The Fires of Muspelheim

by Matt Larkin

  When they came, the fires lit the night, a smoky blaze of destruction that cut a swathe clean through the draugar’s ranks, like a flaming serpent slithering across the countryside. Atop the hill, Idunn watched that serpent break apart, fire jotunnar and Sons of Muspel fanning out, some charging in toward Idavollir, others engaging draugar, and a third tongue of the serpent heading southwest, as if intent to reach Aegir’s fortress.

  The flames burned away the mist, but the smoke and darkness meant Idunn could still not make out the clear shape of what transpired down in the valleys. A conflagration of death, that much she knew.

  Freyja was on her feet, already heading down there, not even offering a word.

  “What do you hope to achieve?” Idunn demanded, chasing after her friend.

  Freyja didn’t look back, though. “Whatever’s down there, it’s given us the chance to get through to Idavollir in the chaos.”

  Or to get burned alive and added to the pyre. But Freyja did not seem much inclined to listen.

  Was it desperation that sped her steps? Or did she flee from her last parting with Odin?

  The two of them were truly a mess.

  At Freyja’s side, Idunn descended into the valleys. Almost immediately, she had to suppress fits of coughing from the choking smoke that flowed over her. The forests here were largely barren of leaves already, but now the trees were lit aflame, a great swathe of fire that spread with each passing moment.

  Freyja drifted around the greater blazes as if driven by some fey impulse, never slowing. All around, the clamor of battle rang out. The shriek of metal slicing into flesh. The cries of the damned that set even Idunn’s nerves on edge. A chorus of suffering that resounded from all sides, when they could see naught save silhouettes out in the smoke. How strange … Idunn could see through shadows, yes, but the smoke created a blocking barrier.

  Here, she spotted a seven-feet-tall warrior, laying into a shambling foe with a giant axe. There, a hint of a dozen undead soldiers overwhelming a smaller unit of men with sheer numbers.

  Occasionally, a splatter of blood or a dismembered limb would fly out of the smoke and land close by, as Freyja led them amid the chaos.

  Neither side seemed overly interested in them. Perhaps because they showed no intent to engage in the chaotic melees erupting all around. These weren’t armies, that was for certain. Not even a hint of structure or discipline. Rather, every member on both sides was simply running from one target to the next, reveling in slaughter for its own sake.

  And Idunn could not quite suppress her giddy glee at the destruction and suffering of so many. Damn Volund for making her into this. Or damn Mother for spreading her legs for Ivaldi. Or … damn Idunn herself for being one of the damned.

  Without warning, a tremendous form rose up within a column of smoke, as if it itself were made of living vapors. A great, smoldering leg strode forth, exposing the loathsome creature. A body seeming made of shifting magma, for incandescent cracks marred its black skin. Curling ramlike horns adorned a monstrous head with oversized brows. Its eyes were pools of lava. Its maw home to sizzling fangs.

  Though she had never looked upon such a being, she knew it, for both liosalf and svartalf feared the princes of other realms, most especially the princes of Muspelheim. And this, a true son of Muspel himself. This a jinni possessing a fire jotunn, giving rise to a destructive monstrosity the likes of which had not walked the Mortal Realm in many eras.

  Even stooping down to gaze upon her and Freyja, the Fire prince towered above her, easily thirty feet tall. In its hand it bore a sword half as long, flaming, glowing so hot it seemed to ignite the air around it.

  About its forearms curled equally incandescent chains, tiny chunks of lava dripping from them to land sizzling upon the ground.

  The creature reared its head back and bellowed. The sound like a dragon’s roar, powerful beyond mere sound, enough to send Idunn tumbling down to her knees, clutching her ears, desperate to stop the awful ringing.

  Even through the deafness, the shadows whispered to her, speaking, as if in fear of this fire prince.

  Surtr.

  Released from eons of captivity, now intent to unleash his rage upon on the world. A fiery vengeance on the beloved home of mortals who had wronged him.

  Idunn stared, helpless, at the flaming behemoth before her, knowing she looked into the face of something ancient beyond measure. Powerful beyond her ken. Enraged.

  A glowing hand descended toward her.

