The Fires of Muspelheim

by Matt Larkin

  “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.

  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.

  With a soul-shredding hiss, Audr broke apart into shadow, reforming some ten feet away, once again hard to track for the swirling shadows that composed the Penumbra.

  Odin clutched his arm over his wounds. Inside, he felt it. The writhing. The pain that urged him to give in and surrender his pretenses at light and control. To embrace suffering and thus move beyond it. To let himself be made like Audr.

  “Consider it one last service,” Valravn’s voice boomed. “Your final gift from Huginn and Muninn. Where you intend to go, we shall not follow.”

  Odin slipped back to his knees, gaping up at the Moon vaettr that had saved him. Did not all vaettir hate humanity?

  The raven cocked its head to the side, then, with a mighty beat of those things that sent a rush of air over Odin, took flight, vanishing into the shadows of this Realm.

  And leaving Odin completely, utterly alone.

  Part IV

  Year 400, Age of the Aesir

  Winter

  28

  Tyr knelt beside Odin’s severed head. Knees dug in the snow, he sat. Staring hard at it. Borr’s son. Ripped to pieces.

  Should’ve been impossible, that kind of savagery. Otherworldly. Hard to fathom.

  And Odin, he must’ve known. He’d said the wolf would kill him. So he’d come here. Even knowing it. Always knowing, and still he’d done it.

  Man had fought Hel herself. Tried to kill her, save she kept jumping hosts.

  Same problem as Fenrir, except the wolf didn’t seem much inclined to retreat back wherever the fuck he’d come from. Meant Tyr had to kill him when there was no one around. Not for miles.

  Also had to hunt the bastard down before he got too far away. Damn wolf kept slipping through his fingers. And every time, people died. Lots of people. And now … now his king.

  Maybe Odin had seen this coming all along. Still made Tyr’s failure complete. Still meant there was naught left for Tyr to do. Naught save vengeance. Cold, bloody. Borr’s son would be avenged, no matter what.

  “Leave,” Tyr said, hardly caring much to look at the nix. “Get gone, and gone far.”

  Flosshilde bared her teeth. Wicked, shark-like things that had Tyr suppressing a grimace.

  “I’ve already got half a mind to run you through,” he said.

  “After all we’ve been through …” The nix’s mouth opened too wide when she wanted.

  Tyr shook his head. None of it mattered a damn.

  He owed Fenrir. And he’d finish it alone.

  The village—if you’d even call it that—was the only one even close to the wood. Nine houses, clustered all together. The wall, four feet of rough stone, it might’ve kept out most creatures of the forest.

  Not Fenrir, obviously.

  Tyr stalked amid the corpses. Frightened men and women, now silenced. Almo
st, he could hope their fear was done. Maybe the Otherworlds would be more kind.

  His boot squelched on viscera and he winced.

  Had to be done. He knew that.

  Blood dribbled down Mistilteinn’s blade, trailing in the snow behind him as he plodded on toward the next house. Last one.

  Some of the men had come to fight him. There weren’t many left. Maybe too many had died of hunger already. Sacks of bone and loose skin. Sunken eyes and distended bellies.

  Maybe they’d gone to fight the draugar or Serks or jotunnar or vampires. Sorry state of things, when Tyr couldn’t even guess which invading army of horrors the folk had to fear the most.

  Unfortunately, now, they had to fear him most.

  He’d been careful, making sure no one could escape. A woman had tried. Been half over the wall when his hurled spear had taken her in the back.

  He’d had to fight down the bile from it.

  Borr would’ve despised him. Would’ve struck him down.

  Tyr, he’d always been a murderer, even when he’d tried to do better. There wasn’t better for him. He wanted to blame urd for that. Would’ve been lazy, though. He knew what he was doing.

  Smaller, individual walls separated the houses.

  Tyr stepped through the gate of the next and plodded over to the house. Tried the door. Blocked. Probably barricaded. Inside, he could hear the fearful breathing. The last of them had fled here.

  Tyr blew out a breath, frosting the air. Men like him … deserved to rot in Naströnd. Torments of Hel weren’t enough for him.

  He’d failed Odin. Failed Borr. Failed even their legacy.

  But he’d give them vengeance. Give them that, and make damn sure Fenrir didn’t get anymore hosts.

  Only one way to do that. Only. One. Way.

  Tyr hacked into the door, Mistilteinn easily cleaving through the wood, through the bar behind it. From the wet thwack, must’ve gone through someone bracing it, too.