by Matt Larkin
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 grim 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 abys
s. 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 the 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 …
There, on the far bank, the woman was pressed up against a tree, eyes closed, arms above her head as a blond man thrust into her with ever increasing speed. And she was Freyja.
Odin’s stomach dropped out from under him, unable to tear his gaze away from the sight of his beloved, writhing in ecstasy as someone else pounded into her.
Fuck. What was he doing? If this was another time, of course she’d had other lovers before him. She’d lived thousands of years. Shit, the Aesir used to worship her as the Goddess of Sex, among other things. Clearly, she’d enjoyed a good many—
The man flung his head around wildly, groaning in release, giving Odin a bare glimpse of his face …
No.
No.
Frey?
Gaping in horror, Odin stumbled away. Blinked. Tried desperately to believe he had not just seen his beloved fucking her twin brother.
Hand to his mouth—not sure whether to scream or retch—Odin spun, stumbling randomly through the woods of Vanaheim.
18
Beside him, Flosshilde clucked her tongue at the slaughter of another village, this one in the south of Reidgotaland. Varulf pack had swept in, killed everyone. Torn them to pieces, fed on some. From the look of it, maybe had their way with the women first, some of them. Hard to be sure, with the bodies ripped apart, though.
Like a wind of chaos had swept down through the whole valley.
Flosshilde, she mostly stuck to the rivers, streams. Consulted with other nixes from time to time, just to be sure they were on the right track. Seemed like Fenrir headed for the Myrkvidr. Rumor had always placed varulfur in there, so maybe he was recruiting more of his kind.
Tyr shook his head in disgust at the scene all around. It wasn’t the first village they’d seen thus. Always, too late.
And here he was, working with Flosshilde. Once, he’d let himself half-trust her. Forget what she was.
A vaettr. A thing from the Otherworlds.
Well, no forgetting that now.
Not with her inside that new host. He’d brought her a girl—fifteen winters, he figured—young and scared. Not half so scared as when Flosshilde had grabbed her and drowned her. Dying, he supposed she’d made a deal or just got so weak the nix could take her. Or maybe Tyr didn’t even want to know how it worked.
Just, he’d seen Flosshilde’s old, graying body floating downstream. Empty.
And the nix had complained she’d liked her blonde host more than this redhead. Then stripped the girl naked in front of him. Asked him to fuck her.
He’d refused. Hard as that was, what with her rubbing the red fuzz between her legs.
Vaettr, they liked to discomfit mortals. Play with their minds so they didn’t know up from down anymore. She was like that. Sensual and gut-wrenching all at once, and Tyr hated her.
Needed her, too.
Alone, he might never succeed. True to her word, she’d reclaimed Mistilteinn and restored the runeblade to Tyr. Then helped him track Fenrir.
Always too late, though. Always like this.
Macabre charnel and desolation and guilt, for not doing more, faster.
“We move for the Myrkvidr now.”
“I should consult with my brothers and sisters to be certain.”
Tyr shook his head. “No. I’m fair certain the wolf heads for the dark wood.” And not just for recruiting. No, it connected Hunaland, and formed the border of Valland. And maybe Fenrir made for Valland, where Idavollir and the last of the Aesir lay.
Wolf had wanted Odin back then. He’d be going for the king again. And if he hadn’t found the king, well, he’d be going for those who knew where to look.
“For the Myrkvidr,” he repeated.
Flosshilde shrugged. “I have to follow the streams, regardless, but I’ll find one to take me there and meet you in the marshlands if need be. I dare not cross openly into the Gandvik. Rán holds sway there.”
Just as well. Tyr would prefer solitude to having to look at her. Having to look at the girl he’d all but murdered. Maybe worse than murdered. Her fear, it was his crime. Back when Flosshilde had her old host, Tyr hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t thought about what it meant, considering her an ally.
But having seen the host before, having damned her to this …
Well, maybe Tyr deserved to rot behind the gates of Hel. Deserved it many times over.
He did not make the Myrkvidr. Long before that, the ground began to tremble. Tremors that grew so violent, Tyr dropped into a crouch, one knee down in the snows just to steady himself.
Only, it kept getting worse.
Like the whole mountain range thought to rip itself apart. Whole world, maybe, caught in its death throes.
