkness inside her. Because of the need her svartalf blood gave her, to destroy, to bring pain.
Freyja reached over and took her hand, squeezed it. “Naught to say?”
“Oh. Sorry, I …” She shook her head. Freyja sat there, confiding in her, speaking of her fears, of wanting to live, while this very day Idunn had mused on ending her own life. “You’re not going to die, Freyja. Look how Odin fights. Look at the two of you! I don’t think aught in this world could separate you.”
For some reason, that didn’t seem to comfort Freyja. “How could our beautiful islands be reduced to this?”
Idunn shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“What?”
Idunn rubbed her hands over her face. “There was a world before this. There will be a world after this.”
“If we win, maybe. But that doesn’t do much for me, for the life I lead, unless you want to buy into Odin’s claims about us all getting spun out by the Wheel of Life over and over. Even if it’s true, I don’t see how that’s me. Or … almost worse, what if I were to lose my soul mate and not die? How could I live on in the face of such a loss?”
Idunn abruptly looked up at Freyja. “Grandmother asked me something similar, ages ago.”
“Lady Chandi?” Freyja shrugged. “And why not? If any of this was true, surely others have suffered the same.”
Idunn stole a glance back at the hollow where Odin worked. Was that … was it even possible that Odin … that this was all true? That, if Odin was Naresh reincarnated, and Freyja truly was his soul mate, if such a thing existed, then might not have Freyja been Naresh’s own love … Grandma Chandi?
“What?” Freyja asked. “What happened?”
Idunn swallowed. The worst of it was, her friend would probably never even believe her. “I …”
Freyja sighed. “Oh, what am I doing, Idunn? Carrying on about my fears of death? I haven’t even asked you what happened to you in Svartalfheim or how you escaped. I can see …”
“That it changed me?” Idunn couldn’t keep the sneer from her face, but she managed to shrug it away after a moment. “It doesn’t matter. We both knew this was inside me all along. Svartalfheim brought it out, just like Alfheim was inside my old husband.”
“And your escape?”
“Your daughter, actually. She set me free. Volund became more lax in his security after confirming he’d planted his seed in my belly.”
“His … you mean he …”
Now Idunn had to roll her eyes. “Please. You need me to explain how a man’s seed gets inside a woman? It’s not like it was the first time I was ever raped in five thousand years of trekking across the world.” It was, however, the first time she’d grown to enjoy it. A thought she desperately wanted to keep from revealing to Freyja, but, at the same time, found herself almost tempted … wanting to writhe in the delicious ecstasy of her last friend’s scorn.
“You mean Thiazi.” Freyja swallowed. “Father told me about … I mean I guess I always knew he must have …”
Idunn looked away, hoping to keep Freyja from seeing her face. From seeing her revel in her own past suffering, somehow intoxicated and aroused by it, though she remembered once looking upon those days in horror. Damn it! What had Volund done to her to make her like this? Oh, how she’d wept when the jotunn had …
It felt like her head would split apart from her own self-delusions. Oh, it hadn’t been Volund who’d done this to her. He’d helped bring it out, true, but the masochistic streak had lain in her all along, a gift from her father. Along with the tenacity to survive almost aught. She’d relied on that part of herself, while trying to ever beat down any of her self-destructive impulses, to bury them with more positive ones. As if she could push away darkness through sheer force of will, through forcing herself to seek and find joy in the world no matter how dark it grew.
Freyja crawled over and threw her arms around her, the sudden warmth a shock that sent a convulsion through Idunn. Her friend drew in a sharp breath and Idunn realized she’d grabbed Freyja’s elbow, was digging her nails into it. But Freyja didn’t let her go.
Not for a long time.
Finally, she eased Idunn back against the low rail around the bridge. “Can you … can you tell me about Hnoss?”
A reflection of the gri
m future that no doubt awaited Idunn were she to falter and give in to her impulses for but a moment. And such an answer would no doubt crush her friend.
“She returned to Svartalfheim. It’s too deep inside her now, but still, some part of her remained that remembered me and you, and the joys we’d shared. Some part, enough that she wanted to help.” Something beautiful, having survived that much torture.
Maybe then, there was yet hope for Idunn, as well.