  Closer. Closer, ready to engulf her. Immolate her and end her suffering … with agonies that would dwarf all she had endured before.

  Freyja shoved her hard, sending Idunn toppling further down into the valley, rolling through a brushfire, and down, into a puddle of melted snow that was already close to burning. She screamed. Hardly heard it.

  Freyja’s screams, though, they cut through the ringing in Idunn’s ears. Those cries of utter torment drowned out all the cacophonous sounds of battle and destruction, becoming a beacon that had Idunn half running, half stumbling, ignoring her injuries as she blundered through the hazy smoke to find her friend.

  Surtr had Freyja hefted in one hand, lifted toward his face, almost as though he intended to bite her in his fanged maw. The liosalf’s skin charred, bubbled and popped, releasing its own curtain of steam and smoke as Freyja was cooked in its grasp.

  Idunn shrieked.

  Instinct took over and she poured her terror and fury into the shadows, becoming them. A tendril of darkness lurched from a cloud of smoke and wrapped itself around Surtr’s wrist, yanking, desperately trying to pull Freyja back down to ground level.

  Idunn might have revealed herself to Volund, thus. It hardly mattered.

  Freyja’s screams of torment were drowning her.

  “Release her!” she shrieked.

  Surtr jerked his arm up. The shadow tendril caught aflame then disintegrated, a reverberation jolting back into Idunn and sending her toppling over. An instant later, the Fire prince flung Freyja at her. Her friend’s body collided with her, and the pair of them tumbled, end over end.

  Freyja’s clothes had burned away to cinders. Her flesh was blackened, skin melted away to muscle where Surtr’s fingers had actually touched her. A bloody, charred ruin of Idunn’s beautiful, eternal friend.

  “No. No. You can’t die …”

  Surtr roared, hefting that monstrous flaming sword.

  Someone shrieked a battle cry. Then Frey was there, in midair, falling. Slashing at Surtr’s face. Vanishing. Appearing beside him.

  Out of sunlight.

  His clothes had caught alight by mere proximity, but he ignored the flames, hewing again and again into the prince’s calf. The third strike, his sword lodged in igneous flesh, and he shrieked, jerking his hand away.

  That looked like … like the blade had melted.

  Frey cast about himself for a weapon, and, finding none, suddenly met Idunn’s gaze.

  Run, his look said. Save my sister, it implored her.

  Drawing her pneuma, Idunn hefted Freyja into her arms and took off at a sprint, casting another glance back at Frey. There was no way he could fight that monstrosity, much less unarmed.

  If he’d had a weapon, maybe, but …

  Still, the liosalf fought with fury, diving between Surtr’s legs, coming up, flinging rocks. Screaming defiance. Fury and valor Idunn could not dream of matching.

  And then the smoke and tumult of battle separated them, and she couldn’t see aught more of him.

  Desperate, Idunn ran on, darting around more eldjotunnar and Sons of Muspel, around draugar.

  “Frey …” Freyja pleaded in her arms. But Idunn’s friend was barely coherent, was losing so very much blood.

  Idunn … she wasn’t really a healer. Many liosalfar could push their pneuma into someone else, accelerate the healing process. But Idunn couldn’t do so, not in any manner that would’ve helped Freyja. She had to get the liosalf to someone who could help, and that meant she had to pr
ay other liosalfar remained within Idavollir.

  There had to be.

  Because without aid … not even an alf could survive such burns.

  25

  Inside the ancient fortress of Idavollir, Odin opened his eye at the sound of Freyja’s forlorn moaning. His lover sat alone in a small chamber, arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. As fragile as crystal, looking apt to shatter if so much as a loud sound were uttered in her presence.

  Odin sat upon the hard floor, watching her, willing his disorientation to fade. His mind felt too big, like it expanded so far beyond the bounds of his skull that it might scrape the edges of the cosmos. The sea of time that so called to him now melded with an ocean of memories. Lifetime upon lifetime blended into a unified and eternal manifestation of his soul. Thoughts and dreams compounded upon one another to create the depths of that ocean.

