Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 3: Books 7-9

by Matt Larkin

  Still death stalks you … and still you resist … denying the inevitable … Give in … die …

  Unable to contain the anguish a moment longer, Odin roared at the darkened sky.

  “My king,” Tyr said, helping him up.

  Odin scarcely knew how much time had passed. Wallowing in despair, he had watched, unseeing, the remnants of the battle, unable to bestir himself to care who lived or died anymore.

  He had failed.

  For a time, Audr had continued to taunt him on the matter, but, when Hel fled the Mortal Realm, the eclipse had broken and true night had settled. Dawn drew nigh, and both the wraith and Valravn had grown silent.

  “Are you well?” Tyr asked.

  Odin blinked. Looked to his thegn. “You weren’t here.”

  “No. Hunting the wolf. Still am. Heard the battle. Had to come to aid our people. Didn’t know you’d returned, though.” The man pointed at the sky. “We win?”

  Now, Audr cackled again.

  Odin rubbed his face, pointedly looking away from the carnage. He couldn’t bear to see it. To see … her. “Hel has retreated back to Niflheim.”

  “So it’s over.”

  “No!” Odin spun on the man. “If we claim victory and let this slide, she will only try this again!”

  “World has other problems now. Surtr. Kvasir. Fucking wolf.”

  Odin shook his head. True, such things were problems, and he would attend to them as best he was able, when the time came. But Hel … he had sacrificed so much to defeat her.

  And failed … Fate’s jaws are upon your throat …

  Paid such a price, and the one thing he’d sworn to do was make sure that at least she could not rise again to threaten another era.

  Odin groaned. “I must find a way to reach Niflheim. Hermod could have done so, but he’s lost, and Andvaranaut is gone. Still, there has to be some way I cross between the worlds and hunt her down before she regains her strength.”

  Die …

  Tyr spit on the snow. “Mist-madness. Want to fight Hel? In her own domain. Didn’t suffer enough this night? Want to see what else she can claim from us?”

  Odin suppressed his surge of ire at Tyr’s tone. The man himself looked worn ragged and had no doubt lost companions. Such losses weighed on anyone.

  But that was exactly why Odin had to make it to Niflheim, fulfill his oath, and destroy Hel utterly.

  Fate’s jaws are upon your throat …

  Odin held Tyr’s gaze. “I have to do this, old friend. Whatever price I pay, it will serve to grant meaning to these other sacrifices. All those who have died and suffered because of her. We will attend to the other evils of this world when time allows. Right now, I have to focus on finding a way to …”

  Yes … Audr’s voice teetered somewhere between a cackle and a grim satisfaction. Yes … Fate’s jaws are upon your throat …

  There was one way Odin could pass the barriers of the Astral Realm and into the Spirit Realm. The way all men did, given time enough.

  Die …

  His stomach lurched at the thought of it. How many times had he felt the pain of his death at Fenrir’s hands? He’d known his doom so long, had run from it for ages. Yes, he’d tried to change a great many things about the future, but always this one had hung over his head, and always, he had allowed himself to believe he would avert this as well.

  Odin was not the kind to give in. Not to aught. Least of all death itself.

  Fenrir had stalked him through prescient visions and nightmares for the better part of Odin’s long existence. The wolf had always been there.

  No oracle can see past his own death …

  Which was why Odin had never actually seen himself succeed in destroying Hel. Indeed, perhaps it was a last, desperate gambit that she could never have imagined nor prepared herself for.

  An army of einherjar waited on the far side of the Veil.

  Odin could … could order Hermod to take them there and storm the gates of Hel.

  But Odin, not Hermod, was the Destroyer. The one who, through Loki’s machinations, had recovered the memories of a thousand warriors. A soul forged in lifetime after lifetime of battle, in order to create a weapon that could not be broken.

  And to join the einherjar, to lead them, he must truly enter into their ranks. He must …

  Embrace fate …

  Yes. Urd had him caught in its web, as it had done from the beginning, but it had shown him a path. A means of ending this, finally, for all time.