17
Odin’s hand shook as he placed Andvaranaut into the orrery. Much as he’d tried to instill the others with confidence in this plan, much as he himself knew this alone might achieve the end he sought, how could he not wonder if he opened the world to something just as loathsome as Hel? To willingly create a bridge to an Otherworld, to something beyond the scope of mortal ken … would history take that as arrogance? As madness?
Forcing the damning tremors from his hand, he slid the ring into the slot. Maybe, uncounted millennia ago, Loki had forced this role—this cycle—upon Odin because of that arrogance. Because he alone would take these mad steps and push beyond the limits of what other mortals would even imagine, much less attempt. Would make the sacrifices, of himself, of the world. Sacrifices to buy a little more time.
You cannot escape the predations of fate, Valravn said.
Audr cackled. Its jaws close in upon you …
So little time. Still, how much? How many more cycles could Yggdrasil endure? Even a cursory observation revealed the Tree had split further, the hollow widening. And outside, he had seen where a bough had split, falling into the root abyss below.
Feed Nidhogg, or the dark dragon would eat away at the roots until the World Tree crumbled. Or force a cyclical apocalypse upon the world and watch the Tree falter and rend itself asunder, just the same.
No good choices.
“We’re ready,” he said, struggling to keep any trepidation from his voice. The others had enough reason to fear, without becoming a party to his doubts.
Freyja moved to his side, Idunn trailing behind her. The two of them both looked worn ragged, drawn out beyond the last of their endurance. And yet, neither seemed quite ready to surrender or give up. Here, at the very end of time—at least this iteration of time—Odin could not have asked for stronger companions. He hoped his look said as much, for he could not bring himself to speak.
His lover laid a hand on his shoulder and nodded. Idunn shut her eyes a bare instant, then opened them and met his gaze, offering a nod of her own.
Well, then.
Odin knelt and activated the Bilröst.
The rings of the orrery began to spin, their velocity rapidly increasing. Taking Freyja’s hand, Odin guided her outside, knowing Idunn would follow.
From the platform beyond the Tree, a coruscating arc of light now began to take shape, shimmering, crackling into existence. Brighter than before—or was that his imagination—forming into a rainbow that lanced through the darkened sky, so vibrant it illuminated the night.
A hand fell on his shoulder. Squeezed. Idunn, tense. Odin didn’t need to look back at her to know she was grim-faced, looking out over the sky.
“It’s beginning,” Odin said.
A tremor shook the bridge. No, the whole Tree, and the even the land beyond. Like the world trembled in anticipation of the coming conflict.
At the far side of the bridge, mist gathered, followed almost immediately by a throng of frost jotunnar, no doubt drawn here by the appearance of the Bilröst.
“We should move,” Odin said, claiming Gungnir.
“What about the ring?” Freyja asked.
“Naught we can do about that at the moment.” Still clutching her hand, he raced forward, trusting Idunn to chase after them.
Then, he released Freyja and charged for the jotunnar. They hesitated, not frightened of him, he had to assume, but rather uncertain of what was coming across the rainbow bridge. And, indeed, it had begun to glow, incandescent, shimmering so bright it almost hurt to look at it, the colors all blending together.
Odin burst into the frost jotunn forces, slashing with Gungnir’s blade. Whirling. Thrusting. The butt shattered a jotunn’s knee. The tip cut out a throat. Freyja vaulted past him, mace crashing into a jotunn’s shoulder, blade following.
The dim prescient anticipation that had bid him flee now grew into a clarion in his mind.
“Move!” Odin bellowed, shouldering his way past a jotunn, not even trying to fight. Just to run, and to ensure the women followed behind.
Another, more powerful earthquake shook the ground. So violent, he stumbled, slammed a knee into the stone bridge. The land itself had begun to thrash and writhe, twisting in agony from the merging of this world and the World of Fire.
A frost jotunn tumbled over the side of the bridge, screaming as he fell into the abyss. Another slipped, landed on his arse. Drawing pneuma, Odin jumped over the fallen creature.
A loud crack behind them, and Odin could not stop himself from casting a glance back.
The bridge split, the center rent asunder as if struck by lightning. Falling, crashing into the darkness in a tumbling cloud of dust. More and more of the bridge pitched away.
“Run!” Freyja shrieked.