  He had become a living paradox, not of time, but of self, the realization that at once, there was no self, and that the self was eternal—a flicker of light persistent from the dawn of time. Light that dwelt inside the cosmos, despite their genesis in the darkness of Ginnungagap.

  Light.

  It took a moment to force such expansive thoughts down and focus himself in the present. Even as he rose, stumbling toward his lover to comfort her, a thousand ephemeral images of his own body engulfed him, trailing behind and streaming ahead, and Odin had to draw in sharp breaths to draw them back inside.

  He was himself. And within that self lay the thousand lives Loki had spoken of.

  And all of them loved Freyja and recoiled at seeing her distress. His hand—a thousand hands coalescing into one—fell upon her shoulder and she stiffened, though surely she had heard his shuffling stumbles toward her.

  Without warning, she fair leapt to her feet and shoved him away. “Come back finally? Come to berate me once more for my relationship with my brother?”

  “I have come …” His voice was a thousand voices, echoing through his mind, a cacophony that had him stammering, struggling to pull them inside.

  Freyja sneered. “Well then, you’ll be gladdened to know he’s dead!” She shoved him, her strength enough to heft him off the floor a hair and send him stumbling away. “He’s ash! He burned away to naught while you flittered through time!”

  Only now did Odin see the scars marring her arms, and the hints of worse beneath her white shirt. Burns. Devastating burns that would’ve killed any mortal and, Odin suspected, many vaettir as well. He reached out to touch her face and she batted his hand away.

  “You released the fires of Muspelheim, as you wished. This madness is what it bought us.”

  Odin frowned, shaking his head sadly. “This is Hel’s doing. She has waged war on our world once more, and to fight her, we have made so very many sacrifices, my love. But I swear to you, now, she will pay for what she has brought us to. The flames even now burn away the poison mists. All that remains to us now is to drive Hel from our world and ensure she cannot ever threaten it again.”

  Freyja looked inclined to shove him again, but instead threw up her hands. “How exactly do you propose to fight an Elder Goddess? Surtr, a mere prince of Fire in comparison, has laid waste to our armies and a fair portion of hers as well. But his power is naught compared to what Hel wields. So how?” She spread her hands in disdain. In rage. “How will you stand before her?”

  Now Odin grabbed her shoulders, looking into her eyes. His love. She was, in a real sense, his beacon. A signal fire through time, keeping him tethered. “I was not ready before. Now I am. Whatever forces remain to us, we will gather them for a last stand. The time has finally come.”

  They gathered around the great hall, all looking at him, faces tight with desperation, some having already given over to despair. They knew Thor was dead, their great warrior, and Tyr missing, off hunting Fenrir.

  Your own doom, Valravn said. Your great fear.

  No. Odin had become something more than he was before. More, he suspected, than he ever had been before, in any of the thousand lifetimes. Perhaps that was Loki’s intent all along. The cycle sent the world teetering ever closer into the abyss, yes, but it had also forged a thousand warriors inside Odin. And as the Firebringer had hoped, Odin could finally feel them becoming one warrior.

  And if those warriors were compounded, then each must be greater than the last.

  So few of the Aesir and Vanir remained. Indeed, several more liosalfar had fallen, their hosts destroyed by draugar or the Sons of Muspel. Unable to draw in sunlight so long as Hel extended her power to maintain the eclipse. Saule was gone, and Malakbel.

  Gefjon and Nehalennia were, as best anyone knew, with mortal refugees to the north, unable to get past Hel’s army of draugar. No one could say what had happened to Thrúd.

  Magni, left in command of this faltering place, looked worn ragged, eyes red and rimmed by dark circles. He had not taken the death of his father well and, Odin feared, if the man went into battle, he might do so with no regard for his own safety.

  Idunn’s presence, there beside her mother, was the only welcome surprise found in Idavollir.

  “Surtr will go toward Andalus,” Eostre said, “to join with the Sons of Muspel in Serkland. I must go to them, try to negotiate a peace.”

  “If you go,” Idunn said, “I’ll go with you.” Oh, poor Idunn. Caught between sunlight and shadow and torn apart by both. Odin so desperately hoped she would find a place, somewhere, where she could belong.