  If he but had the strength to face the pain and the terror. In prescient memory he had lived through his murder a good many times already. What was one more?

  Fate’s jaws are upon your throat …

  Yes. They always had been. But perhaps, he need not defy fate this time. It would draw him across the Veil.

  Yes …

  Tyr cracked his neck. “Seem lost.”

  “No. I think I have found my solution. Where did you say you hunted the wolf?”

  “South. In the woods nearby. Fenrir’s slaughtered a town that managed to survive the Sons of Muspel.” Even saying the words seemed to pain Tyr. He had so much reason to hate Fenrir, after all. Odin dared to hope Tyr might slay the wolf, after Fenrir had done his …

  No oracle can see past his own death …

  Yes. Odin couldn’t see what would happen, but he could hope. “Come, old friend. We shall hunt the wolf together.”

  “And Hel?”

  “I’ll call upon her, soon enough.”

  The sun had risen, and Audr and Valravn had both fallen silent within Odin’s mind. Odin knew better than to expect to find Fenrir in daylight, and indeed, Tyr had them make camp by a frozen stream, resting.

  The thegn cracked the ice to draw up fresh water, then served up the meager game he had left—rat, in this case. All over, animals were dying out from the winter. Surtr’s furious flames had destroyed so many woodlands, Odin supposed they were lucky this one remained. He’d heard birds—an occasion that had become rarer and rarer—earlier in the day.

  Now, the forest had fallen eerily silent once more. One could not appreciate how truly unnerving that was without having experienced it. Trekking in the wood, a man became inured to the countless sounds around himself, and could forget they were there. But here … a place with no insects, no birds, no beasts. Not even wind.

  The only sounds were the ones they made.

  “Is it true?” Tyr asked, after filling a skin. “Idunn’s come back?”

  Odin nodded absently. “It’s just as well she and her mother went south. Hel … seemed to delight in hopping into hosts I cared for, forcing me to destroy them.”

  “Was still plenty enough left on the battlefield. More were dead than alive, true. But hosts enough remained.”

  Odin had thought on that already. “I pursued her across the Veil. I think she had begun to fear I might truly dispatch her soul, and thus, when I drove her from my own body, she fled back completely.”

  “Eh. So vaettir can’t claim you?”

  “I fought her off, once. I cannot say whether I would manage the same forever, against any possessing entity. I prefer not to place myself in a position to need to try.”

  Tyr grunted. Gnawed on dried rat flesh. After a moment, he pried gristle from his teeth. “Everyone’s dying. Would have liked … just …”

  “You fear for Idunn and wish you could have seen her before she headed for Andalus.”

  Tyr grunted again.

  Odin let his mind free, plumbing the depths of prescient vision for any sign of Idunn’s fate, but naught was there. The only visions, were of his death at Fenrir’s jaws.

  He couldn’t see aught else. Because his life had finally run out.

  There was no more future for him left to see.

  And, though he could not truly explain it nor hope to express it in words, that brought a strange kind of relief.

  A burden of knowledge, finally lifted.

  It was almost over.

&n
bsp; The last of Odin’s prescient insights told him which way to go, wandering through the wood. The way he’d always gone, never before minding the path for fear of its destination. But now, he sought that destination with the utter certainty of inevitability.

  In the darkness just past twilight, they threaded between trees, Tyr no doubt still believing they were hunting prey, rather than Odin offering himself up.

  Fate had manifested, and Odin was tired of fighting against it. For once, he would willingly walk along the strands of the web.

  Part of him kept searching for words to say to Tyr. They had been through so very much together, and Odin, in a way, loved Tyr as he loved so many others now taken from him. But, try as he might, no words sprang to his tongue. There were surely things he ought to have said, knowing the end had arrived, but he couldn’t …

  Couldn’t find aught that …

  “M-my father would have been proud of you,” Odin finally managed. “You have done the Aesir proud.”