The stone beneath them shook so violently that every dashing step he took threatened to send him careening over the side. He wanted to look back, to wait for Freyja and Idunn, but doing so, delaying even a heartbeat, might have doomed them all. All he could do was flood as much pneuma as possible into his limbs, push his speed and grace to its limits, and run.
More crashing. Plummeting, cracking chaos behind him. So loud it almost drowned out the screams of the jotunnar.
Odin leapt from the bridge onto solid ground beyond it.
And then that ground began to tremble, giving way. Great clumps of earth broke apart, slipping into the chasm below. Like the whole island was tearing itself apart. Torn to pieces by the forces he’d unleashed.
Beyond, in the rainforest, the dense maze of roots from the trees helped stabilize the ground, and Odin scrambled onto them before daring a look back. Idunn and Freyja raced past him in that instant, but Odin scarcely noticed them.
The Bilröst now glowed bright white, tinged with blue, crackling as if a river of flame streamed over it. Within that river, Odin fancied he could make out massive shadows, hints of figures, racing toward the world, intent to burn everything to ash.
Beyond the Tree, a mountain exploded. The sound of it, an instant later, was like the roar of a thousand dragons, mixed in with searing, hissing, popping rage as a geyser of lava spewed hundreds of feet into the air. The sound left Odin’s ears ringing, sending him into a bout of dizziness that had him crashing down onto his arse, with Freyja plopped down beside him.
Black smoke billowed forth from the ruptured mountain.
On the far island to the north, another volcano erupted. Successive blasts of sound bombarded Odin, as if more mountains erupted all across the world. All of Midgard, reeling under a catastrophic shift toward the World of Fire.
Idunn clutched his shoulder. She was shouting something, but he couldn’t make out aught over the ringing in his ears. Frantically, she gestured to the Bilröst. It had burst into flame. Cracks like incandescent spiderwebs had spread along the surface of the bridge as pulses of what looked like lava raced along the arc and into the hollow within Yggdrasil.
What had he done?
Idunn, now even more hysterical, had begun to shove them each deeper into the rainforest, but Odin couldn’t help casting glances back at the fracturing bridge. Waves of heat rippled around not only the Bilröst, but Yggdrasil itself.
And then the bridge detonated. Like a bonfire overturned with debris kicked onto it, it billowed out glowing embers in all directions, sizzling through the air. Half a heartbeat later the hollow inside Yggdrasil erupted into fire, a white-hot conflagration that blasted outward in an inferno that seared his eye for even having looked upon it.
The air around t
he Tree seemed to catch flame, great sheets of fire lancing out in all directions. Whole branches burst, caught in the blaze.
A great heave on his shoulder sent Odin crashing down into a mudslide, tumbling down a hill, over water. His skin sizzled, seeming to scream as it bubbled, ready to melt off from the endless waves of heat as if the entire island had become a pyre.
Freyja! Where was—
He slammed down into a lagoon—even the water seemed scalding!—and flailed, desperately reaching for his love. Currents caught him and dragged him deeper, pulling him under.
The tug on his body was so powerful, he couldn’t even say when the tug on his mind began, but it seized him, and he found himself untethered, yanked away from all sensation. Torn to pieces and boiled alive.
Drowned and shredded.
The raging currents deposited Odin in a river that eased the burning of his skin, but at once tugged him back under the surface, flinging him about until he managed to orient himself, to desperately swim for the surface. Then bursting through, he caught a breath, and swam for shore.
Bright sunlight left him blinking as he pulled himself onto the riverbank, gasping, panting. Scarce able to hear himself for the ringing in his ears.
With a groan, Odin rolled over onto his back.
Where …?
A tropical island again. If not Asgard, then a place very similar to it. Back before the beginning of Ragnarok, or a long time after it.
Finally, he managed to push himself up.
As the ringing began to pass, he could have sworn he heard … grunting? A man and woman in the throes of passion, both sounding very close to climax.
Unable to quite force down a sudden voyeuristic thrill at it, Odin followed the sound. Someone here, by the river, having a much better day than he had so far. Why did he care to see?
What he needed was to get back to Freyja and help her escape Asgard before it was too late. Whatever he’d wrought with the Bilröst, the islands had clearly become uninhabitable. Especially for frost jotunnar. He had to admit a certain grim satisfaction at that, though he still feared what it would mean for the rest of the world if the fires of Muspelheim had spread half so thoroughly as …