  It did not truly serve his ends to send away his people, but perhaps Eostre was even right. Perhaps she could help save some few remnants of humanity from Surtr’s flames through negotiation or supplication. As Al-Uzza, perhaps Eostre could save mankind.

  Odin couldn’t see the answers.

  You cannot see beyond your own death, Valravn said. And it draws so perilously nigh.

  Fate’s jaws close in …

  It left him Freyja and Malina, neither of them with stored sunlight remaining, Magni, who might have a death wish, and an army of broken and exhausted Aesir and Vanir.

  The last days of an era.

  “Surtr has greatly diminished Hel’s horde,” Odin said. “This provides us with an opportunity. She does not wish to withdraw and allow us to regroup, but it also stalls her, prevents her from raising more draugar, considering the Sons of Muspel reduced most of the corpses to ashes.” Freyja cringed at his words and Odin had to push down a sliver of regret. He could not change what had happened to her brother. “Further, Hel diverts some of her power to maintain the eclipse.” A small edge. “I ask everyone who remains to push back against her army. Destroy the draugar and frost jotunnar who have come through. Force Hel herself to take the battlefield. And then I will deal with her.”

  “Arrogance,” Malina said, her voice soft. The liosalf seemed on the brink of despair, a strange state for one of her kind.

  Odin rose from his seat. “There is no dawn coming to offer reprieve. This is our last chance. Say your farewells to those you love. In one hour, I go to battle with Hel and all her forces. And if we fail, the world ends with us.”

  “I have so many reasons to want to hate you,” Freyja said, when they were alone in the great hall. A hundred emotions warred on her face, as if she could not decide whether to scream or whimper or rage or embrace him.

  Choosing the last for her, Odin moved to her side and drew her close. “My prescient insight shows so little left before us … I cannot say what will happen out there … Only one thing I can say with utter certainty. I have loved you every time I’ve found you. It no longer matters whether or not you believe in the Wheel of Life, because I know it is true. I remember all the times I loved you. The Well of Urd showed me this so long ago, but I wasn’t ready until now. Not really.”

  She murmured something, and buried her face in his shoulder. Then, after a moment, she spoke softly. “I love you too. Fate has not been kind to us.”

  “Fate is never kind.” Odin stroked the back of her head. “I hav
e to do this now. I have to ensure that Hel cannot ever bring the world to this point again. That she cannot tear us apart from our loved ones again. Whatever I have to sacrifice, I must.”

  “I know.” She sighed deeply.

  A slow, perfect sound.

  A precious memory to add to the ocean.

  Hel’s forces had encircled Idavollir, preventing Idunn and Eostre from escaping. It hardly mattered. The chaos that would soon ensue would afford Odin’s allies the chance they needed.

  Odin had stripped down to the waist, not bothering with armor or aught else that might slow him. More importantly, his forces saw the runes that encircled his body. They saw, and they whispered, wondering what the symbols meant. The Master of Runes, some had begun to call him. And they would need that confidence.

  Despite his aged form, having spent the years in constant struggle had ensured his muscles remained tight. He would look like a berserk, wading into battle. A sight he hoped might further instill confidence in his allies.

  Now, he stood at the head of his faltering army. A good number of his forces bore torches in addition to their arms, though more still preferred shields, even if they could not create a shield wall large enough to hold back the draugar that ringed them.

  Much of the mist had burned away, but the darkness of the eclipse meant the vast horde of draugar and frost jotunnar remained largely in shadow. A legion of gleaming red eyes out in the darkness, clanging rusted weapons upon tattered shields. Shuffling on decaying feet. Knowing, as sure as Odin did, that the final charge now impended.

  Hel had no doubt told her draugar that the Aesir were their greatest enemies, and now, the last Aesir stood arrayed against them.

  Odin turned, looking back over his own scattered, frightened army. They knew so many of them would die this day. Setting his face, Odin banged Gungnir’s butt on the ground and raised his shield. “I know you are tired. I know you are pushed beyond the limits of endurance. But we have come to the end at long last. One final battle I ask of you, and then, whatever befalls you, I promise you the chance to rest, in your beds, or in Valhalla!”