  Tyr glanced at him, then shook his head. “Wish it were so.” He clucked his tongue. “No. Didn’t act with honor half so oft as I ought to have. Maybe I did what I had to, but it wasn’t oft what it should have been. I was always … I wrought death and chaos … broke faith with others … Failed more oft than I succeeded.”

  “You are too harsh on yourself. Far harsher than Father would have been.” Indeed, Odin sometimes wondered if his father would have judged Odin himself more harshly than the others. Odin, who had started so many wars, sacrificed so many lives, made so very many compromises.

  How had any of them gotten here? The web of urd had brought them, of course, but that hardly absolved Odin of his guilt for the things he’d done. Maybe Tyr felt the same. Maybe they all did. Loki had implied that, toward the end of any era, chaos and corruption would invariably rise.

  Was that just a way of saying men would be all the more guilty?

  Either way, Odin had his share and more of things to make up for.

  There is no absolution … There is only the descent into darkness … Which you have now at last embraced …

  Odin swallowed, suddenly recognizing the grove they had wandered into. He pointed off to the south. “A flash of vision has me anxious,” he lied. “I’d have you check there to ensure he cannot sneak up on us. You’re the better woodsman.”

  Tyr grunted, cast Odin a bemused look, and stalked off into the wood.

  A deep sadness seized Odin at watching his friend leave for the last time. He prayed—or would have prayed had he believed any deity would listen—that Tyr would escape this wood and reunite with Idunn. But he could not see that. Maybe it would happen, maybe not.

  That uncertainty … other men must have lived thus. Hoping for weal to befall them, knowing it could just as easily be woe.

  A time after Tyr had left, Odin sighed, and turned to the east, brandishing his spear, though he knew he would not use it. Perhaps, he could have been fast enough to overcome Fenrir. But that would have wrought a paradox and availed him naught. Fenrir would pass into other hosts—Tyr was still too close, and Odin suspected other refugees lurked in this wood. And Odin would be no closer to reaching Hel.

  As expected, the Moon Lord came stalking from the trees, naked, eyes feral, teeth bared. His tongue slavered in anticipation of his prey, so long awaited. Was it only Grimhild’s spell that had bound the two of them together? Or was that spell but a manifestation of a stronger bond?

  Even Fenrir might be compelled, drawn in by the connections of the web of souls.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Odin said.

  “You always were a fool.”

  “Yes.”

  The varulf began to advance, fur rapidly sprouting from his face, chest, all over his body. His shoulders shrugged from side to side as his bones and muscles popped and rearranged themselves. He underwent the change with a practiced ease any other shifter would have envied. But Fenrir did not become wholly wolf, assuming a form still partially human in stature.

  A monstrous amalgamation of animal and man that only the greatest of shifters could attain.

  Even before the change had completed, he broke into a loping trot. Lunging. Flying through the air as if carried on winds out of Niflheim.

  Those slavering jaws closed around Odin’s throat the same instant Fenrir’s forelegs punched into his shoulders and bore him down.

  Crushing, crunching pain as fangs rent through flesh. Tearing, gnashing.

  Rivers of agony all while choking on his own blood.

  Torment … that Odin had felt a hundred times before.

  The anticipation of it worse than the fleeting moment before teeth crunched down. A savage jerk of Fenrir’s head ripped out Odin’s throat, his bones. A single, unbearable instant of complete agony in which he was aware of his ribs snapping as the wolf yanked his spine from his body.

  Of seeing his collapsing, headless body, his missing neck a macabre ruin.

  And then darkness held him.

  It started deep in his chest. A dull ache. A consumption.

  Odin sat on his knees, hands on his throat, desperately gasping for breath that would not come. The pain! The agony of it, of feeling his rent bone and shredded flesh. It had not faded, but rather dimmed, only to be replaced by the growing void that spread through him.

  His heart did not beat.

  But something else pulsed through his veins. A taint, a corruption from within, one that reached farther with each failed breath.

  Cringing, Odin spread his hands wide, then gaped in horror as the flesh on his fingers began to split apart, to slough off and dribble to the shadowy ground in an ooze. Not only his own bones poked through his decaying skin, but a manifestation of that darkness. As if his hands became claws.

  Breathless and horrified beyond words, Odin thrashed.

  Any perception of his Astral form had long revealed a darkening of his aura, those energies becoming tattered wisps that trailed around him. His soul, tainted by his use of the Art, had begun a transmogrification into something else entirely.

  Something that, now he was dead, would at last be completed.

  Odin felt it, as the darkness seeped through him, melding him into a wraith. It split him apart. Great, decaying rents opened along his ribs and over his chest, exposing bone and seething shadows within. A desperation to hide his own foulness seized him, and born of his desire, a shroud appeared, drifting in the nether winds of the Penumbra, tattered and broken. The very symbol of wraiths, for they, like he, must hate and conceal themselves, as any semblance of human form slipped away from their grasp.

  He couldn’t … No!

  Odin would not allow this to happen.

  Surely, that was what they all said. Sorcerers who plied the darkness for answers and power, and, looking into the void, found it had crept up into their souls.

  But … if he could but fight it off a little while longer … if he held himself … as himself …

  For wraiths were also the quickest to fall prey to the Lethe, and that Odin could not afford. Not whilst Hel yet existed. He had denied her form in the Mortal Realm, but he would not allow her to regain her strength in the Spirit Realm.

  “Oh …” A hateful, bitter chuckle, of one that despised all life. And Odin, most of all, perhaps for forcing it to fight for the cause of life, even for a moment. The sounds came from all around, blending with shadows, until at last coalescing into another figure wrapped in a tattered shroud, bleeding off bits of darkness into the Penumbra.

  “Audr,” Odin struggled to speak. His voice had become twisted with pain and—he could not help but fear—his own impending transformation.

  “You struggle against it, still …”

  Odin wanted to swallow, but found his mouth dry. So dry he could taste naught but ash, seeming to crunch over his tongue when he attempted to move it. “You encouraged me to take this step, to finish the fight with Hel.”

  “Oh … Perhaps … I just wanted to see you reap … this reward …
”

  Growling his own hateful snarl, Odin managed his feet. He knew he must now look like some hideous amalgamation of man, draug, and svartalf. But he was still Odin. At least for a little while longer. He was Odin. “I am myself.”

  The words seemed to strike Audr like a blow, for the wraith recoiled, hissing, its loathing perhaps only intensified to see someone survive what had so consumed him. “Sorcery … has its price …”

  Perhaps. In time. “Not yet.” Odin took a threatening step toward Audr. “Have you broken our accord?”

  “Your death invalidates it … Writhe in despair …”

  Odin sneered at the wraith that had so long dwelt inside him. “Go find someone else to haunt, ghost. If you will not aid me, I have no further use for you.”

  “In your arrogance … you do not see the fate … that holds us all …”

  “You, who betrayed your own people and destroyed your own civilization. You think … to compare us? You think I am like you, Audr Nottson? Retreat to the darkness of your mistress.”

  Audr did not, however. Instead, the wraith drifted closer, claws extending out of its shroud, reaching for Odin’s throat. “I shall yet … have your soul …”

  Growling, Odin beat Audr’s hands away. The wraith moved fast, though, faster than Odin, given the pain that still wracked him. Those claws lanced out, gouging Odin’s chest. They ripped through his ethereal flesh, further exposing the shadows roiling within Odin’s breast, and feeling as though they gouged him down to his very essence.

  Another claw slashed his face, tearing brutal rivets along his cheek.

  Odin fell back a step, only to have one of Audr’s clawed hands grab his shoulder, lancing through. Audr’s face remained concealed by the shroud, but it drew closer, giving Odin the sickening feeling of staring into something blacker than black, an absolute void of existence, or rather, a manifestation of the primordial darkness Loki had so feared.

  A shriek sounded overhead, a raven’s cry.

  An enormous shadow descended over Audr, a beat of powerful wings, as Valravn—now manifested as a raven with a thirty-foot wingspan—dropped down, talons tearing into the wraith.